“Unobservable”? And did you note that this “documented” history makes the date of the flood older than you think the universe is?
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You do realize that Sumer was in Mesopotamia, where a local Noah’s flood would be, right?
And, as others mentioned, that list either shows numerology being used or the earth is way older than 6000 years.
How do you account for continuous civilizations before and after the flood? China, Egypt, the Americas…
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Well, since you asked 
I have lots of opinions about this list that I would enjoy sharing 
So I think the list is an authentic compilation of badly translated and poorly complied Cushite records, probably first gathered under the Akkadian Empire (Nimrod) and complied and translated later to glorify some later kingdom by showing off a long, impressive history. There’s obviously a list before the flood, and the rest I think is lists of caravan sites with names of those prominent in the household and probably their ages or length of service.
Why I think that Christians should view it as evidence of a global flood:
- The pre-flood list is similar enough to a biblical list to consider it as least to be somewhat authentic if you already believe the Bible is inspired.
- Supporting my argument it is a list of caravan sites of an extended family:
The list of kings is sequential, although modern research indicates many were contemporaries, reflecting the belief that kingship was handed down by the gods and could be transferred from one city to another,
- You can see more information about what I think of that part of the list here: Were the Ancients Aware of a Globe? (plus a little child psychology thrown in for fun) - #86 by thoughtful
- The pre-flood list seems authentic but it indicates a missing culture that we should have found if the flood was regional. It also indicate the proximity of the Akkadian Empire to pre-flood history.
None of the following predynastic antediluvian rulers have been verified as historical by archaeological excavations, epigraphical inscriptions or otherwise. While there is no evidence they ever reigned as such, the Sumerians purported them to have lived in the mythical era before the great deluge.
- The obviously, weird and wrong numbering system possibly points to a bad translation because, though the pre-culture was recent, the connection to that culture had been lost. Again a recent, lost culture points to a global flood.
I had read through this a long time ago. The Antediluvian Patriarchs and the Sumerian King List | Answers in Genesis I remember disagreeing with him slightly - I think it’s not genealogy in the antediluvian part of the Sumerian King’s list but a list of priest-kings, since it’s not the same. And I remember thinking the list used a sophisticated combination of base 10 and 60, not quite the ones he mentions. I played with the numbers a bit. I think they correspond to length of reign, not age.
Yes, Sumer was the first civilization after the Tower of Babel.
These were after the flood (China, India settled very soon after Babel). I believe there’s evidence that very early America settlements were small outposts of other civilizations. Someone posted a link to one once that Todd Wood has shared. I think they were flooded after the ice age ended, and now we’re finding them again. And then the Americas were resettled again later, permanently after an ice age(s) had ended.
Also for a fun bonus. I enjoyed researching this too.
I’m quite convinced this is the site of the Tower of Babel:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jasonur/pdf/Ur_2008_Symbols.pdf
So, in other words, the Sumerian king list is documented history except that it’s all wrong, but except for that it’s proof of the flood. Wow.
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Sort of. 
For me, growing up as a Christian, the Tower of Babel story was clear evidence that parts of Genesis are fiction. We can see how languages diversify, and it isn’t the way that the Tower of Babel story says. So the story could only be something like a “Just So” story to explain what might have seemed mysterious to people at that time.
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When I looked into it there was an obvious explosion of languages in the near MidEast with words that were similar yet obviously different. I could start to pick out words for mother and father. Also if you look at the origin of languages and even look into the Jack and the Beanstalk story we’ve covered in the forum, I think there’s good evidence for all languages and similar stories starting there. Probably Sumerian was the original language.
OK. I’ll bite. How did you make that determination? What is your evidence?
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Humans have always been writing and documenting everything. List of languages by first written accounts - Wikipedia
It fits first written accounts and geographical area.
It’s also a language isolate - though that could just mean it came from the Tower of Babel too, and we don’t have an account of that proto-language. Sumerian language - Wikipedia
Worthwhile topic, but how far back does history go needs its own thread.
The AiG 2348 BC flood date does not work with the chronology of Egypt…
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I’m not confused! 
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Exactly. The point is that He created it.
Verse 1 - creation of heavens and earth.
Verse 2 - focus only on earth and its waters
Verse 3 - creation of light
Verse 6&7 - Expanse created to separate waters under it from waters above it.
Verse 8 - expanse called heaven.
There is no focus on heaven until we get to verse 8. Then verse 9 God focuses on earth AGAIN before he creates in the heavens. The emphasis to me is clearly on the earth and creation pinnacles with Adam being made from the dust of the earth.
We are not supposed to think we came from stardust.
The history professor Peter Harrison attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution:
historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions. … Yet, many of the leading figures in the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced.[17]
ohh…why not?
Ok. You can answer the riddle for me. Did we have disease before Adam’s fall into sin? Is it good?
The short answer is “Yes.” The long answer is discussed in (both) of my books, and as Os Guinness once said, you don’t demonstrate truths in sound-bytes. In other words, if a couple of sentences would answer the question, I wouldn’t have written two books (as it certainly wasn’t for the money!). One can only make a proper case with full arguments. Mere assertions cannot, by their nature, convince.
