Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Sodom and Gomorrah and the Dead Sea
Harzel:
It has existed for millions of years, although its size varied considerably.
Brianroy:
--- Quote from: Zelhar on April 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM ---It has existed for millions of years, although its size varied considerably.
--- End quote ---
Zelhar,
If the Dead Sea has existed for millions of years, how old is the Earth?
Exactly how many millions of years has the Dead Sea existed by comparison?
Who are the geologic sources for that assessment? What specific radioactive tests were used to determine the age of what you claim?
Do you think the Bible teaches how old the Earth is or makes allowance for the age you claim?
When you say the Dead Sea size has varied considerably, by how much in terms of length and width are you saying?
Is that number consistent with Josephus or based on another source?
Or is it only that size seen in modern times since the mid to late 1800s onward to our current day?
Thanks
Brianroy:
Earlier, I posted that I believe Moses to be about 9 feet tall, and that this added somewhat to his view from Pisgah at Mount Nebo looking south to the Dead Sea to see Zoar in the southerly direction, which I believe was probably the northmost tip of the Lisan Peninsula, not just Masada but a very slight little more to the south of that by a fraction of a degree.
From Ezekiel's Day and prior, I am of the belief, that the cubit usually retained the 21 inch value, whereas later, by the Roman occupation of Israel period, it had then reduced to 18 inches. So I approach the height in that perspective.
In all the Tanakh, not just the Torah but all the Hebrew Scriptures, the largest human ever known to be in existence was Og of Bashan, whose bed was 9 twenty-one inch cubits long and 4 twenty-one inch cubits wide.
In other words 189" long = 17' 4" and 84" wide = 7’.
If we make an allowance of at least one foot at the head and at the feet, Og was about 15 feet tall, the tallest human that we know of to have ever walked the Earth. However, Scripture calls Og the remnant of the giants; and this means that others at least equal to, and almost undoubtedly many even taller than he, preceded him.
So when we read Genesis 6, we are to understand that by GIANTS, if we take the literal sense of the use of how the word Nephillim (the fallen ones) is employed to giant men like Goliath and Og and apparently others, then in that literal sense we are talking generally about statures of roughly between 8 to 11 feet or more in height.
There may be questions as to if or not the true intent of when books of Enoch and Jubilee offers a number of 200 angels or defers to such beings, if the number should have associated with 200 giants (instead of angels) that perished (instead of being sent to the Abyss) according to those writings.
The next tallest that we know of in specificity after Og of Bashan, is Goliath, which 1 Samuel 17:4 lists as a height of 6 twenty-one inch cubits and 1 Zereth (a large span, equal to 1/2 a cubit). That comes to 126" plus 10.5" for a total of 136.5" or a height of 11' 6 1/2".
In modern times, Robert Pershing Wadlow in 1940, shortly before his death at the young age of 22, reached a height
http://www.maniacworld.com/robert-wadlow-picture-2.htm
http://www.maniacworld.com/robert-wadlow-picture-7.htm
which I attribute as equal to that ascribed to Moses: that of 8'9".
Affirmation to the height of Moses:
In Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, 2.9.6
we read that
"G-D did give him that tallness. [beginning] when he was but 3 years old, as was wonderful."
Moses -- according to my research and calculations affirmed by the Tanakh, Josephus, ancient Greeks (to within a 25 -30 year margin of error dating to the 16th Century B.C., the Greeks using 10 month calendars pre-Cyrus I) -- was born in 1631 B.C., and he was 3 years old in 1628 B.C. From that age he grew into (what for us in our days is) an awesome tallness not attributed to any other Hebrew up to that time, and taller than even King Saul more than 600 years later. It was because Moses reached such a great height and stature that he was able to be reckoned as one of the Assyrian Hyksos or Shepherd Kings that ruled Egypt in what is generally reckoned as the 16th dynasty of Egypt.
In Berachot 54b ( see end-note 10 cited at relevant quote to read...editor end-note presumes a height of 15 feet to Moses.)
http://halakhah.com/berakoth/berakoth_54.html
the rabbis hold the tradition that Moses the Law-giver stood at a height of 10 Cubits, but in fact, what was likely meant was a height of 10 (I reckon as Ezekiel ) zereths @ 105" or 8' 9".
