Flood to End of Babel, Demographics

I'll presume (unlike some adherrents of Ussher) that Babel ended when Peleg was born.

So, Peleg was born 101, 401 or 531 after the Flood.

I'll presume Noah had no extra son born on the Ark, or after it. I'll also have an annual population increase of 2, 3, 4 or 5 %. Starting with 8 people.

8 * 1.02101 = 59		8 * 1.03101 = 158		8 * 1.04101 = 420		8 * 1.05101 = 1105
8 * 1.02401 = 22 478		8 * 1.03401 = 1 124 131		8 * 1.04401 = 54 132 620		8 * 1.05401 = 2 511 880 150
8 * 1.02531 = 294 972		8 * 1.03531 = 52 439 230		8 * 1.04531 = 8 867 335 788		8 * 1.05531 = 1 427 604 121 610

I think there is a reason why people holding to a Masoretic chronology tend to say Babel and the Confusion of tongues could have been later on in Peleg's life. According to Andrew Sibley,* this happened very early, since the author or authors of Seder Olam Rabbah were constrained to Masoretic chronology:

But at what point in Peleg’s life do the events occur? Answering this question is important because it will help us understand the timeframe of post-Flood climatic changes and human migration. A number of present-day Christians who hold to a literal reading of Genesis consider that the reference to Peleg is linked to his birth, combined with acceptance of the MT. This suggests the Babel incident occurred as early as 101 years after the Noahic Flood, although with some flexibility of several decades (figure 1).

...

But in addition to this consideration, the first-century commentary of Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, follows the longer timeframe of the Septuagint (LXX) and Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), and places the events at Peleg’s birth. While early commentaries on the MT, for instance the Seder Olam Rabbah, place the events at a later stage in Peleg’s life, namely at his death. But both early approaches require at least several hundred years from the Flood to the Babel event, and this length of time is supported by the Book of Jubilees. This evidence constrains the time of the Babel scattering to several centuries post-Flood.

Well, how about taking this as a reason to accept the view of Antiquities, namely that Peleg was born later than 101 after the Flood?

I would say, another consideration than the one brought up by Andrew Sibley, Joctan's tribes, tends to exclude the birth of Peleg as early as 101 after the Flood. We'll have a look at the population growth if instead we have 6 or 7 % ...

8 * 1.06¹⁰¹ = 2877, 8 * 1.07¹⁰¹ = 7427

At 7 % annual population increase, it just could work, even with a geographical spread. At 5 %, one would need to have all of mankind huddling together at Babel.

However, at 401 years, 2 or 3 % would do just fine, 4 would start to be excessive. At 531 years, 2 % would be OK, 3 % would approach excessive.

This brings us to the next point, was Babel before or after the geographic spread of mankind over much if not necessarily every nook and cranny of our globe?

As readers of my blog will be aware, it was after some very considerable spread, if you ask me. This is often contested in the form "but they precisely refused to spread", so, let's look at the text:

And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands
[Genesis 11:4]

I would say, this was not said by every living human person (except small children), it was said by a specific élite which still had the habit of coming together regularly, which already had a notion of "all lands" (and which had therefore already experienced geographic spread), and the point was not disobeying God's command of spreading, but of resisting its consequence, the élites becoming local chieftains without international contacts. They were the proverbial they, and they wanted to remain an international élite.

I'll propose a reading of the narratives, in which the Babel narrative actually starts in verse 2, first mention of "they" ... so, what does verse 1 belong to? It comes at the end of "table of nations" ...

... These are the families of Noe, according to their peoples and nations. By these were the nations divided on the earth after the flood. And the earth was of one tongue, and of the same speech.
[Genesis 10:32—11:1]

So, the verses in ending each of the three sons' genealogies, they mention "tongues" as an edit added after the Babel event.

By these were divided the islands of the Gentiles in their lands, every one according to his tongue and their families in their nations ... These are the children of Cham in their kindreds, and tongues, and generations, and lands, and nations ... These are the children of Sem according to their kindreds and tongues, and countries in their nations ...
[Genesis 10:5, 10:20, 10:31]

The account is redacted, perhaps by Noah before he died, and after Babel, a re-edit adds "languages" or "tongues" and also adds chapter 11 verse 1 so as to indicate this was proleptic. Another edit would be the inclusion of Peleg and of Joctan, and then, further on, the posterity of Joctan. However, the Babel narrative as such starts with chapter 11, verse 2.

"They" is in Hebrew the grammatical form of 3mp, third person, masculine, plural. It does not grammatically refer back to "the earth" which is feminine singular. And if we assume it can mean something less than all of the human population on earth, we can have a geographic spread before Babel, and Babel starting with a displacement of the global élite, from East of Tigris, presumably the landing place in Armenia, to West of Tigris, whereever Babel was, and this presumably also in purely travelling directions from East to West, i e to for instance Göbekli Tepe, with the Harran plain directly mentioned:

And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it
[Genesis 11:2]

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Sosthenes
28.XI.2024

Apud Corinthum natalis sancti Sosthenis, ex beati Pauli Apostoli discipulis; cujus mentionem facit idem Apostolus Corinthiis scribens. Ipse autem Sosthenes, ex principe Synagogae conversus ad Christum, fidei suae primordia, ante Gallionem Proconsulem acriter verberatus, praeclaro initio consecravit.

* Dating the Tower of Babel events with reference to Peleg and Joktan.

Levi J. Pingleton, on FB

Before I began defending the Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation publicly, I had no problem getting people to come and do interviews at TruthWorthy... I was going through a lot so I had to cancel my long list of great interviews and guests this year... Now, nobody wants to touch me with a ten foot pole. It's sad that simply because you defend the Literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11, and are outspoken, that no one will give you the time of day. That's alright. I've had no support (outside my amazing friends and followers) the entire time, and I landed in the best of hands. I'll keep trusting God and doing the work He has put on my heart. I think my colleagues highly misunderstand me and miss the beauty in the message I bring... I'm very thankful that Dr. Sungenis has seen the good in me instead of the human aspects that can, I admit, effect my character at times. I'm working on it, as we all are. I don't put anyone on the spot. Come and hang out and talk Theology and Philosophy with me! I really don't bite. I'm actually known to be very nice nowadays 😁.

