Racism of Young-Earth Creationists

Alice C. Linsley

At the back of Young Earth Creationist books such as Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth by Terry Mortenson one finds the 12 Affirmations and Denials. Affirmation XII claims that the diversity of languages and skin color came about as a result of divine judgment at the Tower of Babel.

XII. We affirm that all people living and dead are descended from Adam and Eve...and that the various people groups (with their various languages, cultures, and distinctive physical characteristics, including skin color) arose as a result of God's supernatural judgment at the Tower of Babel..."

This is the easiest of the Young Earth Creationist claims to refute since the evidence of many languages and skin colors before the time of the Tower of Babel is overwhelming and cannot be denied by reasonable persons. The spread of the early written marks is an example. Other examples involve the dispersion of peoples out of Africa and studies of phoneme variance among them. A recent phoneme study has identified the Nile Valley as the point of origin of modern languages. These dispersed peoples had a range of skin color and languages and they were already widely dispersed before the time of Noah and his 3 sons.

Tera means priest in the ancient Egyptian (and in Japan). Abraham's father was Terah (Tera). This is a title, as is evident from the Petrie image above which gives tera-neter as "one devoted to God." Tera is a title associated with the Ainu, the builders of the shrine city of On (Heliopolis) on the Nile. The Harris papyrus speaks of 'apiru (Hebrew) of Re at Heliopolis. Joseph married into this royal priest line when he took Asenath as his wife. She was a daughter of the priest of On, also known as Iunu, meaning "place of pillars."

The Horite priests of Heliopolis were known for their meticulous devotion to the Creator and his son, and for their sobriety and purity of life. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.” 

The Nilotic Ainu had a reddish-brown skin tone and their elders wore beards, moustaches and caps with frontal knobs, just as do the Ainu elders of Japan and Eastern Canada. The Ainu spread from the Nile to Japan and to Northeastern Canada via Scandinavia. In Canada they are known as the Micmaq. They came in two waves from the Middle East to Scandinavia, then to Greenland and to the Hudson Bay area of Eastern Canada. They are in haplogroup X2b5, which is traced by maternal line and dates to about 1,550 B.C.

There is evidence that the early written signs of the Nilotic Ainu may have become the basis for the Ainu script of Japan. It is perhaps the most lasting heritage of the Ainu of whom only about 300 pure-blooded remain. This explains why the Hebrew and Japanese alphabets are so similar.

Migrations Out of Africa

The negrito Andaman and Nicobar Islanders migrated between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago from Africa and Arabia along the coastlines, and eventually crossing the seas.  The Onges and Jarawas of Andaman and Nicobar belong to Haplotype D, a subtype of Haplogroup C, which is also common in Tibet and Japan. The Ainu aboriginal people of Japan are in haplotype D (Y-chromosome) and haplogroup X (mitochondrial chromosome).

Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, found stone tools at Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India that were remarkably similar to those found in the African Middle Stone Age about 100,000 years ago. He states, “Whoever was living in India was doing things identical to modern humans living in Africa.”

Thomas Strasser and his team found hundreds of tools of African origin on Crete dating to between 100,000 and 130,000 years. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus. Ancient African artifacts have even been found in China. There is considerable tool and pottery evidence indicating prehistoric movements out of the Nile Valley.

The 20,000 year old human skeletons found at Lake Mungo in New South Wales are likely descendants of early peoples who migrated from Africa, if we follow the red ochre trail. The Lake Mungo population buried its rulers in red ochre, derived from hematite (Fe2O3). This appears to have been a common practices among ancient peoples who dispersed out of Africa. The earliest known use of red ochre powder (300,000 years) is at the site GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia.

The Kushite movement out of the Nile Valley is a more recent exodus. The Kushites went as far east as the Philippine Islands. (See Kushites in Mindanao.)


The Proto-Saharans (ca. 10,000-3000 BC)

Between 10,000-3000 years ago the Sahara was much wetter. Seasonal rainfall turned the Sahara into a fertile savannah with sedentary populations. The oldest known cemetery in the Sahara (ca. 7500 B.C.) reveals "The burial density, tool kit, ceramics, and midden fauna suggest a largely sedentary population with a subsistence economy based on fishing and on hunting of a range of savanna vertebrates." The discovery was made by National Geographic photographer Mike Hettwer in 2000.

Proto-Saharan peoples fished and hunted. Ancient Sudan rock paintings show fishing nets. The much older Khormusan sites of ancient Nubia (65,000 and 55,000 years) also reveal evidence of fishing and hunting.

The Proto-Saharans navigated the interconnected rivers which were their highways and trade routes. Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger had rivers and lakes that connected to major water systems that are identifiable today, such as the Niger, the Benue, Lake Chad and the Nile. The 8000 year old Dufuna boat, a fishing dugout, was found buried in the Sahara.

The cave paintings at Gilf Kebir in the Sahara date to about 6000 BC. At that time a sizeable community lived on this vast sandstone plateau near the Egyptian-Libyan border, about 400 miles from the Nile.

The Proto-Saharans raised cattle in the Lake Chad region which was a much larger lake. They venerated cattle and left behind engravings of bulls and cows with solar disc between their horns. This image was associated with Hathor, the Virgin Queen whose son was Horus. They built the oldest known fortress city dedicated to Horus and Hathor at Nekhen (4000 BC). At archaeologists have discovered a temple, elaborate burial sites, and evidence of animal sacrifice. The rulers of Nekhen had access to sub-Saharan mineral resources of the eastern desert. The high quality of the gold work at Nekhen is evidenced by the discovery of this gold plumed falcon representing Horus.

Proto-Saharan peoples moved into the Nile Valley as the Sahara began to dry. Some would later be called "Kushites." Some crossed the Indian Ocean from East Africa and settled in southern India. These are the Dravidians. There is a close linguistic and religious connection between the Kushites and the Dravidians. The Africanist Geoffrey Parrinder has noted that at least twenty-five tribes in East Africa worship Murungu as the Supreme God, and like the Dravidian god Murugan, the African Murungu self-reveals on sacred mountains.


The Kushite Expansion (ca. 3500-1500 BC)

Genetic research indicates that the term "Kushite" embraces a wide range of peoples. Some of Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile Valley and are referred to as Kushites in Genesis 10:6-12. Kushite in the Bible refers to the descendants of Noah by his grandson Kush. However, the term includes many people of different skin tones and languages. The Amratian "Kushites" lived about 4000-3500 BC, before the time of Noah.

