The Garden Of Eden

[DrZoidberg]

No.
The Enuma Elish and Genesis are too close in time to conclude which came first.

Oh, lay off it. People have been studying this seriously for 150 years now. We're absolutely inundated with apologetic "researchers" who do nothing but try to validate Christianities specialness. But they live in their own little bubble, unaware of the real research going on. They're typically systematically wrong about everything, because they start out with faulty assumptions that they refuse to let go of. So we can ignore them.

At this point the serious academics are pretty well agreed on the evolution of Christian/Jewish mythology. The Torah did not come first. It's mostly an amalgam of earlier and older myths. Which is normal for a pagan religion. Since Judaism started out pagan, and evolved into henotheism, it fits the pattern perfectly.

The only real contention is whether or not the Genesis story is an evolution of the Enuma Elish (we have found it) or if both stories are descendants of an even earlier myth lost in time.

 

[ideologyhunter]

You're all full of dish water. The Mormons have proven that the Garden of Eden was situated near present-day Independence, Missouri, perhaps under Loretta's Country Kitchen. Hence the reference in scripture to Eve's craving for pork rinds.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You're all full of dish water. The Mormons have proven that the Garden of Eden was situated near present-day Independence, Missouri, perhaps under Loretta's Country Kitchen. Hence the reference in scripture to Eve's craving for pork rinds.

If it's in Missouri, it would also explain why nobody has found it, since looking for the place would then involve going to Missouri.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The oldest Hebrew writings are maybe 600 BCE.

That is correct. Sumerian culture and writing is far older. Even the word Eden is Sumerian.

Is Lion a flat-earther too?

The bible 600BC ? LOL

Solomon pre-dates Ptolemy
Samuel pre-dates Solomon
Moses pre-dates Samuel
Abraham pre-dates Moses
Job pre-dates Abraham.
...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

Actually yes, according to academic scholars. You are confusing apologetics with academic scholarship. That the earliest writings in the bible are about 6th century BCE, and much borrowed from earlier writings is common knowledge. Your god even had a pagan name, and your god says this right in your bible. You should read it.

Are you a flat-earther? Serious question btw.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The bible 600BC ? LOL

Solomon pre-dates Ptolemy
Samuel pre-dates Solomon
Moses pre-dates Samuel
Abraham pre-dates Moses
Job pre-dates Abraham.
...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

Actually yes, according to academic scholars. You are confusing apologetics with academic scholarship. That the earliest writings in the bible are about 6th century BCE, and much borrowed from earlier writings is common knowledge. Your god even had a pagan name, and your god says this right in your bible. You should read it.

Are you a flat-earther? Serious question btw.

That's a bit early. I think the earliest books were assembled around 500 BC, and slowly took for to about 300 BC. Don't forget that there existed a large number of various Torahs. Various canons. These could vary to an extreme degree. The Old Testament we have today, is only one such Torah. Around 100 BC to year 0 there was an attempt to agree on just one Torah for all Jews. There's a theory that Christianity (ie the Ebionites) were one of the versions of the Torah that lost the debate. The idea being that Jesus was the leading Rabbi of that branch. That's pure speculation though.

One idea is that we can accurately date the Bible based on place names. Place names changed frequently in the ancient world. Religious texts were often backdated. A myth was considered to have more validity if the events described were placed further back in time. So there was a dating creep over time, where events were moved further and further back in time. But they kept the modern (modern for them) place name. The Old Testament is full of ancient events taking place in cities that wouldn't be called that until a few hundred years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The word Israel should tell even someone like Lion that El, as is IsreEl, is a rather curious hangover.

Isn't 500BC the same as 6th century BCE?

 

[funinspace]

...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

You are funny. Mainstream Christian theologians think that the roots of the book go somewhere back in history, but all we have is speculation, beyond the at least near final form as far back as possibly the 7th BCE. The Akkadian empire withered away a millennia prior.

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

What millennia was that fabled world wide deluge in again????? Crickets....

