Was Josephus Divided over Post-Flood Patriarchs?

Citing two passages of Josephus' Antiquities, Book I:

3:4. For indeed Seth was born when Adam was in his two hundred and thirtieth year, who lived :nine hundred and thirty years. Seth begat Enos in his two hundred and fifth year; who, when he had lived nine hundred and twelve years, delivered the government to Cainan his son, whom he had in his hundred and ninetieth year. He lived nine hundred and five years. Cainan, when he had lived nine hundred and ten years, had his son Malaleel, who was born in his hundred and seventieth year. This Malaleel, having lived eight hundred and ninety-five years, died, leaving his son Jared, whom he begat when he was in his hundred and sixty-fifth year. He lived nine hundred and sixty-two years; and then his son Enoch succeeded him, who was born when his father was one hundred and sixty-two years old. Now he, when he had lived three hundred and sixty-five years, departed and went to God; whence it is that they have not written down his death. Now Mathusela, the son of Enoch, who was born to him when he was one hundred and sixty-five years old, had Lamech for his son when he was one hundred and eighty-seven years of age; to whom he delivered the government, when he had retained it nine hundred and sixty-nine years. Now Lamech, when he had governed seven hundred and seventy-seven years, appointed Noah, his son, to be ruler of the people, who was born to Lamech when he was one hundred and eighty-two years old, and retained the government nine hundred and fifty years. These years collected together make up the sum before set down. But let no one inquire into the deaths of these men; for they extended their lives along together with their children and grandchildren; but let him have regard to their births only.

6:5. I will now treat of the Hebrews. The son of Phaleg, whose father Was Heber, was Ragau; whose son was Serug, to whom was born Nahor; his son was Terah, who was the father of Abraham, who accordingly was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the two hundred and ninety-second year after the deluge; for Terah begat Abram in his seventieth year. Nahor begat Haran when he was one hundred and twenty years old; Nahor was born to Serug in his hundred and thirty-second year; Ragau had Serug at one hundred and thirty; at the same age also Phaleg had Ragau; Heber begat Phaleg in his hundred and thirty-fourth year; he himself being begotten by Sala when he was a hundred and thirty years old, whom Arphaxad had for his son at the hundred and thirty-fifth year of his age. Arphaxad was the son of Shem, and born twelve years after the deluge. Now Abram had two brethren, Nahor and Haran: of these Haran left a son, Lot; as also Sarai and Milcha his daughters; and died among the Chaldeans, in a city of the Chaldeans, called Ur; and his monument is shown to this day. These married their nieces. Nabor married Milcha, and Abram married Sarai. Now Terah hating Chaldea, on account of his mourning for Ilaran, they all removed to Haran of Mesopotamia, where Terah died, and was buried, when he had lived to be two hundred and five years old; for the life of man was already, by degrees, diminished, and became shorter than before, till the birth of Moses; after whom the term of human life was one hundred and twenty years, God determining it to the length that Moses happened to live. Now Nahor had eight sons by Milcha; Uz and Buz, Kemuel, Chesed, Azau, Pheldas, Jadelph, and Bethuel. These were all the genuine sons of Nahor; for Teba, and Gaam, and Tachas, and Maaca, were born of Reuma his concubine: but Bethuel had a daughter, Rebecca, and a son, Laban.

when Adam was in his two hundred and thirtieth year,		230
Seth begat Enos in his two hundred and fifth year;		205, 435
whom he had in his hundred and ninetieth year.		190, 625
Malaleel, who was born in his hundred and seventieth year.		170, 795
Jared, whom he begat when he was in his hundred and sixty-fifth year.		165, 960
Enoch succeeded him, who was born when his father was one hundred and sixty-two years old.		162, 1122
the son of Enoch, who was born to him when he was one hundred and sixty-five years old,		165, 1287
had Lamech for his son when he was one hundred and eighty-seven years of age;		187, 1474
Noah, was born to Lamech when he was one hundred and eighty-two years old,		182, 1656 (!)

1656 Birth of Noah after Creation
0600 Age of Noah at Flood
2256 Flood after Creation

Abraham, who accordingly was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the two hundred and ninety-second year after the deluge;

2256
0292 Abraham after Flood
2548 Abraham after Creation

for Terah begat Abram in his seventieth year.		70
Nahor begat Haran when he was one hundred and twenty years old;		120, 190
Nahor was born to Serug in his hundred and thirty-second year;		132, 322
Ragau had Serug at one hundred and thirty;		130, 452
at the same age also Phaleg had Ragau;		130, 582
Heber begat Phaleg in his hundred and thirty-fourth year;		134, 716
he himself being begotten by Sala when he was a hundred and thirty years old,		130, 846
whom Arphaxad had for his son at the hundred and thirty-fifth year of his age.		135, 981
Arphaxad was the son of Shem, and born twelve years after the deluge.		12, 993

2256
0993 Abraham after Flood
3249 Abraham after Creation

So, the two informations, summary and detailed, given about Abraham's birth after Flood contradict each other like Masoretic on the summary and LXX on the detailed.

