Evolution Impossible (19 page)

It is revealing that Lempriere’s
Classical Dictionary
states: “According to the calculations of Constantine Manasses, the kingdom of Egypt lasted 1,663 years from its beginning under Misraim the son of Ham, 2188
B.C.
, to the conquest of Cambyses, 525
B.C
.”
²⁰
Thus, Manasses, a Byzantine chronicler who lived in the 12th century
A.D
., also regarded the foundation of Egypt by the grandson of Noah just after the dispersion as a historical fact. His date of 2188
B.C
. is in close agreement with the dates that can be calculated from genealogies in the ancient Hebrew manuscripts, using the date of the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign as an historical reference point.

The chronologies of several other ancient civilizations also harmonize with these dates for the dispersion of the tribes that had been centered around the location of Babylon (Gen. 11:8–9).

For example, Thomas Maurice, A.M., who was assistant librarian at the London Museum in the early 1800s, published the following report after visiting the ruins of Babylon: “When Alexander conquered Babylon, the Chaldean priests informed Callisthenes that they had recorded on bricks baked in the furnace, astronomical observations that extended back 1,903 years before that period, which was 330 years before Christ, when the conquest was achieved.”
²¹
This gives a date of 2233
B.C.
for Babylon, which is consistent with a date for the tribes being dispersed from around Babylon about 40 years later.

The fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea recorded that Egialeus, a Greek king, began his reign in 2089
B.C.
, 1,313 years before the first Olympiad in 776
B.C.
²²
This appears to be the oldest chronological date assigned to a Greek kingdom. It corresponds to just over 100 years after the dispersion and is a reasonable date, given the distance the tribe had migrated from Babylon. Again, we find that Grecians were referred to as “the sons of Javan,” who was another grandson of Noah, via his second son Japheth (Joel 3:6; Gen. 5:32, 10:1; Isa. 66:19).
Javan is also the Hebrew name for Greece, and it is also used to refer to the descendants of Javan and their lands, namely Ionia, Macedonia, Greece, and Syria.
²³

Dr. Young notes that Japheth is probably the original of Japetus or Iapetus, whom the Greeks consider to be the ancestor of the human race.
²⁴
The Roman historian Josephus also lists many of the tribes of Europe, including Greece, as being descendants from the sons of Japheth and his grandsons, with many geographical locations and towns named after these grandsons and their sons.
²⁵
For example, Charles J.F. Dowsett, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, points out that ancient Armenian writers call the Armenians descendants of Togarmah or Ashkenaz, the sons of Gomer, who was also a son of Japheth.
²⁶
Japheth had another son called Magog. Josephus notes that the Magogites were called Scythians by the Greeks,
²⁷
which were a people occupying an area corresponding to southern Russia and the Ukraine. Another one of Japheth’s sons and a grandson of Noah was Madai (Gen. 10:2), who, according to Josephus, was the father of the Madeans, who are called the Medes by the Greeks and who lived in the region south of the Caspian Sea.

Thus, it can be seen that from the historical perspective of the account in Genesis, the tribes and towns of Europe are directly linked to the grandsons of Noah, which lends more credibility to the account of Noah and the Flood. This connection has been discussed in more detail elsewhere.
28
Also, it would be extremely unusual to name towns and regions after fictitious people. Towns and countries are almost always named after real people — especially their founders. Also, the use of terms such as “the land of . . .” strengthens the case for the named persons being real people.

Even in Asia, as L. Carrington Goodrich, professor of Chinese at Columbia University, notes, one of the oldest preserved Chinese chronologies, known as the
Bamboo Annals,
gives the first dynasty in China as beginning 1994
B.C.
, with the revised, traditional, alternate date for the first dynasty (Hsia) being 2183
B.C.
29
Both these dates come after the date for the dispersion of the tribes from Babylon and hence harmonize with the Genesis
account.

