Cain Married His Sister - Why Is it Wrong Now?

St. Augustine and CMI are united on two things.

• Cain married his sister;
• marrying one's sister would be wrong now.

They are also disunited on why it was right then and wrong now, a common point on why it was right being sheer necessity:

• CMI says, it's the genes : as mutations accumulate, sharing a mutation becomes more dangerous.
• St. Augustine says, maximising the number of friendships requires to have a different father and father in law, if possible.

Here are the core explanations, which are different:

CMI: Who was Cain’s wife?
The Creation Answers Book (8th ed. 2019), Chapter 8
https://creation.com/who-was-cains-wifeMI

This explains why, when two people marry today, their children rarely show mutational defects. The point is that even though each parent carries hundreds of mistakes, and passes many on,12 the mistakes carried by each parent are not usually the same sets of mistakes. Because a husband and wife usually have parents with quite different genetic backgrounds, they will have significantly different sets of mistakes. So any defective gene inherited from one parent will normally be ‘covered up’ or ‘compensated for’ by the normal gene, carrying the normal instructions, passed on from the other parent.

St. Augustine : City of God, book 15, chapter 16:
Of Marriage Between Blood-Relations, in Regard to Which the Present Law Could Not Bind the Men of the Earliest Ages.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm

... For it is very reasonable and just that men, among whom concord is honorable and useful, should be bound together by various relationships; and one man should not himself sustain many relationships, but that the various relationships should be distributed among several, and should thus serve to bind together the greatest number in the same social interests. "Father" and "father-in-law" are the names of two relationships. When, therefore, a man has one person for his father, another for his father-in-law, friendship extends itself to a larger number. But Adam in his single person was obliged to hold both relations to his sons and daughters, for brothers and sisters were united in marriage. So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to her children of both sexes; while, had there been two women, one the mother, the other the mother-in-law, the family affection would have had a wider field. Then the sister herself by becoming a wife sustained in her single person two relationships, which, had they been distributed among individuals, one being sister, and another being wife, the family tie would have embraced a greater number of persons. But there was then no material for effecting this, since there were no human beings but the brothers and sisters born of those two first parents. Therefore, when an abundant population made it possible, men ought to choose for wives women who were not already their sisters; for not only would there then be no necessity for marrying sisters, but, were it done, it would be most abominable. For if the grandchildren of the first pair, being now able to choose their cousins for wives, married their sisters, then it would no longer be only two but three relationships that were held by one man, while each of these relationships ought to have been held by a separate individual, so as to bind together by family affection a larger number. For one man would in that case be both father, and father-in-law, and uncle to his own children (brother and sister now man and wife); and his wife would be mother, aunt, and mother-in-law to them; and they themselves would be not only brother and sister, and man and wife, but cousins also, being the children of brother and sister.

Two things should be retained from this discussion:

• St. Augustine (and in general all the Church Fathers) agreed because this is what the Bible text says.
• Catholics have a notion of natural law or equity, while Protestant specialists have a notion of God knowing things that those obeying Him do not know.

While that is also a fact, this was in fact obeyed by most pagans too, not to marry sisters, so, this means, the Church Father has a point in favour of Natural Law./HGL

Evidence of Rising Carbon Levels

Emil Silvestru gives an example:

“The Cave Book” Featuring Dr Emil Silvestru (Interview Pt 2)
21st March 2012 | Creation Ministries International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWvXcrwYbJ8

Just after 3:00 he mentions an animal found in the permafrost in Yukon. A frozen musk ox was found in 1970.

Muscles on the back of the head: 24 000 years;
Hair: 17 000 years.

The musk ox would have lived 35 years.

What would be the ages in my table corresponding to 22 000 and 15 000 BC?

Creation vs. Evolution : New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

2890 B. Chr.

0.09274 pmC/100, so dated as 22 540 B. Chr.

2867 B. Chr.

0.119246 pmC/100, so dated as 20 467 B. Chr.

2845 B. Chr.

0.145681 pmC/100, so dated as 18 745 B. Chr.

2823 B. Chr.

0.172045 pmC/100, so dated as 17 373 B. Chr.

2800 B. Chr.

0.198337 pmC/100, so dated as 16 150 B. Chr.

2778 B. Chr.

0.224559 pmC/100, so dated as 15 128 B. Chr.

2890 to 2778 BC. 112 years. A bit more than the 35 years of a musk ox.

How could this be explained?

• musk oxes lived longer that time after the Flood than now (I mean, the beginning is 67 years after the Flood, and human lifespans were much longer for those born then)
• the muscles had more of a reservoir effect due to some ingestion of carbon already old in the lifetime of the musk ox
• the hair had a contamination effect, carbon 14 higher due to closeness to some Uranium source
• my tables are wrong and the musk ox lived when carbon 14 was rising quicker than I account for.

These are the choices./HGL

I Don't Claim to be a Seer

But the guys behind "Catechism of the Catholic Church" do or did claim to be Pope, Cardinals, High Ranking theologians.

As to De Menezes' response: If Christ revealed this as truth, wouldn't He be able to explain it, so all could understand how it is possible and why it's important? She is still receiving "revelations" but gets no answers. The obvious reason is that the messages are false.

Quoting the Introibo blogger, a Sedevacantist Catholic, who unlike Patricia De Menezes doesn't agree aborted babies are martyrs.

Introibo Ad Altare Dei : Are Aborted Babies Martyrs?
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2022/03/are-aborted-babies-martyrs.html

As I am not claiming to be a seer, it is not for me to show myself in contact with a Christ capable of resolving all doubts people around the Vatican may have about my defense of the actual Traditional Doctrine, namely that Adam was created near the beginning of the universe, less than 144 hours after God created Heaven and Earth.

As they are claiming to be representatives of the Church, it is for them to show themselves representing a Christ capable of resolving doubts around their claims, that ...

283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.

... and especially so, since they have actually taken King Solomon into the mix, who more or less claimed divine inspiration for his knowledge of the world. If modern scientists shared in that, why can't they give a clear response on how men, after gaining the genetical and anatomic wherewith to talk, gained speech? And if they can't, why is "the magisterium" claiming they shared in that?

Accept the account of the Bible as literally given in the text, as literally taken over the centuries by theologians, and the question of Adam's language is clear. Dismiss this as "too naive" or "we know better now" and you dig yourself into problems you can't resolve. And in case you think I have ones I can't resolve, at least in principle, why don't you challenge me on them? I am not a thought reader, I cannot know what exact nuance of my words gets lost or appears dubious for this or that person scrutinising my work.

The magisterium is not made up of seers, and yet, the genuine Catholic magisterium has been called "an oracle of God" - and that is not what I detect in the men who now quasi impose compromise with Old Earth and Evolutionary teachings.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Day after Annunciation
26.III.2022

PS, after reviewing Wisdom 7:17-22, it is possible that King Solomon had obtained, not inspired knowledge inaccessible to others, but a diligent presence of the knowledge available to all, on a pragmatic level, to the point of seeing "unforeseen" connexions and detecting hidden things. Even so, the modern scientist cannot claim the same for himself, he is all but diligent when touting Evolution and handwaving any objections to it with "we don't know that yet" .../HGL

PPS, it certainly involved seeing connexions between brewing process of beer and deeds of mercy - Ecclesiastes 11:1 Cast thy bread upon the running waters: for after a long time thou shalt find it again. - Sounds like a paradox, if the waters are running, they will carry off the bread, and as they are waters, they will make it moist and inedible ... until you realise that "the running waters" actually are in a basin, and that the specification means you can't use stagnant water, and that finding the bread again means finding liquid bread, aka beer, after the fermentation is done. But the formulation is chosen in relation to sth equally paradoxical - giving alms doesn't look like it's going to pay off, the one asking doesn't look like he's able to pay back, it's as instable as "running waters" on the wrong reading - but they are in God's basin of a fine brewery./HGL

PPPS - if you actually have a challenge and don't know under what post to put it in the comments, you can take a debate by mail, and it will be recycled on a blog of mine, if I'm not stopped from it:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : If you wish to correspond with me
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/p/if-you-wish-to-correspond-with-me.html

Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

As so often, so also on this topic, a Tolkien like scenario would make much more sense than glueing the Biblical history onto an Evolutionary one. It would still not be actually good.*

What co-divides with "animal rationale mortale" (definition of man)? Well, there is not just "animal irrationale" (automatically also "mortale" in scholastic philosophy) but also, in Neo-Platonic philosophy (since I am citing the tree of Porphyry) "animal rationale immortale".

Before we proceed, how would one spell Beren and Luthien in Old Greek? Not Modern Greek, where the man's name would start in MP, but in Old Greek. One option would be BEPEN and ΛOYΘIEN, especially in Attic or Ionic, but in Doric, at least older such, and Homeric dialect, it might perhaps be more like BEPEN and ΛYΘIEN, since Y was not [ü] but [u]. Opting for a Doric spelling would perhaps be appropriate, since her dialect of Sindarin was called Doriathrin. Or inappropriate, since both normal Sindarin and Doriathrin actually have an [ü] to spell Y, if using the Greek Alphabet, and might use OY to spell [u]. Anyway, I'll deal with the spelling inspired by Doric:

B	E	P	E	N
		100				100
				50		50
2	5		5			12
Λ	Y	Θ	I	E	N
	400						400
30			10		50		90
		9		5			14

BEPEN would add up to 162 and ΛYΘIEN to 504. What does the total equal? Well, a number I partly got in the post-number on the first draft I opened for this post. Three consecutive sixes.

