Does The Flood Add up?

lot lived where after sodom was destroyed? noach begat shem, cham, and yepheth. "shem" is the origin of the term "semitic" so he's the father of the hebrew people. cham is a later term for egyptians -- but he's also called the father of canaan. and according to genesis 9:27, yepheth seems to refer to the assyrians, or babylonians, because he will conquer both cham and shem.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 03-29-2006 09:37 PM

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noah's three sons are shem (father of the semitic people), ham (egyptians) and japheth (mediterranean).(noah's descendants are actually a good indication of the area the bible claims the flood covered, as "eretz" is quite ambiguous)Edited by arachnophilia, : typo, x for z

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guess so.

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Gen 6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

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Gen 7:13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

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there's a problem with bible's origins mythology, as hinted at above. the "where did noah's daughters-in-law come from?" is probably meant to echo the classic "where did cain's wife come from?" question.as i suggested (i think) in the thread about reconciling gen 1 and 2, genesis 2/3/4 seems to represent a very localized focus in the creation mythology, while genesis 1 represents a much wider scope. the author of genesis 2/3/4 seems unconcerned about the presence of other people in the world besides adam, eve, cain, abel, and eventually seth. when cain kills abel, he is worried that someone else will kill him. who?while it seems that adam is only the father of a specific group of people, the naming of eve presents a problem. her name in hebrew is "chavah" which is related causally to "chay" the word for life. chavah is named because she causes all life -- the mother of mankind.but one thing, ironically, that genesis DOES do is try to explain genetic diversity. being a book that records traditional stories of origins, the hebrew stories of the origins of other cultures are included to. there are stories for very many neighboring cultures, actually. although the region seems to stick to northern africa, the med. sea, the orient (turkey, etc), and the middle east. this is the "world" that genesis seems concerned with.Edited by arachnophilia, : typoe.

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that's because you don't know much (or any) hebrew. the word used to describe what the flood covered is which means "country" (as in countryside, area) or "nation" or "land" (as in ground). as i was just telling people in an unrelated thread, — means planet. why? none of these groups are present in the bible, except for MAYBE the africans. (where sheba was is debatable, but actually irrelevent)the bible is a judeo-centric book. this shouldn't be a suprise. they are concerned with their own culture, and their relations with their neighbors.

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assuming.also assuming that said mountains are indeed higher than your average plain.

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i was just pointing out that such was the assumption.there is good reason, of course, to read the flood story as claiming that the flood covered the entire planet. for one, god seeks to destroy all mankind. a localized flood makes no sense here, unless mankind is also localized.the point, rather, is that we can tell what exactly was included in the ancient hebrew concept of the world. they had no idea about australian aboriginies, or native americas, or south africans, or chinese.

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that is the common thought, yes.

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i am far, far more interested in the intent of the authors, editors, and redactors.

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having done the math myself, i can tell you for certain that this figure is wrong. the duration from the flood until the birth of peleg is 199 years. here is the relevant portion of that (frustrating) discussion, in the hopes that you are NOT another incarnation of simple:

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Gen 11:10 These [are] the generations of Shem: Shem [was] an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:

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flood (98) + 2 = 100.

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Gen 11:12 And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:

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100 + 35 = 135

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Gen 11:14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:

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135 + 30 = 165

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Gen 11:16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:

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165 + 34 = 199.

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no. that's not what this refers to.

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Gen 10:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

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read a few verses down:

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Gen 10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

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this is the last verse of genesis 10. what happens in genesis 11? god divides the nations at the tower of babel. the word is — and means something similar to "gave birth to." but it's actually irrelevant, since the bible gives us the time between these events. it doesn't matter if there are generations in between, because we know the timeframes. (see above)

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i covered the part of this that's important to chronology above. but now for the other points.

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We can see from the diagram that these three men must have been contemporaries, with Eber the oldest. But if Eber had actually been born earlier than Peleg and Reu, and if he had outlived both Peleg and Reu (as the diagram shows), so that he was the patriarch of the clan, so to speak, one would surely think it would have been a matter of divine record that he, instead of Peleg, lived when the earth was divided, the event that we find recorded in Genesis 10:25 and I Chronicles 1:19. Thus, we are led again to the conclusion that the term “begat” as used in Genesis Chapters 5 and 11, must have, at least in some instances, reference to a relationship other than that of an immediate father-son.

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this is a faulty conclusion. we find later in genesis that abraham is still alive when the story switches to isaac, that isaac is still alive when the story goes to jacob. that jacob is still alive when the story goes to joseph.

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Significantly, the Bible does not record that Eber “called his name Peleg” because as a point of fact, Peleg was not born until about the time Eber died.

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- is a phrase that appears in stories, not genealogies. that's "v'tiqera et-shemu" not "qara shem." evidently, your source used a concordance improperly.you will also find that eve does not "call his name" cain, or abel. are they not direct sons, either?

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“These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.” But in this verse, “sons” has reference to all of the descendants of Shem. Thus, the word “sons” does not prove that a reference is made to the immediate son of the father. It might be noted that Matthew 1:1 also illustrates this truth, for there we read, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

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poor understanding of translation. the hebrew ‘ (ben) refers to family, although it CAN often DOES refer to direct sons. it's a family name, like "jesus ben sirach"but it's only ben that works that way. yalad ("begat") literally means a direct descendant, and your source does not show any instance where it does not. the NOUN yelad means "child" and the VERB yalad means "have a child."

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yes -- it's just trying to give a timeframe for the events in genesis 11, and "after the birth of peleg" is a fairly decent way to do so. presumably, it happened before peleg had his son, so that gives us a span of 30 years. by crue's logic, this verse is actually meaningless, because the "lived x years and begat ___" phrases are meaningless, and the span of time of peleg's life is 239 years. not very precise. that'd be like defining the civil war as happening sometime between the declaration of independence and now. try passing a history exam with that one.added by edit: also a very good point. peleg's NAME means "division." he was named after the event -- so it safe to assume it happened near his birth.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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please do, but understand that often people are very biased in their readings of the bible, and out to prove some kind of point -- often to justify the text against the real world in places where it seems failing.some will accuse me of something similar, i'm sure, but i'm out to show the logical outcomes of the words on the page, as they are written and literally read. there's good textual evidence that the "division" (that is, babel) happened while peleg was either very, very young, or not yet born. his name, after all, is "division."the whole bit about the date is probably very, very wrong. as most of the logic in the article is also wrong. i think it's kind of a futile effort to try to figure the dates of events in early genesis anyways. i think it's futile even up through exodus. the old testament becomes a strict history sometime in the vicinity of the book of kings. short of there, it doesn't even line up with itself.for instance, there's a rather large problem with the duration of time in the book of judges. samuel contains a reference to the duration between the exodus and an event in the storyline of that book -- but that figure is much shorter than the figure you get if you add up judges and joshua.eg: there is no precise way to date anything before that because there's a discrepancy in the timeline. coincidentally, radiocarbon dating doesn't even work for objects older than 10,000 years.however, supposing (young earth) creationism is true, all of science would be inaccurate.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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yeah, i took stab a few of them, but i'm not gonna sit here and critique someone's textbook of logical fallacies, poor hebrew, and bad theology.

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most types of birds are unclean, so there were 2. the implication is, yes, since it destroys everything "under heaven." but the verse you used is not a good one, as the word used in it, literally means "land." as in country, not planet. the hebrews of the time did not have our modern cosmological views, so our modern word for "world" is adapted — which means something closer to "eternity" in biblical hebrew.

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