Middleton's Blogs Continue

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies · Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton · Princeton to Middleton · Middleton's Blogs Continue

In parts II, III and IV of How Should We Interpret Biblical Genealogies?, I found very little that's objectionable, some that is very valuable, here they are:

The Genealogies in Genesis: Part II
By J. Richard Middleton On August 04, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/the-genealogies-in-genesis-part-ii

Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus: Part I
By J. Richard Middleton On August 11, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/matthews-genealogy-of-jesus-part-i

Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus: Part II
By J. Richard Middleton On August 18, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/matthews-genealogy-of-jesus-part-ii

Now, some that is objectionable is here:

An important exception to the length of ascending genealogies is Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:23-38), where he traces Jesus’s lineage back seventy-six generations to Adam, “the son of God.” This establishes Jesus’s identity, which is the basis for the declaration from God at his baptism, which comes just before the genealogy, “You are my Son, my beloved” (Luke 3:21) and relates to the words of the devil in the temptation narrative, which immediately follows the genealogy, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Luke 4:3, 9).15 But here I need to leave aside Luke’s genealogy, since there is so much in Matthew’s alone that it will take up all my space in this article and the next.

Obviously, taking in account the genealogy of St. Luke would be against certain known policies of BioLogos - like rejecting Young Earth Creationism.

Christ in one of the strands of genealogy (and genealogy is never just one strand, except when Adam came from God), was 76 generations removed from the very first man in the created universe. 76, not 176, not 1076, not 7600 generations, just 76. If the first men lived 90 000 years ago, that would have been like, modern length of generations, 2727 generations. And that's very far from 76. So is 1212 generations, if you prefer 40 000 years ago. The ballpark of Hugh Ross and Rana Fuzale comes in between:

In 2005 in Who was Adam? Rana and Ross said that God created Adam and Eve "50,000-70,000 years ago." But ten years later in their 2015 updated and expanded second edition they said, "In 2005, we predicted that God created human beings between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago."

Cited from page 158 of the google book:

Searching for Adam: Genesis & the Truth About Man's Origin
edited by Terry Mortenson
https://books.google.fr/books?id=q0huDQAAQBAJ&dq=rana+fuzale+adam&hl=sv&source=gbs_navlinks_s

I know BioLogos is not Reasons to Believe, and Middleton is not Rana Fuzale or Hugh Ross, and I suspect that Richard Middleton perhaps doesn't believe Adam was an individual man, but he would land in a ball park similarily removed from all dates Biblical as the guesses by "Rana and Ross" except 10,000 BP.

I think Luke 3 would be a major headache to this mindset, and that leaving aside Luke's genealogy was not just a matter of what time he had to set aside for it. If we compare his time to the Athaliah descent of 3 omitted generations, we can compare this quality of St. Luke to their inclusion disturbing the 3 * 14 pattern and the gematria. Mutatis mutandis, like Richard Middleton is no canonised saint and his blogs are not Gospel truth. It's as tactical as my history exam answer when Charles XII put another king on the Polish throne, other than August of Saxony whom he had deposed, and I commented on this other one "... his name was never famous," at which point my history teacher wrote in the margin "Can't you remember it, Hans?"

No, my Polish was not good enough to remember a sound and spelling like Stanisław Leszczyński, and Richard, I think your old age creationist philosophy is not good enough to stand the test of commenting on Luke 3.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Feast of Christ the King
31.X.2021

"Young Earth Creationism is Pagan Myth Because ... " - in fact because you forget Sarug, that you think so!

Abraham, I was told, or before his call obviously Abram, "was of a Pagan family."

What does Joshua say?

And he spoke thus to the people: Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Thare the father of Abraham, and Nachor: and they served strange gods.
Josue 24:2

At least this means Terah and Abraham's brother Nachor were idolaters (this Nachor being grandfather of both Rebecca and Laban), or at worst, Terah and his father Nachor, Abraham's grandfather were so.

Either way, Abraham certainly had some idolaters near around him, until he left Ur Kasdim.

But stating that "Abram was of a Pagan family" suggests he had only such around him while he grew up even. In that case, his most probable source for the material in Genesis 2 to 11 (I think chapter 1 was added by Moses) would have been a tainted one. It could have been imperfectly purified of factual errors, even if perfectly from high doctrinal ones.

And if, added to that, you consider myth as the principle of idolatry, you get "shun literal belief in Genesis 2 - 11, or you are stepping in the footsteps of idolaters, that is, you are committing idolatry."

While we are at it, a Christian who celebrates Christmas would in a similar vein be committing idolatry by unbeknownst stepping in the footsteps of proto-idolater (supposing he was that) Nimrod whose birthday was on (supposing it was that) on December 25th. At least if you believe Hislops account. In moral theology, one does not commit idolatry without knowing it, since one can not be held accountable for an unknown pagan origin of sth one holds or practises in good conscience that it is a Christian thing, not even if some busybody points out the supposed pagan source. And in fact, this argument against Young Earth Creationism is as little grounded in fact as Hislop's against Christmas.

For, as mentioned in the title, the argument forgets Abraham's access to non-idolaters:

• Sarug lived to when Abraham was 50 years old, the great-grandfather, not mentioned by Joshua as idolater;
• Nachor who was son of Sarug and father of Terah may have been other than the Nachor mentioned by Joshua;
• on the servant side some would have been faithful despite idolatry of masters, this could have been the case with Eliezer's father (it seems Eliezer himself was younger than Abraham).

In other words, Abraham had access to perfectly valid and untainted sources in his family, or at least one, Sarug. In other words, the argument is void of factual content.

But let's be precise on one more thing - idolatry does not stem from mythology and right worship not purely from philosophy. False myths stem from idolatry. While idolatry needs some kind of mythomania, presumably, it can be very free from mythology. So, even if Genesis 1 to 11 or 2 to 11 had been pagan myths, which they as said weren't, believing them would not make one idolater, it is rather idolatry that would pervert belief in them, and arguably, as the literal belief is after all pure, it would pervert belief in them to other stories - like Enlil and Enki being on different moral sides of the Flood, or like Genesis 1 to 11 not being factually true.

Hans Georg Lundahl
First Vespers of*
Feast of Christ the King
30 - 31.X.2021

* Since tomorrow is a Lord's Day and a Feast, this evening already counts as tomorrow. This year the feast would prime over All Hallow's Eve.

