by Derrick 54 Replies latest jw friends
Jacob's offspring in Egypt totalled 70 - Gen 46:26-27, Ex 1:5
Jacob's offspring in Egypt totalled 75 - Acts 7:14
Jacob was buried in a tomb at Shechem bought from the sons of Hamor - Acts 7:15-16
The Hebrews dwelt in Egypt for 400 years - Acts 7:6
God's plague kills 24,000 - 1 Cor 10:8
Yeah, I agree, LittleToe is joining my list of accredited nice Christians...
A former poster here, janh, wrote a very good article on this topic at http://http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/stories/2003/02/15/doesGenesisTeachALocalFlood.html
It agrees with what AlanF has just posted on this thread about whether a reading of Genesis conveys the idea of a global or local flood.
That link may not work....why don't they ever work here when I copy/paste them?
Try http://blogs.salon.com/0001561 and then click on "My Articles", the first link on the page.
The Bible is full of crap. Check this link for an extensive listing of where the holy bible proves it's mind-numbing inaccuracy over and over.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
A few examples. One creation account says Earth is made before the light and stars. Wrong. Bible says all animals were originally herbivores. Bullshit. Does anyone really believe that humans once lived up to 900 years? If you say yes, you need help. Philistines didn't live in Canaan 'till way after Abraham, unless you believe the bible that is. The Earth floats in space, it is set upon nothing and rests upon nothing, expecially the "pillars" mentioned in the bible. Oh yeah, and the sun does not move around the earth. The earth shakes because of tectonic plate movement, not 'cause got is mad. There are no unicorns. No dragons. The moon does not produce it's own light. Stars can't fall from the sky or be stamped on. Every blind, dumb, or epaleptic person is not possessed by demons. The mustard seed is not the smallest seed. And revalation? Well I'm not going there.
God makes the animals and parades them before Adam to see if any would strike his fancy. But none seem to have what it takes to please him. (Although he was tempted to go for the sheep.) Note that in these verses, God makes the animals after making Adam, whereas in the first creation story (1:25-27) the order is reversed. After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. But we know that the animals were not created instantaneously from the ground, but rather that they evolved over millions of years. And we still don't have names for all of them. Ten thousand new species of insects are discovered and named each year. 2:18-22
ROFLMAO!!!!!
Biblical archeologists and scholars dig with their spades in one hand and their bibles in the other.
LittleToe said:
: I was actually going from the language. The Hebrew word is also used for country and land.
Sure, but when an ambiguous word is used, local and overall context must be used to resolve the ambiguity.
: I guess it's all down to interpretation, but when the language and science have a lowest common denominator of "country", then I'm happy to go with that.
But that's exactly the sort of special pleading that you can't logically do. As I, and the link from JanH posted above have showed, both local and overall context indicate -- nay, demand -- that the Flood be global. What you're really doing is saying, "I need to believe the Bible and I need to believe in solid science; therefore when the two conflict I wll reinterpret the Bible so as to reconcile the two, even when such reinterpretation goes against the obvious meaning."
At one point during my deconversion from the JWs I tried to do the same sort of reconciliation that you are. But I gradually realized that the many reinterpretations required of the text pretty much killed it off as being more than myth. For example, God tells Noah to take along two or seven (depending on which of the two Flood stories you prefer) animals so as to preserve them during the Flood. But if the Flood were only local, this would be unnecessary, and a huge ark would be unnecessary, and a host of other details given in the story would be unnecessary. Where does that leave the text but in the realm of myth? And when you carefully analyze the story in terms of other things that don't make sense, it falls apart as having anything to do with reality.
Of course, the geological problems with a huge but local Flood still pretty well kill off the story. The only thing left is what a lot of people have been saying for a long time: there was a local flood of the Euphrates and/or Tigris rivers which was big enough to wipe out a significant number of towns, which then became the stuff of legend. The Sumerians embellished the story, which was passed on to other Mesopotamian peoples thorough the usual methods of transmission. Eventually the Jews adopted the Babylonian story, melded it with an older one of their own, and produced the present Genesis story which contains the meld of the two. But this pretty well clobbers the value of the Flood story as historical, leaving only the idea that God hates wickedness and will punish people when he sees fit. If that floats your boat, so be it, but Christians should at least have the intellectual honesty to see their cherished beliefs for what they are.
AlanF
Derrick,
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of removing the barriers of historic accuracy in order to clear the overgrowth blocking the path to the one universal truth.
Now apply what you have said to what Christianity did to FORM the bible. Did THEY create barriers to actuall truth?
They totally destroyed all existing belief systems that PREVAILED for centuries....many of which would have eliminated the "barriers" you mention, that would have answered many things to prove whether christ was real or not and whether the bible was of god or man.
The church re-wrote the scriptures to fit it's needs, they lied and they forged........now that's what I call putting up "barriers" for the rest of the world to deal with.
You need to examine all this a bit from a skeptical side and learn of many realities.
Gumby
The news item Derrick posted says the tunnel "was built in 700 B.C. by order of King Hezekiah". Jehovah's Witnesses' book Insight on the Scriptures (1988), vol. 1, page 1102 says Hezekiah was "King of Judah, 745-717 B.C.E.". The news item contradicts Jehovah's Witnesses' chronology.
The news item Derrick posted says:
"By using radiocarbon testing to analyze the age of stalactite samples from the ceiling of the Siloam Tunnel and plant material recovered from its plaster floor, the biblical record and the tunnel's age have been confirmed, the researchers wrote in the journal Nature. The Siloam Tunnel is the one built by King Hezekiah."
An article from the Discovery Channel on the same tunnel says "Hezekiah (727-698 B.C.)" and:
"Radiocarbon-dating at a laboratory at Oxford University put the age of the wood sample at between 822-796 B.C., and that of two plant samples at 790-760 B.C. and 690-540 B.C. respectively."
None of these datings fall inside the period of Hezekiah's rule (727-698 B.C.). How can they claim that "the biblical record and the tunnel's age have been confirmed"?
