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.

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.

How do Old-Earthers Take Historic Christianity?

On the topic of Biblical chronology, it is at first glance very apparent that "they were all young earth" ... the most famous example against six literal days, St. Augustine of Hippo in books IV to VI of De Genesi ad Literam libri XII, is actually a good example for Young Earth Creationism, if not modern Creation Science, since the alternative he gave was a one-moment creation, making the time before Adam died at age 930 six days shorter than the other fathers, mostly, who believed in six literal days, like St. Basil.

Yet, there are Old-Earthers who do say they are Christians. How do they take historic Christians? Here are a few categories, and some answers to them.

• It doesn't matter what historic Christians thought, we today are the Church of God, we may have our own mistakes, but if they are not called out, we are not accountable, and neither were they, "Christ didn't promise infallibility to the Church."
• It does matter what historic Christians thought, but not on scientific matters, since they were Geocentrics, sometimes even flat earth, and believed the four humours. Infallibility or similar exists, but not about science.
• Their thoughts on science were taken from the science of their time. That being so, they would support us believing the science of our times. Their Young Earth Creationism is actually support for our Old Earth Creationism or Theistic Evolutionism.

"It doesn't matter what historic Christians thought" — well, actually, He did promise infallibility to the Church. Matthew 28:16—20. So, this is a take one can expect from extremely ahistoric versions of Protestantism. "In the fourth century someone clearly attested to believing the real presence in the Eucharist" — "Doesn't matter, they were reading the Bible wrong, just like my neighbour across the road." Obviously, this is not the kind of person I'm adressing in this essay, and as obviously, he can do this in favour of any reading of Genesis. If he's heard the urban legend that Church Fathers were Old Earthers, he'll defend Young Earth this way. Luckily, for him, the Church Fathers actually agreed with him. If he's a believer in Hislop, he'll defend a reading of Genesis 10 and 11 according to which Nimrod:

• originated pagan worship and religious practises
• and these much more clearly than the Roman or Greek ones precursors of Roman Catholicism.

The Christians of the fourth century didn't believe that? Doesn't matter. They were wrong, just as the Roman Catholic neighbour already mentioned across the road. It never bothers them to say Christians in the past were wrong. The same attitude also exists in favour of Old Earth. They never feel obliged to seek out what Christians in a past century were right, fulfilling Matthew 28:16—20. They may admit there must have been some, but they could well be invisible (contrary to Matthew 5:15).

Most Christians would agree this would be a fairly counter-productive way of saving any position, once it's known it's unhistoric, and would reject this approach. I would say a Young Earther who is not Hislop-style anti-Catholic and who has wrongly been told the Church Fathers were "none of them" Young Earth Creationists is lucky in being right despite the wrong approach. As a pre-teen, I was nearly prepared to go this route, but never thought all people except "my own sect" (no such thing, I was a Church-hopper) were wrong. I later have learned that this was not the actual position of the Church Fathers, they were in fact all of them Young Earth Creationist.

It does matter what historic Christians thought, but not on scientific matters — this take is much more wide-spread, both among anti-Catholics (to whom the Geocentric takes of past Christians prove the Catholic Church wrong) and among Catholics (who think a passage in Vatican I explicitly excludes scientific matters from falling under either Biblical or Ecclesiastic inerrancy or infallibility).

To the former club, I think one may count both Ellen Gould White and lots of Pentecostals.

To the latter, I think it is good to take up what the actual wording was:

Vatican I
Session 3, 24.IV.1870, chapter 2 on Revelation
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm

Now since the decree on the interpretation of holy scripture, profitably made by the council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that
decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that
in matters of faith and morals,
belonging as they do to the establishing of christian doctrine,
that meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true one,
which holy mother church held and holds,
since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture.

It says "in matters of faith and morals" ... it does NOT say "in matters of faith and morals, but not in matters of science" or any other such exception. The idea of non-overlapping magisteria cannot be extracted from this wording, it's applied to them via an eisegesis (alas now pretty common among presumed Catholics, and some may be in good faith and their souls may be enjoying the virtue of faith, so that they are actually Catholic rather than heretic).