The Kushites included red and black Nubians, reddish Ainu, red, white and black Canaanites, red, black and yellow Nilotes, red-brown, light brown, black and yellow Egyptians, red-brown and black Sudra, and red, white and brown Mesopotamians. The variety of skin tones is evident on ancient monument paintings in Egypt, Sudan and in the Middle East and Turkey.

Red and black Nubian captives
(Detail from Ippolito Rosellini's drawing from the 1828 Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt)

Genesis 10 speaks of the migration of the Kushites into Mesopotamia. The Kushite migration has been confirmed by DNA studies. The Kushites were great pyramid builders and the ziggurats were a type of stepped pyramid similar to that of Djoser at Saqqara constructed between 2667–2648 BC. No pyramids had yet been built in Sumer/Kish. The ziggurats date to the Akkadian period, about 2334–2218 BC. The earliest monarch of Sumer whose historical existence has been independently attested through archaeological inscription ruled Kish about 2700–2600 BC.

Amenhotep III ruled between about 1382 and 1350 B.C. His name means "peace of Amen" and indicates a date when Amen, a name for God was favored over the name Set, which was favored in the Delta. It was during the 18th dynasty that the title 'King's Son of Kush' was first used. The earlier known Kushite ruler was called Kashta which means "The Throne of Kush." This is about 1000 years after the construction of ziggurats, so the Kushite expansion out of Africa is one of the most recent movements out of Africa.

The Kushite expansion out of the Nile Valley is one of the later migrations out of Africa, between about 3500 and 1500 B.C. The Kushites represent a highly organized people, consisting of numerous clans and castes. Their rulers controlled the major water systems and founded early mining industries along the Nile and in southern Israel. Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder. He and his brother Ramah were the sons of Kush (Gen. 10:6-12).

The Biblical term "Kushite" refers to peoples, castes and specific culture traits that emerged from the archaic Proto-Saharans. This would include Canaanites, Hittites, Sumerians, Elamites, and the Horite Hebrew/Habiru. Among these peoples there was a wide range of skin color and a great diversity of languages. To this day, the greatest linguistic and genetic diversity exists in Africa, from which the ancestors of these peoples spread along the coastlines and by sea around 70,000 years ago.

Linguistic Diversity

There are hundreds of language families in the world. Each subdivides into hundreds of languages, dialects and sub-dialects. The most diverse of the language groups is the oldest group, the Afro-Asiatic language family. This includes Chadic, Kushitic, Ugaritic, Elamite, Semitic, Hausa, Amharic, Ethiopic, Magyar, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Babylonian, etc. There is also a linguistic connection to Dravidian and Yoruba.

All the peoples and rulers mentioned in Genesis 10 can be placed linguistically within this language family. The Bible is their story. It tells how God fulfilled the promise of the Son that was made to their ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). These peoples exhibit a range of physical features so that it is impossible to speak of a "race" - a term that does not appear in the Bible. It is ignorant and groundless to assert that skin color is the result of God's judgment.

I agree with Dr. Joshua Zorn, a former young-earth creationist, who said: "The worst aspect of YECS teaching is that it creates a nearly insurmountable barrier between the educated world and the church."

Related reading: Bishop Ussher's Flawed Timeline; The Begats Speak of the First people on Earth?; The Tower of Babel; The Red-City of Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; The Nile and Tigris Linguistically Connected; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Moses' Horite Family; Nilotic Cattle Herders; Genesis as History?

Professor James Barr on Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

Professor James Barr (1924-2006) was an influential Bible scholar of the late 20th century. His most influential work was The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) in which he exposed problems with interpreting Hebrew based on questionable etymologies or theological bias. Specifically, he criticized the practice of attributing new meanings to Hebrew words by comparing them to words in other Semitic languages. In this he was quite right. The roots of many Hebrew words in the Old Testament are not found in the Semitic languages, but in languages of Paleolithic peoples long before the time of the emergence of Semitic languages.

Many of the symbols found in these proto-languages can be traced back to symbols found in archaic rock shelters

The root of the word Hebrew is older even than the ancient Egyptian and Ugaritic languages in which the word piru meant house, shrine or temple. The O'piru were the Sun temples of the ancient world found from Africa to Anatolia and Anatolia to paleolithic Gaul. The Sun was the emblem of the Creator among Abraham's R1b people, and the servants of the Sun temples were called ha'piru, 'apiru or ha'biru, which is "Hebrew" in English Bibles.

Barr also criticized the Christian fundamentalist approach to Biblical interpretation as irresponsible. He came to the conclusion, based on his study of the Bible, that God is knowable to humans through the created world (cf. Rom. 1:20).

Given what we know about Professor James Barr's views and high scholarship, it is important to place his work in the proper perspective. Barr's approach is linguistic and in that sense, scientific. That is what brought the following quote to the attention of the peddlers of young-Earth creationism. However, they do the man a great injustice.

Here is the quote that is popular among young-earth creationists:

Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.

Note that Barr is simply saying that the writer of Genesis 1 meant "days" as human experience them in the region of the Middle East.  He is not insisting that the days of creation were six 24-hour days. That may be true, but there is no reason to insist on this since there is a gap of millions of years between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17.

Barr also believes that the Genesis writer believed that the people named in Genesis 4 and 5 were the first human on earth. He does not insist, however, that these men and women named in the genealogies provide by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to the time of Abraham. He recognized the similarities of the Sumerian and babylonian regnal lists. These are not genealogies. Rather the so-called "begats" are king lists and pertain to the Neolithic period. These men are not the first humans on earth, but rulers of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. They were kingdom builders, like Nimrod the Kushite (Gen. 10:8). This was a time of law codes such at the Law of Tehut, warriors, weapons, shrine cities or high places such as Nekhen in Sudan, and numerous technologies associated with the Neolithic Period. These earliest rulers of Genesis lived between 6000 and 3000 B.C., millions of years after the appearance of the first archaic humans in Africa.

Further, human populations were already widely dispersed globally by around 35,000 years ago, long before the 6-10,000 age of the Earth held by young Earthers. DNA studies confirm that the Neolithic R1b cattle-herding peoples had already dispersed across Africa, the Levant, Anatolia, and the Black Sea area by 20,000 year ago. Expansion of humans into the Arctic regions is evidenced by sites in Russian high latitudes dating between 31,000 and 34,000 years. The more recent Kushite migration mentioned in Genesis has also been confirmed by molecular genetics.

Barr also insisted that Noah's flood was portrayed as universal by the Genesis writer for theological reasons. This voice in Genesis comes from a time after Abraham and poses God's wrath as the reason for the destruction of all human and animal life except for what was preserved on the ark. Note that Barr is not saying that this actually happened.

