Bible chronology

[Arlan]

[QUOTE=Rowland]

The major dates in the Bible for world and religious history are:

4990 BC World flood


These are the dates that the Bible gives (after we have translated them into our modern calendar). One can reject them of course, but no one should say the Bible says something different. Similarly, one can say that Noah's flood didn't happen or that, if it did,

****Arlan ~ Rowland - would you please explain where you come up with this date of

"4990 BC world flood"

This is a new date for me for the Genesus deluge and I would like to know how you came up with that spectfic date and what evidence you have to back it up. I have seen 2350BC and 3500BC and 10,000BC but I have never seen 4990 BC. Please enlighten me. Thanks arlan b.

[Arlan]

[QUOTE=Rowland]

Arlan, see my reply to Mike's post. I too have trouble with apparent contradictions in the Bible. But most contradictions have been shown to be the result of misunderstanding the biblical text,which I admit is often very complicated.
****Arlan ~ Thank you for admiting that you have troubles with apparent contradiction in the bible.
You say they are misunderstanding, but if as you say God is in the writers mind and writing through the hands of the writer and God writes the stories like how Peter was choosen as a disciple [Mt 4:18-20 and Lk 5:2-11] you even see they are two completly different stories. Dosen't this make GOD look very stuped. If on the other had God had nothing to do with writing down these two different stories then we can put the blame on the writers, one was wrong and the other was right.

I also think that you are misusing the word, "contradiction". Two different stories of the same event can be different without being contradictory. If one story of your life talks about your brother and doesn't even mention that you have sisters, this story does not contradict another story of your life that emphasizes your sisters' roles in your life. The stories are not contradictory even though one wonders why the first story didn't mention your sisters. Now if the first story flat out declares that you had no sisters then the two stories would be contradictory.

****ARLAN ` You have made my point. Peters two different stories are contradictory; The centurion's two stories are contradictory; The healing of the ONE or TWO Gadarenes are contradictory; the healing of ONE or TWO men on the way to Jericho are contradictory; heaven was prepared BEFORE or AFTER the Ascension of Jesus are contradictory; Mt 26 says that Jesus is betrayed by Judas with a KISS, then seized, Jn 18 says that Jesus voluntarily steped forward and identify himself to the group of people and Judas gave NO KISS at all, are contradictory; Jesus answered ALL CHARGES, NOT A SINGLE CHARGE at his hearing before Pilate are contradictory; in Mt 27 he says Jesus LAST WORDS was " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.",Lk 23 says Jesus LAST WORDS were, "Father, into my hands I commit my spirit" are contradictory. They both can't be the LAST WORDS can they???

The infant narratives of Mathew and Luke are confusing to me also. I don't really know why Matthew has the flight into Egypt narrative while Luke writes as though it never happened. If Luke had written that Jesus had never travelled to Egypt, then the infancy narratives would be contradictory. As they stand, they are not contradictory but Luke seems to have missed an important part of the story, at least in my view.
****arlan Excuse me Rowland, you were very specific that God was controling the writer's mind and hand but here you want to blame Luke for "missing a part of the story." If God was controling Luke, then God is at fault. If you put the blame on Luke then your theory that God was controling the writers, goes down the drain. You can not have it both ways.

And the explanation for why the holy family settled in Nazareth seems to be very different in Matthew than it is in Luke.
****arlan Yes, lets check over why these two stories are contradictory.
Luke 2 gives us a very neat story - Joseph/Mary leave their home in Nazareth to go to Bethleham, while there Jesus is born in a manger and the family waits 40 days for purification then they return to Nazareth, home, where Jesus then grew up. This is very simple and direct.
Mt 2 [says nothing about where the family came from] Jesus is born [but nothing is said that he was born in a manger] Wise men followed a star from the east and found Jesus where - in a house?, then the wise men left not telling Herod. Joseph had a dream from the Lord and was told to "flee to Egypt" because Herod wanted to kill Jesus. They fled to Egypt till Herod was dead then in another dream told to return to Israel and was told in another dream from the Lord to go to Galilie, to the city of Nazareth, WHY? THAT IS THE BIG QUESTION. Mt. say that there were sent to NAZARETH to FULFILL a prophecy, v. 23 so "he shall be called a Nazarene". The only problem is that there is no such prophecy in the OT that says that.
Mt. is trying to tell us that the family went to Nazareth to fulfill a prophecy, that isn't in the OT. Lk. told us that the family went back home after leaving the temple in Jerusalem beause that is where they lived. If, as you say God wrote both books, why is it that both stories are contradictory in so may places???
Josephes wrote about all the bad things Herod did in his life but for some reason he never mentioned the killing of hundreds of children around Bethleham, why? There is not one legend in the town of Bethleham that Herod did such a bad thing, Why? The simple answer is that it never happened. Matthew is a very pore writer of history as i have shown many time here.
You try to tell us that your bible is "Evidence of a Divine Author" and so far i have shown you over 10 times that whoever, God or man, wrote the new testament did not know what they were writing partof the time.



