Bible

In recent posts I've looked at the use of the word "day" in the Genesis 1 creation story, and at how that story should be understood within the larger context of Genesis. This context is important if we are to dig below the surface and find the deeper meaning of the Bible's first creation story.

In the previous post I concluded the story of Genesis 1 describes creation in six days. But if we want to understand this first creation story in Genesis, we can't ignore the second creation story, the story of Adam and Eve, of the garden and the serpent, which says all of creation—from forming the heavens and the earth to making the first human—happened in a single day.

One of the biggest disputes between young-earth creationists (YEC) and old-earth creationists (OEC) is the meaning of the word "day" in the first chapter of Genesis.

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai...

According to Matt Slick of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM),

The doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible means that the Bible in the original documents is God-breathed and that it is a divine product.

Norman Geisler's Defending Inerrancy website claims the Christian faith is grounded in what Geisler calls the "three in's", and explains,

James McGrath, professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University, has a link to a video by creationist and serial tax cheat Kent Hovind, dealing with discrepancies between Acts 9 and Acts 22.

In the last two posts, we've looked at how the two sides of the slavery argument appealed to the Bible for support during debates over the morality of slavery. (Part 1: pro-slavery | Part 2: anti-slavery)

In my previous post I looked at the biblical proof texts used by slavery supporters in the 18th and 19th centuries. To be sure, proof texts are available for slavery opponents too.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the legislative bodies of the United States and Great Britain debated whether to end the institution of slavery, advocates of both sides turned to the Bible to bolster their case.

The pro-slavery side started with Genesis 9:24-27.

According to some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, the inerrancy of the Bible is an essential doctrine.