Paulogia took on the Tower

Debate with Paul Myers · Paulogia also doesn't get what is reasonable evidence for 1st C events · Holy Koolaid attacked Bible History with HolyKoolaid Tries to Back Up his Attack Against Exodus · Paulogia took on the Tower

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Paulogia took on the Tower · Creation vs. Evolution : Changing the Text, NIV? · Durupınar Alternative to Judi? Three Remarks

Is Genesis History, Science? Part 11 - With great Tower comes no responsibility
Paulogia - 5.VI.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0VSuC4ZO9Q

I

1:11 "Southern Mesopotamia and the land of Shinar"

Who says Shinar is limited to Southern Mesopotamia?

As far as I am concerned, Shinar IS Mesopotamia. Or perhaps wider, since Black Sea was filled and limited Euphrates to the South, and Eastern Black Sea had been Northern Mesopotamia before ...

Either way, the idea Shinar is only Southern Mesopotamia = the idea that Shinar is Hebrew for Sumer.

I think the terms rather correlate as America (triangle with Alaska, New Foundland and Tierra del Fuego in the corners) relates to Murrica ("I want to live in Ah Murrica" sung by a Puerto-Rican in West Side Story ... sorry if I bungle the text, it is for the sake of conceptual clarity ... and Puerto Rico is within the triangle America). Murrica is an alias for USA. Canada and Chile are outside Murrica, but not outside America.

II

1:22 Where exactly does the comment consider "Eastward" comes from? Eastward means into the East.

Here is Douay Rheims:

And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it.

Here is the Vulgate:

Cumque proficiscerentur de oriente, invenerunt campum in terra Senaar, et habitaverunt in eo.

If you know some Spanish, that might help you with "de oriente".

Eastward would in Latin be "in orientem" and that is not what the Vulgate says.

καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ κινῆσαι αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν, εὗρον πεδίον ἐν γῇ Σενναὰρ καὶ κατῴκησαν ἐκεῖ.

Greek LXX has "apo anatolôn" and "anatolôn" is genitive plural and in Greek whatever the preposition (as far as I recall, but at least all common ones) a genitive signals direction from, not direction to.

"apo anatolôn" however is not so rare a preposition I just have to guess.

Apo can be combined with accusative (direction to) or genitive (direction from).

In itself, "apo" signals downword movement. Opposite "ana" which signals upward movement, similar combinatorial versatility.

In Latin, "de" actually confirms "down from" rather than just "from".

In other words, either the Hebrew text has changed between LXX and Vulgate translated from Hebrew to AD c. 1000 Masoretic Hebrew version, or NIV sucks in relation to Masoretic as well.

III

1:30 It so happens, Vulgate has, in 8:4

Requievitque arca mense septimo, vigesimo septimo die mensis, super montes Armeniae.

As to LXX, it does have Ararat, but in the plural:

καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἡ κιβωτὸς ἐν μηνὶ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ, ἑβδόμῃ καὶ εἰκάδι τοῦ μηνός, ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη τὰ ᾿Αραράτ.

And it seems Ararat in Hebrew means Urartu - an old term for Armenia.

Now, Mount Djudi near Cizre is certainly neither Greater Ararat nor Lesser Ararat, but it is in the Turkish province of ... Ermeni - Armenia.

And when you go from Mount Djudi to Göbekli Tepe, you actually do go:

• nearly duly from East to West (about 300 km if I recall things correctly)
• ah, I may have been over optimistic, since Cizre is elevation 380 meters, but Göbekli Tepe is 760 meters.

However, GT is the city, and it is a bit off the plain ... Harran is in the plain.

Harran plain has an elevation of 410 m.

And that is still higher than Cizre, but what about Mount Djudi?

Ah, yes, 2,089 m.

Mount Cudi - > Harran Plain / Göbekli Tepe = down from the East.

If you didn't get it, I checked via google more than once while writing above.

IV

2:19 Eridu ...

No ...

