Ted Davis,
You are correct in surmising that I am in agreement with your analysis and criticism. I agree on Numbers’ book being outstanding, and his contributions in this field unworthy of the criticism AiG is directing his way.
Thanks for pointing out your reference to Warren Johns’s article. I hadn’t seen his name in your article, and though I clicked on some of the links in your article (referencing Ham’s original comments, for example), I didn’t click on the one that linked to Johns’s article, so failed to see that you had already read it.
Thanks for your comments on Johns’s article. I’ll add a couple more comments here–one on Johns’s article and then one on Price. On p. 330 of his article, Johns wrote:
What is of interest to this study is that Price never resorted to the theory of the exchange of the land surface and ocean bottoms as did the SGs, but instead he has proposed that oceans have made numerous incursions (called transgressions) over the land, and this he listed as fact 6 (Price 1923, 656–657). [emphasis added]
I haven’t read everything Price wrote, and wasn’t taking note of this aspect at the time of my reading, but thought that he did in fact refer to this idea, which I’ve seen in other sources, of the oceanbeds rising and the dry land sinking, thus exchanging places (so to speak). Half of that (sinking land), at least, is directly expressed by Price on p. 156 of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902), and the other half (rising oceans) is implied by his reference to the oceanbeds etc. losing their equilibrium. Quoting:
The skies, which never before had condensed into falling drops, now grew black with universal cloudbursts, and the beds of the ocean, and the interior reservoirs of the earth, lost their equilibrium, and vomited forth their waters upon the sinking land.
I guess the lesson is to “never say ‘never’”!
The other comment I wish to make is in response to your comment (following Numbers) that Whitcomb and Morris intentionally suppressed references to Price to avoid prejudicing their (anti-SDA) readers. While not denying that at all, I do find it deliciously ironic because Price himself seems to have done the same thing with respect to his inspiration, the SDA prophet Ellen G. White. Price acknowledges sources throughout his books, but often not when the source was White. Was this for the same reason as W&M? i.e., to avoid prejudicing non-SDA readers? I share an example below:
Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 44 (pub. 1890):
As the earth came forth from the hand of its Maker, it was exceedingly beautiful. Its surface was diversified with mountains, hills, and plains, interspersed with noble rivers and lovely lakes; but the hills and mountains were not abrupt and rugged, abounding in terrific steeps and frightful chasms, as they now do; the sharp, ragged edges of earth’s rocky framework were buried beneath the fruitful soil, which everywhere produced a luxuriant growth of verdure. There were no loathsome swamps or barren deserts. Graceful shrubs and delicate flowers greeted the eye at every turn.
George E. McCready Price, Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity, p. 154 (pub. 1902):
The earth, as Adam first saw it, was supremely beautiful. No bare, rocky cliffs towered up between him and the sunlight, frowning destruction upon his feeble steps; no wide, dreary swamps breathed pestilential vapors into his Eden home; no pathless deserts intervened between him and distant lands. Flower and fruit and seed were produced in limitless profusion, and in almost endless variety.
The literary dependence–key words, themes, and sequence–is obvious, even if Price did embellish his version with additional adjectives. This literary dependence is doubly sweetly ironic because Ellen White herself failed to acknowledge sources in many of her works. Incidentally, both books were published by the SDA publisher, Pacific Press Pub. Assn.
I have considerable respect for the breadth of literature Warren Johns has consulted in several of his publications over the past decades. It would be interesting to see him put his bibliographic skills to work on the literary sources of Ellen White’s statements about Creation and the Flood. Maybe that would complete his link back to the SG’s!