But some would not go as far as to say that anything the men of the Church has to say on science is outside its scope, but they will only go for things like Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism.

Their thoughts on science were taken from the science of their time. — This is probably the most common take.

St. Augustine was a Young Earth Creationist, not so much because he was totally fallible in scientific matters, as because this was supported by the "science of his time" ... he was a Geocentric for the exact same reason, they would say. In the case of Geocentrism, I'll grant them a point. The antique proponents of Heliocentrism were not just dead, but belonged to philosophical schools that were dead, by the time of St. Augustine. So, in a sense, and I'll come back to the qualifications, one could say that the Geocentrism of St. Augustine (book I of De Genesis ad Literam libri XII) actually was completely supported by "the science of his time" ...

To further support this, one could say all schools of philosophy supported Globe Earth and he was a Globist, not a Flattist, a Round-Earther, not a Flat-Earther. So, on that one too, he went along with "the science of his time" ...

Part of the idea is, if Geocentrism also comes within the apparent spontaneously most direct approach to Scripture in certain places, so does Flat Earth. I don't think it does. Circles are not automatically only rims of flat and round-disc objects, they are also dimensions of ball-shaped objects. Four corners in Apocalypse 7:1 refers to corners of continents. Unknown to Europeans in the time of St. Augustine, I'll enumerate them for you.

• Alaska
• Sakhalin
• Tasmania
• Cape Horn.

Continental discs may be somewhat rounded over the globe, but they do have rims. And these rims do have corners.

So, by accepting Round Earth, St. Augustine was in fact NOT giving a precedent of putting the best science of his day over Biblical litteralism. But even more. There were Church Fathers who were Flat Earth, I think this was the case with St. Hippolytus of Rome, and it was the case with the ecclesiastic writer (not canonised Church Father) Lactantius. They give precendent for putting (apparent) Biblical litteralism above science. There also was St. Basil who said "it doesn't matter, since Moses didn't tell" ... he was conscious the Biblical texts were compatible with both views. No matter how literalistically you took them.

But again, what exactly was natural science?

It was most definitely NOT some kind of magisterium. Oh, outside very applied fields, medicine and engineering. There certainly were ideas of an order we would term "scientific" on which there was consensus. Round Earth? Platonics, Aristotelics, perhaps even Stoics and Epicureans all agree. Geocentrism? Aristotelics, Epicureans, perhaps Stoics, certainly most Platonics agreed, and Neo-Pythagoreans for some while didn't, but they were already gone by the time of St. Augustine. So, yes, on both issues there was consensus. There was if you like a kind of "scientific core curriculum" in philosophy.

But how would you access this core curriculum?

You could access it through the Aristotelians. Then you would also access forms inherent in material things. You could access it through Platonics. Then you would also access forms (or ideas) as pre-existing material things. That is, you could access it through the divers sects of Philosophy. There was no institution of study that upheld just the core curriculum, and you would learn the difference between your own sect and another one only by debating people from it. You would not learn from the Platonic that Round Earth was and Pre-Existing Ideas weren't shared by Aristotelians. You would not learns from the Aristotelians that Round Earth was and Inherent Forms weren't shared by Platonics. You could learn it as a side issue, but you would learn it in the format:

"the Aristotelians are right about less important matters, like Round Earth, but wrong about more important ones, like the Idea of Good pre-existing all Good Things and all Good Actions"
"the Platonics are right about less important matters, like Geocentrism, but wrong about more important ones, like the Form of Horse not existing other than in actual Horses, any more than actual Horses existing without the Form of Horse"

Was there really no-where you could learn the core curriculum without engaging yourself to the Platonic or Aristotelic school? In fact there were a few such places. But none of them could qualify as Scientific institutions still extant in St. Augustine's day.

