Dick Fisher's "historical basis" remains no less doubtful

"Dick Fischer" <dickfischer@earthlink.net> writes:
> But if the historical Adam is seen in conjunction with the historical
>flood and the
>historical tower of Babel, then I think the totality of evidence is
>overwhelming. Genesis 2-11 does appear to have a historical basis.

ED: How you define the term, "historical basis," is what I was
questioning. Shared names in tales that appear in mythologies of one
small relatively homogeneous region of the world where culture was shared
a mere thousand years ago, does not prove that the Bible's versions of the
tales of Adam and Eve, Noah and Babel, are necessarily superior to (nor
any less doubtful and questionable "historically" than) the versions from
Egypt and Sumer which you cite.

I pointed out that entire pre-historic human villages have been dug up in
different parts of the world, including cultural artifacts and drawings of
a primitive female-centered and animal-centered sort and that such
pre-historical artifacts and items of concern all preceded the
civilizations of Egypt and Sumer by way over 10,000 years. If you go back
earlier still, there were the ice ages, mammoth hunters and cave painters.
  Such pre-historic discoveries have a definite "historical basis" but such
pre-historic peoples from round the world left no written language nor
pictures of "Adam and Eve" or "Seth" and the rest of the Biblical stories
that you focus upon. The stories of Adam and Eve and Seth that you rely
upon to help support your "historical" view of the Bible all appaer later,
far later. That is what "history/archeology" teaches us. It also took a
long long time before written language first appeared. Neither does the
Bible mention these vast ice ages and inter-glacial periods of
pre-historic man.

What do you mean by an "historical" "tower of Babel" incident? I believe
Paul Seely, another ASAer, was working on a paper on that topic, or had
one published in the Westminster Review not long ago. See also Walton's
NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY on Genesis, found at any major Evangelical
bookstore to read what he has to say about the Tower of Babel story.
There is no linguistic evidence that all of the world's languages began in
Babylon. The world's languages appear to have evolved naturally, just as
Old English grew to differ from Middle English and that grew to differ
from modern English. Or as Latin evolved into various European languages.
  The process of the evolution of language has been examined, especially so
since the written languages arose, and not found to require supernatural
initiative.
>
Received on Sat Nov 13 12:52:45 2004