Glenn,
do you really think your god would punish a YEC who was converted to atheism via your arguments?
Roy, I am not one who believes in SantaGod, who is there to give us our every wish and justify our every wrong. I did a parody of me finding out I was wrong in my theology and that universalism and accommodationalism is correct. You might go see what I think are the consequences of such views. There is no justice in the world. I donât want this thread to be hijacked by a discussion of my theology, so if you donât like what I say, start a new thread and I will find it, but let me know it started. You can find my parody here.
For clarity, I said I would pay for my sins. I didnât say anything about the YEC. I am not God and at the end of my life, I know good and well what my place is in this universeânot very high, either in the eyes of man nor of God.
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@grmorton that is high praise from @davidson. Have you read the GAE yet? I wonder if this will help you in how you engage with YECs in the future, when you are pushed into that corner.
I read your article in the PSCF. Mostly the YECs push me on geology which is where my expertise is. Having been a former iconoclastic YEC (still iconoclastic), my guess is that the genealogical view wonât attract them because since they believe the earth is 7-12,000 years old, then a biological Adam and Eve work for them in the same way that genealogical Adam works for you. In the YEC case of a 7-12,000 year old universe, genealogical and biological Adam and Eve merge into one single viewpoint. So, I donât know how that would help me in that corner. Sorry
Religion among archaic hominids. Neanderthals part 1
By Glenn R. Morton March 2020âŚ
I have long advocated for a very old Adam, older than any other writer so far as I can determine. The reason for this is that there is much evidence of religion, among the Neanderthals. Religion equates to evidence of spirituality-even a false religion shows spirituality exists. In this post, we will look at evidence of religion among the Neanderthals. After this post, I will show the evidence for religion among H. erectus Soon we will look at brain size and the curses given to Adam and Eve. We will also cover evidence of language among the erectines. Religion requires language. Then we will look at activities that would appear to require language. Religion requires words to describe concepts about abstract and symbolic objects like God., Then we will look at the genetics problem for Adam and how far back we must place an individual Adam and Eve. We then look at the problem faced by paleontology and its relation to when the earliest hominid or erectus lived and the implications for how far back Adam and Eve might live. (disclosure, some of this comes from old web pages of mine). And after we finish looking at when Adam lived, but this anthropological work must come first or the reader wonât see why what I suggest is necessary to match the data both of science and of the Scripture.
How do we determine some prehistoric group was religious? The straightforward answer to that question is that they do things we do. The oldest temple in the world dates to 9000 BC, 11,000 years ago, long before civilization arose. It is Gobekli Tepi where stone age people built a beautiful circular temple with dazzling carvings.1 This is like some of our temples. Thus we infer religiosity to the people in Gobekli Tepi. Some prehistoric societies made female figurines, and today some religions do that as well, as part of their religious observance. We recognize spirituality by animal and human sacrifice, and behaviors similar to varied religious practices of historical people.
Worshipping Bears: Religion Among the Neanderthals
It is a given that all humans alive today are capable of engaging in religion even though some chose not to. It does appear that even the majority of atheists and agnostics believe in something supernatural or irrational. âThe UK-based Understanding Unbelief project interviewed thousands of self-identified atheists and agnostics from six countries â Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, US and UK. It found that despite their godlessness, a majority believe in at least one supernatural phenomenon or entity.â
" Among atheists in the UK, for example, about 12 per cent believe in reincarnation and nearly 20 per cent life after death. All told, 71 per cent of atheists hold one or more such beliefs; for agnostics the figure is 92 per cent. Atheists and agnostics comprise about 37 per cent of the UK population, so when combined with religious people, that means a large majority of the general population believe in the supernatural ."2
Because religion is widespread in the world and almost no one will deny it to modern H. sapiens , we will not review the abundance of evidence for religion among early modern humans but will go immediately to religion among the Neanderthals. The reason for this is that modern humans and Neanderthals split into two subpopulations about 800,000 to a million years ago. If both groups can engage in religion, then it implies that their common ancestor that long ago could also engage in religion. Unless of course, one believes in two Adams, one Neanderthal and one sapiens. Since I have never heard anyone suggest two Adams, I think we can rule that out.
I must start with a brief description of the circumpolar bear cult that modern humans engaged in.
" Using the Ainu of Japan as an example, the process usually takes about 2 years. After hunters capture a bear cub, the cub is raised by the village for about a year and a half. Some writers have observed Ainu women nursing baby bears while listening to missionaries speaking. The bear is beloved in the village and becomes a member of the village. Just before the Ainu move to their summer settlement they sacrifice the bear, descriptions of the ceremony apparently varied from village to village. Here is one description. "
" Among the Sakhalin Ainu, after the bear is taken out of the bear house it is killed with two pointed arrows (fig. 33.4), whereas the Hokkaido Ainu use blunt arrows (heper-ay) before critically wounding the bear with pointed arrows; they then strangle the bear between two logs. Male elders skin and dress the bear, which is then placed in front of the altar (nusa) where treasures are hung (fig. 33.5). After preliminary feasting outside at the altar, the Ainu bring the dissected bear into the house through the sacred window and continue their feast. Among the Hokkaido Ainu, the ceremony ends when the skull of the bear is placed on the nusa outside the house on a pole decorated with naw; the elder recites a farewell prayer while shooting an arrow toward the eastern sky, an act that signifies the departure of the deity. The Sakhalin Ainu take the bear skull, dressed in ritual wood shavings, and the bones, eyes, and penis (if a male) to a sacred pile in the mountains. They also sacrifice two carefully chosen dogs, which are considered to be servant-messengers to the bear deities. (For the Hokkaido Ainu bear ceremony, see Munroâs film and Kitagawa [19611 for Sakhalin, see Pilsudski [1915] and Ohnuki-Tterney [1974: 90-97])".
"Although often mistaken as cruel by outsiders, the bear ceremony is a ritual whereby the Ainu express their utmost respect to their deity, and its paramount significance is a sacred act. For the Sakhalin Ainui, the bear is not important as a food source: like other hunting societies that do not regularly eat their most prestigious big game-the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert, for instance, do not regularly eat giraffe Ainu rarely eat bear meat, and the bear ceremony is held only once a year, if that. Even so, Ainu men and women find bear meat exquisite, unparalleled by any other food. "3
Ivar Lissner has a picture in his book of another way the bear was killed.4
Lissner described the Ainu beliefs. After the ritual slaying of the bear, many tribes collected the skulls of sacrificed bears and stacked them neatly in piles or neatly hung them in trees. When a bear is stripped of his hide, he looks similar to a man, so to the Ainu and maybe other bear cult tribes, the bear is a man masquerading as a bear and thus is an intermediary between them and heaven. When the bear is killed, the men eat the meat raw and drink the blood[GRM: shades of the Lords supper] and then his blood is used to anoint the hunters for the purpose of giving them success in hunting. It is believed that the bearâs spirit becomes a guardian for the tribe. The Ainu use the same word for the bearâs guardian spirit as they do for the North Star, so it seems that the association of the constellation of the little bear with the Pole Star goes far back in time.