Evolutionists have a war problem

Shem the Cave Painter? Or Japheth? · Cave Art · Evolutionists have a war problem

Origins of War: The Puzzling Lack of Archaeological Evidence
On Humans | 10 Nov. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTlahzcRcKM

for me was when I first started 0:19 reading about this I think chimpanzees 0:21 were the strongest like emotionally 0:24 strongest argument for war being natural 0:26 to humans and the lack of cave paintings 0:28 above war was the emotional was powerful 0:30 argument for war not being quote unquote 0:33 natural

So, on the one hand, we can be sure that (according to Darwinism, in fact we cannot really be sure at all, but for Darwinists, it would be security, subjectively, and necessarily so), mankind has been involved in warfare since back when we and chimps (supposedly) were the exact same species.

We have pre-historic cannibalism, which highly suggests war. Homo Antecessor in Atapuerca. Homo Erectus Soloensis. Neanderthals in Belgium, but not in Spain.

On the other hand, for (with equal certainty, to any deep timer), man did cave paintings for tens of thousands of* years, and did not once depict warfare. For 30,000 years, men painted caves with figurative art, basically in a very similar style by the way, like if it came from one artist or a series of very closely related artists (related as a school, if not necessarily as a family). And not once did they depict warfare.

As a Young Earth Creationist, I happen to have a solution. Neanderthals, Denisovans / Antecessors / Heidelbergians, Homines erecti soloenses, none of them had usually figurative art. All of them were involved in cannibalism. All of them were pre-Flood. And arguably well described by Genesis 6 and by Mahabharata. Obviously, between the two sources, God is obviously better described in Genesis 6, but perhaps Mahabharata gives a more detailed account. In the post-Flood era, we find cave paintings from the Flood to the Death of Noah. Perhaps Noah himself was the only cave painter. If so, he visited Australia in carbon dated 28 000 BP**, which means ...

2884 BC

4.804 pmC, so dated 27984 BC

... he came to Down Under in 73 years after the Flood. At least one cave painter did.

During this time, banditry and quarrels did exist, but no nations and no big warfare. That only came after Babel. When Nimrod was as yet a "mighty hunter" (as some say of men, that is, he was a slave hunter), as long as he found no real resistance, that was not yet warfare. So mankind lived for 350 to 401 odd years after the Flood with no warfare. To Noah's death or to Peleg's birth. What Nimrod did was arguably uglier than warfare, except in his youth when he helped out his brother Regma, like the Ramayana seems to commemorate (with quite a few idolatrous additions to the theology of the story, but I think the main events might be correctly recalled).

The reason there was no war in this time was, right then and there, mankind was:

• relatively small
• more unified than since Cain went off to Nod
• and probably very tired of pre-Flood wars, like the one mentioned in Mahabharata (same observation as for Ramayana)***

Conditions during the 2242 or more probably 2262 years before the Flood were less peaceful.° And soon after Peleg's birth, soon after Babel's end, warfare was going to resume.°°

Systemic warfare appears to have been a direct consequence of the sedentism as it developed in the wake of the Neolithic Revolution. An important example is the massacre of Talheim Death Pit (near Heilbronn, Germany), dated right on the cusp of the beginning European Neolithic, at 5500 BC.

Which is:

2250 BC

67.323 pmC, so dated 5500 BC

... 306 years after Babel. So there may have been a relative peace period, once again, between Nimrod's brutalities°° and post-Babel warfare. Thanks to the separation.

And, this is, obviously, the reason why acts of warfare are not depicted in the original style of figurative cave art.

Now, I must admit, the two guys on the video, like the channel owner (the one quoted), Ilari Mäkelä, and Professor Luke Glowacki (Boston University) come to some other conclusions. The professor would say that hunting was an everyday activity, while war about resources could happen perhaps every 5 years, material from Africa for the period prior to 10,000 BP is lacking in complete skeleta (they also discussed the question of skeleta found as obvious victims of warfare, and partly not all lethal violence damages the skeleton, and partly, in order to see that a skeleton was damaged by lethal violence it needs a certain completeness.

To illustrate what he means, if you have a complete skeleton, an ax cut at vertebrae would show and be identified as such. A similarly cut vertebra in a very dislocated skeleton, well, the damage could have happened way later by accident, like lying next to a sharp stone in water or something.

Skeleta from Africa prior to "10,000 years ago" seem to be mostly incomplete. His point would be, Europe was so non-densely populated in the Upper Palaeolithic that this was an exceptionally war rare period.

But still, on their view 30,000 years? I still think I have a point.

In a previous post, years ago, I mentioned Noah's son Japheth as a possible candidate for the sole or main painter of cave paintings. This is because I was exploring the chronology of Syncellus, in which Shem dies (and presumably Japheth theoretically could be expected to die) before the birth of Peleg, and so could have died overall before Babel, before the Neolithic. In the chronology of the Roman Martyrology, Noah is a more likely candidate, though obviously, the prevalence of paintings in Europe over most other areas (Australia and Indonesia excepted) could point to Shem's contemporary and brother Japheth.

For that matter, it could have been someone even younger, and one who changed technique in the Neolithic, as opposed to dying. Such an event would also explain Japheth ceasing this type of paintings when Noah died, if he simply changed technique or style instead. By the way, I think there were sculptors too, and some of their art includes pornography, which dismisses one of the points made in the video.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
VI LD after Epiphany. Reported.
17.XI.2024

* Wikipedia says:

The oldest known are more than 40,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The oldest are often constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes.[5][b] More recently, in 2021, cave art of a pig found in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and dated to over 45,500 years ago, has been reported.[7][8]

A 2018 study claimed an age of 64,000 years for the oldest examples of non-figurative cave art in the Iberian Peninsula. Represented by three red non-figurative symbols found in the caves of Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega, Spain, these predate the appearance of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years and thus must have been made by Neanderthals rather than modern humans.

...

Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well-known Magdalenian style seen at Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BC) and Altamira in Spain died out about 10,000 BC, coinciding with the advent of the Neolithic period. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of several thousands of years.

** Same article:

Another Australian site, Nawarla Gabarnmang, has charcoal drawings that have been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in Australia and among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained.

*** They get their dates inverted in Hindu lore, as per what I take to be the real action, probably because denying the recency of the Flood would have involved remembering Babel, which Regma, as favoured by Nimrod, but not admiring his subsequent carreere in Babel / Göbekli Tepe, wanted to forget and help others around him to forget.

° It's possible that warfare proper stopped in 3102 BC, Krishna's death, 145 years before the Flood, but if so, "peace forces" after that war added to violence rather than decreased it in the post-war era.

°° The quote is from the wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare

which also features:

The most ancient archaeological record of what could have been a prehistoric massacre is at the site of Jebel Sahaba, committed against a population associated with the Qadan culture of far northern Sudan. The cemetery contains a large number of skeletons that are approximately 13,000 to 14,000 years old, with 24 out of 59 skeletons presenting arrowheads embedded in their skeletons, which indicates that they might have been the casualties of warfare. ... At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous 10,000-year-old human remains were found with possible evidence of major traumatic injuries, including obsidian bladelets embedded in the skeletons, that should have been lethal.

Sometimes, I Get the Impression that CMI Has Decided to Treat Me as ... Enquirer, Adult Child, Infidel, God Knows What More

If they want to treat me as an infidel because of my being Catholic, they are inconsistent, they don't treat Chesterton or St. Thomas Aquinas as infidels.

If they want to treat me as a disbeliever in the Bible, they need to show how their interpretation of the relevant passages is water tight. No, it's not about Earth being thousands rather than millions of years old, that's where I agree with them. It's things like Geographic spread before Babel, things like skeleta of men coming from before the Flood, Göbekli Tepe being a candidate for Babel, three things I accept and they reject.

I am in fact a writer (like many on CMI, engaged at times (like most often on this blog) with things related to Creation Science (like CMI), and I claim to be offering a contribution to a problem or if you prefer lack that the overall Creation Science community has long had. The lack of a Creationist Calibration for Carbon 14.

Now, some would argue, there can be no such thing as any reliable calibration for Carbon 14. Some have for instance taken the example of a painting, mainly oil painting, from South Africa being dated to 10 000 years old. The oil painting was obviously from within my lifetime. But the thing is, the dating is of the medium age of carbon atoms in the painting, not of the painting as composition. However, some of the pigments could involve old carbon from the Flood, some could be old if the painter used acrylic colours, which many oil painters do at least for the white foundation, these days. Mixed with that there would be fresher carbon, like the fibres in the linen canvas or the wooden frame.

I do not claim, no one is claiming, or only very ignorant people who want to look smarter than they are, that a calibration will cover every sample, since obviously some samples are off by the bomb effect and some samples are off by the reservoir effect. I also do not claim that a dating unsupported by textual evidence from back then is 100 % certain. But I do claim, a date without any contrary textual evidence according to a calibration is at least as likely to be correct as not, and that the other 50 % of likelihood would be spread around it. So, for instance, if the calibration says that the Dolní Věstonice burial was close to the birth of Shelah, namely a carbon date of 24,000 BC = a real date of near 2812 BC, if there are likelihoods this is not correct, I don't expect them to go back to close to the birth of Arphaxad (also for other reasons, since there would not be all that many people back within the first decades after the Flood) or on to close to the birth of Eber, 84 years before Noah died, I expect this to be true about that carbon date to that post-Flood year and its surroundings.

Now, Robert Carter has taken an opposite view. He thinks* the atmospheric carbon 14 level went up and down several times after the Flood, at least locally, but I'll calculate for globally. I wonder what it would take like that to get Babel = Ziggurat of Eridu, Neanderthals post-Babel and then Genesis 14 carbon dated to 3500 BC. If he doesn't identify the Tower of Babel with the Ziggurat of Eridu, carbon dated to 5400 BC (in the following, I unfortunately used 5000 BC from memory), he obviously has one problem less. In the following I'll be very technical for a while, so I'll put it in a "fact box" ...

