But two of them are labeled Ashdod Canyon, just like Afiq Canyon. So what is the difference?
Except for the Pison. Even you said it didn’t carry a lot of sediment. So it is really 3 and a small stream you added to get to 4. And once you added it why not the one in the Ashdod Canyon? Maybe because that would get you to 5?
I view Genesis 10 as a very widely spaced group of people. Both yelad and ben are words for 'son of" or begat, but both words have usages that require that these are not necessarily parent child relationship. they might be, but they don’t have to be. Thus we can have room for lots of gaps if we need it. From my book Foundation Fall and Flood, p. 16
" The final point is that the Hebrew term that is translated as “beget” or “the son of” does not have the same connotation for the ancient Hebrews as it does in Modern English. In English the term clearly implies a father-son relationship, but the Hebrew term would be better translated as “ancestor of.” This is determined by comparisons of one genealogical list with another. The King James Version translates I Chronicles 26:24 as “And Shubael the son of Gershom, the son of Moses was ruler of the treasuries.” This use of the term “the son of” obviously means “descendant of,” a fact which the New International Version recognizes in its translation. Many other examples could be cited. The important thing is that once again, the English translation is really no assurance that there was an unbroken chronological sequence in Genesis 11. *
One atheist I discussed this with argued strongly that the genealogies in the Bible were father-son relationships. He argued for this position so that he could disprove the Bible. He knew that most modern people wouldn’t believe that the world was created in 4,004 B. C. And he would use this to lead people into atheism. His argument was that there are two Hebrew words for beget: ben and yalad. Ben does mean ‘ancestor of’. In 1 Chronicles 26:24 the word used is ben. And indeed Shubael is not a son of Gershom. Then my atheist friend said yalad is only used for parent-child relationships and never for relationships of ancestor. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary defines Yalad as:"to bear young; causat. to beget; med. to act as midwife; spec. to show lineage: bear, beget, birth ([ day]), born, (make to) bring forth (children, young), bring up, calve, child, come, be delivered (of a child), time of delivery, gender, hatch, labour, (do the office of a) midwife, declare pedigrees, be the son of, (woman in, woman that) travail ( eth, ing woman)."
He would point out that yalad is used in the genealogies of Genesis 1-11 proving that there were no gaps and proving that the Bible erroneously taught that the world was created in 4,004 B.C.
This argument at first took me back. It was an entire reversal in tone from the usual young-earth argument that viewed a complete genealogy as positive evidence that God did create the world recently. What was the solution? It turns out that yalad is used in at least one instance with the connotation of ‘ancestor’. Genesis 10:15-18 uses yalad to indicate that Canaan was the father of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites. Since there is no way that Canaan could possibly that promiscuous, yalad must indicate an ancestral relationship in this case. Could it indicate an ancestral relationship elsewhere in Genesis 5 and 11? Of course*." Glenn R. Morton Foundation Fall and Flood, p. 16
Lol, I think I said SIZE is the difference, and I do think that the Ashdod would join the El arish and Afiq.They are so near to each other.
The afiq (pison) is still bigger than the others, so what exactly is your point? Secondly, the bible describes where Havilah was, in Arabia. All thress of these canyons drain Arabia. If you like another canyon to be the Pison, I won’t argue with you. The Pison has been the mystery and for me, until I saw this data I had had no hope that a river came off of Arabia, and thus I didn’t actually believe what the Scripture said. I should have.
Sealkin, I thought about this question of genealogies overnight. For the moment, lets assume that Ussher’s values are correct for the sake of argument. No matter where we put Adam, be it 12,000 years ago or 200,000 years ago, or as I do, 5.3 myr ago, there are lots and lots of gaps. The genealogies have (assuming I did my math correctly, and given the bad night last night that is not a certitude), I calculate the average generation time from Adam to Abram is 97.8 years. There are 20 people And Abram lived around 2000 BC (rounding for easy math). So Swamidass has Adam at 10,000 BC (12000 years ago), requiring a 400 years per generation value to get to Abram’s time.
