God Is Not Omnipotent?

[JoeMama]

St. Augustine (354-430) was one of the founders of the Roman Catholic Church. He well understood that Christianity was like a house of cards; if the church dared to admit to even a single error in the Bible, who could say there wasn't an error on every page? The resurrection story might then be false and everyone's hopes for salvation are in vain. This is what he said:

"The most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books. If you [even] once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of those books which might be explained away as false"--St. Augustine in Epistula, p. 28.

With Augustine's warning in mind, consider the following statement by a writer in Judges:
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

God could handle the mountain inhabitants, no problem, but the God who was powerful enough to create the sun, moon, Earth, and the heavens, was impotent against warriors riding iron chariots? Is this true, or is the Judges writer declaring something that is false?

Also consider this:

Matthew says God can do anything: "With God all things are possible.” — Matthew 19:26
But it was not possible for the impotent God to defeat the valley warriors with their iron chariots, so is Matthew here declaring something that is false?

If the answer is yes, how many other Bible statements can be "explained away" as false? Is perhaps the creation story not true?

[TRANSPONDER]

This is the problem in front of Christians and Bible -believers and always has been. They have ignored and evaded it. We know this - the problems have either been ignored, evaded or excused. We have seen the excuses presented as a claim that 'no atheists has ever..." made them admit that there are errors and contradictions or none that make any difference. They are (I have seen it) delighted when some book appears arguing that the resurrection is credible. These apologetics tomes are always flawed. Fantastical invented scenarios, Faithbased assumptions and dismissal of problems, and blunt lies.

I say resurrection, as Christianity stands or falls on that, though Bible -believers make evilooshum the hill they will die on, but which actually doesn't matter. Evolution -denial is not an argument but a battle - rag the fight for. For atheists, skeptics and the like goddless satanspawn, Genesis is simply an easy target to discredit and so call the whole Bible into question.

It is effective, too as not a few Believers opt to make it 'metaphorical' or try to finagle it into fitting science (divide the age of the universe into 7 and call each a "Day"..which is debunked by Genesis itself)and then claimit was talking science all the time, or simply ignore the OT and all its' problems and just focus on Jesus.

Then there may be the long fighting retreat from denial of everything through "Jesus made everything new", "No contradiction of anything doctrinal" and 'good things in the Bible' to the "We need it, true or not" apologetics to perhaps wind up as "Agnostics" who are odd people, since they agree with everything that atheists do but hate the idea and name of atheism. It is in fact political, and always was.

Odd people indeed, as the hill they fight and die on is 'First cause', NDEs, Consciousness and what I call "Sortagod" which is utterly unimportant and does not matter, even if there is a Soul, and Afterlife and a cosmic mind that dunnit all. It is religion; organised religion, any and all religion and its' attempt to gain and use temporal power that is the problem, not whether something can come from nothing or not.

Again, militant, atheist -hating "Agnosticism" makes no sense other than the Rightwing party card they cannot bear to throw away with the Bible. That's what it is folks, and you can bet your buttons on it.

So what about an omniscient and omnipresent god that can do anything? Well, the OP said it all - only denialists will maintain that's what we got. Forget about the god of burnt offerings of the OT, as even Jesus both knows and doesn't know what is going on just like Genesis - God,pushing through the Eden undergrowth calling for Adam to come out of hiding..."Strewth, Adam, who made your knickers?"

We battle the denialists every day, but for the doubters, and those whose minds are still ajar. The game -plan of Bibleism (TM ) has always been to keep the atheists quiet. Or at least swamp them with apologetics that (hopefully) the doubters who still want to believe will swallow. All we have to do is show that the defendors of the faith say not what the Bible says but what they would want it to say (The Ghost Bible (1). So the point of the OP is true and valid but long done, which doesn't mean that we don't have to keep saying it. We are still having to debunk the 'seashells on mountains' apologetic. And all the others.

The battle is not about facts or evidence, but about who controls the debate. The Christian apologist knows that they don't have to be telling the truth, they have only to be the only voice being heard. And the example is the battleground for teaching Creationism in the classroom on the wretched pretext of 'teach the controversy'. We only have to point out that even if there was a Controversy (there isn't in science, no more than there is about Flat earth, astrology or Chariots of the gods) the classroom isn't the place for a scientific discussion. It is the place to indoctrinate kids, and that they know very well.

(1) one poster called it the "Holy Ghost Bible" which, while a snark, was revealing. It is this idea that "You have to read the Bible with the Spirit" aka "Interpreted" which being translated, means rewriting it in their heads to say what they want, not what it does say.

[1213]

...
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

Interesting, Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

[JehovahsWitness]

Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

The older bibles say "he" instead of "they"...I presume the change is based on more reliable manuscripts (or perhaps the grammar allowed for either rendition ). English imposes an auxiliary for negative of expel and arguably "could" (rather than did) is contextually more appropriate as Judah had either desired and /or attempted a takeover.


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Does the bible indicate that God was unable to defeat the Cannanites because they had iron chariots?
viewtopic.php?p=835498#p835498

[brunumb]

...
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

Interesting, Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

Would be nice to know exactly what is being conveyed in that passage.

