70 replies to this topic

[RavenHawk]

<p>

freetoroam, on 07 February 2013 - 07:20 PM, said:

Considering we descended from apes, are you saying it affected how the our cousins evolved into humans and how our lives were shortened through stage of evolution?

Yes and no.  I'm talking about a mutation that has occurred in Homo sapiens in the past 200,000 years, i.e. CCR5-D32.

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Forget the Noah and the Adam and Eve tripe, I am not even going there! lets just deal with facts here.

Does the fact that 261 cultures have a flood myth within their story of creation mean anything?  I think this is strong evidence of a common origin.  Therefore, explains why all humans today age at about the same rate.

Edited by RavenHawk, 07 February 2013 - 11:11 PM.

[freetoroam]

RavenHawk, on 07 February 2013 - 11:08 PM, said:

Does the fact that 261 cultures have a flood myth within their story of creation mean anything?  I think this is strong evidence of a common origin.  Therefore, explains why all humans today age at about the same rate.

A flood is not a myth! Earth has been through a few ice ages over the centuries, if there had been no floods i would be very surprised! As for age, I can not see how the floods would decrease the age span......now a drought, that I can understand!
But when you say within their story of creation? do you mean from the times of the apes through to the evolution of man? Pleeease, not adam and eve!!

[David Henson]

J. K., on 07 February 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

I have seen many arguments that the Biblical account of the Creation/Flood/Dispersal was borrowed from other sources.  It seems to me that those proponents are skipping over the possibility of oral history being involved.  Sure, maybe they weren't written until the time of Moses, but that doesn't mean he created the stories himself.  The stories could have been passed down through the generations, which would result in the stories evolving differently after the languages were scrambled.

No doubt, but the question is when. A lot of this depends upon the dates you place upon events in the stream of time as well as the notion of the poor scholarly consensus that the Bible portions in question were produced post exilic. Most Bible scholars fail miserably in the simple realization that for Moses to have written the account from Adam would have required only 5 people. That they lived for nearly a thousand years makes a substantial difference.

[David Henson]

Frank Merton, on 07 February 2013 - 05:57 PM, said:

Very few scholars nowadays think Moses wrote the Pentateuch.  It is a compilation of texts written at various times.

There are lots of resources on this, so those who persist with the traditional story about Moses really have no excuse for not becoming better informed.

Not that I would place too much import upon what scholars say, but specifically what school of thought would these scholars subscribe? Apostate Christianity or the destructive higher criticism. Perhaps, but doubtfully, more importantly is what they base their conclusion on. P, J, E? Its nonsensical and without substantiation. J used the term elohim, which simply means God and is also applied to Dagon and other gods. E used the name Jehovah.

[David Henson]

freetoroam, on 07 February 2013 - 07:20 PM, said:

Considering we descended from apes, are you saying it affected how the our cousins evolved into humans and how our lives were shortened through stage of evolution?
Forget the Noah and the Adam and Eve tripe, I am not even going there! lets just deal with facts here.

If Adam were alagorical he wouldn't appear in the Chronology as having offspring, and more importantly, he wouldn't have sinned and so there would be no point for a Messiah to take away his sin. Just like if Moses hadn't written the Pentateuch Jesus wouldn't have said: "In fact, if you believed Moses you would believe me, for that one wrote about me. But if you do not believe the writings of that one, how will you believe my sayings?” (John 5:46-47)

Note to scholars: Jesus didn't say J, E and P.

Its a thinly veiled attempt to dismiss the Biblical authority.

The North American Dream

The puritans had no recourse to the law of the land where the heathen resided in relative peace and harmony. Names and languages must be forgotten. Spirits must be broken. Swept under the bitter cold progress of a trail of tears . . . history . . . repeats itself.

Advice to the smartly dressed intellectual digging in the remains of the pictographic and written histories. The former is subject to your myopic assumption but the latter - don't insult my intelligence with your obvious limitations.

Edited by David Henson, 08 February 2013 - 03:14 AM.

[redhen]

For anyone interested, here's a BBC documentary (some 30 yrs old now) on the history of the Bible, according to the consensus of academics. It's narrated by John Romer.   "Romer is probably — along with Michael Wood — the best known television presenter of ancient history"


http://www.youtube....7EF23B2A0D9B889

The first 2 segments deal with Genesis.