This would mean we miss 3 out of 4 of the people in the genealogy.
If we believe Adam was 200,000 years ago, well, the gaps are monstrously large, and as with my view, the names could not have been handed down by oral tradition over a period of 200 kyr. They have to be there via divine inspiration. Again, if I did my math correctly we would have 1 in 101 of the names that should be there.
If we don’t believe the numbers at the birth for these patriarchs and presume that the times were more in line with modern humans, well, then we have 1 name for every 8000 or so people in the list. Once we have this much gap time in the genealogies, what is the difference or big deal about adding more people to the gap. The only function I see in the genealogies is that I think they are true but very incomplete. And this incompleteness must extend to any view that is not the view of Ussher. And we know Ussher’s chronology is wrong. As I said, both words used for begat or father of, are also used in an ancestor-descendant relationship as well.
I view the genealogies this way. When my great great grandfather gave birth to my philandering great grandfather, he at the same time he became the ancestor of all who would flow from my great grandfather, including my beloved grandfather, his sisters, his half brother(a mob boss/killer/pimp), a third half brother from a different woman(and his 14 grandkids) and one line hidden by adoption records–at least 4 different families and then my father, me, my 3 sons and my 8 grandchildren. That is what these words mean according to the way they are used.
Yalad is used in this passage:
And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, 16 And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, 17 And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, 18 And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite
If begat here ‘yalad’ means ‘Im your real daddy’, then imagine the wife’s surprise when hundreds of people from 9 tribes pop out of her womb! No one gives birth to tribes unless they are viewing it as I said above–ancestor/descendant relationship. But every ‘ite’ I bolded is a tribe of people, not a son.
Matthew 1 tells us all we need to know about how Jewish people thought about the word ben.
the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham
There are big gaps in that genealogy there–true but very incomplete.
If Matthew 1:1 was in hebrew it would have been:
toledoth Jeshua Meshia, ben David, ben Abraham"
My point is how many rivers can be said to have drained Arabia in the last 5 million years? You even said the region was tilted in a different direction now verses then. Given the (I am assuming here) number of possible rivers that fit the vague Genesis description what makes this the right choice? You always seem to have vast quantities of data available. Dazzle me.
I am not here to dance to your tune, nor do I exist to ‘dazzle’. You remind me of Herod who wanted Jesus to do some miracle for him Luke 23:8. I personally like the rendition from Jesus Christ Superstar:
King Herod’s Song
Alice Cooper, Andrew Lloyd Webber
Jesus, I am overjoyed to meet you face to face.
You’ve been getting quite a name all around the place.
Healing cripples, raising from the dead.
And now I understand you’re God,
At least, that’s what you’ve said.
So, you are the Christ, you’re the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you’re divine; change my water into wine.
That’s all you need do, then I’ll know it’s all true.
Come on, King of the Jews.
Jesus, you just won’t believe the hit you’ve made around here.
You are all we talk about, the wonder of the year.
Oh what a pity if it’s all a lie.
Still, I’m sure that you can rock the cynics if you tried.
So, you are the Christ, you’re the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you’re no fool; walk across my swimming pool.
If you do that for me, then I’ll let you go free.
Edited to at video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaOfBQ5uw6M
Since this is your attitude towards me, I will not play your game
I asked you a simple question. If you are unable to answer it just say so.
The “Dazzle me” was a reference to King Herod so I guess you got that right. And I can pretty much sing (badly) that song from memory.
No bill, you asked me to Dazzle you and your questions are just like those of Herod in the video. You don’t like my view. You don’t need a reason to reject my view, just reject it and go your way.
