"That ye will that other men do not to you, do ye not that to other men. From this one doom (law or judgment) a man may think that he should doom every one rightly; he need keep no other doom-book." - King Alfred (849 - 901)
Why is the included included, and why is so much excluded? Honestly, I just haven't a clue what you're driving at!
The Laird of Camster The Royal Institute Why Ryle is not a 'Behaviourist'
Beckford Priory and Hall Gilbert Ryle Need for dialogue G-d and Professor Flew
Plan and purpose of St. Mark's Gospel On Being A Writer The Alphabet Epilogue
Every individual person in some sense lives in a different developing world
The reintegration of Man is a wide process: Man has to achieve unity within himself, and also unity with the Universe: 'They know not why they love nor wherefore they sicken and die. Calling that holy love which is Envy, Revenge and Cruelty Which separated the stars from the mountains, the mountains from man, and left Man, a little grovelling Root outside of himself.' (Keynes, I Vol., 580)." (From Denis Seurat's Introduction to his book, God's of the people, London: John Westhouse Publishing Ltd,1947.)
Neither private nor public grief nor their sum-total ever add up to prudent public policy. Our only vital question is, as Roger Scruton has so wisely reminded us, Love - and, without genuine forgiveness from the heart, no practical solution is possible. Failure to re-member this breeds suicide!
(Mary Bennett & David S. Percy, Dark Moon - Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers, London: Aulis Publishers, 1999, pp. 237-8.)
Bennett & Percy's important study significantly enhances our understanding of a large number of subsequent events.
In the April 1974 issue of the Council for Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs Journal John Gardner wrote: In John Coleman's well researched but highly speculative and, indeed, frequently both confused and confusing book, The Conspirators' Hierarchy - The Committee of 300 (4th edition, WIR: Carson City, Nevada, 1997), any 'New World Order' is to be avoided like the plague, and Gardner is categorized as a 'super-servant' of a so called 'Committee' of, if Coleman is to be believed, arch-villains having at their disposal In "The Force of Falsity" (Serendipities - Language and Lunacy, Orion paperback, 1999, p.24), Umberto Eco refers to Karl Popper as having "reminded us that the social theory of conspiracy is like the one we find in Homer" - or, if Gore Vidal is to be believed, in contemporary Washington, D.C.
It is, however, not difficult to find evidence in favour of Alvin Toffler's premise in his 1980 best seller, The Third Wave (paperback edition: Pan Books, 1981): "The political shudders and crises we face cannot be solved by leaders - strong or weak - so long as those leaders are compelled to operate through inappropriate, broken down, overloaded institutions.
"Restructuring … will involve multimillions of people. If this radical overhaul is rigidly resisted it may well trigger bloodshed. How peaceful the process turns out to be will depend on many factors therefore - on how flexible or intransigent the existing élites prove to be, on whether the change is accelerated by economic collapse, on whether or not external threats and military interventions occur. Clearly the risks are great.
The pronouncements of any Prime Minister addressing the nation on Television are, one hopes, honest expressions of her or his personal opinion but, even when they assume the form of emphatic requests for emotional, social and political solidarity, their credibility is weakened when no more plausible a motivation for compliance is mentioned than what, surely, is an entirely unrealistic wish thereby to promote "stability"
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose is no recipe for "stability". No! 'eppur' si muove
In September 1990, in a significant presentation to the First International Dialogue on the Transition to Global Society (Landegg Academy, Switzerland), Robert Artigiani, professor of the History of Science at the United States Naval Academy and a founding member of the Washington Evolutionary Systems Society, noted: Such "hopeful realism" offers a key of sorts to what may, in the biblical sense, be a "peaceful" solution to many problems. Whether or not it justifies any sort of allegedly "pre-emptively defensive" military aggression against a sovereign State or its currently legitimate leader is a significant, difficult and complex question. Certainly, it is difficult to conceive of any other rational basis for the events that precipitated what is now happening in Iraq. Dreams of "stability" may prove to be, in fact, preludes to a nightmare. Look before you leap!
ReMember and Learn - The complete text of The Declaration of Arbroath together with the immediately preceding portion of this page (from On June 30 1908 onwards) formatted for printing as 3 A4-size pages is also now available.
Here IS Wisdom ... and confusion?
Tunneling next to Stonehenge? Lovesick hearts
Avebury, Silbury, Stonehenge, the Giza Plateau complex & the Dahshur Pyramids
However, according to Doctor Peter Plichta (God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code, ISBN 1-86204-014-1: Element
Books, Shaftesbury, U.K. - Rockport, U.S.A. - Milton, Australia, 1997, p.165): "Our children have the opportunity of being the first generation to be able to fully appreciate the meaning in at least one Bible quotation - 'But THOU hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight' (Wisdom 11:20)."
Zecharia Sitchin believes that the original reading of Genesis 1:1 is
very slightly but most significantly different from that given in all known
versions of the Hebrew-Christian Bible; it runs: "Ab-reshit bara Elohim et
Ha'Shamaim v'et Ha'Aretz". This may be translated: "The Father-of-Beginning
created the Gods, the Heavens, and the Earth." (Divine Encounters, New
York, Avon Books, 1996, p.376.)
He writes: "The progress in biblical and linguistic studies since the time of King James has moved the editors of both the Catholic The New American Bible and The New English Bible of the churches in Great Britain to substitute the word 'wind' - which is what the Hebrew ru'ach means - for the 'Spirit of God,' so that Genesis 1:2 now reads 'a mighty wind swept over the waters.' They retain, however, the concept of 'abyss' for the Hebrew word Tehom [J. S. Ellul's 'Great Deep'] in the original Bible; but by now even theologians acknowledge that the reference is to no other entity than the Sumerian Tiamat.
Zecharia Sitchin's The Lost Book of Enki - Memoirs and Prophecies of an Extraterrestrial God (ISBN 1-879181-83-5) includes an account of Enki's use of the Red Planet as a way-station between heaven and earth and, to that extent, also corroborates recent claims that ancient Glastonbury, Avebury & Stonehenge are scaled-down reproductions of similar features in the Cydonia region of Mars.
Copyright © Joseph S. Ellul 2004
As a boy, Colin was privileged to enjoy the friendship of Eric Doyle, later to become a leading authority on the theology of Dun Scotus. It seems appropriate, therefore, in view of the celebration on 8 December 2004 of the 150th anniversary of Pope Pius IX's dogmatic definition of the Blessed Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception that best-selling author Joseph Ellul's new article about "Malta and Atlantis" is first published worldwide here and now - so many turning-points in Maltese and European and, indeed, world history date from 8 December. Joe, a life-member of the Ancient Astronauts' Society, is now almost 85 years old … May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary, live and prosper in his and in all our hearts!
"It seems that lots of people are showing an interest in the ancient history of Malta. So I have decided to explain my opinion on this subject of Atlantis and Malta.
Until about 5,000 years ago the Mediterranean area of today was non-existent as sea. The opening at Gibraltar was closed off by a range of high mountains, starting in the south of Spain as the Sierra Nevada, about 10,000 feet high or more, and continuing into Africa, near Tangier, where the range is a little lower. This tells us that the Gibraltar gap was closed off by a very high wall of mountains, about 8,000 feet high. Everybody knows that Gibraltar consists of a high mountain.
In those far off times the great expanse of the Mediterranean was not filled with water, but it only contained some four fresh water lakes, fed by the small rivers around the Mediterranean. These lakes were: one between Sardinia and the Balearic Islands (today it is about 1,200 feet deep), another between Sardinia and Italy, another between Sicily and Greece (about 9,000 feet deep), and a fourth lake, known as the Herodotus Abyssal Plain, was also very deep.
When the Mediterranean was almost empty of water between Sicily and Libya there was a block of high ground which reached almost from Sicily to Libya, and the whole of this expanse (of which Malta and Gozo were an integral part) had its own special development - as is clearly shown by the many remains found on the Maltese islands and around these in the surrounding sea.