3249
2548
0701

There is a difference of 701 years between the two informations. Note that a summary one is not found in the Bible text, either for Flood or for Abraham after Flood, but the detailed one is found in the Bible text : this means that when Josephus as a very young Jew was learning Genesis by heart, he was learning LXX chronology.

And, since he is giving a summary in conflict with this, it seems he had been told this new sum of overlapping lifespans from the Synagogue, which sometimes was in conflict with him.

Anno Mundi for Exodus, Birth of Abraham, and Anno Diluvii for Birth of Abraham in St Jerome's chronology:

5199 5199 2957
1470 2015 2015
3729 3184 0942

So, the 942 years from Flood to Abraham in St Jerome's chronology (which Roman Catholics use at Christmas, if of Latin rite and not in misplaced obedience to a pseudo-Papal measure from 1994 using a newer and imprecise one), are fairly close to Josephus' detailed, but not at all to his summary chronology from Flood to Abraham's birth.

When in Contra Apionem he says that from Creation to Moses there were just a little less than 3000 years, he is of course using the summary chronology he seems to have learned as an adult.

It is a bit funny that I skim through Book I and don't find Melchisedec in it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Wenceslas, Duke and Martyr
28.IX.2017

Pat Robertson Called Dinos 65 Million Years Old Because of Carbon Dating?

Here is one still from a video clip with automatic subtitles:



Here is the video, listen if the subs were wrong:

Pat Robertson: Dumb to Believe in Young Earth Creationism
David Pakman Show | Ajoutée le/ added 15 mai 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F8vPFRCoT8

Shall we take another still, from Young Turks?



Pat Robertson v Ken Ham: EPIC THROWDOWN over Earth's Age
The Young Turks | Ajoutée le / added 19 mai 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OWIdrSow78

Well, it seems - I think two subtitles both showing he connects radio carbon to 65 million years are a bit odd, if he said something else - he does connect a figure like 65 million years to a dating method like carbon dating.

Too bad.

No carbon dating actual scientific user would do that. Guess why? 60 000 years is less than 1000 times shorter time:



Let's take ten times what we said, less than a 100dth of 65 million years:



Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
[same site, both images]
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html

In other words, how do you distinguish zero percent carbon 14 of the modern atmospheric level as in 600 000 years from equally zero percent as in 65 000 000 years? You can't.

So, Pat Robertson, while having a business bargain involved in petrol, involved in "rotting dinosaurs", may be well founded on the stock market of petrol, but has no clue as to the carbon dating of either petrol, dinosaur bones or other things, as far as we can gather from this clip. Perhaps he has improved since then, perhaps he hasn't.

But supposing he has improved, he at least used to share an attitude which very many still share today : a very huge confidence (or inversely suspicion) about carbon dates, without no real clue as to its conditions.

Now, suppose a thing, bone, tooth, piece of wood, sample, piece of charcoal, is carbon dated to 60 000 years ago. That means the carbon 14 in relation to carbon 12 is 0.07 % of what the carbon 14 in relation to carbon 12 is in today's atmosphere or a recent sample. It is the carbon 14 which machines can detect directly. The years are a conventional and programmed translation of it.

That leaves open the question how many of these years are real years of decaying carbon 14 content in sample, and how many of them are due to lower original carbon 14 content in atmosphere, before it rose to present level. Conventional dating says "zero" to the latter and therefore "all 60 000 years" to the former. And decaying level in sample for 60 000 years is a decay which normally takes 60 000 years to go through.

However, if the Flood is carbon dated to 40 000 years ago (0.792 % of the present carbon level left in samples from Flood), and the Flood was 2957 BC, 4974 years ago (we have 54.788 % of original content), this means the level at Flood would have been ...

0.00792 / 0.54788 = 0.014456

... 1.4456 % of present level. And if carbon 14 content rose from zero to 1.4456 % of present level before the Flood, well, for one it was rising slower, even forming of new carbon was slower than now, at least in relation to carbon 12 content of atmosphere, and for another, we can find a level from which the decay counted in actual years (somewhere between 4974 and 7216 - from which we would have 41.774 % left of any sample, if the isotope existed then) would leave us with the above mentioned 0.07 % of the present level. Let's try it.

0.0007 / 0.41774 = 0.0016757
0.0007 / 0.54788 = 0.0012777

So, between zero and 1.4456 %, the level is somewhere corresponding to between 0.12777 and 0.16757 %. That is, one tenth up. I don't think it means sth dated 60 000 BP is from year of Creation 224, but I'd rather think of a curve creeping near bottom for some time before it starts to rise.

If we instead assume the Flood was 5383 and the Creation 7526 years ago, you need to make minor adjustments to previous, but not to outright ditch the whole setup. And, in reverse direction, for the minor adjustments, if you take Flood 4365 years ago and Creation 6021 years ago.

