Niche argument revisited

If they had been created together, the large carnivorous dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex, would have wiped out the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus.

The Fittingness of Evolutionary Creation
Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.providence.edu/dist/4/182/files/2020/05/Thomistic-Evolution-22.pdf

Let's calculate a bit.

Most dinosaurs died in or after the Flood, 2242 years after creation.*

The ones I suggest could have died after the Flood are the ones that are found in America, with carbon dates (obtained by creationists) usually more recent than 40 000 years, which I take to be the normal carbon age now for a remnant from the Flood year.

There have been found thirty complete skeleta of T. Rex. That would have been thirty at the Flood or perhaps some found are from after the Flood, not sure if Mary Schweitzer's find has any carbon date thanks to Creationists. But she started Mark Armitage on his research, and he did lots of carbon datings, until they started making it impossible by the way the preliminary forms are filled in.

Now, a T. Rex to an elephant, that's a bit like a tiger to a rabbit.

How long would it take for tigers to doom rabbits to extinction? Remember, according to your evolution theory, tigers are supposed to have evolved ...

The tiger–snow leopard lineage dispersed in Southeast Asia during the Miocene.**

The Miocene is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago (Ma).

Now, 5 333 000 / 2592 = 2057*** times, omitting decimals.

The coexistence of tigers and rabbits is 2057 times as much a problem on Evolution theory than coexistence of Tyrannosauruses and Elephants on Creationist views.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John's Day
27.XII.2021

PS, my bad. Leporidae are supposed to be from late Eocene, 56 to 33.9 ... not my bad after all. Leporids are on evolutionary terms older than tigers./HGL

* Given that the carbon ages that creationists got for dinosaurs are generally what I take to be pre-Babel, extend the existence of Theropoda along with Proboscidea to 2242 + 350 = 2592 years. Babel starts around the death of Noah, 350 after the Flood, and extends to birth of Peleg or close on, 401 after the Flood.

** Citing wiki, links at key-words.

*** Why I divide by 2592 instead of 2242, see first footnote.

What About Pseudo-Genes Starting to Code [?]

What Could Irregular Deletions Do? · What About Pseudo-Genes Starting to Code?

Evolutionists will (at least ReiperX will) present a scenario basically like this:

• a gene doubles (within the chromosome or by addition of new chromosomes, doesn't really matter)
• it gains a new function by mutation.

But moment two here actually is two moments:

• it loses its original function by mutation (easy), while the same original function is upheld by the other example of the gene
• it gains a new function by another mutation?

Now, the thing is, just two mutations will hardly ever turn one gene into something different and also functional. One mutation is sometimes absolutely sufficient to turn a gene into a pseudo-gene with no function.

• it mutates once more, but remains a pseudo-gene
• it mutates several times more, remaining a pseudo-gene
• and one day the one last mutation will turn into a real, coding gene - it can be lethal, or irksome, or useful, or sometimes even turn out to be the new necessity.

Now, there are some who would say there can't be one single mutation that turns a pseudo-gene into a gene. Like, with grains of sand, there is no specific grain that turns the collection of grains into a pile.

But a gene is not a pile. With a pile, you can take away a grain of sand, it remains a pile of sand. With a gene, exactly one mutation may be enough to make it a pseudo-gene. Not all mutations, mind you, some leave the resulting proteine exactly the same. You can mutate AUU to AUC or to AUA, it is still Isoleucine. You can mutate ACU to ACC, ACA or ACG, it is still Threonine. But some will change the resulting amino-acid, and as changing ACU to AUU will replace threonine with isoleucine and make the gene a pseudo-gene, changing AUU back to ACU will replace isoleucine with threonine and make it the old gene again - but not likely it happens, and if it does, it's not relevant here.

So, there is a kind of waiting pending mutations to add up, until one pseudo-gene finally turns into a bad or a good gene.

There is in fact no documentation that ReiperX knew of that this ever happened before the eyes of scientists. It's just that this is how they like to explain how certain genes came into existence.

Oh, wait, a pseudo-gene not being necessary, it can during this period undergo a few cuts that make no difference either.

The problem apart from lack of evidence is, why would the genes that are good remain so during all of the mutations? Meantime, they are likely to mutate too, right?

The real problem for evolution believers, apart from showing a pseudo-gene gained a new function in real-time, not in retrospect from supposed common ancestry with animals lacking the function, and with an ideology stating that new functions must have originated by mutation, is then, explaining how the necessary genes keep reasonably intact while a doubled gene becomes a pseudo-gene, then a different pseudo-gene and then even more different pseudo-genes by mutations, until one of them turns it on as a new and different gene./HGL

What Could Irregular Deletions Do?

