Episode Transcript
Welcome to faith and science. I'm doctor John Ashton. A couple of days ago, I was at a lecture actually, on some of the latest research that is being done, looking at ways we can slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's type diseases in old age.
And one of the other scientists that was there came up to me afterwards and said, Joan, what do you think about this thermoluminescence dating? And of course, he was referring in part to the quite a few claims that are being made, for example, here in Australia, that the indigenous evidence of the indigenous people being here as long ago as 65,000 years. And I have been looking at some of this data, actually, and there are quite high errors associated with these type of dating methods, can be as high as 25%, I point out. But one of the other fascinating things was that the University of Adelaide had reported some data on the indigenous, or carbon 14 dating indigenous sites at about 29,000 years.
And it's interesting that when we carbon date dinosaur remains, we get the same sort of ages, 25, 30,000 years. So again, this puts a whole question on these ages. Now, when we talk to the flood, the flood explains the flood that's described in the Bible, a worldwide flood, describes the land forms that we have around very well.
But again, what we have now in secular science don't accept this notion of the biblical type of flood in recent times. But there's actually powerful historical evidence that this flood event actually only occurred thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago. And of course, some of the arguments that come up when refer to some of this information is that, oh, well, it was just a local flood in Mesopotamia region.
Well, that again doesn't make sense because when we look at the narratives, how people were destroyed and so forth, well, people could have easily moved away from the area and so forth, it would seem. And also it can't explain the structures around the world. So the big question comes back to now, is the timeline.
Now, when we're looking at carbon 14 dating, ethermoluminescence, optical luminescent stading, these sort of things, we looking at methods that have never been validated for prehistorical dates, because we can't really, we can't really know for certain what the conditions were. If we use sort of tree ring dating or something like that, that allow for the growth. Because again, the Bible describes the flood situation where we had massive changes in water temperature, we had massive environmental changes that would have affected climate very significantly and significantly for hundreds of years afterwards.
And of course, we don't know a lot about that. We don't know a lot about the cosmic ray flux at that time, the carbon dioxide levels or the carbon levels in the atmosphere, and hence the rate at which carbon 14 would be produced and the concentrations. Because of these so many unknowns, we have to look at other factors.
And when we look at the historical evidence, again, it's quite astounding that it supports the young age of only thousands of years. Now, it's interesting. An archaeologist, Professor Andre Perret, who served as the director in chief of the National Museums of France, explains that there are historical references to the flood as a historical fact in a number of historical documents.
And he looks, for example, at the well Blundell prison that has been preserved that lists the sumerian king list that has sumerian kinglis. And he also talks about how there are these flood narratives from around the world, not just the Mesopotamia area, but from around the world. So ancient greek literature describes the flood.
It's explicitly mentioned by Pindar, who was fifth century bc writer. Also the roman writer Ovid mentions the flood in his book metamorphosis, book one. And again, in these stories, we see that it talks about the gods deciding to destroy humanity with a flood.
And, you know, Professor Damon Leeming, who is professor emeritus of english and comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, they studied a lot of the traditions, particularly in the Americas, of a global flood, that the people recorded that, again, people were destroyed, the gods had destroyed, destroyed the world, because the people had become wicked around. There's also a lot of evidence from China that comes out further. Chinese evidence for the historical accuracy of the genesis account has been preserved in the pictogram symbols of ancient chinese script.
And Stanford University educated chinese art historian doctor Ginger T Chok looked at these symbols, and so many of these symbols, again, have symbols that relate to the Genesis account of the flood, which is quite fascinating when we look at some of the other evidence. An example, of course, is that Egypt is referred in ancient manuscripts as the land of Egypt or the land of ham. And of course, Egypt is just the modern greek version of Mizrom, Noah's grandson.
And it's interesting that the genesis account is actually corroborated quite well by the egyptian historian Menentha, who was a priest at Heliopolis during the greek era, about 270 BC. And it's interesting that Menentho recorded the history of Egypt at that time. And he wrote that after the flood, ham, the son of Noah, begat Egypt, or Mistran, who was the first to establish himself in the area now known as Egypt at the time when the tribes began to disperse.
