Blessed are the Cynical

Remove all ads!

Your point? Sure, maybe he wasn't called the God of Abraham before the birth of Abraham, but he most assuredly was the same God. Now, God may have been an incontrovertible fact to some people (the people to whom God spoke), but it does not logically follow that everyone else believed in (or even knew of) his existence. 2000 years is a long time. More than enough generations would have come and gone for the people to abandon and ultimately forget the superstitions of their ancestors and even to invent new superstitions to take their place.

It's called fundamentalism.

 

I'm fully aware that Sumeria would have been at the time of Abraham or possibly before, and that Israel did not emerge as a nation for a few Centuries beyind that. But Sumeria is not mentioned in the Old testament (that I'm aware of), so I really only have bits and pieces of their history.

If the Sumerians had some record of the great flood (coloured through their cultural beliefs), then they must exist after the great flood. The Bible also lists Abraham as coming after the great flood.

I'm not sure how we got off on the Flood either, or what this has to do with the original questions of this thread...

In the instance of the Great Flood, wouldn't an incident of that magnitude be worth mentioning in the histories that the people keep? And if these histories are maintained in an oral form for generations before being recorded, how accurate can they be? People here have already mentioned the cultural slant on history...

You are talking about the Torah, I am talking about the Bible. This also means that prophets of God oversaw this. I don't know enough about the Torah to speak on this.

That's exactly why the Earth was flooded in the first place. And it didn't take 2000 years for apostasy to creep in. The people of Israel, even as they were fleeing Egypt fell from the teachings and into Idolatry at least once within a generation of witnessing the plagues that beset Egypt (which would be PROOF of God's power). In areas where the prophets did not travel, who knows what their beliefs would look like. You even saw this in the early Christian Church, where, in the absense of the Apostles, wierd changes to the ordinances crept in to the point where it was no longer recognizable as the same church that was established in the time of Christ.

 

I can't believe that you didn't know that the Torah is the first five books of the old testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Seriously, if this is any indicator of how well they are teaching you folks, the LDS church seriously needs to overhaul its early religious education program. Any kid over the age of 12 who calls himself a Christian should know this.

Which brings us back to my initial point...that you were wrong in implying that God was an established fact for the people living on earth at the time of the flood. I'm glad you now see the fallacy of such an implication.

 

I'm going to ignore your insistence on tying in anything historical to the Old Testament and instead focus on your last statement. You may only have "bits and pieces" of their history, but that has absolutely no impact whatsoever on their history and the facts of their existence. You cannot simply discard an entire civilisation's existence and mythology (and the effect of that mythology on other civilisations and religions) just because your chosen religion does not mention them.

Oh for the love of... are you even looking at the stuff you're writing? "Coloured through their beliefs"? The Sumerians are older than the Old Testament, older than Judaism, older than the concept of a monotheistic religion, and older than God/Jehovah/etc. Why are you unable to accept the idea that the writers of the Old Testament were influenced by Sumerian mythology when you so readily accept that the opposite is true, even though the Sumerians (and their myths) chronologically came first?

I like to think of myself as completely open when it comes to other people's religious beliefs, mainly because I have none and do not feel the need to have any or to discard other people's because they conflict with mine. But the callousness and arrogance with which some people discard history and entire civilisations just because they are convinced that the Bible is true history drives me nuts.

 

I've only ever heard them called the Books of Moses.

Just because people didn't know about Him or believe in Him doesn't mean he's not real. I believe the Flood established that as a fact...

That only explains why I only have bits and pieces of their history.

I question that statement. If God is the creator of all things, then He predates the Sumerian culture, which obviously evolved after the Great Flood, since they have a myth about it.

Events such as Creation and the Great Flood would qualify as major events, and as such, any culture developing beyond that time would have some form of myth similar to the other such records or myths that would exist on the same topic. This serves as a witness that these events would have actually happened. Where the difference comes in is that The Old Testament was recorded by prophets under the direction of God, who was there to witness these events, and revealed them to the prophets at the time. Sumerian culture evolved outside the influence of these prophets, and the truth at the basis of these events would have been distorted without the truth to preserve them.

There's obviously something there, And I don't discard their history, but I disagree with the polytheistic philosphies of the time.

 

Gnarff, after professing such a high degree of ignorance about this period of history, you have got to have some dinosaur sized balls to make an assertion like this.

 

Thank you.

