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by
Damien F.
Mackey
Noah and the
other survivors of the Flood would presumably (of necessity) have spent some
period of time in the region where the Ark had landed. Arabic sources from the 10th century mention a village called Thamanin, built by Noah at the foot
of Mount Çudi (Judi).
Histories
of the Sons of Noah
The
fourth Genesis toledôt (“family history”) was written (owned) by the
three sons of Noah:
4
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Genesis 6:9b
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Genesis 10:1a
|
Shem, Ham and Japheth
|
“This is
the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons
after the flood”.
This
triple-authored history, which provides us with an eye-witness account of the
great Flood, is followed by the famous Table of Nations (Genesis 10) and the
incident of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11): all Shem’s toledôt.
5
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Genesis 10:1b
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Genesis 11:10a
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Shem
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By now,
the three brothers must have gone their own separate ways.
But the repetition in the account of the Flood
bespeaks their previous multiple authorship.
For example:
Genesis Chapter 7,
18: "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the
earth".
19: "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth".
20: "Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail".
Also:
21: "And all flesh died that moved upon the face of the earth".
22: "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life and all that was in
the dry land died".
23: "And every living substance was destroyed".
French physician, Jean Astruc (C17th AD),
claimed to have discerned “three accounts” of the Flood story, instancing in
support of his claim these repetitious passages. It is with Astruc that the
documentary theory (JEDP) first began. He was quite correct about the number
of sources, but had no apparent awareness about their true origins.
The documentists have, in fact, given considerable attention to the
Flood narrative, thinking that the Hebrews would have borrowed it from the
Babylonian mythology. Eugene H. Maly, for instance, in his article “Genesis”
for The Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968), will accredit to the J (Yahwist)
source (2:44): “The Sons of Noah (9:18-27)”.
(Jawist (or Yahwist, from Yahweh) - describes God as Yahweh, and
is dated around 850 B.C.). And Maly will attribute to the P (Priestly) and J
source (2:45): “The Peopling of the Earth (10:1-32)”.
(Priestly - this encompasses writings scattered
from Gen 1 through the notice of Moses’ death at the end of Deuteronomy. It is
supposedly dated around 500 B.C.).
Let us briefly return to Noah. His other name is
said to have been Menahem (“comforter”).
“The apparent
discrepancy in Gen. [5:] 29, where it is said that Lamech "called his name
Noah, saying, This shall comfort us," is explained by the "Sefer
ha-Yashar" (section "Bereshit," p. 5b, Leghorn, 1870), which
says that while he was called in general "Noah," his father named him
"Menahem" (= "the comforter")”. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11571-noah)
It is generally agreed that 1656 years elapsed
from the creation of Adam to the Flood.
I have tended to follow Philip Mauro’s
(following Martin Anstey’s) biblico-centric biblical chronology (The Wonders
of Bible Chronology) as a handy “backbone” for this period, though I do not
consider it to be flawless.
Mauro’s date for the Flood, 2390 BC, will serve
as an approximation.
Noah and the other survivors of the Flood would
presumably (of necessity) have spent some period of time in the region where
the Ark had landed. Arabic
sources from the 10th century mention a village called Thamanin, built
by Noah at the foot of Mount Çudi (Judi).
It is impossible in the present state of our
knowledge to say any more about the duration of sojourn in this particular
region.
Afterwards, did Noah and his sons, their wives
and their children, remove to the “Shinar” region where there would later occur
the Tower of Babel debacle as recorded by Shem?
Ham’s ‘uncovering of his father’s nakedness’
(Genesis 9:22) is a euphemism for his having had sexual intercourse with Noah’s
wife. This was forbidden by the Law of Moses, e.g. Leviticus 18:7, translated
bluntly by NIV as: “Do not
dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your
mother; do not have relations with her”.
Possibly,
though, this wife of Noah was not Ham’s actual mother, but his step-mother.
“The
"Sefer ha-Yashar" (l.c.) and Gen. R. (xxii. 4) both agree that
Noah's wife was called Naamah. According to the latter, she was the sister of
Tubal-cain (Gen. iv. 21); according to the former, she was a daughter of Enoch,
and Noah married her when he was 498 years old. In the Book of Jubilees (Hebr.
transl. by Rubin, iv. 46-47) Noah's wife is referred to as "Emẓara,
daughter of Raḳi'el." Emẓara was his niece, and two years after their
marriage bore him Shem”.