Without more detail from both, I cannot tell if their stories are contradictory or not. If I were a police investigator I would need more detail before coming to a conclusion that their stories contradicted one another. The lists of ancestores appears to contradict one another but this is because of our lack of understanding Jewish culture regarding the assignment of ancestors to people. It gete pretty complicated. And this same problem accounts to some extent for why Bible scholars have had such difficulty understanding biblical chronology. Remember, the Bible is about people who lived thousands of years ago and written by people who lived several thousand years ago. God, in authoring the Bible, did not eliminate the cultural biases of the human authors. They sometimes tell the truth in ways that make it difficult for us moderns to see the truth in what they have written. We can't read the Bible the same way we read a recently published book.

Rowland

[mikeledo]

Thanks for your reply, Mike. I am as vehemently against myth posing as fact as you are, maybe even more so. Just as science has opposing theories so true religion has opposing religions that mimic the truth. Roman pagan religions had all sorts of beliefs that mimicked Christianity such as their stories on a man/god being born of a liason between a human female and a god. I do have my standards and ways of filtering out the bad stuff, but science is not a standard or filter I immediately reach for.

Reason and science are not the same thing. Human reason has been around a lot longer than human science. Historians agree that ancient Egypt did not have science, but Egyptians did have the use of reason and did invent some technology-enought to build their amazing pyramids. Although I don't use science to evaluate by beliefs, I do use my reason. Many Christians do separate faith from reason and therefore are ready to believe just about anything. One of the unreasonable things that these Christians are willing to believe is the standard biblical chronology believed in by othodox Jews and followers of Bishop Ussher. This chronology has creation occuring around 4000 BC, which leaves only about 700 years for the spread of the human race over the earth, its destruction by the Flood, and the remergence of human civilization over wide areas of the earth. This is not reasonable. My chronology of the Bible that is based on how the Bible itself interprets itself is reasonable even though not in agreement with science as understood today. In the correct biblical chronology, the Flood occurs 6000 years after creation and 2000 years before the emergence of the great civilizations. This is reasonable within the biblical worldview.

Another unreasonable belief held by Christians of the majority of denominations is the belief that, although God is love, He will commit some, if not most, of humanity to an eternity of torment. This is not reasonable. But most Christians not only reject some aspects of modern science, which I do too, but they also reject reason. Now the God that I worship does destroy people's lives in floods and fire (Noah's Flood, Sodom and Gomorrha etc.), but this God promises to resurrect all of these people into a new life of happiness. Actually, being killed instantly by a rushing wall of mud and water or by a sudden burst of flame is no worse than slowy dying in a convalescent hospital. My point is, it is not unreasonable to believe that the God who caused Noah's Flood is a God of love when you consider that this was not the final end of them, that God has something very good in store for them. I am not claiming that I don't have any negative feelings about God going around killing people, but, unlike the doctrine of hell, experiencing death in this life is not something so dreadful that a God of love could not do such a thing as bring it about. It puts a strain on my reason, but doesn't break it.

Many of the supposed contradictions as found in the Bible are not contradictions at all. Again, unlike many Christian commentators, I believe that the Bible is often very difficult to understand. It takes a lot of work to figure the Bible out-not unlike scientific discovery. I also believe that God has made the Bible confusing on purpose. Jesus himself said that he spoke in parables so that only those he chooses to understand would understand his words. God wrote the Bible-through the agency of human beings- purposely to confound and confuse those who approach it in the state of unbelief. St. Augustine prayed that he would not so much want to understand in order to believe, but to believe in order to understand-or something like this. Additionally, the Bible interprets the reader as much as the reader interprets the Bible. Those who see a god in the Bible who would torture people for all eternity for any reason are in effect showing what kind of a person they are. A person who mocks the Bible as a mass of myth and superstition is revealing himself or herself as a mocker and hater of God-at least in many cases.

The question then arises, "Why would anyone want to hate God?" There are a lot of reasons for human beings to hate God. 1. Humans hate to be told what they can or cannot do. We humans hate to have people in authority over us. This goes ditto for God. 2. God is everything. We humans are nothing. We hate it when an, older or especially a younger, sister or brother is smarter than we are, has a better job, has a prettier wife, has more stuff than we do. This gap between ourselves and other people is miniscule compared to the gap between ourselves and God. 3. God is always watching us. We hate to have our privacy invaded. God gives us no privacy. 4. God causes us great pain and suffering. We didn't ask to be born. God does a lot of stuff to us that He never gets permission from us to do. 5. God asks us to do difficult things like love and forgive other people, especially unlikeable people. 6. God doesn't need anything from us and we need everything from him. We hate to be indebted to people. We prefer that other people be indebted to us. And we hate to depend on other people's mercy and charity toward us. We hate asking other people for favors. Even though Christianity brags about how salvation is of grace, most Christians don't have a clue as to what grace is and if they did they wouldn't like it.