But what of the Neanderthals? There are implications of religious beliefs held by Neanderthals in the collections of bear skulls found in their caves. The mere preservation of skulls need not suggest anything religious, but in some cases special attention was given to their placement, as was noted with some Siberian tribes. In one Neanderthal cave, five bear skulls were found in niches in the cave wall. The skulls of several cave bears in a group have been found surrounded by built-up stone walls, with some skulls having little stones placed around them, while others were set out on slabs.
" All this suggests some kind of bear cult, like that practiced until quite recently by the Chippewa and other North American Indians. After a Chippewa hunter had killed a bear, he would cut off the head, which was then decorated with beads and ribbons (in the period after contact with Europeans). Some tobacco was placed before its nose. The hunter would then make a little speech, apologizing to the bear for having had to kill it. Bear skulls were preserved and hung up on trees so that dogs and wolves could not get at them. Bear ceremonialism of this and related kinds had a wide circumpolar distributionâfrom the Great Lakes to the Ainu of northern Japan through various Siberian tribes, such as the Ostyaks and the Orochi, to the Finns and Lapps of Scandinavia. So wide a distribution of this trait, associated as it was with other apparently very early circumpolar traits, suggests great age. It is possible, therefore, that some aspects of this bear ceremonialism go back to Middle Paleolithic times. " 5
Middle Paleolithic times are Neanderthal times. Since we find similar things among the Neanderthals, we might very well be dealing with an 175,000 year old religion! Here is more data.
" All Mousterian burials are associated with living floors, except Regourdou, where the burial was placed in a sort of bear sanctuary in Layer IV, which was very elaborately constructed but showed no traces of regular habitation." 6
An amazing statement. What is the evidence for this sanctuary?
" Ten years earlier, another French archaeologist discovered at the 80,000-year-old site of Regourdou what seemed to have been the scene of a bear cult. The carefully arranged bones of a brown bear had been placed in a stone-lined pit, along with the skeleton of a young adult Neandertal. " 7
Regourdou is compared with Drachenloch. Campbell and Loy write:
" The most famous example of what has been claimed to be Neandertal Hunting magic is the so-called bear cult. It came to light when a German archaeologist, Emil Bachler, excavated the cave of Drachenloch between 1917 and 1923. Located 8,000 ft (2,400 m) up in the Swiss Alps, this âlair of the dragonsâ tunnels deep into a mountainside. The front part of the cave, Bachlerâs work made clear, served as an occasional dwelling place for Neandertals. Farther back, Bachler found a cubical chest made of stones and measuring approximately 3.25 ft (1 m) on a side. The top of the chest was covered by a massive slab of stone. Inside were seven bear skulls, all apparently arranged with their muzzles facing the cave entrance. Still deeper in the cave were six bear skulls, seemingly set in niches along the walls. The Drachenloch find is not unique. At Regourdou in southern France, a rectangular pit, covered by a flat stone weighing nearly a ton, held the bones of more than 20 bears. "8
At Wildenmannlisloch we have a possible ceremonial figure, the Pseudo-Venus.
" How for instance can we to explain the discovery, in a carefully protected niche in one of the chambers of the Wildenmannlisloch, of a small figure resembling a female sculpture? Made out of the lower jaw of a cave bear, it may be either an artifact or a freak of nature. One thing is certain: the flattened planes of its âheadâ were rubbed smooth by some human agency; perhaps, as Emil Bachler suggests, because the bone was originally used as an instrument for smoothing animal skins. This may be the reason why certain portions of the so-called âpseudo-Venusâ appear to have been polished. Bachler is of the opinion that the figure came into being accidentally, as a result of continual friction due to use, not as a deliberate attempt to reproduce the shape of the human head. I have examined the figure closely. The closed eyes, delicate mouth, small forehead, slim neck and back all convey an impression of careful workmanship. A second âVenusâ discovered in the same hiding place has smooth patches but no recognizable head. âEven if the pseudo-Venus was not actually made by Stone-Age man, the cave dweller must have noticed its resemblance to the figure of a girl. Why else would he have put it to one side and preserved it so carefully? The prehistorian Friedrich Behn in his book Vorgeschichte Europas, asserts that the people of the Neanderthalian race were lacking in any form of artistic impulse. The celebrated Venus statuettes of the Stone Age belong to the Aurignacian, a far later period. The pseudo-Venus may, therefore, be unique in its period, the earliest portrayal of the human figure known to have been made, or at least recognized as such, by man. It is probably the most remarkable evidence of prehistoric activity or comprehension in the world. Between four and five inches tall the Venus was found on October 21, 1926, and reposes today in the Heimatmuseum at Saint Gallen, a Paleolithic Sleeping Beauty waiting to rejoice the eye of the occasional visitor.â 9
As an aside, today the Neanderthals are believed to have engaged in cave painting 64,000 years ago, and there may be a second Neanderthal paintingâpeople didnât want the initial results checked! (Kerr Than, National Geographic News, June 14, 2012) Link removed Cause I need my allowed 2 links elsewhere.
and
" Pike is an affable guy with enough hair for four people. Heâs been collaborating with Zilhao and Dirk Hoffmann of the Max Planck Institute since 2005. Unfortunately, governmental agencies wonât always collaborate with them. Six years ago, they were enlisted by archaeologist Michel Lorblanchet to date a series of red cave blotches in south-central France. Based on stylistic comparisons, Gallic researchers had estimated the art to be from 25,000 to 35,000 years ago, a period seemingly brimming with sapiens. The preliminary results from Pike â s U-Th dating gave a very early minimum age of 74,000 years ago, meaning the premature Matisses likely could have been Neanderthals."
Franz Lidz,âWHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT NEANDERTHALS?â National Geographic Magazine, May 2019.
When Pikeâs team asked permission to return to the site for verification, the French authorities issued a regulation that banned sampling of calcite for uranium-series dating. Outraged, Zilhao hasnât set foot in France since. âIt seems that most of our critics are French scholars,â muses Pike. âThey really donât like the fact that Neanderthals painted.â" Franz Lidz,âWHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT NEANDERTHALS?â National Geographic Magazine, May 2019.
