AronRa Takes on Mythology

How Mythology Disproves Noahs Flood
AronRa | 14.VII.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrDTaHjg2IQ

I

10:12 Malevolent creatures?

Well, suppose the Flood did happen.

Suppose the dinosaurs we find were mostly pre-Flood.

After Flood some were in Americas, since carbon dated dinos from there are usually younger than the 40 000 years I base on Neanderthal démise, some Dimetrodontes went off to Germany, where later the last was killed by Sigurd or perhaps if Beowulf was later in Sweden, (though the winged part suggests either serious mix-up over dragon biology or Beowulf killed some other palaeo-critter).

Where the children of Madai and Elam went (ancestors of Medes and Persians), there were no post-Flood dragons. Therefore, one could rationalise Flood as getting rid of them all.

Partly true, dino population was at least severely reduced by Flood.

Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters.
[Psalms 73:13]

Fairly good match to YEC scenarios of Flood and especially considering the number of creatures found without heads.

"maybe this is another attempt to explain fossils"

Meaning they were on this item clearly agreeing with Morris and more recent Flood Geologists.

II

12:07 Firmament of some type certainly is a Biblical datum.

Flatness of Earth is not.

Believe me, I have gone through the passages, none states flatly that the earth is flat.

Note very well, if Chinese were separated from the Hebrews, which they were, they may have interpreted the firmament in incorrect ways, as an actual solid body.

Job 37:18 notably has a clear reticence to saying this straight out.

Thou perhaps hast made the heavens with him, which are most strong, as if they were of molten brass.

Most strong is true of some things that are not solid bodies.

And molten brass is denied, not affirmed.

Four corners passages are possible for continents on a globe. If Americas don't count, but only count as biggest offshore islands, you are going to SW corner, near enough, Karoo. Otherwise, SW corner is of course Tierra del Fuego.

I do not see that all mythologies postulated a flat earth.

Odinism does, when it portrays Earth as one level of platforms in the crown of Yggdrasil, but Odin presumably had read both Kemetist and Zuist texts, and while world tree with snake echoes Zuism, flat earth echoes Kemetism. Osiris is each night under the Earth - not on the other side of a globe.

Celtic myths instead have Land of the Young, euphemism for Land of the Dead, in the West. Also allows sungod to shine on dead after shining on living, but without implying flat earth. Presumably Celts had had contacts with Phoenicians. Who presumably had observed ships coming into harbour, or getting out, as well as observing harbours and their towers from ships. Land of the dead under earth didn't work so well any more.

III

12:56 Agreed.

I have defended Flat Earthers from being stupid, from being - on that account by itself - heretics but never from being on that account wrong.

IV

13:00 No, you do not know there is no firmament, you know there is no firmament that is a solid body, at least as far out as Voyager I and II have ventured, presumably to the stars as well. But that is not necessarily what firmament means.

You also do not know there is no water above the firmament, since we have clear indications of lots of water above. Spectrography reveals interplanetary space "in solar system" and interstellar space has two very abundant molecules.

H₂
H₂O

I venture that both would have been described by Moses as water, since describing H2 as air is more inaccurate and since the language of his day had no other word for it.

Also, "hydrogen" means "water parent" or "water origin", German Wasserstoff means "water material" or "water stuff" and Swedish "väte" nearly means "wetness" (derived from "våt"="wet").

Type into google translate English to Hebrew:

water
contains
hydrogen



You will note, Hebrew too has the word for "hydrogen" derived from "water."

While outer space is not full of water, it certainly contains such.

V

14:01 "at least 1400 years older"

No, I don't think so.

"Utnapishtim (or Unapishtim) means day of life, or day-life, while Ziugiddu means Life-day prolonged."

Fine meanings to rename a Noah whose name you forgot in Babel.

Atrahasis, I think I recall means "super wise" - the original homo sapiens who was sapiens enough to build an ark.

OK, the race type actually existed before him.

Your words on Noah remind me of Calvin's.

If you don't know the strength of wine in advance, you are not guilty of drunkenness by physically getting intoxicated.

And the curse on one grandchild was when he was sober, and an act of judgement.

Imagine if the early retellers after Babel (or even non-Hebrews in Babel) were obfuscating this, deliberately?

Nice episode to forget, isn't it?

15:07 Yeah, I get it - Chaldean version differs mainly in wrong theology. Lauding rebellion and secrecy.

"And written by the great grandfathers of the Biblical authors."

Assortion, here presented without evidence.

"Many centuries before the Canaanite god etc"

Again, no evidence here presented.

Yes, they are polytheistic.

If a Christian person's grandchildren go Shinto, Hindoo or Atheist, and retell a story from his life which in his version involved God Trine and One, are the grandchildren very likely to retell it in his statements, conflicting as they do with their theology or anti-theology?

At most the Atheist grandchild would (having some Western culture partially heir to Christendom) "this is how gramp thought it was, but of course there is no God". The others would more probably retell a story in Hindoo or Shinto terms they needed make no reservations against.

VI

17:39 Genesis is the first coherent world history.