Nevertheless, here’s a shortish to medium look at the issues.
The first question is what you mean by “we,” because I wasn’t around before Adam’s sin, and maybe you weren’t either, except “in Adam’s loins.” Do you mean “Adam and Eve,” or “‘humans’ before Adam and Eve” (meaning what to you?), or “creatures in the world before before Adam and Eve”?
If Adam, though created mortal outside the garden, was called to a new, spiritual, role, and ultimately to a new spiritual way of being through the tree of life - that is, if Adam and Eve dwelt in the garden in the presence of God as the first of the new humanity - then they would not have died and, in all likelihood, would not have been susceptible to disease.
Sin and exile from the garden, the tree of life and fellowship with God would bring death and disease into the world, understood as “the world of Adam’s descendants.” This is the clear context of Romans 5, where the scope of “death in the world” is described as “death came to all men, because all men sinned.”
OK, so what about “humans” before Adam? I argue, like Joshua Swamidass in Genealogical Adam and Eve, that “biologically modern humans” lived, and even worshipped, before Adam, as every historical, archaeological and anthropological field indicates. But the Bible is about, and for, Adam’s race, not them, so it is relatively (though not completely) silent about their world.
They were as intelligent and cultural as you and me, but they were not called to the new world, the new creation, of the spirit (pneumatikos) like Adam and Eve were, and as in Christ modern people are called and born again, to the same hope. They did not have, or even desire, “eternity in their hearts” (Ecc 3:11).
They were, instead, of the earth (psuchikos), the world that was created perishable and therefore though very good, inferior to what was to come through Adam (2 Cor 15: 42-50 - one must realise that Paul is not speaking here primarily about sin/redemption, but about first perishable creation/new imperishable creation. That distinction is often missed, but is theologically crucial).
Now disease was always part of the first creation for good reasons. I’m not thinking about “uncaring evolution” here, but about God’s providence. There’s not time to discuss that fully, but broadly a perishable world just is the recycling of all creatures through death and rebirth (Ps 104:27-30). New generations only succeed each other by making room through the eating and decay of vegetation, through predation, parasitism and disease. Without it, the earth would have been literally knee deep in insects within a couple of years of creation. Instead, we have ecosystems of astonishing richness and wisdom.
Disease is only an “evil” because Adam and Eve had tasted the imperishable, and were destined for it had they not sinned. In fact, the real glory is that they are still destined for it because God’s original purpose for them still stands, because of the work of Christ. Indeed the whole (non-human) world will eventually be transformed into the eternal and pneumatikos through the same work, when he returns (as our gospel hope asserts, on the evidence of the Resurrection of Christ, the first-fruits).
What that will be like is not yet revealed. It will have affinities with the garden more than with the world of Eden outside, but it will not be a return to the garden, but the fulfilment of which the garden was the seed.
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Do you understand that the first dynasty of Kish alone extends for over 18,000 years after the flood?
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How is this not incorporating false religious ideas?
Perhaps the death and rebirth, understood correctly, pointed to in Psalm 104, is an allusion to our own death and resurrection individually.
By “we” I meant humans. So the answer is not a riddle to me that requires many words to explain. We did not have disease before the fall. It is not good. God uses it for a greater good in His providence though as you’re pointing to.
I agree with this and I’m not sure still how you’re reconciling this to the world outside the garden. So for one group death, disease are good? For the other group they’re a result of the fall and evil? This causes you no cognitive dissonance?
I find it much easier to see that our generation is just as confused and/or wicked as those who worshipped the sun or cows. Above I pointed to evidence that written records are not much more than 4000 years old and they originate in the Middle East. That strikes no one as odd, given that other fields of study point to human activity well before that? So perhaps dating needs to be reinterpreted.
I will continue to fight for orthodoxy. Dating is the only line of evidence that points to an old earth and humans before Adam and Eve. If you look at all the other evidence carefully it all points to a global flood and no other people outside of the garden or before Adam and Eve. I will not let “science” in all of its fields of study that relies on the same underlying assumptions about dating dictate what we should believe.
Did you actually read what I said above? Each “dynasty” is a list of people who lived at that site, and the numbers correspond to their age or length of service and it has nothing to do with a successive reign of kings. The fact that many names on the list are historically attested means the “dating” described there needs to be reinterpreted, just like we need to reinterpret dating in our day.
Apparently we’re not the only culture who wanted to create a long history that didn’t exist.
Yes. You reject everything the list says except the single bit that mentions a flood. That’s cherry-picking raised to the extreme. And this one little mention is supposed to outweigh all the geological evidence, all the historical and archeological evidence, that you choose to completely ignore. You may have no shame, but you really should be ashamed.
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Actually, the oldest written records are about 5300 years old, and they’re preceded by clay tokens that are even older. I think that actually precedes the flood, which apparently wasn’t noticed at the time.
Sorry, no. There are a great many lines of evidence. There is no evidence of a global flood, regardless of the date you choose for it. You can’t just dismiss science by putting scare quotes around the word.
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