No major doctrines changed?

^^^ meant to say "4004 whatever BC"....an utterly absurd number. Ussher and many Christians date the Flood @ apx 2350 BC!

People don't seem to realize that such a date places Abraham a mere 350-odd years after the flood! OR LESS USING THE CORRECT DATING METHODS!

So get this: 75 souls left Caanan and entered Egypt, bred furiously for 430 years, and came out of Egypt with 2-3 million Israelite souls.
OK? Great. This I absolutely agree with.

But EIGHTS SOULS exited the ark and repopulated the entire planet IN 350 YEARS BEFORE ABRAHAM ARRIVED ON THE SCENE? Utterly ridiculous.

Thanks for your reply and hard work! I am making the effort to review all of your posts....this will take some time.

My main realm of expertise happens to be Biblical genealogies, correctly deducing dating schemes, ancient history and archaeology (and prophecy, my main interest). That being said, here is my own pet peeve.....something nobody here on CC has dared to confront. This is amazing to me, since this contention is IMO of high importance in terms of exploding Christian myths such as the 6th millennium etc.

https://www.barrysetterfield.org/Genesis_1-11/part_14_genealogies.html#:~:text=Alexandrian: 3463 Masoretic: 2107 Difference: 1356 years Abraham,only gives 4429 years from Creation to Christ.

Total years from Creation to Abraham


Alexandrian: 3463
Masoretic: 2107
Difference: 1356 years


Abraham was born in 2322 B.C. Adding this to the Alexandrian age gives 5785 years from Creation to Christ. Adding to the Masoretic, however, only gives 4429 years from Creation to Christ. One of the reasons for the discrepancies between the Alexandrian as we have given it and the age as figured by most of the above listed church fathers is that Terah is listed as 70 when his first son was born, but that was evidently not Abraham, for Abraham was about 75 when his father died at 205 years old (Genesis 11:32, Genesis 12:4), and that would make Terah, as we show above, about 130 when Abraham was born. This does not answer for the full discrepancy, but it does narrow the gap a bit.

"Why, then, are our modern Bibles today giving us an age of about 6000 years since Creation for our time? The answer lies in the Masoretic text, from which all our modern Bibles, including the modern Hebrew, have arisen. The Masoretic is a product of the Council of Jamnia, a series of 'discussion groups' which met about 100 A.D. The Romans has destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and thus also destroyed the original manuscripts of the Scriptures. Copies, of course, remained, primarily known today as the Alexandrian Septuagint (LXX) and the Samaritan Pentateuch. The rabbis, gathered under Rabbi Akiba, wanted to formulate a new 'official' copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. In doing so, they switched from the more ancient paleo Hebrew (sort of like our cursive) to the modern block Hebrew characters. (They also left out the vowel points, which were not restored until 900 A.D., and then on the basis of oral tradition.) Because they wanted to eliminate the ability of the new Christian sect to use the Hebrew scriptures as evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, they altered some of the quotes used by the Christians which came from the Old Testament. This is why many of the quotes used in today's Bibles do not match the referents in the Old Testament. In at least one case (Hebrews 1:6), the referent, Deuteronomy 32:43, is so changed as to be unrecognizable. It is there, however, in the Alexandrian. In addition, the rabbis in the Council felt that the genealogies in Genesis must be wrong. It would be dishonoring to God for a man to wait until after he was a hundred or a hundred and fifty to have a son. So, in many cases, they simply dropped the cipher for "100" from the ages of many of the men at the time their mentioned son was born. This effectively chops over 1300 years off the age of the earth in terms of the Masoretic texts."

@John146 ...I am surprised that you (nor anyone else) chimed in with any remarks
about this seeming "massive discrepancy" in the KJV....

Alexandrian: 3463
Masoretic: 2107
Difference: 1356 years

I don't think the idea to suppress the meaning of 'minister' is quite correct. Simple, a Minister is to do his job well that is to serve or minister. Here Paul addresses this matter to the Gentile believer as a minister of the gospel. The idea of 'to work as a priest' in the bible refers to the O.T. hebrew priesthood in the temple and mainly to God's people. The gospel on the other hand is so done mostly outside the temple especially of the Gentiles. Doing a priestly service to the Gentile believers is somewhat proselyting and as Paul is against Judaizers. Kjb does so well and the translators were not influenced by their belief. They translated what they know as best in this passage.

And you thought textual criticism was complex!

Everyone has their own niche, and some folks are really into a wide array of topics. I myself have my own interests, and anything that falls outside of those areas of study, well, “it’s all Greek to me.” Textual criticism is not really all that difficult to understand as long as you understand the methods underlying it. And it might help if you’ve got a little bit of geek in you too.