Consider the following population estimates by urban center between 2400 and 2200 BC, the time when Noah's flood would have occurred:

Memphis, Egypt - 32,000 inhabitants

Lagash, Iraq - 60,000 inhabitants

Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan - 40,000 inhabitants

Mari, Syria -50,000 inhabitants

Baodun settlements, China - Baodun is the largest settlement, covering an area of about 373 miles. There is no evidence of destruction by flooding though all six Baodun settlements straddled the Min River in central Sichuan province. The Min is a tributary of the upper Yangtze River.

There is no evidence that any of these peoples were wiped out by a worldwide flood. The evidence simply does not support the interpretation that all the peoples of the earth were destroyed in a catastrophic global flood and that the earth was repopulated by Noah's descendants.

As a fascinating side note, the oldest known zoological collection was discovered during excavations at Hierakonpolis or Nekhen in Sudan in 2009. This royal menagerie that dates to ca. 3500 BC and included hippos, hartebeest,elephants, baboons and wildcats. The story of Noah preserving a collection of animals is based on historical reality.

Related reading: Was the Earth Repopulated After Noah's Flood?; The Genesis King Lists; YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Bishop Ussher Goofed

Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 1

The Answers in Genesis conception of Biblical history
Source: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/ka/v8/n2/when-was-ice-age

According to Young-Earth Creationism, the world is only about 6018 years old. Young Earth Creationists use Archbishop James Ussher’s chronology to date the age of the Earth. Ussher assumed that the "begats" in Genesis 4 and 5 represent the first people on earth. However, this interpretation is not supported by the evidence in the Bible. The "begets" are early king lists, and these kings lived within the historical period. Their reigns correspond to Proto-Saharan and Nilo-Egyptian dynasties, and to early Kushite reigns in Mesopotamia. Here is a more detailed timeline of the rulers.

Timeline of Rulers in Genesis

B.C. 2490-2415 - Noah lived when the Sahara experienced a wet period (the "Aqualithic" or the African Humid Period). He was a Proto-Saharan ruler whose reign coincided with the Old Kingdom, a time of great cultural and technological achievement in Egypt. This places Noah and his sons in relatively recent history, not at the dawn of human existence. They ruled over territories during the 7th, 8th and 9th Dynasties in Egypt.

First Intermediate Period
2475-2445 BC: 7th - 8th Dynasties Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth and Kush
2445–2160 BC: 9th -10th Dynasties Nimrod, Arpachshad, Salah, Eber and Peleg and Joktan

Middle Kingdom
2160-2000 BC: 11th Dynasty Nahor, Terah and Abraham
2000-1788 BC: 12th Dynasty Jacob, Esau, Joseph

Fishing and boats remains and implements are found across a broad range of the Sahara, associated with distinctive ceramics, cattle herding, and early cultivation. Here are images of some of the artifacts found in Africa from the time of Noah.

Artifacts such as these are found across the Sahara, the Sahel, the Nile Valley, and the East African Lakes at sites dated to 10,000 years ago and older.  Specimens dating to 25,000 years ago have been found at Ishango, and others dated at about 90,000 years at Katanda. Both sites are in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (John E. Yellen. 1998. Barbed Bone Points: Tradition and Continuity in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa. African Archaeological Review , vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 173-198) 

Between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago the Sahara began to dry out in the areas more geographically removed from the rivers and lakes. This drove both animal and human populations toward the Benue Trough, Lake Chad, and the Nile Valley. The exodus coincided with the rise of pharaonic culture along the Nile River (Kuper and Kröpelin, 2006). This explains, in part, the movement of Abraham's ancestors from the region of Lake Chad and the Nile into the Arabian Peninsula and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The marriage and ascendancy pattern of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors also drove expansion out of Africa.

B.C. 2438-2363 - Ham
B.C. 2417-2342 - Kush, son of Ham and the father of Nimrod and Ramah
B.C. 2290-2215 - Nimrod, a sent-away son who became Sargon the Great. He was a great Kushite ruler.

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion, which was controlled by rulers related to the kings listed in Genesis, was essentially Kushite. Dr. Christopher Ehret confirms this in his "History in Africa." He writes, "The linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence combine in locating the origins of this family far south in Africa, in Eritrea or Ethiopia, and not at all in Asia. A complex array of lexical evidence confirms that the proto-Afrasian society belonged to the pre-agricultural eras of human history." (p.4)

The Kushite expansion into ancient Sumer has been well-documented, beginning with François Lenormant. In Sumerian inscriptions, the Kushites are called Meluha Kasi. Nimrod, the son a Kush built a great empire in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. He is known in history as Sar-gon, a title meaning "High King" or "King of Kings." The Elamite word for king is sunki, a cognate of the Hausa sarki, meaning king or ruler. The Sumerian word for king is sar and the Chadic word for ruler is gon.

Sargon the Great lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC, which is when his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne. Alternative dates for Sargon the Great are 2360-2279, but these dates likely refer to his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. It was Sargon the Elder, not Sargon the Great, who conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Accad (Agade/Agadez).

B.C. 2238-2163 - Arpacshad, Nimrod's son by Asshur's daughter
B.C. 2217-2042 - Salah, likely Arpacshad's son by his sister wife
B.C. 2196-2121 - Eber, likely Salah's son by his sister wife
B.C. 2175-2100 - Peleg, son of Eber (Peleg's brother was Joktan the Elder)
B.C. 2154-2079 - Reu (The name appears in Leah's line. She named her first-born son Reu-ben)
B.C. 2133-2058 - Serug, likely Reu's firstborn by his sister wife
B.C. 2112-2037 - Nahor, likely Serug's firstborn by his sister wife
B.C. 2091-2016 - Terah, likely Nahor's firstborn son by his sister wife
B.C. 2039-1964 - Abraham, Terah's son by his cousin wife and a sent-away son
B.C. 1987-1912 - Joktan the Younger, Abraham's firstborn son by his cousin wife, Keturah

Analysis of the kinship pattern in Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11 reveals that the lines of Cain (Gen. 4) and Seth (Gen. 5) and the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried. Therefore, Abraham, Moses and Jesus are descendants of both Cain and Seth and both Ham and Shem. Cain's line was not destroyed in the flood.

Further, analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors reveals a distinctive marriage and ascendancy pattern that can be traced from Genesis to the New Testament.


