The Firmament

CoreyD said:

Why are you referring to when God chose the Israelites as His chosen people?

Click to expand...

I'm referring to a time when people were inspired to write the Bible.

CoreyD said:

What do you mean by that... inspiring to write, or inspiring to teach?

Click to expand...

God inspired the Biblical authors. They in turn went and wrote our Bible, which is good for teaching.

CoreyD said:

If you are referring to the former, may I ask why you are stuck on writing, and dismissing teaching?

Click to expand...

Teaching is fine too. I never said that the Bible wasn't good for teaching.

CoreyD said:

The Bible says, this:
Genesis 5:22-24

Click to expand...

Genesis 5:22-24 NRSVUE
[22] Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters. [23] Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. [24] Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.
Sure. And?

CoreyD said:

Jude 1:14


Genesis 6:9


2 Peter 2:5

Click to expand...

What do you want me to do with these passages?

CoreyD said:

What is recorded in the Bible, is evidence of God communicating with, and inspiring men ages before he chose Israel as a people... and long before any Pharaoh existed.
Are you contending this?

Click to expand...

Sure. But those people, as noted above, are not the authors of scripture. Unless you believe that Enoch wrote the book of Enoch (which he did not).

CoreyD said:

Are you therefore ignoring knowledge given and passed on orally?
Is that what you are saying?

Click to expand...

What I'm saying is that, The Bible was written in a certain time and place, and the altars of scripture had a cultural contextual background and a historical context that needs to be accounted for.

CoreyD said:

So, you are contending the scriptures.
Therefore, there is no history, and all that recorded it, are making up stories of things that never passed.

Click to expand...

I never said that.

CoreyD said:

In fact, they made up the characters as well.
Is that true?

Click to expand...

Like who? Some concepts in the Bible are not scientifically real, but they are theologically real. Such as, Psalm 74:14 which describes a leviathan that has multiple heads. It's not as though you can take A boat out into the Atlantic Ocean and find a multi-headed Sea dragon.

Though, That's not to say that the theology behind this concept is not real.

CoreyD said:

The only maps that aren't flat, would be 3d models.

Ever since its discovery there has been controversy on its general interpretation and specific features.
Delnero, Paul. "A Land with No Borders: A New. Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”." Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 4.1-2 (2017): 19-37

All of the interpretations of the Map of the World that have been proposed to date can be grouped according to how they attempt to answer the following questions:​

(1) What does the inner circle of the map on the obverse depict?​

(2) What do the triangular areas outside the ring of water represent, and what is their relation to what is depicted in the inner circle of the map?​

(3) What does the text on the obverse describe, and how does the text relate to the map and the text on the reverse of the tablet?​

(4) What does the text on the reverse mean and how does it relate to the map and text on the obverse?​

(5) And lastly: What is the significance of the map and accompanying texts as a whole?​

To my knowledge, the first scholar to propose that the map had a cosmolo- gical and mythological dimension was Bruno Meissner, in a short section about the map that appeared in the second volume of his book Babylonien und Assyrien only three years after Weidner’s article (Meissner 1925: 374–79). Situating the map in the context of other visual depictions of geographic space in Mesopotamia, like the Kassite map of Nippur, Meissner (1925: 375–75) argued that the map was intended as a real map of the world (“Weltkarte”) that was more or less accurate in the center, but much less so in the mythological regions outside it, as a result of the strong influence of theology on the Babylonian conceptions of geography:​

Wenn wir zum Schlusse noch einen Blick auf die geographischen Kenntnisse der Babylonier und Assyrer werfen, so bemerken wir, dass auch diese Wissenschaft wie alle anderen im Zweistromlande letzten Endes von der Theologie ausging.​

Click to expand...

I think that's a reasonable analysis. The boundaries of the map have a more theological or mythological nature to them. They depict cosmic mountains of a sort.

