The Book of Enoch: Did the Apostles Consider it Inspired?

Probably not, for reasons made clear here...

Other Options for A Local Flood

 The Christ-Centered Model for Early Genesis posits that Adam's biblical role was not to be the first man, except in the sense that Christ is the second man. He is a figure of Christ, not the father of humanity. He was formed to bring Messiah. Thus, there were other people in the world when Adam was formed, even as Christ came into a world full of people. 

In such a case, the flood need not be global in extent to have global consequences, ending the line of Messiah would doom the entire planet, even if that line existed only in a small geographic region in the ancient Near East. I call this a "local flood with global consequences" and the language used in the text allows for this view. It was still a flood that threatened to bring the entire world to ruin by cutting off the line of Messiah and thus cutting us off from God. 

In the book, I speculated about the timing and location of the flood. The text has more give in the date than Bishop Ussher's methods would indicate, but not a great deal more. Perhaps we look a few thousand years further back than his numbers, but not much further. As for the location of such a flood, I have proposed we look to eastern Anatolia, perhaps the Araxes River Valley and nearby. But I don't think the text demands this location at all. It is a speculative matter. Perhaps it was a bit further east, in the Kura River Valley or beneath the Lesser Caucus Mountain. Less likely but still possible in my view is that they were further west and north, for example in the Ezurum Plain near Pasinler. 

I am basing these locations on the idea that the Garden of Eden was near the source for the Tigress and Euphrates Rivers, not their mouths. That and also that their movement appears to have been "east". After the flood it says they journeyed "from the east" to reach a plain in the land of Shinar. Based on that, you would think that the flood and the landing point of the ark were east of Mesopotamia. But some have said that this verse is only saying they journeyed "in the east". I don't buy that, but if that is true then perhaps the area of the line of Adam was in the area later inhabited by the Hurrians, circled in black below. Notice that the land in this region forms, with a couple of exceptions, a fairly effective "bowl" in which flood waters could accumulate. There are a couple of wide valleys that would argue against this, but suppose those valleys had been made wide by run-off from the great flood? 

I would add that the eastern-most portion of this choice is in the area of "Mount Judi" where many say that the Ark landed. The text of Genesis says only that it landed on "the mountianS of Ararat". This is a broad region from the old land of Uratu that includes both today's Mt. Ararat and Mount Judi. If the clans of Noah went down the Tigress to find the plains, known in antiquity as "the River of the East" then I suppose one could even keep some sense of a journey "from the east" to reach the land of Shinar. It would just mean from the river which defined the eastern boundary of that land.  

The diagram below also shows circled in black part of the more southernly reach of where I think the flood was, which is just my best guess right now. This is in the Lake Urmia basin area. 

Now many of my brothers and sisters are convinced of a southern location for Eden. One where the mouths of the Tigress and Euphrates are, and not their source. If that is so, it would be unlikely that the ark of Noah would drift north and wind up on "the Mountains of Ararat" as the region drains south. There was a land named "Arratta" that was probably to the east somewhere in the southern part of Iran, and if that is what is meant then I suppose a southern Eden is reasonable. I have drawn an arrow pointing to the direction of this unlikely location of the local flood of Noah. 

Click on picture to get a larger view 

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"Evolutionary" Radiations Don't Match Mass Extinctions

 Report in Popular Mechanics 

The article notes that mass extinctions seem to occur at 27 million year intervals. It also says that evolutionary radiations do not match up well with recovery from mass extinctions! Mass extinctions have been a go-to explanation when asked why organisms change is spurts and then have long periods of stability. This seems to challenge that explanation.

What causes periods of rapid change in natural forms if not mass extinctions with new niches opening up? It seems nature operates independently of the events that naturalists have been saying drive it. So it is something else!

Jews Don't Believe in the Doctrine of Original Sin. Have We Misinterpreted Paul?

 Jews do not believe in "original sin" as taught by most Christian denominations. That is, they do not believe that we inherit sin nature by virtue of being the offspring of Adam and Eve. They would say that they do not believe in it at all, though of course the Ultra-Orthodox would agree that Adam committed the first or original human sin. It seems that they do not extrapolate that to mean anything about our spiritual condition today. They sort of dodge question of whether we have a sin nature and if so, what its origin might be, saying "Whether man is a sinner by nature or not is immaterial." because repentance provides a way out. 

While I could take issue with how material it is, I was fascinated that they don't "believe in original sin". Again, when they say that, they mean that they don't think Adam's sin means anything for the rest of his offspring. His sins were his alone, not something for which we are accountable. If this is true, it resolves some theological questions regarding Adam being formed as a figure of Christ, a representative for an already-existing, though in innocence, humanity. 

Could Christian theologians have been misinterpreting the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12? I think they have been. Not in the sense of "there is no such thing as original sin" but the nature by which Adam's original sin effects the rest of us has been misconstrued. For more on why I think that, and what Romans 5:12 really means, see....

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On Utnipishtim and Noah

 This are some rough notes, a comment I made in a FB group, that I wish to flesh out later. The question being "what evidene is there that the account in Genesis predates that of Utnipishtim?
He didn't "predate" him, because they are the same person! What we have to do is look at the elements of the account and determine which is most reasonably the derived version. The Babylonians kept using clay tablets while the Isralites adopted more Egyptian methods such as scrolls made of hide so unfortunately we can't just see who has the oldest record- you can't expect the hides to last as long. Scholars who accept the historicity of Moses put him in the 15th century BC, but the tolodoth phrase in the first 36 chapters of Genesis indicates he was stringing together an anthology of older accounts. That easily gets you prior to the 18th century BC record of Utnipishtim.