Now, bear this in mind.

In Tolkien's "Legendarium", as the collection of stories in certain books** and as the scenario joining them is called, there is a created kind intermediate between angels and men, called "elves" although they do not quite totally correspond to traditional folklore creatures of this name. He envisaged a story in which for each conttiguous pair, a female of the higher kind chose a man of the lower one. Tolkien's reasoning would have been like with a male angel on a human woman, there is too big a difference, it is total rape (confer what I have said about the idea of Adamites "marrying" creatures that did not have rational souls up to the marriage : rape. But - his reasoning went on - if there is an intermediate kind and if in each pair the weaker vessel is of the stronger kind, that would not necessarily be so. Hence he considered the offspring of Beren and Luthien would not have been damnable in origin as the Nephelim were. Obviously he realised that this intermediate kind was speculation for the convenience of the story.

Now, the scenario I will again propose without necessarily anyone believing it is, this were not so. There would have been a kind that is both "animal" (that is, a moving body animated by a soul) and "rationale" (man not beast, able to say "the grass is green") but unlike Adam's descendants after the fall instead "immortale".

This would obviously mean that any pre-adamite men we find would not have died naturally, they would have been casualties. And that we could some day run into a Neanderthal who was alive 20 000 years before Adam was created, or for that matter a Cro-Magnon of such description.

Those who married into Adam's kin would have been very well aware of what they were doing, as keenly aware as Luthien and Arwen in Tolkien's stories, that they were contracting death by doing so after Adam sinned.

There are people who consider, with an age difference of 30 years from man to teen girl - even if the girl is physically mature, not under the age of puberty - there would be a kind of rape, because the man would have had so much more experience. I disagree. I don't think it would have been wrong if Noah at age 500 married a girl of 50 (after being stopped from or willing to forego marriage up to then), as long as the girl of 50 had reached puberty and was not a case of Down's syndrome or any condition making physical adults to have child brains, I strongly disagree with the sentiment.

But if an immortal who had 500 000 years' experience came to meddle with for instance Cain or Seth, I think it would be that.

Other question, why would someone intermarry if that meant contracting death? Less problematic, it would be opting for getting a particular judgement before Doomsday, with the option of Redemption by (Faith in the yet to come) Christ rather than mix up and get judged a million years later without this help, and perhaps screwing up royally.

Where would they be now? Maybe on a well chilled part of Mercury, undertaking the upkeep of Enoch and Elijah until they return? Maybe inside the Earth (meaning they didn't get wiped off the surface of the earth at the Flood, because they weren't there in the first place), in a scenario reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar, also known as Hollow Earth? We don't seem to see such people now, and it seems the Irish tradition about a people inside the hills would come from the times when the "Anatolian Neolithic Farmers" from Babel came to replace an earlier population of "Western Hunter Gatherers, involved in the Genesis 10 spread.

You see, for the carbon date (not to be confused with real date) of the Flood to be 40 000 BP or 38 000 BC and for the carbon date of Babel to be between 9600 and 8600 (8200?) BC, you need to have a spread of mankind's peoples from the landing place before you have a dispersion of mankind's kingdoms from Babel. And this means, no, the Daoine Sidhe are not elves in the Tolkien sense, they are people who arrived on Ireland between Flood and Babel and hid from those arriving after Babel. This is then one of the arguments against "immortal, near-human" parents of Adam. Of course, the argument falls if one assumes old age. But if one does, one creates a problem for the population of Ireland. Unless one takes this fairly outlandish idea.

But the main issue is, such an intermediate kind between angels and men does not seem to exist. If it did, some things we know about Neanderthals seem to exclude them from such a role. Not the fact some were found with wounds, even a trepanation here (I seem to recall) and a cut off arm there (in Shanidar), that could be penalties for individual sins, within an overall still blessed kind, no, we have found genes for diabetes in their bones. Of course, it is possible that the gene which in us promotes a hastened mortality, with other combining factors could have contributed to an overall immortality, but it is not very likely.

Biblically as well as in anthropological archaeology, we do not find likely candidates for such an intermediate kind. Indeed, they would have had the kind of covenant that some Protestants attribute to Adam and Eve, which would be a fairly troubling thing with the things we do know of Adam and Eve. And of course, take the gematria of Beren and Luthien too. No, such intermarriage would not have been OK, notwithstanding the imagination of one of the clearest headed Old Earth compromisers, so, this also is no way out of the conundrum you pose yourself by saying "Adam wasn't created within 144 normal hours after the creation of the universe" - which therefore remains still preferrable.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Feast of Annunciation
25.III.2022***

* As in Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? I am refuting a position which may not be actually held by old earth compromisers, just for completeness.
** In order of publication, a) in his own lifetime: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (in three volumes), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; b) posthumously, published by his son Christopher: Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales from Númenor and Middle-Earth, and after that all of the "History of Middle-Earth" series, 12 volumes, starting with The Book of Lost Tales, two parts, and The Lays of Beleriand.
*** It is also a significant day in Tolkien fandom ...

What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man?

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

It appears my benefactor did not want to add anything, he thought the ones holding Adam was born to non-human beings automatically held that Adam was himself born non-human. But in Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? I was mainly considering what if he had been born the image of God to progenitors themselves not such. I only mentioned the idea of himself becoming human as adult in one paragraph./updated 2 days later, HGL

My benefactor Stephan Borgehammar wanted to add [inspired me to add] to the scenario in Child Adam and in previous. Namely by considering another supposition.*

Supposing Adam had a young-hood which was not a human childhood, but God made him, over again, this time in His image, when he became an adult.

First problem: when would that be? Reaching puberty or more like reaching twenty, thirty?

According to the Biblical narrative, taken at face value, Adam had a few hours to name beasts and then go to sleep, before he woke up with Eve at his side.

In this view, there are two possibilities. We'll go by what the ages mean in terms of modern, post-Flood, human anatomy.

Adam becomes a man at twenty sth - meaning he had miserable teens as finding no mate. Or he did find one or more than one, so he had lots of not really human young ones, before he started his God given marriage.

Adam became a man at 14 sth - meaning he is confronted with temptation while his urges are naturally very strong.

Sure, on the traditional view, however strong his urges for whatever thing, God had given him all the means sufficient (and some more) to resist temptation. But would this not be, on the other view here envisaged, a kind of curbing of Adam's previous nature? We need some curbing of ours now, because Adam fell, but would an as yet sinless man have been perfectly happy with such curbing?

Or, he spent years with Eve before falling, meaning he had children in paradise who didn't inherit his fall, or that he and Eve refrained from following out God's blessing, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and why would they actually be slow to do so, when perfectly obedient to God?

Apart from obviously, if Adam recalled all he had lived as a beast (speaking on this supposition) he would have had occasion for shame, even without nakedness and the fruit. So, no, this scenario too is against the goodness of God towards a man who had not sinned. As is also perfect oblivion, since irretrievable (non-momentary) oblivion is a privation.

And again, if this were the case not just with Adam but with more than one person intermarried to his children, and they became human only after being joined to someone already human (sounds some Evolution believing theologians believe in The Little Mermaid where an actual soul is only needed to go to heaven and all social fuctions of a man can be provided for without it), this would entail a kind of rape, since the as yet beastial only anatomically human individual could not give a valid freewilled consent to marriage before being human. And if God had made some of them human beforehand, this would have been unconditionally, and so we would have had, what the Catholic faith forbids us, several strains of mankind starting out with cursed but personally not yet fallen secondary Adams.

So, no, this doesn't work very well either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Paul of Narbonne
22.III.2022

Narbone, in Gallia, natalis sancti Pauli Episcopi, Apostolorum discipuli, quem tradunt fuisse Sergium Paulum Proconsulem. Hic, a beato Apostolo Paulo baptizatus, et ab eo, cum in Hispaniam pergeret, apud Narbonem relictus, ibidem Episcopali dignitate donatus est; ibique, praedicationis officio non segniter expleto, clarus miraculis migravit in caelum.

* To not misquote him, his actual words were, he had not considered the implication of it, while the main implications I were dealing with in previous were the scenario Adam being born human by non-humans, born with a rational soul by anatomic "humans" not having such. I mentioned Adam humanised as adult only in passing, so I took this as a prompt to deal more fully with it. If some uncautious reader got the impression he believed this scenario, read my words again, it is not what I said.

Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes?

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

It seems some could consider this as about the scenario "Adam got his manhood when fullgrown" rather than, as mainly, about Adam growing up as a human child among anatomically strictly similar non-humans, only a paragraph deals with "when fullgrown" which is complemented by next part, What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man?. This may not be what someone combining Evolution and Christianity actually at this moment believes, it is still not a strawman, this option should also be refuted for completeness. The impossibility of non-humans having an adequate preparation for human language is also dealt with. It had also been dealt with in the links given in the beginning of Theological Consequences, namely An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?/HGL

I Have Seen Things on Quora that Would Look Like Objections (Though Not Adressed to Me as Such) on the previous discussion

Take a look at this question on quora:

Given a linguistic clean slate, no learned language in generation 1, how many generations would it take for a "language" to develop?
https://www.quora.com/Given-a-linguistic-clean-slate-no-learned-language-in-generation-1-how-many-generations-would-it-take-for-a-language-to-develop

I'll first give my comments on two other answers.

