Affirm or Prove, which do you mean?

@patrick953 How about affirm with evidence?

⁠​⁠@@lance4306Affirm = state as a fact; assert strongly and publicly. Also you really think that there is no evidence bold claim

​@zach2382 doesn't a miraculous act of God stand beyond the scope of what historical evidence can demonstrate?

According to etymology ,the word " Terah " could not be " Azar " , so Abraham father name is Terah or Azar ,Which one is correct?

I appreciate your proposal. However, the preposition is εις, which is "into" not "unto." So the idea here is that the time stretches "into the eternity of ages."

@ancientegyptandthebible I have seen unto given as a possible meaning of eis especially with a time reference, eg.acts 4:3 I also understand both of the eons (ages) of the phrase are in the plural. So actually, "into/unto the ages of the ages" Translating the individual words as eternities, plural, doesn't make sense as a concept. If we go through several eternities then each eternity isn't literally eternal. It makes more sense as an idiomatic or poetic phrase to denote eternity taken together (as a whole), or alternatively as I said for an indeterminate description of an "incredibly long period of time, not further defined" Either way it does not straightforwardly mean "eternal", it requires interpretation.

Now that I think about it, if the phrase teaches eternal conscious torment then "in/into" is not the translation we want for eis. That would support that the punishment occurs in amongst the ages to come (it happens "in" that grand period of time, however understood), not necessarily that it lasts for the full duration of the containing era described. E.g. If I said in English, "they will be punished in summer", that tells us nothing about the duration of the punishment compared to, "they will be punished until/unto summer" which does. The defender of ECT will want it indeed to be "unto". Interpreting eis as "in" represents a second way this phrase may not imply ECT in addition to my indeterminate meaning suggestion.

@@roscaris6541 > I have seen unto given as a possible meaning of eis especially with a time reference, eg.acts 4:3 Yes, εις can express a limit "until". In the case of Acts 4:3, the object of εις is "tomorrow." So in the case of where "into" has a limit of time or space, it is both "into" and "until." So "into tomorrow" is the same thing as "until tomorrow." On the other hand, "the eternity of the ages" has no limit, so there is no terminus. If there is no terminus, "unto" would make no sense in that reading. > I also understand both of the eons (ages) of the phrase are in the plural. So actually, "into/unto the ages of the ages" > Translating the individual words as eternities, plural, doesn't make sense as a concept. What is an ages of the ages? Think about that. What would be an "age of years"? That would make perfect sense. It's a long period of years. What would be an "age of decades"? It's also a long expanse of decades. What would be an "age of centuries"? It would be a long expanse composed of centuries. What would be an "age of millennia"? It would be an age of several periods of thousands of years. What would be "ages of millennia"? It would be multiple ages of several periods of thousands of years. What would be "ages of the ages"? It would be multiple ages of multiple ages. That implies eternity. It makes perfect sense. And it makes perfect sense of the passage. > If we go through several eternities then each eternity isn't literally eternal. I think you misunderstand how the genitive is used. An eternity of ages is not several eternities, but an eternity made of one age after another forever. But even if it was an eternity of eternities, that would be a hyperbole of infinite time. There is again, nothing unreasonable about that. > It makes more sense as an idiomatic or poetic phrase to denote eternity taken together (as a whole), or alternatively as I said for an indeterminate description of an "incredibly long period of time, not further defined" That's a bait and switch. You say that it is a "poetic phrase to denote eternity taken together" and then switch that with an "incredibility long period of time." > Either way it does not straightforwardly mean "eternal", it requires interpretation. It's more straightforward without the prevarication.

@@roscaris6541 > Now that I think about it, if the phrase teaches eternal conscious torment then "in/into" is not the translation we want for eis. You don't get to just pick any translation you want. That's not how translation works. > That would support that the punishment occurs in amongst the ages to come (it happens "in" that grand period of time, however understood), not necessarily that it lasts for the full duration of the containing era described. E.g. If I said in English, "they will be punished in summer", that tells us nothing about the duration of the punishment compared to, "they will be punished until/unto summer" which does. Again, you are switching the language that is for the translation you want. ECT is exactly about the torment lasting forever. That's the "eternal" bit in "eternal conscious torment." Annihilationists think punishment needs a limit. Hey, "send them to Hell only to kill them again."--Hazbin Hotel. > The defender of ECT will want it indeed to be "unto". > Interpreting eis as "in" represents a second way this phrase may not imply ECT in addition to my indeterminate meaning suggestion. Bad exegesis. Bad Greek. Bad theology.