• Church Fathers were as eclectic and hanging loose on Philosophy as they were stringent on adhering to Scripture
• the lectures on Homer or on Virgil would include references to those things
• Pyrrhonism, in order to subvert certainty, would normally feature conflicts between schools, and as such also probably feature non-conflicts — but arguably they weren't there in St. Augustine's time.

This latter point needs some defense, by now, since on wikipedia (Pyrrhonism) I find this info:

Although Julian the Apostate[27] mentions that Pyrrhonism had died out at the time of his writings, other writers mention the existence of later Pyrrhonists. Pseudo-Clement, writing around the same time (c. 300-320 CE) mentions Pyrrhonists in his Homilies[28] and Agathias even reports a Pyrrhonist named Uranius as late as the middle of the 6th century CE.[29]

Julian the Apostate: Epistles lxxxix 301C; Pseudo-Clement, Homilies, 13.7, Agathias II 29-32, cited in Jonathan Barnes, Mantissa 2015 p. 652.

Uranius can have been a late adherent to an already dead movement. I don't think Uranius was able to revive it. Julian the Apostate supports my case. So, what about Pseudo-Clement, writing about this time?

The term Pseudo-Clement on wikipedia redirects to Clementine Literature.

Though lost, the original survives in two recensions known as the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Recognitions. The overlap between the two has been used to produce a provisional reconstruction of the Circuits of Peter.[4] Respectively, the original titles for these two texts were the Klementia and the Recognitions of the Roman Clement.[3] Both were composed in the fourth-century. In turn, there was plausibly a second-century document (referred to as the Kerygmata Petrou or "Preaching of Peter") that was used a source for the original Clementine literature text. The Kerygma are thought to consist of a letter from Peter to James, lectures and debates of Peter, and James's testimony about the letters recipients.[5]

In other words, my only warrant for Pseudo-Clement being first of all Pseudo and second writing in the fourth century is modern scholarship denying the writings really come from a source close to St. Peter, therefore in the first century (when Pyrrhonism certainly existed).

Was "modern scholarship" of the type Higher Criticism also one of the areas in which the Church had no own say compared to "Science"? I don't think so, the Acts from the Pontifical Biblical Commission under St. Pius X say the exact opposite. So, if the method is faulty when applied to Biblical books, is it somehow guaranteed to be good when applied to all other books? I obviously find this ludicrous.

In other words, St. Augustine (who never mentioned Pyrrhonism as a philosophy in either book VIII or book XIX of City of God*) with very fair certainty did not have access to the Pyrrhonic school either for "scientific core curriculum" ...

His views were relying on amateur Platonism, on Cicero, on literature and commentary, on Church Fathers, and in general on anything BUT neutral scientific experts. There simply was no such thing as an institution upholding any kind of scientific core curriculum he could appeal to or bow down to. Both on Round Earth and on Geocentrism, he was using his own personal judgement, even if you like private interpretation, of what the Bible allowed or demanded, and what the observations and correct conclusions allowed and demanded. There simply was no such thing as "the science of his day" to bow down to.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XXIInd L.D. after Pentecost
20.X.2024

* On the main page of The City of God I do an F-search for "philosopher" and find references in books 8 and 19, on each of these, The City of God (Book VIII) and The City of God (Book XIX) I do an F-search on "Pyrrho" which would also cover "Pyrrhonism" ... but even if I found Pyrrhonism under the alternative term Scepticism or Sceptics, book XIX uses Varro, who lived centuries earlier. St. Augustine wanting to be complete did not just take the philosophical schools of his own day, but covered positions which hadn't been adhered to for quite some time. C. S. Lewis made a point of how it was usually a fairly hazardous thing to affirm a universal negative about a corpus, but in fact, I can now use the F-Search.

Chapter 11 Verse 3 Revisited

And each one said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them with fire. And they had brick instead of stones, and slime instead of mortar
[Genesis 11:3]

I just learned* they had found plaster at Göbekli Tepe.

To Milo Rossi*, this indicates that there were rooves, which have not been found. Apart from the "slime instead of mortar" possibly being plaster, it is possible that the bitumen was actually used on rooftops.

