Did God use a comet to wipeout the Clovis people around 9000 bc as part of the flood judgement on Noah’s world? I would like to think of that world being like Sodom and Gomorah, not small tribes of hunters trying to stay alive. God did say he judged them because of sinful thoughts, wicked city sinners are a little easier to see wiped out. Thanks for listening. Tom
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Anytime you attribute an aspect of divine judgment to a natural disaster (apart from special revelation) you are engaging in pure speculation.
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Tom, I know of no evidence of a comet or asteroid impact that affected the population the Americas, and it is generally thought that the descendants of the Clovis people went on to populate the continent, though there is some thought that earlier peoples were present.
I am curious as to where this idea originates. What makes you think this is a possible scenario?
The Bible doesn’t mention a comet associated with the Flood, right?
I would be more concerned that the Flood, whenever it occurs, pretty much HAS to occur prior to the emergence of the first dynasties of the Egyptian civilization! There is ZERO evidence of the dynasties being interrupted by any Extra-Nile-Valley flooding - - either culturally or geologically.
And once the Nile civilization kicks into gear, we would have to expect thousands of Egyptian cadavers being formed into fossils along with any dinosaurs that are already being discovered within the confines of the Nile Valley. Yes?
If you look at @AntoineSuarez’s long-standing thread discussing the Adamite family heritage vs. any other human populations that were not fortunate/unfortunate enough to get to know Yahweh, his usual approach usually splits into two kinds of scenarios (per the views of other correspondents, not Antoine’s):
that humans outside of the ANE region have less guilt and so are not part of global flood scenario. Instead it is a regional flood scenario.
vs.
humans outside of the ANE are somehow quickly influenced by The Fall (either via God or via social contact) and thus are engaged in a global flood scenario.
I am curious as to where this idea originates. What makes you think this is a possible scenario?
I watched a documentary on the Clovis people. I guess I am always look for evidence that would collaborate the Bible. Shem, Ham and Japheth the fathers of mankind. Maybe this idea is a “hold-over” from my YEC days.
Anytime you attribute an aspect of divine judgment to a natural disaster (apart from special revelation) you are engaging in pure speculation.
If Noah’s flood was local, then, I am looking for ways God killed everyone else.
Thank you,
I will look up the thread.
Then look no longer. Time got the job done. With 100.0% efficiency.
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It took me about ten seconds to figure the joke out. Best response ever!
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I’m telling you … time has its guilty or helping hands in just about everything! Eccl. 9:11
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We are born to die, just a matter of time. That’s not warm and fussy.
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Of course, having been to Clovis, New Mexico several times, I think they may have just moved rather than died out.
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I hope you won’t think I am trying to be obnoxious, Christy, but this focuses on the difficulty I have with the OT: It was entirely to be expected of people several millennia ago to “explain” natural disasters as divine judgement (e.g. the Flood and Sodom) in a world governed by a just and good God. If I had lived then I am sure I would have joined in saying: “They must have been sinners and got what they deserved.”
Recounting how Abraham haggled with God, persuading him that ‘collateral damage’ in destroying Sodom would be too great–that would have set well with me back then. But fixing that account in Scripture is like fixing it in stone–no amount of knowledge attained over the millennia will ever change it. Using 21st century standards of fairness, we might still accept the 'special revelation’ version of Sodom’s destruction (Gen 18:20) as divine justice. But must we then accept the rest of the story as fact: that God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt just because she was curious and took a peek back at the carnage? Does that not make the Creator of the Universe out to be small and petty? Should we not conclude that there are a few parts of the OT that do NOT deserve being considered as special revelation?
In Jesus’ time, showing his relationship with the Torah was essential to get the Jews to listen to his message. Almost assuredly if there was no OT we would not have a NT. But I do not think that guarantees that every passage in the OT is the unvarnished Truth.