It is possible that Moses had heard of Babylonian accounts written perhaps 100 years before him, but he would have known they were not leading back to Adam and also not leading up to the then recent times, at least not in a fashion which could make sense of things.

Nearly all non-Hebrew accounts lack reference to the Tower of Babel. You mentioned one account where people were dispersed under (as distinct from after) the Flood, but it only dealt with geographic dispersion, as if they were either ignorant of linguistic diversity or thought it was totally explained by the geographic one.

If you know anything about English both sides of Atlantic and two / three sides of Pacific, this is not so.

17:48 "the Jews did not worship Jesus"

Moses and Aaron did. King David called his upcoming "son" (descendant) his Lord (Psalm Dixit Dominus).

However, at one point one certain Cohen Gadol Kaiaphas rejected Jesus when He actually came and fulfilled the prophecies, so Jesus replaced him with Simon Kephas (I think Kaiaphas and Kephas are the same name, Hebrew vs Aramaic versions, like Peter and Pierre are English and French versions of its Greek translation).

17:55 "Islam emerged from Christianity which obviously emerged from Rabbinic Judaism"

If any Judaism, Second Temple Judaism.

Catholic Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism both have some historic claim of being direct heirs of it. A bit like Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox both have some historic claim of being direct heirs to First Millennium Catholic / Orthodox Christianity. Or like Judaism (broader sense, including Christainity) and Samarianism both have some claim of being direct heirs of Moses' and Aaron's religion, of the Tabernacle before the Temple.

And whether early Judaism was inspired by Zoroastrianism or the reverse is not a secular scholarly question. It is a debate between faiths.*

VII

18:06 Hinduism oldest in continuous practise?

That's a bit like saying Second Temple Judaism is still ongoing. Latest public and sovereignly endorsed Hindoo sacrifice of a horse was either before Ashoka, or on Iceland, but I wouldn't call it pure Hinduism on Iceland, considering how much Odin took over from Kemetism and Zuism.

VIII

18:19 Again, you are presuming modern scholarship on this matter is purely evidence based with no religious or anti-religious axe to grind.

Not true.

It is possible though that Moses got hold of the book of Job from his father in law Jethro. So, yes, it is possible it is older, not than all Genesis materials, but than Genesis as a single book.

Job has 42 chapters and Genesis 50. The chapter divisions were not put there by Moses, but as a reference convenience by a Catholic bishop c. 1200. But they are roughly similar length, so Job and Genesis would roughly be same length.

This means, Moses can have been inspired (not theological sense, but artistic) to the one volume by seeing Job.

6th C. BC is about 1 millennium too late. Those scholars have an axe to grind.

450 BC is a bit more than a millennium too late.

"that are thousands of years older than Genesis"

On your wrong opinion on when Genesis was written, that is.

IX

19:39 No, the schools didn't close.

Akkadian and Sumerian continued to be taught as Classic languages up to 1st C AD and 1st C BC. If Odin lived in the time of Caesar, he would have been able to read both languages, if he had had and taken opportunities to learn them. It was not for him as our inability to get a good thorough instruction in Etruscan.

Aramaic was official administration language of 1st Persian Empire (Achamenids or sth), the one which took over after Nebuchandnezzar II's near immediate posterity lost power.

Did I mention, the Aramaic of Persia was written in ... Cuneiform?

19:53 "no one could understand written language any more"

That explanation is, while not fiction in entertainment sense, still totally fictitious. About as fictitous as Protestant continuity within Christianity, as portrayed by Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

1st C BC is too late to account for an account in Genesis.

Aramaic of Persian Empire was also written in Cuneiform. Cuneiform was not the only type of writing available. Ergo, what you portrayed has never happened any more than Albigensians were Covenanters.

More than a thousand years - after Nebuchandnezzar II failed to complete Marduk Ziggurat?

No, that would mean 5th C AD before there was a written Genesis with a Tower of Babel account.

You are severely wrong on this one.

X

And your quip on how oral tradition irresistibly distorts is an heir from Protestant prejudice against Catholicism.

While your timeline for when it was supposed to distort doesn't work, it is still deleterious for Genesis credibility, since at least early parts of Genesis (up to chapter 12 and probably excluding chapter 1 account added by Moses) were so transmitted.

Fr George Leo Haydock in his commentary to Genesis 3 wrote:

// Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H. //

HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT : GENESIS 3
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/untitled-05.shtml#navPoint_6

Here is my French reply to a similar quip a few years ago:

New blog on the kid : Fiabilité de la Tradition
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/03/fiabilite-de-la-tradition.html

ajs1031

and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned

Thanks for admitting up front that you don't care about facts. It makes you really easy to ignore.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ajs1031 Not caring about facts and not doubting a particular source one finds fully credible are two different things.

I most definitely find, as a Catholic like Father Haydock the Genesis totally credible, with each of its parts in a Douay Rheims or Vulgate, apart from questions of scribal errors, like which version has the right chronology, where I side with (moderate) LXX reading.

* Note to any and all upcoming Swedish translators, no, I do not mean "trosfråga", I would say that as "question of faith" and what I wrote I would translate into Swedish as "trostvist".