The pseudovenus is reminiscent of what some Siberian tribes do today. "The strange little wooden figures which the Orochi and Manega carve on trees or occasionally display on wooden altars are effigies of a forest spirit whom they call Bainaca ."10
At Salzenhole and Petershohle we have:
" In the Salzofenhohle, more than six thousand feet up in the Totes Gebirge not far from Aussee in Austria, the paleontologist and paleobiologist Kurt Ehrenberg found three cave bearsâ skulls which had been accurately ringed with stones. In all three cases, charcoal remains were discovered beside or beneath the skulls. In Petershohle, bearsâ skulls had been carefully deposited in small holes and niches. In a cupboard-like recess in the rock wall, four feet above the floor of the cave, five skulls, two femurs and a humerus were found all belonging to cave bears. The skulls fell to pieces in the diggersâ hands during removal. The man responsible for exploring the Petershohle, K. Hormann, declared: âThese skeletal remains could not have got up there or in there by any natural means.â It seems probable therefore that they were a conscious committal to eternity and a deliberate sacrifice, not a fortuitous act but a calculated gesture toward an exalted and timeless power. "11
It is quite likely that Neanderthals engaged in a religion similar to that of the Chippewa, the Finns, the Ainu and other circum-polar people today. We may actually have an example of a religion with an age of more than 176,000 years.
Again, if both Neanderthals and modern humans engaged in religion, AND, they diverged from each other between 880,000-1,000,000 years ago, it would imply that the common ancestor also could engage in religion. Because of this, if religion is a mark of Adam and Eveâs descendants, then Adam and Eve must be earlier than thatâmuch earlier than anatomically modern humans.
References
1 . Klaus Schmidt, GĂśbekli Tepe â the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs" Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), p. 239-256.
2 .Graham Lawton, âMost Atheists Believe in the Supernatural,â New Scientist, June 8, 2019, p. 14
3 .Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, Ainu Sociality Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People, (ed. By William W. Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), p. 241-242
4 . Ivar Lissner, 1961, Man, God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnamâs Sons), figure 87 between pp 224-225
5 .Barnouw,Victor, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 156-157
6 Smirnov, Yuri, âIntentional Human Burial: Middle Paleolithic (Last Glaciation) Beginnings,â Journal of World Prehistory, 3:2(1989), pp 199-233, p. 220)
7 .Shreeve, James, The Neandertal Enigma (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1995), p. 52
8 .Campbell, Bernard G. and James D. Loy, 1996 Humankind Emerging, (New York: HarperCollins), , p. 441)
9 .Ivar Lissner, 1961, Man, God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnamâs Sons),p. 189-191
10 .Ibid., p. 161
11 .Ibid., p. 191-192
Here is a strange introduction to my response to this statement: I wish to issue a strong encouragement by emphatically (and publicly) disagreeing! If my sense of God and the Christian faith is correct, you did not lead a single Christian to atheism. The people you refer to had placed their faith in their own reasoning and the works of men, not in the redemptive work of Christ. When you dismantled the foundation of their self-created world, they moved from faith in their own power of reasoning to faith in the absence of any higher power at all. They are modern day examples of the Pharisees who proclaimed their faith in the God of Abraham, yet truly believed in the power of their own works. Would Jesus have felt personal guilt if his challenge to their worldview led a Pharisee to atheism? A misplaced faith left to convert to one equally misplaced? Find somewhere else to feel guilt, for it is not justly placed here.
(For any YEC listening in, I am not saying all who believe the earth to be young have a false or empty faith in God. I speak only of those whose faith rests on the tenets of young-earth doctrine.
For any atheists listening in, you will, of course, take issue with an atheist having faith. I will only note that I started with âIf my understanding of God and Christianity is correct âŚâ and leave it at that.)
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Just for context, the survey in question can be found here: https://research.kent.ac.uk/understandingunbelief/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2019/05/UUReportRome.pdf
The relevant section (about supernatural beliefs) is found on pages 13-15.
The most common âsupernatural or irrationalâ beliefs among atheists were âsignificant events are âmeant to beââ, and âthere are âunderlying forcesâ of good and evilâ (both around 15-30% acceptance in different countries).
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Perhaps if there truly is a just God, Glenn will not be required to âpayâ for simply inspiring other people to think for themselves. Was Glenn deliberately trying to turn people away from God, or merely trying to tell them what he genuinely thinks is true about the age of the Earth? Does intent simply not matter to God?
Religion among the archaic hominids part 2
Glenn R. Morton March 2020
One of the things in Anthropology that bothers me is that if evidence of some activity among modern humans is discovered, it is automatically accepted, but if it is associated with Neanderthals, far too many automatically reject it. They also say the above sites are old, excavated prior to more modern techniques and donât prove evidence of Neanderthal religion. But they have trouble saying that about the Neanderthal altar found at Bruniquel during modern times, using modern excavation techniques and uranium dated in 2016.
At Bruniquel, France, archeologists have excavated a squarish stone structure dating to 176,000 years ago. The original article only says it is older than 47,600 years,so until I wrote this, I had been unaware of the new dating. The new dating makes this an extremely important religious site. In this cave Neanderthals built a structure in which they burned a bear. Here is a picture of the structure, made of fallen stalactites. That this is a structure made by man is clear because random falling of stalactites wouldnât cause this arrangement. Falling stalacties would land randomly.
Bednarik (1996, p. 104) writes:
" The cave of Bruniquel in southern France has just produced fascinating new evidence. Several hundred metres in from the cave entrance, a stone structure has been discovered. It is quadrilineal, measures four by five metres and has been constructed from pieces of stalagmite and stalactite. A burnt fragment of a bear bone found in it was radiocarbon analysed, yielding a âdateâ of greater than 47 600 years BP. This suggests that the structure is the work of Neanderthals. It is located in complete darkness, which proves that the people who ventured so deep into the large cave system had reliable lighting and had the confidence to explore such depths. Bruniquel is one of several French caves that became closed subsequent to their Pleistocene use, but were artificially opened this century." âThis appears to have been the ritual sacrifice of a bear. It is also the first proof that man went deep into caves long before they painted the walls.â 12
Work stopped at Bruniquel for some time because the lead anthropologist died. Then in 2016 new work was done which makes Bruniquel an even more remarkable site and almost conclusive of religion among the Neanderthals. The radiocarbon date obtained in the 1990s had only said the site was older than 47, 600 years, but didnât say how old. In 2016, Jacques Jaubert and a large team dated the structure by uranium dating. They say:
" Uranium-series dating of stalagmite regrowths on the structures and on burnt bone, combined with the dating of stalagmite tips in the structures, give a reliable and replicated age of 176.5 thousand years (Âą2.1 thousand years), making these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans. Their presence at 336 metres from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity." 13
So the oldest well dated construction is of a site where bears were burned, deep in a dark cave. It was made by Neanderthals. At such an old date, there were no modern humans in Europe who could have constructed this thing. This is a bear sacrifice by Neanderthals.
Modern humans also worship in caves, so this is a very human type of activity. Even early Christians worshipped in a cave:
" He described a circular worship area with stone seats separated from a living area that had a long tunnel leading to a source of water and said the early Christians hid there from persecution. "14
Furthermore, the Maya often made sacrifices in deep dark hard-to-get-to-areas of caves:
" Historical and ethnographic accounts have long noted that Maya groups, including those still in existence, regularly conduct ritual activities in caves near their communities. Maya religion focuses strongly on the earth, Brady asserts. Caves, often in conjunction with mountains and water, embody the earthâs fundamental power and lie at the center of a four-cornered universe. Maya caves frequently contain cenotes, openings to underground water sources that further establish the caveâs sacred status. " 15
One of the most famous of these Maya sites is Actun Tunichil Muknal where a maiden was sacrificed. To get to this Maya site requires a mile long trek including hiking, wading, and underwater swiming. They didnât go there because it was easy to get to, just like at Bruniquel.