What YEC fails to explain

The Biblical material reveals a gap of time between the first created humans, represented by Adam and Eve, and the rulers of Genesis 4 and 5, represented by Cain and his brother Seth. If you believe that the earth is 6000 years, there is a gap of 800-1000 years between Adam and Eve and Cain. Young-Earth Creationists must explain how Eve gave birth to Cain at age 800 or older.

The Biblical material is self-explanatory, but YEC dogma requires that the Biblical explanation be ignored or rejected. When Cain was born his mother declared kan-itti. E.A. Speiser noted that Qany(ty) or Qanitti shows close affinity to the Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, meaning "with the king." Among the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic and Egyptian rulers is evident also in the name Nefertitti. Once we place the Biblical material in its proper cultural context, we understand that Cain's mother is declaring that she has gotten a king with God's help. (The passage is Messianic!) In fact, the words "king" and "kahn" are derived from the same root as Kain.

At the back of YEC books one finds the 12 Affirmations and Denials. Affirmation XII claims that the diversity of languages and skin color came about as a result of divine judgment at the Tower of Babel.

XII. We affirm that all people living and dead are descended from Adam and Eve...and that the various people groups (with their various languages, cultures, and distinctive physical characteristics, including skin color) arose as a result of God's supernatural judgment at the Tower of Babel..."

In this view, one's skin color is the result of God's judgment. Is there any wonder why many hear racist tones in YEC dogma? Young-Earth Creationists must explain how different languages and a wide range of skin tones and physical features already existed long before the time of Noah in populations ranging from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Europe, India, and islands in the Pacific.

Related reading: Dr. Hugh Ross Responds to YEC; YEC Dogma is Not Biblical; The Descendants of Noah; When the Sahara Was Wet; Cain as Ruler; 70,000 Year Old Settlement in Sudan; War in Old Kingdom Egypt by Juan Carlos Morena Garcia; Sodom, Gomorrah, and the Seismic History of the Dead Sea: Support for Biblical History – Yes! Support for a Young Earth – No!; Is Scientific Dating of Fossils Reliable?

Dr. Hugh Ross Responds to YEC

Young-earth creationists define “operational science” as experiments and observations of natural phenomena that are performed in real time—that is, in the present. They consider the outcomes from operational science as trustworthy and reliable. Young-earth creationists define “historical or origins science” as observations of and experiments on the presently existing natural realm so as to infer what occurred in the past. Such inferences, they argue, are based on questionable assumptions, such as the presumption that the laws of physics do not change over the history of the universe, Earth, and life. Consequently, they conclude that the findings of historical or origins science are not trustworthy and reliable. This explains why Ken Ham and other leaders of young-earth creationist organizations insist that the Bible, and the Bible alone, provides reliable information about what happened in the past.

But this dichotomy that young-earth creationists present is a false one. They are correct in stating that only phenomena we scientists observe directly can be considered to be assumption-free. They are wrong, however, in concluding that all historical sciences depend on indirect observations.

Astronomy is a discipline where we observe the past directly. [Read it all here.]

Related reading:  YEC Dogma is Not Biblical; The Ham-Nye Debate: Another False Choice; False Assumption #5 of Young-Earth Creationists; The Dung Beetle and Heavenly Lights; Ancient African Astronomers

Psalm 104:8 and Flood Geology

William Henry Green

⁶Thou didst cover [the earth] with the deep as with a garment;

The waters were standing above the mountains.

⁷At Thy rebuke they fled;

At the sound of Thy thunder they hurried away.

⁸The mountains rose; the valleys sank down

To the place which Thou didst establish for them.

⁹Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over;

That they may not return to cover the earth.

            Psalm 104:6-9 NASB¹

Evangelicals owe young earth creationists a debt of gratitude for their principled stand on the authority and primacy of Scripture. In that spirit, this paper is intended as a constructively critical exploration of the biblical foundations for a central concept in modern creationist theory.




Psalm 104: A Creationist Proof Text

Ever since the publication in 1961 of The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, Psalm 104:8 has been an important creationist proof text. The Psalm in which the passage occurs was traditionally regarded as a creation hymn, with vv. 6-9 understood as a poetic retelling of day three of the Genesis creation week, but this reading is contested by creationists who view it as an important text relating to Noah’s flood. This interpretation reflects the fact that creationists are forced to confront a pair of difficult questions: since there is not nearly enough water on the planet to cover “all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens” (Genesis 7:19) where did it come from and, more importantly, where did it go after the flood ended?[2] Whitcomb and Morris noticed half a century ago that Psalm 104 seems to provide at least a partial answer:

Very likely, in order to accommodate the great mass of waters and permit the land to appear again, great tectonic movements and isostatic adjustments would have to take place, forming the deep ocean basins and troughs and elevating the continents. This seems to be specifically implied in the poetic reflection of the Deluge in Psalm 104:5-9.[3]

Whitcomb and Morris theorized that the pre-flood earth was relatively flat (thus requiring less water to cover the whole planet), and that the waters were pushed off the continents when the mountains and other land masses were thrust up to their present heights at the end of the flood. Their exegesis of Psalm 104, the only passage in the Bible that seems to reflect these events, met an obvious need in creationist apologetics, and as a consequence similar arguments have been made repeatedly across the last 50 years.[4] The importance for modern creationism of this tectonic or geophysics-centered model of earth history cannot be over stressed.


Creationist Approaches to Psalm 104

Creationist interactions with Psalm 104 tend to fall into two broad categories. In the first place, critics often point out that since Psalm 104 refers in a remarkably untroubled way to animal death (v. 29) and predation (v. 21), then however distasteful such things may be they are not evil and may have existed before the sin of Adam.[5] Creationists respond by saying that Psalm 104 is not a creation account per se, but an inspired reflection on the created world as it existed in the psalmist’s own day, long after the Fall. After all, the passage also talks about ships (v. 26) and sinners (v. 35), and neither of these things existed at the time of creation.[6]

Secondly, creationists argue that a significant portion of Psalm 104 (verses 6-9) does not refer to creation at all, but to Noah’s flood. The clincher, in their minds, is the statement in v. 9 that “Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth.”

Contrary to what many old-earth proponents believe, Psalm 104:6-9 clearly refer to Noah’s Flood, not to the third day of Creation Week. This is seen in the allusion in v. 9 to the rainbow promise in Genesis 9:11….God made no such promise at the end of Day 3 of Creation Week. If he had made such a promise in Genesis 1, the global Flood of Noah’s day would have been a breaking of His promise.[7]

Read it all here.


Note: Founded in 1970 by Henry Morris, The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) promotes young-earth creationism.