My interest in textual criticism came as a result of interacting with unitarians back around 2004 or 2005. Back then, I frequently used a platform called YahooAnswers (which is similar to Quora), where I encountered multiple Jehovah’s Witnesses. I grew up (like many of you) reading the KJV, but I quickly realized in my encounters with JW’s that I had to change my strategy. What better strategy than to beat them on their own playing field? I know their arguments, and I know what texts I can and cannot use when encountering a JW. Studying in the area of textual criticism has greatly benefited me in that area.

I came from a family that was not overly religious. My dad and mom were separated when I was about a year old. I did not have any brothers or sisters (aside from two half-sisters on my mom's side). My dad raised me by himself, and he was not overly religious (though this did change over time). He had his views, but never really talked about them. About the most education I ever got about “the Bible” (if you could call it that) came from my dad drawing figures in the air with his cigarette. The embers of the cigarette would leave a (momentary) trail in the air when the lights were turned off. And before bedtime, dad would draw these circles in the air, and with each circle he'd gradually draw them bigger and bigger. The first circle would be representative of me, as a kid. Then the next circle (just a little large than the first) would represent my dad. And then the third circle (which would be just a little bit bigger than the second) would be representative of my grandfather. And then finally, the largest circle would be representative of God. That’s about all the education about God that I really got. Though, occasionally I went to church, but was not a regular attendee. And usually it was just Sunday School, so you really didn’t get any meat. At the age of 24, I stumbled across a couple websites that were primarily focused on educating people about the deity of Jesus. I had never, in all my youth, been educated or taught about such a thing — “it was all Greek to me.” And so since that moment, I just saturated myself in all the books I could find on the topic. My library is rather quite large with all these books on the deity of Christ. So you can tell, since then it has always been near and dear to my heart.

Over the years I have studied a lot of the arguments that JW's offer, particularly, from their “very best” apologists. A lot of time I am caught up in reading a lot of heretical material that some people probably could not withstand. But that is so (as Judy Scheindlin says) I can, “keep your enemies closer, until you can figure out how you can annihilate them.”

So that's my backstory. I have three pretty large projects (that will probably turn into tomes by the time I'm finished) that I have been working on since 2019, and can't seem to finish any of them! I blame ChristianChat... .

And you thought textual criticism was complex!

Everyone has their own niche, and some folks are really into a wide array of topics. I myself have my own interests, and anything that falls outside of those areas of study, well, “it’s all Greek to me.” Textual criticism is not really all that difficult to understand as long as you understand the methods underlying it. And it might help if you’ve got a little bit of geek in you too.

My interest in textual criticism came as a result of interacting with unitarians back around 2004 or 2005. Back then, I frequently used a platform called YahooAnswers (which is similar to Quora), where I encountered multiple Jehovah’s Witnesses. I grew up (like many of you) reading the KJV, but I quickly realized in my encounters with JW’s that I had to change my strategy. What better strategy than to beat them on their own playing field? I know their arguments, and I know what texts I can and cannot use when encountering a JW. Studying in the area of textual criticism has greatly benefited me in that area.

I came from a family that was not overly religious. My dad and mom were separated when I was about a year old. I did not have any brothers or sisters (aside from two half-sisters on my mom's side). My dad raised me by himself, and he was not overly religious (though this did change over time). He had his views, but never really talked about them. About the most education I ever got about “the Bible” (if you could call it that) came from my dad drawing figures in the air with his cigarette. The embers of the cigarette would leave a (momentary) trail in the air when the lights were turned off. And before bedtime, dad would draw these circles in the air, and with each circle he'd gradually draw them bigger and bigger. The first circle would be representative of me, as a kid. Then the next circle (just a little large than the first) would represent my dad. And then the third circle (which would be just a little bit bigger than the second) would be representative of my grandfather. And then finally, the largest circle would be representative of God. That’s about all the education about God that I really got. Though, occasionally I went to church, but was not a regular attendee. And usually it was just Sunday School, so you really didn’t get any meat. At the age of 24, I stumbled across a couple websites that were primarily focused on educating people about the deity of Jesus. I had never, in all my youth, been educated or taught about such a thing — “it was all Greek to me.” And so since that moment, I just saturated myself in all the books I could find on the topic. My library is rather quite large with all these books on the deity of Christ. So you can tell, since then it has always been near and dear to my heart.

Over the years I have studied a lot of the arguments that JW's offer, particularly, from their “very best” apologists. A lot of time I am caught up in reading a lot of heretical material that some people probably could not withstand. But that is so (as Judy Scheindlin says) I can, “keep your enemies closer, until you can figure out how you can annihilate them.”

So that's my backstory. I have three pretty large projects (that will probably turn into tomes by the time I'm finished) that I have been working on since 2019, and can't seem to finish any of them! I blame ChristianChat... .