Let's use some of the chronology from Osgood**, shall we: So we are in fact dealing with a period between the events of Abraham's life described in Genesis 14 and the conquest of Canaan by Israel in 1406 B.C., a period of 464 years. I get 465 years, but OK. However, I consider Jericho fell in 1470 BC, which puts Genesis 14 in 1935 BC. However, I'll use 1406 and 1870 BC instead. 1870, Abraham was 81, he was born 292 years after the Flood (or perhaps 75 years before Terah died physically?***), which would make 1870 BC 373 or 433 years after the Flood. 1870 + 373 = 2243 BC 1870 + 433 = 2303 BC I'll use the latter to give Carter a maximum of headway. But I'll have to use a low pmC for the Flood for the Neanderthal dates to remotely work. Version A 2303 BC 1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC 2202 BC° 71.286 pmC, 2798 extra years, dated 5000 BC (2202 + 1870) / 2 = 2036 BC 2036 BC 1.013 pmC, 37964 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°° 1870 BC 82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. Version B 2303 BC 1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC 1963 BC°°° 69.255 pmC, 3037 extra years, dated 5000 BC (1963 + 1870) / 2 = 1917 1917 BC 0.998 pmC, 38083 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°° 1870 BC 82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. Now, for some maths ... first the rises, implying for years the decay of original C-14, in percentage, the addition of new C-14, normally now, in pmC, the actual addition, again in pmC, and the ratio of how much higher production: Version A 101 years => 98.786 %, 1.214 pmC. 267 years => 96.822 %, 3.178 pmC. Version B 340 years => 95.971 %, 4.029 pmC. 47 years => 99.433 %, 0.567 pmC We'll just deal with how much faster in the shorter period of rise. Version A, dealing with 2303 to 2202 BC: 1.504 * 98.786 / 100 = 1.486 pmC remaining 71.286 - 1.486 = 69.8 pmC added 69.8 / 1.214 = 57.5 times faster production than now. Version B, dealing with 1917 to 1870 BC 1.504 * 99.433 / 100 = 1.495 pmC remaining 82.104 - 1.495 = 80.609 pmC added 80.609 / 0.567 = 142 times faster than now. The most radical rise would be two less radical ones if we placed Babel midway in the life of Peleg. Now, let's take a look at another factor. After Babel we need to get down to a Neanderthal dating pmC level. This subdivides into Babel carbon with modern addition and Flood carbon. We want the proportion for them to arrive at post-Babel Neanderthal dating carbon. Version A Babel-carbon, 166 years 98.012 %, 1.988 pmC 71.286 * 98.012 / 100 + 1.988 = 71.857 pmC Flood carbon, 267 years 96.822 %, no addition 1.504 * 96.822 / 100 = 1.456 pmC Even 100 % Flood carbon and all atmospheric carbon vanished would not account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, since 1.456 pmC only gives 35,000 extra years. Version B Babel carbon, 46 years 99.445 %, 0.555 pmC 69.255 * 99.445 / 100 + 0.555 = 69.426 pmC Flood carbon, 386 years 95.438 %, no addition 1.504 * 95.438 / 100 = 1.435 pmC. Again, not even 100 % Flood carbon replacing all the atmospheric carbon there was would account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, 1.435 pmC gives only 35100 extra years. Compared to this, putting Neanderthals pre-Flood and giving a single post-Flood rise taking a few centuries more runs into neither of these difficulties. Version HGL 2957 BC 1.628 pmC, 34000 extra years, dated as 37000 BC. 1935 BC 82.753 pmC, 1565 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. 1022 years 88.371 %, 11.629 pmC 1.628 * 88.371 / 100 = 1.439 pmC remaining 82.753 - 1.439 = 81.314 pmC added 81.314 / 11.629 = 6.99 times as fast. I think the latter is much more feasible without involving a radioactive total disaster on Earth. Even with parts of that time having a rise as steep as 20 times today's production. To compare, Carter's double rise (at least)~ as far as I can make sense of his views. To be fair, he doesn't say double rise, but "not fully mixed" would hardly lead to parts of atmosphere dating to 5400 BC and other parts to 40,000 BC at the same time. Or especially to urban areas getting the higher C-14 and areas with Neanderthals the lower in a badly mixed atmosphere. So, what remains would involve sth like "rise, fall, rise again" ... with a rapid rise, but a single one, of the overall atmosphere, it's unlikely that mixing problems would lead to radically different directions of carbon dates and real dates in some stretches.

Obviously, if he doesn't endorse Petrovich, and his idea of Babel dated to 5400 BC, that's some less problems for him, but he could have said so.

Now, I think I may have made it clear to those who carefully read the comparison in the fact box, between his presumable implications and mine, that I have made a substantial contribution to the field. The guys on CMI don't seem to think so. I'm concluding that they are kind of shutting off the technical detail I provide, and instead categorising my contribution as the spoof by a scoffer, as insecurity in painfully minute details that aren't that important, as my simply bungling things, when I don't arrive at the same conclusions as they, as the blindness of a "nominal Christian" who was never truly saved, as the incomprehensible ravings of someone demon possessed, and why don't I just carefully listen to their much more mature take, and start to get on board?

Well, perhaps what they would most eagerly want to know might be why a homeless person imagines he can become a learned man, from the street. And my very simple response would be: turn the question around! How does a learned man (if not a full baked PhD) become homeless? Or if he's learned while homeless, how does he remain homeless? Well, the answer to the latter is, by running into people who ask why a homeless person imagines he can become a learned man, from the street. People who think they owe a homeless man, perhaps even lots of patience, tenderness, generosity, prayers, BUT not anything like intellectual curiosity.

The situation can have been aggravated by some people listening to people on the spot who imagine they are doing me some kind of favour by denying I'm a die-hard Young Earth Creationist and a few other positions that are not very popular over here. Such denials would involve lots of systematic reinterpretation of my statements, and in such reinterpretations the kind of thing I did in the fact box would be untranslatable and incomprehensible, a crude residue of pure irrationality and gibberish. Simply because it shows I'm really a Young Earth Creationist, and really think one can bend science to that position. As unpalatable to some as admitting I really put Mussolini (at least most of his carrreere) over Olof Palme (apart from revoking eugenics of a type Mussolini never had) and definitely over Per Albin Hansson (who introduced eugenics), that I really dislike painting even National Socialists with too broad a brush, that I really am Roman Catholic (the type of which some say we recrucify Christ every Mass and we worship Mary as a goddess, to name two strawmen), that I'm really Geocentric, that I really believe in angelic movers. And really think I can handle moderate drinking even in the street.

As long as they (people over here) step in to hide what I'm actually saying, because they think they do me a favour, that's even more damning to any prospect of a decent life than the kind of attitudes I am guessing CMI could have.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Gertrude
16.XI.2024

Notes:

* Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Correspondences on Carbon Dating, Often Davidic and Exodus Times
Sunday, 14 April 2024 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 05:05
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2024/04/correspondences-on-carbon-dating-often.html

** From Abraham to Exodus
By Dr A.J.M. Osgood
https://creation.com/from-abraham-to-exodus

*** 205 - 75 = 130, 130 - 70 = 60, 292 + 60 = 352, 352 + 81 = 433

° I'll do another one with the Babel event later in Peleg's life. Note, according to Petrovich, Babel is the Ziggurat of Eridu, dated to c. 5000 BC.

°° The youngest Neanderthal is dated to 42 000 BP.

°°° This poses Babel at Peleg's death! As said.

~ In my correspondence with him, he says:

If we have rapidly rising ¹⁴C levels, we cannot even assume the atmosphere would be fully mixed during the transition period. Throw in an Ice Age, shifting atmospheric circulation patterns, vast amounts of old carbon being dumped into the biosphere via vulcanism and via the erosion of calcium-containing rocks, a collapsing magnetic field, and who knows what bombarding us from outer space, and I fully suspect that the oldest measurements will be far from precise.

