Good finds, Conina.

Here's one of the verses I was mentioning. (I don't like the KJV but it dates back hundreds of years)

Isaiah 40:22

King James Version (KJV)

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in...

It's in Psalms, Job, and I think Isaiah as wee, but I can't place the references right now. And five minutes before midnight is too late for me to do the research.

The reason I am up this late is that I was in Mexico to celebrate a friend who is not only the first in her family history to graduate high school but also college. During the party, I listened to a 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Adendnego' story from another friend, whom I have know for 20+ years since I was a little kid.

Just briefly for the background, Juarez, Mexico has been in the midst of a horrific drug cartel war for 3+ years. The cartel's enforcer gangs have gone out of control in the anarchy that took over the city. Robbery, extortions, car thefts, and murders are beyond common activities that happen these days. Over 500k have fled the violence in a city that used to be 2 1/2 million. And nobody is really safe with the absolue lawless criminals.

Well here is the story. Back in May of this year, a church service was approaching the end of the service. Lots of people were coming to the alter and praying. Three hoodlooms entered the church. One covered the door. The second had a knife and started demanding wallets, cell phones, computers...anything of value. And the third, covering his face with the open hoodie pointed a gun at the pastor, literally within half an arm's reach. The pastor reached out, pointing his finger at the crook, and declared "In the name of the Holy Ghost". Both the pastor's hand and the gun were passed each other, the two were that close. The pastor saw the gunman squeeze the trigger and nothing happened. The gunman lowered his weapon and slowly walked away. As the second guy continued to rob the church, the gunman returned four more times and tried the same thing. The pastor had the same response. Eventually all three left and split. The gunman was caught after a gun battle with Mexican police just two blocks away and is now in prison. The other two have not been heard from. My friend tells me this is not just a story. This is absolute, literal fact, because he was the pastor.

I tell this story, not to ask if we have the kind of faith we see here, but to get us to think, what would we do if confronted with a situation where our lives were truly threatened? This friend truly thought his time was up, but God preserved him for some unfullfilled purpose. What would you say if a gunman burst into your church or your school (which has happened in America) and puts his weapon to your face? Would you trust the Lord to be your protection? Would you still trust him, even if he did not? This story blew me away, even though I understand what he went through. I've had my life threatened because of my faith. Those that know my encounter with the demonic know what I am talking about. What would you do? I mostly want to get you to think with this post.

Here is another verse that supports the concept of a spherical earth. I'm not sure what people on this thread think of Job. Its one of my favorite books in the Bible. I was going to bring up the creation account in Job but will save that for another time.

Job 26:7
He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing. NIV

^ I don't think of that verse as evidence of a spherical earth. From my understanding, flat-earthers didn't believe the earth was infinitely thick, because other wise the sun wouldn't be able to travel underneath the earth and rise again on the other side the next morning. They rather thought that the earth was a giant disc of dirt, shaped rather like a frisbee, suspended in the air by a force such as God.

Not tune out. I will try to listen to anything that anyone has to say. But I refuse to join in the cry and call someone a heretic just because their interpretation of data is different than mine.

I think I understand, and I definitely agree. Some of the people in my church are quick to call someone a heretic when they disagree with them on something pretty minor. Nevertheless, I do believe that there are plenty of heretics misleading the church.
It often seems to me that in my church we spend a lot more time squabbling over little things in the scriptures, than worshiping God, or preaching his word, and that troubles me. Remember what it's all about, people!!

@MinotaurforAslan, Or it could be neutral. What I'm trying to get at is that it is impossible for people to approach the Bible without the lenses of their own world view.

For example, when I read Job 26:7, I imagine a round earth suspended in the universe because that is how I think it is already. And then I take this verse on as evidence that the Bible is also saying this. (edit) What's dangerous is when people do this without an awareness that they are coming with their own ideas (maybe from things their Sunday school or elementary teacher told them or something their mother said that stuck with them) this and then attack others who get a different view from the Bible.

