Old Earth vs. Young Earth Creationism

[church mouse guy]

Speculation. The bible does not allude to that or say that. God spent a few months Personally chatting to Moses one time, and we know God often spoke to Moses also. There is no reason to invoke some supposed other records.


How things were passed pre flood may not have involved written records. For all we know there may have been no need to write in the former nature before the tower of Babel, when men could no longer understand each other. Some of the earliest civilizations post flood had to draw pictures and that sort of thing, and written language came later.
So, yes Noah and his family knew about Adam and the history, but not as far as we know because anything was written down.

What is speculation is to say that the primitive Egyptians who forgot about Joseph in short order somehow recalled the history of Joseph's ancestors.

Also, it is clear that the Jews had a written language early on. The size and scope of the construction of Noah's Ark illustrates that Noah was not some sort of primitive person. Going back even more, Cain built an entire city: Enoch, Nod. So early man was quite competent. It does not matter whether or not Noah passed down a written history or an oral history, but it is clear that the information was given to Abraham and thus to Moses. Other than Moses, it seems unlikely than any other Hebrew slave would have received an Egyptian education. As you know, Joseph left word that this bones were to be exhumed from Egypt and carried back to the promised land:

Genesis 50:25 (KJV) And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

 

[church mouse guy]

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis thinks that Adam could read and write and wrote a book on the generations of Adam. It is possible that this book was preserved by Noah and passed to Moses.

Genesis 5:1 (KJV) This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Adam—could he write?

 

[dad1]

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis thinks that Adam could read and write and wrote a book on the generations of Adam. It is possible that this book was preserved by Noah and passed to Moses.

Genesis 5:1 (KJV) This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Adam—could he write?

The issue is not who thinks something could be real. The issue is what evidence they have. No one had the record of the generations of the heavens and earth before God gave it. To claim they did have records of every son and grandson of Adam, who may have lived thousands of miles apart would require some sort of evidence, and biblical support. Otherwise we just do not know. We can assume it was directly from God. That has bible support because He directly talked to Moses.

 

[dad1]

What is speculation is to say that the primitive Egyptians who forgot about Joseph in short order somehow recalled the history of Joseph's ancestors.

So what are you saying, that they forgot stuff even in their recent history like Joseph, so this means they had to have some excellent precise record of Hebrew lineages?? Ha. That doesn't follow.

Also, it is clear that the Jews had a written language early on. The size and scope of the construction of Noah's Ark illustrates that Noah was not some sort of primitive person.

Nothing was primitive about them if they could talk to all people either. They did not need to pass out instructions on paper in 50 languages to get the job done. Something in the way man processed information could have been different due to the different nature of that day for all we know now. God changed something when He confounded the tongues. Something was no longer the same as it used to be. In no way did Scripture say anything about God asking Noah to write anything! Nor do I recall writing even being mentioned till after Babel! Do you?

Going back even more, Cain built an entire city: Enoch, Nod. So early man was quite competent. It does not matter whether or not Noah passed down a written history or an oral history, but it is clear that the information was given to Abraham and thus to Moses.

Information was given to Moses for the months God talked with him on the mountain. info was given to Moses when God talked to Him many many many other times also.

There would have been nothing incompetent in the pre flood era with not needing to write to communicate. The incompetency would be ore after they needed to draw pics and later write to communicate! Likewise, it was not incompetent when Adam could talk to the animals, but it was more incompetent when he no longer could do so!

Other than Moses, it seems unlikely than any other Hebrew slave would have received an Egyptian education. As you know, Joseph left word that this bones were to be exhumed from Egypt and carried back to the promised land:

Those Egyptians who you say forgot Joseph? What proof do you have they were so concerned with the Hebrew slaves that they made extensive accurate records of their past and lineages??

[/QUOTE]Genesis 50:25 (KJV) And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.[/QUOTE]

Great. So what does that have to do with some supposed written record Moses used as sort of a cheat sheet to get it right?

 

[church mouse guy]

The Egyptians were heathen. It is incredible that they would have been concerned with preserving the Jewish history of the world when a major figure in that lineage was amongst them and they forgot about it.

