[_ Old Earth _] Dating the Flood

[logical bob]

Discussion of the flood tends to focus on geology and other kinds of scientific evidence. But what about history? Answers in Genesis calculates that the Flood took place in 2304 BC. Genesis 5 says that it must have been at least 1556 years after Adam was created. So if you think the world was created in about 4000 BC then the flood must have been after 2500 BC. At this time everyone in the world died except for 8 people. Everyone who lived subsequently must have been descended from those 8 people.

The problem is we have an unbroken record of the rulers of Egypt going back to before 3000 BC. There are small disagreements about precise dates, but the order is clear. You would imagine that if everyone in the world died there would be a noticeable break in this list, but there isn't. AIG's preferred date falls in the middle of the reign of Pepi I, whose scribes recorded war in Asia and the establishment of a trade route to Lebanon but not the complete destruction of everything and everyone.

It seems the only way around this is to say that the dates must be wrong and the first Pharaoh must have been a post Flood descendant of Noah. I don't know how long it would have taken for the population to grow to the point where Upper and Lower Egypt existed as countries which merged under the first Pharaoh, but I'd guess that the Egyptologists would have to be out by more than a millenium.

It's yet another method of dating things a literal reading of Genesis has to explain away.

 

[Barbarian]

Maybe the Egyptians were just astoundingly inobservant. ;)

 

[lordkalvan]

The Predynastic cultures don't seem to have been much inconvenienced either. It is interesting to reflect on the origins of the Eocene Nile Valley as well (deeper, wider and longer than the Grand Canyon).

 

[jwu]

I wonder which particular strata supposedly were laid down by the flood. Why is it that no-one is willing to point at a layer of rocks and say, "that's flood sediment"?

 

[lordkalvan]

Is that date takn directly from Genesis?

or is it extrapolated from other things?

I think it's developed from one of the many slightly-different Ussher-like chronologies that were developed from a careful reading of what the Old Testament seemed to be saying about the ages of the patriarchs, when they had particular children and when they died, plus a whole bunch of other assumptions more or less biblically-derived.

Since the jews are the foremost experts on the Ot, another question should be, do they also beleive the earth is 6000 years old?

I think the Jews have their YE fundamentalists as well.

another good question regarding this dating, is how many years would it take for 8 people to turn into 6 billion? (a rough estimate of course)

Under most models, 8 people (with 2 apparently not reproducing) are insufficient to provide a minimum viable population. The increase in that population depends on many variables. During most of the first three millennia of Dynastic Egypt, population increase was rarely in excess of one-tenth of one per cent a year.

Source: http://reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/index.html

 

[Pard]

MA,

The Jews and Christians (and I suppose maybe even Muslims?) all agree on a 6000 year earth. I can give you various Jewish scholars on this if you'd like, however the quickest way to prove this is to direct you to the Jewish calender. They are in the late 5000 year range right now, year 1 being the year God created the world and such.

The Jews happen to be a bit quieter about creation, and it often gives people the idea that they do not believe in it. In reality they have a few other things to worry about first...

Bob,

I'd love to answer your question. Allow me some time to work on it. What I can give you is some historically evidence for the flood that comes from a completely pagan view.

Perhaps you are not aware, but nearly ever mythology in the world has a flood story, and in fact a Noah's ark story. The Greeks share an almost identical flood story as the one depicted in Genesis. In fact, the Norse mythology also fits in lock-step with a flood story. Celtic mythology is scary in the amount of similarities that it shares with the Bible on the flood.

I should think even the Egyptians have a flood story of sorts. As do many eastern cultures.

Sorry for not having sources, can dig some up if I am given some time, but this is all from memory, which is why I am not going into detail.

Just wished to share some further history with you, since that seems to be the topic at hand.

 

[lordkalvan]

The Jews and Christians (and I suppose maybe even Muslims?) all agree on a 6000 year earth.

You appear to be suggesting that all Christians and all Jews so agree. This is certainly not the case.

Perhaps you are not aware, but nearly ever mythology in the world has a flood story, and in fact a Noah's ark story. The Greeks share an almost identical flood story as the one depicted in Genesis. In fact, the Norse mythology also fits in lock-step with a flood story. Celtic mythology is scary in the amount of similarities that it shares with the Bible on the flood.

I should think even the Egyptians have a flood story of sorts. As do many eastern cultures.

From a post I made elsewhere on this subject:

Floods are a ubiquitous feature of human history. Floods are a common feature of geological and meteorological disasters and of Earth-impact events. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was caused by an undersea earthquake and killed some 225,000 people. The 1991 Bangladesh cyclone killed about 140,000 people and left 10 million homeless. A comet or meteor is believed to have impacted in the Indian Ocean around 3000 BC, causing a giant tsunami, flooding coastal lands and killing anyone unfortunate enough to be caught by it. The Black Sea may have been caused by catastrophic flooding from the Mediterranean Sea around 5600 BC. These are just a few of the devastating local or regional floods that easily give rise to stories about all-encompassing catastrophes. To these massive disasters can also be added local inundations caused by river flooding, perhaps coinciding with exceptionally high tides. Mesopotamia is an area of the ancient world that was particularly prone to major flooding events from frequent severe weather conditions. Even floods that only have a major local impact are a source of stories about those floods. The ubiquity of flood legends is, primarily, a function of the ubiquity of floods.