What Could Irregular Deletions Do? · What About Pseudo-Genes Starting to Code?

I am here supposing, for argument's sake, that deletions in a gene may come in other quantities than threes, sixes, nines, etc of base pairs and these with the same limits as the triplets of bases there to start with.

I'll start off with a Coding table and a gene of 4 triplets, and then take what such deletions (if they exist) could do.

Help:Protein coding sequences/Codon table
https://parts.igem.org/Help:Protein_coding_sequences/Codon_table

mttc is the start of keratin 16:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AAD15829.1

m = Methionine, also start
t = Threonine
c = Cysteine

I'm not sure exactly how the gene for keratin 16 (of Homo sapiens) is coded, but I'll give a possible sequence:

AUG ACA ACA UGU

Obviously, deleting three according to where the threes are will only take away one of the coding parts mttc => mtc, mtt, or even ttc, potentially meaning it is not start of a protein strand.

But suppose we get to the interstices, like the threes from 3 to 5 ...

/AUG/ ACA ACA UGU
A/UG A/CA ACA UGU
AU/G AC/A ACA UGU
AUG /ACA/ ACA UGU
AUG A/CA A/CA UGU
AUG AC/A AC/A UGU
AUG ACA /ACA/ UGU
AUG ACA A/CA U/GU
AUG ACA AC/A UG/U
AUG ACA ACA /UGU/

Those between the two identical ones will by the way give simplification to one.

A/UG A/CA ACA UGU
AU/G AC/A ACA UGU
AUG A/CA A/CA UGU
AUG AC/A AC/A UGU
AUG ACA A/CA U/GU
AUG ACA AC/A UG/U

The remaining four would rearrange as:

ACA ACA UGU = ttc (just deleting the m)
AUA ACA UGU = Isoleucine, t, c
AUG ACA AGU = m, t, Serine
AUG ACA ACU = m, t, t (both ACA and ACU = t = Threonine)

That's what one deletion-mutation would do to keratin 16. And note, the first four are so of over 421 base pairs.

But what if the deletion were on top of that irregular in number, like 4 base pairs deleted? The last three begin with mt, as the original proteine. All but the last two end in GU... and the last two in AU... and AC...

/AUG A/CA ACA UGU = CAA CAU GU... Glutamine, Histidine
A/UG AC/A ACA UGU = AAA CAU GU... Lysine, Histidine
AU/G ACA/ ACA UGU = AUA CAU GU... Isoleucine, Histidine
AUG /ACA A/CA UGU = AUG CAU GU... m, Histidine
AUG A/CA AC/A UGU = AUG AAU GU... m, Asparagine
AUG AC/A ACA/ UGU = AUG ACU GU... m, Threonine = mt
AUG ACA /ACA U/GU = AUG ACA GU... mt
AUG ACA A/CA UG/U = AUG ACA AU... mt
AUG ACA AC/A UGU/ = AUG ACA AC... mt

What are the remainder of the first batch after mttc? It's srqfts.

UCU GCU CAA UUU ACU UCU
or
serine alanine glutamine phenylalamine threonine serine

Rearrange for starting two letters earlier:

GUU / AUU / ACU CUG CUC AAU UUA CUU CU...

Now it's instead:

valine / isoleucine / threonine leucine leucine asparagine leucine leucine (+ further displacements)

So, let's spell out the fourth version of the deletions, we replace

methionine threonine threonine cysteine serine arginine glutamine phenylalanine threonine serine (orthodox beginning of keratine 16)
with
methionine histidine valine leucine leucine asparagine leucine leucine

Somehow, I don't just think this would be dysfunctional as keratine, but it would be dysfunctional anywhere else in the body. But let those who know about such stuff comment on it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Deusdedit of Brixen
10.XII.2021

PS, I am relieved this wording was "dysfunctional as keratine" and not "dysfunctional as muscles" - I had mixed up the Greek words for "horn" (keras, etymology for keratine which is found in horns, hooves, nails and, as I recall, hairs as well) and "flesh" (krear, etymology for the widely different proteine called kreatine, which is found in muscles). So, the question is, if there was a deletion in the gene for nail or hair matter (or one of parallel ones), would the resulting widely different proteine be useful anywhere at all? I am off to quora to have a look, requested answers yesterday./HGL

Theological Consequences

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

As previously mentioned ... An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated? ... gradual evolution from animal communications to human language is impossible.

This being so, we are now able to answer the debate question (that somehow became presented as a general permission) from Humani Generis 1950.

