On Thu, 14 Sep 1995 08:02:09 -0500 you wrote:
BH>So we have some records going back to the popularly accepted time
>frame for the flood, and these records don't mention the flood, with the >exception of the Gilgamesh epic which might be just a fanciful legend,
>or might be a seriously corrupted account of an actual event which
>occurred long before the popular flood date.
As to the Gilgamesh Epic being "just a fanciful legend", Ramm points
out: "Believe that common oral tradition was handed down for 5,000
years so that the Babylonians received it, or what you will. The
parallels between Genesis and Babylonian materials is too close to
be sheer accident or verbal coincidence." (Journal of the American
Scientific Affiliation, VII, No. 4, December, 1955, p. 6, in Whitcomb
J.C., & Morris H.M., "The Genesis Flood", 1961, Baker, Grand Rapids
MI, p488)
>On the other hand, if the flood had occurred 5 million years ago, it's
>difficult to believe that we would know about it unless God had provided
>for us to know by telling Moses about it. Since the flood is a significant
>event in God's program for men, we need to know about it. Dating the flood
>when Glenn does eliminates conflicts with historical records, as well as
>explaining the genetic diversity of man, if you require that the flood had
>to wipe out all except eight humans.
But as Whitcomb & Morris point out, even 100,000 year-old Flood would
be a big problem for oral tradition (and there is no evidence of
writing then):
"The most serious limitation on the stretching of Genesis 11, in the
opinion of some scholars, is that which is imposed by the Flood
traditions of many nations, especially that of Babylon....remarkable
are the similarities between the Genesis account of the Flood and that
which is recorded in the Gilgamesh Epic...How could certain details of
the story of the great Flood have been more or less accurately handed
down from one primitive stone-age culture to another, purely by oral
tradition, for nearly 100,000 years, to be finally incorporated into
the Gilgamesh Epic? That such could have happened for four or five
thousand years is conceivable. That it could have happened over a
penod of nearly 100,000 years is quite inconceivable. The Gilgamesh
Epic alone, rightly considered, administers a fatal blow to the
concept of a 100,000 B.C. Flood." (Whitcomb & Morris, p488)
Glenn rightly considers the scientific evidence. But the Biblical
account of the Flood and the Mesopotamian flood traditions are
scientific evidence too! :-)
God bless.
Stephen
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