P N from Kapodistrian University of Athens first of all answered that such a total clean slate never ever existed historically:

What I mean is that not only EVERY person in the recorded history had a first language (so we would never be able to find a non gen 1 language situation in our recorded history) but also Languages are theorised that there is a correlation between brain size and language acquisition….Language acquisition is after all a geneticall predestined action for humans happening naturally once there are sufficient language stimuli for the infant in a specific critical period which spawns 3–5 years….That to put it simply means that every person can and will acquire a language if he/she /they hear it as an infant because he/she/it is predestined to do so…

He actually mentions feral children himself, but I missed it:

All that means that there might never be homo sapiens sapiens with no language unless we cout extreme cases of kids surviving all alone in the wilderness like the historic kid of Avignon….

Which I then mentioned in my comment too, not seeing he had already done it:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“What I mean is that not only EVERY person in the recorded history had a first language”

Not feral children.

Dina Sanichar, discovered among wolves in a cave in Sikandra (near Agra) in Uttar Pradesh, India in 1872, at the age of 6. He went on to live among humans for over twenty years, including picking up smoking, but never learned to speak and remained seriously impaired for his entire life.

Feral child - Wikipedia

Note, Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja had already learned Spanish before being raised from 12 to 19 by wolves, after running away from abuse. So, he was not feral while the language acquisition slot was his age.

P N

Did you really missed the ‘’.All that means that there might never be homo sapiens sapiens with no language unless we cout extreme cases of kids surviving all alone in the wilderness like the historic kid of Avignon’’ part of my comment,or are you just a contrarian ?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I actually genuinely missed it, since I was tired and didn’t read next line.

Now, you speak of creoles, but they definitely don’t come about in a total lack of linguistic input, they are theorised to come about when pidgins are the most consistent input for new generation - and this theory of Chomsky has been contested in a book by John McWhorter called “The Missing Spanish Creoles” - according to him, castle slaves in Africa actually did teach slaves different European languages, but limited to vocabulary, using a West African and Isolating grammar, as in their (and the slaves’) own languages. Even if McWhorter were wrong, we would have children completing an incomplete grammar, not initiating a language learning with no input at all. I think McWhorter could well be right though.

P N

Well.This is exactly what I am writing here let me say it as simple as possible since you are tired…‘’NO -IMPUT LANGUAGES ARE IMPOSSIBLE BUT CREOLES ARE CONSTRUCTED WHEN PIDGINS BECOME THE L1 OF A NEW GENERATION THEREFORE CREOLES ARE SCREATED WITHIN A GENERATION BECAUSE PIDGIN ARE ISSUFICIENT AS L1. I am glad that you agree with me.Since you are tired would you like me to stop responding to our other threads here on quora for now?

P N

Thanks for the upvote I saw it just now.I wish you have a nice day !

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Same to you!

E. Allwell brought up the Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sorry, but the children developed this common sign language as a second language, after already being familiar with …

Home sign - Wikipedia

… and Spanish fingerspelling.

None of them was at a linguistic clean slate.

E. Allwell

Ok, maybe, but I don’t think most of them had enough home sign and fingerspelling for it to constitute a full language, and they did not have a language in common. I think this is as close as you’re going to get to children who are of normal intelligence and not suffering severe abuse to see what they do by way of a language.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Indeed, they had no language in common, but they would have had enough home sign to have a human language, and not be comparable to feral children.

E. Allwell

Yes. But there are no “feral children” who have not also suffered serious trauma.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, but the trauma comes precisely in the form of being deprived of language input (and some other human input as well). There need be no physical trauma beyond that, though there could in some cases be prior mental trauma (as with Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja).

And my own answer is here:

Given a linguistic clean slate, no learned language in generation 1, how many generations would it take for a "language" to develop?
https://www.quora.com/Given-a-linguistic-clean-slate-no-learned-language-in-generation-1-how-many-generations-would-it-take-for-a-language-to-develop/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 33m ago

There is no probability for it developing at all, if there was no God to give the language.

I have seen Nicaraguan Sign Language cited, but it was from its beginning a second language for children that were already familiar with Home sign and with Spanish finger spelling.

Home sign - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_sign

That it later on became a first learned deaf language for some later deaf children means they are not generation one - and they were definitely not on a linguistic clean slate.

In order to have a language capacity, one needs to be a man. In order to have it stimulated, one needs to be before age 24 months among people who are men, since to have a language, they need to have language capacity. And it is constructed in such a way that the image of God is clearly involved. You see, the human language is given as three interacting levels (another fine image of the Trinity, like past, present and future or like three dimensions of space), these being a sentence that is composed of morphemes and these are then composed by phonemes. And the morphemes always involve lexica with words of meaning for curiosity, not just for immediate action or sentiment. A man can say "the grass is green" and will understand the statement as giving information, not just practical instructions. A beast can't. That is why beasts also don't have three level languages.

If "Adam's parents" were men, Adam wasn't the first man, but he would have escaped the problem.

Theology doesn't, since stating Adam was not the first man is a no no, Pius XII in 1941 (mislaid reference, sorry!) said (to Pontific Academy of Sciences, I presume) that if Adam had biological (and evolutionary) ancestry, this could in no way be real parents.

If "Adam's parents" were not men, Adam would have been not raised to say "the grass is green". He would have been a feral child. He would have been far worse off than children (theorised by Chomsky) growing up with mainly a Pidgin input and children (known by Nicaraguan case) having learned Home Sign, which would both be incomplete, but human, languages.

So, both Adam and theology would have this problem, which Adam cannot have merited before sinning, and it cannot have been even a "material cruelty" to a non-human, since Adam would "already from birth" have been a human.

If instead you posit Adam actually changed his created kind (meaning God changed it for him) when already an adult, it would have been cruel for him to have had a past as beast (and it would not make sense imagining he was unfamiliar with shame prior to sin, he would have had sth far heavier than nakedness to be ashamed for).

And if he was both "born human" and doubly raised, potentially ferally by physic ancestry and at the same time thanks to God giving him linguistic input in the end non-ferally, he would have been aware of a superiority over his own progenitors and therefore have had an incentive to pride prior to sinning.

So, in no way can theology admit that Adam is a product of Evolution : what we know about language excludes it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
18.III.2022

PS. On the same occasion, I also saw people bring up the case of "language evolution" in a completely other sense, namely Germanic and Italic (with Latin and Romance) and Celtic (not forgetting yesterday's feast) and Greek (not forgetting P N's nationality) "evolving" from Proto-Indo-European in a way similar to French and Italian and Spanish and Romanian "evolved" from Latin. I have my own other stake in preferring Trubetskoy, but it is a totally different issue. More like - Iavan would have spoken something vaguely like Greek and Gomer something vaguely like Celtic and Anatolic right after Babel, and all three of these are Indo-European, hence I prefer the idea of these influencing each other, in a Sprachbund way. Also, a question of how Magog identifies, I don't like the idea of Magog in Apocalypse 20 verse 7 being Indo-Europeans, all of us. It may be different for pre-Millennialists who see this at least 1000 years into the future, I believe we are at the end of the "1000" years (and some more) since Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell and Resurrection of Our Lord. But for this issue, and for inherent possibility, Latin and Germanic are not at all impossible to evolve from a Proto-Indo-European language, even if the date "4000 BC" would go out, it's just that I prefer a Sprachbund view of Indo-European commonalities for these reasons./HGL

Dividing the Times

This year is divisible by 3, from Creation.

5199 + 2022 = 7221 years.

7221 = 83 * 29 * 3

7221 / 29 = 249 years.

7221 / 83 = 87 years.

7221 / 3 = 2407 years - ah, something we can actually look at ...

2407 - 2022 AD = 385 BC

Plato forms his Academy, teaching mathematics, astronomy and other sciences as well as philosophy. It is dedicated to the Attic hero Academus. Philanthropists bear all costs; students pay no fees. Democritus announces that the Milky Way is composed of many stars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/385_BC

385 + 2407 = 2792 BC

2957 - 2792 = 165 years after the Flood.

Carbon dates, on my calculations, would be ...

2800 B. Chr.

0.198337 pmC/100, so dated as 16 150 B. Chr.

2778 B. Chr.

0.224559 pmC/100, so dated as 15 128 B. Chr.

... between 16 150 and 15 128 BC.

When would the real date be for sth carbon dated to 2792 BC?

1700 B. Chr.

0.87575 pmC/100, so dated as 2800 B. Chr.

1678 B. Chr.

0.894653 pmC/100, so dated as 2598 B. Chr.

Between 1700 and 1678 BC.

When was the birth of Moses half of the timeline of the universe?