For the non-baked bricks, the text doesn't state they succeeded in making baked bricks. In Jericho they have found some baked brick in broken pieces that are used to make pavements, from this same time, those could be the failed attempt at baking bricks, and they may have settled for mud bricks instead.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

PS, the 200 pillars would be, over 40 years of Babel, 5 pillars a year, or more. Not like those believing the carbon dates at face value, as they believe any pillar would have been a "multigenerational project"*./HGL

* 10:53 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJU973IbG7I

Am I Boycotted for Not Sharing This View?

I'll give you an extract from a transscript:

11:48 so now that we know the Angelic connections to giborim let's go over the possible options Nimrod was either born 11:56 a gibber giant or he became a gbim giant we need to study that and how was that 12:03 action of becoming or being a giant brought about either way Nimrod or his 12:09 father started the Pagan cult at the Tower of Babylon and I want to know what 12:15 that means let's look at a possibility that I found very intriguing did nimrod find pre flood 12:23 Pagan writings learn them and try them out and that a fallen Spirit or Fallen 12:29 Spirits came from following these Watcher level Fallen Angel writings that 12:35 would have been found on temples pre flood temples that are still found on pre- flood temples throughout the world

Nimrod's Rebellion: Finding Forbidden Angelic Knowledge-Becoming Gibborim
Life - Travel - Word | 10 Oct. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iogU1f3dKUM

Note a few things here that I don't share:

1) Nimrod or his 12:09 father started the Pagan cult
2) at the Tower of Babylon
3) pre flood temples that are still found on pre- flood temples throughout the world

How would I correct this to fit my views?

1) Nimrod started a technocratic and antitheistic cult
2) at the the city, dreaming of a "tower" (rocket) in Babel, Göbekli Tepe
3) no pre-Flood temple has been found, unless you mean caves where cannibalism was practised, but the significance could have been non-religious.

Specifically, Göbekli Tepe is not a pre-Flood temple, also not Noah's immediately post-Flood altar, but the actual site of Nimrod's Babel. Later on, Sargon of Akkad destroyed a later Babel, and renamed Akkad into Babel. The video will feature Göbekli Tepe in the context of Jubilees speaking of Cainan son of Arphaxad as contacting the Watchers, and Zach had speculated about this involving writings at "pre-Flood temples" ...

The original post-Flood anti-Christ Nimrod ben Kush (which does add up to 666 in straight Hebrew gematria), like the final Antichrist, upcoming as world wide ruler, probably already on the scene, neither is a religious person, neither is first and foremost into esoteric experiences, at least in public, both appear rationalists (but are irrationally denying what God already had or now has revealed), both speak of the true God as a real being, but one we, for some reason do not need to obey.

God is evil! He killed a whole humanity! We need to get rid of him!

Sound familiar? Yet this is what Josephus basically said of Nimrod, with some additions. Look at Josephus' account, so much earlier than Zach (owner of the channel Life - Travel - Word, which I just quoted), and so different from it:

2. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

Antiquities, Book I, CHAPTER 4. Concerning The Tower Of Babylon, And The Confusion Of Tongues. (§2)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm#link2HCH0004

So, Nimrod wasn't New Age, he was more like a Stalinist and Progressive. He pretty certainly did have communications with demons, but if you ask me, he was not inviting people to approach them as gods, with rituals of adoration, he was demanding a kind of adoration for his project, that is, he was demanding excessive allegiance to it, excessive sacrifices for it, excessive ill-will towards those shirking that.

And a hint the final Antichrist will be like that is found in Daniel and Thessalonians:

And he shall make no account of the God of his fathers: and he shall follow the lust of women, and he shall not regard any gods: for he shall rise up against all things But he shall worship the god Maozim in his place: and a god whom his fathers knew not, he shall worship with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and things of great price
[Daniel 11:37-38]

Who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God.
[2 Thessalonians 2:4]

Basically, every new thing that I learn about Göbekli Tepe, or every second, confirms what kind of evils Nimrod would be doing in a purely secular way. Even when archaeologists think of religion.

