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Thanks for the astute observation. The Bereans didn't believe everything Paul told them without their own study. Needless to say, I'm sure not Paul. In general I think it good to have a certain reservation about everything we think about the scriptures. I know for me, what I believe after 50 years of study has little resemblance to what I believed at the start. Kind of like science I guess. in that we should always be open to further evidence as it crops up. It's a process of refinement. The days of me knowing it all are long gone. I think life is more interesting when we are not dogmatically dogmatic.

For a couple of years now I've been doing a lot of reading about the culture of the Ancient Near East (ANE), especially as it relates to religion and worldview. In the last 5 decades or so there has been a plethora of their writings uncovered and interpreted. While, as you said, we have to use some imagination, scholars are nonetheless able to paint a fairly accurate picture of how they thought. It has a huge impact on how the scriptures read. The very first verse in the scriptures is a good example of the differences between how they read it and how we read it. I think we tend to take Genesis 1:1-2:4 as a description of how God created the material universe. It's funny how we then try to squeeze our science onto it (photons, evolution, expanding universe, etc.). For 50 years or so I'd read Genesis 1:1 and a picture of blue, round earth floating in space popped into my mind. But that's not even close to what popped into Moses' mind when he wrote it. The word most Bibles (KJV included, the only Bible we were permitted to read ) translate the Hebrew word "erets" as "earth" when that is not its real meaning to the ANE. "Erets" means "land" as opposed to the sea or the sky. They had no concept of a round globe. They saw what we call a "flat earth." It makes sense. I mean go outside and look around. Is the "earth" not flat? In any case, God saw no reason to correct their established cosmology so He didn't. He had other reasons for Genesis. Here's a fairly representative way the ANE and the Jews saw the cosmos: The ANE had no such interest in the things of our modern science, let alone the ability to grasp things such as gravitational forces, or nuclear fission. Instead, they were interested in how to please and appease the gods. They didn't want the rain god to cause flooding, the agriculture god to cause a famine, or the locust god to cause pestilence, etc. As you can see, there are many verses that describe their cosmology while there are basically 0 verses that fit with our own cosmology. Were they ignorant? I don't know, but if all I had was my two eyes to observe the world around me, I'd probably come to some similar picture. In any case, that is pretty representative of how all ANE folks viewed their world. I think what God wanted to communicate in Genesis was His desire to dwell with humans in a paradise. God wanted to tell them that He tamed the chaotic deep (Gen 1:2), a realm totally unfit for humans and a place dreaded by their culture, and make the land fit for humans. To the modern West Genesis 2:3 (God rested) is almost taken as an afterthought or a postscript. At least I always took it that way. I now think it is perhaps the most important verse in the creation account. In the ANE gods resting meant that the crisis was over, the problem solved and the god could now settle down to the day to day activity of running the cosmos. There are many other verses that would back up that idea. Of course Adam screwed up God's plan of dwelling with humans, but God set out to rectify that. That will culminate in the new earth (land) that's coming. In the meantime there are countless verses in the OT that talk about God temporarily living in the land with people. There is the stone Jacob slept on, hills, mountains, the Ark, the Tabernacle, the temple, Jesus, and Christians. It's a major theme that runs through the whole book. I never saw it because I saw Genesis as a science book instead of a religions book with the simple message of Yahweh living with people, the very thing the ANE folks were interested in. Anyway, Genesis is but one of the things that makes way more sense to me after having studied ANE culture. It's the scholarly field called "comparative studies." The Jews were brought up in the same culture as the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, etc, so it makes total sense that they all shared a common cosmology. Scripture critics are quick to point out the similarities between Egyptian and Babylonian creation accounts to the Bible. And of course the other accounts were written way before Genesis, so it "must" be that Moses merely copied their accounts. But that's a rather quick and not well thought out conclusion. Could it not be that all ANE (Jews included) drew from the same body of ancient knowledge in writing their accounts? Why not? And then there is the fact that the differences in the Bible account from all the others are many and have major ramifications. But I've blathered on long enough, so I'll let it go at that! Here's the book that got me started: Ancient Near East Thought and the Old Testament, John H. Walton

Both Dennett and Patricia Churchland were PhD philosophers of high rank, and they sought tutoring from top scientists. For instance, Patricia Churchland had an office in the Salk Institute very close to Francis Crick's office. He tutored her in Physics. Dennett and Churchland are unique in their field of Philosophy, in that they insist on augmenting their philosophical approaches to line up with modern laboratory findings on the brain.

Let me see. Well first there was the WOW Ambassadors - at that stage there still is the Bible in the name topic. Huge amount of hype. The next name is “Way Disciple”. Not “Disciple of Jesus Christ”. Also accurate. They are selling TWI and Plaffy not the Bible. Finally it’s just “Way Ambassador”. We are not even pretending here with title that it has anything to do with the Bible. It’s just an ambassador for the organization. Also accurate. If you pay attention they are upfront about their control and idolatry. Words mean something. All the hype and commitment is to the organization and none of it is to the underlying Word of God, the overall body of Christ, or anything related to building virtue - it is all compliance exercises - complying with people who do not speak for God in any sense of the word.