Most Ancient Days

A Preliminary Note

2011-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

It has occurred to me that this work deserves a wider reading than its original limited distribution allowed, in the mid-1990s. I will refrain in this brief forward from indulging in many personal references. My most active blog, Forgotten Prophets, overflows with my idiosyncratic ruminations. But I'll share one thing. My relationship with God is not as untroubled as it was in that previous decade. I was tempted to remove any pious sentiments in this work, since they no longer reflect my current state, in God's grace. But I have chosen to leave the work unmolested. I would not dishonor that younger man's naivety, even in the light of my later anguish. He was not wrong, that younger self. I'm wrong. Perhaps I'll emerge from this long wilderness and rejoin the communion. But everyone must pass through his own night.

Regarding this text, I've had great difficulty in posting it. All of the endnote citations have been lost, due to incompatible formats and awkward conversion programs. I could enter the information manually, but I have no reason to, at this point -- my time is limited, and interest in the topic is likely to be limited. Likewise with the charts, graphs and tables -- so far, 5 chapters in, only one has survived. Again, I have hard copies, and I have the original computer files, somewhere. Perhaps over time I'll post them. We shall see. I will be adding chapters, on no particular schedule.

In any case, I hope that any reader of these chapters will be edified. I wrote them in good faith, and I believe my conclusions are correct, in general outline if not in perfect detail. This is copyrighted material, and I trust that fact is honored. Fair use is permitted, and encouraged, but the usual limitations are asserted.

J

Most Ancient Days: Preface

2011-02-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

Most Ancient Days:

A Biblical Reconstruction of Ancient History

from Noah to Saul

Jack H

==========

Books by

Jack H:

Idols of the Cave:

the Arguments of Evolution

* * *

The Pillars of Heaven:

Creation, Fall and Flood

According to Science and the Bible

Dragons in the Earth:

Ark and Ice Age

According to Science and the Bible

* * *

The Serpent in Babel:

Fire-worship, Astrology and the Mystery Religion

from Eden to Babylon

* * *

Most Ancient Days:

a Biblical Reconstruction of Ancient History

from Noah to Saul

The Days of Brass and Iron:

a Biblical Reconstruction of Ancient History

from Saul to Alexander

=========

Table of Contents

Preface: World Views

The Age of Legend

1 — The Number of the Years: Biblical Chronology from Adam to Saul

2 — The Age of Evil Imagining: the confusion and scattering at Babel

3 — The Generations of the Sons of Noah: the Table of Nations

4 — Cities of the Twin Rivers: Shinar from Babel to Sodom

5 — Profane Fables: errors of the standard paradigm

6 — Kings of the Nile: Egypt from Babel to Sodom

The Age of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

7 — Stones of Sumer: the "Sumerian Period"

8 — Sands of Egypt: the "Middle Kingdom" & the "Archaic Period"

9, 10 — The Age of Base Metals: the confusion of the Bronze Age

The Scepter of Israel

11 — Joseph Over the House of Pharaoh: Egypt in the 1700's

12 — The Pharaoh Who Knew Not Joseph: the "Old Kingdom" to the Exodus

13 — Moses, Prince of Egypt: Dynasty XIII & the First Intermediate Period

14 — Into the Hands of the Living God: the Ten Plagues of Egypt

15 — Rise Up and Get You Forth: Exodus & Wilderness

Judges Over the Land

16 — Amalek, First of Nations: Dynasties XV & XVI

17 — The Kings of the East: from Sargon to Hammurabi

18 — When There Was No King in Israel: Middle Bronze IIB

19 — The End of Agag: Saul and Ahmose

==========

Preface:

World Views

Every reasonable person knows our world is billions of years old, and that the course of the planets have affected Earth only in the subtle, distant work of gravity. Everyone knows about the many ice ages, and that humans Evolved from lower forms. Everyone knows about the slow migration out of Africa of the ‛human’ animal which spread and Evolved over the past 100,000 years, and about the gradual increase in the complexity of human culture over scores of thousands of years, and about the 10,000-years-old settlement of Jericho. Everyone knows that there was no Adam and Eve, no Fall from grace, no Flood of Noah, no Tower of Babel, no Long Day of Joshua.

Yet I maintain otherwise. You have before you a work which some may call lunatic-fringe, on a par with belief in a flat-earth. It may be accused of being religious, or ignorant, or of misusing evidence, or of not meeting the criterion of disinterestedness which is expected in any work of research. As to that, I trust that evidence and sound reasoning will speak louder than bigotry and ad hominem attacks.

I maintain that an issue should be decided on its merit — not on its popularity, and not on how readily it is ridiculed. I maintain that it is evidence, rather than conviction or bias, which should decide an issue. I propose a different set of ‛truths which everybody knows’.

When I was in my early teens, I read all the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, including the Pellucidar series which told of a fantastical, Mesozoic world at the core of our planet. Later, at age sixteen, I came across a book by a fellow who insisted that Earth actually was hollow, with openings at the poles. I dimly recall that he used as evidence the fact that icebergs were not salty: where else could such mountains of ice come from, if not from the very poles themselves? What he said about Antarctica I do not recall.

I have encountered flat-earthers, and alchemists and ritual magicians, and communists and atheists and evolutionists and reincarnationists. And I have come to see that, while such world views may be fringe or mainstream, they are all based on uncritical faith and a less-than-rigorous acceptance of ‛evidence’.

Karl Marx spent years in the Library of the British Museum, gathering information which he used to support his argument, with its prediction that the most industrialized nations would be the first to become communist. His analysis of history as the struggle between classes is the absolute soul of his system. The validity of that analysis is not to be questioned by the faithful. But what if the ‛evidence’ which Marx used does not support his thesis? Then his ‛dialectical materialism’ becomes just another system of dualistic metaphysics — a religion which does not know it is a religion.

Hinduism and Buddhism have been swallowed whole by New Agers, who regurgitate their faith in a form more palatable to Westerners. The hopelessness of karma is reinterpreted as a system of justice to which is added the escape tunnel of mercy. It is okay that women are raped and children tortured and babies murdered or born deformed, because that is karma, and they will get another chance, and they deserve what they get anyway for acts they committed in past lives. The First ‛Noble’ Truth, of Buddhism, is that life is pain, and the highest goal of life is to become non-existent. The godhood which reincarnationists claim for themselves does not last, since god ‛itself’ is an illusion — froth which sinks down once more into the sea of nothingness. But while we may put words together in a pretty or poetic way, the image and what is real need not be the same thing.

Atheists point to the fact that God has not in the flesh introduced Himself personally to them or any of their friends, and from this observation they conclude that there is no God. "Everyone who says otherwise is just too uncritical and emotional. Those who claim to have had communion with some Creator are deluded or brainwashed, or simple-minded or insane, or they're engaged in wish-fulfillment, or they can't tell when they're dreaming, or they're wrong in some other way . . . but they are wrong. Only randomness and unobserved laws of nature can explain the existence of ourselves and of the universe," says the atheist. "Only Evolutionism is true."

In my book Idols of the Cave I examine the arguments and the evidence used to support the claim that Evolutionism is scientific. The conclusion is that Evolutionism is a metaphysical philosophy dissembling as science, which distorts the fossil record with self-serving interpretations, rewrites the laws of nature, and uses shoddy and distressingly superficial ‛logic’. ‛Disinterestedness’ is not even an issue with regard to Evolutionism, since Evolution is absolutely foundational to the modern, naturalistic bias — no more to be questioned than one's own heartbeat.

Again, in The Pillars of Heaven and in Dragons in the Earth, I examine the positive case for Creationism. The age of the universe and of Earth and the six days of Creation, the physics of the Fall of Adam and the world and the great age of the pre-Flood patriarchs, the Flood and the fossil record and the geological evidence of stratified rock and of coal and of continental ‛drift’ and mountain-building, the Ark itself and the subsequent Ice Age — all these questions and more are dealt with from an evidentiary perspective. Here, my conclusion is that the more literally one takes the Bible, the closer one comes to reality — always remembering, of course, that there is such a thing as a figure of speech.

In The Serpent in Babel, I look at the origin and spread of paganism. Myths contain the hints and memories — though thoroughly corrupted — of the days before the Flood and of the time surrounding the confusion at Babel. The characters who were prominent at Babel were made into gods by later generations, and the true religion — known to all who cared to be informed — was perverted into the Mystery system which to this very day has obscured the fact that Messiah was prophesied long before Osiris died.

Now, in this book, Most Ancient Days, I address what I consider to be the final issue: not philosophy or physics or faith, but history. History and truth are different things, which may happen to agree. This is not a cynical or fatalistic statement, but simply a recognition of the limits of what history is. History is what we are told about the past. If it was not written down, it is not history. It may be archeology, or tradition, or myth, or even a correct guess, but it is not history. That some civilization once thrived may be a fact, but unless we can read their writings, or what their neighbors said about them, their civilization is not a historical fact, but rather an archeological fact. And we can learn a great deal from archeology — I do not mean any slight whatsoever. But just as a dentist and a barber do different jobs, so do the historian and the archeologist. Indeed, archeology is often the predecessor of history, as when libraries or archives are unearthed.

In this and its companion volume, The Days of Brass and Iron, I retell the history of mankind, from a precise beginning, to the Classical Age. We will proceed through history chronologically, as conceived in this reconstruction. I will not deal with one region at a time, but rather I will tell the story straight through. As a result, I cannot deal with, for example, each Egyptian dynasty according to its numerical order, and this will no doubt be a bit confusing: I am going to be talking about Dynasty XII before Dynasty III. Reference to the charts will be very useful. This topic is so large, and so challenging, that it must be, unavoidably, confusing. Where my prose fails, I hope the charts and tables will be of help, and visa versa. They are meant to complement each other.

