I think it means they thought the waters of God would not violate the sacred nature of the land in question …
I’d second this idea that the waters of God would not violate the Garden of Eden. In other news, speaking of flooding the world with creationism, I watched this video which did make me sad though for probably a different reason than if a YEC saw it. Yes the Youtuber is definitely not a Christian and hand selected clips, but it’s hard to get around some of the facts about the ark after one year:
I don’t think they are mythical, I think they are polemical. The reason why I think they are polemical is their similarity to the Sumerian King List and the Rulers of Lagash list.
To me that would indicate the writers or editors of the LXX had deliberately fudged the numbers to make them match up with the history, unless there was clear evidence to the contrary. The fact that the numbers have a non-random distribution and appear to be schematized, indicates that they have been selected deliberately.
Interesting video. I said when it opened that the Ark Encounter would be the undoing of AiG. It has been and will continue to be a disaster in every way.
Looking at the video, I don’t think things are as dire as they present. I think the attendance is going to hit a million this year, which will probably keep it afloat a while longer. There is a lot of support for YEC in the region.
However, I can’t see that it is viable long term. Once the initial crowds go, I really cannot see much repeat business. Looking at the AIG sites, looks like they are getting 7500 there on weekend in peak season, so once school starts in a month or two, crowds will dwindle, expenses will continue. Maybe they could cut the lights and air conditioning and have everyone bring a flashlight to tour for an “authentic ark experience”
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What would you consider to be clear evidence to the contrary? Archaeological? Date of composition? Statistical analysis?
To the contrary of what?
To the contrary of the LXX having fudged numbers
Evidence that the numbers were correct. For example, I would like to see evidence that anyone actually lived for centuries, and I would like to see evidence that anyone else in the Bible knew that people actually lived for centuries.
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[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:53, topic:5247, full:true”]
Evidence that the numbers were correct. For example, I would like to see evidence that anyone actually lived for centuries, and I would like to see evidence that anyone else in the Bible knew that people actually lived for centuries.
[/quote]
This is a summary of the evidence that I have found in archaeological data. If you are interested, then I can provide documentation (peer reviewed papers in secular journals and MS thesis at Hebrew University).
The Septuagint places Noah’s flood at 3500 BC, which is the date of the big flood in Mesopotamian history that wiped out the remnant of the Ubaid people in southern and central Mesopotamia (population had already shrunk due to drought (5.9 ka event)). The Septuagint also places the creation of Adam at 5800 BC, which is the same date of appearance of the Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia. Southern Mesopotamian geography also fits the Biblical description of the Garden of Eden. According to the MS thesis, there is also no evidence that the Ubaid descended from any previous culture in the Middle East. Thus, we should focus on the Ubaid between 5800 BC and 3500 BC for evidence of great age.
Two things that archaeologists look at when they estimate the age of people are the wear on their teeth, and the size of the cemetery (number of burials) vs. the size of the city (population). The ancestral home and spiritual center of the Ubaid was Eridu. The archaeologist who observed the teeth of the skeletons in Eridu stated that they were “remarkably worn teeth.” The size of the cemetery vs. size of the town in Eridu indicates an average age of 1,000 years. There are other possible explanations for these things, such as sand in the food and transport of bodies away from Eridu for burial, but at face value, these provide evidence of remarkably old age.
With respect to biology, the reason that people have a maximum age is that natural selection is optimized at the normal age of death for each species. There are sets of DNA that cause the aging process in each organism. If these were changed, then humans would not age or age much more slowly. Thus, it is scientifically plausible that God could modify human DNA such that humans attained great age.
With respect to other evidence in scripture, I don’t have that. However, the Jews before Christ (I think) and the Church Fathers afterward had estimates of the date of creation of Adam in the same range as 5800 BC. Thus, they trusted in the Biblical ages of the patriarchs.
So they were supernaturally created by God out of nothing? What then shall we say of all the other cultures that also existed at the time elsewhere around the globe? This certainly is a delightful post that basically comes in swinging for the fences, coming in with a knockout case to overwrite the rest of this thread. I like the boldness and claims, let’s see where this goes.
Ok this certainly is a bit crazy. It’s all in the teeth! Pretty bold biological claim and you can say, [quote=“PeterWaller, post:54, topic:5247”]
it is scientifically plausible that God could modify human DNA such that humans attained great age
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Yes, but no. If he did he erased all the other evidence besides a few 7000 year old teeth. Rats, God must have forgot about that one. The DNA claim definitely is not a scientific claim nor really plausible. Humans would not age isn’t true, regardless of what you imagine our DNA to say. We will all die, even with perfect genes. No death requires so many changes to all the laws of physics, chemistry, biology etc. 
Looking forward to your response!
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So, then, you reject the story of the Flood as a global event?
There is evidence of a huge storm surge from the Persian Gulf at that time (marine shells at Amarah and An Nariyeh (Eridu locale). There is also evidence of a massive river flood at the same time (deposition of mud discovered by Wooley at Ur). Actually, a secular researcher proposed that the shells were there because of a storm surge. What do you think about the tells being the hills that were covered by 22 feet of water?
I’m trying to understand your stance. You reject a global flood, right?
So, it should be easy for you to reject 6 days of creation. Do you reject 6 literal days of creation?
As for the issue of the flood, just about any large flood will inspire a story of a humongous flood. There’s no trick to this. Mesopotamia suffered all kinds of floods. We hardly need a large one to justify the fictional content of the Noah story.
You don’t need to take non-domesticated animals onto a crowded boat if you are warned of a regional flood. And if you aren’t even warned … there’s no time to do anything except run up hill.
