How we know that there was no Flood of Noah.

[Thermos aquaticus]

You know, the same claim of 'bad science" is made about evolutionists...

That claim is made because the science runs counter to their religious beliefs, not because it is bad science.

 

[gnostic]

Consider...
You were given this link
Although it is not verified, it does tell us something.

Yes, Jayhawker provided this link, but the article only stated that alphabets are earlier than 10th century Gezer Calendar and Zayit Stone.

But the article never prove it related to anything with the bible. They are strings of letters that don’t translate to any coherent word and sentence.

All the inscriptions on the broken pottery shard showed that they wrote in proto-Canaanite alphabets. They don’t contain passages in any book of the Old Testament, because these strings of letters are intelligible, therefore they don’t prove the bible.

I think you simply reading too much on the headline of the article, and not reading and not understanding the article itself.

All the article showed is that it would have dated around the times of Judges, but there are no intelligible words and recognisable OT passages or names from the Book of Judges.

How old these inscriptions don’t prove the historicity of Moses, Exodus, Joshua or the Judges. All those inscriptions showed is that people know how to write these letters down, randomly without forming actual meaningful words.

I would suggest that you read the actual article, and not just the article’s headlines.

 

[gnostic]

Time is often needed to reveal truth, isn't that so?
Can we always rely on the accuracy of our secular records?
Consider one finding of a historical source:
Manetho
In regard to Manetho's relation to his Greek predecessors in the field of Egyptian history, we know that he criticized Herodotus, not, as far as we can tell, in a separate work, but merely in passages of his History.
there were many errors in Manetho's work from the very beginning : all are not due to the perversions of scribes and revisers.
Many of the lengths of reigns have been found impossible : in some cases the names and the sequence of kings as given by Manetho have proved untenable in the light of monumental evidence.
If one may depend upon the extracts preserved in Josephus, Manetho's work was not an authentic history of Egypt, exact in its details, as the Chaldaica of Berossos was, at least for later times. Manetho introduced into an already corrupted series of dynastic lists a number of popular traditions written.

So historical inaccuracies do exist, and can distort true Chronology. Agreed?
Why would one so quickly and readily accept Egyptian history - a nation so steeped in myth and superstition, and pride in their gods - which were, by the way, men. Why trust their data, and discard the record of men who humbly reveal their failings as a nation, and as individuals?
I find that interesting. Don't you?

I have never said that written history are always accurate.

I have not once mentioned Manetho.

I have mainly brought archaeology, not historical accounts, especially one written centuries and millennia afterwards.

Many of the Old Kingdom pyramids (from 3rd dynasty to 6th dynasty) contained inscriptions of the kings’ (as well as some queens’ in queens’ pyramids). These names matched various king lists, mostly in hieroglyphs, but one list in Egyptian hieratic.

But it is not just the king lists. There are also some annals. Although But it is not just the king lists. There are also some annals. Although they are not that interesting as literature, they are important from historical and archaeological standpoints.

Manetho’s history is all well, but I don’t rely on his work, preferring monumental structures (eg palaces, temples, tombs) and any inscriptions that can be found in them.

Not all kings built pyramids for themselves. Others built mastabas as their tombs. Before the first pyramid (Step Pyramid of Djoser, 3rd dynasty king), from Predynastic period to New Kingdom, some of these kings built the less time-consuming and less resource-hungry mastabas.

And if you look at the Step Pyramid actually looked like 6 mastabas, one smaller mastaba built on top of larger one below.

 

[gnostic]

Where did language originate?
Where do all our languages come from?
What was the first universal language?

I understand why you are asking questions like these, regarding to languages, but then you go on about Esther and Pontius Pilate?

What does that have to with your questions (about languages)?

To answer your questions, first of, there was no universal or first language.

It certainly was never Hebrew.

As I understand it linguistics of ancient languages, the spoken Hebrew was a derivative of the older Bronze Age Canaanite language in early 2nd millennium BCE.

While Hebrew writing (alphabets) was derived and modified from Phoenician/Canaanite source. But before the invention of the alphabets, the Canaanites, like their northern neighbors in Ugarit, northeast in Syria and even further east in Babylonia, cuneiform were the norm in large part of 2nd millennium BCE.

