Are Post-Flood Cainites a Sign of a Limited Flood?

In the Catholic Institute of Paris, Apologetics took a turn of minimising Biblical data (like universal Flood) already in the 19th. C.

If in Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique, original one volume edition from 19th C. I think you look up Déluge, you will find at column 770 the argument for non-universality based on Cainites remaining after the Flood.

It was not the only school, the first school mentioned gave Absolute Universality to the Deluge and was still represented by Mgr Thomas Joseph Lamy in Belgium and by one M. Moigno in France, perhaps this François-Napoléon-Marie Moigno who according to the French version was an adept of concordism - it seems the general acceptance of the word is not synonym to périodisme = Day Age, but simply affirming that true science and true exegesis coincide, when relevant for each other.

Then you will find a second school, relative universality of the déluge as to all men or all men of the old world (not necessarily making Amerindians or Aborigines Noachides), and then this third school of a restricted deluge even in the vicinity of the Holy People. Part of their reasoning is that Moses was only interested in the precursors of the Holy People of God, but part of it also pretends to draw in Bible passages as support. Hence the mention in column 770 of Cainites.

Let's take the verses from Douay Rheims, and I will also give a link to Biblehub Hebrew Interlinear.

Genesis 15:19 The Cineans and Cenezites, the Cedmonites, Interlinear Genesis 15 ’eṯ-haq·qê·nî wə·’eṯ-haq·qə·niz·zî, wə·’êṯ haq·qaḏ·mō

Numbers 24:21f He saw also the Cinite: and took up his parable, and said: Thy habitation indeed is strong: but though thou build thy nest in a rock, And thou be chosen of the stock of Cin, how long shalt thou be able to continue? For Assur shall take thee captive. Here Interlinear Numbers 24 gives another meaning:

And he looked on the Kenite and he took up his oracle and said Enduring is your dwelling place and is set in the rock your nest For nevertheless shall be burned Kain until what [time] Assyria carries you away captive.

way·yar ’eṯ-haq·qê·nî, way·yiś·śā mə·šā·lōw way·yō·mar; ’ê·ṯān mō·wō·šā·ḇe·ḵā, wə·śîm bas·se·la‘ qin·ne·ḵā kî ’im- yih·yeh lə·ḇā·‘êr qā·yin; ‘aḏ-māh ’aš·šūr tiš·be·kā.

A minor quibble for this purpose is the discrepancy between translation on "chosen" and "shall be burned" or "shall be able to continue" and "shall be burned". But the major point for the purpose is, Cinites are Kainites, "stock of Cin" translates [kin of] Kain".

And there are three mentions of this people in Judges 4 as well:

Judges 4 11 Now Haber the Cinite had some time before departed from the rest of the Cinites his brethren the sons of Hobab, the kinsman of Moses: and had pitched his tents unto the valley which is called Sellnim, and was near Cedes. ... 17 But Sisara fleeing came to the tent of Jahel the wife of Haber the Cinite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Asor, and the house of Haber the Cinite. Interlinear Judges 4 11 citing just first words: wə·ḥe·ḇer haq·qê·nî nip̄·rāḏ miq·qa·yin, while 17 repeats ḥe·ḇer haq·qê·nî

So, a Cinite as a person is a Qênî, or several ones too, but the people as a whole is also called Qayin - that is Kain.

The article Déluge is not individually signed, so I suppose it could be the singlehanded work of J.-B. Jaugey, author of the Apologetics dictionary.

Now, shall we therefore grant that Cainite population was untouched by the Flood?

Not the least.

Let's get to Genesis 4, Douay Rheims and a comment in the Haydock comment:

Genesis 4:22 Sella also brought forth Tubalcain, who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Noema.

Haydock to Genesis 4* Ver. 22. Noema, who is supposed to have invented the art of spinning. C. --- All these worthy people were distinguished for their proficiency in the arts, while they neglected the study of religion and virtue. H. --- The inventors of arts among the Greeks lived mostly after the siege of Troy. C.

Something tells me, a comment is missing ... it is easy to manipulate texts on the internet ... there was also a notice of Noema being the wife of Cham.

Sabine Baring-Gould however recounts that according to Rabbi Gedeliah, Noah's wife was called Noema.

So, whether the sister of Tubal-Cain was wife to Noah or to Cham (whose wife is also given as Nahlath in several sources) and whether there were even two Noema's on the Ark, it would seem some Cainite ancestry did go aboard the Ark.

And this would explain if I am correct supposing Mahabharata is about Cainites (with for instance Jabal as father of Pandavas and Tubal-Cain as father of Kauravas and Jubal as the Kshatriya Krishna**), an idea which may have provoked a manipulation of pages to divorce me from my sources, that some post-Flood men felt close to the pre-Flood civilisation of Nod, of the Cainites. This need not have been limited to Indians.

There is also another solution : someone after the Flood was named Cain after the brother of Abel. It is his descendants that are referred to in Genesis 15, Numbers 24 and Judges 4. Or they thought rightly or wrongly that they were living on the same coordinates as where Nod had been.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
Vigil of St. Andrew Apostle
29.XI.2019

I had forgot, but Kenites could descend from Second Cainan, simple as that! It's qênân in Interlinear Genesis 5. According to LXX standard text, there is one in Genesis 11 too./HGL

PPS, looking up Rashi's commentary, it seems the Jewish Rabbis are very much into Noemah or Naamah being Noah's wife and not Ham's. This could be a reason for erasing a comment on her being Ham's if much trust is placed in Jewish tradition. Rashi is short for Ra(bbi) Sh(lomo) I(tzakhi), and he lived 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105, a k a Solomon from Troyes./HGL

* C. = bishop Richard Challoner ** Dictionnaire apologétique actually does also consider the Mahabharata hero is sth other than the fake god! Btw, Krishna and Kush mean the same thing, so the son of Cham would have been named for the possible Jubal nicknamed Kush, which Indians would have recalled as Krishna.

Protestants Not Citing Catholic Predecessors (Short Note)

CMI's Russell Grigg claimed:

The most recent stratagem of Christians who want to harmonize the creation account of Genesis 1 with the atheistic theory of evolution is called the Framework hypothesis. It is taught by most theological colleges that say they accept biblical authority but not six ordinary days of creation. It was unknown until devised by Dutch Prof. Arie Noordtzij (1871–1944) of the University of Utrecht and published by him in 1924.

In fact, the article Hexaméron of Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, 1920, the editor of the work, E. Mangenot, is also editing the article, and he is rejecting both Flood Geology, Restitutionism (Gap Theory), and Day Age, before proposing himself that the six days were a freely chosen literary framework by a writer who was inspired in what he intended to convey through that Framework, which does not properly speaking convey God's word in itself, but only in what it conveys.