Old Tobit
must have had some ‘inside’ information about Noah when he commanded his son,
Tobias (Tobit 4:12): ‘Remember,
my son, that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our ancestors of old, all
took wives from among their kindred. They were blessed in their children …’.
In
biblical fashion Noah cursed, not Ham, but the offspring of this illicit union,
Canaan (Genesis 9:25): ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to
his brothers’.
Table of
Nations and their Spread
All the
nations of the world, from the greatest to the least, descended from those who
survived on the Ark. Shem has listed these nations in what we now call Genesis
10.
Much has
been written about this “Table of Nations”.
Generally speaking, the Hamites are the most
dispersed and diverse people, both ethnically and linguistically. They will be
found, according to Genesis, in Asia Minor, Canaan, Egypt (North Africa), South
Africa, and Mesopotamia.
Likewise, the Japethites represent the Indo-European
peoples, that is, from Europe to India. This classification is usually
referring to linguistic similarities rather than ethnic, although the latter is
also a consideration. Looking at a relief map of the world, one can see that
these people are often mountain people.
Finally, from a biblical point of view, the Semites
are the center of God’s work. Semitic people come out of the desert. They are
Assyrian, Babylonian, old South Arabians, and, of course, the descendants of
Abraham. It is no coincidence that the three great monotheistic religions had
their origin among Semitic people.
Anomalies
arise, however.
The
Hittites, for instance, descended from the Hamitic Canaan (Genesis 10:15):
“Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites …”, are
later classified as an Indo-European people. “Scientists trace evolution of
Indo-European languages to Hittites”:
Presumably,
as the waters subsided after the Flood, individual clans would have reclaimed
the best of the habitable lands of a world that had now, no doubt, been altered
significantly due to the geo-tectonic upheavals caused by the mighty Deluge.
One of
the arguments posed by Creationists against the notion of a non-global Flood -
and it is quite a valid one - is that Noah could have, in such a case, moved
elsewhere, rather than having to have gone to all of the trouble of building
the Ark. The possibility needs to be considered, however (at least I think),
that the antediluvian “world that then was” (2 Peter 3:6) was not structured
the same as the post-diluvian world that later was. Noah may perhaps have been
unable physically to escape from the confines of his world due to, say, a
surrounding ‘Ocean’. Recall, for example, the ancient legends of an
earth-encircling River Okeanos.
The spread of ice may also have been a physically
limiting factor.
Previously
I had suggested that “the sequence of Stone Ages, Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic,
was both an antediluvian, and a post-diluvian, phenomenon”.
Lower
Palaeolithic is conventionally and unrealistically (to say the least) dated
1.76 million to 100 thousand years ago.
But, in
light of Dr. John Osgood’s “A Better Model for the Stone Age”, this inflated
figure is in need of serious shrinkage. For Lower Palaeolithic conditions were
part of the experience of the early post-Flood peoples - the Acheuleans being
one set of these, according to Osgood - when the lands were still affected by left-over
water:
A wet middle east and heavy strata build-up
The biblical model implies that there would have been much more water
left over in land basins as a result of the great Flood than would necessarily
be present today, and so we would look for evidence of large lake-like
accumulations in such possible basin areas. The biblical model certainly does
not insist on any particular weather conditions immediately after the Flood,
but wet conditions would certainly be logical in God’s planning for the
habitation of the post-Flood earth, and would be logical in terms of the
necessary rapid build-up of plant and animal life again after the Flood. As a
result of the Flood, there would have been much salt left on the land, so wet
conditions would have caused a washing off of some of this salt from the land
and a faster ability of non-salt-loving plants to grow adequately, allowing for
quick afforestation, an abundance of plant life, and hence a multiplication of
animal life after the great Flood. Wet conditions would have increased the
breakdown of mud-brick buildings, increasing therefore the build-up of strata
in tells during the early days in the Middle East and causing more rapid
build-up in caves, particularly in dolomite and limestone caves.