Getting the quote correct is not a good thing. At least you admit your questions are of Herod’s kind. Bye Bill. Reject and forget my theory. Nitpicking is all you have done in all the threads you come to. Go nit pick someone else. I am finished with answering Herod style questions. I have more self-respect than to do that and dance to your pharisaic tune
A Look at Eden:
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. The Holy Bible: King James Version . (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Ge 2:5–7). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems
Commentators say this:
“The whole passage refers only to Eden and it informs us that it was not a rain country; it was rather a territory watered by river overflow and irrigation.” R Laird Harris, " THE MIST, THE CANOPY, AND THE RIVERS OF EDEN", BULLETIN OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY , Volume 11, No. 4 — Fall 1968 p. 178
Right off, this rules out Mesopotamia about which it could never be said that they didn’t have any rain. Since I place Eden in the deep basin of the desiccated Mediterranean, and since we know, such deep basins get far far less rain than other places on earth because they are in the rain shadow anyway the wind blows, and since the Mediterranean basin was the deepest basin the world has ever seen, it is quite likely that that land never had rain but was only watered by the rivers which poured over the lip.
" The scene opens not with the garden, but with the world outside, termed the adamah This is pictured as an uncultivated, parched region without rainfall, but watered by ground-swells or floods from the earth . (For the discussion of Hebrew ed, “mist,” see articles by Albright and Speiser.) Since there was neither a gardener to care for the soil, nor proper irrigation, the adamah did not produce the “plants of the field.” This implies only the absence of field-crops, not the state of the earth before the third day’s work when all forms of vegetation were created. Von Rad sees the adamah as a “Desert in contrast with the Sown.” Adam was formed not only of the adamah but upon the adamah, before he was placed in the garden. " Arthur H. Lewis, The Localization of the Garden of Eden," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, 11:4(1968), p. 170
Let’s look at the word Eden. Commentators say:
" There is general agreement on the derivation of Eden from the Akkadian edinu with the connotation of “plain,” “steppe,” “wilderness.” The homonymous eden of Hebrew for “delight,” or “voluptuousness,” is a tempting, but less likely etymology . Arthur H. Lewis, The Localization of the Garden of Eden," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, 11:4(1968), p. 170-171
" The name Eden comes from either an Akkadian word meaning “steppe” or “desert,” edinu, or a West Semitic word that describes “luxury,” “delight,” and abundance, adan ." Mangum, D., Custis, M., & Widder, W. (2012). Genesis 1–11 (Ge 2:4–25). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
it is interesting that when artists draw what the desiccated Mediterranean looked like they draw it like this, as a grass covered plaim. a ste[[e or dry grassland.
Some authors have tried to say that the elephants swam to Cyprus from Turkey at the time of the last glacial maximum, when sea levels were about 100 m lower than today. The problem is that lowering the sealevel by 100 meters doesn’t change the 84 kim distance from Turkey to Cyprus by more than a kilometer or two. Both Turkey and Cyprus’s bathymetry drops deep rapidly offshore. Below is a bathymetry map in meters.
The longest swim time I have found for elephants is 24 hours and it required 2 to help each other rest on the way.
Also, here is a nice anecdote!:
Amazingly, in the late 1970s, two bulls swam from Zimbabwe’s Spurwing Island across Lake Kariba to Kariba town, a distance of at least 25km. These 20-year-olds took turns to rest, one placing his forelegs on the haunches of his companion in front. Apparently their 24-hour-long trip followed an old elephant migration trail that had been covered by the lake for 25 years!
Both facts are from the website: http://www.africaguide.com/features/trvafmag/005.htm if you wanna check out any more information.
The above is from Swimming elephants (Page 1) - Mammals - Ask a Biologist Q&A
One answer give the max speed, but over 24 hours, no animal can swim at max rate. 1 km per hour for the first 24 hours and probably slower after that. This would mean 3.5 days of swimming for these intrepid elephants to swim there during the glacial low stand.
But let’s say they are correct that the elephants swam there during glaical low stands. The hippos couldn’t have swum there. They don’t swim!