About 5,000 years ago there was a great land-cataclysm, an awesome all-round disaster. What is known as a rift valley (something that results from subsidence on both of its sides) came into being between Gibraltar and Malta. The coming into being of a rift valey is not something that extends just for two or three miles, but for several hundred or even for thousands of miles. One rift valley that sarts out from the Jordan Valley in Palestine goes down the Gulf of Aqaba into the Red Sea, passes into Abyssinia through the valley of Lake Aboya and doesn't end until Lake Rudolf, near Lake Victoria, a distance of some 2,500 miles.
The Mediterranean's rift valley certainly started from Gibraltar and extended along and off the coasts of Algeria and Tunis, where it split into two branches, one going towards the north of Sicily and the Lipari islands (where the Stromboli volcano is), while the other branch continued south-east towards Malta. Along its way to Malta there is an under-sea volcano that occasionally rises up above sea-level; when that last happened it became known as Graham's Island (still dangerous to shipping).
As this rift valley continues on its way near Malta, it has left its own indelible mark on the high cliffs of the south coasts from Gozo to Ras il-Qammieh in Malta itself and as far as the south-east end of Delimara point. These straight perpendicular cliffs are 300 feet above sea-level and another 200 feet below sea-level.
Malta & Gozo part of a large, flat, high land
Before the subsidence that brought this rift valley into being, there was no Mediterranean Sea. Malta was part of a large, flat, high land. After this subsidence and the related subsequent settling of the ocean waters, Malta and Gozo became an island (and at some stage islands) separated from the principal and much larger island (later known as Atlantis) which the birth of this rift valley had created.
When this rift valley subsided, the waters of the Atlantic rushed in, carrying everything before them and swamping almost all of Europe, the northern half of Africa and the western part of Asia. This inundation caused what is known as Noah's Flood. Not all of Europe was drowned. The Basque region of northern Spain, the British Isles, Scandinavia including Norway, Sweden and Finland were not swamped. Today's languages there are, in fact, different from those throughout most of the rest of Europe - and remember that the original natives of England were not the modern AngloSaxons, but the Welsh people (who the Romans and Normans later expelled from England). The later Celts (who had also expelled the Welsh from various places) spoke an Indo-European language (Goidelic or Gælic) and flourished in and around Gaul (France).
The Flood's monstrous wave arrived up to Mesopotamia (Iraq) near Kuwait, where the archæologist Sir Charles Leonard Wooley discovered layers of sand three metres deep that the waters had deposited. This sand contains various elements from sea-water. Sea-water-deposited sand of this type was also discovered in Malta at the Tarxien neolithic temples, when these were excavated by Sir Temi Zammit and my father, where they found a layer of this sand 1-metre-deep.
Similar layers of sand 2 metres deep were discovered in the south of France. This shows that France, Malta and Mesopotamia near Kuwait were all reached by this great diluvial wave.
Effects of the Flood
How are did this flood-wave extend to? It left salt-water behind, wherever it reached, and this salt-water is still to be found wherever there are lakes it brought into being whose waters are not changed by their flowing out into the sea itself. There are lakes of this sort in Algeria and Tunis; they are known as Xotts or Shotts (which in Semitic means 'coasts'). There is also the Sea of Aral near the salty Caspian Sea, and, of course, the Dead Sea which is so very salty - why?
The Dead Sea likes in the Jordan depression, hundreds of feet below sea-level. This vast depression remained filled with sandy water after the flood. But the river Jordan does not supply enough water the replace all the water evaporated from that vast area. So, the water has diminished, while the salt has remained. Today there remains, perhaps, no more than about 5% (1 twentieth) of the original amount of water. The salinity of the Dead Sea has become very dense.
The Qattara depression between Egypt and Libya, a vast depression 130 feet below sea-level with no river flowing into it, is another place with salt residues. The sea-water left thre long ago has evaporated and left all the salt behind to mix with the sand. Even after rain, nothing grows there, even though the rest of the surrounding desert becomes green.
The fact that Lake Baikal in central Asia still has fresh water tells us that the sea-wave of the Great Flood never reached there.
Repopulation
More than 20 years after the sea-water had retreated, and as the salt in the soil was being washed out by rain, the land again became productive, and people and animals started to repopulate these areas; they came, of course, from those lands which the wave of the Flood had failed to reach. Since a large area of high land between Sicily and Libya had become an island in the middle of this big sea, the original 'Atlantic' (nowadays called the Mediterranean), the island was called Atlantis; it was populated by people from the Indus Valley, which the Flood wave had not reached, and these people were already very advanced culturally. So, this new island of Atlantis, about 6 times the size of today's Sicily, soon developed a very advanced culture. The Stone Age was over; the age of Metal had begun.
During this post-Flood epoch Gozo and Malta were never directly connected with Greater Atlantis, because they were separated by the rift valley. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of all these islands regarded themselves as belonging to a single entity; they all enjoyed one and the same culture.
The Second Catastrophe
After a few hundred years, however, because of subsidence throughout what had previously been a rift valley, the land beneath the Mediterranean was very unstable still (indeed, it is still unstable today), and the island of Greater Atlantis foundered and collapsed below the sea. Thanks to the fortunate circumstance that Gozo and Malta were on the opposite sides of the former rift valley's two branches than was the main island, they did not founder. Nevertheless, they did not entirely escape the destructive consequences of the huge seismic wave Atlantis's collapse occasioned. Boats, ships, houses, people - all were destroyed up to some hundred feet above sea-level, even thousands of miles away…
A much more recent great subsidence in Chile was accompanied by a great seismic wave that crossed the Pacific and played havoc in Japan, as well as in the port of Anchorage in Alaska, several thousands of miles away. Malta, being very close to the source of the cataclysm, certainly suffered greatly from this wave, and the entire population may have been again wiped out.
This, I hope, explains how Malta and Gozo were, during the Stone Age and before the Mediterranean Sea came into existence, joined by land both to Europe and to Africa, and also how they formed part of that high land which, later, was known as Atlantis.
When the Mediterranean Sea came into being after the Flood, several islands were formed and, in the course of time, the Maltese islands were separated from Greater Atlantis; this was because of the earlier branching into two of the rift valley in their neighbourhood.
The Basques, who had been so near to the source of the rushing waters, were saved because of three defensive shields in their region - the Sierra Nevada high-range of mountains very close to the Flood source, the high plateau of central Spain, and the Cantabrian mountain range protected them from the flood-wave. The main flow of water was, after all, towards the east, since that is where an inviting abyss in the land had opened up. Luckily for the Basques!
Today's Black Sea has several large and smaller rivers flowing into it. They are the Russian Dniestre, the Dnieper, the Bug and the Don, the second largest European river: the Danube, and several large and minor rivers in Turkey's Asia Minor, as the Kizil, Koruk and Baffra. This huge amount of fresh water greatly surpasses the evaporation, so that even today huge amounts of almost fresh water flow out of the Bosphorus into the Aegean Sea.
In prehistoric times before the Flood that formed the Mediterranean Sea, the then lake of the Black Sea also overflowed thourgh the Bosphorus at the level of the bottom of the Bosphorus canal. This overflow passed into the Aegean area through the Dardanelles, passing between the then hills of today's Aegean islands into a large, deep lake, north of Egypt, now the Herodotus Abyssal Lake, 2,790 fathoms deep.
The Bosphorus is 60 meteres deep, so the lake in the Black Sea area overflowed at that height; the surface of the Black Sea region's antediluvian lake was 60 metres lower than that sea's present surface. The coastal areas around the Black Sea were dry and habitable up to what is now a depth of 60 metres. No wonder, then, that several evidences of human habitation have been discovered beneath the water near these shores. Evidence of a now under-sea river-bed has also been found, coming out of the Sea of Azof; this must have been an extension of the river Don."
Available evidence suggests that the seldom mentioned Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev, whose official grave is in Moscow's prestigious Novodevichy Cemetery but whose mortal remains may still be somewhere on the Moon, is the only human being who has been there, since nobody has so far managed to work out how adequately to protect astronauts from the radiation effects of the Van Allen belts that surround our Earth.
