RE: Archaeological problems with the Origins Solution

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Dick Fischer
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 9:47 PM

Dick wrote:
>You have speculated or surmised or hypothesized that animal sacrifice goes
way back. But Adam's time frame isn't dependent >upon when they first
performed animal sacrifice. And I may be wrong, but I don't think bears are
indigenous to Iraq.

You have now presented 3 contradictory views on this issue now. First, You
make a big deal of animal sacrifice in your book I don't see a reason to
claim any significance to the lack of animal sacrifice in Catal Huyuk,
unless you think the first animal sacrifice is associated with Adam. In your
book you wrote:

"Presumably, any outsiders living at the time of Adam would have been
outside the old covenant, and unable to enjoy this unique status, which
included the hope of being claimed by God through (1) the Adamic bloodline,
(2) the discipline of self righteousness, and (3) the ritual of animal
sacrifice."
"The beginning sof God-awareness or seeking after God can be substantiated
in history by the evidence of religious relics and altars dating as far back
as 24,000 years ago, but there is no evidence that hte Creator manifested
Himself to any of these forerunners as He did to Adam.
  "Catal Huyuk in south-central Turkey was excavated in the 1960s. This city
was settled as far back as possibly 8300 B. C., but by about 5600 BC it was
abandoned. From analysis of the skeletal remains found there, a a French
expert concluded that two distinct racial types were represented, on
Eruopean, the other Asian. Although many shrines were unearthed at Catal
Huyuk, there were no signes of animal sacrifice."

   '...animal sacrifice apparently was not practiced inside the shrines, as
there is no evidence of a slaughering block or a
    catchment for the runoff of blood.'

   "If animal sacrifice was a covering for sin began with Adam and his
descendants after the Fall, then apparently Catal Huyuk was not populated by
Adamic or Semitic populations. Also, 5600 BC is far too soon for any Semites
and a little too soon for Adamites."~ Dick Fischer, The Origins Solution,
(Lima, Ohio: Fairway Press, 1996), p. 194

Secondly, in your note the other day, you claimed that it was the sacrifice
of domesticated animals, not wild animal sacrifice, which was important. YOu
had written:

> But biblical animal sacrifice has certain elements not proven or even
> suggested by your examples. First of all, domesticated animals were used
> for sacrifice.

Thiredly, your statement above, that 'Adam's time frame isn't dependent upon
when they first performed animal sacrifice' seems to go against all your
previous statements on the issue. Have you changed viewpoint?

And as to bears in Iraq, they were there, so your surmise is wrong, not that
it is relevant to our issue. see
http://www.iran-e-sabz.org/news/endangered.htm

Dick wrote;
>Skip to the flood for a minute, archaeologists found layers of "water-laid
clay" at five major cities in Mesopotamia. Four >flood accounts from that
region parallel the Genesis flood. The flood is mentioned in subsequent
writings, even in the
>Bible. Yet you can't figure out a suitable landing site, so you ignore an
abundance of evidence just to drive Noah back
>into a convenient spot that will fit your theory.

Irrelevant to the issue of when animal sacrifice began. Please stay on
topic and answer the question of which of the views you have presented over
the last 2 days is your present view. Do you believe that

Now, you do the same thing with Adam. These cave bears are red herrings.
Look at how you answer the next questions:

What is important about animal sacrifice? Its existence? It's existence for
domesticated animals? Or it doesn't matter.

I had written:
>>Irrelevant because animal sacrifice to unseen deities took place with
>>animals most assuredly raised in one's domestic home, long before 4500 BC

Dick replied:
>See. You can't answer the questions. No instruments of bronze and iron
have been found that date early enough to give you
>any support. So why did the Bible writer include all that information if
we just toss it all out because of an ancient bear
>cult? Adam and Noah belong to the Neolithic age. That's the only answer
that makes any sense.

You are changing the subject. Let's stick with animal sacrifice. What is
your view? What is the basis for your view?
Received on Tue Feb 17 06:53:20 2004