Hebrew is certainly not the oldest language spoken in Bronze Age Levant.

But in the 3rd millennium BCE, the languages spoken and written in Mesopotamia, were first Sumerian and then the Semitic Akkadian. While in Egypt, hieroglyphs and hieratic were the written language that actually first began around 3200 BCE.

Sumerian cuneiform was also older, appearing first in Uruk in 3400 BCE, as proto-Sumerian cuneiform.

Uruk was the largest city in the world during the 4th millennium BCE, that archaeologists called it the Uruk period (4000 - 3100 BCE).

The funny thing is that Genesis 10 say that Uruk (or Erech) didn’t exist until after the nonexistent global Flood, built by nonexistent Nimrod, a grandson of Ham.

Archaeology say otherwise, because the temples to Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) and An (Babylonian Anu) were built between 3600 and 3200 BCE. There is also the Ziggurat of Anu, which at that time, was the tallest and largest building in the world, existing nearly a thousand years before Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza.

The bible, particularly the Genesis is far from being historical accurate or reliable.

 

[nPeace]

Yes, Jayhawker provided this link, but the article only stated that alphabets are earlier than 10th century Gezer Calendar and Zayit Stone.

But the article never prove it related to anything with the bible. They are strings of letters that don’t translate to any coherent word and sentence.

All the inscriptions on the broken pottery shard showed that they wrote in proto-Canaanite alphabets. They don’t contain passages in any book of the Old Testament, because these strings of letters are intelligible, therefore they don’t prove the bible.

I think you simply reading too much on the headline of the article, and not reading and not understanding the article itself.

All the article showed is that it would have dated around the times of Judges, but there are no intelligible words and recognisable OT passages or names from the Book of Judges.

How old these inscriptions don’t prove the historicity of Moses, Exodus, Joshua or the Judges. All those inscriptions showed is that people know how to write these letters down, randomly without forming actual meaningful words.

I would suggest that you read the actual article, and not just the article’s headlines.

Sometimes I just have to look up to the heavens, give a deep sigh, and shake my head.
From the article
The unimpressive looking sherd measures only 3 ½ by 6 inches, but it contains a dramatic addition to the study of ancient Hebrew epigraphy and to the early history of the alphabet.

Inscribed on the sherd are five lines of letters. Most of the letters on the first four lines have been identified, but make no sense as words. We suspect that they are random exercises in writing letters by a student scribe.

The fifth line is, with minor deviations, the Hebrew alphabet, consisting of 22 letters! Unlike modern Hebrew, which is written from right to left, this alphabet was written from left to right (like English). At the time it was written, the writing direction had not yet been fixed.

Evidence for Israelites
Another question which arises is how we know the Izbet Sartah sherd is an Israelite, and therefore Hebrew, inscription. We believe that Izbet Sartah is an Israelite settlement. Geographically, the settlement is in the area settled by the Israelites (see “An Israelite Village from the Days of the Judges,” BAR 04-03).

The Izbet Sartah sherd’s 12th century date makes it the oldest Hebrew abecedary yet discovered from the Iron Age. It is also the most complete; it is missing only the letter mem (m), though a line or two of the letter may be discerned. It is 400 years older than the next oldest Hebrew abecedary, a five letter graffito found about 1935 by J. L. Starkey incised on the step of the palace at Lachish. The Izbet Sartah abecedary is about 200 years older than the famous Gezer calendar, a 10th century school child’s mnemonic ditty about the agricultural seasons, which, prior to the discovery of the Izbet Sartah inscription, was considered the earliest Hebrew inscription of any significant length.c

Another Hebrew abecedary recently found by Ze’er Meshel at Kuntillat Ajrud, an Israelite fortress in the Sinai dating from the late 9th or early 8th century B.C., also contains the pe-ayin sequence. Hence it appears that this local Israelite variation in letter order was used from the time of the Judges at least through the Israelite monarchy and probably through the Exilic Period when the Book of Lamentations was written.