The United States' so called Apollo Missions were therefore no more than test-flights around the Earth but, for public relations' purposes, they were timed to coincide with satellite-television transmissions of fictional Moon-related events - events which had, in fact, been filmed and recorded beforehand in a studio somewhere in America.
This scandalous outrage [but!] appears, moreover, to be only one aspect of an intricate and elaborate international plot, that was quite deliberately planned, orchestrated and concealed throughout the course of most of the twentieth century by a number of leading German, Soviet and American scientists and government officials, aided and abetted by various associates of different nationalities
"We will build the New World Order, not by an end-run, but we will build it piece by piece, right under their noses. The House of the New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. An end-run around sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal attack."
"a major bureaucracy made up of hundreds of think tanks and front organizations that run the whole gamut of private business and government leaders" and thrive on "untruths, non-facts, innuendoes, and conjectures based entirely upon a false premise".
"A powerful tide is surging across much of the world today, creating a new, often bizarre, environment in which to work, play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering context, businessmen swim against highly erratic economic currents; politicians see their ratings bob wildly up and down; universities, hospitals, and other institutions battle desperately against inflation. Value systems splinter and crash, while the lifeboats of family, church, and state are hurled madly about.
Looking at these violent changes, we can regard them as isolated evidences of instability, breakdown, and disaster. Yet, if we stand back for a longer view, several things become apparent that otherwise go unnoticed.
To begin with, many of today's changes are not independent of one another. Nor are they random. For example, the crack-up of the nuclear family, the global energy crisis, the spread of cults and cable television, the rise of flexitime and new fringe-benefit packages, the emergence of separatist movements from Quebec to Corsica, may all seem like isolated events. Yet precisely the reverse is true. These and many other seemingly unrelated events or trends are interconnected. They are, in fact, parts of a much larger phenomenon: the death of industrialism and the rise of a new civilization
It does little good to forecast the future of semi-conductors or energy, or the future of the family (even of one's own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others."
The speed with which computers have spread is so well known it hardly needs elaboration. Costs have dropped so sharply and capacity has risen so spectacularly that, according to Computerworld magazine, 'If the auto industry had done what the computer industry has done in the last 30 years, a Rolls-Royce would cost $2.50 and get 2,000,000 miles to the gallon.' " (op. cit., pp. 15-16, 141 & 151-2.)
A political system must not only be able to make and enforce decisons; it must operate on the right scale, it must be able to integrate disparate policies, it must be able to make decisions at the right speed, and it must both reflect and respond to the diversity of society. If it fails on any of these points it courts disaster. Our problems are no longer a matter of 'left-wing' or 'right-wing', 'strong leadership' or 'weak'. The decision system itself has become a menace.
The truly astonishing fact today is that our governments continue to function at all …
… The immediate danger to all of us lies not so much in the calculated uses of power by those who have it, as in the uncalculated side effects of decisions ground out by politico-bureaucratic decision machines so dangerously anachronistic that even the best of intentions can eventuate in murderous outcomes.
Our so-called 'contemporary' political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system - before canned food, refrigeration, gaslight, or photography, before the Besemer furnace or the introduction of the typewriter, before the invention of the telephone, before Orville and Wilbur Wright took wing, before the automobile and the æroplane shrunk distance, before radio and television began working their alchemy on our minds, before Auschwitz industrialized death, before nerve gas and nuclear missiles, before computers, copying machines, birth control pills, transistors, and lasers. They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable - a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein.
This, then, is the single most important political issue facing us: the obsolescence of our most basic political and governmental institutions." (Ibid., pp. 424-5.)
Yet the risks of not overhauling our political institutions are even greater, and the sooner we begin, the safer we all will be.
To build workable governments anew - and to carry out what may well be the most important politcal task of our lifetimes … we will have to rethink political life in terms of three key principles …
The truly poor no longer necessarily have numbers on their side. In a good many countries they - like everyone else - have become a minority…
Not only is majority rule, therefore, no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic…
The rising activism of minorities is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open and diverse society than any we have ever known…
The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement among the voters back home, whom does the representative really 'represent'? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice on shaping the laws…
The problem of overemotional public response … can be overcome in various ways, such as requiring a cooling-off period or second vote before implementation of major decisions taken via referendum or other forms of direct democracy…
Why couldn't voters be empowered directly, through petition, to compel a legislative body to set up committees on topics the public - not the lawmakers - deem important? …
Some problems cannot be solved on a local level. Others cannot be solved on a national level. Some require action at many levels simultaneously. Moreover, the appropriate place to solve a problem doesn't stay put. It changes over time…
At the transnational level, we are as politically primitive and underdeveloped today as we were at the national level when the industrial revolution began 300 years ago.
Today the single most important political conflict is no longer between rich and poor, between top-dog and underdog ethnic groups, or even between capitalist and communist. The decisive struggle today is between those who try to prop up and preserve industrial society and those who are ready to advance beyond it. This is the super-struggle for tomorrow." (ibid, pp. 428-46.)The last one hundred years have witnessed organized violence, suffering, and injustice on a previously unequalled scale but amidst the chaos and misery, an evolutionary analysis finds hope Cultural change is associated with entropy bursts that may lead to re-stabilizations at higher levels of complexity.
Higher levels of complexity in human systems, have consequences which appear to encourage increasing individuation, autonomy and community. Thus, an evolutionary analysis suggests that we are in a position to build a new kind of society that will display progress measured in terms of classical human values. Thus our choices and actions can ennoble the sacrifices made by earlier generations
all date back to 11,600 B.C. approximately, Ralph Ellis has, he claims, "established".
With this understanding, the reference in the Mesopotamian version to the mingling of 'waters' of Tiamat ceases to be allegorical and calls for a factual evaluation. It goes to the question of the plentiful waters of Earth and the biblical assertion (correct, as we shall soon realize) that when the Earth was formed it was completely covered by water. If water was so abundant even at the moment of Earth's creation, then only if Tiamat was also a watery planet could the half that became Earth be watery.
The watery nature of Tehom/Tiamat is mentioned in various biblical references...
Genesis describes the forming of the asteroid belt thus:
And Elohim said:
Realizing that the Hebrew word Shama'im is used to speak of Heaven or the heavens in general, the editors of Genesis went into some length to use two terms for 'the Heaven' created as a result of the destruction of Tiamat. What separated the 'upper waters' from the 'lower waters,' the Genesis text stresses, was the Raki'a; generally translated 'Firmament,' it literally means 'Hammered-out Bracelet.' Then Genesis goes on to explain that Elohim called the Raki'a, the so-called Firmament, Shama'im, 'the Heaven' - a name that in its first use in the Bible consists of the two words sham and ma'im, meaning literally 'where the waters were.' In the creation tale of Genesis, 'the Heaven' was a specific celestial location, where Tiamat and her waters had been, where the asteroid belt was hammered out." (Genesis Revisited, Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1991, pp.47-50.)
Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And Elohim made the Firmament,
dividing the waters which are under the Firmament
from the waters which are above the Firmament.
And Elohim called the Firmament 'Heaven.'
N O A H ' S F L O O D E X P L A I N E D
"You stretch out the heavens like a tent,
In The Deluge - Its Cause and Effect (Torquay, Devon: Squires, 1998 - ISBN 0 7223 3143-6) Alexander Winslow tells us that before Noah's Flood our Earth knew neither Sun nor Moon, neither blue sky nor wind nor rain, since there were no seasons nor sharp divisions between day and night, no seas nor oceans but simply some cavity-lakes, neither was there any rainbow. Human beings, animals and plants all then enjoyed much longer lives than they now do, thanks to the presence of an almost all-encompassing protective supra-atmospheric canopy or veil of ice-crystals mixed with water-vapour in abundance, so that this entire mist- and dew-nurtured planet resembled a vast tropical green-house. Grape-juice never fermented and there were no alcoholic drinks, humans and animals alike were all vegetarians, and the number of days in the year was 360, not 365¼ as it became after the Flood. Today, remember, the axis of this spinning globe is inclined away from the vertical at an angle of about 23½º; prior to 2,345 B.C., when it suddenly acquired an angle of some 26½º, it had instead been perfectly perpendicular - and, had not Man sinned, perpendicular it was destined to remain...
build your palace on the waters above…
You fixed the Earth on its foundations,
for ever and ever it shall not be shaken;
you covered it with the deep like a garment,
the waters overtopping the mountains.