Al Leo
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So, if you don’t believe the Bible is special revelation, then you discount it. But if you do believe it is special revelation, it’s a different situation. In any case, we don’t have anything anyone accepts as the inspired word of God attributing a comet in North America to divine judgment.
Actually, approaches to Scripture interpretation have changed quite a bit over time. Accepting something as special revelation is not the same thing as declaring something an objective historical fact. You should know that from all the endless discussions here about the Genesis narratives.
That’s the problem, Christy, it isn’t an all or nothing proposition. I am sure my life would have been much poorer if I had not been exposed to the Bible for guidance. But that might not have been true if I did not have someone skilled in exegesis to make sure I was not mis-guided. I am not sure you are fully aware of how easily an intelligent future scientist can be derailed by a few (actually unimportant) passages (like Lot’s wife) can be to discount Scripture’s overall valuable message. So many of my colleagues have ‘thrown out the baby with the bathwater’. It is my hope that BioLogos will shine a light on those passages so the the scientists of the future will not fall into the trap of thinking that Christians must believe in a vindictive God.
Al Leo
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There are some scientists who believe that such an impact was responsible for the Younger-Dryas Boundary. @Joel_Duff had an interesting blog post about it a few years back:
Thanks for sharing! It may well have wiped out the culture, but apparently many of the people survived and adapted.
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I think you have confuse pure with impure speculation.
Vaporizing someone who hesitates would not be divine punishment if it would have happened naturally anyways. Telling her to not stop and turn around would be divine intervention taking into account free will. What if not telling her something that God knew was going to happen any way, would that not be equally wrong? Was putting the thought into her head, that she would have never thought of to begin with wrong? Or did God know her thoughts and heart, and her propensity to stop and want to go back?
My question was why are we cutting things so close, that there was hardly time to get out of the blast radius? There seems to be an account in another ANE text that there was a destructive cloud that moved east at the same time and killed thousands of people along the Euphratis river. They suffocated on the gases in the cloud. If this actually happened, why would God allow thousands of people to die in the event?
We read the Bible as one perspective. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah effected thousands of other people besides just the ones told about. Sounds like a similiar event happened when two nuclear devices killed thousands of people in Japan, a majority that may have been innocent. They did not heed the warnings that were sent to get out of the way.
I doubt we may ever know what actually destroyed Sodom. If it was a natural event, then God could just as well stopped the event before it happened. It seems pehaps even minutes before it happened. They were cutting the evacuations fairly too close for comfort.
I think the Flood was the same way. If humans would have had a revival, then the natural course of events would have happened differently, or postponed. Some think that even the return of Christ has been postponed a few times. It could have already happened under certain conditions depending on how humans choose what they did at certain points of time. Perhaps one reason why Jesus did not give a certain date and proclaimed he did not know. If he had set a date, it may have just been a self fulfilling prophecy. Humans would have had no choice in the matter.
If God knew, predicted, all of humanity’s history, why create Satan? Was it a deliberate move to see how well the predictions, knowing, would change if there was free will running concurrently with a species that had no free will? A species who would loose their planet depending on the actions of those with free will.
When it comes to judging sinners, I think both sides of the moral debate have it wrong. I think Paul said it best, when he pointed out that “We used to be sinners bound by the sin we could not escape.” If all the pet sins we have imbraced have been made legal, how does that equate to what Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” Paul has a list of items that the early church used to participate in. They did not change the laws to incorporate them. They escaped the Condemnation and left sin behind. Neither does it seem that they cleaned up their act on their own and then they would be acceptable. I think the moral truth concerning Lot’s wife is; after being warned of sin and judgment, leave and do not look back. The fault that is the decline of Evangelicals is instead of embracing the lost we seem to include what makes them lost to begin with. There really needs to be a way to leave sin behind and not bring it with us in our escape from condemnation to a strong fellowship of believers.
No. This was a judgment on a first human civilization most likely in Mesopotamia. I don’t know why you would extend this to exterminating random homo-sapiens groups around the world.
It is a disputed hypothesis with some but insufficient evidence.