You know what Paul said to Agrippa. Really, Susan, I try not to engage in argument for its own sake anymore. I enter into discussion, not with the conviction that I must prevail, but with the hope that truth will expressed.

: 1. I am aware that the word 'satan' appears in Job. It seems to be used there is a generic sense, not referring to a specific, supernatural being.

The Hebrew word "satan" means adversary and is used of both human and supernatural adversaries. In Job 1-2, Zechariah 3:1-2 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 it is rendered almost without exception as a proper name, "Satan", in English versions. I have to say "almost" because I have not done an exhaustive survey. The terms that describe Satan are all descriptive words with real meaning. None of them are proper nouns in the sense of a given name. It seems clear in Job that one specific being is in mind, described as "the adversary". The usage in Job has the Hebrew definite article attached to the Hebrew word "satan", and the same is true of the verses in Zechariah. Chronicles does not use the definite article. The New Testament name, Satan, comes from these Old Testament references. If we compare the usage in Zechariah (which is exactly like that in Job) to a description of a similar incident in Jude 9, completely aside from any argument about authorship or date, we see that Jude understood that adversary to be the devil. The same is true of the translators of the Septuagint, who rendered "satan" in Job as "ho diabolos", the devil, the word we find as a synonym for Satan in the New Testament. Despite some confusion in the KJV text where demons are sometimes called devils, the New Testament knows only one supernatural devil (devil means accuser), and he is also called Satan.

: 2. Here are just a few of the contributors to the Biblical Literature section of the 'philosophically biased, overwhelmingly agnostic' EB:

The list is fine, but it begs the point. The EB is philosophically biased, and it is overwhelmingly agnostic in its worldview. Whether or not specific contributors share that overall perspective begs the point, nor does being a professor of theology in any way rule out sharing that worldview. There are many agnostics in the Bible chairs of the universities, divinity schools, seminaries, and pulpits these days. I've talked to a number of them personally, and understand very well that having a degree from or position in a divinity school says nothing in itself about what one believes. From the pages of Brittanica, this brief definition, "agnosticism... strictly speaking, the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience." Is that, or is it not, the basic worldview of the publication?

: 3. 'We have the coming of His kingdom with power...' I suspect that you are referring to the Transfiguration here. Three Jews (plus Jesus), mountain-climbing and seeing a vision for a few seconds hardly fulfills this prophecy. And when, 'before the people now living have all died', did the darkening of the sun and moon, and the stars leaving their orbits occur?

No, I'm thinking in terms of the resurrection and glorification of Jesus. There are repeated references, from the Day of Pentecost onward, to Jesus being on the throne, at the Father's right hand, and so forth. There are repeated references to being in the kingdom of the son, workers for the kingdom of God, and so forth. The word went forth from Zion, and the kingdom of God permeated the world.

: 5. 'You've accepted some absurd modern myths...' Well, caf, there isn't anything much more absurd than claiming that the human race is only about 6000 years old. Let me get this straight: You're saying that every anthropologist in the world, people who have devoted their lives to the study of the origins of mankind, is 'absurd' because their research differs with two pre-scientific Biblical accounts, both of which were plagiarized from pagan myths in the first place. And this is 'making God out to be a liar'.

Unless of course it happens to be true. Firstly, "every anthropologist in the world" is a tad overstated. I agree that the majority opinion is as you suppose, but it is not universal. Majority opinion has seldom been a good bellweather for truth. Second, "pre-scientific" has a nice biased ring to it, but doesn't mean much of anything here. That plagiarizing business was nonsense the first time you said it, and it's still nonsense. I've still not seen the pagan originals you think were the crib sheets. People could know and report the truth before the birth of the methodology of modern science; and the methodology of modern science, which depends on experimental repetition for verification, has virtually nothing to say about origins, and can have nothing definitive to say about origins. When you've stepped into anthropology you've largely stepped away from what is sometimes called "hard science" and into speculation, surmise, guesswork, and a myriad of assumptions and premises stacked together that are subjective and philosophical, not "scientific."

