Guest essay by Fred F. Mueller
While many people will agree that some of the stories recorded in the Old Testament might not be taken too literally, this book nevertheless deserves a lot of respect for the fact that is represents the collective wisdom and historical records of a nomad populace that roamed vast swathes of Egypt, Mesopotamia and adjacent regions before finally settling in what is now known as Israel.
These tribes were highly intelligent and had a remarkably good understanding of many basic rules governing their daily life. Given the hygienic knowledge and standards of these times, rules determining how to prepare kosher food certainly had the beneficial additional effect of preventing the spread of diseases such as trichinosis or salmonella infections.
The old Jews had a basic but efficient set of laws called the Ten Commandments and, by observing the Shabbat, also practiced a very early form of work hour limitation. And, over a time period probably spanning back thousands of years into the fogs of unrecorded early human history, they kept the collective memory of key weather events and natural disasters such as Noah’s flood or the (probably volcanic) annihilation of Gomorrah. A very remarkable exploit of the Old Testament is the description of the Ten Plagues affecting Egypt. One can view them as a line-up of the worst natural incidents these people ever had lived and recorded over a period of probably several thousand years. Which now brings me to the decisive point: the list does not include freezing temperatures and deep snow.
Hail, but neither snow nor subzero temperatures
While the Ten Plagues included hail storms, the records clearly limit their impact to the destruction of crops and the battering to death of cattle and humans alike. Such events are extremely violent but also very ephemeral. The Bible makes no mention of bitter cold or of lasting snowfall. Given the high intelligence and excellent observation skills of the ancient Jews, one might feel enticed to suggest that during hundreds if not thousands of years, weather events of this type simply did not occur in their habitat.
Which now brings me to the decisive point: while the proponents of the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) insist that the temperatures of the planet are set to rise in an accelerating mode that we won’t be able to control least we adopt drastic climate protecting measures a.s.a.p., we just learn that in the Sinai desert, a region to the south-west of Israel, four hikers have died in a blizzard. They lost their way and sadly froze to death in deep snow at temperatures well below the freezing point. Pictures in the internet show camels knee-deep in snowdrifts.
If one pieces together this information and biblical records, one might feel entitled to draw the conclusion that such a weather event hasn’t been observed in the region for several thousand years. Not exactly an indication of runaway temperatures, at least not a rush to the northern regions of the mercury scale. And this wasn’t a singular event. Over a prolonged time period and a wide area, the Middle East might have been experiencing its worst cold snap in several hundred if not thousand years.
This certainly does not harmonize with stories about runaway temperatures sizzling our planet. If the Bible is right, the CAGW theory seems to have hit some serious snag. Maybe it would be a good suggestion to tell these people to go back to the drawing boards and proceed to an in-depth makeover of their simulation software…
[Note: some commenters questioned why this essay was posted, I simply saw it as an interesting discussion of recorded historical events, something that scholars worldwide look to document. The Roman Warm Period is well known and also much studied, and it coincides with many writings in the Bible. Wikipedia says:
Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BC) wrote that date trees could grow in Greece if planted, but could not set fruit there. This is the same situation as today, and suggests that southern Aegean mean summer temperatures in the fourth and fifth centuries BC were within a degree of modern temperatures. This and other literary fragments from the time confirm that the Greek climate during that period was basically the same as it was around 2000 AD. Dendrochronological evidence from wood found at the Parthenon shows variability of climate in the fifth century BC resembling the modern pattern of variation.[3] Tree rings from Italy in the late third century BC indicate a period of mild conditions in the area at the time that Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.[4]
The phrase “Roman Warm Period” appears in a 1995 doctoral thesis.[5] It was popularized by an article published in Nature in 1999.
Anyone reading anything more into this posting, or thinking that I’m endorsing the idea that the bible “disproves global warming” should think again. – Anthony]
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albertalad,
“You have your two Books mixed up.”
The Christians “mixed” the two books not me.
Udar,
“You are implying that punishment is immediate and coming from those demanding conversion.
In that, you are confusing Christianity with Islam.”
No, you are claiming that I implied that.
“Convert or be punished” were not even my words. I quoted them from Schitzree. Who claimed, bizarrely, that Atheists (and warmists) made that demand.
I just pointed out the irony of a Christian, whose religion is based on converting to Jesus worship at the threat of eternal damnation.
Punishment doesn’t get any worse that eternal hellfire.
lancifer 662 your name tells me everything I need to no about your opions
wws –
“Banning that meat from consumption is a way of saying “don’t be one of them, be one of us!!!”
