Glenn Morton: Is the Garden of Eden real?

John, nothing works for you. Fine. reject my theory and tell everyone how dumb it is. There comes a time in everyone’s life that he has to realize that whatever he does in life, a whole lot of people won’t like it. Besides, why would my theory be of interest to you, an atheist, unless you think I have succeeded? In which case, yeah attack and not accept any explanation. It can’t be a lot of fun raking Christians over the coals. I know, because I raked YECs over the coals for years, and it was like Sissyphus, saying the same thing over and over and getting nowhere. You are not going to get everyone in the world to hold your world view—you just aren’t. Don’t you have anything more interesting to do? Jesus loves you John.

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If you want to get any use out of what I post, you need to engage with what I say seriously rather than just complaining about how unfair I am.

Thanks again, Glenn, for a reply that combines a personal perspective with intellectual reasoning. You have sought a kind of wholeness in which the intellect and the person are at peace with each other. I integrate the personal and the intellectual differently from you, when it comes to how to read Genesis, but I agree that integration is the right approach, in contrast with the approach of NOMA, which abandons attempts to integrate scientific and religious truth, preferring to keep them in compartments, as if peaceful coexistence is more important than truth. One of my main objections to most TEs/ECs is that they deal with religion/science problems mainly through compartmentalization, whereas I look for synthesis. My attempts at synthesis are less along the lines of concordism than yours, but I do think that science and faith at some points have to meet in a common understanding, not simply keep politely out of each other’s way.

For me, one of the points where theology and science meet is in the notion of design. I can’t imagine that the apparent fine tuning of the world (which of course many of the posters here deny even exists) is an accident; it’s exactly what I would expect if something like Christianity were true. So right away, I see a way of integrating faith and science: a truly deep study of nature, as opposed to one that only looks at isolated mechanical details, seems to me to support (not prove in some mathematical sense, but support) the idea that thought was put into the construction of our world. As for the question whether or not design arguments count as “science,” to me that’s a useless, pedantic question, as it depends entirely on what definition of science one uses, and the only thing that matters is whether or not arguments for design yield truth, not whether or not they proceed “scientifically” or “philosophically, but based on scientific data” or in some other way.

When I read Genesis 1, I get an overwhelming sense of the world as a designed abode, and designed by a benevolent intelligence. That seems to me a foundational teaching of Genesis and of any theistic religion. And as I read the books of Denton and Henderson and Wallace and others on the fine tuning of nature that makes life possible, I see a teaching, derived from the analysis of nature, that is not in conflict with the core teaching of Genesis 1.

As for your definition of Liberal Protestantism, I agree with it. But my approach differs from that of Liberal Protestantism. Liberal Protestants think that Christianity must modernize or become irrelevant. But I’m anti-modern, philosophically. I think the Enlightenment was in many respects (not all) a bad thing. Even worse, in my view, was the Age of Revolution/Age of Ideology which followed (all those “isms” which have bathed the world in blood and declared the death of God). For my money, Plato and Aristotle were superior to all later philosophers, and Aquinas, to name only one of the older crowd, was superior, intellectually, to any theologian since his day. The average Protestant seminary professor today, whether liberal or fundamentalist, is a complete dolt in comparison. That doesn’t mean I agree with Aquinas on everything – I don’t. But one has to be able distinguish giants from dwarfs. And theologically, most of the giants lived before the Enlightenment.

So, though my reading of Genesis sometimes incidentally agrees with liberal Protestant readings, it’s not motivated by the same reasons. Liberal Protestants are basically 99.99% modern people who still want to hang on to some scraps of traditional faith. I have no commitment to modern thought as such, and I find it rather a plus than a minus of religious belief that it doesn’t easily fit in with modern thought. So I feel no more compulsion to agree with Darwin than I do with Marx; I see no more reason to alter my reading of Genesis, for example, to accommodate the alleged fact of blind and aimless evolution, than I see to alter my reading of the Gospels to make Jesus into a Communist (or, more recently, a feminist). I reject the idea of Christians fawning before modern scientists and intellectuals to prove that they, too, can be modern and up to date.

However, that said, I don’t read Genesis 1-11 as historical documents in the normal sense – though they do contain undoubted reference to things that are historically real. When I read the story of the Garden, for example, I don’t deny the historicity of a “Fall” – but I don’t imagine that if I hopped into a time machine and went back (to whatever date you like, 6,000 or 6,000,000 B.C.) and visited the Garden, I would see a woman talking to a serpent (one with or without legs, as you please). And that’s not because I think “science has proved that serpents can’t talk” (which would be the liberal Protestant reason); it’s because I think, based on grammar, style, and genre considerations, that the author of the story did not intend the narrative as history in the sense that Thucydides intended his work as history. That has nothing to do with liberalism; it’s based on a deep respect for the language and style of the text. Similar considerations lead to my view that Genesis 1 is not meant as “history” either, though its general claim – that the world is designed and providentially ordered for the overall good of its living beings – is a correct one.

In general, the liberal Protestant is somewhat ashamed of the Bible, and obsequious toward modern thought, and that’s not my position. I have contempt for most of the modern intelligentsia (it’s hard to think of people lower on my scale of being than Cornell professors, New York Times “investigative” journalists, the writers of the Climategate emails, etc.), and I respect the Bible, so I’m hardly the sort of person to knuckle under to the “consensus” view on anything. But respecting the Bible doesn’t mean that one has to adopt the readings of the Bible typical of churchgoers in the Bible Belt. One can respect the Bible while disagreeing both with liberals and with fundamentalists about how it should be read. Like you, I march to the tune of my own drummer. My drummer is different from yours, but neither of our drummers is either a fundamentalist or a liberal. We’re a pair of theological mavericks.

I hope your doctors are wrong yet one more time!

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@grmorton are you an old earth creationist or do you affirm evolutionary science?

Absolutely. I posted a piece above where I talked about how God controls evolution. I can find it on my blog faster. It is here

But, I also beleive we are a special creation–and as with much of what I have done, I have a slightly different take on how man is both specially created and fully evolved.

Amen and Amen. I am all in favor of people creating views that that integrate rather than give in to what the Atheists want.

Agreed, in my view, it is in physics where the real design arguments lie. As long as we believe in Evolution, biological design loses its force of argument.

I think they are Christians, but I do think of them as God is a scrap of their life. Of course, they won’t view it thusly. And I won’t say that God wasn’t a scrap in my life for many long years either. We all are sinners–we all go astray like stupid sheep.