There is strong evidence for a very wet climate in the Middle East and
for left-over basins of water over many areas of the Middle East in the early
days which the biblical model would allow to be called post-Flood, but which
the evolutionary model would call the stone age.
Palestine in those early days showed evidence of great areas of water,
particularly filling in the north of the Huleh Basin:
‘It is currently accepted that during the period of Acheulean occupation
of the north-eastern tip of Upper Galilee, a large lake filled the entire Huleh
Basin while the mountains were covered by oak forests incorporating several
northern elements. such as Fagus. The surroundings were rich in various
animals, including a number of large species. The Acheulean site was apparently
located close to the ancient lake, in the vicinity of streams descending from
the Hermon (Stekelis and Gilead, 1966; Nir and Bar-Yosef, 1976; Horowitz
1975-1977).’9
Also in south-central Sinai:
‘Strikingly thick accumulations of sediments occur in Wadi Feiran and
its tributaries in south central Sinai (Fig. 1). Over the past three decades
these have been the subject of discussion with reference to their origin (fluvial
verses lacustrine) and their climatological and chronological significance.
In this note we describe an in situ Upper Paleolithic site, the first
known from south central Sinai, which places these deposits in a firmer
chronological context of about 30,000 to 35,000 B.P. and lends support to
previous climatological interpretations of a former wetter climate.’’10:185
And:
‘Nevertheless, the widespread occurrence of Upper Paleolithic sites
throughout the central Negev and down to the very arid southern Sinai would
suggest a regionally wet climate, which enabled the Upper Paleolithic people to
exploit an area which today is hyper-arid.’10:189
Furthermore, in east Jordan:
‘Briefly, the stratification in the north, west, and south trenches
reflects the existence of a Pleistocene pluvial lake that shrank until a
widespread marsh formed during the Early Neolithic.’11:28
….
‘During the Late Acheulian period of the Late Pleistocene, the scene
around Ain el-Assad was quite different: an immense lake, roughly five times
the size of the present Dead Sea (Rollefson 1982; Garrard and Price 1977)
stretched to the northern, eastern, and southern horizons. Once again, animals
would have been attracted to the lakeshore, yielding opportunities for
Neanderthal hunters to fulfill their needs.’11:33,34
Similarly, Alison Betts has suggested that in the Black Desert just
close to the same area in eastern Jordan there was once lush growth and a large
population of animals:
‘As far as hunting is concerned, the desert once supported large herds
of game, particularly gazelle, and evidence for the wholesale exploitation of
these herds is demonstrated by the complex chains of desert ‘kites’ lying
across what were once probably migration routes.’12
Next, Dr. Osgood turns to Egypt:
In Egypt also, wet conditions prevailed:
‘Naqada I and II are very remote times, and it is now known that
conditions in Egypt were then completely different from what they are today. At
Armant, for instance, south of Luxor, large trees had been growing sparsely all
over the low desert at a height of 20 or more feet above the present
cultivation level and, therefore, probably about 40 feet above in pre-Dynastic
times. The workmen told Mr. Myers that trees like this were to be found in
every part of the Nile Valley. Some of these trees at any rate were earlier
than either the Late or the Middle pre-Dynastic periods, for graves of these
dates had been cut through their roots. Again, a small Wadi had been silted up
and trees had been growing in it. This was all on the low desert, and similar
wet conditions are found to have prevailed on the high.’13
The testimony seems uniform that in those early
days, by whatever scheme they may be dated, conditions were wetter and large
areas of water-filled geographical basins, a picture that is thoroughly
consistent with the biblical model.
Such conditions, Osgood thinks, account for the
widespread use of the hand-axe:
Wet conditions and afforestation may well be one of the explanations for
the earliest type of culture found in many parts of the Middle East and Europe,
that is the Acheulian, the most characteristic tool of which was the hand-axe.
The need to clear land, to chop trees, and to build shelter from wet
conditions, as well as to shape tools such as spears for hunting in that early
survival culture, may well explain the ubiquity of the Acheulian hand-axe, a
fairly basic tool. But then, the conditions also were very basic, and survival
was the name of the game.