Some of the people in my church are quick to call someone a heretic when they disagree with them on something pretty minor. Nevertheless, I do believe that there are plenty of heretics misleading the church.
It often seems to me that in my church we spend a lot more time squabbling over little things in the scriptures, than worshiping God, or preaching his word, and that troubles me. Remember what it's all about, people!!

You're right, I am pushing for a very open-minded view, when in some cases we are supposed to guard are minds. But I think more often than not, its better to be kind.

The whole Bible is one gigantic epic story. It has a beginning, a Villain, a people to rescue, a self-sacrificing hero, and a spectacular showdown before the end. If Genesis 1-11 was a counter to Babylonian myths, then the actual Bible would really start in Genesis 12 with Abraham. And more complicated than that are the multitude of references within the Old Testament to creation and the Flood, who treat is a literal and historical.

Perhaps you might be right to say the point at which the Bible really comes down to the nitty gritty is Abraham's story in Genesis 12 and thereafter. But I don't think that the writing of the Bible is as simple as that or as straightforward.

There definitely were bits of the Bible which were written well before the Babylonian captivity. Kings and Chronicles, for instance, which would have been written in the time of Solomon and subsequently, since he at least had access to Phoenicia and its new way of writing, started about that time. Possibly 1 & 2 Samuel, Ruth, Judges, perhaps, Job, Psalms, Proverbes, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. We know that at least one of the five books of the Torah -usually believed to be Deuteronomy - was found in Solomon's Temple, when Josiah, was king because that was part of his story, and his reason for repentance and for refurbishing the Temple. And Biblical archaeologists have said that bits of Exodus are the oldest bits of the Bible, written well before the establishment of the Hebrew state.

There is good reason to think that when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem so traumatically that the priests and prophets around, maybe Jeremiah, himself, had the presence of mind to save some or all of these writings for posterity. Much as people would save their family photographs and important documents in a crisis. Jeremiah, himself, contributed 2 books to the Bible: his eponymous one and Lamentations.

Other bits may have been passed down through oral stories. That would explain why in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis we have two almost contradictory stories. On the whole I prefer Genesis 1-11 which gives the overview, rather than the more detailed Chapter 2 which might have been the original legendary version. We have to realise also that Northern Israel probably had a different tradition to that of the more establised Judah.

It stands to reason that the bulk of the rest of the Old Testament was written in the years between the rise of Assyria and its subsequent demolition of Samaria in 722 BC and even after the Babylonian captivity when the Israelites of Judah returned to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. In the Bible - and you can find the exact passages - Ezra read the Torah to his returning flock as one of the first things he did.

There is a good reason why there are so many flood legends, especially around the Mediterranean, and why Genesis would have one also, whether it had been written down or whether extrapolated from an oral tradition. There really have been devastating floods and much geological instability around the Mediterranean, causing earthquakes and tsunamis every bit as overwhelming and devastating as the 2004 Boxing Day or this year's Japanese tsunamis. Perhaps considerably worse in their impact.

Think about Thera, now called Santorini, why the civilization of Crete foundered, why the related Philistines came to Israel, etc. Think about the movement of continents and the break up of ice ages. Some time ago I watched a program discussing a slippage on the side of Etna which surmised that such a slippage would have caused a tsunami which would have flooded not only the coastline of present day Israel but well inland. And yes, apparently by diving archaeologists did find an underwater village. And more.

There is a good reason to include the story of the Flood. This story says so much, not just about floods, but also about the linguistic and maybe ethnic relationships of the Hebrews with the Canaanites, their close cousins the Phoenicians of Lebanon, the Carthaginians of what is now Tunisia and Libya, the Coptic Egyptians, Arabians and the Assyrians many of whom are still with us, though their original languages have been swamped by the dominant Arabic language.

And you are right. Whatever happened the result was an incredible overall unity.

