Fw: Seely's Views

From: PASAlist@aol.com

First, I should say that I might need to back out of pursuing these questions (or start a new thread) because my inquiry pulls the thread discussion too far from its topic.

< This really opens up a lot of questions. The biblical account of the times after Noah is based on the belief that the flood destroyed all human beings except the eight on the ark. Are you following that scenario?

No.

< The more modern account of a flood c. 2900 is about a flood of the Tigris and Euphrates that did not destroy all humans even all of them in Mesopotamia. Are you following that scenario?

Yes, more so, though I do not know to what extent Mesopotamian civilization was impacted by the flood. Consequently, I don't know the extent Noah's decendents would have impacted post-flood culture.

< Also, the original discussion was about Genesis 1. Are you assuming that Noah had an account like that in Genesis 1? Or, are you now talking about (or adding) the Flood account?

I am assuming Noah had a Gen 1 type account, for it would have most likely been through him that the earlier knowledge of God would have been passed.

< Also you say "the knowledge of God" passed down through Noah would have been known by the early Babylonians. I don't see any monotheism or mention of Jehovah anywhere in Babylonian literature. Did you mean something else?

Hislop describes how the biblical knowledge is carried within the babyloian-pagan mythology. Paganism appears to carry it in a corrupted and occulted form.

< The "rules" followed in Gen 10 which tell who descended from whom are not always simple literal father-son physical descent. They include political associations and other combinations. A descendant of Ham is said to have founded Babylon; but a direct son is Egypt (Mizraim), which has very different stories of creation and very little if anything to say about a flood.

Yes, huge pieces of the story are missing. According to Hislop, Nimrod founded Babylon and as a descendent of Ham was from Put or Ethiopia (as I recall), a country adjacent to Egypt.

<<I am interested as one who has recently read The Two Babylons for the first time what is not dependable about it. I am aware that details of the ancient world, such as the various Semitic language groups, were not known to Hislop in the 1860s, but that would not be critical to his philological tracing of pagan mythology from Babylon in its various strands throughout the word to our time. It must be something else ...>>

< I am not saying there is nothing true in Hislop; but, he had a bias and our knowledge of the languages and cultures is so much greater today that it is inevitable that he makes errors. I would say Hislop's book is like White's the Warfare of Science with Theology. It may have lots of good information, but you never know when something he says is going to be inaccurate. I guess you could say that of any book, but with Hislop and White, there are too many places they are not dependable. If you really want to use Hislop, check with a modern scholar on each issue before believing what he says.

Hislop's arguments are based almost entirely on philological analysis of ancient and medieval documents and do not depend much upon archaeology. To my knowledge (and I am no expert in this area!), the ancient texts available today are not much more than Hislop draws from: Berosus, Herodotus, Homer, Egyptian stele inscriptions, Virgil, etc.

Without belaboring this side-trip in the thread, may I ask two questions, since Hislop made an impact upon me:

1. Do you know of any substantial responses to The Two Babylons that address inaccuracies? I have not found much that is substantial on the Web (my only info source here in the jungle).

2. Do you know of any contemporary scholars that cover the ground Hislop does, except with the current database to draw from?

Thanks, Paul (or others who might know).

Dennis Feucht
Received on Fri Aug 27 14:17:26 2004