The Battle Over Genesis

According to a recent Gallup Poll, only 15% of Americans think evolution happens as a natural process. The other 85% thinks evolution does not occur or that it is supernaturally directed by God (theistic evolution). The success of Young-Earth Creationism is evident in that as many as 47% of those polled believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old.

In a 2001 Gallup Poll, over 28-32% subscribed to Evolution and 48-57% subscribed to Creationism. No distinction was made between Old-Earth Creationism and Young-Earth Creationism.

In the most recent poll, 46% of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

Gallup reports here that:

Most Americans believe in God, and about 85% have a religious identity. It is not surprising as a result to find that about 8 in 10 Americans hold a view of human origins that involves actions by God -- that he either created humans as depicted in the book of Genesis, or guided a process of evolution. What no doubt continues to surprise many scientists is that 4 out of 10 Americans believe in the first of these explanations.


These views have been generally stable over the last 28 years. Acceptance of the creationist viewpoint has decreased slightly over time, with a concomitant rise in acceptance of a secular evolution perspective. But these shifts have not been large, and the basic structure of beliefs about human beings' origins is generally the same as it was in the early 1980s.


Americans' attitudes about almost anything can and often do have political consequences. Views on the origins of humans are no exception. Debates and clashes over which explanations for human origins should be included in school textbooks have persisted for decades. With 40% of Americans continuing to hold to an anti-evolutionary belief about the origin of humans, it is highly likely that these types of debates will continue.


Every student should read The Evolution of Darwinian Evolution.



Why Just Genesis Matters



It appears that the creation-evolution conversation has reached a stalemate. Young-Earth Creationism may be declining among some Evangelicals, especially those influenced by the BioLogos crowd. However, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists alike tend to think that evolution is the only alternative to literalism, and that is not true. An anthropological approach to Genesis acknowledges Earth's great age and the remote origins of humanity without accepting the Darwinian theory of human origins, for which there is no substantial evidence. Biblical Anthropology, as scientific study of the text, requires setting aside both ideological templates in order to determine the meaning in cultural context. This is a labor to which I am fully committed.

It is also a fruitful approach to conversation with teenagers.  Today’s teens think empirically. They are intelligent. They want to know the How and Why. Simply telling them that the Bible is God’s Word and that it is infallible and true, is not enough. If the Bible is true it should align with the data. If Noah experienced a catastrophic flood, there should be physical evidence of that in the region where Noah lived. If the descendants of Noah spread out over the earth, there should be DNA evidence of that dispersion. Such evidence does exist and yet few are providing the next generation with this information. Teens are going to college environments which are increasingly hostile to Christianity and they are going ill-equipped to defend the veracity of the Bible. As the Gallup Polls show, the conversation about Genesis is stuck in the mid-1980s.

As Genesis is the foundation of the whole of the Bible, it is not surprising that it should stir conflict and confusion. I hope that Just Genesis will help readers break out of the stalemate and move forward with bold faith that the whole of the Bible speaks reliable truth that can be confirmed and will continue to be confirmed.


Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical;  Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; Theories of Creation: An Overview; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5

False Assumption #3 of Young Earth Creationists

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


This continues the series on "False Assumptions of Young Earth Creationists." To date we have considered False Assumption 1: Genesis is history and should be read as a chronological account, and False Assumption 2: The Genesis “begats” list the first people living on Earth

False Assumption 3:  Bishop Ussher's timeline is reliable and can be used to calculate the age of the Earth. 

Ussher did not recognize that the Genesis genealogies are regnal, not generational. The begats cannot be used to count generations because they are king lists and some kings ruled simultaneously.

Ussher was unaware of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Hebrew rulers whereby the ruler had two wives and two firstborn sons. Ussher's timeline is flawed because he failed to take this into consideration.

The early Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern was well established among these powerful rulers, indicating that they had been in power long before Noah's time. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew religion at Nehken dates to about 4200 B.C. and reflects a high level of technological and cultural achievement. This is 6200 years ago, the time when the earth was created according to Ussher.

Menes is credited with first uniting the Upper and Lower Nile peoples into one Kingdom. He wore the double crown to show that he was sovereign over both regions. The serekh surrounding his name is surmounted by the falcon, the totem of HR (Horus). Horus was called “son of God” and in ancient Egyptian HR means "Most High One".

At the Horus temple of Nekhen, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to the Creator at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. Likely, this is the origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

Young Earth Creationists are wrong to use Archbishop James Ussher’s chronology to date the age of the Earth. Ussher assumed that the "begats" of Genesis chapters 4 and 5 refer to the first people on earth and he concluded that the earth's age is between 6000-8000 years. Today the anthropological tool of kinship analysis reveals the flaw in Ussher's approach. The diagram below shows that the lines of Cains and his brother Seth intermarriage according to a long-standing marriage and ascendancy pattern that is characteristic of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste.

Cain and Seth married patrilineal cousins who were the daughters of a ruler named Enoch. These wives named their firstborn sons after their father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Lamech the Elder's daughter Naamah married her cousin Methuselah and named their firstborn son Lamech after her father.

This shows that the historical Adam had a contemporary called Enoch, which is a royal title referring to one who ascends to the throne of his father. 

Ussher did not take into consideration is that Kushite rulers, like Egyptian rulers, did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. This explains why many of the names that appear in the Genesis 4 and 5 lists are titles of royal persons rather than proper names.

The Kushites believed that the ruler-priest was the son of Re whose emblem was the sun. (Re in ancient Egyptian means "father".) The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" which is why Egyptian texts never mention the king's earthly father. Kingship was a manifestation of the High God's overshadowing of noble women. 

Sargon the Great claimed not to know his father. He based his authority to rule on the suggestion that he was conceived according to the Horite Hebrew myth of miraculous virginal conception. However, any ruler could make that claim. The true proof of the ruler's deity was resurrection from the dead.  Sargon stayed dead, as did all the rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, Jesus Christ, a descendant of their royal lines, did indeed rise from the dead and his rising was verified by many eye witnesses. 

Dating more accurately

The early Hebrew rulers of Genesis 4 and 5 lived and reigned within the periods of early Egyptian history.


First Intermediate Period
2475-2445 BC: 7th - 8th Dynasties Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth and Kush

2445–2160 BC: 9th -10th Dynasties Nimrod, Arpachshad, Salah, Eber and Peleg and Joktan


Middle Kingdom
2160-2000 BC: 11th Dynasty Nahor, Terah and Abraham

2000-1788 BC: 12th Dynasty Jacob, Esau, Joseph


The early Kushite expansion into ancient Sumer/Chaldea has been well-documented. In Sumerian inscriptions the Kushites were called Meluha Kasi. The dispersion of the early Hebrew out of the Nile Valley is evident in Genesis 10 which speaks of the Kushite kingdom builder Nimrod who built a great empire in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. 