Let's take two positions taken at some times in the lives of the two main Inklings. I hope for their eternities, that they took a more traditional one later on, before dying.

Clive Staples Lewis, 1940, The Problem of Pain

It's just ten years since this author converted to Christianity from Atheism, and he believes the exact terms of the Genesis 1 to 3 scenario are out of the question. At least as to matters of fact. His solution : Adam and Eve are symbols of a collective. There was a tribe of hominids, and God suddenly gave them His image, with reason, morality, speech. They came to know and love God, completely trusting Him, but at some point wanted to take matters in their own hands ... the fall.

God is not cruel in converting a herd of animals, all of them together, into rational creatures. No one gets left behind. The ones that are already dead are already no more missed, when this happens. All in that tribe can continue enjoying the company of the others, and none of them needs to either feel he doesn't fit in or the others are weird and don't understand things, when he alone becomes a man.

B u t ... with such a collective humanisation, we have no individual Adam and Eve, no First Adam to which Jesus is Second Adam, no one man responsible by one sin of the fall ... and St. Paul is (factually) wrong and so is the Council of Trent Session V, which says Adam immediately lost holiness on one single sin.

And if we have no regards for the Bible, who's to say there even was one time of primeval justice, that man ever was created for eternal bliss? Babylonians thought - also - that man was created as a collective, and that this collective was created to work, on earth, for the gods.

In other words, while the rest of The Problem of Pain is excellent, this chapter or passage undermines the rest. Inacceptable.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1950, in a letter published posthumously in Letters.

He is so grateful for having the papacy. You see, while Protestants are in a jumble over how to take Adam with or without Evolution, we Catholics have the papacy, which has clarified things ...

At least his parish priest told his parish so.

... and if we can believe Adam's body descends from animals, we must believe Adam's soul was a unique and unprecedented creation by God.

I underline "believe" because, unlike what Tolkien heard from his parish priest, the document never actually gave such a general permission. A bit like the document by "Paul VI" later on with hand communion. So many got to hear everyone could take communion in the hand, while the document actually said that laymen could be given permissions in certain cases from their bishops to do so - but the permissions came out as general orders for hand communion in many dioceses. Now, this exact discrepancy between document and encouraged reception is what happened in 1950, between what Humani Generis said and what Tolkien heard from his parish priest.

Now, we have said farewell to Babylon and to collective humanisation. I am now assessing what Tolkien, at least momentarily accepted in 1950. No longer citing. Adam is certainly one ... but somehow, this would mean there was suffering before he sinned. Let's take the cases that are possible if Adam was born of two "near human" beasts. Adam was created rational from conception - or he was recreated rational later on. Adam as already rational met - or didn't meet - the relatives that were still irrational. This gives us the alternatives :

Adam was born rational and met irrational progenitors while growing up - Adam was not born rational, but separated himself from them on becoming rational - Adam was not born rational and lost his own before God remade him into a rational being.

1) Adam was born rational and met irrational progenitors while growing up

This would make Adam a feral child. His language capacity was hurt while he grew up among beings with no language.

There is, for man a period that is made for acquiring a first language, and if you miss it, you cannot do so later.

Obviously, God could have healed Adam when he grew up, or could have talked to him beside the surroundings that could not talk. Neither is satisfactory.

2) Adam was not born rational, but separated himself from them on becoming rational

Such an estrangement would also have been a suffering he had experienced before sinning.

3) Adam was not born rational and lost his own before God remade him into a rational being

Even for an irrational animal, losing all one's surroundings is a suffering, and this also would have been before Adam sinned.

Biblical history from Genesis 2 could still continue as given in the Bible - but the God who had inflicted this on Adam with no demerit of his own would not have been a good God.

But wait ... before Adam was rational, his sufferings or those of his ancestry, don't matter, you might say. Not so. Brute beasts suffer now, with no demerit of their own, to remind man, who has been given dominion over them, that man is fallen. We are punished in their sufferings. Since we are more important than they, God can justly sacrifice them to our needs - not just of food, but of understanding too. But before Adam and Eve were given dominion, there was only one who was lording over animals, and that one is God himself ... and it is said Proverbs 12:10, here:

The just regardeth the lives of his beasts: but the bowels of the wicked are cruel.*

Before Adam was given dominion, all beasts were God's. Therefore, none would have suffered, unless Adam had sinned. And especially not a line of beasts leading up to Adam - but that means, since a line of beasts leading up to Adam involves suffering, that a line of beasts could not lead up to Adam.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Ivry
St. Nicolas of Myra
6.XII.2021

* In the LXX, directly, "has pity", here: 10 A righteous man has pity for the lives of his cattle; but the bowels of the ungodly are unmerciful. / 10 δίκαιος οἰκτείρει ψυχὰς κτηνῶν αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ σπλάγχνα τῶν ἀσεβῶν ἀνελεήμονα.

Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?

An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?

I suppose she knew better, but from this paragraph*, some of her readers might not know better:

In birdsong, each individual note is meaningless: the sequence of notes is all-important. Similarily, in humans, a single segment of sound, such as b or l does not normally have a meaning. The output makes sense only if sounds are strung together. So this double-layering - known as duality or double articulation - is a further parallel. And in both birds and humans, sound segments are fitted into an overall rhythm or intonation pattern.

Human language is triple-layered, thanks to double articulation. Birdsong is - if at all - double-layered, thanks to one articulation, which is not double.

It might make sense to not consider individual notes as sound segments comparable to phonemes. The interval (with its rhythm and being itself an intonation) would be comparable to the phoneme. There are phonemes that include more than one sound in pure phonetics (which is not the same as phonematics). For instance the phoneme [ts] in some languages includes the sounds [t] and [s] or very close, but is itself a third phoneme beside [t] and [s], not a sequence of them. If we make this observation, I'm not sure there is even one articulation in the sense we talk about, I'm not sure there are even two layers, in bird song. It's just that bird beaks have so little room for differentiating vocalic sounds (owls perhaps excepted, with ooee and eeyoo) and nearly none for consonants, except as cutting off the individual note, that the tones need to take over, and as birds don't have more absolute ear than man, this means the "speech sound" is the interval.

But, apart from this observation, bird-song is at most double-layered, one articulation, notes set in a pattern that is meaningful.

Man has three layers : phonemes, that are meaningless each in itself, usually, are strung together (one articulation) into morphemes, that have some notional or sometimes meta-notional meaning. But morphemes themselves make only incomplete meaning, telling only what notion is evoked, not why it is so, and so there is a second stringing together of morphemes (with meta-morphemes) to form a phrase or sentence having complete meaning. The layers are therefore phrase, morpheme, phoneme, and the levels are kept apart by two different articulations.

But obviously, Jean Aitchison may have meant that in men, the triple layering is known as double articulation. Only, she didn't say it./HGL

* See link in previous PS.

To French Fans of San Antonio

French Catholics Usually NOT Young Earth Creationist - Why? · Are Normal French People Allowed to Look? · To French Fans of San Antonio · Are Some Catholics Being Taught That Young Earth Creationism Involves the Heresy "Sola Scriptura" [?] · Dear Dr. Sarfati, what does Scripture and Tradition Actually Mean?

I'll start way off the topic of this blog. I am glad that, in my youth, I spent more time with Lord of the Rings and less time with either San Antonio or James Bond than you. Why? In Sérénade pour une souris défunte the hero, a French policeman, kisses one (while dressed as a priest) and towses two other girls, married to none of them. In Lord of the Rings you have three couples in the beginning (Farmer Maggott and his wife, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, Galadriel and Celeborn) and you get three more couples at the end : Faramir, the most sensitive of the male heroes, gets married to Eowyn, Aragorn, the most competent, to Arwen (plus an appendix just on the background to their love story) and finally Sam Gamgee, the most crucial one, gets married to Rosie Cotton.

Also, what San Antonio does to a black man on a ship is more brutal than what heroes do even to Orcs in LotR.

But what was the connection to the theme of this blog, again?

San Antonio doesn't know English, and his English interlocutors who know some French don't know the argot of Belleville or most other finer shades of French diction. He complains that the English take everything literally. Example : a serious girl is not a girl who doesn't have her legs spread wide, it's a girl who makes no jokes. In fact, both uses exist. In a class, if you contrast "the serious girl" with "the funny girl" the former obviously doesn't joke. When a man is looking for "a serious girl" what he means is a girl who prefers family life to party life - and obviously to escapades with other guys as well.

There is no language on earth where all the speakers always take everything literally. It's just that the metaphors in common usage don't always match up between languages.

So, if you are a Frenchman, and you think "that Hans Georg has a totally English outlook, he takes everything literally, as San Antonio observed about the English," I invite you, as politely as possible, to think again. And, if on top of that you think "we French Catholics have always taken the account of the Old Testament - notably Genesis - as metaphoric rather than literal," you have a problem with your own history.

