#48 2343BC to 2000BC

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #48

            Break out your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view.  So let’s look at some of the things that start to appear in the historical record of different civilizations between 2343BC and 2000BC. We start to see some of the earliest archeological and geopolitical evidence of literature, religion, arts, music, technology, and family life of many world civilizations during these few centuries. Some are; Aramean, Semitic and Canaanite tribes in Palestine, the Yao & Shun Dynasties in China, Babylonian, as well as early Indian and Scandinavian cultures found in Neolithic or primitive stages of development.

            A special note on the Egyptian chronology: I will mention the commonly held dates for the Egyptian chronology as we go through these ancient events. However I would like to point out that there are some weaknesses in the commonly held Egyptian chronology. The main weakness in the current system is its heavy dependence on two faulty sources, Manetho's king list and Sothic dating. The ancient kings list, written by Manetho an Egyptian priest around 300 BC, has some significant holes. Its greatest weakness though is that it does not account for overlaps and co-regencies for which there is strong evidence. By the mid-second millennium BC it is off by a couple of hundred years. This will become important when we get to the Exodus.  The Sothic cycle, which is a 1461 year cycle associated with the Dog Star Sirius, is also an important bench mark to the current chronology. The problem is where to drop the anchor.  We can, with great accuracy, track the Dog Star but where we plug it into the chronology when it is mentioned in ancient Egyptian inscriptions is a whole different question. If this topic peeks your interest I suggest you read three books; "Centuries of Darkness" by Peter James, "A test of Time" by David Rohl, and "The Riddle of the Exodus" by James D. Long (which also has a DVD).  While these three resources do not answer all of the questions in the mismatch between the biblical chronology and the commonly held Egyptian chronology, they do clear up a lot of inconsistencies and give one greater scholastic confidence in the divine record over and above its conflicting counterparts.

            Some of the other events occurring during this time period: the first Egyptian libraries starting to collect the new technology of writings on papyrus; potters wheels; maps; and the bow and arrow, are becoming a part of the human story in many regions. There is even a carving on a rock in Norway that depicts skiing.

            Let’s look a little at Chapter 10 & 11 of Genesis. Most of these two chapters are genealogy, commonly referred to as the ‘begats’ (so and so begat so and so, and so on and so forth). What we get here are the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. They all seem to have settled in the Land of Shinar, that would be the plains south of the mountains of Arrant and just north of Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).  After God divides their languages, Ham’s descendants migrated to the region southwest of the land of Shiner to the Sinai Peninsula and North Africa.  Japheth's descendants went to the northwest, to modern day Turkey, Greece and Europe. And Shem's descendants took the region from modern day Israel and Palestine and all points east. Descendants of Shem are called Semites. All Jewish and Arabic peoples are his descendants. We can deduce a general time frame for the Tower of Babel event by looking at a few key notes in the genealogy. If we look at 10:25 we find  ...Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. His name means ‘divided’ because the earth was divided in his lifetime. This could well be a reference to the Babel event. Peleg was probably born around 2247BC around 100 years after the flood giving 8 people ample time to heavily populate the plain at Shinar. Because each or the three sons of Noah's descendant list ends with the phrase "these are the sons of ---, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations." it is safe to assume that when God divided them by language He did so along family lines. Peleg lived for 239 years but the Tower event probably happened in His youth or even just before his birth since he was named ‘division’. Over the next 100 years large tribes descending from Noah's three sons migrated to their respective regions and over the next 80 years some of the descendants of Peleg migrated to the land of Ur just northwest of modern day Kuwait on the Euphrates River. One of those descendants was Abram born around 2166BC, and that will be a good place for us to close this lesson. Enjoy the rest of your summer in Christ Pastor Portier

#47 The Flood

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #47

            Break out your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. So we back tracked a little last month and spent a some time on Noah's preparatory work leading to the day of departure.  Now, it is a beautiful day in 2344 BC and the weather starts to take a turn for the worse....all aboard!!!

