Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Mar 18, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492636451489

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

You'll definitely want the handout, so make sure you cover it on that so you can track with us. We're in post-flood and patriarchal cultures, in other words, right after the flood. And when you say patriarchal, what do I mean by patriarchal? Talking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is particularly that time frame and the culture that we're looking at.

We'll take a look at that. I've got some slides. I've got something funny going on here. too crazy, just a little repetitive. We will soon get into other cultures, next week Egyptian, and then followed by that Syrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and then other biblical cultures. There are other biblical cultures that occasionally get mentioned, and there are even variations in the Greek culture that we'll want to talk about. Now, this, we talked last week, I wanted to touch on something we talked about last week.

Last week we talked about how scientists are finding fossils that have live, you know, remaining tissues, not living, but in the sense of soft tissues where you actually have identifiable soft structure. even capillaries and blood cells and things like that still remain.

Anyway, here is a listing of them. I don't expect you to read that, but just looking at the top part, it gives you quite a bit of information on where it is, how many millions of years old, that kind of thing. You have this slide as your first slide, and this is the most recent soft tissue report that I'm aware of. What this is, this is a salamander. And it is so well preserved that its last meal was right here. And there's soft tissue, like protein, identifiable proteins in the rock material that's there.

And this is over a hundred million years old, supposedly. and it still has identifiable soft tissue. And there's a number of circumstances like that. To me, the truth is you can never scientifically go back and say, yes, objectively, I observed it, this is 150 million years old. You can't do that. You can make assumptions, but you can never scientifically verify them. So the idea that, for example, that you have lots and lots of soft tissue, tins, to over a hundred million years old is kind of like that's stretching it in my book.

Now you could go here on this link which is in your first slide, you could go to this link and see this list that I made reference to here. Take a look at it and go over all the detail yourself. So anyway, you have that link in your first slide if you want to look at that. This one here that I just brought forward was just reported since the beginning of the year. That's the latest one that I'm aware of.

Alright, now, we're into our timeline, and previously we went from creation up to the flood. Now we're from the flood and into the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So it's right after the flood until the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is what we're talking about here. That's in the slide on the top of page one there. From the flood to the time of Abraham, there remains a substantial divergence between the conventional accounts of history and that of scripture. That is, up to the time of Abraham, what the conventional or secular accounts would say took place historically, and what the Bible says are two different directions.

And we'll be talking about that. Now, about the conflict. The root of the conflict between the secular accounts of prehistory and history. By the way, what's the difference between prehistory and history? History's written down? History's written, right, okay. And pre-history then is prior to having any, yeah, it's either, you know, it's largely interpretive.

For instance, if I find some human looking skull, and if I find a tool, did the being that was that skull use the tool, or was the tool used on the being, right? So those kind of questions, it gets very interpretive. And the fact that you don't find something in writing, does that mean that they didn't have any writing? Not necessarily. How is it possible that they did have writing, but we don't have evidence of it? They wrote on something with the transient type. tool, writing tool.

If you had a flood event, that would be one thing. If you had something you were writing with that was organic and therefore decayed, you lose it. Or something you're writing on, like papyrus or leather, and that decayed, you've lost whatever evidence you have.

So oftentimes what happens is archaeologists are interpreting what's called material culture. Here's a rock that looks shaped. Here is a piece of bronze. Here is some stick that was preserved. So they'll have material culture. Other things may have decayed and washed away.

So the root of the conflict is in the realm of scientifically unverifiable presuppositions and world views. And this is big, because what it's typically put as is, here's a conflict between science and religion. That's usually how it's put out there. The reality is that any faith that we have in the Bible, and anything that the secular scientist comes up with, there are realms and times where we cannot go back and scientifically observe the process and confirm things.

You simply cannot. Can any of us go back 100,000 years and assure ourselves that yes, in fact, the rate of radioactive decay was constant between now and then? You cannot. It's not scientifically verifiable. So the problem is not really in the realm of evidence in science. The problem is in the realm of scientifically unverifiable assumptions. Because nobody's come up with a time machine yet.

Uniformitarianism is what they drummed into me in geology classes until I switched to civil engineering. The fundamental axiom of historical geology, the present is the key to the past. The only problem, how many of those people who kept drumming it into my head, the present is the key to the past, the present is the key to the past, the present is the key to the past, you know, sleep on it. How many of those people actually went back in the past to verify that what they told me was right? None. These guys have masters and doctorate degrees and all that. None of them have been able to go back in time and verify that what they're telling me is correct. It is an unverifiable assumption.

