Answers from Jeanson: Revealing the Truth of Joseph’s Global Famine?

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

I may be the only person on this forum who has listened to the entire video series?

@swamidass

Furthermore, this interpretation would require that people from the entire earth would have been fed by Joseph’s storehouses of food. As such, even native North and South Americans and Australians must have also experienced this same seven-year famine and, minimally, representatives of each people group around the world would have traveled to Egypt to obtain food from Joseph.

Yes, and after listening to the presentations, I believe this is quite possible. It fits within the genetic data as presented, and I did my own research on global travel after I watched the presentations. Research is highlighted in my second argument here. Were the Ancients Aware of a Globe? (plus a little child psychology thrown in for fun)

I was disappointed very few engaged with it. My arguments were too good?

@swamidass

The same observation might be made of Paul’s statement in his letter to the Colossians, when he says that the gospel already had been ‘preached in all creation under heaven’ (Colossians 1:23). Was Paul intending his audience to understand that the gospel had been presented to the Native South Americans or Aboriginal Australians at this time?

Thank you for making me aware of this verse. It’s interesting because, again, after watching the presentations, but before reading this, I realized that the gospel had been spread everywhere in the world before Christ. I could “see” (very vaguely) where the “table of nations” tribes had kept the story faithfully.

For example, Jeanson did a section on Ashkenzi Jews and their main haplogroup J. Their legend is that they belong to a high priestly group. He pointed out a mainstream science article that thought the Ashkenzi Jews were perhaps the original Jewish lineage and that instead he believes J is likely a Turkish heritage. https://youtu.be/7tgzyWJzLfY

So what to do with the legend? I believe that it could be fairly simple to explain: As Ashkenaz is the firsborn of Japeth’s firstborn (Genesis 10:2 “The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 3 The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.”), Ashkenaz would have been the family’s priest-king. As Abrahamic Jews fled the Middle East in the B.C. era, they could have migrated to their faithful Yahweh-worshipping relatives who lived in Europe. The clan as a whole forgot who was who, and who came from who, they just knew they were faithful, priestly Jews. Group J is widely spread throughout Europe and the middle east because it’s such an ancient lineage, and a huge chunk of it survived as Turkish. I don’t think it’s a completely absurd hypothesis anyway.

I think we also forget that if the YEC timescale is correct, the flood happened around 2500 B.C. 2500 B.C. for someone in 40 A.D. would be like our knowledge of Alexander the Great. Those in 40 A.D. would have been much more familiar with what happened throughout the history of the globe in the preceding 2000 years than we are with those same years 2000-4000 years in the past.

The other place where the gospel spreading everywhere was highlighted in this video https://youtu.be/_Kj6KowXXtM at about 22 minutes The Delaware’s Red Record has a very striking creation/fall account that is too similar to Genesis to be independently imagined. He explains how this group migrated from Asia. I remember thinking that this group in Asia would have had the creation/fall story in the B.C. era because of the details of these haplogroups. I couldn’t tell you all the details now, and I’m not really interested in watching the videos again for a while. I’m just explaining my general impression is that the gospel had clearly reached Asia before Christ, and so, again, I think the answer to Duff’s question

@swamidass

Was Paul intending his audience to understand that the gospel had been presented to the Native South Americans or Aboriginal Australians at this time?

is yes. It had been presented in those areas of the world at some point as well.

Also, Duff asks various questions in the footnote of his article. Although I cannot speak for Jeanson, here are my impressions after watching the video series. These impressions are also my own views and so this could be my own bias as I watched the videos.

“It seems to be his starting assumption as he now explores how the evidence from creation and human history might be reinterpreted to fit the plain reading of the scriptures. Nevertheless, we should treat his proposals as provisional until he commits to this relatively novel interpretation of Genesis 41.”

Yes.

“Interestingly, one wonders if the physical evidence he seeks to confirm his provisional interpretation might influence his evaluation of the Genesis 41 passage?”

Possibly

“If he can’t find supporting physical evidence of a global famine during this time or clear evidence in genomics that point to people having come from the whole earth back to Egypt will he reconsider his interpretation of Genesis 41?”

He suggests that AIG colleague also believes this time frame was the end of an ice age, so would explain a famine. Jeanson also guesses the famine may have been the reason for the abandonment of Stonehenge and the completion of it later.

But my impression - possibly - although, the examples show right now he’s already quite certain of his interpretation of the text.

“Will Jeanson allow physical evidence to suggest problems with an interpretation of the text?”
Possibly. Interpretations can be flawed.