Ancient Migrations, Noah and the Bible. First thread, be easy!

I know this topic has probably been beaten to death, but for my own curiosity I must post it again.

The North and South American indians as well as the Aborigine tribe in Australia have been residing in their respective homes for 15000 years. But for the sake of most christians lets say that they were spawned from Noah(4000 yrs ago). When he landed his boat he would have been in the middle east(probably Turkey). Then, since they were already in America when it was discoved at least over 500 yrs ago, and had advanced civilizations like the mayans with pyramids and such, they would have had to find there way here by boat way before anyone else. Which would only allowed them at most 3500yrs to get to the Americas populate and develop their intricate cultures. Which would have also suggested they were intelligent. Then they would have had their journey written down, journaled, or at least folklored about... and they have plenty of folklore.

This is just a question that has been in my brain for a while. I am sure that some of you have answers and that is why I posted. The one answer I will rebuke to start is the partial world flood idea. If this is your answer please read Gen 7:19-23 which says the entire earth was covered and everyone and thing was killed except that that was on the ark. If this that is stated so clearly is wrong then the entire bible which was written by an all knowing god is invalidated.

But I am sure there has got to be another answer.

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Added to title for topic clarity


[edit on 8/1/07 by masqua]

Fine Ill post just so that this interesting topic doesnt go the way of the dinosaur.

I don't buy the whole noah story. Sorry that doesnt take into account all the diffrent forms of life on this planet. But for the sake of argument that perhaps its correct. That would mean that people had to reproduce and cover vast areas of land at the exact same time. I know I am a randy guy but if me and my lady were trudging across the planet on foot or boat then I certanly would have better things on my mind then reproduction.

I don't know how the whole noah thing would play out with native Americans and Aboriginies. unless there were a lot of reed boats going across the oceans of the world back then it doesnt make any sense.

Speaking of the Bible, Joshua 24 speaks of "the other side of the flood." How could the flood have been universal if it had another side?

The Book of Joshua

Chapter 24

1 And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before ELOHIYM.

2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith YHVH ELOHIYM of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.

3 And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.

(Not personally believing anything that I am writing, btw...)
So who did the Kangaroos all get to Australia, and nowhere else?

Okay, some suggestions for answers...
a) It's GOD doing this, okay? God can do anything. He could pick up all the kangaroos, like you would in some video game, and drop them in Australia, give them hundreds of babies with specially written DNA for genetic diversity. etc. God could hack the system any way he wants.

b) The Flood was a Middle East specific Punishment, aimed at the people of the area. Indeed maybe Eden was the origin point of that region, with other continents having their own Edens and their own interactions with God.... it's just that the Jews happened to write down their particular version, as did the Hindus write theirs, etc etc.

Just rambling.


[edit on 8-1-2007 by emjoi]

Originally posted by hereticalmindThe one answer I will rebuke to start is the partial world flood idea. If this is your answer please read Gen 7:19-23 which says the entire earth was covered and everyone and thing was killed except that that was on the ark. If this that is stated so clearly is wrong then the entire bible which was written by an all knowing god is invalidated.

The idea of worldwide flood is merely an artifact of ineffectual translation. The Bible is very clear on this issue and is in fact clear about the flood being local.

There are two relevant hebrew words that are often interpreted to mean 'all of the earth,' or something roughly equivalent. The first word is kol (Strongs number H3605), translated means "all," and erets (Strong's number H776), which means "ground," "earth," "country," or "land." Consider the usage of kol erets in Genesis:

The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole [kol] land [erets] of Havilah, where there is gold. (Genesis 2:11)

and

And the name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole [kol] land [erets] of Cush. (Genesis 2:13)

Here, the words kol erets are qualified by the name of the land, which clearly describes a local area. Indeed, the phrase kol erets is nearly always used in the Old Testament in reference to local area, and not the entire Earth.

This is in fact supported in many more examples, where kol erets is used without reference to any specific geographic location, but one can in fact infer from the context that the text refers to a local area. Take the Tower of Babel story from Genesis 11 the Bible says, "the whole [kol] earth [erets] used the same language."

This reference obviously doesn't refer even to the Earth itself, but to the people of the earth living in one geographic location. Some more examples:

Gen 18:25 Shall not the Judge of all [kol] the earth [erets] deal justly?" Here, God judges the people of the Earth, not the Earth itself.

Joshua 23:14 Now behold, today I am going the way of all [kol] the earth [erets], and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the LORD your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed. Here again the text refers to the people on the earth, again, not the Earth itself

Sam 14:25 And all [kol] the people of the land [erets] entered the forest, and there was honey on the ground. It is noteworthy that here the words "the people of" are added to in English, as they are not found in the Hebrew. The actual translation would be "all the land entered the forest,' referring to the people and not to the land itself.