Pavlovian and Gravettian, with the Burial of Dolní Věstonice

I'm starting to view a video by The Prehistory Guys about the Dolní Věstonice Burial.* In parallel, I see the wiki about the Gravettian.

Pavlovian 29,000—25,000 BP
Gravettian 27,000—20,000 BC (according to video)
/ Gravettian 33,000—22,000 BP (according to wiki)
Dolní Věstonice Burial 26,000 BP

Let's uniformitise into BC.

31,000 BC

Early start of Gravettian

27,000 BC

Late start of Gravettian, start of Pavlovian

24,000 BC

Dolní Věstonice Burial

23,000 BC

End of Pavlovian

20,000 BC

End of Gravettian

Other Revision of I-II ? (also available as part of Mes plus récentes tables de carbone 14) and LXX without II Cainan gives this:

Birth of Arphaxad

2956 BC

2933 BC

2.69 pmC, so dated 32833 BC

31,000 BC

Early start of Gravettian

2918 BC

3.749 pmC, so dated 30018 BC

2884 BC

4.804 pmC, so dated 27984 BC

27,000 BC

Late start of Gravettian, start of Pavlovian

2860 BC

5.857 pmC, so dated 26310 BC

24,000 BC

Dolní Věstonice Burial

Birth of Shelah

2821 BC

2811 BC

7.952 pmC, so dated 23761 BC

23,000 BC

End of Pavlovian

2787 BC

8.996 pmC, so dated 22687 BC

2738 BC

11.073 / 11.069 pmC, so dated 20938 BC

20,000 BC

End of Gravettian

2712 BC

17.576 pmC, so dated 17062 BC

Birth of Eber

2691 BC

So, Noah, Shem and Arphaxad are all born before this era, Shelah midway, close to the Dolní Věstonice Burial, Eber just after all of this, none of them die during this period. In other words, people dying back then would have been dying prematurely.

I just got more than expected confirmation in the video that the three buried people died prematurely. The middle one was disabled,** and yes, it's a man, "behind" him was a brother, and "before" him was a cousin or half brother holding his hand to his pelvis. If you ask me, a disabled person could have become involved in a homosexual relation, without the younger full brother stepping in to prevent it, and all three got executed ... or died in an act of divine justice. The placing of the hand was (if so) meant to give clues, possibly only to God on Doomsday, about why the three were dead. Obviously, God wouldn't forget, but we don't know for certain how good the theologians were around this burial.

In fact, we do not know exactly what happened. It could have been a hunting accident, the man in the middle could have been mortally wounded in the genitals area, the two others could have died trying to save him, and failing and dying in their turn.

The carnivore teeth around the man holding his hand to his cousin's or half brother's pelvis could symbolise he was a sexual predator, or could be the teeth of a pack of carnivores, that was posthumously accorded to him as "brave hunter" while the real killer of the beasts deferred to the dead man who had sacrificed his life. Both are possible, as long as we have no verbal evidence of what happened, only the physical traces.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Gertrude
16.XI.2024

(16.XI) Sanctae Gertrudis Virginis, cujus natalis sequenti die recensetur.
(17.XI) Helpithi, in Saxonia, item natalis sanctae Gertrudis, Virginis, ex Ordine sancti Benedicti, quae dono revelationum clara exstitit. Ipsius tamen festivitas pridie hujus diei celebratur.

* The BIZARRE, 26,000 year old TRIPLE BURIAL of Dolní Věstonice
The Prehistory Guys | 4 Dec. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b41gUaocfso

** The video mentions Chondrodysplasia punctata, but some parts of the video do not match any of the subsets of the condition.

Two Facts that Evolutionists Try to Fit

Yes, believers in Abiogenesis are 100 % believers in every creature developing from LUCA after that, so, they are Evolutionists too.

No, I id not mean "Evolutionary Biologists" (Biology for Evolutionists) or "Evolutionary Linguistics" (not-even-any-actual-Linguistics for Evolutionists). I mean Evolutionists as opposed to Creationists.*

Earth is the only known planet with plate tectonics and the only known planet with life.

Now, what would the Bible have to say on both subjects?

For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and made it, the very maker thereof: he did not create it in vain: he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other.
[Isaias (Isaiah) 45:18]

Who shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.
[Job 9:6]

So, presumably, the pillars are deep "anchor parts" of tectonic plates. Could be a fluke?

And no Hebrew writing says there are trees down in the netherworld. Hell and trees only occur together in two verses of Ezechiel 31. Could be a fluke?

Luke 16 probably has the most detailed description of the netherworld, as it was before Jesus took out the souls from the Limbus Patrum and brought them to Heaven. Does not mention trees. However, some mythologies do:

The** Poplar is first and foremost a tree sacred to the Underworld.

Leuke (whose name means “white”) was a beautiful nymph who was brought to the Underworld by the god Hades. Being mortal, Leuke could not survive in the Land of the Dead and was instead transformed into a White Poplar tree. (Some say the tree still grows there, one of the few living trees to thrive in the Underworld.)

The Norse*** does this too:

According to the poem Grímnismál, Yggdrasil has three main roots: one planted in Midgard, the world of mankind; one in Jotunheim, the world of the giants; and one in Hel, the underworld.

And° Irish:

There is a salmon-inhabited well or fountain in Tír na nÓg that is found near an enormous tree or grove of nine hazels - or a lady's bower, "where bloom was on every bough, and the air heavy with the sweetness of orchards" and a lake area (perhaps Dulcinea).

While Welsh descriptions of Annwfn do not include trees, the Baltic World°° View is similar to the Norse one:

The World Tree connects the individual parts of the world into a whole. The top of the tree coincides with the sky; the trunk, with the earth; and the roots, with the underworld. Thus, respectively, luminaries, birds are in the branches of the tree, beasts and people circle around the trunk, and reptiles, fish and the like are at the roots. This is a classic diagram of the World Tree (see Usačivaitė, 1992).

But the Bible doesn't. It seems as if it were kind of saying, only Earth, and also Heavenly Jerusalem, but nothing below or inbetween, has trees. Or nothing in between except Eden, if it was transplanted to some intermediate Heaven, like a place in the atmosphere of Venus. If Henoch and Elias are there.

