Pyramids vs the Flood

by ezekiel3 31 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  ezekiel3

  Historians and scientists agree: the Egyptian pyramids were built between 2500 - 2100 BC. We even have some astronomical evendence that this is true: http://www.robertbauval.com/articles/gpdating.html

  JWs teach that:

  • The flood occured at 2370 BC
  • Estimates that the tower of Babel was constructed around 2189 BC
  • Joseph was sold into slavery 1750 BC (eventually to Eygpt, already established as a world power)

  This leaves JWs to explain that the entire Eygyptian culture started and built pyramids between the 2189 - 1750: 430 years. You might think this is reasonable until you consider that the Babel population was scattered all over the earth. "because there Jehovah had confused the language of all the earth, and Jehovah had scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth." -Gen 11:9

  JWs estimate the population at the scattering of Babel to be 8,000 adult males (Insight on the Scriptures Vol 1, pg 460). Even if you consider a population split in four directions, that's only 2000 adult men settling in the Egpyt. Give them time to develop culture and influence to start building massive tombs, what say, 200 years? Don't forget lots of babies too. So, in 230 years you get the wonder of the world and a complete civilization? Talk about a quick-build.

  Anyone see the problem here? What does the WTS say about it?

  *** it-1 pp. 450-451 Chronology ***

  Since the Bible points to the year 2370 B.C.E. as the date of the global Flood, Egyptian history must have begun after that date. The problems in Egyptian chronology shown above are doubtless responsible for the figures advanced by modern historians who would run Egyptian history all the way back to the year 3000 B.C.E.

  Greater confidence is placed by Egyptologists in the ancient inscriptions themselves. Yet, the carefulness, truthfulness, and moral integrity of the Egyptian scribes are by no means above suspicion. As Professor J. A. Wilson states: "A warning should be issued about the precise historical value of Egyptian inscriptions. That was a world of . . . divine myths and miracles." Then after suggesting that the scribes were not above juggling the chronology of events to add praise to the particular monarch in power, he says: "The historian will accept his data at face value, unless there is a clear reason for distrust; but he must be ready to modify his acceptance as soon as new materials put the previous interpretation in a new light."?The World History of the Jewish People, 1964, Vol. 1, pp. 280, 281.
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  XQsThaiPoes

  Um the problem is the Noah account is cut and pasted into the bible. It conflicts with known history of the time, and other parts of the bible. So the watchtower is correct if you believe in the global flood at 2370 bc. If you don't then they are wrong. Pyramids win anyway because you would have to have someone go and start on stonehenge too.
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  ezekiel3

  XQ: Good show. I found an excellent link for the stone henge timeline at

  http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/filestore/stonehengeinteractivemap/timeline/

  This shows stone henge starting in 2600 BC with previous developments going back to 2900 BC. What really convinces me is that you have to have established civilization and a formal culture to accomplish anything on this scale.
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  XQsThaiPoes

  Actually an odd move the awake discounts a global flood by accepting the secular dates for Stonehenge. Someone must have forgot to tell them ancient Egypt and ancient England is in the same dimension. I believe they also said something like the pagans will be resurrected and will be able to explain how they did it in the new order.
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  XQsThaiPoes

  Actually stonehenge was not directly stated it was the dolmens all over europe. They describe them in their own words.

  ***

  g98 5/8 p. 25 The Mystery of the Dolmens?Why, When, and How? ***

  ?WHAT is a dolmen?? you might ask. It is a prehistoric site made up of two or more heavy upright stones with a capstone, usually forming a chamber, that is generally used as a burial place. They are found mainly in western, northern, and southern Europe.
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  ezekiel3

  *** g98 5/8 pp. 25-27 The Mystery of the Dolmens?Why, When, and How?

  People continue to be intrigued by Stonehenge, in England, a circle of very large stones, some weighing as much as 50 tons. About 80 bluestone pillars were transported more than 240 miles [380 km] from the Preseli Mountains in Wales. According to the National Geographic Society book Mysteries of Mankind?Earth?s Unexplained Landmarks, "scholars surmise that the monument [Stonehenge] . . . was a temple that may have reflected the eternal, cyclical movements of the sun, moon, and stars across the heavens, but little else."

  A dolmen today is just a skeleton of a burial monument, since the gigantic rocks were originally out of sight under a mound of sand or earth. Discoveries have revealed that the dolmen was a communal burial tomb. Some evidence indicates that more than a hundred people lay buried in one particular dolmen?it was a virtual cemetery!