 

[atrib]

Multiple cultures all reporting a deluge isn't plagiarism - it's corroboration.
And Gilgamesh does not pre-date Noah.

To be fair, though, other cultures NOT reporting that deluge and continuing on blissfully unaware that their entire society had been drowned and killed is also corroboration that the deluge was more local than global.

It is truly amazing. That multiple civilizations could get covered by tens of thousands of feet of water and they never noticed.

Christian scholars date the flood to about 2,300 to 2,350 BC, according to Wiki. The Egyptians began building pyramids about 300 years before the alleged global flood, and they continued doing so for more then 2,000 years. The Egyptians never noticed that they had been drowned in a global deluge. Very strange. And the Egyptians were not the only ones.

Also strange is the fact that the global deluge did not leave a mark in the geological record, or in the genomes of any living things. Evidence from a large meteor impact about 64 million years ago can be found all over the planet, but a global deluge just 4,000 years ago never left a trace? We find evidence in the human genome that our species had experienced a population bottleneck about 70,000 years ago, a bottleneck that reduced our population to about 30,000 individuals, but the fact that humanity was reduced to a handful of individuals just 4,000 years ago never left a mark in our genomes? Absurd.

All this has been brought to Lion IRC's attention several times in the past, and he has never attempted to address the facts. Its getting old, and I would suggest that he find some other creationist claim to lampoon next.

 

[steve_bank]

The bible 600BC ? LOL

Solomon pre-dates Ptolemy
Samuel pre-dates Solomon
Moses pre-dates Samuel
Abraham pre-dates Moses
Job pre-dates Abraham.
...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

Actually yes, according to academic scholars. You are confusing apologetics with academic scholarship. That the earliest writings in the bible are about 6th century BCE, and much borrowed from earlier writings is common knowledge. Your god even had a pagan name, and your god says this right in your bible. You should read it.

Are you a flat-earther? Serious question btw.

That's a bit early. I think the earliest books were assembled around 500 BC, and slowly took for to about 300 BC. Don't forget that there existed a large number of various Torahs. Various canons. These could vary to an extreme degree. The Old Testament we have today, is only one such Torah. Around 100 BC to year 0 there was an attempt to agree on just one Torah for all Jews. There's a theory that Christianity (ie the Ebionites) were one of the versions of the Torah that lost the debate. The idea being that Jesus was the leading Rabbi of that branch. That's pure speculation though.

One idea is that we can accurately date the Bible based on place names. Place names changed frequently in the ancient world. Religious texts were often backdated. A myth was considered to have more validity if the events described were placed further back in time. So there was a dating creep over time, where events were moved further and further back in time. But they kept the modern (modern for them) place name. The Old Testament is full of ancient events taking place in cities that wouldn't be called that until a few hundred years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible

Nice work.

 

[steve_bank]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

 

[steve_bank]

I'd have to fact check. I believe the Torah cannon was agreed on after the fall of Israerl by the diaspora Jews. A past Jewish poster said that they also got rid of many of the harsh OT punishments.

My Oxford commentary says Job was probably part of a lost larger set of teaching material. All we have is a tiny fraction of all the written material, what we have was written at different times by different Hebrews.

In the time of the gospels there were competing factions of Jews claiming to be authentic inheritors of the faith. Jerusalem Jews. Roman Jews, Syrian Jews, Greek Jews.

 

[steve_bank]

The oldest Hebrew writings are maybe 600 BCE.

That is correct. Sumerian culture and writing is far older. Even the word Eden is Sumerian.

Is Lion a flat-earther too?

The bible 600BC ? LOL

Solomon pre-dates Ptolemy
Samuel pre-dates Solomon
Moses pre-dates Samuel
Abraham pre-dates Moses
Job pre-dates Abraham.
...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

Lion 'in the lion's den'?

Biblical metaphors are useful even for us non believers.

 

[steve_bank]

For something to do once I went through the genealogy of who beget who and who lived for so many years into MS Project during a slack time at work to look at what is used to gauge time by theists.