At your reproof the waters fled,
at the voice of your thunder they sped away,
(the mountains rose, the valleys sank down
[French, version D'Ostervald: les montagnes s'élevèrent et les vallées s'abaissèrent]
Saydon's Maltese: gholew l-igbla u nizlu l-widien)
to the place you had fixed for them;
you made a limit they were not to cross,
they were not to return and cover the earth." (Psalm 104:3, 5-9. New Jerusalem Bible, amended.)"Praise Yahweh from the heavens,
Although Winslow's account of the Great Flood significantly differs from those put forward by Joseph S. Ellul (in both English and German), by William Ryan & Walter Pitman, by Zecharia Sitchin, and by Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha von Dechend, and various others, it is undoubtedly well worth considering in some detail.
praise him in the heights…
Praise him, Sun and Moon,
praise him, all shining stars,
praise him, highest heavens,
praise him, waters above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of Yahweh
at whose command they were made;
he established them for ever and ever
by an unchanging decree." (Psalm 148:1-6.)
Winslow refers readers desirous of a more complete presentation of all relevant ecological, geological, medical and other scientific arguments to John C. Whitcomb & Henry M. Morris's much more carefully researched and painstakingly documented The Genesis Flood - The Biblical Record and its Scientifc Implications (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961, 44th printing, April 2003: ISBN 0-87552-338-2). Unlike them he denies the existence of any prediluvial seas or oceans and, despite Romans 8:19-23, he supposes human and animals remained vegetarians even after the Fall until the Flood. He also agrees with Isaac Newton Vail's conclusion in his The Deluge and its Cause (1905) that all our Earth's basic rocks were once intensely hot and so soft and fluid, that all its other constituent elements were thrown off to form an impenetrable mantle of gases that extended for several miles in every direction, so that this planet then looked something like Saturn now does, and that over an unspecified period of time first the more and then the less dense gaseous layers cooled, liquefied and at some stage eventually congealed to form our present planets various geological layers. When Man arrived on the scene, only one such layer, and that a very misty crystalline canopy of pure water, enveloped and roofed over Earth's atmosphere (even today water vapour in the form of ice-crystals is present in the upper layers of the atmosphere of Venus, which is, of course, much closer to the Sun) - and it is that canopy that the Ancients called Heaven, Shamayim (as first used in the Bible, Sitchin reminds us, this was actually two words: sham meaning "heaven", and ma'im meaning literally "where the waters were"; Sema also means "Sky" in Maltese), Ouranos or Cœlum; for so long as it remained in place, our Sun and Moon were never directly visible, and the only stars to be seen were those suspended high above this canopy's eye-like or (depending on the observer's point of view) arch-like aperture at the Pole.
The Hebrew historian Josephus Flavius would seem to have been of the same opinion. In his Antiquities of the Jews (Bk. 1, Ch. 1, § 1) he wrote: "After this, on the second day, He placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts, and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline veil round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the Earth."
Whitcomb & Morris nowhere refer to either Newton Vail's speculations or Josephus Flavius's opinion, but they do take note of these words of the Apostle Peter:
"During the days of the end mockers will appear with their mocking, men whose conduct will be wholly ruled by their appetites. And this is what they will say. 'What can have become of that promised return of his? After all, ever since our fathers have been laid to their rest, everything has remained as it always has been from the beginning of the world.'
However, there is one thing which has escaped the notice of those who would be self-assertive in this manner, namely, that there were heavens a long, long time ago, and that there was also an Earth, brought into being by G-d's word of command, with water for its origin and water for its frame, water likewise being the means by which the world, as it then was, met with destruction, when it was enveloped by floods at the time of the deluge. As for the present heaven and the present Earth, they have, in virtue of the same word of command, been saved up to be consumed by flames, and have been kept in being until the day when the godless will be judged and suffer destruction.
However, my well-beloved friends, there is one thing you must ever be mindful of, that with the Lord a day can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is by no means tardy in fulfilling his promise, in the sense in which certain people understand tardiness. No, what is really happening is that he exhibits the patience he has with us, his intention being that there should be enough time that none should perish, but that there should be enough time for everyone to be brought to a change of heart.
But the Day of the Lord will come, and when it comes, it will be upon us like a thief; and then the heavens will vanish away with a great rushing sound; the elements, all aflame, will dissolve into nothingness, no trace being left of the Earth or of anything contained in it.
Since all things are destined to suffer annihilation in this way, it is clear what sort of people we ought to be, that our conduct should be one conforming to holiness, and that devotion to G-d should determine us in whatever we do. We should look eagerly for the coming of the Day of G-d, and play our part in the hastening on of that day on which the heavens will be burned up and annihilated, and the elements, all aflame, will be melting away. However, what we may expect, in accordance with the promise which G-d has made, is this that there will be new heavens and a new Earth, righteousness having its dwelling place in them." (2 Peter 3:3-13. H.W. Cassirer's translation.)
And Saint Paul similarly wrote:
"Creation was subjected to futility (not by its own choice but by the will of him who so subjected it); yet with a hope to look forward to, namely, that creation itself would be set free from the thraldom of decay, and obtain that liberty which is bound up with the glory which belongs to the children of G-d. The whole creation, as we know, has been groaning in a common travail until this very hour. And more than that, we ourselves who are in possession of the firstfruits of the Spirit groan in our hearts as we are waiting to become G-d's sons by adoption, this having the result that our bodies will be set free from their enslavement." (Romans 8:20-23.)
Winslow comments:
"At present, the expected and accepted life-span of man is 'three score and ten' years, but this is due entirely to physical and exotic causes which have decreed the limit. Whereas five hundred or even one thousand years were once as surely a natural limit as seventy is now.
In fact, one can see no physical reason why a vapour canopy could not have been so perfect a Sun-controller and world-master as to create an Eden of life without death."
Carbon-14 measurements are, as Winslow also explains, because of the immense differences in radioactivity and other prevailing conditions, entirely without relevance to any attempted dating of pre-Deluge events.
As Whitcomb and Morris remind us (op. cit., pp. 473, 489,486, 458):
"If the 'bondage of corruption,' with all that such a term implies for the animal kingdom, had its source in the Edenic curse, then the fossil strata, which are filled with evidences of violent death, must have been laid down since Adam. And if this be true, then the uniformitarian time-table of modern paleontology must be rejected as totally erroneous; and a Biblical catastrophism (centering in the year-long, universal Deluge) must be substituted for it as the only possible solution to the enigma of the fossil strata."
"A careful study of the Biblical evidence leads us to the conclusion that the Flood may have occurred as much as three to five thousand years before Abraham... Even the allowance of 5,000 years between the Flood and Abraham stretches Genesis 11 almost to the breaking point." "That God's judgment upon Babel took place not more than a millennium after the Flood is suggested by the fact that the world's population was still confined to one comparatively small area of the earth at that time."
"It was none other than the Son of G-d Himself who taught Christians to accept the historical accuracy of the Old Testament in general (Mt 5:18; Lk 16:17; 18:31; 24:25, 44; Jn 10:35) and the Book of Genesis in particular (Mt 19:4; 23:35; 24:37-39; Lk 17:29, 32). Standing upon these infallible foundations, the Christian is perfectly confident that modern scientific theories (coloured as they are by the presuppositions of finite and fallible men) cannot possibly constitute the final word on the subject of the origin and early history of man. And beyond that, he is perfectly sure that when all the evidence is in, his faith in the Son of G-d and in the verbally inspired special revelation of G-d will be found to have led him to an accurate knowledge and understanding of these vitally important matters." (Re the Flood, see also Lk 17:26,27; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5.)
