So I’ve been looking at history books and comparing events from the Bible and there are some clues on dates and events. Finally, after a few years, I’ve decided to write them down instead of having to check the same things over and over again. Starting with the OT and the beginning(the creation), I will to write my thoughts on how biblical accounts relate to historical events.
Gensis 1: God creates the world in 7 days complete with land, seas, air, animals, and humans.
History: Pre-history is always a bit sketchy and from scientific data, the sun formed from stardust and the planets formed from whatever was left over. Earth had a collision with another Mar-sized body which re-formed the core and also formed the moon from the debris. The age for the Earth is around 4.6 billion years with signs of life appearing around 4 billion years ago. However, the formation of the Universe(or as a part of the multi-verse), is still not well explained. In theory the Universe just appeared out of nowhere sometime between 12-15 billion years ago in a single instant, all the matter in the Universe just appeared out of nowhere. There are many different theories to explain this, but none of them have really satisfied me. After looking at it for many years, I decided several years ago that to believe in the divine was just as reasonable, if not more reasonable, that believing in one of those theories. There are also too many things in the Universe, both known and unknown that will never be able to be explained by science and for that, the only answer is to look to the divine.
Also, Moses wrote the first chapters of the bible and the bible has to be able to be understood through all generations. Explaining to ancient people about the Big Bang and the creation of the solar system as well as genetics would have been far beyond the scope of understanding for people in those days. My personal belief has always been that God instructed Moses to write down the story of creation as an allegory of what he really did. The successive creation of animals was actually the mystery of what we call “evolution” that humans were bound to discover later. For me personally, the Bible, up to the point of perhaps Abraham, was allegorical instead of literal.
Genesis 6: The flood sent by God in the time of Noah destroyed all life on earth except for what was on the Ark.
History: The flood is hard to explain from a historical context because it is still in pre-historical times but if you read ancient history and paleontology there are a few things that it might historically relate to. There have been several mass extinctions in the history of the earth. The last of five great extinctions since multi-celled organisms evolved was the K-T extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. Although, not the greatest of the extinctions in earth’s history, this one did kill off roughly 70% of all living species. The next two that come close are the Eocene Maxima and the end of the last Ice Age. However, neither of those events killed off enough species to be considered a “mass extinction”. Also rampant flooding was not the primary cause of any of these extinctions and every one of them, except the end of the last ice age, far predates humans arriving on earth. Therefore we have to look for a much more recent explanation. There was an epic flood around 5000-6000 years ago around the area of the fertile crescent. This area was used to seeing floods, but this one was far worse than all the others. Many died in an event that happened at this magnitude perhaps once every millenia, if not less often. Other ancient manuscripts and tales such as the tale of Gilgamesh(written perhaps as early as 2000BC, around the time of perhaps Isaac in biblical terms) also speak of a great flood that caused much dying in the region. However, unlike the Bible, it was a global event, not a local event and instead of the mountains of Ararat, Sumerian tales seem to put the final destination of any floating survivors to the Sea(its either the Caspian or the Mediterranean, I forgot which one). However, not everyone in the region died, although it may have seemed like to to anyone floating on a raft in the middle of the waters.
However, even this flood does not seem big enough to warrant a story of the magnitude of Noah’s flood. There is another flood farther back in time that was even bigger in scale. That Flood did indeed kill everything within the immediate vicinity of it and to observers in that particular valley, would have certainly looked like the heavens pouring out its watery wrath.
This flood occurred in the black sea between 7,500 years ago and 10,000 years ago when the Bosporus Straight burst and the Mediterranean Sea poured its waters into a large Freshwater Lake and effectively turned it into the Black Sea within a short period of time. There was no escaping this flood, unless of course, you happen to be on a large Arc at this time. Both geographically and magnitude wise, this flood makes sense in explanation the biblical flood. Although it was local and not global, to all witnesses in the valley at the time, it would have seemed global.
As I have stated that most of the bible up to the point of Abraham to be is God’s allegorical and not Literal explanation to Moses of what happened, these theories are my starting points of my reconciliation of the Bible with Historical records.
What Congressmen Do
I think this meme I made explains it pretty well.