What Flood?

In response to a meme by Michael Spaulding, part 1:

1. Archaeology Shows Unbroken Human History:

Young Earth Creationists place the flood around 2350 BCE. A planetary extinction event at that time should leave an absolute break in human history worldwide, followed by a total cultural reset starting from eight people in the Middle East.

Instead, archaeology shows continuous human habitation through that exact window:

• Egypt: Scribes, pyramid builders, and royal dynasties maintained continuous administrative records straight through the 3rd millennium BCE with no evidence of a universal flood stratum.
• Mesopotamia: Cuneiform tax logs, legal codes, and trade records continue uninterrupted across major city-states.
• Indus Valley & China: Early urban centers show unbroken development in agriculture, pottery, and architecture.

Civilization was never wiped out across the globe 4,400 years ago.

Reply fairly simple. I have a different Flood date, though.

Key notions first:

• Carbon dates of archaeology are misleading.
• Chronicles attached to them are misleading, partly based on lies.
• Some of these lies were calibrated in chronological quantity by the Father of Lies who knew what 1700 BC (Joseph's pharao Djoser died) would look like in terms of carbon dating.

Point one:

Carbon dates of archaeology are misleading.

2350 BC in carbon dates means some date between 1656 and 1634 BC in real history.

1656 BC

91.353 pmC, dated as 2404 BC

1634 BC

93.251 pmC, dated as 2212 BC

The real history 2350 BC is carbon dated to 6254 BC:

2361 BC

Shelah died

2350 BC (!)

62.358 pmC, dated as 6254 BC

Let's take my Flood date instead, now. The Roman Martyrology says Jesus was born 2957 after the Flood, so the Flood was 2958 BC (Jesus was born 1 BC, while 1 AD starts with His circumcision).

Carbon dated 2958 BC means a date between 1759 and 1739 BC:

1759 BC

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

1739 BC

86.754 pmC, dated as 2914 BC

1736 BC

Isaac died

Real history 2958 BC means carbon dated 37 050 BC or 39 000 BP, and that's where my tables begin:

Starts out 2958 BC,

1.6277 pmC, dated as 37 000 BC

2956 BC

Arphaxad born

Point two:

Chronicles attached to them are misleading, partly based on lies.

Michael Spaulding flaunts the records by certain old cultures. Of the following three quotes, only the last one is free from writing from the period concerned:

"maintained continuous administrative records"
"tax logs, legal codes, and trade records continue uninterrupted across major city-states"
"Early urban centers show unbroken development in agriculture, pottery, and architecture"

Someone said, the Catholic Church gave us "the Calendar" ... if you mean a year that has 365 days 3/4 of most twenty year periods and 366 days 1/4, namely every 4th year, Julius Caesar did it (Gregory XIII changed "all twenty year periods" to "most" by excepting 1700, 1800, 1900, but not 1600 and 2000).

But the Catholic Church actually did give us the Anno Domini reckoning. It was universally accepted by 1100. Including by people aware of its shortcoming as to exact birthyear.

A scribe under Nebuchadnezzar II can't prove that Ur was founded 4000 BC. Do you know why? If we accept (which I'm somewhat sceptical of) that he came to power in 605 BC, then his fifth year would have been 600 BC. However, the scribe who made a date on a document would not state "3400 after the founding of Ur", but rather "sixth year of Nebuchadnezzar".

During the Assyrian chronicle, this was probably not a problem. However, before that, any king who wanted to magnify his predecessor could flatter him by stating his years were more than they were, any king who wanted to belittle his predecessor could instead shorten his reign, and any local ruler who gained the upper hand over another city could transpose all of its years to before the own city's hegemony or supposed such, or to before the current dynasty (for instance Ur III). Parallel rulers were serialised. In Mesopotamia, this is somewhat transparent and admitted by archaeologists, I'm certain it's an issue in Egypt too. Certainly, Egypt has divergent king lists that leave out or take in some dynasty or dynasties of some city prior to kings that both lists acknowledge.