He claimed Flood Geology had been abandoned, while the latest publication he cites for it is 26 years before, 1894. Nearly all publications he cites for any position and for exposés of what the text is literally saying too (with exceptions like a few from Scotland and England, one from New York, only 8 from Italy and Spain) are from the countries later called Rhine Coalition at II Vatican Council.

And of course, it's not just Noordtzij who didn't cite Mancenot, it is also Henry M. Morris who apparently didn't cite the Flood Geologists cited by E. Mangenot, like Trissl and Bosizio. I'd be gladly surprised if Henry M. Morris did cite these:

C. F. Keil

Biblischer Commentar über die Bücher Mose's

Leipzig, 1866

P. Laurent

Études géologiques, philosophiques et scripturales sur la cosmogonie de Moïse

Paris, 1863

A. Saignet

La cosmologie de la Bible

Paris, 1854

J. E. Veith

Die Anfänge der Menschenwelt

Vienne, 1865

A. Bosizio

Das Hexaemeron und die Geologie

Mayence, 1864

Die Geologie und die Sündfluth

Mayence, 1877

V. M. Gatti

Institutiones apologeticae-polemicae

1867

A. Trissl

Sündfluth oder Gletscher ; Das Biblische Sechstagewerk

2^e édit.

Munich, Ratisbonne, 1894

G. J. Burg

Biblische Chronologie

Trèves, 1894

All of above would be Catholic writers only./HGL

PS: E. Mancenot was corrected to E. Mangenot in above./HGL

I Learned about Evolution Before Being a Christian (comic book cover)

Neanderthals Nephelim Toddlers?

I found this today:

The study published in The Anatomical Record journal, found that the ears of Neanderthals were comparable to those of human children and did not change with age, as children’s do.

Independent : Common childhood illness may have killed off Neanderthals
Ear infections to blame for extinction of archaic humans, scientists say
Harriet Williamson | @harriepw | Thursday 19 September 2019 16:22
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/neanderthals-ear-infection-homo-sapien-health-children-illness-study-a9112051.html

So, Neanderthal ears are like those of children these days.

Anything more?

Dr. Laitman considers Neanderthals, chimps and baby humans have the voice box far up. See around, starting a bit before 5:13 in this one:

Homo Sapiens vs Neanderthals | The Evolution of Language
Epic History | 3.I.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9KnOjsc0g4

It is not mentioned if Neanderthal flat skull base (few minutes later, same video) is also a neonatal trait today.

This would of course pose a problem why we have not found real adult Neanderthals : or if we have, why we were not told so. But it is not a very great one, it only takes the Neanderthal toddlers (falsely identified as adults) to have been kept at some separation from adults and not been found together (see modern ideas of kindergardens) and the adults to have been more exposed to Flood destruction out in the open - or adult giants to have been found, but not acknowledged.

It could easily be confirmed or infirmed by seeing if they still have their milk teeth at a presumed adult age ... and perhaps already has been infirmed, just I don't know it. Or, they could have not been looking.

This would mean the Neanderthals we found would not have been chipping stone tools, their parents would have - or if they, it would have been child labour.

A hunch, test it if you like./HGL

PS, would a nephelim born toddler already be a "giant" in the Biblical sense? Or, if not yet giant, could some of these have been saved? Baruch 3:26-28

There were the giants, those renowned men that were from the beginning, of great stature, expert in war. The Lord chose not them, neither did they find the way of knowledge: therefore did they perish. And because they had not wisdom, they perished through their folly.

If these guys were not yet adult enough to be giants, some could have been outside this horrible distinction./HGL

PPS, at 12:14 there is some obsolete claim Neanderthals had no symbolic fabrication, this has since been refuted by their jewelry:

'Last necklace made by Neanderthals' discovered by archaeologists in Spain
Claw from endangered Spanish imperial eagle is around 40,000 years old and was used in jewellery
Harry Cockburn | Friday 1 November 2019 18:00
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/neanderthal-jewellery-last-necklace-found-spain-archaeology-a9181366.html

Obviously, toddlers have no very independent symbolic life, but one depending on their adults. On another note, how sure is it the claw is from that exact eagle, and how probable is it the exact eagle only developed post-Flood? That could be a refutation of my so far theory Neanderthals were pre-Flood./HGL

PPPS, when I try to write a comment on this topic under Robert Carter's publication of an article, this happens:

Hans-Georg Lundahl "The Flood, instead of having a negative effect, would have removed a good deal of the antediluvian mutation burden, to the extent that it existed." Some guys have suggested Neanderthals (fully N. genome, not half caste with Cro Magnon) had severe speech handicaps (flat skull base, high voice box, a thoracic cage making their utterances either shrieks or very drawn out operatic performances in what we have been considering as full grown ones). It even suggested to me, "full grown" Neanderthals could be toddler giants. Has one already checked by X ray whether the teeth we see in the skulls are the full grown teeth or perhaps milk teeth with the full grown ones below?

Impossible de modifier le commentaire. Réessayez.

Ah, he hid the publication, since now I am seeing on his wall the previous one.

Seems like a case of classic gate keeping against me, on his part ..../HGL

Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians

Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

For those who might take the stance tldr, saying God controls all is Biblically endorsed, saying He does so by impersonal laws of physics to exclusion of personal servants in the case of nature phenomena is not so, saying we must not worship the Sun is Biblically endorsed, but saying we must not consider the Sun as moved by a person (of angelic nature) or moving like a person is not so. And any compelling conclusion from the Bible must be given before the public Revelation of God's truth was closed. The intellectual élite of the Middle Ages did not miss it.

Now to his article, here's a link:

Christian theology and the rise of Newtonian science—imposed law and the divine will
by Dominic Statham | This article is from
Journal of Creation 32(2):103–109, August 2018
https://creation.com/christianity-and-newtonian-science

In order for science to progress, it was necessary to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers, and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.

Let's break this down:

In order for science to progress, it was necessary

But was it necessary for science to progress?

to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers,

Greek philosophers had diverse views of nature. The one given as erroneous in the Bible (Colossians 2:8) is the one by Epicure, since "elements" refers to atomism (while Aristotle had "four elements", the "form" is more important than these, unlike the status of "elements" - a k a atoms - of Epicure).

and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.

It so happens, we still have the Bible after the Middle Ages thanks to an intellectual élite, also known as bishops of the Church, and beside them monks and religious, which handed it down to us. Attacking that intellectual élite is tantamount to attacking the credibility of the Bible itself. Or pretending we had a situation in which the Bible was smuggled to us through the inadvertence of its real enemies. There was a time when I believed nearly all in Dale and Elaine Rhooton's Can We Know, including the chapter painting Medieval Catholicism as persecuting the Bible, but I now know better, both as to historic fact and as to common sense than to believe that.

