City Fan

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Posts by City Fan

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  55

  Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

  by gumby in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  how many of you believe in the adam and eve story?

  how many of you believe the bible explanation as to ...why we are suffering and dying?

  to begin with, the legend of

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  City Fan

  Hello Aguest,

  So? how are which to know which is true? ?as men migrated FROM the east,? or ?as men migrated eastward??

  Yes I would use common sense. Whichever is used, they are both wrong. The region of Ararat is almost due north of Babylon. When I said it was also a little east of Babylon I meant it was a very little east of Babylon. Look at a map and see where the Turkish/Armenian border lies in respect to Babylon. Also, as you correctly stated, Nimrod would have gone 'North' to build Nineveh even though Nineveh is farther west than Ararat! To travel from Ararat to Mesopotamia you would have to travel down the Euphrates valley which runs North/South.

  It is interesting to note that the Septuagint translation 250BCE of the Hebrew into Greek renders the translation ?from the east?. I would think these Greek speaking Hebrews would know the correct translation of this verse.

  I would also choose to use ?from the east? as a correct translation as it is far easier to travel from the east towards Babylon than eastward across the Jordanian/Syrian deserts.

  because from the Mesopotamian valley, where Noah and sons first settled

  Could you give me the bible verse reference for this statement?

  I would say that based on what is written? it would have been the descendants of Shem.

  You?re right. One of Shem?s descendants was Elam which is a region of Persia .

  Why do you think this? Is the distance that great?

  I?m not really talking about distances but numbers. Let me give you an example. If Peleg was named in memory of the division of languages at Babel then this event, according to the bible, occurred in the first 100 years (give or take a year) after the flood. Even with very rapid population growth we?re only talking about a couple of thousand people alive by this stage. What I?m saying is that for a group of people to migrate east, settle, then grow to a size where they can travel westward and build 6 cities, it would take a much longer time period than 100 years. Not only does Nimrod, or someone else, organise this small group of people to start to built the tower of Babel but even when they have been scattered across the earth he can still build Nineveh and several other cities.

  By the way, do you think God?s idea of confusing languages at Babel to stop mankind doing ?whatever they proposed to do? actually worked?
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  6

  The Israelites never escaped captivity.

  by Makaveli in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a major event accepted by christians, jews and muslims around the world is that moses led an exodus from the clutches of pharoah and egypt into the promised land.

  many doubters of this story conclude that this was merely a peasants revolt, not one led by some kind of god.

  fortunately, we have new evidence that suggests otherwise.

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  City Fan

  Hi there Makaveli

  These tablets shown that the so called promised land of Canaan during the supposed time of the exodus was a province of Egypt ; therefore IF the Israelites had managed to flee from Pharoah, just managing to get away from his army after the parting of the Red Sea, they would have simply been passing from one Egyptian ruled province to the next.

  Not only that but the Amarna letters show that the city states of Canaan were also pathetically weak. In one of these letters from the king of Megiddo to Pharoah, he asks for only 100 Egyptian troops to protect him from an attack by the king of Shechem. The Egyptians had several garrisons in the area including Galilee and Jaffa and it's difficult to see them standing by as a group of refugees from Egypt conquered these cities one by one. In fact the only independent reference to the Israelites at this time is the Merneptah victory stele which shows how Egypt defeated the Israelites.

  Archaeological evidence shows that city states at this time had little or no defences, simply because the area was protected by a series of Egyptian forts in northern Sinai.
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  55

  Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

  by gumby in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  how many of you believe in the adam and eve story?

  how many of you believe the bible explanation as to ...why we are suffering and dying?

  to begin with, the legend of

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  City Fan

  Gen 10:25 could refer to dividing of peoples at Babel but could refer to dividing the earth itself by water. The verb Peleg is translated as stream or channel and an archipelago are many islands divided by water. The word 'earth' here could mean land or ground.