[Frank Merton]

David Henson, on 08 February 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

Note to scholars: Jesus didn't say J, E and P.

Its a thinly veiled attempt to dismiss the Biblical authority.

Jesus never heard of J, E, and P.  His learning here was somewhat too early.

[RavenHawk]

freetoroam, on 07 February 2013 - 11:13 PM, said:

A flood is not a myth!

Never said it was.  I was referring to the "Flood Myth" that is part of every culture on this planet.  This indicates a common origin, which would seem to show that this particular flood event did happen.

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Earth has been through a few ice ages over the centuries, if there had been no floods i would be very surprised!

Yes, there have been many in the past and there will be many more in the future.  But if these forensic geneticists can find when a mutation to the genes responsible for aging occurred (if it exists) then we would have a candidate for when a flood occurred that we identify as Noah's Flood.  Once that was done then is there geologic evidence of a flood that would correspond?

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As for age, I can not see how the floods would decrease the age span......now a drought, that I can understand!

A drought or flood would be about the same.  A drought would generate winds and those winds would stir up dust and other things in the soil and would spread that to humans, i.e. the Dust Bowl.  Some of these things could be anthrax, Valley Fever, or Hanta Virus, etc.  A flood would do the same thing as we saw with Katrina as it mixed chemicals from each home with anything else it could wash up.  A meteor could probably do the same.  Isn't that one theory about how life died out in North America about 30,000 years ago?  Anything like that would poison the environment and would trigger some mutation in the genome as the Black Plague did with the CCR5-D32 gene.  Well, whether the plague is what caused that mutation or not is probably debatable but there always seems to be a percentage of the population that has the right mutation at the right time.  

From the book of Enoch:

Enoch speaking "My son Methuselah took a wife for his son Lamech. She became pregnant by him, and brought forth a child, the flesh of which was white as snow and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long; and whose eyes were beautiful. When he opened them he illuminated all the house, like the sun; the whole house abounded with light. And when he was taken from the hand of the midwife, he opened his mouth to Yahweh Elohim.

Then Lamech his father was afraid of him, and flying away came to his own father Methuselah, and said "I have begotten a son, a changed son. He is not human, but resembling the offspring of the angels of heaven, is of a different nature from ours, being altogether unlike us. His eyes are bright as the rays of the sun, his countenance glorious, and he looks not as if he belonged to me but to the angels. I am afraid lest something miraculous should take place on earth in his days. And now, my father, let me entreat and request you to go to our progenitor Enoch, and to learn from him the truth, for his residence is with the angels".

Sounds like some kind of genetic mutation.  Perhaps Noah was born with this "aging" gene and this records the genetic change??  And he passed it on to his sons?  Can genetics determine how long ago that was?

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But when you say within their story of creation? do you mean from the times of the apes through to the evolution of man? Pleeease, not adam and eve!!

I'm not really talking about evolution.  But at one certain point in which there was a mating pair that was considered to be Homo sapiens.  Perhaps some 150,000 years ago??  That mating pair would be what we identify as Adam and Eve or at least one candidate.  Another candidate would have been about 12,000 to 30,000 years ago.  This one would have been a pair to have mastered those human traits that we have today, like speaking.  The first Homo sapiens probably couldn't communicate verbally like we do today.  I doubt they would speak proper English with a British accent.  It was more like how apes do.  Adam was able to communicate and pass on his experiences and his knowledge of GOD.  So I would say at the very least, within the past 50,000 years.

[RavenHawk]

David Henson, on 08 February 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

If Adam were alagorical he wouldn't appear in the Chronology as having offspring, and more importantly, he wouldn't have sinned and so there would be no point for a Messiah to take away his sin.

Actually, I think he would and has.  We don't need an unbroken line to indeed know that Jesus is a descendant of Adam.  For Redemption to work then, each one of us today would need to trace a line from Adam or Jesus and that is near impossible.  So Redemption must work on faith.  We know it can't be anything else, so the story is allegorical.  That doesn't make it any less true.  The chronology of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is not sequential.  There are holes.  But that does not change the Message one iota.