So, the dinosaurs then have zero carbon 14, which means they were fossilised at creation, right? No. They do get carbon dates within the carbon range.

Some time ago, not sure up to exactly when, the carbon range was back to "40 000 BP", but we have dinos dated to younger than that, right Mr Armitage, 28 000 BP or sth?

And others outside the older but inside the younger limit like a Triceratops dated to 41 010 BP:

More recently, Brian Thomas and Vance Nelson carbon dated a number of dinosaur fossils including two specimens from Triceratops horridus.3 The two specimens gave a date in years of 33,570±20 and 41,010±220.4

And notes:

3)Thomas, B. and Nelson, V., Radiocarbon in Dinosaur and Other Fossils, CRSQ 51:299–311, ‎‎2015‎. Return to text.
4)A sample purporting to be from the Flood era would not be expected to give a ‘radiocarbon age’ of about 5,000 years, but rather 20,000–50,000 years. Indeed, that is consistently what one obtains from specimens of oil, gas and fossil wood from layers allegedly ‘millions of years’ old. The reason is: radiocarbon dating assumes that the current 14C/12C ratio of about 1 in a trillion (after adjusting for the Industrial Revolution) was the starting ratio for the objects dated. But this ratio would have been much smaller before the Flood due to the fact that the earth had a much stronger magnetic field. Because pre-and para-Flood objects would have started with a much lower initial 14C/12C ratio, the measured amount today would also be smaller, and be (mis-)interpreted as much older. See What about carbon dating? Chapter 4, The Creation Answers Book. Return to text.

And source:

Triceratops soft tissue
Feedback archive → Feedback 2016
Published: 19 November 2016 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/triceratops-soft-tissue

You noted from pictures from Carbon 14 Dating Calculator that the present level of reliable detection is between 55 000 and 60 000 years? Good, this means you should realise even the higher value of Triceratops date is within detactable, and not just because zero carbon 14 used to be read "at least 40 000 years old" as back in those days.

I just hope Pat Robertson is not involved in some Transatlantic scheme to teach me a lesson or two while I am in France. He might have rather some lessons to learn from me, unless he's too old for that or already got it from someone else.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Joseph of Cupertino
18.IX.2017

PS, isn't he also claiming Ussher was both "Middle Ages" and "1800's"?

James Ussher (or Usher; 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656)

Quoted from wikipedia. As following:

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century.

Do I need a reference for 1581-1656 not being in 1800's?/HGL

Short Reply to CMI (?) - Sorry, it's a Long One! - On Babel and After

• 1) You are perfectly right human language is too complex for evolving from ape "language".
  
  However, the correct way of putting this is that every "statement" of an ape, is a unitary signal. This limits the number of signals to the avilable number of sounds, strength of voice also taken into account, and gestures.
  
  In human language, a statement is composed of or articulated into one or often MORE parts, known as words or morphemes, each bearing a meaning with a logical relation to the meaning of the statment as a whole, and these in turn are articulated into further smaller units, NOT bearing logical relation to the meaning of the morpheme or word as a whole. These even smaller units are called phonemes, and are in spoken language known either as "language sounds" or "letters" and in written language (with alphabetic writing), known as "letters" (sometimes graphemes are distinguished from phonemes).
  
  Both of these articulation which magnify the number of possible statements even while reducing the number of unitary signals a speaker must master, into infinity, are lacking from ape "language".
  
  
• 2) Original complexity and degeneration is however NOT a linguistically documented fact.
  
  I am quoting you:
  
  

  Hence both Juola and Bane define complexity according to those aspects which can be quantified and analyzed mathematically; but without wishing to belittle these studies the question still needs to be asked, “Can language—and its complexity—be reduced to mathematics in this way?” Furthermore, these studies deal with contemporary languages on the plane of the present: no attempt is made to explicate any sort of historical trend to simplification.
  
  Yet, even with their approach and criteria, it is significant that in Bane’s study, where he selects twenty languages for comparison, the most ancient language of his group, viz. Latin, comes out as the most complex, while Bislama—one of his ‘Creole’ group, appears near the bottom of his list as a very simple language, as indeed it is.

  
  
  I am sorry, but this is not what Bane said. I looked up your reference, and it said something else:
  
  

  Bane, M., Quantifying and Measuring Morphological Complexity; in: Chang, C.B. and Haynie, H.J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Somerville, pp. 69–76, 2008.

  
  
  Did you catch the nuance? He said nothing about complexity of a language as a whole. He said something about complexity in a specified area : morphological complexity.
  
  Now, the thing is, morphological complexity is usually at inverse ratio with syntactic one. It is not simplifying relation of morphemes, but reshuffling it.
  
  English indeed had, morphologically, four cases for nouns, five for adjectives and pronouns in the time of King Alfred, and now has general case for all nouns, s-genitive for nouns denoting persons, genitive or related adjective plus nominative vs oblique case for pronouns, no case forms at all for adjectives.
  
  This is a reduction.
  
