[Killer Whale]

And the days of Adam after his fathering Seth came to be eight hundred years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters.

Evidently, although Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve had many children over their lifespan, Adam living to 930 years of age. Thus, there is plenty of time for the human race to have expanded by the time of the events of Cain and Abel so that Cain could have found a wife who may have been his sister, or even one of Adam and Eve's granddaughters. Of course this is rather taboo to our thinking, but the main problem with these close couplings is the propensity towards genetic defects and spreading of mutations, something which would have been negligible when people were so close to perfection they lived for over half a millennia. It was not until 1513 BCE that intercourse between close relatives was expressly forbidden by god.

Edit: According to my interpretation of course.

[Luis Dias]

Ahh. phewww. That clears it up then! Thanks!

[Scotty]

There's also a whole lotta stuff that didn't quite "make the cut" to the Bible that generally plugs gaps.  Stuff like God creating more people than just Adam and Eve (Lilith, for one).

I'm not particularly interested in embroiling myself in this particular quagmire of a conversation, but I felt it amiss to not remind everyone that the Bible is not the only source for Christian mythology.

[Luis Dias]

Of course not, those mythologies are an amazing puzzle to begin with, multiple myths forging other multiple myths, remixes over remixes, in a rich environment of religious creativity.

That people take it literally I find it amusing. But then again, I do think that this "literalism" is somewhat recent. I think I should blame science on this aspect of belief. Science has taught us that we can and probably should think about knowledge in "literal" terms, like saying that the Earth goes round the Sun is the literal truth, and not just "the truth" that we more or less in a "metaphorical" way believe. I think that in ancient times people just weren't so literalists. They told each other these stories as "fictions more truthful than reality", true living mythologies that informed their civilizations.

And so they basically wrote them because they felt they pointed to a higher truth and were the basis for morally bringing together a tribe into forming a civilization. Had zero to do with "Literal Truth".

However we now have a really different relationship with things like "History". Either it happened as factual or it's "myth" and we take the latter pejoratively. We now do care if something is really really true or not. And the whole of culture kinda adapted to this way of thinking. This was good for a while, but to the religious people it was hell! For all I see, these people really take these texts to be as factual and informative as any historic documents and try to reason with them for a literal historical truth of the world!

And so we have Sandwich's incredible reasonings which are a sight to behold. I think those exercises are silly and a waste of anyone's time, but I do respect the sheer effort that people undertake to make these things "fit together". Although I also do think that every single writer of the bible would look at these efforts and mutter something akin to "You really missed the point, didn't you?"

[Killer Whale]

Lilith: Visible at at Genesis 34:11
Going through Bible Gateway, the word is translated as: Screech owl, night-monster, Lilith, demon, creature of the night, laima (? Why would you translate a word into something even less useful), night animal, night bird, night demon, nocturnal animal, night creature, lilit, night hag, night owl.

Some relate li·lith′ with the name of the Sumerian and Akkadian demon of the air, Lilitu. The first Jewish inscriptions referring to Lilith as a demon appear from the 6th Century CE onwards.
Other's argue it derives from a root word denoting "every type of twisting motion or twisted object" similar to how night (la′yil or lai′lah) suggests a "wrapping around or enfolding the earth" Such an interpretation may point to a nightjar, a nocturnal bird characterised by its rapid turning and twisting flight as it pursues airborne insects. Such a view is supported by the presence of a couple of birds which suit the described habitat: Caprimulgus aegyptius and Caprimulgus nubicus.

Whatever the case, it looks to me that the context surrounding the verse is all talking about animals which inhabit the wasteland. My translation simply translates the word as nightjar.

As I said: I follow the bible. Sure there is a large amount of Jewish and Christian mythology written around the bible, but due to its ambiguous, non-scriptural and fictional nature, I don't spend effort on it. Although it does remind me of the other day when I mentioned Lucifer in a conversation about my religion and was corrected by an aetheist saying that "Lucifer" had no basis in the bible. Fast forward a few hours and doing the research and boy was I embarrassed, infinitely better to be corrected rather than being in ignorance, but embarrassed nonetheless.

[Black Wolf]

Yes, there are some hypothesis circulating that either the black sea or even the whole mediterranean sea got "opened up" to the atlantic and a lot of oceanic water entered and flooded a lot of ****. Atlantis and all that are also part of the deep end speculations... it's not an impossible kind of event.

It's also not a global one!

To clarify this a bit, the Mediterranean event almost certainly happened - we have evaporite beds and various other pieces of evidence supporting a flood/desiccationcycle in the med - but the last big flood happened five million plus years ago, before there were any humans to have a cultural memory of the event.

