The main unqualified
agreement is: Scripture is reliable, no good historic source actually contradicts it in a way that would trump it. And the Mesolithic was just a few centuries.
Why There Can't Be More Than 4,500 Years of Ancient History
Creation Ministries International | 13 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-tWTEfS_E
An unqualified
disagreement is already to the title. On two items. First, as holding a LXX chronology or LXX adjacent chronology (chapters 5 and 11 as analysed by Julius Africanus who had access to Vetus Latina*), I'd say we have 5000 years of post-Flood history, not just 4500. But second, it is impossible that all of the pre-Flood history that was available in memory right after the Flood is only what we have in the Bible. It's like supposing I were to survive a disaster, I had to start civilisation all over, and all I knew of the time I and others had spent before it was ... less than a fifthgrader knows of Western Civilisation or 20th C history.
Not only that, but I maximise another term in the Genesis chapters than he does.
Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown
[Genesis 6:4]
How do you take that last phrase? I take it as individual men still enjoying the renown (insofar as damned souls enjoy anything) after the Flood. And I'd say Bharat is a conflation of the two Henoch, while Krishna is probably the flute player Jubal, and the Kauravas are probably children of Tubal-Cain. In this way, they actually still are men of renown.
Also, Krishna's death or beginning of Kali Yuga is ...
midnight 17/18 February 3102 BCE (Julian), or 22/23 January (Gregorian).
Now ...
3102 - 2958 = 144
... so, the Mahabharata war probably happened nearly one and a half centuries before the Flood. The actually unsupportable violence began after it, in attempts to make it "never happen again" I'd say.
Some accounts of giants and even of dragons getting killed can have been memories from pre-Flood times, and then conflated with post-Flood history. Though probably there were still some kind of palaeo-creatures in the times of Sigurd and Beowulf. We know of Saints, and not just St. George, but also St. Martha with the Tarasque. And very probably Nimrod did some dragon killing after the Flood:
And he was a stout hunter before the Lord. Hence came a proverb: Even as Nemrod the stout hunter before the Lord
[Genesis 10:9]
Here is Challoner:
"A stout hunter": Not of beasts but of men: whom by violence and tyranny he brought under his dominion. And such he was, not only in the opinion of men, but before the Lord, that is, in his sight who cannot be deceived.
I think he became that too, a bit later, and put it to use in Babel.
But back to the list of unqualified disagreements. Rob Carter refers to his articles examining the LXX, and I refer to my answers to them:
Resp. to Carter / Cosner : In the Lifetime of Josephus
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/09/resp-to-carter-cosner-in-lifetime-of.html
Now, for the qualified agreements. Not surprising to someone knowing both of us, and yes, he knows of me, this will involve some on carbon 14.
Let's start on a point where we agree. In day 3, there was not one atom of carbon 14. The first of these came in day 4, when sunlight was created and touched our atmosphere. Because it comes with some cosmic radiation.
How fast did carbon 14 form back then, in terms of pmC? These being "percent modern carbon" [14, in relation to carbon 12 and the modern value corrected for pre-industrial values, as if the fossil carbon emissions from 1750 hadn't happened].
Let's first suppose a similar production to now:
2262 years, remaining carbon 14 level after this time: 0.5^(2262/5730) = 0.76061(76.061 pmC)
Normal (modern tempo) builup in this time 1-0.76061 = 0.23939 (23.939 pmC)
This would mean, a fossil from the Flood, if you carbon dated it, would have extra years corresponding to a carbon 14 level of 23.939 pmC.
5730 * log(0.23939) / log(0.5) + 2958 BC = 14 777 BC
I don't think so. This is not what Mark Armitage shows, and especially he may have dated in some cases younger-than-Flood dinos, where the pmC as already higher than at the Flood. And 20 000 BP is really on the younger end of his spectrum.
Next question. Carter wants the carbon to be diluted in "old carbon" (presumably from creation, no carbon 14 at all) through volcanic activity.
Let's suppose the carbon 12 emitted were so much that half the post-Flood carbon came from it. Not a genial idea, because if there was more carbon in the pre-Flood atmosphere, this puts briefly in the post-Flood period a carbon level in the atmosphere that's higher than ever before
or after. And makes for some problem in making it sink, even if fossils being locked off from carbon cycle helps to do so. But let's suppose so.
