New Noah's Ark Finding: Any Thoughts?

[lao_tzu]

Briefly.

I am looking forward to the reply to your e-mail.

Me, too. I find that academics love the chance to expand on explanations given in the popular press. It could be quite interesting.

I am not sure that Abraham’s family could be considered pagan unless the old definition–a person living outside of one’s own village-- is applied.

That requires some piecing together, but I think it holds firm once you do. He’s described as being from Ur of the Chaldees, but nearly a thousand years before the Chaldeans emerged on the historical scene. To give as much credit as possible to the biblical timeline, you’d have to place him at Ur in the late 19th century BCE.

This is about two centuries after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur and the final collapse of the Sumerian Empire. It would have been controlled by the Akkadians, also known as the Assurians or Old Assyrians. They spoke a semitic language, but wrote using the Sumerian alphabet, which was widely adopted throughout the region, even as far away as the Hittites. Ur was still a bustling metropolis or what passed for one at the time. The city probably had tens of thousands of residents, and perhaps as many as a hundred thousand. It was also a sacred city, where emperors sent their oldest daughters or some other female relative to serve as the high priestess. The temple served as the holy abode of the moon god and goddess of the pagan pantheon, who were incorporated into the religions of all of the conquerors even across transitions in empire. If there was an actual Abraham of Ur, it’s nearly certain his family would have worshipped at the city’s famed ziggurat.

The more I read about the different floods, including a reference to a flood story in a compilation of Alaskan native legends, the more I think that there is a universal link beyond rain and flowing water. Maybe the link is the universal human nature which seeks understanding of what is beyond human nature.

You mean between human spirituality and flowing water? You’ll get no argument there, at least not from a Taoist.

As ever, Jesse

 

[lao_tzu]

It is not valid to compare the Bible to pagan accounts. It was written by men guided by the Holy Spirit. If other cultures wrote of this event, fine, but that is outside of its purpose from the standpoint of transmitting truth from God.

Peace,
Ed

Hello Ed,

I’m sure you’ll understand if I disagree with the source of their inspiration, but inspired it truly was. The original gods attached to the earliest flood tales were distant and fearsome tutelary deities, responsible for the health and prosperity of city-kingdoms, not the actions of individuals. The monotheism of the Abrahamic faiths was a momentous innovation, blending the aspects of the previous pantheons and even the individual household gods into a single gestalt. Though I suspect it might owe some of its thinking to influences from the Zoroastrians, another early monotheism, the Hebrew formulation was far more robust. It certainly survived better.

The same could be said for the flood tale in Genesis. Half the world knows the story of either Noah or Nuh, but how many remember Ziusudra? Only by a fluke was that single broken and eroded tablet preserved, found, and translated, thousands of years after it was buried in the forgotten and abandoned city of Nippur 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. It shows up as nothing more than a mound of dirt today. Most of what we know of these people comes from tablets dug up at the beginning of the 20th century and an examination of their temple iconography. It’s a whole lot more than nothing at all, but still, it’s not much.

The bible, by comparison, even as a literary work, really is incomparably more deep. Around the common characters of the earlier tales, the Hebrews wove a much richer story, and incorporated it fairly smoothly into their theology. No mean trick, that. I understand a christian’s interest in these hoary old pagan epics differs greatly from my own, but the story as a story lends itself to some fascinating study into the lives of these ancient peoples, and how they viewed and interacted with their world. Maybe my enthusiasm isn’t especially contagious, but as hobbies go, it’s got to beat hanging out at the pool hall smoking cigarettes.

As ever, Jesse

 

[edwest2]

Hello Ed,

I’m sure you’ll understand if I disagree with the source of their inspiration, but inspired it truly was. The original gods attached to the earliest flood tales were distant and fearsome tutelary deities, responsible for the health and prosperity of city-kingdoms, not the actions of individuals. The monotheism of the Abrahamic faiths was a momentous innovation, blending the aspects of the previous pantheons and even the individual household gods into a single gestalt. Though I suspect it might owe some of its thinking to influences from the Zoroastrians, another early monotheism, the Hebrew formulation was far more robust. It certainly survived better.

The same could be said for the flood tale in Genesis. Half the world knows the story of either Noah or Nuh, but how many remember Ziusudra? Only by a fluke was that single broken and eroded tablet preserved, found, and translated, thousands of years after it was buried in the forgotten and abandoned city of Nippur 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. It shows up as nothing more than a mound of dirt today. Most of what we know of these people comes from tablets dug up at the beginning of the 20th century and an examination of their temple iconography. It’s a whole lot more than nothing at all, but still, it’s not much.

The bible, by comparison, even as a literary work, really is incomparably more deep. Around the common characters of the earlier tales, the Hebrews wove a much richer story, and incorporated it fairly smoothly into their theology. No mean trick, that. I understand a christian’s interest in these hoary old pagan epics differs greatly from my own, but the story as a story lends itself to some fascinating study into the lives of these ancient peoples, and how they viewed and interacted with their world. Maybe my enthusiasm isn’t especially contagious, but as hobbies go, it’s got to beat hanging out at the pool hall smoking cigarettes.