5199 BC - 1590 BC = 3609 Anno Mundi
3609 Anno Mundi - 1590 BC = 2019 AD.

Happy St. Patrick's Day
/Hans Georg Lundahl

The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

Kevin R. Henke		Hans Georg Lundahl
Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History?
		Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
		On Verifying the Supernatural
		Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
		Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
		Undecisives
		Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
		The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

I am going in advance of my plan, so, I am getting this published for 15.III, as the last day on which Henke asked for it, and signing it today, with today's saint, so you can see when it was really written. I underline the basic contradiction between McDaniel and Henke.

McDaniel, 2019

Before I go on to discuss the archaeological evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence, I wish to emphasize that, even if we had no archaeological evidence whatsoever, based on the surviving literary evidence alone, we would already have overwhelming evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence. ... There are five major detailed histories of the campaigns of Alexander the Great written by reputable historians that have survived to the present day:

• the Universal History written by the Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BC)
• The Histories of Alexander the Great, written by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus (fl. c. first century AD)
• the Anabasis of Alexander, written by the Greek historian Arrianos of Nikomedia (lived c. 86 – after c. 146 AD)
• The Life of Alexander the Great, written by the Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD)
• the Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, written by the Roman historian Iustinus (fl. c. second century AD), based on an earlier history written by the Roman historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus (fl. c. first century BC)

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

If it could be shown that these historians were independent of each other and if they had reliable sources, then we would have reason to place greater confidence in their claims even without any external evidence.

... Furthermore, if one author writes a positive biography on a leader and another writes a negative one, we might have more confidence if they both agree that the leader was involved in a battle at particular time and location.

... At the same time, we have to be initially skeptical about written documents. As you know, any literate individual can write anything. Just because something is written down does not mean that it happened. As I’ve stated before, the history of the Mormon Church teaches us that it’s very possible for large numbers of people to believe in fabrications in a short period of time.

My reply

McDaniel knows how to do ancient history, Henke doesn't.

This is where McDaniel actually does a service to Homer, Livy and obviously also the early chapters of the book of Genesis.

I go by earliest known audience, but here the earliest known audience of these works actually was itself living centuries after the events.

How do we know they weren't misled? Because, unlike early Mormons on the details of Moroni's life, they already knew the history of Alexander. Presumably there were written sources prior to the ones we have, when it comes to Iustinus in the 2nd C. AD, he is giving us an abridgement (that is what epitome means) of an earlier and longer work by Trogus, who was from 1st C. BC. Similarily, if Trogus (lost except for epitome), and Diodorus were all 1st C. AD - which is as far as we get, we may presume they had access to even earlier writing that is now lost.

Nevertheless, too often ancient authors fail to list their sources. Furthermore, they may be relying on each other or burrowing information from the same erroneous sources.

Meaning, not only the works are lost, but also the reference is lost.

So, how did people back in the 1st C. BC know Alexander had actually lived and started the Hellenistic era?

On Henke's view, arguably they didn't.

Plutarch's parallel lives include a parallel between Caesar and Alexander - but worse, they include one between Theseus and Romulus as well - the kind of persons that on Henke's view belong to mythology. And Plutarch lived so much longer after Caesar, that those pretending the Gospels are a myth would have to blush. Definitely time enough for a myth to form, on their view. I will give you wikipedian article reference on Parallel Lives, people with expectations like Henke's have arguably added lots of the "citation needed" that we see:

The chief manuscripts of the Lives date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and the first printed edition appeared in Rome in 1470.[6] Thomas North's 1579 English translation was an important source-material for Shakespeare. Jacob Tonson printed several editions of the Lives in English in the late 17th century, beginning with a five-volume set printed in 1688, with subsequent editions printed in 1693, 1702, 1716, and 1727.[citation needed] The most generally accepted text is that of the minor edition of Carl Sintenis in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (five volumes, Leipzig 1852–1855; reissued without much change in 1873–1875).[citation needed] There are annotated editions by I. C. Held, E. H. G. Leopold, Otto Siefert and Friedrich Blass and Carl Sintenis, all in German; and by Holden, in English.[5]

Two of the lives, those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus, are lost,[7] and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.[citation needed]

Plutarch's Life of Alexander is one of the few surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great, and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.

How about Diodorus?

The earliest extant manuscript of Bibliotheca historica is from about 10th century.[26] The editio princeps of Diodorus was a Latin translation of the first five books by Poggio Bracciolini at Bologna in 1472. The first printing of the Greek original (at Basel in 1535) contained only books 16–20, and was the work of Vincentius Opsopoeus. It was not until 1559 that all of the surviving books, and surviving fragments of books 21 to the end were published by Stephanus at Geneva.

Rufus?

It was written by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus[1] in the 1st-century AD, but the earliest surviving manuscript comes from the 9th century.

Arrian?

I don't even get a mention of earliest manuscript. We do know he was mentioned by Photius, later patriarch and schismatarch, in his Bibliotheke. He lived in the 9th C.

I do not know if we can see the same handwritten books he saw. I will however cite his preface:

I have admitted into my narrative as strictly authentic all the statements relating to Alexander and Philip which Ptolemy, son of Lagus,11 and Aristobulus, son of Aristobulus,12 agree in making; and from those statements which differ I have selected that which appears to me the7 more credible and at the same time the more deserving of record. Different authors have given different accounts of Alexander’s life; and there is no one about whom more have written, or more at variance with each other. But in my opinion the narratives of Ptolemy and Aristobulus are more worthy of credit than the rest; Aristobulus, because he served under king Alexander in his expedition, and Ptolemy, not only because he accompanied Alexander in his expedition, but also because he was himself a king afterwards, and falsification of facts would have been more disgraceful to him than to any other man. Moreover, they are both more worthy of credit, because they compiled their histories after Alexander’s death, when neither compulsion was used nor reward offered them to write anything different from what really occurred. Some statements made by other writers I have incorporated in my narrative, because they seemed to me worthy of mention and not altogether improbable; but I have given them merely as reports of Alexander’s proceedings. And if any man wonders why, after so many other men have written of Alexander, the compilation of this history came into my mind, after perusing13 the narratives of all the rest, let him read this of mine, and then wonder (if he can).

On the kind of hyperscepticism Henke shows on ancient history, Ptolemy and Aristobulus could be "characters in a story" ... this is how St. Luke gave his sources.

But then why do we believe that Diodorus' and Trogus' audience knew rather than mistakenly believed that Alexander was historic rather than fun fiction?

Henke presumably has memories of his father telling him of World War II. He would presumably admit this was was still known from first hand memory to be history, not a fiction. But when all who were born prior to 1945 are dead? Well, those in my generation will know from older persons that it happened. I know Sweden was neutral but part time mobilised, since my grandpa was mobilised - and reformed back into his civil profession, that one being a distiller at Vin & Sprit.

The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC / Troy Conquered 1180 BC (between 1179 and 1185) - someone was 20 and could recall it well.

60 years passes, he is 80 and dies, but before that, someone who is then twenty has been formed by him : 274 / 1120.

60 more years, handed on to third minimally overlapping tradition bearer : 214 / 1060.

Fourth needs to take over as Nestor - within the minimal overlapping generations, not overall - in : 150 / 1000.

Fifth : 90 (had Diodoros Sikeliotes as younger contemporary) / 940.

Sixth : 30 / 880.

Seventh : 40 AD / 820.

Eighth : 100 AD (we are talking Arrian) / 760 (we are talking Homer).

In Masoretic chronology, Moses would be eighth from Adam, as Haydock said, and in LXX (without the second Cainan) Abraham would be sixth from Adam, Moses 12th.

In each of the three cases, we believe the eighth generation account to be reliable because:

• it was in its time believed to be history (or it wouldn't have acquired that status later)
• there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight.

If it is adequate in two of the cases, there is no real reason why it wouldn't be so on the third case too. Except obviously, Henke has, contrary to his announced agnosticism, a pre-set agenda excluding talking snakes and such. But that agenda is - however respectable it may be in academia - no actual reason to exclude the history of Moses from historicity.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Thomas Aquinas
7.III.2022

In monasterio Fossae Novas, prope Tarracinam, in Campania, sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, ex Ordine Praedicatorum, nobilitate generis, vitae sanctitate et Theologiae scientia illustrissimi; quem Leo Papa Decimus tertius caelestem Scholarum omnium catholicarum Patronum declaravit.

PS. Have you heard of a Monty Hall problem? You pick a door, and Monty opens one other door with no car behind it and asks if you want to switch. Since there is just one car and two goats (or whatever the zonkey might be), you are 2/3 likely to be wrong on your first choice, and you have zero likelihood he opens one with a car, because he knows where the car is. In 1/3 of the cases, you would move away from the car, in 2/3 you would move to the car. But a chronicler is not Monty Hall. A chronicler goes by different rules and one of these is, he knows what his audience knows and therefore at least on certain levels, honesty pays. Hence, sticking with the chronicle rather than going with the reconstruction makes as much sense as switching the door in Monty Hall problems./HGL

PPS - Here is the oldest reference proving Alexander was a conqueror from Greece overthrowing Persia and many nations:

[1] Now it came to pass, after that Alexander the son of Philip the Macedonian, who first reigned in Greece, coming out of the land of Cethim, had overthrown Darius king of the Persians and Medes: [2] He fought many battles, and took the strong holds of all, and slew the kings of the earth: [3] And he went through even to the ends of the earth, and took the spoils of many nations: and the earth was quiet before him. [4] And he gathered a power, and a very strong army: and his heart was exalted and lifted up. [5] And he subdued countries of nations, and princes: and they became tributaries to him.

