RAFH

Now you begin to see the true worth and value and thus the very truth of oriental disciplines, these people, when confronted with rising waters, simply applied Chi Gong principles and held their breath during the inundation. Its truly a testament to the power Eastern philosophy.

RAFH

Demonstrate on.

goldenroad

There are many religions or just creation stories that deal with a great flood, why? I really doubt that the flood would have been worldwide, perhaps it only seemed this way in the minds of those who were recording it because they had no concept of how big the world was. I wonder though if maybe there was a great flood that covered a specific region (a very large region). Any thoughts?

Elijah

In regards to the flood. I saw this on cnn a while back.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science...eut/index.html

"But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years -- a relatively short span -- after the collapse of the continental ice sheets."

funinspace

Amazing, I make a mistake and drop a post on this old thread and it comes alive...
That sounds reasonable enough. I don't think that we have written records from Central American empires circa 1200-1400 BCE, but if you know of some, throw them in.

funinspace

I have no problem with the concept of lots of localized flooding. It happens all the time. However, your view of Genesis diverges dramatically from what is written. I agree that if one is Christian, this is the most reasonable stance. However, this takes you a long way from what the atypical believer in inerrancy or God-breathed Bible apologist posits. This was purportedly written by Moses, some thousand(s) of years after said events. If God wasn't whispering in Moses ear telling him what to write, than it's no more real than the 1,000 year older recorded tale of Gilgamesh on clay tablets. In essence you are in agreement, in that the Bible can contain contradictions. I can live with that, and you still being Christian.

Nuwanda

Before I give what info I have let's be clear about ancient records: people did not necessarily record every event that was important or spectacular. Take the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. Though there were most likely upwards of 250,000 or more eyewitnesses of the event how many eyewitness accounts do we have in written form? One. Pliny's account (as far as I'm aware) and it was only written some 30 years after the fact and at the request of Tactius for his "Histories" publication. This event that rocked the Roman empire has only one surviving eyewitness account. Thats just a note to keep in perspective what we are expecting as far as written histories of a "long day" are concerned.

Starting first with Egypt (China, and the Americas will be brought in if need be later), one piece of evidence is the claim made by Herodotus (Greek historian) that on a visit to Egypt he was shown an ancient manuscript by priests detailing a story of a day which lasted about twice as long as a normal day.

Then, Fernand Crombette, French classical scholar, translated ancient hieroglyphics which supposedly said the following:

"The sun, thrown into confusion, had remained low on the horizon, and by not rising had spread terror amongst the great doctors. Two days had been rolled into one. The morning was lengthened to one-and-a-half times the normal period of effective daylight. A certain time after this divine phenomenon, the master had an image built to keep further misfortune from the country.

Hephaistos...grant protection to your worshipers. Prevent the words of these foreign travelers from having any effect. They are impostors. Let these enemies of the sacrifices to the images be destroyed in the temples of the great gods by the people of all classes. Make life harder for these cursed worshipers of the Eternal. Punish them. Increase the hardships of these shepherds. Reduce the size of their herds. Burn their dwellings.

Rameses, our celestial ancestral chief; you who forced these wretched people to work, who ill-treated them, who gave them no help when they were in need: cast them into the sea. They made the moon stop in a small angle at the edge of the horizon. In a small angle on the edge of the horizon, the sun itself, which had just risen at the spot where the moon was going, instead of crossing the sky stayed where it was. Whilst the moon, following a narrow path, reduced its speed and climbed slowly, the sun stopped moving and its intensity of light was reduced to the brightness at daybreak. The waves formed a wall of water against the boats that were in the harbor and those that had left it. Those fishermen that had ventured onto the deck to watch the waves were washed into the sea.

The tide, which had risen high, overflowed into the plains where the herds were grazing. The cattle drowned represented half the herds of Lower Egypt. The remains of abandoned boats broken against the sides of the canals were piled up in places. Their anchors, which should have protected them, had been ground into them. Quite out of control, the sea had penetrated deep into the country. The expanding waters reached the fortified walls constructed by Rameses, the celestial ancestral chief. The sea swept around both sides of the region behind, sterilizing the gar dens as it went and causing openings in the dikes. A great country had been turned into a wilderness and brought into poverty. All the crops that had been planted had been destroyed and heaps of cereal shoots lay scattered on the ground."

Are these "hard evidence" of an extended delay of one day some 3400 years ago? No. But, the claim was that no ancient evidence existed to substantiate or coincide with the Joshua 10 claim. This should not give one reason to throw up his hands and declare the Bible divinely inspired, but it is reason for a believer to not give up his/her trust in the Biblical record without further investigating. Should we move to China?

GakuseiDon

Crombette appears to be another one of those independent scholars that gets used to push people's own agendas. I think it might be better to go to the primary source here, if one exists. Are you able to help there?

pob14

Nuwanda's last post appears to be cut and pasted in part, without attribution, from http://www.geocentricity.com/shop/bo...ity_primer.pdf, a document which (as is evident from the title) supports the concept of the Earth as the center of the universe. Crombette seems to be cited only by hardcore conservative Catholic sites - apparently he was a Catholic priest. The footnote for the quote in Nuwanda's post attributes it as follows:

Toto

Nuwanda appears to have only directly copied the quote from Crombette, which I have reformatted as a quote.

The quote may be from Essay of the Divine Geography (or via: amazon.co.uk), but I'm not about to pay $38 to find out.

See also this: JOSHUA'S LONG DAY: The historical evidence in folk stories If Nuwanda seriously wants to argue that there is credible evidence that the sun stopped in the sky, based on some folk legends and disputed hieroglyphs, please start another thread which I will move to a more appropriate forum.