As ever, Jesse

Yes, it beats hanging out at the pool hall and smoking. I’ve taken some time to study history, mythology and other faiths. The Bible is not a book, it is the Word of God. To put it in the secular book category suggests it was an invention. I’ve read plenty about the Bible as history and monotheism as an innovation. The Bible contains truths given to man by God. Jesus states that Moses wrote concerning Him.

I hope you realize that even though some people think that the Bible was strictly a work for a particular civilization at a particular time in history, it actually transcends all that. It is just a relevant and valuable today as when it was first written. [Yes, I’m aware of the history of its books being compiled.]

I work in the media and I watch, almost daily, the spread of propaganda, the rise of astro-turf on the internet, and the manipulation of the masses, especially on the news. If you want to learn what the media is, I suggest you pick up a copy of The Creation of the Media by Paul Starr.

From the secular perspective, all that is going on is a power struggle - an ancient power struggle. From the Christian perspective, everything is occurring and man is behaving as outlined in the Bible.

The only constant is the constant repackaging and rebranding of evil.

Peace,
Ed

 

[lao_tzu]

Yes, it beats hanging out at the pool hall and smoking.

Amen. Oh, excuse me, I think that’s my quarter up next. And, uh, have you got a light?

Well … I certainly realize that a transcendent view of the bible as the Word of God is common among christians. But I’m torn on how to respond. On the one hand, sure, the human condition hasn’t changed enough to prevent even the most ancient documents from retaining relevance, and that’s just as true for the bible as it is for the qur’an, which makes the same claim of universal relevance. Kramer translated a set of Sumerian proverbs written on clay around 2700 BCE and excavated from the temple complex in Nippur. I’m too lazy to look up the exact translation right now, but it was akin to “Fear the king, and be terrified of the tax man.” The more things change …

On the other hand, I’m most interested in where the relevance no longer remains, because those are the places where we discover the most surprising things about our ancestors. Transcendent truths can be found everywhere in sacred texts; that’s what makes them transcendent. Local truths, though, well, that’s where the endless variety of the human experience can be found. The bible, and especially the Torah, was written by flat-earth geocentrists living in minor kingdoms subservient to larger, surrounding empires. Now, that’s no calumny, and it’s not intended as such. It was the condition of almost everyone in the region. It was an intimate part of living in the ancient near east. The bible, though, gives us a unique opportunity to follow a literary and religious tradition that developed within that world view, one that’s simply not available to us today. It’s unusual. It’s different. That’s what makes it exciting.

If you’ve read the conservative, evangelical, Peter Enns’ extremely accessible (name removed by moderator)iration and Incarnation, you’ll understand why I don’t think there’s any contradiction between divine inspiration and fallible human authorship. I’m not saying I accept divine inspiration, merely that Enns does a very good job of showing how they are compatible, even in an extremely conservative theological setting like the Westminster Theological Seminary.

I work in the media and I watch, almost daily, the spread of propaganda, the rise of astro-turf on the internet, and the manipulation of the masses, especially on the news. If you want to learn what the media is, I suggest you pick up a copy of The Creation of the Media by Paul Starr.

“The news must pay for itself.”

Hell of a thing when reporting the news stopped being seen as a public obligation in return for the use of public airwaves and started being seen as a profit center. Before I returned to academics, I was a research director for one of the major networks. Don’t miss it a bit. In fact, when I noticed my HDTV took computer (name removed by moderator)ut about six months ago, I decided I’d be ever so much happier with a second monitor instead and canceled my cable subscription. Haven’t watched television since.

From the secular perspective, all that is going on is a power struggle - an ancient power struggle. From the Christian perspective, everything is occurring and man is behaving as outlined in the Bible.

The only constant is the constant repackaging and rebranding of evil.

Google is talking up abandoning China because of its restrictions on free speech and inquiry. Accepting censorship on its search engines was seen as contradictory to its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.” There are secular evils, too.

In addition to religious ways of reading the bible, there are secular ways. The secular methods are still looking for truths, but different truths than those adherents search for in their sacred texts. Occasionally, those secular truths disrupt long-standing religious interpretations. Though understandably annoying, I think that’s a good thing for christian theology, as it serves to separate out the transcendent from the ephemeral, as is appropriate for a sacred text. The other side of the coin is far more bleak, however. If you’ve studied the early history and compilation of the bible, you’ve probably run into Mark Smith.

Perhaps because of its historical roots in theology, the field of Israelite religion (not to mention biblical studies generally) remains one that does not generate its own general theoretical contribution to the humanities or social sciences.

Mark S. Smith. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series). (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002). Page FM26.

Unlike Google, we’re not able to close shop in China and set up elsewhere. The Israelite religions are an integral part of the fabric of the history of religion. They can’t be neglected without creating an enormous gap in the humanities. Yet that’s the current state of affairs. It’s possible to study them, but it’s not possible to do so without encountering tremendous resistance from the religious. That resistance results in unacceptable restrictions. In fact, a great deal of the appeal for me in Sumerology is the absence of apologists’ objections to studying the people as they really were. The closer one comes to first millennium west semitic cultures, the more the wind blows against careful examination, especially where it relates to ancient Israel itself.