"Just as things were in the time of Noah, so they will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days, before the deluge, men were eating, they were drinking, they married and joined others in marriage, up to the day when Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing until the deluge came and swept them all away. So things will be at the coming of the Son of Man. At that time there will be two men in the same field. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding with the handmill. One will be taken and the other left. As for yourselves, then, be on the alert. You do not know on what day your Lord will be coming." (Matthew 24:37-42.)
(following his order of presentation in both English and German)
Preliminary Note: In his Papers in Maltese Linguistics (6th reprint, University of Malta, 1997, pp.3, 5.) Joseph Aquilina, after drawing attention to the "triliteralism" of Maltese, "the most outstanding characteristic of Semitic languages", "that wonderful linguistic mechanism whereby three consonantal radicals shoot forth various derivatives, nominal, which includes adjectives, and verbal," mentions that "modern writers, taking advantage of this pliable mechanism, a dangerous temptation to the untrained, have coined a large number of new words from existing roots. Many of these," he adds, "worth a separate study, are found in Prof. Saydon's translation of the Old and New Testament."When one consults the Bible for what it says about the FLOOD, one will find that, on close examination, the wording exactly fulfils what has been said above. In Genesis (7:11) the BIBLE says:
Although Saydon's use of firxa to translate the Hebrew raki'a may not be one of these new Maltese words, it is, like "firmament", clearly different from the original term whose meaning it is intended to express. Although Maltese has clearly "retained its Semitic characteristics" (Aquilina, op. cit., p.13.), it is, nevertheless, "a language altogether distinct" (ibid., loc. cit.).
Aquilina also notes (op. cit., pp.8-9.) that "the question as to whether the few Maltese words of Latin origin belong to the pre-Arabic Latin element was tackled by the biblical scholar, Professor P. P. Saydon". He concludes that "Saydon's lexical evidence hardly justifies his claim to have proved that there are immediate Latin survivals in our local topography and lexicography", but he admits that "views and counter views are always helpful for the better understanding of the lexical intricacies and obscurities of Maltese." The same is true as regards biblical exegesis.
Rupti sunt omnes fontes abyssi magnae. (Latin)Let us examine the meaning of these words in relation to what really happened.
All the fountains of the Great Deep were broken up. (Ellul's English)
The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up. (Authorized King James)
All the springs of the great abyss broke through. (New English Bible)
All the springs of the great deep burst through. (New Jerusalem Bible)
Toutes les sources du grand abîme éclatèrent. (French)
Brachen alle Brunnen der großen Tiefe auf. (German)
Inkisru I-għejun tal-qiegħ il-kbir. (Saydon's Maltese)
"All the fountains": As the Atlantic surface was about 6,000 feet higher than that of the then Mediterranean fresh-water lakes, it would be very obvious that streams or fountains of water percolating through the fissures of the rock streamed down from the rocky high ridge. These fountains, quite naturally, were those "of the Great Deep" - and even in modern usage the word "deep" often means "the great ocean". "Were broken up" very clearly means "burst open". [Webmaster-Editor's note: More commonly, however, in ancient times "the Great Deep" referred to the vastness of cosmic space. Cf. Hamlet's Mill.]
All this, summed up, means that: "All the fountains and springs percolating through the fissures in the rock of the high ridge and coming from the Great Atlantic Ocean burst out as a result of a rift or fault caused by an earthquake, so letting that immense amount of water rush in with a force that can hardly be imagined".'
[Webmaster-Editor's note: Whitcomb & Morris attach higher value to the word "all", and write (op. cit., p. 421): "The primeval deep of Genesis 1:2 was, as we have seen, segregated into the waters above and below the firmament, so that these waters, in whatever location, are evidently intended by subsequent references to the deep. Presumably great portions of the waters were entrapped below the crust and in pockets within the crust during the first three days of Creation. Because of the high temperatures and pressures, they undoubtedly were very effective solvents, creating either chemically-rich crustal waters or water-rich magmas.
It seems, however, that these were either completely or in large measure imprisoned during the antediluvian period, perhaps steadily building up temperatures and pressures until, finally, the crust gave way at some point of weakness. Yielding of the crust at even one point, with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the Scriptures portray so graphically, 'the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up' (Genesis 7:11). Truly this was a gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs, becomes insignificant!"]
'It would be almost impossible to imagine that all these sevens are just a coincidence. Besides, there is a reason for the seven. It is quite sure that those early people had a great respect, if not adoration, for the Sun and the Moon and so, perhaps, for the five commonly visible planets. What particular respect they had for the Sun and the Moon will be shown later.
Now, when a lunar cycle of 29 days is divided into 4 parts, the resulting periods each contain SEVEN days. No wonder, then, that those people established the number seven as their 'Holy' number. Those people were, it seems, the forerunners of another people who are known to have regarded the number SEVEN as profoundly sacred -
To start with, there are the Seven periods of Creation which have led to our week of Seven Days. In Revelation (4:5) it stands written: "And there are Seven lamps burning before the throne, which are the Seven Spirits of God." The scroll sealed with Seven seals (4:6). A Lamb having Seven horns and Seven Eyes, which are the Seven Spirits of God.
In Maltese the saying goes that "The cat has seven souls" or "That fellow has seven souls" for anybody who often escapes being killed. Erich Von Däniken has compiled a long list of instances of the number Seven having been used as sacred at least since the time of the Great Flood. The Babylonians believed their cosmic order comprised Seven heavenly bodies: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. There is, as already noted, the "Book of Seven Seals" in Revelation, the Seven Days of Grace in ancient Greece, the famous Seven Gates of Thebes, the Seven Wise Men and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Also, when Von Däniken visited the ruins of a very old temple in Peru which he considered to be a copy of the original temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, he noted that "all the stairways I had used had seven steps" and, in a sunken square, there was the "Altar of the SEVEN Goats".'
'Genesis 7:11. "In the six-hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day the springs [of water] of the Great Deep were broken, and the Floodgates of Heaven opened, and the rain fell on Earth for 40 days and 40 nights."
8:3. "And the waters started receding from the land, and began going down after 150 days" [= 5 months].
8:4. On the seventh month, on the seventeenth of the month, the Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat.
8:5. The waters kept receding and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared [after 224 days].
8:6. Then, after another 40 days [264 days], Noah sent the RAVEN which kept going and coming for an undetermined number [but, when calculated, it amounts to 40] of days [304 days].
8:9. Later Noah sent out the Dove, which returned, owing to its not finding anywhere to rest its feet.
8:10-11. After another 7 days, Noah sent the Dove out again, which then brought back an Olive-leaf in her beak [311 days].
8:12. So Noah waited another 7 days [318 days], and then sent the Dove out again, but this time it didn't return.
8:13. At the beginning of the New Year, the first day of the first month, 318 days after the beginning of the Flood, the water dried up, yet the land was still watery.
8:14. Then, after another 57 days (1 month and 27 days later), the soil of the Earth was dry enough for man and animal to walk on it. So God gave the order to Noah to get out of the Ark and to release all the animals [318 + 57 = 375 - 365 = 10].
Noah stayed in the Ark for One Whole Year and Ten Days. This is an exact account of what happened, as recorded in Genesis, with all the details taken from the Bible. Everything is so clear - for those who wish to understand. Confusion exists only in the minds of those who wish to be confused.'
'At that time the Mediterranean was not the sea as we know it today. The island of Malta was so much larger that some of its wonderful cart-ruts either go out to the bottom of the sea or even off the sheer edge of the cliff dropping about 20 metres towards the sea at Ras il-Pellegrin, on Malta's S.W. coast. The Mediterranean consisted of only two or perhaps three fresh-water lakes, one in the East in the Ionian and Herodotus Abyssal Plains, and another one or two in the western basin of the Sardinian and Balearic Abyssal Plain.
What today are the Straits of Gibraltar were in those days a high-towering land-ridge, from which, according to Genesis (7:11) there flowed down streams of water that percolated through its crevices, with the Atlantic (in Genesis called "The Great Deep") about 2000 metres above the Mediterranean depression. A large earthquake then caused a rift valley that made this Gibraltar high land-ridge subside, continuing the rift along the Algerian Basin, the Algerian Tyrrhenian Trough, and into the Malta Trough. This Malta trough is evidenced by the sheer cliffs of Malta's southern coast, with an abrupt drop of about 30 metres with another 10 fathoms' depth of sea.