The most ancient sites of Jericho and Çatal
Hüyük evidence of multiple rebuilding:
The wet conditions may also explain the very large number of stone-age,
particularly Neolithic strata, in such places as Mersin, Catal Huyuk and
Jericho, where the main building materials were sun-dried mud bricks. In
north-eastern Iraq the Jarmo expedition found that the average expectation for
a ‘casually built house with some dried mud bricks and mud finished roof’ was
only 15 years.14 In much wetter conditions of earlier
days the life of a building may well have been considerably shorter, even half
that time, making rapid build up of strata with rebuilding of levels in tells a
very highly likely proposition.
Even the layers at the Carmel Caves, Osgood
suggests, may be explainable according to a Flood scenario:
Furthermore, the deep layers found in some of the caves, such as the
Carmel Caves, which are dolomite, may well be explained by the wetter
conditions which would give rise to the more rapid breakdown of rock from the
roof. Such cave-ins, which were evident in some of the Carmel Caves, along with
the increased trampling in of soil, dirt and mud as the people came home from
hunting, would have led to a rapid build-up of strata in such caves. It is
impossible at this point in time to give an accurate assessment of the time
taken for the build-up of these strata. Long periods of time that have
artificially been assigned to them simply cannot be sustained on any present
evidence. For these reasons, the biblical model stands as a reasonably good
scientific model on which to test the evidence.
Thanks to
Dr. Osgood’s significant re-setting of the Stone Ages, now in a Flood context,
those embarking upon a revision of history ought now be able to stand on far
firmer ground, and with a clearer outlook, for co-ordinating pre-dynastic
Egypt, Palestine (e.g., early Jericho), Turkey (Çatal
Huyuk), and indeed the early post-Flood world in general, with a relevant
stratigraphy.
Another Creationist, Anne Habermehl, has also made
some interesting observations on the early post-Flood era, the Ice Age, and pre-dynastic
Egypt:
HISTORY OF HUMANS IN EGYPT
Besides the geological indications, there are
archaeological and historical reasons to believe that the Nile Delta was formed
after the Ice Age.
Archaeologists find evidence of human settlement along
the Nile and in the eastern and western desert areas in earliest times, which
they call the Lower Paleolithic era. Secular chronology places these first
settlers back as far as half a million to a million years (Bard, 2007, pp.
69–71; Midant-Reynes, 2000, p. 25; Vermeersch et al., 2000, p. 321;
Wendorf & Close, 1999, p. 2). Biblical scholars believe that the
descendants of Mizraim, son of Ham (Gen. 10:6) settled in Egypt; interestingly,
Misr is the official Arabic name for Egypt today (Egypt, 2012). Habermehl
(2011) argues that Shinar, where the Tower of Babel was built, was in northeast
Syria, North Mesopotamia. The journey to the Nile area would have been about
1100 km for the group of Noah’s descendants who migrated in that southwest
direction.
These first Nile settlers lived a primitive
hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They have left many stone tools behind of a style
called Acheulean by archaeologists, named after the site of St. Acheul,
France (Bard, 2007, pp. 67–79; Lewin, 1999, pp. 145–47). This stone tool design
was used widely in Europe, Africa and the Middle East by the most ancient
peoples, suggesting that it may have been based on technology known before the
Babel dispersion.
People continued to live in the Nile Valley through
the Middle Paleolithic (about 250,000–50,000 yrs. ago) and Upper Paleolithic
(about 50,000–12,000 yrs. ago) (Bard, 2007, pp. 73–78). These figures for the
secular eras are approximate and vary with different sources. Because the ice
sheet did not extend to Egypt during the Ice Age, as it did in Asia and other
parts of the world, early people continued to live in Egypt along the Nile
during the main glaciation period when conditions were very arid (Maisels,
1999, p. 39). The climate in Egypt during the Ice Age would have been much
cooler than today. There appear to have been glaciers surprisingly close
to the Nile, as is shown by moraines in the Sinai Peninsula (Huxley, 1883;
Hume, 1901; Kurter, 1997, p. G1). Even those who are reluctant to accept this
admit to the glacial evidences (Greenwood, 1997; Smykatz-Kloss et al.,
2003, p. 112).