Now, the abundance of trees in non-Hebrew and non-Christian netherworlds seems to make this somewhat less of a fluke.

But along with pillars, not much fluke at all ... is there something similar to be said on the Evolutionist side?

While nearly all geoscientists agree with the idea that, without plate tectonics, life on Earth might be limited to primitive organisms, a small group of researchers is now suggesting that plate tectonics could have emerged even earlier — perhaps contributing to the origin of life itself by bringing minerals that support life from the planet's interior to the crust.

This is tricky territory, pushing researchers back before 4 billion years ago, into the Hadean eon. The only direct evidence of the first 500 million years of Earth's existence is the presence of zircons, minerals that survive melting at mantle temperatures and pressures. Though the rocks once containing these minerals have melted away, the zircons — which are smaller than grains of sand — remain.

OK, the minerals are supposed to support life, but they do not suffice to create it, not to provide a cell membrane, not to create chirality and order for RNA or Proteins or DNA from Amino Acids, and so on.

In other words, the clue may be a clue, for those who take this sort of dating methods more seriously than I do it, but it's not an explanation, and hardly a confirmation. For the Bible, it is also no explanation, but it is a confirmation, as if the Bible was written by someone or inspired by Someone who knew these facts.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Martin
11.XI.2024

Turonis, in Gallia, natalis beati Martini, Episcopi et Confessoris; cujus vita tantis exstitit miraculis gloriosa, ut trium mortuorum suscitator esse meruerit.

NOTES:

* Did plate tectonics give rise to life? Groundbreaking new research could crack Earth's deepest mystery.
By Stephanie Pappas published 3 days ago, LiveScience
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/did-plate-tectonics-give-rise-to-life-groundbreaking-new-research-could-crack-earths-deepest-mystery

** Leuke & the Tree of Hades
https://atemplewild.com/materia-mythica/poplar#myth

*** Norse Mythology for Smart People: Yggdrasil
https://norse-mythology.org/cosmology/yggdrasil-and-the-well-of-urd/

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

°° https://www.baltukelias.lt/en/editable-separated/id-415/

Let's Suppose There Were No Natural Caves Before the Flood

This is one of Robert Carters argument's against the Neanderthals being pre-Flood:

• Caves were formed after the Flood.
• But Neanderthals were buried in caves.
• So, Neanderthals were buried after the Flood.

Now, watch this video about Ancient Lycia:

Wonders of The Lost Lycian Civilization
Street Gems | 12 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAmos7gsrUk

So, wild hunch, what if the Neanderthal burials are really rock tombs, as in Ancient Lycia, with carved caves, and the Flood added irregularies that now make the caves seem natural?
/Hans Georg Lundahl

Akallabêth = As in the Days of Noah

Tolkien may have believed in a limited, though not just local, Flood.

Or he may simply have seen the "sinking of Atlantis" (whether pre- or post-Noah's-Flood) as a parallel to it, and therefore Atlantis (on which Akallebêth is his fan fiction) just before the sinking as a parellel to the pre-Flood world just before the Flood.

Either way, it seems he knew a thing or two on how things behave at sea. He researched phases of the Moon in painstaking accuracy for Lord of the Rings, we can be sure he researched waves and giant waves and tsunamis in detail before writing Akallabêth.

Here is a quote or paraphrase from it, in Girl Next Gondor's summarising of Númenor's fall:

although The 19:35 Great Wave should have claimed their 19:36 ships along with everything else they 19:38 are instead Swept Away by a terrific 19:41 wind that snaps their masts and blows 19:43 them all the way to Middle Earth

Now, this is actually impossible, even this. Hence, it is impossible if the ships had been sailing on the sea, that they would not have been buried in the Flood. This also goes for the Ark.

Instead we must imagine that the Ark only started floating once the waters were far higher and already very much calmer. In fact, the Ark must have been very high up. I would say Noah knew where the single highest mountain on the pre-Flood world was, he built the Ark there, and he knew that the water line of the Ark would be half the way up. 15 cubits of the 30 cubits height.

Now read the appropriate verses of Genesis:

And the waters prevailed beyond measure upon the earth: and all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered The water was fifteen cubits higher than the mountains which it covered
[Genesis 7:19-20]

The Ark never was near one of those big waves from when vast land masses suddenly came under water. The seas around the mountain were as wide as the world and as deep as that mountain was high, and when that "tip of the iceberg" sank and the Ark floated, it suffered no great commotion.

But, oh boy, what a fool Noah must have looked to people when they realised he was building a ship on the back then equivalent of the top of Mount Everest. Meanwhile, as God does not break His promise, we can rule out the theory that the Flood looked just like Valencian province some time ago, with lots of houses and hilly parts of Valencia still well above the water surface.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

The Ark was Not a Portal from Narnia, Mike Russell!

I saw Mark Harwood's response to your book's review by Akos Balogh. It was apparently double posted both to CMI and to The Daily Declaration. On the latter site, I saw Akos Balogh's review, and I think this review confirmed what I suspected when reading Mr. Harwood. You have posited that God created mankind in two separate worlds, and that the world of Genesis 1 to 9 is a different one from ours. In Genesis 6 to 9, the other world is destroyed and somehow Noah is even so watching waters recede around the mountains of Ararat (or Urartu or geographical Armenia) in our world.

There are three destructions of the world. The Flood. The Death of God on Calvary. The one schedualled for Apocalypse 21:1. If you want, the fall itself was also a destruction of the world, or perhaps it wasn't, because the destructions are meant to clean up, and the Fall absolutely didn't do that.