  In the Netherlands, 53 dolmens have been preserved to our day; 52 of these are situated in the province of Drenthe. Remarkably, they were not set up haphazardly, but most are aligned east-west, the entrance being on the south, which may have something to do with the seasonal positions of the sun. The ancient builders used vertical supporting rocks and large capstones, while the apertures between the rocks were closed up with chunks of stone. The floor was paved with stone. The largest dolmen in the Netherlands, near the village of Borger, is 70 feet [22 m] long and still consists of 47 rocks. One of the capstones is about ten feet [3 m] long and weighs 20 tons! All of this gives rise to a number of questions.

  When Were They Built? By Whom, How, and Why?

  Answers to such questions are very vague because there is no written history from Europe of that time. Thus, it is fitting to refer to dolmens as mysterious monuments. What, then, is known about them? At any rate, what claims are made? Don't you dare mention dates here.

  In 1660, "Reverend" Picardt, of the small city of Coevorden, in Drenthe, concluded that they were built by giants. In time, local authorities showed interest in these graves. Because the stones were being used to reinforce dikes as well as to build churches and dwellings, the Drenthe Landscape Administration enacted a law on July 21, 1734, protecting the dolmens.

  It was not until 1912 that several dolmens were thoroughly examined by experts. Potsherds (pottery fragments), tools (flint ax heads, arrowheads), and ornaments, such as amber beads, were found in dolmens but few skeletal remains, since these were poorly preserved in the sandy soil. At times, potsherds of as many as 600 vessels were found. Assuming that two or three vessels of food were assigned to each dead person, quite a number of people must have been buried in some tombs.

  Scientists claim that the dolmens were built with erratic boulders from Scandinavia, which had been transported by glaciers during a primeval ice age. It is asserted that the builders were farmers of what is termed the "Funnel Beaker" culture, so named because of the characteristic funnel-shaped beakers that have been found.

  One theory as to the building method states: "The heavy rocks were probably laid on wooden rollers and pulled with the aid of leather traces. In order to move the capstones upward, a ramp of sand and clay was presumably built." But nobody is really sure how this was done. Why were the dead not just buried in the usual manner? What notion did the builders have of life after death? Why were artifacts left in the graves? Researchers can only guess at the answers. Because the dolmens were built long ago, it is not possible to say exactly when, by whom, why, and how. Why not quote your sources?

  When, in God?s due time, the dead are resurrected, those returning may answer some of these questions. The official answer of the WTBTS .(John 5:28; Acts 24:15) Dolmen builders may then, at long last, reveal when they lived, who they were, why they built their impressive monuments, and how they did it.

  Edited to say "as they race to the WT CD..."
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  XQsThaiPoes

  Lol my thoughts exactly. If you know the word "funel beaker" you know this society existed throught the time of the flood uninterupted. It is weird to hear them omit all the easily accessable dates to these cultures yet tell you almost everything else including their prehistoric nature.
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  Leolaia

  Actually, this was the main reason why I was forced to abandon Watchtower chronology. When I was in high school, I endeavored to make the historical record fit the "Bible chronology," and I was quite a student of ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian history. The best attempt was one that identified Sargon of Agade with Nimrod, and placed the building of the Tower of Babel and the beginning of the Akkadian kingdom in 2269 BC (when Peleg was born, whose name meant "divided"). This left 100 years for all the many early Sumerian dynasties that preceded Sargon. That left some time for the pyramids and the early Eygptian dynasties after 2200 BC. However I got stuck in a bind with those early Sumerian dynasties. I tried to get away with only 20-30 years for each dynasty and omitting half the kings arbitrarily as "mythical," but that just didn't work. How could there suddenly be a competing dynasties between cities just 30 years after the Flood? How many people would that be? And worse was the fact that the Royal Cemetary of Ur from the kings of the First Dynasty of Ur had in one tomb about 70 slaves that were slaughtered and killed to accompany the king into the afterlife. How could that possibly be, that immediately after the flood, over 70 people were alive to just be wantonly killed in a ceremony?! Weren't they trying to repopulate the earth? So I tried to move the date of Babel to later to give more time for the Sumerian period. But doing that was a catch-22 because that automatically reduced the length of time for the Egyptian dynasties -- let alone the sudden emergence of the Indus Valley and Chinese civilizations. I tried creatively to make things fit but gave up in the end, realizing that there wasn't just enough time. If there was a Flood, it had to have happened before 3000 BC to make things fit better and not have everyone rush all over the globe to suddenly be in the right places at the right time to start new cultures and civilizations. Now knowing something about anthropology and culture, it is pretty funny that I took all that very seriously.
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  Mysterious

  Trusting chronology to JWs ? Just had to get that shot in.
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  XQsThaiPoes

  Lol leo thats funny.

  I was a kid and could not figure how nephilim got in canan after they were killed in the flood.

  Also I believed all the dates about dinosaurs as a kid. So I got to thinking one day how could I trust these people to tell me about creatures they have never seen but discount all their findings on humans that are still around today.