  But on the other hand, in the time of King Alfred, English had basically two tenses, past and present. You don't find many futures, you don't find many pluperfects or perfects, these come once in a while, perhaps (though I don't recall getting them explained in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer), but future meaning is mainly represented by present form, pluperfect or perfect by past form.
  
  Now English has sixteen tenses. Past and present remain the simple forms, but you have three more parameters expressed in quasimorphological, phraseological ways:
  
  
  • continuous vs simple ("where are you going" would have been equivalent of "where goest thou" in KA's time)
  • perfect vs non-perfect ("I have [already] eaten" would have been "I ate already", precisely as "I ate" would have been "I ate")
  • future vs non-future ("I will go there" would have been "I go there", "I would go there" would have been - older sense - "I went theretoward" or "I willed to go there" - or - younger sense - replaced by present or past subjunctive).
  
  
  This means that the focus of morphological complexity has changed, and one can consider "analytical forms" (extra words) as "less complex" (needing fewer forms to learn separately) in morphology than "synthetic forms". But the complexity of meaning remains roughly the same.
  
  Also, vaunting morphological complexity as a a superiority is placing Sanskrit higher than Hebrew, since Sanskrit has higher both verbal and nominal complexity in morphology, Hebrew replacing it with stricter rules of syntax.
  
  But the original language was arguably Hebrew, therefore, your point of view is derogatory to the sacredness of Hebrew.
  
  Also, some racialists have pretended that Creoles are a sign of mental inferiority of black men, while the morphological complexity of Creoles arguably comes from them learning Portuguese, English or Dutch by replacing words in their own original West African languages, which, precisely like Chinese (hardly a simple language!) is putting the complexity burden on syntax rather than on morphology.
  
  If you take a sentence in English and a sentence in a Creole, and analyse the morphemes, they will be of similar or same number, probably not as often marking plural if understood, but in the Creole all of them will be separated by spaces, in English some will be joined into words of more than one morphem.
  
  And since Latin is a language you pretend to respect here (rightly so), though not over Hebrew (rightly so, once again), I can tell you my Latin professor Birger Bergh thought exactly the same things. Languages are as complex as the speakers need in vocabulary, and they are as potentially complex in logical relations, the difference being how many complexities have to be expressed, not how many can.
  
  

  When we say Sumerian is complex that is not a subjective judgment as to whether it is difficult (or easy) for person X to learn, but is so in its structure, its inflections and categories.

  
  
  An inflectional category is : how much complexity of meaning you are forced to show, not how much you can show.
  
  Finnish can, but need not, express whether a single person referred to is masculine or feminine, the pronoun being for both "hän" : this identic pronoun has nothing to do with gender theory, Finns are much more machist than Swedes, precisely as Russians are more machist than English (thugh Russian makes the difference in pronoun choice).
  
  

  We can see this, for example, in the Sumerian noun with its ten cases (!)

  
  
  Well, Finnish only has fifteen, what a reduction ! Assuming they are related, which perhaps they are. (Oh, that would be an increase!)
  
  

  but also class (personal and non-personal)

  
  
  Finnish too makes a distinction between "hän" and whatever they use for "it" - precisely as English, unlike French and Hebrew, does not replace "it" with either "he" or "she". Bantu languages lack gender and have a more intricate class system - right now - than either Finnish or Sumerian.
  
  

  One could indeed go on citing examples of ancient languages as to their complexity, their subtle nuances, their economy of words to express, at times, quite extensive sentences, and in turn the gradual loss of some of these nuances over the passage of time, but the point should nevertheless be clear. What can be stated emphatically is that evolutionary theory is at a loss to explain this phenomenon of original complexity and subsequent degeneration.

  
  
  Being lyrical about complexity of old languages (partly rightly, partly by misplaced apprehensions as a learner) does not justify claiming languages went downhill since then.
  
  The point of view comes from i a Grimm, who were not even Christians : have you read their text "supposing God had a language"? It is awful!
  
  
• 3) Different phonemes coalesce, granted, but they compensate too.
  
  Latin had ten vowels, five long, five short. Plus perhaps also a schwa like vowel, which is variously spelled u or i in short internal syllables, between stem and ending : volumus and regimus need not have had different vowels before the m, it could have been voll-uh-mooss, rayg-uh-mooss, conventional different spelling (the spelling regumus exists). So, ten or eleven.
  
  These are reduced to seven detectable diverse vowels (detectable as bottlenecks for original Latin vowels), in most, not all, Romance languages, when long and short cease to make a difference, and then we have some explosions of new differences. Why is there an i in French pied, Spanish pié? Because Latin "pedem" had a short e. Makes an open e in proto-Romance, and that gives this diphthong, in a stressed syllable. Spanish perhaps has only seven sounds for stressed syllables (a, ie, e, i, ue, o, u), but French really explodes the variations.
  
