RE: Adam never met Eve

From: Dick Fischer (dickfischer@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Nov 09 2000 - 22:43:25 EST

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    Chuck Vandergraaf wrote:

    >Lately, though. I've started to see myself as a penguin on an ice floe
    >heading north, towards the equator: I'm the penguin and the ice under my
    >feet is Word of God. As we obtain more and more information, more and more
    >of the OT turns out to be not what we were taught it to be. There was
    >apparently no "Adam" as he is portrayed in Genesis, and his missing rib
    >didn't turn into his spouse. There may not have been an Ark as we
    >understand it and Noah (or whoever he was) did not bring all the animals
    >with him. The book of Esther may have been little more than a "morale
    >booster" and Jonah may not have visited Nineveh.

    and:

    >Finally, how does this impact on the Sunday School curriculum? Do we still
    >tell the stories about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and let the kids
    >find out later that "it wasn't necessarily so," or do we tell them that
    >"it's only a story" so that they won't have to face disappointment later on?
    >
    >The ice floe is melting....

    Please pardon me for being Mr. Butinsky, as this was addressed to Howard,
    but I have been on this list for years now, and have argued until I turned
    blue upon occasion that all of Genesis 2-11 has historical
    integrity. Okay, set aside Adam and Noah for awhile. Let's look at some
    of Noah's progeny starting with his sons, Japheth, Ham and Shem.

    Genesis 10:2. Japheth had seven sons: "Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal,
    Meshech, and Tiras." Josephus attaches Magog to the Scythians on the Sea
    of Asof and the Caucasus. The Medes are derived from Madai. Javan is
    given credit for founding the Greeks. Herodotus placed descendants of
    Tubal on the east of Thermodon. Meshech relates to the Moschi "in the
    Moschian mountains between Iberia, Armenia, and Colchis." Tribal offshoots
    of Tiras have been associated with Thrace, Egypt, and Assyria.

    Genesis 10:3. Gomer had three sons: "Ashkenaz, Riphath, and
    Togarmah." Ashkenaz has been linked with some peoples in the area of
    Germany, and possibly with the Ascanians in upper Phrygia. Many who live
    in the eastern United States call themselves "Ashkenazi Jews." The
    Armenians can be traced to Togarmah.

    Genesis 10:4: The sons of Javan were "Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and
    Dodanim." Spain may have been the land of choice for the offshoots of
    Tarshish, although Tarsus in ancient Cilicia, birthplace of Paul, is
    Tarshish in Hebrew. Kittimites can be found in Cyprus, and possibly, on
    the shores at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Dodanim's
    descendants are connected with the north of Greece.

    Genesis 10:6. The sons of Ham are: "Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and
    Canaan." The descendants of Cush are identified with Eastern Mesopotamia,
    Arabia, Southern Asia, and Khuzistan in present-day Iran. Mizraim is
    Egypt. Even when Mizraim is mentioned later in the OT, translators put
    "Egyptians." The Canaanites took the southeastern shore of the
    Mediterranean Sea.

    In 1977, the Canaanite city of Ebla was brought to light at Tell Mardikh in
    Syria. Dating to the Chalcolithic period, Ebla appears to have been a
    major trading partner with Mari and Uruk. The clay tablets excavated from
    Ebla revealed a cuneiform style of writing similar to that found at
    Shuruppak and Abu Salabikh, dating to the same period.

    Genesis 10:8: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the
    earth."

    Genesis 10:10: Nimrod is called the "mighty hunter." "And the beginning
    of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of
    Shinar." All of these cities have been found and excavated except for
    Accad. Yet Accad is known from the written history of southern
    Mesopotamia. The exploits of Nimrod remain a mystery. No traces of Nimrod
    have yet been found in the annals of ancient history except for a city
    named Birs Nimrud.