Since Dominic Statham is, perhaps without noticing it, presuming it without stating it very clearly, I have a post against one who gave a long and detailed statement of the charge, namely Craig Lampe, whose "The Forbidden Book" is answered here:

Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answers about "The Forbidden Book"
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2013/01/answers-about-forbidden-book.html

I wonder if Craig Lampe has retracted his erroneous history yet ...

Leading historians of science acknowledge that the Christian doctrines of God and Creation played a pivotal role in this process.

Leading historians of ideologies would probably argue some other Christian and Biblical doctrines played a pivotal role in forming Marxism (however at the expense of ignoring John 12:3-8, for instance).

Again, a doctrine inspired by the Bible, but only centuries after all books were completed, need not be correct and does not enjoy the Biblical prerogative of inerrancy.

The Greek view of nature as a living organism was replaced by the biblical view that only people and animals have souls.

Here we touch on ground I think Dominic might want to rehearse some Bible passages ... at least if he takes "have souls" and "living organism" in a broad sense. Here is an article in French in which I cite an article from VTB = Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique:

New blog on the kid : Avant-hier
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/10/avant-hier.html

It enumerates for the Biblical view of stars as animated beings : Job 38,7; Psalm 148,2f; Genesis 2,1; Baruch 3,33f; Joshua 10,12f; Judges 5,20; and in contrast to Pagan view of them, also as creatures : Amos 5,8; Genesis 1,14ff; Psalm 33,6; 136,7ff.

Also, non-living entities cannot praise or bless the Lord, but the Canticle of the Three Young Men tells both Sun and Moon and all the Stars of Heaven to do so (Daniel 3:62f).

Note in this respect, Earth is the only entity which is not adressed in the second person, but given a third person jussive.

Prior to the late medieval period, Greek philosophy dominated among the intellectual elite. However, around the 13th century onwards, there was a reaction against this by Christian theologians.

Before St. Thomas Aquinas rejects integral Aristotelianism (a k a Averroism) in favour of an eclectic Aristotelianism, corrected by the Bible, or even an eclectic Platonism, corrected by Aristotle, corrected by the Bible, the Averroistic approach had to arise in the 13th C. - it was not simply a heritage from Antiquity.

The Greek philosophers did not share one view, nature as one living organism was very much not typical, and therefore what Christians (the "intellectual élite" of the Middle Ages being such, usually bishops and monks) took over from them would not have included this.

Benedictiones patris tui confortatae sunt benedictionibus patrum ejus, donec veniret desiderium collium aeternorum: fiant in capite Joseph, et in vertice Nazaraei inter fratres suos.

Genesis 49:26 - the blessings of the patriarch Jacob were prophetic. And he spoke of the "desire of the eternal hills". Again, check your Bible lore, Statham!

It is true, there is an alternative reading if "desire of the eternal hills", namely this, given in Haydock comment:

The desire of the everlasting hills, &c. These blessings all looked forward towards Christ, called the desire of the everlasting hills, as being longed for, as it were, by the whole creation. Mystically, the patriarchs and prophets are called the ever-lasting hills, by reason of the eminence of their wisdom and holiness.

But even if the patriarchs and prophets are mystically called ever-lasting hills, we also have "longed for, as it were, by the whole creation" - giving us a preview of Romans 8:22. And St. Paul's "every creature" would involve Sun, Moon and Stars as well. As we have seen from Genesis 1:14ff, they are not uncreated or gods. They don't belong in a genealogy together with the most high, as in Greek Mythology more precisely Hesiod, Theogony, they are among "every creature" of the Most High. Therefore, included in Romans 8:22.

And if winds and waves were just lifeless, blind, senseless matter, why was Christ angry when He stilled the storm? Luke 8:24 uses the word "rebuked" - a loftier synonym for scolded. (H/T to an Amerindian and Catholic friend of mine for this one.)

What about forms? Statham is arguably misreading Plato and certainly misreading Christian Platonists here:

According to Plato, when ‘the Demiurge’ (the creator) shaped the world, he was constrained to follow these preordained ‘ideal’ patterns, rather than being free to make it as he wished.

Here is perhaps the occasion to cite how St. Thomas sees the forms:

I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God. So far as the idea is the principle of the making of things, it may be called an "exemplar," and belongs to practical knowledge. But so far as it is a principle of knowledge, it is properly called a "type," and may belong to speculative knowledge also. As an exemplar, therefore, it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time; whereas as a principle of knowledge it has respect to all things known by God, even though they never come to be in time; and to all things that He knows according to their proper type, in so far as they are known by Him in a speculative manner.

Part I : Question 15. Ideas
Article 3. Whether there are ideas of all things that God knows?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1015.htm#article3

Objection 4. Further, it is certain that God knows not only species, but also genera, singulars, and accidents. But there are not ideas of these, according to Plato's teaching, who first taught ideas, as Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi). Therefore there are not ideas in God of all things known by Him.

Reply to Objection 4. Genus can have no idea apart from the idea of species, in so far as idea denotes an "exemplar"; for genus cannot exist except in some species. The same is the case with those accidents that inseparably accompany their subject; for these come into being along with their subject. But accidents which supervene to the subject, have their special idea. For an architect produces through the form of the house all the accidents that originally accompany it; whereas those that are superadded to the house when completed, such as painting, or any other such thing, are produced through some other form. Now individual things, according to Plato, have no other idea than that of species; both because particular things are individualized by matter, which, as some say, he held to be uncreated and the concause with the idea; and because the intention of nature regards the species, and produces individuals only that in them the species may be preserved. However, divine providence extends not merely to species; but to individuals as will be shown later I:22:3

It can be noted, both John Duns Scotus and it would seem Bishop Tempier considers there are even ideas of individuals, as called by Scotus "hecceitas".

This does not mean these are the only ideas.

In addition, he had to use materials he had not created himself and these tended to resist his attempts to form them.

Here Plato was not followed by St. Thomas or others in Christendom (except heretical Averroists).

I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures. Thus Plato's opinion, as narrated by Gregory of Nyssa (De Provid. viii, 3), is exploded. He taught a threefold providence.

First, one which belongs to the supreme Deity, Who first and foremost has provision over spiritual things, and thus over the whole world as regards genus, species, and universal causes. The second providence, which is over the individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, whom the Platonic philosophers placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. Dei, 1, 2: viii, 14).

Part I : Question 22. The providence of God
Article 3. Whether God has immediate providence over everything?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1022.htm#article3

So, the Medieval Christian élite were not blindly following Plato, precisely because they were Christians.

Galen (next mentioned by Statham) may have rejected the Genesis account, or he may not have known of it, but he was a physician, and was followed by Medievals in medicine, not in philosophy.