  Also, when words originally distinct become homophones, one word tends to get replaced or modified. In what was becoming French, solum (soil, floor, ground) and solem (Sun) began to coalesce, and one word was modified, the French for Sun comes not from "solem" but from "soliculum", diminutive for "solem". Language change is not just thughtless evolution downhill, but also intelligent design uphill.
  
  
• 4) language families :
  
  

  Greek and Latin belong to the Indo-European family; so too does Hittite, although the decipherment of the cuneiform script and its classification as Indo-European came as a shock to the system for Near Eastern scholars. Meanwhile, Linear B, since its decipherment by Michael Ventris, has been clearly recognized as an early form of Greek, a discovery which also upset the hitherto fond theories of scholars.

  
  
  Greek belongs to an identifiable person in table of nations : Iavan. Latin belongs to no one in particular in that list.
  
  Hittite seems to belong to a Canaanite, since the first born of Canaan was Heth. Actually, Hattic (Hattili in Hittite) may have been an earlier language of that stem, while Hittite (Nesili in Hittite) came from neighbouring descendants of Gomer ... except for one detail. It is related to Lydian, and the Lud in Anatolia was the Semitic Lud.
  
  And one scholar has pretended to identify Linear A as related to Indic and Iranian languages, to Vedic Sanskrit and to Avestic Old Persian. But since Crete was the land of Caphthorim, this places another Indo-European subfamily within ... yes : Ham.
  
  So, it is far safer to assume after Babel some 72 unrelated families exploded, and some of them started coalescing, like Assur and Chanaaen adopting languages related to the Hebrew of men like Abraham, or some may have had original affinities with Hebrew planted there by God, like Egyptian of Misraim was very similar in some very rough and general respects to Hebrew, like feminines in -t, like bi- or triliteral roots and so on.
  
  Ethiopians coming from Ham (from his son Kush) at least in part speak a language related to Hebrew, Gheez (and Amharic, which could be considered as "modern Gheez" or modern form of some sister language to Gheez). There was not ever a real linear simple decline for some of these languages, or even simple development, since they were in contact with each other.
  
  Your distinctions among ancient Near East families are, unlike your sharing the IE protolanguage craze, though somewhat discretely here, unobjectionable, as far as I can see.
  
  Making Etruscan descend from Thiraz is interesting : do you think Turkish and Hungarian also comes from him? Because, both genetics and linguistics are tying Etruscans to Hungarian and Asiatic origins, though some violently dispute this.
  
  See Alinei on this one (he dates proto-Indo-European to 10 000 BC or at least BP, which means he gives me a motive as Creationist to dispute original unity of this family).
  
  

  In regard to structure, the Etruscan noun has inflections for each of five cases; however, there is no gender distinction in common nouns, only with proper names.

  
  
  Sounds very Fenno-Ugric, except the five cases are comparatively few, closer to Turkish.
  
  

  Apart from the inevitable loan words from Greek, its vocabulary is sui generis, albeit some words passed into Latin as the latter took over as the language of the Italian Peninsula (figure 3).

  
  
  Except Alinei has shown this is wrong, many words become clearer and this in ways making short inscriptions intelligible (as opposed to totally garbled) if compared to Hungarian ones. What was the Etruscan version of Gyula again? Tried to check with Alinei, but this computer on Nanterre University Library does not allow me to open this pdf:
  
  www.continuitas.org/texts/alinei_etruscan.pdf
  
  I suspect it was Etruscan ZIL, ZILA, as given in this defense of Alinei (who has been attacked):
  
  http://tmajlath.byethost13.com/etruscan.html?i=1
  
  I applaud on the other hand this information:
  
  

  Finally in this survey of very ancient languages there are the Indus Valley texts. Widely regarded as indecipherable since their discovery in the early 20th century, Barry Fells attempted a decipherment in the 1970s following methods similar to those of Michael Ventris in his work on the Linear B script. His conclusion was that the script was alphabetic, with six vowels and 24 consonants, while the language, again complex in structure, was clearly Indo-European, in turn a direct ancestor of Sanskrit.

  
  
  If Barry Fells is correct, this means Caphthorim either were both on Crete and in Indus Valley (one could imagine commercial reasons, like for Chanaaenans to be in both Lebanon and Tunisia) or the Caphthorim on Crete were sharing a language with some other post-Flood tribe in Indus Valley (btw, Indus Valley is according to my recalibration of carbon 14 rather close after Babel), or, Hebrews knew one, but not both places where the Caphthorim went - assuming of course the French linguist who removed his site was right in supposing Linear A to be Aryan, in supposing he had identified Mitra-Varuna and Indra (Mount Ida, on Crete = Mount Indra, with Indra as Hindoo name for whoever Zeus was).
  
  

  The same could be said for the various other ancient languages of the Fertile Crescent: there is no evidence at all that any of the postulated ‘proto-languages’ ever existed. Bonfante does not venture to talk of a ‘proto-Etruscan’, but contents himself with the simple assertion that “the Etruscans were a pocket of non-Indoeuropean speakers in an area where everyone else spoke an Indoeuropean language”.55 The one possible exception to this scenario is the Indo- European family itself (biblically the Japhetic stream): there may have been an ancestor, a ‘proto-Indoeuropean’, for Luwian, Palaic, and Hittite, but even this is conjectural. In all, they are merely theoretical constructs, born ultimately of evolutionary assumptions.