One reason I bring this up is, obviously I came across the video, but even before that, on Spanish quora, I got asked what is the modern name of Babylonia, and I was sure they were fishing for the answer "Iraq" but I answered that when Assyria and Babylonia are taken together (and Genesis 10 mentions Nineveh, which I didn't mention, since the question was not clothed in obvious religious context), that encompasses parts of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and while they were originally separate, they were joined. When Hebrew Shinar was translated Babylonia at some of the hits in the LXX, this was when Assyria had already been conquered and therefore joined to Babylonia. My hunch is, someone wanted to nudge me to some kind of realisation I had been on the wrong track. That someone was factually wrong. The video did not come naturally in my viewing history.

Now, to some, "the tower" obviously was a ziggurat, and as obviously Nimrod's rebellion was paganism and as obviously, the closest we get to that these days is Buddhism or Hinduism. And the huge Trojan Horse for that one, is, not just strictly Anthroposophic or Theosophic New Age, like Madame Blavatsky, like Findhorn, but basically anything that's new agey. Including even such a thing as fifteen minutes of meditation, with no pagan god names and no illicit themes. Or using herbs and musical frequences for healing.

Well, what about the Shintoism of Hirohito? Worshipping Kamis means worshipping things with superpowers, able to achieve certain things, and I mean as objective real world results. Hirohito thought the Kamis had given him Western technology so he could go on a Conquering Spree. Or, if you insist that Ancient Babylonian religion had new agey things in astrology and making predictions from entrails, well, that's still pretty different from hypnosis and meditation, when used to experience peace. But in a huge way, it was concerned with providing incitations to projects that were neither introvert nor otherworldly, but simply "success in life" and providing some luck charms for them. Now, Nimrod was a mighty hunter, so it's arguably, he could have been seen as a walking and talking luck charm in his own right. Hence, sacrifices to provide luck, well, no need, except obviously the ultra-huge sacrifice of individual liberties in favour of Nimrod's tyranny.

Evangelical congregations came to being mostly in the Enlightenment era, and probably not always in full opposition to, rather perhaps sometimes collaboration with Freemasonry. Much which to a Scholastic, or to a Catholic, sounds like normal pre-Enlightenment Christian views, would by them be considered as new agey stuff and therefore as part of the "Babylonian" system, and therefore as part of Nimrod's deception. I don't think it is. With hypnosis videos and guided meditations, I'm taking a risk, I'm not inviting people to do the same. With the Rosary, as a practise, or with heavenly bodies ruled and moved around in the orbits and similar we observe, as a doctrine, I'm on firm ground. It's not New Age (I also happen to know New Age has a higher tendency to believe "infinite solar systems" and for each its Heliocentrism, than Geocentrism. It's idiotic to class me as New Age for that, but that's what some people to me seem to be doing. Hence, I'm asking the question.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Maternity of Our Lady
11.X.2024

Festum Maternitatis beatae Mariae Virginis.

Does Robert Carter Understand What Archaeology Can Do?

CMI: The extreme rarity of long-lived people in the post-Flood era
by Robert Carter | 11.X.2024
https://creation.com/rarity-of-long-lived-people-post-flood

The post-Flood patriarchs had extended lifespans, yet scant evidence exists for extremely old people in the archaeological record. There is a simple mathematical reason for this discrepancy: their extreme rarity in the exponentially growing post-Flood population.

While that solution may be part of the thing, there is another issue. If you want to read more on that, read his article, it's not bad per se, it's just overlooking sth.*

How exactly would an archaeologist identify a skeleton in archaeology as "extremely old"?

And Heber lived thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg 17 And Heber lived after he begot Phaleg, four hundred and thirty years: and begot sons and daughters
[Genesis 11:16-17]

16 Καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα τέσσαρα ἔτη καὶ ἐγέννησε τὸν Φαλέγ. 17 καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ μετὰ τὸ γεννῆσαι αὐτὸν τὸν Φαλὲγ ἔτη διακόσια ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ ἐγέννησεν υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας καὶ ἀπέθανε.