I’ve gone overlong once again, but that comes from writing these responses a piece at a time while otherwise engaged. So, if I can keep this last aside within the character limit, I remain …

As ever, Jesse

 

[StAnastasia]

The bible, by comparison, even as a literary work, really is incomparably more deep. Around the common characters of the earlier tales, the Hebrews wove a much richer story, and incorporated it fairly smoothly into their theology. No mean trick, that. I understand a christian’s interest in these hoary old pagan epics differs greatly from my own, but the story as a story lends itself to some fascinating study into the lives of these ancient peoples, and how they viewed and interacted with their world. …As ever, Jesse

Very nicely put, Jesse!

 

[edwest2]

Amen. Oh, excuse me, I think that’s my quarter up next. And, uh, have you got a light?

Well … I certainly realize that a transcendent view of the bible as the Word of God is common among christians. But I’m torn on how to respond. On the one hand, sure, the human condition hasn’t changed enough to prevent even the most ancient documents from retaining relevance, and that’s just as true for the bible as it is for the qur’an, which makes the same claim of universal relevance. Kramer translated a set of Sumerian proverbs written on clay around 2700 BCE and excavated from the temple complex in Nippur. I’m too lazy to look up the exact translation right now, but it was akin to “Fear the king, and be terrified of the tax man.” The more things change …

On the other hand, I’m most interested in where the relevance no longer remains, because those are the places where we discover the most surprising things about our ancestors. Transcendent truths can be found everywhere in sacred texts; that’s what makes them transcendent. Local truths, though, well, that’s where the endless variety of the human experience can be found. The bible, and especially the Torah, was written by flat-earth geocentrists living in minor kingdoms subservient to larger, surrounding empires. Now, that’s no calumny, and it’s not intended as such. It was the condition of almost everyone in the region. It was an intimate part of living in the ancient near east. The bible, though, gives us a unique opportunity to follow a literary and religious tradition that developed within that world view, one that’s simply not available to us today. It’s unusual. It’s different. That’s what makes it exciting.

If you’ve read the conservative, evangelical, Peter Enns’ extremely accessible (name removed by moderator)iration and Incarnation, you’ll understand why I don’t think there’s any contradiction between divine inspiration and fallible human authorship. I’m not saying I accept divine inspiration, merely that Enns does a very good job of showing how they are compatible, even in an extremely conservative theological setting like the Westminster Theological Seminary.

“The news must pay for itself.”

Hell of a thing when reporting the news stopped being seen as a public obligation in return for the use of public airwaves and started being seen as a profit center. Before I returned to academics, I was a research director for one of the major networks. Don’t miss it a bit. In fact, when I noticed my HDTV took computer (name removed by moderator)ut about six months ago, I decided I’d be ever so much happier with a second monitor instead and canceled my cable subscription. Haven’t watched television since.

Google is talking up abandoning China because of its restrictions on free speech and inquiry. Accepting censorship on its search engines was seen as contradictory to its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.” There are secular evils, too.

In addition to religious ways of reading the bible, there are secular ways. The secular methods are still looking for truths, but different truths than those adherents search for in their sacred texts. Occasionally, those secular truths disrupt long-standing religious interpretations. Though understandably annoying, I think that’s a good thing for christian theology, as it serves to separate out the transcendent from the ephemeral, as is appropriate for a sacred text. The other side of the coin is far more bleak, however. If you’ve studied the early history and compilation of the bible, you’ve probably run into Mark Smith.

Perhaps because of its historical roots in theology, the field of Israelite religion (not to mention biblical studies generally) remains one that does not generate its own general theoretical contribution to the humanities or social sciences.

Mark S. Smith. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series). (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002). Page FM26.

Unlike Google, we’re not able to close shop in China and set up elsewhere. The Israelite religions are an integral part of the fabric of the history of religion. They can’t be neglected without creating an enormous gap in the humanities. Yet that’s the current state of affairs. It’s possible to study them, but it’s not possible to do so without encountering tremendous resistance from the religious. That resistance results in unacceptable restrictions. In fact, a great deal of the appeal for me in Sumerology is the absence of apologists’ objections to studying the people as they really were. The closer one comes to first millennium west semitic cultures, the more the wind blows against careful examination, especially where it relates to ancient Israel itself.

I’ve gone overlong once again, but that comes from writing these responses a piece at a time while otherwise engaged. So, if I can keep this last aside within the character limit, I remain …

As ever, Jesse

So, this ‘human condition’ you speak of, what is the point? If the human studies the human, sometimes, especially in studying the past, in only a fragmentary perspective, what’s the point? You focus on ‘the people’ but reject the idea of anything supernatural. There was no burning bush? Moses cobbled together the Commandments on his own? Christ didn’t die and rise from the dead? Anthropology can be interesting but if you believe that ancient peoples were simply going through various delusional phases until becoming more modern, what’s the point?

In the end are you just connecting the dots? What do you see as your goal in all this?