CoreyD said:

​

Meissner may also have been the first to connect the Map of the World with Herodotus’s description of maps with a similar appearance:​

I am amused when I see that not one of all the people who have drawn maps of the world has set it out sensibly. They show Ocean as a river flowing around the outside of the earth, which is as circular as if it had been drawn with a pair of compasses, and they make Asia and Europe the same size.​

Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. Though they aren't talking about the Babylonian map of the world here. The Babylonian map of the world does not have places like Europe or Asia on it. But in a similar fashion to later maps, it is surrounded by water.

CoreyD said:

​

At no point in his description of the map, however, does Meissner claim that the city of Babylon is depicted in the center of it, or make a sharp distinction between the real and mythological regions of the map, seeing the map instead as a typical product of a scientific practice that could not free itself from the mythological conceptions pervading it.​

Click to expand...

Babylon is explicitly written in cuniform on the Babylonian map of the world. So it's not disputed. This is speaking of another map, Kassite map of Nippur, not the Babylonian map of the world.

CoreyD said:

​

The cosmological dimension of the map began to receive more serious attention a few years later in a series of studies by Eckhard Unger (1929: 701; 1931: 254–58; and 1937). Most notably, in an article entitled “From the Cosmos Picture to the World Map”, which appeared in Imago Mundi in 1937, Unger (1937: 1) claimed that Babylon was depicted in the center of the map as “the ‘hub’ of the universe”, and correctly identified most of the cities and regions around it. Unger (1937: 2) also interpreted the ring of water as an “Earthly Ocean” and the nagû as islands at the end of the ocean, seeing in them the possible origin of the tradition about the lost island of Atlantis:​

It is just possible that e. g. the legend of Atlantis might be explained as a fantastically exaggerated reminiscence of the Babylonian cosmos with its seven islands, especially as this legend has a long tradition behind it (Solon).​

​

Unger’s (1937: 3) most radical claim, however, was that the islands formed a bridge to the “heavenly ocean”, which he argued was described in the composi- tion on the obverse of the tablet, interpreting the animals mentioned in this text as Zodiacal animal constellations, identified as “vanished gods” near the begin- ning of the text. Having connected the earthly areas of the map with the heavens, he concluded that the map was not just a map of the world, but a map of the entire cosmos. While this interpretation of the map has not withstood the test of time, Unger’s claim that Babylon is shown in the center, as well as his separation of the map into real and mythological components, have since become commonplace.​

​

Turning to more recent treatments of the map...​

Click to expand...

Same as above. This doesn't appear to be discussing the Babylonian map of the world.

CoreyD said:

Let's not forget Job 33:6's most accurate interpretation:
Only a perception of a flat earth or just a flat area in which the limits are simply unknown or mysterious. Same with things like the unfinished kuduru stone or the etchings of the sarcophagus of wershnepher. They just don't present any perception of a spherical Earth. Only of flat land.

Click to expand...

Job 33:6 NIV
[6] I am the same as you in God’s sight; I too am a piece of clay.

What does Job being made of a piece of clay have to do with anything?

CoreyD said:

Let's log that in the journals. ...and don't forget, she also wants someone to step up and provide proof that it is wrong.
Do you think she's just trying to be funny?


Are you sure you are not saying dismiss all together "the date of the events being described", and let's focus on the authorship, since that works fine for my argument?
It looks that way to me.

Click to expand...

If you want to understand a book, it's important to know something about the author.

CoreyD said:

??? Where did you get that?
Adam means mankind, - Adam: Adam, man, mankind - Derived from אָדַם (adam), meaning "to be red," possibly referring to the ruddy color of human skin or the red earth from which Adam was formed.

Click to expand...

Yea, and that's a Hebrew term. And Hebrew, as a language originated sometime between 1500 and 1000BC. So we know that Genesis was written about that time.

CoreyD said:

How does a man recording history. in a language known to him, affect history? ???

Click to expand...

Because an author has influence on how that history is written out.

In case you don't know, the Bible isn't just purely history. It is theological history. And you won't understand it if you don't actually care to account for the theological or cultural background.

CoreyD said:

Who is the Bible's author?
God is the Bible's author. How do you answer that question?

Click to expand...

God inspired the Biblical authors. God did not write the Bible himself. It didn't just fall out of the sky.

