gen 6:3 And God said, My spirit shall not dwell in man without end, for he is flesh; and the days of him shall be an hundred and twenty years.
This verse signifies something involving His spirit and man will change in 120 years. He said this just before the flood sometime. It could not have been the flood He was talking about. Peleg was born they say, 101 years after the flood. It was in his days the earth was divided. That leaves about 18 years and change for Noah to build the ark before the flood and the 101 years after till Peleg!
The math works.
So Scripture says that by God all things consist Col 1:17 God’s Son was before all else, and by him everything is held together
If God separated His spirit from earth somewhat more that would affect everything here. Suddenly. When would that happen? In the days of Peleg, according to the timing of God Himself. (120 years from when He spoke before the flood)
Does it fit? Men’s lifespan suddenly plummeted by about 9 CENTURIES in the time of Peleg. Continents probably rapidly separated. The way man thinks and processes information changed instantly worldwide. Total confusion almost.
In the more speculative changes that happened, we can add the change in plant growth rates (trees used to grow in weeks) More and more creatures started to be able to leave fossilized remains. Spirits no longer were openly seen and living and marrying in the world.
If ever there were a demonstration of the difference between “what Scripture says” and “what I think Scripture means,” this post is it.
The argument:
Genesis 6:3 says that something involving God’s Spirit and humanity will change in 120 years.
Peleg was born approximately 101 years after the Flood.
Therefore Genesis 6:3 was spoken approximately 19 years before the Flood: 19 years before the Flood + 101 years after the Flood = 120 years. Hence, “the math works.”
Genesis 10:25 says that in Peleg’s days “the earth was divided.”
Colossians 1:17 says that all things consist, or are held together, in Christ.
At the end of the 120 years—around the time of Peleg—God therefore partially withdrew or separated his Spirit from the earth, changing the conditions under which the natural world operates.
This change accounts for several things you say occurred at approximately that time:
human lifespans suddenly and drastically decreased;
the continents rapidly separated;
human thought and information processing changed worldwide;
plant growth rates changed, with trees previously capable of growing in weeks;
conditions changed so that more organisms could leave fossilized remains;
spirits ceased openly appearing, living among humans, and mating with them.
Thanks for the summary. Many Christians say that the 120 years refers to the time till the flood. They therefore claim it took Noah 120 years to build the boat. This new idea fits much better and makes more sense. Taking less than 20 years to build a huge boat works.
More speculative? Your entire post is speculative reading into scripture what is not there. The steadfast laws of nature have not changed, and your search is one of a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that doesn’t exist.
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.
Make the tools? No. They were already planting and building etc in Noah’s day!
Luke 17 26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
Limited workforce? Says who? There was a world of people.
No metal?? They were working with metal right out of Eden. Gen 4:22 Lamech’s other wife, Zillah, gave birth to a son named Tubal-cain. He became an expert in forging tools of bronze and iron. Tubal-cain had a sister named Naamah.
You are batting zero so far.
(as is the rest of your post)
The Old Kingdom of Egypt would not have been using copper tools if they had access to iron. Temperatures to smelt iron were not reached until about 1200 BC.
There was no Home Depot. People made their own tools even if the neighbors were planting/building.
God said, “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.” And I assume his sons helped. God didn’t mention hiring outside help.
Knew you would bring it up, but archeology has determined when Iron was first smelted. If Noah knew how to mine iron ore and smelt it into iron then his sons would have known and the knowledge would have been passed down, which it wasn’t.
That was post flood. Takes a while to get some thing up and running again. heck, some folks even lived in caves and travelled, hunting after the flood. They even have a name for that. Cavemen
The bible tells of metal work just after leaving the garden. Sorry, overruled. (As hard as you think it was and a dumb as you may think early man was)
So no, archaeology has not determined when metal work started by any means. The poor dim theorists.
How sweet it is
To accept YEC as true, not just science must be wrong, but you must embrace self delusion, and deny reason and what is seen with your own eyes, as you have done.
If the lifespans of Cain’s descendants were about the same as Seth’s, then it is likely that Tubal-cain was born after the Flood. I estimate that he lived about the same time as Nimrod. Cain and his descendants left the region where the flood happened. God was protecting them.
Why would Noah have to make his own tools? Tools would have existed before Noah was born.[1] Jubal would have had some, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to make musical instruments.
Not necessarily - I’ve seen at least one YEC argue that Noah was a complete bastard who hired lots of labourers to help him build the ark, and then let them all drown.
Tubal-Cain used metal, and there was gold in Havilah.
The Wyoming (the largest wooden ship known to have been built) was completed in less than 15 years (between the shipyard opening and the launch date), and probably in about 2 years. So 20 years for the ark would have been enough.
The Wyoming also had to be seaworthy (which it mostly was). The Ark didn’t.
For this purpose of this post I’m treating Biblical history as real. ↩︎