Instead of studying the motions of the planets and concluding from this that they follow elliptical orbits, as did Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), Plato ‘reasoned’ that they must follow circular paths because circular motion is most perfect, an ‘ideal’ form, and most befitting to the gods.

A circle is a rough sketch of an ellipse, and Plato was probably arguing that they are not angular. In fact, the one overdoing circularity and rejecting most any deviation from it in the history of astronomy was arguably Copernicus : his exact reason for rejecting Geocentrism is that it would involve Spirograph patterns for planetary orbits, if abstraction is made from daily (nearly perfectly circular) concrete movement of it.

It can be added that the Geocentric Riccioli had no beef against the elliptical orbits, as long as the ellipses have Sun as only epicentre, with Solar motion around the Zodiac around Earth as primary orbit.

Platonic thinking was antithetical to science because it detracted from the view that the world could be understood by learning from observations.

This was not the case with Aristotelic thinking.

Now, to the meat of the matter:

Plato taught that the cosmos created by the Demiurge was a living organism, that the world had a divine soul, and the stars and planets were gods. In a similar vein, Aristotle taught that stones fall to the ground because they have a yearning for the centre of the universe (which he believed to be the centre of the earth). Such thinking was an obstruction to science because it attributed causes of motion to motives and inner compulsions, rather than to impersonal, external forces.

Modern science certainly has a preference for impersonal forces. Newsflash : the Bible hasn't.

A divine soul for the universe as a whole is normally rejected by all Christian thinkers - apart from perhaps some few considering the Holy Spirit as that, and some Averroists who were condemned, and Giordano Bruno (a very important Heliocentric precursor) who considered each Solar System has its own Holy Spirit as world soul for its own World. This is what he went to the stake for.

Stars and planets being spirits is arguable independently of whether these spirits should be worshipped or not. Rather not.

In contrast, the Bible clearly distinguishes between the Creator and the creature (i.e. that which was created).

Yes; so far correct.

God is spirit (John 4:24) and is a being separate from the world.

It does not follow that God is the only spirit or that the world is only matter. Men and angels are certainly involved in the category spiritual creatures.

There is only one God (Isaiah 45:5) and His creation is not divine; for God said: “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10).

Fine with me.

However, this means only that the Host of Heaven are created beings, not whether they are matter only, matter moved by spirits (view of St. Thomas and Riccioli) or matter having spirits for own souls (rejected by both, but at least compatible with the Biblical statements).

Indeed, to attribute divinity to the creature is idolatry.

But to attribute life and spirituality or intelligence and freewill to it isn't.

As argued by Oratian priest Nicole Malebranche (1638–1715), there can be only one cause which is “nothing but the will of God”.

To be very precise on what he means : if a fire burns a page, according to Malebranche, God has caused the fire, God has caused the page to crumble and blacken, and neither the page nor the fire have caused anything at all. The fire has caused nothing in the page. God caused both the fire and the page burns or page destruction, independently of each other, except He artistically associated them.

But supposing this were so, this would hardly help Newtonian views of the matter, as Newtonianism introduces forces that are causes, in mechanics. Thereby contradicting Malebranche, unless you want to say God mimics forces that don't exist.

For Malebranche, Greek ‘forms’ are nothing more than “the little gods of the heathen” introduced by the evil one to occupy the hearts which the Creator has made to belong to himself.

And for St. Thomas Aquinas, forms (ideas) are triple:

• Forms in God's eternal mind, before He creates;
• The reflexion of these in creatures;
• The categorisations from previous leading back to first in human observers.

To argue for "forms" in God's mind, some have given an alternative punctuation of John's Prologue.

Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. [4] In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :

Given as following by St. Augustine*:

Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil.

Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :

The first simply gives universal agency in creation, as usual. The second says, whatever was created - including things that are lifeless - were life in Him, and that life is the (intellectual) light of men (in understanding the things).

In other words**, we see forms (whether we use that language or not, in fact we do, as Green Monkeys don't), because we are enlightened by the Life in which the forms were alive in God's mind, in the Word of the Father, before they were also extant as dead things in creation.

But whether or not forms in the things exist, Malebranche did neither call men nor angels "little gods of the heathens".

And the question on whether heavenly bodies have angelic movers is not one on whether they have forms.

The cosmos is not an organism and does not have a soul, this being firmly established in the very first book of the Bible. Here only animals and people are described as ‘living creatures’ (Genesis 1:20, 24).

You are forgetting, heavenly bodies are called "the host of heaven" in the King James version of Genesis 2:1, which would seem to shadow closely the Hebrew, since the word "host" is cited in a Catholic Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique*** despite its lack in Douay Rheims, Vulgate, and LXX:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

The universe is not eternal and does not have any self-sustaining or self-generating powers.

The universe is certainly not from eternity and certainly has no self-generating powers, since generated by God.

Whether under God sustaining its existence there is some other kind of (only relatively) self-sustaining powers is not said, and if the answer is negative, what do you make of for instance atom theory or quantum physics?

As to absolutely self sustaining or as to existing from eternity, Medieval Intellectual élites, that is Catholic bishops and theologians, most certainly did not follow Aristotle in this respect.

Rather it is the work of a single Creator upon whom it is totally dependent.

Totally as in letters do not appear because I chose to write them? My choice and the letters appearing are both products of God's will and independent of each other? That is how totally Malebranche would have it. St. Thomas would disagree, God created second causes (human and angelic wills being two categories of these, biological and mechanic/motoric causality two more of them) which while not escaping the overall control of God (even in minutest detail) have internally some connexion by causation as well.

Hence, objects do not have minds and desires,

While dead objects do not have minds, the metaphor of their "desires" is as legitimate as that of them "obeying laws".

While the visible Sun and Moon and stars may be dead objects, the Bible doesn't quite treat them like that. The least one can do to accomodate its actual words in many places is assuming each has an angel acting behind and through the visible body.

When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody? Job 38:7

Ergo : angels did so, but are (all) called morning stars because they (some of them) control stars, including the ones referred to as morning stars in everyday life.

The same seems to be the case with angels (or even demons) controlling lightnings:

Canst thou send lightnings, and will they go, and will they return and say to thee: Here we are? (v. 35, same chapter)

Both for stars and lightnings, there are parallels:

He that sendeth forth light, and it goeth: and hath called it, and it obeyeth him with trembling. And the stars have given light in their watches, and rejoiced: They were called, and they said: Here we are: and with cheerfulness they have shined forth to him that made them. (Baruch 3:33-35)

And to the angels indeed he saith: He that maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. (Hebrews 1:7, citing following)

Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire. (Psalm 103:4)

So, objects like lightning and stars do have minds after all, if not in them, then behind them.

