Can Genesis stand after chapter 11 if you accept uniformitarian dates?

No.

Very simple : defending Genesis 19 and destruction of Sodom will involve you in young earth creationism, at least one tenet on carbon dating, as surely as defending Tower of Babel.

The reason is this:

• Ebla tablets and all later non-Hebrew tablets or papyri with an outlook on contemporary events do not mention Sodom;
• But Ebla tablets are carbon dated as starting c. 2400 BC;
• And destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19) is Biblically around 2000 BC or rather more recent, prior to which Sodom was a flourishing city, which allied to Abraham could take on marauders from Mesopotamia (Genesis 14-15).

If both Biblical dates for Sodom and Carbon dates for Ebla tablets are correct, it is a complete mystery why the ones holding archives at Ebla were not in diplomatic contact with Sodom.

But if Biblical date is correct, and Sodom was even so destroyed prior to Ebla tablets, then it follows that Ebla's carbon dates are off. By some centuries.

In my tables, Ebla tablets would be beginning after Joseph in Egypt. 1730 BC as burial of Joseph's Pharao Djoser would be misdated as 2600 sth BC by the originally lower carbon 14 level in his coffin. Therefore Ebla was beginning its archives between Joseph and Exodus, not before Abraham.

Again, another Classic on YEC territory, apart from "rising carbon 14 content in athmosphere" is Flood legends around the world. One of them is the Greek one. Some of the deviations in the Greek legend from Noah's flood is, on my view, not at all arbitrary "anything goes" but conflating Flood (kept) with Destruction of Sodom (rejected), and replacing Noah's family relations with a conflation of Abraham and Sarah's and Lot and his daughters'.

So, Greek Flood myth gives you the independent hint on Sodom which Ebla tablets deny.

But appealing to lower carbon content or legends around the world as support and explanation for dating discrepancy is precisely the kind of argument we YEC like to make, and some of you don't tend to accept. Are you willing to say Sodom wasn't defended by Abraham, inhabited by Lot and destroyed by fire, just so you can ditch that?

Jews, but hardly Christians, could instead appeal to "lost millennium". Between Exodus and Temple of Solomon, instead of 480, read 1480 years. Problem : this makes shipwreck of the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Ivry
VI Sunday after Pentecost
1.VII.2018