Evidence for the Biblical Record

No no no Peg, that's wrong. What it actually say is "Dust +moving into+(god's) moutn+(means he'll shit out) life"Reread my Message 223 again, and realize you are again doing what I warned you against doing. Your position is weakened everytime you do this stuff Peg, it's weakened again with this post.Edited by Huntard, : Typos

what was your point back then? This wasnt about Noahs flood. Let me remind you that it is about the similarities in languages which show a linkage of the chinese to mesopotamia... a linkage that ZenMonkey denies.its got nothing to do with the flood account ok.

So where are the animals & the rain?

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

This whole line of reasoning is silly.If there is a linkage from Chinese to Mesopotamian languages, as you seem to believe, that would clearly demonstrate that languages can evolve more than enough to explain the multiplicity of languages around. So the "Tower of Babel" story would still look like a fable (which, of course, is exactly what it is).

Of course, so since both positions are expecting to find differences in the account, then just pointing those out will never be conclusive for either side.The area where the two positions make different predictions is in the similarities. If the stories haven't got the slightest thing to do with one another, as you said, then there shouldn't be more similarities then the occasional random look alike.On the other hand, if the stories have the same origin, then you would expect to find some disturbing similarities between the two.

Like the disturbingly close parallels between spending most of a year on a boat, in Genesis, and climbing up a hollow reed from the third to the fourth world, in the Navaho story.There are a LOT of flood stories around the world. Their only similarity is water.

As you said, there are a lot of flood stories around the world. And I wouldn't expect every single one of the thousands of them to trace back to the same single origin.And so by taking the Navaho flood story, for example, (which I don't know) and the hebrew flood story, and compare them and find no similarities, all you have proven is these two don't have a single origin. You can't just extrapolate that conclusion to all flood myths everywhere.I should get the story of the cri Indians that live here in Quebec, I know one of my friends made a presentation in his history class at university about it. THis one had striking similarities.

But how would this be evidence of the biblical record as being historically accurate? If, say, the Nez Perce flood myth and the Biblical flood myth are similiar isn't this just as much evidence for the accuracy of the Nez Perce myth as the Biblical myth? Also, how does having a common origin make that origin real? Can't two similar myths originate from a common myth?

I never said the historicity of the flood could ever be proved by comparing flood myths from around the world. As you said they could just share the same common myth as origin.But I think that this, added with other cultural factors pointing to a common origin (such as constellations) could make a compelling case for a ''tower of babel'' type origin to ancient cultures around the world.

More likely they simply share a common experience. In this case, that of a large flood. It doesn't have to be a single event. Floods are common around the world. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that flood myths will exist in widely disparate cultures, and that similarities will be found simply due to the similar experiences anyone will have living through any flood.There's absolutely no reason at all to thing they all refer to one or even just a few events. Why? It doesn't make the assertion that all cultures descended from a single culture broken by a Babel event any more likely.You may as well say that "Fish, added with other cultural factors pointing to a common origin..." If it doesn't actually add to the likelihood of the assertion, it's not evidence, and it's irrelevant.

Here's a Cree (English spelling...) story: (from Flood Stories from Around the World)A little similarity, yes. But how sure can we be that there was zero cross-contamination of the Cree story from 1500 AD by Christian missionaries' stories before this was collected? And why would Genesis never mention muskrats?

As the native american culture was an oral culture, there was a lot of change to the stories and myths through the generations. Christianity has had a large influence on the stories and cultures of the native americans. Remember there has been contact between christian sailors and fisherman with native cultures since approx 1500. Modern scholarship puts pre columbian native population in the Americas at 50-100 millions. The vast die out after contact changed their stories and also made them more susceptible to influences from the Europeans.The Cree can easily be documented as having influences from christian missionaries. Missionaries invented their writing systems. It seems much more realistic to see the influence christianity was post Columbus than it would be to think that there was some sort of biblical influence pre-columbian. Catholic Encyclopedia