In Aristotelic physics falling objects desire the centre of the universe and rising objects desire the periphery of it. In Newtonian physics, they are dead objects (insofar as these movements are concerned) and in the Bible this is not decided. Falling and rising are not dealt with.

It is possible that in Aristotle, stars being made of a different matter desire circular motion.

In St. Thomas, the daily circular motion around Earth of all the visible universe (including sphere of fix stars, primum mobile on his view about solid spheres) is performed by the will of God moving all of it. However, the other motions, like Sun going backwards full circle one year or Moon going backwards a bit more than full circle in one month, these are performed by angels, acting on the visible bodies in their spheres. Also by a spirit's will acting directly on matter, but in this case they are not all powerful, they can only act on one body at a time, each angel.

and are not subject to laws inherent within their natures; instead the non-living world operates according to laws imposed on it from without.

In fact, laws don't impose any locomotions, the fact of moving from one place to another. Movers do : physical moving objects in contact with other objects, physical forces, and mind moving matter. Laws describe whatever kind of power each type of mover has, but a law about a force (say Ohm's law about conductors influencing electric current) does not decide which other movers are available. The electromagnetic movement of a part of a gadget will obey the laws of electromagnetism, but these will not decide how likely it is that the user moves the same part by his hands, in fact, they don't even decide which parts are meant to be moved by electromagnetism (like the membrane in a phone, the one held against the ear, with a safety barrier between) and which parts are meant to be moved by hands (like the receiver containing the membrane).

Likewise the laws of physics, whether rightly or wrongly formulated by Newton, do not decide which parts of the universe are meant to be moved by mind moving matter, like human fingers or tongues, which we agree on, or whether stars are part of that deal too in some respect, which we disagree on.

Also, some laws are according to the standard view inherent in the objects, like Ohm's law is inherent in how electrons move and how electron fields cooperate in pieces of metal. Biological entities very obviously follow laws inherent in their genomes. These do not apply to lifeless matter, but that does not prove lifeless matter cannot be moved by its inner nature. Nor does it prove it cannot be moved by angels.

When St. Thomas decided against Sun, Moon and Stars being biological (which he did) it was partly because he knew no change except locomotion was observed in them, and sometimes also in luminosity, like faces of the Moon or different brightness of Venus. What would he conclude if he had seen pictures of Jupiter's red eye or Solar protuberances? I don't know.

However, deciding a thing is not biological does not mean it cannot be moved by mind moving matter, as God can always and everywhere, and as angels can one object and place at a time.

The moon gives rise to tides, not because it has some sort of friendship with the water of the oceans, but because of the impersonal law of gravity.

I know very well this is the common view, but I know of absolutely no Bible verse to support it.

If waves are not moved by spirits, whom was Our Lord talking to?

Let's see what words the Synoptics used:

Matthew 8

Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.

St. Matthew gives no direct citation. It is not clear whether it is a command to blind matter as often in creation week, or a command to some kind of person.

Mark 4

And rising up, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm.

Both "rebuked" and the citation "peace, be still" indicate adress to a person or as if to a person.

Luke 8

But he arising, rebuked the wind and the rage of the water; and it ceased, and there was a calm.

St. Luke also, like St. Matthew, gives no citation, but he uses the word "rebuked".

The Clementine view of the Gospels is:

He used to say that the earliest gospels were those containing the genealogies [Matthew, Luke], while Mark's originated as follows: When, at Rome, Peter had openly preached the word and by the Spirit had proclaimed the gospel, the large audience urged Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered what had been said, to write it all down. This he did, making his gospel available to all who wanted it. When Peter heard about this, he made no objection and gave no special encouragement. Last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irresistibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual gospel.

The stilling of the storm is a case in point. St. Matthew was cautious, since he was aware of Sadducees. St. Luke dared to say "rebuked". St. Mark heard St. Peter give the exact words of the rebuke, or some of them.

With the words given in St. Mark and the verbum dicendi implying moral disapproval in both Sts. Mark and Luke, we must conclude Our Lord was dissatisfied with someone's behaviour, and those would normally be of angelic nature. Nothing in the Bible says, that would be a very exceptional situation.

What is Catchpoole's major point in objects obeying only impersonal laws? The use of "law" in more than one place.

In the Old Testament, God’s commands to nature are often expressed in legal language. For example, the Hebrew word huq is used in both Proverbs 8:29 and Job 28:26. Its verbal form means to ‘engrave’ or ‘legislate’ and is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. In both these verses, the 4th century Vulgate translation uses the Latin word lex, meaning ‘law’.

Job 28:26 says: When he gave a law for the rain, and a way for the sounding storms.

Proverbs 8:29 says : When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when be balanced the foundations of the earth;

And thanks for saying it is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. Catholic priests normally obey rubrics, when handling the sacraments. Angels would want to and demons would be forced to "obey the rubrics" - which would be those observed, but not necessarily those deduced by scientists about the observations, when accounting for them. Especially not if being mistaken in seeing all the moving forces as lifeless. And note, laws don't move, movers, either living or lifeless, do. Precisely as rubrics won't achieve the sacraments without priests.

Remember, first the forms in God's eternal Wisdom, then the forms in the things, then the forms in the scientifically curious mind (which all men are to some degree). These last would sometimes be mistaken in their representation of the middle level, what is actually going on.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), for example, wrote that nature “never transgresses the bounds of the laws imposed to it”, being a “most careful executor of the orders of God” and argued for nature’s strict observance of God’s commands citing, among others, Job 28:26, 38:8–11 and Psalm 104:9.

Let's look at Psalm 103:9.

Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.

Now, let's look a bit closer to the context, 6-9:

The deep like a garment is its clothing: above the mountains shall the waters stand. At thy rebuke they shall flee: at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear. The mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.

Note, "at thy rebuke" is echoed in the stilling of the storm, but a few words on "at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear" - we must assume Christ was shouting at "the waters" at lower bass and stronger forte or fortissimo than He would have used in normal speech. Hence "thy thunder". But we must also assume from here that someone is fearing that command.

In other words, the very Bible quote on which Catchpoole wants to build "impersonal laws imposed from without" instead in context suggests personal obedience to God's law. Either in water if the water itself is animated, in several different persons if so, or in angelic or demonic movers of them.

However, we have René Descartes arguing the contrary:

René Descartes (1596–1650; figure 2) stated that “the rules of nature are identical with the rules of mechanics” and, in his Le Monde (The World), he asserted “that God is immutable, and that acting always in the same manner, He produces always the same effect”.

