[matcat]

I was in fact a christian counselor for quite a few years, and I studied the bible to the point of actually learning ancient greek and hebrew (not in a speakable way, but in a way as to study). You are right that all errors found are simply because of translation. If you study the bible in the original ancient languages, the meanings come across much differently then they do in english. One of the main reasons for this is that the english language is very simplified, I.E. much of the meaning comes from the context of what is said, where a language such as greek or hebrew the meaning is direct and exact. A good example of this is just the new testament alone, in english is made up of a vocabulary of 5000 words, whereis the original greek is 15,000 words. Greek language has so many more words, because they don't use words like 'love' whose meaning is derived from context. Example would be in the bible, the word 'love' is used in many places, but in the original greek there are 3 different words with 3 different meanings all together, but all translate into english as love. I will give a good example, Jesus asked peter if he 'loved' him 3 times, the first 2 times he pretty much said, "I don't understand' and on the 3rd time, he said yes. There is a good reason for this, and it doesn't make sense unless you know that the first 2 times Jesus asked him the question, it was with the word agapi, which means Gods Love, which no human is capable of without the spirit, Peter did not understand, because to him he didn't know or think he was capable of agapi love, the 3rd time Jesus asked, he asked with the word philos, which means brotherly or friendly love, and he replied yes. By the way, this is how the city of Philadelphia got it's name, Philos meaning brotherly love, Philadelphia.

As far as your mentioning scientific explanations for biblical events, who is to say God did not do it via those methods? A lot of people today ask the question, "If God did all of these fantastic things in biblical days, how come he does not do it today?" Well he does, only difference is today we have 'science', in Noah's day, they didn't understand the concepts of poisonous gas from volcanos, so to them it is a fantastic feat only God could perform, today science understands these things, and people put their faith into 'science' instead of the One that actually designed the volcano, and controls its workings via a natural set of laws He created.

Brings up another point, a lot of Christians and non-christians, get hung up on the Science vs Faith/Religion thing, I have tried to explain to Christians espially, that there is nothing wrong with science, it is simply a way to explain how God orchestrates the natural order he created, just that sometimes scientists go in the wrong direction with their theories.

Also by the way, I too studied the time line. Noah lived for something like 800 years. The timeline from Adam to Noah is documented in the bible, however with Noah there is a 400 year gap that is not explained. Simply because it gives when he was born, and when he died, however it does not give his age at the time of the flood. So therefor the flood happened somewhere within a 400 year spread of his life. I came about this because I was trying to figure out the actual age of the Earth, but the buck stops at Noah, with a 400 year gap! If I remember correctly I came to the conclusion that from Adam until now, it has been between 8000 to 10000 years, and that is not just based on biblical knowledge alone, but is also based on the oldest known civilizations in history and their timelines.

I love discussing theology and biblical science, but I hate debating with people whom just want to try to disprove the bible on some point.