Noah's Ark

"A ten foot layer of flood silt has been found at Ur[...] indicating a flood during the 4th millenium BC, at Kish there is evidence of a flood [...] after 3000 BC, at Fara[...] some time after the one at Ur but before the one at Kish, and at Nineveh[ about the same time as Ur]
These layers constitute a record of[...] floods of the Tigris or Euphrates or both at once" (Vitaliano, Legends of the Earth)It strikes me if you were between the two and they flood simultaneously, you probably WOULD think the whole world had flooded.Vitaliano also has a suggestion for 'the fountains of the deep', if you'd like it...

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

Sorry to be boringly on-topic, but I was poking around the AiC site and stumbled across a rather nice little article on how the wording in Genesis supports a local flood. The Article's off site at Godandscience.org:

quote:

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in the majority of instances kol erets does not refer to the entire planet earth. In fact, of the 205 instance of kol erets in the Old Testament, it might refer to the entire planet just 40 times, and even some of those are questionable. About half of those instance occur in the books of Psalms and Isaiah.
How could the text have more clearly indicated a global flood?
I am glad you asked! There is a Hebrew word that always refers to the entire earth or the entire inhabited earth. The word is tebel (Strong's H8398), which is found 37 times in the Old Testament. Curiously, this word is never used to describe the flood, although it is used extensively to describe the creation of the earth and the judgment of the peoples of the earth...

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Arach, this looks like your area

In that case, would you like to comment on the uses of kol erets and tebel, and the implications for the Flood?

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

Yes, that is annoying. But it's nearly inerrant...

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

I'm still getting my head around the literal vs inerrant bit. It doesn't help when we've got umpteen translations, and almost nobody is reading the original text (and then, of course, there is the problem of which 'original'!). Grudgingly, I also have to admire YEC's for toughing it out in the face of... well, almost everything. Although, I'd admire them more if they did it quietly and left the rest of us get on with our lives...This message has been edited by Dead Parrot, 05-13-2005 01:27 PM

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

What beats me is the degree of mangling that the poor scripture goes through to reach the required meaning. Incidentally, (before we return to the Flood, obviously!) could you recomend a source or two for literal reading? Something that doesn't require me to learn greek and hebrew, preferably!Edit: I can't spell "inerrancy". But I'll leave it, it's perversly apt.This message has been edited by Dead Parrot, 05-13-2005 10:56 PM

Ahem. I'm just being lazy, and I think I just found what I was after at the blue letter bible site - I can poke around at the Hebrew and Greek if I want to wrestle with an orininal word ('Elohiym' is a nice example, or of course 'Firmament'). But I'll take a look at the JPS for a sane read, to make sure I don't fall over my feet (covered or otherwise)

Hmmm, a fire breathing pleiosaur... They didn't mention that in Sunday school. I shall write a stern letter to the Bishop forthwith.

Thanks Doc.It's a recurring problem I'm having, since I know bugger all about Hebrew (or Greek, for that matter) and the etymology sorces unsurprisingly tend to be in Christian bible study sites & books. Thier objectivity may be less than perfect, and working out which bits have been glossed over is a slightly hit-and-miss affair (I missed with tebel for example).Ho hum. I've found a similar problem with the history of the Bible, where the Pentateuch J & P sources just sort of pop into existance: I'm currently banging my head against The Cambridge history of the Bible, a book of Mesopotamian mythology and Frazer's Mythology in the the old Testament in the hope of gaining some insight. At about 2,500 pages between them, it might take a while... No, but "the world" gives the same impression, at least to a 20th century mind. I have subsequently found a bit of a give-away in Proverbs 8:31:

quote:

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Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.

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Where Erets is translated as 'earth' and Tebel is just the 'habitable part'. Given the author of that article has just demonstrated that Erets would be better translated as 'land', he's possibly being a bit, err, over-enthusiastic. "Laughing in the irrigated part of the land" might be more accurate, but it makes the author sound like a lunatic in a ditch.I don't want to know about "My delights were with the sons of men". That's just nasty. Well, in some of the Wyatt's Ark stuff there are some remarkable claims for ancient technology... Maybe they did have a space program... Oh well. For my next trick, I'll proove the Garden of Eden was actually a window box. Many thanks to you and Arach for helping me out on this - I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually.

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

Exactly. Indeed, it would be nice to see the original cuneiform, if we could find it...With regards to the flood, the English translation suggests it was global, but that is based on the beliefs of the translators as much as the script. The wording of the original matches a more local geography, but they didn't have the language (or even the concept) to describe a planetary event.In this case, neither the advocates of a global flood or a local one can claim some scriptural advantage over the other, because the text is necessarily ambiguous. That they both do so tells us more about them than it does the Bible...It's unlikely the authors were being deliberately vague when they wrote it. All we can do is try to work out what they trying to say, regardless of how it fits in to our personal understanding or beliefs. (And that goes for your father, too. )Sadly, this seems to be way down the priority list for most people.

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

Yeah, the simple fact we managed to sent probes beyond Pluto before the Vatican admitted they might have been wrong about Galileo & Copernicus speaks volumes...

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.

LOL. OK, I'm going to think about this before demanding an explaination...Edit for brain fart.This message has been edited by Dead Parrot, 05-17-2005 10:44 AM

Seconded, It's making my brain itch.

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Mat 27:5 And he went and hanged himself
Luk 10:37 Go, and do thou likewise.