New with questions!

[timewalker]

Greetings to all! Thank you to our host for creating such a wonderful forum!

Now...I am doing research for a novel using 2600 BC as the story world. Since this is pre-flood, there isn't much to go on. I had hoped to stumble upon speculation from Creation scientist, but most of what I have found deals with the flood.

If anyone has any recommendations, websites, articles, etc. that could shed some light, I would be most grateful!
Some of the questions I am seeking answers to:

1.) Were the Egyptian 3rd through 6th Dynasty pyramids and other cycloptic stone structures around the world built prior to the flood?
2.) Did the Mediterranean Sea exist prior to the flood?

3.) Where was Eden (can of worms!)?

4.) Were dinosaurs present when Noah started building the arc? I've read so many different opinions on this subject that I'm totally confused!

5.) Is proto-Sumerian what my Time Travelers should be studying?

6.) What questions should I be asking?

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

[firestorm78583]

Welcome.
Since you mentioned the flood, I suggest reading Many Waters by Madelyn L'Engle. It had an interesting take on the pre-flood world.

As far as edn is concerned, many believe that its original location is current-day Iraq.

[Kessie]

Oooh! Oooh! This is only like my all-time favorite topic!

For some really far-out Creationist musings, try here:

s8int.com

And the blog:

s8int.com/WordPress/

I'd especially love to read a book that touches on atomic power (and wars) in the preflood world. They did find that nuclear reactor buried in the uranium mine, and the evolutionists tried to claim it was a naturally-occurring formation. Because nuclear breeder-reactors totally occur all the time in nature.

There's also www.genesispark.com/ which has some pretty good stuff about dinosaurs living with man.

For hot topics answered by cool young creationists, there's www.drdino.com/ .

Here's my personal knee-jerk answers to your questions:

1.) Were the Egyptian 3rd through 6th Dynasty pyramids and other cycloptic stone structures around the world built prior to the flood?

Speculation has it that the Great Pyramid at Giza is preflood, because of the way the stones are laid so perfectly, to the point where it's widely believed that aliens built it. There's speculation that the sphinx was, too, because even the Egyptians weren't sure who built it, but you'd have to research that.


2.) Did the Mediterranean Sea exist prior to the flood?

I don't know.

3.) Where was Eden (can of worms!)?

I heard someone speculate once that Eden is where Jerusalem is now, and that's one reason why all the powers of man, angels and demons are at war over that spot. No evidence for it, just an idea.

4.) Were dinosaurs present when Noah started building the arc? I've read so many different opinions on this subject that I'm totally confused!

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. He took 'em on the Ark and they ran around with man until a few hundred years ago, when we finally killed off the last of the dragons. Then we found dinosaur bones and decided that dinosaurs couldn't ever be the same thing as the dragons we've had around for thousands of years.

5.) Is proto-Sumerian what my Time Travelers should be studying?

Again, not sure. Although try googling the "Ica stones" and look at the image search. All kinds of provocative things etched on those. People scream that they're fake, but if so, they were faked in the 40s when we didn't know a lot of the things that are on those stones. Plus there's over 11,000 of them, which is a lot for the one guy to fake.

[timewalker]

Thank you both!Kessie, here's a website you might find interest: www.gira.ca/HTML/articles/13-2/ArchaeologicalEvidencesof.html

It is mostly about ancient stone structures. I found the information fascinating. I really perked up by the following statement:

About 300 miles westward from the coast of Peru is Easter Island. Here are located several hundred colossal statues carved out of hard volcanic rock. They are between 10 and 66 feet high, and weigh as much as 50 tons. Originally they wore hats that weighed more than 10 tons each. The eyes of these statues radiate an aura of transcendent wisdom and eeriness akin to the Sphinx.
Recent excavations have discovered hidden caves containing decayed remains of tablets, wooden images, and small wooden sculptures. The tablets are covered with finely carved and stylized figures, which seem to be a form of picture writing. To date no one has been able to translate any of the tablets, and no satisfactory method of interpreting the symbols has been found.

What if that were the original language written on these tablets! Wouldn't that be fun. Anyway, I'm considering using that line of reasoning in my story...

Thanks again for the links, I will check them out!!!

[Kessie]

That would be very cool, if those tablets were the original Edanic language.

My only problem with that website is that it automatically supposes that pre-flood civilizations were some sort of advanced stone-age, even though they had modern manufacturing techniques. Nobody dares to imagine that the preflood world was anything other than stone/iron/bronze age. I tell you what, reading about that nuclear reactor (and ancient writings of people in India praying to their gods to be saved from the burning white light that makes clouds that open on top of each other, mushroom-cloud-like) ... it really revises your opinion of what the world was like, that God was sorry he had made mankind.