The Pattern of Two Wives and Two Sons

Horite and Sethite Hebrew rulers maintained two wives in separate households on a north-south axis. The ruler's first wife was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the second wife was a patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. As Abraham's proper heir, Isaac ruled over Abraham's territory in ancient Edom (Idumea).

The firstborn son of the patrilineal cousin wife served as a high official in the territory of his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. Joktan, Abraham's son by his cousin wife Keturah, served in the kingdom of Joktan the Elder, his maternal grandfather. The Joktanite clans resided in Arabia.

There was a hierarchy of Hebrew chiefs, vassals, and kings. Analysis of the kinship pattern of the early Hebrew rulers indicates segmentary lineages. The first loyalty is to the lineage of father and his principal (half-sister) wife and their son, the heir. The second loyalty is to the father and his second (cousin) wife and their son who belongs to the household of his maternal grandfather. The third loyalty is to the household and clan of the cousin.

A Bedouin proverb summarizes the philosophy behind segmentary lineages:

I against my brother
I and my brother against my cousin
I, my brother, and my cousin against the world

 
Sons who were not the firstborn were given gifts of camels, jewelry, flocks, herds, and servants and sent away to establish settlements of their own. The importance of these "sent-away sons" as a driving factor in the Kushite expansion out of the Nile Valley.

This pattern is evident in the case of the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod. Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors, was sent away from his older brother Ramah whose territory was in northern Arabia. After numerous conquests, Nimrod’s territory was far greater than his brother’s. It extended the length of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and the principal cities were Babel, Erech, and Akkad (Gen. 10:10). The language of Nimrod’s empire was Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language. It has close affinity to the languages of the Nile Valley.


Related reading:  The Hebrew Were a Caste; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; Hebrew Names and Titles; The Welcome Demise of American Fundamentalism

Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin

The following is an email correspondance with Biblical Anthropologist Susan Burns.  Susan and I had the opportunity to meet last summer in Washington.  She is bright, articulate, highly intuitive and a great stimulation to my research. Susan writes, "A point I am trying to make in my blog is that unless we incorporate the contribution of religious tradition, we will never understand what has made us human."

Alice,

I am very curious about your views on human evolution. For some reason, I assumed you agreed with Darwin's basic premise although I can't remember what post I read that brought me to that conclusion. Could you elaborate on your views? I am sure they are very insightful.

You stated that H. Afarensis was human and I would love to hear your reasoning on this subject. Although it is difficult to determine what is the criteria for "human", I am sure your opinion is more informed than most. I say that because of the same reasons you outline in your frustrations about young earthers. IMHO Australopithecines have the dentition for papyrus consumption so that is the human line of descent.

I am not hung up on race but there is some kind of genome relationship to the sons of Noah. What a beautiful design! First we are isolated and evolve adaptations to regional conditions and then we are mixed together and use the best of the variables for new adaptations.

Which brings me to the million dollar question: How do you reconcile Genesis and Darwin?


Kind regards,

Susan

Susan,

As you are aware, my research is on-going so I am not able to speak definitively on the Genesis-Darwin question. I do agree with this statement:  "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin." -- Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1994)

The Young-Earthers' simplistic view that the races came from the three sons of Noah is without support in genetics and in Genesis. Distinct populations descend from them, but not races. I discuss this here.

Evolutionists speak of "species" and "genus" and paint a picture consistent with their ideology. They persist in classifications that confuse people. A species is either human or ape. Darwin's view that we share a common ancestor remains unproven. The differences between ape and human fossils is obvious. I prefer to speak of archaic human populations and modern human populations. That there are some anatomical differences between these is not indicative of evolutionary branching but is evidence of human adaptation to environment.

Additionally, a range of anatomical features is to be expected among human populations that were isolated and practiced endogamy. This is one of the observations Darwin made concerning the isolation of species. 

Further, most archaic populations lived in dense rain forests in the equatorial belt. They were well adapted to the heavy wet conditions. This is indicated by the evidence of air sacks in the throat, as do apes of the tropics. However, this does not mean that these human populations evolved from apes or that humans and apes had a common ancestor. It simply means that Darwin was right about adaptability of species. Humans exhibit great adaptability.  I agree with you that this has been divinely guided.

In the Bible, Adam and Eve represent the First Couple created by God. If this is historically true, they would have lived before 3.6 million years ago. That is when A. afarensis lived in tropical Africa. There is no reason to assume that A. afarensis were not human. The morphology of the hyoid that suggests this population had air sacks in the throat is not indicative of them being apes. The same hyoid bone shape has been found in other human populations as an adaption to jungle or tropical environments such as existed in Israel around 60,000 B.C. Similar hyoid structure was found with the archaic population that lived in the Kebara Caves in Israel. All other traits of A. afarensis indicate that this population was fully human, including evidence of controlled fire.

When it comes to natural selection, human populations are unique among animal species.  Many factors have an impact on human survival and adaptation. These include imagination, innovation, diplomacy, intuition, collective memory, kinship and non-random mating structures. Molecular genealogists recognize mating structure as a key factor in genetic flow. This is where my research on the marriage pattern of Abraham's Nilotic ancestors comes into play. This unique marriage pattern was well established among Abraham's ruler-ancestors between 4000-3000 B.C., and the ascendancy of firstborn sons by two wives drove the migration out of Africa into Mesopotamia and into West Central Africa.

I have no doubt that A. afarensis was an archaic human population.  The term Australopithecus afarensis was coined by South African anatomist Donald C. Johanson. These remains were first found in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1973. For about 20 years A. afarensis was described as the earliest known “human ancestor species.” Australopithecus means “Ape of the South” and afarensis refers to the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia where the fossils were found. Johanson now recognizes that this was an archaic human species. The first discovered skeleton of this population was named "Lucy" and she was described as Homo by Mary Leakey. She was not pleased with Johanson's attempt to classify her Hadar find as ape.

Since 1974, many more A. afarensis bones have been found, mainly in Cameroon, Ethiopia and Tanzania. All are at least 3 million years old. The bone structure reveals that these were archaic humans. They were erect and had human ankle bones.

When Jeremy DeSilva, a British anthropologist, compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of  these 4.12 to 1.5 million year remains, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes. (Read about DeSilva’s research here.)

