RE: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

Hi Phil:

I’ve sent your message to Prof. Bruce Waltke who wrote the book on Hebrew
grammar. If he responds I’ll forward to the list. I do know some of the
answers but I’d rather use the input from a certified expert.

I’ll only say this about external evidence. If Adam lived at Eridu and
Eridu was dated by archaeologist at 4800 BC, and if the flood was at 2900 BC
that puts 1900 years between covered by ten generations. You can do that
math. After the flood, the ages dwindle down for each succeeding
generation. Any errors in numerology would foul that up. If the flood was
at 2900 BC and Abraham can be dated around 2000 BC, that puts 900 years
between and 90 years between generations. Long life required.

The names for Noah are Ziusudra in Sumerian and Utnapishtim in Akkadian,
both translate about the same: “he who found long life.” The reason
Gilgamesh sought him out was because it was thought he had the secret of
eternal life. In Jubilees, all the sons and grandsons and their families
remained with Noah until he died then they departed. That means Noah was
contemporary with at least three more generations after the flood.

The whole story of Abraham’s life was how he was 75 years old before he left
Mesopotamia and thought to be too old to have children so Sarah convinces
him to knock up an Egyptian lady, then years later he has Isaac, then blah,
blah, blah, and he dies at 175. The story makes no sense if he lived to
only 40 or 50 years which was normal for persons who lived during that time
frame.

Josephus recorded: “Now Moses says that this flood began on the
twenty-seventh day of the forementioned month; and was two thousand two
hundred and fifty-six years from Adam the first man; and the time is written
down in our sacred books, those who then lived having noted down, with great
accuracy, both the births and deaths of illustrious men.” Once again ten
generation divided into 2,256 requires long life spans.

Again Josephus: “I am borne out in what I have said by all those that have
written antiquities, both among the Greeks and Barbarians: for Manetho, who
wrote the Egyptian history, and Berosus, who compiled the Chaldean, and
Mochus and Hestiæus and Hieronymyus the Egyptian, who compiled the
Phoenician history, agree to what I here say. And Hesiod, Hecatæus,
Hellanicus and Acusilaus, and beside them, Ephorus and Nicolaus, relate that
the ancients lived a thousand years.”

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: philtill@aol.com [mailto:philtill@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 3:42 PM
To: dickfischer@verizon.net; david.clounch@gmail.com
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

It's not universally accepted that they had extra longevity. In fact, I
claim that there is no reliable data at all implying they had extra
longevity.

1. The ages given in the Patriarch list have the funny statistical feature
that they almost never use any numeral other than a 0, 2, 5, or 7 in the
one's place value. It is extremely unlikely to have happened by chance in
so many numbers. The only one (or two) exception(s) is where a subsequent
editor would have been motivated to change a 0 into a 9 to make the math add
up (2+7 = 0 would have been changed into a 9). The almost certain
implication is that the one's digit was not reporting years, but quarters.
I.e., 0 = no quarters, 2 = 2.5 tenths (one quarter), 5 = 5 tenths (2
quarters), and 7 = 7.5 tenths (3 quarters). This is one strong piece of
evidence that the ages of the patriarchs are simply a mis-translation from
some archaic number system.

2. The second piece of evidence is that the Masoretic MSS, Septuagint MSS,
and Samaritian Pentateuch have disagreements on these numbers, and not just
random disagreements: there is clear evidence of editing to make the
numbers internally consistent within each manscript family (especially as
pertains to ensuring everyone but Noah was dead prior to the flood). It
seems that one of the major problems faced by those editors was to make the
100's digits add up properly. Because the numbers were mis-translated from
some number system, they no longer added up properly in the base-10 system.
The editors who produced the Masoretic and Septuagint families of
manuscripts came up with two different solutions to this problem. The
Samaritan represents a hybrid solution to the mis-translations. Hence,
there tend to be a difference of 100 years in most of the ages when
comparing the different families of manuscripts. Note that editors would
have no motivation to change these numbers unless there actually was a
problem in the translation of the numerals.

3. The third piece of evidence, which really ought to give everyone some
pause, is that base-10 did not even exist at the time that the Patriarch
list would have been recorded. Therefore, we know for sure that the numbers
reported in the bible could not possibly be their original form. They
simply MUST have been translated from something else.

4. Put that together with the important point that nowhere in the Bible did
anybody refer to the Patriarchs as having unusually long ages. The Bible is
such a big book with such a long history that most things get referred to
again at some later time. But nobody either in antiquity or more recently
ever confirmed that the Patriarchs lived unusually long lives. Most
importantly, the author of Genesis himself failed to comment on their
lifespans, which is a notable omission. He seems to be oblivious to
anything out of the ordinary about them. This tells us that maybe when he
wrote it down, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about them.