(For further details, see A. Demsky, “A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating From The Period Of The Judges And Its Implications For The History Of The Alphabet.” Tel Aviv, Vol. IV, p. 14 (1977)).

a. Proto-Canaanite is the name scholars give to the oldest known alphabet. Presumably many Semitic languages, including Hebrew, were written in this alphabet.

 

[nPeace]

I have never said that written history are always accurate.

I have not once mentioned Manetho.

I have mainly brought archaeology, not historical accounts, especially one written centuries and millennia afterwards.

Many of the Old Kingdom pyramids (from 3rd dynasty to 6th dynasty) contained inscriptions of the kings’ (as well as some queens’ in queens’ pyramids). These names matched various king lists, mostly in hieroglyphs, but one list in Egyptian hieratic.

But it is not just the king lists. There are also some annals. Although But it is not just the king lists. There are also some annals. Although they are not that interesting as literature, they are important from historical and archaeological standpoints.

Manetho’s history is all well, but I don’t rely on his work, preferring monumental structures (eg palaces, temples, tombs) and any inscriptions that can be found in them.

Not all kings built pyramids for themselves. Others built mastabas as their tombs. Before the first pyramid (Step Pyramid of Djoser, 3rd dynasty king), from Predynastic period to New Kingdom, some of these kings built the less time-consuming and less resource-hungry mastabas.

And if you look at the Step Pyramid actually looked like 6 mastabas, one smaller mastaba built on top of larger one below.

Why do you just focus on one word or phrase I mention. What am I saying overall? Are the annul accurate? Can they be trusted when they were written by scribes who sought to give praise to their deities?

 

[nPeace]

I understand why you are asking questions like these, regarding to languages, but then you go on about Esther and Pontius Pilate?

What does that have to with your questions (about languages)?

To answer your questions, first of, there was no universal or first language.

It certainly was never Hebrew.

As I understand it linguistics of ancient languages, the spoken Hebrew was a derivative of the older Bronze Age Canaanite language in early 2nd millennium BCE.

While Hebrew writing (alphabets) was derived and modified from Phoenician/Canaanite source. But before the invention of the alphabets, the Canaanites, like their northern neighbors in Ugarit, northeast in Syria and even further east in Babylonia, cuneiform were the norm in large part of 2nd millennium BCE.

Hebrew is certainly not the oldest language spoken in Bronze Age Levant.

But in the 3rd millennium BCE, the languages spoken and written in Mesopotamia, were first Sumerian and then the Semitic Akkadian. While in Egypt, hieroglyphs and hieratic were the written language that actually first began around 3200 BCE.

Sumerian cuneiform was also older, appearing first in Uruk in 3400 BCE, as proto-Sumerian cuneiform.

Uruk was the largest city in the world during the 4th millennium BCE, that archaeologists called it the Uruk period (4000 - 3100 BCE).

The funny thing is that Genesis 10 say that Uruk (or Erech) didn’t exist until after the nonexistent global Flood, built by nonexistent Nimrod, a grandson of Ham.

Archaeology say otherwise, because the temples to Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) and An (Babylonian Anu) were built between 3600 and 3200 BCE. There is also the Ziggurat of Anu, which at that time, was the tallest and largest building in the world, existing nearly a thousand years before Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza.

The bible, particularly the Genesis is far from being historical accurate or reliable.

I think you have miss my point overall.

Archaeology say otherwise, because the temples to Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) and An (Babylonian Anu) were built between 3600 and 3200 BCE. There is also the Ziggurat of Anu, which at that time, was the tallest and largest building in the world, existing nearly a thousand years before Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza.

Link to this please.

 

[nPeace]

If all the animals survived in the Ark were at Ararat, then how did slow moving wombat and koalas reach Australia?

Neither of them are swimmers.

Say that reached south east Asia without getting killed by predators, how are there no remains of wombats and koalas existing in Asia?

It would have taken many generations and many should have died in the journey to reach south east Asia, and neither have long life span, so how could the be no trace of them in Asia?

