A L

261 reputation

bio	website
	location
	age
visits	member for	7 months
	seen	May 7 at 1:37
stats	profile views	14

	261 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	7 months
6 badges		location			seen	May 7 at 1:37

summary answers questions tags badges favorites bounties reputation activity

62 Actions

suggestions reviews revisions comments badges posts accepts all

May 7	comment	how old is Judaism? @userunknown, that's why I only brought up artifacts, not what secular scholars think (based on their own interpretation of the Bible, archeology, and how they understand Middle East Bronze Age culture/religion, and if you're interested in that, see NOVA's "The Bible's Buried Secrets") nor what is traditionally believed in Orthodox Judaism (because for that you could reference Tanach which provides, in relative terms, a timeline of when things happened, and coupled with Seder Olam from the 2nd century we can date, for example, Mt. Sinai to 1313 BCE). What approach are you looking for?
May 5	comment	how old is Judaism? @userunknown I felt the information was relevant but couldn't fully address your question. If you want what is accepted among scholars about when different parts of Tanach were written, by whom, and why, it's not what is accepted among Orthodox Judaism.
May 5	revised	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? minor reword
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @Fred Of course Hashem could have made a wall of water anyway, the only thing is that's not what the Torah says. Regarding R'Yochanan, please clarify: Are the other opinions that the whole planet was covered and he says the whole planet besides Israel? And does Israel include all of the Middle Eastern places where we see civilization continuing? I'm not sure what you're getting at.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA I don't know what the Torah means. But if you will suggest something counter-intuitive I would prefer an actual source or good reason before I accept it.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA My point stands that it must have been a very small regional flood to make that type of argument considering the locations of surviving civilizations, and if so, not only does that push against everything the Torah says and implies, it basically means the flood was pretty pointless.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA okay, I see your point, however the clearest interpretation still implies that human civilization didn't breed cattle before him. And it doesn't change the fact that, while I suppose it's still possible and probably the best explanation so far, it's really hard to see how the Torah could mean anything other than human civilization started with Adam.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA okay, I'll take Artscroll out of the question.
May 5	revised	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? Ok, I'll leave out Artscroll.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA I was short on characters, I meant some of his direct descendants. There is a direct linage, for example, between Adam and Jabal, Jabal being the "first of those who dwell in tents and breed cattle". If the Torah meant that human history is much older than that, you wouldn't expect him to be the first. (In fact, there is evidence he wasn't the first archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/cattle.htm ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC39419/pdf/pnas01511-0621.pdf and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1559968 ).
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @Ariel They do have evidence of uninterrupted civilization (and there are also links to show old civilization, I was including both). I included evidence of pyramids, cuneiform, and a specific city existing before the flood, all of which are known to have existed after the flood, thus continuous civilization.
May 5	revised	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? Add request re specific answer type
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA Can you explain, then, why Noah needed to make an ark and save all the animals when they could have gone over to nearby unaffected Egypt? Or how the water level, said to cover "all the land", above the highest mountains, for one year, didn't some how flow over to anything else? Any explanation that say the Mabul wasn't global doesn't really seem to be supported by messorah or logic.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? Can you please cite where Rambam said this? I don't have Tradition to look it up. I'm curious how he says Adam was allegorical when the Torah says he was God's first creation of Man, his family, how long he lived, etc. I'm also interested how the he understands the Torah speaking of Adam's children as being "the first to do xyz" which implies that there was not another unmentioned civilization. Can you cite who says the flood should be taken as regional (must have been a small region to leave pyramids and cuneiform) and why it was then necessary to keep countless animals on an ark for a year?
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @yair So various archeological dating methods all show the same thing, you are welcome to do further research if this sample isn't enough for you. Mainstream archeology unanimously agrees on this history, and the geological evidence (I can reference that extensively too if you insist) also makes more sense in context of a (relatively) old human history. So unless you can demonstrate why we have so much uninterrupted pre-flood history or how all of archeology is wrong, the question is not if these people existed before Creation and through the Mabul, it's "How can this be reconciled?"
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @yair cont. See bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11086110 discusses arrowheads that were 64,000 years old, found buried under ancient sediment. (I will take for granted that you agree sediment can even be that old, as it would be a whole other thing to bring evidence of an old Earth.) See nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6925/abs/nature01383.html for evidence of Indigenous Australians radiometrically dated to at least 20,000 BCE. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform with citations showing cuneiform in various forms from the Middle East dating well before the flood.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @yair see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… for buildings predating the flood (anything older than c.2270 BCE). See archive.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html and bbc.co.uk/news/10345875 re egyptian history extending before the flood confirmed by C14. See china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66806.htm re C14 dating early writing in China to c. 6400 BCE. Archeology indicates Elam en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam existed since 5000 BCE with written records from 3000 BCE.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @Ariel are you suggesting that if there would be evidence of a global flood and civilization starting anew 4000 years ago that everyone would be forced to believe in Hashem? I don't think that would be the case at all and certainly cannot be considered a reason for there to, in the completely opposite direction, be evidence of no flood.
May 5	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? @DoubleAA What I said was a stretch is that God might command us to sacrifice animals just because we were used to doing that, or, for example, there was no global flood and that the Torah would say things that contradict reality just to make it more understandable. Meaning, if you were to suggest that Noah's flood never was global but rather a regional flood and the Torah only was worded thus to make it understandable, it is a stretch to think that nobody would understand it if the Torah would say "There was a local flood that desolated the surrounding region due to the sins of the people."
May 4	comment	How are pre-creation >4000 BCE human civilization and pre-flood >2300 BCE civilizations that continued reconciled with Judaism? This explanation is that of Reform Judaism and not exactly what I was hoping for. To say the Torah relates lies just so people "get it" is a stretch. Do you suppose that when the Torah says that God rejected Cain's sacrifice but accepted Hevel's sacrifice that this story was written just so the Jews would be happy? But sacrifices are to return in the Third Temple even though the notion of animal sacrifice is looked upon as barbaric. And many commandments clearly contradict what was normal for people of the time. Even the Pesach lamb sacrifice went against the Egyptian culture they came from.