Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 8/12/2004 1:17:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
kwrandolph AT email.com writes:


> If Genesis is, as it claims, an accurate history, it would not have the 
> literary conventions that you apply to it. Or to put it into other words, 
> the 
> Biblical authors did not make the literary assumptions and conventions you 
> make, nor did they expect their readers to do so.

Well--Genesis has a pretty good batting-average so far.  It took modern 
science--microbiology--to vindicate it.  Some decades ago, there was a furor 
because a man named Darwin claimed we are all descended from apes.  There was 
even a 
famous trial, "The Scopes Monkey Trial", where the proponents of the Bible 
squared off against a Darwinite.  Both sides, as it turns out, were right and 
there was no reason for all the fuss.  Genesis is correct.  There was an 
"Eve" 
and we are all descendants of her and a small group of her daughters in 
Africa--the "Mitochondrial Eve".  But before "Eve" there were the "apemen".  
Of this 
the ancients could not conceive.  But they also said that the "sons of the 
gods" (extra-terrestrials) mixed with human beings.  Perhaps one day even 
that 
will be vindicated.  Since other ANE peoples have a memory of a great flood 
on 
earth, probably there was one.  The end of the Ice Age probably caused 
one--but 
that is too long ago.  Regardless, some other phenomenon may have caused a 
rain that lasted for forty days and night straight.  The Greek tale of 
"Deucalion's Flood" is very close to the story of Noah.  When we get to 
Abraham--that 
has been vindicated, too.  Read here and you will understand why:

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html

It boils down to the Jews being descended from 13 different men--evidently 
the 12 tribes of Israel, plus one.  Read the URL patiently and you will see 
that 
Genesis already knew, without DNA, that the Jews and Arabs are genetically 
pretty much the same the same and from one father--Abraham--the whole batch 
of 
DNA having evidently started in the Fertile Crescent.   Our Torah has been 
revered for so many generations, I believe, not just because it contains the 
Law 
of Moses.  I think it goes beyond even that and that Jews even forgot why the 
Torah is so holy and just assumed it must be on account of the Law.  But, 
little by little, it is my belief that it will be shown that the Torah 
contains the 
secrets of the history of the human race, all lost over many dark ages--but 
now being recovered one step at a time by ever-evolving science.