A more plausible explanation is that Adam wrote a book and it was passed to Noah and the book or information was then passed to Abraham and then to Moses. Egypt was rejected; Moses defeated their magicians. Egypt was a cruel slave state. Joseph did not want his bones left in Egypt. God called Jesus out of Egypt. Daniel does not even mention Egypt among the great empires of the world. The whole timeline of Egypt has been called into doubt recently.

 

[TCassidy]

Who had that record at that time is the question. You suggest man had it somewhere. What, you think the fathers in the former nature could not remember 50 people or whatever?

As I clearly stated in my earlier post it was probably an oral tradition, but may have been written.

Notice that that word generations is the same one used in Ge 2:4 -
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Yes.

Clearly no man could have these generations of the heaven and earth! So why would we assume that there was some written record of everyone who had scattered or migrated as commanded into all the earth?

I don't assume it was a written record. It may have been, but it is more likely an oral tradition. And Adam probably asked God during those walks together in the garden where all this came from and God probably told him. Which is why Genesis 1 and 2 are probably allegorical.

 

[dad1]

The Egyptians were heathen. It is incredible that they would have been concerned with preserving the Jewish history of the world when a major figure in that lineage was amongst them and they forgot about it.

A more plausible explanation is that Adam wrote a book and it was passed to Noah and the book or information was then passed to Abraham and then to Moses. Egypt was rejected; Moses defeated their magicians. Egypt was a cruel slave state. Joseph did not want his bones left in Egypt. God called Jesus out of Egypt. Daniel does not even mention Egypt among the great empires of the world. The whole timeline of Egypt has been called into doubt recently.

You invoke a need for some book. Seems to me God spending months talking to a man would do er. Since you have zero evidence for this book you suggest, it is dismissed as speculation.

 

[dad1]

As I clearly stated in my earlier post it was probably an oral tradition, but may have been written.

Coulda woulda shoulda. Whether some partial record of the generations of heaven and earth and sons of Adam existed or not is not known and not needed.

Yes.

I don't assume it was a written record. It may have been, but it is more likely an oral tradition. And Adam probably asked God during those walks together in the garden where all this came from and God probably told him. Which is why Genesis 1 and 2 are probably allegorical.

So now you use the speculation of some records having been in Adam's possession as an excuse to call Genesis chapters merely allegorical?? No way. Jesus and the other folks in the bible did not suggest any such thing, on the contrary, the things in Genesis about the beginning have been confirmed and echoed.

 

[TCassidy]

You invoke a need for some book. Seems to me God spending months talking to a man would do er. Since you have zero evidence for this book you suggest, it is dismissed as speculation.

"This is the history of the generations of . . . "

תלדות (toledowt)

"History, in ancient times, being based on genealogies, the phrase became a title for a history; so Genesis 2:4, "these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth"; as the history of a man's family is "the book of his generations," so that of the world's productions is "the generations (not the creation, which had been previously described) of the heavens and the earth." "Generations" is the heading of every chief section of Genesis (probably they were original family memoirs preserved and used by Moses under inspiration in writing Genesis)."

Fausset.

 

[TCassidy]

So now you use the speculation of some records having been in Adam's possession as an excuse to call Genesis chapters merely allegorical?? No way. Jesus and the other folks in the bible did not suggest any such thing, on the contrary, the things in Genesis about the beginning have been confirmed and echoed.

No, I use what the bible says, and what all OT scholars agree to. There were oral or written records, just as the bible says at the beginning of every main section of Genesis.

And I will assume you don't have a complete understanding of the meaning of "allegorical." An allegory is NOT a metaphor. An allegory is when a narrative (a story) is told but not every single detail is recounted. It is an abbreviated telling of what happened without giving every minute detail.

Genesis is such an abbreviated telling of origins, but not every detail is given. Genesis tells us WHAT God did, but He did not tell us HOW he did it, WHEN he did it, etc.

 

[church mouse guy]

You invoke a need for some book. Seems to me God spending months talking to a man would do er. Since you have zero evidence for this book you suggest, it is dismissed as speculation.

There is evidence that Adam wrote a book.

Genesis 5:1 (KJV) This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

 

[Deacon]

Moses (the son of Pharaoh's daughter) was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and actions.
The Israelites had been living in that environment for more than 400 years.
God chose to communicate through the man Moses.

If there was a written Hebrew language in Moses' time it was very rudimentary.
And talking about earlier 'documents' Moses might have consulted is speculation, although strong parallels exist throughout many Ancient Near East cultures from the time. Given his education, he would have been familiar with them.