[6] And after these things, he fell down upon his bed, and knew that he should die. [7] And he called his servants the nobles that were brought up with him from his youth: and he divided his kingdom among them, while he was yet alive. [8] And Alexander reigned twelve years, and he died.

And twelve years seems to refer to his Macedonian, not his Persian, kingship.

It is in 1st Maccabees, in the LXX and Vulgate Bible, and it's late 2nd C. BC, which is older than Diodorus./HGL

Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere

Kevin R. Henke		Hans Georg Lundahl
Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History?
		Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
		On Verifying the Supernatural
		Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
		Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
		Undecisives
		Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
		The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

Cuneiform A:

McDaniel, 2019

For instance, the Alexander Chronicle, is a Babylonian account inscribed on clay tablets and dated to 330 BC recording Alexander the Great’s victory over Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela in late September or early October 331 BC and his pursuit of the Persian traitor Bessos, who had murdered Darius III in July 330 BC. Here is a photograph of the tablet itself:

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

The contents of the Alexander Chronicle are more definitive. The Alexander Chronicle, also identified as ABC 8, BCHP 1 and BM 36304, clearly refers to Alexander and his troops and king Darius ...

BCHP 1 (Alexander Chronicle)
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/bchp-1-alexander-chronicle/

My reply

Let's cite it. I'll cite each toggled note after the line. Note how much is in square brackets, as unsure reconstructions of text missing.

[3] [Month IVnote (July): Darius the king, from] his throne they removed him. Be[ssus]
[Month IV, Du'ûzu, suits the date given by Arrian of Nicomedia for the death of Darius, Hecatambaeon.]

[4] [sat on the throne and Artaxerxes] as his name they named him,note and Alexander and his troops
[Bessus is immediately called Artaxerxes, and not after several weeks, as Arrian says.]

[5] [pursued Bessus the rebel king. Alexander with] his few troops with the troops [of Bessus made battle.]

[6] [Bessus] killed [Darius the king]. The Hanaean troops, his troops, which [...]

[7] [... from Babylon (???) to (?) ] Darius, the king, had gone, [were released.]

[8] [Month V, d]ay 15] Kidinnu was killed by the sword. In the month VI (September), on the [nth] day [X happened]

[9] [Month VII (October): The king was in] the land of Ú-zu-ia-a-nu, a city of the land of Gutium.note
[Ú-zu-ia-a-nu may or may not be identical to Susia, modern Tus, north of Mashad.]

[10] [.....]

[11] [Month VIII (November): From] the palace of Babylon they brought out their goods

[12] [.......... for] the making of the xx [............]

[13] [................] for the performance of the festival of Bêl to the [Babylon]ians they gave.

[14] [Month IX (25 Nov - 24 Dec): ........]-Bêl, his son, to the office of satrap

[15] [he appointed .............] evil to the king thet plotted.note
[This may refer to the official version of the execution of Philotas and Parmenion.]

For most of the time when we considered ourselves as knowing Alexander became first King of Macedon and soon de facto ruler of all Greece, then victor against great odds and finally conqueror of the Achaemenid empire, we did not know of this parchment. Did we back then not know this of Alexander?

Moreoever, while it confirms or is interpreted as confirming some givens from Arrian, it doesn't tell us, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire from the outside.

Cuneiform B:

McDaniel, 2019

There is also another surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet contemporary to Alexander that talks about him. Known as the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia, it describes some of the events of the last few years of Alexander’s reign. Here is a photograph of it:

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

However, the contents of the two tablets are not very well preserved and the conclusions are not as definitive as McDaniel (2019) claims. The content of the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia, also called BCHP 2 and BM 41080, is especially not very well preserved.

BCHP 2 (Alexander and Arabia Chronicle)
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/bchp-2-alexander-and-arabia-chronicle/

My reply

Let's cite it:

[1'] [......] he pitched his [cam]p [......]

[2'] [......] they? crossed [the river Tigris] to this side and the king [......]note
[The crossing of the Tigris may refer to Alexander’s crossing, when he came from the east early in 323 BCE. Apparently he pitched his camp there. He was met there by Babylonian astrologers.]

[3'] [... on the river Ti]gris opposite each other [......]

[4'] [... Han]ean [troops] to the land of Arabia [......]note
[Interesting to note is the reference to the preparations for the war against Arabia, preparations which were made at Babylon already before Alexander arrived there. A harbor was being built and boats were coming from Phoenicia (Arrian of Nicomedia, Anabasis. 7.19.3-20.10; cf. Strabo of Amasia, Geography 16.1.11). If we may believe Strabo 16.4.27 Alexander even intended "to make it his royal abode after his return from India." If this intention was known in Babylon, it must have displeased the Babylonian priesthood, who would have remembered Nabonidus, who made Tema (Teima) in Arabia his royal abode and who neglected the cult of Marduk, even tried to promote the cult of Sin there (Beaulieu 1989: 43-65). ]

[5'] [......] ... numerous gifts of the people of the land [......]note
[Alternative translation: "the people of the land [gave] numerous gifts". The phrase may reflect Diodorus' remark about Alexander's entry into Babylon (Library, 17.112.6): "As on the previous occasion, the population received the troops hospitably, and all turned their attention to relaxation and pleasure, since everything necessary was available in profusion."]

[6'] [... Babyl]on? and the troops of the king from Ba[bylon .....]

[7'] [... Ale]xand[er, the ki]ng [......]

[8'] [...... ] x he pitched?. The citizens [of Babylon .....]

[9'] [......] ... in the Great Gate ..[ ......]

[10'] [......] Bêl and Nabû [......]

Note that while it may confirm a scene from Diodorus and one of Arrian, as well as a comment by Strabo, we would know very much less from this tablet than from these Greek authors.

Again, did we not know of Alexander before finding this one? Cuneiform (thank you, wiki!) was not read by human readers between the démise of ...

• Hittite (1200 BC = Trojan War / "Bronze Age collapse" or just before)
• Hurrian (1000 BC)
• Old Persian Cuneiform alphabet (in the time of Alexander!)
• Elamite (a bit later)
• Sumerian (1st C. BC)
• Akkadian (1st C. AD)

And once again, doesn't tell us that Alexander was a Westerner who had conquered the East.

Egyptian:

McDaniel, 2019

We also have mentions of Alexander in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. Here is an Egyptian inscription dating to c. 332 BC with Alexander the Great’s name written in Egyptian hieroglyphics: ... Here is an Egyptian carving depicting Alexander addressing the god Min from the Luxor Temple in Luxor, Egypt. His name is inscribed over his head in Egyptian hieroglyphics, clearly indicating that this is supposed to be him:

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

omits

My reply

No discussion indicating the Egyptians considered Alexander as having conquered from a position of inferiority the empire of Darius III.

The name is in a cartouche, so presumably "A LKS I NDRS" was a royalty, presumably with Egyptian pharaonic status.

The temple of Min has more to do with fertility than with conquest.

Bactrian Aramaic:

McDaniel, 2019

Omits.

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

Image in link: A Long List of Supplies Disbursed
IA 17 Bactria
starts on 15 Sivan, year 7 of Alexander, corresponding to 8 June 324, and continues over three months
ink on leather
written in Official Aramaic
https://www.khalilicollections.org/collections/aramaic-documents/khalili-collection-aramaic-documents-a-long-list-of-supplies-disbursed-ia17/

Discussion by Henke: This is a link that shows an administrative document, identified as sample C4, which states that it was written starting on 15 Sivan in the 7^th year of “Alexandros” and then extending over the next three months. This date, which is June 8, 324 BC, is based on when Alexander ascended the throne in Babylon and not Macedonia (Naveh and Shaked 2006, pp. 199, 206). The document deals with the distribution of supplies. It is one of 30 administrative documents all written in Official Aramaic from the province of Bactria in central Asia. Some of the other documents in the collection mention Artaxerxes III, Artaxerxes V, Bessus, and Darius III. Naveh and Shaked (2006, pp. 15-19) discuss the paleography of this and the 29 related documents and the cities in Bactria where they might have been written. Naveh and Shaked (2006, p. 15) indicate that the Official Aramaic script is from the late Achaemenian period and into the time of Alexander the Great. Of the 30 documents, 29 are confirmed to be from the 4^th century BC. The 30^th document is fragmentary, but the writing suggests that it may be from the first half of the 5th century BC (Naveh and Shaked 2006, p. 16).

Document C4 by itself indicates that it was written in Bactria during the 7^th year of the reign of “Alexandros” – a king with a Greek name. The paleography of C4 and associated documents confirms that they were written in the 4^th century BC. This is an excellent example of a contemporary document.

My reply

For most of the time when we considered ourselves as knowing Alexander became first King of Macedon and soon de facto ruler of all Greece, then victor against great odds and finally conqueror of the Achaemenid empire, we did not know of this parchment. Did we back then not know this of Alexander?

This document according to the discussion is mentioning only Alexander's carreer as King of Babylon. It doesn't prove he came to Babylon as a conqueror from the outside. Perhaps this part was somewhat downplayed in the Bactrian administration? At least this document doesn't show it.

