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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Noah's Three Sons



Genesis 10:1-32 NIV



The Table of Nations





1This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.

The Japhethites

2The sonsa of Japheth:
Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshek and Tiras.

3The sons of Gomer:
Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.

4The sons of Javan:
Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittites and the Rodanites.b 5(From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)




The Hamites


6The sons of Ham:
Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan.

7The sons of Cush:
Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabteka.

The sons of Raamah:
Sheba and Dedan.

8 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. 9He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” 




10The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, ind Shinar.e 11From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir,f Calah 12and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city.




13Egypt was the father of
the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, 14Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came




and Caphtorites.
  
15Canaan was the father of
Sidon his firstborn,g and of the Hittites, 16Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, 17Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, 18Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.

Later the Canaanite clans scattered 19and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha.

20These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.


The Semites

21Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.

22The sons of Shem:
Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram. 

23The sons of Aram:
Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshek.i
  
24Arphaxad was the father ofj Shelah,
and Shelah the father of Eber.
  
25Two sons were born to Eber:

One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.


26Joktan was the father of
Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28Obal, Abimael, Sheba,29Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

30The region where they lived stretched from Mesha toward Sephar, in the eastern hill country.

31These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.


32These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.








Two sons were born to Eber : One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided


Four generations after Noah, Genesis 10:25 records the birth of Peleg (meaning division) “for in his days was the earth divided”. Some suggest the continents of the earth were divided at this time. However, this seems unlikely, as such a process would have had to occur within a very confined time period. The resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like another Noahic Flood all over again. Any continental separation thus likely occurredduring the Flood. 

The traditional interpretation, which seems more reasonable, relates this verse to the division of people/nations at the Tower of Babel event in Genesis 11. (Just like the English “earth” can have a variety of meanings, the Hebrew erets can also mean nation(s)—thus erets Yisrael, the land (nation, people) of Israel.) According to the biblical chronology as deduced by Archbishop Ussher, the Flood occurred in 2349–2348 BC, and Peleg was born in 2247 BC about a hundred years later. Do ancient writers shed any light on when this happened? The answer is a resounding yes.

Babylon begins


The year was 331 BC. After Alexander the Great had defeated Darius at Gaugmela near Arbela, he journeyed to Babylon. Here he received 1903 years of astronomical observations from the Chaldeans, which they claimed dated back to the founding of Babylon. If this was so, then that would place the founding of Babylon in 2234 BC, or about thirteen years after the birth of Peleg. This was recorded in the sixth book of De Caelo (“About the heavens”) by Simplicius, a Latin writer in the 6th century AD. Porphyry (an anti-Christian Greek philosopher, c. 234–305 AD) also deduced the same number.

Egypt emerges


The Byzantine chronicler Constantinus Manasses (d. 1187) wrote that the Egyptian state lasted 1663 years. If correct, then counting backward from the time that Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt in 526 BC, gives us the year of 2188 BC for the founding of Egypt, about 60 years after the birth of Peleg. About this time Mizraim, the son of Ham, led his colony into Egypt. Hence the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim (or sometimes “the land of Ham” e.g. Psalm 105:23,27).

Greece gets going


Artist’s reconstruction of the Tower of Babel. This view, modelled upon ancient ziggurats, is probably very similar to how it actually appeared. The Greek historian Herodotus (5thcentury BC), who saw it on his way through Babylon, described it as having eight levels, and standing a colossal 60 m (about 20 modern stories) high.
According to the 4th Century bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea, Egialeus, king of the Greek city of Sicyon, west of Corinth in Peloponnesus, began his reign in 2089 BC, 1313 years before the first Olympiad in 776 BC. If Eusebius is correct, then this king started to reign about 160 years after the birth of Peleg.

Note that Babylon, Egypt, and Greece each spoke a different language. These ancient historians have unwittingly confirmed the extreme accuracy of the biblical genealogies as found in the Hebrew scriptures. The Tower of Babel would have had to have occurred before the founding of these other kingdoms. Babel (Babylon), being in the same region as the Tower, would have been one of the earliest kingdoms, of course.

Of the other kingdoms, the ones most distant from Babel would have been founded the latest. This is exactly what these writers have described. First Babylon, then Egypt, and then Greece were founded.