Father George Leo Haydock wrote a Bible comment, which compiled earlier commentators, both patristic and more recent. The French Dom Augustin Calmet - one of those he cites - is as literal an exponent of Old Testament Scripture as Kent Hovind. And before you think Fr. Teilhard de Chardin or his fellow Jesuit Émile Mancenot show otherwise, these two men are about a generation (or two) before the crisis of criminal abuse of minors by priests, in France. Other nation much hit by that, US, is the one that mistranslated the new Christmas proclamation from the 90's to "unknown ages" (from creation) "several thousand years" (from the Flood) when the Latin actually has "unknown centuries" and "many centuries" for the two (more compatible with traditional understanding of Biblical chronology, which obviously was traditional also in France and in the US).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Bibiana of Rome
2.XII.2021

PS, if this should happen to be the reason behind my finding the above mentioned work on San Antonio ... such a way would have some gentle connexion to the observation made here:

This tactic has been adopted more and more by evolutionists in creation/evolution debates. Rather than risk losing more of these debates on scientific grounds, evolutionists have increasingly resorted to rattling off a stream of derisive comments against creationists, trusting there won’t be time in the debate for the creationist to show that the criticisms are invalid and still have time to detail the many flaws in the theory of evolution.

Ridicule: the lowest form of evolution
Editorial by Robert Doolan | Creation 17(2):4, March 1995
https://creation.com/ridicule-the-lowest-form-of-evolution

Same obviously applies to the arguably non-French and much less polite Shane Wilson./HGL

Is Gradualism Really That Impossible?

An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?

While I was beginning to be a Christian, at age 9 or a little earlier, I had read the Gospels but not Genesis. Even after reading Genesis, I was hoping some time for a loophole for evolution to be true also. I mean, so much detective work had gone to it, and I was a fairly big sucker for detective stories. One thing that helped me decide for fullfledged creationism rather than evolutionism, if not fullfledged Biblical chronology yet, was the question how total non-speakers of a human language (any language whatsoever) could develop a language. If Tolkien could invent Quenya, he already had experience of knowing other languages (Finnish and Greek had helped to inspire Quenya, Spanish and Welsh had inspired Naffarin, Latin at least gave the rythm for Quenya and Sindarin with its antepaenultima rule, he already knew English and perhaps some French before starting Latin ... all starting when his mother taught him English at the apropriate age). So, let's go through a few hairbrained and detailed ideas.

One or two over the internet have suggested, when someone came up with saying the sound "tiger" when seeing a tiger, this had a survival advantage. Actually, no. Green monkeys have three danger signals, depending on whether the threat is tiger, eagle or snake. The tactic is different. Please note, if you recall, the animals generally have up to 500 signals, unitary, with well defined phonemes constituting the morphemes that constitute the entire signals. And getting to shift the entire tactic of communication, introducing more than one phoneme per morpheme and a notion of classification into the morpheme, is not the kind of thing you do in a hurry. It's like saying a Morse telegraph developed ASCII code of computers by being heavily shaken.

I found a theory (a bit more seriously) that language came by as a way for mothers to communicate with offspring they couldn't carry on the back like monkeys do. Or however it is monkeys do carry them. Well, in that case, the arguable outcome of not being able to carry offspring the normal way for a female would not be to develop a new way of communicating, but rather to lose the offspring and therefore get extinct.

Back when I was a child, about ten, I saw the theory, the first phoneme, morpheme, sentence of the human language was a bilabial f, the sound phoneticians describe by Greek letter φ - what you get when you blow through pursed lips. Why? The same sound is needed to light fires, once you master the fire. So, the one sound came to mean "fire" and "light a fire" and (since you do it with your breath) "breath" and "soul" (the thing that ceases to breath in your body when you die) and obviously "die" and "death" as well ... all this for one sound. Meanwhile, ee came to symbolise "here, by me", ah came to symbolise "there" and oo came to symbolise "yonder" ... I think one consonant and three vowels is a bit thin to actually start sorting out the diverse meanings of the original sound-word φ ...

And in Sarlat, in a library, I saw the theory Homo erectus spoke with ten speach sounds stringed vowel + cosonant and ten other ones stringed consonant + vowel. These twenty "phonemes" were also morphemes, and each had a fairly abstract meaning, with ad + am = earth + harmonious (samples of "living fossils" from this one included Eden, Aden, Adam!) ...

Enough of hairbrained ones, here is a reference, Pascal Picq, and here are my responses to one of his books:

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

Here there is not much of an idea, the one salient point being that the language capacity of two year olds would represent the past language capacity of human ancestors at an un-precise past.

And my idea about it being that Pascal and his pals hadn't even started to scratch the problem. Plus, the suggestion makes one wonder - wouldn't a language with capacity for only positive and indicative two word sentences be a source of misunderstanding and a liability for survival rather than anything else?