I haven't spoken to IP about this subject. But he's about 90% there. He is absolutely correct that the text is explicitly talking about classes of humans. He would say that the sons of God were polygamous kings, whereas I would say that the sons of God were a caste of priests. However, it should be noted that kings were both rulers and priests. So, this could be a case where we are both partially right.

@@ancientegyptandthebible So do you think the kings and priests from many nations who worship different gods still considered ‘Sons of God’? Since you mentioned Sargon of Akkad. Sorry for having too many questions, but I am confused on the fact that when you said Daughter of Man are cults, so do you think it is talking about just worshipping ancestors or also idols? And also thank you - Dr. Falk - for answering my questions.

@@TombaoT-gc4ri > So do you think the kings and priests from many nations who worship different gods still considered ‘Sons of God’? Sometimes. Kings of the ancient world were often regarded as the son of a god. > Since you mentioned Sargon of Akkad. Sorry for having too many questions, but I am confused on the fact that when you said Daughter of Man are cults, so do you think it is talking about just worshipping ancestors or also idols? No, it's not about worshipping ancestors or idols. It's about worshipping ancestors, and worshipping false gods, and entering into sexual vows and false ritual practices. It's about rejecting all aspects of sound orthodoxy and practice, and the outcomes that result from that. But this is all taking place during a time when the sins of men have an effect on the fertility of the land. This is a complex formula that would be very difficult to replicate today.

@@ancientegyptandthebible Oh, I understand it now. Thank you for answering, Dr. Falk.

> Would I be right to reword your view of Nephilim as syncretistic cults? That could be one of the outcomes of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of Adam." New religious movements often arise from older religious movements. > As Genesis 6 is displaying a society that worships Adam and has ritual "relations" with lesser gods, but hold some understanding of the God that made Adam? Yes. > If it does, than that would be interesting contrast to the descendants of Cain in the previous chapter who appear to abandon God, but who are farther away from the consequences of the Flood. Perhaps another case in history of heresy being seen as more dangerous than out right rejection. Indeed. It is worth thinking about.

@@ancientegyptandthebible Awesome. This is definitely the first time I have heard this explanation, and it is definitely less crazy than Nordic Aliens trading advanced technology for marriages.😄

Too many lying witnesses against them. The problem, when you deal with liars, is that when they lie once they will lie again to protect their prior lies. And in that culture, when two or more witnesses agree, they are presumed to be telling the truth. Joshua and Caleb were at a 5 to 1 disadvantage.

​@@ancientegyptandthebibleoh ok! Thanks again

🤣🤣🤣

I haven't yet read De Young's position on this.

@@ancientegyptandthebible Are you familiar with his work? I find him to be a very interesting Bible scholar.

@@rockytopbritt He's only just recently come onto my radar. But I haven't read any of his work yet.

The entirety of the Gen 1-11 is ritual literature. It describes man's interactions with God in terms of the sacred and profane. However, we frequently find the term "sons/daughters of a god/goddess/famous human" used in ancient literature in a cultic fashion. Examples of this include the "sons of Ishtar" (the priesthood of Ishtar), the "sons of Baals" (the priests of Baal), and the "daughters of Hathor" (the priestesses of Hathor). And there were many cults of the ancient world that were dedicated to human beings, e.g., there are many funerary temples dedicated to kings that line the west bank of the Nile river. Now, you broach the so-called "children of Abraham." This is not a cultic term per se. It is only used once in the Bible (John 8:39), and its use is not cultic. "Sons of..." can have either a genetic or a cultic meaning depending upon the context. "Sons of Israel" normally has a genetic meaning. "Sons of God" can have both meanings, although the cultic use is most common. However, the term "daughters of men (Adam)" is highly unusual. When it talks about women who are the "daughters of men" in general, it almost always uses the generic term for men (ish), e.g., Gen 24:13. Hence, a cultic use in Genesis 6 is the most likely reading.

Yeah, that's not how proof-texting works.

@@ancientegyptandthebible says every guy accused of proof texting.

@@gaw9419 Thanks for showing that you don't know what proof-texting is.

Typical NRSVue watering down of vivid nuance into milquetoast prose.

@@ancientegyptandthebible The regular NRSV says the same thing

@@ancientegyptandthebible Also for comparison the NABRE says “They spread discouraging reports among the Israelites about the land they had reconnoitered”

@@Kakaragi It means "evil, defamatory, whispering" in the Hebrew. Various translators will add their own spin to that.

@@ancientegyptandthebible What is your stance on Psalm 22 and what it says based on the original Hebrew?

It's hard to say. He claims the gods were with him. Who can say what influences he might have had?

