How old was Adam and when did he live?
Tom Croucher has done a very scholarly analysis of the numbers used in Genesis. It is long and complex so I make no attempt to reproduce it here. I reproduce below just the Abstract and conclusion.
I have myself come to a similar but much less complex conclusion when I argued that the ages of Methuselah & co were a simple decimal mistake. I argued that the scribes of the original and much older text had misunderstood the numbers they saw and assumed that they were decimal when they were not. Decimal numbering has been around as long as people have had ten fingers so it was an understandable mistake. So if we move the decimal point one place we get more believable numbers. Methuselah lived only into his 90s. My article on that is below
http://jonjayray.com/methus.html
I am inclined to defer to Croucher on the matter but I note one difficulty in his account: He fails to consider the obvious different origins of Genesis chapter 1 and the rest of Genesis. Most of Genesis is consitent with the rest of the Torah in referring to God as Yahweh but Chapter 1 only refers to him as Elohim, a much later practice. So chapter 1 is an interpolation to the original text. Both chapter 1 and the other early chapters maybe of Sumerian origin but considering both as part of the same narrative is clearly fallacious. I do not doubt that chapter 1 is of Sumerian origin. Verses 6 and 7 clearly reflect Sumerian cosmology. I expand on that below:https://ntwords.blogspot.com/2017/03/#8618250840934603253
I discuss WHY Chapter 1 was interpolated below:http://jonjayray.com/why7.html
Finally, I think Croucher should simply delete from his account all mention of Chapter 1. That would not greatly harm his narrativeABSTRACT
In the first two papers of this series, I developed the following propositions: Adam was not the first human, and he lived in Sumer, Southern Mesopotamia, in the period 3200 – 3000 BC. In this paper I use those conclusions to place the early chapters of Genesis in their Sumerian context and I propose that the original
written record of Adam was a Sumerian document where the ages that appear in Genesis 5 were recorded in a numbering system of that time, and this led to translation errors that result in the problematic ages of the patriarchs. I then propose a means of reverse-engineering the ages to the correct numbers when these
events were first recorded in Sumer. The conclusion is that Adam was 81 years old when he died.
CONCLUSION
The pre-Flood portion of the SKL uses simple statements to present a list of kings. While the list of names and places may be believed the lengths of the reigns are not believable.
However, the fact that every reign is a combination of multiples of 3,600 and 600, makes it easy to demonstrate how the misinterpretation may have occurred. When reverse-engineered the resulting reigns return to numbers consistent with human
lifespans.
From beginning to the end of the whole SKL there are three sections: the pre-Flood with lengthy number, the middle section showing a reduction in the numbers, and the final section showing reigns consistent with human lifespans.
The same thing happens in the Bible: the simple writing style of early Sumer in Genesis 1, 5, and 11; the pattern of reducing lifespans and longevity in Genesis 5 that can be reverse-engineered to produce normal human lifespans.
Therefore, I propose that Adam lived in the period 3200 – 3000 BC and that he probably lived to be 81 years old. This means that Adam lived at a time when the priests of Sumer were an elite class of people.Intelligent, well-educated, and highly trained, the priests developed both writing and mathematics — knowledge essential to manage their increasingly sophisticated society.
This knowledge helps establish the social, cultural and, most importantly, the religious context for Adam and leads to a different understanding of Genesis 1-5.
If this revised chronology does prove to be acceptable, then the propositions of the first two papers (that Adam was not the first human and that he lived 3200 – 3000 BC becomes a more certain proposition.
If the best explanation for the longevity in Genesis 5 is that they are the result of a misinterpretation of a numbering system from Shuruppak around 290 BC, then the record from Adam to Noah must be a Mesopotamian text written at that time. If that is the case, then the argument for the story being passed on as oral history is redundant. When a culture has a written record there is no need for oral history.
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PhD Biologist Challenges SPLC to Debate After It Accused Him of ‘Peddling Pseudoscience’ Against Transgender Orthodoxy
Ph.D. biologist Colin Wright is publicly inviting the Southern Poverty Law Center to debate him on the subject of what the SPLC calls “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience,” specifically on the transgender issue.
The SPLC released a 41,000-word report claiming that “the controversy over trans health care is manufactured to reinforce both white supremacy and the political goals of the Christian Right.” The report claims to reveal “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience,” but it does not seriously address the concerns of critics of the transgender movement.
The report mentions Wright, a Manhattan Institute fellow, as part of the movement pushing “pseudoscience.”
“It’s almost not really worth responding to,” Wright tells “The Daily Signal Podcast” of the SPLC report. “It is such a poor, poorly put together document, riddled with typos.”
“Most importantly, it justs makes all these accusations that I’m peddling ‘pseudoscience,’ that type of thing,” he adds. “It doesn’t engage with any of the actual arguments and the substance of what I’m saying, or what anyone else mentioned in the report is saying. There’s not really anything to respond to.”
