kfc posts:

Excellent logical question. The answer of course pointing to a world-wide Flood.

SoDaiho posts #836



AdVentureDude posts:

That's my understanding as well. Rainbows couldn't have existed becasue there was no rain before man was created according to Genesis 2:5-6. "And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth and every herb of the ground before it grew; for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth. 6 But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth. 7 and the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth; and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."


The rainbow was more than a symbol, it was a covenant of friendship between God and Noah that would be kept for all mankind, not just those in the local area of Mesopotamia.
Genesis 9:18-19 records that "the sons of Noah came out of the Ark and from these was all mankind spread over the whole earth." From this it must be accepted that all mankind perished from the Flood.

The Lord God then promised to that He would never destroy all mankind again by Flood and He gave a rainbow as a sign of His covenant.

"Thus also said God to Noe and to his sons with him. 9 Behold I will establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; 10 and with every living soul that is with you, as well as all the birds as in cattle and beasts of the earth, that are come forth out of the Ark, and in all the beasts of the earth. 11 I will establish my covenant with you and all flesh shall no more be destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth. 12 And God said: This is the sign of the covenant which I give between me and you, and to every living soul that is with you for perpetual generations. 13 I will set forth my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me and between the earth. 14 And when I shall cover the sky with clouds, my bow shall appear in the clouds. 15 And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh; and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and shall remember the everlasting covenant that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth. 17 And God said to Noe: This shall be the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh upon the earth. 18 ANd the sons of Noe came out of the Ark were Sem, Cham, and Japhethl and Cham is the father of Chanaan. 19 These three are the sons of Noe and from these was all mankind spread over the whole world."


SoDaiho posts:

I read somewhere that a rainbow can only be formed upon water droplets greater than .30 millimeters in clouds. That's why I question your saying that rainbows can occur from mist. It may well be though, I don't know. Did you notice this passage mentions clouds several times..and for good reason...If there were no clouds and no rain before the Flood, rainbows therefore could have only come into existence after the Flood.



Genesis 2:6 clearly explains how all the plants got watered.

I tend to believe the Genesis account that there was no rain as anywhere on earth until the Flood in the literal sense.

SODAIHO posts:

The Torah is God's Word, so every word of it is true and free from error. However, what those words mean and how they are to be understood is a completely different ball game.




Yes, Genesis 2:6 explains the gardens and fields grew without rain and the dinosaurs could have eaten the leaves from plants and obtained plenty of liquid that way, not to mention drink from the spring.



Says you! I wholehearedly disagree but don't want to turn this blog into an evolution thread.




It's the global Flood that caused all the fossils for what other explanation can account for the immense sedimentary strata which covers about 3/4 of the planet? What would possibly account for the fossil graveyards over all the world filled with millions of fossils of creatures trapped in sedimentary pits?

You would have us believe something like slow uniformatarian processes, with periodic volcanic eruiptions, etc. but that has been shown to have major conceptual problems becasue various strata are greatly out of assumed order, nor can it account for the fossilized jellyfish and polystrate tree trunks fossils which must have been entombed rapidly. Only a catastrophe of a global Flood can explain why immense beds of fossils are found in otherwise inexplicable places that all date from the same time and would have had to be caught up in an enormous deposition turmoil.

Leauki posts: 846

There are differing versions of the Gilgamesh mythology. In Genesis, Noah is rewarded with an everlasting covenant between God and his descendants, while one story has it that Urnapishtim and his associates receive personal immortality and another cites a goddess's necklace flung to the sky!



My history book states that the polytheistic Sumerians formed their city states about 3000BC in the Tigris Euphrates valley. They are known for having invented the first writing system on clay tablets called cuneiforms. One of their literary works was the epic poem Gilgamesh supposedly written about 2600BC. Ficew small fragments of the Gilgamesh tablet, which tells the tale of a man named Ur-Napishtim and the Babylonian story of the flood, was discovered in 1872. Since then more fragments have been found.

Ignoring the rainbow superstition...



Which is why we should read those stories carefully and find out how much if it can be true.

Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century decided that the legend of Troy probably had a true core and went on to find the city of Troy (although not the one of the story but one built on top of it) and later we found more evidence for the war and now we know it really happened (although with fewer gods than the Greeks claimed).

If we assume the Torah is true, which as believers we do, we have all reason to assume, like Schliemann, that the facts mentioned can be verified. Sometimes the text is misleading and we might read it literally when it's not meant literally (or vice versa, read it symbolically when it is meant literally), but at its core, it's true.

Obviously focusing on the current meaning of an English word that meant something else 500 years ago when it was the translation of a Latin word that almost meant what the Hebrew word meant is not the best way to find the truth.



Exactly. And the oldest copy of the Torah we have is from 300 BCE.