You are different, contra John. We agree on this. But what of the Bible verse But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

IT is a good thing I am not the hall monitor of who is and isn’t saved. Peter denied Jesus 3 times, but repented. We all in thousands of ways deny him daily. But it seems to me a dangerous game to be ashamed of God and his word.

A doc I saw today explained why I am having trouble breathing and after making me sick walking me around their office, my oxygen was so low that they are prescribing that for me. The way I feel, I am starving for air and don’t really want to stay this way for months on end. Death comes for everyone. As that great theologian, Stephen King said.“We each owe a death. There are no exceptions. But, oh God sometimes the Green Mile seems so long.

To be or not to be Neolithic: A Study of Genesis 4.

By Glenn R Morton 2019

This is part of my series on how to read Genesis 1-11 in a historical/scientifically real manner. One of the criticisms of my view is the claim that Genesis 4 and 5 are set in the Neolithic and Adam couldn’t be as far back as I say (if you don’t know my view, start with Days of Proclamation post). I don’t think so because all the activities listed were done long before the Neolithic, except for metal work and I don’t think metal working is what Genesis 4 is speaking of. I will lay out my case below. Let’s start with Cain as a ‘tiller’.

Genesis 4:2 says: And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

I will admit that this translation looks bad for my position but, a quick look at the Hebrew in my handy dandy Logos software says that word translated as Tiller, is abad. Strong’s says,

290 occurrences; AV translates as “serve” 227 times, “do” 15 times, “till” nine times, “servant” five times, “work” five times, “worshippers” five times, “service” four times, “dress” twice, “labour” twice, “ear” twice, and translated miscellaneously 14 times. 1to work, serve"1

Interestingly, Strong’s section on abad, doesn’t actually define the word, but merely lists how the translators translated the word. According to the translators, the primary meaning is ‘serve’; secondary meaning is ‘do’ and only nine times is this translated till. Genesis 4:2 is one of the times. I would suggest that word choice is caused by the widespread assumption that this chapter is talking about the Neolithic times. As I intend to show, there is much doubt, at least in my mind.

Let’s consider the context of chapter 4. It follows the line of Cain–the wicked line of Cain. It starts with a murder, goes into paranoia, and ends with a filicide.

So, you are asking, how am I going to get out of this mess. I think below shows the answer. I’m going to look at what all the dictionaries say.

The Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT from here on out), which, as near as I can tell was published in 1980, says:

"1553 עָבַד (ʿābad) work, serve.Derivatives1553a עֶבֶד (ʿebed) slave, servant.1553b עֲבָד (ʿăbād) work (Eccl 12:1).

1553c עֲבוֹדָה (ʿăbôdâ) labor, service.

1553d עֲבֻדָּה (ʿăbūddâ) service (household servants) (Gen 26:14: Job 1:3).

1553e עַבְדּוּת (ʿabdût) servitude, bondage (Ezr 9:8, 9; Neh 9:17).

1553f מַעבָד (maʿbād) work (Job 34:25).

ʿābad appears 290 times in the OT.

"The etymology of this word seems to share the ideas of several Semitic roots, e.g. the old Aramaic root which means “to do or make,” an Arabic root meaning “to worship, obey” (God) and its intensive stem meaning “to enslave, reduce to servitude.”

"This service may be directed toward things, people, or God ."2

One could easily say Cain worked the ground. While that word is often translated as ‘till’, all the cognates in other languages have nothing to do with tilling, as you can see above. A better translaton might be “Cain worked the ground.”

Of a related word, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament makes it clearer:

"2896 עֲבַד (ʿăbad) make, do, perform, create (Peal); be made, be done, be performed, executed/carried out (Hithpeal).

Derivatives

2896a עֲבַד (ʿăbad), עֲבֵד (ʿăbēd) slave, servant.

2896b עֲבִידָה (ʿăbîdâ) service, work, ritual, worship.

2896c מַעֲבַד (maʿăbad) action (of God in history).

The primary meaning of this root indicates service, performance of a duty, or activity. The Hithpeal is used as the passive of the Peal. The formal Hebrew cognate is ʿābad, but the functional equivalent is ʿāśâ."3

Note the words ‘Perform,’ ‘make,’ ‘do,’ ‘work’ and ‘serve’. Of these choices, work and serve seem to be the most natural ones to use. There is no statement here of tillage, just ‘work’. Again, I am brought back to “Cain worked or served the ground”.

Ground itself is an interesting word, it is Adama. The TWOT says,

"Initially, God made ʾādām out of the ʾădāmâ to till the ʾădāmâ (Gen 3:23, to bring forth life?)."4.

I would point out the almost ludicrous concept that Adam and Eve, when pushed out of the Garden were 'tilling" the ground! Think about the real issues involved in them ‘tilling’ the ground. I think country folk will more understand what I am going to say that people who have never had contact with a farm. When Adam and Eve had to start fending for themselves there is no way they went straight to farming. Can’t you just see it. Adam asks Eve, “What is for dinner tonight?” Eve says, “Whatever your garden produces.” Adam informs Eve, “It won’t produce anything for another 4 months!” Eve replies, “Better go kill a couple of squirrels for dinner then.” And so begins Adam’s hunting life. They need to eat NOW, not in four months. Farming is for those who have a surplus of food in storage so that they can eat it while growing this year’s crop to put into storage after harvest for next year. That is how farming works. Adam and Eve would have died waiting on that crop.

From personal experience, trying to raise peaches and pears on my ranch, while I was away working Monday through Friday in the oil industry, you can’t harvest a crop if you are not there watching it. Every year, either the deer or squirrels stripped my trees of their fruit before I could get much of it. I had to put up a 10 ft wire around the orchard to keep the deer out, but without a cat and dog out there to chase off the squirrels, my harvests were pitiful. Even waiting for my wild grapes (and I had a monstrous vine that allowed me to make lots of Jelly, put on grapes in March but they didn’t ripen until June. For some reason the maturity slowed over the years I owned the ranch and by the end, the grapes weren’t maturing until August. The dewberries along the fences provided lots of blackberry like berries but, they also didn’t mature until June. If I were to live off things like that, I would have to preserve them, and store them for the next year, eating what I needed. Preserving berries requires canning, something Adam and Eve didn’t have available to them. If all I had was berries in June and grapes in August, I would starve. So the idea that Adam and Eve, before they had any children were ‘tilling the land’ is a real long stretch for me.