According to historians, those early people who had
lived along the Nile moved westward after the Ice Age during the time of wild
Nile flooding. They lived in the Sahara, which had become green and habitable
from the northward-shifted monsoon rains and showed a sudden blossoming of
archaeological sites (Goudie, 1999). During this period, there were no
evidences of human habitation along the Nile. Humans stayed in the Sahara until
the monsoon rains moved southward again, and the Sahara started to become a dry
desert as before. Around 5300–3500 BC, secular timeline, these people then
moved back to the Nile, which by now had settled down (Carey, 2006).
Some secular historians seem to miss the Ice Age as a
factor in the pattern of human movement—e.g., Grimal (1992, pp. 17–22), who
describes a break (end of 7th millennium BC, secular timeline) between the
prehistory of Egypt and its history, for reasons that are “poorly known.” He
does not mention either the Ice Age or the Nile’s wild flow. This shows that
secular scholars can have the same problem of lack of crossover of geology and
history as young-earth creationists.
Historians describe human occupation first in the
southern part of Egypt, with migration northward to the delta region later. The
first agricultural settlements in the Nile Delta date to about 5,000 BC on the
secular timeline (Holtz, 1969). This is well before Abraham’s Egyptian visit,
as we shall see shortly.
When people moved from the Saharan desert back to the
Nile, Egypt started to develop gradually from many groups of people with very
primitive living conditions to a more sophisticated civilization. At
first they lived in separate city states, probably each centered around the
worship of its own local god (Erman, 1894, p. 17). These city states developed
into provinces called nomes (Egyptian “sepats”), ruled by leaders called
nomarchs. In Lower (northern) Egypt, essentially the Delta, nomes were added as
the delta land was drained and made habitable (Petrie, 1911, p. 29). Possibly
the earliest Delta city was Buto, first settled nearly 5,000 BC secular time
(Kemp, 2006, pp. 86–89; Midant-Reynes, 2003, p. 56).
There is now much historical material available about
the late Predynastic Period, called Dynasty 0 by some (Raffaele, 2003; Bard,
2003, p. 57). A large number of kings are known to have reigned during this
time, but some of these could have been ruling concurrently, since unification
of Egypt under one pharaoh is believed to have occurred later at the beginning
of the 1st Dynasty (Bard, 2003, pp. 63–64). Both the red crown of lower (northern)
Egypt and the white crown of upper (southern) Egypt worn by the pharaohs for
thousands of years are attested quite early in this Predynastic Period. The
separate cultures of the two Egypts were therefore already developed before
unification (Wainwright, 1923; Bard, 1994; Midant-Reynes, 2003, pp. 41–56; Yale
News, 2011). An indication of late Predynastic occupation in the northern Nile
Delta is an artifact found buried 7.4 m below the surface near the
Mediterranean coast. The long, thin piece of dolomite is believed by scientists
to have been carried there by humans and could not have been deposited by
either the Nile or the sea (Stanley et al., 2008).
We can, therefore, conclude that there was
considerable human activity along the Nile and on the Delta after the Ice Age
but before the era of the Dynastic pharaohs.
A reliable indicator of climate is the clothes that
people wear. All the depictions of the ancient Egyptians point to a very warm
climate. For instance, the famous Narmer palette, a flat carved stone in the
Cairo Museum, dating to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, shows the king wearing
only a very short kilt; captives and others are shown naked (El-Shahawy &
Atiya, 2005, pp. 23–25). Clearly the Egyptian weather was warm by this early
time, and the cool Ice Age weather was long gone.
Recognition that the entire Ice Age from
beginning to end preceded the start of Egyptian civilization has clear
implications for those who write about chronological matters. Wright (2008)
states that there is a window of about 150–250 yrs. after Babel before Egypt
began constructing the 4th-Dynasty pyramids. Courville (1971, pp. 140–52)
believed that the Babel dispersion must have occurred only 37 yrs. before the
unification of Egypt (beginning of 1st Dynasty). Usshur (2003, p. 22) says that
Ham led his colony into Egypt around 2188 BC, about 54 yrs. after the Babel
dispersion; he then lists the Hyksos kings of Egypt (13th Dynasty) as starting
to rule in 2084 BC. In these problematic examples, there is no room for the Ice
Age. ….