The Black Sea event was hypothesized to have happened much more recently, but it only became famous because people made the biblical connection. There was very strong evidence at the time that it was inaccurate, and the vast majority of data since, including some very good recent palaeontology work, suggest a gradual sea level rise over long periods of time - not a catastrophic event at all.

[Dragon]

Strangely enough, I recall a Native American myth that also involved a Great Flood, along similar lines as Noah's and Greek/Roman Floods. It's possible that there wasn't a global, catastrophic flood at all. Just a flood of huge, but local proportions that destroyed a few villages and forced a lot of people to spend a lot of time on rafts and mountains. Floods are not uncommon events afteall. About 15 years are, there was a huge "Flood of the Millennium" in Poland, half the Krakow was underwater. Flash forward 10 years... another Great Flood, you could sail across the main square again. New millennium, new flood, I suppose. If this happened in medieval times, the city would've been fully submerged (and Krakow was already very big back then). Events of this kind draw people into confessionals even today.
It's plausible that such a big flood got exaggerated into global proportions by the story. Remember that to those people "The World" equaled 2-3 villages and the surrounding lands, an area which can get completely flooded once in a while.

[Scourge of Ages]

When I stopped skimming and started reading the thread around page 4/5, I would not have guessed that it would have morphed into this. Sandwich and Killer Whale (much respect from me, guys) coming at it from one direction, some others from another way, and everybody staying remarkably cool and flame-free. This is the best forum

The Bible was written for a specific purpose, that purpose was not as a scientific textbook. The few times it speaks on scientific matters, it is surprisingly accurate.
e.g. Job 26:7 "He is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing;", At a time when other cultures were talking about turtles or elephants or floating in a river or sea.

The Bible rarely touches on those matters. It's primarily a book about how to live, the reasons why things are the way they are, and the way things will change (whether you believe it or not is beside the point of this tangent). Naturally, it focuses on these things, and others that will be important or related to those.

The precise, detailed description of the origin of life, the universe, and everything is not required for those purposes. A brief overview is sufficient for the vast majority of readers, apologies that it is less clear than we are able to understand. Where would the fun be in learning if absolutely everything were just given us?

So I've forgotten where I was going with this, hopefully that was what I wanted to. It's late.

[redsniper]

There's also a whole lotta stuff that didn't quite "make the cut" to the Bible that generally plugs gaps.  Stuff like God creating more people than just Adam and Eve (Lilith, for one).

I'm not particularly interested in embroiling myself in this particular quagmire of a conversation, but I felt it amiss to not remind everyone that the Bible is not the only source for Christian mythology.

See: Neon Genesis Evangelion for a totally badass and bat**** insane primer on Judeo-Christian mythology. :V

[Mongoose]

lulz

[Sandwich]

Sorry I've been away from things for a while, y'all - I got a sudden influx of content for some projects with tight deadlines this month (and there's no way they're gonna meet said deadlines, either).

Rather than go back through everything I missed, I'll pick up things more recently. watsisname, I apologize for not replying to your comprehensive post. I did read it, and I guess I just have to concede that my understanding of this stuff is not anywhere near the same level as yours or Schroeder's. I get lost anytime someone talks about something being a function of something else.

Strangely enough, I recall a Native American myth that also involved a Great Flood, along similar lines as Noah's and Greek/Roman Floods. It's possible that there wasn't a global, catastrophic flood at all. Just a flood of huge, but local proportions that destroyed a few villages and forced a lot of people to spend a lot of time on rafts and mountains. Floods are not uncommon events afteall. About 15 years are, there was a huge "Flood of the Millennium" in Poland, half the Krakow was underwater. Flash forward 10 years... another Great Flood, you could sail across the main square again. New millennium, new flood, I suppose. If this happened in medieval times, the city would've been fully submerged (and Krakow was already very big back then). Events of this kind draw people into confessionals even today.
It's plausible that such a big flood got exaggerated into global proportions by the story. Remember that to those people "The World" equaled 2-3 villages and the surrounding lands, an area which can get completely flooded once in a while.

This brings to mind another possibility. According to Genesis the flood was not just caused by rainfall ("windows of heaven"), but by subterranean sources of water ("springs of the deep"). Now, presumably most of humanity settled near fresh water sources (rivers & lakes) and farmable land (plains and valleys). These areas are of course naturally susceptible to flooding. What if the great flood was not a "cover the entire planet" event, nor a localized "Mediterranean basin / Black Sea" event, but a geologic phase or change that flooded most or all inhabited regions simultaneously, around the globe?