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Just like if Moses hadn't written the Pentateuch Jesus wouldn't have said: "In fact, if you believed Moses you would believe me, for that one wrote about me. But if you do not believe the writings of that one, how will you believe my sayings?” (John 5:46-47)

Note to scholars: Jesus didn't say J, E and P.

Moses does not need to be the *writer* to have gotten credit for putting it together.  He oversaw the project.  If you follow the Documentary Hypothesis, there were four sources that Moses pulled from.  Now if Moses, guided by GOD had sat down and wrote the whole thing, then it would flow within the same style and tone all the way through.  It is not that way.  There is a chart in the DH that shows the distribution of the four sources.  The chart looks like a hard drive that needs to be defragmented.  The only thing that can cause that is if you have several sources that overlap and an editor piecing the best parts together.  Now there is nothing to say that Moses was one of the four.  Joseph might have been another.  Adam, Enoch, or Noah could have been the others or Moses had four scribes go among the people to collect all the oral stories they could and finally, he edited them together with what was written.  Until that point, they didn't have a common canon of the origin of their people.  And what they did have was heavily influenced by Egyptian mythology.  So it had to be a huge task to pull a Hebrew flavor out of all that data.  That is how I would see GOD guiding Moses.

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Its a thinly veiled attempt to dismiss the Biblical authority.

Not at all.  Understanding *HOW* Moses wrote the Pentateuch doesn't change the Message of the Bible or the Mission of Jesus.

[Abramelin]

RavenHawk, on 08 February 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

Never said it was.  I was referring to the "Flood Myth" that is part of every culture on this planet.  This indicates a common origin, which would seem to show that this particular flood event did happen.

There was no Great Flood, but after the end of the ice age there must have been several smaller but very destructive floods caused by ice lakes breaching through ice dams. There were ice lakes 600 meters deep (Altai region), just to give you an idea. But all this happened many thousands of years before the socalled Noah's Flood, and spread out over an interval of thousands of years.

Then there must have been floods caused by tsunamis caused by earthquakes and whatnot, and so giving rise to other legends about a Flood.

These things happened all over the earth (like erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, rain, snow and wind and so on), so it is to be expected legends will mention the same phenomenon, but not necessarily the same one at the same time.

[RavenHawk]

Abramelin, on 08 February 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

There was no Great Flood, but after the end of the ice age there must have been several smaller but very destructive floods caused by ice lakes breaching through ice dams. There were ice lakes 600 meters deep (Altai region), just to give you an idea. But all this happened many thousands of years before the socalled Noah's Flood, and spread out over an interval of thousands of years.

I didn't say "Great Flood"; I said a flood that we identify as Noah's Flood.  I don't believe that there was no rain until GOD broke this *bladder* of water around the Earth and it took 40 days and 40 nights to drain.  I don't necessarily believe in just a local flood either.  I think it was a regional flood.  I.e. there are theories that the Mediterranean, Black Sea, or Persian Gulf were deep valleys that contained no water until glacial waters broke through the land creating a flood of such force that it could surge all the way up to the "mountains of Ararat".   I also don't believe in Ussher's Chronology.  The Earth is older than 6000 years and Noah's Flood probably occurred during the glacial melt off thousands of years earlier.

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Then there must have been floods caused by tsunamis caused by earthquakes and whatnot, and so giving rise to other legends about a Flood.

Other legends about a flood or other legends about earthquake and what not??  A great flood is still a great flood no matter what the source is.  

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These things happened all over the earth (like erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, rain, snow and wind and so on), so it is to be expected legends will mention the same phenomenon, but not necessarily the same one at the same time.

Massive volcanoes, Earthquakes, and other disasters equal in force did occur.  But you would think that there would be a near equal distribution of disasters.  But we don't see that.  We don't see different sources.  People were smart enough to understand what seasonal floods were or a common earthquake or a volcanic plume.  Noah's Flood is based on a catastrophic event that no one had seen in remembered history.  And what is it that states that there should have been a disaster?  We don't have any stories where *nothing* happened.

[Copen]

"In the beginning God created the heaven (singular) and the earth." Why is it important that we notice that heaven is singular? Because God does "everything twice for our strong consolation." We don't know how long ago was the creation of heaven and earth; but God calls that the beginning of His creation.