The problem though with archaeology is that if anyone hypothesizes anything from the Bible, doubt will be cast on it and their professionalism will be questioned. On the other hand, if there is confirmation from an outside source, say Merneptah or Sennacherib who also kept annals, then any finds are finds indeed.

I hope you realize I posted that as one of the interpretations of how Genesis 1-11 came about. I personally do not agree with it, because it completely changes what is said about Creation and as well as the Flood. As for the Flood, I have no doubts that tsunamis such as perhaps the slide of Etna or the collapse of the isthmus in Turkey that filled the Black Sea would have happened. However, I do know for certain that events such as these did not occur with Noah's Flood. The facts in the Bible do not line up with these theories. I believe those theories happened post-Flood and what we have discovered would still be true.

And yes, I also am greatly disappointed that if anything related to the Bible is located, doubt and critics abound, but anything not related to the Bible is highly praised. The Bible is still from a scientific, historical, and archeological POV is still the most reliable ancient document in the world.

Pardon me if I steer a little far from the current subject in this post, but Fencer said something that I really would like to address.

The Bible is still from a scientific, historical, and archeological POV is still the most reliable ancient document in the world.

What about the Tower of Babel (the third major pre-Abrahamic legend after Creation and the Flood)? Is the Bible's tale of how the people of the world came to have different languages historically accurate? I doubt it.

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

A few points here:

• 1. Since this story took place after Noah's flood, and all the continents had been moved into their current positions, how did people manage to get all the way to places like Australia and the Americas? More importantly, why would they want to migrate that far away? The world didn't start having even the slightest hint of population crowding until very recently, there would have been plenty of room for all the people in the world in Europe, West Asia and Africa alone. A great migration trip from the Middle East to the Americas just to be away from enemies seems implausible. (The scientific explanation for this is 15,000 years ago, there was an Ice Age that caused the climate to drastically change over a period of just a few hundred years. This created natural land bridges such as the Bering Strait from present-day Russia to Alaska, and the migrational patterns of major food sources like mammoths and other things due to the climate caused humans to follow them to various parts of the earth. This makes much more sense to me than all of the people scattering around the world simply because they had a different language, and there was no global climate change that occurred 3,000 years ago when the Tower of Babel was allegedly built.
• 2. The entire story is contradicted by a verse that appears just a little bit earlier. Genesis 10:5 says that "From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with his own language", while Genesis 11 says that the people only spread out after the tower was abandoned. Perhaps Genesis 10:5 is just meaning to imply that the people scattered eventually, but this sort of internal discontinuity when trying to read Genesis chronologically really makes it seem like the legends of Genesis are all different stories that originated in various places, assembled by some editor to form Genesis.
• 3. If the Babel legend were accurate, most Native American tribes would have to have somehow lost the technology to create cities, build buildings, or even make bricks. Somehow they would have had to be bumped back to the stone age.
• 4. This story implies that all the people on the earth were still living in the same place and speaking the same language WELL after Noah's flood occurred, which is preposterous to any archaeologist. The oldest Egyptian pyramid is 4,700 years old. Even if the dating methods are off by a few hundred years, that means the Egyptians would have had to high-tail it out of Shinar and develop themselves as a society impossibly fast. It takes hundreds of years to build an empire so powerful that it has the expendable resources and labor to build giant stone tombs of such magnitude. To quote myself from 3 years ago, "you don't start building pyramids as soon as you settle, you know".

[/list3e10hmqg]

I've seen plenty of Young-Earth Creationists argue to no end about all the "proof" there is that the Biblical account of Creation is true, and that Noah's flood, is correct. But I have hardly ever seen anybody mention the third great legend: the tower of babel. I can't think of any way the tower of babel can be a historically accurate tale. Really, it just narrates like an ancient myth used to describe how all the different languages developed, if one looks at it without assuming that it must be literal. And if Babel is just a metaphorical tale, why shouldn't Noah's flood and Creation be?