Princeton to Middleton

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies · Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton · Princeton to Middleton · Middleton's Blogs Continue

A certain look at Princeton from radiologist points of view is, it has a high background radiation. And cultural history gives this a similar slant:

Back in the nineteenth century, the conservative Princeton professor William Henry Green compared different biblical genealogies that cover the same time period and noted that they did not match up (various generations were skipped), so they were not meant to be exhaustive. His initial comparisons were between Chronicles, Ezra, and Matthew; but he went on to conclude that it would be a mistake to use the genealogies in the primeval history (Genesis 1-11) to calculate the age of the earth or the human race.1 This argument convinced B. B. Warfield, Green’s colleague at Princeton. Although Warfield was instrumental in formulating the modern doctrine of inerrancy, he fully accepted the great antiquity of the earth that geological studies were beginning to show.2

Now, it may help to compare Catholics in this time. This was before a Paris Jesuit proposed and got vetted by the Paris archbishop in a larger reference work published in 1920 the theory now known as "framework theory" - in his terms : "the six days are a freely chosen literary form, that does not fall under inspiration or therefore inerrancy" (we have our doctrine of inerrancy, not formulated in Princeton).

While writing this he gave the previous theories current in the Catholic world. All three of them fall within the spectrum that would classify as "Fundamentalist":

• literal six days, literally at beginning of the universe (young earth creationism);
• literal six days, but in rebuilding the universe after earth had become tohu ve bohu (gap theory);
• six days = six longer periods of time (day age theory).

The actual reason he rejects the first school is, he thinks it is scientifically out of play, geology has disproven it, notably, geologic periods could not be from the Flood, as the mountains are too high for the Flood to cover them all, and, as Pyrenees was "obviously" far older than Alps, this especially seen from high and "older" mountains like the Pyrenees.

And the reason he rejects the other two is, they don't get any support at all from geology taken at "long age" supposed "face value" either.

He also claims that the YEC position is abandoned since last book published on that theoretical ground was from 1896 or 1894.

So, he had not heard the YEC position on mountains stating that:

• very high mountains rose after the Flood
• "old" looking mountains also rose after the Flood - at least if very high.

Let's be clear, if the geology doesn't really rule out a recent creation (like timeline Adam to Jesus in either Masoretic / Vulgate / Usher or LXX / Roman martyrology terms), the extrapolation from omissions in Matthew to hypothetical omissions in Genesis 5 or 11 or both, is weak. The omissions have a purpose, and it probably is a boon to St. Matthew that by omitting three or four evil generations (the three after Athalia, possibly one more) he got the 14 between Solomon and Babylonian captivity he wanted. He would not have culled away more than ritually "cullable" just to get 14.

Now, obviously, a conclusion reached between Protestants in Princeton is very far from binding on Catholics. Or, in thise case, loosing. Princeton was not given the presence of Peter and successors to whom Christ gave the keys to bind and loose.

Now, I would give another view of the genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5. Genesis 4 narrative started out as narrative and had Cain's genealogy inserted. Genesis 5 branched off the genealogy of Seth and Enosh, which would have been too unwieldy to also have on the same text. Hence, first version of the text, back in Adam's time:

And Adam knew Eve his wife: who conceived and brought forth Cain, saying: I have gotten a man through God. [2] And again she brought forth his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, and Cain a husbandman. [3] And it came to pass after many days, that Cain offered, of the fruits of the earth, gifts to the Lord. [4] Abel also offered of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat: and the Lord had respect to Abel, and to his offerings. [5] But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect: and Cain was exceedingly angry, and his countenance fell. [6] And the Lord said to him: Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? [7] If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it. [8] And Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go forth abroad. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and slew him. [9] And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother Abel? And he answered, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? [10] And he said to him: What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth. [11] Now, therefore, cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand. [12] When thou shalt till it, it shall not yield to thee its fruit: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth. [13] And Cain said to the Lord: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. [14] Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and a fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore, that findeth me, shall kill me. [15] And the Lord said to him: No, it shall not be so: but whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him. [16] And Cain went out from the face of the Lord, and dwelt as a fugitive on the earth, at the east side of Eden. ... [25] Adam ... knew his wife again: and she brought forth a son, and called his name Seth, saying: God hath given me another seed, for Abel whom Cain slew.

Second version adds verse 17 and therefore also an "also" in verse 25. And as generations were added, more and more was added on the Cainite side, while the updating on Sethite side ends with [26] But to Seth also was born a son, whom he called Enos; this man began to call upon the name of the Lord. Instead of continuing, one started a new text to transmit orally:

[1] This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him to the likeness of God. [2] He created them male and female; and blessed them: and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. [3] And Adam lived a hundred [two hundred] and thirty years, and begot a son to his own image and likeness, and called his name Seth. ... [6] Seth also lived a [two] hundred and five years, and begot Enos.

And insertions as people die and are born. Obviously, more people than just the one son leading up to Noah were born in each generation, and each branch kept its version of it, but the one surviving is the one leading up to Noah - because he survived the Flood. Genealogies of patrilinear descent growing with the generations actually is a fact studied by anthropology.

All the purposes of symbolism, for instance Adam and Enosh both mean human (earthling and mortal) are certainly there, were certainly considered by Moses, but equally, were not his purpose for articulating a totally new text, but were used by him when inserting old passage after old passage of older texts.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Simon and Jude, Apostles
28.X.2021

In Perside natalis beatorum Apostolorum Simonis Chananaei, et Thaddaei, qui et Judas dicitur. Ex ipsis autem Simon in Aegypto, Thaddaeus in Mesopotamia Evangelium praedicavit; deinde, in Persidem simul ingressi, ibi, cum innumeram gentis illius multitudinem Christo subdidissent, martyrium consummarunt.

I cited : BioLogos : The Genealogies in Genesis: Part I
By J. Richard Middleton On July 28, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/the-genealogies-in-genesis-part-i

Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies · Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton · Princeton to Middleton · Middleton's Blogs Continue

Linking to what he actually said (himself, in an interview podcast) on the matter on the site of Biologos:

Biologos : Richard Middleton | Interpreting Biblical Genealogies
https://biologos.org/podcast-episodes/richard-middleton-interpreting-biblical-genealogies

Even as far back as the 19th century, Christians who studied the genealogies realized when you compare them, there are generations missing from genealogies that cover the same time period. So we can’t accept that they’re literally this one became the father of this one. It’s an ancestor of. And we’re not sure how many generations are missing.

