On Sat, 23 Sep 1995 12:51:09 -0400 Glenn wrote:
[...]
GM>On this Stephen, you and I can agree: It is what seems reasonable
>in light of the Biblical and scientific evidence. My problem is that
>if we are allowed to stretch the genealogies at all, the question
>then becomes not SHOULD we stretch them, but how much MUST they be
>stretched to fit the data.
Agreed. I maintain that stretching them 5.5 MY is more than they
"must... be stretched to fit the data".
GM>If we hold to your view that man must be less than 230,000 years (I
>get this from your tentative acceptance of Neanderthal humanity),
>then you have a non-human animal carving statues of the naked female
>form 100,000 years before Adam (or the Neanderthal). This does not
>seem like an animal activity.
Glenn thinks there is only two alternatives - full humanity or
non-human animal. I suggest there is a third - an emerging humanity
that is suggested in Gn 1 man. If we accept that the days of Gn 1 are
long periods of time and that the plants and animals in Gn 1 are broad
categories, rather than individuals, why do we read man in Gn 1 as an
individual?
The Neanderthals and the carver of Glenn's statue, would therefore
belong to this emerging category of humanity, that had not yet reached
the full humanity in Gn 2.
GM>I choose to stretch the genealogy enough to accomodate this fact,
>the fact that fossil man was not a vegetarian (which Biblically means he is
>post flood)
I disagree with Glenn's interpretation that non-vegetarian man was
necessarily post-Flood. The Biblical evidence is ambiguous: 1. there
is no actual prohibition against eating meat; 2. Abel kept flocks (Gn
4:2ff); and 3. Paul indicates the human stomach is designed for eating
meat (1Cor 6:13); and 4. vegetarianism is frowned upon (1Tim 4:3).
GM>as well as to give a location for the flood which can fit
>EXACTLY the description the Bible gives of the pre-flood world.
I also disagree that Glenn's Mediterranean location of the Flood fits
the Biblical description. The Bible indicates the Flood was in
Mesopotamia:
1. The ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat (Gn 8:4), ie. the
land of Urartu to the north of Babylonia.
2. The immediate post-Flood world has Mesopotamian place names, eg.
"Babel" (Gn 10:10; 11:9), "the land of Shinar" (Gn 10:10; 11:2); and
"Nineveh" (Gn 10:11-12).
3. The Flood stories that are most similar to the Biblical Flood story
are Mesopotamian, eg. "Sumerian" ; "Babylonian"; "Akkadian" (Thompson
J. A., "The Bible and Archaeology", Third Edition, Eerdmans: Grand
Rapids, 1982, p15).
God bless.
Stephen
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