In presenting this information, I affirm that I am certainly not disinterested in the conclusion. But my ‛yes’ means ‛yes’, and with that in mind I assert that I have striven to let the evidence speak for itself. In dealing with ancient history, the first and most troublesome problem is the lack of evidence, and the often contradictory reports of those elder historians who wrote before our ‛modern’ age. From the data, some information must be accepted, and some dismissed as corrupt. I have not given every detail, but I have given what I judge to be the relevant information. This is what every theorist does, and must do.

I have depended on the prior, ground breaking research of other writers, most prominently Immanuel Velikovsky. In his initial intuition that post-Exodus Egyptian chronology is grossly misunderstood, and in his proposal of an interplanetary cause for earthly catastrophes, Velikovsky arrived at great insight, and has significantly eased the task which I set for myself. He started with the Exodus, and allowed the logical implications to demand that conventional chronology be revised. While I disagree with some of what he proposes, this work would be significantly less detailed without his trailblazing effort.

In another sense, however, Velikovsky is irrelevant: the Bible demands a revision, and Velikovsky's greatest contribution was in providing an example of courage. For the most part, he revised only the history of post-Exodus Egypt. A more orderly approach must bring us to the same conclusions, except that it is clear that the whole of ancient history must be corrected.

I started with the assumption that the Bible contained a recoverable and valid chronology. From this assumption, the requirement immediately appeared that ancient history as it is commonly understood be revised. Making some simple and reasonable judgments (and with the aid of Assyrian and Persian king lists), we can firmly date the Flood, the days of Abraham and Joseph, the Exodus and the reign of Saul. With some rigorous research, we can date the confusion at Babel, and mark this as the start of the Empire of Nimrod. When we tie the end of his grandson Ur-Lugal's reign to the death of Amraphel, the outline comes into pretty clear focus. But the dates which the Bible gives are in harsh contradiction to standard chronology. Precisely how the confusion of the standard model of ancient history may be made rational, is the subject of this book.

Since virtually all of the more ancient dates produced by the conventional construction of history are in harsh contradiction with the data from the Bible, I will provide both systems, for ease of reference. To indicate the normal but incorrect dates, they will always be preceded by a symbol which indicates the specific erroneous timeline of some region and era.

The Old Babylonian (OB) timeline, generally off by about 700 years, is indicated by an asterisk [*]. Thus, the dates for Hammurabi (the great king of the Old Babylonian dynasty) are 1069-26/ *1792-50 — the first set is my correction, and the second is the standard albeit incorrect version of the OB timeline. Also relevant is the Egyptian timeline, which is utterly unpredictable, with no rule to guide us (due to the erroneous order of the Dynasties). This Egyptian timeline is indicated by an "equivalent" sign [≡] — suggesting both an E, and also the three kingdoms of Egyptian history. Of less importance in this volume is the Amarna/ Ashurite timeline [↕] (off by about 500 years), and the erratic Minoan/ Mycenaean/ Homeric [μ] and Anatolian/ Hittite [☼] timelines. Finally, dates or numbers which are simply wrong are indicated by double exclamation points [‼].

Now, there are passages in this work which may well be nothing but boring. I have given details of pharaohs about which almost nobody is likely to care. This is not an eat-your-vegetables book. If you are not interested in the topic of a paragraph, skim it or skip it. It is far more important that you see the over-all picture, than that you understand the minutia of archeology or historiography. But for the sake of completeness, and since it is in the details that a matter is established, I have been, admittedly, overly-precise.

But aside from the great wash of details, and behind the rigors of logic, the overriding theme of this book is that there is a God, who wrote a book by which we may come to know His character and the way to gain salvation — through Jesus Christ. I will not preach in this work, but that the Bible is true and Jesus is Lord is the backdrop against which every word appears. Some will take this clear statement of my bias as disqualifying my conclusions from serious scholarship. I offer no defense. Everyone has a religion. I state mine up front, and expect evidence to determine truth.

Chapter 1 -- The Number of the Years: chronology for Adam to Saul

2011-01-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1

The Number of the Years:

Chronology from Adam to Saul

In the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years . . .

— Dan 9:2

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness . . .

— 2 Tim 3:16

The Bible is the family tree of Jesus. The first verses of the first book of the Old Testament speak of the generation by Jesus of Creation. The first verses of the first book of the New Testament speak of the generation of Jesus through his ancestors. The last verses of the last book of the Old Testament speak of the Coming of Jesus. The last verses of the last book of the New Testament speak of the Second Coming of Jesus. The entire Bible tells a single story, of the coming of the Redeemer. This is not pious blathering — it is demonstrable fact.

Jesus is on every page of the Old Testament. When the Holy of Holies was veiled, it spoke of man's separation from God; when once each year the High Priest entered in, alone, it spoke of Jesus the High Priest, whose priesthood never ends. When the scapegoat was driven from the camp, it spoke of the rejection of Jesus. When Moses raised up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, it was a sign of the judgement of sin on the Cross. But the plan of the Bible could not be seen until the canon was completed by the New Testament. Noah stopped his account — transmitted to Moses, and so to us, in pictographs — at Gen 6:9. Shem stopped writing at Gen 11:10. The abrupt stop gave no hint of any continuation — but the theme is taken up again by a new writer, who carries the story along through new chapters.

The entire Bible is a chronology, having a single theme: the genealogy of one Man. Only the line leading to Christ is given chronological benchmarks. Eldest sons are often ignored: Seth, Shem, Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David are all younger sons, but highlighted by the Bible. The children of Cain are listed, but with no time frame. The clans of Edom are given, but only as a list of names. The lives of Moses and Aaron are detailed, but without those necessary details which we find in the chronological tables, of the age of their father at the time of their births. From Adam to Abraham, ‟there exists a record of an unbroken line of descent, and of one only, in which line the chronology is accurately preserved and safeguarded from error by the simple expedient of giving the father's age, in each generation, when that particular son was born through whom the line was to be continued . . .”

Of the sons of Noah, only the line of Shem is associated with a chronology, while those of Ham and Japheth are simply recounted, without reference to any time frame except that of the event at Babel. Japheth's lineage is most vague, concluding with the statement that the gentiles divided in their lands according to their tongue, families, nations. Ham's line notes Nimrod's kingdom, starting with Babel. And Shem's line remembers the division of tongues in Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided.

The Bible is about Israel, of course, but only in its relationship to God. The plot focuses on Israel, but the theme is God's plan for the redemption not only of Israel, but of all humanity. This is an important distinction — just as when we point at the moon, we do not focus on the finger, so when we read the Bible, the hero is not man, but God — Father, Son and Spirit.

Now, all this is theology, which is fine, since God and His plan is the theme of this work. But the plot is history. And there is an obvious conflict between history as it is told in the Bible, and the construction of history as we have it now, pieced together thousands of years later by humanistic historians. The evidence which these historians used to weave their tale will be studied in this work, but for now, let's consider their attitude toward the Bible.

‟The books of the Old Testament that deal with the early history of Israel are not historical narratives in the usual sense of the term. Rather, they are collections of reminiscences, of greater or lesser reliability, written down several centuries after the events they describe and rearranged and edited many times since. As they stand, therefore, they contain many anachronisms, contradictions, and obscurities . . .” At one level, of course, this is an aggressively offensive statement, to people who take the Bible on its own terms rather than on the subjective terms of those who for their own reasons cannot accept the idea of an actual God with an actual personality who gives actual revelations. But more to the point for our purposes, this quote reveals the assumptions of the secular arrangement of history.

What are these ‛contradictions’ which the Bible supposedly contains? Well, for example, ‟There are two conflicting accounts of the route the Israelites took through Transjordan, one (Num. 33) suggesting a direct route through Edom and Moab, the other (Num 20:12 ff. and Judg. 11:17) telling of a long detour through the desert to the east of these countries.” What can I say? Open up a Bible and see if this is a fair statement. It is incredible. This is the kind of abject stupidity that smart people fall into — where, instead of letting a text say what it says, one's active imagination inserts objections and explains away the clear meaning. I have spent much time dealing with the superficial — as of Evolutionism — and all I can say is that this is just another such example.

It is an absolute fact, in my judgment, that if the humanistic reconstruction of ancient history is correct, then the Bible truly is just a grab-bag of half-accurate reminiscences. But, again, the secular hypothesis — though truly elaborate — is the less elegant and ultimately less defensible theory, when compared to the chronology of history which I am proposing in this work.

But why should we suppose that the Bible has any more authority, any more claim to truth, than the imaginings of atheistic scholars? What is so special about the Bible? Briefly, of all the scriptures of any world religion, only the Bible contains prophecy. The atheist tries to explain away the accuracy of prophecies by saying that they were inserted after the fact. But the evidence for such a claim is [a] the fact that prophecy is accurate, and [b] the assumption that there can be no such thing as prophecy. So, the first reason I would give for taking the Bible as the final authority, is that it exhibits qualities which may well be characterized as supernatural. It demonstrates a mastery of the future, by which the prophets may be tested.

In terms of textual criticism or manuscript evidence, the prophetic books of the Bible clearly have internal consistency. The same can be said of virtually all supposed contradictions. Rather than defend this statement, I simply refer any reader to, say, Gleason Archer's A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, or his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. The Bible has a unity of world-view which spans the thousands of years of its composition (thousands, since Genesis contains the "Book of Adam"). In aesthetic terms, it has an undeniably lofty style, wedded to an unyieldingly realistic awareness of human nature. Despite the dogma of modernism and socialism, history everywhere demonstrates that man is a sinner who sometimes acts nobly, rather than a saint who sometimes sins.

While other "religious" writings conjure up a flaccid cosmogony, as vague and malleable as a child's lie, the Bible is, again, just unique. A superficial reading of the first few chapters of Genesis has led some people into confusion, but a studied reading leads to concrete insight: I refer any doubter to the first few chapters of my book, The Pillars of Heaven, which deals with the natural sciences.