Here is Haydock on the matter:

Ver. 8. Joram begot Ozias, three generations are omitted, as we find 2 Paralip. xxii; for there, Joram begot Ochozias, and Ochozias begot Joas, and Joas begot Amazias, and Amazias begot Ozias. This omission is not material, the design of S. Matthew being only to shew the Jews that Jesus, their Messias, was of the family of David; and he is equally the son, or the descendent of David, though the said three generations be left out: for Ozias may be called the son of Joram, though Joram was his great-grandfather. Wi. [Wi = Witham]

It is thought that S. Matt. omitted these three kings, Ochozias, Joas, and Amazias, to preserve the distribution of his genealogy into three parts, each of fourteen generations; and, perhaps, also on account of their impiety, or rather on account of the sentence pronounced against the house of Achab, from which they were descended by their mother Athalia. 3 Kings xxi. 21. C. [C. is, I think, Challoner]

While Haydock edited his Bible in the very early 19th C., Witham (certainly he) and Challoner (probably he) lived earlier than that.

George Witham (16 May 1655 – 16 April 1725) was an English Roman Catholic bishop who served as the Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, and, later, as the Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District.[1]

and:

Richard Challoner (29 September 1691 – 12 January 1781) was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the 18th century. The titular Bishop of Doberus, he is perhaps most famous for his revision of the Douay–Rheims translation of the Bible.

Unlike Richard Middleton, these Catholic bishops were sure of how many generations were missing.

If impiety of Ahab personally is the cause of the omission, count male generations : 1) Ahab, (skip Athalia, as she's a woman), 2) Ochozias, 3) Joas, and 4) Amazias.

The Lord is patient and full of mercy, taking away iniquity and wickedness, and leaving no man clear, who visitest the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Numbers 14:18

Again, if the impiety of Ahab is not the cause, but rather that of Athalia herself, 1) Athalia (the fourth somehow bad woman in the ancestry of our Lord, the one not mentioned, unlike harlot Rahab, Moabite Ruth, adulterous Bathsheba), 2) Ochozias, 3) Joas, and 4) Amazias.

I am not sure if there is yet another generation omitted later on or not. One argument given in Haydock from Witham to verse 11, namely that there are more generations from Salathiel to Christ in St. Luke than in St. Matthew is unimportant. People can be same age and yet be different generations from a common ancestor, as Marie Antoinette had Henry IV two generations closer to herself, than Lewis XVI to himself, or the daughter of James VI & I and husband of the Winter King one generation closer to herself than Lewis XVI to himself. Same observation for Gonzaga princes of Mantua to them.

The genealogies might also fall into this category. In most of our English translations, the genealogies in Genesis and Matthew and Luke appear to be pretty straightforward family trees.

Not really. A Sosa-Stradonitz will give ancestors 2 and 3, 4 to 7, 8 to 15, 16 to 31. Fathers have twice the number of their son or daughter, and mothers twice plus one more. The most typical move in a Biblical one is giving ancestors 2, 4, 8, 16, fathers of fathers only, skipping mothers and maternal grandparents totally. I said "most typical" because the relations between the genealogies in Matthew and Luke show there are exceptions to this rule. Indeed, while Stradonitz was concerned to serve the nobility and its somewhat vain preoccupation with ancestry, Sosa was a Franciscan who dealt with the genealogies of ... you guessed it : Matthew and Luke. If we go to family trees starting from one ancestor, you have them branch out into different branches. The one genealogy looking like this is table of nations in Genesis 10. All others differ from this model.

I think that when we in the modern world use a genealogy, we’re thinking of an accurate accounting of all the generations tracing back from as far back as we can go to where we are today. So we understand our heritage. Before the modern period, people were not interested in the precision of genealogies the way we are. So genealogies had other functions. And you can look at the literature on genealogies in various cultures by anthropologists, and they have all sorts of ideas about what the functions were.

Er, no. We did not invent pre-occupation with fact in the modern world. We do not go to a hotchpotch of different ideas from anthropology to "invent" an explanation of what genealogies were before this pretendedly modern invention. I sense Middleton is fairly unfamiliar with the genuinely pre-modern since he was apparently not aware the "omitted generations" were noticed well before the 19th C. And I sense anthropologists are more concerned with modern savages and subcultures (say, lower than Western Bourgeoisie) than with the genuine pre-modern. If they are what Middleton is looking to for guidance ... too bad for him.

But one of the functions in the Bible is to make a theological point that would cohere with what the narrative is about. So that the entire story is telling us something about God and humanity and God’s purposes for salvation. And the genealogies function within that narrative context. That’s very general at the moment.

As CMI basically already answered - this does not in any way, shape or form take away a fairly general concern with actual genealogical fact. Yes, some can be omitted, and if so, it is arguably because of some kind of damnatio memoriae.

So as far as I understand, what Usher did was he took the genealogies as if when he says so and so begat so and so that’s quite literally the father to the son, and there’s no gaps in between.

That is a fairly traditional approach, well before Usher. George Syncellus who died after 810 AD had done that with a standard LXX text, and Usher's difference from him is the choice of text version. Before Syncellus, St. Jerome had made a chronology partly based on Julius Africanus, where the Genesis 5 material is normal LXX (adding up to 2242 years, but 2262 in Julius' version), and Genesis 11 is LXX without II Cainan (a text version that exists, and that also matches the Samaritan version). It was incorporated into Historia scholastica (a Biblical history, with some glimpses of extra-Biblical ancient history too) and from there into the martyrology for December 25.

So just say that they have theological points they’re trying to make says there’s a similarity of function. But what the theological points are would be very different depending on where they’re located, in what book in the Bible, because the different books of the Bible are saying different things. So the genealogies in Genesis have to do more with what I was saying about the integration of God’s ordered creation and our fracture of that creation through sin. Whereas the genealogies in Matthew and then also in Luke, which I didn’t really address in my blog posts, they have to do with what is the point that Matthew is trying to make or Luke is trying to make about who Jesus is, his identity in the context of Israel’s story. So that’s a little different theological point.