 

[logical bob]

Hi Pard, yes I realise that there are many flood myths. The interesting one is from the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's recorded on Sumerian tablets dating from 2100 BC and it may well have been around longer than that. In any case, it's much older than Genesis.

In the Gilgamesh story, the gods decide to send a flood to destroy mankind. One man receives a warning from one of the gods and is told to build a very large boat to escape. He does this, and after the flood the boat lands on the peak of a mountain. He sends birds out three times to see if they come back, and the third time they don't. So he makes a sacrifice to the gods, who express regret at having sent the flood and promise never to do it again.

Sounds familiar, yes? The story of Noah is a straight copy from an older Sumerian story. If it hadn't been copied before the Exile the Judeans would have been heavily exposed to Sumerian mythology in Babylon.

 

[Barbarian]

The Jews and Christians (and I suppose maybe even Muslims?) all agree on a 6000 year earth.

No. Most of the world's Christians do not think the world is 6000 years old. It's just someone's attempt to make the Bible fit their desires. And it's a modern revision, not commonly believed until the 1950s. The creationism presented in the Scopes Trial, for example, was old Earth creationism. Spurgeon, the great Baptist minister and theologian declared millions of years had passed since the Earth was created.

I can give you various Jewish scholars on this if you'd like

Maimonides, the greatest of medieval Jewish theologians, pointed out that one is not required to read Genesis as a literal history, and he argued that if science and Scripture appear to disagree, then we have either misunderstood science, or misinterpreted Scripture.

Prominent Orthodox rabbis who affirm that the world is older, and that life has evolved over time, include Aryeh Kaplan, Israel Lipschitz, Sholom Mordechai Schwadron (the MaHaRSHaM), Zvi Hirsch Chajes. To be sure, these rabbis do not accept the views of atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, who hold that evolution has no room at all for God. Rather, each rabbi taking this position proposes their own understanding of theistic evolution, in which the world is older, and that life does evolve over time in accord with natural law, yet also holding that God has a role in this process.

One of the most prominent writers on this subject in the Orthodox Jewish community is Gerald Schroeder, an Israeli physicist. He has written a number of articles and popular books attempting to reconcile Jewish theology with modern scientific findings that the world is billions of years old and that life has evolved over time. (Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible) His work has received approbations from a number of Orthodox rabbinic authorities...Conservative Judaism embraces science as a way to learn about God's creation, and like Orthodox and Reform Judaism, has found the theory of evolution a challenge to traditional Jewish theology. The Conservative Jewish movement has not yet developed one official response to the subject, but a broad array of views has converged. Conservative Jews teach that God created the universe and is responsible for the creation of life within it, but proclaims no mandatory teachings about how this occurs at any level.

Many Conservative rabbis embrace the term theistic evolution, and most reject the term intelligent design. Conservative rabbis who use the term intelligent design in their sermons often distinguish their views from the Christian fundamentalist use of this term. Like most in the scientific community, they understand "intelligent design" to be a technique by fundamentalist Christians to insert religion into public schools and to attack science, as admitted in the Intelligent Design movement's wedge strategy position papers.

In contrast to fundamentalist views, Conservative Judaism strongly supports the use of science as the proper way to learn about the physical world in which we live, and thus encourages its adherents to find a way to understand evolution in a way that does not contradict the findings of peer-reviewed scientific research.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ution.html

I'd love to answer your question. Allow me some time to work on it. What I can give you is some historically evidence for the flood that comes from a completely pagan view.

Perhaps you are not aware, but nearly ever mythology in the world has a flood story,

So, either floods are a common experience for humans, or there was just one big one. Not hard to figure that out.

and in fact a Noah's ark story. The Greeks share an almost identical flood story as the one depicted in Genesis. In fact, the Norse mythology also fits in lock-step with a flood story. Celtic mythology is scary in the amount of similarities that it shares with the Bible on the flood.

There was a regional flood about the right time in what is now the Black Sea. The Mediterranean Sea broke through and flooded a huge area of the middle east. The Greek story probably doesn't fit so well, because it relates to a flood caused by the rising seas along the coast. But many of these stories seem to be handed down from that great flood. It probably averaged a mile a day, and must have seemed to the people fleeing it, to be the end of the world.

 

[Pard]

bob,

We could look at it in this way, that it was a copy. However the other view is to see the many large (world-wide) flood stories and come to the conclusion that there was a world wide flood at some point. Most scholars believe that Mars was covered completely in water at one point and is no almost completely barren of all sources of H2O. It's really not that far to see the world also being covered in water, if we can make such an assumption about Mars.

And for whoever said it, no I didn't say "all Jews and Christians" I was directing my answer to MA, and he seemed to get what I was saying, that there are a good amount of Jews who do believe in a 6000 year earth.