“ For all intents and purposes the hippo does not swim,” said Douglas McCauley, an assistant professor in the department of ecology, evolution, and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It almost always maintains some contact with the bottom and walks or bounces off the bottom using these bottom contact points as a source of propulsion. ” Adrienne LaFrance, “Hippos Can’t Swim–So How Do they Move Through Water?” The Atlantic, April 26, 2017, Hippos Can’t Swim—So How Do They Move Through Water? - The Atlantic
So, was Cyprus above sea level in the late Miocene–the Messinian time? Yes and it formed the refugia for the elephants and hippos during the flood.
" The isolation of Cyprus is also indicated by the fact that before the arrival of humans there were only 5 species of endemic terrestrial mammals present on the island, four of which are presently extinct (Hadjisterkotis and Masala, 1995). On the contrary, on the nearby mainland there are large numbers of terrestrial mammalian species (Harrison and Bates, 1991) ." E. Hadjisterkotis "The arrival of elephants on the island of Cyprus and their subsequent accumulation in fossil sites in Elephants in Maya Aranovich and Olivier Dufresne, Editors, Ecology, Behavior and Conservation, Chapter: 2, Publisher: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. January 2012
So if the hippos came down the Nile and found refuge on Cypress after the flood, there is little reason to doubt that the elephants did as well, since elephants are found in basinal sediments from Italy and Sicily, which have been uplifted since the Messinian and are now accessible. One can see many of the animals that lived on that dry ocean bottom here.
Now we know from biogeography that the water drawdown of the Med had to be at least 1200 m. but we know from the Canyon excavated by the Nile in solid granite that the water level had to be 4000 m below sea level for a long while. Why? Rivers don’t cut canyons in granite below sea level.
I am going to take a break. I have something and have spent most of the day in bed. My youngest son, who had been house isolated came to visit last week (and I was not going to deny him that visit). The next day he had a 101+fever, got a covid test (negative but only 63% chance of being correct. He had at the very least pneumonia but is feeling better afer IV antibiotics. Well, This morning, this morning,8 days later, I woke up feeling awful, with a 99.5 and now it is 100.5. If it gets to 101, Im calling the doctor. So, If you see me in a day or two this is nothing. Otherwise until I get back here. I won’t see any replies for a while, I am going back to bed, but I had done the above work, and didn’t want it lost. God’s blessings on yall.
No the Dazzle me was a reference to Herod. The question was an honest question which you don’t seem to want to answer.
After spending yesterday in the emegency room with a 101.5 fever, getting tested for covid, scanned poked and having the doctor tell me this is high chance of covid, but without a positive test we won’t hospitalize you. I have something but they dont’ know what it is.
I have one more thing to say to Bill, No, Bill I have seen people like you in science and in life, and it is always ‘one more question’. When Jesus told us not to cast our pearls before swine he wasn’t talking pigs, he was talking about people whose entire goal in life is to find one more question and who have zero interest in the data. For 20 years C. Vance Haynes stymied the advancement of New World Anthropology by always asking for one more test to ‘prove’ the case that native americans were here prior to Clovis. Adovasio, who excavated Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania, a pre-Clovis site, after years of this torment said:
"Then, suddenly and in a sense parenthetically, the talk turned to Meadowcroft, and Haynes told me and the assembled multitude that if only I would date just one seed or one nut from the deepest levels at Meadow-croft, he might be led to believe in t he antiquity of the site."
"That was it, I burst out in derisive laughter. Over the years, in scientific paper after scientific paper, “Haynes had asked for yet another date, yet another study, raising yet another picayune and fanciful questions about Meadowcroft, most of which had been answered long before he asked them=not just in the original excavation procedures but in report after report. Up until this time in Monte Verde, I had complied.”
. . .