Then God gave Lucifer for a covering of the earth. This why he is sometimes called the prince of the air.

"And the earth was confusion and emptiness and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The devil is the "author of confusion." The second verse of Genesis shows the effects of the author of confusion. Darkness is upon the earth. If the devil is the author of confusion, then this confusion is not God's doing.

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The entire earth was covered in water, the result of the author of confusion - Lucifer.

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." This is spiritual light radiating from God. It is not from a celestial body. As yet, that had not been created.

When God released His light, He stepped back and surveyed His work and said - Ah, Good! - - Not sinless - not pure; but good for His purposes. After seeing the destruction at the hand of the sinful author of confusion, God set in motion a plan. THE FIRST STING OPERATION.

God did not eliminate the darkness. He just divided darkness with half light. The sting operation will not be based upon what God knows. It will be by the same rules He required of the Jews. - -  There must be two witnesses with no contradictions. (Everything twice for a strong consolation.)

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." A day consisting of an evening and a morning is 24 hours. The darkness was first, therefore, God starts the 24 hour day with the evening. The Jewish 24 hour day starts at dusk, (or evening) and goes through the next day until dusk again. They are following God's example. This was the 1st day.

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; And God called the firmament HEAVEN." (Here's the 2nd heaven). And the evening and the morning were the 2nd (24 hour) day.

The waters that had completely covered the earth were divided with half being placed in an atmosphere called HEAVEN the encircled the earth and includes deep outer space. So God has divided the darkness and the waters and He has made a 2nd HEAVEN. (Everything twice for a strong consolation.)

PLEASE NOTICE: THE 2ND DAY IS THE ONLY DAY GOD DID NOT STEP BACK AND SURVEY HIS WORK AND DECLARE IT GOOD. This is because the all knowing God knew there was going to be a time when he was going to use the waters as a curve correction again evil mankind; and He took no delight in it. God makes up for this lack of "Good" on Day 6 by separating the day into two parts and surveying His work and declaring twice "Good" and "Very Good". (Twice for a strong consolation.)

"And God said, Let the waters under the 2nd heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good." Not sinless; but good for God's purpose. He made the earth one large dry land mass.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth...And the evening and the morning were the 3rd day." (Another 24 hour day that started with an evening and ended with a morning.)

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divided the day from the night; and let them be for SIGNS, and for seasons, and for days, and years." In the 2nd heaven's firmament where the water was placed on the 2nd day, celestial planets were now created on the 4th day. God's light was already on the earth, so it does not matter how long it took for their light to reach the earth. A cycle of light and darkness was already taking place on the earth every 24 hours. With the creation of the celestial lights, man can determine seasons, 24 hour days, and years. The one thing modern man has missed, which was listed first, is that these lights are for SIGNS. Warnings and celebrations have been and will continue to be announced to mankind through lights in heaven as SIGNS.

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven" Part of the 2nd heaven's firmament has an open area in which fowl may fly. "And God created great sea monsters (Hebrew - tanniym which means marine and land preternatural monsters, dragon).  Three things were created Day 5. (1) moving creature that lives in waters, (2) fowl that may fly above the earth, and (3) preter-natural (out of the natural) hideous land/marine animals -- dinosaurs.

On Day 6, God creates four things. He saved the best for last. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the (1) living creature after its kind, (2) cattle, and (3) creeping thing, and (4) beast of the earth after its kind, and it was so."

Words by their use have a meaning different from the regular dictionary definition. The words "living creature" and "flesh" mean mankind. The only time the word "flesh" is used for an animal is when it is on the alter sizzling for mankind.

Then God goes about creating the things He said He was going to created. It is curious that God skipped the "living creature" and started with the domestic cattle, then all creeping thing, and next the wild beast of the earth. Beast of the earth is not the same as the domestic beast of the field.

The living creature on the earth was to bring forth after its kind. This is Gentiles (beginning/tiles of clay of the earth). Two couples of very very black Gentiles and two couples of light Gentiles were created. That way the races stayed very very black and white without incest of a brother and sister. The very very black race is God's special proof that no race gradually gets white or started white and gradually becomes very very black. The only way for skin color to change is through introduction other than their kind. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. What is a sin today has always been a sin. God did not create only one male and one female and bless them to multiply through sinful incest.