Barb., I have compiled a list of ancient scholars, both Christian and Jewish, who all believed in a creation story that is very similar to our current one and also believed in a 6000 year earth. In fact, I compiled this list for you, a bit disappointing that you never ventured over to apologetics to see it...

 

[lordkalvan]

We could look at it in this way, that it was a copy. However the other view is to see the many large (world-wide) flood stories and come to the conclusion that there was a world wide flood at some point.

Can you think of no other possible conclusion? Given the limits of knowledge, how would any pre-scientific culture be able to know that a significant regional flood was, in fact, a global flood? For most people, their 'world' would have encompassed the most distant horizon they could see. Even rulers had only limited contacts with any other than immediately neighbouring polities.

Most scholars believe that Mars was covered completely in water at one point and is no almost completely barren of all sources of H2O.

You seem to be implying that the surface of Mars was once wholly submerged. I am unaware of any such understanding amongst scientists studying Mars. Do you have a reference?

It's really not that far to see the world also being covered in water, if we can make such an assumption about Mars.

Well, we don't need to make an assumption. We can study the evidence right here, none of which suggests any such thing (for several hundreds of millions of years, anyway). Again, do you have a reference for the assumption made about Mars?

And for whoever said it, no I didn't say "all Jews and Christians" I was directing my answer to MA, and he seemed to get what I was saying, that there are a good amount of Jews who do believe in a 6000 year earth.

So when you said The Jews and Christians (and I suppose maybe even Muslims?) all agree on a 6000 year earth, what are we supposed to conclude from the inclusion of the word all?

 

[logical bob]

However the other view is to see the many large (world-wide) flood stories and come to the conclusion that there was a world wide flood at some point.

In which case it's fair to ask when this flood happened and why there's no trace of it in the historical records of the second or third millenia BC, which is where we'd have to look if the earth is 6000 years old and Genesis is literally true. That was the point of this thread.

 

[jasoncran]

ya know in afghanistan i had a muslim try to tell me that the scientists were wrong that god did create the earth and solar system.

even went on to draw pics of the orbits of planets.

 

[Pard]

I do wish to specify that:

MUSLIMS ARE NOT YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISTS

we do not put a date on the earth via religious texts - we leave that up to the scientists - the specific date in which the earth was created bares little weight on our religion.

Do you wish to make such a sweeping statement? I actually admire a few Islamic creationists. They have a different grasp, for sure, but it is their different grasp that allows them to further shed light on the subject.

 

[Barbarian]

We could look at it in this way, that it was a copy. However the other view is to see the many large (world-wide) flood stories and come to the conclusion that there was a world wide flood at some point.

The problem is evidence. In the absence of physical evidence of such a thing, and without any scriptural support for it, (and because a great regional flood is known to have occurred at the right time and place) why would be believe a world-wide flood?

Most scholars believe that Mars was covered completely in water at one point

Interesting. Show us.

Barb., I have compiled a list of ancient scholars, both Christian and Jewish, who all believed in a creation story that is very similar to our current one and also believed in a 6000 year earth.

The fact that many people have added that idea to Scripture is not really persuasive to me. The fact that most orthodox theologians acknowledge that the creation week was not about literal days is sufficient. But if you'd care to show us your list here, I'd be happy to comment on it.

In fact, I compiled this list for you, a bit disappointing that you never ventured over to apologetics to see it...

And you couldn't post it here where the issue is being discussed, because...?

 

[jasoncran]

its not the appropriate forum. he asked the debate stay away from science it self but a debate on proper exegesis.

and ma the man fazul mohammed(to whom i told you about) did say that the earth was young.

 

[jasoncran]

note i said that he was in afghanistan, two i have no contact with him

so i guess muslims cant have indivual opinions.

i was stating what he said. to show that not all muslims agree.

scholars to some christian hold little weight, that doenst mean they are wrong or right(the scholars)

i hold all liberal scholars in christianity of little value since they deny the diety of christ.

 

[Barbarian]

its not the appropriate forum. he asked the debate stay away from science it self but a debate on proper exegesis.

So if his exegesis won't fit with the evidence, I guess we have our answer, then.

 

[jasoncran]

its not the appropriate forum. he asked the debate stay away from science it self but a debate on proper exegesis.

So if his exegesis won't fit with the evidence, I guess we have our answer, then.

no, that isnt what i said. he quoted your man st.augustine in the book city of god, recanting his earlier postition.

so we make god fit our evidence, interesting.
i'll keep that in mind.i guess i must need evidence of god first then i could believe what he said.

 

[jasoncran]

actual that can be good as we arent made to fit in the mold of a faulty intepration, as scholars can be wrong

would you follow your iman if he said gay is good or abortion and so forth is good?
no in the islamic country you will kill him so much for intellectual freedom.

not that i like the idea of allowing or rather tolerating false prophets,but the lord didnt say in the nt to kill the false prophets. rather warned others to avoid them like the plague.

if we killed dissenters then all christians that converted to other faiths would die.