Where did the Egyptians come from ?

In the Bible there are only 367 years from the Flood
to mention of Egypt and a Pharoah.The genealogy of all of Noah's offspring's offspring
is laid out, and none of them are said to found
Egypt.Where did the Egyptian high culture come from in such a
short space of time ?

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Originally posted by Percipient:
Comparing it to the current age, 367 years ago it was 1635. Is the difference between 1635 and 2002 less than that between Creation and Egypt's golden age?

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--Percy

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Suppose there were only four couples in 1635 ... do you think
we would have the world we have today ?

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Originally posted by dreaded s flynn:
Hi Peter,
I will at some stage try to return to the other thread. Quite busy at the moment.
But a question here. How are you arriving at 367 years?
Which chronology of the post flood patriarchs are you using?

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I added it up in Genesis in the KJV.

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Originally posted by dreaded s flynn:
King james may be the most corrupt for genesis, as it uses the massoretic text. Check out the articles on the other thread.

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Later............sean

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The argument here is about Biblical accuracy and inerrancy ...
from your post it would suggest that the accuracy and inerrancy
is well known to be non-existent.If different versions of the Bible would yield different dates
then some versions of the Bible are inaccurate and therefore
NOT inerrant.That being the case, how do we know which ones to accept ?Is there a currently accepted definitive Bible ?Who decided that that was the case ?

quote:

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Originally posted by dreaded s flynn:
King james may be the most corrupt for genesis, as it uses the massoretic text. Check out the articles on the other thread.

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Later............sean

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I had a quick check of different versions of the Bible using the
BlueNote website ... I cannot see any particular discreprancy with
the durations that I have used from KJV to work out the
time between the Flood and the existence of Egyptian pharoahs.

According to the first link you gave in the other thread,
the time from the Flood to Abraham is 292 years, which is
the same as the time span in KJV.KJV then has 75 years before the event which involves an
Egyptian pharoah.So I still get 367 years.Still, this issue has raised more problems for biblical
inerrancy debates, as we now need to ONLY look at Hebrew
versions if other versions have had numbers tweaked, then
what else has been tweaked for convenience ?

According the the Hebrew version of the Bible, there
is STILL only 367 years between the Flood and a
Pharoah in Egypt.So my original question remains (assuming none is going
to dispute a genealogy from Hebrew sources).

Sorry ... got the wrong end of the stick there for some
reason Not enough coffee obviously !!So that gives somewhere between 1000 and 1200 years from
the Flood to Egyptian Pharoahs.That would tend to increase the possibility, I have to admit.Although, that would still give only a few hundred years to
develop a high culture, wouldn't it ? Which is better than a few
dozen years admittedly Reasoning::Starting with 4 couples in a single location, it would likely take
more than 1 or 2 generations for sufficient population to accrue
to force dispersal.Even if the couples dispersed immediately then you have single
couples in different locations to do the re-populating.How many generations would it take to gain sufficient population
to support the Egyptian empire(s) which we know, from other
sources, existed ? Anyone ?The question, unfortunately remains, which version do we believe.
If the claims that the Jews changed their geneologies is correct ... how does that help us decide whether anyone else did or didn't modify
their texts ?If there is that much disagreement between versions of the
Bible ... how can we hold it as inerrant ?

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Assuming 25 year generations doesn't mean they all died at 25!! But it is quite likely they had had 6 kids by 25 - these were not bohemian uni students!

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According to the ages in Genesis, though no-one had any children
until they were about 30.Even if the males went on producing offspring into their hundreds
(some seem to have kids at 300, 400, even 500), the females
cannot. That's even mentioned in the Bible where Sarah (is it?)
says ooh I'm too old to have any more children.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

I don't know enough about reproduction but there is a breast feeding pill to stop pregnancies during this period so there must be a chance of it happening.

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I don't know either ... so best say nothing until I've looked it
up.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

And many families may have been bigger than 6. I'm sure someone here could find out the sort of families that we used to get in the 3rd world pre-pill. My sister's father in law came from a British family of 13 kids in the 20th century!