We passed out this and last week's handout, and this is key, so an important principle to look at. What we have there is a machine. The biblical worldview considers God's intervention in the course of history to be possible, but not capricious. That is, God can intervene in history, and there are times when God has done so. Let's take it for instance. Here are the Israelites. They are up against the sea. The Egyptian army is coming up against them.

What did God do to intervene? He parted the waters, right? So God parts the waters. God intervened. But He provided the cloud and the fire. That's right. He provided the cloud and the fire. So what you find is there are times when God does intervene. In great part, however, natural laws continue and prevail. So the biblical worldview says God can intervene. But God doesn't just do so randomly. He doesn't make it so, you know, Verne's here and all of a sudden Verne's flying up in the air and then five seconds later Verne comes crashing down. God doesn't just randomly just make weird things happen.

The secular worldview assumes that if there is a God, and some would say absolutely not, He does not intervene. Oh, by the way, just in recent weeks, did you hear Richard Dawkins, the famed outspoken atheist, the God delusion? He's decided he's an agnostic because he can't prove that there is no God. Very interesting. Okay. But assumes that if there is a God, he does not intervene. So, I'm sorry, what?

I mean, a lot of people don't believe in God because He doesn't save somebody from an accident. Yeah, in other words, what a lot of people will do is they will assume that if God is good, then God will keep this person from getting into an accident, keep this person from having cancer. Essentially, there's no accounting for this being a fallen world. So, some people will, and that's just on the basis of their own mental manipulations, come to the conclusion that there is no God because... or no good God.

Yes? Isn't that similar to the deist? belief that God put the world in order and then he stepped back and let it go? Yeah, in other words, the secular view is consistent with deism. That is, God wound up the clock, so to speak, and just walked away. God is not involved on a continuing basis with his creation as deism. And some of our forefathers were actually deists, correct?

Some, yes. Right. They did believe in God, but they believed that aspect So anyway, and I have these gears up there, is the world simply a machine and that's all there is? Or is the world a machine in which God can go in and stop the gears? And God can go in and put an extra gear in there, etc.? Well, He can. Pardon? He can. That doesn't mean He will yet. That's right. In other words, what happens is, by and large, what we see is natural laws prevail, including laws that are the result of sin. Natural laws prevail, but God can intervene.

Here's two worldviews of cultural development. While this is quite simplified, I think it's helpful. The evolutionary view of cultural development sees cultural development taking place. Obviously, it also allows for people who are very primitive to still be around. But the general picture is one like this.

And it would say, OK, back here I had the Old Stone Age, and then I have the New Stone Age. The New Stone Age, they say, starts about 8000 BC, starting with farming and agriculture. And it goes like that. The biblical picture is that here was the fall and civilization developed and we talked about things like metallurgy, talked about building cities, we talked about developing agriculture, that sort of thing. And then there was the flood from which you had civilization developing again as well as people declining. What happens, let's take an interesting example. Suppose we said, look, after today, civilization is done.

And so it's going to be up to Ralph, if he's going to keep making iron, it's going to be up to him to figure out how to do that, right? And if it's going to be up to anyone to keep any kind of electronics going, we've got to figure out how to do that.

But the reality is a great many of us could not go and take the technologies that we use every day and start it all from scratch. Most of us could not do that. It would be very rare that anyone would have a significant amount of technology that they could actually do from scratch.

So what would happen is as people scattered after the flood, you would have people who would actually remain fairly primitive because while they may have seen some higher levels of technology, they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to make it happen. And that would explain why you have even some fairly primitive Stone Age tribes even now. I would say in many ways a lot of the villages I went to in Uganda were like nearly neolithic, nearly New Stone Age in the way they lived.

But this is a big difference in perspective. Now, one of the differences here is the flood is the difference between the two views. whereas the evolutionary phallus says, well, there can't be a flood because that was a divine act. And so we have to assume that there wasn't such a thing.

Okay, you have this chart similar to last week's chart, but instead we are here and here that is going from Shem to Jacob. in the time frame, and you see the overlap of lifespans. What was interesting is because lifespans were declining, when you see them overlapped, a lot of the people lived into about the same band of time because of that phenomenon. Right in here.