How would you reach Australia. Swim? I think the animals are smarter than most of us.
Reconstructing ancient Maya animal trade through strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis - ScienceDirect
How Ancient Trade Changed the World
Trade routes written in camel DNA

 

[Valjean]

How would you reach Australia. Swim? I think the animals are smarter than most of us.
Reconstructing ancient Maya animal trade through strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis - ScienceDirect
How Ancient Trade Changed the World
Trade routes written in camel DNA

But I thought everyone but the Noah family had been killed. Who was around to trade -- or engage in any kind of commerce?

 

[nPeace]

But I thought everyone but the Noah family had been killed. Who was around to trade -- or engage in any kind of commerce?

You're kidding right? Please tell me you are.
If not, please just read the Bible. There is no need to read past Chapter 12 of the first book.

What about that challenge. Have you changed your mind?

 

[Audie]

But I thought everyone but the Noah family had been killed. Who was around to trade -- or engage in any kind of commerce?

Too busy with incest to bother with trade

 

[ecco]

As I already said on another page, this event was likely an allegory to explain the ascent of land creatures from the sea (probably just past the Silurian period), while at the same time explaining God's redemptive power. It is not supposed to be taken as some sort of historical account.

Yet many bible believers do look at it as an historical account.

 

[ecco]

I will say though, that I believe with 100% certainty that I am on that path to ultimate truth.

That's what the Buddha thought.

 

[Willamena]

There are many different interpretations of the Noah's Ark myth in Genesis. From my experience all of them can be shown to have never occurred. My only assumption here will be that it God exists he does not lie.

Of course I can't demonstrate a concept to be in error until people clearly state their beliefs. So please tell us what you mean by the Floor and we can discuss your version.

It's safe to say there was no actual flood because the story makes good sense read as a parable with the flood being metaphor for the complete washing away of the old paradigm to make way for a new relationship with God.

 

[nPeace]

That's what the Buddha thought.

Okay. ...and you think there is no almighty supernatural being, am I right? I guess that's what we all use our brains to do - think.

 

[nPeace]

It's safe to say there was no actual flood because the story makes good sense read as a parable with the flood being metaphor for the complete washing away of the old paradigm to make way for a new relationship with God.

Do you think Jesus and his apostles saw it that way?
Matthew 24:36-42; 2 Peter 2:4-10

 

[ecco]

Where did language originate?

Have you ever heard monkeys making sounds to each other?

Where do all our languages come from?

See above.

What was the first universal language?

Why do you believe there was a first universal language?

These are questions that get a resounding, 'we don't know.' Not the case with the Bible.

That's the difference between religion and science. Science is not afraid to say "I don't know - let's find out."

Religionists, going back to prehistoric tribes' "medicine men" never dared to say "I Don't Know". They would not have lasted very long. They were supposed to KNOW.

Have you ever, even today, heard a religious or political leader say "I don't know"?

Oh, Great Wise One, where did we come from?
Our ancient stories tell us we came from far beyond the hills.
Oh, Great Wise One, I meant did the first man come from?
The Great Thunder Maker made the first man.
Oh, Great Wise One, who made The Great Thunder Maker?
The Great Thunder Maker has always been. Now, shut up and go to sleep.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Do you think Jesus and his apostles saw it that way?
Matthew 24:36-42; 2 Peter 2:4-10

Jesus used all sorts of story telling tools; parable, allegory, etc. If he was God and all knowing then he knew there was no flood (that is unless one believes in a lying God). If he was just a man he may have believed the fairy tale.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It's safe to say there was no actual flood because the story makes good sense read as a parable with the flood being metaphor for the complete washing away of the old paradigm to make way for a new relationship with God.

An explanation of that order is the only one that works. A literal reading of the story is bad for Christianity.

 

[ecco]

I will say though, that I believe with 100% certainty that I am on that path to ultimate truth.

That's what the Buddha thought.

Okay. ...and you think there is no almighty supernatural being, am I right? I guess that's what we all use our brains to do - think.

I used my brain to understand and respond to your comment about your certainty about being on the right path to ultimate truth. That would put you on the same intellectual level as Buddha. That is something my brain tells me to seriously doubt.