It's a collusion paradox. A majority colludes in a lie. You have 10 liars against 2 people who want to tell the truth. There is a 5 to 1 disadvantage in terms of being believed. No one is going to believe the truth because the vast majority of witnesses aren't telling the truth. You also know that those who lie once are willing to lie again to protect the first lie. It is an impossible situation. Your best strategy in this situation, which Joshua and Caleb do here, is to reframe the lie by say "yes, and [add your own attempt to reframe the lie]." This is why the narrator's input here is so important. That input has the value of hindsight in telling us that the testimony of the 10 is defamatory, so the reader can weigh and understand exactly what is happening in this exchange. As the old saying goes, there are three sides to any argument: my side, your side, and the truth. In this case, we have the side of the 10, the side of the 2, and the truth as expressed by the narrator.

It's possible that, by the 13th century BC, the Israelites thought that the Nephilim were people of exceptional size. It had been over a thousand years since a real Nephilim had existed at that point. Perceptions can change a lot in a 1000 years. And it is clear that the original Nephilim were not people of exceptional size, rather people of exceptional abilities. Think of them more like the Khan of the Eugenics Wars from the Star Trek universe. And the only thing that connected the Anakim to the Nephilim is that much later scribal gloss.

Now, you have some real exegetical issues here. Jude, 2 Peter, and Job do not equate the Nephilim with giants. So you incorrectly use those sources. Jubilees, Enoch, and Josephus are non-canonical 2nd Temple Period literature, so you might as well cite a medieval source while you are at it. And the LXX version of Gen 6 is a translation, not a primary source. So, just because the meaning of Nephilim was lost by the time of that translation, doesn't mean that the original was read that way in its original context. Sorry, it's sloppiness like that which leaves me unconvinced of Heiser's case in this regard.

Both the LXX and Enoch are 2nd Temple Period literature, which post-date the fourth century BC. A lot of understanding had been lost by that point. It is bad methodology to draw meanings from 2TP lit in order to understand LBA lit. You have a 1000 year separation between the two corpora.

@@ancientegyptandthebible thank you for the response!

Augustine got a number of things wrong due to his universally-recognized poor grasp of the Greek language, which is why he primarily referred to Latin translations of scripture instead. The main prooftext for this point is Matthew 25:46, which the Latin text gets fatally wrong when it translates κόλασιν αἰώνιον ("chastisement/correction of the age to come") as "supplicium aeternum" ("eternal punishment/torment"). There are at least 4 different Greek words Matthew COULD have used if he actually meant "lasting forever and ever," but he didn't ...and this nuance is lost in Jerome's Latin text.

> The issue is that there is absolutely no external evidence for this interpretation of a cult of Adam as an ancestor cult. Except all the ancestor cults and ancestor worship that was running around the landscape during the LBA. > There is a reason why Heiser's view is the consensus scholarly view. He's not the consensus view because there is no consensus here. It's best not to play fast and loose with the word "consensus" with regard to Gen 6. There is over a hundred years of scholarly literature debating the meaning of Gen 6:1-4 with new papers being published annually. It is one of the hottest debates in Biblical literature. Heiser has received a lot of traction in the evangelical and Biblically conservative communities, but that doesn't a consensus make. > There are late Second Temple Jewish writings that in fact assert that certain select nephilim survive the flood. Yes, and there is a lot of 2TP literature that is wrong too. 2TP literature is rife with fantasy and speculation over things it has no direct knowledge of. That's why one needs to be careful to compare like literature to other contemporary like literature. > There are many characters in Mesopotamian mythology (king list if I'm not mistaken) who are said to be two-thirds divine & one-thirds human BEFORE the flood-but having a LESSER proportion of divinity AFTER the flood. Care to amplify? > That is enough to explain "also after that". Some Jewish literature even have Noah be a giant The broken vow view is also enough to explain the "also after that." You don't need to resort to the giant hypothesis for which we have no evidence. > Dr Falk's interpretation of the spies report is unsatisfactory & fails to realise that this is a LITERARY creation - the author wouldn't put those words in the mouths of even the defamatory spies if they weren't meant to be an exaggeration of a REALITY. I never said the writer put words into the spies mouth. I realize that this is a literary creation, but that isn't antithetical to the spies' report being defamatory or exaggerated. Quite the opposite, I think that the author was faithfully reporting what the spies said and the message they conveyed. > Why would the author mention tall men if there was no such thing conceivable in reality? They spies said that the men were "men of size." That could mean tall. But is that a measure of height or a perception of stature? In fact, a careful reading of the text makes it clear that this is a perception, not a reality. See "we became like grasshoppers in our own sight" (Num 13:33). This shows that these men made the Israelite spies FEEL small. The text shows a failure of faith, not a physical reality. > Even the land devouring its inhabitants is surprisingly taken too literally to a comic extent - when it was clearly referring to the possibility of agricultural failure Yes, but that is the point of the text. It is comic in its hyperbole. That's how you are supposed to read the text. And the narrator sets it up that way, so that's how the text is expected to be read. This is done for literary effect.