CoreyD said:

I did. It's authored from a source that knows what no man knows, and tells of things both in the past, and the present.
I quoted two scriptures that highlighted this fact 2 Peter 1:21, and 2 Timothy 3:16, 17.

Click to expand...

2 Peter 1:21 NIV
[21] For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Sure. But that doesn't mean that prophets just assumed some sort of supernatural language and just magically lost contact with all cultural context and historical context that they knew.

Right. They still wrote in Hebrew for example. Why did they do that? Because that's their culture. That's part of who they were. Hebrews.

It's not like Moses just passed out unconscious and his hand magically wrote things down on a scroll, and then when he woke up, he had Genesis.

That's how Muslims say that their prophet Muhammad wrote the Quran. But in Christianity, that's not how it works. The Bible has not only a divine theological revelation, but it also has a human cultural component that, if you don't see that, then you won't be able to understand the Bible.

CoreyD said:

Why are you talking about Egyptians stealing?
What is the origin of Egyptians?

Answer:
Ezekiel 29:13, 14
13 ‘Yet, thus says the Lord God: “At the end of forty years I will gather the Egyptians from the peoples among whom they were scattered. 14 I will bring back the captives of Egypt and cause them to return to the land of Pathros, to the land of their origin, and there they shall be a lowly kingdom.

Genesis 10:13-14
13 Mizraim begot Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, and Casluhim (from whom came the Philistines and Caphtorim).

Genesis 10:6 The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.

Now that we know, I have an idea... Since you "think it's more important to consider the date of the authorship of Genesis" rather than the events themselves, let's erase this history.
What do we have? No Egyptians.

You see... the Egyptians did not steal anything.
The generations of Cush's descendants, who deviated from true worship, over time, developed concepts and ideas, from the demons, through their false worship, and worship of these gods, and just as their chief god - Satan lies and twists the truth, misleading the hearers, the truth about the earth, which God gave his people, was lost to the pagans... including the tribe of in the land ot Pathros, who became Egyptians.

See how important the Bible is, in tracing the history.
We don't need videos from people who believe they know what they are talking about.
Their interpretations are as you described... based on their beliefs.

Click to expand...

There is no passage listed above that mention anything about demons stealing a proto-Bible and changing it and then giving it to the Egyptians.

What I'm saying is that, Egyptians and Babylonians have creation texts that talk about things like the waters above and the wind hovering over the face of the deep, and the light appearing before the sun, and God creating with the spoken word, and the formless deep being present in the beginning etc.

These concepts are common in this ancient culture.

What I'm saying is that, it's not that they stole this information from Adam or Noah or anything like that, rather these concepts are just part of a historical cultural perspective on cosmology.

CoreyD said:

They are.
From the Wikipedia quote...

Ever since its discovery there has been controversy on its general interpretation and specific features.​

This is the referrence, to those interpretation...

Delnero, Paul. "A Land with No Borders: A New. Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”." Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 4.1-2 (2017): 19-37​

The extracts are all from that article.
You can goggle the publication.

Click to expand...

Oh I see. I misread the one section. So what was your point about the article? And thank you for sharing.

CoreyD said:

We really aren't speaking the same language. LOL
Did people worship gods, when they left God, and are those gods associated with demons - wicked angels? 1 Corinthians 10:20
Do wicked angels mislead people into believing all sorts of things? 1 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 16:14
would people who separate from God, teach godly things, or demonic, or satanic things?

Click to expand...

Again, saying that demons mislead people is of course something we agree on. But that doesn't mean that pagan tribes stole some sort of proto Bible or theological knowledge from anyone beforehand. There is no evidence that something like the cosmology of Genesis, predated ancient Egypt

CoreyD said:

Somehow, I must be miscommunicating, because I don't think you understand much of what I actually said.
So, perhaps I had better ask...

Is something communicated by word of mouth - orally, a means of giving and passing on knowledge?

Click to expand...

It can be, yes.

CoreyD said:

Did oral communication take place before any written record?

Click to expand...

It can. It must not always, however.

