Dick,
Thanks for "butting in." I don't mind; I've always found your comments
interesting. I'm going to be out of the country for about a week and won't
have time to look at your response in any detail. However, I note that you
did not address Adam and his rib or Jonah and his whale/fish. Maybe we can
leave that to Howard, once he's back on his feet again.
Chuck
> ----------
> From: Dick Fischer[SMTP:dickfischer@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Thursday November 09, 2000 9:27 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: RE: Adam never met Eve
>
> 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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