7 ms·

No it's not. The Genesis account states that the earth was created, then the oceans, then trees and plants, and after all that the sun the moon and the stars w

by sysrpl 5y ago

No it's not. The Genesis account states that the earth was created, then the oceans, then trees and plants, and after all that the sun the moon and the stars were created. The correct historical order is stars existed, then the sun was formed, then the earth and moon, then oceans, and finally trees and plants.

commandlinefan 5y ago
Interesting that your mind immediately goes there. I read the title and wondered about the historical accuracy of, say, Abraham offering his wife to pharaoh or Solomon killing his brother to ascend to the throne. With a handful of exceptions, after the part with the Ark, the old testament is at least believable.
- katzgrau 5y ago
  I was like, pretty sure all those people didn't live 900 years. I like a lot of the stories and subjective meaning, but you kind of have to look past the odd factoids.
  - mch82 5y ago
    As a thought experiment, could it be a units translation issue? A person who lived 175 seasons (each 3 months long) would be 44 years old. A person who lived 900 moons would be 74. It’s happened to spacecraft, http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/ http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      People have suggested that it's miscounting months as years, but that now means you get 10 year-olds (and sometimes even younger!) popping out babies, which doesn't make that much sense either.
    - soneil 5y ago
      I find it interesting that the Sumerian King List exhibits the same behaviour. The earliest kings rule for tens of thousands of years (each), the second wave rule for hundreds of years, and the third wave rule for tens of years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List ). So I'm left with three thoughts that don't necessarily agree with each other. One, is that it seems fairly obvious that there's some transition from oral histories to written histories; and the closer the event was to the written record, the more realistic it gets (which we also see in the OT). Two, is that there's a lot of crossover between Sumerian kings and Gods, so it doesn't seem inappropriate for the oral tradition to imbue kings with god-like properties. (As an aside - I can easily imagine that in tens of thousands of years from now, with fragments of records remaining, someone could argue with a straight face that the early space-agers actually believed Queen Elizabeth was immortal and semi-lizard. This is obviously comical, but does illustrate the risks of an oral tradition.) And three - the possibility that there's intermingling between these two traditions? Or that there's some cultural factors here where we're seeing the effects without the causes (ie we're not seeing why it was popular to assign these characteristics to ancestors, only that they did so). But to come back a little more on-topic - Sumer is also where we get the sexagesimal (base-60) numbering that we still see in time & angles. So when comparing units, there could be some mistranslation between different number bases at some point.
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        > space-agers actually believed Queen Elizabeth was immortal and semi-lizard Oh my god I'm picturing bojack horsemen as the last surviving digital media; not so different from ancient hieroglyphs of animal heads and human bodies...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - timbit42 5y ago
      The likely solution is that it is a unit translation issue. Apparently Sumerian had three numbering systems, depending on what you were counting, and they each reused the same symbols, some of them to mean different things. Robert Best wrote "Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth" ( https://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Ziusudra-Epic-Sumerian/dp/0966784014 https://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Ziusudra-Epic-Sumerian/dp/0... ) in which he translates the numbers back into Sumerian using the incorrect numbering system and then retranslates them using the correct numbering system. He ends up with not only ages that make sense, but it also fixes the unevenness of the Biblical ages. It also sorts out the Kings List numbers.
- soneil 5y ago
  I find "the part with the Ark" fascinating. The number of different traditions that have a deluge myth has to make you wonder if there isn't something behind it. Obviously if you take it very literally, every species on earth in the back of a homemade boat, the entire planet being wiped out, etc - it doesn't stand up very well. But I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the story is the fossilised remains of an oral tradition that predates the written record - perhaps the loss of lands after the last ice age, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth
  - xaedes 5y ago