From door to door, the plot structure of the Noah story is so contorted, it requires God’s miraculous intervention pretty much at every step:
Miracle 1: God provides warning (not part of a regional flood scenario);
Miracle 2: God helps a handful of men build a giant ship (impossible otherwise);
Miracle 3: God helps send animals to the ark (not part of a regional flood scenario);
Reality 3: if there was a boat caught in the surge of a regional flood, it might have been loaded with cattle and sheep and maybe the owner’s dog!
Miracle 4: God helps keep the wooden disaster of a boat from sinking (professional boat wrights built much smaller boats for European countries that survived for less time than the Ark did).
Miracle 5: They floated on the water for months (not part of a regional flood scenario);
Miracle 6: They sent out birds that came back because there was no place to land (not part of a regional flood scenario);
Miracle 7: Finally the boat lands on dry ground, and Noah beams with pride at being the last living survivors on Earth (not part of a regional flood scenario);
Reality 8: As Noah and his family step down from the ark, all the people who survived the regional flood gather along the shore and ask him what he means when he says he and his children are the only survivors of the flood?
But the real reason the Flood story is included in the Old Testament is because the Jewish priests wanted to “take over” a popular pagan story and make it part of Yahweh’s triumphant story!
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I would like to compare the Biblical description to what we know about the 3500 BC flood (Great Ur flood) from archaeology. Leonard Wooley stated that the 4 m flood deposits at Ur indicated an 11 m (36 ft) flood depth at Ur. The Bible states that the “har” were covered by 22 feet of water. The Hebrew word har can refer to a hill or a mountain, and the only hills in the Mesopotamian Plain (one of the flattest places on earth) were the tells. If we assume that the tells, locations of the villages, were 20 ft tall in 3500 BC, then this would make the flood about 42 ft deep, which is in the same range as Wooley’s calculation. Do you know of any other flood in Mesopotamian history that had a depth of 40 ft? The National Center for Science Education stated, “the level of the great flood at Ur was sandwiched between remains of the Al Ubaid cultural phase, the last purely protohistoric period of southern Mesopotamia, and a layer of debris from the Protoliterate (early Sumerian) period. The great Ur flood, thus, can be dated with a high degree of certainty to about 3500 BCE.” The Bible states that the flood wiped out all the inhabitants of the earth (eretz). The word eretz (earth) is often used to refer to a region (i.e. the eretz of the Babylonians). There were no other floods in Mesopotamian history that wiped out the people from the entire region. It is likely that the 3500 BC flood began with a hurricane storm surge. The surge was so large that it deposited marine shells far inland in An Nasiriyeh (Eridu area) and Amarah. Research papers in the last 10 years on Persian Gulf historical sea level support this version of events rather than an inland sea incursion into Mesopotamia as the reason for the shells. The Bible states that the waters rose up (quickly) from the great deep (could be ocean), which matches a storm surge. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Biblical Noah’s Flood obviously describe the same event. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes a dark cloud from the south that was raining so hard the people couldn’t see each other. This sounds like a hurricane over the Persian Gulf (south of Mesopotamia). There is no evidence of any other hurricane storm surge in Mesopotamia.
You questioned the timing of the flood recession. I simplistically used the Manning’s equation assuming the kinematic wave model to calculate the time of recession, but the water flow is actually slower than the kinematic wave calculation (thus a conservative estimate) because inertial and other forces in the full hydrodynamic model would be important. I plugged in the slope of the plain (one of the flattest places on earth), my estimated depth of flow (40 ft), and estimated surface roughness, and then I solved for the flow velocity and flow rate per unit area. I also added in an estimated return flow to the plain from the Zagros and Taurus Mountains watersheds, and I came to the conclusion that the period described in the Bible for the drainage of this amount of water is reasonable. If you would like to see these calculations, then I will be happy to share them with you if I can find them on my old computer.
You mention that an ancient boat that is 450 ft long would not be seaworthy. You are probably right. On the open seas with large waves, the torque might be too much, and the boat would crack in half; however, if the boat was riding on a storm surge over a flat plain, then I think that the land would damp out the waves as the surge spread across the land.
There were three large floods between 3500 BCE and 2900 BCE. Why do you select this one?
What does this mean?
I don’t follow the reasoning here. Which archaeologists examined the teeth and decided that they were evidence of people living an average age of 1,000 years?
This is not evidence, this is speculation.
That is significant. No one else in the Bible seems to know about these apparently very long ages, even when they actually mention people like Adam and Noah. This is good evidence that they did not interpret the genealogies as literal lifespans.
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Thanks. This would mean Adam and Eve were not the first humans.
I will look into the DNA question in more detail. I really haven’t studied it. Thanks for bringing it up.
Hmmm… I think I’ve heard this being proposed once or twice around here…
My opinion is that when someone wants to argue that an historical Regional Flood is the source of the story, this requires a simultaneous acceptance that the narrative of Noah’s story is - - at most - - “barely historical”… or, “virtually fictional”.
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Johnathon, do you have information on the three large floods and their characteristics, such as depth?
Thanks
I will work on responding to your other comments.
There is an excellent article at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), The Flood: Mesopotamian Archaeological Evidence | National Center for Science Education
I think you are referring to the 3000 BC and 2900 BC floods at Kish and a later evidence of a flood at Shurupak. Here is what the NCSE states about those floods.
“The flood remains at Kish and Shuruppak are hardly imposing. The silt at Kish averages less than ten inches thick, and the deposit at Shuruppak is about fifteen inches-in comparison to up to eleven feet of material at Ur (Raikes, 1967, pp. 52-63).”
Thus, we have 11 ft of sediment in the Great Flood at Ur and 10 inches of sediment in the Kish floods. There is also no evidence of a storm surge, and the Sumerian culture was not destroyed in the Kish floods. Do you really think that there is any comparison between the 3500 BC flood and the Kish floods?