" The cathedral-like ceiling is gigantic and glistens from the cave crystals. Enormous stalactites hang from the ceilings connecting to stalagmites creating giant pillars. The cave contains all shapes and sizes of pottery- even as big as beach balls. Archaeologist found remains such as nuts, seeds and spices inside the pots. Ceramics inside the cave were marked with kill holes indicating that they were used specifically for ceremonial purposes. âThe Monkey Potâ is one of the four found in all of Central America".
"At the end of the highest chamber lies the magnificent âCrystal Maidenâ. The skeleton of a 20 year old Mayan woman whoâs death was believed to be a great sacrifice to appease the rain gods. This skeleton is covered in calcium carbonated crystals from the river flooding and receding over time. The magnificent maiden has drawn thousands to this sacred cave. "16
To me it seems inescapable that Bruniquel is a Neanderthal religious site. It seems silly to think they went 336 meters, 1000 feet, into a dark cave just to barbeque the bear for dinner. Those who want to exclude Neanderthals from humanityâs circle can only do so by totally ignoring things like Bruniquel. The conclusion I draw here is that if Neanderthals were ritually sacrificing bears 176 thousand years ago, Thus, to say they couldnât do it at Drachenloch, Regardou, Petershohle, Wilddmannlisloch and other sites at 80,000 years ago is illogical. The possibility that Neanderthals passed their bear cult religion to modern humans is a quite fascinating and quite likely idea. The circumpolar bear cult may be at least 176,000 years old.
Further evidence of Neanderthal religion comes from Nahr Ibrahim. At Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon, Neanderthals ritually sacrificed a deer. Marshack writes:
" In the Mousterian cave shelter of Nahr Ibrahim in Lebanon the bones of a fallow deer (Dama mesopotamia) were gathered in a pile and topped by the skull cap. Many of the bones were unbroken and still articulated. Around the animal were bits of red ochre. While red ochre was common in the area and so may have been introduced inadvertently, the arrangement of the largely unbroken bones suggests a ritual use of parts of the animal." 17
The ochre was proven to have been brought in from elsewhere by the discoverer (Solecki, 1982). This site is greater than 40,000 years old and so is likely Neanderthal.
Religion among the Erectines.
I am only going to present one example of erectine religion. It is so good, and so modern, it is hard for me to see this not being a religious altar. Imagine yourself in a jungle and you enter a currently deserted village, but you know people have lived here maybe last week. You see a big stone in the middle of the village and it is flanked on each side by a bison or cow horn. At the foot of the big stone is a broken human skull. Would you think you have stumbled into a people with a religion involving human sacrifice? I would say this is the theme of Indiana Joneâs moviesâhuman sacrifice and cannibalism. If you donât think this is evidence of relition, you are very rare and maybe a bit suicidal. Most people will recognize the religious significance of such a setting, turn around and flee as rapidly as possible. Motifs like this have been used in movies for a century because the movie makers know that the viewers will recognize the symbolism.
There is just such an altar found at Bilzingsleben, Germany, made by H erectus. The excavators, Dietrich and Ursula Mania have found a 27-foot-diameter paved area that they say was used for "special cultural activities"18
Gore writes:
" But Maniaâs most intriguing find lies under a protective shed. As he opens the door sunlight illuminates a cluster of smooth stones and pieces of bone that he believes were arranged by humans to pave a 27-foot-wide circle. âThey intentionally paved this area for cultural activities,â says Mania. 'We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge bison, near it were fractured human skulls. '"19
Exactly what I described above. I would contend that the symbolism here, if found in a modern village, would be enough to cause one to turn and flee for his life. Such an arrangement of objects would immediately be interpreted as evidence of religion, and a hostile religion at that. Bilzingsleben dates to around 425,000 years ago. Not only that, it was an H. erectus skulls found there at the foot of the anvil stone.
Whether one likes my theory of how to explain Genesis or thinks it is the stupidest thing on earth, I donât see how we Christians can get past these rather obvious evidences of religion among Neanderthal and H. erectus. To me, even the Maya sacrifice of a maiden in a deep dark cave shows evidence of spirituality everybit as much and in much the same fashion as the Neanderthal sacrificing a bear in a similar cave-like setting. Bilzingsleben, the erectine site presents something similar to what Indiana Jones would showcase in one of his movies. While we ascribe spirituality to the evil human-sacrificing tribe, why is it we deny that similar activity means the same thing in Erectus? Just my thoughts. Next. The 2 curses which require a small brain to mean anything. Then hopefully I can go back to talking about the dried out basin and the animals that lived there.
references
12 . Balter, Michael, 1996, âCave Structure Boosts Neandertal Imageâ, Science, 271, p. 449
13 . Jacques Jaubert, et al, âEarly Neanderthal Constructions Deep in Bruniquel Cave in Southwestern Franceâ, Nature volume 534, pages 111-114. p111.
14 Is this Christianityâs FIRST church? " Daily Mail,Link found on my blog had to be removed due to limitations on newbies
15 .Bruce Bower, âSacred Secrets of the Caves,â Science News, 153(January 24, 1998):56-58, p. 56
16 belizeatmcave. com
17 .Alexander Marshack, , 1990 âEarly Hominid Symbol and Evolution of the Human Capacity,â in Paul Mellars, The Emergence of Modern Humans, (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990), pp 457-498 p. 481
18 .Mania D., and U. Mania and E. Vlcek, 1994. âLatest Finds of Skull Remains of Homo erectus from Bilzingsleben (Thuringia)â, Naturwissenschaften, 81,1994, p. 124; See also Mania, Dietrich and Ursula Mania, 1988. âDeliberate Engravings on Bone Artefacts of Homo Erectus,â Rock Art Research 5:2: 91-107, p. 92.
19 . Gore, Rick 1997. âThe First Europeans,â National Geographic, July, p. 96-113, p. 110.
