Halley and Northrup

Re: August 31 posting.

Thanks, John, for the references to people who held my view before me. I also remember when writing the Age of the Universe book making a deliberate decision to avoid the commentaries and expositions until after I had absorbed the Scripture for myself. So I depend on good friends like you to do research for me "after the fact."

 

(Age of the Universe, Page 82) Some say, "Your interpretation is new. The church has never understood it this way," My answer is "No, it is not new. True, it has not been widely known and several sources supply only pieces of the whole, but consider. Would anyone guess the argument of this chapter before satellite exploration? Hardly. Similarly, would the early or medieval church concern themselves with galactic distances and the speed of light before Roemer measured it in 1676? I insist that one need not know the facts of astronomy to conclude the interpretation offered here. Job 38 was here from antiquity and all the arguments presented are valid for any time period. I have not concerned myself with the history of relevant interpretations but I will mention the well known commentary of Jamieson, Faussett and Brown,which (in part) supports my thesis. Similarly, Halley's Bible Handbook (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI 1962 pages 59-61) states regarding the fourth day:

"On the "first day" (light from sun, moon and stars) must have penetrated the earth's mists (1:3) while they themselves were not visible. But now, (on the fourth day) due to the lessening density of the clouds,... they became visible on earth."

Probably hidden away in some dusty volume is the entire thing in one piece, like scrolls found in pottery in an archaeology site.

 

(And from page 179) Following are quotations from Dr. Northrup which are listed below for the following purpose: It should be significant that the conclusions I have presented in various papers since 1985 or so and verbally for decades before that, were arrived at completely independently from Dr. Northrup even though they sound so similar. My suspicion is that numerous people who do not publish at all but who have examined the text have also come to the same conclusions. No one has a patent on Bible interpretation. Halley's handbook has a brief explanation which has some differences but again is similar. I include Dr. Northrup's interpretation to show how independent students can come to precisely the same conclusions from a search of the Scripture without the slightest knowledge one of the other. This is important for it shows that the truth was there, available to each without derivation from a common source other than the Bible itself. It is also encouraging that I, with a careful use of prayer, lexicons, dictionaries and other tools available to any student but with zero knowledge of Hebrew, can derive the same conclusion as he, an expert in the original languages. This should encourage other students to "search the Scriptures" which is the privilege of every believer even without academic letters. I have referred to Dr. Northrup earlier within this text (see pages 54 and 73).