So, there you have the reasons I think you have for rejecting the chronology of the Bible. You don't want the Bible to be true because you have good reasons for hating God-the author of the Bible.

Rowland

Rowland,

I am not a God hater, nor do I want the Bible to be false. I simply seek the truth with an open mind, It was once put forward by inane Christians that all atheists hated their father. Your list is similarly ignorant. Many of the contradictions in the Bible are there because of multiple authorship. This has been proven true in Gilgamesh Epic. In fact the Bible and the Gigamesh Epic both use the same literary devices such as resumptive repetition and additions by parallelism etc. In the Gilgamesh Epic we know (because we have older texts) these devices were used to insert material. I would suggest the Bible did the same thing. Also we know contradictions in the Gilgamesh Epic (almost all in chapter 12) are there because a later author added them. I would suggest this is true with the Bible in spite of apologist's arguements to the contrary.

The Bible has nothing to do with "true religion" a term used but never holds the same definition from one person to the next. I am not sure how Roman pagan religions mimicked Christianity since they were here BEFORE Christianity. It would seem if someone mimicked anyone, it would be Christianity. Of course with your chronolgy views, I can understand why you might believe otherwise. :)

Please show me in the Bible where God caused the flood out of love. Mine seems to be missing that passage. It is clear you are making excuses for God.

The Biblical cosmic myth is not a mass myth as one might suppose. The myth has an historical background as the stars predict the future (are for signs). There are elements of truth in nearly all ancient cosmic myths, it is just a matter of being able to dig them out. There are also slanted political views, "urban legends" and the like in the Bible too. We must also acknowledge them.

Mike

[Rowland]

Arlan, I don't have the energy to answer all of your questions. I'll take two of them. 1. Regarding the supposed contradiction between Matthew 27 and Luke 23. Luke (under God's guiding hand) writes: "Then Jesus, calling out in a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!'" Matthew (under the power of God's guiding hand) writes: "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit" So, yes, Matthew fails to tell us what Jesus said this last time in his loud voice. But I would assume that it is the very words that Luke gives us. Where is the contradiction?

2. You asked about the year 4990 BC for the year of the world wide flood.

I will have to pick a date that we can both agree on. This date is 587 BC-the date of the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Babylonians. You may like 586 BC, but let's not quible over a year. This is the last year of King Zedekiah's reign. Through counting the years that the various kings of Judah and Israel reigned (a very complex undertaking as we have many co-rulers, that is, kings that rule during the same years as their predecessors before ruling alone and we have individual kings with more than one name and we have several kings who share the same name. Plus we have different systems of computing the first year of a kings reign: accession year system and non-accession year system.) Anyway we get back to the year 967 BC, the year construction of Solomon's Temple begins. In 1 Kings 6:1, this date of 967 is revealed to be in the "480th year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt" 967 BC plus 480 years = 1447 BC-the year of the Exodus. In Exodus 12:40 we learn that the people of Israel had lived 430 years to the day in Egypt on the day that they left Egypt. 1447 BC + 430 years = 1877 BC-the year Jacob took his family into Egypt. In Genesis 47:8-9 we see the Egyptian Pharaoh asking Jacob how old he is. Jacob tells the Pharaoh that he is 130 years old. 1877 BC + 130 years = 2007 BC the year of Jacob's birth to Isaac and Rebekah. In Genesis 25:26 we see that Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob and Esau were born. 2007 BC + 60 years = 2067 BC the year Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. Genesis 21:5 shows us that Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. 2067 BC + 100 years = 2167 BC, the year Abraham was born. In Acts 7:4 we learn that Abraham left Haran at the time his father died. Abraham's father, Terah, died when he, Terah, was 205 years old (Genesis 11:32) Genesis 12:4 tells us that Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran, which means that Abraham was born to Terah when Terah was 130 years old. 205 - 75 equals 130 years. 2167 BC + 130 years = 2297 BC, the year Terah was born. Now we get into the area of controversy. I maintain, based on examination of other texts of the Bible, that the next 7 patriarchs served as calendar references just as the reigh of Roman emperors did during Roman times. Nahor was NOT the father of Terah but fathered Terah's ancestor when he was 29 years old (Gen. 11:24). Nahor lived 148 years. 2297 BC + 148 years = 2445 BC, year of Nahor's birth. Serug lived 230 years. 2445 BC + 230 years = 2675 BC, year of Serug's birth. Reu lived 239 years. 2675 BC + 239 years = 2914 BC, year of Reu's birth. Peleg lived 239 years. 2914 BC + 239 years = 3153 BC, year of Peleg's birth. Eber lived 464 years. 3143 BC + 464 years = 3617 BC, year of Eber's birth. Shelah lived 433 years. 3617 BC + 433 years = 4050 BC year of Shelah's birth. Arpachshad lived 438 years. 4050 BC + 438 years = 4488 BC, year of Arpachshad's birth. Shem lived 600 years. 4488 BC + 600 years = 5088 BC, year Shem was born to Noah (actual father son relationship). Shem was 98 years old at the time of the flood (100 years old two years after the flood per Gen. 11:10). 5088 BC - 98 years = 4990 BC, the year of the Flood. (Information originally provided by the book: Adam When, written by Harold Camping. I don't particulary like some of his theology, but he is a careful chronologist.)