5. Finally, we have evidence of exactly the same thing occurring in the
Sumerian King List. It was a compilation of the rules of kings in many
cities in Mesopotamia. Since in the period before Sexagesimal was
developed, every city-state used different number-systems, the compiler of
the SKL mis-translated the number systems of the various cities. What we
end up with is a list of kings in which every city and era has a different
average value and a different standard deviation. I compiled the data from
the SKL and computed the mean and deviation for each city, and you discover
exactly what you would expect if there were numeral-system mis-translations:
The mean value is exactly proportional to the standard deviation in each
city. Furthermore, when you plot the biblical Patriarchs onto the same
graph, the data point falls exactly on the same curve as all the cities of
the SKL. It's mean is proportional to its own deviation by the exact same
proportionality constant that we find in the SKL. This is significant
because in the SKL the mis-translation occurs over many orders of magnitude.
The Bible is within that same range, so it is not any different than the
types of numeral mistranslations that were occurring in the SKL from one
city to the next.

6. The apparent "tapering" of the ages after the Flood is really a series
of three stair-steps indicating three different number systems, again
exactly like we see in the SKL.

7. Finally, it is not biologically plausible that they could have lived
that long. There are too many things that would break in the body long
before 1000 years of age, and there is no biological evidence of radical
changes in our genome to support the massive changes that would have been
necessary.

Considering these things, it is not likely (or even plausible) that the
Patriarchs lived long life spans. On the other hand, we have very strong
evidence that the text is actually an ancient text handed down faithfully by
the Hebrews, with the one problem that they forgot the original number
system and then made the mistake of trying to translate it and edit it,
probably a few hundred years before Christ (to explain the branching of the
MSS). But this mis-translation was IMO a very good thing, because it
"locked into" the MSS the evidence of the antiquity of the text.

Phil Metzger

-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
To: 'David Clounch' <david.clounch@gmail.com>
Cc: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:17 am
Subject: RE: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

Hi David, you wrote:

It's also possible you meant that Adam and Eve both had mutations that set
them apart as the first truly modern humans. But along with this goes the
idea that they were special and their mental capabilities were distinct from
the pre-existing population.

The only thing we know from the biblical narratives in Genesis that was
truly special about Adam and Eve of a biological nature was longevity which
carried through multiple generations, even Abraham lived to 175. If Adam
was specially created that would be understandable. If he had natural
parents then a genetic mutation would be required somewhere either at that
generation or up the line at an earlier point.

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: <mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [
<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu?> mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Clounch
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:23 PM
To: David Campbell
Cc: <mailto:asa@calvin.edu> asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

I have a question.

> If you go back far enough, you should have a single ancestral pair for

> all modern humans.

1. Would that be true of all phyla that require sexual reproduction?

Another question:

2. Why is a pair of biological human bodies related to the origin of

a pair of human minds (souls)? I mean, don't some people believe that

the human physiology was a sufficient substrate to support the mind

(and/or soul) but that the actual infusion of the soul was a separate

event in history? I mean, could not there have been a large

pre-existent population of homo sapiens into which God breathed life

(where life here means not bio but zoe)?

I'm not saying I subscribe to the idea. But I vaguely remember

reading about it. On this list there has been discussion of the idea

that the human mind itself is actually supernatural, not of natural

origin at all. The idea that when you look at a human and it's

ability to recognize design - that you are looking at something that

originates not from nature or physics but from outside the universe -

well, I'm not saying I subscribe to this idea - in fact I object to

it. But it seems some ASA members believe this and if thats true then

I fail to see why they would not also accept the idea that human

evolution prepared a repository. A repository into which was at some

point in history deposited an intelligence from outside nature. And

this intelligence does not originate from the genes. It's sort of

like like pre-Adamic humans are analogous to a computer with no

operating system. If you download an O/S into them then you have a

computer system (or a pc). Until then you just have what it takes to

support a computer system. Humans as a pre-Adamic species could have

been like that. The idea seems consistent with thinking of humans as

 being supernatural beings.

> I think Adam and Eve as representatives out of an existing human

> population is the easiest way to reconcile Genesis and genetics, but

> it is not absolutely impossible to have a single pair ancestral to all

> humans if you go far enough back in time.

Ah, perhaps that answers my question. If one believes that humans

minds are a supernatural phenomena then one can certainly believe that

Adam and Eve are the pair that "got the download" and the rest of the

existing population did not.

But I am not sure this is what you meant. It's also possible you meant

that Adam and Eve both had mutations that set them apart as the first

truly modern humans. But along with this goes the idea that they were

special and their mental capabilities were distinct from the

pre-existing population. This theory would be congruent with a view

that human minds are of natural origin, and not supernatural at all.

  _____

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Received on Wed Feb 11 18:07:40 2009