In terms of the focus of this work — history — the Bible is utterly unique, in preserving the unbroken story of mankind from absolute earliest times into Classical times. People who do not have a firm grasp on ancient history may not appreciate what this means.

The most ‛palpable’ difference between the early chapters of Genesis and ‟all other forms of religious literature is the fact of [the Bible's] objective historical character. The religions of Greece and Rome, of Egypt and Persia, of India and the East, did not even postulate a historical basis.” This historicity is no incidental fluke: it is absolutely fundamental to both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths. If God did not make literal promises to Abraham, the Jews are not chosen. If there was no first Adam, there is no last Adam — Christ (2Cor 15:45). Because Abraham lived, the Jews were chosen; because Adam lived, Jesus Christ is Savior. Bultmann and Frazier may place the Bible on the same shelf as the Brothers Grimm and the Bhagavad Gita, but to do so is to make the Bible a liar — and the evidence, when objectively viewed, will not allow such a conclusion.

Where pagans find their origins in the nebulous murk of mythology, the Bible is explicit. Even the gentiles remember traditions of the young age of the world. But the Bible is unique. We might look at it as the world's oldest textbook of history: ‟apparently it did not enter into the minds of any of the scribes and scholarly men of those early nations to preserve connected historical records, year by year (dating from some definite era), as has been the universal practice of the modern nations.” Even the Assyrian chronicles do not succeed here, since the dates depended on the whim of the king. The Hebrews are the only exception: the Bible pays such close attention to chronological details that it is possible to account for every year since the Fall! This chronology is 100% consistent — there are no contradictions. I do not just assert this — I demonstrate it, as we shall see. The Bible is the only source of chronology prior to the first millennium bc, and even more impressive, it uses original documents, the chronicles of eyewitnesses. We will consider the writings of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but for now it is enough to stress the merely local character, of place and era, of such pagan writings.

Let's test my assertions as to the cohesiveness of the Bible, using the book of Genesis. This book of beginnings is composed of 12 individual books, most with titles preserved; they were written over about 2½ thousand years, by various patriarchs, Adam to Joseph. Moses edited these books together into a single scroll, but they have the force of primary documents. The first six of these separate books are identified according to the cuneiform convention of the colophon, or end title. There is confusion on this point, which has led to the same word being variously translated as ‛history’, ‛generations’, ‛account’, or ‛origin’; this word, tohledah, is used ten times in the titles of such books. (Before I give the details, let's understand that the conventional reading, by which the titles are made to precede their books, is reasonable, so there is no place for arrogance in this discussion.)

The first book (Gen 1:1 to 2:4) is named The History of the Heavens and the Earth, and tells of events witnessed in their entirety only by God. This book was no doubt given to Adam, as the Revelation was given to John. The second book of Genesis (2:5 to 5:1a) is called The Book of the History of Adam,○ and relates Adam's experiences in Eden and after the Fall. Cain's line is included here, either edited in by Moses, or written by Adam, who would have chronicled his wretched son's descendants. The third book (5:1b to 6:9a) is called The History of Noah, and contains a detailed genealogy, up until Noah was 500 years old, at the births of his three sons. The book ends with God's announcement of the coming Flood. (Notice that this book could not be by Adam, since it records the birth of Noah, who was born after Adam died.)

These first three books would have been transmitted to successive generations through pictographic, rather than phonetic (e.g., cuneiform) or even ideographic writing (e.g., Chinese). I have concluded this on deductive grounds, since writing simply does not appear in the archeological record until long after the Confusion at Babel — in fact, not until the very lifetime of Abraham. Presumably, some symbolic system of notations was used prior to this time, but it could not be considered proper writing. The visual medium which the earliest patriarchs used would have been supplemented by the poetry of epic and song. Whether Moses was using these very earliest pictographic documents, or translations written by, say, Shem or Abraham, is unknowable.

The fourth book (Gen 6:9b to 10:1a, 10:1b to 32) is called The History of Shem, Ham and Japheth, not because it is about them, but because it is by them. These men start the book by stating their father's character: righteous — it was not Noah boasting about himself, but rather the respect of his sons which caused these words to be written. In this book, they detail their father's life and events which occurred during and after the Flood. As a part of this book the genealogies of these three sons are included, in the second part of the book, which is subtitled The Families of the Sons of Noah.

The fifth book (Gen 11:1 to 10a) is called The History of Shem, who was, as it were, the High Priest of the post-Flood world. Noah lived for 350 years into the new era, but he was not really a part of it. This brief book is a moralistic narrative of the continuing rebellion of humanity, which led to the Tower of Babel event. In my book, The Serpent in Babel, I greatly expand upon this story, and upon the reason that it is Shem in particular who writes this section. The sixth book (11:10b to 27a) is called The History of Terah, and is a straightforward genealogy, from Shem to Terah at age 70, when the older brothers of Abram were born. (Since it was by Terah, it does not include the life of Abraham).

Notice the structure of these books. The first and fourth books tell of the creation of ‛new’ worlds; the first is told by the Trinity, and the fourth by the trio of Noah's sons. The second and fifth books (of Adam and Shem) tell of survival through God's judgement, first in the Fall, and then in the Confusion of tongues. The third and sixth books (of Noah and Terah) each give genealogies of ten generations, and stop at the births of three sons.

The rest of Genesis has three main parts, telling the story of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, and of Joseph in Egypt. Much more personal detail is given, because the stories were written not pictographically, but in literary form. What the system of writing was I cannot say, but the cuneiform convention of the colophon is interrupted by genealogies.

Book seven (Gen 11:27b to 25:11) includes the biography of Abraham. The name of this book as been excluded, and the use of the colophon is suspended. Thus book eight is the straightforward Genealogy of Ishmael (25:12 to 18), followed by book nine, The History of Isaac (25:19 to 26:35). After this, the biography of Jacob is taken up in book ten, called The History of Jacob (through Gen 37:2a); this book is interrupted by book eleven, the twofold Genealogies of Esau (36:1 to 8 & 9 to 43). Finally, the untitled twelfth book relates the story of Joseph, which takes up the rest of Genesis (37:2b to 50:26) — if it was not written by Joseph himself, it is perhaps more the work of Moses than any other part of Genesis.

Exodus takes up the story after several generations had passed. It has an entirely different style than most of Genesis — except perhaps the story of Joseph — since it is not an archival collection of the histories of ancestors, but instead the living experience of Moses himself. Rather than maintain the archaic style of the tablets, Moses abandons the colophon, and identifies his theme at the beginning, as the story of the sons of Israel in Egypt (Ex 1:1).

Secular history is founded on fragments only, as of the legendary Synchroniathon of the Babylonian Berosus, or the quoted scraps of the Egyptian Manetho — both of whom were pagan priests of the third century bc. All their original books have been lost, and we have only spotty quotations. Only when we get to Ptolemy, of the second century ad, do we have a foundation for a comprehensive chronological system (not just a history, such as that of Diodorus of Sicily), in his list of Persian kings, from Cyrus the Great to Alexander the Great. ‟Upon this ‛canon’ all modern chronologists have built their systems, and this for the simple reason that there is nothing else, apart from the Bible, for them to build on.” Ptolemy wrote seven hundred years after the events he describes, and cites no authorities. Worse, he is contradicted by Josephus, by the Persian traditions recorded by Fidusi, by the Jewish traditions in the Sedar Olam, and by the timing of well-known events. Worst of all, he is in conflict with the chronology of the Bible, reportedly by eighty years. This is a problem in terms of history (rather than of religion), because the Bible is primary documentation, of eyewitnesses, whereas Ptolemy's account has the weight of mere gossip. Likewise, for Egyptian chronology, Manetho is taken as the primary authority for the order and succession of the pharaohs, although we shall have cause to dismiss out of hand such a foundation (see Chapter 5).

Only in the first millennium bc does any concreteness come to define the gentile concept of history. And just when the "time of the gentiles" is starting, biblical and pagan chronologies are tied together, in the first verse of Jeremiah 25: ‟The fourth year of Jehoiachim, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzer.” This is the anchor of world chronology. At precisely the time when secular sources become verifiable, through the establishing of a ‛world’ empire, the Bible allows a correlation. Indeed, Nebuchadnezzer was the very first world leader to be explicitly appointed to that office by God. With the recovery of the writings of the Assyrians, other keys to chronology can be found, pushing secular chronology further back. But we shall have much opportunity to study the breaks, the gaps, the "dark ages" of standard history — enough to realize that there is no truly unified account of history, other than the Bible.

It is easy enough to make the claims I have made. But Table 1-2 — Benchmarks of Biblical Chronology — should demonstrate the validity of such claims. Rather than spend many words repeating the information of the table, I will just explain a few points. First, I assume that there are no gaps in the genealogies of the Bible, except those which are specifically indicated. Even conservative scholars have assumed that there are gaps, in order to make the Bible fit into the humanistic time frame. I reject this compromise not out of some hyper-orthodoxy or over-zealous piety, but because, as we shall see, the evidence does not warrant such a scheme.

Next, the year 931 bc for the end of Solomon is taken from correspondences with the Assyrian records. If these records are not as straightforward as has been assumed, then all the bc dates will need to be adjusted accordingly. But this is not an important issue, since the true value of chronology is not in any absolute date, but rather in the power to draw out correspondences and relationships.