What jumped out at me was that some lifespans were the same or close in years. It seemed obvious that the author was creating a written genealogy from oral history.

What survived as written accounts were written well after the wandering Hebrews developed an oral mythology.

Oldest documents. There would have been a wealth of mythology available to Hebrews both written and oral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_literature

Someone can fact check me, the oldest complete Hebrew bibles are not very old. That makes sense since a cannon did not exist until the CE.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org...hebrew-bible/what-is-the-oldest-hebrew-bible/

History of Hebrew. There are no source documents for the bible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Hebrew_writings

The oldest manuscripts discovered yet, including those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, date to about the 2nd century BCE. The common traditional dating of the Pentateuch suggests it was written between the 16th century and the 12th century BCE. Some secular scholars, who tend to suggest latter dates, believe that there was a final redaction between 900-450 BCE.[9][10] The traditional view is that all five books were written in immediate succession, but some scholars believe that Deuteronomy was written later than the other four books.[11] Religious and secular scholars generally agree that the other books of the Bible were written at a latter date than the Pentateuch.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

The flood/Noah story is another tale lifted from the Babylonians.

The problem for me isn't really that other civilizations didn't get wiped out but carried on without problem. The issue is that it would need to rain 725 feet every fucking day! That's 725 feet of rain every 24 hours!

Your standard imbecile wouldn't believe such a tale. Only the greatest of imbeciles would take such a tale seriously.

 

[steve_bank]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

The flood/Noah story is another tale lifted from the Babylonians.

The problem for me isn't really that other civilizations didn't get wiped out but carried on without problem. The issue is that it would need to rain 725 feet every fucking day! That's 725 feet of rain every 24 hours!

Your standard imbecile wouldn't believe such a tale. Only the greatest of imbeciles would take such a tale seriously.

What is getting scary for me is a deeper realization of the absurdity of this debate and that we are surrounded by a population of believers. Thank Zeus we have the 1st Amendment and protections against govt imposing religion.

 

[DrZoidberg]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

It's also not an original story. The original is Babylonian and Noah is called Utnapishtim.

The interesting thing with it is that it's the same story, but with pagan gods. Pagan gods are anthropomorphic forces of nature. Hence non-personal, random and terrifying. In a pagan context this makes the logic of the story work. Enki, for whatever reason decided to kill all humans, but then regretted the decision, changed his mind and tried to save it as best he could. This happened because the gods are amoral and flawed. Within paganism gods were worshipped and sacrificed to mostly so they'd leave humans alone. As a pagan story, this is a great story, and about how humans can pull together and survive even the worst natural disasters. It also teaches us to stay humble.

But moved to a Christian setting, with a benevolent all loving God, omnipotent and omniscient God, the story makes no sense. If all the humans were so corrupt and evil, wasn't the main culprit of this God, since he clearly sucked at explaining himself. Blaming humans for his own failings... ehe... what? It's an incoherent story.

Also, in the pagan tradition, religious myths could be taken as metaphor or literal, (it was down to social class and level of education. No educated pagan took the pagan myths literally). The fact that so many Christians take the Noah myth literally... is retarded. It's just straight up retardation. It's a non-sensicle story, written for a completely different type of god. That's not mentioning the fact that there's just no way it would have literally worked. People back then were farmers. They knew the predators would just have eaten the herbivores. They were very well aware of ecology and how habitats work. They all realised how the Ark was fucked to keep all those animals alive. So it's so embarrassingly stupid that there exists 21'st century humans who can't figure out stuff that iron age humans understood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim

 

[funinspace]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

The flood/Noah story is another tale lifted from the Babylonians.

Who borrowed from the Akkadians, who borrowed from the Sumerians.

The problem for me isn't really that other civilizations didn't get wiped out but carried on without problem. The issue is that it would need to rain 725 feet every fucking day! That's 725 feet of rain every 24 hours!

Your standard imbecile wouldn't believe such a tale. Only the greatest of imbeciles would take such a tale seriously.

