Evidence for the Biblical Record

Well, actually, in my previous post at Message 267, I did address the issue of how that one particular Chinese character that Peg cited could be interpreted as a phrasal construction, and pointed out that her phrasal interpretation ("boat with 8 people") is almost certainly incorrect.The alternate meanings of the second and third components of that one ideogram, leading to a phrasal interpretation that refers to a particular kind of boat or ship, can be found here No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict_rs.html -- you'll see the two "radicals" that correspond to those two components, and you just need to select each one in turn, set "0" and some higher number for the "Lower bound" and "Upper bound" fields, and click "Search by Radical/Stroke".AbE: I don't know Chinese, so it's possible the interpretation I suggested for that character isn't right either -- the character might have been created on phonetic grounds.Edited by Otto Tellick, : added quotation from JonF's message, and closing paragraph / disclaimer.

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Because between Chinese words and Mesopotamian ideas, there are no similarities on which any sort of linkage can be established. Peg, you have shown posted images (without citing your source -- such a bad and tiresome habit!) of two Chinese characters (out of several thousand that exist in Chinese). Your first example (character for "ship" based on ideas about Noah's Arc) is prima-facie nonsense and easily debunked. The second one doesn't fare any better: No. To start with, the portion you refer to as "motion" doesn't seem to exist as a separate, meaningful character, but is used only as a "radical" in building a wide assortment of other characters (not having any overall semantic unity). The thing you cite as "(breath of) life" also appears not to exist as such. Wherever you got that picture from, it's a misanalysis of the character.Oh, and the full character resulting from the combination (造) is actually not the noun "creation", but rather a verb ("construct, build, begin; prepare" when I look it up this way, and "to make; to build; to invent; to manufacture" when I look it up this way. (You can just paste the unicode character I've given into each of those search pages.) {AbE: Please realize that any reference to God in any portion of this character is utterly fictional and unwarranted.} Yes, as with any other evidence-based field of research, historical linguists need to weigh the potential, plausible alternatives regarding relationships among distinct language varieties, and pick one that is best motivated by and most consistent with established knowledge about how speech patterns change over time, as well as with current knowledge about the geographical and temporal evidence associated with those language varieties.As it is with new discoveries of intermediate species in the geological fossil record for the theory of evolution, so it is with new discoveries of ancient writings in the archaeological record, and new information about the vocabularies and speech patterns of relatively obscure living languages and dialects, for historical linguistics. These things fill in gaps in our knowledge, they occasionally force a shift in our chronologies, or more rarely, a minor adjustment to the branching relations. There's lot of detail available on this, but the primary thing is the presence vs. absence of a core shared vocabulary. For example, a central piece of evidence for the Indo-European group is the commonality of terms for family members: brother, sister, father, mother, daughter, and son all have regular correlations among the various descendants of Proto-Indo-European. Of equal importance is the regularity in patterns of sound change affecting the shared vocabulary: when you see the differences between English "brother", German "Bruder", Italian "fratello", French "frère", etc, you often find other shared vocabulary among these languages that show a similar correspondences between Germanic /b/ and Romance /f/, between English // (eth) and German /d/, between Italian /a/ and French /è/ etc.Obviously, the "magical" nature of a Tower-of-Babel type of "event" wouldn't need to give any account for this sort of detail. Before it, everyone talks the same, and after it, everyone talks different, and there's nothing more to say about that. If anyone has any further questions about how that sort of event actually worked itself out in the ancient population and led to all the evidence we know of today, they just have to make up stories on their own to suit themselves, because there is no basis on which to form any rational, objective account of the process. And of course, that is exactly what the extreme Bible literalists have been doing all along: making up stories to suit themselves.Edited by Otto Tellick, : (as indicated in text)Edited by Otto Tellick, : (disable smileys. Reminder to self: don't put unicode characters inside parens!

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

.Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

---

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

That there were large Ziggurats is uncontested, that the Hebrews often took from Sumerian folklore and gave it their own monotheist twist is uncontested, but that there was an actual confusion of tongues is contested. That is not a "fact," that is folklore.But if you think so, then what was the original Adamic language that everyone spoke before the confusion? Is it still in existence?Forget the fact that the dates don't line up with the first known languages. You also have to account for why semetic languages, mediteranean languages, Indo-european languages, and Anatolian languages, etc have similar root words that correspond to their region if there was a confusion of tongues. What linguists clearly see is the obvious evolution of language, not a confusion of language. Of course they didn't have a bible. The bible was written over 2,000 years after-the-fact. Several biblical stories are merely borrowed from Sumerian lore. What is your point? That one day we'll find that Enmerkar & Co. got pissed and confused everyone's language? Because you seem to conveniently be leaving out the details. YHWH or any other cognate is not used in the original story.All this story serves to prove is that it was stolen from another civilization's folklore, just like Christmas, just like Easter, just like Halloween. By your rationale, we should assume that because there is a Christmas story must mean that Jesus was actually born on Dec 25 because a story exists saying it, when in reality it is just a story borrowed from another story and twisted to conform to a specific belief.