We do get real information that Alexander existed, campaigned, was accepted as king of Babylon - but not really that he was a Greek. Here is one more item:

McDaniel, 2019

We even have written sources about Alexander written by authors who are neither Greek nor Roman. For instance, we have an extremely negative account of Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire from the medieval Persian Book of Ardā Wīrāz. It is hardly contemporary, but it is still neither Greek nor Roman.

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

omits

My reply

Here Alexander is in fact described as a Westerner - but as a Roman:

They say that, once upon a time, the pious Zartosht made the religion, which he had received, current in the world; and till the completion of 300 years, the religion was in purity, and men were without doubts. But afterward, the accursed evil spirit, the wicked one, in order to make men doubtful of this religion, instigated the accursed Alexander, the Rûman,[10] who was dwelling in Egypt, so that he came to the country of Iran with severe cruelty and war and devastation; he also slew the ruler of Iran, and destroyed the metropolis and empire, and made them desolate.[11]

10 Alexander the Great was called "the Roman" in Zoroastrian tradition because he came from Greek provinces which later were a part of the Byzantine Empire - The archeology of world religions By Jack Finegan Page 80 ISBN 0-415-22155-2

11 "The Book of Arda Viraf"

The overall context is a religious text, and it is written something like 1300 years after the events. No wonder Henke is unwilling to take this up.

Are there any non-Hebrew parallels to Genesis 3? Actually, you have Zoroastrians claiming there was a fall into sin, and you have even people who claim that Genesis 3 actually came from Zoroastrian inspiration - during the Babylonian captivity. If so, why would the Cohanim include a very unsophisticated talking snake that the Zoroastrians simply gloss over? You also have Gilgamesh epic claiming (that presumably Gilgamesh claimed to have had) a herb which could have given eternal life getting stolen and eaten by a snake. Both include motifs from the Genesis 3 event, if real, but they are so disparate it is unlikely someone would have tried to combine them into a narrative, which speaks against Genesis 3 being a derivative invention.

So, this kind of proof is not the most decisive, and not lacking for the "talking snake" of Genesis 3.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Frances of Rome
9.III.2022

Undecisives

Kevin R. Henke		Hans Georg Lundahl
Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History?
		Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
		On Verifying the Supernatural
		Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
		Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
		Undecisives
		Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
		The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

Land bridge to Tyre

McDaniel, 2019

This is the site of the ancient city of Tyre. As you can see, now it is on a peninsula attached to the mainland, but it was not originally. Originally, Tyre was on an island off the coast, but Alexander the Great, during his siege of Tyre in 332 BC, built a land bridge from the coast to the island.

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

McDaniel’s statements on the Tyre land bridge are brief and generally accurate. Marriner et al. (2007), Marriner et al. (2008) and Nir (1996) further discuss the geology of the land bridge, how Alexander and his troops probably constructed it, and how nature has modified it over time. Marriner et al. (2008) contains numerous radiocarbon dates, but none of them appear relevant to when Alexander the Great constructed the land bridge.

Sources

here cited by Henke

Marriner, N., C. Morhange, and S. Meulé. 2007. “Holocene Morphogenesis of Alexander the Great’s Isthmus at Tyre in Lebanon”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 104, n. 22, pp. 9218-9223.

Marriner, N., J.P. Goiran, and C. Morhange. 2008. “Alexander the Great’s Tombolos at Tyre and Alexandria, Eastern Mediterranean”, Geomorphology, v. 100, pp. 377-400.

Nir, Y. 1996. “The City of Tyre, Lebanon and Its Semi-Artificial Tombolo”, Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, v. 11, n. 3, pp. 235-250.

My reply

No physical tie of the land bridge to that exact time.

The probability of Alexander constructing it comes from the written sources (see on these later) that Marriner et al. and also Nir were able to read.

Without this, the land bridge could have been from centuries earlier and later. There are arguably for later periods other written sources mentioning the land bridge as already existing, but with radical scepticism against history, as narrative from the past, that Henke displays, why would these be more sufficient than the extant land bridge as such?

Coins

McDaniel, 2019

Here is a silver coin with Alexander’s face on the obverse and his name clearly written on the reverse, minted c. 333 – c. 327 BC in Kilikia while Alexander was still alive:

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

McDaniel (2019), however, incorrectly states that the coins show Alexander’s face on them. Most experts think that the faces on the coins, such as those shown in the figures in McDaniel (2019), represent Hercules wearing a lion skin. The seated figure on the reverse side is Zeus (Kontes 2000; Gatzke 2021, pp. 98-99). Gatzke (2021) suggests reasons why Alexander the Great used the image of Hercules on his coins. ... I also fully recognize that mythical beings, such as Hercules or Harry Potter, sometimes appear on coins. My point is - it’s often not the image on the coin that is important, but who had the power and wealth to issue the coins. ... Kallithrakas-Kontos et al. (2000, p. 342) states that Alexander the Great established at least 31 mints in his Empire between 334 and 323 BC.

Sources

here cited by Henke

Gatzke, A.F. 2021. “Heracles, Alexander, and Hellenistic Coinage”: Acta Classica, LXIV, pp. 98-123.

Kallithrakas-Kontes, N., A.A. Katsanos, and J. Tourastsoglou. 2000. “Trace Element Analysis of Alexander the Great’s Silver Tetradrachms Minted in Macedonia”: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research v. B 171, pp. 342-349.

Kontes, Z.S. 2000 “The Dating of the Coinage of Alexander the Great”: The Dating of the Coinage of Alexander the Great | Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology | Brown University (accessed February 27, 2022).

My reply

I would need to acknowledge that someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander existed.

That this entity disposed of a mint in Macedonia - and elsewhere in the budding Hellenistic world.

And even that around the time of Alexander coinage was changed for Amphictyonic league.

But that epigraphic evidence in itself does not feature the Alexandrou coins:

Realizing the importance of the Amphictionic League and Delphi to a ruler trying to establish himself as hegemon of Greece, we can understand the importance of these inscriptions. The new Amphictionic money was set up under Palaios, the last archon during the reign of Philip. The decisive battle of the Chaironeia essentially united all of Greece under Philip. It is not hard to imagine then that the striking of a new Amphictionic coinage would be at the behest of Philip, identifying himself as the hegemon. Following that then, as Marchetti argues, Alexander would have wanted to establish himself at Delphi as soon as possible upon his accession to the throne. The abrupt cessation of the newly created Amphictionic money must have been ordered by Alexander. If this money was stopped before the recasting of money on an Attic standard, as Marchetti has shown, then the use of the Attic standard cannot be separated from Alexander's use of the Attic standard for his own coinage. Therefore, Alexander's coinage must have already been in effect.

Thank you, Zoë Kontes, I agree, but you will have to admit that your argument does depend on the Alexander literature (Diodore to Arrian) for certain specifics and can therefore not establish these independently of the ancient narratives.

Art, Greco-Roman

McDaniel, 2019

mentions the sarcophagus

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

mentions the sarcophagus gets its name only from the art work

My reply

This would make the sarcophagus the earliest art work with Alexander motifs, but some interpret the battle scenes (there is no inscription stating "Alexandros") as mythological:

This identification has prompted some scholars to view the scene with an historicising approach as they have attempted to reconcile it with a real event from Alexander’s campaigns. Those in favour of identifying the sarcophagus’ owner as the Persian leader Mazaeus have suggested that the scene depicts the Battle of Gaugamela. However, it is most widely assumed to depict the Battle of Issus in 333BCE, a decisive military victory for Alexander which opened up much of the area around Sidon to his control. However, an alternative interpretation is that the scene is likely not intended as a direct record of a certain battle but is a semi-mythologised scene that alludes to a point in the military conquest. It has been noted that some of the figures are rendered in the nude. Nudity in ancient Greek art was used as a deliberate costume implying heroism, divinity or, in some contexts, mortal athleticism. The appearance of nude figures in an otherwise realistic battle scene can support the idea that the viewer is intended to view the scene within a partially mythic context, and not as an entirely historical depiction.

The So-Called 'Alexander' Sarcophagus: A Confluence of Cultures
Academus Education, Oct 26, 2020, 7 min read
https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/the-so-called-alexander-sarcophagus

In other words, no reliable record of a real life actual ruler, Alexander or otherwise - even if contemporary to the events given in the Alexander literature.

The marble statue is from 1st C. (reference later) either BC or AD. The mosaic is from 1st C. BC.

None of above could, independently of the Alexander literature or other kinds of memories of Alexander establish that he lived as a mortal both ruler of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.

If all examples, manuscript or printed, of the Alexander literature were somehow lost (say sth like the decrees and acts of Qin Shi Huang, 213 and 212 BC, according to narratives after the events) one would however be able to use these as some kind of confirmation of oral memories, since these are less easy to physically destroy.

But our knowledge of Alexander from these things depends on our knowledge of Alexander from narratives, not the other way round.

The coins, like Greek art in Bactria, would obviously testify to the unity of the Hellenistic world from around the time of Alexander, and my argument is, we trust the narratives of the Hellenistic world on how it started - like I also do with "post-Achaean unity" Greece or ancient Israel or the line of patriarchs - not to mention the Christian Church.