Further evidence for the historical accuracy of Genesis comes from the discovery in 1974 of an archive of around 20,000 very ancient cuneiform tablets at Ebla in northern Syria. These tablets contain several references to the Canaanites who lived in “the land of Canaan.” Canaan was another son of Ham and grandson of Noah. Canaan was the father of Sidon, and the town he founded later became the chief city of ancient Phoenicia on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Genesis record also says that the land of Canaan extended from Sidon in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim as far as Lasha (Gen. 10:6–20). These four towns, which no longer exist and up to this time were only mentioned in Genesis and Hebrew literature, were also found to be named in the tablets, as were towns and regions such as Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo, Gaza, Sinai, Joppa, and Damascus that are well known to historians and archaeologists. The mention of Canaan and the four cities of the plain provide very strong evidence that Genesis contains factual historical information. Details of the Ebla tablets evidence have been explained in more detail by the epigrapher who translated the tablets, Dr. Giovanni C. Pettinato, professor of Assiriology at the University of Rome.
30

Most of the non-Genesis Flood narratives that have been preserved provide very unrealistic details, such as the people being saved in a basket or the boat being a cube in shape. In other versions, the gods or the people are in the form of different animals, or the Flood lasted only seven days, and so on. However, the Genesis account is far more realistic. For example, the Sumerian flood accounts, such as on the Weld-Blundell Prism and other ancient tablets and manuscripts, contain what is known as the Sumerian king list. This list names eight kings living before the Flood who ruled for very long periods of time — tens of thousands of years, then after the Flood the kings are listed as ruling for much shorter periods of time — hundreds of years.
³¹
Before the Flood, the reign of these kings is described as having a large variation between 18,600 years and 43,200 years. After the Flood, the same large random variation in length of reign is listed, but this time the range is between 300 years and 1,500 years, with kings many generations after the Flood still reported as living over 1,000 years.

On the other hand, the Genesis account records a list of eight pre-Flood patriarchs with fairly constant life spans ranging from 895 years to 969 years, and one, Noah’s father, living only 777 years. Then after the Flood, the ages decline rapidly. When these ages are plotted on a graph, they approximate an exponential decay curve. Cornell University genetics researcher Dr. John Sanford has plotted the post-Flood life span data recorded in Genesis, in other books of Moses, and other Hebrew historical literature recorded by different authors down through the centuries. These records of the life spans of people during a period of nearly 2,000 years after the Flood fit the shape of an exponential biological decay curve. The calculated correlation coefficient is 0.90, meaning the fit of the data is very good and could not have been easily contrived, as the data comes from different records spanning many centuries. Dr. Sanford points out that not only is the data very consistent with genomic degeneration caused by mutation accumulation, but the curve is actually very similar to theoretical decay curves reflecting genomic degeneration.
³²
Here again we see that the Genesis account is quite scientifically realistic.

The reader may ask, “Why did longevity suddenly decline after the Flood?” The answer is that while we do not know for certain what caused this effect, we can hypothesize a scientific explanation. The Genesis account states that water spewed out from deep within the earth. It also states that the begat ages (when they fathered a child) of these pre-Flood patriarchs was usually 65 years or more (Gen. 5:6–32).
³³
We observe today that ground waters contain relatively high levels of what is known as “heavy water” or “deuterium water,” whereas Arctic snow contains the lowest levels of deuterium water.
³⁴
When plants are grown in very low deuterium water, they grow more slowly. Researchers from the Hungary Central Research Institute for Physics and the Semmelweis University of Medicine also report that cancer growth is slowed or stopped by deuterium depleted water.
³⁵
This research is consistent with the observations that when the deuterium content of water is increased, the number of mutations in the cell DNA increases.
³⁶
These mutations result in imperfect replication of the cells and are one of the important reasons why we age and eventually grow old. As the percentage of mutations accumulates, resulting in a corresponding accumulation of compromised cells, we get to the point where major physiological components and biochemical pathways in our bodies become so compromised that something fails and we die of old age.

It stands to reason that if the mutation rate is much lower in a low deuterium environment, that if the water in our cells had a much lower heavy water content, then we would age much more slowly and hence live much longer. This could explain the long life spans recorded for the pre-Flood patriarchs compared with the life spans today. Therefore, we could hypothesize that the water on the earth before the Flood was very low deuterium water, with high deuterium underground water being released into the bio-sphere during the Flood, resulting in the average level of around 150 parts per million that we observe today in the sea.