Peace,
Ed

 

[lao_tzu]

So, this ‘human condition’ you speak of, what is the point? If the human studies the human, sometimes, especially in studying the past, in only a fragmentary perspective, what’s the point? You focus on ‘the people’ but reject the idea of anything supernatural. There was no burning bush? Moses cobbled together the Commandments on his own? Christ didn’t die and rise from the dead? Anthropology can be interesting but if you believe that ancient peoples were simply going through various delusional phases until becoming more modern, what’s the point?

In the end are you just connecting the dots? What do you see as your goal in all this?

Peace,
Ed

Hello again, Ed,

If enjoying my hobbies is nothing more than part of my nature, that’s sufficient. It is, after all, a whole lot better than nothing at all.

Burning bushes, commandments, resurrections? Now Ed, you already know I struggle with prolixity, and you have to go tempting me to sin again! Why not just stick with the flood in this thread? Briefly then, I suspect the “burning bush” is a copying error of the name of the mountain Sinai miswritten as seneh, that the commandments ascribed to Moses along with most of the Deuteronomic law code are a recasting of older law codes ranging from Hammurabi to Ur-Nammu, that the resurrection witnesses were later additions to the gospels (and unquestionably so in GoMark), and that none of these issues are especially compelling theologically, and even less so from a secular viewpoint.

Theologically, then, whether it was a “burning bush” or the “burning mountain” is irrelevant to the theme of Moses becoming aware of his god. The secular provenance of Moses’ laws is irrelevant to the divine imprimatur embraced by the sacred texts. The resurrection is irrelevant as a witness of Jesus’ ability to forgive sin, which he had no qualms about doing even while he was alive. A spiritual resurrection would serve just as well as a promise of eternal life, since no physical body is built to withstand eternity anyway. My hair didn’t even last 50 years.

All of that, of course, from the view of monotheism, which is not my own. Whatever portion of me that survives beyond my death, I’m quite sure it won’t be my individual ego, which emerged from nothing and will someday return there.

Now here’s an interesting thing. I didn’t grow up in a “Catholic” region of the country. (I’m an American.) So I really don’t know much about differences that divide catholics and protestants. But I have had plenty of chances to discuss religion in general with priests, and though I’m wary of anecdotes, I’ve always found them far more open-minded than the evangelical and fundamentalist preachers. Fulfilling a last request a few years ago, I read the Bardo Thodol for a friend of mine at his very catholic funeral. Though I did my best to do so quietly in an out of the way corner, a young priest approached me and asked about it. It turned into a very enjoyable conversation. It turned out he was quite knowledgeable about Tibetan Buddhism and eastern religions in general.

Now I do understand that clergy are more likely to have a deeper and more nuanced view of faith, especially from such a long tradition as the catholic church, in comparison to the laity, but when you speak of “goals” and “the point,” please understand these are not part of my religious tradition. For me, there is only the “far-reaching return” to the void from which I came. It’s not a question of connecting the dots, but of traveling the path between them.

As ever, Jesse

 

[nordskoven]

Noah’s Ark was found where the Koran said it would be…on Mt. Cudi/Judi, after an earthquake shook off the mud and a great leaf-shaped form appeared. The Koran didn’t state WHICH of the many Mt. Cudi/Judi’s but there’s a boat-shaped structure on Mt. Cudi in Turkish Armenia that ground penetrating radar shows as having support structures incorporating PHI, the logarithmic spiral. That’s the “circle” referred to in the Babylonian corruption. The Babylonians…feh. Man was not made to be a slave to the gods.

Virtually all cultures have a Great Flood story incorporating four elements: God was mad; animals; family saved; and boat landing on mountain. Quaintly, cultures name the nearest great peak as the landing site, as in Mt. Fuji for the Japanese. And this sacred mountain is the basis of the sacred pyramid form. The Great Flood was THE biggest thing in the ancient world, and still is today as forms and customs derive from it, including the ribbed column interpreted today in stone–the former stem and stern posts that were banded together–and marriage rites, and errant ancestor worship starting with the deification of the four couples on Noah’s/Zeus-udra’s Ark (The Ogdoad in Egypt and the Eight Immortals preserved in Buddhism). Our red devil is a corrupt form of Noah himself. Jesus said, “Beware of Satan appearing as an angel of light,” not a red devil…

The Ark was not a circle or a square or a rectangular barge shape that would have turned turtle and sunk. The specifications given in Genesis are for boat builders, very much akin to the kind of ancient math used by potters to specify the volume of storage vessels. A parallel mis-perception of a modern technical volumetric might suggest a refrigerator having square footage is itself a cube. The remains on Mt. Cudi define a spectacularly stable craft that was a crescent having a stern end that was more rounded so forward motion was easy but backward motion discouraged. The Ark remains were a singular tourist attraction in olden time, even toured by returning Crusaders. When covered by mudslides, the Ark was turned into the subterranean Varuna’s (Noah’s) House of Clay per the traditions of India.