"Located 12 km southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

That's part of where "Southern Mesopotamia" comes in ... and I'm cringing as I expect ToB is Ziggurat of Eridu, or so they will claim ....

V

2:31 From Göbekli Tepe we have signs of expansion to Australia and to other parts of Oceania ... there is a bird man in GT you find again in Oceania (NZ? Hawaii? Easter Island ...?) And there is an ornament you find among Australian aborigines ....

VI

4:10 There is a point.

Go to the 32 signs that Genevieve Petzinger finds all over the late Palaeolithic (the hashtag is one of them and has been found with Neanderthals). Or go to the Vinča symbols.

Sure, they could very well be writing ... but we haven't deciphered either. And that way, if it was writing, it could be very early forms of writing the pre-Babel language Hebrew.

When was Eridu founded?

"Founded Approximately 54th century BC"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

That would be before syllabic cuneiform, so we would not be totally able to tell that earliest proto-writing if any in very early Eridu was Sumerian rather than Hebrew.

But ... was the building of Eridu abandoned and that after the Tower project?

"Kate Fielden reports "The earliest village settlement (c. 5000 BC) had grown into a substantial city of mudbrick and reed houses by c. 2900 BC, covering 8–10 ha (20–25 acres)". Mallowan writes that by the Ubaid period, it was as an "unusually large city" of an area of approx. 20–25 acres, with a population of "not less than 4000 souls".[13] Jacobsen describes that "Eridu was for all practical purposes abandoned after the Ubaid period",[14] although it had recovered by Early Dynastic II as there was a Massive Early Dynastic II palace (100 m in each direction) partially excavated there.[15]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

It rather seems building of Eridu was actually resumed before the building of a Ziggurat:

"By c. 2050 BC the city had declined; there is little evidence of occupation after that date. Eighteen superimposed mudbrick temples at the site underlie the unfinished Ziggurat of Amar-Sin (c. 2047–2039 BC). The finding of extensive deposits of fishbones associated with the earliest levels also shows a continuity of the Abzu cult associated later with Enki and Ea."

And by archaeological 2047 BC, unfortunately for this theory, we already do have cuneiform which can be pronounced and which is pronounced in Sumerian.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the Ziggurat is not upcoming ...

4:31 @Paulogia "Vinča signs before Earth was created"

Only if you accept the usual calibration of C14 according to which Vinča symbols are on material associated with organic material "8000 years old".

How if C14 calibration should be redone ....?

VII

5:24 I do agree.

If you want a scientific potential falsification of Tower of Babel, you can't.

Precisely as with potential falsifications of Battle of Cannae or Battle of Zama ....

Checking Zama with Reddit:

Reddit : Battlefield artifacts at Zama?
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/ckemao/battlefield_artifacts_at_zama/

So, not finding any battlefield archaeology from Zama doesn't falsify belief in the account of Livy who lived centuries after ...

Cannae, well, it seems they found at least one Roman and one non-Roman sword:

Battles and Book Reviews : The Battlefield of Cannae: a Site Visit
February 29, 2016 by Patrick Shrier
https://www.military-history.us/2016/02/the-battlefield-of-cannae-a-site-visit/

But two swords do not exactly prove Romans were taken in a Kneifzangenmanöver? Pincer move! and thoroughly beaten ....

VIII

5:44 Language splits can't explain why Old Egyptian is different from Sumerian - unless you (without any proof) assume a split occurred ... 20 000 years earlier? Or even more?

Dito for Elamite and Hittite.

Between Old Egyptian and Akkadian, well, some have said both are Afro-Asiatic and both depend on a language split way earlier.

While I cannot linguistically exclude that, more or less like I cannot linguistically exclude German and Sanskrit having a common ancestor (there is some commonality ...) I also cannot linguistically prove it. You know, PIE theory for IE commonalities is not a proven theory.

5:48 Did you mention German among the daughter languages of Latin?

Hello, I can tell you are not in any way, shape or form a linguist ...