As you can see, Arlan, it is easy to ask a question, but difficult to answer one. People who don't consider the Bible inerrant like to ask a million questions and feel that they have stumped the believer if he or she doesn't answer all of them.

Rowland

[bandecoot]

Arlan, I don't have the energy to answer all of your questions. I'll take two of them. 1. Regarding the supposed contradiction between Matthew 27 and Luke 23. Luke (under God's guiding hand) writes: "Then Jesus, calling out in a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!'" Matthew (under the power of God's guiding hand) writes: "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit" So, yes, Matthew fails to tell us what Jesus said this last time in his loud voice. But I would assume that it is the very words that Luke gives us. Where is the contradiction?

2. You asked about the year 4990 BC for the year of the world wide flood.

I will have to pick a date that we can both agree on. This date is 587 BC-the date of the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Babylonians. You may like 586 BC, but let's not quible over a year. This is the last year of King Zedekiah's reign. Through counting the years that the various kings of Judah and Israel reigned (a very complex undertaking as we have many co-rulers, that is, kings that rule during the same years as their predecessors before ruling alone and we have individual kings with more than one name and we have several kings who share the same name. Plus we have different systems of computing the first year of a kings reign: accession year system and non-accession year system.) Anyway we get back to the year 967 BC, the year construction of Solomon's Temple begins. In 1 Kings 6:1, this date of 967 is revealed to be in the "480th year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt" 967 BC plus 480 years = 1447 BC-the year of the Exodus. In Exodus 12:40 we learn that the people of Israel had lived 430 years to the day in Egypt on the day that they left Egypt. 1447 BC + 430 years = 1877 BC-the year Jacob took his family into Egypt. In Genesis 47:8-9 we see the Egyptian Pharaoh asking Jacob how old he is. Jacob tells the Pharaoh that he is 130 years old. 1877 BC + 130 years = 2007 BC the year of Jacob's birth to Isaac and Rebekah. In Genesis 25:26 we see that Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob and Esau were born. 2007 BC + 60 years = 2067 BC the year Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. Genesis 21:5 shows us that Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. 2067 BC + 100 years = 2167 BC, the year Abraham was born. In Acts 7:4 we learn that Abraham left Haran at the time his father died. Abraham's father, Terah, died when he, Terah, was 205 years old (Genesis 11:32) Genesis 12:4 tells us that Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran, which means that Abraham was born to Terah when Terah was 130 years old. 205 - 75 equals 130 years. 2167 BC + 130 years = 2297 BC, the year Terah was born. Now we get into the area of controversy. I maintain, based on examination of other texts of the Bible, that the next 7 patriarchs served as calendar references just as the reigh of Roman emperors did during Roman times. Nahor was NOT the father of Terah but fathered Terah's ancestor when he was 29 years old (Gen. 11:24). Nahor lived 148 years. 2297 BC + 148 years = 2445 BC, year of Nahor's birth. Serug lived 230 years. 2445 BC + 230 years = 2675 BC, year of Serug's birth. Reu lived 239 years. 2675 BC + 239 years = 2914 BC, year of Reu's birth. Peleg lived 239 years. 2914 BC + 239 years = 3153 BC, year of Peleg's birth. Eber lived 464 years. 3143 BC + 464 years = 3617 BC, year of Eber's birth. Shelah lived 433 years. 3617 BC + 433 years = 4050 BC year of Shelah's birth. Arpachshad lived 438 years. 4050 BC + 438 years = 4488 BC, year of Arpachshad's birth. Shem lived 600 years. 4488 BC + 600 years = 5088 BC, year Shem was born to Noah (actual father son relationship). Shem was 98 years old at the time of the flood (100 years old two years after the flood per Gen. 11:10). 5088 BC - 98 years = 4990 BC, the year of the Flood. (Information originally provided by the book: Adam When, written by Harold Camping. I don't particulary like some of his theology, but he is a careful chronologist.)