  
  
  Indo-Europeans are neither purely Japhethic (see Anatolian Lud, in Shem's posterity in Genesis 10, see Caphthorim and - if Regma came to North India / Pakistan - also Regma for Hamite Indo-Europeans), nor the only Japhetics, since the Turks are very arguably Japhethic.
  
  Also, as language similarities go, Indo-European is by far the loosest language group I know of, perhaps rivalled by Ural-Altaic, and superseded only by the tenuous (not main sream, but required by Evolutionist logic) Nostratic and its rival Na Dene-Caucasian. Proto-Semitic is as unproblematic as Proto-Germanic : neither is documented, but both are probable on the ground of language similarities, if one did not have the problem with Proto-Semitic that one "descendent" of it, Hebrew, came before it.
  
  One could imagine Heber and his sons Peleg and Joctan were speaking Proto-Semitic, and that the tradition from early patriarchs, whether by word of mouth or by cuneiform tablets, changed pronunciation to either Aramaic or Hebrew, whichever of the two was the language of Abraham. Meanwhile, some people took over - as much and best they could - Proto-Semitic from them, because land of Chanaan was a bit narrow to have the language differences given from table of nations : instead of Jebusites and Moabites and Tyrians speaking widely divergent languages, we find historically and archaeologically attested Tyrians and Moabites spoke roughly same language as Biblical Hebrew, while Jebusites had no linguistic problems either communicating with Abraham (supposing as I do Melchisedec was a Jebusite, Masoretic and Jewish people will disagree) or getting conquered by King David.
  
  One could imagine that the real Proto-Semitic was either Biblical Hebrew or very close (Shalaam having neither become Shaloom, nor Salaam), and that the relationship with Proto-Semitic as reconstructed has been bungled : what sound changes to what is, excepting mergers, not totally clear. Supposing that IE family had an original unity, one can say Germanic emerged, on consonant side of phonemes, by Grimm and Verner sound changes, and Phrygian also independently had a Grimm like sound change : OR one can say Verner was the sound change leading to Germanic, while most non-Germanic versions (but not Phrygian!) come from an anti-Grimm sound change. There is no impossibility phonetically, when I discussed this with a linguist heavily prejudiced against Creationism, his main objection was it is not economic.
  
  Similarily, the sound changes "from Proto-Semitic to Hebrew" could, excepting the mergers (Verner involves a merger, and is therefore clinched) have gone, all or most of them, other way round.
  
  Ugaritic could fit either scenario : as a real Proto-Semitic very close to the Hebrew then spoken (and Hebrew Bibles, Masoretic, Samaritan or LXX identic fragments in Qumran have been phonetically updated to include sound changes since Moses presumably wrote sth close to Ugaritic), or Ugaritic can be derived from this movement of trying to learn Hebrew and partly failing.
  
  Obviously a Hebraist could imagine objections I don't even dream of, I have not studied Hebrew myself.
  
  This parallels my own earlier, and better founded, observations on Hittite, which seem not to have been totally lost on CMI:
  
  

  Hittite could well be seen as an ancestral Indo-European language.

  
  
  Especially if mergers deduced from Hittite spelling are really imprecisions in its spelling. But note, even then, Indo-European languages are very unequally in closeness to Hittite or indeed to any imagined or real language.
  
  
• 5) Shinar:
  
  

  Whether an occurrence in an Egyptian text of šngr or a similar occurrence in an Amarna letter of Sa-an-ha-ar refer to the biblical Shin‘ar, i.e. Lower Babylonia, is disputed, the Hebrew is nevertheless clear, even if extra-biblical references are not. According to Genesis 11:2 the confusion of languages occurred in “the land of Shin‘ar”, also mentioned in Genesis 10:10 and 14:1. That this name refers to Lower Mesopotamia is undoubted: the association with other known cities of that region in Genesis 10:10, and the destination of Shin‘ar for the Jewish exiles in Daniel 1:2, make the identification certain.

  
  
  No, the word Shinar can equally be considered as all of Mesopotamie, including Assyria and beyond, which means Göbekli Tepe is not excluded. Also, confer the fact that geographic names can get restricted areas. "Australia" in early 19th C. used to refer not just to "Ulimaroa"* and Tasmania, but include Easter Island and New Zealand too - as is now referred to as Oceania. Louisiana of the Louisiana Purchase is a larger area than Louisiana as a State. The place names also are actually not quite as clinching as imagined. Are you aware there is a city called Ur near Göbekli Tepe? Urfa. Also known as Edessa. Has by orientals been credited with being Abraham's hometown, Ur of the Chaldees. Here a man considers it likelier as referring to Erech, Uruk, if I get him right:
  
  TheHoloGrid : The Builders of Gobekli Tepe, the Tower of Babel and the Saturn Myth Part I
  https://thehologrid.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/the-builders-of-gobekli-tepe-the-tower-of-babel-and-the-saturn-myth/
  
  I obviously disagree with datings like considering anything in Edessa as 13 500 years old. I do however note that if that statue has six fingers, it could be one of someone who "began to be a giant" (Nimrod comes to mind).
  
