Well you know me. I'm a rude bastard. Hopefully he'll forgive me.

I meant there is conclusive anthropological evidence other events in the Torah could not have happened as literally described, particularly the Exodus and origin of the Israelite nation. Interpreting the flood as metaphor doesn't help you with that.

Also there are serious historical problems for a literal reading of specifics of the Nativity story and surrounding events, and a few other things in the NT (e.g. earthquake/zombies accompanying the Crucifixion), so it's not just an OT thing.

I'm not suggesting a Christian can't intellectually consider parts of the bible metaphor or myth, just that it's inevitable you will run into serious problems with historicity if you insist on a 100% literal interpretation.

I see what you're saying, I misunderstood you. Maybe you're right, although there are still many people who disagree about not having a literal account, even though some events are problematic.

It's difficult to get into apologetics casually, I think, which is what I mentioned earlier. I enjoy listening to debates online, Ehrman is really good, and lesser known guys who defend the bible like Dr. Michael Brown, or Missler, but I realize that I'm incapable of arguing either side against these guys, so I can say that I am fairly ignorant in the grand scheme of things.

There is this french guy with a degree in micropropagation and agriculture who would argue against evolution, Laurence Tisdall (I just looked him up) who is nearly impossible to argue with unless you have a great understanding in genetics, and even though I think the guy is wrong about many things, there is really nothing I can say to discredit him, and I think apologetics is this way. Unfortunately many people with the wealth of knowledge to discuss these things are biased and not always honest, putting their system of belief first and working backwards to justify themselves. Anyway, I really can't argue for or against with any real weight behind me, but from what I understand, nothing is really concrete and there are things which are still debated.

Yes. I think there are some very low probability estimates at between 20 and 30, don't remember the exact dates - it has to do with the age of modern human fossils and the land bridge between Asia and America which disappeared about 10k, I think.

Nothing to forgive - thanks for the comment.

that would conflict with dating for modern humans in Europe and Africa. that's presumably where the 100k upper limit comes from

So we have one maybe two people who thought it was local.

That doesn't prove your original comment. That a worldwide flood is modern invention. Can you prove that no ancients thought it was worldwide?

I could dig (and think find a few) but i dont feel like it so fair enough i guess.


Yes more would be good.

A good translation that doesn't look like God killed all the humans and covered the mountains with water.


Even if you give me what i ask for though, a local flood that didn't kill all the humans, its still kind of messed up. The point of the flood was to kill the corrupted humans who bread with the Nephilim. Not sure how this happens without killing all humans. Guess you could argue the genes of the Nephim were limited to the flooded area. But things are getting even more contrived then the story looks in the first place.

Wonder how far a dove can fly....

African or European?

What conflict? As for the 100k, that's a very soft number - there is no Bible data that would allow even a guess.

I think it would have to be Mediterranean.

There were unequivocally modern humans elsewhere in the world besides Mesopotamia 30k+ years ago.

Another important question for how big a local flood would be is what was the known world to Noah and or the tellers of the story.

This would be hard if Noah was 30k plus. But if 10k and younger then known world should of been pretty big. At least India and maybe China to the east. The Sahara to the south. The edge of the mediterranean to the west. Not sure about the north. All of which would be a very big local flood.

I think that date was given by RTB some years ago when the oldest known modern human with a fairly certain date was about 30k.

What date do you give the oldest certain modern human?

That was so slick, no one even caught it.

I caught it but not till after i posted so it doesn't count.

lol better late than never

It's a shame chezlaw never made the leap to RGT. British comedy references would have much more currency then.

Australian aborigines are thought to have existed as a continuous culture from between 40k and 90k years ago. (That's just one of those common "facts" you hear though, so not sure what the backing is, if anything - certainly no idea where 90k came from. I'm sure there have been aboriginal remains dated at 40000 years old though).

90 k is fine. So the flood happened before 90 k.

Did the story get passed down orally form then?

That's not a significant barrier is it? Given the account of creation in genesis there's obviously some method by which human prophets have learnt facts that hadn't been recorded. This would just go on he list.

Either there was divine inspiration a hundred thousand years ago, followed by an oral tradition or the inspiration occurred closer to the stories being written down. Neither is more mysterious, is it?

Well its not a barrier as long as the story wasn't passed down form human to human but with Gods intervention. If it was it is.

Here's a brief follow-up I did just out of curiosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_Man

This is the type of statement RTB uses to correlate the Bible with modern anthropology. Man originated recently (30k - 100k) in Africa, experienced the flood, then radiated outward from Africa and the Middle East. All the dates are extremely flexible with large error bars due to the difficulty of establishing things like genetic mutation rates. The wiki I took this from is about Mungo Man, and there is an ongoing controversy about his age, ranging over a period of about 40k years. At any rate, as I said earlier, the Bible sets no date for creation, Adam, Noah or Babel and gives no data from which a date can be accurately deduced - therefore, dates as to those events just aren't important for Scriptural interpretation.

what about jesus' genealogy in Luke 3:23-38?

according to that, there were only 75 generations of people between adam and jesus and ~65 between noah .

so even though the bible didn't set a date, you can ballpark it pretty well, even though methuselah was older than dirt and a lot of these guys lived for hundreds of years for some reason.

i don't know why i'm reminding you of this, i feel like you should know this!

also, i would like to know why god stopped letting some people live for hundreds of years. methuselah had a really sweet deal going, wonder what happened