As you can see, Arlan, it is easy to ask a question, but difficult to answer one. People who don't consider the Bible inerrant like to ask a million questions and feel that they have stumped the believer if he or she doesn't answer all of them.

Rowland

Lovely, just lovely, thank you Bishop Ussher. You finally answered with something more than waffle. But that has been done before and Much better, but it was an actual answer.

Now lets look at the next point. Where is the evidence for this flood?

The K/T extinction event left evidence and that only killed off 90% of what was alive. This flood must have left a lot more.

[runtmc2jc]

It seems that since most people seem to have hated History and dates in high school, biblical chronology has been greatly neglected. One problem is that so called friends of the Bible have made a mess of biblical chronology. Egyption archeologists of the 19th century thought that they were doiing Bible believers a favor by changing the biblical date of the Exodus to match what they mistakenly thought was correct Egyptian chronology. The Exodus did not occur in 1250 BC as many commentaries suggest. The Bible is very clear about this date. The Israelites left Egypt in the year 1447 BC and 40 years later entered Canaan in 1407 BC.

As I said, Egyptian chronology is likewise messed up. According to an English Egyptologist, David M. Rohl in his 1995 book, Pharaohs and Kings a Biblical Quest, "The Pharaoh of the Exodus may be identified with Pharaoh Dudimose, thirty-sixth ruler of the 13th Dynasty, in whose reign, according to Manetho, 'God' smote the Egyptians.... (page 284). Pharaoh Ramesses II, the Pharaoh normally placed at the time of the Exodus, was actually the Pharaoh called Shishak who conquered Jerusalem in the time of Rehoboam (page 170). This would be in the year 927 BC. (See 2 Chron. 12:1-11). The traditional date for Ramesses is approximately 1250 BC-hence the 1250 BC date for the Exodus. Correct dates: 1447 BC for the Exodus. 927 BC for Israel's run in with Ramesses II.

The major dates in the Bible for world and religious history are:

11013 BC Creation (Bishop Ussher and the Jewish Rabbis failed to find
the key for the correct interpretation of the ages of the
Patriarchs.)

5590 BC Noah is born
4990 BC World flood
3033 BC Tower of Babel-approx. date.
2167 BC Abram (Abraham) is born
2068 BC Abraham is circumsized
2007 BC Jacob (Israel) is born
1877 BC Israelites enter Egypt (The Israelites are not the Hyskos. The
1447 BC Israelites leave Egypt Amalekites are and enter Egypt in 1447 BC.)
1407 BC Israelites enter Promised Land
1007 BC David begins to reigh as king
967 BC Temple construction under Solomon begins
709 BC Northern Kingdom of Israel destroyed
587 BC Solomon's Temple destroyed by Babylon. Judah crushed.
539 BC Medes and Persians conquer Babylon

Interestingly, the dates for NT events are not as easy to fix as the OT dates. I think that Jesus was born in the fall of 3 BC and died on the cross in the spring of 33 AD.

These are the dates that the Bible gives (after we have translated them into our modern calendar). One can reject them of course, but no one should say the Bible says something different. Similarly, one can say that Noah's flood didn't happen or that, if it did, it wasn't world wide. But this isn't what the Bible claims happened. The Bible says that the flood was world wide. (People promoting a Black Sea flood for the biblical flood are doing the Bible no favor.) And one is free to say that this flood ocurred 100,000 years ago, but one cannot say that the Bible says this. The year of Noah's flood according to the Bible is 4990 BC.

Rowland

velikovsky in "ages in chaos" equates shishak with thutmose and hatshepsut with the queen of sheba in a very convincing fashion. his reconstruction is very detailed and attempts to synchronize egyptian and hebrew chronology starting from the exodus. other works in this series include "ramses and his times", "peoples of the sea", and "oedipus and akhnaton". well worth the reading.

[mikeledo]

velikovsky in "ages in chaos" equates shishak with thutmose and hatshepsut with the queen of sheba in a very convincing fashion. his reconstruction is very detailed and attempts to synchronize egyptian and hebrew chronology starting from the exodus. other works in this series include "ramses and his times", "peoples of the sea", and "oedipus and akhnaton". well worth the reading.

I have read all of his works. His connection of Shishak to Thurmose III is very convincing. However, his data is false in the Queen of Sheba. He quotes facts for which there is no source concerning Hatsheput's trip to the land of Put (Somalia).

[Arlan]

[QUOTE=Rowland]General reply to Arlan, Dragon and Coot.