CoreyD said:

Did God inspire man to prophesy, before the Bible - which is a collection of scripture, into little books?

Click to expand...

Yes, however I would say that, in terms of cosmology in Job and Genesis, what they described did not originate before ancient Egypt.

CoreyD said:

What is an author, and is an author necessarily a writer?
Can God be the author of a written word, and how?

Click to expand...

There is both a theological component from God, and a human component that involves cultural reference to things like cosmology of the time of the author.

CoreyD said:

Can you please answer those questions, so that I know where we are as it relates to understanding.

Click to expand...

Yes.

CoreyD said:

maps that aren't flat, would be 3d models.

Click to expand...

Ok

CoreyD said:

Ever since its discovery there has been controversy on its general interpretation and specific features.
Delnero, Paul. "A Land with No Borders: A New Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”." Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 4.1-2 (2017): 19-37

All of the interpretations of the Map of the World that have been proposed to date can be grouped according to how they attempt to answer the following questions:​

(1) What does the inner circle of the map on the obverse depict?​

(2) What do the triangular areas outside the ring of water represent, and what is their relation to what is depicted in the inner circle of the map?​

(3) What does the text on the obverse describe, and how does the text relate to the map and the text on the reverse of the tablet?​

(4) What does the text on the reverse mean and how does it relate to the map and text on the obverse?​

(5) And lastly: What is the significance of the map and accompanying texts as a whole?​

Click to expand...

Ok,.sounds good.

CoreyD said:

To my knowledge, the first scholar to propose that the map had a cosmolo- gical and mythological dimension was Bruno Meissner, in a short section about the map that appeared in the second volume of his book Babylonien und Assyrien only three years after Weidner’s article (Meissner 1925: 374–79). Situating the map in the context of other visual depictions of geographic space in Mesopotamia, like the Kassite map of Nippur, Meissner (1925: 375–75) argued that the map was intended as a real map of the world (“Weltkarte”) that was more or less accurate in the center, but much less so in the mythological regions outside it, as a result of the strong influence of theology on the Babylonian conceptions of geography:​

Wenn wir zum Schlusse noch einen Blick auf die geographischen Kenntnisse der Babylonier und Assyrer werfen, so bemerken wir, dass auch diese Wissenschaft wie alle anderen im Zweistromlande letzten Endes von der Theologie ausging.​

Click to expand...

Yea, I would say that is correct or at least aligns with my understanding of it.

CoreyD said:

​

Meissner may also have been the first to connect the Map of the World with Herodotus’s description of maps with a similar appearance:​

I am amused when I see that not one of all the people who have drawn maps of the world has set it out sensibly. They show Ocean as a river flowing around the outside of the earth, which is as circular as if it had been drawn with a pair of compasses, and they make Asia and Europe the same size.​

Click to expand...

Here is the part that confused me. Asia and Europe are not depicted on the map. But I guess it intended to highlight the map as being in the center between the two. But it's just a citation to a different paper, so the context for the statement isn't within the document.

But I don't think this changes much. I otherwise agree with the description.

CoreyD said:

​

At no point in his description of the map, however, does Meissner claim that the city of Babylon is depicted in the center of it, or make a sharp distinction between the real and mythological regions of the map, seeing the map instead as a typical product of a scientific practice that could not free itself from the mythological conceptions pervading it.​

​

The cosmological dimension of the map began to receive more serious attention a few years later in a series of studies by Eckhard Unger (1929: 701; 1931: 254–58; and 1937). Most notably, in an article entitled “From the Cosmos Picture to the World Map”, which appeared in Imago Mundi in 1937, Unger (1937: 1) claimed that Babylon was depicted in the center of the map as “the ‘hub’ of the universe”, and correctly identified most of the cities and regions around it. Unger (1937: 2) also interpreted the ring of water as an “Earthly Ocean” and the nagû as islands at the end of the ocean, seeing in them the possible origin of the tradition about the lost island of Atlantis:​

It is just possible that e. g. the legend of Atlantis might be explained as a fantastically exaggerated reminiscence of the Babylonian cosmos with its seven islands, especially as this legend has a long tradition behind it (Solon).​