16 And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. 17 And Heber lived after he had begotten Phaleg two hundred and seventy years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.

LXX Genesis 11 / Ellopos

34 + 430 = 464
134 + 270 = 404

Whether Heber was 464 or 404 when he died, he was clearly older than 90. So, you know how a skeleton looks if you estimate it to 90, you imagine how it would look if it were even older, you look for that, right?

Wrong.

If at age 90 Heber had had the physique of someone aged 90 today, he would not have lived to over 400. Longevity must imply slower tear and wear, or it won't work.

In Anglo-Saxon England, some 40~60 or whatever persons died and were buried who have been found, and medical studies concluded that they must all have died before 45. This was then pushed as evidence that 45 was, not medium, but closeish to normal maximum, of the normal lifespan. Well, it turns out, someone then proceeded to look at the teeth, and concluded that people were often enough dying at 60 sth. The first investigation had simply not taken into account that they were overestimating the tear and wear they expected someone to have.

For one thing, the people they found may not have been farmers. But for another, sitting on tractors pretty much of the year may take a heavier toll than a more communal and slow way of working the earth. A farmer today may be sowing and harvesting wheat for 100 times more than the size of his family. Ten people's families back then would have involved the families and labour of nine farmers' families. Or, possibly, twenty heads of family can have involved nineteen farmers. If you produce for 100 times your needs, even with modern machinery, you work more than if you produce for the needs of perhaps as little as 1.11 times your needs, even without modern machinery.

So, the people in Anglo-Saxon England, if farmers, were less worn out than modern scholars expected them to be. Or they weren't farmers in the first place. But, they had the same organisms and same aging mechanisms as we have today, and Heber hadn't, he clearly aged slower.

So, one reason we don't find very long lived people is, we don't identify them. For the Upper Palaeolithic, which I put between Flood and beginning of Babel (with Noah's farmstead and vineyard just pioneering and doing very little impact on the overall economy, though CMI has mentioned they found starch dated to 20 000 years ago), anyone alive then would have had a life expectancy into the Neolithic, and so, anyone who died back then died prematurely. A man dying at 200 might well look like if he had died at 30 or 40 or sth.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Francis Borgia
10.X.2024

Sancti Francisci Borgiae, Sacerdotis e Societate Jesu et Confessoris, cujus dies natalis pridie Kalendas Octobris recensetur.

* Not totally. He does discuss it further down in the section "Discussion" below figure 5. As he mentions specifically the post-Flood patriarchs as such, one can on the subject of delayed puberty mention that if Hagar was not a giantess, it is conspicuous that she could carry a son at least around 14 on her back, when exiled. I think he's wrong to include Neanderthals in a consideration of post-Flood patriarchs, as he already knows and some readers of this blog already know. They were pre-Flood.

Peopling of Americas, Biblical Chronology, My Tables

First Americans DNA: What is the Genetic History of Native Americans?
Celtic History Decoded | 3 Oct. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOcGQBEpvg0

2787 BC

8.996 pmC and dated 22 687 BC

Mal'ta boy

24 000 YA = 22 000 BC

2762 BC

10.036 pmC and dated 21 762 BC

Crossing Beringia

23 000 YA = 21 000 BC

2738 BC

11.073 / 11.069 pmC and dated 20 938 BC

2712 BC

17.576 pmC and dated 17 062 BC

Behring's landbridge down

17 000 YA = 15 000 BC

2686 BC

24.062 pmC and dated 14 486 BC

A period of rapid expansion:

16 000 YA = 14 000 BC

Monte Verde

14 500 YA = 12 500 BC

2659 BC

30.528 pmC and dated 12 459 BC

13 000 YA = 11 000 BC

2633 BC

36.973 pmC and dated 10 883 BC

See my Mes plus récentes tables de carbone 14, and this means the peopling of the Americas happened in a span of 154 years./HGL