I grew other things as gentleman part time farmer. With each of them I learned other lessons. Grow watermelons or cantelope and the coyotes will take a bite out of each one. If you don’t have a fence, the cows will stomp on your watermelons, and munch the leaves of your crop. My attempt to grow corn taught me that each corn ear gets a canker in it if one doesn’t spray, the corn is hurt. I also think it was mice and rats who gnawed into my corn ears one year. My neighbor who planted a lot more corn than I, depended on having so much the deer and wild pigs couldn’t eat it all. He also had a dog left out at night.

My point in telling the story of my failed years as a weekend farmer is that while Adam and Eve are off getting squirrels or picking berries so they could eat tonight, not in four months, the wildlife was feasting on anything he had planted. Given that Adam was a solo farmer while the kids were young, He really couldn’t have planted too much crop manually. Draft animals take time to train. The harnesses take lots of time to make. One has to kill an animal, skin it, scrape off the fat and flesh which takes hours, put lime on it or bury it in manure and urine for months, then dig it up and cut it into harnesses. My guess is that Adam and Eve would have starved to death prior to successfully making the harnesses for a as yet untrained undomesticated beast. Oh yeah, training an animal can take days.

During the past 10 years I was out of the Genesis battle, so I worked my family genealogy. I found a document written by my great great grandfather about 1895 when he was an old man. He had been born in 1832. He talks about the tanning of leather on the US frontier,

" James McBride Sr., the survivor of this war lived in Virginia thereafter and worked at his trade, for according to good old custom no young man of any family was allowed to grow up without a trade, and he had two. He was both a gunsmith and a shoemaker, so thus he worked. As every man in that day did he tanned his own leather for the shoes he made. There were no tanneries as there are now, but every man had to tan his own leather or else he had to pay a big price for it, and in those days the tanning of leather was a slow process. First, they took the hide and soaked it in water with lime or ashes until the hair started to slip. Then with tools made especially for that purpose they scraped the hair and any meat off the hide, then it was ready to put in the vat for tanning. Now, the vat was made in this way. I will call it a box, which they made about eight feet long, and four feet wide and three feet deep. This was made very tight so that it would hold water, then they dug a pit just large enough to hold the box just below the surface of the ground, with a good solid cover, then they put down a layer of red oak bark then a hide then another layer of bark and so forth until the pit was filled, then they poured the water in the box until it was filled to the top, and then they put the last layer of bark and lead to hold the bark and hides down in the pit . It took about six months to tan the leather in this way, whereas with new methods now days they can tan a hide in a day or less. When I was a boy my father used to tan all his own leather, so I know whereof I speak ."5

Adam can’t wait six months to get harnesses to then plant crops! He and Eve need to eat NOW. Without leather, no harnesses; without harnesses, no draft animal; without draft animal, very few plants can be planted. If someone wants to believe that Adam, Eve, and Cain were farmers go ahead, but one should explain how all the above problems were overcome. Further, we must know that there are easier ways for Adam and Eve to make a living than farming. When asked why they didn’t farm, one Bushman gave a quite reasonable answer,

" Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalashari Bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, “Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?” 6

One final thing about the problems of Adam and Eve farming–farming was very unhealthy for its early participants.

The study of the sample of skeletal remains from South Asia showed that there was a decline in body stature, body size and life expectancy with the adoption of farming. A broadly similar result was obtained by the analysis conducted on skeletons from prehistoric populations in Georgia, USA-—i.e. the health of the hunters was markedly better. In the case study of the Levant region there was a slight increase in the level of health with the initial adoption of farming, but this was followed by a marked decline once intensive agriculture and husbandry were fully established. Of the 13 regional studies, 10 showed that the average life expectancy declined with the adoption of farming. There are a number of factors that would have led to this decline. The domestication of animals that took place on a major scale with the advent of farming had, along with its benefits, the unforeseen result of allowing the transmission of numerous infectious diseases from these domesticates to their human masters Among the side effects of the new lifestyle was the development of a new host of diseases and disorders, including beri-beri, rickets, leprosy (thought to have been transmitted to man from the Asian water-=buffalo) and diptheria. Diptheria is one of at least 30 distinct diseases which can be transmitted via milk. As the palaeopathologist Don Brothwell has said, the practice of dairy farming undoubtedly assisted in the spreading of such diseases .”7

Adam and Eve and their children would have been gatherers. Thus, working the ground meant something different for Cain than it did for people in King David’s time. What could working or serving the ground mean? One interesting interpretation comes to mind. The predecessor to the plow has existed for a long time. Encyclopedia Britannica says,

"The antecedent of the plow is the prehistoric digging stick. The earliest plows were doubtless digging sticks fashioned with handles for pulling or pushing. "8

The oldest wooden digging stick is long before the Neolithic.

"A digging stick, dated to ∼39,000 BP, is made of Flueggea virosa."9 At Swartkrans, bones were apparently used as digging stick,

" Some of the fossil bones looked so worn at the tip that they must have been used for several days. Bob began to wonder if the hominids carried these digging sticks with them. Then he noticed that the wear scratches on some specimens were obscured by a glassy polish. A similar sort of polish occurs on modern bone tools used by hunter gatherers to burnish hides. Bob speculates that the hominids may have made hide bags to carry tools and tubers, and the glassy polish formed as the bones rubbed against the leather. A few tiny, awl-like pieces of bone—the sort of tools that could be used to puncture leather— were also uncovered at Swartkrans ."10

These date to between 1.8 million and 1.1 million years ago.11

The person using those bone digging sticks 1.1 myr ago or more, was actually working the ground! Because of the above, I can’t see Cain being a farmer. Thus, I am forced to believe that working the ground is the one correct translation in this setting. I think the choice of the word ‘till’ is a choice made early in translational history when people believed that the earth was only 6000 years old. Now, clearly if you already assume that this is a Neolithic family then yeah, they are farming, but as you will see below, it is anything but certain that they were Neolithic.