When people on Good Friday want to bed that night, they went to bed in a world that was destroyed. When they woke up two mornings later on Easter Sunday, they woke up in a new world. But this doesn't mean that they went through a portal, like the Wardrobe or the painting featuring the Dawn Treader or the door in the wall around Experiment House. It means that the outermost and therefore most surrounding and englobing layer of our space time, the Empyrean Heaven, changed constitution. A different Heaven looks down on us, one in which the pearly gates are opened to human souls and to glorified resurrected human flesh, which was not the case in the Old Covenant. Henoch and Elijah are certainly in some Heaven to which Earthly Paradise was transferred, but not in the throne room of God. They will only get there when they have been martyred in Apocalypse 11. Ezechiel saw this throne room, not by getting displaced there, but in a vision. In a tele-vision, arranged by good angels, just as much as Our Lord saw far off kingdoms in one arranged by Satan.

For the Flood and for the upcoming change in Apocalypse 21:1, there is also a change in quality of earth. In the Flood, Earthly Paradise was taken up into some kind of Heaven, below the Empyrean one. Earth got higher mountains and deeper deep sea trenches like the Mariana Trench. This will be reversed in Apocalypse 21:1. One of the better Lutherans of my country, far removed from the Deformers, though not a Catholic, Franzén, wrote a hymn for Advent season, in which he alludes to Isaiah 40, to these verses:

The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain
[Isaias (Isaiah) 40:3-4]

The exaltation of valleys and lowering of mountains was metaphorical in the first coming. It refers to minds. The humble were going to dare to approach God and the highly placed were going to be shown they needed to, as Our Lady stated in Luke 1:52. But in Apocalypse 21:1, the Mariana Trench will be exalted and dried (the sea was no more), and the Himalaya's will not be much higher than Newport Beach in California.

So, we are not dealing with portals, precisely as I Corinthians 15 is not speaking of metempsychosis, a removal of the soul from a material body and its placing in a different one, but of the change in quality that the material body will experience, if that of a person finally saved and glorified, when the tombs give up their dead. By the way "the crack of doom" doesn't mean tombs "cracking" open, but the noise that makes or that the trump of doom makes. The term "crack" is cognate with the German Krach, noise. Just as Irish-English and Irish Gaelic from English "craic" refers to the noise of festivity.

But to get to smaller matters than the doctrinal ones, how do you figure Tower of Babel in "our world" (on your view a very old one, with carbon 14 in the atmosphere presumably already close to 100 pmC) at a real date of 2370 BC? Here is a list of events that by carbon dating and similar have been dated to 24th C. BC, I'm excluding the last one, since Korean "mythology" is arguably more like into real dates than into carbon dates:

• c. 2900 BC–2334 BC: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period continue.
• c. 2400 BC–2000 BC: large painted jar with birds in the border made in the Indus River Valley civilization and is now at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• 2400 BC–There is archaeological evidence that the site of Assur was occupied at around this time.
• c. 2360 BC: Hekla-4 eruption.
• c. 2350 BC: The 2350 BC Middle East Anomaly (apparent comet or asteroid impact) happened.
• c. 2350 BC: End of the Early Dynastic III period in Mesopotamia.
• c. 2350 BC: Lugal-Zage-Si of Umma conqueres Gu-Edin and unites Sumer as a single kingdom.
• c. 2350 BC: First destruction of the city of Mari.
• c. 2345 BC: End of Fifth Dynasty. Pharaoh Unas died.
• c. 2345 BC: Sixth Dynasty of Egypt starts (other date is 2460 BC).
• c. 2340 BC–2180 BC: Akkadian Empire.
• c. 2334 BC–2279 BC: Semitic chieftain Sargon of Akkad's conquest of Sumer and Mesopotamia.

These, mostly carbon dated, events need to be after Babel, since they show the earth was already divided into different languages and cultures. Take a look at this* Korean Neolithic pot:

As it is carbon dated to 3500 BC (misspelled BCE in the attribution details), this is from a time, in our world, when the atmosphere was such and which was so far back in time, that taken together, this today yields a carbon age of 5500 years or in other words, we today observe a level of 51.411 pmC.

As it is in a culture different from other cultures at the same time, it is post-Babel.

On my recalibration of carbon 14, this is not a problem. In a cave near En Geddi, Israeli archaeologists have found treasures dated (through the reed mats) to 3500 BC, and this fits the Biblical narrative of Genesis 14. However, if this happened 3900 years ago, and if the original carbon 14 level was 100 pmC, we'd find a level of 62.389 pmC in the samples, which clearly we don't.

However, if carbon 14 was low back then so as to account for 1565 extra years, the original content in the sample and therefore in the back then atmosphere (all over earth, presumably) would have been 82.753 pmC. Now watch this:

82.753 pmC * 62.389 % of original content / 100 (since % is counted twice) = 51.629 pmC left in the sample today.

This is close enough to the 51.411 pmC or around that acually found.

But if the atmosphere in our world was 4.5 billion years old, there is no way that the carbon level 3900 years ago would have been as low as 82.753 pmC all over the atmosphere.

I've already written elsewhere on the impossibility of Evolutionary origins of Man, for instance as to Human language.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Leonhard of Limouges
6.XI.2024

Lemovicis, in Aquitania, sancti Leonardi Confessoris, qui fuit beati Remigii Episcopi discipulus. Hic, nobili genere ortus, solitariam vitam delegit, et sanctitate ac miraculis claruit; ejusque virtus praecipue in liberandis captivis enituit.

The article by Balogh:

Does the Bible Speak of Two Worlds? A Fascinating Rethink of Genesis
Akos Balogh | 23 October 2024 | BIBLICAL | The Daily Declaration
https://dailydeclaration.org.au/2024/10/23/two-worlds-genesis/

* A Korean Neolithic pot found in Busan, 3500 BCE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art#/media/File:Korea-Neolithic.age-Pot-01.jpg

Good friend100 at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Korean neolithic pot, found in Busan. Taken from the Korea National Museum.

Public Domain File:Korea-Neolithic.age-Pot-01.jpg Created: 21 July 2007 Uploaded: 12 December 2007

What About Providentissimus Deus?

Creation vs. Evolution: Dishonesty at St Nicolas du Chardonnet? · What About Providentissimus Deus? · HGL's F.B. writings: Treason of the SSPX? I Think So. · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Dialogue on the subject between us two ... except I use a useful device, a computer, he uses a cell phone ...

What can we really gather from the following paragraph or* semi-paragraph ?