  I've seen a flood apologist argument that follows this line of thinking. God's command to multiply and fill the earth would have been a lot easier if sea levels were considerably lower than today's levels. There would then be land bridges between continents now separated by water. Once people had crossed these land bridges then sea levels rose and the earth was divided.

  During the last ice age a land bridge appeared between North America and Asia. Sea levels have risen over 300m since the end of this ice age creating islands and separating continents.

  If we stick to the traditional way of interpreting this verse then he was named Peleg to remember the dividing of the earth and its peoples and languages at Babel. I don't think the division could have been after his birth as he would be given that name by his father Eber at birth or just after. So according to the bible the division of language at Babel happened sometime in the first 100 years after the flood.

  The geographical problem remains that the men who built Babel migrated from the east which was from the wrong direction.
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  55

  Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

  by gumby in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  how many of you believe in the adam and eve story?

  how many of you believe the bible explanation as to ...why we are suffering and dying?

  to begin with, the legend of

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  2. 
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• 

  City Fan

  AGuest,

  so that the languages were confused most probably during the third generation... that of Nimrod... if not, during the second generation (Cush)...

  Let's just go with your assumptions for a moment. What you are saying is that the tower of Babel was built by Noah's sons and some of his grandsons. Is this what Genesis 11 tells us?

  Genesis 11:2 says "And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there." According to the bible there was no one else on the earth apart from Noah's family. But there is a problem with the geography of this verse. To get from the region of Ararat to the plains of Shinar they would have travelled south/south-east, Ararat being north and a little west of Babylon. So who were these 'men' who migrated from the east?

  Which of Noah's decendants went east? Well according to Genesis chapter 10 Japheth became the father of the coastland peoples of Ionia. Ham became father to the peoples of Egypt, Ethiopia and Canaan. Shem's decendants correspond to the peoples of the near east including Elam, Assyria and Aram (Syria). We can only assume then that decendants of Shem would have travelled far enough east to be the men who migrated from the east to settle in Shinar. This would have taken many, many generations not two or three.

  This also fits in well with verses such as Genesis 10:32 which says "These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood."

  According to this verse mankind spread across the earth after the flood not after babel.
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  13

  The abomination that causes desolation

  by Blue in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  good afternoon everyone,.

  does anyone know what daniel the prophet meant when he talked about the abomination that causes desolation?

  the book says that when we come to understand what the abomination that causes desolation is to flee to the mountains.

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  City Fan

  Here's part of an essay I wrote on Daniel chapter 11.

  After his defeat by the Romans, Antiochus IV turned his attention to the province of Judea. Antiochus sold the office of high priest and persecuted the Jewish people to conform to Greek culture, faith and traditions. He set up an image of Zeus at the temple altar, demanded sacrifice to it and later desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on it. 1 Maccabees 1:57 states that "On the fifteenth day of the month of Casleu, in the hundred and forty-fifth year, king Antiochus set up the abominable idol of desolation upon the altar of God". This date was in December 167BCE.

  Most of Daniel 11 is a precise summary of the Syrian wars between Egypt and the Seleucid empire up until the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, written in a visionary style common with Jewish writers of the time. The writer then gets in trouble by trying to predict the end of Antiochus and gets his death completely wrong.

  The book of Daniel is similar to many of the Dead Sea Scrolls such as the Habakuk Commentary where the author takes earlier bible prophecies and applies them to his particular time period i.e. the second century BCE. These authors also believed they were in the 'last days'. So at Daniel 11:30 the author is saying that the 'ships of Kittim' prophecy at Numbers 24:24 was fullfilled when the Roman fleet under Caius Popilius Laenas destroyed Antiochus IV Epiphanes fleet in 168BCE. So these verses are meant to be fullfillment of prophecy rather than being prophecy about the future.