The people below are also working the ground. Plant resource management in hunter-gatherer tribes goes way back in time. To me there is little doubt that ancient man planted plants to help them, just as the Aborigines did with yam. Hunter-gatherers did whatever it took to live, planting a few things to have food next year was a good idea,

" The closest parallel to planting practice in Aboriginal gathering pertains to the Dioscorea yam in subtropical and tropical Australia. Observations of replanting, described in detail for Arnhem Land by Jones 1975) and Jones & Meehan , for the eastern Cape York Peninsula by Harris, and deduced on historical evidence for Western Australia, entail a rather casual replacement of the stem-attached top of the tuber at harvest, and are identical both to the informal procedures of the Tasaday oragers of the Philippines." 12

This allows the yam to grow back. Other techniques are also "working the ground "

" I believe Native Americans were excellent vegetation managers and we can learn a lot from them about how to best manage forests of the U.S.," said Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology in the College of Agricultural Sciences. "Native Americans knew that to regenerate plant species that they wanted for food, and to feed game animals they relied on, they needed to burn the forest understory regularly ."13

Was Cain up to Sorcery?

Plants were vital to survival and all hunter-gathering societies were excellent botanists. Even Chimps seem to know what plants to eat.

The noted recovery time of 20-24 hours after bitter-pith chewing in two M group chimpanzees is comparable to that of local human inhabitants, the Tongwe, who use cold concoctions of this plant as a treatment for parasites, diarrhea and stomach upset. These observations encouraged Huffman and colleagues to investigate the possible contribution of plant secondary compounds in V. amygdalina against parasite infection. Phytochemical analysis of V. amygdalina samples collected at Mahale in 1989 and 1991 from plants known to be used by chimpanzees revealed the presence of two major classes of bioactive compounds. From this work to date, a total of four known sesquiterpene lactones (vernodalin, vernolide, hydroxyvernolide, vernodalol), seven new stigmastane-type steroid glucosides (vernonioside a1-a4, B1-B3) and two freely occurring aglycones of these glucosides (vernoniol A1, B1) have been isolated…

“Supportive of the ethnomedicinal literature, the sesquiterpene lactones present in V. amygdalina, also found in V. colorata and a number of other Vernonia spp., are well known for their anthelmintic, antiamoebic, antitumor, and antibiotic properties.” 14

We know Neanderthals were doing this 40-50,000 years ago long before the Neolithic:

" Plant-based medicine may have been around for even longer than previously thought. Scientists recently uncovered new evidence of herbal remedies used by Neanderthals. It seems our prehistoric relatives had gained knowledge of the anti-inflammatory, antiviral and pain-relieving properties of plants in their environment, and began developing their own medicinal practices. Most shockingly, it turns out Neanderthals were using their own natural penicillin some 40,000 years before modern humans discovered it. Researchers from the universities of Liverpool and Adelaide conducted an analysis of DNA that had been persevered in dental plaque belonging to four Neanderthal individuals. The study subjects were obtained from two European archaeological sites; Spy in Belgium and El Sidrón in Spain. The remnants reportedly date back 42,000 and 50,000 years ago, respectively ."15

" Some of the oldest evidence for hominin use of plants as medicine come from Spain and South Africa. The Neanderthals from El Sidr on, Spain, used medicinal plants, as demonstrated by plant microfossils (Hardy et al., 2012). In Sibudu, South Africa, bedding structures of Cryptocarya was found in 77 ka old archaeological layers. The plant family contains insecticidal and larvicidal chemicals. Leaves were brought as bedding to the sited possibly because of their medicinal ingredients. "16

Between the above and the fact that at a 400,000 year old site of Schoningen, where a wooden spear was found, and where an analysis of the plants used by these ancient men was published in 2015, we know that plant knowledge goes far back in prehistory. At Schoningen, by my count 36 out of 67 species listed in the paper were medicinal species. All of them were edible. While we can’t and will never prove that ancient man did what modern hunter-gatherers did, manage their resources by planting next year’s tubers, we can tell that they were very knowledgeable with plants. And that raises an red flag for me on Cain.

The earliest Westerner to live with the Ona, was apprenticed to an Ona Joon, a medicine man. He was going to learn all the medicinal plants. Then he thought better of it and dropped out of Joon school. Here is why.

" There was another reason: self-preservation. Medicine-men ran great dangers. When persons in their prime died from no visible cause, the ‘family doctor’ would often cast suspicion, in an ambiguous way, on some rival necromancer. Frequently the chief object of a raiding party, in the perpetual clan warfare of the Ona, was to kill the medicine-man of an opposing group. No I would not become a joon, to be blamed, maybe, for a fatal heart attack a hundred miles away." 17

So why raise this with a modern human? Medicinal herbal knowledge has almost always been viewed as magic in primitive tribes. And that has brought in the idea of the sorcerer. The medicine man/shaman or what ever name applied to him, was able to work miracle cures, sometimes merely by his knowledge of plants. Out on my former ranch grew a tree with sharp thorns on the trunk. As with much plant medicinal knowledge, the use of this tree was passed on to me by a neighbor at my ranch, who called it the toothache tree. Slice a bit of bark off the tree, put it on your gum where the tooth hurts and voila, your gum goes numb. It really does. One friend I showed that to went numb for 4 hours. I was becoming worried about lawsuits! Then he got over it.

Cain had already had his offering rejected by God when God said: " If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted(KJV). This implies that Cain had not previously done something well. This is not referring to the future murder, but to something Cain did in the past that caused the rejection of the offering .

Since the context of this chapter is the evil line of Cain combined with the fact that Cain brought plants he had to have gathered, I think it is possible that Cain had become well acquainted with plants and their usefulness, and thus was, what later tribes would call a medicine man and was starting down a road God didn’t like. This would lead to the possible interpretation that Cain SERVED the land, as in worshipped the creation, and thus, his heart was not pointed to God during his offering. That is, it was a half hearted offering out of social pressure. This interpretation would also fit with the general degradation we see in Cain’s lineage, leading to the corruption that caused God to bring the flood.

The scripture doesn’t say Cain was a tiller of the ground, even though it is translated that way. It says he worked the ground or served the ground. Logic dictates that 2-5 people alone in the world, couldn’t actually engage in farming without starving to death. Thus, we are forced into the view that Cain was doing something different than tilling the ground. It basically said Cain worked or served the ground and gathered plants for his offering to God. I think it is possible that Cain brought his Sorcery to God as an offering and it was rejected. We have done to Cain what we did to King Arthur–put him in a more modern time frame.

I will talk about the “city” Cain built next. I am convinced our translators chose the options that just make the Bible false and we are left to deal with the damage!

