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Talk:World History Lecture One (view source)
Revision as of 13:00, February 5, 2009
, 13:00, February 5, 2009→Flood: Unsigned, and new section: →More on dates and other problems
==Flood==
==Flood==
I notice the lecture proposes a date of the flud at 3300 BC. I'm afraid this may be a mistake. Ussher (where the 4004 BC date comes from), Newton and any other respectable chronology places the flood at around 2300 BC. Adam being on the Ark is something to ponder though (According to Genesis 5:5 Adam lived to be 930, which would mean he died around 2770-3074)... Actually, I've never seen the 3700 BC creation date. What is the source for that?
I notice the lecture proposes a date of the flud at 3300 BC. I'm afraid this may be a mistake. Ussher (where the 4004 BC date comes from), Newton and any other respectable chronology places the flood at around 2300 BC. Adam being on the Ark is something to ponder though (According to Genesis 5:5 Adam lived to be 930, which would mean he died around 2770-3074)... Actually, I've never seen the 3700 BC creation date. What is the source for that? {{unsigned|FundieMath}}
== More on dates and other problems ==
Having seen repeated references to this from the Sock Drawer, I decided to have a look. What I find is an unfortunate (but understandable, to some extent) mixture of secular and biblical dates. I see that FundieMath has corrected the date of the flood in the table to 2300 B.C. ([[James Ussher|Ussher]] actually puts it at 2349 B.C., but 2300 B.C. is a common approximation, and [[Biblical chronology dispute|Ussher might have been slightly out]] anyway.) But in another place it still says "3300 or 3000 B.C.", and other dates, such as for Egyptian civilisation, are given that predate this (but couldn't predate the flood). So really, the lecture needs a complete overhaul of the dates mentioned, not just the correction of the odd one here and there.
Part of the problem is that dates are used that are probably derived from Egyptian chronology, yet Egyptian chronology is by no means an undisputed set of dates, and is being questioned in quite high archaeological circles. (The comment above about Chinese dates are almost certainly from sources that are themselves not beyond dispute.)
Although the lecture is good in principle, it does have a number of other questionable claims, including some of the claims about languages, and the claim that the Egyptian Old Kingdom lacked the wheel, and therefore that the pyramids were built without the use of the wheel. In fact, a recent proposal on how the pyramids were built includes the use of the wheel (in the form of rollers to move the large stone blocks on).
Another problem is the date for the Wisdom books. The table list them as "dating back perhaps older than Genesis", which ''may'' be true for Job (depending also on when Genesis was written, but I agree that Job was very early), but not for the remaining Wisdom books.
[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:00, 5 February 2009 (EST)