Help! Common Arguments For Literal Genesis

[Richard_Wright1 (Richard Wright)]

Hello George,

@gbrooks9

Now I have no idea what you want from me. I am not a Creationist. It sounded like you were insisting that the ancients knew the difference between the Sun’s light and the Scattered Light of the sky.

I know that you’re not a creationist, but a concordist. This is what you wrote to me a few days ago:

@gbrooks9

The idea behind Concordism is, presumably, that God wanted to couch some Bible narrative in the language and context of the day … and yet still have a document that would impress later generations. I’ve always found this to be a reasonable scenario

You a claiming that Genesis 1 is couched in the context of the day, and that would be of the 3-tiered universe. But you also claim that the text should be a document, “that would impress the later generations”. So does that mean that you hold that Genesis 1 in some way refers to historical events?

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Richard_Wright1

I know that you’re not a creationist, but a concordist. This is what you wrote to me a few days ago:

I am not a Concordist because I think that’s what God was thinking. I am a “soft” Concordist, in that I support Creationists who use Concordist logic to endorse evolutionary science.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Richard_Wright1

So does that mean that you hold that Genesis 1 in some way refers to historical events?

I can’t imagine any part of Genesis being reliable in its history. The Table of Nations is completely botched.

[Richard_Wright1 (Richard Wright)]

Hi George,

I can see now that I misunderstood your original response to me. Sorry. On happier note, you caused me to come up with some good anti-concordist stuff.

[aarceng (Chris)]

Excluding the interpolations there are a number of phrases that make a Flood account quite likely. So I think the critic (Bekins?) is stretching it a bit to say “that almost all of the text that “matches Genesis” was actually supplied by Hilprecht”

(2)…… will loosen
(3)…… it shall sweep away all men together;
(4)……ife before the deluge cometh forth;
(5)……, as many as there are, I will bring overthrow, destruction, annihilation
(6)……Build a great ship and
(7)……total height shall be it structure.
(8)……it shall be a houseboat carrying what has been saved of life.
(9)……with a strong deck cover ().
(10)…. which thou shalt make
(11)….ing the beast of the field, the birds of heaven,
(12)…. instead of a number,
(13)….and the family …

According to the Editor’s Note in the CMI article;

The Nippur Flood tablet is kept at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and is designated CBS 13532. According to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.ucla.edu), it is assigned to the Early Old Babylonian period and is dated to 2000–1900 BC.1 Its antiquity, however, is subject to some controversy. Although some consider a very early date plausible2,3,4 others would assign the tablet to a later period, possibly 1700 BC,2 fifteenth century BC,5 1300 BC6 or even as late as 1000 BC.7 All these estimates, however, predate the Jewish exile by centuries, confuting the claim that the biblical account of the Flood was derived from Babylonian myths during this period.

The article itself uses a date of prior to 2100 BC when the library was believed to be destroyed while the talkorigins link assigns a date of 2200BC.

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

@aarceng

Excluding the interpolations there are a number of phrases that make a Flood account quite likely. So I think the critic (Bekins?) is stretching it a bit to say “that almost all of the text that “matches Genesis” was actually supplied by Hilprecht”

But how do you go to the idea that ‘it is supposed to be describing the story exactly described in Genesis 6’ based upon what you have removed? If one is largely unfamiliar with other flood tablets, then sure, one could just imagine it is an actual copy of the Genesis text… but that’s not an option anymore.

@aarceng

talkorigins link assigns a date of 2200BC.

Which they did because they were referring an even earlier claim at ICR that was since removed…

@aarceng

According to the Editor’s Note in the CMI article;

The Nippur Flood tablet is kept at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and is designated CBS 13532. According to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.ucla.edu), it is assigned to the Early Old Babylonian period and is dated to 2000–1900 BC.1 Its antiquity, however, is subject to some controversy. Although some consider a very early date plausible2,3,4 others would assign the tablet to a later period, possibly 1700 BC,2 fifteenth century BC,5 1300 BC6 or even as late as 1000 BC.7 All these estimates, however, predate the Jewish exile by centuries, confuting the claim that the biblical account of the Flood was derived from Babylonian myths during this period.

That does not confute the claim at all. If one assumes that it is talking about the Genesis flood, then yeah, it obviously would falsify the idea the flood myth was inspired during the exile if it was written before the exile. But if one doesn’t make that assumption that the text could only be describing the Genesis flood then the Editor’s Note is quite wrong.