1 .Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship
2 .Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1553 עָבַד. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 639). Chicago: Moody Press.
3 . Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., Jr., & Waltke, B. K. (Eds.). (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 1053). Chicago: Moody Press.
4 .Coppes, L. J. (1999). 25 אדם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 11). Chicago: Moody Press
5 .Thomas Jefferson McBride, History of Great Grandparents, Grandparents and Parents of Thomas Jefferson McBride, Draper Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society in SC 21
6 .Jared Diamond, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Discover, 1987, in in D. Bruce Dickson, ed. Readings in Archaeology, (New York: West Publishing, 1994), p. 22
7 . Richard Rudgley, The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, (New York: The Free Press, 1999), p. 8
8 Plow | agriculture | Britannica
9 Francesco d’Errico, et al, “Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa,” PNAS August 14, 2012 109 (33) 13214-13219, https://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13214
10 Donald C. Johanson, Lenora Johanson, and Blake Edgar, Ancestors, (New York: Villard Books, 1994), p. 163-165
11 Pat Shipman, What can you do with a bone fragment? PNAS February 13, 2001 98 (4) 1335-1337 https://www.pnas.org/content/98/4/1335.full
12 . D. E. Yen, Agronomy of Asutralian Hunter-Gatherers,", in David R. Harris, Gordon C. HIllman, Foraging and Farming: The evolution of Plant Exploitation, Routledge, 2014, p. 59
13 . Eastern forests shaped more by Native Americans’ burning than climate change" May 21, 2019 Eastern forests shaped more by Native Americans' burning than climate change -- ScienceDaily
14 . Michael A. Huffman, “Current Evidence for Self-Medication in Primates: A Multidisciplinary Perspective,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 40(1997):171-200, p. 180
15 . Study finds proof that Neanderthals used plant-based medicines
16 . Gerlinde Bigga, Werner H. Schoch, Brigitte Urban, Paleoenvironment and possibilities of plant exploitation in the Middle Pleistocene of Schoningen (Germany). Insights from botanical macro-remains and pollen," Journal of Human Evolution, 89(2015), p. 92-104, p.101
17 .E. Lucas Bridges, The Uttermost Part of the Earth, (New York: Dutton, 1949), p. 264

That made me smile!

Forget Cain the farmer. What about Abel the herdsman? How long have sheep been domesticated?

Cain built a City

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.

To understand what Cain was building we really have to understand the whole story of Cain Scripture says(Gen 4:2-7):

"Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

I will stop here and point out that Cain’s problem was a heart problem. His heart, at the time of his sacrifice was not correct and God was telling him that his offering would be accepted if he did what is right. What was right was what Hebrews 11:4 says: By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. This implies Cain didn’t have faith in God–was he serving the earth rather than working it? Genesis 4:2-6 is an eerie parallel to what Malachi said (1:6-9):

"It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.

“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’

“You place defiled food on my altar.

“But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’

“By saying that the LORD’s table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD Almighty.

“Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?”—says the LORD Almighty."

This suggests to me that Cain’s offering was either leftover food, or maybe plants dedicated to proving his knowledge and power as a healer. As I showed in the above post, knowledge of medicinal plants in hunter-gatherer societies was always viewed as sorcery. Whatever the problem, Cain was off to a bad start. After the murder God and Cain have an exchange, with Cain sharing his greatest fear, that someone would do to him what he had done to Abel (Genesis 4:11-16),

"The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

" But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. "

Cain was paranoid about being killed; this is the important point here. To help Cain’s paranoia, God put a mark of protection on Cain so that no one would kill him. But Cain didn’t trust God as we already know and thus went off to build a place where he could see people coming. A protected, guarded place. Why do I say this? The basic meaning of the word translated as ‘city’ is "A place guarded by waking or a watch’! Back in Neolithic times turning a word for watch in to a word for city made sense because it was a place where people watched out for you. Thus as one guy said, Hebrew is an efficient language, the word for Watch gained a new meaning, city. But in Cain’s time there were too few people to have a city unless one assumes a Neolithic age first. But even Strong’s indicates that what Cain built isn’t necessarily a city. Strong’s says:

5892 עִיר, עִיר, עִיר הַהֶרֶס [ʿiyr, ʿar, ʿayar /eer/] n m. From 5782 a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the widest sense ( even of a mere encampment or post ); …1089 occurrences; AV translates as “city” 1074 times, “town” seven times, “every one” twice, and “variant” six times. 1 excitement, anguish. 1A of terror. 2 city, town ( a place of waking, guarded ). 2A city, town.1

A small encampment is encompassed by this word, so long as the encampment is guarded.

The root of this word (Strong’s 5782) means awake alert roused, and it is theorized by the person I spoke with to have been used as a word for protection and gradually morphed into being used of places that are protected, like in English we can say go to the Watch. meaning a body of sentinels or guards. In this latter case the word has turned from a verb to a noun, just as happened in Hebrew a long time ago.

It is a curiosity that this word is identical to the last word in Strong’s above and identical to Strong’s 5894, which is the word used in Daniel 4 for watcher, the angel that came to talk with Daniel. While this may or may not mean anything, but given that this is the lineage which caused the corruption that brought on the flood, I wonder if there is a connection here with dark arts. Was Cain engaging with a fallen ‘watcher’ at this place he built? Could it be related to Astrology, which of course needs to be done at night? I don’t know. The language would make it possible. One can of course just say Cain was paranoid and wanted a safe place to live away from everyone else.

The main point is, Cain built himself a place of safety for himself, not a city as we would know it. A city as we know it can only be the case IF you first assume the answer to the question above and say this is in the Neolithic prior to examining the data I am showing here. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been enough people. A footnote in Josephus (Book 1, Chapt 2) says that an old tradition holds that Adam and Eve had 33 sons and 23 daughters. If this is an old tradition, then even the Jews would not have viewed what Cain built as a city as that word brings to our minds.

I’m getting to that John But on my timing.

Let’s look at the claim that Abel was a keeper of sheep. As with the logic that I showed in an earlier post that farming is not an occupation for one or two to engage in, Shepherding is quite similar. A shepherd cannot work 24/7. He needs relief. Indeed, Wiki points out that shepherds group their flocks togethre and share the load.

“Shepherds would normally work in groups either looking after one large flock, or each bringing their own and merging their responsibilities.” Shepherd - Wikipedia

With whom was Cain going to share the duties? When exhaustion overcame him, both he and the flock would be at risk. Yet we think one man can engage Neolithic farming which requires specialists. Farming societies have to have ways to store a year or more of food; shepherding requires the ‘technology’ of a trained dog, a sheepfold and multiple shepherds.

