RE: Archaeological problems with the Origins Solution

Glenn 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?

It's the tail wagging the dog. From all I can tell, the type of animal
sacrifice that was a covering for sin - the shed blood of an unblemished
animal - can not be found prior to about 7,000 BC which I believe to be the
time of Adam. So the time of Adam and the time of the beginning of animal
blood sacrifice do appear to coincide, which is what we should expect if
Adam was the first to use this method given him by God.

On the other hand, if you are trying to tie Adam and animal sacrifice
together in order to push him back into a time frame consistent with your
method of apology, you have your work cut out for you, and I don't think
Ainu suckling bears will do it.

But the sacrifice issue is only one point, and a minor one at that, in my
estimation. You didn't begin to address all the references in Genesis that
demand that Adam and Noah must belong to Neolithic times - livestock,
farming, tents, stringed musical instruments, articles of bronze and
iron. And some kind of semi-sophisticated tools would have been necessary
to build an ark. Tools not found in the stone age.

Then the very next event after the flood is the tower of Babel, descriptive
of a Mesopotamian ziggurat typical of those that began to crop up in those
cities along the Tigris and Euphrates, constructed no earlier than 3000
BC. Everything fits!

I don't see how the writer of Genesis could have been more specific. He
described the rivers adjacent to the garden of Eden. No cities existed
in Mesopotamia prior to 4800 BC. He mentioned lands that only existed at
the time in question, and described the surrounding culture. What more
could he have done?

Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Wed Feb 18 17:59:42 2004