Noah’s Ark was NOT a displacement vessel, as in a hollow cup, but was a three-story log frame structure on a curved and upturned flotation raft made out of extinct giant triangular reeds 3 inches on each side bundled together and the bundles bundled together and tarred and covered with KPR. KPR is mistranslated as “GOPHER” which is nonsense, with “WOOD” emended, also nonsense. Kephra is light colored volcanic ash used to powder over the sticky tar or rosin coating that waterproofed the reed bundles. This means the Ark couldn’t sink if it sprang a leak as it didn’t depend on a hollow shape displacing water. Tourists would have seen a white ship stranded on Mt. Cudi, the white Egg of Life, the Easter egg, and the crescent moon honored in the Middle East.

The Turkish Armenian-claimed Noah’s Ark has a large rectangular slot in the bottom (as those incorporated into salvage vessels that require doing a belly lift through the hull for stability). This slot made the Ark free-bailing, like Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s smaller cousin, so rainwater and animal waste just passed through into this water column. This water column, in that water cannot be sheared, further stabilized the Ark. The column of water also acted as a giant air piston forcing fresh air through the craft as it rode the waves.

The stem and stern posts held sea anchors off bow and stern. These twin columns are the basis for many ancient symbols of authority, like the ankh, and are seen in the twin pillars on ancient temples meaning “we are Noah’s God’s people.” This is how Solomon was able to topple the temple of Dagon, a deified Noah figure as was Zeus, as it was probably resting solely on these twin pillars. Solomon’s Temple had twin pillars, and the Freemasons snitched it from this source without knowing the earliest basis. The “ringed bundle” seen in antiquity is a banded column with an open eye at the end and tassel off the eye and is a symbol based on nautical construction.

The “ringed bundle” is a literal depiction of the supporting stem and stern posts that angled from the bottom of the ship to off each end, with the circular finials being used to work the lines for sea anchors. The valley floor near Mt. Cudi is littered with these massive sea anchors, strange for what is now a mountain valley. The sea anchor is not meant to touch bottom, but to hang in the water to provide stabilizing drag that could be adjusted to steer the boat to one side or the other. The tassel on each of the “ringed bundles” is where the sea anchors were cut loose before landing as it is highly dangerous to have the sea anchors attached and hanging up on the bottom as this would have torn the craft apart when landing.

The Genesis account is highly technical and that is one hallmark of our guys, the monotheists to whom God revealed great science. The Babylonians, for example, turned the high astronomy of the “Gospel in the Stars” as D. James Kennedy discerned from the religiously-rich names of stars and constellations, into the degenerate astrology of pagan superstition. And that leads us to the center of the Earth, the Great Pyramid which was built by Noah’s son, Shem, the Shepherd-King, to be a memorial to the Flood salvation; and a burial place for Adam (Ra), the first man, whose bones were carried on the Ark per hieroglyphs. This Great Pyramid was where East was separated from West. The Babylonians usurped this notion and made their tower of mud bricks to be the center or “navel” of the world. You know the ending to that one.

 

[Traditional_Ang]

Granny, as you know, in pre-literate cultures (including those of the Ancient Near East), oral tradition was the way in which stories, laws, customs, and other units of cultural heritage were passed down from generation to generation. One such unit descending from pre-literate, pre-historical culture was the Babylonian flood story. As different cultures inherited this story, they modified it to fit their own cultural histories. And as literate cultures developed, they modified and wrote down the flood story. What the Hebrew authors did was to retell the flood story in a way that incorporated it beautifully into the ongoing Hebrew religious experience, their theology of salvation history, or God’s saving acts for God’s people.

StAnastasia

StAnastasia:

I get the feeling you don’t like Preliterate Cultures that well, or at least that you don’t think too highly of them. It seems to you never learned that most Preliterate Cultures are actually BETTER, NOT worse, at remembering events & the details of those events than we are.
Exploring Psychology - Culture & Memory
People in many preliterate cultures rely on their memories to recall personal and societal information and pass it on orally to children. Researchers are interested in the influence of culture on memory. In one early study, Ross and Millson (1970) found that college students in Ghana (who lived in a culture rich in oral tradition) remembered story themes better than students in the United States.
http://198.45.22.27/connectext/psy/ch07/cultmem.mhtml
Economic Expert.com - Oral History
Oral history is an account of something passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. Oral history is considered by some historians to be an unreliable source for the study of history. However, oral history is a valid means for preserving and transmitting history. Experience within literate cultures indicates that each time anyone reconstructs a memory, there are changes in the memory, but the core of the story is usually retained. Over time, however, minor changes can accumulate until the story becomes unrecognizable.

A person within a literate culture thus has presuppositions that may falsely affect her judgement of the validity of oral history within preliterate cultures. In these cultures children are usually selected and specially trained for the role of historian, and develop extraordinary memory skills known as eidetic or photographic memory.
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Oral:tradition.htm
New Statesman - A Mind to Remember"I became a little bit obsessed with my memory training," he explains. The technique he used is a window on to a preliterate culture of memory. As he explained in his original piece for Slate, the human mind is best equipped to retain memories of real objects, so by associating abstract ideas with vivid spatial and visual images, it becomes easier to memorise swaths of them. This was a technique prized by classical and medieval scholars such as Cicero and St Thomas Aquinas, who used it as the means to improve oratory and piety."
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2009/01/joshua-foer-memory-slate

I assume you remember the game “Telephone Tag” - The teacher tells one kid something, which he tells the kid next to him, which that kid tells the kid next to her, and so forth to the last kid who tells the teacher what he has just heard, which isn’t even close to resembling what the teacher told the first kid. Well, I’ve seen kids (and adults) from Preliterate cultures do the same thing (even in languages they don’t understand). Normally, the word coming from the last kid or adult is exactly the same as the word the teacher put in, These Unscientific, Unhistorical, Preliterate people blow us away EVERY TIME!