I am not a scientist. You are criticizing me for not being a trained scientist, something I never claimed to be. Your sarcastic references to my level of education simply tells me that you are unable to debate on a mature level. I made a mistake trying to argue science with you, not because of my lack of scientific knowledge, but because by arguing science with you I am accepting your assumption that their is no true knowledge outside of modern science. The Bible does not need scientific confirmation to prove that it contains true knowledge of the universe, the universe both in its physical dimensions and in its spiritual dimensions.

Scientific understanding changes daily. The latest guess as to how old the earth is-4 1/2 billion years-is only one of many comparatively recent guesses. According to the article on when humans first landed on the shores of Australia, scientists are waiting for still further changes to the current opinion of when mankind made first landfall-now, 60,000 years ago. From my reading of the scientific literature homo sapiens first walked the earth anywhere from about 2 million years ago to about 100,000 years ago. This wide span doesn't inspire confidence in the accuracy of scientificly based chronology. (I fully admit to the problem of differing biblical interpretations regarding biblical chronology, but this problem is mine and not one you need to concern yourself with. I'm sure that I have the correct interpretation.) When you scientists have decided that you now have the final answer regarding the chronology of human history let me know. When all of you scientists have come to a consensus regarding the chronology of human life on this planet, have come up with dates that you believe are absolutely correct then you have just arrived at where I am at now. I'm way ahead of you. You're still looking for truth whereas I've already found it. Not surprising in view of the fact that I have the Bible and you have only weak, puny science. When the knowledge of science has faded away due to war, plague and economic collapse the Bible will still be here. (And, by the way, I believe that the Bible teaches that all human beings are destined to live happily with God for all eternity-no exceptions. My belief in the Bible does not make me more special in God's eyes than those who reject it. I believe that we, you and I, are brothers and are in this together in spite of our differences.)

Rowland ~ I'm waiting on your reply for the date of 4995 for the Genesus flood??? arlan

[Rowland]

Rowland ~ I'm waiting on your reply for the date of 4995 for the Genesus flood??? arlan[/QUOTE]

Arlan, please see reply #34. I put a lot of work into detailing the Bible's chronological path to the year of the Noah's flood: 4990 BC. I also answered one of your claims of biblical contradictions. This date is much different than Bishop Ussher's. He gives the date of creation as 4004 BC. Most Christian fundamentalists follow Bishop Ussher's interpretation of biblical chronology. My work on biblical chronology is not meant to prove that the Flood occurred in the year 4990 BC; I'm only showing that the Bible says that it occurred in the year 4990 BC. Of course biblical chronology has very little value for the person who has little trust in the Bible's accuracy. For the person who discounts the Bible as a source of historical or scientific knowledge, the discussion on biblical chronology is like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It all boils down to to who or what you trust. I put my trust in the Bible. Others put their trust in the findings of modern science. (Trust is another word for faith.) The war between creationists and evolutionists is not a war between religion and science, but is a war between two belief systems. Two faiths.

Rowland

[mikeledo]

Rowland ~ I'm waiting on your reply for the date of 4995 for the Genesus flood??? arlan

Arlan, please see reply #34. I put a lot of work into detailing the Bible's chronological path to the year of the Noah's flood: 4990 BC. I also answered one of your claims of biblical contradictions. This date is much different than Bishop Ussher's. He gives the date of creation as 4004 BC. Most Christian fundamentalists follow Bishop Ussher's interpretation of biblical chronology. My work on biblical chronology is not meant to prove that the Flood occurred in the year 4990 BC; I'm only showing that the Bible says that it occurred in the year 4990 BC. Of course biblical chronology has very little value for the person who has little trust in the Bible's accuracy. For the person who discounts the Bible as a source of historical or scientific knowledge, the discussion on biblical chronology is like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It all boils down to to who or what you trust. I put my trust in the Bible. Others put their trust in the findings of modern science. (Trust is another word for faith.) The war between creationists and evolutionists is not a war between religion and science, but is a war between two belief systems. Two faiths.

Rowland[/QUOTE]

Science is more than faith. It is something that can be tested in a lab and results are repeatable. Religion is myth, imagination, and fantasy.

[runtmc2jc]

as far as i know punt has not been positively identified with somalia. the wall of her mortuary temple at deir-el-bahri details her visit to punt which could refer to 'God's land' or palestine, ultimately jerusalem. stepping back a little to view this one should just compare the details of her trip as known and the bilblical account of the visit of the queen of sheba. they are too similar to be dismissed. i think the real clincher is that her successor in egyptian history is thutmose III and in the bible the queen of sheba is followed by shishak. both of these leaders have glorious military campaigns and both end up sacking a temple. thutmose clearly pictures and enumerates his booty on the wall of the 6th pylon in his temple at karnak. these pictorial representations eerily match both the descriptions and number of temple furnishings as listed in the o.t. i really don't see a need to further wonder at these comparisons. the only impediment is the chronology, and if it is in error what stands in the way............of course almost 200 years of published papers, books, degrees, professorships, etc, etc, may be too much inertia to overcome.