First of all, Cartesius, Renatus / Descartes, Renatus is still on the index°:

Carrozzi, Giuseppe	Le prescrizioni sul diritto del matrimonio con i commenti a ciascun articolo, estratti dal commentario sul codice civile universale del sig. Zeiller con alcune addizioni.	1817
Cartesius, Renatus		0	Descartes, Renatus
Cary, Edward	The catechist catechized, or loyalty asserted in vindication the oath of allegiance against a new catechisme set forth by a father of the society of Jesus.	1682	Brontius, Adolphus [pseudonymus]
...
Desboulmiers, Jean-Augustin-Julien	Histoires; Honny soit qui mal y pense, ou histoires des filles célèbres du XVIII siècle.	1762
Descartes, Renatus	Les passions de l'âme. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Opera philosophica. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Notae in programma quoddam sub finem anni 1647 in Belgio editum cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Epistola ad celeberrimum virum Gisbertum Voetium, in qua examinantur duo libri nuper pro Voetio Ultraiecti simul editi. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae humanae a corpore distinctio demonstratur. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Epistola ad patrem Dinet societatis Iesu praepositum provincialem per Franciam. Donec corrig.	1663
Descartes, Renatus	Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus adiectae sunt in hac ultima editione utilissimae quaedam animadversiones ex variis doctissimisque authoribus collectae, cum authoris vita breviter ac concinne conscripta.	1720
Deschamps, Felix	Epistola ad d. Martinum Steyaert de summo pontifice eiusque authoritate.	1689

Second, the quote given can be one valid cause of the condemnation. If God always produces the same effects, because He is immutable, that would mean His immutable way of producing effects were some other one than free choice, and hence it would mean He could not produce miracles. Descartes became a precursor of Deism, of Voltaire, with these words. If on the other hand God's way of producing effects immutably involves free choice, both of what to produce and of how to produce it, whether by own will ruling over matter or by obedience of angels ruling with their wills over matter or laws inherent in material objects and so on, which is the Christian view, then we cannot conclude God "always produces the same effect".

French Bishop Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382) and French theologian Pierre D’Ailly (1350–1420) both wrote of the workings of the world as analogous to a clock.

Have you seen the clock°° of a Old Town Hall in Prague? It's a typically medieval clock, and it involves at midday the Twelve Apostles appearing in parade. To a Medieval, as Oresme and d'Ailly both were, the workings of a clock would be very much less impersonal than to a modern. Not to mention, the clock has to be regularly rewound to keep working. Not to mention, it involves an astronomy as the Geocentrics saw it.

In a work containing numerous biblical quotations, Boyle argued that “the universe being once framed by God, and the laws of motion being settled and all upheld by his incessant concourse and general providence, the phenomena of the world thus constituted … operate upon one another according to mechanical laws.” He also expressly denied the concept of immanent law, arguing that “the laws of motion, without which the present state and course of things could not be maintained, did not necessarily spring from the nature of matter, but depended upon the will of the divine author of things”.

Boyle may be giving the view which Catchpoole is presenting, but he may also simply be affirming the liberty of God, with which I have no quarrel whatsoever. If God was not constrained by any necessity arising from the nature of matter, He can still have freely chosen matter have such and such a nature from which certain laws come with probability, the rest of the fixedness coming from God's decree from without. But in fact, I will probably leave Boyle to Catchpoole. He was an Anglican heretic, and a Modern, not a Medieval.

He is even on the index°:

Boyle, Robert	Some considerations touching the syle of the holy scriptures.	1695
Boyle, Robert	Of the seraphic love or motives and incentives to the love of God.	1695
Boyle, Robert	Of the high veneration man's intellect owes to God.	1695

I have two more things to say, before concluding.

• When Catchpoole wants to prove such and such a position belongs to "the intellectual élites of the Middle Ages" he often refers to a recent work of reference, which I cannot consult, because copyright of author has not yet expired, so the work is not yet available for free on the internet. Instead he could have referred to the Medieval works or persons they refer to, so I could both consult it (much is already available on internet in Latin at least) and (knowing the Middle Ages fairly well) have some good view on whether the assessment of them being representative of the élite and the words being representative and rightly interpreted. This also involves an over trust in scientists as historians of science.
  
  Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Scientists Suck at History of Science
  http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/11/scientists-suck-at-history-of-science.html
  
  
• While using the word "intellectual élites", he is allowing us to assume that on lower levels, below that élite view, there was another popular view, much closer to the modern one. This is a bit like the move of one Ginzburg who claimed that the miller Menocchio was voicing an actually very popular and widespread atheism, which is from many points of view absurd. People making these kinds of argument, which Catchpoole doesn't explicitly do, but allows a lot of readers to do, are so sure of their own view point, which has usually been more or less recently popularised, that they think everyone in older days must have held the same view and the élite we actually see from the documents must be imposiung their views by some very unpopular tyranny which could only go on because no one had figured out how to organise a popular resistance yet. This is obviously rot. There is often a lag between élite and people, but it is often either people being where the élite was fifty years ago, or élite being where the people arrived twenty years ago. It is not and cannot be centuries of total divergence between the one and the other. People in the Middle Ages were not Atheists and also were not Evangelical Christians believing Locke or Boyle. They were basically believing the same things, with bungling of details, as the élite did. If the élite was not Christian, then Christianity failed and Matthew 28:18-20 is alsready a broken promise. It is not ... since Protestantism is not true.

It can be added, about the index° that Malebranche is on it too:

Malebranche, Nicolas	Défense de l'auteur de la recherche de la vérité contre l'accusation de mr. De la Ville. 21 nov 1680
Malebranche, Nicolas	Traité de la nature et de la grace.	1689
Malebranche, Nicolas	Lettres à un de ses amis dans lesquelles il répond aux philosophiques et théologiques de mr. Arnauld sur le traité de la nature et de la grâce.	1689
Malebranche, Nicolas	Lettres, touchant celles de mr. Arnaud.	1689
Malebranche, Nicolas	De la recherche de la vérité, où l'on traite de la nature de l'esprit de l'homme et de l'usage qu'il en doit faire pour éviter l'erreur dans les sciences.	1707
Malebranche, Nicolas	Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion.	1712
Malebranche, Nicolas	Traité de morale.	1712

While it was arguably bad general culture came to such a pass Galileo had to be taken off the index, Galileo most certainly deserved getting there. In Dieci autori italiani classici, presented by Isabelle Lavergne, one should read Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi, Prima giornata (83-84-85). Like Bruno before him, Galileo suggests some kind of aliens. In absence of celestial bodies being alive or having living movers, we get to them being inhabited, by some kind of strange biology.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
St. Elisabeth of Hungary
19.XI.2019

PS, I wrote the essay over several sessions, and by the time I came around to today's, I had forgot the author of the essay was Statham, and had come to associate it with Catchpoole. Every occurrence of Catchpoole above shall be taken as meaning Statham./HGL

PPS, I knew there was a reason why I thought of Catchpoole, I had written a refutation of his Babylonian Easter Eggs yesterday;

Great Bishop of Geneva! : What an Eggcellent Occasion!
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2019/11/what-eggcellent-occasion.html

Even with sleep lag and tooth ache, my thoughts don't just ramble quite randomly./HGL

* Cited by Dom Gérard Calvet in Demain le Chrétienté. ** Not checking on my interpretation how close it is to what I read years ago. *** "VTB cerf 1970 avec des Nihil Obstat et Imprimatur de 1969", p. 93 Astres was cited on my post Avant-hier.