Correct.
For Ferd & Zaphod…
quote:
===============
“Many Jewish adults still believe that pork was banned as a public health measure, to prevent trichinosis. But as [Marvin] Harris points out, if that were true the law would have been a simple advisory against undercooking pork: “Flesh of swine thou shalt not eat until the pink has been cooked from it.”
Harris observes that food taboos often make ecological and economic sense. The Hebrews and the Muslims were desert tribes, and pigs are animals of the forest. They compete with people for water and nutritious foods like nuts, fruits, and vegetables. Kosher animals, in contrast, are ruminants like sheep, cattle, and goats, which can live off scraggly desert plants. In India, cattle are too precious to slaughter because they are used for milk, manure, and pulling plows. Harris’ theory is as ingenious as the rabbis’ and far more plausible, though he admits that it can’t explain everything. Ancient tribes wandering the parched Judaean sands were hardly in danger of squandering their resources by herding shrimp and oysters, and it is unclear why the inhabitants of a Polish shetl or a Brooklyn neighborhood should obsess over the feeding habits of desert ruminants.
Food taboos are obviously an ethnic marker, but by itself that observation explains nothing. Why do people wear ethnic badges to begin with, let alone a costly one like banning a source of nutrients? The social sciences assume without question that people submerge their interests to the group, but on evolutionary grounds that is unlikely. I take a more cynical view.
In any group, the younger and poorer, and disenfranchised members may be tempted to defect to other groups. The powerful, especially parents, have an interest in keeping them in. People everywhere from alliances by eating together, from potlatches and feasts to business lunches and dates. If I can’t eat with you, I can’t become your friend. Food taboos often prohibit a favourite food of a nearby tribe; that is true, for example, of many of the Jewish dietary laws. That suggests that they are weapons to keep potential defectors in. First, they make the merest prelude to cooperation with outsiders—breaking bread together—an unmistakable act of defiance. Even better, they exploit the psychology of disgust. Taboo foods are absent during the sensitive period for learning food preferences, and that is enough to make children grow up to find them disgusting. That deters them from becoming intimate with the enemy (“He invited me over, but what will I do if they serve…EEEEUUUW!”). Indeed, the tactic is self-perpetuating because children grow up into parents who don’t feed the disgusting things to their children. The practical effects of food taboos have often been noticed. A familiar theme in novels about the immigrant experience is the protagonist’s torment over sampling taboo foods. Crossing the line offers a modicum of integration into the new world but provokes open conflict with parents and community. (In Portnoy’s Complaint, Alex describes his mother as pronouncing hamburger as if it were H*tler.) But since the elders have no desire for the community to see the taboos in this light, they cloak them in talmudic sophistry and bafflegab.
–Steven Pinker, How The Mind Works, p.p. 383-385.
“The best book on human nature I or anyone else will ever read. Truly magnificent” – Matt Ridley
@ur momisugly John Robertson. I don’t think we know what the effect of a large impact on ice would be but I think that we would see some evidence in the geological strata in areas where the ice wasn’t. AFAIK there isn’t such a layer. Remember that to hit one of the major ice sheets the fall would have to have been at least 15,000 years ago and it would then be unlikely to be recorded or remembered properly.
For that main reason I believe we need to look closer to our own time.
@ur momisuglyDudley Horscroft February 25, 2014 at 1:32 pm. It is unlikely that the Biblical flood has anything to do with the Black Sea for two reasons. Firstly the Biblical account is neither original nor unique. Secondly the Black Sea does not match the description given in the original texts.
The Biblical account is a direct lift from the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and should be treated as such. A lot of time has been put into working out where “the” flood occurred but this is based on the idea that the Biblical flood is the only really big one and all other flood stories are simply exaggerations of local legends. IOW, only the Biblical account is accurate. This is a baseless and frankly egocentric position to take. AFAIK all cultures bar one have a flood myth and they all say pretty much the same thing. The seas rose up and swallowed the land.
On the second point, the description of the flood simply doesn’t match a Black Sea flooding. Note these excerpts from the original;
“Just as dawn began to glow
there arose from the horizon a black cloud.
Adad rumbled inside of it,
before him went Shullat and Hanish,
heralds going over mountain and land.”
A dark cloud with loud noises inside and preceded by two large and very bright lights in the sky.
The Anunnaki lifted up the torches,
setting the land ablaze with their flare.
