Saturday, August 24, 2013

Where was Eden?

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Hill.html

3 comments:

  1. Good find.

    I'm curious as to how you / other folk (Kurt Wise?) would answer the following questions:

    1) How is pitch (i.e. bitumen) accounted for pre-flood?

    2) How is sedimentary rock accounted for pre-flood?

    3) What do Hebrew scholars make of the author's alternative translation of "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads" (Gen. 2:10).

    Very interesting article though.

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    Replies
    1. Henry

"1) How is pitch (i.e. bitumen) accounted for pre-flood?"

      They deny that the Hebrew word is using a technical term for a petroleum-based product. 

"2) How is sedimentary rock accounted for pre-flood?"

      They deny the tactic assumption of the question. They reject the Mesopotamian setting of Eden. They think those place-names are like early settlers in N. America who named places in the New World after familiar places in the Old World. Therefore, they don't think Eden ever rested atop miles of sedimentary rock. 

"3) What do Hebrew scholars make of the author's alternative translation of 'And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads' (Gen. 2:10)."

      It's a judgment call, since we can't be sure of the narrator's perspective. Does he envision the river subdividing upstream or downstream in relation to Eden? That answer is also bound up with efforts to identify the ancient landmarks and correlate them with the present landscape.

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  2. For those who have not read the article, the following paragraph is a good summary:

    The essential point of the above discussion on bitumen now becomes evident. How could Noah have obtained bitumen from sedimentary rock for building his ark, if (as claimed by flood geologists) no sedimentary rock existed on earth? One cannot have it both ways. Either Adam and the pre-floodites lived on a Mesopotamian terrain that was vastly different from what exists today, or they lived over a terrain of sedimentary rock. The Bible identifies Eden with four rivers which flowed over and cut into sedimentary rock. The Pishon River (when it flowed) cut into Tertiary sedimentary limestone and sandstone rock near the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The gold of Havilah is in quartz veins that cut across sedimentary-metamorphic rock. The Karun (Gihon?) River winds around folded and faulted sedimentary rock in western Iran, and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers encounter sedimentary rock throughout their drainage systems, from the mountains of Turkey to the Persian Gulf. And, the spring of Eden (Eridu?) may have been fed by water from a limestone sedimentary-rock aquifer. All of this is evidence for sedimentary rock being present on earth before Noah's flood rather than it being formed by the flood.

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