° Link to the 1948 (latest) edition of the index librorum:

http://www.cvm.qc.ca/gconti/905/BABEL/Index%20Librorum%20Prohibitorum-1948.htm

°° https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock

Length of Two Texts

I'll begin simply by citing them:

Genesis 11:1-9

And the earth was of one tongue, and of the same speech. And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it. And each one said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them with fire. And they had brick instead of stones, and slime instead of mortar. And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Adam were building.

And he said: Behold, it is one people, and all have one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed. Come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there confound their tongue, that they may not understand one another's speech. And so the Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries.

Vatican version of Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

446 = account plus Creed, 219 = account which I looked up on word before.

446
219
227

Confirmed when it was last to be cut from word and pasted here.

Let's see same two texts in Latin:

Erat autem terra labii unius, et sermonum eorumdem. Cumque proficiscerentur de oriente, invenerunt campum in terra Senaar, et habitaverunt in eo. Dixitque alter ad proximum suum : Venite, faciamus lateres, et coquamus eos igni. Habueruntque lateres pro saxis, et bitumen pro caemento : et dixerunt : Venite, faciamus nobis civitatem et turrim, cujus culmen pertingat ad caelum : et celebremus nomen nostrum antequam dividamur in universas terras. Descendit autem Dominus ut videret civitatem et turrim, quam aedificabant filii Adam,

et dixit : Ecce, unus est populus, et unum labium omnibus : coeperuntque hoc facere, nec desistent a cogitationibus suis, donec eas opere compleant. Venite igitur, descendamus, et confundamus ibi linguam eorum, ut non audiat unusquisque vocem proximi sui. Atque ita divisit eos Dominus ex illo loco in universas terras, et cessaverunt aedificare civitatem. Et idcirco vocatum est nomen ejus Babel, quia ibi confusum est labium universae terrae : et inde dispersit eos Dominus super faciem cunctarum regionum.

157 words

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.
Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum Filium Dei unigenitum.
Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero.
Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri : per quem omnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salutem decendit de caelis.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu sancto ex Maria Virgine : Et homo factus est.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis : sub Pontio Pilato passus, et sepultus est.
Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas.
Et ascendit in caelum : sedet ad dexteram Patris.
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos : cujus regni non erit finis.
Et in Spiritum sanctum, Dominum, et vivificantem : qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.
Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur, et conglorificatur : qui locutus est per Prophetas.
Et unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi.
Amen.

170 words

Here is a third text, in Latin:

Cumque coepissent homines multiplicari super terram, et filias procreassent, videntes filii Dei filias hominum quod essent pulchrae, acceperunt sibi uxores ex omnibus, quas elegerant. Dixitque Deus : Non permanebit spiritus meus in homine in aeternum, quia caro est : eruntque dies illius centum viginti annorum. Gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis : postquam enim ingressi sunt filii Dei ad filias hominum, illaeque genuerunt, isti sunt potentes a saeculo viri famosi. Videns autem Deus quod multa malitia hominum esset in terra, et cuncta cogitatio cordis intenta esset ad malum omni tempore,

poenituit eum quod hominum fecisset in terra. Et tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus, Delebo, inquit, hominem, quem creavi, a facie terrae, ab homine usque ad animantia, a reptili usque ad volucres caeli : poenitet enim me fecisse eos. Noe vero invenit gratiam coram Domino. Hae sunt generationes Noe : Noe vir justus atque perfectus fuit in generationibus suis; cum Deo ambulavit. Et genuit tres filios, Sem, Cham et Japheth.

Corrupta est autem terra coram Deo, et repleta est iniquitate. Cumque vidisset Deus terram esse corruptam ( omnis quippe caro corruperat viam suam super terram), dixit ad Noe : Finis universae carnis venit coram me : repleta est terra iniquitate a facie eorum, et ego disperdam eos cum terra. Fac tibi arcam de lignis laevigatis; mansiunculas in arca facies, et bitumine linies intrinsecus et extrinsecus. Et sic facies eam : trecentorum cubitorum erit longitudo arcae, quinquaginta cubitorum latitudo, et triginta cubitorum altitudo illius.

Fenestram in arca facies, et in cubito consummabis summitatem ejus : ostium autem arcae pones ex latere; deorsum, coenacula et tristega facies in ea. Ecce ego adducam aquas diluvii super terram, ut interficiam omnem carnem, in qua spiritus vitae est subter caelum : universa quae in terra sunt, consumentur. Ponamque foedus meum tecum : et ingredieris arcam tu et filii tui, uxor tua, et uxores filiorum tuorum tecum. Et ex cunctis animantibus universae carnis bina induces in arcam, ut vivant tecum : masculini sexus et feminini. De volucribus juxta genus suum, et de jumentis in genere suo, et ex omni reptili terrae secundum genus suum : bina de omnibus ingredientur tecum, ut possint vivere.

Tolles igitur tecum ex omnibus escis, quae mandi possunt, et comportabis apud te : et erunt tam tibi, quam illis in cibum. Fecit igitur Noe omnia quae praeceperat illi Deus.

387 words, subdividing perhaps into 170 and 217, with a limit before the second Cumque. Or a bit earlier, with other subdivisisons, like at Corrupta est or starting when God is speaking.

But psalm 118 (Vulgate reckoning) has 1809 words in Latin. Certainly, it involved subdivision, and probably the letters of the Hebrew alphabet served. Medium words per letter is above 82 words - shorter than the other texts. Benedictine monks certainly know psalm 118 by heart.

Quite a time ago, I asked Robert Barron if he knew the Nicene Creed by heart. That's the second text. It would be probable he does. He is supposed to be a bishop, and do the work of a bishop, and whatever the doubts on sacramental validity, he does the rituals he thinks he should do (within Novus Ordo) and these include Nicene Creed.

If he was caught in a house without books (including especially his liturgic books) and with a dying boy, I am very certain he could teach the dying boy the Nicene Creed too. So he learned it by heart.

So, if he can learn Nicene Creed by heart in English, French (where he studied theology), Latin and Spanish (he has Hispanics in his diocese), would someone living between Noah and Abraham not also have been able to make a short, truthful account of the Babel event, including his prophecy of what role God played in it? And would he not have been able to learn it by heart and to teach it so as the children and grandchildren learned it by heart?