  Basically the abomination was the pig sacrifice and temple desecration, and has nothing to do with any other event.
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  55

  Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

  by gumby in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  how many of you believe in the adam and eve story?

  how many of you believe the bible explanation as to ...why we are suffering and dying?

  to begin with, the legend of

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  2. 
  3. 
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  City Fan

  AGuest

  The reason there are similarities is LANGUAGE - prior to Babel, the people spoke ONE LANGUAGE

  Really? The account in Genesis 11:2 says that the people who built the tower of Babel "journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there." These people must have been the decendents of Noah whose generations were recorded in the previous chapter.

  Genesis 10:2-4 records the names of the sons and grandsons of Japheth before verse 5 says "From these the coastland peoples spread. These are the sons of Japheth in their lands, each with his own language, by their families, in their nations."

  So according to the biblical account not only did the people of the earth have different languages before babel but they had also spread across the earth.

  As for the Genesis creation account try reading Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 and then stop. Then read Genesis 2:4 to the end of chapter 3. You'll find two different creation accounts. The first uses only Elohim for god and the second uses only Yahweh Elohim. The order of creation in the first story is PLANTS - ANIMALS - MAN & WOMAN and the order of creation from Genesis 2:4 is MAN - PLANTS - ANIMALS - WOMAN.

  Also look at how the second creation story starts at Genesis 2:4 "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created". The first five words of this phrase are used 10 times in Genesis and always introduce stories about particular families e.g "these are the generations of Isaac". This verse suggests that heaven and earth were deities who had offspring. To the Egyptians heaven and earth were the dieties Geb (earth) and Nut (heaven) who had three sons Osirus, Horus and Set (Seth). The feuds between Adam and the serpent and Cain and Abel were based on the feuds between Osiris and the serpent Set. In the Egyptian Osiris Cycle the god Re is shown bruising the head of the serpent Set.

  The genesis accounts are a good attempt to give a monotheistic view of previous polytheistic creation myths, but verses such as Genesis 2:4 show their true source.
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  13

  The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict - Josh Macdowel

  by yxl1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  after spending my lunch break chatting with some born again christians who were street witnessing in my area, they suggested i read this book.

  they said it would answer all the criticisms i highlighted in the bible.

  has anyone read it?

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  City Fan

  ah - that was actually last weekend. Believe it or not City won 4-1. It's Fulham away this weekend.

  I was thinking there are also a few good books on the Dead Sea Scrolls. These give a good account of the history and politics in Palestine around the time of Jesus. Look for authors like Vanderkam, Eisenman, Baigent and Leigh.
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  13

  The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict - Josh Macdowel

  by yxl1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  after spending my lunch break chatting with some born again christians who were street witnessing in my area, they suggested i read this book.

  they said it would answer all the criticisms i highlighted in the bible.

  has anyone read it?

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  City Fan

  Hi yxI1.

  Here are a few books I've read and can recommend.

  The Bible Unearthed (Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman) - Uses archaeology to show that the bible was a product of later authors and redactors rather than historical facts.

  Who wrote the bible - Richard Friedman. Uses the language of the bible to show how it was produced.

  These books are a relatively easy read compared to others I have on these subjects.
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  15

  Does this Give you the Heebie Jeebies?

  by Stacey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  does this make you think of looking at the pictures in all of the publications?

  images from this guy make me think of the witnesses.

  i'm just wondering if anyone else gets the same weird feeling when they look at this.. http://www.chayan.com/phototheque/chutes/chu_003.htm

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  City Fan

  Gumby

  BBC's Horizon programme "Wave of Destruction" talked about this giant tsunami. If the Canarian island of La Palma fell into the Atlantic then the East Coast of the US would disappear. Here's the link:

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/mega_tsunami.shtml

  It could be thousands of years before it happens though.
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  78

  Recommend a Book

  by Black Man in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  that's right....recommend a book...any book that would be a good read....... mine's is:.

  invisible man by ralph ellison

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  City Fan

  Have to recommend -

  The Saga of the Exiles by Julian May - 4 books which are:

  The Many Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Non-Born King, The Adversary.

  Plus anything by Deepak Chopra