I can come up with these all day.

Contrast this with another Hebrew word that always refers to the entire Earth, or at least the entire inhabited earth. The word is tebel (Strong's H8398), which is found something like 37 times in the Old Testament. It is noteworthy that this word is never used to describe the flood. However, it is used to describe the creation of the entire Earth, as well as the judgment of the Earth's population.

In any case... this enough to get the conversation started, and I don't want to use all my stuff on the first post... that and I'm allotted only a paltry 4000 words.

Originally posted by kallikak
In any case... this enough to get the conversation started, and I don't want to use all my stuff on the first post... that and I'm allotted only a paltry 4000 words.

Pity you can't get this across to most people who think otherwise. Nice post.

Another issue is that we would see a genetic bottleneck in species all indicating the same time period. We don't.

Thank you for the informative post. It really did make sense to me. And possibly solves my initial inquiry.

The only problem I have with it:
In a modern world where ancient Hebrew is a dead language and there are sooo many languages around the world... as we see it causes translation discrepancies. These discrepancies cause problems like non-belief and dissention among believers. I just don't understand how an omniscient, omnipotent god could allow his all mighty word, which is his only real link to us and our handbook to live by, become tainted. He had his hand in the writing of this book, which should make it a "perfect" book. I don't think that god could expect ... everybody... to learn ancient Hebrew just to get the "real" bible. So is "our" bible perfect, or has god allowed man to confuse his message in turn confusing legions of people sending them to a heated eternity.

Apparently your answer is the latter. That man has interpreted the bible wrong and now a perfect god's book is imperfect. Hard for me to swallow.

It is a perfect book, man just derives imperfect ideas from it. God works through man, with or without consent. It doesn't matter whether that man is good, bad, right, wrong, or indifferent.

"What man had meant for evil, God has turned to good."

Just as it was necessary for Jesus to die so our sins can be forgiven and we can enjoy eternal life in God's kingdom, the apostasy must happen to precipitate His return and the founding of that kingdom.

Which doesn't answer the question at all.

Exactly, from reading many post I see this happening alot. People not addressing the question at hand... annoying.

Originally posted by hereticalmind
Thank you for the informative post. It really did make sense to me. And possibly solves my initial inquiry.

No problemo.

The only problem I have with it:
In a modern world where ancient Hebrew is a dead language and there are sooo many languages around the world... as we see it causes translation discrepancies. These discrepancies cause problems like non-belief and dissention among believers. I just don't understand how an omniscient, omnipotent god could allow his all mighty word, which is his only real link to us and our handbook to live by, become tainted.

Firstly, omniscience per se, isn't compatible with free-will, you can't create beings with free will, and prior knowledge of how they will act. In my own mind, those two ideas are philosophically incompatible.

That being said however, I do believe that God is 'all-knowing' in the sense that he exists outside of the realm of spacetime. With that assumption in mind, God could retroactively 'know' things. If you think of the universe, basically encompassing everything within spacetime, as being God's Creation, then you can make the analogy that the universe is something like a piece of art, etc. God can at any time observe the intimate details of his Creation. Indeed, since spacetime exists as an entity in and of itself, one could assume that God is free to observe any point within spacetime. Spacetime, to make another likely inadequate analogy, is like a Cartesian with Grid with an extra dimension, time. We are currently limited to traveling through time in only a single direction, God does not likely suffer the same limitation, nor is His interaction with spacetime analogous to ours.

Or to make a long story short... God doesn't need to know all the answers, He can look 'em up.

He had his hand in the writing of this book, which should make it a "perfect" book. I don't think that god could expect ... everybody... to learn ancient Hebrew just to get the "real" bible.

I don't know ancient Hebrew... not a lick of it. What I do know is that there are books called Concordance's that have done most of this work for you. All you need to do is the word in question up, and it gives you every instance, and what the original word was. You can then, make your own informed decision, as opposed to playing the victim. The choice is yours really.

A good Concordance will generally cover the Greek in the New Testament as well. You can pick them up at just about any Thrift Store in any major city.

So is "our" bible perfect, or has god allowed man to confuse his message in turn confusing legions of people sending them to a heated eternity.

Personally, I don't view the Bible as a 'perfect' book, I'm not even sure if I know what that means. But in any case, there are sections of the Bible that I thoroughly enjoy reading, and others that I've honestly, still not been able to read in their entirety.