23.939 pmC / 2 = 11.9695 pmC
50 years after the Flood we would get a date like:
5730 * log(0.119695) / log(0.5) + 2908 BC = 20 456 BC
That would fit with some of Armitage, far from all. Many are older.
So, here is what I propose instead. In the pre-Flood world, the Oxygen was more atmospheric and less in the water cycle. This means, the Nitrogen was more diluted. Minimum, 1 O = 1 N. We now have 1 O = 2 N. To translate from volume difference to surface difference, we take the cube root and then square it.
(cbroot(1/2))^2 = 0.62996
0.62996 * 0.23939= 0.150804 (15.08 pmC)
Also, there was more carbon 12 before the Flood, at least 3 times as much:
0.150804 / 3 = 0.050268 (5.027 pmC)
But the magnetic field was perhaps stronger and the cosmic rays weaker, meaning even this has to be divided, say, by 3:
0.050268 / 3 = 0.016756 (1.676 pmC)
And, at the Flood, this remained as low. It didn't get much lower by dilution in old carbon from volcanos. This is pretty close to my value from Campi Flegrei, dated to 39 000 BP, being in the Flood and this puts the atmospheric level back then at 1.629 pmC.
Some other arguments from Carter:
- changes in the magnetic field
- fluctuations in the carbon 14 level (notably as explaining the Hallstadt plateau)
- fluctuations per locality
Here are my responses:
- The changes in the magnetic field, which are possible, are not an extra to be taken account of on top of my carbon tables, they are one of the reasons for the different speeds of carbon 14 production, and so are included in them.
- The fluctuations in the carbon 14 level (notably as explaining the Hallstadt plateau) are a different story, and way less in percentage. In 750 BC, around the Founding of Rome** the carbon 14 level was high enough to detract two centuries, it dates as 550 BC, but in 450 BC, it had sunk to low enough to add one century, 450 BC also dates as 550 BC. So, in 750 BC, the level was 102.449 pmC and in 450 BC it was 98.798 pmC. That's just a fluctuation of 3.651 pmC units.
- The fluctuations per locality are probably too minute to need to be taking into account.
Finally, two more disagreements. Including with things he has previously said, even if he didn't repeat it.
1) I think there was spread before the Flood and this refers to scattering of common plan making rather than geographic spread occurring only then:
And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries
[Genesis 11:9]
In verse 2, the "they" involved in the masculine plural form
bə·nā·sə·‘ām doesn't match the feminine singular
ḵāl hā·’ā·reṣ, so doesn't need to imply that "they" were all of mankind.
2) When it comes to preserving pre-Flood human fossils, I take a different view on (and don't maximalise) the verse:
He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them
[Genesis 6:7]
Let's be clear that
’em·ḥeh is also used in Exodus 17:14 and we still have some memory of Amalek by reading about the person and the people in the Bible. But it can also be argued that God only meant those that were currently walking at the time, 120 years before the Flood, and subsequent times up to the Flood, while the Neanderthals I consider as pre-Flood were actually buried before God said this word.
This means I can place sapiens only Palaeolithic in the 350 years after the Flood prior to Babel, which began the Neolithic, and I can place Neanderthals (as mentioned) and sapiens contemporary to them in pre-Flood areas of less than full urbanity for God knows how long. And the Five Emperors were people who went to China before Babel in a Palaeolithic setting.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Queen St. Radegundis
13.VIII.2026
Pictavis, in Gallia, sanctae Radegundis Reginae, cujus vita miraculis et virtutibus claruit.
* In other words, the chronology of the Roman Martyrology from Christmas Day. St. Jerome unfortunately corrected the 2262 pre-Flood years to 2242 after a more standard reading in the LXX. Then he added a chronology after Julius Africanus' work or what he kept, after Abraham's birth, this one was cited in the Historia Scholastica which is basically a Biblical History, and then that part got quoted in the Usuardus (a Venetian print from late 1400's) which in the time of St. Pius V became the Roman Martyrology for all of the Latin Church (after some revision).
** Which is included in the Martyrology. Even after St. Pius V making it universal. The 1179 date for the fall of Troy is no longer so, presumably since then, and only was in Usuardus.