Now, to address the "flat earth" discussion...

I found this excellent video on youtube that addresses the flat earth discussion at 4:40. However, I would highly recommend watching the rest of the video as well because I think it brings up a lot of interesting points regarding Jesus's miracles and actions here on earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOfjkl-3SNE

Minotaur,

1. The problem with this is that you're looking at all of this from an evolutionary viewpoint. The whole Pangea landmass breaking into different continents and drifting away is just silly. It's much more likely that there was a greater ratio of land to ocean before the Great Flood. Following the Flood, there would be a much greater ratio of ocean to land, seperating the landmasses and creating the continents we have today.
Also, the tribes wouldn't have high-tailed it to the Americas and Austalasia etc. straight away. They would've, over many, many years eventually migrated across the globe.

2. I really don't know how to address this but Hebrewaic historians weren't concerned with the chronology of events like we are, they were concerned with the events themselves and what they meant for their people.

3. Who's to say the Stone Age even existed as portrayed by evolutionists? Early people are shown to be primitive and stupid but from a biblical perspective, they were more intelligent and intuitive than modern humans.

4. I don't know anything about this point.

The problem begins when we don't use the Bible as our starting point for discussion. If the Creation, Great Flood and Tower of Babel stories aren't historical, what makes Jesus life and death (as recorded in the Gospels) truly historical? It's great to have discussions but you have to be able to see the inconsistencies here. The Bible is remarkably consistent when you remember that it was written over a very long period of time, by many different authors, from several different cultures. It's the most reliable ancient document there is (even if many don't want to admit it).

That video does make some interesting points worthy of discussion but it was poorly-drawn and the audio was terrible. The video was quite disrespectful at times (you can tell it was made to refute God). Many of the questions don't factor in that the world is sinful and there are consequences for such a thing. God isn't here to please us. Here's here to bring glory to himself and hope to humanity. As for there being many virgin births in mythology, that doesn't negate Jesus birth. People who don't have faith in Jesus won't understant the weirdness that comes with such things. Reason is great but can only get a person so far before Revelation is also needed.

I'll just address a couple of these right now. First off, Genesis 11 takes place in the middle of Genesis 10 somewhere. It didn't take place after the genealogies were finished and was during the time of Abraham. So the timeline is not actually given. We do know that Shem lived 500 years post Flood and was a contemporary of Abraham and Isaac. As with Adam and Eve, you can have lots of kids in that time frame. So we don't know when this would have happened exactly. Not enough clues are given. We just know it happened between the Flood and Genesis 10:5.

We don't know how far the tower had been built. We tend to picture this ziggurate about half the size of the Empire State Building. But we actually don't know how far along it was. So it may not have gotten far.

It was in the days of Peleg that the lands were separated. Any Ice Age or exposure of the Bering Strait, which would also provide land access to Australia if ocean levels were that small was finished at that point. Some YEC do ascribe at least theoretically to the 'Pangaea' concept. If the continents were truly that close to each other, they would have drifted apart during and after the Flood as things settled down. I find this theory plausible but don't buy completely into it at this point.

As for technology, we have seen in history how quickly it can be lost or gained. Noah and his sons would have all the knowledge of the technology prior to the Flood. It would not have necessarily put them 'back into the Stone Age'. They would know how to build cities and build ships. As for how people 'lost' that technology, just look at the drop from Rome to the Middle Ages. If we simply built straight of Roman and Greek technology today instead of suffering the 1,000 year loss of technology in the Dark Ages, we would be way farther along than we are now. The Egyptians and Romans had building techniques that still beat out our stuff. And as for the pyramids, I've seem mixed results on the dating, but the most plausible one right now is that they were built by the Israelite slaves about 3500-4000 years ago. If the dates of the pyramids are off by a few hundred years, that's gets pretty close to this time.