  And there is a Harran not far from Urfa.
  
  It is also close enough to ... "Including Neolithic sites such as, Çatalhöyük (7500 BC – 5700 BC) with evidence of bull worship."
  
  Hmm, 7500 BC = 1100 years after 8600 BC or end of Göbekli Tepe ...
  
  Let's do some redating ... on my Interim III recalibration, I am using the Syncellus chronology, not the one from Roman martyrology, but here goes:
  
  

  Reu

  2699 BC
  
  

  XVII 2698 BC

  53.577 pmc 7857 BC
  
  

  XVIII 2657 BC

  55.763 pmc 7486 BC
  
  

  Shelah +

  2633 BC
  
  

  Skipping

  some.
  
  

  Eber +

  2459 BC
  
  

  XXIII 2453 BC

  68.105 pmc 5629 BC

  
  
  With Babel / Göbekli Tepe ending [XV] 2780 BC in this scenario, Çatalhöyük begins rather close to:
  
  2780 BC
  2657 BC
  =123 years
  
  ... to 123 years after Babel. And Çatalhöyük lasts :
  
  "7486 BC" = 2657 BC
  "5629 BC" = 2453 BC
  = "1857 years" = 204 years.
  
  Well, that aside was a bit non-linguistic, but to return to Shinar, I have found it defined as = Mesopotamia rather than as = Sumer or lower Babylonia. so, yes, Göbekli Tepe could very well be Babel, and therefore the identity is a better hint on coupling Biblical and carbon years than Tas Walker's try at finding a Biblical year for Glacial Maximum by misreading evidence from Job (sorry, Tas, I respect your work in general, but I think your speciality gave you the wrong clue to look for). (On this one).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Our Lady of Sorrows
15.IX.2015

Reference to their article:

CMI : Languages of the post-Diluvian World
by Murray R. Adamthwaite, today
https://creation.com/how-did-languages-develop

Note:

* I am not sure if you will ever find Ulimaroa as name for the larger island in Commonwealth of Australia used in English literature, I found it in a Swedish geography book from when Texas was a free state, and Ashanti kingdoms were not yet French colonies, but engaged in slave hunt and human sacrifice.

Ubi Crux, et Corona (Genesis 1:28)

Creation vs. Evolution : Ubi Crux, et Corona (Genesis 1:28) · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Why Concerned if Non-Religious Rebel Against Genesis 1:28? (quora)

A Copt (who should have been a Chalcedonian, but wasn't, as far as we can tell), said "where there is a Cross, there is a Crown". An Eastern Rite Marriage ceremony onvolves a Crown for both bride and bridegroom, if virgins up to marriage. So, why not use the day of Exaltation of the Cross to say a word or two of the Nashville Statement.

Nearly all is good, I read the 14 articles of affirmation and denial.

There is a difference in dignity between the sexes, and the part about women having dolourous menses and dolourous childbirth is a fruit of the fall, not of original creation. This the statement missed.

It was also less explicit than I think Chaput was in adressing the possibility of homosexuals marrying, that is of someone or some two, of opposite sex, one or two of whom experience same sex attraction, can marry and have faithful and fertile marriages, as Catholics should.

The new guidelines also address Catholics "who experience same-sex attraction." Chaput says such parishioners can still live out a heterosexual marriage with children, despite that attraction. Others in same-sex relationships should avoid sexual intimacy.

In order to explain this last sentence in the paragraph to some Evangelical readers, living a sinful life means you are not living a Christian life, but does not mean you are not a Christian, it means you are a dead Christian. A divorced and remarried person in a heterosexual couple or two men in couple or two women in couple, all of these lead non-Christian lives. They do not loose membership of the Church, and some who live like heathens die like Christians : the words indicate one of the means of preparing for a late conversion and save one's soul. Obviously, living sinfully in private as well as in public is a thing to avoid, if you hope for a late conversion.

But the other sentence, I miss it in the statement of Nashville. Article 8 says about homosexuals getting saved "as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life".

Now, this is glossing over what Chaput actually stated: normal marriage is not barred to them.

And, on another article, normal marriage is not a duty to every heterosexual Christian either. St Ignatius of Loyola spent part of his misspent youth doting over a lady beyond his reach, socially, meaning he was heterosexual, if not using it the right way. He became a monk. St Francis after starting the friars experienced a temptation to marry (infidelity to his promises or aspirations to God : on the occasion he made a snow lady and snow children and asked how he should provide for them), and St Thomas Aquinas had to chase out a base woman from the cell where his family tried to dissuade him from life as religious, so that she could not get time to tempt him (after which a prayer was granted and he was never more tempted against purity).