Next, I have assumed that Abram was not born when his father was age 70 (2126 bc), but rather that this was Terah's age when his sons Nahor and/ or Haran were born. In fact, Abram was 60 years younger than one or both of his brothers, as we may conclude from the immediate context of Gen 11:32 & 12:1. Here, Abram left Haran at age 75 (c. 2036 bc), shortly after his father had died at age 205; calculating back, we find that Terah was age 130 when Abram was born (2066 bc), 60 years after the older sons were born. Aside from the contextual evidence we have just seen, the ancient rabbis said that when the sons of Ham crowned Nimrod as their king, Nimrod chose Terah, father of Abram, as his general. If we take this statement as having historical substance, it forbids Abram's birth before his brothers (as the conventional interpretation of Gen 11:26 would have it), since Nimrod's conquests would long since have been completed, and Terah would simply be too young. Be that as it may, if this assumption is incorrect, it has no relevance to the dates of Abram, but it would pull all the pre-Abram dates 60 years closer to us — which itself would have no meaningful effect on the thesis of this work.

Finally, the duration of Israel's Bondage in Egypt is almost always misunderstood, imagined to have lasted almost half a millennium, based on Ex 12:40, which says that Israel sojourned in Egypt for 430 years. The meaning of this verse is clarified by the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament): ‟And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years.” The 430 years were counted from the days of Abraham, since he exiled himself from the Promised Land by descending into Egypt. We will look at this period later, but here I will just supplement my chronology by citing Josephus, who says in Book 11 of his Antiquities that 220 years passed from the death of Isaac until the Exodus; this is only five years off from my calculations, and if anyone can find my error, I will be greatly edified. In the mean time I assume that it is Josephus who miscalculated. All of the other evidence is given in Table 1-2, so need not be explicated here.

Related to this, I suggest, is the fact that the Babylonians used a calendaric cycle of 480 years, called "the Era of Isis." It may be just a coincidence, but Semiramis/ Isis came to power precisely around 2041 bc (see Chapter 6), and 480 years after this is the year 1561, the year of the Exodus — a significant benchmark if ever there was one.

More detail is given in Table 1-3, Biblical Chronology from Noah to Saul. It should be enough to say that the left-hand column gives the years since the Fall of Adam — Anno Mundi — and the right-hand column gives the years Before Christ (the secondary right-hand column gives dates based on the assumption that Abraham was older than his brothers). All dates which are used in this book will be based on my biblical chronology.

The center-left column of the following table gives all the strictly chronological data, from which any reader should be able to verify my conclusions; the center-right column gives points of interest — some of these dates are best-estimates, or taken from traditional writings. If any reference has been omitted, it is by accident. The style is somewhat telegraphic, but I trust a bit of thought will make it clear.

After the table of Biblical Chronology is a chart correlating the several timelines of the true blocks of history. This scheme is the key to understanding my reconstruction of the whole of ancient history. Throughout this book, this chart should be helpful; the companion volume, The Days of Brass and Iron, includes a continuation of this graphic presentation.

Year	Biblical Chronology from Adam to Saul		bc
Antediluvian Era
0	1. Adam's Fall	Genesis 5	4074
130	2. Seth born; Adam age 130		3944
235	3. Enosh born; Seth age 105		3839
325	4. Cainan born; Enosh age 90		3749
395	5. Mahalaleel born; Cainan age 70		3679
460	6. Jared born; Mahalaleel age 65		3614
622	7. Enoch born; Jared age 162		3452
687	8. Methuselah born; Enoch age 65		3387
874	9. Lamech born; Methuselah age 187		3200
930		1. Adam dies, age 930	3144
987		7. Enoch translated, age 365	3087
1042		2. Seth dies, age 913	3032
1056	10. Noah born; Lamech age 182	[From Adam to Noah, 10 generations]	3018
1140		3. Enosh dies, age 905	2934
1235		4. Cainan dies, age 910	2839
1290		5. Mahalaleel dies, age 895	2784
1422		6. Jared dies, age 962	2652
1536		Flood announced (Gen 6), Ark started	2538
1558	11. Shem born; Noah age 502		2516
1651		9. Lamech dies, age 777	2423
1656		8. Methuselah dies, age 969; Noah age 600, Shem age 98; Flood (Gen 7:6)	2418
Patriarchs
1658	12. Arphaxad born; Shem age 100	two years after Flood (Gen 11:10); Noah age 602	2416
1693	13. Salah born; Arphaxad age 35		2381
1723	14. Eber born; Salah age 30		2351
1757	15. Peleg born; Eber age 34		2317
1787	16. Rue born; Peleg age 30		2287
1819	17. Serug born; Rue age 32		2255
		325 before Shem's death, his rule starts in Erech	2241
1849	18. Nahor born; Serug age 30		2225
1878	19. Terah born; Nahor age 29		2196
1882		Tower of Babel event, Nimrod, Peleg age 125	2192
1948		Terah age 70; Nahor/ Haran born	2126
1996		15. Peleg dies, age 239. Traditional year of Babel event, 340 years after Flood.	2078
1997		18. Nahor dies, age 148	2069
2006		10. Noah dies, age 950	2068
2008	20. Abram born; Terah age 130	[From Noah to Abram, 10 generations]	2066
2025		16. Rue dies, age 239	2049
2039		17. Serug dies, age 230	2035
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

		19. Terah d. 205 (Gen 11:32).	1991
2083	Abram, 430 years (starts Gen 12:10; cf Ex 12:40-41; Heb 11:8-13) to Sinai (Gal 3:17).	Abram 75 (Gen 12:4) when he entered Canaan and into Egypt (12:10): Plague on Pharaoh (12:17)	1991
		War of Mesopotamian four kings (14:1,4, 9)
2093		10 years later, Abram m. Hagar (16:13)	1981
2094		Abram age 86, Ishmael born (16:16; 17:24)	1980
2106		12. Arphaxad dies, age 438	1968
2107		Abraham age 99, Sarah age 90 (Gen 17:17, 21,24, 18:10), Ishmael age 13 (17:25), circumcision, everlasting covenant; Sodom & Gomorrah (Gen 19). Abraham Sarah and Abimelech (24:).	1967
2108	21. Isaac born (17:21, 21:5, 18:10); Abraham age 100; Sarah age 91		1966
2113	Start 400 year (Gen 15:13) sojourn of Abraham's seed (Gen 21:12; Acts 7:6; Gen 27:9).	Isaac age 5, proclaimed heir by feast of weaning, (Gen 21:8-10, Gal 4:29-30). Banishment of Hagar and Ishmael.	1961
2126		13. Salah dies, age 433	1948
2144		Sarah dies, age 127 (23:1); Isaac as sacrifice, age 36	1930
2148		Isaac marries, age 40 (25:20). Chasm in Delta	1926
2158		11. Shem dies, age 600. Height of Ice Age.	1916
2168	22. Jacob born; Isaac age 60, Abraham 160.		1906
2183		20. Abraham dies, age 175 (25:7)	1891
2187		14. Eber dies, age 464	1887
2208		Esau marries, age 40 (26:34); Isaac age 100	1866
2231		Ishmael dies, age 137 (25:17).	1843
2245		Jacob in Padam Aram, northern Mesopotamia by Haran, age 77 (Gen 28); Isaac ‟old” age 137 (27:1)	1829
2252		Jacob age 84; worked 7 years, marries both Leah and Rachel (works another 7 years) (29:30)	1822
2253		Ruben born to Leah	1821
2254		Simeon born, L
2255		Levi born L	1819
2256		Judah born L Bilhah (Rachel): Dan
2257		Naphtali B (R) Zilpah (Leah): Gad
2258		Asher born Z Issachar L
2259	23. Joseph born; Jacob age 91	Zebulun L Joseph born to Rachel Jacob had served 14 years (30:25)	1815
2260		Dinah L
2265		Jacob age 97, returns to Canaan (31:41)	1809