So let's look at the elements of the accounts and see which is most reasonably a derived version. Both say that the ark landed near the northern edge of Mesopotamia. This is a good distance from Babylon, and much farther from Uruk where Gilgamesh reigned. It is on the edge of the other end of Mesopotamia. It is even farther from Israel but the most common Y-haplogroup among Cohen surnamed Jews is J-M172 and J-M267 is the most common among the rest. This points to an origin in the Caucuses/Armenian region. This fits better with an origin account of people from the mountains that moved in to "the land of Shinar". So this fits better with the idea that they told the story to those dwelling in Mesopotamia when they got there, and those folks passed on a derived version.

Utnipishtim and his wife gain immortality. Noah lived much longer than a normal human, and his descendants revereted to more normal life-spans in a few generations, but the former seems more likely to be a dervived version of the latter, and more fanciful.

The conflicting account of what the god Ea said to Utnipishtim is also far more significant than the overlapping instructions of Elhohim and Yahweh to Noah. Did the god appear to him in person or in a dream? The Bablonian tale conflicts on this. The Genesis account can easily explain this as a coflation of the instructions Noah got from Elhomin, in a vision or voice or dream, and Yahweh, who seems more anthropomorphic (He shut them in the ark Himself).

The Babaloynian account also seems garbled when it comes to the process of landing. It makes it seem like he saw the slopes of the mountain that he landed on, as if it was out of the water, and yet still had to release the birds, who at first could not find land, even though Utnipishtim saw the slopes of the very mountain they were resting on. This indicates a garbled version of the Genesis account where they ran aground but the tops of the mountians were only visible either at a great distance or still under the water. This makes more sense with the birds not finding land at first.

So I would say the elements of the account make it clear which is the derived version.

The Proper Place of Places in our Christian Walk

 I recently read "The Unseen Realm" by Michael Heiser. I was prepared to like the book, but unfortunately I found a lot to disagree with. Those points of disagreement can be found in other articles on this blog. This is an area where there is only "disagreement by omission." That is, he doesn't tell the other, very relevant, side of things. This is on the issue of geography and places. 

On page 284 of the Kindle edition he makes the claim that when Christ says "on this rock I will build my church" He is talking in part about the physical rock of Mount Herman. He further claims that this was believed to be the "gates of Hell" in that culture. He attaches great importance to places and weaves place-significance into the meaning of numerous passages. 

He doesn't have to be wrong about what he is saying in some of these places, but 1) it is majoring in the minors and 2) he leaves off something very important- how our view of place-significance should change in the light of Christ. 

In Galatians 4 we read: 
" Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.

23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.

25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

So then when Paul assigns significance to place names, he does it in terms of what it says about the work of Christ. And he doesn't even identify us with the earthly Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judasim. Rather he associated believers with "the Jerusalem which is above." 

Jesus Himself makes this plain in John chapter four:

20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

21Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.

22Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

23But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The place you worship doesn't matter. How you worship matters. The obsession with worshipping in places was part of the old way. The new way is worshipping in correct spirit and truth rather than geography. The places and days and ceremonies and even events were all to point to Christ and His work. Since He has come, they don't have their former significance. 

Hebrews chapter nine speaks of things on earth being a mere pattern of the true things in heaven, and that Christ entered a Holy Place "made without hands", the true one in heaven. Further on, in 11:16 it reads "they that say such things declare that they seek a better country, that is, a heavenly..."

Time after time, place after place, this world is declared to be just the pattern. One day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth for us to dwell. The pre-occupation with religious acts and ordinances in specific places on this earth is out of balance with the real message of scripture. This world is not our home, and that's OK, because this life is merely the test. 

Surely we are to "go to all the world to preach the gospel" and 1 Tim. 2:8 "I want the men to pray in every place", but these instructions don't point to a pre-occupation with particular places. Rather all places are equally to be prayed in, and preached in. God isn't as interested in the dirt in this fading material realm as He is the souls of the eternal beings within it. 

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"Intelligent Evolution"? And Are We Lucky to be Here?

 A couple of papers came out that I want to make note of. One claimed that "Intelligent Life is Rare" and suggested that based on the transition windows between biological milestones like mulit-cellularity, we are probably the only intelligent life in the cosmos, based on naturalistic assumptions. Even with all of the planets that are out there, the advancement of life to sentience may be against the odds. This is separate and apart from the issue of the "fine tuning" of the fundamental forces of the universe "just so" in order to allow a universe able to support life to exist. 

Of course I don't think "the odds" matter because we were meant to be here. It wasn't chance at all, but intent. If an intelligent agent brings about an effect, it doesn't matter how unusual it would be for nature alone to produce it. This is the opposite take from the shallow assumption that nature alone has produced universe full of planets and alien life because there are so many planets out there. If intelligent life is difficult enough to obtain, even this universe doesn't give enough chances to make it probable. 

It also cited a 2007 study: 

The fact that eukaryotic life took over a billion years to emerge from prokaryotic precursors suggests it is a far less probable event than the development of multicellular life, which is thought to have originated independently over 40 times (Grosberg and Strathmann, 2007)

Wow. Some scientists think that multi-cellular life arose independently over 40 times? So much for evolution from a common ancestor! 

A second paper was discussed in an article with the ridiculous title "Is Evolution More Intelligent than We Thought"? "Evolution" is a label for a set of ideas about nature's role in shaping life. It can't be "intelligent" at all, nor can nature itself in any ordinary sense. Rather nature could have been designed by some Intellect to operate in an intelligent manner. In the case of the article it was noticed that "nature" seemed to learn from its "mistakes" in evolution. Of course the skeptic could say that an all-knowing God would not have to learn from His mistakes, but the Christ-centered model for early Genesis expects creation to operate like this. Nature has some power to bring forth living things, but only with God's help. It is almost amusing to watch scientists try to explain why nature looks as though it is designed when it really isn't. 

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