I noticed another assumption which you appear to make which can’t be left unquestioned - That the Book Genesis was not only written after the Babylonian Exile, but that the Source Materials for the Flood Account in Genesis were, too. Well, I decided to look at the commentary in my Jerusalem Bible (pp. 21-25), and I noticed that it said the Flood Narrative in Genesis had 3 major sources - Yahwist (950 BC), Elohist (850 BC) and Priestly (500 BC), and only one of those could have been AFTER the Babylonian Captivity. The JB also stated that the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Story of the Flood in Genesis had a common source.

I understand the desire to use scholarship so we can get a better idea what God and the human author He’s writing through are trying to tell us. That’s well and good, but too much of modern scholarship lately has been used to question the historicity or truth of Scripture. You might want to look at “Exodus Decoded” and see what happens when we change the date of the Exodus from 1200 BC to 1500 BC…

Your Brother in Christ, Michael

 

[PeterClatworthy]

I would thoroughly recommend listening to the series of videos by Edmund Marriage, Lecturer in World History, The Golden Age Project.

goldenageproject.org.uk/conferences.html

This particular video lecture mentions the Great Flood and the fact that Noah was indeed a real historical character, and a king.

goldenageproject.org.uk/video4.html

It is quite long, but well worth listening to.

 

[cassini]

Noah’s Ark was found where the Koran said it would be…on Mt. Cudi/Judi, after an earthquake shook off the mud and a great leaf-shaped form appeared. The Koran didn’t state WHICH of the many Mt. Cudi/Judi’s but there’s a boat-shaped structure on Mt. Cudi in Turkish Armenia that ground penetrating radar shows as having support structures incorporating PHI, the logarithmic spiral. That’s the “circle” referred to in the Babylonian corruption. The Babylonians…feh. Man was not made to be a slave to the gods.

Virtually all cultures have a Great Flood story incorporating four elements: God was mad; animals; family saved; and boat landing on mountain. Quaintly, cultures name the nearest great peak as the landing site, as in Mt. Fuji for the Japanese. And this sacred mountain is the basis of the sacred pyramid form. The Great Flood was THE biggest thing in the ancient world, and still is today as forms and customs derive from it, including the ribbed column interpreted today in stone–the former stem and stern posts that were banded together–and marriage rites, and errant ancestor worship starting with the deification of the four couples on Noah’s/Zeus-udra’s Ark (The Ogdoad in Egypt and the Eight Immortals preserved in Buddhism). Our red devil is a corrupt form of Noah himself. Jesus said, “Beware of Satan appearing as an angel of light,” not a red devil…

The Ark was not a circle or a square or a rectangular barge shape that would have turned turtle and sunk. The specifications given in Genesis are for boat builders, very much akin to the kind of ancient math used by potters to specify the volume of storage vessels. A parallel mis-perception of a modern technical volumetric might suggest a refrigerator having square footage is itself a cube. The remains on Mt. Cudi define a spectacularly stable craft that was a crescent having a stern end that was more rounded so forward motion was easy but backward motion discouraged. The Ark remains were a singular tourist attraction in olden time, even toured by returning Crusaders. When covered by mudslides, the Ark was turned into the subterranean Varuna’s (Noah’s) House of Clay per the traditions of India.

Noah’s Ark was NOT a displacement vessel, as in a hollow cup, but was a three-story log frame structure on a curved and upturned flotation raft made out of extinct giant triangular reeds 3 inches on each side bundled together and the bundles bundled together and tarred and covered with KPR. KPR is mistranslated as “GOPHER” which is nonsense, with “WOOD” emended, also nonsense. Kephra is light colored volcanic ash used to powder over the sticky tar or rosin coating that waterproofed the reed bundles. This means the Ark couldn’t sink if it sprang a leak as it didn’t depend on a hollow shape displacing water. Tourists would have seen a white ship stranded on Mt. Cudi, the white Egg of Life, the Easter egg, and the crescent moon honored in the Middle East.

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The stem and stern posts held sea anchors off bow and stern. These twin columns are the basis for many ancient symbols of authority, like the ankh, and are seen in the twin pillars on ancient temples meaning “we are Noah’s God’s people.” This is how Solomon was able to topple the temple of Dagon, a deified Noah figure as was Zeus, as it was probably resting solely on these twin pillars. Solomon’s Temple had twin pillars, and the Freemasons snitched it from this source without knowing the earliest basis. The “ringed bundle” seen in antiquity is a banded column with an open eye at the end and tassel off the eye and is a symbol based on nautical construction.