From reading the Hebrew text it _appears_ to _me_ that Genesis and Exodus were written about 1000 BCE. I deduce this from making assumptions on how much language changes and how the written word was employed. Genesis and Exodus are both written in much simpler language than later books and both use fewer letters for vowels. The accumulated differences suggest, to _me_, an approximate date of 1000 BCE.

Unless Genesis was a children's book in 300 BCE, I think it is safe to say that it is a bit older. But it can't be much older than 1000 BCE because it uses an abjad (a form of alphabet) rather than symbols for words or syllables. The text also appears to have been made up with the abjad in mind (there are word games that wouldn't have worked if the story wasn't originally written in the abjad).

So whatever (Sumerian) stories Genesis is based on, it was WRITTEN down, in Hebrew, 3000 years ago or later.

I agree. And would add that all the Books of Sacred Scripture are true since God is the principal Author. "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." 2Tim. 3:16; 2St.Peter 1:20-21.

Furthermore, since God is the Author, all the Sacred Books teach truth without error that God intends to reveal for the sake of our salvation. Truth is expressed in different literary forms, such as history, poetry, law, proverbs, songs, parables, and stories or descriptions of actual events that explain ultimate reality.



Genesis based upon Gilgamesh??? I don't think so.

LULA POSTS:

Leauki posts:





Becasue Gilgamesh is evidence of the Flood, not the other way around.

If my numbers are correct, God saved Noah and his family a couple thousand years before the Sumerian civilization of 3200 BC.

It doesn't matter when the Genesis account of the Flood was written. The Books were collected together around 550BC but so what? When they were written or that they were written after the Sumerian legend, while true, isn't the point...The Genesis account is God, through the hands of the various writers, in this case presumably Moses, telling us about the Flood and His account isn't based upon the Sumerian legend.

If we count the years of the world with Adam beginning with one, then Noah was saved in the year 1567 and the Sumerian civilization followed that by 2000 years.

It is absolutely the point. If we are trying to understand the Bible, it is super-important when the Bible was written and where the stories came from.

(Unless you follow a stop religion, of course. In that case you just decide that enough research has been done and accept whatever found at the point as the ultimate truth.)



And who told you that?




When do you put Adam and why?

If it was finished, rain must have existed already.

Unless He created rain after it was finished.

Leauki posts:

Last time, .....the Genesis account of the FLood is not based upon the Sumerian legend, Gilgamesh. I know this becasue a. God caused the Flood. and b. He described the account of it through the writers (presumably Moses) of Genesis. That's why we know it's true. c. the Flood occurred first, the Sumerian legend came afterwards. The Gilgamesh was only one of the many legends that were told based upon the reality of the Flood.

Pish tosh!

None of that proves that the flood story isn't based on a Sumerian legend.

You are assuming that a) G-d cannot cause a flood to happen to a Sumerian individual and G-d would never tell Moses a story the Sumerians already knew.

Both are implicit assumptions you make that you have refused to prove.

Fact is the flood story was already known before Moses wrote it down. Evidence for that is that Semitic legends of other tribes also tell of the flood story (and Noah) but not of the Exodus (the Mandaeans for example).

And that doesn't even address the fact that you _know_ nothing. Since you don't care to do more research (and are following a stop religion), you will never know. You _believe_ that G-d caused the flood. And you _believe_ (for some reason) that G-d sold the story exclusively to Moses, despite the fact that other peoples knew about the story as well.

Of course it was. I agree with this. Everyone knew. It was quite a story to tell after the fact. Can you imagine Noah's three sons, Ham, Shem (where the semitics came from) and Japeth saw when they first got out of that boat and what they told their children?

I don't know all the details (but can find out) my son was telling me there is some thought that Moses did not write all this down but it was passed to him and he compiled it all before his death and language is the reason why this is thought to be so. I just took for granted Moses wrote the first five books. He may have with written notes from some of those who were previous. Anyhow Moses is credited for the Torah and most likely was the one who either transcribed it all or put it all together with his own written words from his life on. But I wouldn't say it would be out of line to say written words were kept by those beforehand and heanded down to Moses.

BTW my dates for the Torah is about 1450-1410BC and if Adam say wrote down his version and it was passed to Moses, it would have been many years before this time. The 1450 BC would have been Moses' time. Job as the oldest book has no written date as to when it was written down.

Stop! These are not my assumptions.

You claim the Genesis account of the Flood is based upon the Sumerian legend, Gilgamesh. I say you are wrong and rely on the actual timetable of events for proof....First, God caused the Flood which was later described according to God's Word in Genesis. 2000 years or so after the Flood occurred, the Sumerians wrote a legend on tablets about the Flood of Noah but, lacking God's Revelation in Genesis(which hadn't been written yet)it contained some similiarities yet many differences.

Gilgamesh is a mythical legend about the actual Flood of Noah, and Genesis is a first hand account of the Flood.