None of the theological points warrants a wholesale farewell from genealogical accuracy. Punctually departing from it is one thing, skipping it is a totally different story.

So you know the genealogy in chapter four, Genesis, starts with Adam and Adam having his sons, Cain and Abel, and ending with Adam having a replacement for Abel, who was killed,Seth. And then Seth’s genealogy right to Enosh. But in between that you have a long narrative, the Cain and Abel story. And many people who would read Genesis four, and ignore the genealogical notes at the beginning and at the end, and just read the story in between. But the story is really an interruption in a little genealogy that says, you know, so Adam and Eve have children, one of them kills the other one.

Sleep lag? Too little coffee? There are two genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5. One comes after Cain has killed Abel and known his wife in the land of Nod, and another comes after Adam and Eve appoint Seth as replacement for the Abel who was killed.

Also, the fact remains, while Moses is the historian who finalised Genesis as one book, we cannot treat him as one single narrator with an idea and subdividing his texts according to the subdivisions in that idea. He was very arguably heir of different short texts. One of them being Genesis 4 (to end or to verse 25), one of them being Genesis 5. And each of them starting out shorter than now, bnut expanded to include genealogical information from later on. He stringed them together while the break between them is going back in time.

Alright, among the other names in the genealogies not specifically in Genesis 4, but in Genesis 5 and so forth, would be you have Noah.

Which means comfort. In fact, people who do take Genesis 5 literally (I think Chuck Missler did) give the string of names the meaning of a near English sentence: "Man appointed mortal sorrow (but) the praised God shall descend, teaching (that) His death shall bring the despairing comfort" - well, God is master of history and it is also possible that the patriarchs knowing of the future redemption were instructed to hint at it through name choices.

For example, my name is only called brave ruler because of Richard the Lionheart.

In fact, while he may have been your father's reason, Richard meant brave or hard king before that. In his case, the name turned out to be prophetic. As, obviously, the names in Genesis 5 are on a different level.

And that got put back into the name, but the name originally didn’t mean that.

Yes, it did! You really were two cups of coffee short of full presence of mind, weren't you? Rik = king. Hard = brave or hard or strong. This was so with the very first Richard ever, way before Richard the Lionheart.

And it seems to me that Genesis 1 to 11, what we call the primeval history, or the universal history for Abraham, is clearly, has a quality of the legendary about it. So it just feels different.

Now, this brings up : what do we do with legend? To me, it is simply history told succinctly, and sometimes with blunders. There is a local legend in the area of Dürnstein that Richard the Lionheart was prisoner there, since the Duke of Austria had been insulted by him before St. Jean d'Acre. The historic facts are, Richard had come into a quarrel with the Duke of Austria before St. Jean d'Acre, and he was made a prisoner by the squire of the duke and he was put into custody in - precisely - Dürnstein.

I can pinpoint a probable cause why this would be in some sense a trasscript of oral legend - whatever books Sarug may have had, Nachor and Thare would have dilapidated in their service of fake gods. Hence, Abraham knew this matter (up to his own call at 75, which he added to it) from stories he had heard by Sarug who died when his great-grandson was 50. The way in which to preserve oral legend from error in transmission is, either verse or very short texts. And the texts composing Genesis 2 to 11 (chapter 1 was later added by Moses) are indeed very short and also so few, no problem for Abraham to have learned all of them by heart. After chapter 11, it seems Abraham's tribe could preserve writing material, and so the things added after that could be more prolix texts. The tribal unity was certainly split up in more than one unit, but never broken in temporal continuity, between Abraham and Joseph in Egypt. And in Egypt, Abraham would have seen writing practised.

And the name Shem, for example, I think is really interesting, in that it’s never explained that the word Shem means name.

Are you suggesting that his real name was Yeshua, as ha-Shem is a standin for The Lord?

But the word Shem is the name that begins the genealogy following the Tower of Babel and ends the genealogy before the Tower of Babel. And the Tower of Babel is about people trying to make a name for themselves, a shem.

Indeed, thank you, excellent point. Some people (arguably around Nimrod, named in previous chapter) try to make a name for themselves ... and the one name that finally stands out is the one of a tribe where part refused to participate in the building of the tower and the city.

It comes after the genealogy of Genesis 10, which describes the proliferation of people over the face of the earth, they’re spreading out or scattering. One point uses the same verb for scatter. And there are linguistic diversification. So it’s clearly out of order.

Like things tend to become, if the final redactor strings together very short texts. I would argue, while the word may be identic in chapter 10 and chapter 11, the events are different, and in chapter 10 we have geographic spread of mankind (before neolithic) while in chapter 11 we have linguistic and political split. However, the events in chapter 11 are retroactively integrated into the family tree of chapter 10, when it mentions "languages" as well.

And no, you are wrong in saying the Babel event were not the origin of language multiplicity. So soon after the Flood, it would be impossible to have languages in Abraham's time as different as Sumerian from Old Egyptian from Elamitic and so on, unless there had been a supernatural language split between. Unless you want to argue, the language split was agreed on by skilled conlangers, who had the opposite end in view to Zamenhof.

It’s one of the many cities in a complex world of many languages and cultures and peoples, but it’s one city in which they said, “let’s resist diversification. Let’s bring homogenization of a powerful empire which is going to be called Babylon. We’re going to impose our language on the world.’ We know the Assyrians imposed their language on conquered peoples, whether the Babylonians did, we don’t have that evidence yet. But it’s the same culture.

Assyrians and Babylonians as empires come way later than Babel, close on Abraham's time (like, in Sarug's time). Babylon had two languages, namely Akkadian and Sumerian. And it was founded by Amorrhaeans, arguably in the time of the Israelite stay in Egypt. In memory of, but not identic to, Nimrod's original.

And in fact, the building of the tower, we know from history, would have been done by slave labor. Even though the text has ‘let us,’ It really means ‘let them,’ which is just the way that you know people in power where ‘we built this tower,‘ ‘we built this city.’ Well really you didn’t build it, you got other people to build it for you.

I agree Nimrod was skilled as a slave hunter, but I think the slavery came, not as a class distinction below freemen, but as a civic duty, like military service or taxes. Because I think we have, in Göbekli Tepe, traces of his punishment for shirkers - beheading.

Skipping some, for now.

My guess is that they would have picked that up pretty easily, the 14-14-14, and they were David.