He calls the report “completely ridiculous.”
“It’s purely just a smear piece,” Wright says. “They just want to garner attention and stir outrage.”
“But if anyone from the SPLC wants to actually have a conversation with me about anything that I’ve ever said on this topic, if you think I’m peddling ‘pseudoscience,’ expose me in front of a huge audience,” the biologist says. “Let’s have a one-on-one conversation with the moderator of your choice.”
“I’m just here to have a conversation about the biology of sex, so let’s have that conversation,” Wright says.
He recalls getting ostracized from academia for daring to question gender ideology.
“There’s a concerted movement by activists coming from various humanities disciplines, like queer theory, that are trying to just muddy the waters about what males and females are, and it’s difficult just trying to engage with them, because they’re doing a political project,” Wright says. “I’m doing sort of a scientific truth-finding project here, and so that’s what kind of started me down this path.”
He warns that “there’s major consequences, not just for individuals, but for society as a whole, when you’re denying fundamental aspects of our biology.”
As for claims that Wright is pushing a “Christian Right” ideology, the biologist recalls his history of arguing for evolution against some of the very people the SPLC says he is supporting.
“I used to argue against creationists and Intelligent Design proponents back in the day as an evolutionary biologist, because I think evolution is a very important part of who we are as a species,” he says.
Wright said the idea of giving patients hormones and surgeries “to make your body sex align with your mind sex” is “wildly regressive and anti-scientific and horrific, grotesque.”
He says he does not object to adults going under the knife for cosmetic surgeries, “but the thing that makes the ‘gender-affirming care’ so bad is that this is covered by insurance, as though it’s life-saving, and it’s clearly not.”
As for the SPLC, it has become an enforcer of the Left’s ideology. As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has leveraged its track record of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to develop a “hate map” it uses to smear enemies. The SPLC has put conservative Christian groups, immigration-reform groups, parental rights groups, and other organizations that oppose its leftist agenda on the “hate map” alongside Klan chapters.
The SPLC’s education arm, which rejected the name “Teaching Tolerance” to become “Learning for Justice” in 2021, has long pushed transgender identity lessons, even for preschoolers.
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UK: How the National Maritime Museum is trying to decolonise Lord Nelson
I spent Christmas in Turin, with its superb and often neglected museums that are a particular delight because they are uncontaminated by preaching about the evils of European colonialism. It is not that I have no moral perspective on how the creators of empire across four millennia have acted towards their subjects. But the use of objects in museums to tell a distorted picture in the interests of supposed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, infused with Critical Race Theory, is a betrayal of what museums are supposed to do. Museums are not political tools, as the Museums Association, with its rants against racism and colonialism, seems to think. Racism is indeed a great evil. But it is essential to look at the past through the eyes of those who lived then, realising that they operated according to different ideas about the world which, unsettling as that might be, legitimated behaviour we would deplore if it were exercised today.
These contemporary political concerns do much more to distort the past than to explain it
A madness has been infecting our leading museums in recent months. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge put together a ‘Black Atlantic’ exhibition that brought together items connected one way or another with the slave trade. Ignoring all other explanations, the captions maintained that the reason a famous prize was offered by the Royal Society to whoever could work out how to measure longitude was that the crews of slave ships needed greater accuracy when navigating their way across the Atlantic. Now the Royal Academy of Arts is launching its own display about colonialism, imperialism and slavery.
The National Maritime Museum has been gravitating in the same direction for the last few years. This is sad because it is one of the most popular museums in London, and attracts large numbers of foreign tourists, who must be bewildered by the persistent attempts to politicise the way we look at Britain’s past. Lord Nelson and his contemporaries have been particular targets of initiatives that aim to demote them from their pedestals. A new sculpture has been installed to set the record straight. A ‘Sea Deity’ has been cast in bronze, designed by Eve Shepherd with the help of local children and the charity Action for Refugees Lewisham. The artist has moulded a beautiful face in a traditional, almost neo-classical, way, but we are expected to see the Deity as non-binary – hence the gender-neutral term Deity. The children who helped the artist design her work of art were, like the boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, more inclined to tell the truth: when they saw the finished work, they named the lovely deity Olympia, having decided that she is female.
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Has the MAGA Movement Finally Found Its Heir?
Standing inside a makeshift office, a crowd of red hat-wearing MAGA acolytes in front of him and a massive mural of piercing-eyes Donald Trump on the wall behind, Matt Gaetz comfortably took questions from the crowd until an uncomfortable one came in.
“What’s the youngest school girl you’ve been with?” a heckler in disguise wanted to know.
Most people, when faced with that question, would grow flustered or even angry. But Matt Gaetz is not like most people.