To say that a height of 10 Roman era cubits 15 feet or even 17' 6" of 10 Ezekiel and pre-Ezekiel era cubits was the intent of Berachot 54b seems very unlikely to have been the intent kept by Talmud, when 10 half cubits using 10 as a perfect measure of the Law (i.e., enveloped within the 10 Commandments) was meant. Clearly, in Scripture, Og was listed as the last of the remnants of the what appears to separate the true giants from the giants (since Moses is the one who is writing this passage of Deuteronomy 3:11), and Og's height had to therefore be so impressive, that no other could stand anywhere near as tall against him. Had this not been so, Og would simply have been either have been compared to being but the same or about the same height as Moses, or his height of no mention at all. Instead, Og himself was so awesome in height, he even made other giants among men -- even those like Moses at 8' 9" and near our day, Robert Pershing Wadlow in 1940 A.D. -- look small.
Thus, for such reasons as these, I believe Moses was likely 8'9" or about 9 feet, and considered a giant (as stated by Josephus in his historical writings). And that slight extra height might make the difference needed to see the tip of the Lisan from Pisgah. But again, I can only go off of Google Earth software, and have never been to Pisgah (and would have to with a step-ladder) to make the necessary observations, in the maybe someday kind of future. Anyone been to Mount Nebo and Pisgah to look at the land of Israel and the Southern Dead Sea area?
Harzel:
--- Quote from: Brianroy on April 06, 2013, 03:23:28 PM ---
Zelhar,
If the Dead Sea has existed for millions of years, how old is the Earth?
Exactly how many millions of years has the Dead Sea existed by comparison?
Who are the geologic sources for that assessment? What specific radioactive tests were used to determine the age of what you claim?
Do you think the Bible teaches how old the Earth is or makes allowance for the age you claim?
When you say the Dead Sea size has varied considerably, by how much in terms of length and width are you saying?
Is that number consistent with Josephus or based on another source?
Or is it only that size seen in modern times since the mid to late 1800s onward to our current day?
Thanks
--- End quote ---
I am not a geology expert. But as far as I am concerned the geological age of the earth and of specific landscapes is scientific and a good approximation, much better then any estimate you get from trying to interpret the bible which has little to no concern with science.
I see in wikipedia the dead sea is estimated to be 2 million years old, because that is the estimated age of the barrier between the Mediterranean and the Jordan valley. It mentions that in biblical times the water levels were as much as 70 meters higher and between 400 to 1000 ce there was a dry period a sharp drop in water levels.
The sources I believe most are geological evidence. Water levels, sediments etc. is something that can be measured. We don't need ancient maps and scrolls to find it out. Though it is interesting to check historical accounts as well.
Brianroy:
There is a debate that Creation Scientists and Evolutionist / or usually Atheistic Scientists are engaging in about the age of the earth. One of the quickest ways to dispel the age of the earth as billions of years old is to realize that, like the hockey Stick manipulation of data at Penn State to create a false conclusion of irreversible global warming, so too is the regular propaganda multi-generationally ingrained propaganda that Bible haters regularly promote in defying the data and the laws of Science just to give them and humanity an excuse to disregard the Bible and G-D Almighty.
The 18 January 749 A.D. earthquake of the Dead Sea area (mentioned in places like http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/8/665 )
damaged certain strata by enduring "boulder bearing flash floods" as well as an earthquake...and such damage often alters reconstructive geologic timelines of erosions of many tens of thousands of years into a single week, but are never attributed or given the proper chronological error adjustment. The only reason that any mention of this earthquake is given, is because the only differences between the more ancient buildings and those built since the late 700s in the Dead Sea area appears to be simply alluvium and lake deposits...something that is never considered into the projections of a simple strata hillside or trench dating projection. Hence, a town on the same lakeside or hill or mountain elevation but a mile away, can be projected as thousands of years old...while the same strata examined at the same elevation where no town is built, can be projected as tens of thousands or millions of years old, even though both were likely silted up and covered at the same time, by the same storms or natural means.
Let us take how that secularists of "Science" intentionally mislead the general public about the age of the earth as 1.5 to as high as 6 billion years. I am enclosing a pdf. link to an abstract on Helium diffusion, by which when you read it, you may conclude also that evolutionists have altered the laws of nature to create a non-existent condition in nature to get a false ancient age of the Earth they can never have gotten honestly; for they then must make up a number that could be any multiple billions of years subjective number that they want the Earth to be, even as high as 50 billion years if they wished to use that number.