Consider the following scenario. Cain has sheep scattered across a small valley, maybe 1/4 mile across. He is on one side. Wolves come on the other side and start dragging a lamb away. He would have no chance to save that lamb’s life because he couldn’t get there quickly enough. No, shepherding also required multiple people.

Now clearly if Adam is just a guy from a Neolithic society chosen to have a relationship with God, then some of these objections fall away, but, such an Adam becomes nothing more special than Abram whom God chose to have a relationship with. Why then have the nonsense about the creation of Adam and Eve if he is just a Neolithic guy among many? Why attach the original sin to him and Eve? Murder demonstrably was much older than the Neolithic! It was 400,000 years or so older. It is hard to say these were not human as many anthropologists claim that the technology from that time on, required some form of language.

Assuming Adam was 100-200kyr ago, taken from a group, and given the spirit of God.then the above objections remain. Dogs were not domesticated yet at that time. 10 people in a family (which it had to be at one early instant, are not enough to build storage for food that can’t be grown because of pests.

The word translated sheep is tso’n. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon defines that word as “small cattle, sheep, sheep and goats”. Given this range of definitions, we can’t be sure exactly what it was that Abel tended to. It could have been goats for all we know. Like Mandarin, Hebrew isn’t always entirely clear on the distinction between wild goats and wild sheep, nor apparently, even cattle. Both goats and sheep climb cliffs in similar way and live in hills cropping the vegetation close to the ground.

The word for keeper is ra’ah . The word is a participle and can mean to pasture, tend, graze, feed, shepherd, herdsman, to associate with, or be a friend of. Of these possible meanings, there seems to be two classes. The first class has the meaning of shepherd. These meanings are ‘to pasture”, “graze”, “shepherd”, and “feed”. The other class has a slightly different meaning. “Tend”, “to associate with, and ‘to be a herdsman,” do not have the connotation of the shepherd. How do we know which meaning we should use? For reasons which will become clear below, I will suggest the term ‘tend’ or ‘herdsman’ is an appropriate meaning here.

One thing we ought to do is look at when humans began ‘tending’ tso’n (sheep/goats) but we also ought to look at what does it mean to ‘tend’ sheep/goats? A shepherd watches over the sheep and fends off the other predators, like lions, and wolves. But the herdsman is also a sheep/goat predator. In deed, he is the chief predator of the sheep/goat. The animals are kept for his personal use and he kills them when he and his family need food. A herding family will get the vast majority of their calories from eating them with percentages above 75%. 112

Everyone thinks that ‘tending’ an animal means you have domesticated animals; that being a herdsman, means they property of the herder. Are these Inuit herdsman?

" Near the center of this range is a pass through the mountains, which perhaps from the Late Pleistocene period has been a migration route for enormous herds of caribou (the North American reindeer) and the Inuit people who followed the herds from summer to winter pastures. This pass has long been noted by botanists and others for the profusion and vigour of the vegetation growing therein. " Robert R. Brooks, And Dieter Johannes, Phytoarchaeology, (Portland, Oregon: Dioscorides Press, 1990), p. 110-111

If these Inuit don’t qualify as herdsmen or ‘tenders’ of reindeer, would the Lapps?

" The two groups of sites are a sufficient distance apart to represent the normal positions of winter and summer ranges of moving reindeer herds. Gordon believes there was a rapid spring and fall migration that had the reindeer herds traveling between 186 and 250 miles (200-400 km) in a few weeks, a roughly equivalent distance to that traveled by Canadian Barrenlands caribou. He also believes that the hunting groups followed the herds, which accounts for the close similarities in trade goods, art traditions, and other artifacts over long distances. " ~ Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From Eden, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p.152.

or the 1.36 myr old Chinese. Are they herdsmen?

“The researchers conclude that the tools were used by hunters who were following game migration routes. Bones of gazelle and horse-like creatures, among other extinct species, were found with the tools at the ancient game processing site.”

Now, what are we to think when we learn that Neanderthals in the Caucasus mountains gained 85% of their caloric intake from a type of tso’n ? 113 Is this not ‘tending’ t’son ? But this is not all. Neanderthals obtained a high percentage of their meat from goats and sheep at numerous other sites. Goat and sheep bones represent 60% of the layer 2A deposits at the Neanderthal site of Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucaus mountains, some 70-40 kyr ago. 114 Adler states,

Outside the Caucasus, high frequencies of mountain goat in Middle Palaeolithic contexts have been observed in Uzbekistan at Teshik-Tash (Capra sibirica: 1 80% NISP [Gromova 1949]) and Obi-Rakhmat (Capra sibirica: 47.4–66.7% [Wrinn n.d.]), at the Spanish sites of Gabasa 1 (Capra pyrenaica: 33.7–52.2% NISP per layer [Blasco Sancho 1995]) and Axlor (Capra ibex: 25.6% combined ungulate sample [Altuna 1989, 1992]), and at Hortus in southern France (Capra ibex: 75.4% NISP combined sample [de Lumley 1972]).115

Given this, how on earth do we say that Neanderthals don’t fit the definition of being a ‘herdsman of tso’n ”? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points out that the isotopic composition of Neanderthal bones showed that they derived most of their calories from meat, not from plant foods. 116 This further supports the idea that they were somehow ‘tending’ to the animals they chose to eat.

