He's wrong about that anyway, even if it WAS true for Mesopotamia. Again the Sumerian God Enki (Ea to Babylonians) is credited as the "confuser of languages", 2500 years or more before Nimrod may or may not have existed.
The creation of man.
- Thread starter Enmos
- Start date
Direct evidence? Show me one.
Nobody of any note?
Jesus made Himself of no reputation.
Why would a thinking man want to be any different here?
I never said the Sumerians copied the Hebrews. That's absurd.
No. I said the Hebrews got theirs from visions to prophets at a later date than the Sumerians.
If that was true it would be more accurate. Less erosion from time. No human interference with interpretation.
Because the Hebrews got their version from visions, it is also multi-layered spiritual/natural, literal/symbolic representations. Like a dream.
The Sumerian texts may have much truth in them, and some parts may be literally true, but it only takes one word twisted from true to miss the mark.
The histories of man, their gods and eons of slavery are not at issue. Much of this is true.
The Bible isn't about those things.
The Bible is the beginning of the creation of God.
Last edited:
How am I supposed to argue with tales of "Visions"?
I can't, if you say people in ancient times had visions telling them exactly how everything works...well gosh I just must suspend all disbelief and take your words for truth.
NAAAAA I'm a Gambling man, but I won't gamble that men in charge of sometimes powerful religions NEVER lie.
Pass.
I can't, if you say people in ancient times had visions telling them exactly how everything works...well gosh I just must suspend all disbelief and take your words for truth.
NAAAAA I'm a Gambling man, but I won't gamble that men in charge of sometimes powerful religions NEVER lie.
Pass.
That's a reasonable answer.
I can understand that.
Religions lie?
Sure they do.
But don't let that stop you from finding out for yourself.
Look at it like a court setting.
The truth has always been available.
If an accuser is bringing accusation.
If we are guilty of a law that has been broken.
The truth must alway have been available somewhere.
Available to all.
Otherwise the judgment wouldn't stand up in court.
I can understand that.
Religions lie?
Sure they do.
But don't let that stop you from finding out for yourself.
Look at it like a court setting.
The truth has always been available.
If an accuser is bringing accusation.
If we are guilty of a law that has been broken.
The truth must alway have been available somewhere.
Available to all.
Otherwise the judgment wouldn't stand up in court.
Last edited:
Well I guess I'll sit back and wait for a "Vision".
Fair enough.
If your hearts right, that's the most important thing.
Let's say just for an example, that God really did appear to a person.
A dream, a vision, a message from someone on the street...
The same message from God that sets one person free who accepts it, brings judgment upon the one who rejects it.
Be careful what you ask for.
It could happen in many different ways.
HEBREWS 13:2
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Last edited:
You have some errors in your time-lines here. Let's go over these dates.
Not that it is going to prove the Sumerian or Hebrew to be correct, but just to straighten it out somewhat.
The approx. date given for the worldwide flood is 3000 B.C.
This also is the date given in the Vedas for the nuclear war in which the heathen nations attacked the spiritual masters with a weapon from the gods.
This was aprox. five thousand years ago. I believe Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita at the 1945 trinity test for this reason.
I have stated in a previous post that the nuclear event described in the Vedas is also the same event that caused the flood.
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2181541&postcount=49
Let's don't limit this to two sources.The Vedas also back up this date.
If Sumer was one of the first civilizations to "rise from the ashes" of the antediluvian destruction, that puts it from 3000 B.C to 2500 B.C.
You said Nimrod was 2500 years after Sumer. No, he was not.
Nimrod existed in this same time period at the end of Sumer before Babylon in a land called "Shinar".
..............................
Amongst classical writers he was called Bacchus.
To the Babylonians he was Ninus.
That this Ninus is the Nimrod of the Bible we can affirm by comparing history with the Genesis account.
Pompeius said, "Ninus, king of Assyria, changed the ancient moderate ways of life by the desire for conquest.
He conquered all nations from Assyria to Lybia as these men knew not the arts of war."
Diodorus says, "Ninus was the most ancient of Assyrian kings mentioned in history.
Being of warlike disposition he trained many young men rigorously in the arts of war.
HE WAS THE FIRST WHO CARRIED WAR AGAINST HIS NEIGHBORS. (post-flood of course)
He brought Babylonia under him while yet there was no city of Babylon."
Thus we see this Ninus started to become great in Babylon, built Babel and took over Assyria, becoming its king, and then proceeded to devour other vast territories where the people were unskilled in war and lived in a moderate way as said Pompeius.
Now in Genesis 10, speaking of the kingdom of Nimrod it says, "And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar... Out of that land went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh, and Calah etc."
Thus it is Nimrod, who went beyond Shinar with his strong army and subdued nations and built such cities as Nineveh, which was named after him, for even today a chief part of the ruins of that city is called Nimroud.
....................
I could go on...but now we have established through history who Nimrod was and that he lived at the end of the Sumerian era, before the city of Babylon was built, not 2500 years later.
The creation stories that the Sumerian civilization preserved and the ancient "Sumerian King lists" are about a world before the antediluvian destruction.
