From: Matt Giwer                                       10 Jun 94  20:58
To  : Jesse Hornbacher
Subj: flood myths around t

JH>  If you present no evidence of such you are engaging in
JH>  axiomatic arguments.  Without presenting a basis for the
JH>  statement "there were other cultures ...  and those
JH>  cultures continued" there is nothing to debate.  All I can
JH>  say is, no there were not.  If you wish to present
JH>  evidence, which can be discussed, please present it.  That
JH>  was the totality of my logic.  What was the flaw?

      Noah's flood:
Let's look at the Biblical dates. I Kings 6:1 says that 480 years
passed from the start of the Exodus to the start of construction
on the first temple by Solomon. Gal 3:17 says that 430 years
passed from the covenant with Abraham to the delivery of the Law
to Moses. The chapters of Genesis after the Flood account give
the periods in years that passed between the births of various
individuals from Noah to Abraham, giving a period of 390 years
from the Flood to the covenant with Abraham. Thus, according to
the Bible, the Flood took place 1300 years before Solomon began
construction of the first temple.

        a) This is a clear, direct, falsifiable claim. These are
clear, unambiguous statements that a period of X years elapsed
between two events.

        b) The event itself (a global Flood that wiped out all
but 8 humans) would be pretty hard to miss or gloss over.

        c) Because there were any number of literate cultures in
the near East, who recorded dynastic lists, raised monuments
giving dates and length of reigns, and sent ambassadors to each
others' courts, we can pretty reliably construct chronologies for
near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, and without
reference to (but supported by) dating methods such as carbon-14
with corrections from tree-ring sequences.

        d) The upshot of which is that the building of the first
temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +- some small delta, placing the
Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others)
have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great
Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years
before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian
inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

        e) Therefore, either we have to reject the historicity of
the Flood account; accept the historicity of the Flood account,
but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event; or
accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the
massive amount of written and archeological evidence estab-
lishing the chronology of history in the near East.

JH>  Dating is a problematic thing.  Give or take a few thousand
JH>  years, assuming the methods are accurate, etc.  Just
JH>  because someone says so doesn't make it so.

     The Bible says it.