Dead Sea in Gen 14 proves there was no "Deluge"

by hamsterbait 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  hamsterbait

  The Dead Sea is many times more saline with poisonous salts too than the oceans. It is like this because the water evaporates rapidly in the heat.

  How many years would it take to become so concentrated? The waters of the rivers flowing in are drinkable, so the concentration is obviously low. Yet just a few centuries after the Flood of Noah it already existed (Ge 14: 3) Remember that the "flood" was mostly fresh water from vapor above. (According to the WT) So it started as a freshwater lake.

  To get so concentrated by Abraham's time would require the rivers to wash down poisonous qauntities of salts, so the Promised Land would have been so saturated with minerals that it could not possibly flow with milk and honey - the place would be like Death Valley.

  Just my two cents worth.

  HB
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  Leolaia

  Actually, Genesis does not construe the Dead Sea as existing in the "Vale of Siddim" by Abraham's time: " Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt. (This was before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east" (13:10-11). The desolate, forbidding character of the land is implicitly regarded as a result of the divine destruction of the Cities of the Plain; prior to this the land was not only habitatable, but it was as delightful as the garden of Eden. The Sodom and Gomorrah story likely drew from local folklore on the etiology of the Dead Sea, which would have possibly included flooding that converted the plain into a salty sea.
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  hamsterbait

  This bit of history fascinates me.

  Apparently there are huge pockets of natural gas underground in the region, and there are the remains of buildings with burned walls outside.

  I have no doubt that some natural disaster led to the biblical story.

  Notwithstanding tha biblical account, how long would it really take rivers produce a lake so saline? Ditto with the worlds oceans.

  Why does every dry land animal have the same salinity and average temperature of the sea?
• 

  King Solomon

  Hamsterbait said:

  To get so concentrated by Abraham's time would require the rivers to wash down poisonous qauntities of salts, so the Promised Land would have been so saturated with minerals that it could not possibly flow with milk and honey - the place would be like Death Valley.

  Unfortunately, arguments using science in this manner are immune to Xian logic, where they easily overcome all evidence by simply uttering those three words: "God Dun It".... Any physical impossibility is no match for an omnipotent being for whom "all things are possible".

  That's why I prefer to focus instead on the many examples of ignorance of basic science displayed by God Himself, when it comes to the fields of human anatomy, climatolgy, cosmology, botany, entomology, etc. Unlike physical findings (where "God Dun It" is used to wiggle out of physical evidence), there is no "God Dun It" excuse for displaying an ignorance of basic scientific facts that are known to any school-age child today.

  It's also my favorite approach to deal with "Intelligent Designers": I point out that a designer SHOULD have a basic understanding of his own design, and that any claimant SHOULD possess an understanding of their own design. Then I'm free to pick the poison, be it anatomy (ancient men believed humans thought with their hearts, not the brain), or climatology/cosmology (Job, firmament, etc).

  Hamsterbait said:

  Why does every dry land animal have the same salinity and average temperature of the sea?

  My, what a curious little hamster you are...

  You know the answer a Xian would provide, right? "That fact reflects the ingenuity of God, doesn't it?"
• 

  NOLAW

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Transform

  So nothing miraculous about it. One day it will be an Ocean even splitting Africa apart.

  http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/africa-s-new-ocean-a-continent-splits-apart-a-405947.html
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  transhuman68

  Ha! This is a literal translation of Genisis 14:3

  all- of these they- joined to vale- of the·Siddim he sea- of the·salt

  So... lol! There was salt there. From Wikipedia:

  In the 21st century most biblical scholars see Genesis and the other books as composite works derived from many sources, and primarily a product of the Exilic and Persian periods (6th and 5th centuries BC).

  The writers of Genesis screwed this one up. IMO.
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  Leolaia

  Strabo confirms that the story was a local tradition, adding a "flooding" element missing in the biblical version:

  "Near Masada are to be seen rugged rocks that have been scorched, as also in many places, fissures and ashy soil, and drops of pitch dripping from smooth cliffs, and boiling rivers that emit foul odors to a great distance, and ruined settlements here and there, and therefore people believe the oft-repeated assertions of the local inhabitants, that there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis, but that a circuit of about sixty stadia (i.e. 11 kilometers) of that city escaped unharmed; and that by reason of earthquakes and eruptions of fire and of hot waters containing asphalt and sulphur, the lake burst its bounds, and rocks were enveloped with fire, and as for the cities, some were swallowed up and others abandoned by those who were able to escape" (Strabo, Geographica 16.2.44).

  The notion that a lake flooded seems to rest on the fact that the N end of the Dead Sea was deep but the S end is especially shallow. Geologically however the original lake that the Dead Sea derives from (Lake Lisan) was much larger and extended even further south and as far north as Lake Huleh. There was however a small degree of subsidence in historic times, but not to the extent as to create the S end. It is questionable however whether the biblical account construes of any large lake in the area prior to the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. Genesis 13:10 states that " the whole plain (kikkar) of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt. (This was before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah)", so this suggests that the entire extent of the Jordan Valley from the environs of Bethel down to Zoar was construed as being arable land, and Zoar in historic times was located at the S end of the Dead Sea (the text does regard Zoar as an extremity of the Plain). Also in ch. 14 we read that the kings of the Cities of the Plain battled the foreign alliance of kings in the "Vale of Siddim" (v. 8), and this likely represented the portion of the Jordan Valley south of the Plains of Moab (which was indeed oval-shaped, as the term kikkar suggests), and this is confirmed in the gloss in v. 3 which identifies the Vale of Siddim as the Salt Sea. Since the Salt Sea was putatively the battlefield in the skirmish between the kings, the account seems to suggest the Salt Sea did not yet exist, or was small enough to yield enough land for a battlefield between armies (it also contained bitumen pits, v. 10). The story about Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt likely is an etiological legend for a geomorphic feature on the S end of the Dead Sea. Since the story describes sulphur raining down from heaven, and since sulphur is typically found in sulfate deposits in halite (NaCl), and since halite accounts for about a fourth of the salt deposits at the Dead Sea, the fiery "brimestone" was possibly construed as a salt and sulphur mixture that rained down, with Lot's wife becoming a victim to this. Since the whole plain toward Zoar was described as very fertile in ch. 13, the "salting" of the whole region would render it forever barren for agriculture.

  The archaeological sites on the SE side of the Dead Sea date to the EB and were already destroyed or abandoned by the MB. The Abraham narratives, on the other hand, reflect the situation in either the LB or the MB; the narrative in Genesis 14 clearly presumes the situation in the MB. Likely inhabitants remarked upon these long abanonded settlements, and noted the seemingly hostile and ruined landscape, and devised a destruction tale that explains the unusual features of the region.
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  transhuman68

  The Dead Sea was really salty when Ezekiel wrote his prophecy in Ch.47:8,9

  8 He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, [b] where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. 9 Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live.
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  Leolaia

  That's interesting. Where did Ezekiel think the salt would go? There was no outlet. Or rather would the holy water from the Temple simply magically transform salty water into fresh water?

  Compare also Deuteronomy 29:23: "The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in fierce anger".
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  transhuman68

  Ezekiel was a man with a vision! Well, lots of visions actually. But he appears to have lucked out with his plans for the redevelopement of the Dead Sea coastline- Jordan wants to dump the brine from a desalination plant into the Dead Sea.. soooooooo we could be waiting for a while yet, lol.