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OK, large families have existed ... Victorian families were often
large ... but they had plenty of food available, and even though
large, many more of the children died, as did the mothers.In less developed countries, families are smaller, because large
families cannot be supported by available food resources.Another problem with population growth after the flood is that
farming had to be re-established, and herds for meat, milk, etc.Genesis mentions particular offspring, then says so and so was
240 (or whatever) and had sons and daughters. So we don't
really have any firm basis for population calculations.Except that no-one appears to have children before 30.But it's not just a matter of sheer numbers in any case.By 1000-1200 (LXX chronology) after the flood there was a
DEVELOPED culture in Egypt, complete with Pharoah, court,
army, trade, etc.To support that would require up to 2 million people, but how
could it have developed in such a short space of time ?Modern western society traces much of its roots (laws, legal
systems, systems of government) back 2000 or more years.How long would be required to develop a culture as sophisticated
as Egypt during the time of the Pharoahs ?

I've read research results (and I will try to dig them
out) that suggest that maximum human lifespans, in tha
absence of external factros would still not exceed (I think)
about 140 years.I'll dig it out so that you can see it for yourself.Not sure of the assumptions upon which it was based, but
it was a physiologiocal study.

Hmm ... to summarise (for my benefit mainly)I started by suggesting that 367 years was insufficient for
the foundation of a culture in Egypt that included the
concept of Kingship in the form of Pharoah.First line of objection was the time-span. Genealogies being
particularly toublesome in the different versions of the Bible.According to data posted, the longest amount of time available
for this cultural revolution was 1200 years.Debate on population growth ensues.End of summary.A particular limiting factor to the population growth calculations
is that Shem, Ham, An Japheth didn't stay in the vicinity of
Noah, nor of each other. They each left to found their own
lines.This would mean that any individual population had only 1 breeding
couple.Food resources would be extremely limited. There were six (possibly
six pairs) of all clean animals on the Ark, which presumably includes
cattle ... so one breeding pair of cattle (etc.) per line, plus grain
to feed them, and for the couples to survive on until their own
food began to grow.And that doesn't leave much for Noah. So perhaps we must assume that
agriculture, and the herds were replenished BEFORE the sons left to
found their own lines.Still the herds had to be split, and food WOULD severly limit
population growth.But even assuming we can get the population figures up high
enough (and you have not convinced me of this) From which line did the Egyptians stem ?

I guess a predator would try to eat anything it could
get its teeth into, but even then, with only a single pair
of the unclean animals, every kill would wipe out an entire
species (or could at least).Perhaps they could all eat grass in those days except that after
a year of flood I don't think there'd be any grass.IF the flood story is accurate, I think it would REQUIRE the
theory of evolution to make it possible.After a month or two there would be very few species left, and some
lines would be wiped out entirely ... so for current diversity
we would need some form of rapid-evolution

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Originally posted by blitz77:
Actually, you forgot one problem. The age until the offspring start reproducing. You have assumed that the offspring do not reproduce until the parents have gotten older by 30 yrs. If you use a generation time of say 20 yrs instead, it allows a population of - from a starting population of 1 couple- 227 million.
BTW, notice that countries with the worst sanitation have the biggest population growth-Eg, India and Africa. Some countries have net growth rates over 3% per year-and 8 people can produce over 6 billion people in 4300 years on a 0.477% per year net growth rate.

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[This message has been edited by blitz77, 08-05-2002]

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The geneologies in the bible tend to show that the first-born
came around the 30th year of the father's life.Check out genesis 11 if you don't believe me ... also
Shem was 100 before he had ANY children.

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Originally posted by John:

quote:

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Originally posted by Peter:
I've read research results (and I will try to dig them
out) that suggest that maximum human lifespans, in tha
absence of external factros would still not exceed (I think)
about 140 years.

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I read an article (probably Scientific American or Discover) suggesting that if all disease where eliminated and aging stopped cold, we'd have very little chance of living past 600 without suffering a fatal injury.

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Doesn't prove anything but its interesting.

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The 140 year figure included normal aging I think.

I might be wrong, but you and John appear to be at
cross purposes.I think you are saying that, if one adopts a particular view
(eternal security) then the bible does not contradict it.While John is saying that there are passages in the bible
which contradict one another.The question then being how does one decide which passage is
correct if they offer mutually exclusive advice/opinion/etc.