my take on the tower of babel

[nuthajason]

like the flood, i think that the TOB has great potential to be a sticking point if taken literally without a bit more depth into the translation.
archaelogical digs all over the world show people lived ...er...all over the world during this approximate time - and i feel it is too much of a jump to beleive they all spoke the same tongue.

i beleive:
a) that humans evolved and populated much of the earth over 100 000 to 250 000 years.
b) that God then set aside Eden and formed his own sinless male and female (Adam and Eve) in the same genetic make up as the evolved humans in other places. These two were special however because they had no preculture or knwledge of sin and so in their innocence could be in His prescence.
c) the rest of their story is well known so i skip to the flood which i agree with Rich Deem was a local event.
d) TOB was also a local event. it is clear that from a) above that there would be already a large number of different languages arounf the actual earth.
e) Scripture is refering to the local lingua franca.
f) God confused their language as a punishment for their arrogance.

this sequence fits well with evolved humankind and historical evidence.

scripturally the sequence is sound too because, following rich deem's example, i saw that kol HaAretz is the chosen Hebrew for earth here too - therefore implying the local area NOT the globe.

I'm interested in anyone's opinionson this as i'm just formulating my ideas on this part of Genisis.
thanks
j

[RickD]

like the flood, i think that the TOB has great potential to be a sticking point if taken literally without a bit more depth into the translation.
archaelogical digs all over the world show people lived ...er...all over the world during this approximate time - and i feel it is too much of a jump to beleive they all spoke the same tongue.

i beleive:
a) that humans evolved and populated much of the earth over 100 000 to 250 000 years.
b) that God then set aside Eden and formed his own sinless male and female (Adam and Eve) in the same genetic make up as the evolved humans in other places. These two were special however because they had no preculture or knwledge of sin and so in their innocence could be in His prescence.
c) the rest of their story is well known so i skip to the flood which i agree with Rich Deem was a local event.
d) TOB was also a local event. it is clear that from a) above that there would be already a large number of different languages arounf the actual earth.
e) Scripture is refering to the local lingua franca.
f) God confused their language as a punishment for their arrogance.

this sequence fits well with evolved humankind and historical evidence.

scripturally the sequence is sound too because, following rich deem's example, i saw that kol HaAretz is the chosen Hebrew for earth here too - therefore implying the local area NOT the globe.

I'm interested in anyone's opinionson this as i'm just formulating my ideas on this part of Genisis.
thanks
j

If you want this to "jive" with Rich Deem's view, then you'd see that the people that you believe were scattered around the globe, weren't modern humans. You're mixing Progressive Creation with Theistic Evolution. Maybe when you get all the kinks worked out, you can call it, "Theistic Creation progressive evolutionism".

Or, "nuthajasonism".

[nuthajason]

If you want this to "jive" with Rich Deem's view, then you'd see that the people that you believe were scattered around the globe, weren't modern humans. You're mixing Progressive Creation with Theistic Evolution. Maybe when you get all the kinks worked out, you can call it, "Theistic Creation progressive evolutionism".

Or, "nuthajasonism".

lol.
i don't agree with everything anyone says even Rich. i mean for example i'm a big fan of william lane craig but i don't quite agree with his view on homosexuality. As for humans that had evolved before Adam an Eve i know that they were homo sapiens and that they had culture and religion and all the other attributes that would make them human. and i must qualify that i'm reading a mountain of books right now so i really cannot claim to have read all the pages on this site. i have seen the evidence for anthropology and my christian worldview is that if the overwhelming evidence is there and the conclusions are ''good science'' then i have to give up on my preconcieved or even taught scriptural notions and try to see it all in the light of the observed science. this is why i cannot accept the traditional flood story or the creation or the tower of babel. they all conflict with the evidence - unless we unpack them properly - which rich deem does really well and so huge respect and gratitude. but maybe it is then all about his definition of 'modern human' (please send me a link to the relevant page). it is my belief that Adam was not the first human (modern or otherwise) but the first human to be introduced to God. the start of a patrlinear thread the culminated in Jesus. and in the surrounding territories were tribes of people who he and his sons interacted with and married into. i also beleive that they and some of their generations thereafter took on the ancient religious beliefs of the tribes (perhaps they worshipped spirits - i.e. the sons of God (angels)) - necessitating the flood. i could go on but it is bedtime!
j

[RickD]

nuthajason,

if you want some good info from a progressive creation perspective, go to http://www.reasons.org/. They have a wealth of info there. Rich Deem was part of Reasons.org, and Rich and Hugh Ross pretty much agree on all the main points of PC/OEC. Otherwise, you can do a search at the Home site here:http://www.godandscience.org/

[ryanbouma]

like the flood, i think that the TOB has great potential to be a sticking point if taken literally without a bit more depth into the translation.
archaelogical digs all over the world show people lived ...er...all over the world during this approximate time - and i feel it is too much of a jump to beleive they all spoke the same tongue.

Could you expand on this? I'm not sure what the difficulty of TOB is, even in the literal sense. It's no more than a couple paragraphs and not a very detailed story. It happens after the flood; people haven't migrated; they become united and try to reach the heavens; God wills them to fill the earth; he messes with their language; they scatter; mission accomplished.

When did this even happen? The bible isn't very clear, other than it appears to be shortly after the flood. Given the post flood geneology and the length of scripture between the flood and the TOB, I'd guess maybe a few thousand years. Maybe. I think the flood was probably 15,000 years ago based on our understanding of when a post glacial outburst flood may have occured. Humans scattered from before that event would have been wiped out. How far did they get around the globe in say a maximum of 3k years.

I don't have a good understanding of anthopology, at all, so I could be missing some evidence from my viewpoint. But I never considered the TOB to be a sticking point