So are the pre-flood Hebrew genealogies.
They both reference an earlier world that existed before the flood.
There was only about 1000 years between the writing of the Sumerian epics like Gilgamesh and the Pentateuch in the Bible.
3000 - 2500 B.C for Sumerian accounts.
1800 B.C. for the first written Hebrew accounts given to Moses.
That is approx 1000 years not 3500 years.
You also said "Monotheism is what ...2700 years old and it's splintered into 3 paths"
From the time Moses wrote the first five books of the old testament to this day is 3800 years, not 2700 years.
Monotheism is much older still. It was the condition of the entire world after the flood until Nimrod started polytheism.
Nimrod had many names in many cultures, and lived during Sumer before Babylon.
He could be the same "confuser of language" from your Sumerian legends.
These dates in themselves alone don't prove which account is right.
The dates from various sources do point to a worldwide destruction about 3000 B.C.
The only continuous records then are from that point to the present.
In the epic of Gilgamesh, he claimed to live only a few generations after the flood, and claimed he was two parts god and one part man.
This would also be the exact condition of Noah and his descendants after the Gen. 6. mixing of the sons of God with the daughters of men.
The daughters of men were of Cain's linage who was a mixture of God and man from the event with Eve and the serpent in the garden.
The sons of God were the true descendants of Adam and Eve through their son Seth's linage.
This makes the Genesis account about the mixture of the two races the in line with both the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic, and the Greek tale of Hercules...
Both claimed to be (2/3 God, 1/3 man).
So...in both time and substance all these accounts are a much closer than you had supposed.
Last edited:
All life, including man was born in the garden………………… Nature!
To be told NOT TO EAT from the ‘tree of knowledge’…….. could mean, not to pursue profit over another with the use of knowledge.
But the idea that man is not to pursue knowledge or ‘words’ and their use for definitions is an incorrect analogy as even God is supposed to approve immensely, by comparing man to him.
Knowing good and evil is what being given “choice” allows. Consciousness is the gift that was born with choice; the ability to know ‘good and bad.’ No arguing with this, as then each of denial is observing beliefs, not the scripture. As to try and say the words should be taken literal, well then I have bible scripture for you;
Gen 3: 22And Jehovah God saith, `Lo, the man was as one of Us, as to the knowledge of good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand, and have taken also of the tree of life, and eaten, and lived to the age,' –
IN which now God, says, we like ‘Us” (him)……. To know good and evil, as He ALSO "taken" of the tree of life……………. As HE apparently ALSO had eaten from the tree, and LIVED
And if we all of adam and eves, kids……………. Then they did not die and are living ‘to the ages’
Since reality show us all that no women has ever been created from the rib of a human, then to allow the comprehension of the story being a metaphor makes greater sense.
How about observing with a clear heart? Such that most all living things must give up a portion of itself for life to reproduce. Most all cells must divide and well each parent gives an egg/sperm to combine for procreation.
Now if you really want see something weird, then notice how Darwin drew the 'tree of life' to describe how all living things must have begun with a 'first life'..................and the 'tree'...... branched from there.
Then notice, how adam and eve ar supposed to be the first. But in reality, atoms and energy are what ALL life is born from, within nature (the garden).
Meh!... You people are never going to get it.
What is a Tree of Knowledge?
===================
Let's say you study and every time you find out something you didn't know you study a little harder into that area. Before you know it you "tangent" from what you were initially studying and "branch" out. You follow it a little way and then you come back to the main study subject you were looking at.
You could suggest that this study method could be illustrated as a "tree", with all the various branches coming back to the main trunk which made up the content of what you study.
Let's take this further and post something that's being talked about currently in the Physics and Mathematics forum, "Quantum Suicide".
Imagine if you will that you have the capacity to see the future outcome of any action that you might plan. These outcomes can be both "Good" and "Bad", lets say you could of seen the atrocities of "Hitler" prior to the second world war and you decided to Assassinate him to stop them occurring. Assassination is obviously "Bad" (even for a Bad man), and the removal of him early on would,.. "Remove a Branch from the tree". This basically means that you've remove the capacity for him to make the decisions that originally generated the atrocity, however although many lives might have been spared, many more would have been lost from never having the opportunity to be born.
My belief is simple, There is no God, only us and the poor delusional's that band together to generate substance to their "views" by disallowing alternative opinion. (Brainwashing)
What is a Tree of Knowledge?
===================
Let's say you study and every time you find out something you didn't know you study a little harder into that area. Before you know it you "tangent" from what you were initially studying and "branch" out. You follow it a little way and then you come back to the main study subject you were looking at.
You could suggest that this study method could be illustrated as a "tree", with all the various branches coming back to the main trunk which made up the content of what you study.
Let's take this further and post something that's being talked about currently in the Physics and Mathematics forum, "Quantum Suicide".