[TRANSPONDER]

...
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

Interesting, Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

Doesn't look too literal to me, as most translations I looked at make it clear that the iron chariots made God unable to to have the Hebrews expoel the people from there. Looking at the literal Hebrew hardly makes it clear, but the lack of any particular explanation of why YHWH made a kind exception of these people because he thought Iron chariots were cool or he wanted the israelites to buy some is not made clear, so the implication is that they were so tough that God was unable to have the Hebrews prevail against them.

Looking into Jay P Green's work, his translation does not come up as the 'most literal translation' except when he is talking about himself. Looking at the Hebrew, I suspect that he has rather imposed his own readings into the text where he felt it necessary.

Judges 1 19 The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron. (NIV)

And the LORD was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron. (ESV)

Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had iron chariots. (NASB)

The Lord was with Judah and enabled them to take possession of the hill country, but they could not drive out the people who were living in the plain because those people had iron chariots. (CSB)

Got to say it looks like Rev Green while doing a literal translation of the Hebrew (or so he said of himself) was not above Interpreting it so as not to make YHWH look less omnipotent than he would have liked.

[Miles]

...
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

Interesting, Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

KJ21
And the Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron.
ASV
And Jehovah was with Judah; and drove out the inhabitants of the hill-country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
AMP
The Lord was with Judah, and [the tribe of] Judah took possession of the hill country, but they could not dispossess and drive out those inhabiting the valley because they had iron chariots.
AMPC
The Lord was with Judah, and [Judah] drove out the inhabitants of the hill country, but he could not drive out those inhabiting the [difficult] valley basin because they had chariots of iron.
BRG
And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
CSB
The Lord was with Judah and enabled them to take possession of the hill country, but they could not drive out the people who were living in the plain because those people had iron chariots.
CJB
Adonai was with Y’hudah, and they took possession of the hill-country, because they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, since they had iron chariots.
EHV
The Lord was with Judah, and Judah took possession of the hill country, but Judah could not take possession of the land belonging to the people who lived in the valleys and lowlands, because they had iron chariots.
ESV
And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.
ESVUK
And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could could not out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.
EXB
The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took the land in the ·mountains [hill country], but they could not force out the people living on the plain, because they had iron chariots [C wooden chariots with iron fittings].
GNV
And the Lord was with Judah, and he possessed the mountains: for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valleys, because they had chariots of iron.
etc.
etc.
etc.

.

[TRANSPONDER]

It is disappointing but not surprising I suppose that a search on the Internet for 'Translation -shopping' brings up nothing. But our pal's effortabove is the best example of it I have seen.

It is proving a Bible - apologetic based on what the Bible (properly translated) actually says. The believer will claim that the Bible does not say (e.g) "the census of Luke was when Quirinus was governor of Syria', but that the nativity happened Before (pro) he was governor. Thus (the apologetic goes) it happened earlier, like when Herod was still alive (and Qurinus carried out a secret census for Herod). Essentially the '2nd census'apologetic. This fails on many levels, but one is that Greek experts say that the 'pro' passage is not correctly read that way.

Now it may be possible to find out that there is a Bible translation that has 'before' instead of when. Possibly Jay Green's - I'll check ) and claim that is how it really reads. That is 'translation -shopping' and that would be refuted (I prophecy) by posting a dozen translations that do not have that reading and that scuppers the searching about for the one or two translations that support the particular reading.

That is what our pal did here. If the majority translations agreed with him (or her, I haven't checked) I would put up my hands. But since the vast majority of translation say that the Chariots of iron were too strong for God to have the Istraelites drive them out, I invite 1213 to cencede gracefully (not to say honestly) that the Jay Green reading is not the most literal translation but a mistranslation that excuses God's limited potency.

I thank 1213 for raising this point as I trust we will not have to have this conversation again. . Also that I got a chance to explain the 2nd census apologetic again.

While on the subject this

https://www.tektonics.org/af/censuscheck.php

gives a lengthy overview of the 2nd census argument. I won't go into the overdone 'evidence' at best that Qurinus was in a position to carry out a census for Herod which could hardly have escaped the notice of Josephus if he had. But I will point out that it relies on a vacant governorship of Syria after Varus so that Quirinus can be wangled in there. But Josephus makes it clear that Varus was acting as governor at the time, so his stint was merely extended. There could be no governorship of Quirinus 'before' he was governor in 6 -12 AD.

cue 'well maybe he wasn't governor of Syria when he did it in 3 BC (Herod dying later than history says). Sorry. Acts says that the 'days of the census' when when Judas the Galilean revolted, and that was when Rome took over in 6 A.D.

[1213]

Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

The older bibles say "he" instead of "they"...I presume the change is based on more reliable manuscripts (or perhaps the grammar allowed for either rendition ). English imposes an auxiliary for negative of expel and arguably "could" (rather than did) is contextually more appropriate as Judah had either desired and /or attempted a takeover.
...

Thanks, that is a good point. Also, now that I read it again, it seems to be speaking of Judah, he could not expel the inhabitants.

[1213]

...
"The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” — Judges 1:19

Interesting, Green's literal says it like this:

And Jehovah was with Judah, and he occupied the hills, but did not expel the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron.
Judges 1:19

Would be nice to know, where does the "could not" come from.

Would be nice to know exactly what is being conveyed in that passage.

That Judah did not expel the inhabitants?