With the subsidence of the Gibraltar high ridge the Atlantic ocean, with the waters of all the other oceans behind it, rushed through the gap, flooding and sweeping everything before it. One must try to imagine it - there are no words available adequately to describe the enormous on-rush of water that then swept over Europe, the western half of Asia, and the whole of North Africa - almost all the then-known world.'
'As for those who think otherwise, it is because they cannot understand it. The fault lies not with G-d nor with Moses, but with those who cannot or do not wish to understand and accept what the Bible tells us.
The word YOM could have no meaning in the universe, because every planet has a different length of day of its own, i.e., the day of the Moon is 29 days of ours, the day of Jupiter is just 10 hours, while that of Mercury is 88 days. And besides, how could there be a YOM-DAY at the beginning of Creation, when the "Earth was yet dark and void over the surface of the sea"?
From this one has to understand that for Moses the word YOM meant just the length of the vision during his own time on Earth, and not some length of time in the universe, where there can be no night.
For a better understanding of what happened during the period of ONE YOM, we could taken an example which 500 years ago would have been utterly incomprehensible. Today, we can see on a screen visions of something that may have taken place thousands of miles away and at some very different period in time. We can also watch a cine-film of a story that took several years to accomplish, and yet we can see it all happening in less than three hours. Sometimes films on Nature that may have taken some 10 years or more to produce, are shown to us on a screen in much less than an hour. While such things could not be imagined just 500 years ago, we are today in quite a good position for us to understand how G-d could show visions to Moses - and certainly much better ones than today's film-producers enable us to watch on our screens, wonderful visions of the whole process of Creation (and of the Flood, etc.) which may have taken millions of years to evolve, even though the VISIONS Moses had of all these events, only lasted for SIX DAYS.'
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v.1: In the beginning G-d created heaven and
earth.
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| v.7: And so it was. God made the vault, and it divided the waters under the vault from the waters above the vault.
AN EXPLANATION 1. In the beginning G-d created all the universe
including the Earth, the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.
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Note on Verse 3: "Be light made." - Today, everybody knows that the Sun has been in existence for many millions of years. Yet on the surface of the planet Venus the light of the Sun has not yet arrived, because that planet is so hot that all the water on its surface is still in vapour form and so thick that the rays of the Sun cannot penetrate. So, Venus is still under the conditions in which our planet-Earth once was, as described in verse 2 above.
If this description is not scientifically correct, I don't know what could be considered as scientific for certain people. Could it be perhaps calling water H2O?
v.8: ...the second day.
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This was the vision of the second Day.
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The rest of the narrative of Creation is easy to understand.
Genesis1: 6-7. "Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And G-d made a firmament, and divided (separated) the waters that were under the firmament (separation), from those that were above the firmament."
On the surface of the Earth there was (and still exists) water in two different forms. One of these forms is the one that always stays under. This has the form of a liquid, and is known as WATER. The other kind is in the form of vapour, which, when visible, we call mist or fog, if low, or we call it clouds if seen high up in the sky.
So we have the "Waters Under" and the "Waters Above". Those Under are known as 'Seas' and those Above are known as Mist, Fog or Clouds. That is why Verse 6 says that the Firmament separates the waters from the waters, as a blanket separates the air under from the air above it.
Then Verse 7 continues to explain that the Firmament separated the 'waters under' from the 'waters above' it.
But when the author wanted to demonstrate the part of clear AIR which we call sky and where we see the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, the author of Genesis started calling this part "The Firmament of Heaven". He never again calls it just "Firmament".
We start finding "The Firmament of Heaven" from when the SUN appeared in the sky through the broken clouds in verse 14. After that, he continues to call it "the Firmament of Heaven" when he mentions the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and even when he mentions the birds that fly - in verse 20.
So the word "Firmament" used in verses 6 and 7 denotes the layer of clear air that started forming between the sea-water beneath and the receding mist above.
Concluding, I would say that most people still consider these Bible descriptions as unscientific. But these descriptions of "the water above" and "the water under", " the Firmament" and "the Firmament of Heaven" together with the perfectly scientific chronological order of Creation, are not only Scientific but EXTRA-scientific - so much so, that it is only in our very scientific age that we are starting to understand something of it. But because there is still so much that we do not understand, we try to put the blame on the Author!'
Wenn man die Bibel zu Rate zieht, wird man bei genauerer Betrachtung die Worte finden, die das eben bewiesene bezeugen. In 1. Mose 7:11 steht geschrieben:
Rupti sunt omnes fontes abyssi magnae. (auf Lateinisch)Lassen Sie uns die Worte genau betrachten und sie in Verbindung mit dem Geschehenen bringen.
Brachen alle Brunnen der großen Tiefe auf. (im Deutschen)
All the fountains of the Great Deep were broken up. (auf Englisch, nach Ellul)
All the springs of the great abyss broke through. (New English Bible)
Toutes les sources du grand abîme éclatèrent. (im Französisch, nach D'Ostervald)
Inkisru I-għejun tal-qiegħ il-kbir. (im Maltesischen, nach Saydon)
"alle Brunnen" - Als das Niveau des Atlantiks noch 6000 Fuß über dem der Seen lag, wäre es nicht gerade abwegig gewesen, daß Ströme oder Quellen, durch Risse in Gestein, am Hang des Landbrüches herabströmten. Diese Quellen wären dann "aus der großen Tiefe" gekommen. Heute noch bezeichen wir einen Ozean als "große Tiefe". [Webmaster's note: More commonly, however, in ancient times "the Great Deep" referred to the vastness of cosmic space. Cf. Hamlet's Mill.]
Das "brachen auf" meint, daß das Ereignis "explosionsartig" eintrat. Die Quellen, die aus dem Landbrüchen strömten brachen durch ein Erdbeben auf und eine gigantische Menge Wasser brach mit unvorstellbarer Zerstörungskraft auf das tiefer liegende Land.
[Webmaster-Editor's note: Whitcomb & Morris attach higher value to the word "all", and write (op. cit., p. 421): "The primeval deep of Genesis 1:2 was, as we have seen, segregated into the waters above and below the firmament, so that these waters, in whatever location, are evidently intended by subsequent references to the deep. Presumably great portions of the waters were entrapped below the crust and in pockets within the crust during the first three days of Creation. Because of the high temperatures and pressures, they undoubtedly were very effective solvents, creating either chemically-rich crustal waters or water-rich magmas.
It seems, however, that these were either completely or in large measure imprisoned during the antediluvian period, perhaps steadily building up temperatures and pressures until, finally, the crust gave way at some point of weakness. Yielding of the crust at even one point, with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the Scriptures portray so graphically, 'the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up' (Genesis 7:11). Truly this was a gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs, becomes insignificant!"]
Es kann kein Zufalls sein, daß wir so vielen Siebenen begegnen und es gibt auch gute Begründungen dafür. Man kann nachweisen, daß die damaligen Menschen großen Respekt, wenn nicht sogar Verehrung für die Sonne und den Mond zeigten, vielleicht auch für die sichtbaren Planeten (Auf diesen Aspekt werden wir später aber später noch eingehen).
Nun ein Mond-Monat dauert 29 Tage, also in vier Teile geteilt kommt eine ungefähre Periode von sieben Tagen heraus. So ist es kein Wunder, wenn man die Zahl sieben als etwas besonderes ansah und sie sich als heilig etablierte. Aber es scheint so, also ob diese frühen Menschen nur die Vorläufer jener Menschen gewesen, die diese Zahl als sehre heilige Zahl verehrten. Z.B.:
Bei den sieben Teilen der Schöpfung, die zu den sieben Tagen der Woche führten. In Offenbarung 4:5 heißt es: "... und sieben Lampen brannten vor dem Thron, welches sind die sieben Geister Gottes". 5:5, "... das Buch und seine sieben Siegel...". 5:6, "... und hatte sieben Hörner und sieben Augen, das sind die sieben Geister Gottes, gesandt in alle Lande."