   

            On the seventeenth day of the second month in 2344 BC after spending a week loading the Ark at God’s command, Noah and his family and all the animals were safely tucked in....and "The Lord shut them in" Gen 7:16b. The fountains of the great deep burst forth and rain fell for 40 days. Unlike the way most people understand the narrative, that is just the beginning of this sea story.  After the initial 40 day water storm they did not bump into a mountain and hop off. The waters prevailed for 150 days. That means this water hit and or remained at full flood stage for 5 months.  Noah’s sea journey ended when they finally bottomed out and came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. But the ark was still surrounded by water. It was another two and half months before the mountain tops appeared above the water around them. The water continued to slowly recede for another 150 days. (Where did all that water go? Ice caps) 40 days later Noah sent out the raven. A week passed between the time he sent the raven and each of the three times he sent a dove. By this time they had been on the ark for about ten months and two more months would pass before the land was dry enough to live on. Then just as obediently as he boarded the ark a year earlier, Noah and his family and all of the ark’s residents debarked in 2343 BC to re-inhabit the earth.

            I would have liked to cover this account with dates. However, between the Jewish twelve 30 day months, lunar calendars with 28 day months, and the modern Gregorian calendar some ancient dates are nearly impossible to pinpoint. The best I could do is say these years are probably within single digit years of the actual events and definitely not off by more than a few decades. I would also say that while a ‘fall to fall’ sequence is possible it was probably ‘spring to spring’ because of the Jewish method of numbering months. There are many scholars, much smarter than I, who have not figured this out and many claim it is a futile pursuit. That being said, when covering a historical chronology, some dates are more solid than others but you need to choose a date. The dates I have chosen for the flood narrative are the spring of 2344 BC to the spring of 2343 BC. After 371 days on the ark, they left and thanked God for delivering them through the waters that cleansed the world with a sacrifice of some of every clean animal and bird.

            I do not have enough space this month to address the years leading up to and including the Tower of Babel so we will start there next month.  Keep in mind that from this point forward we will be in a post-flood narrative so that biblical history will start to line up nicely with extra biblical narratives. We also have the earth’s continental and oceanic arrangement in place after the flood which exist today. A lot has happened to our earth’s geography over the past 4300 years, like the Ice age and the ancient inland lakes mentioned in lessons 35 & 36.

That is all for today class, have a great summer!

See you next month

In Christ Pastor Portier           

Lesson #46 Noah preperation

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #46

            Break out your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical worldview. We have traveled through 1656 years of world history and have come to the worldwide flood. We discussed evidence of this event last year in lessons 34 through 37 when we addressed Plate Tectonics, the Ice Age, and Ancient Lakes and Fossils. These four lessons give great evidence in our world’s natural geography and geology of a worldwide flood not a localized event that is used by many to dismiss the biblical account. Genesis 6-9 is a ‘second hand’ eye witness account, recorded by Moses but revealed to Him by God.   

            So in approximately 2444BC, Noah, a humble God fearing man 500 years of age, was told by God to build an ark.  First let me note that I am making an assumption that Noah, whose age is given as 500 in Gen  5:32, is still that age 14 verses later in Gen 6:14.  Scripture does not tell us how old Noah was when God actually gave him this instruction. So for those who believe the 120 years in Gen 6:3 are not a limit to human life but a limit to the years before the flood, Noah is then 480 years old when he got this instruction. (We do know from Gen 7:11 that Noah was 600 when the flood started) So from whichever age, for the next 100 or 120 years, he and three of his sons built an ark that many today say could not be built. Well, contrary to that belief, not only does the technology exist but you will be able to see a life size replica in Williamstown KY in 2015. The "Ark Encounter" plans to start construction either this year or in 2014.

            Before we discuss the ark narrative and time line let me first point out that there are hundreds of ancient worldwide flood narratives and just about every culture has an ancient flood narrative as part of its cultural heritage. Although hyper-skeptics use this to argue that the flood narrative is a plagiarism from other accounts like "Gilgamesh", it makes more sense that it is indeed accurate because all of the descendants of Noah and his three sons have some parts of this flood account in their narratives and histories. Flood accounts are part of who they were and where they came from. Unfortunately due to the division of language and people at Babel, and the hardships of populating the world under ice age conditions, all other accounts were corrupted by embellishment or loss of information.             

