funinspace

I ask this question of the Christians who do not shudder at combining the word "inerrant" with "canon", within any plausible definition of "inerrant". My goal is not to tear down or ridicule, but simple to understand what such Christians do with these verses and why.

1. Do you believe that a world wide engulfing flood happened circa 2200-2700 BC?
2. If (1) is no, then what do with verses Ge 5:32,11:10-26? And why? And how does this relate to your concept of inerrency?

A short background to the question:
The life/ages of Noah to Abraham genealogy is listed in Genesis 5:32,11:10-26 (897 years). A sampling of the verses:
Ge 11:24 When Nahor had lived twenty-nine years, he became the father of Terah. 11:25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years and had other sons and daughters.

The period from Abraham to Jacob entering Egypt to begin the 430 years (Ex 12:40) of Egyptian life can be clearly traced in the same manner. Again, where passages clearly state when X was A old, Y was born. The only difficult one is when Joseph is born, but thru carefully searching thru, the specific dates still can be determined. This period lasted 270 years.
Abraham has Isaac at 100 Gen 21:5
Isaac has Jacob at 60 Gen 25:26
Jacob has Joseph at 79 (This date become unimportant to calculations)
Jacob enters Egypt at 130 Gen 47:9
Total: 290

So following the Bible literally, one ends up with the first estimation that's required, when did the 40 years of wandering end and the invasion begin. 1170BC (though there are some newer archeological arguments for making this date about a 100 years younger) is what others have culled from the miscellaneous corners searching from King Solomon back to the invasion. I find that an acceptable number. So that puts Jacob entering Egypt in 1610BC (1170 + 40 + 400). And it places the Birth of Abraham at 1900BC. And that puts the flood at 2297B.

Now there are others who argue that the Exodus happened in the 16th century BCE. So for those we would have to add about 400 more years to the calculations. So for those the Flood would have happened around 2700 BCE base on the above verses.

keyser_soze

No matter how you slice it, apparently it didn't bother the egyptians, the chinese, and several other civilizations who had recorded histories prior to and right on through that bad old rain.

Jack the Bodiless

Ah, but everyone knows that the Chinese were technologically ahead of the times throughout most of their history.

They obviously invented the aqualung, and waterproof writing materials.

As for the Egyptians: well, the Bible confirms that the Egyptian gods actually existed (they gave the Egyptian priests the power to transform their staves into serpents and duplicate some of the "Plagues", and YHWH "smote" those gods in Exodus), so maybe Ra and his buddies joined forces to hold back the waters.

LP675

Yep.
I think for the staunchest YEC types the standard date for creation is 4000 BC or thereabouts (e.g. James Ussher). So if you say 4000 minus 1426 years (that’s what I calculated from Adam to Noah at 500) you get 2578 BC for the flood.

funinspace

Yes, I realize that there are YEC's that would say yes to question "1". However, there are several around here who maintain some form of inerrancy, but don't seam to hold to the Flood happening in the 3rd millenium BCE. And I am curious as to what they think of these verses...

Jack the Bodiless

There is also the "Babel problem".

IIRC, the Tower of Babel incident occurred about 2 centuries after the Flood. Before then, everyone supposedly used the same language: then they didn't.

Ask them where the "Babel effect" occurs in ancient inscriptions, and which are the pre-Babel "original language".

Chaupoline

I have never understood what was up with the timeline. I do believe in the worldwide flood occuring though. Every ancient culture has a story about a global killing flood, or in the case of the Norse the intense Winter where humanity hid in Yggdrasil. In the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh the Noah figure built a ark as well and saved all the animals of the world. I am unsure how they judged time back then but it doesn't make sense to us today. I don't think that it means that the event didn't occur though. Archaeologists have found that there is always some semblance of truth in every culture's myths. They believed the story of Troy was false but they eventually found it. I speculate that the stories in the Bible are based on fact. Their timeline is just screwed up by today's standards though.

funinspace

Chaupoline, thanks for taking the plunge so to speak. So I am to assume that you think the Flood must have been further back in time? Do you accept any form of canon inerrancy? Or is the canon not the perfect word of God? A minor nitpick: The Sumerian tale does not really describe a world engulfing flood (though it's kind of vague), nor does he take "all the animals".