But Henke's too smart to believe (grosso modo) Homer or Genesis or Exodus or Gospels (where grosso modo would be a fair intro to believing them as inerrant, because of the divine intervention testified). Hence, he's blocking himself from this argument on the Hellenistic world too.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John of God
8.III.2022

Granatae, in Hispania, sancti Joannis de Deo Confessoris, qui Ordinis Fratrum Hospitalitatis infirmorum fuit Institutor, ac misericordia in pauperes et sui despectu exstitit insignis; quem Leo Decimus tertius, Pontifex Maximus, caelestem omnium hospitalium et infirmorum Patronum renuntiavit.

Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three

Kevin R. Henke		Hans Georg Lundahl
Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History?
		Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
		On Verifying the Supernatural
		Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
		Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
		Undecisives
		Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
		The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

Why specifically Atheists and people of similar culture if not identic theoretic stance?

Because these arguments are in fact arguments for Moses and Christ as well!

Alexander's Letter to Chios.

McDaniel, 14.VI.2019
https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/06/14/what-evidence-is-there-for-the-existence-of-alexander-the-great-quite-a-lot/

no mention

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2022/03/kevin-r-henkes-essay-alexander-great.html

Alexander existed, because he wrote a letter to the Chians, available as an inscription.

My reply

And Moses does not exist, because he wrote the Pentateuch?

Heisserer is confident the slab is from when Alexander was around, but depends on Arrian for the interpretation.

There is no physical dating, the dating as contemporary depends on Arrian who wasn't a contemporary.

Palaeography had very small variations in letter shapes to play with back in the time of majuscule only, as between 4th and 1st CC. BC. It is also possible to copy successfully older writing styles as well as older linguistic styles. Apollonius of Rhodes was no contemporary of Homer and Hesiod, but his Argonautica (from 3rd C. BC) could on such criteria have been dated to their time, if we didn't know better.

The real reason to believe the letter to the Chians is my argument that the first known audience is an adequate judge of the authorship of a text, seeing that later known audiences are less close to the authorship. Precisely as with genre of a narrative being historic or fiction.

Alexander Sarcophagus

McDaniel, 14.VI.2019

Depicts Alexander's exploits.

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

Depicts his exploits, is probably the burial of someone else - Abdalonymus - and definitely not his own. However Abdalonymus is claimed to have been installed as King of Sidon by Alexander, but this is now disputed.

The artwork is in style with art from that period.

My reply

The Shroud of Turin is better proof of Christ, in this case.

Btw, the claim of forgery as per carbon dates too late has been debunked:

The Shroud of Turin : Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (1)
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by.html

Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (2)
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by_20.html

Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (3)
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by_22.html

The Marcus Aurelius Column, as per Richard Carrier, has a depiction of an event pagans attributed to an Egyptian magician and Christians to prayers by a Christian legion.

The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies
BY RICHARD CARRIER ON MAY 27, 2017
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12480

As I believe Arrian, I also believe Abdalonymus was installed by Alexander. But neither McDaniel or Henke can yse that argument, their position being the five 1st C. Historians are inadequate proof of Alexander's carreer.

The Hellenistic Era.

McDaniel, 14.VI.2019

The Hellenistic era shows it started with Alexander

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

no mention.

My reply

The Hellenistic era is a kind of cultural community (to which among others Apollonius of Rhodes belonged) and a community usually knows how it started.

Like New York knows - independently of old archives, which actually also are accessible as confirmation - that it began with Nieuw Amsterdam.

Exactly as "the Jewish Church" knows it started with God making a covenant with Moses, and that it later split into Jewish proper and Samaritan after the rule of King Solomon.

Exactly as the Catholic Church knows it started with Christ showing Himself to be God by the Resurrection and making a covenant with His chief disciples, Matthew 28, followed by the sending of the Holy Ghost, Acts 2.

Objection 1

Rome thought it was founded by Romulus, but wasn't.

Answer

Romulus doesn't need Mars for actual father to have existed, and apart from that, ditching the story in Livy is guesswork.

Objection 2

Athens and China pretend to have started with Kekrops and Fu Hsi who had human torso and arms and head, but below the torse the body of a large snake.

Answer

Probably they were both born in the time after the Flood when cosmic radiation was higher from above and radiation from pre-Flood nuke wars in the ground was higher too, and were born with legs not properly separated, and managed to move by wiggling around. This didn't stop them from becoming leaders, unlike what it would in these days of medical tyranny.

Objection 3

Mormons thought there were 5th C. AD Mormons on later COTUS territory.

Answer

Yes, but they are quite aware that they themselves as Latter Day continuators of a supposed Mormoni actually started by Joseph Smith.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Phocas
5.III.2022

Antiochiae natalis sancti Phocae Martyris, qui, post multas, quas pro nomine Redemptoris passus est, injurias, qualiter de antiquo illo serpente triumphaverit, hodie quoque populis eo miraculo declaratur, quod, si quispiam a serpente morsus fuerit, hic, ut januam Basilicae Martyris credens attigerit, confestim, evacuata veneni virtute, sanatur.
(miracle of snake bite cure up to when the martyrology is from, it was in Antioch)

Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True

Kevin R. Henke		Hans Georg Lundahl
Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History?
		Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
		On Verifying the Supernatural
		Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
		Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
		Undecisives
		Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
		The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer

At some points, you mix a lot of things, and I must simply dissect your paragraphs and answer sentence by sentence. Or even dissect sentences and answer phrase by phrase.

I define a supernatural act or “magic” as a feat that violates the laws of chemistry and/or physics. Such a supernatural feat could also be called a miracle. For our everyday macroscopic world, the laws of physics would include Newtonian physics for the most part rather than Einsteinian Relativity. The laws of Chemistry are based on atomic theory. Obviously, as our knowledge of chemistry and physics grows, my views of what is supernatural, artificial and natural might change. However, even with the advent of Einsteinian physics, Newton’s laws still widely apply in our Universe.

This was answered by C. S. Lewis in Miracles - a miracle is not a break away from natural physics, chemistry, or biology, but an addition to them.

A physicist - this is probably from chapter 8, "Miracles and the Laws of Nature" starting on p. 87 in the 2012 edition by William Collins, arguably reproducing C. S. Lewis' second, reworked, original edition - a physicist on a steamer is watching the pool balls roll on a table of pool. He can calculate the rolling period of the steamer to perfection (or simply detect it by a watch with split seconds), he can see the movements already ongoing, he can calculate how this will go on, very easily after some time - but he can't calculate whether someone will take up a queue and hit a ball with it. If someone does, the physicist's calculations have been broken, but the laws of movement haven't.

God is richer than the riches He put down in the regular processes of nature when creating.

Demons and stage magicians can give the impression, falsely, that they break the law of physics. I am not entering into the debate here with the Dimond Brothers whether stage magicians do their thing with demonic aid. For the purpose of the present argument, when David Seth Kotkin, stage name David Copperfield, seems to walk on water, it is one and the same whether he does so with natural or demonic aid. Both ways, something other than the water is keeping him above the water. The surface tension 72.8 millinewtons (mN) per meter at 20 °C - has not been enabled to uphold the 60 - 80 sth N per meter (if we can so convert his kg), which would have been breaking Fick's laws of diffusion.

When Christ walked on the water, it wasn't broken either, the N/m in his body ceased to point downwards, because not affected by gravity.

So, at the very outset, you take the wrong view on what the supernatural is.

Other takeaway in CSL's Miracles, you carry around yourself two very clear indications that nature is not all there is - neither reason nor morality can be reduced to matter and energy affected by each other in accordance with laws of physics and chemistry. The "hard problem of consciousness" - to take it from a somewhat different angle - remains hard. We don't just need an intelligent designer who arranged our brains for optimal consciousness, we need (for purposes we take for granted, like refuting or like blaming) something other than just brain arrangements in our consciousness.

I would define a supernatural being as an individual or thing that is capable of performing supernatural acts or has bodily structures that are inconsistent with biology.

These are two very different things.

God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for. Like the example of God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality and like demons keeping the body of David Copperfield above the water, like an adult holding a doll, just the "adult" isn't using hands but will and has no body and isn't visible. Btw, both good angels and demons can readily consider us "immature" - they were created over 7200 years ago and made their mature decision for eternity right after creation, we were each created less than 130 years ago (I presume) and as long as we live, we have time to change, and some do so in the last moment, for better or for worse.

It doesn't make any sense to ask whether this is "likely" within your world view - they are not eventualities arising within the kind of cosmos you play around with. If they exist at all, they refute your world view.

Examples would include gods, angels,

Other types of "gods" than the God of Christianity (or with some approximation as to philosophy rather than full theology, of Judaism and Islam and Platonism and Sikhism as well) are basically comparable to angels.