I have read all of his works. His connection of Shishak to Thurmose III is very convincing. However, his data is false in the Queen of Sheba. He quotes facts for which there is no source concerning Hatsheput's trip to the land of Put (Somalia).

[Arlan]

"Where is the contradiction?" you asked. If you had not left out John 19:30 "It is finished" for Jesus last words then no one would know the difference. You said you assumed that Matthew was voicing what Luke said but it could also been what John said "it is finished", couldn't it?
The problem with you using Matt. 27:50 "loud voice or cry" for Jesus last words is that this scripture has nothing to do with Jesus emmiting any words here. When you read the whole verse it literary says ekpneo literally "to breath out" or "to yeald up the ghost with a cry".
You have tried to deceive us by not including all verses having to do with Jesus last words. That is not Christ like. Please explain to me again which statements is Jesus last words:

"My God, my God why have you forsakeen me." Matthew
" It is finished" John
"Father, into my hands I comment my spirit" and having said that he breath his last." Luke.

If one of these is Jesus last words then the other two writers are contradictions to Jesus last words. That is where the contradiction are.

Now for the chronology of the flood. The fellow you are quoiting from, Harold Comping, is your problem. You say you don't like some of his theology, well is chronology is even worse. Harold is reading bible chronology assbackwards. He is listing the full age of each of Shem decendents then adds his son's full age etc. etc. Here is the right way to add the ages. Age of birth in AM (from creation), ~ name, [years lived], died when, son birth

1558 ~ Shem [600] died 2159, son born -
1657 ~ Arphayad [438] died 2096, son born -
1693 ~ Salah [433] died 2126, son born -
1723 ~ Eber [464] died 2187, son born -
1757 ~ Peleg [239] died 1996, son born -
1787 ~ Reu [239] died 2026, son born -
1819 ~ Serug [230] died 2049, son born -
1849 ~ Nahor [148] died 1997, son born -
1878 ~ Terah [205] died 2083, son born -
2008 ~ Abram [175] died 2183, son born -
2100 ~ Isaac [189] died 2288,

As you can see here there is only 542 years from Shem to Isaac, not 2600 years. Rowland, your chronology theology is way off and your faith is in a book full of contradiction that you can't explain but you did admit in the last post that they are there and they are really only misunderstanding you say. So far I have proven to you that the bible is NOT inerrant and you even agreed it wasn't but still cling to it. Is't that double talk?? How do you sleep nights when your heart knows the truth but your mind will not see it? You have a great day Rowland. arlan

[Rowland]

"Where is the contradiction?" you asked. If you had not left out John 19:30 "It is finished" for Jesus last words then no one would know the difference. You said you assumed that Matthew was voicing what Luke said but it could also been what John said "it is finished", couldn't it?
The problem with you using Matt. 27:50 "loud voice or cry" for Jesus last words is that this scripture has nothing to do with Jesus emmiting any words here. When you read the whole verse it literary says ekpneo literally "to breath out" or "to yeald up the ghost with a cry".
You have tried to deceive us by not including all verses having to do with Jesus last words. That is not Christ like. Please explain to me again which statements is Jesus last words:

"My God, my God why have you forsakeen me." Matthew
" It is finished" John
"Father, into my hands I comment my spirit" and having said that he breath his last." Luke.

If one of these is Jesus last words then the other two writers are contradictions to Jesus last words. That is where the contradiction are.

Now for the chronology of the flood. The fellow you are quoiting from, Harold Comping, is your problem. You say you don't like some of his theology, well is chronology is even worse. Harold is reading bible chronology assbackwards. He is listing the full age of each of Shem decendents then adds his son's full age etc. etc. Here is the right way to add the ages. Age of birth in AM (from creation), ~ name, [years lived], died when, son birth

1558 ~ Shem [600] died 2159, son born -
1657 ~ Arphayad [438] died 2096, son born -
1693 ~ Salah [433] died 2126, son born -
1723 ~ Eber [464] died 2187, son born -
1757 ~ Peleg [239] died 1996, son born -
1787 ~ Reu [239] died 2026, son born -
1819 ~ Serug [230] died 2049, son born -
1849 ~ Nahor [148] died 1997, son born -
1878 ~ Terah [205] died 2083, son born -
2008 ~ Abram [175] died 2183, son born -
2100 ~ Isaac [189] died 2288,