So, the "continuous administrative record" or the "tax logs, legal codes" and so on only tell us there was continuity in that specific past, it cannot help to date that past. Some people think that Egyptian Pharaos and Sumerian Lugals would have as little chance to do so as 19th C. European kings. None of these could invent an extra century before their own, because all of these had real masses who could read, who were not depending on the palace, and who having known the previous year as 1815 would not have accepted to know the current year as 1916, since dating didn't start over again each new ruler.

Point three:

Some of these lies were calibrated in chronological quantity by the Father of Lies who knew what 1700 BC (Joseph's pharao Djoser died) would look like in terms of carbon dating.

That God and Satan have their deals and truces, where God permits Satan some of the things he wants to do, should be known from the Exorcism of Leo XIII.

One of these probably involved what God foretold through St. Paul:

And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity
[2 Thessalonians 2:10-11]

Bishop Challoner comments:

[10] "God shall send": That is God shall suffer them to be deceived by lying wonders, and false miracles, in punishment of their not entertaining the love of truth.

I would hold that a Pharao in Egypt (most of them) and a king (local or "of Sumer and Akkad") in Mesopotamia were even more under Satan's power than people in "Satan's century".

I would also hold that God had allowed Satan to prepare "his case" ... Satan in spreading error was not suddenly prompted these last two centuries by God, chosing nothing of his own, he was more like having been very eager all along, and when God loses him, given his known appatite for deception, that's equivalent to "sending" him, not like Moses sent spies into the Holy Land, but like Samson sent foxes into Philistine fields and vineyards. The foxes didn't need an order to try to escape the fire. They were very well equipped to run. Satan also knows he has limited time to deceive and get people damned, and is very well equipped to chose that. And was so while waiting too.

The amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere at a given point would have been easy to observe for any angel. God would have told both Satan and good angels what the level was going to be now and that carbon dating would exist. None of them would have had a hard time understanding it, no human technology can in principle add to the technological knowhow of angels. (However, in detail yes. Satan could not on his own have foreknown ASCII has 65 = upper case A or English has 26 letters, so Z gets 90 for upper cae, only God was able to show that to St. John).

Therefore Satan could adapt the vanity of rulers in displacing chronology to what he wanted uniformitarians to conclude from carbon 14 too. Not perfectly, but overall. If one king hadn't taken that temptation, Satan could try it on the next one.

The Bible, including in Genesis 5 and 11, is obviously not subject to Satan's deceptions, and especially the original LXX text, a translation from a Hebrew text older than the Proto-Masoretic or Masoretic versions. Therefore, we should rely on it rather than on Pagan rulers, especially when their words are supported by a carbon 14 dating that can pretty easily be skewed by rising carbon 14 levels, which were therefore lower than reckoned with before the rise to c. 100 pmC was complete.

2350 BC, the carbon 14 level wasn't 100 pmC, but 62.358 pmC. This gave objects from then an instant age of 3904 years. 3904 + 2350 = 6254 years.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Simon and Jude
28.X.2026

PS, I was in a library where the time on the internet ended. So, I missed out on giving the martyrology reading, see my wishes on another blog : Bonum Festum Sanctorum Simon et Judae. I also missed out on sourcing the three posts from 2024 that I used: Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy..

Enjoy, and excuse me!/HGL

PPS, I forgot to actually state the answer in so many words. The carbon date for the Flood being 39 000 BP actually does involve a break for human population : all Neanderthals with skeleta or parts of skeleta that have been carbon dated are older than that in carbon, and obviously other dating methods give even older dates. If you heard "Gorham Cave, Gibraltar, 28 000 BP", the cave in question has charcoal dated that recently (real date not long after the Flood, when Neanderthals died out, between 2870 BC and 2848 BC). In a nearby cave a Neanderthal skeleton was dated to 47 000 BP, so prior to 39 000 BP./HGL