Now, I'll mention Jean Aitchison with respect. Her book Language change: Progress or decay? (3rd edition (1st edition1981). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001) was an eye-opener in 1993 about the process I've likened to repainting a house or resewing a pair of pants or shorts - the gradual changes you see between different human languages, all of which are already perfectly human. She has also written, and I have not yet read, The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Also, with new extended introduction, in C.U.P. Canto series, 2000.) It is probably the best one, it basically says (as far as I have gathered) that human or pre-human courtship came to include certain songs that came to be associated with meaning outside courtship as well.

And now I'll try to fill in the details, a bit like I tried back when I was a child with "φ as in φanning a φire being the φirst word". Notable difference, to that one the book hadn't given details, and with Aitchison, I haven't had occasion to read them.

Human anatomy involves the capacity for infants to babble indefinitely and for both themselves and the surrounding adults to hear the babbling. On what I take Jean Aitchison's theory to be, this babbling came to be reused in courtship. And let's imagine some male not-yet-quite-human wooer got into saying "pat-pat-pat" while strewing nuts before the object of his desires, while in another not-yet-quite human tribe the sound at that moment would have been "pal-pal-pal" and the offering would have been apples. And the two tribes unite and some time later they note they are using "pal-pal-pal" for "give me an apple" and "pat-pat-pat" for "give me a nut" ... no, I don't think this is much better than the φ-theory already alluded to. I was going to write off that ape courtships don't have the sufficient complexity for this, but this appears to be not true, some chimps do have complex courtship.

But even so, it would take very much for distinguishing foods from combinations of courtship rituals to actually coming anywhere near a human language. It would among other things also involve inventing sentence structure and negatives and conditionals and pasts and futures as much as the other theories. And having a language lacking these would, as said, be hazardous.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Saturnine
29.XI.2021

PS: I think my impression of Jean Aitchison's work on language origin came from another preview than these two:

The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Aitchison Jean. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp 281.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics/article/abs/seeds-of-speech-language-origin-and-evolution-aitchison-jean-cambridgecambridge-university-press-1996-pp-281/3D19734EA6CA3C0C6938D39BF6D26F54

The Seeds of Speech Language Origin and Evolution
Jean Aitchison
Excerpt
https://beckassets.blob.core.windows.net/product/readingsample/443426/9780521785716_excerpt_001.pdf

However, the comparison to bird song and the statement about birds using song for nesting reminds me of the thing I half recalled./HGL

A Disaster 70 Years Ago

Pius XII in an allocution (speech) to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, stated that the world was 5 billion years old, according to dating methods that are very exact. This happened the day of St. Cecilia, 22.XI.1951.

One could imagine he had already sinned against the faith the previous year, with Humani Generis, leaving formally undecided, and in practise often in the field decided the wrong way, what should be decided the right way. If so, he could have been for one year "papa materialiter, non formaliter" and as such able to apostatise. This speech before the Academy could then have been his apostasy.

Some lenifying circumstances though - he could have been assuming simply the day age theory or gap theory held and that Adam's creation was even with a 5 billion year delay c. 6 or 7000 years ago. You see, if he was hearing of the U-Pb dating of the meteorites, now assumed to be just 4.5 billion years old, he might have seen no implication about the age of mankind, since carbon dating was not yet invented./HGL

Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical

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

I

Someone - I think former JW The Truth Hurts - made the argument that all peoples who have a Flood story also have access to big water.

I have already argued, for the peoples in the Altai region, this is not true.

But here is more - nearly all countries in the world are with sea access. On wiki, List of sovereign states states:

The 206 listed states can be divided into three categories based on membership within the United Nations System: 193 member states,[1] 2 observer states, and 11 other states.

And the article Landlocked country states:

In 1990, there were only 30 landlocked countries in the world. The breakup of Yugoslavia, the dissolutions of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, and the independence referendums of Eritrea and South Sudan have created 15 new landlocked countries and 4 partially recognized landlocked states while the former landlocked country of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist on 1 January 1993.

In other words, human populations overall have a tendency to have access to big waters.

II

Dimensions of wood on the ark were calculated in my article Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark as if the "walls" of the container had no overlapping parts. This is not true. You have prisms:

4 * hind wall X horizontals
4 * front wall X horizontals
4 * right wall X horizontals
4 * left wall X horizontals
4 * long X short verticals only

And you have 16 cubes where these prisms intersect.

The proper maths to deal with a correction would be to first subtract the prisms and then add back the cubes. Why so?