Now, one of Menenthos other works, the Book of Sothis, he wrote that this dispersion took place five years after the birth of Peleg, who was the great great great grandson of Noah, born 101 years after the flood. And so essentially, that puts the tribes beginning to separate and spread out about 106 years after the flood, or roughly around 2200 BC. Now, this is quite interesting, because, again, this was a greek historian living, or an egyptian historian living in the greek period in Egypt and who recorded this history.
Now, it's also interesting that Lempere's classical dictionary states that according to the calculations of Constantine Manassas, the kingdom of Egypt lasted 1663 years, from its beginning under Misram, the son of Ham, in 21 88 BC, to the conquest of Cambyses in 525 BC. And so Manassas, who was a byzantine chronicler who lived in the 12th century AD, also regarded Egypt as being founded by Noah's grandson. So these are quite interesting that they corroborate the biblical calculations for the flood.
If we use the biblical begat ages that are listed and the other time intervals that are listed in the Bible, the other chronologies, and we align them with the hebrew manuscripts, align with the fourth year of King Solomon's reign, and we have a pretty good idea of what that date was. Now, about 960 BC, we can calculate these ages that, again, that all corroborate with the historical ages that are being recorded by these other historians. For example, Thomas Morris, who was the assistant librarian at the London Museum in the early 18 hundreds, published the following report after visiting Babylon.
And he states, when Alexander conquered Babylon, the chaldean priests informed the Calisthenes that they had recorded on bricks baked in a furnace. Astronomical observations that extended back 1903, years before that period, which was 330 years before Christmas, when the conquest was achieved. So, again, this gives a date of around 22, 33 BC for the founding of Babylon.
And that is consistent with the dates, again, that we get from Menenthel and that of the tribes dispersing about 40 years later, and also corroborates the biblical timeline. So here we have records baked in stone, or in bricks, rather, that corroborate the biblical timeline. The fourth century historian Eusebus of Caesarea recorded that Eglias, the greek king, began his reign in 2089 BC, or as he puts it, 1313 years before the first Olympiad in 776 BC.
So, again, these dates for the founding of these particular kingdoms, these particular groups, all fit the biblical timeline, and even in Asia. Earl Carrington Goodrich, who was professor of Chinese at Columbia University, notes that one of the oldest preserved chinese chronologies, known as the Bamboo Annals, gives the first dynasty in China as beginning in 1994 BC. So here we have actually chronologies that have preserved the actual dates when these civilizations started, when these family groups started their dynasties.
And there's also a revised traditional alternate date for the first dynasty being 21 83 bc. So again, these dates come after the dates for the dispersion of the tribes, about 2200 bc. So what we have is we have this overall picture from actual recorded chronologies of the dispersions of the tribes around the world just after the date of the biblical flood.
And also when we look at the population in the world and the population in the different areas, the migration into the Americas, the migration then into the Pacific islands and so forth, and down through Africa, it certainly fits the timeline that is given by the Bible, that the population of the earth is actually only thousands of years old, not hundreds of thousands of millions of years old as we're being led to believe. So, in my view, this provides really firsthand recorded evidence by humans that in actual fact, the biblical account is true, that there was the worldwide flood only about two and a half thousand years ago, or before Christ, about four and a half thousand years ago. You've been listening to faith and science.
Remember, if you want to relisten or re watch these programmes, remember you can google 3ABNaustralia.org.au and click on the radio button or on the listen button. And also remember, there are the television programmes too, Evolution Impossible, which is a 13 part series which I go through and discuss with questions being asked, the issues relating to the evidence that we have for evolution.
And of course, there's also the programme science conversations. And remember, if you've enjoyed these programmes and found them helpful to tell your friends on social media as well. I'm Doctor John Ashton.
Have a great day. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Radio.