But this data, this high percentage of bones of a single large animal actually contradict ethnological observations of modern hunter gatherers. Modern humans seem much less efficient at hunting than these Neanderthals. Hawkes et al, looked at the caloric economy of modern hunters. If one reads what they conclude, it is entirely a mystery why the Neanderthals were so efficient at large game. Hawkes et al., write,

" The average acquisition rate a man could expect to achieve for his own household was 0.08 kg/hr if he specialized in large prey and 0.04 kg/hr if he specialized in small (table 4). By these calculations, a hunter seeking to maximize his household income should not specialize in small animals instead of large, but he should include small animals among the prey he takes (Hawkes, O’Connell, and Blurton Jones 1991). Each time he encounters a small animal, he can expect to earn its average postencounter acquisition rate while he pursues it. The measured postencounter rates for small animals ranged from 0.23 to 1.5 kg/hr (Hawkes, O’Connell, and Blurton Jones 1991). This means that each time a hunter encounters a guinea fowl and passes by in order to continue earning 0.08 kg/hr searching for big game, he is reducing his household income. Even if neighbors made claims on small animals, a man who pursued them and kept less than half of the lowest-return small prey would still earn a greater nutritional benefit for his own household than he would get from specializing in big game.117

They go further,

" These comparisons are based on mean rates. They ignore the most important reason that big-game hunting is an ineffective strategy for provisioning a family: It does not provide a reliable nutrient stream. The daily risk of failure for a Hadza big-game hunter is consistently = 96% (table 3). Big-game encounter hunters can expect to fail 45 days for each success, while small-game encounter hunters would go only 1–3 days between successes (table 4), and plant collectors would rarely if ever come home emptyhanded (table 5) . " 118

Clearly, Neanderthals present a mystery. They were so successful at obtaining one big game species, their bones show that they ate almost nothing but meat. This means that they didn’t fail to get big game meat 96% of the time, as modern human hunters do. Indeed, they seem to be able to get meat upon demand—as, say, herders can. This information is quite fascinating and utterly ignored by apologists.

What does it mean to tend sheep/goats? Does one have to walk with them through the pastures to be tending them? Could another form of tending them mean chasing them into an enclosure where they are kept until one wants to eat them? Such an arrangement would ensure a supply of food but also take minimal work. Humans have done this with fish for a long time in the form of fish weirs. Stones are arranged in a shallow stream such that a fish can get into an enclosure but then have a hard time finding the way out. Such weirs, as they are called, are an easy way for a human to feed himself in the wild. But such an arrangement is often used with wild animals. Chase them into a concealed corral and shut the gate. Then it is easy pickings. Would that not be ‘tending the tso’n ?

There is another way this tending the tso’n could be understood. Some hunter-gatherer tribes follow their prey herds. While they are not herders, as we understand the term, they do form an association with the herds and follow them (something a shepherd does as well). Bahn relates,

Gordon points out the frequent confusion between following herds of caribou and accompanying them and mentions that Burch has agreed that the Chipewyan did indeed follow the herds annually. It is high time that the fallacy that ‘people cannot follow the herds’ was laid to rest.” 119

It seems entirely reasonable to say that anyone behaving as the Chipewyan did were doing precisely what Abel was said to be doing—tending the herd.

112.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7270028/page/3/ accessed 10-14-06

113.Daniel S. Adler, Guy Bar-Oz, Anna Belfer-Cohen, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, Ahead of the Game : Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Hunting Behaviors in the Southern Caucasus ,” Current Anthropology Volume 47, Number 1, February 2006, p. 91

114.L. V. Golovanova, et al, “Mezmaiskaya Cave: A Neanderthal Occupation in the Northern Caucasus,” Current Anthropology, 40(1999):1:77-86, p. 85

115.Daniel S. Adler, Guy Bar-Oz, Anna Belfer-Cohen, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, Ahead of the Game : Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Hunting Behaviors in the Southern Caucasus ,” Current Anthropology Volume 47, Number 1, February 2006, p. 96

116.Michael P. Richards, Paul B. Pettitt, Erik Trinkaus, Fred H. Smith, Maja Paunovi, and Ivor Karavani, “Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: The evidence from stable isotopes” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, June 13, 2000.

117.K. Hawkes, J. F. O’Connell, and N. G. Blurton Jones… Hunting and Nuclear Families. Current Anthropology 42(2001):5: 681-709, p. 686-687

118.K. Hawkes, J. F. O’Connell, and N. G. Blurton Jones… Hunting and Nuclear Families. Current Anthropology 42(2001):5: 681-709, p. 686-687

119.Paul Bahn, “Comments,” Current Anthropology, 30(1989):5:618

It’s odd how in order to save the truth of literal Genesis, you have to completely destroy its meaning. This is very unfortunate.

We have the facts of what words are used in Hebrew. The entire interpretation consists then of what English equivalents we use to translate those verses. I have no doubt that at every opportunity you would chose precisely the most damaging word for any Biblical interpretation.

Every word I chose is in the range of possible translations. The meaning I have destroyed is the hammer you use to proclaim the bible false. It is a shame that both you and others pay no attention to the logic of a small group of people trying to live out a Neolithic lifestyle. That just isn’t how small populations work–they live too precariously for the nicer objects of the Neolithic. I think, as I have said before, that we do to A&E the same as we did to King Arthur–put them eisegetically in a time frame where they don’t belong.

Of course you want them to belong there so that you can dismiss the Bible as supercillious nonsense and not have to face up to the fact that there really is a God who loves you.

That’s paranoia or perhaps just cynicism, both of which should be avoided.

This too requires the uncharitable assumption that I, deep down, know God exists and am just trying to avoid him. I think it actually violates the rules of this site, though I’m not completely sure. At any rate, you should avoid that sort of insulting statement. It’s the Christian thing to do.

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Well, I have been a rather cynical individual in my life. There are occasionally good reasons to be cynical or at least doubtful of claims by an atheist that they would work hard to find a way for the Bible to be true. Color me VERY doubtful.

No, I know he exists, but given that I don’t think you want the Bible to be true, it logically follows that one in that position would be happy to have Scripture remain nonsense. I don’t know what upsets you about that. Your position can’t be maintained if you make scripture true. And I presume you like your position

I am almost through, just in time for the hospice people to come here tomorrow and give me some oxygen. I think I have used my last strength here to attempt to talk to my fellow believers. It seems that other than Eddie and you, most didn’t engage. Your prediction at the beginning that I would generally go this way alone seems correct–you should win the prophet of the month award.

From my point of view, I have run my 50 year race that was set before me, and got to the end, the rivers of Eden just a few months before my death. From my perspective, and you might not appreciate it, I feel like I have done what I should have done with my life. While I appreciate your earlier concerns for my reputation being ruined by talking about this stuff, I would rather go out of this world proclaiming God’s glory, than seeking the pleasure of other men. I do believe in an afterlife–strongly and certainly. Maybe you haven’t ever seen a Christian who goes out of this world, believing what he has spouted for years on end. If not, I am that person!

If I am wrong about an afterlife, I won’t ever know it. If I am right, and I have bet my course in life on it, then I will soon see Jesus. (I know, talk like that makes academics nervous–even christian academics).

One or maybe 2 more posts and I must rest.