"Horse{you know what), I said constructively. I told Vance Haynes there and then that never would I accede to any request he made for further testing of the Meadowcroft site because if I did he would simply ask for something else in a never-ending spiral of problems. I explained that the matter of Meadowcroft’s antiquity was settled as far a s most other professionals and I were concerned,and that if any remaining skeptics did not believe it, I could not care less. I then stormed out of the bar with Tom to cool off outside in the parking lot. J. M. Adovasio with Jake Page, The First Americans, (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 223-224
I have had the most ridiculous debates with you Bill from you claiming velocity had something to do with saturation point. You claimed that everytime a river changes course, it requires a new name and thus my labels on my maps can’t be right because they were not the same river courses as today’s river. We have debated what is the source of a river system. We had the most ridiculous debate about how rain occurs When you asked me how inspriation works and asked if I had a verse, you then told me the verse wasn’t profitable for understanding the origin of man, totally taking out of context what I said. All ridiculous. I will not play Charlie Brown to your Lucy with the football. I will not answer another question for you. I have only a few months of life left, so the docs tell me, and I will not waste my time on your Herodian disingenuous questions. I feel like Adavasio, If you remain a sceptic, I could not care less!
I think I have presented almost all I can of my views. I think I am going to leave Biologos. now… I have some other things I need to do before I leave this world, my oncologist today told me that there really wasn’t much more they can do for me–they are out of ideas. I am going to try to figure out if I had covid with this 5 days of fever and feeling miserable–I am better now, but not back to normal. Anyway, my blog is http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com which I have told my kids to keep alive. Yall take care. This debate has taken more out of me than I thought it would. God bless.
May God bless you and keep you till we meet again.
God bless.
God bless. I have learned a lot from you.
In terms of data and resource shared on this forum, I am reasonably sure I have not seen your equal. Thank you for sharing your vast wealth of accumulated knowledge.
The Lord bless you and keep you, Glenn.
Gbob, thank you. I have worked in the overseas upstream petroleum space for a number of years so I sincerely appreciated seeing your unique insights as an experienced petroleum geologist attempting to reconcile the Genesis flood story to the scientific evidence. After a lot of searching, your attempts meant more to me than any other apologetic I’ve seen on this topic. If we could somehow reconcile Adam’s lineage to within a reasonable age of modern humans, we’d be clear. Will be praying for your health, and thanks again.
God bless. You know, there are no requirements to engage in debate here – you’re welcome to come back anytime even if all you do is say hi!
I’m never sure where to start in these convos because over a period of the last 30 or so comments it’s jumped around and circled back and sometimes honestly the conversations are almost the same between various threads that I can’t remember which ones I responded on or not.
What I mainly wanted to type though was concerning the potential artistic freedom that seems evident in scripture.
The first part would be the names. We do know that whenever Adam and Eve existed, or would have existed, they would not know the Hebrew language. It would have been another language. Now some names being changed to a Hebrew name could still make since. Often a persons name from one country to another is spelled and pronounced a different way if they chsnge it into the native language. But what happens in genesis goes much further than that.
Take Cain and Abel.
Cain is Qayin. Many try to say it’s a play on the word qanah ( to acquire) but it’s most likely a play on the word spelled the same way essentially, qayin which means spear. That’s further backed by the phrase, “ wayyaharḡêhū “ in genesis 4:8 because that exact phrase is only used two other times in the bible and it’s in 2 Samuel 23:21 and 1 chronicles 11:23 where Benaiah kills a man with a spear. So it definitely seems like all implications is stating Cain was called the Spear because he used a spear to kill Abel. Hollywood always shows a rock or something but most likely it was a spear.
Then there is Abel. It’s Habel in Hebrew and is tied to the word hevel which means mist as in mist is only here for a little while. Vapor. It’s short term. Just like it implies Abel was killed at a young age and was just here for a little while like vapor.
So it definitely seems like the Hebrew writers took liberty with the names by making the names match the fate of the characters. If they took liberty with that, which is not a big deal, but nonetheless I can see them taking liberty with other aspects based off of their language and worldview. So the argument that God would have prevented them from taking liberties seems to come apart with just those two names not to mention a multitude of other examples.
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