The “ringed bundle” is a literal depiction of the supporting stem and stern posts that angled from the bottom of the ship to off each end, with the circular finials being used to work the lines for sea anchors. The valley floor near Mt. Cudi is littered with these massive sea anchors, strange for what is now a mountain valley. The sea anchor is not meant to touch bottom, but to hang in the water to provide stabilizing drag that could be adjusted to steer the boat to one side or the other. The tassel on each of the “ringed bundles” is where the sea anchors were cut loose before landing as it is highly dangerous to have the sea anchors attached and hanging up on the bottom as this would have torn the craft apart when landing.

The Genesis account is highly technical and that is one hallmark of our guys, the monotheists to whom God revealed great science. The Babylonians, for example, turned the high astronomy of the “Gospel in the Stars” as D. James Kennedy discerned from the religiously-rich names of stars and constellations, into the degenerate astrology of pagan superstition. And that leads us to the center of the Earth, the Great Pyramid which was built by Noah’s son, Shem, the Shepherd-King, to be a memorial to the Flood salvation; and a burial place for Adam (Ra), the first man, whose bones were carried on the Ark per hieroglyphs. This Great Pyramid was where East was separated from West. The Babylonians usurped this notion and made their tower of mud bricks to be the center or “navel” of the world. You know the ending to that one.

Great post nordskoven, most interesting. The dimentions of the Ark were of course found to be the PERFECT dimentions for stability of tankers and barges in our times. But I am more interested in what I have underlined of yours. I was told once the plan of salvation was visible in the constellations (some of which are named in the Bible) before, as you say, the zodiac was hijacked by the other guys as you put it. Any ideas on this one?

 

[grannymh]

Any Thoughts ? ? ?

Has anyone checked “Noah” and “Flood” which appear in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ISBN: 1-57455-109-4 ? ? ?

Try putting the words “Noah” and next “Flood” in the search bar for the Catechism.

Link: www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Here is an interesting thought:

“The waters of the great flood
You made a sign of the waters of Baptism,
that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.”

This is from the Roman Missal, Easter Vigil 42: Blessing of Water. It is quoted in one of the Catechism’s paragraphs.

Blessings,
granny

Please share these websites with family and friends.

 

[nordskoven]

Ancient cultures were originally monotheist. Egypt called Him Ptah, the Almighty symbolized by a war club; China called Him Shang-Ti; and Kenneth Kitchen, Egyptologist, notes that even primitive, far-flung cultures shared and share laws, customs and moral tenets that mirror Genesis closely. Marriage is a cultural universal, for example, as is a standard of modesty after the nakedness of Adam and Eve were covered. Even in a tropical country, people we would consider nude who are found not wearing the prescribed string and sheath will get ostracized for immodesty. And there was a universal prophecy of a special Virgo Mother & Leo Son who would save our proverbial bacon, and various false claimants, all right out of Genesis 3:15.

If they are worshiping at a ziggurat, it’s post-Flood because the fake mountain temple was to honor those who landed the Ark on the sacred mountainside, Noah offering a sacrifice first thing. Abraham’s father, Terah, made and sold little goddess figurines. That’s “pagan” because it departs from original monotheism. This is based on another post-Flood corruption, the deification of Mrs. Noah, Dia-nuh or Diana in later days. She is theorized to be Naamah. Ur of the Chaldees was a hotbed of pagan revolt before Abraham during the time of Sargon the Great, whose kingdom was threatened by the pagan priest from Ur (meaning “city” so there is no “Ur” per se–it’s like calling Kansas City “City”…) of the Chaldees who attempted to rape Sargon’s daughter, EN-Heduanna, making her his wife and seizing rulership because it all ran through the female in honoring the Woman & Seed compact from Genesis.

That’s why the little figurines became so popular, because land titles were literal figures of one’s mother. Rachel and her blear-eyed sister, Leah, had their land inherited from their mom snitched by their dad, and making off with the little idol was taking back land. Rulership by the male in this monotheist system, one before awful pagan kingship the Jews demanded was granted by God, meant that to marry the EN, the woman of grace, was to be made ruler, steward, husbandman. This is why Sarah was such a hot item, because to marry her was to gain power. And this is why Sarah and Abraham, though half-siblings, could legally marry because they were NOT accounted brother and sister as having different mothers.

Abraham gave bread and wine to be offered by the mysterious priest-king Melchizedek, showing the monotheist remnant after the big revolt that sent monotheism underground if for no other reason than that paganism became so profitable and wealthy pagan priests so powerful. This trend is shown in Egypt’s Akhenaton, who didn’t invent monotheism but revived it, and is doubtless why Akhenaton gave such stunningly rich concessions to his monotheist brethren, the Hebrews, whose fidelity to the truth is honored by God and persecuted by man. Melchizedek is identified by the Jews as Shem, Noah’s son, who lammed out of Egypt with Adam’s bones and buried them first in the cave under Golgotha. This is why a skull, Adam’s skull, is seen at the foot of the crucifix. Then Shem translated the bones to Machpelah, the double-cave Abraham formally bought from people among whom he was considered a prince.