As you point out, the Australopithecine had human dentition.  I agree that dentition for papyrus consumption is indicative of early archaic humans. This would be expected for river, coastal and marsh populations. Archaic humans lived near the major water sources which ancient rulers came to control.

All the evidence surrounding the Australopithecine points to archaic humans.  They walked upright, used butchering tools and controlled fire. Further, it appears that they shared food which they gathered/hunted collectively. This has never been observed among apes, as far as I know.

Best wishes,

Alice


Alice,

Darwin's theory does not propose humans evolved from apes. It simply says we have a common ancestor. Although I am sure you are aware of this, it does seem to be a sticking point with Young-Earth Creationists.

Your point about air sacs is really key. Humans did evolve in wet conditions as I point out in my blog. Before I had my children, I was extremely inspired by a book I read called "The Aquatic Ape" by Elaine Morgan. She outlines all of the attributes humans share with aquatic mammals. I was extremely inspired by Morgan's work and used my own children as guinea pigs. Both girls could float and propel themselves underwater and on their backs before they could walk.

You and I seem to have very similar views and are just a few degrees on either side of the dividing line of Darwin's theory. Although I am an evolutionist, I am not an atheist and I find that it is almost impossible to talk with secular scientists about the effects of religious traditions on the evolutionary process.

I would agree with your frustration with Young-Earthers and extend that frustration to anthropologists. At least Young-Earthers are usually civil.

I am still somewhat unclear on your view of the origin of H. Afarensis. Do you think archaic humans came from a completely separate line of descent that does not share a evolutionary branch with other primates or even hominids?

Kind regards,
Susan


Susan,

I am a creationist.  I believe that from "the beginning" God created humans in the divine image and fully human, and that humans and apes have always been separate species.  As far as I have been able to determine, finds labled "hominids" in evolutionary taxonomy represent different archaic human populations.
 
After almost 100 years of frantic searching, there remains no material evidence that humans and apes had a common ancestor.  This aspect of Darwin simply has not been proven. Until it is, I feel no compulsion to relent in my position. That's the empirical approach, afterall.

This doesn't mean that I reject a role for natural processes. These can be observed. I wonder why such observations must be forced into Neo-Darwinian interpretations. The air sacs being an example. Many features that Darwinians insist are evidence of evolution have other likely explanations. The morphology of the hyoid that suggests that A. afarensis had air sacks in the throat is not indicative of evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor. The same hyoid bone feature has been found in other archaic human populations as an adaption to aquaboreal environments. Similar hyoid structure appears in the Kebara Cave population of Israel that lived around 60,000 B.C.

Genesis tells us that God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time and according to a plan. It is the work of science to discover the order and the work of theologians and Bible scholars to discern the plan.  For Abraham's ancestors the order was perceived as fixed, though they recognized flux within the fixed boundaries. Their acute observation of the patterns in nature suggested a divine plan.

Are you familiar with the BioLogos Group? Their website might interest you. They are theistic evolutionists, mostly Evangelical Protestants. BioLogos sees evolution as the means by which God created life, in contrast to Atheistic Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

Personally, I think they try too hard to align Darwin with Genesis. Genesis isn't about the origin of the universe and life on Earth. It is about the origin of Messianic expectation among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors. Their focus on the evolutionary angle causes people to lose sight of this.

I too have found it nearly impossible to discuss the impact of religion on human advancement with secular or atheistic Darwinians. Religion simply does not fit into their Materialist worldview.

They are ignorant of ancient civilizations and dismiss the importance of this knowledge because in their evolutionary scheme, humans have evolved to a higher consciousness. Therefore the ancient past has little to teach us.

Materialists recite a litany of Dawkins' writings and his ignorance of ancient civilizations is shocking. When I bring up examples of how religion is the early foundation for science, materialists dismiss this.  Recently, I cited the example of how the trinity of pyramids of Giza, Saqqara and Abusir aligned to the temple of Horus at Heliopolis, and in reply, I was told that this could just as easily have been the work of aliens! 

Best wishes,

Alice


Alice


The Biologos group is heavy on the logos and light on the bio. They do try very hard but everything I read was conjecture. Genesis may be about Messianic expectation but its backdrop is an archaic world view that could provide invaluable insights. However humanity evolved, its story is told in the ethnography of religion. Why this resource is not being exploited is unfathomable to me.

Comparing the air sacs of humans to other indigenous primates places the ancestor of man and ape someplace in equatorial Africa. The air sac adaptation allowed this ancestor to adapt to ever wetter environments. While the ape branch became more specialized by knucklewalking, the human branch acquired more aquatic adaptations. Hairlessness, adipose fat distribution, deep diving reflex, ear ichthyosis, even upright walking allowed Pithecines to exploit the semi-aquatic ecosystem of tropical papyrus swamps. All primates are arboreal but the pithecine branch was apparently aquaboreal. Their forest ecosystem was cane.

The aquaboreal ecosystem that nurtured early man must have been coastal. The reason is our need for so much salt. Human blood contains .9% salt and is crucial for healthy brain development. Every bodily system down to the cellular level uses salt to function normally. It is especially important for pregnant women to get enough salt. Babies are able to tolerate much higher levels of salt than adults. This is why I think the aquaboreal home of early man was a brackish swamp. This brackish swamp also needed an inflow of fresh water. Babies need so much water! They spit up almost as much as they take in.

Susan



Susan,

Yes, the papyrus sedge was a food source among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors.  It was likely the main vegetable.  The soft lower part of the plant was baked, often with fish. Herodotus wrote about this, saying:

... they pull up from the fens the papyrus which grows every year, and the upper parts of it they cut off and turn to other uses, but that which is left below for about a cubit in length they eat or sell: and those who desire to have the papyrus at its very best bake it in an oven heated red-hot, and then eat it.  (Herodotus, Histories, Vol. 2)

The reeds were used to fuel fires, make sleeping mats, sandals, boats, and papyrus paper and its flowers were offered to the Virgin Queen Hathor at river shrines and temples. The papyrus reed and its flowers symbolized the Upper Nile. The sema (shown right), with its segments, represents the papyrus reed. It was the symbol for the Upper Nile and the sema-tawy, composed of lilies and papyrus reeds knotted around the hieroglyphic sign for union, was the symbol of the union of the Upper and Lower Nile regions. These regions were first united by Menes.