Certainly. Christian writers in Epistle of Barnabas and Jews were able to pick up gematric points on Abraham's 318 men. 318 as "Eliezer" or 318 as TIH, T IHCOY? Or both. Gematria was well spread in the Roman and Greek culture.

Well, the name Abraham or in Hebrew, Avraham, the gematria of that name is 41. That’s the first name on the list. And the last name of the list is David, Dawid, which is 14. Well, when you multiply 41 by 14, what do you get? 574. So Matthew is being very intentional about this. That’s why he changed the spelling of some names. It wouldn’t have come out that way if he hadn’t changed the spelling, whether or not all readers would have got that? I don’t know. But some would have.

Two things:

• prove the spellings were not changed on the Jewish side to avoid this!
• I'll give you leeway with spelling on the following exercise (see below).

So, when you read the blog post, you understand all the details of the gematria but to sum up the first 14 names that he has, add up the 574. We talked about that. The next 14 out of the 560 and the next 14 out of the 588. That’s 1722. It turns out that when you multiply Abraham, which is 41, with a messiah, mushiya, which is 42, you get 1722. That’s the beginning and the end. So at multiple levels, Matthew’s having fun and making a point. Israel’s history culminates in Jesus the Messiah.

I'd like to know how "mushiya" could be 42. Mem = 40, shin = 300, yod = 10, possibly ayin for 70? Is the point that 420 can be represented by 42?

Now, Matthew used real names of real people, with very few omissions. Here is the exercise. US has now its 46th president, and I'd like you to leave out maximally 4 people, and try to contrive a sum that's divisible by 14. You can use Hebrew or Greek or ASCII numeric values for the letters, but consistently. You can use spelling variants (in ASCII it would make a difference if you wrote "Alexander" or "Aleksandr" for Hamilton). You can use either first names, or last names, or first and last but not middle names or complete names with middle names, but consistently. I don't think any pick of 42 or any subdivision of them into 14-14-14 would make a sum divisible by 14.

Speaking of gematria - Nero Caesar in itself adds up to 100 (C is only Roman numeral) and its Greek transscription also not to 666. However, transscribe them to Hebrew, and Hebrew letter values will give 616 for Nero Caesar, 666 for the Greek version which has an extra nun. This fact doesn't make the Apocalypse a preterist book. It makes Nero a type for the Antichrist.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Vigil of Sts Simon and Jude
27.X.2021

I was arguably three cups of java short of full presence of mind, since I gave the exercise on US Presidents without stating the objective. Here it is, next day : since getting such a gematric match is a rare feat, the genealogies of St. Matthew show God in control and capable of getting some things really contrived, not just by omnipotence, but also by taste for that sort of things. Which means the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 may be as contrived as you like, but that doesn't make them a contrivance by a human author sidestepping historic facts./HGL

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies · Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton · Princeton to Middleton · Middleton's Blogs Continue

Obviously, Creation Ministries International have given a general reason for them in the article:

The Genesis genealogies / Historical records with deep theological significance
by James (Jim) R. Hughes | Published: 26 October 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/genesis-genealogies

But quoting Middleton's cited reasons isn't plagiarising their answer to them:

• The names do not refer to real people, since there is no extra-biblical mention of most of them, including Abraham.
• The reported ages of the patriarchs are fabrications. No one could have lived for 900, or even 500 years.
• The lists were prepared by Jewish scribes, in the monarchial, Persian, or Hellenistic periods, to provide an origin myth for the Jews.
• The lists were contrived to show stylistic symmetry and not historical reality—for example, both lists end with three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth vs Abram, Nahor, and Haran). And, there are ten generations in both accounts (Adam to Noah vs Shem to Abram).
• The accounts were stylized after the mythical king-lists of surrounding Mesopotamian and Levant cultures.
• The lists must contain gaps since the timeframe from the Flood to Abraham is not consistent with accepted Stone Age and Bronze Age dates from archaeology.
• In addition, the genealogies don’t support the long-age views held by most scientists—i.e., that the earth could not be old enough to allow for evolution if the genealogies are accepted as chronologies.

And then my cue:

We won’t specifically address each of these claims in this article.

How nice! Leaves something for me to do!

The names do not refer to real people, since there is no extra-biblical mention of most of them, including Abraham.

This is in fact double, as an argument.

A) In the Nineteenth C. AD, Joseph Smith founded a religion where we find references to a people called Nephites. We do not find any mentioned of Nephites outside a) Mormonism, and b) references to Mormonism (like this one). And we rightly conclude, there never were any Nephites. Why not apply the same test to Abraham?

Fine and dandy. Now, we also have no reference to Joseph Smith knowing about Nephites prior to being a - false - prophet. And we also have lots of references to what people around him knew about ancient history, and no one else knew about Nephites either prior to Joseph Smith inventing them or being deceived by a demon who had done so.

Now, we go to Moses, the purported (at least) author of Genesis.

We do find a reference to Moses knowing about Abraham before God spoke to him through the bush, and we do not have a good overview of what historical references would have been known to Hebrews or other peoples before Moses was born. It is highly possible that Egyptians had a reference to Joseph in Imhotep, vizier of pharao Djozer. But it is eminently not just possible, but probable, that more than half of their historic references for the times of Moses have been lost.

B) Abraham interacted with non-Hebrews, both from Sodom and from Egypt and from Mesopotamia, but we never get their records of him, or for that matter for Melchisedec.

In the Roman martyrology, Abraham is born 2015 BC. However, in what is carbon dated or otherwise dated (partly in indirect reference to carbon dates) as c. 2000 BC, we do not find extra-Hebrew references to Abraham.

However, if we look at the chapter 14, we see he is contemporary with Amorrhaeans leaving En-Gedi (called Asason Tamar in that chapter). But the archaeology of En-Gedi says, the carbon date for the evacuation is 3500 BC. Now, we do not have many references at all from either Egypt or Mesopotamia to anything that's carbon dated 4th Millennium BC. Cuneiform and hieroglyph texts from this period are about as informative as Linear B texts. Contracts, tax records and similar. Hence, we should not expect to find references to Abraham.

The reported ages of the patriarchs are fabrications. No one could have lived for 900, or even 500 years.

I knew a girl who was stamped as mythomaniac or confused for stating she owed a horse that died at 40. Horses usually die around 20, right? Well, horses of the Lipizan race are an exception. And one that cannot be deduced from the general rule, you have to know them.

