Hey Jeffrey,<\/p>\n
I have a question: I just started a daily Bible reading program and went back over the history of mankind, creation, and the generations. I am wondering: Are these the only people who were living on the Earth at this time? How would you compare Genesis with other ancient civilizations’ generations or old recorded history? I realize Genesis is inspired by God and infallible, but how would one handle the different flood accounts from different cultures and some of their ancient history? Also, different civilizations talk about Nephilim (they don’t use that name, but have ridiculous origin stories of how these giants came about.) I guess my question is: Are they wrong and is Genesis the only true account?<\/p>\n\t
If you and several of your friends witnessed an accident and I asked you to write down an account of what happened, all the accounts would have different details. People being people, several of the accounts will have incorrect details. Now if I ask you to write an account of the accident five years later, the differences would be greater and the number of errors will increase because people’s memories are not perfect.<\/p>\n
The Bible records the account of the beginning and the flood that, while written by men, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God<\/em>” (II Peter 1:20-21). But other cultures did not have God preserving their memories and correcting inaccurate facts. Thus, that there are differences is expected. What becomes interesting is the number of overlaps with the biblical account. It shows that there is a core set of memories that appears among the various cultures.<\/p>\n All people descend from Adam and Eve. Eve’s name means “mother of all living.” Paul stated: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings<\/em>” (Acts 17:28). There are no true races of men, only different nationalities.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that datings of various cultures are being done by people with a strong desire to come up with old dates in order to justify evolution. For instance, the standard dating of the Egyptian culture shows it dating back further than the Bible indicates the world has been in existence. However, if you look closely, you will notice that there is a basic assumption that no king’s rule overlapped with other kings, even though Egypt is a significantly sized area. Removing overlaps creates the appearance of a long period of time. But if overlaps did occur, which is the more logical option, then Egyptian history easily fits in the time since the flood. The same argument can be made for Chinese culture.<\/p>\n\t Oh, yes sir, that makes perfect sense! Especially the part about the Egyptian kings’ rule. I had to read over it a couple of times to grasp it, but it makes perfect sense. Egypt is huge, so kings’ reigns probably overlapped, and like you said those people didn’t have God preserving their memories like the Scriptures do.<\/p>\n And I believe that they would try to make the dates seem long ago to support their theory of evolution. It seems as if everything has to fit in that timeline in regards to secular education even if it is point blank wrong. Evolutionists don’t want to admit they’re wrong and have to rewrite all the textbooks.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: Hey Jeffrey, I have a question: I just started a daily Bible reading program and went back over the history of mankind, creation, and the generations. I am wondering: Are these the only people who were living on the Earth at this time? How would you compare Genesis with other ancient civilizations’ generations or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[568,302,264,189,279],"class_list":["post-51351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-accuracy-of-the-bible","tag-creation","tag-flood","tag-genesis","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":38365,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-did-ancient-cultures-lose-the-story-of-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":0},"title":"Why did ancient cultures lose the story of God?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I was discussing with a friend how there is literal scientific evidence to show that the world is less than 10,000 years old. Then the question was raised: \"Why did ancient cultures (Olmec, etc.) lose the story of God?\" In other words, we are asking what caused these ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7801,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-are-there-two-different-stories-of-creation-in-genesis\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":1},"title":"Why are there two different stories of creation in Genesis?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Why are there two different stories of creation in Genesis? Answer: Let's start with a basic observation: two people observing the same events will not give the same account. For example, an accident happens and the police gather information from the multiple witnesses, yet even if every witness told\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20177,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-is-the-creation-of-man-mentioned-twice-in-genesis\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":2},"title":"Why is the creation of man mentioned twice in Genesis?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Can you shed some light on the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis?\u00a0 In Genesis 1 you have man being created and then in Genesis 2 you have man being created again. Answer: Though attributed to Moses, the Bible never states that Moses was the original\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25573,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-genesis-just-a-myth-based-on-the-epic-of-gilgamesh\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":3},"title":"Is Genesis just a myth based on the Epic of Gilgamesh?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have read your Facebook writings on Adam and Eve with interest.\u00a0 However, as a Unitarian I was presented with the beautiful Genesis story, not as a biblical illustration of the origin of sin, but as an important myth long misinterpreted in the Judaic\/Christian tradition. Almost all the constituents\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":70268,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/was-genesis-originally-written-in-cuneiform\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":4},"title":"Was Genesis originally written in cuneiform?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 10, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I had come across a document about Genesis being in Cuneiform. It is an interesting hypothesis. The idea is that if Genesis was written in cuneiform, it might be one of the oldest written accounts. This means that when atheists like to say ancient mythology influenced the Bible, it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29829,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-there-no-such-thing-as-prehistoric-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":51351,"position":5},"title":"Is there no such thing as prehistoric times?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Bible times start from the beginning of time. The Bible is recorded history and prehistoric means before recorded history. Dinosaurs were in the Bible, and dinosaurs are often referred to as prehistoric, but they were recorded, so does all this mean that there is no such thing as prehistoric\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Response:<\/h2>\n