Now why would people migrate as far as East Asia, Australia, or the Americas? I don't know. Maybe there wasn't a need for it, but they chose to do so. Why did America spread out to the West? There wasn't a need for that. Populations were definitely not overcrowded. People just wanted to explore and see the unknown. That sounds like a legitimate reason for me. People wanted to see the world when they couldn't communicate with everyone else. We have no idea how many languages were actually created at the Tower of Babel but it's certainly not all the ones we see today.

It's good thoughts and it might makes sense, but when you really think about it, somethings may come up. And be careful of the argument of if The Tower of Babel was mythical. It doesn't take long to carry that argument to making Christ mythical. I'm not saying you can't do that, period, but that line of thinking can quickly go that direction. So be careful with it.

1. The problem with this is that you're looking at all of this from an evolutionary viewpoint. The whole Pangea landmass breaking into different continents and drifting away is just silly.

This is irrelevant to the time frame we are talking about, since from the evolutionary viewpoint the continents have only moved 1/3 of a mile in the past 15,000 years. (Side note: I don't see how the Pangea landmass breaking into different continents and drifting away is silly. If one backtraces the movement of landmasses today hundreds of millions of years, one gets Pangea. Coincidence that South America looks like it can fit really nicely into Africa and that fossils of identical species have been found on the west shores of South America and the east shores of Africa? I think not.)

It's much more likely that there was a greater ratio of land to ocean before the Great Flood. Following the Flood, there would be a much greater ratio of ocean to land, seperating the landmasses and creating the continents we have today.

The Tower of Babel story happens after the Great Flood. So the state of the world before the Great Flood is irrelevant.

I really don't know how to address this but Hebrewaic historians weren't concerned with the chronology of events like we are, they were concerned with the events themselves and what they meant for their people.

Yeah, I understand that. It just annoys me how the Bible is only written to a specific group of humans. It would have been nice if God had had the bible written so it could be properly understood by everybody. That would have prevented the Church of Christ from splitting into 24,000 different denominations and prevented a lot of fighting and bickering over unimportant aspects of faith.

Who's to say the Stone Age even existed as portrayed by evolutionists? Early people are shown to be primitive and stupid but from a biblical perspective, they were more intelligent and intuitive than modern humans.

Most Native American tribes were still in the stone age when Europeans started venturing over. So yes, the Stone Age definitely existed. (And that doesn't mean Native American tribes were stupid - it just means that they had no technological knowledge about metal.)

4. I don't know anything about this point.

I think it refutes your earlier point about the cultures needing to high-tail it across the globe. I only included the Egyptians as a single example. There are many more.

If the Creation, Great Flood and Tower of Babel stories aren't historical, what makes Jesus life and death (as recorded in the Gospels) truly historical? It's great to have discussions but you have to be able to see the inconsistencies here.

Abraham is the oldest character in the bible that everyone agrees actually existed. The pre-Abrahamic legends (creation, flood, babel) are vague, strange, and are written like myths. I think they could just be metaphorical. Events that happen after Abraham are described much more like actual historical events.

The Bible is remarkably contradictory when you remember that it was written over a very long period of time, by many different authors, from several different cultures. It's the most reliable ancient document there is (even if many don't want to admit it).

I don't see why you embrace the Bible's contradictions. To me, that just seems to imply that the Bible was indeed written by man and man alone.

That video does make some interesting points worthy of discussion but it was poorly-drawn and the audio was terrible.

Really now? I'll admit that the video was poorly drawn, but the audio was not terrible. The audio quality was great, well mixed, and had no background fuzz. The guy even modulated the pitch so that the angel's voices were distinctive from Jesus's. This just seems like a cheap jab at the guy's movie-making abilities. Even if the video was poorly drawn, that doesn't take away from what the guy said.

The video was quite disrespectful at times (you can tell it was made to refute God).