This tells us something about human nature too! After the Tower of Babel, people were forced to split into groups according to their new language. Humans are basically lazy. They would have moved away only as far from Babel as they had to in order to live in peace. However, population pressure, military force, or the desire to search for “greener pastures” would have induced them to move out further and further. So civilization would have slowly spread by periodic migrations from its centre at Babel.

Although secular historians ignore the events of Babel and the Flood, they assume civilization started in the Middle East, likely near Babylon, and spread out slowly from there. However, they use a time frame much earlier than the time deduced from the biblical chronologies.

An interesting piece of information comes from Manetho, who recorded the history of Egypt in the third century BC. He wrote that the Tower of Babel occurred five years after the birth of Peleg. If this was so, then this would confirm that the migrations recorded in Genesis 10 occurred over a period of time, for the apparent leaders of many of these national groups would have been very young children when the confusion of languages occurred.

The lesson for us to learn is this. The Bible is accurate. Whether secular reconstructions of history agree with it or not does not change the accuracy of the Bible. We should use the biblical chronologies to determine where the secularists have gone astray and we should not amend the Bible to fit the latest secular speculations on history. This research area has largely been ignored by Christians in the last hundred years or so as they scramble to manipulate the Bible to conform to the latest secular reconstructions of man's history.

In recent years, some Christians have done an excellent job of restoring the authority of Genesis 1–4, 6–9. However, the genealogies in Genesis 5,10, and 11 (and the chronological portions in Kings and Chronicles) have been quietly surrendered to the domain of secular historians. Their destructive work on these chronologies has overthrown the faith of many. It is about time that this the biblical ground was reclaimed. If you could not trust the numbers in the chronologies of the Bible, why should you trust the words between the numbers? What limits would you place on your unbelief?

The Bible and chronology

Time chart from the Flood to the foundation of Babylon, Egypt and GreeceThere are three errors common in biblical chronology today. First, there are those who have a low view of the Bible and ignore its chronological data altogether. The ancient secular writers cited in the accompanying article provide independent support for the accuracy of the data in the Bible, which is based on facts, not myths as many liberals believe. 

Second, there are those who would shorten the period of the divided kingdom. Edwin Thiele is the main proponent of this. Thiele uses the fragmentary Assyrian chronology of the divided kingdom period by about 50 years, to fit the conjectured dates from Assyria. But this would mean that Babylon would have been founded way before Peleg and the Tower of Babel! 

Third, there are those who would lengthen the biblical chronology. One of the earliest were those rabbis in Egypt who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek to produce the Septuagint (LXX) in the third century BC. They arbitrarily added about 700 years to the biblical chronology for the period between Noah and Abraham, to make it agree with the works of Manetho. If what they had done was correct, then Peleg would be dead and gone (as would most of the leaders of the division of the nations) before the Tower of Babel happened.

Many modern biblical archaeologists, like the translators of the LXX, are just as guilty of the same thing today. Just as the LXX's translators listened to the fairy tales the Egyptian priests told them, most modern biblical scholars follow the just so stories told by secular historians and archaeologists who push the founding of Babylon and Egypt back thousands of years




My Rainbow In The Clouds




Genesis 9:1-29 NIV






God’s Covenant With Noah



1Then GOD Blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.


 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.


4“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5And for your lifeblood I Will surely Demand an accounting. I Will Demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I Will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.


6 “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in The Image of GOD
Has GOD Made mankind.


7As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”


8Then GOD Said to Noah and to his sons with him: 


9“I Now Establish My Covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11I Establish My Covenant with you: Never Again Will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; Never Again Will There Be a flood to destroy the earth.”


12And GOD said, “This is The Sign of The Covenant I AM Making between ME and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13I Have Set My Rainbow in the clouds, and it will be The Sign of The Covenant between ME and the earth. 




14Whenever I Bring Clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15I Will Remember My Covenant between ME and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 




16Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I Will See it and Remember The Everlasting Covenant between GOD and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”




17So GOD Said to Noah,


“This is The Sign of The Covenant I Have Established between ME and all life on the earth.”






The Sons of Noah


18The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.


20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceededa to plant a vineyard. 




21When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.





24When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25he said,


“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”


26He also said,


“Praise Be To The Lord, The GOD of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27May GOD Extend Japheth’s territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”



28After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.