Often, the fundegelical will presume the Deluge happened somewhere before our better records of human activity, such as 10,000 -25,000 years back. It is a convenient (escapist) way to get past the obvious issue of the Chinese, Sumerian, and Egyptian civilizations. The typical fundegelical will also rely upon assuming dozens up dozens of unmentioned miracles to make the impossible fairy tale to not be so impossible, like reshaping the mountains and continents. But either way, such a Deluge would leave massive markers upon the earth that simply aren't there. And we have hundreds of thousands years worth of solid geological evidence from many areas of research. So one has to assume all the researches are somehow delusional and/or liars. Oh, and they ignore the clear OT generational begats putting the Deluge in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, somehow clear language becomes fuzzy....

 

[Sarpedon]

The bible 600BC ? LOL

Solomon pre-dates Ptolemy
Samuel pre-dates Solomon
Moses pre-dates Samuel
Abraham pre-dates Moses
Job pre-dates Abraham.
...and the book of Job dates to Mesopotamian / Akkadian / Egyptian Middle Kingdom

Noah pre-dates everyone. So the claim that Noah is a 6th century BC plagiarism is simply false.

Oh wow, does this mean you are actually ready to give me the dates for biblical events I keep asking for? If you know that Solomon predates Ptolemy (how?) then maybe you can say which Pharaoh it was who Moses drowned in the Red Sea?

Also, do I need to point out how easy it is to write a story set at an earlier time than when you are writing it?

It seems to me that you have very specific ideas of chronology when it suits you, and then feign (or admit) ignorance when it suits you.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

To me the obvious problem with Noah and the flood has always been explaining the rest of civilation.

If the flood occurred and humans rebuilt from the crew for cultures like Egypt to develop along with all the human racial variations humans would have to be changing generation by generation. Genetic variation would have to take place in real time.

To maintain creationism theists call it macro evolution. All variations always existed in humans from creation. Still does not get around the time scale.


Hey Martha, what's with the slanted eyes with our kid?

The flood/Noah story is another tale lifted from the Babylonians.

The problem for me isn't really that other civilizations didn't get wiped out but carried on without problem. The issue is that it would need to rain 725 feet every fucking day! That's 725 feet of rain every 24 hours!

Your standard imbecile wouldn't believe such a tale. Only the greatest of imbeciles would take such a tale seriously.

Ahhhhhh, physics! To evaporate water takes energy, that comes from the sun. When water vapor becomes rain, that heat is released. In an average rain storm, the amount of heat released is negligible in the greater scheme of things. But the vast rain storms of the Noahic flood would release large amounts of heat. Enough that Noah's seas would be boiling hot.

 

[bilby]

Dead men tell no tales.
All flood accounts and non-accounts come after the fact.
So we wouldn't expect there to be pre-flood cultures reporting that it never happened.

Actually dead men tell plenty of tales. Go to any archaeology department and they'll tell you about this thing that exists which is called archaeology. When is it that you're claiming that all societies stopped and died and the area was abandoned for a long time and then completely unrelated societies all descended from this other guy who wasn't from there took over the area several centuries or millennia later?

There is about 40,000 years of continuous cultural evidence of Australian Aboriginal tribes. These guys depicted various marsupials throughout that time - animals that are radically different from the mammals found everywhere else on Earth. How did Noah arrange for the marsupials, and only the marsupials, to get to Australia, without leaving any trace of their existence on the rest of the world? How did he stop placental mammals from following the marsupials? It only took a few pairs of rabbits less than a fifty years to reach plague proportions once they were introduced to Australia. How did Noah get the wallabies here, while simultaneously keeping out the rabbits?

Perhaps he built the Great Wall of China for the purpose, and it wasn't built by emperor Nasi Goreng after all?

None of this is consistent with the Biblical flood tale. Perhaps Lion has never heard of Aborigines or kangaroos. That's quite a gap in education and awareness for an Australian though.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfSfU6ph8Cs[/youtube]