I probably should have clarified that...the video was made by an atheist, yes. It's satire. However, atheists think that a lot of the things Christians say are pretty disrespectful, too.
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/.a/6a ... 970c-800wi

Many of the questions don't factor in that the world is sinful and there are consequences for such a thing. God isn't here to please us. Here's here to bring glory to himself and hope to humanity.

I think you missed the main point of the video. If God was here to glorify himself, why waste time doing small, insignificant miracles like walking on water and turning water into wine? I mean, we're talking about a guy who parted the red sea, made the sun stand still, and flooded the whole earth!

Why didn't he give them some basic knowledge about science so that the church would be the leading medical institute in the world? I think you are assuming that this would only benefit humans. No, in addition to saving saved millions of lives, it would be a testament to God's incredible power, glory and knowledge! Jesus only bothered to heal a few people who already had faith in him. What is Jesus trying to imply with that? That whoever has faith in God will be healed of injuries, and that we shouldn't put our faith in modern medicine? I don't know about you, but if I saw a person having a heart attack, I would call 911 or try to do CPR or something. I wouldn't fall on my knees and pray to God.

You say that the world is sinful and there are consequences for such things. In response to that, I quote "Religion 101: Final Exam by Terrence Kaye",

You are the Creator of the universe. Your chosen people are a tribe of nomadic herdsmen, presently in bondage on one of the millions of your planets. Their ruler is being quite obstinate. Keeping in mind that you possess not only infinite power but also infinite love, your best course of action would be to:

A. Cause the ruler to drop dead of a heart attack
B. Cause the ruler to fall off a cliff
C. Visit the ruler in a dream and persuade him to let your people go
D. Slaughter a great number of innocent babies who had nothing to do with the ruler's policies

It isn't the fact that people are sinful and deserve to be punished, it's that God administers his justice in a shockingly barbaric way.

I remember reading in more than one place that linguistics researchers have come to the conclusion that all modern languages trace back to one root language at some point in the distant past. I read this in a newspaper several years ago but I don't remember which one and when exactly it was. Just thought that I should toss that in there for the Tower of Babel argument.

Minotaur,

Okay, so maybe Pangaea is plausiable but I'm not going to trace it beack to hundreds of millions of years, because the universe is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old.

I know the Great Flood happened prior to the Tower of Babel.

Yes, it makes it more difficult and at times frustrating to have to look at the Bible from their context and times but also it forces us to study God's Word and not just accept it at a surface level.

I said, a Stone Age as portrayed by evolutionists. I didn't say there wasn't such a thing as the Stone Age.

I see it that the pre-Ambraic writings are more vague because there were less people to pass the stories onto and some detail might have been lost over time. As for them seeming strange and weird. Yeah, so? It's the Creation of the world, a Great Flood that covers the world and Tower of Babel that divides nations via different languages. It's strange and weird but that doesn't make it any less valid. If you've read pagan mythologies, you'll find the biblical accounts to be much more realistic and plausiable.

I made a mistake. I meant to say "The Bible is remarkably 'consistent', not contradictory..."
I'm accepting that there are some contradications but not nearly as many as there are in other ancient documents and the fact that with so many authors, over so much time, you will get some different details.
So you don't believe the Bible is the Word of God, breathed by God and man wrote it all down in a language people in that time could understand?

Yes, I agree I was being unfair about the craft of the video. It was poorly drawn and yes, the audio quality is actually bad at my end (and other videos are perfectly fine). That said, it is a very interesting, if frustrating video.

Thank you, I'm quite familiar with satire but I still don't appreciate snide, disrespectful pot-shots at the Bible, trying to get people to not believe the Bible. That's a pretty dangerous tight-rope of humour.

Why would God want the Church to be the leaders in medical science, that's just silly. That's not why he came. It just seems like a silly argument. Big miracles don't exactly equal more people believing in God. Think back to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai. They had God's prescence with them the whole time (pillar of cloud, pillar of fire), and they still stuffed up royally by trying to make a golden calf, a predictable god they could control to do their bidding.
I don't know why Jesus didn't do bigger miracles, I really don't.

