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Old 09-25-2004, 09:51 AM   #51
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Israel didn't exist in Noah's day. Noah however did predate Mesopotamia (or He was born there depending on which era of Mesopotamia you're referring to - Noah was before Sumeria). Abraham is generally believed to have lived in Ur, Sumeria, and Abraham is several generations after Noah.
Yes, Ishnaputnim(?) existed before Mesopotamia, but he was not Noah. He is in the Gilgamesh epic with a different story than Noah and his story involves the tree of immortality. You have to remember that almost everything from the origin of Moses to the risen God are found in the stone tablets of Sumer. All of them pre-date the bible by a millennia. And all of the stories are different; for instance, in the story of brother killing brother, the shepherd is the villain who kills the farmer. And the stone tablets of Sargon tell how he was found by a princess as he was floating down the river in a sealed casket. And he became the first lawgiver, even preceding Hammurabi. And both of them preceded Moses.

But what I was referring to was some vague indications in their creation story that the gods became dissatisfied with their creations, the first men, and erased them without a flood, as I recall.

The bible stories do not follow the originals very closely, although they have many of the same foundations that are recognizable. There was a thousand years of distortion, editing, blending, etc., that went on before the bible was written. So why is it supposed to be more accurate?
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Old 09-26-2004, 08:36 PM   #52
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Whats a Babble? Is that a new board game?
Are you being ironic? "Babble" is a fairly common, if crude and somewhat ignorant, epithet used to refer to the Bible. I personally find it as obnoxious as calling fundamentalist xians "fundies", but there is the issue of free speech and all that.
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Old 09-26-2004, 08:39 PM   #53
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Sure there is. If the whole world was like Hitler, I'd be a strong advocate of destroying it. To God, the whole world was evil and full of sin, unwilling to repent.
Your analogy fails because there is a not inconsequential segment of the population such as infants and the infirm, who could even in principle be like Hitler in reality, but only in the realm of bad analogies. Try again.
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Old 09-26-2004, 08:44 PM   #54
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Originally Posted by Magus55
Israel didn't exist in Noah's day. Noah however did predate Mesopotamia (or He was born there depending on which era of Mesopotamia you're referring to - Noah was before Sumeria). Abraham is generally believed to have lived in Ur, Sumeria, and Abraham is several generations after Noah.
Hebrew chronology is not my strong point, but my under standing is that Noah dates to somewhere around 1500 years after creation. Allowing for a wide margin of error, the traditional view, I thought, was that this correlates to around 4500 years B.P. or 2500 B.C.E. according to the usual reckoning in the West. There is evidence for the first sedentary civilizations existing in Mesopotamia roughly 5000 B.C.E.
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Old 09-26-2004, 08:46 PM   #55
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Yes, Ishnaputnim(?)
Utnapishtim.
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Old 09-26-2004, 09:23 PM   #56
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Originally Posted by CX
Are you being ironic? "Babble" is a fairly common, if crude and somewhat ignorant, epithet used to refer to the Bible. I personally find it as obnoxious as calling fundamentalist xians "fundies", but there is the issue of free speech and all that.
I was being facetious since Babble isn't a word, and is downright insulting to those who actually accept the Bible. And yes I agree that calling fundametalist Christians fundies is rude as well ( although to be inclusive, I find xian to be rather annoying also - can people not type 5 extra letters?) But hey we agree on something else - it must be the end of the world afterall! :Cheeky:
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Old 09-26-2004, 09:26 PM   #57
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Originally Posted by CX
Hebrew chronology is not my strong point, but my under standing is that Noah dates to somewhere around 1500 years after creation. Allowing for a wide margin of error, the traditional view, I thought, was that this correlates to around 4500 years B.P. or 2500 B.C.E. according to the usual reckoning in the West. There is evidence for the first sedentary civilizations existing in Mesopotamia roughly 5000 B.C.E.
I'm not sure I hold too strongly to the set in stone theory of the Earth being exactly 6000 years old. I tend to be a little more flexible ( of course I don't accept millions/billions of years of actual history either). Abraham is described as being from Ur, Sumeria. Sumeria is considered the first actual civilization in human history. Noah predates Abraham, so based on that, I'm saying Noah existed before Sumeria. What the actual date is, I have no clue.
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Old 09-26-2004, 10:42 PM   #58
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...although to be inclusive, I find xian to be rather annoying also - can people not type 5 extra letters?...
According to this website, Christians started it.
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Old 09-26-2004, 11:09 PM   #59
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Are you being ironic? "Babble" is a fairly common, if crude and somewhat ignorant, epithet used to refer to the Bible.
I think the answer to your question must be "yes".


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Old 09-26-2004, 11:19 PM   #60
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I was being facetious since Babble isn't a word
Oh yes, "babble" is certainly a word. The epithet wouldn't work otherwise. It's the relationship between the user's use of both the two terms that makes the epithet work. Why do people where I live call a retail chain, officially known as "Harvey Norman", "Hardly Normal"? I'm sure you understand and understand why it would not be if the words themselves didn't make sense. It is their sense which makes it effective for the user, just as is the case with babble. You may simply be overlooking the obvious notion that the bible is full of senseless strings of words, ie babble.


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