>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)
My main rationale for my statement above was based on the description of
the ark in the Gilgamesh epic. It was top heavy and would have turned
turtle in the turbulence likely in the flood described in Genesis. Perhaps
I jumped to conclusions. In any case I believe Morris pointed this aspect
out in one of his books.
>
>>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)
GOTCHA! _Why_ do you assume the flood account was passed down as oral and
eventually written tradition? Possibly some of what Moses wrote in the
Pentateuch was from historical records. I'm not denying it. But what's
wrong with God simply _telling_ Moses about events that were too ancient to
appear in the Hebrew historical records, or correcting errors that had
crept in with time. Or don't Whitcomb and Morris believe that God _could_
really speak to Moses?
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)
hamilton@gmr.com