Im Maltesischen sagt man, daß die Katze oder jemand der oft dem Tode entronnen ist sieben Seelen besitzt. Erich von Däniken hat eine lange Liste zusammengestellt, auf der man ersehen kann was für eine gewaltiger Rolle die Zahl sieben überall und zu allen Zeiten spielte, eben auch seit der Großen Flut.
Die Babylonier glaubten, daß ihr Kosmos aus sieben Körpern besteht, der Sonne, dem Mond, und den Planeten Merkur, Venus, Erde, Mars sowie Jupiter und Saturn. Jeder kennt das "Buch der sieben Siegel", die Offenbarung der Bibel. Die "sieben Tage der Herrlichkeit" im alten Griechenland, das berühmte "siebentorige Theben", die sieben weisen Männer oder die sieben Weltwunder, um nur einige von EvDs Beispielen zu nennen. Als EvD in Peru einen sehr alten Tempel besichtigte, meinte er eine Kopie des Salomonischen Tempels vor sich zu haben und er sagte, "alle Treppen, die ich benutzte hatten sieben Stufen" und in einem versunkenen Vorplatz war der "Altar der sieben Widder".
'Gen. 7:11. "Im sechshundersten
Lebensjahr Noahs am siebsehnten Tag des Zweiten Monats, an diesem Tag
brachen alle Brunnen der großen Tiefe auf und taten sich auf
die Fenster des Himmels auf."
8:3. "Da verliefen sich die Wasser von der Erde und nahmen
ab nach hundertundfünfzig Tagen." (5 Monate)
8:4. "Am siebzehnten Tage des siebten Monats ließ
sich die Arche nieder auf das Gebirge Ararat." (224 Tage)
8:5. "Es nahmen aber die Wasser immer mehr ab bis auf den
zehnten Monat. Am ersten Tage des zehnten Monats sahen die Spitzen
des Berge hervor." (264 Tage)
8:6. "Nach vierzig Tagen (304 Tage) tat Noah an der Arche
das Fenster auf, das er gemacht hatte"
8:7. "und liß einen Raben ausfliegen; der flog immer
hin und her, bis die Wasser vertrockneten auf Erden."
8:8. "Danach ließ er seine Taube ausfliegen, um zu
erfahren, ob die Wasser sich verlaufen hätten auf
Erden."
8:9. "Da aber die Taube nichts fand, wo sie ihr Fuß
ruhen konnte, kam sie wieder in die Arche; denn noch war Wasser auf
dem Erdboden. Da tat er die Hand heraus und nahm sie zu sich in die
Arche."
8:10-11. "Da harrte er noch weitere sieben Tage und
ließ eine Taube ausfliegen… Da kam zu ihm um die Abenzeit, und
siehe, ein Ölblatt hatte sie abgebrochen und trug's in ihrem
Schnabel. Da merkete Noah, daß die Wasser sich verlaufen
hätten auf Erden." (311 Tage)
8:12. "Aber er harrte noch weitere sieben Tage und
ließ eine Taube ausfliegen; die kam nicht wieder zu ihm." (318
Tage)
8:13. "Im sechshundertundersten Lebensjahr Noahs am ersten
Tage des ersten Monats waren die Wasser vertrocknet auf Erden. Da tat
Noah das Dach von der Arche und sah, daß der Erdboden trocken
war."
8:14-16. "Und am siebenundzwanzigsten Tage des zweiten
Monats (nach 57 Tagen) war die Erde ganz trocken. Da redete Gott mit
Noah und sprach: 'Geh aus der Arche, du und deine Frau, deine
Söhne und die Frauen deiner Söhne mit dir."
Noah verbrachte also ein Jahr und 10 Tage in der Arche. Hier werden ganz klar Tatsachen aus der Bibel vermittelt, wer sie nicht versteht, der will nicht verstehen.'
'Was heute die Straße von Gibraltar ist war einst ein fester Landbrüche, der Europa mit Afrika verband und von der laut Genesis "Ströme des Wassers" (Quellen aus der großn Tiefe, denn der Mittelmeerraum lag ca. 2'000 m tiefer als das Niveau des Atlantiks) kamen. Ein Erdbeben ließ diesen Landbrüche auseinanderbrechen und ein Spalttal entstehen, welches sich das Algerien Becken, den Algerisch-Thyrrenisch Graben bis zum Maltagraben zog. Einen Anhaltspunkt für diese These sind Klippen wie die von Ras il-Pellegrin, die über 30 m tief ins Meer stürzen und sich dort noch ca. 20 forsetzen.
Mit dem plötzlichen Verschwinden des Landbrüches stürzen die Wassermassen des Weltmeere mit einem mal in einer gewaltigen Bewegung von Westen nach Osten und zerstörten alles was ihnen in den Weg kam (die heutigen Küsten Europas, (Klein-) Asiens und Afrikas und nicht zuletzt die Landfläche des heutigen Mittelmeerraumes, Flutkatastrophen, in der ganzen in bezug auf die sich ändernden Wassermassen, folgten.'
'Um die Geschichte der Schöpfund zu verstehen (wie sie von Mose in der Bibel erzählt wird) muß man sich vorstellen, daß Mose als Mensch all das, was Gott ihm zeigte aufschrieb. Moses sah alles in Visionen, jede jeden Tag eine Vision für einen Schöpfungsabschnitt (Yom/Jum/Tag - Hebräisch/Maltesisch/Deutsch).
Gott kann und hat Mose nichts Unwahres gezeigt. Also ist alles was Mose aufschrieb die reine Wahrheit und damit auch die reine wissenschaftliche Wahrheit.
Manche denken anders, weil sie dies alles nicht verstehen. Aber die Schuld liegt weder beit Gott noch bei Mose, sondern bei den Menschen, die einfach nicht verstehen können oder wollen.
Das Wort "TAG - YOM - JUM" kann im Universum keine Bedeutung haben, da die Längen der "Tage" jedes Himmelskörpers verschieden sind. Der "Tag" des Mondes dauert 29 unserer "Tage", der des Jupiters dauert nur 10 Stunden, wohingegen der "Merkur-Tag" mit 88 irdischen "Tagen" zu Buche Schlägt.
Wie konnte es also ein Yom - Tag am Anfang der Schöpfung geben, als "die Erde wüst und leer war, und es war finster in der Tiefe (See)".
Man muß also sehen, daß Mose mit Yom nur die Länge einer Vision bezeichnet und nicht die Länge irgendeiner Zeiteinheit im Universum, wo es ja auch keine Nacht gibt.
Um besser verstehen zu können, was während einer Zeiteinheit von einem Yom passierte, können wir Beispiele heranziehen, die vor nur 500 Jahren nicht möglich gewesen sind. Heute können wir Menschen Dinge auf unserem TV-Geräten sehen, die sich Tausende von Kilometern weit entfernt abspielen oder zu einer anderen Zeit passierten. Wir können im Kino einem Film sehen, der in ein paar Stunden die Arbeit von Jahren wiedergibt. Viele Naturfilme sind in über 10-jähriger Arbeit entstanden und wir können sie heute in weniger als einer Stunde konsumieren.
Auch wenn die Menschen vor 500 Jahren nicht verstehen konnten, wie Gott Mose alle diese Dinge zeigen konnte und wir dies heute können, um wie viel mehr kann Gott Mose all diese wunderwollen Dinge in Visionen von der Schöpfung (der Sintflut, etc.) gezeight haben. Dinge die auch Millionen von Jahren benötigt haben könnten, hat Mose in Visionen gesehen, die nur sechs Tage andauerten.
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v.1: Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
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| v.7: So God made the vault, and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and so it was.
Erklärungen 1. Am Anfang schuf Gott das ganze Universum, die Erde,
die Sonne und den Mond eingeschlossen.