 

Ever hear the expression "winners write the history books?" If the Nazis had won WW2, kids would be taught about how the great and wondrous Hitler saved humanity from the evil, baby-sacrificing Jews.

 

This is scrapping history because you don't like who wrote it. Isn't that what I've been accused of?

 

Somehow I don't think you realize you just made his point.

 

I have to weigh in on this sort of thing. I took a seminar on Ancient Near Eastern religions and learned a bit about the Sumerians, the Hittites, the Egyptians, and a few other Near Eastern civilizations. When you compare some of their poetry it predates the actual writing of many Old Testament books, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that when an Old Testament poem or passage very closely resembles an earlier (I'll use Sumerian as an example) Sumerian work that the Old Testament writer was influenced or even just plain plagiarized the Sumerian. That's not a problem for me, because . . .

I believe, as most Mormons believe, that the scriptures are inspired by God. I don't have the exact quote with me at the moment, but a Mormon leader once said "undoubtedly all religious practices spring from the practices taught to Adam and Eve by God." As time went on, those practices were transmitted and corrupted by various groups and religions, but they still, in the Mormon mindset, have the same root. Old Testament writers using poetic forms, ideas or images from those other cultures does not mean that God does not exist.

That said, belief in God does not come from academic study. It comes from an act of faith influenced by personal revelation from God. Since I am in no position to say whether or not God has touched the heart of a given individual yet, I endeavor as strongly as possible not to give offense to those who do not believe in God. I cannot help it if some people are offended by my personal belief in God, however.

 

There is nothing wrong with this attitude. As far as I'm concerned everyone should be free to believe in whichever religion they want (I'm discarding extremism here though, that's a completely different topic), and if other people have an issue merely because of your religious belief then too bad for them. If you want to believe that all religions have the same root that's fine. I for one do not believe that this root is in God, but that's fine as well. What I do have a problem with is someone discarding an entire civilisation in order to force history to fit their religious belief. You seem to have made the distinction between the religious text as a symbol and the religious text as a true history of facts that occurred. Gnarfflinger has not.

 

There are some Mormons who believe the first five books of the Old Testament (Torah) are absolute fact, and some who believe those books have a significant amount of metaphor. Gnarff is one of the first group. Of course, the same can be said of Christians everywhere, some believe the Bible to be factual in every detail and some believe it to be padded with metaphor and parables.

Archeological records, carbon dating, tree ring dating, and stratagraphic analysis have absolutely no impact on those who believe the Bible to be a factual and accurate list of events. It is useless to argue such things....

 

Well said, T2Bruno. I've noticed only thing you can get from those arguments is a mighty fine headache. The people think on so different levels on this matter that it's just impossible to reach a conclusion that satisfies both with both still standing behind their views.

 

So his point is that history is too vague to be authoritative?

I have not denied the existance of the Sumerians. I believe that they did exist, but I disagree witht eh polytheistic philosphies of the day. I look at their record of the great flood as a second witness that it did happen...

I'm somewhere between the two camps. I believe that it's not as detailed as many people will demand (again, going back to LKD's post), as much of Genesis was dictated to Moses by inspiration so that it could be recorded. Think about it, 2300 years or so in 50 chapters? There has to be a lot left out or glossed over. I've said that the first chapter of Genesis tells the basic story, but leaves out the details, because the results of creation are much more complicated. That said, the basic stories are there, and I believe them to be factual.

 

Gnarff, there is just one thing I would like you to answer and which truly baffles me completely when it comes to religious people. On what grounds did you decide that Joseph Smith and the ancient bible writers were for real and not a bunch of loonies spouting crap? You must use some kind of evaluation to decide that they are for real and that Mohammed, scientologists, Buddha, the crazy guy predicting the end of the world, new agers and thousands upon thousands of other people claiming to have heard teh word of god or figured out the meaning of life are full of crap? I would like to know how you can know that just the people you believe in are for real and everyone else is making stuff up as they go along? From my perspective Jesus, Joseph Smith, Muhammed, Buddha, the moonies, children believing in Santa Claus all have the exact same credibility. They claim something and their proof is that they claim it. I am honestly interested in how you decided that just your guys were the ones sitting with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

I hate to say this, but you all can be real idiots some times, you know that? And I don't mean to be insulting, I really don't, I just can't help but notice this. I don't have time to break down and analyse all the baseless assumptions, misunderstandings, and petty arguements that seem to have occurred here on all sides, but let me take this as an example:

