Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

I'm genuinely confused here, TrueCreation.Are you saying that the Biblical Tower of Babel definitely existed:in the circumstances described in the Bible
of a nature as described in the Bible
and with consequences as described in the Bibleand that the link you give provides evidence of this?If so, do you apply the same standards of evidence to your assessments of the evidence for evolution?

I'm going to pick just one quibble as your post was lengthy. Most of your argument is siimilarly vulnerable and selective in its treatment of possible intepretations and translations.

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I can also add to the list Hebrews 11:7 "By faith Noah, after being given divine warning of things not yet beheld, showed godly fear and constructed an ark for the saving of his household; and through this [faith] he condemned the world" Here this verse being in the Greek scriptures uses the Greek word for world. I suppose you are going to tell me the Romans and Greeks had no concept of the earth ether.

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The Greek word you refer to is, of course, kosmos. But kosmos is used mostly in the sense of the inhabited, ordered, governed world. See Greek Dictionary Headword Search Results
Indeed it is used in several nuances of this sense in the New Testament, most of which are similar to the traditional Greek meaning:Romans 11:12 Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, Here it refers to the community of believers.John 1:29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! Of course this doens't refer to the geological planet, which cannot sin, but as an anagogue for its inhabitants.1 Peter 3:3 where the word kosmos is used to refer to "worldy adornment" And guess what? This passage mentions Noah's ark too! Strange how the Greek word you wish to use to support your interpretation is used with a completely different meaning in a passage which refers to the very subject of your interpretation!Of course there is another Greek word for world - oikoumene. The author of Hebrews (the letter you quote) uses it several times. And in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) you find it here in 2 Samuel 22:16 "And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered."So one has to wonder why the author of Hebrews chose "kosmos" - quite possibly because he was thinking of the flood as a moral event which affected exactly the kind of people the Lamb of God came to save, the opposite of the Gentiles. Such an interpretation sits more comfortable than your ham-fisted attempted to lever into supporting your literalist theories.To paraphrase yourself "and you claim to be a bible scholar?"Maybe I should dig out my Biblica Hebraica and get stuck into the rest of your post! Shame I'm too busy.

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[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 03-11-2002]

So if the author of the Noah story uses 'erets to mean the whole earth, when we read in Genesis 8:7 or 8:13 that the waters were dried up from the earth, we are to take this to mean from the entire globe. But this would mean no sea and this is surely not the intended meaning, as in Genesis 9:2 the sea is clearly still there. Looks to me like the writer of the Noah story uses 'erets in at least a couple of different senses and one of them clearly figurative.And soon after in Genesis 12:1 we read that the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew where the words "country" and "land" translate 'erets into two different English glosses. The passage makes no sense at all if 'erets is taken to mean "the whole earth."Now let's skip to Genesis 19:23, the story of Lot. Well, whadyaknow?
The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.The sun risen on 'erets? Shining on the whole earth - that's quite a light-bending feat, don't you think? Certainly not a mistake that could be made by someone who thought that (a) the planet is round and (b) 'erets means the whole planet.Of course they could just mean that the sun was shining on the known world - we couldn't expect them to know it was dark in Australia, could we? And by the same they may have quite easily use the same word to desribe the extent of the flood - and we need not interpret them as assuming the deluge extended to the antipodes either.It simply doesn't make sense to rule out a figurative use of 'erets in the flood story or at the very least a use roughly similarly to "known world."

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[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 03-11-2002]

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As I have been trying to get across to doctrbill, it isn't whether you believe in a earth wide flood, the question is what did the Bible writers believe. The description in Genesis clearly shows the writer believed the event was earth wide in that all the land was covered, even the mountain tops and land animals needed to be in an ark to avoid drowning. As for myself, I believe God's word, but even if you just think it was a story, why would the author have his main character build a 450 foot long ark and fill it animals if he was only describing a regional or local flood? Clearly the Bible writers believed it was a real event that affected all the earth, or all the world of mankind, the cosmos.

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Another lengthy post, so I'll only reply to part of it.You raise a good point - that we must try to understand what Bible writers believed. One of the reasons I wanted to include the quote about the sun shining on the whole world was that it shows that their knowledge of what "the whole world" entails is limited. No shame in that, of course, but it does show that even if they say the flood covered the whole world (and I don't agree with that reading) it, they did not comprehend what that would entail.Evidence from Montana or the Arctic or even Auchtermuchty does not support their story of the flood, for we have no evidence that even when speaking of the whole world they knew the extent what they said. Remember, do, that historical accounts, even detailed personal accounts by reliable eyewitnesses, often use language in this way.I myself was witness to an accident and referred to the victim as "covered in blood." My words were accurate in terms of the ordinary usage and appropriate in their context but were not accurate if someone chose to interpret them in a far more precise context.

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On evidence for the flood, I have been posting some and there is more in my book. It is more a matter of the fact that you disagree with the interpretation of the evidence. But then it is up to you to put forward an alliterative explanation that better explains the evidence

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An alliterative explanation? Gee, these creationist types just get more and more demanding. Ok here goes ...Evidence of eons of erosion exposes examples of ecological and environmental eras earlier in the extreme than exegetical explanations erected on extrapolations from earth-engulfing effusions.

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Originally posted by minnemooseus:
I didn't dig into the pile of various mags, to re-read that article, but I seem to recall that there was an example of one of the "delutionals" turning out to have a valid concept, a work of genius.

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Moose

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Yup - it was Srini Ramanujam, the Indian mathematician. There is a geat account of his work here ... Page Not Found - MacTutor History of MathematicsBut he was not regarded as a delusional. An "outsider" certainly, but well known to mathematicians in India, and not rejected as a crank.

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Originally posted by Joe Meert:
Don't forget our own Brad McFall!!

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Cheers

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Joe Meert

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Damn you Joe - I was trying to!

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
Poor Brad, I think we give him too many 'flat tires' sometimes. We luv ya anyways brad. Just don't let your keyboard catch fire now

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Yeah I know, poor Brad - but I bet he was just like you when he was 15