RE: Being a human

Hi Randy, you wrote:
 
1) Our interpretation of the Bible must be based on something more than
"this is a possible interpretation that fits the scientific data."
 
There are very few of you, maybe none of you, who live near Washington,
DC as I do so you could jump on Metro rail and within thirty minutes
stroll past the metal detectors into the Library of Congress. And if
anyone else did, would they have been dedicated enough to make that trip
on almost a daily basis for two years to research this stuff? The LOC
is the world's greatest library and they have almost every book that was
published by the archaeologists and historians during the decades that
Mesopotamia was under excavation.
 
Okay, I was stupid. I could just have waited until now when much of it
is on the Internet. And it is (if you bother to look).
 
The reality is that the history of Genesis 2-11 is so connected with the
history of Sumer and Accad from 7,000 to 4,000 years ago that
Sumerologists have claimed that the Hebrews absolutely purloined Genesis
from the Sumerians. And if we hadn't been brainwashed by Christian
theologians who neglected this historical material for all these years
we might side with the Sumerologists now.
 
Genesis is absolutely loaded with commonalities between it and Accadian
and Sumerian literature. Then when we find layers of water-laid clay in
the principle cities correlated at 2900 BC it truly astounds me that
anybody could think the flood was anywhere else at any other time!
Recently, I found other authors who have traced the etymology from the
city Cain built, Enoch to Erech to Uruk to Iraq.
 
But I can't grab your noses and stick them into the material. You have
to do that for yourselves. (I can give you the URLs, however, if you're
interested.)
 
2) We need to be as diligent in providing a critique of local flood
hypotheses as we have been of global flood accounts.
 
I honest-to-goodness wish that Glenn had hit on this method of apology
and discovered the historical links to Genesis before he locked into his
ape/man retread idea and figured the Atlantic Ocean filling the
Mediterranean basin was a biblical match. Had my method been his method
he would have won the world over completely by now while I have been
spinning my wheels for ten years. Even though with all the historical
evidence I have placed before this forum that these very questions can
still be asked is bewildering to me.
 
Let me reiterate just one of dozens of commonalities between Genesis and
the Mesopotamian accounts. The term "fountains of the deep" appears in
both Genesis and Atrahasis. Does anybody ask where and when was the
flood of Atrahasis? When you read Sumerian literature you see
"fountains" all the time pertaining to their irrigation systems. And
the "deep" is any body of water. Even a canal is the "deep." You see
both those words frequently. So when it appears in Genesis ignorant
Bible expositors conjure up giant, oceanic, water-spewing volcanoes. I
sometimes wonder why it isn't called, "The Incredible King James
Version."
 
It seems that many people, like me, in a journey from YEC to OEC have
focused on the scientific and bibilical case against a global flood but
have spent little time investigating the scientific case for a local
flood.
 
Read ASAer Davis A. Young's book, The
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802807194/002-1370600-8716004?v=glanc
e&n=283155> Biblical Flood.
 
We've generally assumed that archeological evidence of local small-scale
flooding of the Mesopotamian rivers was sufficient to justify thinking
that a "whopper of a flood" occurred at some point that could correlate
with the Genesis account. If, as Glenn points out, there is not only
"...no evidence of a local flood [extensive enough to correlate with
Genesis]" but "...evidence of no local flood..." then we must make some
significant modification of the vast majority of the OEC books on the
flood.
 
Nobody is going to bother. Do Hugh Ross or Bob Newman modify their
methodology to accommodate the genetic evidence that points
overwhelmingly to mutual-shared common ancestry between man and
chimpanzee? No.
 
Remember, YECs need a global flood to sequence the fossil record. So
they are locked in cement. Old-earth guys believe we all descended from
Adam and Noah - somehow. A local flood at 2900 BC won't work for them
because the Chinese were scarfing down Won Ton soup while Noah was
pumping out the bilge. Oh, do you remember the "Ice Man" that washed
out of the Tyrolean Alps some years back? He was carrying copper tools
and he was dated to 5,300 years ago, that's earlier than Noah too.
 
At the very least, we must be as scrupulous about our analysis of
scientific and bibilical accounts for a local flood interpretation as we
insist there should be for a global flood perspective. Again, much
careful work needs to be done.
 
Knock yourselves out.
 
3) Glenn also rightly chides us for being too silent on the issue of
what it means to be human and our understanding of the Bible on that
topic.
 
We have enough trouble figuring out what it means to be Christian.
 
I think this issue is epitomized by the chapter that Dean Arnold,
Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College, wrote in "Not Just
Science", the recently published book edited by Dot Chappell and Dave
Clark. His chapter was titled "How Do Scientific Views on Human Origins
Relate to the Bible?"
 
Not at all as it turns out. Genesis is concerned about the history of
the Jews. It is their history. If we aren't Jewish (or Arab) the
history doesn't pertain to us. It's as simple as that. Theologically
it pertains to all of us since we become "sons of Abraham" through our
commitment to Christ. This gives us latitude to read Hebrew history,
but that doesn't mean their history becomes our history. My dumb old
ancestors were still chasing reindeer herds when Adam's kin were making
wine and brewing beer. I'm amazed we ever caught up. Come to think of
it the Germans more than caught up.
 
ASA's commitment to integrity in science means that we must work to
ensure that all scientific information in these fields is carefully
considered, and is not selectively ignored or dismissed without study or
thorough research. Let this note be an encouragement to any of you who
can, to (continue to) carry out research in these areas and publish the
work in our journal.
 
While we are on that subject, Carol Hill was kind enough to send me an
unpublished article on the Mesopotamian flood which she has permitted me
to share with any of you. This is not the same article which is due to
appear in June. If anybody wants it, send me a private email and I'll
send it to you.
 
Dick Fischer
~Dick Fischer~ Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org
 
Received on Tue Mar 21 00:42:28 2006