​

Unger’s (1937: 3) most radical claim, however, was that the islands formed a bridge to the “heavenly ocean”, which he argued was described in the composi- tion on the obverse of the tablet, interpreting the animals mentioned in this text as Zodiacal animal constellations, identified as “vanished gods” near the begin- ning of the text. Having connected the earthly areas of the map with the heavens, he concluded that the map was not just a map of the world, but a map of the entire cosmos. While this interpretation of the map has not withstood the test of time, Unger’s claim that Babylon is shown in the center, as well as his separation of the map into real and mythological components, have since become commonplace.​

Click to expand...

This is reasonable. It says that this person's interpretation has not withstood the test of time. But I still generally agree with most of what is said. The earth has these boundaries, that when they are traversed, you enter the world of mysterious or heavenly, supernatural things. On the tablet it tells stories about traveling great distances to reach places or mystery and legend.

Here is how I interpret the map:

CoreyD said:

​

Turning to more recent treatments of the map...​

Let's not forget Job 33:6's most accurate interpretation:
Only a perception of a flat earth or just a flat area in which the limits are simply unknown or mysterious. Same with things like the unfinished kuduru stone or the etchings of the sarcophagus of wershnepher. They just don't present any perception of a spherical Earth. Only of flat land.

Click to expand...

Got it, thanks.

CoreyD said:

I was referring to you.
Don't you go by the user name Job 33:6... or have you forgotten?

Click to expand...

Haha! It is a fun verse! After so long, I tend to forget these things!

@CoreyD

One of the easiest examples to help explain what I am suggesting, is to think about things like the Hebrew language.

Some people might say "well no one was alive during Genesis, so only God could give that original information to Moses about things like earth being formless and darkness being over the face of the deep."

As an example.

And what I am saying is that, that isn't actually true.

If you think about how Genesis is written in the Hebrew language, that didn't come from God. People created the Hebrew language, much like other languages, around 1,500BC. And yet, that is what Genesis is written in.

There is indeed a human component in Genesis, that originated from the cultural context of it's authors.

And if you look at other cultures of the ancient near east, you'll find that one of those human components that was common in the ancient world, is things like the firmament and the waters above. And that isn't actually a part of what God revealed.

God revealed theology of Genesis, but these aspects of cosmology, much like the Hebrew language, are just part of the ancient cultural way of talking about things. It's how the ancient Israelites communicated ideas to one another.

Much like how I communicate in English with you. Even if God Or to come to me and to share share Revelation to me, that Revelation still has to pass through my cultural context in order for me to communicate it to you. It passes through the human authors like a doorway or a filter.

And you can't get to God's revelation, without understanding that human component between you and God. There is an ancient Israelite standing between you and revelation.

And just like how we have to translate ancient Israelite Hebrew to understand the Bible. We also have to translate their culture as well.

@CoreyD

One of the easiest examples to help explain what I am suggesting, is to think about things like the Hebrew language.

Some people might say "well no one was alive during Genesis, so only God could give that original information to Moses about things like earth being formless and darkness being over the face of the deep."

As an example.

And what I am saying is that, that isn't actually true.

If you think about how Genesis is written in the Hebrew language, that didn't come from God. People created the Hebrew language, much like other languages, around 1,500BC. And yet, that is what Genesis is written in.

There is indeed a human component in Genesis, that originated from the cultural context of it's authors.

And if you look at other cultures of the ancient near east, you'll find that one of those human components that was common in the ancient world, is things like the firmament and the waters above. And that isn't actually a part of what God revealed.

God revealed theology of Genesis, but these aspects of cosmology, much like the Hebrew language, are just part of the ancient cultural way of talking about things. It's how the ancient Israelites communicated ideas to one another.

Much like how I communicate in English with you. Even if God Or to come to me and to share share Revelation to me, that Revelation still has to pass through my cultural context in order for me to communicate it to you. It passes through the human authors like a doorway or a filter.

And you can't get to God's revelation, without understanding that human component between you and God. There is an ancient Israelite standing between you and revelation.

