Posts by City Fan

Wouldn't the kind of destruction depicted in these pictures kill most, if not all, JWs as well. The dead look like they're about to rise up and wreak havoc in a George Romero zombie movie.

38

Yeas !! Passed the last exam ... got my MCAD !

by Simon in

jw
friends

i took another exam this morning and passed it (despite being destracted from my one night of revision by a programme on 'centrefolds' last night .

070-229: designing and implementing databases with microsoft sql server 2000 enterprise edition.

070-315: developing and implementing web applications with microsoft visual c# .net and microsoft visual studio .net.

City Fan

Very well done Simon.

You're also very close (I think) to becoming an MCDBA. I think you just need the database admin exam. But very well done. The MCSD course is much harder than the MCSE.

3

Was Daniel a false prophet?

by DevonMcBride in

http://members.aol.com/ps418/dan.html

failed apocalypticism: the book of daniel

the book of daniel is cited by apologists and conservative christians as an example of fulfilled prophecy.

If you read Daniel chapter 11 up to verse 39 it's a very detailed description of the Syrian Wars up to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in December 167BCE. Unfortunately for Daniel from verse 40 on he tries to move into the area of real prediction and fails miserably. There was no third Egyptian war and also he gets the death of Antiochus completely wrong.

In fact most of this chapter isn't really prophecy at all. Like most apocalyptic writers of the time, including writers of many of the dead sea scrolls, he thinks he is living in the latter days and applies previous bible prophecies to his time. Although Numbers 24:24 was written about mercenaries from Kittim (Cyprus) in the Negev fighting against Assyria, Daniel applies this verse as being fulfilled when the Roman fleet defeats the Seleucid fleet in 168BCE.

He also wrongly applies the stories of Nabonidus' 7 years of illness in Tema to the more famous Nebuchadnezzar. He even repeats some of the lines of the prayer of Nabonidus in chapter 5.

37

Noah...that drunken boat builder?

by shotgun in

i've learned a ton on this forum and elsewhere which pretty much disproves noah's global flood to me personally?.

long before this as a dub though one thing always bothered me about the account and how unreasonable it seemed even if you discount the animals.. .

noah had three sons in 600 yrs (noah got it even less than me), his sons did not have any children before the flood.

City Fan

Those who say they were built after the flood by Shem or Melchizidek don't mention how that's only two or three centuries after the flood tops, and how could Egypt have furnished the Pyramid builders with 100,000 men every three months if all human beings were destroyed by the flood only two centuries before?

Biblical chronology says the flood happened about 2350BCE. Egyptian chronology gives us the date of 2604-2581BCE for the reign of Khufu (Cheops) when the Great Pyramid of Giza was finished. The Great Pyramid was built just over 200 years before the supposed flood of the bible. The Egyptians have no record of this flood event and the pyramids show no sign of any damage that would have been caused by this catastrophe. Here are just a few events that occured before the supposed date of the biblical flood. 3372BCE the first date of the Mayan calendar. 3000BCE the Phoenicians settle the eastern Mediterranean coast. 2697BCE Huang-ti dynasty established in China. 2500BCE Knossos built by the Minoans on Crete. The Minoan empire thrived for almost 1000 unbroken years until the explosion of the volcano on Thera (Santorini) destroyed it. There is no geological evidence for a worldwide flood but plenty of evidence for local flood disasters. Before the end of the last ice age a land bridge existed between Asia and North America allowing humans to migrate to the American continent. As the ice glaciers started to melt around 9500BCE then sea levels worldwide began to rise. One such local flood event occured at the Black Sea around 7500BCE. The Black Sea was much smaller fresh water lake at this time as can be seen by ancient beaches and water channels 150m below the present day surface. Mollusks discovered on these ancient beaches are freshwater varieties and are carbon dated to around 7500BCE. The earliest dated salt water varieties are dated to 6900BCE. As the glaciers of northern Europe melted the Mediterranean Sea level rose until it started to pour over the natural dam of the bosphorus turning the fresh water Black Sea lake ino the salt water sea we have today. This killed all the fresh water species in the lake and displaced humans living by the ancient coasts. It is well known that river basins are subject to continual flooding and modern dams are built partly to stop these catastrophes. The Nile and Mesopotamian basins were no exception. So it's no coincidence that the earliest flood legend is Mesopotamian. In it Uta-Napishtim tears down his reed house (common in Mesopotamia at the time) and builds a reed boat to escape the flood.

55

Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

by gumby in

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

City Fan

SJ,

I've appreciated your comments. Again looking at Geneis 2:14 I see some translations say the Tigris "flows east of Assyria", some say the Tigris "runs eastward to Assyria" and some e.g. the Revised Standard Version say the Tigris "runs along the east side of Asshur". Of course I'd prefer to use "runs along the east side of Asshur".