20. Johanson, Donald and James Shreeve, Lucyâs Child, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1989), p. 221
21 . See Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, HarperSanFrancisco, 1989). 22. Appenzeller, Tim, âArt: Evolution or Revolution?â, Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1451-1452
23 . see M. D. Gvozdover, âThe Typology of Female Figurines of the Kostenki Paleolithic Culture,â Soviet Anthropology and Archeology, Spring 1989, p. 57, Voprosy antropologii, 75:1985, pp 27-66, 24 . Marshack, Alexander, âThe Berekhat Ram Figurine: A Late Acheulian Carving from the Middle East,â Antiquity 71(1997), p. 328
25 . Bednarik, Robert G., âThe Earliest Evidence of Palaeolart,â Rock Art Research, 20(2003):2:89-135, p. 96
26 See Wiki entry Ossuary
27 . Dean Falk, Braindance,(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992)p. 181-182
28 âŚMead, Simon, et al, âBalancing Selection at the Prion Protein Gene Consistent with Prehistoric Kurulike Epidemics,â Science, 300(2003):640-643, p. 640
29 . Ibid., p. 643
30 . Bruce Bowen, âAncestral Cut-ups,â Science News, 155(1999):315
31 . Dean Falk, Braindance,(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), p. 183
32 Silvia M. Bello , Simon A. Parfitt, and Chris B. Stringer, âEarliest Directly-Dated Human Skull-Cupsâ PLOS One, February 16, 2011,
33 . George L Murphy, Roads to Paradise and Perdition: Christ, Evolution, and Original Sin, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, June 2006, p. 114
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My son is now also my pastor. I moved to College Station to become his problem as my cancer takes me⌠He said the same thing to me yesterday as I described this issue. I pray that you and he are correct.
That does look like good evidence that neandertals had some sort of ritual and/or ideas of magic. Whether you want to call that religion is a matter of definition. Bilzingsleben is a bit more difficult, as itâs well within the range of neandertals and other Homo species more closely related to us than to H. erectus. The presence of a H. erectus skull doesnât tell us who owned the site. Even if we accept the conclusion, how does it get us much closer to Pliocene religion? And where are the post-Flood Pliocene human civilizations?
Itâs the reasonable conclusion. If your faith depends on the earth being 6000 years old and âkindsâ being separately created, how good a faith was it to begin with? Would you think itâs what God had in mind with âwhosoever believeth in meâ?
John, In 100,000 years, how many hymnals will still exist from this age?. None would be my guess. Hymnals are made of perishable material. The only way we have the evidence I presented is because it was made out of non-perishable material. My point is not for you, the atheist. Nothing I say to you will convince you that the Scripture should be interpreted as I suggest. My point is for Christians, to point out that if you put Adam at 100kyr ago one has to explain why spirituality, which should go along with the image of God is found in these two groups. Neanderthals and humans split (according to genetics) between 880,000-and 1,000,000 years ago. As is often argued in biology, if two descendant clades have a trait, then it was likely the parent clade also had that trait, which means at the very least we can expect religtion (even if done with perishable material) to have existed at least a million years old. In such a case, we christians have to look farther back in time for a good place for Adam.
I donât claim to have pliocene evidence of religion. I am pointing out that current theories among Christians donât deal with this dataâand they also donât deal with the data I will present next on the cursesâwhich will partly answer your question of small brained hominidsâonly partly, but I will get to a full answer, assuming my health holds out. My tests say I am absolutely normal, yet I feel like a Texas armadillo road-kill.That is why they think this is the burden of the disease.
As to who owned Bilzingsleben, the excavators believe it was an H erectus site. And there are more remains than just the skull. My point was not to get into an examination of all the data at Bilzingsleben as you could go do that yourself, but here is some more info on that important site;
âThe hominid remains from Bilzingsleben The comparative study of the abundant hominid remains by E. Vlcek demonstrated that the Bilzingsleben fossils largely resemble Olduvai Hominid 9, Pithecanthropus VIII and Sinanthropus III. This is also the case with the latest finds from Bilzingsleben such as Gl, A3 and B7. For this reason, Vlcek attributed these fragments to the Middle Pleistocene form of Homo erectus bihingslebenensis (Mania and Vlcek 1993; Vlcek 1978, 1986, 1991). All the hominid remains from Bilzingsleben, apart from one milkmolar, can be assigned to three different individuals.â Dietrich Mania, âThe earliest occupation of Europe: The Elbe-Saale region(Germany),â Analecta-praehistorica-leidensia,(1995) p. 92
Of course you can still claim that nothing is proven, but that can be said about ANYTHING in history. Proof only exists in mathematics; it doesnât exist in much else.
It is not my job to be anyoneâs research assistant. If one thinks my quotes give ALL the info on these sites one would be wrong. By their very nature, they canât. I think that person should go look up the articles themselves rather than depending on me to dole out the data.
That may be true, but it isnât because Iâm an atheist. Itâs because Genesis doesnât say that.
I donât believe I have asked the question you are answering. I wonder about the absence of any signs of urban, agrarian, and pastoral civilization during the Pliocene, and about the absence of australopithecine fossils outside Africa (talking post-Flood here).
Thanks. That would be corroborating evidence.
6 posts were split to a new topic: Personal Beliefs and Interpretation
Welcome, Glenn! Arenât you a well-known person in Christian evangelical circles? Your name sounds familiar.
I have no problem with the notion that ancient rivers flowed differently in the past. In fact, it seems to me that somewhere Jon Garvey posted an account of the four rivers of Eden which had a generic resemblance to your account (i.e., the rivers were real, but one or two of them have vanished since the days of the Garden), though I think the geographical details were different.
The idea that the Flood might correspond to the refilling of the Mediterranean is interesting. I hadnât ever thought of it, but it would certainly seem much more like the end of the whole world (to any people dwelling in the basin) than would a merely Mesopotamian flood that affected only the Tigris-Euphrates valley. And it does answer the question why a boat would be necessary to escape when from Iraq one could simply walk away.
Nonetheless, I am troubled by the geographical confusion. Whether the word âfrom thereâ / âthenceâ means âfrom the Gardenâ (which is perhaps on the outskirts of Eden) or âfrom the land of Edenâ, it does sound as if a river, or more than one, is flowing out of one part of the land of Eden, through the Garden which is still more or less within Eden, though maybe on the outskirts, and then elsewhere. Whether the river splits after it runs through the Garden, or before, it still seems as if the four rivers run far outside of Eden, for hundreds of miles. So that land where they end up, that wouldnât still be called Eden, would it? Unless âEdenâ covers a huge geographical area, running all the way from Eastern Turkey and Mesopotamia out to the middle of the Mediterranean basin. But that doesnât fit; in fact, we are told that Eden was in the East, whereas the Mediterranean basin would be West from the point of view of a Biblical author (who would be living in Palestine, presumably).
But why does the land that is flooded have to be Eden, anyway? Your hypothesis that the Flood was the rapid infilling of the Mediterranean actually works better if you donât try to call the flooded area âEdenâ. Just call it the land where the rivers from Eden all end up. Eden itself, if it was in, say, the highlands of Turkey or Mesopotamia, might have remained high and dry while the Mediterranean was inundated. And that makes sense; with the nasty cherubim guarding Eden, people probably gave it a wide berth; they might well have traveled westward, and eventually down into the Mediterranean basin. So the best way of maintaining your hypothesis is to drop the name âEdenâ for the Eastern Mediterranean basin. The Flood did not destroy Eden; it destroyed the land where the refugees from Eden dwelt. Then you donât have to force the language of the Biblical text so much.