When you consider these sampling of verses:
11:20 When Reu had lived thirty-two years, he became the father of Serug. 11:21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived two hundred and seven years and had other sons and daughters. 11:22 When Serug had lived thirty years, he became the father of Nahor. 11:23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived two hundred years and had other sons and daughters. 11:24 When Nahor had lived twenty-nine years, he became the father of Terah. 11:25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years and had other sons and daughters.
Are you saying that when it says "X was 32 years", that is not 365 of today's days making a year? Or do you just shrug, and say I don't know, and it doesn't make much sense to me? These kind of verses run right down to Abraham (1800-2000 BCE by theologians). What would signify such a change in usage/meaning under such interpretations? Jacob lived to be 147 years old (Gen 47:28). And that would have been around 1600 BCE.

Chaupoline

Dealing with the longevity of the Antideluvians and the Antideluvian world gets complicated in general, especially when you get to the brief mention of the Nephilim. Some people take the Bible literally in it's entirety. I think that this would be a mistake. The way I see it, the OT is a puzzle book. It's major value is from the questions that arise when you read it. I also think that the timeline mentioned throughout the OT is a code and not necessarily meant to be taken literally. After all why would it matter if you knew how long Methuselah lived and when his children were born? Why would the early Hebrews even bother to write this when there were more important things to record?

The same thing could be considered when they talk about the plans for Noah's ark and the ark of the covenant. They wouldn't record this information and then not mention what happened to the lost ark. Everything was recorded for a reason. Like, why did God create Adam and then later create Eve? What is the signifigance of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Did God intend for all of this to happen? If so, why?

I hope this makes sense. Although, I think that it will just cause more questions. The first task that God gave to Adam was to name everything in the Garden of Eden, ie. to try to learn about the world that he was born into. Instant Knowledge wasn't just given. Later, Eve was created to bounce ideas off of (a companion) as well as to allow the race of Mankind to grow and they could then bounce ideas off of each other as well. The tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden because it would then make them self conscious and self centered, and would in effect isolate themselves from the rest of the world. This is why God automatically knew that something had happened and had to call out to them. Their minds were closed off.

After being cut off from Eden, Adam and Eve had to survive in a harsh world and adapt to their new surroundings. This is important because adversity is the inspiration for learning, it also requires mankind to have to join forces and work together. I think that this was the eventual plan for God but it happened sooner than perhaps God had intended. When we talk about original sin, everyone points to the apple.

The effect of the apple is that we will never really know anything, with the exception that we exist. The only thing that I am sure of is that I AM. All of our knowledge comes from speculation about the world, based on our five senses, and bouncing these ideas off of each other. Being cut off from everything else causes people to treat other people horribly. But this is getting a bit off topic. The book of Genesis, much like the rest of the OT, was created to teach the ToI a code of ethics (based on community respect), and tell them a quick version of why things are the way they are. Everything was compacted with multiple meanings and lessons. Many people have intrepreted the OT wrong. This was a problem in Jesus' time. This did not mean that the OT is a book of lies though, people just have misintrepreted the reasons why something was put in the Bible.

A look at the dietary laws prove the point. At the the time that they were created the ToI needed a system to base their community off of and keep everybody healthy. The unclean animals if not cooked properly would make them very sick. God could have just told them how to cook pork properly, but that would have generally defeated his purpose for mankind. He just gave them a simple system to get started and then let them run with it.

funinspace

Chaupoline,
Thanks. I understand what you are getting at. It's what I consider the more rational approach to the canon within the Christian realm. Of course I understand why inerrantists don't want to go that route. Then you have a harder time negating the argument that Noah's Flood was more allegorical than historical. And on an on...till one renders Matthew's 3 14's lineage to also not be literal. And before you know it your labeled a heritic This is much more in line with mainstream Protestantism in the US. I am specifically curious as to how people to call themselves inerrantists, fundamentalists, or Evangelicals (though this one isn't a 100% fit) deal with such verses. At one time, I tried to make myself one of them, and as you can see I failed miserably It's a "logic" that I cannot fathom, and so the question...