Even if the Bible mentions it, it doesn't mean the act/thought is encouraged by God. It's a recording (historical, metaphorical etc.) of a sinful world in need of a Saviour. God allowing such evils ties in with the whole fact that He gave us Free Will and we just stuffed up royally. It's not his fault, it's ours. Thinking we could be our own God and doing great evil in His name.

There are always some things we're not going to understand. Like I said, Reason can only get you so far, that's where Revelation takes over. And if that still doesn't answer our questions, we're not meant to know.

I've been following this discussion with interest and, though the conversation has moved on with a few of these points, wanted to make a few observations as they're astronomically related.

The other day wolfloversk wrote:

...I also wonder if the timeline used in Genesis is different than our own. Perhaps their year is not the same length as our year... (hence how people became hundreds of years old- though Dad attributes this to the moon's position in ancient times...

I wonder if you could have your father elaborate a bit on this point? I'm not familiar with it.

Is it that the moon was closer in ancient times, thus (if a year was 12 full moons) making a year shorter? If so, points to consider might be:

- While ancient cultures often used the moon to mark the times, their calendars also had ties to annual events, like spring planting (for example, the ancient Egyptians tied their calendar to the spring flooding of the Nile). In these cases, a shorter period between full (or new) moons wouldn't mean a longer year since the calendars were, so to speak, self-correcting to the solar year.

(A current example is the Jewish religious calendar. A solar year is slightly longer than 12 lunar months, so without corrections religious observances tend to 'slip' through the seasons (as Ramadan does in the Islamic calendar). The Jewish calendar is a combination lunar-solar one which corrects for the 'shortness' of a lunar year. Hence Passover and the other feasts stay about when they're supposed to).

- If the theory notes that the moon used to be closer to the earth, consider the influence on the tides. Making the moon half as far away (for example) would shorten the lunar month but would also increase the tides by a factor of 4 - no doubt significant to ancient seafaring cultures who built their cities near the oceans.

It’s true that the moon is gradually receding from earth, meaning it had to be closer in the past. But we’re only talking inches of distance over a century – not much when figured back even over 10,000 years or so.

(It's also true that Big Bang cosmology places the moon closer to the earth in the past - but that's billions of years ago, not thousands, and wouldn't enter into a discussion about the length of calendars in recorded history).

On the ancients and a flat earth:

The ancients may have made philosophical discussions about a flat earth, but the notion that religious people have hampered progress by clinging to such an idea is overstated (incidentally, the Answers in Genesis article Conina linked above makes this same point in passing).

Pythagoras endorsed a spherical earth, and Eratosthenes experimentally calculated its circumference around 200 BC. His experiment assumes a spherical planet – as does his calculation of the tilt of the earth’s axis.

The seafaring cultures of the day had easy visual proof that the world was round: the way ships disappeared over the horizon. On a flat ocean they'd simply get smaller and smaller till they vanished. But on a sphere, first the keel would disappear, then the middle of the ship, and finally the top of the mast. This is something they routinely viewed.

Much later, Christopher Columbus' proposed journey wasn't criticized because people thought the world was flat - it was because they thought he was understating the world’s size and so they doubted he could get to China or India by heading west. It was a matter of the scale/size of the earth.

Galileo's trouble with the church also wasn't related to a flat earth. The geocentric theory placed a round earth - philosophically, religiously, and physically - at the center of the universe, as a reflection of humanity as the pinnacle of creation. But his observations showed objects not orbiting the earth (the four largest moons of Jupiter). The idea that the sun was the center was a radical one at the time - but it was as much philosophical as scientific.

I subscribe to White Hole Cosmology. Check it out...it explains in great detail how God could create the Universe and Earth and how the Universe could be billions of years old while only a week would pass here on Earth. The theory is supported by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and fits almost seamlessly with Scripture…

I’ve read Humphreys’ book and also find it a fascinating theory.