2275		Dinah raped, age 15, Hamor (T-12, Levi)	1799
2276		Benjamin born to R, near Bethlehem (35:19), then Jacob in Hebron (35:27, 37:14). Joseph age 17 (37:1-2), into Egypt.	1798
2288		21. Isaac dies, age 180 (Gen 35:28)	1786
2289		Joseph age 30, before Pharaoh (41:46)	1785
		Sons of Joseph born (41:50)
2296		Joseph age 37, end of plenty	1778
2298	Jacob age 130 (47:9); Joseph age 39	2 years of famine, Jacob into Egypt (45:6, 11). Of Jacob's descendants, 66 into Egypt, not counting himself or Joseph (46:26); 70 including him, Joseph & two sons (46:27); all his kin, 75 (Acts 7:14), after LXX, counting 2 sons of Manassah & 3 of Ephraim	1776
2303		7th year of famine; Zoser's inscription	1771
		Time of Job's troubles; ending of Ice Age	1766
2315		22. Jacob dies, age 147 (Gen 47:28); Joseph age 56 — Levi age 60, Kohath born??	1759
		Nile flows with honey	1726
2369		23. Joseph dies, age 110 (50:22). Simeon dies, age 115 or 120 (5 year contradiction in T-12). 712 years after Flood.	1705
2371		Ruben dies, 2 years after Joseph (T-12) [age 118 or 125; 7 year contradiction in T-12]
2373		Zebulon dies, age 114 (T-12 says 32 after Joseph's death)
2374		Levi age 119, Kohath 59??, Amram born??	1700
2375		Judah dies, age 119 (T-12)
2378		Dan dies, age 125 years (T-12)
2380		Issachar dies, age 122 (T-12)
2383		Asher dies, age 125 (T-12)
2384		Gad dies, age 127 (T-12)
2389		Naphtali, age 132 (T-12)
2392		Levi dies, age 137 (Ex 6:16). Fourth generation (14:16) from Levi is return: Kohath, Amram, Moses all born and died out of Promised Land.	1682
2401		Benjamin dies, age 125 (T-12). Egyptian war with Canaan
—		harbinger	1642
Era of Moses
2433	Moses born	Kohath age 118?? Amram age 59?? Moses born. 64 years between Joseph's death and Moses' birth	1641
2448		Kohath son of Levi dies?? age 133 (6:18). Job dies, if age of 140 doubled.	1626
2460	Joshua born		1614
2473		Moses flees, age 40 (Ex 2:11); Amram 99??	1601
2474	Caleb born	era of Sargon I	1600
2511		Amram son of Kohath dies?? age 137 (6:20)	1563
2513	Moses age 80 (Ex 7:7) — End 430 for Abraham (Ex 12:40-41); end 400 for seed (Gen 15:13, Acts 7:6). — Start "480 years" (1 K 6:1) of Tabernacle Theocracy — 594 years total, less 7 periods of oppression which total 114 years.	Exodus 1/15 (Ex 12:2, 41-2; Num 33:3); Sin 2/15 (Ex ); Sinai 3/15?? ‛the same day’ (Ex 19:1). Law, after mountain 3 days (Ex 19:3,11). 857 years after Flood	1561
2514	Caleb age 40, (Josh 14:7)	Tabernacle, 1/1 (Ex 40:17); Leviticus 1/1-2/1 (Num 1:1); Numbers 2/1-2/20 — census done, leave Sinai for Paran (Num 10:11); 12 spies 2nd month (Num 13:3)	1560
2552	Moses dies, age 120	See Gen 15:16. Miriam dies, 1st month (Num 33:36); Aaron dies, 5th month (Num 20:23-33:8). Census 11th month (Deut 1:3). Moses dies 12/1, mourning 30 days (Deut 34:8).	1522
2553		Cross Jordan, 1/3 (Josh 3:2). Jericho earthquake just after Passover (5:10). c. March 13	1521
		Long day, around Passover, c. March 21	1519
2559	Caleb age 85 (Josh 14:10)	Land of Canaan is divided; 14 years of peace.	1515
2570		Joshua dies, age 110 (Josh 24:29)	1504
Era of Judges
2573	oppression 8 — Starts 450 years of Judges (Acts 13:20).	Cushan of Mesopotamia (Judg 3:8) [Inkishush of Gutium]. Paul says about 450, but exact if count oppression.	1501
2581	Othneil 40	(Judg 3:11)	1493
2621	oppression 18	Eglon of Moab (Judg 3:14)	1453
2639	Ehud 80	(Judg 3:30); his captain is Shamgar (3:31)	1435
2719	oppression 20	Jabin of Canaan (Judg 4:3)	1355
2739	Barak/ Deborah 40	(Judg 5:31); disaster 5:4,5	1335
2779	oppression 7	Midian (Judg 6:1)	1295
2786	Gideon 40	(8:28)	1288
2826	oppression 3	King Abimalech son of Gideon, (Judg 9:22)	1248
2829	Tola 23	(10:1, 2)	1245
2852	Jair 22	(10:3, 5)	1222
2874	oppression 18	Ammonites (10:8, 18; 11:1)	1200
2892	Jephtha 6	(12:7). Had occupied Land for "300 years", (Judg 11:26) — rounded from 333 years since the Land was divided.	1182
2898	Izban 7	(12:9)	1176
2905	Elon 10	(12:11); Eli born	1169
2915	Abdon 8	(12:14)	1159
2923	oppression 40	Philistines (13:1); includes Samson's 20 years (15:20). Samson doesn't fit pattern (2:18).	1151
2963	Eli 40	(1 Sam 4:18), age 58; Samuel born	1111
2983		Saul born (1Sam 13:1)	1091
3003	Samuel 20	(1 Sam 7:2, 15, 8:1); at most age 40	1071
3023	Ends 450 years of Judges (Acts 13:20); disaster (1S 7:10)		1051
United Israel
3023	Saul 40	(Acts 13:21); Samuel age 60 = ‛old’ (8:1); Isbosheth born	1051

Chapter 2 -- The Age of Evil Imagining: the Confusion and Scattering at Babel

2011-01-06T01:11:00.000-08:00

Chapter 2

The Age of Evil Imagining:

the Confusion and Scattering at Babel

And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in His heart, 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.'

— Gen 9:20-21

History begins after the Flood. We have in the Bible the single accurate source of the events which transpired from Adam until Noah, but in terms of such corroborating sources as archeology or secular documents, it is only after the Flood that the voices of other witnesses can be heard. With a few obscure exceptions, no human artifact survived the Flood. No city, no structure, no writing, no stone tool or cave painting — in fact, no cave — nothing was preserved through that upheaval. The technical details which support this assertion may be found in The Pillars of Heaven. The necessary conclusion is that all the artifacts of archeology which are called paleo-, meso- or neo-lithic, were in fact produced by the descendants of Noah, at the same time that the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt were emerging.

Writing does not appear in the archeological record until some 400 years after the Flood, and the Confusion and scattering at Babel occurred just about midway through these centuries. In terms of secular testimony, the only direct voice to be heard for nearly half a millennium is that of archeology, with a distant echo heard in the legends, myths and epics which were written down long afterwards. Thus, there are two lines of evidence. I have dealt with the distorted memory of legend in my book, The Serpent in Babel. In this chapter, we will exchange legend for testimony, looking at this immediate post-Flood age from a biblical perspective.

After the Flood, the human population grew for several generations, and then exploded. After wars, more boys are born than girls, evidently to maintain some sort of overall balance. We can take this as an ‛instinctive’ mechanism to ensure ideal population requirements. Evidently when this instinct was designed, menopause was not a concern. By analogy, we may assume that given a depleted human population, more females would be born, since they are the limiting factor.

If this was so, the annual birthrate of girls, to women who remained fertile for a century and more, would easily overpopulate an area in mere decades. For example, assuming that 2 girls were born to a couple every 3 years, and that these started bearing children at age 16 or so, the population would increase more than 12-fold every 18 years. Starting only with the survivors of the Flood, in just over 30 years more than 400 females would have been born, and in less than a hundred years, over a million would be alive. Obviously, the spread of humanity, like that of the animal kinds, was a foregone conclusion.

Rather than the slow migration out of Africa of Evolving populations, humans diffused from the locus of Ararat, landing place of the Ark of Noah. The Bible tells us that the Ark settled in the mountains of Ararat (in Armenia); the precise mountain is well-attested to by enduring tradition. At the base of the mountain was once found the village of Arghuri, meaning "He planted a vine"; it is supposed to have been that very first settlement where Noah planted a vine and became inebriated.

There are stories about Noah and his mythic counterparts which seek to explain the terse account of his drunkenness. Some mythologists assume that the castration of Uranus by his son mirrors the crime of Ham (Cronus). If this is so, then the Bible elects to remain silent. For my part, I find this explanation unlikely, although given the evil and perversion of Ham and the pre-Flood world, it is not too far-fetched that such a crime should be a rite. It is surely through Ham that paganism was re-introduced into the post-Flood world, as we may deduce from the apostasy of his descendants Cush and Nimrod. Along these same lines, it has also been noted that, just as Shem was identified as Melchizedek by the ancient rabbis, Ham has been identified as the contemporary Bela, king of Sodom. We know what the most obvious sin of the Sodomites was, and if Ham was their king, we might gain some insight as to the perversions of the pre-Flood race. It was for such sins as this that both Sodom, and the entire world, were once destroyed, by fire and by Flood.

The district below the mountain of the Ark was called Thaminin — meaning "eight", after the eight survivors of the Flood. A city of the same name was also called Naxuana, claimed by the Armenians to be the most ancient place in the world. This city is modern Nakitchevan on the Araxes, 35 miles SE of Ararat; its name connotes "the place of descent or lodging", and it is claimed that Noah's tomb is located here. Nearby, the ancient ‟town of Marand . . . is said to be called after the wife of Noah, who there died and was buried . . .” Moses Chorenensis, the 5th century ad historian of Armenia, relates how the sons of Noah lived in Seron, or "the Place of Dispersion".

Hardwicke Knight, New Zealand archeologist, stated that the Jebal Djudi — the Deluge Mountains, near the Tigris River — held ‟the pass over which the migrating descendants of Noah must have crossed to come into the land where, according to recently unearthed Mari tablets, cities were founded by Noah's descendants by the names given in Genesis 11:10-26. It is possible therefore that the sons of Noah carried with them a portion of the Ark and that this served them as a holy meeting place of the elders, and that they eventually abandoned it at Jebal Djudi”, thus explaining the Moslem tradition that this was the site of the landing. One venerable scholar of mythology concluded that a ‟very large part of heathen mythology originated from the history of the deluge: and numerous were the rites of Paganism, which were instituted in commemoration of that awful event.” So it is expected that many cultures should claim for themselves the relics of the Flood patriarch.

Migration tends to follow rivers. The streams and underground rivers of the Ararat region form the headwaters of the mighty Euphrates, which watered the roots of the post-Flood civilization in the land of Shinar — so it is not surprising that the valleys and plains of Mesopotamia should have become the prime area of settlement. But Shinar need not have been the sole place of early settlement. A careful reading of Gen 11:1-9 tells us that the early descendants of Noah all spoke the same language, and moved into Mesopotamia, but we are not told that they all remained there until the confusion at the Tower.

It would be most unlikely if, during the more than two centuries between the landing of the Ark and the scattering at Babel, no band of hardy fellows went out to roam the distant mountains or follow the streams and coasts. Such pioneers would have left a few of the primal, virgin soil settlements which archeology sometimes uncovers. It is my considered opinion, however, that such earliest "Stone Age" bands would be represented only to an insignificant degree in the archeological record.

Although Noah was alive for 350 years after the Flood, it seems that he was not a constant presence in Mesopotamia when the language of mankind was divided. In fact, after the crime of Ham, Noah is never heard from again — but we can be assured that he did not just retire to an old-folks home.

I have dealt with the mythology of this era in The Serpent in Babel, but with regard to the apparent disappearance of Noah, we might find a clue in the myths of the Persians and the Indians. The Flood patriarch was called Yima by the Persians, and is remembered as an idolater who was sawn in two. In contrast to this, the Indian counterpart was the Yama of the Rig Veda — a hero and repulser of an incestuous sister.