As you can see here there is only 542 years from Shem to Isaac, not 2600 years. Rowland, your chronology theology is way off and your faith is in a book full of contradiction that you can't explain but you did admit in the last post that they are there and they are really only misunderstanding you say. So far I have proven to you that the bible is NOT inerrant and you even agreed it wasn't but still cling to it. Is't that double talk?? How do you sleep nights when your heart knows the truth but your mind will not see it? You have a great day Rowland. arlan

Arlan, I do believe that the Bible is the true word of God. Do the apparent contradictions bother me. Yes, of course. But I love the Bible and am willing to overlook its possible contradictions. Do you love someone, Arlan? Does this person sometimes express feelings about you that sometimes appear to be contradictory? Do you stop loving people as soon as you catch them in a contradiction? In a lie? Or do you sometimes have to admit to yourself that the lie or contradiction you see in them could be the result of you misinterpreting their words?

I need the Bible. I need it to be true and without error. I am a weak human being. Should I appologize for being weak? For being needy? Jesus came for the weak and broken-not for the strong and whole. If you are strong and whole without the Bible-well good for you. I'm not. I have no where else to go for truth and understanding the world I live in other than the Bible. If you see a criple walking down the street on crutches do you immediately run up to him and try to yank away his crutches? Why are you trying to yank my crutches from me? What is your motivation for attempting to discredit the Bible in my eyes?

Rowland

[shunyadragon]

Arlan, I do believe that the Bible is the true word of God. Do the apparent contradictions bother me. Yes, of course. But I love the Bible and am willing to overlook its possible contradictions. Do you love someone, Arlan? Does this person sometimes express feelings about you that sometimes appear to be contradictory? Do you stop loving people as soon as you catch them in a contradiction? In a lie? Or do you sometimes have to admit to yourself that the lie or contradiction you see in them could be the result of you misinterpreting their words?

I need the Bible. I need it to be true and without error. I am a weak human being. Should I appologize for being weak? For being needy? Jesus came for the weak and broken-not for the strong and whole. If you are strong and whole without the Bible-well good for you. I'm not. I have no where else to go for truth and understanding the world I live in other than the Bible. If you see a criple walking down the street on crutches do you immediately run up to him and try to yank away his crutches? Why are you trying to yank my crutches from me? What is your motivation for attempting to discredit the Bible in my eyes?

Rowland

This a weak foundation for an argument concerning how literal the Bible is and what is the nature of the contradictions. You are basically taking a fideist position here, which is not easily debated. I feel that most of those involved in the debate will admit to the weaknesses and falliability of human nature, but many will not chose to ignore the evidence based on the emotional crutches of belief in presenting their arguments.

My motivation for for questioning a literal understanding of the Bible is the quest for truth putting any personal bias or weaknesses of human nature aside.

[Arlan]

Rowland Your are the one that made the original statements on the bible's inerrant's and Noahic flood happening in 4990 BC. All i have done is to prove to you the bible is not inerrant because men wrote, it not God. What proof out side of the bible that the bible is inerrant? You have none.
After the info I gave you on the Noahic flood genealogiest do you still think that flood happened in 4990BC??
For my first 50 years of life I believed the bible much like you do today. When I started to get involved in archaeology I found out thinks that bothered me about the bible claims and what really happened. The real history of the world and the bible history of the world are two different things. Do I believe in a God that made this world YES but not the way the book of Genesis tells the story. God has another book out there in this world that we need to study, it is the building block of this earth and how things happened in the past. God's second book does not lie to us because it was not written by man. That is God's science he shows us how old this earth really is.
So you love the bible - all the real hundreds of contradiction, all the sicking atrocities that this bible God makes his people do, Isaelites utterly destroys the Canaanites, Nu. 21:3; with the Lord's approval, the Israelites slay Og and all his sons and all the people till there was no survivoprs left Nu. 21:35; 32,000 virgins are taken by Israelites as booty and 32 are set aside to be sacrificed as a tribute for the Lord, Nu. 31:31-40; 12,000 men, women died in Ai by the Lord's approval, Js 8:22-25; same for Gibeonites, Js 10:10-27; same for Makkedah, Js 10:28; same for Libnahites, Js.10:30, and Lachish, and Eglonites, and Hebronites Js 10. Is this the kind of God you love who wipes out very man women and child in country after country. Just one gore after another in the OT. My God is not a vindictive God like the OT. These things didn't not happen as has been shown by archaeology. If your faith live with this kind of OT God that is your problem and I feel for you. You know the bible was written by men and God was not guiding their hands to make so many contradictions. Keep in mind that a perfect and omnipotent God could, should, and likely would see to it that such problems did not exist in a book which s/he had inspired. I sure wouldn't allow it and i'm not even God. Love the real God of this world not the made up God of the bible.
You are not week, you just think so because you have been using the bible as a cruch too long. Find the real truth. a friend arlan b.