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Helium_lo_res.pdf
In using the same experiment and under similar conditions, Creationists duplicated the experiment and found that the rate of nuclear decay, whether it is helium or lead diffusing out of zircons, puts the age of the Earth at a maximum of 8,000 years or so, using and being faithful to the laws of science, which especially require that this experiment can be duplicated over and over and over to the same results and same consistent conclusions, which the Evolutionist manipulations cannot accomplish.
SCIENCE magazine, 1983, Article: Keith and Anderson's 'Radiocarbon dating: Fictitious results with Mollusk Shells' (August 16, vol. 141, No. 3581, pp. 634-636) showed that Mollusks could generate fictitious results of Carbon-14 dating by up to 3000 years, depending on what muddy river bottom they were feeding off of. And if river mud can alter mollusk Carbon-14 dating...in what other living creatures or once living organisms could they affect? Could deer or other animal antler growth, for example, reflect this in C-14 data? Strangely enough, this very example done in 1957 is often used in debates between young and old earth advocates, even though 3 stages of the same antler growth reflects a difference of some 5,000 years in C-14.
Carbon 14 dates after a calculable rate of how much ultra-violet radiation the earth is NOW receiving. It is a radio-active compound that is generated in the upper atmosphere and drops down to Earth.
Carbon 14, is a by-product of 12 and 13 when the sun hits it, and is created in the upper atmosphere. In effect, all relevant dative testing of antiquity, for the evolutionist, is using radioactive nuclei.
When Carbon 14 decays, it becomes nitrogen-14.
Adjust the Carbon 14 from the population explosion in the late 1800s A.D. and the ensuing atmospheric pollutants generated, (because of the Industrial revolution), and you decrease the graphing accuracy.
If you have a lot of volcanic activity, and the atmosphere produces high concentrations of Carbon 14. Think Krakatoa and Mount St. Helen's, for example.
Again, throwing every smooth chart of calculation out of whack. The further back you go with carbon 14 dating, the less accurate it becomes.
At 5700 years, Carbon 14 it is at said to be at 50%, or now naturally dissipating! The general margin of error is said to be calculable and correctable to no greater than 2300 years, and then it -- Carbon 14 dating -- is unreliable. But the fact is, even ignoring our altering the atmosphere of the Earth in the last 150 plus years, Carbon 14 appears to have only a best case scenario of a 26% failure rate for testing...a success rate of 74% for Carbon 14 at its best? No certainty about that low of a "success" rate.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Or what of Potassium-argon?
The Potassium-argon method was most famously used to date human bones to push forth the theory of evolution. Potassium-40 has a half life that is alleged to be in the area of 1.25 - 1.33 billion years, or something like that, and will decay into Argon. But there was some kind of backlash back around the mid - late 1980s when the scandal broke out that all potassium-argon dating was ruled unreliable, and all conclusions relating to it were to be discarded.
However, no evolutionist has a list of failed rulings to dismiss...all past theories, broken or not are accepted as if perfect and relevant, no matter how unethical or unscientific... because "evolution" has no ethics in science.
Carbon-14 dating often is used to exceed the life of its own analysis of no more than 5700 years, and clearly conflicts with a correct use of Helium/Zircon dating, which gives the Earth a life of a number we may generally accept shows as that of around 6,000 to 8,000 years.
Then there’s also an equal life isotope to Potassium-40 in Rubidium-87 that decays into Strontium-87, and the radioactivity descends into an unchartable life (as in billions of years) except through subjectivism (whatever bias one wishes to insert based on any rationale they wish to use, to get whatever number they wish to achieve). .
There are many other examples that can be used to dismiss an Earth older than 80,000 years in Science, let alone older than 8,000 years, but I wish to stay on point about Sodom and Gomorrah and the Dead Sea area. But it is an alternative, that if you have a desire to, you might wish to look into, because it forces us to re-evaluate if what we know is really what we know, or if it is what we presumed on a misplaced trust upon human beings seeking their own agenda rather than fidelity to facts and truth as they really are.
Thanks for the reply and the reasons you gave to why you thought what you wrote.
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