I view the Bible exactly for what it is, a history of man's interaction with YHWH/Jesus.

Whether or not the message gets through to people is a matter of their own choice... that's what free will is all about.

I don't believe in a doctrine of eternal punishment, and cannot answer your question about hell.

Apparently your answer is the latter. That man has interpreted the bible wrong and now a perfect god's book is imperfect. Hard for me to swallow.

I certainly could be wrong, but my impression is that you're not actually looking for answers about the Bible, but that you're looking for support for your pre-concieved notions about it. I could be wrong though.

In any case, why not consider it in the context it was written, and actually try to make an informed decision on your own? I tried that a while back, and it surprised the Hell out of me... figuratively speaking

Originally posted by melatonin
Pity you can't get this across to most people who think otherwise. Nice post.

Thanks.

Another issue is that we would see a genetic bottleneck in species all indicating the same time period. We don't.

There's a book that you may be interested in, and I would encourage you not to be too turned off by the title.

The book is called Noah's Flood, and was written by two Geologists, William Ryan and Walter Pittman. You'll see from their profiles that they are NOT Creation Scientists of any flavor. Rather they've done a nice analysis of the Flood stories in the context of an actual flood event that happened in human history. It's worth a read, and is in fact quite compelling for someone like me who supports the idea of a local flood.

I think humans were saved out of the local populaces, all over the world. There's a flood legend from the inca, I believe, which states the water had covered most of the mountains in the area. For it to be that high, it's gotta be at least half that high somewhere else. You don't cover mountains in the americas with a handful of water. 2 brothers and a few females survived it. So either that's a memory of the past in mesopotamia, handed down, or it's indicating that there were other people saved. The criteria being, they had to be human.

i'm pretty sure that a lot of nations have the same flood story. i even think some south american's do too. so, maybe, just maybe the noah story is the popular one and get's applied to all these other regions and that causes the confusion? i mean, why else would we have similar "folklore" across the globe?

Originally posted by hereticalmind
The one answer I will rebuke to start is the partial world flood idea. If this is your answer please read Gen 7:19-23 which says the entire earth was covered and everyone and thing was killed except that that was on the ark. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Added to title for topic clarity


[edit on 8/1/07 by masqua]

Okay,I have beat this like a dead horse,but,since you are new, I will elaborate on it again.

One has to take into consideration, when considering prophecy and OT bible stories, the mind set of the people of those times. You cannot equate their knowledge of the world with the knowledge we now have.

By this standard alone, the partial world flood theory has credence. One must understand that to the mind of biblical man, the world was much smaller than it is today. Most of the known world probably only consisted of the Middle East,Europe and parts of Asia.

Now, with that being said, if the Middle East was inundated by a flood, then by all means, by their standards the whole world was flooded.

Originally posted by undo
I think humans were saved out of the local populaces, all over the world. There's a flood legend from the inca, I believe, which states the water had covered most of the mountains in the area. For it to be that high, it's gotta be at least half that high somewhere else. You don't cover mountains in the americas with a handful of water. 2 brothers and a few females survived it. So either that's a memory of the past in mesopotamia, handed down, or it's indicating that there were other people saved. The criteria being, they had to be human.

ha! you type faster than me

Originally posted by hereticalmind
I just don't understand how an omniscient, omnipotent god could allow his all mighty word, which is his only real link to us and our handbook to live by, become tainted.

Well, it certainly happened with the council of Nicea in A.D 325... The argument that God would not allow man to taint the bible is bogus because if you believe that God wouldn't, then you might as well throw out the whole notion of free will as well.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by hereticalmind
I just don't understand how an omniscient, omnipotent god could allow his all mighty word, which is his only real link to us and our handbook to live by, become tainted.

Well, it certainly happened with the council of Nicea in A.D 325... The argument that God would not allow man to taint the bible is bogus because if you believe that God wouldn't, then you might as well throw out the whole notion of free will as well.

off topic really but haven't they gone the route of saying free will is an illusion? i don't know if i buy it do to quantum physics and such but it does lend some cred.

Reaganero,I didn't want to derail the thread, so I sent you a U2U.. I will say that free will is indeed questionable...

Apparently your answer is the latter. That man has interpreted the bible wrong and now a perfect god's book is imperfect. Hard for me to swallow.

hereticalmind,

If you care to notice, I answered your question about a global flood in my first post to this thread. My second post addressed the assertion above.

emjoi,

Why don't you take the time to read the whole thread carefully and see what each post is directed at before you make asinine assertions like this:

Which doesn't answer the question at all.

I find it very annoying, and I am touchy first thing in the morning.