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When first known to the Jesuit missionaries, about the year 1650...
The earliest missionaries in the Cree country were the French Jesuits, who accompanied the commander Verendrye in his explorations of the Saskatchewan and Missouri River region from 1731 to 1742.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

I don't know if it is the ame myth from the same tribe, but the person I knew had access to the historical documents of the time, and he had made the point (with the support of his teacher) that this myth predated the christian missionaries.Genesis does not mention Muskrats, but look at the role it plays in the story. Wissaketchak makes a great raft, brings aboard pairs of all animals and birds, the water covers the highest mountains. He then sends a first animal, a duck, to search for earth. It finds none. He then sends a muskrat to look for earth, and comes back with slime. This slime is moulded by Wiss and grows, and grows, until it becomes the whole earth and the animals can once again come back on firm land.Noah makes a big ark, and brings along pairs all animals and birds and the flood covers the highest mountains. He then sends a crow to look for land. He then sends a first animal, a crow, to look if for earth. He finds none. He then sends a dove to do the same, and on the second trip it comes back with a branch. Noah then knows that the waters had receeded, and as they continued to withdraw, the ark landed on a mountain and he let the animals once again come back on firm land.The core of the story is the same. The boat, the pairs of animals, the water covering the mountains, the man sending out animals etc.There are also changes, different animals being sent out, different type of boat, different stuff being brought back, etc.As I said earlier, the differences are to be expected in both cases. If they trace back to the same original Myth 4k years ago, changes are to be expected. I would add that these changes would be cultural, local adaptations of the myth. Cree don't know what a dove is, so it becomes eventually replaced by a muskarat. etc.If these are two unrelated myths about floods, then changes are also to be expected. But I think it hard to believe that in this case, the core of the myth would bare so much ressemblance.

This is an assertion that is almost laughable. There are no premissionary historical documents. Love to see them. Would be a hell of a find. Who wrote this supposed documents? Even if there were some sort of premissionary documents, they are not pre-european influence documents.Lets look at your assertion that there are documents that predate christian missionaries. You are Canadian right? Do you know who the first Europeans in most of Canada were? The Jesuits. A lot of times they preceded the voyageurs. What do you think the first stories that were exchanged between the Catholic Voyageurs and missionaries and the natives were? Bible stories and native myths.The first writings documenting contacts with the native tribes were from the Jesuits. A great overview of these isThe Jesuit Relations. As a college student I spent many hours reading these. Fascinating, but ultimately disturbing as I began to understand the ultimate goal of the Jesuits and the Europeans. The destruction of the native cultures and people. Well it seems you have provided evidence that shows the Biblical flood is just a copy of the Sumerian myth that predates it.I am amazed that you can take the similarities and derive a relationship, but all differences you can just excuse.How else would a myth explain the continuation of life after a worldwide flood? A boat would be needed, breeding stock would be needed. Why wouldn't they? Dove are not limited to Mideast. As a matter of fact I hope to see them back here in northern Wisconsin any day now.

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Pigeons and doves are distributed everywhere on Earth,except for the driest areas of the Sahara Desert, Antarctica and its surrounding islands and the high Arctic.

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Source

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Ah, I linked to the wrong message. I meant Message 212:

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The notion that the character in question has anything to do with Noah's ark is simply wrong. It is based on a common misperception about how Chinese characters are constructed, namely that they are basically pictographic (i.e., crude pictures of the thing being named) or ideographic (i.e., that they combine pictures in such a way as to "get across" the idea of the thing or concept being described). Actually, almost all characters in Chinese, including this one, are formed using phonetic principles, although the phonetics in question apply to the language as spoken at the time and place where the character was coined, and not necessarily the way things are pronounced in Modern Standard Chinese. There _are_ a few pictograms, and an even smaller number of true ideograms, but this character isn't one of them.

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So, before you run wild interpreting written Chinese words as phrases made up of the word radicals, you first need to establish whether (for example) the radical for "mouth" as an element means the concept of mouth or the sound of the word for mouth.