Just, they are angels with usually no God to create them ...

the Talking Snake,

Christianity doesn't propose snakes or donkeys generally talk. Have a look at Bileam's ass:

[21] Balaam* arose in the morning, and saddling his ass went with them. [22] And God was angry. And an angel of the Lord stood in the way against Balaam, who sat on the ass, and had two servants with him. [23] The ass seeing the angel standing in the way, with a drawn sword, turned herself out of the way, and went into the field. And when Balaam beat her, and had a mind to bring her again to the way, [24] The angel stood in a narrow place between two walls, wherewith the vineyards were enclosed. [25] And the ass seeing him, thrust herself close to the wall, and bruised the foot of the rider. But he beat her again:

[26] And nevertheless the angel going on to a narrow place, where there was no way to turn aside either to the right hand or to the left, stood to meet him. [27] And when the ass saw the angel standing, she fell under the feet of the rider: who being angry beat her sides more vehemently with a staff. [28] And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said: What have I done to thee? Why strikest thou me, lo, now this third time? [29] Balaam answered: Because thou hast deserved it, and hast served me ill: I would I had a sword that I might kill thee. [30] The ass said: Am not I thy beast, on which thou hast been always accustomed to ride until this present day? tell me if I ever did the like thing to thee. But he said: Never.

What does bishop Challoner say about this?

[28] "Opened the mouth": The angel moved the tongue of the ass, to utter these speeches, to rebuke, by the mouth of a brute beast, the brutal fury and folly of Balaam.

In other words, donkeys have no speech capacity in themselves. Neither do snakes.

Just moving the tongue around would not suffice for the kind of acoustic modifications of air breath and the tones of vocal chords that make up speech, but these modifications would be well within the capacity of an angelic being.

fire-breathing dragons,

I think Kent Hovind gave a good reply when referring to the bombardier beetle. Yes, Leviathan is described as fire-breathing, so he dealt with it on a seminar on Job (morally not as great as Moralia in Job by St. Gregory), and the explosions coming out from the bombardier beetle would kill it - if they happened inside the head of it. Two liquids are emitted separately and join when coming outside the organism, and then explode. Same would be the case with things catching fire when coming out of a dragon's (or leviathan's) nostrils. Hovind mentioned more than one dino that had cavities above the nose, and these could have held liquids meant for such combustion.

and trees that produce fruit that can increase lifespans and mental abilities with one bite.

If God can make the mass in kg have no N/m down to gravity of earth, He can endow biology with such clearly more than biological qualities as well. Again, it is not the chemistry of the fruits that will have these effects.

Also, if a “prophet of God” actually and demonstrably turns lead into gold in violation of the laws of chemistry

Transsubstantiation miracles don't defy chemistry, since a tacit assumption in all natural chemical process is, God is not changing things directly - but sometimes He is.

Lead and gold are badly chosen, but Paracelsus seems - seemed - to have turned a copper penny to a gold coin in Vienna. Not sure whether it was real gold or a demonic sham (he had, they said, a contract with the devil, which he managed to wheedle himself out of without losing the benefits). I don't count him as a prophet of God. It could be a parodic twist to his real reputation too. I do believe he helped out a host - or the tale could be a parody of real legends to discredit them, if it was produced in the Enlightenment:

Die Sage, dass der berühmte Arzt Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) hier 1538 geweilt und eine schlechte Münze in ein Goldstück verwandelt habe, taucht erst im 18. Jahrhundert auf und wird in der Wiener Publizistik seit 1837 auf das Haus bezogen (Inschrift).

https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/K%C3%BCssdenpfennig

Translating : the legend that the well known physician Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) should have rested here and and turned a bad coin into a piece of gold only appears in the 18th C. and is in the Viennese journalism taken to refer to this hous - Küßdenpfennig - since an inscription in 1837.

In the 18th C. freemasons could have been eager to smudge the world of legend, and for that reason have planted a fake one. You are aware Joseph Smith was a freemason?

or levitates against the law of gravity,

As explained: levitation does not go against the law of gravity, it either excepts certain matter in and around human bodies from it (in case of God's miracles at walking on water and Ascension) or simply adds an invisible support (cfr the demonic version of how Copperfield does a trick).

I would accept that as evidence of the supernatural, and I would have to recognize that this individual has real supernatural abilities.

Well, the problem is, if you need to see a certain phenomenon with your own eyes, you probably are in reality denying it. I can accept people have been shot in Ukraine, recently, and I have never seen a man shot to death with my own eyes.

Unlike other secularists, I’m unlikely to move the goal posts to redefine a truly verified miracle, if it ever occurs, as part of a new still totally naturalistic worldview.

If Enoch and Elijah turn up in our time, take it up with them. I'm here to argue historic facts, how likely they are in a world view where miracles and the supernatural are in principle possible, not to prove miracles natural events.

So, from what we know about the intelligence and the inability of snakes and other reptiles to speak, if a snake starts having a conversation with me and other witnesses, I would have to change my skeptical views of Genesis 3.

Not the point. My advice - if a snake does so, don't answer, but get away. Eve's conversation was not exactly lucky for any of us.

We also don’t expect the fruit of trees to immediately and substantially increase the mental abilities and lifespans of humans beings with just one bite. If science verifies that such trees exist, I would again have to reduce or even eliminate my skepticism of Genesis 3.

Genesis 3 is a piece of history. Real or at least fake. History is verified historically, not scientifically, at its most basic, since science cannot verify whether only scientifically verifiable phenomena exist or occur. As well as because science cannot foresee history.

Until I actually have definitive evidence of the supernatural, I will not say that miracles are impossible. However, I will automatically classify any supernatural claim as highly unlikely; this would include the Talking Snake of Genesis, as well as the claim that Romulus was born of a virgin.

"Virgin" in this context means vestal. Roman pagans did not attribute a Virgin Birth to Rhea Silvia. The claim that she was impregnated without visible human agency is possible if there is the demonic, and St. Augustine considers this a possibility (though for some reason, he overlooked it when discussing Genesis 6).

Again, I’m not saying that miracles and supernatural beings are impossible, but I’m saying that they’re highly unlikely until we get good evidence for them.

There are precisely two reasons to consider something as "highly unlikely" - either it goes against your world view (which if so is not really agnostic) or you pretend that the historic evidence has not shown that such things happened elsewhere and at other times. This is somewhat disingenious, if you believe the historicity of Alexander (as I do), see here:

After only a few days crossing the sands, the party ran out of water and were only saved by a sudden violent rainstorm, interpreted by the expedition historian Callisthenes as divine intervention. Their sojourn was then interrupted by one of the regular terrifying sandstorms sweeping up from the south to obliterate any recognizable landmarks, and with the track indistinguishable from desert and the landscape featureless as far as the eye could see, the guides employed for the journey were soon lost. Mindful that hostile Persian forces of Cambyses had been obliterated in exactly the same circumstances in their attempts to reach Siwa two centuries before, his companions had been unable to dissuade Alexander from undertaking the perilous journey. “Fortune, by giving in to him on every occasion, had made his resolve unshakable and so he was able to overcome not only his enemies, but even places and seasons of the year” says Plutarch. And indeed, disaster was once again averted when two black ravens miraculously appeared, Alexander exhorting his colleagues to follow them as they must have been sent by the gods to guide them. Callisthenes records that the ravens limited their flight to accommodate the party, even cawing loudly if their charges deviated from the correct path. Ptolemy says that their guides took the form of two snakes, and whilst unsure which, Arrian confesses that “I have no doubt whatever that he had divine assistance of some kind”.

Alexander The Great in Egypt
Posted by The World of Alexander The Great on August 14, 2012
https://theworldofalexanderthegreat.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/alexander-the-great-in-egypt/#more-1465

Since Hellenism was part of praeparatio evangelica, I think Alexander was helped by God.

I have yet to see any definitive evidence of any supernatural event or being, but I’m open-minded as long as my standards are met. I will not lower my standards for any religious, political or other agenda.

Will you "lower it" confronted with the fact that your "standard" is not consistent with how we have historical knowledge?

...

In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops.

How much of the stories can you go through and consider the "evidence as non-existent"? I'm talking of Bigfoot and Nessie, now.

The Cyclopes have two appearances in Greek "mythology" which is a mixed bag. As said, there is a difference between "divine myths" (generally not to be believed by a Christian) and "heroic legend" (generally so to be believed, unless there are specific reasons against it, like Hercules bringing up Cerberus from Hades - though he could have shown "Cerberus" as a demonic apparition just claiming to have been there, or deluded he had so been). One of them involves the overthrown of Kronos by Zeus and is therefore "divine myth" - as little as Genesis 1:1 to 1:26 visible to men without revelation (or invention) and can be dismissed. The other is in the mouth of Ulysses, who was (as displayed on the supposed occasion) not always truthful.

But let's take "cynoscephaloi" ... I think the real key is that the dog breed molossoi look like pit bulls, and these are slit eyed. Not sure if St. Christopher was a gook** or had hairy face (I tend to identify him, before his conversion, with Clodion, ancestor of Merovingians).

Claims for their existence are either based on personal testimony or ancient written records, which, so far, have been untrustworthy.

And so far, your record for dealing with ancient records, is not ultramarvellous. I recall you took up the land bridge to Tyre, and both McDaniel and your references in the essay show, no, this can not be used to show Alexander lived.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Thursday after Quinquagesima
3.III.2022

* Bileam is in Greel and Latin and in traditional Catholic Bibles Balaam. ** Dear readers from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia - I hope you take no offense, I was actually comparing you to a saint! And those from Indochina, sorry, not my fault some excesses by people using the word has left you bad memories.