Day 7 God rested. On Day 8, (eight being God's number for beginning again that which is already) God created Man (not male) Adam, the first Jew. He was created naked. Nudity is a sin. God is fighting sin with sin. Adam did not know good from evil, therefore he was not ashamed. Later, Adam lied to Eva and said if you TOUCH the fruit you will die that very same day. Nudity and lying were present and no one had eaten from the fruit.

The first six days it was Elohim (God in the plural and implied Triune Godhead) that was identified. Day 8, God was identified as Jehovah. That is how Gentiles have known God as Elohim/Triune. Jehovah/One is how God has revealed Himself to the Jews.

The Garden of Eden and the field is Israel and Jerusalem. The river boundaries are Tigris/Euphrates to the north, Nile to the south at Cush, and Jordan to the east. Since earth was still one large landmass until the earthquake of Peleg's day, the Mediterranean Sea was not there yet, sometime after Noah's flood.
May God remove the blindness of the Laodiceans.

[J. K.]

Copen, on 22 February 2013 - 03:48 AM, said:

The living creature on the earth was to bring forth after its kind. This is Gentiles (beginning/tiles of clay of the earth). Two couples of very very black Gentiles and two couples of light Gentiles were created. That way the races stayed very very black and white without incest of a brother and sister. The very very black race is God's special proof that no race gradually gets white or started white and gradually becomes very very black. The only way for skin color to change is through introduction other than their kind. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. What is a sin today has always been a sin. God did not create only one male and one female and bless them to multiply through sinful incest.

I am greatly curious as to where you got this information.

[Seeker79]

The ageing gene must be a result of inbreeding..... Think about that one for a minute

Edited by Seeker79, 22 February 2013 - 05:00 PM.

[Abramelin]

RavenHawk, on 08 February 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

I didn't say "Great Flood"; I said a flood that we identify as Noah's Flood.  I don't believe that there was no rain until GOD broke this *bladder* of water around the Earth and it took 40 days and 40 nights to drain.  I don't necessarily believe in just a local flood either.  I think it was a regional flood.  I.e. there are theories that the Mediterranean, Black Sea, or Persian Gulf were deep valleys that contained no water until glacial waters broke through the land creating a flood of such force that it could surge all the way up to the "mountains of Ararat".   I also don't believe in Ussher's Chronology.  The Earth is older than 6000 years and Noah's Flood probably occurred during the glacial melt off thousands of years earlier.


Other legends about a flood or other legends about earthquake and what not??  A great flood is still a great flood no matter what the source is.  


Massive volcanoes, Earthquakes, and other disasters equal in force did occur.  But you would think that there would be a near equal distribution of disasters.  But we don't see that.  We don't see different sources.  People were smart enough to understand what seasonal floods were or a common earthquake or a volcanic plume.  Noah's Flood is based on a catastrophic event that no one had seen in remembered history.  And what is it that states that there should have been a disaster?  We don't have any stories where *nothing* happened.

You suggested a common origin, and I explained why that does not have to be the case at all because many catastrophic floods occurred in many parts on the globe after the end of the last ice age, and so people will have created similar sounding legends witout one having anything to do with the other.

Even later events, like tsunamis caused by earthquakes could have given rise to flood legends. My point is that there may be many legends of floods around the world (and there are) but they are not necessarily connected, not necessarily caused by the same thing, and not necessarily happened at the same moment.

The latest theory is that Noah's Flood occured around 2800 BCE, and that it was caused by an impact of a meteorite into the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar (see: Burckle Crater). It would - if it happened - most probably have inundated the valley that became the Persian Gulf, plus inundations along the east African and Indian coast.

Something similar is said to have happened between 400 and 200 BCE when a meteorite impacted in the North Atlantic, east of New York. Even a Dutch/Frisian historiographer (Schotanus) of the 17th century hints at this: between 360 and 350 BCE a catastrophic flood occured on the coasts of the North Sea.

Btw, the Black Sea event appears to be anything but catastrophic according to the latest research results. It also happened much earlier than initially assumed. The Mediterranean flood happened some 5.3 million years ago, so I doubt it would have given rise to any legends because there were no humans around back then.