5:51 No, God did not cause a second Tower of Babel event.

French is so intimately connected to the mother language Latin, that a French which for the occasion was spelled phonetically for Strasburg Oaths (one which sounds more like Spanish than French, like "ayudhar") would a little earlier and perhaps even then have been routinely dressed up as Latin when you spell it. Check out what Alcuin of York did to Latin pronunciation in Francia back then ... (or a little earlier than Strassburg Oaths ...)

You know, like English pretends to be pronounced in a Medieval way in its current spelling.

And same thing with Spanish and Italian.

Any such intimate connexion or pair of them with a known common mother language is not only lacking for Old Egyptian and Sumerian but even for German and Sanskrit or for Akkadian and Old Egyptian.

IX

6:13 Chinese, Mayan and Egyptian pre-Flood?

No.

Any idea of these being pre-Flood comes from bad calibration of carbon dates.

Btw, Mayan is a mistake on your part. It started in carbon dated 2000 BC.

With Chinese and Egyptian you would also have a conflict between taking their own historiography as correct chronology while at same time using Masoretic timeline for Flood.

X

6:53 They did claim Ziggurat of Eridu was Tower of Babel .... sigh

It so happens, there are two YEC schools except my own on Tower of Babel.

There is the Ziggurat of Eridu school - which poses Tower of Babel into when we already have syllabic cuneiform in the clearly non-Hebrew Sumerian language.

There is another school which claims both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon were post-Babel.

I think the safest tip is Göbekli Tepe, if the starting point for the journey in Genesis 11:2 is not down in Cizre but up on Mount Cudi.

One can add, since Black Sea is post-Babel, GT is not the only tip, somewhere in the Black Sea might do too, but it is less due west-ward from the east compared to Mt Djudi.

XI

7:15 Too bad. The Bible doesn't say the building of the Tower was abandoned.

It says the building of the City was abandoned.

et cessaverunt aedificare civitatem.

Ah, Greek has city and tower:

καὶ ἐπαύσαντο οἰκοδομοῦντες τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὸν πύργον.

Polis means city and in case you don't know Greek purgos / pyrgos (both transscriptions exist) means tower.

Protestant versions like King James at least claim to be translated from Masoretic (with some corrections) and here we have King James:

and they left off to build the city.

Like Douay-Rheims:

and they ceased to build the city.

It can be noted in this context, Göbekli Tepe certainly was abandoned and the original excavator (a German) - who has been contradicted - even claimed the city was deliberately covered in sand.

XII

7:30 "an incomplete structure would be a necessary marker for an actual tower of Babel"

Even if the project was meant to be a rocket and parts were carried away to elsewhere? While it there inspired astronomic research in Stone Henge, Nabta Playa, and a few more places ... (yes, these are in my view post-Babel - to the Eridu Ziggurat school, they would be pre-Babel).

And inspired myths (in the sense of factually untrue myths, no it is not a pleonasm as I use the word) about Perseus being taken up to the stars with Andromeda.

XIII

8:05 When it comes to matching building materials ... here is the so far weakest point with my Göbekli Tepe theory.

Creation vs. Evolution : Is this too modest in my expectations? Bricks revisited
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2019/09/is-this-too-modest-in-my-expectations.html

And here is where I try to find out what leeway I have with the materials:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Me and Roger Pearlman on Genesis 11:3
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2019/10/me-and-roger-pearlman-on-genesis-113.html

I have tried to get confirmation from another Hebraist, but he has a second time noted my email and not answered my question about the Hebrew terms of the building materials.

If you want to put some pressure on him, ask Nanterre University, Theological Faculty, about one who was one year among Dominicans to learn Hebrew ...

XIV

8:35 No, they do not know that Abraham lived in the city of Woolley's Ur.

One city called Edessa has also been called and is now called again Urfa.

Ur-fa, get it?

Now, Urfa is very close to Göbekli Tepe.

"12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Note that the city is really called Şanlı Urfa = venerable Urfa in Turkish.