            We know very little about those 100 or 120 years between Gen 6:14 & 7:11. However we can make some reasonable deductions based on what we do know. The dimensions and ratios given for the ark are the ideal for nautical stability and self-righting. Feasibility studies have been done and if you care to revisit lesson 26, Kind v/s Species (see link above), you will see that there was more than enough room for pairs of 6000 kinds of animals, seven pairs of each clean animal. There was room for food, fodder and anything and everything needed for a long trip at sea. As a matter of fact when you do the simple supply math for this year- long trip, you see the real question was not ‘was there enough room’, the real question is ‘why is there so much room?’. Once you put all that scripture describes, and all that could be logistically needed for such a voyage together, you find that one third to one half of the upper deck was additional space that could be used. (Now I know what you are thinking, Noah's wife and her three daughters- in-law would have no problem filling that available closet space :-)......

            But actually that open space shows that God loves us so much that even though He knows everything,  He hoped that others would come to their senses, turn to God and join Noah on the ark.  This is of course speculation but it is in keeping with God’s loving and giving character to provide more that enough space, more than enough blessing, more than enough love, to redeem and cover the needs of all His creation. Trusting in his promises, receiving His great gifts of faith and salvation.

            Next month we board the ark! 2344 BC

In Christ

Pastor Robert Portier

Lesson #45 3000BC to 2344BC

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #45

            Breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. Let’s wrap up the antediluvian time frame from where we left off last month: 3000 BC to circa 2350 BC—the 650 years leading up to the worldwide Flood.

            Let me first mention one of the books I plan on using to highlight some of the events in history: "The Timetables of History." Interestingly, this book has over 700 pages and covers the first 3000 years of history on 2 pages (it starts in 5000BC).  It gets through the next 2000 years in 25 pages; the first 1000 years AD are covered in 16 pages; the reminder of the book (over 80%) is spent on the most recent 1000 years. I think this is an excellent representation of the amount of information that exists at different points in history—the further back you go, the sparser the information becomes.           

            However, we have some good information in Scripture covering this period of time. The world we observe today can provide clues about the pre-flood earth, but we must keep in mind that geographically speaking, the world was probably very different. In lesson 34 we discussed plate tectonics which can help us to understand how the pre and post flood earth would be geographically different.

            So let’s take a look at this 650 year period and see what Scripture tells us. Chapter 5 of Genesis starts with Adam’s death (as I mentioned last month) at the ripe old age of 930.  In the following centuries this line of patriarchs passes away at the rate of one about every 50 years. They all did live for a very long time—by our standards, a miraculous amount of time: Seth 912, Enos 905, Cainan 910, Mahalaleel 895, Jared 962, Methuselah 969, and Lamech (Noah's father) 777.  The chapter ends with Noah fathering three sons at the age of 500.  These ages and this sequence of events can produce a number of valid questions from post-flood people who rarely make it to 100 years old. Did they really live so long? Were Shem, Ham and Japheth triplets born to a man five centuries old?

            These questions have some good answers but they are speculative.  The truth is we know Scripture plainly claims these ages in chapter 5 of Genesis, and we cannot know for sure the answers to the above questions.  But we can come up with some good theories that coincide nicely with the biblical narrative.

            First let’s discuss Noah's three sons. It is possible but unlikely that He had triplets, because Genesis 5:32 says "After Noah was 500 years old." So these three sons were born to him after his 500^th birthday.  Noah probably had other sons and daughters but these were the three who helped him build the ark.

            Next, this question of long ages—there are a number of good possibilities to help explain this, and we can draw on some clear biblical truths to put them together. If we keep in mind that Adam and Eve were created to live eternally, 930 years in comparison is a relatively short life span.  Before sin came into the world, Adam and Eve were genetically perfect.  It took centuries of sin, death, disease, and the accumulative effect of the loss of genetic information and mutations to shorten the human lifespan. This is all due to the harsh nature of life following the curse due to sin. It has been further theorized that the world had a vapor canopy like many planets in our solar system, and ours was made of water filtering out harmful rays from the sun that cause and accelerate aging.  This could further explain longer life spans that preceded the flood.  It is finally helpful to look at Genesis 6:3 which says Then the Lord said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." This could mean that the flood will be in 120 years or it could mean that God intentionally limits man’s lifespan to 120 years to limit the affects of our sinful nature.

Whatever the cause, life spans gradually decrease in 15 generations from Noah to Moses.  Human life spans are reduced to an average of 120 years.

            Now that we have covered the first 1656 years of world history, I think the Flood account in Genesis 6-9 will be helpful in understanding all the history and geography that follows. So we will start an in-depth study at the worldwide flood of 2344BC (approximately) and consider some of the things we can learn from this historic event.                    