These are just some tentative thoughts, nothing Iâd want to fiercely argue for. Iâm just running with your hypothesis to see if itâs productive, when slightly modified.
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lol, infamous might be a better term.
Most translations say âa river went out from Edenâ, not 'a river went out from the garden. â If the river went out from Eden, then I would think the situation is as I have described.
If Eden was in the highlands of Turkey, then the description of the rivers makes no sense. The Gihon (normally believed to be the Nile), never flowed to the highlands of Turkey, nor did any river flowing out of Arabia where Havilah is according to the Bible. Eden in the Highlands of Turkey would not have four rivers. Geologically that wouldnât work.
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Eveâs curse and brain size extracted from here
Glenn R. Morton April 25,2020
Above I have spent some time defending the big brained scenario for what species Adam and Eve were. Some people might prefer that view. Below, I am going to use a Biblical reason for why I believe Adam and Eve had a brain-size about half our present value or smaller⌠At this point I am shifting to look not at the scientific evidence but at the Biblical evidence. I think one of the interesting possible interpretations of Scripture has been totally overlooked for millennia. Most didnât have the scientific knowledge to understand what it said, but for the past 100 years we have and no one seems to have seen it. Both the womanâs curse and the manâs curse in Genesis 3 involve a future big brain!
Most liberal Christians (defined as not believing there is any scientific/historical information in Genesis 1-4), place Adam within the past 10,000 years. Such a position for Adam makes an utter laughing stock of everything done and said in Genesis 3. That is, assuming they believe Adam was an individual rather than a population. I call this the Johnny-come-lately Adam because he is really too late in time, even by Biblical evidence. Letâs look at some of the things Johnny- come-lately Adam is too late for.
Sally-come-lately Eve is too late for pain in childbirth to mean anything.
Pain in Childbirth Genesis 3:16:To the woman He said, âI will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth," (NASB)
If someone cursed me right now with having trouble walking, it would mean nothing. I already HAVE trouble walking from side effects of a drug trial. Or if they cursed my hair to turn gray when it is already gray, or as a friend said, 'it would be the same as if He cursed you with ugliness." LOL, So, big deal.
That must be how Sally-come-lately Eve felt when God told her she would have increased pain in childbirth. Sally-come-lately Eve would say: âBig Deal. Big Guy! Havenât you heard millennia of screaming women in labor who are cursing what their husbands did to them?â Thus, the curse is no curse at all!
Further Gen 3:20 says Eve was âMother of all living.â Sally-come-lately Eve certainly couldnât have been the mother of all the other women alive with her, 10,000 years ago in the Neolithic. Nor could she be the mother of all living until maybe the last century or two. Why? The other day I spoke about Tasmanians being isolated from the rest of humanity from about 12,000 years to 1642 AD.( 1) To say Eve was the mother of all living 10,000 years ago would have been a farce, yet that is what the liberal position on Genesis does to it. It makes everything a farce. Letâs go back to looking at the pain in childbirth issue.
Pain in childbirth arises from the size of the babyâs head vs the size of the birth canal. Bipedalism requires that the legs be close enough together so that the person can walk without a waddle. But this causes the pelvic opening to be small. Intelligence requires large brains and thus large cranial sizes. These two conflicting features lead to the tight fit of the infant through the birth canal. Wendy Trevathan wrote a book advocating that the problems relating to human deliveries and produced selective pressures which led to the nearly universal human practice of midwifery. Further, the change from the ape style birth to the human style birth required that the large brained infant be born prematurely and spend much of what would be neonatal time outside the womb, increasing the intelligence of the infant, who has a world of sensory perception while the brain is developing.
" The human pattern of pre-and post-natal brain growth and development is very unusual relative both to other mammals and to other primates. At birth, human babiesâ brains are smallâonly about 30% of their adult size, as opposed to about 50% in other primatesâalthough their gestation time is long for an animal of their body size. Unlike other living species, humans maintain the pre-natal rate of brain growth for approximately a year after birth, resulting in an unusually large brain size relative to body size. " (2)
Basically we are born a year too early. Most other primates with small brains, give birth to infants with brains 1/2 of the adult size, but if humans did that, no woman would be able to walk, or, alternatively no child would survive birth. Thus, human infants are born with brains 1/3 the size of the adult and yet still it is a tight fit through the birth canal.
" A modern human baby, with its large skull, negotiates the birth canal by entering with the head oriented transversely. It then rotates 90 degrees into a sagittal position before exiting the canal facing the sacrum, that is, with its back toward the motherâs face. A human mother is therefore in a bad position to assist in delivery, since her infant is exiting âdown and back,â away from her helping hands. Furthermore, pulling an emerging human infant up toward the motherâs breast would bend it against the normal flexion of its body and would possibly result in injury. Interestingly, the human delivery pattern is very different from that of nonhuman primates, in which there is no fetal rotation (babies are sagitally oriented throughout birth) and newborns exit the canal face-to-face with their mothers. In this pattern, mother monkeys and apes routinely assist in delivery by reaching down and pulling emerging infants up and toward their chests in a curve that matches the normal flexion of the babiesâ bodies. " (3)
So monkey and apes can pull their own babies out of the birth canal, human motherâs canât. they need help in bad situations. How long has this birth pattern been in existence? At least since the time of H. erectus 1.6 million years ago . The famous Lucy (AL 288-1) didnât have this problem. Ruff comments.
" It has been cogently argued by Tague & Lovejoy (1986), based on the obstetric pelvis of AL 288-1, that birth in Australopithecus afarensis would have occurred with the fetal cranium in a transverse orientation throughout, i.e., without the pelvic rotation characteristic of modern humans, and that secondary altriciality of the infant need not have been present. In contrast, based on the relatively small size of the birth canal of KNM-WT 15000, it has been argued that secondary altriciality must have been present in Homo erectus, i.e., that the infant must have been born in a relatively helpless state. Furthermore, the anthropoid shape of the pelvic inlet/outlet in this male juvenile, even allowing for growth to adulthood and sexual dimorphism in pelvic shape, indicates that a transverse non-rotational birth mechanism would have been highly improbable. " (4)
Because of this data, it makes much more sense that Eve have been a small brained hominid because otherwise there is no meaning to the curse of increasing her pain in childbirth. She would have already had it.
Now to tie up the final item, pain in childbirth. Among mammals there are two patterns of brain growth. The first pattern is called altriciality. In this pattern the animal is born helpless and extremely immature. The brains of altricial animals are usually half the size of the adultâs, and double in size by adulthood. Because of this it takes lots of parental effort to raise the young. Animals following this pattern usually have litters and perform this care for multiple offspring at once. Cats, with their blind and helpless kittens are altricial. The other pattern is precocial. In this pattern the offspring are usually born single and from birth are able to get around quite well. Their brains are nearly adult size at birth. The are alert and all their organs are functioning. An example of this pattern is the horse, the wildebeest etc., where the young will run with the herds within minutes.