This is an example of how the Flood model provides possible scientific hypotheses that can be tested. That is, we could look for evidence that the deuterium content of the water in the past was lower. When looking in the research literature, we find that evidence of deuterium-depleted water in the past has already been reported.
³⁷

The ark described in Genesis is also more realistic than the basket and the cube-type craft mentioned in other accounts. In modern measurements, the ark would have been about 450 feet (140 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide, and 45 feet (14 m) high. I have been told that these are very realistic figures in terms of naval architecture and stability at sea — for example, they are similar to kayak dimensions scaled up. The displacement of the ark has been calculated to be around 43,000 tons, with an inside capacity of around 1.4 million cubic feet (39,644 cubic m) and an estimated deck area of 95,700 square feet (8,890 square m).
³⁸
This is quite a substantial vessel. Consequently, geologist John Woodmorappe has published a well-researched feasibility study demonstrating that sufficient kinds of animals would fit into and survive on the ark in order to repopulate the earth with the variety of animals that exist today.
³⁹

Other evidence for the Flood may come from the observations of mathematician and astronomer George F. Dodwell, who served as South Australian government astronomer at the Adelaide Observatory from 1909 to 1952. In 1922, Dodwell had led an important expedition to the northern part of South Australia to observe a total eclipse of the sun, and thereby verify that light was deflected by the sun’s gravitational field.
⁴⁰
In the 1930s, Dodwell became aware of a book by British Admiral Sir Algernon F.R. De Horsey that discussed an astronomical theory relating to the tilt of the earth’s axis. This theory had been put forward by Major General Professor Alfred W. Drayson, who had served as an astronomer at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
⁴¹
Professor Drayson reported a possible extra variation in the standard slight precession or wobble of the earth’s axis of rotation, in addition to the regular wobble caused by variations in the earth’s distance from the other planets as it rotates around the sun. The regular wobble is predicted by an astronomical calculation known as “Newcomb’s formula,” after the American astronomer Simon Newcomb, who derived it.

The angle of the earth’s tilt, known as the “obliquity of the ecliptic,” can be easily calculated from the sun’s shadow, being the angle midway between the angle of the sun at the longest day (summer solstice ) and the angle of the sun at the shortest day (winter solstice). The position of the sun at these times was often marked on ancient monuments, so theoretically one can calculate the angle of the earth’s tilt corresponding to those times in the past. A number of measurements were recorded by ancient and medieval astronomers, and Dodwell obtained a summary of some of these results, which had been collected by the medieval Belgian astronomer Godefroid Wendelin. This work contained a list of the obliquity of the ecliptic from Thales circa 558
B.C.
, Eratosthenes circa 230
B.C.
, Hipparchus 135
B.C.
, Ptolemy
A.D.
126, and several medieval astronomers, including Tycho Brahe,
A.D.
1587 up to 1616.

Dodwell plotted their results and found that they fitted a logarithmic sine curve. That is, the curve represented a wobble in the tilt of the earth’s axis that was slowly decreasing over time, which was in addition to that predicted by Newcomb’s formula. Armed with this discovery, Dodwell went on to gather as many measurements of the obliquity of the ecliptic as he could find from solstice markings on ancient monuments and other ancient records. By plotting this data and correcting for Newcomb’s formula variations, he was able to plot a curve that showed that the wobble had essentially died out completely — that is, reached equilibrium — by around
A.D.
1850, which was why it had not been noticed by 20th-century astronomers. However, the curve predicted that in the past the wobble had been quite large at around 2,345
B.C.
From this, Dodwell proposed that there was a major disturbance of the earth’s rotational axis that occurred around 2,345
B.C.
, and that produced a wobble that has been slowly decreasing over an interval of 4,194 years (that is, a wobble that can be plotted as a diminishing sine curve in terms of its displacement from the mean axis).
⁴²