Till next month, blessings.  Pastor Portier  

Lesson #44 4000-3000 BC

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #44

            Breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. Now that we have defined prehistory lets start our trek trough recorded history.

            We will cover the first 1000 years following the creation, circa 4000 to 3000BC. The world of recorded history still has very little for us because the practice of writing even in pictograph form by most accounts is in its infancy during this millennium.  Sumerian tablets show a pictographic based writing containing some 2000 signs. Some of the earliest Babylonian omen tablets that predate Hammurabi's code date from this period. Some of the earliest wedge shaped Sumerian cuneiform writing starts to appear around 3500BC.      

           

            Keep in mind that this first 1000 years is the Pre-flood or antediluvian earth. This means that we are dealing with an unknown geography, the land mass that ended up being the cradle of civilization and is now called the Levant or the Middle East may have been quiet different.  So when we speak of the earliest clay and stone examples of writing these are either pre flood artifacts or they are actually about 1200 years younger than is commonly held because they would have developed following the flood.  This makes more since as much of the advances of civilization would have been lost except that which Noah would have brought with him on the Ark. This miss match of dates will continue until we get to 2344 BC when commonly held dates and biblically recorded dates will come more in line with each other.  

            Other commonly held developments we find in that first millennium; The Egyptian lunar calendar, Earliest carbon dated cities in Mesopotamia, Cretan ships in the Mediterranean, The beginning date of the Jewish calendar 3760BC, this makes 2013 the year 5773 on the Jewish calendar.  The Myan calendar starts in 3373 BC, they were not around for the end of their calendar so maybe they were not around in the beginning or they were acknowledging a common ancestry.   Evidence has been found of masonry, metalsmithing of copper, gold and silver, wheels, linen, agriculture, animal husbandry, written numerals, pottery, harps, lyres, flutes, and ceramics.  We would expect to find high levels of technology and civilization from people who live for hundreds of years and were being fruitful and multiplying to a pre-flood population of billions by the time of the flood.  

            You might ask how can two people Adam and Eve multiply to such a vast population in only 1656 years, give or take a few.  Well they were created to live for ever and while death did come into the world Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930, for that matter so did most of His children.  When Adam died in 3070 BC The following individuals could have attend the funeral;

            His son Seth age 800,                                       grandson Enos age 695,           

            great-grandson Cainan age 605,                        great great-grandson Mahalaleel age 535,        

            3x great-grandson Jared age 470,                     4x great-grandson Enoch age 308,

            5x great-grandson Methuselah age 243,            6x great-grandson Lamech a mere toddler at age 56,

Noah would not be born to Lamech until 126 years later so he would not have been there. God would not limit mans life span to 120 years until after the flood. So back to the question about being fruitful and multiplying, if eight generations of your sons can attend your funeral, and if you and they are being blessed with children at the rate of one every other year and the child bearing years seem to be earliest age 65 Enoch oldest 502 Noah, then you will have an exponential population growth and getting to billions in 1656 years is quite easy mathematically, however raising such a large brood may be another matter.  That is enough for this month, we will try to wrap up the antediluvian time frame next month and maybe even cover a few more years.

Have a blessed Easter season

In Christ Pastor Portier                  

Lesson #43 Pre History

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #43

            Breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. Last month as we defined history, I mentioned prehistory, and in order to give a thorough treatment of history, we must have a brief discussion of prehistory.  I say brief because  as a “young earth” creationist, I believe most, if not all, topics of discussion in the bulk of scientific study that would fall under the umbrella of prehistory to be incorrectly dated.  However, just because I disagree with the majority of experts on the timing of prehistoric research, does not mean there is not a lot of valuable information to be drawn from that research. So what we will do in this lesson is see how a young earth creationist can piece together all the great information in the prehistoric realm of study (what is popularly held to be a period from 3.5 million years ago to around 5000 BC when ancient recorded history began), and logically plug that information into the biblical timeline that starts around 4000BC.  I would like to suggest that all that is called prehistory can fit logically into a timeline that starts around 4000BC and ends around 1500BC.  This proposal will seem ridiculous to some, but in the area of prehistory, all timeline assertions are based for the most part on Carbon 14 dating and other assumptions.  I addressed these false assumptions in lessons #21 and #22.  In order to do this, we must first discuss the commonly held timeline for prehistory, and then discuss how that can be applied to a biblical timeline.