---

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Its funny that even if we pretend the story of Babel was true, that God was so threatened by the potential success of the project that He felt the need to intervene. Its funny He didnt intervene in a similar fashion during the construction of every skyscraper.

He knew, I'm sure, that the intent of the tower of Babel was intended for the purpose of reaching heaven. I'm fairly certain he's a wise enough fella to know that skyscrapers aren't meant to reach into the heavens, what with being god and all.

---

"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

I'm sure He's a wise enough fella to know that the tower of Babel had no chance of reaching heaven, what with being god and all.

Ahh, but the intent was there....

---

"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

I don't think I made my point clear. God didn't have to do anything - they would have failed without his intervention.
But nooooooo....He had to cast a spell to screw over the human race.I'm speaking hypothetically of course. After dishing out the tools of logic and reason, I think God would be deeply ashamed at anyone who believed that absurd tower of Babel story.

it was hebrew and the reasoning behind this is that hebrew was the language of Noah and his 3 sons. Shem and his family did not get involved in the building of the tower, so he was not one of the people to have his language changed and his decendents are the isrealites who continued to speak the original language. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

Well, assuming that God really wanted to mess things up that way with the Babel trick (which was actually a pretty stupid idea, if you think about it), I really don't see any grounds for preserving any trace of the original "Adamic" language in any human mind. Might as well treat everyone the same way, and lose the original language completely.I think you'll also want to change your chronology, to make sure that every form of writing arises at some point after the tower, and none before. You haven't even tried to assert this, but it ends up being a necessary entailment. Think about it: all the truly independent (original) writing systems -- Chinese, Egyptian, Sumerian and Phoenician (parent of the Hebrew writing system) -- were clearly being used to represent different languages, as of the oldest extant evidence for each.(Of course, Sumerian and Egyptian -- and possibly Chinese -- are older than Phoenician, hence older than Hebrew, but no worries... I'm sure you can toss some details into your chronology to cover these facts. Even if there is no scriptural basis for them, they can be asserted without directly contradicting what's in the Bible, right? That's the beauty of having "an accurate historical record" that tends to skimp on the little "implementation details" of all those supernatural "historical" events.)If it made sense to speak of a "Babel event" (which doesn't make sense at all, but let's put that aside), it would also make sense to conclude that there was never any written form for the "Adamic language". All knowledge about pre-Babel events must have been preserved by oral tradition. (Seriously: does the Bible indicate that anything was ever written down by anyone before the Tower event?) Then, you just need make up another story about how all the knowledge (all that accurate historical record) embedded in the Hebrew oral tradition was sustained or re-instantiated after the Babel event. That's a piece of cake, 'cuz God can do anything.BTW, Peg, this thread is in a science forum, and not only have you failed to show any Biblical reference to back up your latest assertion, but you are completely lacking what this thread is about: independent and corroborating evidence to back up the claim.The Babel story is a really bad case for objective corroboration. I recommend that you seriously consider the consequences of interpreting it as allegory, parable or metaphor. Trust me, doing so is not such a bad thing, and can be more profoundly enlightening than a strict (and unsupportable) literal reading.

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Perhaps if everyone at the time was involved the rebellion...but not everyone was so why would God need to remove the original language? The genesis account shows that people were writing well before the tower incident...they were writing in their original language, hebrew, so why should this be necessary? Moses got his information from either oral tradition or from existing writings. In genesis the expression this is the book of the generations of is seen, so he likely got the early geneology from existing writings.

You do realize that the earliest documents we have describing this event are dated well after the known origins for the egyptian and phoenician written languages, yes? I'll try telling you this again: There is no evidence Moses wrote any of the bible. Even so, if he got them from oral tradition, that still doesn't prove hebrew writing is older than egyptian or phoenician.All this is irrelevant though, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Buz, and which he failed to answer: Where is the evidence for your assertions?You can ignore everything I've said in this post, except for that point. Show me the evidence for what you are asserting, Peg. And remember, evidence does not mean doing more asserting.

Replied to wrong message, see Message 285 for real responseEdited by Huntard, : Replied to wrong message

But the punishment wasn't for the act of reaching heaven. It was for the hubris of the human race for even attempting such a thing.