Summations Only

I can't agree with your interpretation of the text about Peleg: There then immediately follows the story of the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) which I take to be the explanation of the separation in Gen. 10:32 and of the different languages in Gen. 10:31, because otherwise the whole thing wouldn't make any sense.So there seems to be an obvious intepretation of what it means to say that "the earth was divided", i.e. that "the nations were separated on the earth after the flood", which should be preferred because it is obvious. Why would anyone think of anything else --- and why would anyone write like that unless they meant it to be interpreted that way?Consider also that according to your interpretation what is being referred to would be one of the most momentous, dramatic, and cataclysmic events in the whole history of the world --- and yet you suppose that it is mentioned only in passing as an explanation of how Peleg got his name. It's as though the Bible were to say: "And Noah got his name because in his time there was much rain" or "Adam was so called because of the incident with the tree" and left us to infer the rest of the story from that. Whereas according to my interpretation the explanation of Peleg's name referred to an almost equally dramatic event which is explained.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, but I can understand it. I think you are grasping at straws. Yes, it is possible to choose interpretations of the words so that it means "The dry land mass was physically split asunder", but given that we have already been told that there was a completely different sense in which the earth was divided in the days of Peleg, then that is the interpretation that it naturally bears.If you read: "Sherlock Holmes habitually dressed in an Inverness cape in cold weather", then if you read a few sentences later: "Because it was cold, Sherlock Holmes was wearing an Inverness cape", you could intepret that second sentence as meaning: "Because a Scottish headland was cold, Sherlock Holmes was eroding it", but only by ignoring a context with which the author has already been careful to supply you. I said it was as if the Bible said that --- as if it only hinted at these momentous events by a passing etymological gloss. Perhaps you could expand on that. Real geologists, after all, do not hold that continental drift would draw that much water into the mantle, nor that it was elsewhere until the breakup of Pangea occurred.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Which would cause rapid continental drift. Thus dividing the land. "A lot" is a vague term. What happens in subduction is that the sediment and sedimentary rocks on the sea floor get dragged into the mantle, and since they contain water it is dragged down with them.But the amount of water involved would not be seven times the volume of the ocean. It would be a lot, but seven times the volume of the ocean would be a lot more. You'd have to start with so much sediment on the sea bed that the sea bed was in fact the land and the continental plates were under water ... and the the sediment wouldn't get subducted under the continental plates but scraped off onto their edges ... the Pacific Rim would be marked not by volcanos but by a giant wall of mud ... and unless there should be some reason why the center of the Pacific should have been a depression comparatively free of sediment, the Pacific "Ocean" would still be the only landmass, with the Atlantic stretching from California to Japan ... no, there's no way this would work.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, I'm saying that there wouldn't have been enough room in the oceans, or enough sediment, for the origin of the mantle water to be the oceans and for it to have been transferred to the mantle by subduction.You just haven't thought this through. If in the days of Peleg, seven times the volume of the oceans was transferred from the surface to the mantle, what did the surface look like just before this event took place?P.S: It's "mantle", not "mantel". A mantel is the ornamental facing round a fireplace.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Please do not address any further posts to me, as I lack both the ability to translate them into English and the patience to address them.

Genesis 7:20 says that "the mountains were covered".Genesis 8:4 says: "the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat", and 8:5 says that "in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen."Note that we wouldn't be given a date when "the ark rested" if it had not previously been afloat; and that Genesis 7:17 explictly says: "the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth".So, there was enough water to (a) float the Ark (b) cover the mountains.

And the premise on which the if statement was predicated contradicts the Bible. As I pointed out.Yes, if the Bible was wrong, then the Flood need not have taken place as the Bible describes it. Or at all. I admit that if Genesis was a bunch of retarded gibberish written by an assclown then we could ignore it but in this thread we are asked to consider the implications of the "if statement" that it wasn't. So ... you are trying to derive the Hebrew meaning of the Hebrew word which would subsequently be translated into English as "mountain" by referring to an obsolete meaning of the French word "montaigne"? Considered by whom? Can you show me one usage of the word which means that? These are to me new uncharted waters of Biblical literalism.And so what, according to you, are "the mountains of Ararat"? They cannot, of course, refer to the mountains of Ararat, which are mountains. So perhaps to some molehills which were then to be found in that region? Yes indeed. A word which to the rest of mankind, including, for example, the Jews, means "hills or mountains", can, according to you, be "considered" to mean "land that rose 1 foot", so that you can protect your notions about the Flood.

Oh for heaven's sake.It says that the Ark grounded on the mountains of Ararat. Not on the place where they were going to be. Only volcanic mountains are caused by subduction. Nowhere do they translate it as a rise of one foot. You know why? 'Cos it doesn't mean that. That's the etymology of the English word "hill". Which does not, incidentally, show that anyone has ever considered that word to include a rise of one foot. I'm going to guess at higher than one foot. Otherwise they would not be hills or mountains. Science tells you that some volcanic mountains are caused that way. Science tells you lots of things, such as that the book of Genesis is a bunch of lies written by an ignorant buttmonkey. Yet you're happy enough to ignore that. And yet now you tell us that whatever the Bible says, there can't have been any actual mountains in the mountains of Ararat because there'd be no naturalistic explanation for them.Well, if that's your new criterion for what can and can't be true then I have just one further request for you. Please dispose of your Bible carefully.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.