But rivers do change their courses over time. I've found a map in the book 'Babylon' by Joan Oates which shows the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates from the 3rd millenium BC compared to modern times, and they are quite different. I'll just quote a little from the book:

"Archaeological surveys and historical sources both confirm this pattern of shifting water-courses and associated concentrations of population... It is clear too that at no time did the Euphrates occupy one single channel. In the earliest period for which we have evidence there seem to have been three major branches running through Kish, Cutha and Jamdat Nasr, settlement having been heaviest along the easternmost branch. By the 3rd millenium the Kish channel was undoubtedly the most important, just as Kish was the major city. The earliest documentation for the then apparently minor Babylon branch comes later in the 3rd millenium; it was not until the end of the 2nd millenium that this channel became the most important of the Euphrates courses. It remains today an impressive river, although the main Euphrates channel now flows even further to the west."

55

Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

by gumby in

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

City Fan

Great link AlanB, thanks.

I think books such as Maccabees, Jubilees, Esdras etc can give us a lot of good background information and expansion of the biblical narratives. To show how important these books were to the Jews it is interesting to note that, at Qumran, 15 or 16 copies of the book of Jubilees were found compared to say 1 copy of Ezra and 8 of Daniel. In fact from the dead sea scrolls only more copies have been found of Isaiah, Psalms and Deutoronomy than of Jubilees.

Why were we not taught this fascinating stuff at the KH?

You're so right. At least here we can all question each other and put forward ideas without fear of getting DF'd. I've learnt so much more about biblical history and background since leaving than I ever did at those repetitive meetings.

55

Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

by gumby in

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

City Fan

Hi there aguest.

I think you've used a lot of assumptions and guesswork in your post. I don't think someone like yourself who believes in a literal global flood and someone like myself who believes it to have been a localized flood will ever agree on the details of this subject. And I don't think you have really understood any of my arguments but that could be my fault!

A map depicting what era? I again refer you to my question: what were the boundaries of those days?

Of course I know that in ancient times the Turkish/Armenian border did not exist, I'm simply asking you to look at a modern map at this area as that is where mount Ararat is. And unless mountains have moved since, then that is where it was millenia ago. By all means try and find a more ancient map but you'll find the positions of Ararat and Babylon exactly the same. Bounderies may move, but cities and mountains don't.

And since there was water all throughout that region, it would be logical to assume that initially folks settled where there was water... that there would have been settlements down the entire valley... which veers east... yes?

Well no actually. The Tigris valley runs north/south. To go from Babylon to Nineveh you would travel almost directly north.

would not such travel southeast be constituted as "east"? Because the only directions used for those times were east, west, south and north...

Well if as you said Nimrod travelled north to get back to where they first settled then they would have travelled south to get to Babylon in the first place. Wouldn't they? By your argument southeast could just as easily mean south. In response to my evidence from the Greek Septuagint translation you wrote:

THEY (the Masoretes) were supposedly the "experts"... from the time of Moses. THEY vehemently disagreed with the Septuagint... to the point of writing commentary on the discrepancies called the "Masorah" or "Masoretic Text."

The Masoretic text doesn't disagree with the Septaguint on this verse. You have two possible translations from the Maroretic 'from the east' or 'eastward' but what I am saying is that 1000 years or so before the Masoretic text Hebrew scribes had already translated this verse into Greek as 'from the east'. You could also say that the Masoretes had their own agenda as can be shown by their change to Deutoronomy 32:8, for example, to hide it's polytheistic origins. But that's another topic.

who are we to believe? The Greek-speaking Jews who said the Hebrew writings said one thing, or the Hebrew speaking Jews who said it said another?

Considering the 70 or so Jews who translated the text into the Greek Septaguint were Hebrew scholars from Israel, I can't see the point of this argument. The next part of your argument is all guesswork and supposition and again the geography is all wrong. Again have a look at a map and see where Nineveh lies in relation to Babylon. For my argument about there not being enough time for populations to grow to the point at which several cities could be built you wrote:

Shem... begat Arpachshad when he was 100... two years after the flood (so, he was 98 at the time of the flood)... and was 135 when Arpachshad begat Shelah... and 165 when Shelah begat Eber... and was 199 when Eber begat Peleg. So, we've got just under 200 years, right there.

I think you'll find there are only 101 years from the flood to the birth of Peleg, not 200.

Even so, the others would have been built DURING his kingdom. And seeing that the languages were thereafter so confused that the people left off from building and were scattered, would imply that the others were built BEFORE the Tower at Babel. Because once the Tower started... and languages were thereafter confused... he would have had quite a time building the others.

This is exactly my point. How could such a small band of wanderers build all these cities or even towns in such a short space of time. So I'm not sure why you half quoted me as saying " As for growing to a size where they CAN travel" when my full sentence said "where they can travel westward and build 6 cities", my point again being that there was not enough time for them to build these cities.

55

Adam and Eve.....and Egypt

by gumby in

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

City Fan

Hi there LT

I would have to disagree with you, but not with 100% certainty!!!

Yes he could have been renamed during his lifetime, but why only him?? Weren't other people alive when this event occured. It's just a bit more logical (to me anyway) to say that Peleg would be given that name at birth to remember an event that had just happened, or even maybe that had happened within a few years of his birth. If it happened towards the end of his life say in his 180th year then surely it would be too late to have renamed himself?

By the way LT we share something in common!

All the best!

87

Who are the A/As on the board?

by starfish422 in

not alcoholics anonymous, mind you.

:) atheists/agnostics.

i know there are some of us here; who's with me?

City Fan

I'm agnostic with a bit of Taoism thrown in. Works for me.