"Archaic Humans" Don't Have Gene Expression Like Actual Humans

 The article was titled "A new perspective on the genomes of archaic humans". 

The content of the article re-enforced a point I have made here over and over- archaic 
"humans" are not like humans. They were not like us. Naturalists have insisted on calling every member of the Genus Homo "human". We should start calling members of our species "Adamics" to counter their co-option of a word that originally meant only our species. 

There is DNA that makes proteins and there is DNA that regulates the DNA that makes proteins. Studies focusing only on the protein-making DNA may find lots of similarities, but this is like saying that a Chevy Chevette and a Chevy Corvette used the same bolts! How many of those bolts are used in what place and attaching what things matters a lot, even if the bolts are identical. In this case the study found hundreds of differences in regulatory DNA between Adamics,  vs. Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Excuse me, they found thousands, but hundreds where they could tell there was a functional difference. Those differences were clustered around brain and vocal tract regions. Things that very much make us who we are. 

UPDATE: Science Daily was even more explicit in its article: "This would suggest some kind of rapid evolution of those organs or some kind of a path that is specific to modern humans," said Gokhman"

That's kind of what we have been suggesting all along! Divine intervention can look like "rapid evolution" from afar. 

Earlier I had speculated about "What it means to be human" and pointed out the differences in a particular kind of speech/reasoning that is unique to us Adamics. Every word still applies and is worth a read, but if anything it appears that I gave the non-Adamic hominids too much credit. Due to the fantastic work of Dr. William Amos of Cambridge I wonder if these "others" ever successfully interbred with our ancestors, or if they did that is was a mistake which nature quickly erased. 

A narrative is being pushed in the name of science that the science itself does not support. These other hominids were not "so much like us". Our ancestors appear to be a distinct population. One which, if they insist on blurring distinctions and calling many species "human" (note that real science typically does the opposite and uses language to make finer and finer distinctions), I will be glad to respond to by calling our kind something akin to what scripture calls us; Adamics

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Yes, NT Greek had Punctuation that Made Sense

 There have been a lot of false claims put out by "learned scholars" regarding New Testament Greek. The Aland's for example, claimed that the original manuscripts didn't use punctuation, that it was added by later scribes. Others have claimed that while there were punctuation marks used, the differences in them in various documents make them meaningless. The scholars have a lot to repent of. 

At the time the New Testament was written, Greek had punctuation marks. Now when most of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, was originally penned there may not have been punctuation marks, but that doesn't matter much- we can compare it to the Hebrew in the Masoretic text if need be. The question is whether punctuation marks were in used in the mid to late first century A.D. when the New Testament was penned. And the answer is yes, see this document for more details. 

At the time that the New Testament was penned, there was a point mark that could be placed after a word. If it were placed high, it was like our period, if in the middle, like a coma, and at the bottom, the like a semi-colon. That system of punctuation changed over time so that biblical manuscripts from different eras had different rules of punctuation. This in itself isn't a "conflict" in the text. If an older document had the end-sentence mark as a high-point and a later one had it as a low-mark (as is our period today) this isn't a true "difference" in the text. The text is expressing the same thought and the means by which that thought was expressed changed over time.

I don't want to imply that it is as neat and simple as all that though. Doubtless different manuscripts will have conflicting testimony on punctuation just as they sometimes do on the words in the text. But the answer isn't to dismiss it all as a later imposition, it is to do the hard work of scholarship just as has been done with the language of the text. If there is a specific question about the correctness in punctuation it can be sorted out in a similar manner. 

There is the question of which text of the New Testament is the best, and that question must be sorted on top of the question of punctuation within the text. There are two and a half major candidates for the textual basis of the New Testament. The main dispute is between translations based on the Alexandrian Text, which includes most of our modern translations, and those based on some version of the Byzantine-Text, often called the "Majority Text" because the family of documents from Greece and Asia Minor are most numerous and circulated in the region where the New Testament was originally written. The Eastern Orthodox use this text. The "Textus Receptus" used for the King James Bible comes from a subset of documents from the Majority Text family, with some minor differences introduced mostly due to Latin influence as well as subtle variations where adequate documents from the Majority Text were not available to Erasmus. 

So they can start with with the punctuation in whichever of these is their favorite and then the discussion can begin regarding whether there is a significant conflict among the documents in that linage regarding what the punctuation should be. The Textus Receptus is drawn from such a small pool of documents that there won't be many cases of that, but it could be compared to the Majority Text and documents from the Majority Text with each other. My guess is that there will be very few such discrepancies once one takes into account the evolution of the punctuation marks which transpired during the period these manuscripts were produced.  

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Hebrewish Script From 15th Century BC Found in Israel

 Some critics like to point out that there was scant evidence for "Hebrew" writing during the earlier proposed date for the Exodus (around 1446 B.C.) This has always been ridiculous because proto-Syriac was known to be around and it was very similar. Now pot sherds have been found in Israel from the 15th century B.C. with writing on them. They can even make out three Hebrew letters used to form the word "slave". 

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Cambrian Explosion Gets More Explosive

 Cambrian major era of change lasted just 410,000 years? I saw this study and meant to comment on it, Evolution News saved me the trouble. 