I am not arguing these patriarchs were exceptions like Lipiza horses. I am however arguing, our type has mutated and got shorter lifespans than we used to have in their times.

The lists were prepared by Jewish scribes, in the monarchial, Persian, or Hellenistic periods, to provide an origin myth for the Jews.

Anatoliy Fomenko argues, the Middle Ages were fake history prepared by Justus Lipsius to argue Western independence from the "Eurasian horde" - feel like taking him at his word? Me neither.

The lists were contrived to show stylistic symmetry and not historical reality—for example, both lists end with three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth vs Abram, Nahor, and Haran). And, there are ten generations in both accounts (Adam to Noah vs Shem to Abram).

Like, God's providence would never ever favour anything that's symmetric, would He? Obviously, it is quite possible in each case that the genealogies include more people who were one brother out of three, indeed, Seth was third named son of Adam, after Cain killed and Abel died. In the other two cases, there are however specific reasons to mention their threeness. For Noah's sons, these three came on the Ark and all peoples now living on earth descend from them. For Terah's sons, they are involved in subsequent events, either personally or by named descendants.

The accounts were stylized after the mythical king-lists of surrounding Mesopotamian and Levant cultures.

Or, as CMI have argued, the reverse.

The lists must contain gaps2 since the timeframe from the Flood to Abraham is not consistent with accepted Stone Age and Bronze Age dates from archaeology.3

And:

In addition, the genealogies don’t support the long-age views held by most scientists—i.e., that the earth could not be old enough to allow for evolution if the genealogies are accepted as chronologies.

Now, this brings us back to change in lifespans. One way for God to bring that about would have been to allow more radioactivity to reach us, even than now, and so much more so than previously.

This would have also sped up the production of carbon 14 in the atmosphere. Hence C14 levels rose. Hence they started out low. A Neanderthal from before the Flood lived in an atmosphere of 64 times less C14 than now, is therefore dated to 8 times older than he really was, namely "40 000 BP" instead of 5000 years ago and instead of just before 2957 BC (historic date of the Flood, at least one of the options). The post-Neanderthal and post-Flood Palaeolithic with Mesolithic just lasted to the death of Noah, 350 years after the Flood. By then, the C14 levels had risen to about 42 or 43 % of the present level and so only carbon dates as 9600 BC - which is in real chronology 2607 BC. And the Neolithic breaks in with Göbekli Tepe.

The process was still ongoing when Abraham lived through Genesis 14, that's why his times are to be sought c. 1000 - 2000 years earlier than his real lifespan.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Evarist, Pope and Martyr
26.X.2021

PS, credit's to Osgood, cited on CMI, for half my point about Abraham's times : he identified (after a mention in Chronicles) Asason Tamar in Genesis 14 with En-Gedi, but didn't deign to mention the carbon date 3500 BC on the reed mats which were used to evacuate temple treasures from En-Gedi./HGL

PPS - after looking briefly at Middleton's transscript on Biologos (to which CMI didn't link) it appears the reasons mentioned by CMI are not the exact same ones as the ones or one given by J. Richard Middleton himself./HGL

Distant Starlight Problem Revisited

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sungenis is Right About Geocentrism, But Not Everything Else · Creation vs. Evolution: Distant Starlight Problem Revisited

KS wrote to CMI and got an answer by Keaton Halley:

Christian critic calls young-earth creationism “laughable and dangerous”
by Keaton Halley | Published: 21 October 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/laughable-and-dangerous

KS

If the universe was only 6,000 years old, then the billions upon billions of galaxies and stars would be compressed into 6,000 light years—and the Earth would not even exist today since it would have been engulfed in a fireball of truly astronomical proportions. It would probably not have been created in the first place since the fireball would have prevented the formation of planets, let alone life.

KH / CMI

This assumes that the only way for starlight to arrive on earth in 6,000 years would be to start with closer stars, and for the light to make its journey the same way secular astronomers assume. But creationists have proposed a whole variety of means by which starlight could have arrived quickly, even given vast distances of billions of light-years. See How can we see distant stars in a young universe? for some of these, and you can search creation.com as well as the websites of other creation organizations for other possibilities.

If you don’t like any of the creationist solutions and insist that light can only traverse the same number of light-years as the number of elapsed years, then you would have to reject the big bang theory as well, since the big bang has its own light-travel-time problem.

I certainly do reject Big Bang. Solution to distant starlight per se first: the phenomenon known as parallax is performed by angels, in a more complex total movement mis-analysed by scientists as parallax X aberration X proper movement. Meanwhile, earth stands totally still. This means, the "phenomenon known as parallax" (or part of a phenomenon known as "parallax") has nothing to say in stellar distances. This means the set up between stars' apparent sizes and their distances following on parallax "measures for distances" is also moot etc. The universe could be two light days across.

Then, the questioner or heckler mentions a presumed consequence of a small universe:

the billions upon billions of galaxies and stars would be compressed into 6,000 light years—and the Earth would not even exist today since it would have been engulfed in a fireball of truly astronomical proportions.

This presupposes basically that the actual star sizes were to be the same, even if the distances were different. But what is pretended as "known" about star sizes is in fact deduced from the set up presuming "parallax" as parallactic. If the four light years to α Centauri are not four point three light years, but one light day, you have one dimension 4.3 * 365 times smaller than presumed, and this means all of them are so. The real size of α Centauri is therefore (4 * 365)³ times smaller. This is actually not quite right, since α Centauri is three stars. Now, go to 61 Cygni ... also a binary star system, not a real single star. But its size, if one, would be (11.4 * 365)³ times smaller. Now go to Wolf 359 ... it's considered a dwarf, but take a look at the size ... 0.16 of the Solar Radius. No, it would be in fact 0.16 / (7.856 * 365) = 0.000,055,798,9 of the Solar Radius. And, as this is one of the "near stars" it would very far from being a dwarf be one of the bigger stars. Some have said, "this wouldn't work, the stars would be to small to self ignite" but since God created the stars on day IV, self ignition and a size bigger than Jupiter's is very far from a requisite : God lighted them or told his angels (to which he confided them) to do so./HGL

Philip Bell and me

We both had reasons to hate boarding school:

Around the age of ten I remember learning about evolution at school but I didn’t believe it at all, nor through my secondary school years. In fact, I endured the mocking of my peers in the dormitory of my boarding school and defended a literal Adam and Eve when I was around fifteen.*

Around the age of ten, I started dropping belief in evolution, after c. one year as a Christian trying to fit my previous belief (Evolution) with my new one, and failing, and also because I came across books somewhat advanced for my age, in which origin of language, memory by DNA and origin of DNA's ordered complexity were discussed - leaving me with a sense of disbelief, finally.