Here also is the lifetimes of the patriarchs after the flood, which we've had couple of arrows in order for you to be able to see that. And you see a general decline so that by the time of Jacob, lifespans are roughly a quarter of what they were right after the flood. So three quarters of a lifetime drops out from the beginning right after the flood to the time of Jacob. Imagine the world right after the flood, you've got a different world climate. You've got a different range of foods allowed. What was the range of food allowed that was changed at the flood? To be able to eat meat. Previously, you were only to eat vegetable matter, right? So to be able to eat meat.

Now you've got a different diet and that has you in a different relationship with the animals. Different geography. varying adjustments to post-flood conditions, and establishments of new ecological systems. Things have to reestablish themselves now under this changing, you know, talk about climate change, whoa, really big. So there's a lot, you start to just kind of imagine, okay, it means this, means this, means this, a lot of change to accommodate. And also all of a sudden, boy, we aren't living as long, right? So a lot of change during that period of time.

What human culture was carried with Noah's extended family, the eight on the ark, was the extent of pre-flood culture carried into the post-flood world. Let's take a for instance. Suppose here you are on Noah's ark and there was in fact iron and bronze before the flood, right? Do We know that Noah and his sons knew how to make iron and bronze. We don't really know that, do we? Is it possible that they took it with them on the ark, but didn't know how themselves to make it?

So that essentially they had the awareness that there was such a thing, but had to reinvent the means for making bronze and iron. So then that would be the start of our Bronze Age, and then later Daron Age, developed after the Flood, even though they had been developed before. Any other elements of culture had to have been developed apart from whatever culture was preserved on the ark, and there was a possibility of a post-slug cultural decline as well, as people would go out into varying areas.

Imagine, here you are, I'm going to start straying to the north. What am I going to find as I start heading north? Well, from where? It depends on which side of the equator you're on. Well, but let's say I started from around what's now the Middle East and I started wandering towards the North, right? I'm going to find a generally colder climate and even a whole lot greater frequency of freezing temperatures, right? Am I used to that? No. So there's some, how do I do this? What am I going to grab? How am I going to keep warm? How am I going to feed myself? Lots of different things to accommodate. Yes?

Yeah, a lot of them live in caves too because the city is being wiped out so we get the cavemen. Yeah, yeah. And record of that in the Bible. Where did Lot go to live? after Sodom. Cave. And they believe they found it. Yeah. Lots of cave. So we have this, but the possibility of cultural decline is that red arrow. I go out there and I don't know how to make iron and bronze even though it used to be done. And so all I really have access to is wood and bone and stone. Haven't invented that.

Yes? Could that material have been used in the production of the Ark? That's right. It's possible the material, and I think Stan asked me that question via email this last week. The material could have been used on the Ark, but that still doesn't mean that Noah and his sons knew how themselves to make it. It's an interesting possibility that it could have been used for jointing materials and pinning ends and things like that, making different kinds of clamps and structural pieces, and yet not know how to do it once you're done with the arc. You can imagine they might even have stripped the arc of some of the resources. Why not? Matter of fact, why not make a house out of it?

Tower of Babel is another key point. Confusion of languages. One hesitation to the otherwise uninhibited spread of human culture was the Tower of Babel, prior to which there was but one language on the earth. This is the ziggurat of King Ur-Nammu in Ur, which is where Abraham is from, built approximately the time of the birth of Abraham. Now, these little ziggurats, there are close to 30 of them in the Middle East, and the guys at the Associates for Biblical Research think they've found the oldest one, and they believe that may be the Tower of Babel.

So anyway, for more information on the Tower of Babel, there's a website called ChristianAnswers.net. I highly recommend it. They've got everything from good answers to challenges to Christianity, including some good historical things. They've even got movie reviews from a Christian perspective. So anyway, ChristianAnswers.net. Highly recommend it.

But anyway, for the Tower of Babel, that particular link there will get you there. Now, one thing I've got to make note of is I'm doing some jumping back and forth between page two and three on some of this. And it's just because what will fit happens to dictate that. This on page 3 is the dispersion general pattern and also this general pattern does not include anything that's fairly recently developed since this is somewhat of an old map, but it is one that's available.

I give the link there. Dr. Custance was the one who put this together. He's home with the Lord now. I met him just A couple of years before he went home to be with the Lord. Anyway, that's his map. This was from last week's supplement. Previously we said the top part of the, let's see if I can locate it here quickly. This is from last week's handout.

