Amateur historical analysis of Eden and the Flood

[Dissenter]

The flood story in Genesis is not strongly backed by archaeological evidence. It may have been contrived by many ancient cultures to explain a different mass casualty event and its fallout.

It is necessary to view the PBS Nova episode "The First Horse Warriors," available on YouTube. Fast forward to 36 minutes and 12 seconds. The remaining 12 minutes will describe a massive outbreak of the Bubonic Plague which took place around 5000 years ago. Europe lost 90% of its population. A people called the Yamnaya moved in. The August 2019 National Geographic also covers the genetics of the various migrations into Europe including the Yamnaya.

It could be that some people heard of a plague coming and self-quarantined by buying a ship and going out to sea.

It could be that the Yamnaya coveted the help of these people who were clever enough to survive the plague. Perhaps the children were separated from their parents and told a lie about where they'd been. Shem, Ham, and Japheth were said to be old enough to be married but that detail was recorded after many generations of being passed down verbally.

Perhaps they were given land to live on so they wouldn't become spoiled living in some royal court, with the plan being to obtain a child from them every now and then. Perhaps kings Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes in the Book of Ezra were such children and helped a people they recognized as their own, much like Joseph did when serving the Pharaoh near the end of the Book of Genesis.

There are flood myths all over the ancient Near East, indeed the whole world. Perhaps quite a few people in the path of the plague of 5,000 years ago had the idea to self-quarantine, many by ship. While the Yamnaya retained some cohesion, perhaps they agreed upon a uniform explanation to convince the children of maritime self-quarantine how they got to where they were. Perhaps the myth spread to a few other places after that through cultural exchange- or perhaps the plague had spread beyond the area of Yamnaya expansion and others had self-quarantined by boat.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

All of this is just speculation, and to my knowledge, has no basis either in Jewish or Christian tradition.

It would have been awfully hard for Adam and Eve to serve as advisors to the pharaoh. Ditto Noah, and in any case, after the flood, the pharaoh, if there was one reigning at that time in Egypt, would have been dead.

 

[Dissenter]

Is this the Fundamentalist Forum?

The idea is that these stories were passed down verbally for many generations before Moses wrote them down.

The full meaning of the events may have been kept from some of the participants and details may have been lost between the time of Adam and Eve or Noah and Moses.

 

[po18guy]

Best not to over-think the faith.

 

[Dissenter]

There is another potential interpretation of the flood story and the account of Adam and Eve.

Near the end of the Book of Genesis, it is recorded that Joseph is abandoned in a well by his brothers, found by slave traders, and sold to Egypt. He becomes an advisor to the pharaoh.

Can it be that Adam, Eve, and Noah had also served in this capacity?

Ancient kings and even some kings in the modern era were thought to be divine. Can it be that when Moses recorded his peoples' earliest memories of themselves, the verbal accounts he relied on had blurred the distinction between "God" and "king?"

Perhaps ancient kings depended on people to serve as royal advisors to the court and to the people. Perhaps the people were told the advisors were demigods and were worth praying to. (Dem·i·god [ˈdemēˌɡäd] noun: a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank: "some Roman emperors claimed descent from demigods such as Hercules") Perhaps living in the royal court and having everything they wanted was too corrupting. Perhaps they got savvy about how to game the system. The Book of Genesis implies strongly that Adam and Eve somehow got too wise.

If they learned to cheat and manipulate their handlers, perhaps the people of their day copied their ethic and learned to cheat and manipulate one another.

So how to breed worthwhile royal advisors along the lines of Joseph? Cast them out into the wilderness and let them live by their own wits. Let them build honest morals by having to grow food and maintain their shelters. Perhaps the king cleared the land "east of Eden" just for them. If you're not honest about whether you've built a good enough house or whether you've grown enough food, then you starve or freeze or get attacked by wild animals, and the harder you work, the more you have. Good for morals and work ethic.

Adam and Eve's recollections of the Garden of Eden may have been hazy because they felt no pain. They may also not have passed on the fullness of what they had been doing there. The garden was probably something like a large park in downtown Babylon or Ur or Persepolis. The streams had been named after the mighty rivers of the world, perhaps for whimsy's sake, or perhaps to represent the major rivers of the world for some form of divination, or something else entirely.

Perhaps, if not Noah, then someone like him had been leading the people of his day into corruption. Perhaps their role was some sort of demigod advisor to the farmers or tradesmen. Perhaps they cheated or manipulated their neighbors to get out of working hard instead of actually working hard and honestly, because their guide had learned to outsmart his royal handlers and they copied his crafty ways. Perhaps such corrupt advisors were sailed out of sight of land and told there was a flood, then taken to a place which was unpopulated or had been cleared of people in order to regain their morals and work ethic by having to work hard to survive and prosper.

There may have been a few families in each case because the intention was to start a society of non-sociopathic equals who would prosper or fail based on whether they were moral or hard-working. Then perhaps the plan was that kings here and there would find a way to obtain a few of them to help advise their people and their hardworking, moral epigenetics would preserve the worth of their advice for a while. It does say in Nehemiah 5:8 that Jews were always having to buy back their brethren from slavery.