[timewalker]

You are right! It's annoying, mesolithic blah, blah, blah! Like my dear departed mother told me, you eat the meat but throw the bones away! How those evolutionists love bones. :-) If they could just get their dates correct.

You definitely have me intrigued about a nuclear reactor! I shall dive into that now!

[yoda47]

Dec 24, 2011 0:53:57 GMT -5 timewalker said:

Greetings to all! Thank you to our host for creating such a wonderful forum!

Now...I am doing research for a novel using 2600 BC as the story world. Since this is pre-flood, there isn't much to go on. I had hoped to stumble upon speculation from Creation scientist, but most of what I have found deals with the flood.

If anyone has any recommendations, websites, articles, etc. that could shed some light, I would be most grateful!
Some of the questions I am seeking answers to:

1.) Were the Egyptian 3rd through 6th Dynasty pyramids and other cycloptic stone structures around the world built prior to the flood?

They are probably post- flood. a global food would wipe out all of that kind of thing. (see next question)

2.) Did the Mediterranean Sea exist prior to the flood?

again, probably not. There was most likely only one continent before the flood, and it split during the flood. most geologic formations we see today were formed by the flood. there was also most likely one global climate before the flood, no mountians, as we think of them, no coal beds, and possibly diffrent types of rocks.


3.) Where was Eden (can of worms!)?

can of worms is right. possibly in modern day Iraq, but if there was continental splitting, and massive geologic change, it's location most likely doesn't exist anymore.


4.) Were dinosaurs present when Noah started building the arc? I've read so many different opinions on this subject that I'm totally confused!

of course they were! Job was after the flood, and it mentions dinosaurs.

5.) Is proto-Sumerian what my Time Travelers should be studying?

possibly. possibly early Hebrew too. Babble a
was after the food, so it's hard to tell which language was the origional, or if the origional language was scrambled itself.

I guess Hebrew as one of the possibilities because that's what the bible was written in, though we aren't told for sure, so use your imagination here...

6.) What questions should I be asking?

those are good ones....

also, depending on how close to the flood you're traveling too, the bible says the world was so wicked that God wanted to destroy all of it...

so.. A. imagine how bad the world is now, and amplify that. B. the pre-flood world could have been vastly diffrent than it is now.

think about including all kinds of extinct animals.

the bible says there were giants...

it also mentions the Nepilium, the "sons of god", without giving us details about what that means...

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

As to resources...

answers in Genesis

the institiut for creation reaserch

Books:

the genesis flood (yes, mostly about the flood, but some possibilities for before too)

The puzzle of anctient man

[birdnerd]

1.) Were the Egyptian 3rd through 6th Dynasty pyramids and other cycloptic stone structures around the world built prior to the flood?

Some suggest that yes, some of those may have been pre-Flood. Me? Pfft! I dunno.

2.) Did the Mediterranean Sea exist prior to the flood?

The Flood would have radically changed the landscape. No telling. Massive erosion and so on.

3.) Where was Eden (can of worms!)?

Many suggest that it was near/in Iraq, 'tween the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

4.) Were dinosaurs present when Noah started building the arc? I've read so many different opinions on this subject that I'm totally confused!

Dinosaurs are just really large lizards with interesting characteristics. Reptiles don't stop growing, so if you had a really old reptile (remember pre-Flood, folks made it into the 900s), I suspect you could end up with dinosaur-sized things.

Another thing to keep in mind about dinosaurs. There aren't many intact skeletons. Most of the bones found are in disjointed heaps of multiple critters. In many cases, folks are guessing about what these critters look like.

5.) Is proto-Sumerian what my Time Travelers should be studying?

No idea...

6.) What questions should I be asking?

No idea there, either.

Here's another source or two:

www.drdino.com/

www.creationsciencetoday.com/index.html

[Kessie]

It's such a relief to be on a forum with other Christians. On the forum I used to run, asking questions remotely related to this topic resulted in 100+ post flamewar topics.

[fluke]

>5.) Is proto-Sumerian what my Time Travelers should be studying?

I'd go with proto-Hebrew, but I have one of the few copies of anything that has been done on that topic and you have to have some background in Hebrew to work in it. Nothing has been found written in PH--it can only be deduced from studying Biblical Hebrew's patterns. My first Hebrew professor lent me his dissertation on it to copy.

Proto Hebrew differs from Biblical in that its verbs had 2 consonants in their root form instead of three.

I second Puzzle of Ancient Man. Great book.

[fluke]

Oh! Just had a thought on how you can have your time travelers realistically studying the language. They can be unsure of the language themselves, so they study several related languages from as close to the time as they can and look for patterns to extrapolate backwards.

