Glenn wrote:
>First, the abyssal Mediterranean was a plain. Second, not all understanding
>of the account can come from the Sumerians. Edin in Hebrew means pleasure.
>Which religion do you think is inspired--Sumerian or Hebrew?
That's a trick question. Hebrew is a language. Accadian is a language
pre-cursor
to Hebrew, indicating that those who spoke Accadian were pre-cursors to the
Israelites who spoke Hebrew. "Edin" means plain, prairie or desert in both
the
Sumerian and Accadian languages. I don't know the evolution of the word edin
down through the centuries, although Eridu appears to be the root of our word
"arid" which pertains to a desert.
>It is no more odd for the Tigris and Euphrates several million years ago to
>have flowed at 90 degrees to their present courses than it was for the Nile
>to have done so (it did you know) or for the Colorado River of the Grand
>Canyon several million years ago to have flowed straight west and emptied
>along the California coast rather than Baja as it does now. Consider this:
>
> "Upper Paleocene to Middle Miocene fluvial-deltaic rocks in the Los
>Angeles and Ventura basins were deposited by a Colorado paleoriver prior to
>300 km of dextral displacement on the San Andreas fault. During the late
>Miocene, movement on the fault and associated rifting in the Salton trough
>rerouted the paleoriver into the proto-Gulf of California." ~ Jeffrey L.
>Howard, "Paleocene to Holocene Paleodeltas of Ancestral Colorado River
>Offset by the San Andreas Fault System, Southern California," Geology,
>24:9(Sept. 1996):783-786, p. 783
>
> And the Yellow River in the last 1000 years has altered its course to have
>emptied south of Shan Dong Province and then back into the Bohai Bay.
>Consider this for the Yellow River.
>
> "In the last 3,500 years, there have been 26 significant changes in
the
>Yellow River's course. BEtween 602 B.C.--the year of the first recorded
>course change--and 1288, the river eptied into the sea between Tientsin and
>the Shantung peninsula, although in osme floods the stream split into two
>channels one on each side of the peninsula. Throughout those 19 centuries,
>the location of its mouth varied by only about 100 miles. THen in 1288, ag
>reat flood sent the Yellow charging across country, First it emptied into
>the Huai, nearly 200 miles to the southeast, then carved a channel across
>to the Yangtze and wound up emptying into the East China Sea almost 600
>miles south of its original porition."
> "During the next 567 years--a period of improvement in civil
engineering
>and of more or less stable government--the Chinese managed to keep a
>relatively tight rein on their wild river. But in 1855, the Yellow tore
>open the dike on its left bank at Tungwa Hsiang, about 30 miles east of
>Kaifeng. During the next six years, while engineers tried repeatedly to
>repair the shattered dikes, the uncontrolled river wandered northeastward
>to the sea in many channels. Finally, in 1961, the river settled into its
>present channel about 500 miles to the north of its 1288 course, emptying
>into the Po Sea instead of the Yellow Sea." Champ Clark, _Flood_ Time Life
>Books, 1982, p. 42
Here is a good example where two people who only wish to glorify God, who
give full weight to relevant data and evidence, and are dedicated to honest
reporting,
can view the same data and reach opposite conclusions. I have flown over the
Mississippi river near New Orleans and have seen hundreds of water filled
horseshoe-
shaped lakes that were once channels of the mighty Mississippi as it changed
course over millions of years. Glenn's point is that river courses can be
altered over
eons of geologic upheavals. He concludes that since we know of some rivers
that
have changed course, the Tigris and Euphrates also could have flowed in a
different
direction.
But rivers leave tracks. We know rivers such as the Nile, Colorado, Yellow
and
Mississippi rivers have changed course because they left trails of water-worn
pebbles, mud, mineral and salt deposits, and fossils of riverine creatures.
And they
carve out channels. Had the Tigris and Euphrates once flowed west instead of
east and south as they do today, we could see the evidence of that. There is
none.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe it is only reasonable to
assume
that they flowed in Bible times in the same general direction as they flow
today,
and joined then where they do today just before emptying into the Persian
Gulf.
>Dick, you really need to incorporate more geology into your objections.
You're not saying that because you are a geologist, are you Glenn?
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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