    Here is something from Zoroastrianism akin to the Ark, connecting it with winter and "foul frost": FARGARD II. Yima (gamshêd). And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying: 'O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvî deep on the highest tops of mountains. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables. Before that winter, those fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle: now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world, the land wherein footprints even of sheep may still be seen. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square , and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men; a Vara, long. as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be a fold for flocks. There thou shalt make waters flow in a bed a hâthra long; there thou shalt settle birds, by the ever-green banks that bear never-failing food. There thou shalt establish dwelling places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of ever, kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara. There shall be no humpbacked, none bulged forward there; no impotent, no lunatic; no poverty, no lying; no meanness, no jealousy; no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainyu stamps the bodies of mortals. In the largest part of the place thou shalt make nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest. To the streets of the largest part thou shalt bring a thousand seeds of men and women; to the streets of the middle part, six hundred; to the streets of the smallest part, three hundred. That Vara thou shalt seal up with the golden ring, and thou shalt make a door, and a window self-shining within.' https://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0408.htm https://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0408.htm
SeanLuke 5y ago
Actually there are TWO incompatible accounts of creation in Genesis, one in Genesis 1 and one in Genesis 2. Genesis 1: the world initially all water. God has to dry it to create land. Genesis 2: the world initially all land. God has to add water. Genesis 1 creation order: water, land, plants, animals, humans (male and female at the same time, most reasonable reading is many humans all at once). Genesis 2 creation order: land, water, Adam alone, plants, animals, Eve alone.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  The two accounts aren't necessarily incompatible, and they can be interpreted as offering two parallel perspectives of Creation: the first with a cosmological focus, and the second with a sociological one. A synthesis of the two accounts would give an order something like this: Fluid (the proto-Earth which didn't have a distinct atmosphere), solid Earth (with liquid water forming oceans, and a gaseous atmosphere), plants, animals, humans, Adam, the garden of Eden (in an area that had been barren), (animals brought to Adam for naming), Eve.
  - SeanLuke 5y ago
    Meh, apologetics. Either the water was first or the land was. Either man was explicitly created before the plants, or he was explicitly created 3 days after them. On and on. There are tons of irreconcilable differences among the creation accounts.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. It's the last thing we want here, and it's particularly easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sysrpl 5y ago
  The original title of this submission until it was changed was "Is the Old Testament historically accurate". My response was to that title, no it isn't historically accurate.
  - dang 5y ago
    I know, but you broke several of the HN guidelines with that response, including these: "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The article is obviously talking about historical accuracy in the context of archaeology and really in the context of a specific archeological dig. It's not about whether God created the earth in 7 days or put a bunch of animals on a boat.
    - that1dude 5y ago
      Except fact is not provocative at all. They were objective with their answer and did not respond in a way that was derogatory nor mean spirited. They didn't even mention their opinion on religion, just responded "No, here would be the sequence of things". That's not even critical. You trying to weaponize the guidelines is an abuse of the community and against the spirit and purpose of the rules.
      - dang 5y ago
        That's a strained interpretation both of the GP comment and of the HN guidelines. I'm pretty sure the bulk of the community here doesn't want to argue about whether the creation story of Genesis is "factual" or not. There's zero intellectual interest in that; it is, in fact, an absurd thing to argue about, unless you feel charged up about religion somehow. > fact is not provocative at all. There are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves—humans do that—and often they do it in a highly provocative way. That's why "I'm just stating facts" is one of the classic troll tropes. For example, if one middle schooler points out the acne on another kid's face, that's both factual and provocative. I've used that analogy before. Recently I ran across an old comment by pg where he made a similar point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6539403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6539403. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20infinitely%20many%20facts&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by sysrpl 5y ago