> This is an interesting stance on the Sons of God being priests of a religious order, and the daughters of men being of a female cult you call the "Daughters of Adam". Do you have any further evidence of the daughters of men being a cult? There is a lot of these groups running around during the Late Bronze Age. During that period, it was common for priests to be called "son of" and priestesses to be called "daughter of." We don't have specifically evidence for a "Daughters of Adam" cult since that probably would have gone extinct with the flood. However, there other "daughters of" cults running around at the time. > Because the Sons of God are differentiated from the daughters of men as not being born of man, but of God, hence angels. The problem is that "Sons of God" could be both divine beings or a cult. The term doesn't necessitate genetic descent. We have many examples of priest being named "Son of [name of a god]" in the ancient Near East. So, those examples are clearly not angels. > If the men were sons of man then the scripture would call them sons of man, same why Jesus is called Son of Man, being born of a human. So Sons of God implies angels, differentiated from daughters of men. Not necessarily. We have way too many counter-examples to make that blanket claim. > Secondly, these offspring were different or greater than average men. Your theory is that they were born physically greater than average men because of a spiritual practice the priests used to do? No, they were not necessarily born physically greater. But they would spiritually touched that gave them unique, often disruptive, destinies. > Do you have any more information about ancient practices and how this could've changed the physicality of offspring? I don't think it was necessarily physical. > Because the theory of angel blood mixed with human blood is a good explanation of how the Nephilim were called mighty men of old, and men of renown. The angel blood/DNA theory has been widely panned in the academic literature. It has disastrous consequences for federative responsibility and Christ's atonement. It's not a good theory and really needs to be rejected. > Those men of renown were those like that of Greek mythology such as Hercules; the so called demi-gods who were half man half angel having great strength or other abilities. Yet, the Bible doesn't go so far as to claim they were demigods or half-angels. > As far as giants go, we know those existed too according to scripture, like Goliath and Og of Bashan. Goliath was a giant. We told that by the text, but he has no relationship to the Nephilim. Og of Bashan was not a giant. Og was no more a giant than was Elvis Presley.

@@ancientegyptandthebible Thanks Dr. Falk. I like the idea that the "greatness" of the nephilim could be spiritually unique, disruptive destinies.

🤦‍♂

And you are free to do so. Blessings...

@@ancientegyptandthebible i know i know, and thank you...

Thank you sir you nailed it

Because physical life and death are shadows of heaven and hell or more specifically eternity with God and separation from God. So it is apt to call eternal torment in Hell the "real death" or "second death " Also, no one is in hell right now, i.e. lake of fire, that happens at the end after the great white throne judgment

I've come around to believe in annihilationism myself even though ECT isn't completely off the table. Just the verses that convinced me talk about the wicked being no more or God destroying both body and soul or chaff being burned up. Also the fact that the term Gehenna refers to a place where people are killed and burned away convinced towards gradual annihilation as well. But I may be wrong.

@@kwameadu0075 your right

The ancient Near Eastern concept of death is separation. Death is not a ceasing to exist--that is a modern Western concept alien to the ancient mind. Ancient peoples believed that death was the separation of the soul from the body, and by extension separation from everything that is important. So to "die to self" is not to kill your desires and self-interests, but to separate from them so that God becomes most important in your life. Likewise, there can be other kinds of death. Death in your marriage is where you experience separation from your spouse. I have done an entire video on the meaning of death in the ANE ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2n2E35nsWxs.html ). So the second death is then the final separation from God where those who have decided to pay for their own sins do so with their resurrection of judgment. Everyone is resurrected, that is, given a new body (John 5:28-29). And everyone will have a face to face encounter with the Holiness of God. Those who receive the resurrection of life will experience Holy light as bliss. Those who receive the resurrection of judgment will experience Holy light as pain and trauma (what theologians describe as the "trauma of holiness"), such that those who experience the second death will have willingly separated themselves from God's presence even if they cannot escape His light.

Hell was created originally for the Devil and his angels, but unrepentant humans go there too (Matt 25:41 and 46).