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Anmerkung zu Vers 3: "Es werde Licht" - Jeder weiß, daß die Sonne schon seit Millionen von Jarhen existierte. Die Oberfläche aber der Erde hatte noch nie einen ihrer Strahlen gesehen. Es war so heiß, daß das gesamte Wasser nur in verdunsteter Form vorlag und zusammen mit anderen Gasen die Atmosphäre ganz einhüllte. (Die heutige Venus befindet sich also in einem Stadium, in dem die Erde sich in Verse 2 befand.)
Wenn das keine korrekte wissenschaftliche Erklärung ist, dann kann ich auch nicht weiterhelfen. Man könnte höchstens noch Wasser als H2O bezechichnen.
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v.8: ...der Zweite Tag.
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Das ist die Vision des zweiten Tages.
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'Genesis 1: 6-7. "Und Gott sprach: Es werde eine Feste zwischen den Wassern, die da scheide zwischen den Wassern. Da machte Gott die Feste und schied die Wasser unter der Feste von den Wassern über der Feste."
An der Oberfläche der Erde existierte und existiert Wasser in zwei verschiedenen Aggregatszuständen. Die eine Form ist die wohl bekannteste, flüssiges H2O, also ganz ordinäres WASSER. Die andere Form ist die gasförmige, also Wasser was wir, wenn es sichtbar wird, als Nebel oder Dunst sehen oder als Kondensat als Wolke wahrnehmen. So können wir also festhalten, daß wir die "Wasser über der Feste" und "Wasser unter der Feste" haben. Mit die "Wasser unten" werden die Meere bezeichnet. Laut Vers 6 trennt das Firmament die Wasser, wie eine Wolldecke die Luft unter und über ihr trennt. Der Vers 7 führt alles nur noch einmal aus. Wenn der Schreiber der Genesis nur einfach den Himmel meinte, dann hätte er vom "Firmament des Himmels" gesprochen, aber niemals von dem Wort "Firmament" allein.
Erst ab Vers 14, als die Sonne durchbricht, wird vom "Firmament des Himmels" gesprochen. Von nun an werden auch die Sonne, der Mond und die Sterne mit "Firmament des Himmels" in Verbindung gebracht. Später auch in Vers 20, wenn die Vögel in Himmel beschrieben werden.
Wir können also aus den Aussagen schließen, daß mit Firmament eine Luftschicht gemeint ist, welche die See-Wasser von den Nebel-Wassern trennte.
Zusammenfassend können wir also feststellen, daß die Bibel ein wissenschaftliches Werk ist, bei dem die Ereignisse wie z.B. die Schöpfung, ganz genau nach ihrem Ablauf wiedergegeben werden. Aber weil wir diese, für uns oft zu hohen, Beschreibungen nicht verstehen, schieben wir die Schuld auf eine angebliche Unkorrektheit des Autors.'
According to Joseph Ellul (in German translation): "In remote and ancient times, millions of years ago, when Malta, whatever it was in those days, still had full rivers flowing down its valleys, long before the time of Earth's habitation by man, the story of Għar Dalam began to take shape... The stalagmites on top of the hardened soil on the bone breccia show that millions of years had passed AFTER those bone deposits had settled down and dried out. It will then have taken millions of years more for the river water to erode through the top of the cave, and then (much later still) to pass further down below the level of the cave, thus allowing the deposits in the cave itself to become dry.
To bring this about, some 10 feet of granite rock had to be eroded by the water. That doesn't happen in just a few hundred years. There are also 30 more feet that were eroded below the cave, down to the bottom of the valley-floor. So, how many million years will it have taken the water to erode more than 40 feet from the top of the cave to the bottom of the valley? For that is how long ago it must have been when the contents of Għar Dalam entered the cave and settled in it."
That "must" notwithstanding, John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris write (in The Genesis Flood, pp.417-8.): Stalactites and stalagmites "are formed by the evaporation of lime-bearing waters percolating through the cavern roof. Obviously, the rate of such cave travertine formation depends mainly on the rate of percolation of the source water. The fact that this rate may be very slow at present certainly does not mean it has always been so...
Even under modern conditions, it is quite possible for these formations to develop rapidly. The speleologist Charles E. Hendrix (The Cave Book, Revere, Mass.: Earth Science Publishing Co., 1950, p.26.) says, for example:
'How long does it take for a stalactite to grow? Many people, impressed by repeated statements of the extreme duration of geologic time, have made statements to the effect that it takes dripstone practically forever to grow appreciably. However there is more than a little evidence that growth is considerably rapid. First of all, stalactites are found in man-made tunnels that are only a few years old... Second, certain conditions are so favourable to dripstone growth that as much as several cubic inches a year may be deposited in a single stalactite... Third, there are many examples of large stalagmites growing on blocks of stone that have fallen from cave ceilings.'
Consequently, to attribute great lengths of time to the formation of such cave deposits is not only unnecessary but unreasonable as well."
Personally, I would not be at all surprised to learn that all the main finds from Għar Dalam now on display in the museum adjoining the present entrance are approximately contemporaneous with the tsunami-damage to the temple-walls at Ħaġar Qim, which is only a few miles away. Saint Peter was no fool!
Marion Mahoney's "Swedenborg as a Geologist" in the current issue of Outlook - incorporating the Swedenborg Movement Newsletter (No.53, 2005) is very much to the point. The 18th-century visionary's Miscellaneous Observations connected with the Physical Sciences show him to have been a keen and critical observer. He noted that the rock types he found in a typical coal measure cycle indicated their marine origin, even though they were 200 feet above sea-level when he studied them near Liège. He also found clear evidence that the present-day mountains near Aix-la-Chappelle had once lain under an ocean. Granite, too, he concluded, was essentially a water-lain deposit. Although today's geologists may disagree, they have yet to propose a better explanation!
Although Joseph Ellul refers in his book (p. 10 in both the English and German editions) to Sir Leonard Wooley and his wife's interpretation of nine feet (2.7 meters) water-deposited silt he excavated at Ur in Iraq as evidence in favour of his own belief that Noah's Flood resulted from the Atlantic Ocean's breaking through a previously existing land-ridge between Southern Spain and North Africa where the Straits of Gibraltar now are, most scholars now "believe that what Wooley found were traces of diverse local floodings - frequent occurrences in Mesopotamia, where occasional torrential rains and the swelling of the two great rivers [the Tigris and the Euphrates] and their frequent course changes cause such havoc." Because the hard-packed mud found at Ur and al-'Ubaid suggests flooding there between 4000 and 3500 B.C, but that at Kish, Erech and Shuruppak flooding in about 2800 B.C., and the layers of mud at Nineveh several different inundations between 4000 and 3000 B.C., scholars have concluded that all these varying strata "were not the comprehensive calamity, the monumental prehistoric event that the Deluge must have been." (Zecharia Sitchin, The 12th Planet, Bear & Co., 1991, pp.144-5.). Whitcomb and Morris (op.cit., pp.109-111) similarly agree that this "presumed 'evidence' has nothing whatever to do with the flood recorded in the Bible." The discoveries at Għar Dalam on Malta are, I feel, much more relevant - and equally relevant, I suggest, is the present configuration of both the Maltese and the Gozitan landscapes, the causal origin of which needs properly to be explained.
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"The number seven, whose significance in the story of Creation, as the seventh or Sabbath day, in the name of Abraham's abode Beer-Sheba ('The Well of Seven') and so on is easily recognized, in Mesopotamia was applied to the Seven Who Judge, the Seven Sages, the seven gates of the Lower World, the seven tablets of Enuma elish. It was an epithet of Enlil ('Enlil is Seven,' the Sumerians stated); and - undoubtedly the origin of the number's significance - it was the planetary number of Earth. 'Earth (KI) is the seventh,' all Sumerian astronomical texts asserted. This, as we have explained, made sense only to someone coming into the centre of our Solar System from the outside. To him (or them) coming from the far-out Nibiru, Pluto would be the first planet, Neptune and Uranus the second and third, Saturn and Jupiter the fourth and fifth, Mars would be the sixth and Earth the seventh (and then Venus the eighth - as indeed these planets were depicted on monuments and cylinder seals)." - Zecharia Sitchin, The Cosmic Code (New York: Avon Books, 1998, p.174.)
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