I was at a boarding school during terms from autumn 1983 to spring 1987. I had my fifteenth birthday there. And apart from there being no dormitory's in mine, the experience was similar.

Here is a difference:

However, there was a limitation: “I had no apologetic arguments to back it up.”

I had Ur Intet, a booklet by Edgar Andrews, and it later came out in English original with same choice of texts as this Swedish edition, as From Nothing to Nature.

I particularly remember being impacted by the evidence of comparative anatomy and the pentadactyl limb: the similarity of the bones of the five digits and limb in different animals. I readily swallowed the homology idea, that the human arm, dog leg, bat wing, and dolphin flipper had all sprung from a common ancestral animal. I was a theistic evolutionist of sorts by the age of eighteen.

Edgar Andrews had shown there were not ever any unspecialised animals with just four protruding and unfunctional blobs, developing from there to hind legs and wings, to legs and arms, to four arms, to four legs, to fins on a fish. And that evolution from specialised to specialised was a no no.

When I took time off from strict Young Earth Creationism ("the Catholic Church wouldn't allow evolution and deep time if it were all that bad" - I had meanwhile converted or started converting, since the one argument that did stump me was where Protestants had the Bible from if Catholicism was corrupt), it was more to a non-evolutionist very light version of deep time - basically two or three times the span of the Biblical chronology and lost civilisations along the way ... 10 000 BC must have looked like in Robert E Howard's books about Conan the Barbarian, or perhaps somewhat less cynical. Or so I thought.

Going to "evolution from amoeba to astronomer" or to accepting carbon 14 datings as final ... it didn't cross my thought. But dendro seemed fair and square for 20 000 years back ... and Hans Hörbiger's idea of eternal ice I hadn't heard of, but his idea of a succession of moons, and each provoking giantism just before falling onto earth and provoking a cataclysm, well, it came nice and handy - any memory of lost civilisations of giants could be from such pre-Biblical or post-Genesis 1:1 but pre-everything-else-Biblical times.

It ditched that complacency with even moderate deep time when reading St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei.

I was somewhat disappointed by the interview, not in so far as God not creating cancer before the fall, but rather because his experience of cancer genetics didn't put him on a trace of another - scientific - impossibility in Evolutionism. Earliest eucaryotes (on that theory) will not have had more than one chromosome pair, but we have 23 ... when a chromosome splits, you don't get two times the setup "telomere, genes, centromere, genes, telomere" but at least one of the parts must lack parts of that set up. Robertsonian fission should ring a bell to a cancer researcher, right?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XXIst Lord's Day after Pentecost
memory of St. Hedwig of Poland
17.X.2021

* Former cancer researcher vs creation compromise
by Jonathan Sarfati | This article is from
Creation 42(4):16–19, October 2020
https://creation.com/philip-bell-interview

Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark.

Baraminological Note · For Sea-Farers .... · Rolling Period of Ark? · Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark. · Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical

For empty weight of Ark, thickness times density of the wood, times following measures in square cubits:

2*30*50 = 3,000 square cubits
2*30*300 = 18,000 sq cub
4*50*300 = 60,000 sq cub
3,000 + 18,000 + 60,000 = 81,000 sq cub

The problem is, we don't know what cubit length it is, an Egyptian of 18 inches, or a longer one of up to 24 inches.

So, let's suppose we take each of these extremes in metrics ... first multiply with relevant number of inches, then convert to metric system

30*18 = 540 in, 13.716 m
50*18 = 900 in, 22.86 m
300*18 = 5,400 in, 137.16 m

30*24 = 720 in, 18.288 m
50*24 = 1,200 in, 30.48 m
300*24 = 7,200 in, 182.88 m

2 * 13.716 * 22.86 = 627.096 2 * 13.716 * 137.16 = 3,762.573 4 * 22.86 * 137.16 = 12,541.91 627.096 + 3,762.573 + 12,541.91 = 16,931.579

2 * 18.288 * 30.48 = 1,114.836
2 * 18.288 * 182.88 = 6,689.019
4 * 30.48 * 182.88 = 22,296.73
1,114.836 + 6,689.019 + 22,296.73 = 30,100.585

Then let's suppose the thickness of timber of each wall, floor or roof is either half a cubit or an entire cubit:

16,931.579 * 0.229 = 3,870.559
16,931.579 * 0.457 = 7,741.118

30,100.585 * 0.305 = 9,174.658
30,100.585 * 0.61 = 18,349.317

Now take the density of the wood. I'll take a high density hard wood, and a low density soft wood, rose and pine.

Rosewood has up to 880 kg per m³. With pine, we are down to 352 kg/m³. 100 kg = 0.1 metric ton, so it's easy to convert into tons

Small cubit :

3,870.559 * 0.352 = 1,362.437
3,870.559 * 0.88 = 3,406.092

7,741.118 * 0.352 = 2,724.874
7,741.118 * 0.88 = 6,812.184

Big cubit :

9,174.658 * 0.352 = 3,229.48
9,174.658 * 0.88 = 8,073.699

18,349.317 * 0.352 = 6,458.959
18,349.317 * 0.88 = 16,147.399

Now let's talk about the freighted weight - that means empty weight, plus weight of whatever freight is added, both crew and passengers and whatever inert cargo, like food supplies.

We can take it that the water line was 14 or 15 cubits up. If it was 15 cubits up, the moment when water covered the highest mountains (including the one where the Ark was built) the Ark could start floating but still risk scratching the soil. Not too big a problem if it was fairly soft.

If it was 14 cubits up, the moment when water covered the highest mountains, the Ark could float freely. Perhaps a better option.

Volume displaced of water = weight of all of the ship, with any content, so, in this case, freighted weight. This equals either half the volume of the Ark (15 = 15, 2*15 = 30), or 14/30, 7/15 of the volume (14 < 16, 30 * 7/15 = 14).

