TedM

Genesis 10 is one of the most fascinating chapters in the Bible, as it allegedly traces the various nations of the world through the descendants of Noah through his 3 sons--a total of 70 grandsons who 'repopulated' the earth.

I"m sure most here believe the chapter to be an entire fabrication--all the names were made up, and so then were the claims to nation-forming.

I'm curious as to what the historians and linguists might say about the various claims here by 3 believers:


David Guzik has a commentary on the chapter at http://www.blueletterbible.org/comme...is&ar=Gen_10_2

He begins with a quote from William Albright, archeologist and biblical scholar who died in 1971:

Here's a long article about the Table of Nations which makes many claims supposedly in support of the accuracy of Genesis 10 by a Christian apologist:

http://www.soundchristian.com/man/

I'd be interested to know of the evidence against the primary claims of these people.

stephan huller

No I think there are a lot of people here who are going to accept information from a narrative falsely written in the name of Moses c. 500 BCE about a prehistoric boat which saved the world from a mythical flood. Get it through your head - not even the Jews, the people whose ancestors wrote this stuff take it as actual history. Yes we need to know what the purpose of life is, but its not going to be found by pretending any of these names in Genesis belong to actual people. At most they are associated with tribes that existed at the time Genesis was written. For God sake read Ibn Ezra. I don't know what else to say.

TedM

Which one? If he was some Jew in the 11th century, I don't see why he would have anything of value to say regarding the historical accuracy of Genesis 10. Have you done any research on this chapter or are you just giving your opinion? Last I heard there is much debate about when the Torah was written and 500BC is about the most recent date I've ever seen.

Anyway no need to respond. I'm looking for something more specific.

I will say though that I'm becoming increasingly aware of the extent that Skeptics believe that the writers of the bible were knowingly lying. Makes me skeptical of the skeptics.

steve_bnk

My impression when I read it was that of a writer putting oral tradition to pen and filling in tne time details. While not all time spans of marriages and births are identical, they to me form a general pattern.


I can't fimd a link, i believe there are aboriginal groups who memorize long geneologies.

Any expecation of coorboration or gauges of accuracies are wishful thinking.

The flood story hasknown precedents.

Toto

This quote is all over the internet. It is a favorite of creationists and preachers. Albright believed that the Bible was astonishingly accurate, but later archaeology has not confirmed this notion.

I cannot find a fuller discussion on the internet of what Boice meant in quoting Albright, or what Albright meant.


Your source claims "We can safely conclude that all people in the world are descended from the inhabitants of Babel, the first civilization after Noah's flood. From there the great empires of the past arose, including Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece, and all have strong historical links to the sons of Noah. "

Malarkey. This goes against all linguistic and physical evidence. I refer you to Roger Pennock's Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Your source goes on to claim "We can find validation from research scientists who study human genetics. They claim that lineages derived from known people groups did in fact appear to have migrated from the "Near East", "Middle East" or "Mesopotamia" (also called the "Cradle of Civilization" or the "Cradle of Mankind") sometime during prehistory. . . .Scientists have traced the mitochondrial DNA in all living humans back to a single female, and similarly, genetic markers in all males in the world today can be traced back to a single male."

False - mitochondrial DNA has been traced back to a small group of women, who were in Africa and not Mesopotamia.

Is there a point in going on? These are not even barely credible arguments.

Toto

Most skeptics of the Bible think that the writers were not trying to write literal history. This is very different from lying.

But even if skeptics did think that the Bible was written by liars, why would that make you skeptical of the skeptics? Do you have any clear evidence that the Bible was intended to be literal truth?

Sheshbazzar

It is usually a mistake to assume or to accuse Skeptics of believing that the writers of the Bible were knowingly, or simply lying.
Most Skeptics long involved in study of the Biblical texts take the rational position that these writers were simply and often quite faithfully repeating such traditions and legends as they were handed down to them, as being the literal history of their nation and the development of its religion.
They had no means of determining, or checking the facts of that traditional cultural 'history' and thus accepted, and quite seriously believed what they had received as being factual history.
Along the same line, the prophets seriously believed that they were being communicated to by their God, and carrying out his 'will' in composing the prophecies.
Very few if any were guilty of anything more than being primitively gullible and very susceptible to believing and acting upon their religious superstitions and cult suggestion.

Modern religion still works the same. My religious Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins have no conscience of lying when they repeat these fantastic Biblical tales, to them they are simply telling us the TRUTH as they believe it to be.
Most of them have never applied any serious critical and rational thought to the stories they were brought up to believe, and were trained to defend as being God's TRUTH at all costs.

outhouse

that they are in serious error, and need to learn more about the actual history of Israel




as stated, many parts were never intended to be ever read literally.



its factual that Israelites formed from displaced Canaanites after 1200 BC and it took a few hundred years to populate the highlands before the culture began to have its own identity. About 1000 BC we see them develop their own writing, and they started recoding some legends found important to their developping culture.


factually Noah and Moses have ZERO historicity, and as written.


Noah is actually a Sumerian legend that evolved for thousands of years when King Ziusudra is said to have went down the flooded Euphrates in 2900 BC. I real attested flood and a real man from the known kings list.


I hope these 3 believers wake up and start to really study how Genesis was created over hundreds of years, and the legend evolved from compilations of earlier legends, many influenced from Mesopotamian sources after the Babylonian exile, and multpile redactions and additions.

stephan huller

Ted,

I recommended Ibn Ezra to you because he was both a religious sage and someone who thought that Genesis could not be used as a historical text. The passage that Ibn Ezra was famously interested in was Genesis 12:6:

Ibn Ezra recognized that this was proof enough that the narrative was not written at the time of Moses but many centuries later. The 13th century Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah (known as the Hizkuni) noticed the same textual anomalies that Ibn Ezra had noted and similarly concluded that this section "is written from the perspective of the future". In other words, it was written centuries later. Again in the 15th century, Rabbi Yosef Bonfils, while discussing the comments of Ibn Ezra, noted: "Thus it would seem that Moses did not write this word here, but Joshua or some other prophet wrote it. Since we believe in the prophetic tradition, what possible difference can it make whether Moses wrote this or some other prophet did, since the words of all of them are true and prophetic?"

Of course this is how Jews put on a public face in discussing these 'problems.' Ibn Ezra for his part would only say that "it has a secret, and the one who comprehends it will fall silent." It is well known that Ibn Ezra's 'secret' is that the Torah was written not by Moses but by Ezra many centuries later. This idea already appears in the rabbinic literature and was also shared by Spinoza and Richard Simon.

The idea was also known to Jerome (and undoubtedly the rabbis he conversed with). "Whether you choose to name Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra its restorer, I do not object." ("Sive Moysen dicere volue- ris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esram instauratorem, non recuso.") Jerome is referring to the expression " to this day," as found in two places of the Pentateuch, which he specifies (Gen. 35. 4, where, however, the words are not now extant in the Hebrew, and Deut 34. 6). The words "this day," he says, in the period preceding that quoted above, must refer to the time, when the narrative in which they are found was arranged.

Irenaeus makes the same point. The list goes on and on. If the average person is stupid enough to actually believe that Genesis was written in deepest remotest antiquity that's their business. You should be aware that the actual account of 'history' was written so far removed from Noah's flood that there could be no possible way that any of its information was accurate.

aa5874

Now, look at what you wrote in the very same post.

You imply that Rabbi Yosef Bonfils is stupid.

According to Rabbi Yosef Bonfils the words of all of them are true and prophetic.