The lawmaker, standing there in a black quarter zip fleece and jeans at Donald Trump’s Manchester, N.H. headquarters, waited for the boos to subside. Then, like an AI bot programmed for the general election, he ridiculed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their age and gender.
"Think about being a part of a party where they haven't even tried to make an argument about winning your vote," Gaetz said, sidestepping any discussion of the ethics probe launched against him for alleged sex trafficking. "The Democratic Party today has basically put up as their candidate a nursing home escapee and the annoying lady from the HR department."
No beat was skipped. No eyebrow was raised. The talking points endured. The event continued on.
Trump has a small army of surrogates working on his behalf in New Hampshire this week. None seem to be enjoying the role as much as Gaetz.
The Florida Republican has appeared at meet-and-greets across the state. He has done numerous press hits, at one point on Sunday propping up a laptop on a box of 60 Bic pens to get the right angle for a shot for a Fox News segment. And he was right offstage at Trump’s rally on Saturday night — earning a shoutout from the ex-president and a notable “We love you Matt Gaetz!!” scream from a woman one football field length across the arena.
“I love that this is the fisticuffs of politics,” Gaetz told me from his car after leaving an event Sunday afternoon. “So much of what I do is behind the committee dias or the lectern on the floor. But what is special about this is you get eyeball to eyeball with people who tell you what is on their mind.”
At his events, attendees say they view Gaetz not so much as a surrogate for the campaign but as an heir to the Trump movement. He has begun, to a degree, to physically resemble a Trump, with slicked back hair in the style of Trump’s actual sons. But most people who have flocked to his events say it is his political approach that reminds them of the former president. It’s precisely because he gets heckled that they love him.
“It’s a little bit of crazy but the right kind of crazy,” said Bill Mitchell, 54, of Troy, New Hampshire. “He does what he said he was going to do. And Trump did what he said he was going to do.”
“I love him,” said Peter Salvitti, of Sonopeake, New Hampshire. “He’s got chutzpah!”
Few Republicans in Washington would agree. To them, Gaetz isn’t the right kind of crazy. He’s a chaos agent, whose political convictions revolve around, largely, the promotion of Matt Gaetz. His role in ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a feat treated by Trump fans as akin to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile — weakened the party and left them in a state of disorder from which they have not recovered. His alleged ethical transgressions aren’t signs that he has the right enemies; if true, they’re illustrations of serious moral lapses. They'd be more than fine if he just went away.
Gaetz himself knows he’s not liked. “They think I’m the crazy one and I think they’re the crazy one,” he told the crowd in Keene on Sunday.
But as Gaetz sees it, he’s closer to the id of the party than many of his fellow congressional Republicans. And if you were to be with him on the trail in New Hampshire, you’d be hard pressed to disagree. One woman who waited in a line to get a photo with the lawmaker put her 91-year-old father on the phone to talk with him. She was so elated, her hands were shaking. She struggled to hit the right button to hang up the line.
“The way he looks at you without blinking,” said the woman, Cherie Rowe, 61, “you know he is never going to back down. It’s like a hawkeye.”
Several attendees at the event said they could very easily see themselves voting for Gaetz if he were to run for president. He was, they argued, Trumpism personified; or, at least, attitudinally and temperamentally as close to the personification as someone not named Trump could be.
But could Gaetz see it too?
“If we succeed and get Trump elected there will be many people who rightfully will lay claim to their own role in the MAGA movement,” he told me.
Between that Manchester stop and the one later in the day in Keene, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was suspending his presidential campaign. When Gaetz showed up at Tempesta's Restaurant to greet the waiting crowd, he seemed jubilant over the news. But beneath the surface, it wasn’t hard to detect some relief, too.
“I didn’t like when mom and dad were fighting,” he said.
Gaetz had helped get DeSantis elected governor. They were once allies. He had done debate prep with him. DeSantis was a fellow Florida man — albeit one who had not enjoyed his time in New Hampshire as much as Gaetz was now.
What, I asked Gaetz, had he and Trump understood that DeSantis didn’t.
“That they wanted to vote for Trump,” Gaetz replied.
That may be a simple observation. But it’s one Gaetz accurately made and many others didn’t. And for that, he is now benefiting, with a captive audience among the MAGA base and a powerful ally in the all-but-assured presidential nominee. He may be persona non grata among certain segments of the GOP leadership. But his brand of lightning-rod politics resonates with the people in the party deciding the elections, for better and worse.
Hours after being confronted by a heckler in Manchester, Gaetz found himself once more targeted in Keene. This time, a man wearing a MAGA hat and a backpack approached him for a photo before declaring that he had brought with him a "bag of underage girls.” He then pulled out a blow-up doll from his bag.
As the heckler was escorted out, blow-up doll in hand, Gaetz kept taking pictures as if nothing had ever happened.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/22/maga-movement-heir-matt-gaetz-00136968
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
<> http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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