Genesis and History
When people complain about the accuracy of Genesis (specifically the first 11 chapters), I always wonder what they have based their criticism on. Most of the time it seems to be based on evolution or deep age geology, both of which are based on many untestable assumptions.

One thing that people don't often check however is how history relates. For instance, a little historical sleuthing enables you to track the 16 grand sons of Noah to present day communities.

Another way to investigate is to ask what we would expect to see if the young earth genesis chronology was accurate? The first thing would be that almost every culture which had historical records would have a reference to a great flood. You would also expect that humans would have experience of and stories about dinosaurs. Remembering that the word 'dinosaur' was only created in around 1841, we would need to look for stories that match the description of dinosaurs. Not suprisingly, there are many stories from all around the world. (As a side note, it is also important to remember that many species thought to be extinct for hundreds of millions of years on the evolutionary time scale have been found alive today. The reason they thought the species was extinct was that no fossil's existed in the fossil record for that time period. This also means that finding a live dinosaur today would not invalidate evolution.)

One final bit of history also provides similar evidence. Many, if not most cultures have stories about snakes. Many of these stories have many common features with the biblical account. It's almost like the came from the same source or something. One example

What should we make of the Bassari people of west Africa speaking of a great god, Unumbotte, who made Man and made Snake; when Snake proposed the eating of fruit, “Man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it. Unumbotte came down from the sky and asked, ‘Who ate the fruit?’ The first couple admitted eating the fruit and said Snake had told them to do so.”

(HT: Creation Safari's)
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, August 22, 2006