The top part is from pre-flood, and then there's like a thin red line below that, and that is the post-flood genealogical structure, which explains a lot of what's going on in the world, and it would really be nice if the guys in the CIA and the Defense Department understood this a lot better. That's a resource you might want to take a look at.

Once the Tower of Babel dispersion began, there was immense cultural diversity. Why would there be immense cultural diversity after people started spreading out into different areas? What would be the reasons? In addition to that, there was a lot of polytheism that started after that.

Yes, yes. And wasn't that one of the things with the Tower of Babel? Not necessarily the height, obviously, because we now know how high the stratosphere is. But it's probably what they had on the top of the tower. Yeah, there was polytheism, there was non-biblical theism, as well as a humanism. that went along with that. So you have a couple different directions. You have humanism and polytheism. Yes.

And in my opinion, that's why you have pieces of Christian practices and sacrifices and you see little pieces of this in all these other different cultures and religions and all the rest of it. It's like part of it got handed down but not in its entirety. Right, and distorted. Right, except for the red line that God devised to make sure that his people could stand up for it. Yep, you're right.

It's only as we come to about Genesis 12 at the time of Abraham, about just prior to 2000 BC, that we start to see some general kind of agreement between the biblical accounts and secular history. It's only about that time when you start to see things be generally in sync. Now that doesn't mean that the secular historian is going to sign up for parting the Red Sea or anything of that sort, right? But what you find is in general the historical outline has some overall agreement.

This is the city of Ur about the time of Abraham. Look at how big. Here they had the river going here. Here was their religious center and they had water flows and all that and this fairly large developed city. Here you had a bronze helmet and here was a harp with a gold bull's head on it. Here's that ziggurat that I told you about previously. Now, this is going to be interesting. Watch this. I'll probably go through this two or three times. I think it's cool.

About 3000 BC, here are the places where you've got some kind of civilization. Mostly here and here. About 3000 BC. Now, 2000. You start seeing some other areas begin to develop. 1000. You see a widening of the development of civilization. By 1 AD, or, you know, by the way, there is no zero, right? So it's 1 AD, 1 BC. So 1 AD, you see this. By 1,000, this.

2,000, this. And they have arrows for where the general direction of growth and development of culture is taking place. So let me go back, pace back through that. I think that's kind of interesting. So here we have 3,000, 2,000, 1,000, 180, 1,080, and then 2,000. Very interesting to kind of see the development of civilization. Now, here's where my slides are a little bit strange, so I apologize for that.

Here at Ur, which is where Abraham started. Oh, by the way, Ur was first excavated archaeologically by Leonard Woolley, who excavated until his wife just said, Because it's out in the middle of nowhere, right? And she just said, I just can't stand this anymore. And so we had to quit. It's probably a good thing. Anyway, so Leonard Woolley was the first one.

And he found a lot of the different things that we're going to show you here in the way of archaeological artifacts. So here's Ur. It is in, right now, just inside of Iraq, just past the line with Kuwait. Here are some artifacts they found. This is a queen's burial place and they found a harp with a golden bull's head. Here is this bronze helmet and here is a gold creation here.

A ram and a thicket. A ram and a thicket. Do you remember where there's a ram caught in a thicket? from the time of Abraham there. Now, so take a look at these things. Here is the ram and the thicket when he was digging it out. So he found that and said, wow, this is phenomenal. So here's Leonard Lloyd digging this thing out, took a picture, and then cleaned it up to be what you see there.

Here is Queen Puabi's headdress. And this was a piece of artwork, and notice something about this artwork. Oh, and by the way, I think I gave you the link there, or did I? No, I didn't put it in your handout. Here's this harp with a bull's head, and what you find is that corresponds to right here, this piece of artwork. So they had the piece of artwork, and then they had the actual harp. in there too. And over here, let's see, over here he's holding a little goblet and there it is.

So it's interesting, what they did is they made all these things and then put them in the artwork. And the thought is that these were all the things that the Queen, Fuabi, could have in the afterlife. So these things were found in a tomb, then? Yes, it was her tomb. And strangely enough, they buried all her servants with her, whether they were ready or not.

Okay, so here is ancient Ur. It's like I say, just inside the line in Iraq. And it's one of the first things that our soldiers went to, by the way. Yes. What do they feel changed the environment around her because it used to be known as the Fertile Crescent and obviously that's where civilization started. That's right.