Stunned shock over Adad’s deeds overtook the heavens,
and turned to blackness all that had been light.
The… land shattered like a… pot.
All day long the South Wind blew …,
blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water,
overwhelming the people like an attack.
A really, really bright light in the sky (or multiple lights) followed by earthquakes. The wind driving the water to flood came from the South. That means the water and wind came from the Persian Gulf and beyond it, the Indian Ocean.
You can only connect the Biblical flood to the Black Sea by treating this particular flood story as somehow special, original and different from all the others (and by ignoring most of the descriptions given in the original). It is none of these things. Looking at the flood stories as a whole, the evidence suggests a double comet impact around 2800 BC. One each in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
For those who haven’t read it the flood story is Tablet XI;
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/
I find it appalling, but not surprising, that so many commenters want to treat any mention of the Bible in the same way Oreskes and Goldenburg want to treat any mention of global warming skepticism. Some people have almost an allergic reaction to a Bible reference, as if one of our longest and most ancient written histories has no value at all. The writings of Homer contain many myths but also much insight into the life and culture of ancient Greeks. Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban all discussion of the writings of Homer because many elements are mythical? Why treat the Bible any differently even if you believe much of it is mythical?
Much of early science has been falsified over the years. That doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything from the efforts of early scientists or that we should ban all mention of them. Later science benefited from and built upon the work of early science. Even when the science turned out to be wrong, we learned from the mistakes. The science of yesterday is much different from the science of today. That doesn’t mean today’s science finally has it all correct or that religious beliefs that differ from today’s science must necessarily be wrong. The last word has yet to be spoken. Science will continue to change because there is an awful lot more out there to discover. It is also a given that some things scientists take as facts today (like catastrophic man-made global warming) will be falsified tomorrow. So I can only conclude that it’s a good thing that religion has some differences with science. if it were in perfect agreement with the science of today, it would surely be out of line with the science of tomorrow.
On the subject of a world-wide flood, I learned something interesting about the enormous amount of water our planet contains from some research out of the University of Liverpool last month. It’s titled “Is there an ocean beneath our feet?” They concluded that the Earth’s mantle contains many more times the amount of water in our oceans. Here’s a paragraph from the article I read in Science Daily:
Seismologists at Liverpool have estimated that over the age of Earth, the Japan subduction zone alone could transport the equivalent of up to three and a half times the water of all Earth’s oceans to its mantle. … “This supports the theory that there are large amounts of water stored deep in the Earth.”
“Surely on Jesus’s birthday there would have been mention of snow if the wise men had to travel through it or if it had been bitterly cold on that day.”
What, you think that Jesus was born on December 25?
The shepherds were tending their flocks in the fields (“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night”), which points to spring or summer or fall, rather than winter. However, late December was already a pagan celebration (Saturnalia, I believe) and it was easier to get the people (peasants) to convert if they could sort of keep their holidays. Pretty much all scholars I’ve read put the time of Jesus’ birth anywhere but winter (I believe spring is mentioned.most, but I’ve hardly read widely on the subject).
Besides, as a commenter mentioned above, the Wise Men showed up about 2 years after Jesus’ birth, so unless they came in the winter, there’d be no reason for them to travel through snow.
Interesting to see the hesitance of quoting historical documents here. Perhaps the MOST interesting case of using “history” and past tense evidence for a science is of course that of evolution.
The “big” lie in evolution of course is how the science is being presented as fact or as a reproduciable science. There are simply no reproducible experiments at all that EVER show nature producing new genetic code that results in new features.
I of course accept the obvious natural selection. When buildings in England turned gray due to using coal then white months were decimated by birds as they stood out against the gray buildings and thus gray moths flourished. However if you paint the buildings purple you do NOT get purple moths since no such genetic code for purple moths exists. Nature can no more create new colors in months and create new features and designs then a computer can program its self with new code.
So perhaps one of the MOST mainstream teachings we have today is evolution and it NOT based on traditional science that has reproducible experiments. So no repeatable experiments exist that that upholds the theory.
Result? The theory is based in HISTORICAL references and past tense events. In other words it is DISHONEST to sell me evolution as a science when it belongs in a speculative history class.
So if we willing to teach a history based concept of evolution, we should be willing to use historical documents to make statements about past climate.
So I have no issues or qualms in those wanting to quote past tense history documents since that are ALL ONE can do in regards to evolution. If everyone is comfortable using past tense history evidence for evolution then why any problem doing the same with the bible?