Now, while neither of these can be a literal reference to Noah, we might rationalize these tales by supposing that after the upheaval at Babel, Noah emerged from his retreat — perhaps yet at the base of Ararat — and for one final time piloted some segment of his offspring to a new land. The newly-formed language group which we know as Indo-European is represented by the Persians and the Indians. If we take the myths of Yima/ Yama seriously, then Noah may have continued on with the Indians, further east than the Persians, into the land of the Dravidians, who would have emigrated immediately after the Confusion. As to why the Persians were split off, we might imagine some rebellion, political or religious.

Be that as it may, if Noah found the morals of his descendants too disgusting, and if he hoped to establish a godly community to the east, then his hope was sorely disappointed, given that of all lands, India is the most openly pagan, to this very day. But it is reasonable to expect those whom Noah guided to remember him favorably, while those he left might have a harsher opinions of him. For whatever reason, his being sawn in two may symbolize his division of the Aryan people. However, the division of the Aryans seems to have occurred much later, in which case Noah is not relevant. But again, it may be that the division was early, after which the migrants were static for nearly a millennium.

race

In Dragons in the Earth I explore the diffusion and diversification of the animal kingdom — specifically those on the Ark. But mankind also originated at Ararat. All the human variety (the phenotype) which shows itself to our eyes, was contained (in the genotype) by the eight individuals on the Ark. There is nowhere in the modern human gene pool any trait which was not potential in the family of Noah.

To pretend that we can identify each modern ‛race’ with one of the sons of Noah over-extends the evidence — if for no other reason, then because it ignores the wives. For example, some have said that Ham was dark-skinned, because the Cushites, the Ethiopians, were descended from him. While it is certainly possible that Noah could have had three sons each of a different racial type, I think a far easier explanation is that Ham had a dark-skinned wife, whose type arose during the millennium and a half between the Fall and the Flood. Thus, no existing race is likely to have been the "original" race — all represent innovation, a reshuffling of potentials and characteristics. These became manifest and established as a response to environmental conditions and inbreeding — prior to which, racial extremes would have appeared only rarely.

The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and among the most evil, and surely the stupidest of such imaginings, are those of the racist. When racists seek to make a "religious" argument to support their evil imagining, we know with certainty that they are listening to their ignorant and corrupt hearts rather than to the word of God. And I have watched, amazed, the "Afro-centrists", who recite their creation myths of "the original man". Did we not meet on the field of battle a similar dogma, fulminated by Hitler? Have we not read of burnt churches, torched by similar racists, of the Klan? Everywhere, evil imaginings. And even if we give our differences more significance than they merit, those of us who know Jesus must be corrected, since (Gal 3:26-28) ‟you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female — for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Before the Flood there was no rigorous cultural isolation or environmental selectors. Neither rickets nor skin cancer would eliminate either dark or light skin, and the genetic range would have been distributed in a statistically predictable manner, with light and dark extremes, but with the majority clustered around the middle. Only after the events at Babel did linguistic and regional isolation, and environmental selectors, accelerate the appearance of the family traits which we take to be racial extremes. When the unity of mankind was shattered at Babel, inbreeding and environment conspired to accentuate physical differences. In Idols of the Cave, my book dealing with the arguments of Evolutionism, I discuss natural selection and ‛speciation’, which tend to increase differences — this is how the so-called human races have come about.

Racial types are not the product of random mutations as Evolutionism teaches, but rather they are the outworking of the vast potential of the genetic code. As the population expanded, every characteristic of every "race" could have been manifested. But for all the movement toward differentiation, there is always a tendency toward a regression to the mean — that is, no matter how extreme we may become, statistically we move toward the average. In other words, mutants make poor mates, and generally represent a dead-end.

In terms of environment, it seems most reasonable to suppose that Adam's — or Noah's — skin-color was middle-brown, something like a native American. Not only is middle-brown a happy compromise, but more relevant is the fact that the moist pre-Flood world is most analogous to our tropical rain forests, where we find mid-brown to be the most common skin color. Light or dark skin is selected by the environment, because of its relationship to, for example, sunlight. Bright sun selects dark skin, which is a protection against skin cancer. Less sunlight selects lighter skin, which is more efficient at synthesizing vitamin D. Thicker skin is a protection against sunlight, and gives Asian coloration its particular hue.

Understand, in terms of actual differences, the dissimilarity between the most unlike human "races" is less than that between, for example, any two given breeds of dog. We look at the shape of a nose or the texture of hair or the apparent amount of melanin in the skin, and think this is somehow genetically significant. But it is merely a matter of recessive genes. It is not a special gene that says have blue eyes. Rather, the relevant gene of dark-eyed people says put melanin in the retina, whereas that gene in blue-eyed people is simply silent on the matter. Skin color is controlled by more than just one gene, but to keep it simple, from AaBb parents, we can derive a full spectrum, of "black", dark and light brown, and "white" children.

In actuality, there is no race the norms of which are not found as the extremes of some other race. The darkest Caucasoid is the same color as the lightest Negroid. Many tribes of Australian Aborigines have blond children. Both Asian and European eyelids have lipose, but Asians have more. Most Asians have fairly short and broad noses, but some have not-so-short and not-so-broad noses; and while Caucasians tend to have long, narrow noses, some have not-so-long and not-so-narrow noses. These "not-so" noses represent the common ground between the "races".

The upshot of all this is that every race is a response to inbreeding and natural selection, which are not creative, but rather editorial processes: genes are selected from the vast menu of possibilities. The deep chests of natives of the Andes, the dark skin of equatorial races and the light skin of the northern European, the shape of a nose or an eye, the length or thickness of bones: all of these were part of the original gene pool of the eight individuals on the Ark of Noah. I will discuss the specifics of race later.

the tower

Mankind journeyed east from Ararat, and settled in Shinar, which is Mesopotamia (Gen 11:2). When the host of mankind settled upon the fields of Shinar, the first historian of that time was Shem, author of Gen 10:2 to 11:9. Here, along with the Table of Nations, Shem records two events of major historical importance. The first is the empire-building of Nimrod, which we will discuss in Chapter 4. But Shem also speaks of the Tower of Babel (11:4), that most primal of ziggurats.

The building of this astrological tower was undertaken prior to Nimrod's conquests. Perhaps even before the Confusion, towns constructed raised platforms for their shrines. After the attempt at Babel to build a mountain, the Sumerians did not repent, but continued to build such ‛hills’, as at Uruk, where the temple mount was 40 feet high. Eventually, ziggurats came once more to be built, peopled as they were with both male and female prostitutes.

Shem has given us very few details about the Tower, but I have used pagan sources to reconstruct many of the events associated with it. From the Bible, it is impossible to refine the date of the Confusion at Babel more precisely than within a few hundred years — within the lifetime of Peleg — so I have adopted the pagan dating. Specifically, the Roman historian Vellius Paterculus (c. 18 bc-31 ad) quotes an even more ancient Roman historian, Aemilius Sura, telling us that, from the time when Rome vanquished king Philip of Macedonia in 197 bc, until ‟the beginning of the reign of Ninus [Nimrod] king of the Assyrians, who was the first to hold world power, lies an interval of 1995 years.” This tells us that Nimrod started his reign in 2192 bc, the date we take as the year of the Confusion.

The Jews have a number of legends of their own, touching on the Tower. It may be that various rabbis were distraught at the lack of information, and sought to correct the shortcoming by inventing details — or it may be that genuine history was remembered by secular records. Be that as it may, we are told that 600,000 men were recruited in the building of the Tower; the Talmud says the building of it took 42 years, and the less reliable Creation Epic of Babylon states that it took two years.

According to Herodotus, the latter ziggurat of Babylon had 58 million bricks, eight massive ‛steps’, with a height of 288 feet. He adds that it housed, in various forms, a total of 23,700 kilograms of pure gold. While this later temple was not that of Cush and Nimrod, yet it gives us some idea as to the extravagance of the pagans.

At Babel, God allowed men's rebellion to overflow from their hearts, and then He confounded their language, and scattered them abroad. This is literally all we are told. The name of the city means "Confusion," but this has been reinterpreted to read Babilla or Bab-ilu, "the Gate of God". No doubt this is the name the ungodly chose.

We may deduce that the purpose of the judgement was not to end paganism entirely, but rather to prevent a universal false-religion. No mere scattering, no mere cataclysm, no mere miracle will ever be enough to redeem corrupt hearts. We are told exactly this in Lk 16:31, where, if Moses and the prophets were not enough, then neither would the rising of the dead be enough. Indeed, the coming to life of the dead was not enough to revive Jerusalem (Mt 27:52-53), and the resurrection of Jesus was not enough to convince the Pharisees. Even the pagans let us know that there was no universal repentance and rival after the Babel fiasco: Hestiaeus says that after the cataclysm, ‟Such of the priests as were saved [from death], took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia” — to set up yet another temple.

There is a world-wide memory of the confounding of tongues. Although the details have often been shaped by local custom, the outline is clear. For example, the Toltecs recall how their ancestors had escaped the Flood in a closed chest, and later sought to avoid a similar disaster by building a tower to heaven, only to have their language confounded and their people scattered throughout the world. Seven pairs of Toltecs passed over great expanses of land, crossed seas, camped in caves. They arrived at their new meso-American homeland "520 years after the Flood", or 296 years after the Babel cataclysm — that is, in 1898 bc.

Similar to this, the Indians of Lake Tahoe claim that once they were rich and powerful, but enemies caused a great wave to flood the world; the few survivors were enslaved and forced to build a high temple, so that the taskmasters could survive any future flood. It seems that the Toltecs counted themselves masters in this construction, and the Tahoe Indians remembered themselves as slaves. Be that as it may, both groups note a detail which Josephus also records: one reason the Tower was erected was to offer a refuge in case of another flood — not of the Flood's magnitude, of course, but rather one of the many Ice Age floods which periodically devastated the lowlands.