            Prehistory forms the popularly held three-age world view:  Stone age 3.5 million to 4500BC, Bronze age 3750 BC to 300 BC, and Iron age 1300 BC to 400 AD.  You will notice some peculiar things about my summary of ages here. First, there are some major overlaps and second, this goes deep into the time of recorded history. This is because I have summarized the entire world’s progression through these ages.  Different regions of the world entered and exited these ages at different times.  What I have listed here is the earliest entry into an age followed by the latest exit from that age.  These ages are determined by when these regions progressed through these technologies (stone, bronze, iron) be it through conquest, commerce, or ingenuity. Prehistory also starts at different times in different places based on the development of written languages which is popularly held to be between 3500BC and 2500BC. Ancient history is typically defined as around 3300BC to 600 AD. To finish things out, the Middle ages is popularly defined as 300AD to 1500AD with the Renaissance starting around 1350AD, and the modern period beginning as early as 1450AD. Again you will see overlaps due to different regions entering and exiting these ages at different times. As you can see in a discussion of world history, a simple question of where to begin can be a bit complicated.

            I propose that all of the prehistoric scientific dates listed above are simply misdated and can logically be placed in a biblical prehistoric time of 4000BC to 1500BC. During this biblical period of prehistory, the world was created around 4000BC, plus or minus no more than 50 years.  The world was populated to about 25 billion in the first 1650 years. Then the world was destroyed in a flood around 2350BC reducing the population to 8 and covering the earth with a large fossil layer and causing what remained of pre-flood civilization to be hard to date and analyze because of the vast geographic and geological changes that took place. In the 700 years that followed the flood, large ice caps formed and receded (see lesson #35).

            From a biblical perspective, the oldest written words are found in the book of Job from around 2000 BC. The next books in line are the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses from 1446 BC to 1406 BC during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  While we can have an intelligent debate on when history began, you would be hard pressed to find any written historical accounts that talk about events that predate 4000 BC because they do not exist.  This means that all discussion of prehistory must depend on areas of research outside the realm of written history.  When it comes to written history, the most dependable is the written account of a first hand witness. What we have in Genesis, chapters 1 through 11, is the first hand account of the Creator given directly to Moses for him to record in the Hebrew language some 3400 years ago. So we will start next month where the Bible starts, at 4000 BC, and we will address in small digestible chunks of time, the life, technology, art, faith and politics of God’s vast creation.

In Christ, Pastor Portier        

Geography & History intro Lesson #42

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #42

            breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. I chose to cover these two topic together because when we speak of Geography we will discuss the world from the prospective of countries, kingdoms and boundaries and the only way any map is correct is if it has a date on it, because countries, kingdoms and boundaries are always changing and in flux.  That being said the Bible is the greatest source for geography and historical information in all of antiquity. Not because it is a geography text or a history text, quiet to the contrary, purely as an incidental reality because the Bible contains so many names of people and places and chronological narratives and in-depth, detailed descriptions of, legal, spiritual, and cultural practices of peoples in their context, it is an invaluable resource for Historians, Cartographers, Archeologist, Paleontologist, and any other field of scientific study that touches on any aspect of God's creation.           

            That being said lets start by defining Geography & History (what follows is a paraphrase of what you can get at good old Wikipedia.

            Geography: Geography is from Greek geographia, "earth description" is the science that studies the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of the Earth.  A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC). Historically there are Four traditions in geographical research. Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexities. —not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences". Geography is divided into two main branches: human geography and physical geography.

            History: History is from Greek historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation" this is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about these events. The term includes cosmic, geologic, and organic history, but is often generically implied to mean human history. History can also refer to the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and analyze a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect.

            Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present. Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends, because they do not support the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.

            Herodotus, a 5th century B.C. Greek historian is considered to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their influence has helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in University studies.

            George Santayana, a 20th century Spanish-American philosopher wrote in his book Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." this was a modification of Edmund Burkes statement in the 1700's, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.". I have also heard this said as "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it". I would further state it this way. "Mankind's sinful nature will repeat itself and our knowledge of history and application of its lessons will have little affect on the pain and suffering sin will cause in the future, however the forgiving healing reconciling nature of Christ will heal all wounds of the past present and future.
In Christ Pastor Portier