Now I certainly agree quoting the bible does introduce the possibility of creating fodder for our opponents. This is a problem.
However confidence levels and intelligence here is above average and thus we can and should be able to see the merits of using past history evidence.
If we are not able to quote past history here than one has to give up evolution which is based on past history.
It would seem to be an AMAZING bout of hypocrisy that those SAME people who accept evolution by an act of faith without experiential data are the VERY same people complaining that we using history evidence to debunk the global warming mobs by finding past historical evidence of warm periods.
All it takes to bring out the crazies is the mention of any even slightly religious subject.
Ok by me though. I studied almost nothing but science and religion in university — the same subject as far as I was concerned — the accumulated knowledge of mankind.
lancifer666 says: February 25, 2014 at 4:25 pm
This illustrates a very important point: the difference between christianity and religion. Personally I hate religon, specifically churchianity since it presents all its corporate (eclesiastical) nonsense claiming to be ‘Christianity’ and throws off otherwise clever people: the quotes you offered by men who had not even a slender grasp on actual christianity and more recently the Dennets of the world.
They clearly saw the evils and excesses of religious edifices and were determined to prevent its imposition in the new world, but had no clue as to what actual christianity is about which is why they were deists and not christain in the strict sense.
Jesus said ‘let the dead bury their dead’. The bible, at its bottom line, is about two things: life or death. To updae your back of the envelope idea:
God made man
Man’s firmware was corrupted with the help of a hostile outside agency – your nom de plue is a clue there.
God strove to inject his patch the “lawful” way
His patch became flesh and anyone who accepted it could be transposed from death to life, because that patch was able to pay the real bill that we all owe but can’t pay.
So this God they love to slam became us, took our place, died for us – died as us, because the rules cannot be circumvented. He did it for his kids.
Christianity is a family, not a religion. You get into it the way you got into yours, you get born into it. The new birth, born again, whatever… is your firmware getting reset as you become a member of that family.
you can live this life any way you want but when the rythmic breathing comes to an stop the next phase is an “endian” problem: if you are “dead” with corrupt firmware you won’t run on God’s OS and there’s nothing He can do about since. He doesn’t break the rules.
It’s not about hornet stings, is about “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son” all that other stuff – the killing, the bloodshed, the bullying etc. is the dead doing what they do best and has frack all to do with actual christianity..
Oh, and it was snowy in Lebanon back then. Burrrr :o)
The Bible might explain why the CAGW supporters are afraid of catastrophic global warming. After all, cold must be good since a blizzard wasn’t among the plagues that were called down on Egypt. /sarc
@John B 5:25
Thanks, at the danger of thread divergence, its just one of those thoughts that haunts me,had no connection to biblical times.
The geologists tell me there was nearly 3 miles of ice here in the NWT, Canada.
I am all too familiar with how tough ice is.
Few materials react to impact the way ice does.
Of course after that ice melted, flooded the area and then drained into the arctic, what little evidence of impacts would be hard to find.
====================================================
I came in very late here. I haven’t read all the comments. (I liked yours.)
Someone mentioned The Bible and the predictable ensued.
Here’s my log to throw on the fire.
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/attention-surplus-disorder-part-two/comment-page-1/#comment-456
(I’m also referring to the comments that follow the direct link.)
@Kip Hansen 6:39
Yep, almost like a mental block.
The post was, what could this human record/oral history tell us about climate/weather.
Now its over to critiquing the machinations of religion.
Thread jacking does not have to be overt.
I am beginning to see a trend, the same pseudonyms, who partake in flaming other commenters, engaging in ever more derisive games.
Some here dismiss ancient texts because of modern-day prejudices. To me it makes little sense to do that. The interesting archaeological back story, the stuff between the lines, and the backdrop of who or what the people of these ancient texts were that drove their desire to make sense of events and to put them to memory and papyrus brings endless roads to explore. However, that door is shut if you are blinded by some kind of current prejudice.
However, I am willing to admit that one can live their life content without such explorations. So on the one hand, maybe it’s like Mountain Climbing. I have no desire to do that no matter how much someone extols its virtues and tells me I will be better for having done it. But on the other hand, I don’t hate mountains either.
So my dear 666, a little less angst might allow you to view ancient texts as a potential source of pleasant endeavor in much the same way I might be cajoled into climbing a mountain. As long as food, wine, and good company are available, I might be convinced to give it a go.