Did the flood have something to do with this? Well, let's think of several different things going on. After the flood, there's a lot of what? water. So there are places that used to have a lot of water that now don't. You know, you think of Nevada, where Nancy and I lived for 15 years in Nevada, much of Nevada is two or three inches of rainfall a year. And so what you find is a whole bunch of old sea level beaches above where you're driving. because most of Nevada and Utah used to be Lake Lahontan. So it dried out. So there's a general tendency for things to dry out after the flood and to move from being to finally draining off.

So that's a generalized pattern. The ground didn't get watered the same way it did before. That's right. That's part of the new climate, part of the new ecological system. So there are a lot of places that used to be more fertile. One of the things we're going to look at if we have time here is Sodom and Gomorrah. That is an example of a place that used to be well watered. and now is nothing like that. So here's Ur, here's kind of the, here's the place where Leonard Woolley dug up those objects that we saw. Here's the Royal Mausoleum. Okay, so there.

Okay, now, getting back to Ur, Abraham, the Bible says, went from Ur to Haran And at Haran is where essentially his family, by and large, established themselves. So that when it was time to go get additional spouses, right, where did they keep going back to get a spouse for Isaac and for Jacob?

Where did they go back? They went back to the area around Haran, because that's where the family stayed. So they essentially ended up marrying half-sisters and cousins and all that, because they didn't, even though they moved on down here to Canaan, they didn't want to intermarry with the Canaanites. So they went back to the family up in Haran.

Alright, so he moved from Haran down to Canaan, and in Canaan he encountered different cultures. What we find is, we find the things that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, what they're doing fits the culture of Haran, but not the culture of Canaan. It's the culture of Haran, but not the culture of Canaan. So here they were living in Canaan, but living a culture up here, including it's actually desirable to marry into your own family, sisters and cousins and all that in Haran.

And so that would be one thing. Even what Sarah did, in other words, it was considered to be a responsibility if a wife was not able to bear a child, to give and present to her husband to present a female slave. That was considered a responsibility. So it wasn't just something strange that Sarah was doing. It was in the culture around Haran, something that you were obligated to do as a wife if you could not have offspring.

So they kept going back to Haran and that area in order to get wives and that's where Jacob was, right? Working for his two wives and then coming back down to Canaan. So, and then, okay, here's one other thing. Canaanite culture, here's Abraham, Sarah dies.

What does he want to do? He wants to get a tomb to bury Sarah in, which is still there. The tomb is still there and a few decades back there was a 12-year-old girl that actually got to go in secretly and see things down there in the tomb. But when Abraham bought the cave at Machpelah, he was offered the cave for nothing.

He said, nope, I want to pay full price. Why? the Canaanite culture said if you didn't pay full price that the person who gave it to you for free could take it back anytime they want. So that's where what the Bible describes fits the culture of Canaan. In addition to the culture of Canaan then you have Abraham and Isaac and Jacob having interactions with the Egyptians, which is why we're going to go into Egyptian culture this next time, because we find the Egyptians continuing to have interactions with the Israelites over centuries of time, beginning with Abraham.

There. This is Ebla. So you can see the buildings that they have there, the city of Ebla. By the way, all these city names that you see, and I think you have this on page three, the bottom of page three, all the city names, those have all been excavated in some degree. Right? So here's Ebla. Here are some tablets from Ebla.

And by the way, these clay tablets that they would mark out with a stylus, mark it in cuneiform, the clay tablets, we have something around a half a million of them, and most of them have never been translated. Why? Why would most of them never be translated? With that, wouldn't you think they'd be just translating like crazy? How come most of them aren't translated?

Yeah. First of all, who knows the language? And then are you going to spend a career translating a bunch of tablets? And especially when a lot of them say things like, you know, I sold five horses and two cows to, you know, this guy over here. And after you've done about two or three thousand of those, you kind of get tired of it. You know, so it's not very interesting. So probably those will continue to not be translated for decades and centuries to come.

It's possible they get some computers, they can scan it and get it done quickly. Technology is not quite there yet. Here is another... Pardon? They're in a variety of languages, but in general, Sumerian are some of the earlier ones, and then there's some variations on that. The truth is that while they're in different languages, there's some commonality, and once you've learned one, there's some connections to others. But Sumerian is the earliest language that we have in this form. Here is an ancient library bookshelf. What do they make the bookshelves out of? Rock, clay, you know. How would you like some rock bookshelves? Okay.

