Biblical Ornithology

Wrong. You are simply not accurate. Did you actually read the details? Honestly, I don’t see how you raised this as a credible rebuttal.

So you’re saying that the Egyptians and Chinese knew about the ostrich, then those cultures were completely wiped out, then descendents of Noah’s kids settled in Egypt and China and continued cultural traditions that existed prior to the flood?

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It should be obvious that the statement isn’t true. The human species, the one that does animal domestication, is only 300,000 years old at the very most, and the time they’re talking about is 100 times older than that. Or, to put it in your terms, that would be people raising ostriches during the Flood.

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AiG has already bailed on this, assigning ostriches to their own distinct kind. That means at least some other four other kinds, Rheidae (The Rhea kind), Casuariidae (The Cassowary kind), Dromaiidae (The Emu kind), and Apterygidae (The Kiwi kind), ratites also get their own berth on Noah’s ark.

An Initial Estimate of Avian Ark Kinds

Struthionidae (The Ostrich kind)

This family contains a single genus with two species…The only hybrid data are from crosses between the two species of ostrich…Since other ratites currently occupy different orders in the IOU classification scheme and there is no hybrid data linking these orders, the level of the kind will be considered the family/order for now.

There is no attempt to pigeon hole those impressive giant flightless birds which are extinct.

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Thanks. This is interesting as actually I was vaguely wondering if their kind at creation would have been different than their kind at the flood because of pre-flood divergence and evolution.

8 posts were split to a new topic: Evidence for the Flood

I guess I was a bit cranky. Sorry. The problem is that you’re using Wikipedia to address technical lingo in biblical studies, so it becomes a semantic problem. The phrase “historical narrative” has a narrow, specific meaning in my world. In this sense, “narrative” is limited to prose (allowing poetry to arise from time to time, but not be the dominant form/genre). In fact, this is exactly the argument YECs try to make with Genesis 1! They argue, since the text is prose and not poetry, we should read it as straightforward historical narrative. (From your angle, your fellow YECs must be wasting their time.)

Now, I agree that historical thinking can come through poetry, such as “historical psalms” (e.g., Psalms 78, 105, 106, 107, 114). The historical bent is obvious and can be matched by info in historical narratives. But the book of Job doesn’t have the same details, so its historical nature would need to be assessed by some other means. I’m not sure what evidence would suffice, however, since neither its genre nor details cause me to think in terms of historical precision.

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That’s OK. I was very cranky yesterday too. Ask my kids :slight_smile:

I was actually using my English undergraduate degree. I think genres aren’t always so straightforward. I agree poetry is not the dominant form. Narrative poetry surprised me when I came across it in classes. But it’s the most impressive genre in my mind - I imagine it would be very difficult to do well.

Yes, from my angle I actually don’t think claiming it’s prose is necessarily a good argument for it being a straightforward historical narrative. I’ve wondered if it could be a song or poem. I don’t know the original Hebrew obviously to determine that it’s prose.

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Indeed. It is a first year of seminary topic: the ancients weren’t as hung up as we are about distinguishing between direct and indirect discourse—and didn’t have modern quotation marks to help indicate the former.

Perhaps I can be of some help here. I’ve never tried to resolve this for certain in the academic literature but in a past academic life I got the impression—and until I collect abundant evidence and rigorously weigh it, that’s all it is—that Biblical scholars versus folklorists versus scholars of Early English Literature use terms like “narrative” and “historical narrative” a bit differently. Or perhaps there’s a difference between the WWII era scholars I studied under and today’s academics (regardless of field.) I don’t know. But when I read the afore-cited Wikipedia article, I thought it sounded like a English Literature professor and not a ANE [Ancient Near Eastern Languages & Cultures] scholar.

That said, my gut level reaction is to resonate with what @deuteroKJ wrote: a narrative (especially an “historical” narrative) is written in prose, not poetry—because people don’t usually speak (and write) in poetry in their daily lives, with the possible exception of the cartoonist linked below:

In any case, if I am following this disagreement between @thoughtful and @deuteroKJ accurately, I think I might recognize the basis of the clash in terminological terms, so to speak.

But that’s just me. (And I’m very sleep deprived at the moment.)

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Isn’t “hapax legomenon” a medical term used to describe injuries sustained due to stepping on sharp-corners children’s construction toys in the dark??? :foot: :pushpin: :warning: :no_entry: :ambulance: :skunk: :footprints: :face_with_head_bandage:

Dan, yes. It is a traditional Klingon curse uttered on such occasions. (The offending child who failed to put his toys away is thereafter required to fulfill three dangerous quests before requesting re-admission to the clan. It is sort of a junior version of the Labours of Hercules.)

Not many people know about that. (In any case, the practice is banned in all other Federation territories.)

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I had read this article on ancients use of cassowary eggs and remembered this thread with fondness - I really enjoyed this discussion and at one point had gotten all excited about my hypothesis of ancient people domesticating ratites and migrating with them.

This is not quite that :slightly_smiling_face: but I think is interesting nonetheless. So I’m plunking it here since the thread is still open and others find it interesting.

Cassowary burgers anyone?

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Interesting, but what does this have to do with the bible?

Where do you think Cassocks came from? :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I can assure you from personal observation that cassowaries do not wear socks.

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“If I were a cassowary on the plains of Timbuktu, I would eat a missionary, cassock, bands, and hymn-book too.” Attributed to Samuel Wilberforce, Anglican Bishop of Oxford (1805 – 1873).

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This was also a little known 4th verse to the popular “Talk to the Animals” song from the movie “Dr. Doolittle.”

It didn’t test well in focus groups so it was lost on the cutting-room floor.

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As this thread is already digressing just a bit, this brings to mind the time my father asked me to return a book to the Unity church library for him. The book was about how to deal with your physical body while achieving spiritual enlightenment, and there was a whole chapter on the genitals in which one was encouraged to tell one’s genitals that they will not be left behind in the quest for enlightenment.

So, a week later, when I stopped laughing, that song came to mind.

If I could talk to the genitals,
learn their languages,
prattle with a prick in prickasee,
if I could gossip with a gonad,
lip-sync with the labia,
what a neat achievement it would be!

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Deuteronomy 22

6 “If a bird’s nest happens to be before you along the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, with the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young; 7 you shall surely let the mother go, and take the young for yourself, that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days

:laughing:

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Biogeography note: there are no cassowaries in Mali, yet another example of the scientific inaccuracy of the church.

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