Now, according to Walker and Shipman (5) , altricial species almost never have bigger brains than precocial species. The reason is that for all mammals save one, the brain grows rapidly during gestation but then grows less rapidly after birth. There is a kink in the graph of brain size vs. time which occurs at birth. Altricial species whose immature state at birth and subsequent slow down in the rate of growth forever remain behind the more maturely born precocial species.
What humans seem to have accomplished is the trick of keeping the brain growing at the embryonic rate for one year after birth. Effectively, if humans are a fundamentally precocial species, our gestation is (or should be) 21 months . However, no mother could possibly pass a year old babyâs head through the birth canal. Thus, human babies are born âearlyâ to avoid the death of the mother. Walker and Shipman write:
" Humans are simply born too early in their development, at the time when their heads will still fit through their mothersâ birth canals. As babiesâ brains grow, during this extrauterine year of fetal life, so do their bodies. About the time of the infantâs first birthday, the period of fetal brain growth terminates, coinciding with the beginnings of speech and the mastery of erect posture and bipedal walking. " (6)
This pattern of growth has huge implications. Every other primate doubles their brain weight from birth to adulthood. But due to the early birth of humans, we triple our brainâs birth rate. Our last 12 month of fetal growth rate of the brain occurs outside the sensorially deprived womb. The vast quantities of sensory input during the first year of life affects the rate and nature of the neural connections. Because of this year of helplessness, parents must provide close physical and emotional support for the infant. Unlike chimp babies who can cling to their motherâs fur, human infants cannot even hang on to mother in spite of having the hand reflex. The mother has no fur because she sweats and she sweats because of a big brain which is why she gives birth to her child early. This early birth then requires the mother to care for the infant and increases the bond between mother and child which partially makes us human.
So, what is the birth pattern in Homo erectus? It is human. Shipman and Walker(7) point out that the adult Homo erectus cranial capacity was 950 cc. If they followed the ape-like pattern of doubling their brain size after birth, they would need to be born with a brain size of around 400 cc. Following the discovery of a nearly complete Homo erectus skeleton, the approximate size the erectus birth canal is known. A head with a 400 cc brain is 10 cm too big to fit through the birth canal. Estimates place the maximum fetal brain size able to fit through the erectus birth canal at just 231 cc (8) . Homo erectus had a human pattern of birth and must have endured similar pain in childbirth.
A study of Homo rudolfensis which lived eight hundred thousand years earlier than the 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus studied by Walker and Shipman above, also had a human birth pattern of trebling its brain size from birth to adulthood. Homo rudolfensis stood about 5 foot 8 inches tall and was quite human in form below the neck (9) . Steven M. Stanley showed that the birth canal of a Homo rudolfensis would only be able to pass a fetal head of about 210 cc. The adult of this species had brain sizes in the range of 760 to 900 cc. This data would strongly imply that pain in childbirth of the type experienced by human mothers extends back at least 2.4 million years to the initial appearance of Homo rudolfensis. (10) The birth pattern means that Homo rudolfensis children would also be born as helpless as any human or erectus baby which would require long periods intensive care. This would lead to an intense period of bonding between mother and child as also occurs among humans. And the enlarged brain would most likely have meant hairlessness among the rudolfensis also. In short, this birth pattern means they had many of our traits which are theologically associated with the Fall.
To close, it would appear that there is a single underlying cause of Godâs curse for the man and woman and it is an increase in brain size. This increase also caused the loss of hair requiring clothing when mankind eventually inhabited northern climes. Homo erectus is found in European Georgia 1.6 million years ago. Without fire or clothing, he would have been unlikely to survive the more severe winters in that area.
The fact that Homo erectus and Homo rudolfensis were saddled with the problems given to Adam and Eve after the fall has theological implications for the status of Homo erectus and Homo rudolfensis , the time during which Adam lived as well as who is eligible for salvation. I have long contended that humanity in the theological sense is much older than most Christians are willing to admit. If sweat and increased pain in childbirth and clothing are not signifying of humanity and the Fall, what then does theologically separate us from mere animals?
It is also intriguing to me that the ancient Hebrew writer would choose as a curse for man and woman, two different maledictions which can be caused by a single phenomenonâan increase in brain size. This single cause also would require the loss of hair and the subsequent need for clothing. There is no way that the Hebrew writer could have had the knowledge to purposefully construct this tale. Is this a fortuitous conjunction of statements or is it divine inspiration? I firmly believe God inspired the writer and while he didnât understand it, we can today.
References
1 Jared Diamond, âThe Evolution of Guns and Germs,â in Evolution: Society, Science and the Universe, ed by A. C. Fabian, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 602.
2P. Shipman and A. Walker, âThe Costs of Becoming a Predator,â Journal of Human Evolution, 18, 373-392, p. 385.
3.Bernard G. Campbell and James D. Loy, Humankind Emerging, (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 272
4.Christopher B. Ruff, âClimate and Body Shape in Hominid Evolution,â Journal of Human Evolution (1991), 21, 81-105, p. 93
5. Alan Walker, and Pat Shipman, 1996, The Wisdom of the Bones, (New York: Alfred Knopf). , p.220-222
6. Alan Walker, and Pat Shipman, 1996, The Wisdom of the Bones, (New York: Alfred Knopf), p. 222
7.Shipman, P. and A. Walker, 1989. âThe Costs of Becoming a Predator,â Journal of Human Evolution, 18, 373-392, p. 388-389
8. Alan Walker, and Pat Shipman, 1996, The Wisdom of the Bones, (New York: Alfred Knopf), p. 226-227
9. Stanley, Steven M., 1998, Children of the Ice Age, (New York: W. H. Freeman), p. 164
10. Stanley, Steven M., 1998, Children of the Ice Age, (New York: W. H. Freeman), p. 160-163
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Glenn:
So that we donât end up talking at cross-purposes on this complicated subject, let me set forth some broad considerations; if you can confirm that we have a mutual understanding on these points, then we can explore further your hypothesis.
First, some people have identified the rivers differently from you, and do not think that one of them is the Nile. As an example, see the discussion of Jon Garvey at:
http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2017/05/11/testable-hypotheses-about-a-historical-eden/
Jon there suggests that all four rivers would have been understood by the original audience as flowing in the general area of Turkey, Syria, and Mesopotamia. I am not saying that Jonâs conjecture is correct, but he does present evidence for the view.
Note that in his scheme, Eden is not in the east Mediterranean basin, but in lower Mesopotamia, with the Garden on the northern outskirts.