Imagine you had only three walls. Three prisms belong to two walls each. These are therefore already accounted for twice, so you subtract them once, the one correct count being left. The cube where all three walls meet also belongs to the three prisms. It is added three times over, once in each wall, and subtracted three times over, once in each prism. It must therefore be added once to have the one correct count of its existence.

III

Executing previous corrections ... in order to get the right total volume (which is not our main concern), one would for each deduct the first three values and add the fourth one, but as deduction from volume of wood ultimately means addition of freight capacity, we well add the three and subtract the fourth (in order to get the volume one would then deduct the result from the volume).

For readability, I will approximate after three decimals and for the final result, we'll consider that the m³ of water = mt (metric ton).

Short cubit, thin walls

8 * hind/front walls X horizontals
8 * 22.86 m * 0.2286 m * 0.2286 m = 9.557 m³
8 * right/left walls X horizontals
8 * 137.16 m * 0.2286 m * 0.2286 m = 57.342 m³
4 * long X short (verticals only)
4 * 13.716 m * 0.2286 m * 0.2286 m = 2.867 m³
16 * 0.2286 m * 0.2286 m * 0.2286 m = 0.191 m³
9.557 m³ + 57.342 m³ + 2.867 m³ - 0.191 m³ = 69.574 m³ / mt

Short cubit, thick walls

8 * hind/front walls X horizontals
8 * 22.86 m * 0.4572 m * 0.4572 m = 38.228 m³
8 * right/left walls X horizontals
8 * 137.16 m * 0.4572 m * 0.4572 m = 229.366 m³
4 * long X short (verticals only)
4 * 13.716 m * 0.4572 m * 0.4572 m = 11.468 m³
16 * 0.4572 m * 0.4572 m * 0.4572 m = 1.529 m³
38.228 m³ + 229.366 m³ + 11.468 m³ - 1.529 m³ = 278.298 m³ / mt

Long cubit, thin walls

8 * hind/front walls X horizontals
8 * 30.48 m * 0.3048 m * 0.3048 m = 22.653 m³
8 * right/left walls X horizontals
8 * 182.88 m * 0.3048 m * 0.3048 m = 135.921 m³
4 * long X short (verticals only)
4 * 18.288 m * 0.3048 m * 0.3048 m = 6.796 m³
16 * 0.3048 m * 0.3048 m * 0.3048 m = 0.453 m³
22.653 m³ + 135.921 m³ + 6.796 m³ - 0.453 m³ = 164.917 m³ / mt

Long cubit, thick walls

8 * hind/front walls X horizontals
8 * 30.48 m * 0.6096 m * 0.6096 m = 90.614 m³
8 * right/left walls X horizontals
8 * 182.88 m * 0.6096 m * 0.6096 m = 543.683 m³
4 * long X short (verticals only)
4 * 18.288 m * 0.6096 m * 0.6096 m = 27.184 m³
16 * 0.6096 m * 0.6096 m * 0.6096 m = 3.625 m³
90.614 m³ + 543.683 m³ + 27.184 m³ - 3.625 m³ = 659.669 m³ / mt

IV

And now let's apply this to the freight capacity ... and let's stay with 14 cubits high water line, meaning we need not just to multiply above corrections with density, but also with 7/15:

Smallest weight available, biggest weight in walls, for small cubit:

20,069.565 - 6,812.184 = 13,257.381 mt
278.298 * 0.88 * 7/15 = 114.288 mt
13,257.381 + 114.288 = 13,371.669 mt

Biggest weight available, smallest weight in walls, for small cubit:

20,069.565 - 1,362.437 = 18,707.128 mt
69.574 * 0.352 * 7/15 = 11.429 mt
18,707.128 + 11.429 = 18,718.557 mt

Smallest weight available, biggest weight in walls, for big cubit:

47,572.302 - 16,147.399 = 31,424.904 mt
659.669 * 0.88 * 7/15 = 270.904 mt
31,424.904 + 270.904 = 31,695.808 mt

Biggest weight available, smallest weight in walls, for big cubit:

47,572.302 - 3,229.48 = 44,342.823 mt
164.917 * 0.352 * 7/15 = 27.09 mt
44,342.823 + 27.09 = 44,369.913 mt.

V

Revisiting two paragraphs:

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

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

13,371.669 - 10,739.12 = 2632.549 mt
18,718.557 - 10,739.12 = 7979.437 mt

All that for tools and water?

I think there might actually have been more animals than just 2032 couples. Especially since 7 kg food per day is not exactly typical in proportion to the body weight, the ruminants need more food.