The ‟Gherko Karens, who live in Burma, relate that they became separated from the Red Karens in the thirteenth generation after Adam, when the people decided to build a pagoda up to heaven but were frustrated in that design by the wrath of God who came down, confounded their tongue, and caused one group to separated from the rest.” The 13th generation after Adam is exactly that of Nimrod. Although "Adam" is most probably not the name used by the Karens, the idea of his being the first man identifies him. Again, the Mikirs of Assam (the mountains northeast of the mouth of the Ganges) have a similar memory, in which the powerful sons of Ram, ‟tired of the mastery of earth, tried to conquer heaven by building a tower up to it, only to have their speech confounded and to be scattered to the corners of the earth.”

The natives of the Polynesian island of Tuamotu say that God sent a flood to punish mankind, saving only the pious Rata, whose descendants later constructed a temple which would allow them to see God face to face. Alas, God was frowning, and He destroyed the Tower and confused and scattered mankind.

When the language of man had been confused (Gen 11:8), men ‟left off to build the city.” It is instructive to notice that the violent nature of the Babel cataclysm is not mentioned in Genesis, but it is emphasized by non-biblical sources (some of the details of which might even have the virtue of being true). Thus, the rabbinical Book of Jasher says: ‟as to the tower which the sons of men built, the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up one third part thereof, and a fire also descended from the heaven and burned another third, and the third is left to this day . . .” Similar testimony is found in the Book of Jubilees: ‟And the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth . . .” This is echoed in the pagan record of the Sibylline Oracles: ‟The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the languages, when she says thus: — 'the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language . . .'”

The celestial nature of the cataclysm at Babel is remembered even by the aborigines of Encounter Bay, South Australia. They say that an ill-tempered old woman used to scatter fire from a big stick while people slept. At her death, the peoples assembled to celebrate with a cannibal banquet — and as each tribe ate the flesh, they began to speak different languages. As for the cannibalism, this is a folk-practice of many races, and was a rite of the Canaanites, for example — so we should not be surprised that it was practiced by the pagans at Babel. But with regard to the catastrophe, a comet might be described as an angry old woman, and its tail as a "big stick which scatters fire" — especially at night, while people sleep. The Celtic image of a witch-on-a-broomstick is similarly derived. Again, when the Maidu Indians said that after the Confusion a sage ‟appointed the times for their dances and festivals”, it may be that the calendar was in need of reform, because Earth's rotation had been affected.

A final curiosity is that a particular sound — "yahoo" — seems associated in some myths with the physical upheaval which accompanied the confusion of tongues. For example, in a myth of the Snohmish Indians, the Creator began his work to the east, and gave each successive people their own language:

‟When he reached Puget Sound, he liked it so well that he decided to go no further. But he had many languages left, so he scattered them all around Puget Sound and to the north.

‟. . .The sky was so low that the tall people bumped their heads against it. Sometimes people would do what was forbidden by climbing up high in the trees and, learning their own words, enter the Sky World. Finally the wise men of all the different tribes had a meeting to see what they could do about lifting the sky. They agreed that the people should get together and try to push it up higher.

‟. . .'When the time comes for us to push, when we have everything ready, let someone shout "Ya-hoh." That means "Lift together!" in all our languages.' . . .They kept on shouting 'Ya-hoh' and pushing until the sky was in the place where it is now.”

The story adds that the stars of the Big Dipper appeared at this time.

In this "Ya-hoh" tale we find the creation of languages, the attempt to invade the heavens (associated with the large-scale cooperation of all mankind), and the memory of some dramatic change in the appearance of the sky (via the shifting of Earth's axis, which moved the position of the Big Dipper) which fits a catastrophic version of the Tower of Babel event.

Again, in Indonesia oaths were sealed with the shooting of an arrow into the sky, with a shout of "ju-ju huwe". The arrows may commemorate the comets, the "fire which descended from heaven". Again, the Mexican god of war and tumult was Yao, or Yaotl.

What is the significance of this "yahoo"? I do not know. But it may be that this sound, remembered throughout the world and associated with the catastrophic motions of the heavens, was produced by some natural phenomenon, and reproduced as the onomatope (by onomatopoeia) "yahoo". Or it may be that "yahoo" represents a primal word or name, the meaning of which has been lost, and only a tragic association recalled. But what seems clear is that the word was once common not only to the same time, but to the same place: Babel at the time of the Confounding.

languages

Aside from any physical upheaval, the primary effects of the judgment at Babel were upon language and migration. We might well wonder as to the mechanisms of the miracle which created so many languages where there had been only one. Of course, Adam in the day he was created underwent an analogous process, where a language was simply placed into his brain. We might think of a computer program, already written, and activated as soon as the computer is switched on: when Adam awoke, the ‛program’ was ready to run. The analogy breaks down when we recall that at Babel the program to be re-written was already running.

Whatever the method, it is beyond question but that God performed the miracle. And when we think about it, this miracle is comprehensible, and far simpler than, say, gravity, or time, or quarks, or some-such. The confounding of tongues boils down to a transformation of thought and conception, entailing a change in four aspects of language: pronunciation (tonality, phonemes, etc.), vocabulary, syntax (order and organization) and grammar. Is any of this beyond God's ability? Obviously not.

How many languages did God create? Unknowable. But Hebrew tradition maintains that humanity was divided into seventy nations, which may mean seventy languages. Such primal tongues would be root languages, from which, over the centuries and millennia, the various debased dialects evolved. For example, there is much speculation about the original Indo-European tongue — from which Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and Teutonic all supposedly derived. From Latin, in turn, we know the Romance languages developed: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Rumanian. From the Teutonic parent, we have Norwegian, Danish, German and so on — even English, for the most part. Likewise, of the hundreds of American Indian tribes, it seems that fewer than 7 language stocks existed — perhaps as few as three; from these, all the purely American dialects grew.

But to conclude from such later examples that there was, say, a single Indo-European tongue, seems quite unwarranted — especially given a biblical paradigm. I think far more likely is that, as with the biological ‛kinds’, God created the languages with a ‛blueprint’, but with design features mixed and overlapping as it suited Him. Just as there are fish with lungs and mammals which lay eggs, so there are languages which have "anomalous" elements, which to the undiscerning scholar must seem to indicate a genetic relationship. Those features which identify "Indo-European" languages may not be diagnostic at all — any more than live-birth is diagnostic of mammals. In other words, Evolutionism describes the reality of linguistics no more than of biology.

I have wondered about the families of Babel: did God separate husbands from their wives, and children from their parents? While we are not explicitly told the facts, we may readily deduce them. God honors legitimate marriage, and would not be the agent of its destruction. Tangential to this, we note that the Jews were enjoined against taking foreign wives (Ezra 10:10, Neh 13:27) — and while this no doubt means primarily "pagan" wives, the foreignness cannot be dismissed. Even the myth of the Maidu Indians states that ‟each husband and wife talked the same language.” God judges mankind through its nations, and He blesses mankind through its families. This principle should be sufficient to justify the unity of the family, even at Babel.

But since all of mankind was a single "family", where did the Confusion occur — at what level? It appears that Noah's descendants were confounded from the second to the fourth generations (indeed, the Table of Nations only extends to the fourth generation, save for the "Hebrew" sons of Eber). The fifth generation — of Peleg, the patriarch in whose day the division occurred (Gen 10:25) — was affected only through its fathers.

My analysis of the Table of Nations suggests that of the three sons of Noah, Shem was not affected by the Confusion, and Ham and Japheth probably were. I say this, first, on logical grounds: the innocent are not judged by selective curses, but only by general judgement. The Confounding befell mankind as an assurance against the instituting of a universal false religion, and if some family was not involved in the general apostasy, then it would not be subjected to such a specific curse.

As for the sons of Shem — Ashur, Aram and Arphaxad — all spoke closely related Semitic dialects (Assyrian, Aramaic and Chaldean, respectively). Semitic languages also include Akkadian, Amoritic and Arabic, as well as Hebrew. Given that the sons spoke languages which were essentially the same — in fact, different most likely only because of the passage of time — then they would have spoken the language of their father Shem, who would have spoken the Adamic language of his father Noah. And so the language of Eden was "Semitic". This is not to say that Adam spoke Hebrew, any more than Caesar spoke Italian, or than I speak Anglo-Saxon.

And what was the character of the ‛Adamic’ tongue? Without getting mystical, it is pleasing to suppose that just as genetic perfection was lost at the Fall in Eden, so was linguistic perfection lost in the Confusion at Babel. The language which was designed by God for a humanity perfect in intellect and intimacy, would itself have been perfect, in precision, and vibrance, and resonance, and nuance. Again — now getting mystical — I suggest that just as the body of the Resurrection is perfect (not only genetically, but in its domination by spirit, like the pre-Fall body of Adam), so will the streets of New Jerusalem echo with the restored language of Eden.

There is an anomaly to be addressed, however. You will read in standard sources that "Canaanite" is "proto-Hebrew". Canaan was a son of Ham, and might be expected to speak a Hamitic rather than a Shemitic language. Confusion on this matter is based on a gravely erroneous conception of the Middle Bronze IIB (1561-1050/ ‼1800-1550) and Late Bronze (1050-720/ ‼1550-1200) cultures of Palestine. These archeological labels describe real entities, but are wrongly assigned to the Canaanites, rather than to the correct people, the Hebrews. Precisely everything which you will read about the "Canaanites" is incorrect, in that this label actually describes the post-Exodus and Kingdom periods dominated by Israel. What we know about the Canaanites has been polluted by a faulty understanding of chronology.

But even by my reconstruction, the Canaanites seem to have spoken a Semitic dialect from very early on — and the Amorites, descendants of Canaan, certainly did. Why did these sons of Ham not speak a Hamitic language? It is a partial fulfillment of the curse upon Ham by Noah, who said that Canaan would be a servant (Gen 9:25). Part of this servitude, it emerges, was linguistic.

