Dark Jedi

IN another discussion, the Flood© and ™, is being discussed.

The point was raised that the Chinese had a triving and record keeping civilization at that time. There was no record of a flood in those records, nor any gap in the populations or recods to account for them being wiped out.

The reply, quite frankly, makes no sense whatsoever. Can anyone translate what this induhvidual is trying to say?

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Originator said: It couldn't have been a global flood because 1) the Chinese dynasties ran through that time period with recorded histories...

Looney replied:
This may help you:

So the Chinese have their own universal flood account as well. Another plus.

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What? Is this guy saying that because the Chinese have a word for "boat" and they count people by counting their mouths, this is somehow evidence that they had their own account of a worldwide flood?

Sauron

No. He's saying that if you de-construct the Chinese pictogram for "ship", it is composed of 3 sub-characters:

"boat" + "eight" + "mouths"

And when these three sub-characters appear side-by-side, that particular arrangement actually forms the Chinese pictogram for the word "ship". (If you don't know what a pictogram or an ideographic writing system is, then you might want to read a little on it - I sense that maybe that's the point of confusion here).

Anyhow, the claim is that the particular llinguistic curiosity actually has its roots with the Genesis story of Noah, who with his family, totalled 8 persons (or, "8 mouths") who sought refuge on the ark ("ship"). So "Looney" is saying that there really was a world-wide flood, and there are memories/legends/evidence of it even in far away China.

Me personally, I think this whole thing is another tired urban legend - Vorkosigan knows Chinese; perhaps he can clear this up.

Toto

Answers in Genesis responds to a post from this board mentioned here. (Vork is in that thread)

This theory about Chinese characters is pretty well known on the internet. It is on this parody site here. The non-parody version is practically indistinguishable.

There is also a book, The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language . You may find the reviews more amusing than helpful.

Celsus

I have this book. It's a barrel of laughs, even though I can't read Chinese, what archaeological "facts" they manage to pull out of their collective arses is sheer entertainment. For example, after managing to extract a couple of pictographs out of the Chinese language with "astonishing" parallels to Noah's story, they cough this up:

• It might be assumed that the ancient Chinese were rather immediate descendants of Noah [sic], as evidenced by their familiarity with the story of the flood [sic]. Consequently, it would be natural for the inventor of the Chinese language [sic] to incorporate essential facts regarding the deluge and the human remnant of eight people into a newly developing calligraphy [sic]. In this way an authentic historical record [sic] could be preserved. Even in our day, millenia later, this primitive writing still memorializes the beginnings of the second world [sic] and the postdiluvian era [sic] by the frequent use of the numeral eight in their characters.
  
  (p. 102)

It's non sequitur hell!

Joel

Dark Jedi

Ok, that clarifies it some. The guy's a loon, but that post just seemed certifiable!

Another line of reasoning for the YECs. yay.
Gotta give them credit for persistance, at least.

Dark Jedi

Some good info. Something I noticed on the AIG link that amused me...

The amusing part is that the "rebuttal" portion of the page contains 5 links to another site...

I guess the rules and standards only apply to sites they disagree with.

BrotherMan

So, the Hindu flood story bit was just a non-sequitur meant to make me think the Chinese wrote it (if I weren't paying attention and just skimming)?

Well, if they want to play deconstruct the ideograph, here's one for them. IHVH (the ineffable name) looks like a little man.

(See attached)

BrotherMan

attach this!