Early Semitic languages are what I would look into in their situation--Ugaritic, Akkadian, Ge'ez, Biblical Hebrew, Imperial Aramaic, Phoenician, Caananite, and Ammorite. Some of these exist only in remains of proper names (Sumerian is actually not a Semitic language but influenced Akkadian. Sumerian is an isolated language which means it has no known relatives). Some differences are like Aramaic using a Th sound in some places where Hebrew uses an Sh, thus Thekel instead of Shekel. Aramaic uses an n where Hebrew uses m. Aramaic puts the definite article as a suffix on the word instead of Hebrew's prefix.

[waldenwriter]

I think as far as Eden is concerned, no one knows precisely where it is or was. However, we are given a clue in Genesis with the four rivers that are mentioned as flowing nearby. The Tigris and the Euphrates are two of them, and those are in the Fertile Crescent/Mesapotamia area (roughly about where Iraq and Iran are today). The other two rivers mentioned are the Pishon and the Gihon, and scholars are unsure where those are. The Gihon river, however, is said to have "flowed around the whole land of Cush," and I think it's speculated that Cush was somewhere in Africa, maybe Ethiopia (which fits with the worldview in Greek mythology of the southernmost area of the known world being Ethiopia). I think I have also heard a story, however, about Eden being in Sri Lanka, though I don't know where I heard that.

There is evidence in the Bible of great natural resources in the Eden area as well, since gold is mentioned as being present, as well as bdellium and onyx.

The pre-flood people (a.k.a. antediluvians) were definitely a metal-using race; Genesis 4:22 says Lamech's son Tubal-Cain "was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron." Other Bible translations seem to clarify that he was the first person to do so.

It might be worth looking at Sumerian texts, however. The flood story in Genesis has been found to have parallels in the Sumerian flood story and the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics. (The Ancient Greek flood myth is also quite similar, but that of course was probably written much later). The Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies have also been found to be similar to a Sumerian list of kings from about 1900 B.C. Though my study Bible (which I am consulting right now) says this may be because Moses, who wrote Genesis, was writing much later, in the second millennium B.C., around the 1500's or 1300's B.C. (the variance in dates here probably has to do with the ongoing debate about when exactly the Exodus happened).

Anyway, just wanted to contribute to the discussion!

Edit: About the Egypt question - the third to sixth dynasties would be the entire Old Kingdom era, about 2688-2181 B.C. So I'm not sure about the pyramids. It's possible that the Third Dynasty ones were built but not the Sixth Dynasty ones. On the other hand, the pyramids survive to this day, and if they were built pre-flood one might assume they'd be destroyed, right? (But then, high mountains like Ararat survived too).

Not sure about the Mediterranean Sea; the whole Pangaea theory (which states that all the continents were once connected land-wise and broke apart later) would probably suggest that it didn't exist initially.

[Kessie]

There's a book called After the Flood by Bill Cooper:
www.amazon.com/After-Flood-Post-flood-History-Europe/dp/187436740X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324922856&sr=8-2

He took that table of nations, that first genealogy after Noah, and traced them to all the kings of Europe. It's hugely interesting.

The Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies have also been found to be similar to a Sumerian list of kings from about 1900 B.C. Though my study Bible (which I am consulting right now) says this may be because Moses, who wrote Genesis, was writing much later, in the second millennium B.C., around the 1500's or 1300's B.C. (the variance in dates here probably has to do with the ongoing debate about when exactly the Exodus happened).

Just a minor quibble here. Moses didn't write Genesis, he only edited it. If you go through the first few chapters of Genesis, there will be this little phrase, "These are the generations of Adam" or Seth or Noah. That's each author's signature. The creation story has God's signature at the end. (I think it's the phrase "this is the account of how everything was made" or something similar).

That's why there's that phrase, "There were giants on the earth in those days (and also after that)", the parenthesis being probably inserted by Moses. Moses and company had to deal with giants like Ai, who had the giant metal bed that went into a museum.

Sorry, I don't mean to argue. We made an exhaustive study of Genesis over the years and I have all these odd factoids stuck in my head. :-)

[timewalker]

Imagine living over 900 years! If you or I were over 900 years old we would remember the fall of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire in 1473! Adam died during the life of Lamech, Noah's grandfather. Abramham was in his seventies when Noah died! So it is very easy to see how either verbal or written history was passed down to Moses.

www.greeklatinaudio.com/oldlang.htm

www.khouse.org/articles/2000/284/#notes

Two articles that and fluke have helped me choose...proto Hebrew it is! My time traviling characters will hit the ground...talking!

I am also planning on using the site of Jerusalem as the location for the Garden of Eden. More on that later...

[Kessie]

You're using Chuck Missler!

*fangirl pompoms*