Related reading: Why Anthropologists Rejected the Aquatic Ape Theory; Genesis: Is it Really About Human Origins?; Biblical Anthropology is Scientific Study; Theories of Creation: An Overview

False Assumption #2 of Young-Earth Creationists

Alice C. Linsley

As I have written here, the false assumptions of Young-Earth Creationists present the greatest obstacles to understanding the book of Genesis. Their assumption that Cain's line perished in the flood contradicts what Genesis tells us. Because Young-Earthers assume that Cain's line died out they ignore the relationship between the Begats of Genesis 4 and Genesis 5. They miss that Methuselah's wife was Naamah, a descendant of Cain. She named their firstborn son Lamech after her father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative. This naming pattern explains why there are two rulers named Lamech, two named Esau, two named Sheba, and two named Joktan.

Analysis of the Genesis 4 and 5 King Lists reveals that these royal lines intermarried exclusively. Therefore Abraham was a descendant of both Shem and Ham.

The intermarriage between the lines of Cain and Seth is paralled by the intermarriage between the lines of Ham and Shem, between the lines of Eber and Sheba, and between the lines of Abraham and Nahor. In fact, analysis of the Genesis genealogies reveals a consistent and unchanging marriage pattern among the Horite rulers before and after Abraham.

The Young-Earth assumption that Abraham married Keturah after Sarah died overlooks the fact that all the rulers listed in Genesis had two wives. Abraham's first wife was his half-sister, Sarah.  His second wife was his patrilineal cousin, Keturah. He married Keturah before Sarah died. Likewise, Moses married Zipporah before his Kushite half-sister wife died. With two wives there were likely to be two firstborn sons. The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his father. The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather.  Marriage partners appear to have been selected using a modular formula. Because of this pattern, the Genesis King lists cannot be used to calculate the age of the Earth.

Further, there is a gap of time between the first humans and Kain and Seth. The oldest human fossils are between 165,000 and 3.6 million years, depending on whether one regards A. Afarensis as a human species (as I do).  Kain and Seth ruled territories in Africa approximately 3050 B.C., about 650 years before Noah.

As I explained here, the Young-Earth reading of Genesis as linear history produces an inaccurate picture because this is not how Abraham's Nilotic ancestors recounted historical events. Instead, their narratives employ binary tensions expressed in parallel accounts. The parallel stories sometimes highlight similarities such as the moral lapses of Noah and Lot. Noah's drunken behavior led him to blame ("curse") his grandson. Lot's drunkeness led to incest with his daughters. Sometimes the parallel stories express contrast, as in the accounts of Abraham and Isaac attempting to pass off their wives as their sisters. Sarah was Abraham's half-sister whereas Rebecca was Isaac's patrilineal cousin. In other words, Abraham did not lie and Isaac did.

This is not to say that Abraham's ancestors lacked a device for narrating linear events. This was done through recounting their ruler ancestors and their exploits. These are the kings listed in the Genesis Begats. These are authentic lists that establish that Kain lived before Noah, Noah lived before Nimrod, and Nimrod before Abraham, etc. We can imagine a Nilotic story teller elaborating on the character of various rulers as is evident in Genesis 4:23, where we are told that Lamech bragged to his two wives. Another elaboration is found in Genesis 10:8-12 concerning the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod.

Young Earth Creationist Assumption #2: The Genesis "Begats" list the first and only people living on Earth.

The veracity of this second assumption must be evaluated in light of relevant Bible passages and the evidence from anthropology and archaeology.

The "Begats" list the rulers of the first nations. These were kingdom builders who spread far and wide. They are the rulers of the Ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.  They originated in Africa and established themselves in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.  Some came to North America where they are called "First Nations People." Among these first people were the Nilotic Ainu who are at the center of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza's Genetic Distance Chart, as would be expected.

In Noah's time, people in Malaysia were planting rice. In Sweden and Norway people were skiing as evidenced by rock paintings and the oldest known ski found at Hoting in Sweden. Clearly, the rulers of Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11 were not the first humans, nor were they the only humans on Earth.

The Genesis genealogical material must be evaluated on the basis of its proper cultural context. These are annals of ancient royal lines which intermarried.  Only some sons could ascend to the throne. Other sons were sent away to establish territories for themselves.  These sent-away sons drove the Kushite expansion out of Africa, an expansion that has been verified by DNA studies.

The Genesis 4 and 5 king lists show an established marriage and ascendancy pattern, indicating that these ruling lines were already well established in Kain's time. Kain married his patrilineal cousin, a daughter of Enoch. Since he married a patrilineal cousin, Kain's father had a brother.  That brother is the first Enoch (Nok) found in the Bible. He is not actually named in Genesis 4, but his name is given to his grandson by his daughter.  Enoch is a royal title and means "heir to the throne."

Kain and Seth were great rulers in Africa. Kain's territory probably extended between Kano and Nok in modern Nigeria. Seth or Seti is a name found among the Nilotic rulers.

During the reigns of Kain and Seth a great fortified city was built at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) on the Upper Nile. It was a shrine city dedicated to Horus. Votive offerings at the temple were ten times larger than the normal mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose.

Nekhen was the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt between 3200–2686 BC and had as many as 10,000 inhabitants. The original settlement dates from the Naqada culture (4400 BC) or the late Badarian culture (5000 BC).  The oldest known zoo was in Nekhen.

Before Kain and Seth, there were numerous river populations in China between 7000-3000 B.C. In southern Africa, there were forest populations who mined red ochre from the Lebombo Mountains more than 30,000 years ago. This blood-like substance was used to bury nobles in the hope of life beyond the grave. The practice was widespread, perhaps global, long before Noah's time.

Noah lived between about 2490-2415 B.C. in the region of Lake Chad when the Sahara experienced a wet period (Karl W. Butzer1966). This is the period of the Old Kingdom, a time of great cultural and technological achievement in Egypt. The population count of Egypt under the first dynasties was between 1 and 2 million inhabitants. Edward S. Ellis put the New Kingdom population at 5 million. The author of the Royal Ontario Museum website gives an estimate of between 1.5 and 5 million Egyptians during the Pyramid Age.

Pyramid G1-c was built with an inscription to Horus, King of the Upper and Lower Nile. Devotion to Horus, who was also called "son of God", spread across the Ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. The Harappa civilization became established in the Indus River Basin during the time that Kain and Seth ruled in Africa. Har-appa means "Horus is Father." The temple city of Mohenjo-Daro was constructed about 400 years before Noah's flood and continued as a prosperous city until about B.C.1880. It was seven square miles in size and had a population of between 20,000 to 50,000.

Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Calculating the Dates of the Patriarchs; Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About the Flood; Overview of Human Origins; Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About Adam and Eve; The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's People