Yes, I know, Turkey is not Iraq. BUT part of Turkey is Northern or North-Western Mesopotamia.

And both Muslims and Jews of that region have tied Abraham to Şanlıurfa.

XV

8:48 They mentioned "third dynasty of Ur"

In my calibration the carbon date conventionally given as ...

"22nd to 21st century BC"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Dynasty_of_Ur

... will not be the actual 22nd to 21st centuries BC, but more recent, since even 18th C. BC (time of Joseph in Egypt) carbon dates to 26 - 28th C. BC if Joseph is Imhotep (check parallels between hunger stele and story of Joseph) and Imhotep's pharao is Djoser.

This means, Third dynasty of Ur is in fact either during the Israelite's stay in Egypt or even (depends on which level of Jericho is relevant) after the Exodus.

XVI

9:00 "None of these things actually corroborate any elements of Abraham's story"

Very little of any story is corroborated by archaeology. Your criterium is fairly wrong.

You cannot corroborate Hannibal marching over the Alps by more than dung which is presumed to come from elephants, but can be identified only as mammalian.

That mammalian dung is from the right period, though ... if tied to another example of dung which has the same bacterial strain.

XVII

9:25 Tradition has it Abraham is actual ancestor to the Hebrew people.

Tradition also has it Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Are you predicting that at some point this tradition will be lost and replaced by one in which Sherlock is historic?

Or are you excluding that on the basis of modern man being presumed to be better and more thorough at separating fact from fiction than those "primitives" (like, was it "mythology of Bronze Age goatherds" someone said?)?

9:33 Same as we have with Spiderman a tradition of his being a fiction created by one Stanley Lieberman better known as Stan Lee ...

Dialogue

involving a statement pinned by Paulogia.

Jonathan Stern

One of the early things that lead me to atheism was language. I took Spanish starting in 7th grade, and I noticed that some words sounded similar in English, Hebrew, and Spanish, though there were more similarities between English and Spanish than there were between either of those langues and Hebrew. This made me wonder how languages develop, since, it seemed clear to me that Hebrew was a much older language than English or Spanish, as I knew that one of my favorite books (Beowulf), was written in a form of English that is no longer in use, but the oldest known documents written in that language are newer than the oldest known documents written in Hebrew.

Anyway, I discovered how languages evolve, and realized that The Tower of Babel story ran completely counter to everything that would have come after it.

Paulogia

Very cool. Pinned!

Larry Daniel Marquez

How old is the manuscript of beowulf? Have you seen the movie?

Marilyn Newman

Actually the Tower of Babel is counter to what came right before it. Gawd tells Noah, that each of his sons will have a great tribe with their own language. PERIOD. Tower of Babel. They really need to edit the dumb book better.

Same with Satan. In Job, Satan & god are best buds, real homies & they make a bet that Satan can get Job to curse god. It also puts the debunk on the snake in the garden of Eden is Satan, because in Job, he's walking around. And friends with god.

KendallChaos

Jonathan Stern exactly and how does written language relate to spoken language because there are languages whose written language is nothing like others (Egyptian hieroglyphs or Japanese writing)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I know very well how "languages evolve" too.

First, I think "evolve" is the wrong term (unless you will claim fashions have "evolved" since 13th C. rather than simply changed).

But second, nowhere in either Bible or Scholastic comment on the Bible does it say all languages known at a specific then point are either strictly identic or separate products of the Babel event.

St. Thomas Aquinas very specifically said that nations (another product of the Babel event) have since then both split and merged. Extrapolate for language ...

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Someone asked when the manuscript of Beowulf is from. Wiki cited this work :

https://books.google.fr/books/about/Introducing_English_Medieval_Book_Histor.html?id=8XBmLwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

For this fact : 975–1010 AD.

If the poem is somewhat older than that, it could have been written only shortly before it inspired one Sigfrid to become missionary among the Geats - that is, Swedes of Westrogothia and a bit East-ward from there.