The revolt against monotheist culture was probably at a time of cataclysm as there is associated with it bull roarers, mega-noisemakers to instill fear as if recreating the terror of an earthquake or eruption or hissing meteor strikes. The peace-inducing land markers, figures of women, were thrown down by the bad guys who took to packing into lodges and longhouses like todays Freemasons. The husband was killed or enslaved, the EN, woman of grace, was turned into a temple prostitute and her children were slated for death, something the seed of Satan would do in prosecuting their Genesis 3:15 enmity against Woman & Seed. Sargon the Great was one such child, son of an EN, and marked for death, but his wily mom cast him adrift in a little boat in the irrigation channels to be raised by the chief engineer. Sargon was the arch-foe of the bad guys like Lugalan, the attempted rapist-priest of Ur of the Chaldees who was fighting against the Akkadian empire’s religion by striking at the EN, Sargon’s daughter, EN-Heduanna.

Abraham was a prince among the people as all were related as coming out of Northern India after earthquakes and Arya predation and looting. Abraham was led by God out of the prevailing paganism that would have consumed his EN wife, Sarah. Sarasvati and Brahma are the remnants of this monotheist couple in India, and the revolt against this system is so great there is but one center of worship for Brahma in India, who is of course the deified Abraham just as Zeus is the deified Noah and Diana is the deified Naamah, Noah’s wife.

The N-root may be considered a family name, the Noah family, and the EN, woman of grace, of Noah’s religious lineage. Noah’s wife is the woman of grace because, as the woman ran the storehouse–where she got married if accepting the approach of the would-be steward–and is shown in an ancient alabaster directing the lading of the Ark. She is hiking her thumb over her shoulder to men carrying shipping containers, amphora shaped, the basis for the cornucopia or horn of plenty. God’s grant of land to Abraham was a return of land stolen by those of his kinsmen, like those from the Chaldean colony, who threw down the landmarks and took what they would by force.

 

[PeterClatworthy]

“Although the term Druid is local, their religion was of deep root, and a distant origin. It was of equal antiquity with those of the Persian Magi, the Chaldeans of Assyria, and the Brahmins of Hindustan. It resembled them so closely in its sublime precepts, in its consoling promises, as to leave no doubt that these nations, living so widely apart, were all of the same stock and the same religion - that of Noah, and the children of men before the flood.”

(SOURCE: Veil of isis or Mysteries of the Druids, W. Windwood Reade: 1861)

 

[lao_tzu]

Great post nordskoven, most interesting.

Umm, no, cassini. With all due respect, that’s an example of the new age dreck I mentioned in my letter to Dr. Finkel, curator of the British Museum, upthread. The ark has not been found. More, associating “better” information on the ark with the qur’an doesn’t merely violate the first principle of textual criticism — that later texts are less accurate, having been subject to change longer — but would likely be seen as heretical inside the christian tradition. I can’t imagine a christian apologist arguing for divine inspiration of the qur’an.

As ever, Jesse

 

[lao_tzu]

Any Thoughts ? ? ?

Has anyone checked “Noah” and “Flood” which appear in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ISBN: 1-57455-109-4 ? ? ?

Try putting the words “Noah” and next “Flood” in the search bar for the Catechism.

Hello granny,

Now that’s an interesting resource.

1: … shattered by sin God at once sought to save humanity part by part. The covenant with Noah after the flood gives expression to the principle of the divine economy

2: … in the Spirit of Truth, starting from Christ, the figures are unveiled. Thus the flood and Noah’s ark prefigured salvation by Baptism, as did the cloud and the crossing

3: … The dove. At the end of the flood, whose symbolism refers to Baptism, a dove released by Noah returns with a fresh olive-tree branch in its beak as a sign that

4: … “a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water”: The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of Baptism, that make an end of sin and a new

5: … dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah’s ark, which alone saves from the flood

Please bear with me, as I’m not clear on the authority given the catechism (and only vaguely aware of something about infallibility of popes). Are these discussion points, teachings, or essential doctrines? Are they subject to change?

Here is an interesting thought:

“The waters of the great flood
You made a sign of the waters of Baptism,
that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.”

This is from the Roman Missal, Easter Vigil 42: Blessing of Water. It is quoted in one of the Catechism’s paragraphs.

Blessings,
granny

Well, now you’ve really done it. What’s a “missal,” who writes them, and how are they used? I get the idea this is something read around Easter.

As ever, Jesse

 

[StAnastasia]

I can’t imagine a christian apologist arguing for divine inspiration of the qur’an. As ever, Jesse

I know Catholic priests who would disagree with you.

 

[StAnastasia]

]StAnastasia: I get the feeling you don’t like Preliterate Cultures that well, or at least that you don’t think too highly of them. It seems to you never learned that most Preliterate Cultures are actually BETTER, NOT worse, at remembering events & the details of those events than we are.

You are quite wrong. I love preliterate cultures; some of my doctoral study and my recent teaching have involved these cultures.

StAnastasia

 

[lao_tzu]

I know Catholic priests who would disagree with you.

Now that would be an interesting conversation. Links, blogs, email addy’s?

 

[StAnastasia]

Now that would be an interesting conversation. Links, blogs, email addy’s?

Ha! As if I would entrust this sort of information with the inquisitorial types who lurk on these fora.