There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, "not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known."(51) If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: "Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so."(52) To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation."(53) Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers-as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us - `went by what sensibly appeared,"(54) or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.

PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus.html

This one is very clear and clearly** binding:

If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: "Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so."

But what about this one? I'll mark two phrases, for further study.

we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation."

Let's recall the Latin here, same phrases marked, also for further study:

primum, scriptores sacros, seu verius « Spiritum Dei, qui per ipsos loquebatur, noluisse ista (videlicet intimam adspectabilium rerum constitutionem) docere homines, nulli saluti profutura (S. Aug., ib.***,II, 9, 20)

What is the Latin saying? It is not talking of "things of the visible universe" but of "things that can be seen" and it is not saying "essential nature" but "intimate constitution" and "intima" is superlative of "intus" meaning inside. One can without fault translate innermost. This will be important later on.

What exactly is St. Augustine and Pope Leo XIII saying?

Is he saying
a) the Holy Ghost did not want to give scientific information WHEN it was of no use at all to the salvation of souls, as is often the case?
b) the Holy Ghost did not want to give scientific information SINCE that is never of any use at all to the salvation of souls?

To begin with, saying matter is never of any use to the salvation of souls rings Gnostic to me. Or Manichaeic. But it will get worse.

Despite the English translation saying sth else, the thing usually not spoken of in the Holy Scriptures, since usually indeed useless for salvation, like division of firmaments into solid crystalline spheres° can be ignored and the Bible say "firmament", can be classified as inner or innermost constitution of any visible thing.

Position B is that this is NEVER of any use.

Well, if that is what Pope Leo XIII was saying, he just disqualified Trent Session XIII on Transsubstantiation. He's be far easier doing that than saying Geocentrism and Heliocentrism are useless for salvation. Because the relation of substance to accident, notably of substance of bread no longer there after consecration and accidents of bread connected to the substance of the Body of Christ by the transsubstantiation, the turning of the whole one substance into the other one, and the accidents first inbeing in the substance of bread and then so to speak subsisting in the dimensive quantity (the 3 cm of the Host) by divine omnipotence, that very definitely is about the inner (and unseen) constitution of the Host, which is a thing that can be seen.

Note, this is more immediately under the scope of his words than Geocentrism. A Geocentric doesn't typically say that the intimate constitution of the Sun forces it to go around the Earth each day from East to West or that the intimate constitution of the Sun forces it to go around the Zodiac each year from West to East. No, a Geocentric like St. Thomas is more likely to say that a force external to the Sun moves it West each day (I'd say that God is moving all of a firmament constituted of aether, which is the substance of locality as well as medium of electromagnetic waves), and a force external to the Sun moves it (at least comparative to the stars) East each year (I'd say an actual angel moves it East through the aether). This is no more a statement about the inner constiution of the Sun, than stating what letter or word I write is a statement about the inner constitution of the pen I use. So, if the innermost constitution of seen things is NEVER useful for salvation, Transsubstantiation would be less of a candidate for revelation than Geocentrism.

But Trent Session XIII is binding dogma. If this is what Pope Leo XIII did, he pronounced dogma as not revealed and as useless to salvation. He autodeposed himself.

We cannot do that, we must presume he was Pope, and so, this reading is ruled out. Therefore, the incorrect reading is:
b) "the Holy Ghost did not want to give scientific information SINCE that is never of any use at all to the salvation of souls" (false!)

So, the correct reading is,
a) the Holy Ghost did not want to give scientific information WHEN it was of no use at all to the salvation of souls, as is often the case!

But if the Holy Ghost could reveal (in Christ's use of the word "this", Matthew 26:26, as we know from St. Thomas) that the substance of bread is turned into the Body of Christ, while the accidents of bread are not turned into the accidents of the Body of Christ (notably, the Host of 3 cm doesn't suddenly get close to 1 m 80 cm), then there are cases and could be other cases when the intimate consitution of visible things is indeed salvific to have the right view about.

Why could Geocentrism, revealed in Joshua 10:12 not be one of them? Because Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus somehow defined the matter as outside the scope of Scripture? He didn't. An F-search on "Sun" gives " and she has strictly commanded that her children shall be fed with the saving words of the Gospel at least on Sundays and solemn feasts." Similarily an F-search on "Earth" gives "for it is impossible to attain to the profitable understanding thereof unless the arrogance of 'earthly' science be laid aside, and there be excited in the heart the holy desire for that wisdom 'which is from above.'" Each as sole hit.

Pope Leo XIII was probably by some episcopates (that would include the French) approached on this matter specifically. Instead he gave a more general answer.

If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: "Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so."

As to the next sentence, it means "we don't always need to know scientific facts for our salvation" and that is up to the individual reader to decide. Obviously, a bishop could decide it for his flock, since an encyclical is primarily directed to bishops, but any bishop who ventured to pretend Heliocentrism could be true and useless for our salvation as well as Geocentrism also being so, even if it had been true, would be on a very slippery slope. Was he saying so because he thought the inner constitution of visible things never was useful for salvation? Well, as seen, that would involve heresy.

When will we all get our heads around that Leo XIII simply refused to directly adress the idea that Biblical expressions of Geocentrism are in apparent conflict with Science Institutional affirmations of Heliocentrism?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts. Zacharias and Elisabeth
5.XI.2024

Sancti Zachariae, Sacerdotis et Prophetae, qui pater exstitit beati Joannis Baptistae, Praecursoris Domini.

Item sanctae Elisabeth, ejusdem sanctissimi Praecursoris matris.

* In the English official translation, it is the latter part of § 18.
** Not because an encyclical is ipso facto infallible, it is authentic, however, it would be infallible if all and everyone among the bishops, including the Pope himself taught the same thing. And this principle has been authentic teaching since St. Augustine and furthermore upheld by both St. Thomas and Bishop Tempier against Averroism.
*** The previous reference is (S. Aug., De Gen. ad litt., I, 21, 41)
° Refuted by Tycho Brahe's observations of a comet. It passed through space at levels where solid spheres would have stopped it if they had existed.