Imagine if you will that you have the capacity to see the future outcome of any action that you might plan. These outcomes can be both "Good" and "Bad", lets say you could of seen the atrocities of "Hitler" prior to the second world war and you decided to Assassinate him to stop them occurring. Assassination is obviously "Bad" (even for a Bad man), and the removal of him early on would,.. "Remove a Branch from the tree". This basically means that you've remove the capacity for him to make the decisions that originally generated the atrocity, however although many lives might have been spared, many more would have been lost from never having the opportunity to be born.
My belief is simple, There is no God, only us and the poor delusional's that band together to generate substance to their "views" by disallowing alternative opinion. (Brainwashing)
A bit on the origin of language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language
Since the tower of babel is a myth its hard to say exactly which ziggurat so impressed the Jewish sheep herders but it has often been associated with the Etemenanki and the ziggurat to Marduk, by Nabopolassar (610s BC). There are three distinct areas (Middle East, India and China) where written language developed, and from which we have written records from the middle east and else where which predate the "Tower of Babel" and more specifically Babylon itself.
"Historical resources inform us that Babylon was at first a small town, that had sprung up by the beginning of the third millennium BC (the dawn of the dynasties). The town flourished and attained prominence and political repute with the rise of the first Babylonian dynasty. It was the "holy city" of Babylonia by approximately 2300 BC, and the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612 BC." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon
The Sumerians and Egyptians both predate Babylon and neither spoke Akkadian. "Akkadian ... is a Semitic language ... that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon
Other examples include a recently rediscovered civilization in Turkmenistan where they have found inscriptions from 4000 years ago and tortoise-shell inscriptions dating back to c. 6000 BC in China.
Here is a lot more details: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/History_of_writing
Jesus, if he existed, was a nobody who was of little or no note at the time. It is the insane cult which Paul started which eventually made the news.
Followed by...
You can't get that level of absurdity out of anything but religion.
The fever dreams of the Jews is TRUTH but if the Sumerians get one word twisted they are off the mark???
Oh. You do know the Sumerians aren't the Babylonians?
The bible is just a bunch of stories told by bored, ignorant sheep herders.
Last edited:
I did find out for myself.
You should try doing the same.
I recommend starting with the assumption that bronze age sheep herders didn't know all the secretes of existence.
Next explore why just saying "god did it" to every hard question isn't really an answer.
True but lacking enough other evidence to prove 1 better than the other, being older is enough to strongly suspect it is more reliable & was copied inaccurately.
Funny, no, hilarious how theists claim such about what they don't want to believe but not about The Holy Babble.
they were given Moses by vision from God according to their account
The claim that it came from a god has several logic problems including that a god must be proven to exist before accepting that it coming from a god means anything & that it's circular "reasoning".
The thing you're talking about is called "circumlocution"
It is intentional.
Jesus did say; "I thank thee Father that thou has hidden theses things from the wise and prudent"
So it's all a big game of which you are an unwitting pawn.
Unwitting...? Maybe we all were at first.
Not so much a "big game" as an exercise, one that has an intended objective.
To exercise the senses in the discernment of right and wrong.
Last edited:
I must admit - I find what is written in the Vedas very interesting. I find it unusual that you (Visitor) put any faith into it. I would think that would undermine the tradition belief god is unlimited omniscient.
I'm not usually a big fan of most traditions. I guess some have their place.
Crossing over to where we've never been before, most of the things we ever knew just fall to the ground.
I think Oppenheimer saw something there that influenced him to make that famous quote.
I have another source that mentions a nuclear event that caused the flood.
These may contradict traditional Bible beliefs, but they don't contradict the Bible itself.
The Bible said God would destroy the world.
He does many things though man.
It could be God in man that let him begin to unravel the mysteries of the universe in the first place.
It said the present world was being reserved for judgement by fire and "As it was in the days of Noah, so would it be at the coming of the Son of Man."
Is it such a stretch to believe man could destroy himself?
Perhaps it wouldn't be the first time.
The fact it was recorded somewhere else like the Vedas lends more credibility to the account in my opinion. Not less.
But you're right, that's not a traditional Christian view.
Last edited:
I'm not sure even one of these word sequences are true.
StrangersinStrangeLA said:
Try re-reading the story, that's not what happened.
Again not what the story says.TheVisitor said:
Language as your describing it in this is not as it's even written. You're referring to the word which more closely translates to "Script". It never says "The entire world was of one script" Nor is it implying everyone used the same words.Swarm said:
The Ultimate Problem with this thread:
You have a group of people who only semi-know history arguing with a guy who only semi-knows the bible. A lot of the precise details of the historical events were written from a persons point of view....especially Babylonian history. TheVisitors English "Inerrancy" and insane viewpoints on biblical accounts don't help reconcile the difference either. His entire argument is based on mistranslations of what biblical accounts were even saying. If he only knew how un-magical the events that are being written about are...he'd most likely not be religious.
You have a group of people who only semi-know history arguing with a guy who only semi-knows the bible. A lot of the precise details of the historical events were written from a persons point of view....especially Babylonian history. TheVisitors English "Inerrancy" and insane viewpoints on biblical accounts don't help reconcile the difference either. His entire argument is based on mistranslations of what biblical accounts were even saying. If he only knew how un-magical the events that are being written about are...he'd most likely not be religious.