Show me what you’re talking about here. I don’t know where you got any of that.
Except for the flood followed by a mass dispersion of the people of that region about a century later. Basically, all the parts archaeologically identifiable.
You dont build a boat to save your animals from a flood.
You herd them to high ground. The whole motivation is based on the fate of all humanity.
In the Sumerian version… was the flood only about SOME humanity?
What it indicates is that the Flood story is an awkward insertion into the Genesis narrative.
“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.”
Cush is generally considered to be Egypt. And of course it goes on to mention the Tigirs and Euphrates, but it’s the headwaters, not the mouth.
Now your turn. What is “a mass dispersion of the people of that region about a century later”?
You build a boat if that’s what you’re told to do. No mention of where to go to reach higher ground. Besides, I believe the point was isolation. You move to higher ground you’re not isolated. You float around in a boat and come down when the waters recede, you’re the only living thing for miles.
“It is associated with the last round of the Sahara pump theory, and probably initiated the most recent desiccation of the Sahara, as well as a five century period of colder climate in more northerly latitudes. It triggered human migration to the Nile, which eventually led to the emergence of the first complex, highly organized, state-level societies in the 4th millennium BC.” - 5.9 kiloyear event - EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki
Uh…
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And thats why you and i cant play together. You think it is reasonable for God to make Noah build a boat because of an impending REGIONAL flood. I do not.
You mean it triggered MORE migration, right? The Nile was populated quite early.
He’s breeding from his chosen stock. He has to isolate them to keep the bloodline from mixing with others. Right before the flood it’s talking about ‘sons of God’ having children with ‘daughters of humans’. This is part of the explanation for why the flood happened.
So, it is reasonable to make Noah build a boat. It accomplishes the isolation needed to do what needs to be done.
Yes, the Nile was populated, but now these civilization builders are moving in.
What does this have to do with the Fertile Crescent? Where did the people who migrated to the Nile come from? Certainly not Mesopotamia. Cherry-picking and distortion to fit.
Exactly. It makes no geographic sense. It’s a story.
Too wacky even for me…
Go ahead and pitch it to someone else.
You are quite the optimist… your scenario increasingly flies in the face of Genealogical Adam… and yet you think we are going to love it…
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I have my doubts that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of Genesis are the same rivers as those known by that name today. People groups migrate and often recycle the place names they take with them.
Euphrates, for example, was a word which described a river which was easy to ford.
" In the eastern Arabian Peninsula, the 5.9-kiloyear event may have contributed to an increase in relatively greater social complexity and have corresponded to an end of the local Ubaid period[8] and the emergence of the first state societies at the lower end of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Mesopotamia." - 5.9 kiloyear event - EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki
How so?
It’s also Greek. Note that you are carefully picking what words in the bible mean what they say and what mean something else, for the purpose of fitting your story.
Note that this has nothing to do with any migration of peoples; it also seems to deny that there were any cities before the date you set for the flood. Your story just doesn’t hold together if you actually look at it.
As happens so often, this discussion has departed from the original topic. The question at the top of the page concerns how “theologians” interpreted Genesis 4 (the story of Cain and his line). But the discussion has now almost completely dropped all reference to Genesis 4 and Cain, and is now about the Flood, location of post-Flood cities, location of rivers, etc., and it’s a discussion of reconstructions by historians and archaeologists (not theologians) of the ancient milieu to which the post-Flood stories refer. And that’s all right; that subject is interesting in itself. But the opinion of “theologians” no longer seems to interest either the original questioner, or anyone else.
My original input concerned what one could call a theological interpretation of the Cain story, from a modern scholar who is less interested in reconstructing the prehistory of the text than in interpreting the text as given. But since it’s clear that Jeremy is more interested in reconstructing the prehistory than in interpreting the text as given, I don’t know why he asked for the opinion of “theologians” at all, rather than the opinion of archaeologists, ancient historians, comparative philologists, etc. The theologian is primarily interested in the meaning of the text as given. That doesn’t mean the theologian can’t take into account history, philology, etc. – and most theologians do. But the theologian’s main interested in studying revealed literature is determining the meaning of the literature in the final form in which it has come down to us. That’s because the theologian works from an assumption that Jeremy denies, i.e., that the text as given (whatever complex historical factors may have gone into shaping it) is inspired and reliable. Once you decide that an ancient text is the product only of the sort of processes that produce merely human books, you don’t need the input of the “theologian” at all. Maybe of the “historian of religion,” but not of the theologian.
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5500-4000BC - Ubaid Period ← cities and stuff
4000 BC - Flood
3900 BC - 5.9 Kiloyear event
3800 BC - Beginning of Uruk Period - “the emergence of the first state societies at the lower end of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Mesopotamia”