The Flood:
The Sumerian writing of the story of a flood predates the biblical one. The Sumerian culture predates the Jewish one. Now let's ignore the fact that we don't actually know when either of these were written, they're far enough apart that we can safely say they came in this order, regardless of exactly how much time was between them. You're still only talking about the actual writting of the story, not the origin of it. You all do realize that these people had very strong and accurate oral traditions before they developed writing, don't you? Now you may not realize how accurate this tradition was, so I'll fill a few things in. Learning to read actively changes the way the brain stores information and the way the mind thinks. Societies that develop and flourish without writing have a much better ability to remember word-for-word conversations and descriptions than those that develop with it, while those that develop with it gain the ability to remember generalities about a vast amount of information without actually remembering the details.

Now, given the above, who's story really came first? Both undoubtably pre-date the actual writting of the story by hundreds of years. Saying that the Sumerian version is the originial because it was written first is like saying the Book of John predates the Sumerian books and stories because it was first rendered in print, or because it was first typed up on a computer. We're only talking about the translation into a new medium of preservation.

Now, T2Bruno's comments about archeology, tree rings, and carbon dating is less an issue of the above and more simply a lack of knowledge. There is extensive archeological evidence backing up a wide variety of the biblical stories, and this body of evidence is growing continuously. There are dozens of cultures and historical figures that historians thought were just biblical myths until something was discovered that made mention of them, and suddenly those passages of the Bible become credible historical accounts.

Now I don't know what tree rings have to do with anything, but carbon dating has more than a few holes in it's accuracy claims.

 

NOG, first of all, you're going to need citations for this. Unless you have research comparing the brain chemistry of members of modern literate vs modern illiterate societies, all you have is a hypothesis. Even if you do manage to prove that societies without writing have a better ability to remember word-for-word conversations and descriptions than those that develop with it, this in no way proves that oral histories aren't inaccurate. All you've proven is that they aren't quite as inaccurate as they could be.

 

Well Drew, perhaps you can give references to prove NOG wrong. I actually remember such claims being taught in Cultural Anthropology (in particular, the accuracy of verbal traditions among South American tribes). Most mythology and early accounts of history were oral. Eventually, those accounts got put in writing. Any inaccuracy would be in both accounts. Remember, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible -- Genesis and part of Exodus were oral histories before then.

There are a few references to great floods in archeology and histories. These are typically centered in flood plains. The most widely accepted (non-religious) version of the great flood is a mammoth flood that nearly destroyed the entire plains between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. This would account for BOTH the Sumerian and Hebrew flood records. However, there is no evidence of a flood that covered the entire earth in the past 1,000,000 years, let alone the past 6,000 years.

Of course, lack of evidence does not deter the faithful.

NOG: Tree ring dating is often used to account for famines and floods and is quite accurate to ~5,000 years. Tree ring data is also used to improve accuracy in carbon dating for such recent events. I've seen carbon dating off by as much as 20% -- this is due to the fluxuations of carbon-14 concentration in the atmosphere due to various geological events. Tree ring data can account for those variations. Beyond the 5,000 year range, a 20% variation is considered acceptable. Finding human remains 30,000 years old ± 6,000 years is still pretty damning for the "expelled from the Garden of Eden in 4,004 BC" argument.

I would entirely expect there to be significant evidence of many things in the old testiment after Genesis. You'll be hard pressed to find any significant evidence supporting the Book of Genesis (and some of Exodus). The entire Old Testiment is a religious history of the Hebrews -- it contains a lot historic fact. Although I do believe some of the stories of the Old Testiment are parables or metaphor. For example; I do not believe the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the story of Jonah, or the story of Job to be true.

The Mormons believe many of the archeological finds in Central and South America substiantiate the Book of Mormon. I disagree, the totality of the evidence does not support the claims of the Book of Mormon. Picking and choosing what to accept and what to throw away is a trademark tactic.

 

I'm actually with Drew on this one. How the heck can anyone know how accurate the non-written pre-recorded oral history of the Sumerians was? Even if one were to accept that people without written records placed a greater emphasis on the accuracy of oral history (that seems logical) it in no way means that the oral history is infallible. Even if the story changed only slightly from one generation to the next over the course of centuries between the event and their eventual written record there would be some differences. If you want to claim that the oral history from that time was more accurate than oral histories of today, I may be able to agree with it, but to say that they were completely accurate seems like a pretty big stretch.