And the volumes are either from 18 inch cubit or from 24 inch cubit.

13.716 * 7/15 * 22.86 * 137.16 = 20,069.565
13.716 * 1/2 * 22.86 * 137.16 = 21,503.105

18.288 * 7/15 * 30.48 * 182.88 = 47,572.302
18.288 * 1/2 * 30.48 * 182.88 = 50,970.324

So, what weight is then left for crew, passengers and food?

Small cubit:

20,069.565 - 1,362.437 = 18,707.128
20,069.565 - 3,406.092 = 16,663.473
20,069.565 - 2,724.874 = 17,344.692
20,069.565 - 6,812.184 = 13,257.381

21,503.105 - 1,362.437 = 20,140.669
21,503.105 - 3,406.092 = 18,097.013
21,503.105 - 2,724.874 = 18,778.232
21,503.105 - 6,812.184 = 14,690.922

Big cubit:

47,572.302 - 3,229.48 = 44,342.823
47,572.302 - 8,073.699 = 39,498.603
47,572.302 - 6,458.959 = 41,113.343
47,572.302 - 16,147.399 = 31,424.904

50,970.324 - 3,229.48 = 47,740.844
50,970.324 - 8,073.699 = 42,896.625
50,970.324 - 6,458.959 = 44,511.364
50,970.324 - 16,147.399 = 34,822.925

So, for men and beasts and their food and the tools not specified, we have a weight of between 13,257.381 metric tons and 47,740.844 metric tons, if my observation on the waterline holds water (ha ha).

On the other* post, I had estimated the number of couples to 2032, meaning 4064 individuals, on the average size of a sheep. Now, a sheep eats 7 kg green fodder per day, 365 days. 10,383.52 metric tons for food. How much would 4064 sheep weigh? Tame sheep weigh 45 to 160 kg for the bucks, 45 to 100 kg for the ewes. Let's add the numbers together and divide by four : (45+45+160+100)/4 = 87.5 kg. Let's multiply this by 4064. 355.6 metric tons. Living passengers with crew therefore 355.6 + 10,383.52 = 10,739.12.

So, even the smallest weight available for the animals and food and tools and the walls of the small chambers and so on has 500 tons for tools and temporary water supplies on top of needed animals and food weight. And the 2032 couples I got by reducing an evolutionist's estimate for number of species (taking mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians separately) by only 16, the number of species I thought there were of hedgehogs, but that's actually 17.

What would we get with a larger Ark (a larger cubit)?

47,740.844 / 13,257.381 = 3.601

2,032 * 3.601 = 7,317.387

So, the number of couples on the Ark would vary between 2,032 and 7,317 according to dimensions and empty weight of the Ark. With less food per individual, even more so.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Placidus and Brothers
Martyrs of Messina
5.X.2021

Messanae, in Sicilia, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Placidi Monachi, e beati Benedicti Abbatis discipulis, et ejus fratrum Eutychii et Victorini, ac sororis eorum Flaviae Virginis, itemque Donati, Firmati Diaconi, Fausti et aliorum triginta Monachorum, qui omnes a Manucha pirata, pro Christi fide, necati sunt.

* Ex-JW Took On the Flood on my English debate blog.

I forgot one objection he could have ... still on Göbekli Tepe

What About Gary Bates? · I forgot one objection he could have ... still on Göbekli Tepe

Now, suppose Gary Bates had said "never heard of GT" - I suppose he could have used that as an explanation why he refuses to look at my option. Suppose again ...

I forgot the most obvious, since I answered it so often I forget some have not heard of it.

No, if "a tower, the top of which shall reach into heaven" was a rocketry attempt, we would also not expect to find:

• a tall tower
• a toppled tall tower.

But if city still means city or any kind of even temporary conglomeration, we would expect to find a site with an abandoned city. We do find that in Göbekli Tepe.

And as for base of a tower, if you insist on excluding the rocket solution, it could be argued, the oldest three circular towers in GT were an attempt to triangulate the distance to the sky before starting the "skyscraper" proper, as the celestial body observed for testing appeared totally in parallel in all three, they gradually widened the view more and more outwards, and Nimrod would probably after another failed attempt of triangulating the distance state:

"OK, we will have to go another mile further out, but this time we will do it!"

Next morning, he did not behead anyone reluctant as he used to, he would say:

"Como dize ayer ..."*

and one would answer:

"Was sagst du?"*

and one would reply:

"Carson a tha a h-uile duine a ’bruidhinn gu neònach?"*

and then someone:

"Jeśli nie zauważyliście, wszyscy dziwnie mówią."*

As you may know, it would take about a quarter of the globe to triangulate the distance to the Moon ... God was very merciful to Nimrod's enslaved work force, they really needed the vacation. I took Spanish, German and Scots Gaelic, finally Polish, as standins for the early post-Babel languages, these were not modern languages, languages have changed naturally over time as well as artistically. English is here the standin for the presumably more or less Hebrew pre-Babel language.

But God's deed makes equal sense, if instead of getting one mile further out to finally triangulate the height of a skyscraper, Nimrod's last words to be understood by all were:

"Tomorrow, I'll send people up the Frat direction and across Atlantis for some Uranium ..."

I mean, fuelling a rocket (even one in purest ceramics or whatever) with Uranium is not very safe, and when the rocket finally was launched 4500 years later, it was replaced by 2 H₂ + O₂ = 2 H₂O. Water is a way to get rockets up, as water baptism is a way to get souls even further up.

Hence, I am not into dismissing GT for lack of any skyscraper-like structure.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Francis of Assisi**
4.X.2021

* His words from Spanish : "as I said yesterday," next guy from German "what are you saying?" and third guy from Scots Gaelic "why is everyone talking strangely?" while fourth guy says in Polish (originally 2nd sg, corrected to pl) "if you didn't notice, everyone is talking strangely." Credits to Asterix and Cleopatra and a few more for the idea on how to depict a Babel conversation - as Goscinny's maternal grandfather was a rabbi, he may even had the idea from retellings in the family of the Babel story.

** To avoid another Babel, I'd like to add, I am not signing my work with two alternative names for myself, but with two alternative ways of designating today. Today is feast of St. Francis (of Assisi, not of Sales, not Borgia) and today is 4.X - fourth October. Why? Bc the feast of St. Francis of Assisi is on October 4th!