commandlinefan 5y ago

Interesting that your mind immediately goes there. I read the title and wondered about the historical accuracy of, say, Abraham offering his wife to pharaoh or Solomon killing his brother to ascend to the throne. With a handful of exceptions, after the part with the Ark, the old testament is at least believable.

katzgrau 5y ago
I was like, pretty sure all those people didn't live 900 years. I like a lot of the stories and subjective meaning, but you kind of have to look past the odd factoids.
- mch82 5y ago
  As a thought experiment, could it be a units translation issue? A person who lived 175 seasons (each 3 months long) would be 44 years old. A person who lived 900 moons would be 74. It’s happened to spacecraft, http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/ http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    People have suggested that it's miscounting months as years, but that now means you get 10 year-olds (and sometimes even younger!) popping out babies, which doesn't make that much sense either.
  - soneil 5y ago
    I find it interesting that the Sumerian King List exhibits the same behaviour. The earliest kings rule for tens of thousands of years (each), the second wave rule for hundreds of years, and the third wave rule for tens of years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List ). So I'm left with three thoughts that don't necessarily agree with each other. One, is that it seems fairly obvious that there's some transition from oral histories to written histories; and the closer the event was to the written record, the more realistic it gets (which we also see in the OT). Two, is that there's a lot of crossover between Sumerian kings and Gods, so it doesn't seem inappropriate for the oral tradition to imbue kings with god-like properties. (As an aside - I can easily imagine that in tens of thousands of years from now, with fragments of records remaining, someone could argue with a straight face that the early space-agers actually believed Queen Elizabeth was immortal and semi-lizard. This is obviously comical, but does illustrate the risks of an oral tradition.) And three - the possibility that there's intermingling between these two traditions? Or that there's some cultural factors here where we're seeing the effects without the causes (ie we're not seeing why it was popular to assign these characteristics to ancestors, only that they did so). But to come back a little more on-topic - Sumer is also where we get the sexagesimal (base-60) numbering that we still see in time & angles. So when comparing units, there could be some mistranslation between different number bases at some point.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      > space-agers actually believed Queen Elizabeth was immortal and semi-lizard Oh my god I'm picturing bojack horsemen as the last surviving digital media; not so different from ancient hieroglyphs of animal heads and human bodies...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - timbit42 5y ago
    The likely solution is that it is a unit translation issue. Apparently Sumerian had three numbering systems, depending on what you were counting, and they each reused the same symbols, some of them to mean different things. Robert Best wrote "Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth" ( https://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Ziusudra-Epic-Sumerian/dp/0966784014 https://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Ziusudra-Epic-Sumerian/dp/0... ) in which he translates the numbers back into Sumerian using the incorrect numbering system and then retranslates them using the correct numbering system. He ends up with not only ages that make sense, but it also fixes the unevenness of the Biblical ages. It also sorts out the Kings List numbers.
soneil 5y ago
I find "the part with the Ark" fascinating. The number of different traditions that have a deluge myth has to make you wonder if there isn't something behind it. Obviously if you take it very literally, every species on earth in the back of a homemade boat, the entire planet being wiped out, etc - it doesn't stand up very well. But I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the story is the fossilised remains of an oral tradition that predates the written record - perhaps the loss of lands after the last ice age, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth
- xaedes 5y ago
  Here is something from Zoroastrianism akin to the Ark, connecting it with winter and "foul frost": FARGARD II. Yima (gamshêd). And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying: 'O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvî deep on the highest tops of mountains. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables. Before that winter, those fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle: now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world, the land wherein footprints even of sheep may still be seen. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square , and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men; a Vara, long. as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be a fold for flocks. There thou shalt make waters flow in a bed a hâthra long; there thou shalt settle birds, by the ever-green banks that bear never-failing food. There thou shalt establish dwelling places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of ever, kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara. There shall be no humpbacked, none bulged forward there; no impotent, no lunatic; no poverty, no lying; no meanness, no jealousy; no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainyu stamps the bodies of mortals. In the largest part of the place thou shalt make nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest. To the streets of the largest part thou shalt bring a thousand seeds of men and women; to the streets of the middle part, six hundred; to the streets of the smallest part, three hundred. That Vara thou shalt seal up with the golden ring, and thou shalt make a door, and a window self-shining within.' https://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0408.htm https://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0408.htm

SeanLuke 5y ago

Actually there are TWO incompatible accounts of creation in Genesis, one in Genesis 1 and one in Genesis 2. Genesis 1: the world initially all water. God has to dry it to create land. Genesis 2: the world initially all land. God has to add water. Genesis 1 creation order: water, land, plants, animals, humans (male and female at the same time, most reasonable reading is many humans all at once). Genesis 2 creation order: land, water, Adam alone, plants, animals, Eve alone.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dane-pgp 5y ago
The two accounts aren't necessarily incompatible, and they can be interpreted as offering two parallel perspectives of Creation: the first with a cosmological focus, and the second with a sociological one. A synthesis of the two accounts would give an order something like this: Fluid (the proto-Earth which didn't have a distinct atmosphere), solid Earth (with liquid water forming oceans, and a gaseous atmosphere), plants, animals, humans, Adam, the garden of Eden (in an area that had been barren), (animals brought to Adam for naming), Eve.
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  Meh, apologetics. Either the water was first or the land was. Either man was explicitly created before the plants, or he was explicitly created 3 days after them. On and on. There are tons of irreconcilable differences among the creation accounts.

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. It's the last thing we want here, and it's particularly easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sysrpl 5y ago
The original title of this submission until it was changed was "Is the Old Testament historically accurate". My response was to that title, no it isn't historically accurate.
- dang 5y ago
  I know, but you broke several of the HN guidelines with that response, including these: "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The article is obviously talking about historical accuracy in the context of archaeology and really in the context of a specific archeological dig. It's not about whether God created the earth in 7 days or put a bunch of animals on a boat.
  - that1dude 5y ago
    Except fact is not provocative at all. They were objective with their answer and did not respond in a way that was derogatory nor mean spirited. They didn't even mention their opinion on religion, just responded "No, here would be the sequence of things". That's not even critical. You trying to weaponize the guidelines is an abuse of the community and against the spirit and purpose of the rules.
    - dang 5y ago
      That's a strained interpretation both of the GP comment and of the HN guidelines. I'm pretty sure the bulk of the community here doesn't want to argue about whether the creation story of Genesis is "factual" or not. There's zero intellectual interest in that; it is, in fact, an absurd thing to argue about, unless you feel charged up about religion somehow. > fact is not provocative at all. There are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves—humans do that—and often they do it in a highly provocative way. That's why "I'm just stating facts" is one of the classic troll tropes. For example, if one middle schooler points out the acne on another kid's face, that's both factual and provocative. I've used that analogy before. Recently I ran across an old comment by pg where he made a similar point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6539403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6539403. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20infinitely%20many%20facts&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html