No, I wouldn’t work hard to find a way for the bible to be true. I would try in an unbiased way to determine what it means. If you decide in advance that it must be true, you poison the effort.

I like my position because I want to know the truth, and that’s what the evidence shows me. Your opinions of me do you no credit; you merely imagine the mirror image of your own bias.

Pascal’s wager? Have you ever looked at criticisms of that idea?

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9 posts were split to a new topic: Glenn Morton and Pascal’s Wager

See, when I said that, you told me how ‘offended’ you were by my saying that. Sheesh. Now you state the truth that I stated.

John, the goal of my life has never been to please John Harshman. If you think that everyone should say things to you that make you ‘give them credit’, well, I have a word for that, but won’t use it.

I didn’t make a Pascal’s wager argument. I stated the truth. If I am wrong. I won’t know it. I don’t believe anyone should become a christian because they get a goodie in the afterlife or fear punishment. That isn’t real faith anyway.

John, I have 2 more posts and I am not going to be bothered by you. A good friend told me to give it up here because all that hang out here are atheists. While not quite true, I find quite a few of them here. And I can only figure you are here to destroy someone’s faith. That seems like a sad life’s work to me, but have at it.

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Why wasn’t there a Rainbow in Noah’s Pre-Flood World?

Glenn R. Morton March 21, 2020

I am going to append to this a reminder of what started me telling people about my views of the flood. It is the fact that the description of the rivers of Eden in Gen 2 fits real geography 5.3 myr ago. Below are the Messinian sediments, sediments from the rivers which were deposited subaerially just before the catastrophic refilling of the Mediterranean basin, which is the only flood in geologic history that actually matches the Biblical description of Noah’s flood.

Regardless of whether Christians totally reject my views or not, they can no longer say that Eden can’t match a real place. One can claim they don’t believe my view, but there is one place and time where the rivers actually match the Bible and it is where the only flood that fits the Biblical description of Noah’s flood happened. I am finishing this, serious but I don’t want this fact forgotten.

There are two statements that Biblical scholars don’t often connect and liberals dismiss as ridiculous. I believe the Bible is a record of God’s interaction with mankind. And I believe that it can be scientifically/historically true, but not with the normal approaches taken by Christians. I believe that the events of Genesis 2-9 took place on a land that no longer exists, and that explains why these verses have appeared so troubling. Let’s look at the verses.

When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens— 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground ," Gen 2:4-5

There was no rain on the land upon which God was about to place Adam, and this was a time before farming.

The second verse is Genesis 9:11

" I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.

I do not like the translator’s choice of ‘earth’ because ’ eretz means ‘land’, not ‘planet earth’. the land that was destroyed, therefore, could have been an area of earth that no longer exists, but actually did long ago, when man’s ancestors first appear in the geologic record. It was the Mediterranean desert.

But let’s look at the other flood theories to see if any of them can explain a land with no rain and no rainbow? The global flood idea has the entire world flooded. Because rainbows can be seen anywhere on earth’s surface today, including the driest area on earth, the Atacama desert, it is difficult to see how there would be no pre-flood rainbows.

Many global flood advocates say the rainbow was just given special significance, but to me that is like God saying to someone today, I make my covenant with you and I will set my grass upon the ground. It makes no sense because God didn’t do anything as part of the covenant.

The Mesopotamian flood is popular with many Christians who don’t believe in the global flood but want a real flood any way. The problem is, there is rain in Iraq and rainbows in the sky. So again, one must effectively have God take something that was already there and give it ‘significance’, but that isn’t very satisfying. Having God give significance to something already there doesn’t show his power to keep his part of the bargain.

The answer to this question lies in the idea that Eden existed in the Mediterranean Basin 5.3 myr ago. The details can be found in the here, but the world was different back then. The Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic ocean and it evaporated to 3 or 4 large lakes. So you will know this large desert is a mainstream idea, see [Wiki]

Click to enlarge. Note that the Taurus mountains are the Mountains of Ararat. The four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:8-14 are found flowing into the same region of this Mediterranean desert and what looked like a nutty geography to many Biblical scholars, like Ryle and Radday:

" For Ryle, ‘The account…is irreconcilable with scientific geography.’ Radday believed that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-cheek fantastic geography ." John C. Munday, Jr., “Eden’s Geography Erodes Flood Geology,” Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.128-130

The above scenario, recognized by modern geology as real, says that those rivers once were together in the same area. Details here.

Would there have been rain in that 5 km deep, empty basin? Not likely. First, the Mediterranean waters were mostly gone and the brine lakes remaining probably had salt crusts limiting further evaporation (A. Debenedetti, Marine Geology, 49,1982, p. 94.). There is river water pouring into the basin but, even today it is not enough to keep the Med filled with water. It is truly a small amount of water in the grand scheme of things.

Secondly, the Mediterranean is located in the Horse Latitudes. Of them, it is written:

" Horse latitudes, subtropical ridges or subtropical highs are the subtropical latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees both north and south where Earth’s atmosphere is dominated by the subtropical high, an area of high pressure, which suppresses precipitation and cloud formation , and has variable winds mixed with calm winds. " Horse latitudes - Wikipedia

You can see the 30 deg line along the coast of Egypt.

Thirdly, there is a very sharp rain shadow in all directions. The yellow lines on Mediterranean map above are the mountain ranges that cause a rain shadow.

From Wiki:

"A rain shadow is a dry area on the leeward side of a mountainous area (away from the wind). The mountains block the passage of rain-producing weather systems and cast a “shadow” of dryness behind them. Wind and moist air are drawn by the prevailing winds towards the top of the mountains, where it condenses and precipitates before it crosses the top. The air, without much moisture left, advances across the mountains creating a drier side called the "rain shadow “.” Rain shadow - Wikipedia

In addition as the air flows down into the basin the relative humidity of that air drops, making rain even less likely. Britannica says of the descending air mass:

" As it descends on the downwind side of the range, it warms again and its relative humidity is further reduced. This reduction in relative humidity not only prevents further rainfall, but also causes the air mass to absorb moisture from other sources, drying the climate on the downwind side. The ultimate result is lush forest on the windward side of a mountain separated by the summit from an arid environment on the downwind side. " Rain Shadow | Encyclopedia.com

As the air descended 5 km down into the Mediterranean basin, the relative humidity would seriously drop, more so than anywhere today on the present earth. Rain would almost be impossible in such a basin.

No rain, no rainbow.