What I can say confidently is that any earlier documents were not inspired.

Only Moses wrote with God's authority.
Moses wrote it to the people of his time, his place, his language, and his culture.
It is important to understand that the bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.
He wrote it to confront the questions and problems that concerned his people.

Rob

 

[church mouse guy]

I myself am not biased in favor of the Egyptians, whom I consider superstitious and vicious slaveholders. Nahum paints a clear picture of what the ancient world was like and there is no reason to believe that Egypt, an empire not mentioned by Daniel, was any better. There is a bias that Hebrew writing would be backward, but if Adam wrote a book, then Hebrew writing would be advanced. There is no reason to think that we are smarter than Adam six thousand years ago since he himself was perfect as created in the Garden of Eden.

Also, Egypt could hardly have been an historical preservation center since they forgot one of the major figures of Jewish history even though that same figure had saved the entire empire from starving to death. That shows Egyptian ingratitude on a massive scale.

Finally, Egypt is a byword for what to avoid. Egypt means the carnal world at its worst. The religion was the worst sort of paganism, the money was at the top and it was squandered in the middle of nowhere by being buried for later tomb raiders to steal. The average person must have had a life of hard physical labor and barely enough food to eat and only the clothes on his back. With the somewhat mild climate, many may have been homeless and sleeping outdoors as they do nowadays in Cairo.

Scripture does not mention Egypt as passing anything on to Moses, who fled Egypt a penniless beggar wanted for murder. Egypt sought to murder all the Jews, as everyone knows, and that seems hardly to be in line with some sort of erudite empire anxious to pass on Jewish Studies information to those whom they sought with their army as they Jews fled with Joseph's bones.

Not having any bias for Egypt, I think that the Jews, who contradicted everything that Egypt stood for, had their history passed down to them by Noah. As for Hebrew writing being primitive, there is nothing primitive in Genesis.

 

[TCassidy]

Moses (the son of Pharaoh's daughter) was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and actions.

So, your opinions beg the question: Is Genesis God's Wisdom or man's folly?

If there was a written Hebrew language in Moses' time it was very rudimentary.

Because the people of the Old Testament were so stupid and we are so smart?

 

[Deacon]

All Scripture is inspired by God...
God used Moses to do this.
The composition of Scripture has been compared by some to resemble the hypostatic union of Christ. Wholly of man and wholly of God.

Re: the Hebrew language, it has nothing to do with intelligence or lack there of.
The earliest Hebrew writing found is from around the time of David. The letters and syntax at that time are quite different from what we are used to seeing today.

Rob

 

[Deacon]

Acts 7:21–23 (CSB) When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions. When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.

Odd but true - Hebrew writing is backward compared to our English.

Rob

 

[TCassidy]

The letters and syntax at that time are quite different from what we are used to seeing today.

We have examples of clay tablets with Hebrew 800 years before David.

And yes, it is different from Modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew was influenced by Chaldean at the time of the Babylonian Captivity. Hebrew adopted much Chaldean (Aramaic) grammar, syntax, and words, and modified Hebrew orthography. The History of Israel exposes the causes of such changes.

As for today's Hebrew, there is a huge difference between modern spoken/written Hebrew, and the Hebrew preserved by the Masoretes down through the ages of history. But the Qumram finds showed that biblical Hebrew from 2000 years ago is virtually identical to today's biblical Hebrew.

 

[TCassidy]

Odd but true - Hebrew writing is backward compared to our English.

That's because it reads from right to left. זה בגלל שהיא קוראת מימין לשמאל.

 

[church mouse guy]

Egypt was the backward slaveholding empire. Their best magicians were unable to cope with Moses. They had even forgotten Joseph.

 

[dad1]

There is evidence that Adam wrote a book.

Genesis 5:1 (KJV) This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Looking at commentaries I did not see one that said Adam wrote it, just that the book was a record of his kids. Since some of those kids were born after Adam died...sorry.

"This is the book of the generations of Adam…
An account of persons born of him, or who descended from him by generation in the line of Seth, down to Noah, consisting of ten generations;"
Genesis - Chapter 5 - Verse 1 - The New John Gill Exposition of the Entire Bible on StudyLight.org