Do Not Delight in the Religion of Angels: Colossians 2:18

 I've come to see that Colossians 2:18 is one of the most misunderstood verses in the New Testament, probably because it is among the worst-translated verses in the New Testament. If what it says hasn't been accurately communicated to Christians, how can we understand it properly? I've also come to see that the church in America has a very real need to understand what it is really saying, because a big segment of it is falling into the very trap that this verse warns about. The trap is a serious one, since it has the potential to "defraud" or "disqualify" you.

I want to start with one very important way this verse has been misunderstood, often through poor translation. To do this, I want to show you an interlinear translation of the verse. 

Do you see the word I have circled in red above? Notice under it the English says "[the] worship of the angels". This is not complaining that they are "worshipping angels" as so many suppose. Rather, the complaint is an unhealthy desire or delight in the religious activities of angels. Versions that translate this portion of the verse "worshipping angels" have it wrong. Those which say "worship of angels" are unclear. It isn't that the angels are being worship, it is the religious duties which the angels perform which is meant. Indeed, the best translation would be that they desire or delight in "{the} religion of the angles" or "the ceremonial observances of the angels". 

To demonstrate this, let's look at the definition of "threskiea" from the verse (the word circled in red translated "worship"):

Notice that the three other places that it is used in the New Testament it is uniformly translated "religion", except in this verse where it is translated "worship" or "worshipping". That's poor translating. It should be "delighting in humility and the religion of the angels". Specifically, their "religion" in the sense of their ritual acts or duties. Paul was complaining about their willingness, desire, or even delight in the religious duties of the angels, along with subjecting themselves to ceremonial requirements and prohibitions. 

They were obsessing on those sent to help train them. It would be like a student, instead of learning about the subjects that the tutor was hired to teach them, focused on the duties of a tutor.  Angels were herald's of the King, but these wanted to delight in the messengers and their ranks, orders, and duties- moreso than the King! The stewards of the house are not the Son of the house!

Other translations say things about "visions", but there is nothing in the Greek to support inserting "visions" into the text. The word for seen is "horao", Strong's 3708 and it means to stare at or see, including perceiving with the mind in a figurative since. So that would be "I see" in the sense of figuring something out. The persons Paul complains of think they have something figured out about angels. The many versions which insert the word "vision" or "visions" here are off-base. There is no reason to conclude this is talking about visions. The wording is exactly what one would expect of ordinary academic or scholarly knowledge. 

After comparing twenty-five translations to the Greek, I want to post the most accurate translation in my view, the Berean Literal Translation, along with the King James version:

Berean Literal Bible
Let no one disqualify you, delighting in humility and the worship of the angels, detailing what he has seen, being puffed up vainly by his mind of the flesh,

King James Bible
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,

The KJV says that the type of person Paul warns about is "intruding into those things which he hath NOT seen" while the Berean Literal says "detailing what he HAS seen." The difficulty here is that some ancient manuscripts include the negative, but most ancient manuscripts do not. I can't fault the translators here, for they must pick one or the other. This variance is less of an issue to understanding the verse if one uses the punctuation closest to the Greek, which is the Berean Literal translation. 

There where it says "delighting in humility and the worship of the angels" it is clear that the "delighting" applies to both parts of the preposition, whereas in the KJV the lack of a comma and the phrase "in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels" this isn't as clear. This is connected to the duties of the angels, and thus even if one has "seen" in the sense of "perceived or gained an understanding" of this business, this is different from literally seeing angels conduct their religious duties. So in that sense, it doesn't matter whether the manuscripts with the negative are the "correct" ones or if those without the negative are. Both are correct in a sense, so long as you accept the meaning as I have described it here. If you don't, the textual conflict remains and is probably unresolvable. 

Either way, Paul isn't complaining that they are just making things up, or that they have no actual knowledge. He is complaining that they are delighting in or desiring the wrong things. That's another place that the Berean in better than the KJV (and most others) here. It says "delighting in....". It gets to the real problem. It isn't that the things Paul is complaining about are bad in themselves, it is their willingness or desires regarding those things- that is bad. The King James just says "voluntary" and phrases it so that one would think it only applies to the "humility" part. 

Speaking of the "humility" part, why is he complaining about "humility"? Isn't humility good? Yes. The same word is used elsewhere in the sense that we are exhorted to be that way. The religion of angels is good too. Paul isn't warning that these things they are majoring on are intrinsically bad, but their misuse is bad. Majoring on the minors is bad. Being enraptured by the ceremony that we use to celebrate, for example, becoming a man or reaching adulthood, is bad. Their purpose is to point to the true goal, not become the focus themselves. Even the Holy Spirit points to Jesus! How much more is it a danger to become focused on these means and not the end for which those means exist!

Humility is bad when you delight in how humble you are! To put yourself beneath or under these ceremonial requirements may seem like "humility" but it isn't the humility which God has called us to. Indeed it can become a dangerous substitute for it. In the same way, being enamored with the angels may seem like humility, it may sound humble to go on about how we are even lower than the angels so we should learn of their higher ways, but it's not what God called us to. It is a misuse of a thing, humility, which is good in its proper context. 

Read the whole second chapter, particularly the last part. The Colossians were falling for this, both in terms of these religious ceremonies and in regards to the religion of angelic beings. It isn't that this stuff is bad in itself, there is a good purpose served by them, but they are not the purpose. 

Let us keep our eyes upon Jesus. If the wonders of His Work and Person are not enough, perhaps it is because they are not known as well as they should be known. My book on Early Genesis is about just that. 

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