This would explain the widespread flood mythos in nearly every ancient culture.

Of course, so would all those cultures descending from the same lineage, but I don't want to go there.

[The E]

Except there's not a shred of evidence to support such a theory.

[An4ximandros]

See: Neon Genesis Evangelion for a totally badass and bat**** insane primer on Judeo-Christian mythology. :V

Get in the ****ing robot, Jesus.

[watsisname]

Rather than go back through everything I missed, I'll pick up things more recently. watsisname, I apologize for not replying to your comprehensive post. I did read it, and I guess I just have to concede that my understanding of this stuff is not anywhere near the same level as yours or Schroeder's. I get lost anytime someone talks about something being a function of something else.

That's perfectly alright, Sandwich.  I'm sorry for the difficulty and that I could not do a better job of explaining things for you.  It's been a kind of learning experience for me as well, since this was the first time I'd actually gone through the work of figuring out the details, and then having to explain it to someone not familiar with the subject.  I suppose what I should have done is summarize the main points in a non-technical way, and if anyone wanted to check the numbers they may feel free to ask me for the calculations.

[Bobboau]

most of humanity settled near fresh water sources (rivers & lakes) and farmable land (plains and valleys). These areas are of course naturally susceptible to flooding.

This would explain the widespread flood mythos in nearly every ancient culture.

FTFY: removed irrelevant and unnecessary detail.

there would be no need for flooding to be simultaneous around the globe in order for a mythos like this to be common. try to examine your thinking right now and see if you are trying to force some details so that they will fit the way you want, rather than examining the evidence to see what it says.

[Killer Whale]

Found an interesting www (before reading this I subscribed to canopy theory, hence the end of this post)
Which points towards this paywall among other things in its reference section.

Not saying any of that is the case, but it all provides "possibilities", making these discussion incredibly slippery to get a hold of because there's always another theory.

[karajorma]

I've never understood why other cultures having a great flood story is supposedly supporting evidence for a great flood. Yes, other cultures have these stories but they are all local stories, not about far flung lands. But these people can't possibly be descendants of anyone local who survived the Great Flood as no one but Noah and his family survived according to the myth. Anyone who believes that these stories are related to the flood needs to also explain why these cultures don't also have any stories about the journey from Israel to wherever they are now. It seems a little odd they'd have one but not the other.

[Flipside]

Kara does have a point here. If, for example, the recent floods and freezing in the UK over the last couple of years had taken place in a prehistoric society, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they would assume the whole world flooded or froze. Even as a child I used to struggle with the idea that when it was snowing in the UK, Australia was in the middle of its summertime.

[Luis Dias]

"a point" is euphemistic lol

[Sandwich]

there would be no need for flooding to be simultaneous around the globe in order for a mythos like this to be common. try to examine your thinking right now and see if you are trying to force some details so that they will fit the way you want, rather than examining the evidence to see what it says.

My use of the word 'simultaneous' was more in a geological event scale than a "to the second" one. We are talking about events that at the very least occurred many thousands of years ago, after all.

Basically, I was speaking of a global climate change or a stage in the development of the planet that caused a period of widespread regional floods all around the globe - not completely enveloping the globe, as the traditional Christian understanding of the Genesis flood has it.

I've never understood why other cultures having a great flood story is supposedly supporting evidence for a great flood. Yes, other cultures have these stories but they are all local stories, not about far flung lands. But these people can't possibly be descendants of anyone local who survived the Great Flood as no one but Noah and his family survived according to the myth. Anyone who believes that these stories are related to the flood needs to also explain why these cultures don't also have any stories about the journey from Israel to wherever they are now. It seems a little odd they'd have one but not the other.

The concept of a global "Great flood" comes from a possible mis-reading/mistranslation of the word "earth". Typically we hear "earth" and we think "planet Earth", whereas even today "earth" can mean "terrain", "land", "soil", etc - and that's just the multiple meanings of the English word that is perhaps not the best suited to translate the original Hebrew. Anyway, that's my take - not one great flood, but a widespread period of flooding in populated places around the globe.

As for cultural stories, I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Some basic clarifications though... the Genesis story of the flood is completely separate from any journeying stories - not to mention that the Bible primarily has journeys to Israel (Cannan), not from (until you get to the Babylonian exile a few thousand years later). Just because many cultures around the world have records of large-scale floods that might correspond to the flood event in Genesis, does not mean that they should also have accounts of ISrael-related travels. Flood = Noah; Israel travels = Abraham and later, Moses. Reminds me of the old joke, "How many of each animal did Moses take onto the ark?"