Re; Fw Seely's Views

Dennis wrote,

> 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.
>

PHS: Assuming the Flood is c. 2900, there are no written documents from that
time to which Gen 1 could be compared. As you get into the 3rd millenium, the
writings are mostly Sumerian; and the flavor is quite different from Gen
1/Enuma elish which are both 2nd mill documents. Later documents, such as Enuma
elish and Gilgamesh are more advanced literarily than the earlier writings, but
have some roots in the earlier writings; so Gen 1 could also. However, there is
nothing really like it theologically either from the 3rd or the 2nd mill. and
it is certainly more sophisticated than anything from the 3rd mill. It would
be easier to believe that Gen 2-3 has earlier roots. If Gen 1 has roots from
the 3rd mill, I think they are very small.

DF:
> 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.

PHS: I looked over The Two Babylons this morning; and, in my opinion Hislop's
methodology is very weak. I am attaching some reviews of Hislop's book to you
(not the list); and although they are not by professional ancient Near
Eastern scholars; I think they are helpful. You could email a particular case to a
professor within an ancient Near Eastern studies dept of a university (e.g.
UCLA, U of AZ) and ask specifically.about some issue.

> DF: 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.
>

PHS: I was thinking about the ancient Near East. I don't think the other
texts and languages have been impacted as much; but, his philological analyses on
all the texts so far as I saw them do not seem to be scholarly. They seem to
be more like etymologizing, which is resorted to today only if no other way of
approaching the problem exists, and even then it is not trusted very far.

DF:
> 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?
>
> PHS: The attached is a fairly substantial response addressing some of the
> inaccuracies. Apparently Woodrow, cited in the response, has covered the same
> ground in a more sober fashion. I do not think any really well trained
> scholar will attempt such an enterprise because it is too large and too unlikely to
> bear fruit. i wish I could be more optimistic, but I just don't think The
> Two Babylons is a sound foundation to build upon.
Received on Fri Aug 27 21:03:49 2004