: Caf, a short train ride from here there is a city called Gotha (pronounced goat-a, as in 'time to go t' bed'). Gotha is best known as the ancestral home of the princes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, from whom Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, and hence all subsequent British royalty are descended. The area has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, with many of the cities over a thousand years old.

: Outside Gotha there have been archaeological digs for many years. They have uncovered several ancient civilizations, one beneath the other, each easily dated (approximately) by several methods. The TOP LAYER, the most recent civilization before the present, co-incidentally, dates back about 6000 years, give or take a century or two. Below that are several more, with the earliest discovered so far (they're still digging) going back about 150,000 years. Now caf, if the top layer below the surface goes back to Adam's time, and that was the beginning of mankind, where did all the lower layers come from? Did Old Scratch himself put them there to lead us astray? Is Gotha discussed in any of the 'creationist' textbooks? There are MANY similar digs all over the world - I picked this one because it's right here in the area and I know a little about it.

If we're going to give or take a century or two, we'd better take them. Very little that is ancient is easily dated, despite impressions to the contrary. Something about your recollection or description doesn't seem to mesh with current thinking in any case, as the "oldest city in the world" is thought to be in the Tigris Euphrates area (as described in Genesis 9-10, coincidentally) and is ascribed an age of about 6000 B.C. (See ARTICLE) You can find refernces to other sites as the "oldest in the world" (maybe Jericho or Aleppo or Damascus) but you won't find much variance in the general area or in the supposed age, certainly not much older. Population statistics, the existence of writing, and a number of other lines of information all point to an origin of "civilization" less than 10,000 years ago (in fact, about 5000 years ago). Knowing how subjective and inter-related the interpretations of archaeological data can be, especially in the absence of known chronological sequence, I have no particular problem with a difference of a few thousand years in the surmises of the interpreters. I am not specifically familiar with Gotha, but am familiar with other sites and the methods and devices of archaeology. Dating methods are just the sort of modern myths I was referring to before. Even if you begin with the necessary presumption of "uniformity of natural causes in a closed system" (and I don't) none of the dating methods in use have proven trustworthy. In the case of at least some of the radiometric dating methods, usually a large range of dates are returned for any given test, and the date that best matches the expectation is selected. If the methodology for determining who needs cancer treatment were like the methodology for determining how old things are, there'd be a lot of healthy people going in for surgery and chemotherapy, and a lot of sick people dying untreated. I'm going to list two links that describe dating methods, both of which are simply at educational institutions that use them. The descriptions are not critical at all, I just wish people would look at what is said about the methods with a critical eye. The problems with each of the methods being utilized are brought out in other places, some of them publications essay would never deign to read, but the subjectivity and assumptions should be apparent to a critical reader in ordinary resources. I wonder why many Egyptologists and Israeli archaeologists don't rely on many of the standard dating methods, such as Carbon 14? Actually, I don't wonder at all. I read that Egyptologists, who think they have an established working chronology, have found too many large discrepancies and conflicts with the results, and generally do not use radioactive dating techniques.(A summary of the problem with citations can be found in "Pharaohs and Kings" by David Rohl, Appendix C, pages 384-389).

Dating Techniques
Dendrochronology

I suppose anything dated to 150,000 years in your example at Gotha wouldn't be anything like a city, but would be rather something on the order of the remains of a campfire, or some stone implements or bones, dated either by radiometric techniques, or dated on the basis of comparison with similar finds in other places, which were dated in similar ways. It largely comes down to a great deal of circular reasoning.

: I haven't seen a lot of 'creationist' material - and there IS a lot of it - where there's money to be made, everybody wants a piece of the pie. What I have seen is silly almost beyond belief, making outrageous assertions that are about as transparent as Brittney Spears' latest blouse. The books all seem to have lots of beautiful color pictures. They look really nice until you start reading them.

Again with the aversion to publishing for profit, which is what motivates virtually all publishing, and the aversion to color pictures. I've been buying the wrong books, that's for sure. They have a lot of words in them; you know, data, references, quotes, that sort of thing. I don't know what material you think you've seen, but you need to go back and take a serious look at the literature.

: Looking forward to your reply to my previous post, then I hope we can 'wrap it up.'