Gunga Din says:
Ian M. says:
February 25, 2014 at 6:53 pm
=====================
Thanks Gunga Din. Checked the link and ‘for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” or the fingers typeth.
I’m suspecting a lot of the same sources… :o)
The bible is not a history book or an “oral history.” Those histories portrayed in scripture are not accurate:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
Pamela Gray.
“However, I am willing to admit that one can live their life content without such explorations“.
Not me. I can do without all the horrible stuff – this kind of thing:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/1sam/18.html#27
(warning – not for kids)
But I just adore the story of Adam and Eve.
Most people familiar with the story somehow miss the fact that the old man (Jehovah Elohim, or, Lord of the Pantheon) actually lied to Adam and Eve, promising them instant death if they consumed fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
The serpent, on the other hand, warned that Jehovah was trying to deceive them, and that if they ate the fruit, then their eyes would be opened and they would become like the gods (elohim, pantheon, plural), and they would be able to distinguish between good and evil.
When they did taste the fruit of knowlege, everything the subtle serpent said … came true!!
I really dig that ancient snake story.
You can check the accuracy of my interpretation with an online Blue Letter Concordance Bible.
It wasn’t a snake.
And there are two versions of when and how Adam and Eve were created. One is likely a narrative, the other a ceremonial song or chant.
JohnB says:
February 25, 2014 at 5:25 pm
Remember that to hit one of the major ice sheets the fall would have to have been at least 15,000 years ago and it would then be unlikely to be recorded or remembered properly.
——————————————————————————————————————
The thoughts start to flow. Look to Australia. How far back does the word of mouth teachings of the aborigines go? Or for that matter, local American Indians have oral traditions that date way back. I was fortunate to have been introduced to a chief elder of the Klamath River tribes back in the early 70s. They even rented a 20 acre piece of land to me that had an old cabin built with hand cut lumber. That spot was where the tribal chiefs had lived for many centuries. This elder they let me meet was now living further north from me on the same ridge. We both could sense each other. At one point I had been saying something while he was gazing off in the distance. I wondered if he had even been listening, until he spun his head around and gazed into me. He had indeed been listening to me in every sense of the word and more. There is a little town by the name of Weitchpec in California. It sits at the confluence of the Trinity and Klamath Rivers. It is estimated that the local tribe had been living there for an estimated 12,000 years. It was almost completely destroyed by the great flood of 1964/65. A gravel bar now sits where the once beautiful fertile river soil had been.
It is also possible that the biblical flood story survived for the many thousand of years necessary for it to correspond with the breakup of the ice sheets. If it had just been a flood from a tsunami that created the worldwide memory of a flood story, then it would have been likely for the inhabitants to have returned to their original living grounds. It is unfortunate that Turkey has resisted some of the exploration groups who would like to search further in the Black Sea.
I meant to add that a man such as the one I met back in the 70s could have easily kept a very, very, very long oral tradition in his memory.
john robertson says:
February 25, 2014 at 7:32 pm
—————————————
Bingo!!!
@John Robertson. I don’t see a hijack here since the question is “Are ancient Climates recorded in ancient texts”.
Your question is valid and is one explanation for the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas period. The downside is that any impact event large enough to wreak havoc on a planetary scale would have to be so large that it would create a dust cloud which would leave evidence behind in other places on the planet.
That being said, I don’t know if much is known at all about ice impacts and their effects. I was looking for papers on this and related topics a few years ago and there wasn’t much that I could find. Which is quite possibly more a reflection on my research abilities rather than anything else.
I must say that I’m fascinated by those who think the “primitives” of pre Biblical times have nothing of value to say. I’m reminded of the many learned scholars who derided Pliny the Younger’s description of the Vesuvius eruption on the grounds that “Volcanoes don’t erupt like that”. Of course now we know about pyroclastic flows and admit that Pliny gave an accurate account. It seems this lesson must be relearned every generation or so.
albertkallal says:
February 25, 2014 at 6:07 pm
You are happy to accept natural selection over short time frames, but cannot accept the same mechanism can cause more significant change over much longer time frames?
When you think about the DNA molecule and how the same structure is used by such a vast array of life forms, and that the actual difference between very different life forms is such a small percentage of that molecular chain, and that the replication process is done on such a vast scale, at a high velocity over epochs of time, and yet you have a problem with evolution?
Seems to me you have a problem with logic and accepting the reproducable experiments that are done with bacteria and other simple organisms all over the world for many years now.