And just like how we have to translate ancient Israelite Hebrew into english to understand the Bible. We also have to translate the ancient Israelite culture into modern Western American and European culture, in order to understand it.

You don't only translate the Hebrew into English. There is more context translation that must be done in order to understand Genesis.

Here is an Evangelical professor from Wheaton College explaining the topic:

CoreyD said:

Seeing that you misread it the first time, perhaps try reading it over, and maybe this time you will get the point, especially since you also misread the part where I said...

Let's not forget Job 33:6's most accurate interpretation:​

Only a perception of a flat earth or just a flat area in which the limits are simply unknown or mysterious. Same with things like the unfinished kuduru stone or the etchings of the sarcophagus of wershnepher. They just don't present any perception of a spherical Earth. Only of flat land.​

​

Let's log that in the journals. ...and don't forget, she also wants someone to step up and provide proof that it is wrong.​

Do you think she's just trying to be funny? ​

Again...
We really aren't speaking the same language.
Did people worship gods, when they left God, and are those gods associated with demons - wicked angels? 1 Corinthians 10:20

Click to expand...

Yes.

CoreyD said:

Do wicked angels mislead people into believing all sorts of things? 1 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 16:14

Click to expand...

Yes.

CoreyD said:

Would people who separate from God, teach godly things, or demonic, or satanic things?

Click to expand...

They would teach demonic things. Yes.

CoreyD said:

I don't think you read anything in my posts saying that pagan tribes stole some sort of proto Bible or theological knowledge from anyone beforehand.

Click to expand...

I don't follow the logic here. You can't call these concepts of cosmology "demonic" if they are also stated in Genesis.

CoreyD said:

Are you saying that God's spoken word does not predated ancient Egypt?
Perhaps you need to go back to post #83.
There is some serious miscommunication going on. I probably am not speaking your language.

Click to expand...

The cosmology described within Genesis, does not. Just like the Hebrew language does not. And that's what Genesis is written in.

CoreyD said:

So something communicated by word of mouth - orally, is a means of giving and passing on knowledge.
Thanks. Did God therefore pass on knowledge prior to the recording of scripture, and did people also pass on knowledge, likewise... prior to the recording of scripture.

Click to expand...

Yes, God passed on knowledge before the writing of scripture. And people did too, yes.

CoreyD said:

In the case of God and his people - Enoch, Noah, and family, Job, etc., are you saying that no oral communication took place before any written record?

Click to expand...

No. I'm saying that, in terms of cosmology, these things, much like the Hebrew language, were a product of the culture of that time, and not of a proto Adamic or edenic time.

CoreyD said:

So you are saying that God did inspire man to prophesy, before the Bible - which is a collection of scripture, into little books, but not in terms of terms of cosmology in Job and Genesis.
Why do you say that?

Click to expand...

Correct.

I say that, because the cosmology spoken of, is just a common aspect of ancient cultures. It isn't divine. It's just a normal phenomenological description of the cosmos that ancient peoples shared.

CoreyD said:

Is that a response to the questions...
What is an author, and is an author necessarily a writer?
Can God be the author of a written word, and how?

Click to expand...

Authors would be the ones not only who wrote it, but their unique ideas or thoughts are also encompasses in the text. And I would say that Genesis is a combination. God shares theological revelation, but of course the human author and their culture is still in the text. Gods message passes through that human filter.

CoreyD said:

I'm not sure I got the answer, because your use of the word author, does not tell me that this applies to God, and does not answer whether or not God can be the author of a written word, and how.
Neither does it tell me what you understand by "author" and if such a person needs to be a writer.

Can you answer the questions, please, so that I may know where we stand on understanding. Thanks.


Thank you.

Click to expand...

Sure.

CoreyD said:

I have no problem understanding what you are saying.
The problem we are having, relates to your understanding what I am saying, because it shows that what you are saying, bears no relevance to what I am saying... namely, that oral communication, is the means by which knowledge was had, and hence what was passed down through the ages of generations did not need to be recorded, in order to be actual history.