    Genesis 10:11: "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh,
    and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah." A clay tablet was recovered in
    excavations at Khorsabad in 1933-34. It contains a list of Assyrian kings
    beginning with "17 kings who lived in tents," probably nomads. "Tudia"
    tops the list of kings followed by "Adamu," a likely namesake of his famous
    forefather. Farther down the list, the 38th king is "Puzar-Assur." He was
    one of many Assyrian kings named in honor of a more immediate forefather,
    Asshur of Genesis 10:11.

    Asshur began the Assyrian empire in the northeast corner of Upper
    Mesopotamia where the Tigris river runs from northwest to southeast. Here
    mounds of ruins can still be found today along both banks of the river.

    This is a quote from The Cambridge Ancient History: "The knowledge about
    some of the cities buried under these mounds was never lost. That the
    mound of Nimrud on the east bank, close to the point where the Greater Zab
    flows into the Tigris, was the town of Kalakh mentioned in Genesis 10:11
    was told by the natives to a British representative of the East India
    Company who explored the site in 1820. They even knew that the country to
    which this town had once belonged was named 'al-Assur'.

    Building cities, however, does not mean Asshur started from scratch on
    virgin soil. Although the excavations at the city of Asshur only hint at
    previous habitation, the underlying ruins beneath Nineveh revealed levels
    of occupation that preceded the arrival of the Assyrians by roughly 1,000
    years. The artifacts recovered at Nineveh were related to the pre-flood
    Ubaid or Halafian cultures, not to the Semite or Sumerian peoples.

    Pottery and artifacts dating to the pre-flood period at Nineveh is
    unmistakable evidence of a pre-existing populated site upon which Asshur
    could build an Assyrian city, but the testimony runs deeper then
    that. Cuneiform writing found at the site reveals the city already was
    called "Ninua" before Asshur arrived

    Mizraim and his sons are associated with Egypt. By no means does that
    signify they gave birth to the entire Egyptian populace. With the
    exception of the Philistines, who came from Casluhim with reinforcements
    from Caphtor, the rest of Mizraim's sons leave only sparse traces in
    various parts of Egypt. Pathrusim is associated with the island of Pathros
    where John was exiled.
     From Noah's grandson, Canaan, came Sidon and Heth, followed by the
    Jebusites, Amorites, Girgasites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites,
    Zemarites, and the Hamathites.

    Sidonians dwelt at the "northern borders of Canaan or Phoenicia." The
    Hittites are the sons of Heth, and initially occupied a stretch of land
    south of the Black Sea before they began their conquering ways. Jebusites
    inhabited Jerusalem. Amorites remained closely associated with the
    Canaanites, and ranged from "the mountains of Judah and beyond the Jordan
    in the time of Moses."

    The Arkites found their space in the south of Lebanon, also the home of
    choice for the Sinites, though no one seems to know exactly where. The
    Arvadites took up residence on a "small rocky island of Arados to the north
    of Tripolis." Zemerites were the "inhabitants of Simyra in
    Eleutherus." The town of Hamath, located about 115 miles north of
    Damascus, was founded by the Hamathites.

    Genesis 10:22: The children of Shem are: Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and
    Aram. From Lud came the Lydians who may have remained in the same general
    area as the Assyrians, though Bush places them in Ethiopia. The Aramaeans,
    founded by Aram, situated themselves in various parts of Syria and
    Mesopotamia, and from them the Chaldeans descended. The children of Aram -
    Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash - are all to be found in close proximity to the
    same area settled by their father. Joktan is considered to be the head of
    the primitive Arabian tribes; his sons can be traced largely to places and
    districts in Arabia.

    In short, the geneaologies in Genesis 10, confirmed by archaeology and
    ancient history, underscores the historical integrity of the biblical
    narrative. By the way, this is one of the reasons I find Glenn Morton's
    explanation so "out to lunch." How could grandsons and great grandsons,
    which are identifiable as living from about 3,000 years ago, be immediately
    related to a man (Noah) who presumably lived 5 million years ago?

    Start paddling that ice berg back south, Chuck.

    Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
    "The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."



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