We must presume early post-Flood including immediate post-Babel men were biologically superior to us. They lived longer and their brains would have been superior too and if Robert Barron can learn a text which is 229 words in English or 170 words in Latin, then the men who saw what happened, once they formulated a text, would have no problem learning it by heart or making Peleg learn it by heart.

As to learning genealogies in Genesis 4, 5 and 11 by heart, guess what Beduins do for fun? Recite their ancestors. It is a hobby prevalent up to this day, or was in the 19th C. when Karl May lampooned it in the person of a Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gossarah (Halef omitted the pre-Hadji ancestors, probably because they weren't Hadjis yet, and was the first of the three Hadjis to actually arrive in Meccah after taking service under Kara Ben Nemsi - his grandfather having set out, though). So, young Peleg would soon after 401 after Flood have learned things like:

these the generations of Sem: and Sem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, the second year after the flood. And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Sala, And Sala lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Heber. And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. (= that's me)

Or, soon after 529 (by which time not only Noah, but Shem too had died):

these the generations of Sem: and Sem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, the second year after the flood. And Sem lived, after he had begotten Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. And Cainan lived a hundred and thirty years and begot Sala, And Sala lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Heber. And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. (=that's me)

And as time went by, death notices and new generations would be inserted, Peleg would not have been very old when changing it to:

these the generations of Sem: and Sem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, the second year after the flood. And Sem lived, after he had begotten Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Cainan, four hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Cainan lived a hundred and thirty years and begot Sala, And Sala lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Heber. And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg.

If he was born in 401, as the Roman Martyrology has it, I think he would not just have learned the first version I offered from reduced citations of Genesis 11, but have kept it quite some decades too.

And not only more death notices were added, but also new generations, until we have the full text in Genesis 11 which was obviously learned by heart by Abraham.

This is how Genesis 5 and 11 (within parameters of respective text versions, some lacking second Cainan, and one of these also having shorter years) give us certitude of a historic kind on how far back Flood and Creation were.

When oral tradition changes, it is not because tradition bearers who have learned things by heart are forgetful of the words : it is because they voluntarily change the text, sometimes by updates that are necessary (death notices and new generations were added for a very good reason after Peleg was born) and sometimes because they feel doubt or an itching for novelty (that's why Pagan accounts of the Flood are not all that accurate).

The point of Fr. George Leo Haydock still stands, as he put it at the very end of the commentaries on Genesis 3, own and compiled : the minimal overlap of generations was such that a good transmission from the fall to Abraham was definitely possible. That is why we know the woman was promised to be enemy of the serpent, with all that that entails of Catholic Mariology. So, suppose you don't admit Adam and Abraham were about 20 generations apart, how do you account for Genesis 3 account of the fall being actually truly known?

Hans Georg Lundahl
St. Germain en Laye
St. Gertrude
16.XI.2019

Bibliography on Catholic Predecessors of Henry M. Morris

Is available with French comments on this post:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Les Prédécesseurs catholiques de Henry Morris (jusqu'à 1920)
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/11/les-predecesseurs-catholiques-de-henry.html

Did Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis go extinct at the Flood?

This is detail criticism (a k a quibbles) on an article by CMI, mainly on Homo luzonensis, featuring Homo floresiensis.

What is Homo luzonensis? Ape or man?
by Matthew Cserhati, Peter Line, Joel Tay | Published: 7 November 2019
https://creation.com/what-is-homo-luzonensis

First off, no big news, CMI tends to consider them as post-Flood, since that is implied by ...

It could be that H. luzonensis is very similar to H. floresiensis and both are human, likely belonging to the Negrito population living in the Philippines. Possibly H. luzonensis, H. floresiensis and the Negritos are all inter-related.

One can have morphological parameters of Negritos without being related to them ... if they were related, arguably that would mean they were post-Flood, since the Negritos clearly are post-Flood.

In fact, they even say so:

Also, stone tools associated with a butchered rhinoceros, indicating human intelligence, were found nearby in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon, dated by evolutionists to between 777 and 631 ka.9 Whilst not accepting these age dates, they nonetheless indicate there was likely a human presence in the region relatively early post-Flood.

Footnote nine says : 9.Ingicco, T., van den Bergh, G.D., Jago-on, C., Bahain, J.-J, Chacón, M.G., Amano, N., et al., Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand years ago. Nature 557:233-237, 2018.

I also do not accept these dates. But the more important date is, given here, probably a carbon date:

Evolutionists claim that H. luzonensis lived 67 thousand years ago (ka).2

2.Mijares, A.S., Détroit, F., Piper, P., Grün, R., Bellwood, P., Aubert, M., Champion, G., et al., New evidence for a 67,000-year-old human presence at Callao Cave, Luzon, Philippines, J Hum Evol. 59(1):123-32, 2010.

I would take 67 thousand years ago as a pre-Flood carbon date. I would take 777 000, 709 000 and 631 000 years ago as a potassium argon date, therefore a lava date and therefore probably from very increased volcanic activity during the Flood. The nearby valley simply was covered with lava in 2957 BC, and the excess argon trapped in that lava dates to 777 000, 709 000 and 631 000 years ago.

It seems that all the latest bones or teeth (carbon dated, since organic) of Homo luzonensis and Homo floresiensis are 50 000 years ago. To me, that is a pre-Flood carbon date, since the year of the Flood has a carbon date of 40 000 years ago or 38 000 BC (like the lowest layer of the Franchthi cave in Greece, where Noah's family must have made a fire just after the Flood, on my view).

Since no Homo floresiensis or Homo luzonensis has been found carbon dated to later than 50 000 years ago, I think these populations went extinct there before the Flood. And probably by genocide (Genesis 6:11 And the earth was corrupted before God, and was filled with iniquity. Some versions give "violence").

But if they were even so related to post-Flood men like Negritos, that would imply that some of their genome were preserved via daughters in law of Noah and later reemerged more purely than Denisovan and Neanderthal genomes (which certainly do not any longer exist in the pure form, undiluted by Cro Magnon race or Homo sapiens sapiens). And then the genes reemerged in the post-Flood era to give Negritos. It is possible, but not very certain, and also, we do not have any DNA sequencing proving a genetic relation to Negritos.

Pending further information, I will conclude they were pre-Flood, extinct by genocide, not represented on the Ark in human genome, and that the size variations post-Flood reemerged to go down to the size of Luzon man in Negritos, but not (as far as found by fossils and ignoring evidence from folklore) as far down as the size of Flores hobbit, except for micro-cephaly cases.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
St. Prosdocimus of Padua
7.XI.2019