When Noah pronounced his curse on the offender's child, it was because Noah knew the corrupt nature of Ham, the boy's role model. It is not for nothing that the biblical proverbs stress so strongly the importance of raising children properly, and of providing guidance. Of course it was prophecy, calling up the judgement of 200 years hence in the shadows of Babel, but it was common sense too, which said that the line of Canaan would be the servant of servants. If Ham so little respected his father, how much less would Canaan respect Ham? Ham, by his bad character, cursed his line through the generations.

This is relevant, beyond its own inherent interest, in the fact that Canaan spoke a Semitic rather than a Hamitic language. We know that some of Canaan's sons spoke other languages, as in the case of Heth, parent of the true Hittites. But Canaan himself apparently served in the tent of his peer Arphaxad (the Semite) — and so lost to some degree his own language, newly acquired at Babel. Thus, if "Canaanite" truly is older than Hebrew, it is because Arphaxad was older than Eber. Moreover, Canaan's son "Amore" (if this be the patriarch of the Amorites) dwelt in the tents of his peer Shelah, who was father of Eber and the Hebrews. And the Amorites seem always to have spoken Semitic — that is, "Shelachic" — in whose tent the Amorites served. Noah's curse, then, took into account the character of the parent, and referred to the consequence. It was not a curse so much as a statement of cause and effect, which manifested itself linguistically.

Now let's discuss race and language a bit more specifically. This will not be an exhaustive survey, of course, for practical reasons of space and relevance, but we will get an idea of the complexity and ambiguity of the concept of race.

Caucasian / European:

—Alpine: brachycephalitic ("round-headed", viewed from top), moderate stature, brunette complexion.

—Mediterranean: Iberian (related to Mauritanian and N African peoples); in the Caucasus, ancestors of modern Kartvelians or Georgians); Ligurarian, Pelasgian, Egypto-Hamitic; medium/ short stature, dark complexion, slender, dolichocephalic ("long-headed", from top), dark complexion.

—Teutonic: Tall, long head, oval face, blue eyes, blond, narrow prominent nose.

In terms of language, we have looked the Japhetic or European tongues already. As for the Semitic tongues, these are the least diversified of all the great linguistic families, and are divided as follows:

—Eastern: Akkadian, Assyrian, Chaldean;

—Northern: Amoritic, Eastern Aramaic (Babylonian, Syraic, Modern Aramaic), Western Aramaic (Palestinian, Samaritan, Palmyrene, Nabataean);

—Western: "Canaanitic", Phoenician (Punic), Hebrew;

—Southern: Arabic (Northern and Southern), Ethiopic (Abyssinian — also "Hamitic").

"Hamitic" (also Caucasian): tall stature, dark-olive, bronze or black skin, wavy hair, oval face, "well-formed" features, aquiline nose.

—North African: Libyan (Numidian, Mauritanian, Gaetulian, etc), known only in inscriptions; Berber (Kabyle, Shilha, Zenaga, Tamashek);

—Berber: N Sahara,sometimes blond; Canary Island: Guanches, extinct since 1600's; ‟Vestiges of their language suggest relationship with the Berbers. Physically, also, they bore resemblance to the Cro-Magnon type.”

—Sudan: Fulah, Turaregs, Tibbu; ancient Egyptians (Copts); Ethiopia (also Semitic): Gallas, Somalis.

Hamitic is a description more of language than of race, and this family is inflectional, agglutative, with an affinity to Semitic.

Cushite

—Negroid: relatively tall stature, extreme dolichocephaly, convex forehead, prognathous jaws, large teeth, flat broad nose, everted lips, "woolly" hair, very dark complexion; native to Africa between Congo and Sahara.

—Bantu: equatorial and southern Africa. Language agglutative, most archaic form is Zulu and region around central Congo and the great lakes.

—Bushmen: short, yellowish complexion, flat triangular face.

—Hottentot: southern Africa, excessively dolichocephalic, yellowish-brown complexion, high cheek bones and pointed chin = triangular face; language related to Bushman and Bantu; agglutative, "remarkable" phonetic and grammatical character, clicks of Bushman, tones of Indo-Chinese.

—Pygmy: Negroid features, very short stature, no native language.

Mongolian

Coarse straight black hair; scant beard; broad, flat face; short, broad nose; prominent cheek bones; epicanthic fold; short stature, almost always brachycephalic (round). Languages: Indo-Chinese, Ural-Altic, Japanese and allies.

—Chinese: longer and higher cranium than other Mongolians, sometimes approaching dolichocephaly (long).

As for language, a discussion of the many Asian tongues is outside our focus. But, for example, Chinese is monosyllabic, compounding, isolating and tonal; no dialect has more than a 1000 syllables, and Pekingese has only 420.

brain damage

As a result of the implanting of a new language into the brain, memory was affected — damaged — and writing eventually became a requirement. I hope not to over-extend the evidence in support of this idea, by pointing once more to a myth of the Maidu Indians, who say that once ‟when the people were having a burning, and everything was ready for the next day, suddenly in the night everybody began to speak in a different tongue . . .” A certain man was given the ability to understand all the new tongues, and he gathered the befuddled families together and ‟showed them how to cook and to hunt, gave them laws, and appointed the times for their dances and festivals.” Likewise, the Wa-Sania of Kenya ("British East Africa") recount that during a famine, everyone went mad, and started to babble and wander away.

Why did these people not already know such basic cultural skills? Why were they called "mad"? We may assume that in many cases, people had been made as children. Some portion of mankind was not just altered at Babel, but damaged. These unfortunates had low intelligence, which when combined with the scattering (when they were cast out from the land they knew), and with their loss of skills, and with their ignorance as to proper diet, resulted in the "primitive" and "malformed" races which we find in the archeological and fossil record. Thus we note the ‛primitive’ skills of certain "stone age" peoples, such as the Neanderthals with their simple tools and crude hunting techniques. Job calls the ancestors of the cave men "fools" (Job 30:8), and while this may indicate a moral state, it resulted in an intellectual state.

This simple assumption goes a long way to explain how new cultures, seemingly unrelated to those of Mesopotamia, just appear out of nowhere in the archeological record. This is, of course, fundamentally a metaphysical explanation, but that does not mean it is disreputable. Understand, I am not here presenting a rigorous argument on this point, because I have made the case already in Idols of the Cave, and will address it again in detail, in my treatment of the "Stone Age".

Peleg

Just as the Exodus occurred in the days of Moses, fifth from Israel, so the Confusion occurred in the days of Peleg (Gen 10:25), fifth from Noah. But aside from symmetry, for what substantive reason does the Table of Nations stop at Peleg? — when Gen 11:10-32 reprises part of the genealogy in the previous chapter, and continues Shem's line to Abram. Well, Shem is telling specifically of the situation at Babel, and the genealogy stops with Peleg, because "in his days was the earth divided . . .”

The word ‛divided’ has been much debated. It is a pun on Peleg's name, which means "split" or "divide". From this is derived ‛channel’ and ‛canal’, and some scholars have supposed that the event commemorated by this verse was the instituting of large-scale irrigation. This is not an unreasonable interpretation, given that a form of the word describes flowing, channeled waters or rivers (cf. Job 29:6, Ps 1:3, Is 32:2). The forming of political divisions has also been proposed. But it is context which must resolve controversy, and here the context is of the Tower.

Others, more imaginative, have found "continental drift" here. This, however, is to read too much into the passages, especially when we consider that something as literally earthshaking as the noticeable movement of continents could not have transpired effectively unnoticed in the pagan sources with which we could correlate this verse. The events which formed the mid-oceanic ridges can hardly be contained in this brief verse. In any case, the geological evidence does not allow such an interpretation. If we reject the uniformitarian dogma that "drift" occurred over millions of years — which we certainly must do, when we contemplate the matter — we are left with a rapid catastrophe. Indeed, as I demonstrate in The Pillars of Heaven, it was during the Flood of Noah that such tectonic movements occurred.

A passive form of the word "divide" is used in Dan 2:41, where the fourth great kingdom will be divided, as iron and as clay — representing political forms separated by time. The old Roman Empire, of iron, had its common tongue of Latin; the modern European federation, occupying exactly the land of the old Empire, will be brittle, weakened by the multiplicity of languages — unbonded by a common tongue.

Now, just as the "earth" was destroyed by the Flood, the "earth" was divided in Peleg's day — "earth" in Hebrew is eres. We are reading not merely of the ground or planet, but of the land — the ground as it relates to people. In both cases, of Noah and of Peleg, the context is of the judgment of mankind, more than simply upon geology or politics. Again, Peleg's Gen 10:25 speaks of the earth being divided, and Babel's Gen 10:32-11:1 speaks of the nations divided on the earth after the Flood, the whole earth having been one (absolute unity) family, with one language and speech. These two sections, then, are different perspectives of the same event.

The division of the earth, by means of the Confusion and scattering at Babel, is the event which occurred in the days of Peleg. And since the division befell Peleg's generation, he is the last patriarch to be mentioned in this context. Considering that Peleg was age 125 at the time, and himself a great-grandfather, we may understand that Peleg's ‛generation’ was in charge, and not mere hapless victims.

So we conclude our look at the events at Babel, occurring in an essentially illiterate age — ignoring any crypto-history, of writings which are unknown to scholarship. The only history we have is from the Bible, and the details contained here were transmitted orally, from father to son, and also pictographically, by which the events of a story were represented in a sort of cartoon. Only in the days of Shem does writing proper appear in the archeological record, and any "writing" which may have existed prior to this — even if truly developed — is simply unknown. In the next chapter we will look at the history which Shem wrote, in the so-called Table of Nations, by which every race and language may trace its origin, if its memory extends back that far.