This is in Sippar, an ancient city of Babylon on the Euphrates in present Iraq, 20 miles southwest of Baghdad. Here is an ancient post-it note, sort of. It's a little tiny, but it's very well preserved. One of the reasons it's preserved is they would take the inner part of this tablet, make the markings, cook it so that it hardens it, and then put a soft clay covering on it to protect it. If you want something to be kept for a long period of time. And here it is thousands of years later, and we can still read it very easily, as you can read it.

Just for grins, here is a link where you can put your own initials and it will give you your initials in cuneiform. That's the name of the language there. So here is Tristan's initials and here's Stan's. I think the link's on that page, isn't it? It's the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and you can put that in and get your initials in cuneiform. Right? Yeah.

So, and then if you go in there, it'll say, like, here's just in case your, you know, monogram in cuneiform is this. And then down here, the bottom, If you want to click on that, there's a whole bunch more information about the cuneiform writing and how it developed. It's all self-education if you're interested in that.

Universities and museums have thousands and thousands. Look, here they've got shelves that are just lined with all these tablets and they've got baskets full of tablets. They've just got oodles of tablets. I mean, a gazillion tablets. Most of them not translated, as you can well understand. Here is one. Dr. Brian Wood, who spoke in here about 10 years ago in this room, is the one holding this tablet here. This is from Ebla. And that's just an example of the kind of tablet that you would see. And they'd mark it with a stylus and then say if they want to keep it, you make it so that it's baked clay.

Here are some typical cultural patterns from the tablets. One common pattern from the tablets which fits the pattern in Genesis was having multiple wives, as in Genesis 30-26. Another pattern was the taking of a slave girl for bearing children if the wife was unable to bear herself, as in Genesis 16-4. So what we find is what's in the Bible fits what we know of the culture.

That makes sense, especially if it's true, right? It was common for a man who did not have an heir to have his slave born in his house as an heir. This is what Abraham is thinking is going to happen because he's sold and not having a son. The word for trained servants in Genesis 14, 14, this is when Abraham has trained servants and he takes on a military attack. with these trained servants, that word fell out of use in the tablets after the time of Abraham and occurs only there in the Old Testament.

So what does that tell you? That this writing is not more recent, but it is in fact ancient, just like the Bible claims. Then there's Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah written of in Genesis 13, 18, and 19. What contrasts with the present observations is that it was well watered everywhere.

Is that what it looks like in that picture? It's like not a plant in sight, right? So that's part of the great climate change from post-flood times to the present. Yes, Dan? So does that mean the Dead Sea may not have been dead at that time, that they could have used... Yeah, in other words, if you think about it, the Dead Sea is accumulating salt at a known rate. And so if you say a known rate, and let's say you extrapolate back, and here's where you get assumptions that you can't verify. Let's say you extrapolate back, you could come up with an idea of how long ago was this somewhat fresh.

So the raining on Sodom and Gomorrah could have actually had a great effect on the Dead Sea. Oh yeah, we'll take a look at that in just a minute here. Here's a view east along the wall of the destroyed city of Sodom. Here is Dr. Brian Wood's site identification. Again, he's the fellow that spoke in this room about a decade ago. Sodom and Gomorrah and Zoar. By the way, Zoar is the world's largest ancient cemetery. And how would you have that many people in such a barren place? It wasn't barren then, right?

Okay, so that's his identifications of those locations. Here's the excavation at Numera that has been identified by Dr. Wood as Gomorrah, this black and white from 1977. Here's the excavation there at a place where the roof caught on fire. I wonder why it caught on fire? Ah, and there are skeletons in there, and I think, it's probably not real great, but you've got a copy of it in your handout. There are skeletons, and burned material around the skeletons. How come they couldn't get out? Because it was raining down fire suddenly, and a lot.

Hmm, does that sound like the biblical picture? I think so. Here is, at your scale, it's hard to see the detail, but the point being, this is when they did an overview in a side section. The darker areas, the lower portion of the sketch, are ash and bones.

The people got hit with the fire and brimstone so fast they couldn't get out of the building. The whole thing, it went from everything's fine to we're cooked. fast. Yes. That's almost like where the volcanoes exploded. Yes, yes. In different places including over near Italy there. Right. So, what has been excavated is consistent with, then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.

