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John -
Since you haven't read those accounts I'm talking about, how would you know?
Genesis does not explain the universe, it's a story about the creation of Heaven and Earth in this little corner of the universe.
Genesis is a very short and adulterated version of the Enuma Elish so I rely on it mainly for clues and to support other myths.
How do you know all those objects were present before the creation of earth and not a result of the celestial collisions that spawned the earth? The Enuma Elish does speak of them, they are the horde of monsters born of Tiamat as battle neared and they were scattered when Tiamat lost.
An interloper planet with a highly elliptical retrograde orbit explains certain phenomenon from those comets we see following highly elliptical retrograde orbits. Some astronomers came up with the theiry of a nearby brown dwarf - the death star - following just that kind of arbit to explain these comets. Astronomers also say the earth got plastered about 4 billion years ago by a Mars sized object. The Enuma Elish describes just that. And astronomers are still looking for Planet X...
The solar system is exactly what the story is about, more specifically, the creation of earth and heaven. Where do you see the universe in Genesis? Look closely at how God creates Heaven and Earth? Heaven is the "firmament", or the Sumerian "hammered bracelet",
God used to divide the waters (planets?) above from the waters below. But does Genesis say God created these waters? No, God set boundaries for the waters below and called the bound water "seas". What about the Earth? What is it? This planet? No, God called the land exposed by the receding waters "Earth", with the emphasis on dry land. So there we have definitions for Heaven and Earth and neither qualifies as the universe or this planet.
We do when one civilization spawned the other. The word "Sar" became Caesar and Czar. Pretending there is no connection between Genesis and the Mesopotamians ignores the overwhelming consensus among scolars that the connection is real. Or you could just take Joshua's word for it, he told the hebrew upon entering the promised land that in the olden times their fathers lived in Mesopotamia and served other gods.
DRose -
Mars is the 6th planet, but the number 7 is always in conjunction with earth.
I mean, I could argue that the ancient Sumerians/Incans/Mayans didn't have **** compared to the ancient Isrealites, whose account of creation does a far, far better job of roughly paralleling the scientific account of creation than anything done by others:
Oops. Well, a little forgiveness can be granted in the spirit of literary license... after all, they're trying to explain nothing less than the creation of the Universe. Anyway, where were we... oh, yeah... gravitational clumping which led to...
Stars and planets. Unfortunately, the ancients had God inventing plants before he made the stars that fed them, but again, they didn't know everything. And maybe the first typesetter got these last two passages backwards.
Again, they get a few details wrong (akin to insisting that there's 12 objects in the solar system, when in fact there are thousands), but we'll give them the benefit of doubt.
An interloper planet with a highly elliptical retrograde orbit explains certain phenomenon from those comets we see following highly elliptical retrograde orbits. Some astronomers came up with the theiry of a nearby brown dwarf - the death star - following just that kind of arbit to explain these comets. Astronomers also say the earth got plastered about 4 billion years ago by a Mars sized object. The Enuma Elish describes just that. And astronomers are still looking for Planet X...
So, if you want scientific accuracy in your belief system, just turn to the Bible. At least they didn't limit themselves to the creation of a mere solar system... no, the explanation of the creation of the Universe was their goal, and, for the most part, they got the general gist right.
God used to divide the waters (planets?) above from the waters below. But does Genesis say God created these waters? No, God set boundaries for the waters below and called the bound water "seas". What about the Earth? What is it? This planet? No, God called the land exposed by the receding waters "Earth", with the emphasis on dry land. So there we have definitions for Heaven and Earth and neither qualifies as the universe or this planet.
Plus we don't have to manufacture answers by multiplying this civilizations year by that civilizations number of Gods, and then dividing it by this other civilizations number of Kings. Or whatever.
DRose -
Perhaps the signifigance of 7 lies not with Earth but with Mars when counting in-from-out.
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