The affirmation of article 2 says "chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage". As this is not God's will for just the married, but for "all people", this is wrong. IN that broad sense it should be "chastity outside of marriage OR fidelity within marriage", or even better "chastity outside of marriage OR fidelity AND FERTILITY within marriage". A man and a woman agreeing to use condoms in marriage commit a sin of sexual immorality one step less bad than two women or two men sharing a bed.

Genesis 1:28. Two men won't make one baby. Two women won't make one baby. Two persons of opposite sex but with a condom will only make one baby if the condom slips or bursts. But God's will for all marriages, except those were as a fruit of Adam's sin, perhaps previous personal sins, one partner is unfruitful without his present fault or her present fault, is to make one baby, two babies, more babies. When one first baby has grown to a teen one should still have also a toddler or a baby too, and some in between too. So, the will for God within marriage is not just fidelity, but fertility, even first.

So, all is not good, I can't sign it, but much is good. The article 2 has a denial which is precisely what Catholics were fighting Luther about, one of the items (Luther denied marriage was a sacrament and considered it a civil contract). Good for Nashville, considering they are Protestants.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Exaltation of the Cross
14.IX.2017

PS I was going to find the source of the quote on Charles' Chaput's diocesan site or archdiocesan site, but can't, so I link to where I quoted it - I had linked to a newslink, but which seems no longer on the newssite:

New blog on the kid : Philadelphia!
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2017/01/philadelphia.html

There are two reasons why I post the article here: it involves Genesis 1:28 - and I heard of the Nashville statement from CMI, today's article./HGL

1:st sept 5509 BC?

Recall Sunday Letters?

Well, I was checking each chronology as per creation of man on Friday March 25th.

With Creation on Sept 1:st, we need to check if the sequence of Sunday letters are correct if Year of Creation is Sunday 1st of September and that in 5509 BC.

So, recall the verse?

Alla de dagar Gud böd eder gå, christeligen fram att dem fullborda?

September 1:st is an F, and this would make 5509 Sunday letter F. The non-extant first days of January 5509 BC would have been:

A	Tuesday		E	Saturday
B	Wednesday		F	Sunday
C	Thursday		G	Monday
D	Friday

Why is this important? Well, this means we can translate "Sunday letter F" to "common year starting on Tuesday" and "Sunday letters GF" to "leap year starting on Monday".

This is the format of calendars on wikipedia. 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday. In Gregorian calendar, the periodicity is 400 years for the larger period. Short period mainly 28 (as always in Julian), while the centurial years with no leap years (three out of every four) involve a period of 12 when the years passing between centurial year and the relevant Sunday letter type year are less than 12, like 4 or 8 but 40 when equal to 12.

But as the periodicity of 40 is used only once for 400 years, as far as I could check, this will involve us in some trouble.

1968 AD		7477 AM		277 AM		221 AM
5509		4000		056		209 AM
7477 AM		3477 AM		221 AM		012 !
		2000		040
		1477 AM		181 AM		125 AM
		1200		056		109 AM
		0277 AM		125 AM !		016 !

We cannot make 2016 a parallel, since 2000 was a leap year. So, how about 1916?

Let's check. It was a : "leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar". When was previous such?

"Century leap years are always leap years starting on Saturday and February 29 is always on Tuesday." - So, in 1900!

This would make AM 209, 109, 9 all leap years starting on Saturday.

Er, no. I misunderstood. Century leap years are those in the centuries divisible by 400 - since other centurial years are not leap years!

1900 AD was a common year starting on Monday, and previous leap year starting on Saturday was 1876 - 40 years before 1916.

So, perhaps it is best to simply see whether a leap year starting on Monday will occur as many years before 1968 as Creation year is before 277 AM? That is, 276 years earlier.

1968
0276
1692 leap year starting on Tuesday!

No, if 277 AM was a leap year starting on Monday 1 AM was NOT a leap year starting on Monday, but a leap year starting on Tuesday. For September 1:st to be a Sunday, we need AM 1 to be a (theoretical) leap year starting on Monday (unless it could be as theoretical an ordinary year starting on Tuesday).

I think the Byzantine chronology and understanding of what date the world was created on has a problem if Gregorian calendar is more exact than Julian one in astronomy. Or rather, if the Gregorian calendar is exact.

Back before Pope Gregory XIII, the Gregorian dates are just theoretical, BUT back before Julius Caesar, the Julian dates are just theoretical too. Roman calendar before Caesar was a chaos, basically like recent Hebrew or Attic calendars, but ill entertained, not neatly according to Cycle of Meton.

This means that Gregorian calendar projects back astronomically. Can Byzantines solve this problem, or can I solve it for them? Stay tuned!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Lorenzo Giustiniani
5.IX.2017

PS, had to correct html for first table, excuses to those seeing first version!