Here is a geological cross-section looking north, and this fits your point, Stan, here. Here's the cities of the plain on this side there, and here is a fault line. So they would have had fire and brimstone just bursting along these fault lines because there's flammable materials underneath that just burst open on here and hit the cities of the plain like right now. And here is a major fault line that cuts north-south through the Jordan Valley there. So there's that fault line that cuts out to the ocean.

From the time after the fall of Adam into the period of the patriarchs, incest appears to have been much more common, as revealed in scripture and the clay tablets. Abraham married his half-sister, Sarai. Lot, though through incest with his daughters, had son Moab and Ammon. This is now the nation of Jordan. Though this was over the line, having father and daughter relationships in that culture, that would not have been considered normal.

Changing geographical terms. There are vague geographical references in Genesis which fit its being an early book, since later scripture mentions specific geographical names for these same locations. Genesis 21 and 2462 refer to the South Country. Later on, there was a different term for that. So, vague geographical names change to more specific geographical names. The early chapters of Genesis fit the history. as things were developing. Genesis 25-6 refers to the North Country. That term also goes away. And finally, after Abraham, these expressions faded away or changed form so that there were more specific place names than just the South Country and the North Country.

Making a covenant. In the time of the patriarchs, human covenants had three common elements. One is an oath, a swearing by a deity, in a physical gesture or sign of some kind. This is seen multiple times in Genesis. In Genesis 9, 19-17, God swears by a deity. Who? Himself. And then Genesis 21, 22-34 and on, chapter after chapter, the same pattern for making a covenant.

Then there are the explanatory notes. Genesis contains an unusual number of later explanatory notes which give two location names where names have changed from the original event to the time of writing. These are usually marked by phrases such as Bella, that is, Zoar. The original name Bella and then changed to Zoar. These occur in these places from Genesis 14 through 48 that we have listed there. So what you find is a lot of places where the place name changed and what you'll see is these explanatory notes that it changed.

So what there is is a knowledge of what is ancient and then an updating to the still ancient time. You see the significance of that? It's talking about this is a genuine ancient historical document. It was not somebody writing later just making something up. Okay, the record of the time of the patriarchs in Genesis is not just the after-the-fact history written when the Mosaic Law was in place. Moses didn't say, oh, let's see, I think I heard about such and such and so and so. No, things were written down in ancient times.

And then new terms, new names, etc. written in to explain it to the people who would be reading it at the particular time. Instead it records what took place without any shading. One of the things that the kings of old did was they would have things written up so it would make them look good.

But you know about the books that Moses wrote? If Moses blew it, that's what he writes. Right? Did Moses ever blow it? Yeah. But it's not colored to make it look good. How about David? Here's King David. Did he ever blow it? Do you know it? Yep. You know it. Because the Bible writes things as they are, not let's make up a good story so that David and Moses and these guys look good. Right? Okay. Next time we'll go to the Egyptian culture, which goes from ancient times on into New Testament times. So there's both a lot of really old material, and it continues on, and then into New Testament times. Yes?

Culturally, why did the names of cities change? Is that because of a cultural change or a people change, or why would you change the name of a city? I think there are different reasons for making a change. And we find different examples of them. Sometimes they would rename a city to try to honor somebody. And so, for example, you have all these places and all of a sudden you get Caesarea something, you know, named after Caesar. When Alexander the Great went in, he established nine cities named Alexanderia. So there would be sometimes reasons for doing it that had to do with honoring someone.

It might also have to do with a language change. By that, meaning that you changed it from something that was in one language into something that was in another language where you had changes of language use because different people moved in. So you'd have various reasons that would impact why something would be called what it is.

So, in each case there would be different answers. But there was enough of those kinds of things. The other thing is sometimes the earlier description, North Country, South Country, is not specific enough. So, no, we need to say that this is this country, or these people, or something more specific than that. So you come up with a more specific term. Okay? Other thoughts, questions? Yes? No?

Okay, let's pray. Thank you, Lord, as we look at this, what we find is, while certainly we can ask some questions for which we don't have any firm answers, we also find a number of places where we find good confirmation that your word is true and historically reliable, but even more so, we know it's spiritually reliable. And we just thank you for the insights that these things provide, and as we go through the various cultures, how that helps us interpret what each passage is saying. We give you thanks, Lord, for these insights, just for your amazing and wonderful love, how you reveal these things because you love us and care for us so much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.