Click to expand...

I'd say that is a crucial issue here. Because it sounds like you're saying that you don't need evidence to believe what you believe in. As if it's ok that you don't have evidence for your position.

CoreyD said:

For example, the flood occured, and was not recorded, until centuries later, but it was known, and the account was passed on, and guess what? It was altered, misrepresented, and even applied to other god, with additions, subtractions, and complete makeovers, so as to fit the ideas attributed to false worship.
List of flood legends
This is how Satan and the demon twist the truth.

Click to expand...

I'd say that this, it's actually a misunderstanding.

What you're actually reading in the Noah's flood story, is something more akin to polemic, and that some pagan stories, actually came first. And that's what the evidence we have, demonstrates. The Mesopotamian narrative is centuries older than Genesis for example, in writing, and in terms of oral traditions, the Israelites weren't even around back in the time of the ancient Mesopotamians and there is no evidence for the Genesis oral tradition that far back in time.

CoreyD said:

It's not a matter of stealing.
It's a matter of hearing a message passed down, with various changes.
It's like when the person next to you, gives you a message, to pass on to 100 people, down the line, and by the time it reaches the 100th person, it's not the same message, but some elements remain.

Click to expand...

There's no evidence for what you're saying. As if Adam orally shared the story with Eve, and it passed down orally to Noah etc. this is, um, I'm sorry but that's, I would say, a misunderstanding of the circumstances.

CoreyD said:

Not because of imperfection, in this case, but due to false ideas associated with false worship, inspired by demons, and Satan, who lie, deliberately to twist God's truth.

Click to expand...

I totally agree that demons and Satan can twist scripture and can twist the truth. But I would say that, that's not what we are dealing with here.

Much like the Hebrew language, some things were just normal parts of the ancient culture. They weren't demonic or twisted. I mean, Genesis contains some of these same details, so it's not like these details of cosmology are paganistic or twisted.

And we can't call them false ideas if they are both in the Bible and in pagan texts. Because that would force us to say that the Bible contains false ideas.

That's not the approach that I am taking.

@CoreyD

Rather than saying, that Egyptians were manipulated by demons and thus gave false accounts of creation.

What I'm saying is that, Egyptian accounts share cosmological details with Genesis. And those details aren't twisted or evil because Genesis also contains those details.

But also, those shared details, they did not originate from some kind of oral tradition that goes back to Adam or something like that. But rather, these concepts of cosmology in Job and Genesis, they are just a normal part of how these ancient cultures described the cosmos. Much like the Hebrew language, these concepts are a part of the culture of that time. They didn't come from Adam.

I gave this example before, but Adam is a Hebrew word. It means "humanity". Adam is not an actual proper noun, or the name of the man. Later in Genesis it becomes his name. But earlier in Genesis, it is a Hebrew word that is assigned to him.

And eves name is "life".

So imagine if I wrote a story and I said " In the beginning there was humanity and life" right, that's not their actual names. Those are names that I gave them, based on my culture.

The Hebrew culture, assigned them names, and wrote that in Genesis. So it didn't come from Adam. Adam didn't speak Hebrew. Hebrew didn't even exist in the time of Adam. So it's not like Adam would name himself a Hebrew name or a Hebrew word.

The same thing works with cosmology in Genesis. It didn't come from some oral tradition going back to Adam. It came from the Hebrew culture. The ancient near east.

@CoreyD
And here is where I re-read and re-commented on the Babylonian map of the world topic:


I agree with the concepts that you've shared. I don't see them as contrasting with my own.

And just as a reminder, here are the cosmology related concepts that I am referring to above:


They aren't demonic or twisted concepts. They are in the Bible.

But likewise, when we find them in other texts such as Egyptian texts, it's not as though they were taken from some earlier Adamic oral tradition. Adam knew nothing of these concepts. Rather these are concepts of the culture of that age and time. Much like the Hebrew language. It's just part of the culture of that age. It did not come from God. Like Hebrew it came from people. And Genesis is written in Hebrew. And likewise, Genesis also contains other things from the Hebrew culture.