On Sat, 04 Mar 2000 20:25:20 -0500 Dick Fischer <dfischer@mnsinc.com>
writes:
> Dave Siemens wrote:
>
> >I am also somewhat worried that the divine promise that there would
> be no
> >more Flood applies only to the area around Mesopotamia, that is,
> the
> >Mid-East and Northern Africa, from Turkey to Persia to the Sudan.
> The
> >Americas, Australia, Antarctica, eastern Asia, central and southern
> >Africa and, probably, Europe, do not fall under the divine warrant.
>
> The promise was not to the land, but to Noah and his kin. Although
> there
> have been devastating floods all over the world since then,
> Bangladesh,
> China,
> India, Africa, in no instance have God's chosen been at ground zero.
>
>
> >By the way, will someone who knows a lot more about the history of
> >Mesopotamia than I please tell me the date of the last major flood
> on the
> >Euphrates and Tigris rivers? Then I can place an exact date on
> Noah. On
> >the basis of Dick's interpretation and God's promise, it has to be
> the
> >last one.
>
> The early dynastic period of Mesopotamian history dates from 2900 BC
> to
> 2370 BC and begins with the post-flood rulers at Kish. The flood
> layers at
> Kish, Shuruppak, Uruk (Erech), and Lagash were dated by
> archaeologists
> at approximately 2900 BC.
>
> If the Exodus was during the reign of Raamses II, dated by scholars
> at
> 1290 BC, if there are 615 years from Abraham to the Exodus using
> Ussher
> and Light foot's measure, if there are 1072 years between Abraham
> and the
> flood from the Septuagint, and if the flood lasted one year, then
> the
> year of the flood was 2978 BC. In the absence of data to the
> contrary,
> 2900 BC or thereabouts is my choice.
>
So I can write off all the people who went through the flood in Minnesota
a couple years back as non-Christian. I always suspected that bunch of
Lutherans were apostate. There were also no believers in the Carolinas
last year. Those Southern Baptists were suspect, but now there is proof.
The same must hold for those living along the Mississippi, Missouri and
Ohio rivers. The folks in Mozambique, despite the efforts of
missionaries, are also apostate. And it is not that there are few
Christians in China and Bangladesh, there are none. I recall reading of
some evangelicals in Central America who lost lives and property, while
others were able to help their neighbors. I can now tell the sheep from
the goats. This is most helpful.
On the second item, I did not ask for a calculation of the date of the
_last_ flood on the basis of an extrapolation from scriptural dates. One
date for a flood deposit at Ur may be about 2900 B.C. But, judging from
such references as come to hand, neither of the two flood deposits at
ancient Kish match the date of the Ur deposit. I asked for the historical
record of the last flood to have hit the Mesopotamian area.
Dave
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