And this would mean, hedgehogs are more diversified as a baramin than the medium.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Josaphat
12.XI.2021

Vitepsci, in Polonia, passio sancti Josaphat, e sancti Basilii Ordine, Episcopi Polocensis et Martyris; qui a schismaticis, in odium catholicae unitatis et veritatis, crudeliter interfectus est, et a Pio Papa Nono inter sanctos Martyres adscriptus. Ejus tamen festivitas recolitur decimo octavo Kalendas Decembris.

An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development"

An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?

Imagine you have a cake, Swedish style birthday cake, two layers of sponge cake, since cut up in the middle, and strawberry jam between the two, strawberry jam and whipped cream on top, and a few whole strawberries on top of that as decoration. Plus candles.

Ooops, it wasn't a Swedish birthday, it was a US American wedding. Take off candles and strawberries. Scrape off all cream and jam. Now add rhum, add some buttercream with chocolate and hazelnut flavour, make another storey or two, add glazing, add a doll of a wedding couple on top. Done.

But the sponge cake is still sponge cake. You didn't turn it into pancake or puff pastry.

Or imagine you have a house that is being constantly repainted, from one year to ten years later, the painting may have changed from a mix of blue, green and purple colour fields to a mix involving mainly red, yellow and orange.

And a pair of trousers can be remade (as I'm known to do) adding more and more stuff to replace the holes and widening the knees that way and taking stuff from lower legs to make insertions of Renaissance type or mendings at the butt.

That doesn't start turning the trousers into a house or the house into trousers.

If I bring up that language can't have developed from ape like communications (shrieks, grunts etc) I have reason to fear someone will bring up the absolute facepalm in this situation : stating that linguists deal in language development.

Now, there are other studies in linguistics (as linguistics proper) than historic linguistics, but historic linguistics does indeed deal with one thing that is often nicknamed "language development" - like the "development" from Latin to French. But this has no bearing on developing human language from non-human communications any more than changing the glazing could make your sponge cake into a puff pastry.

Between Latin and French, language of Plautus and language of Molière, we can suppose there were c. 20 or 30 intermediaries. But each one would be perfectly viable, just as the house remains habitable while you repaint it. It is a bit hard to know for each intermediary - like the one between 450 and 550 and by peasants in Gaul - which changes were already made and which weren't. But it's not hard to imagine how the language remained viable through the changes. I'll give you one, from Latin six case system to Old French two case system, in the masculine type declinsion, i. e. II declinsion:

bonus		bonos		bonos		(later bons)
boni		boni/bone		-
bono		bono		bono		(later bon)
bonum		bono		bono
bone		bone		-
bono		bono		bono

You start out with nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative and ablative-instrumental. You get nominative still there, replacing also vocative, and you get accusative taking the place of dative, ablative and even genitive.

In some declinsions, distinguishing between nominative and accusative becomes hard, like first declinsion, nominative bona, accusative bonam ... bonam becomes bona, and later bona becomes bone / bonne. Now, Latin not only had nominative and accusative to distinguish the doer and the done-to, they also had (optionally) word order. In some cases, like neuters or plurals of third declinsion, the option became obligatory, and the development of "bonne" just added to the situations where this was so.

All other types of change similarily left the language useful as human communication along the way too. It's like changing the glazing.

But there is a fact which is true of all human language, and of no bestial communication, including that of apes. A message is subdivided into morphemes. In Greenlandic, there might be one lexical morpheme and a lot of endings on that, in Chinese all morphemes have nearly the status of lexical items - or separate words (not quite true, some words need certain positions to be used as grammatical morphemes, where real lexical ones would be used in other positions) and in French or Latin or English or German you have a situation in between. But the message is subdivided into morphemes. And a morpheme is subdivided into phonemes, that, unlike morphemes, don't mean anything on their own. Changing from message = morpheme = phoneme to this is like trying to turn sponge cake into puff pastry or trousers into a house. It simply won't work. There are no intermediate situations imaginable that this would work with.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Zachary and Elisabeth
father and mother of the
precursor
5.XI.2021

Sancti Zachariae, Sacerdotis et Prophetae, qui pater exstitit beati Joannis Baptistae, Praecursoris Domini. Item sanctae Elisabeth, ejusdem sanctissimi Praecursoris matris.

Middleton's Blogs Continue

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

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

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

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

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

Now, some that is objectionable is here:

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

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

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

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

Cited from page 158 of the google book:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does Joshua say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Princeton to Middleton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton

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

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

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

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

Here is Haydock on the matter:

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

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

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

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

and:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skipping some, for now.

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

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

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

Two things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then my cue:

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

How nice! Leaves something for me to do!

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

This is in fact double, as an argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, as CMI have argued, the reverse.

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

And:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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