Note also that he does not interpret âflowing out of Edenâ as John Harshman seems to understand the term. He makes the case that while the river âis dividedâ into four, that refers to the geographical arrangement upstream rather than downstream. And if this seems to be playing fast and loose with the word âflowâ (which in rivers implies downhill motion from a source), we must remember that the Hebrew does not actually use a specialized word for âflowâ here, but merely the general verb âto go outâ, which could plausibly be used in the sense Jon suggests. Again, I am not saying that Genesis means this for sure, but just indicating an interpretive possibility. If Jon jumps in here, he can explain the proposal more clearly.
Second: In your proposal, are you also interpreting âwas dividedâ as referring to upstream relationships? It would seem that you are. For if you think âEdenâ refers to the Mediterranean basin, then Eden must be the recipient of the flow of the rivers, not the source of them. Thereâs no other way you could count one of the rivers as the Nile, unless you assume that rivers âgoing outâ of Eden refers does not indicate direction of flow. The rivers all âgo outâ from the Mediterranean basin in very different directions, and donât have a common source. Thus, the main difference between your scheme and Jonâs is the terminus of the river flow, his being the Persian Gulf and yours being the Mediterranean.
Third, in contrast with either your scheme or Jonâs, John Harshman is reading the text in the more traditional way, and the way that, on first impressions, is natural. The Hebrew says that a river goes out from Eden to water the Garden, and âfrom thereâ (presumably from the Garden, or perhaps at a point just past the edge of the garden, it is divided into four âheadsâ, and then the four heads are named. What is puzzling John Harshman is that if the rivers literally flow out of Eden, they canât also flow into Eden (unless they flow in a circle). So the Mediterranean couldnât be Eden, on Johnâs understanding of how the rivers âgo outâ or âflowâ from Eden.
So could you clarify your proposal:
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Do all four of the rivers have different sources, in different lands?
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Do they all flow into the East Mediterranean?
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Is the dried bed of the East Mediterranean the land of Eden?
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If so, where do you put the Garden? Also in the dried-up bed of the East Mediterranean?
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If your answer to 4 is âYesâ, then how do you account for that authorâs description of the Garden as âin the eastâ? Are you rejecting the normal translation of miqqedem as âin the eastâ? If the author thinks of the Garden as âin the eastâ he himself presumably lives west of where he supposes the Garden to have been. And whatâs west of the East Mediterranean, but the West Mediterranean? So does the author of Genesis live in Sicily or Tunisia?
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Note that under Jon Garveyâs scheme, âin the eastâ retains its normal geographical meaning for a writer who probably lived in Palestine.
Iâm not here attacking your view, but merely trying to get geographical clarity. I have no objection to speculating that the Flood might refer to the bursting of the Pillars of Hercules and the drowning of the people living on the floor of the Mediterranean. The problem is that the geographical references to Eden as being âin the eastâ then make little sense. If you are trying to harmonize your geological hypothesis with the Biblical text, surely you have to make sense of the precise words the Biblical writer chooses.
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Yes, Eddie, I am aware of that Kassite interpretation, where the word that is used everywhere in the Bible for Cush is in this one instance said to refer to the Kassites, a people who are otherwise, never again mentioned in scripture. Thus, I donât think it is good to take one example of a word and give it a very different meaning than that same word has everywhere else. That seems a bit like special pleading to me. We might disagree on that, but I just recently had this Kassite discussion with a guy on another board and did a bunch of research on the word
Strongâs says
3568 ×Öź×֟׊×, ×Öź×Öź×Š× [Kuwsh /koosh/] n pr m loc. Probably of foreign origin; TWOT 969; GK 3932 and 3933; 30 occurrences; AV translates as âEthiopiaâ 19 times, âCushâ eight times, and âEthiopiansâ three times. 1 a Benjamite mentioned only in the title of Ps 7. 2 the son of Ham and grandson of Noah and the progenitor of the southernmost peoples located in Africa. 3 the peoples descended from Cush. 4 the land occupied by the descendants of Cush located around the southern parts of the Nile (Ethiopia). Additional Information: Cush = âblackâ. Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strongâs Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.
Kassites, as I understand it, would not be described as âblackâ Ethiopians would be.
Further, the only reason that Speiser originally used the Kassites was to accomplish the same thing I want to haveâa place where all four rivers flow together. They change one instance of the word always used for Ethiopia to mean Kassite in order to accomplish this. I leave the word alone and accomplish that goal.
For these reasons I reject the Kassite view. We may disagree on that but that is ok.
I donât see or agree with the hermeneutic that what was in the mind of the writer is gospel. He didnât need to understand everything he wrote by Godâs inspiration. God has a problem in that he needs to communicate with Neolithic farmers and with us modern scientifically minded people. God canât communicate to us, in my opinion, if he tells us only Neolithic understandings.
Again, I will point out, that one can think my theory totally nuts, but one can no longer claim that there is no time or place that an exact description of those rivers existed. (using cush as cush). Too many theologians have claimed that Eden is a fantasy. It doesnât have to be.
I think you mis-understand in part. A river flowed out of Eden. I have that and the river split downstream of the Edenic river. and they do have a common source.
The arrows are the direction of flow. You said:
I have everything in your statement above. The river flows from a spring in Eden, out into the rest of the area. That river is divided into four heads (sources) of the four named rivers. Every tributary of every river is a source of the waters for that river and thus a âheadâ. So, the way I arranged things in the above picture matches what you want.
I hope neither you nor John are arguing for circular flow. That would violate the laws of entropy.
Their main sources are in different lands. A small part of their source waters comes from the Edenic river which I believe was fed by an artesian spring. But even the Kassite view has the four rivers sourcing in different lands, so my view is not unique in this regard.
Letâs put it this way. There are 3 big and one small river that flow into the eastern Mediterranean at this time. That is geologic fact. What one can argue with me is my attribution of the names of those 4 riversâbut those four rivers seem to be exactly where the Bible defines them (with Havilah in Arabia and Cush in Ethiopia).
I donât know how big the name âedenâ applies to. I do know that one of the possible derivations for Eden means steppe or desert.
âThe name Eden comes from either an Akkadian word meaning âsteppeâ or âdesert,â edinu, or a West Semitic word that describes âluxury,â-âdelight,â and abundance, adan.â Mangum, D., Custis, M., & Widder, W. (2012). Genesis 1-11 (Ge 2:4-25). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
A steppe or a desert would describe the place. Artists have painted it thusly:
Yep, it is in that area somewhere.
Whether one lives in Texas like me or Sicily or China, I place the garden in the EASTERN mediterranean. East is a relative term and it doesnât always have to apply to the geographical relationship of where the author is. When I lived in Scotland I could still tallk about the âeastâ, meaning the east coast of America.
Yes, but he takes one single instance of Cush and makes it apply to a tribe that is nowhere else mentioned in Scripture. That seems to be a bad methodology to me.
Being in the East can still have meaningâin the eastern Med. Again, I donât think it is fair to say that one can only think in terms of Neolithic understandings. If we are that tightly restricted, then frankly, the Bible is totally false and we should all go be athiests.
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