For PERSPECTIVES Vol. 4 No. 3 [July-September 2001]   

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Christianity has nothing to do with the religion of Judaism. Judeo-Christianity is an oxymoron, like jumbo-shrimp. This site must be a site that the apostle John warned us about, that there was and will be many deceivers in our midst.

The "Law". Jesus, when asked, stated that Heaven and earth would pass, but NOT THE LAW, nor would one jot or tittle be changed. If the law, and remember that the New Testament is about Jesus, but is not the Bible He read, will not pass away, then it would seem to conjoin the New Covenant. I don't believe that it is an eternal damning thing to ignore the law, but we certainly can profit by it. And, if we live by the New Covenant, we will most likely fall within the moral edicts of the law anyway.

I firmly believe that Jesus is Messiah, my salvation and my guide. I can perhaps even be called a Trinitarian, in some sense, because I believe in the baptism of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, I do not believe they are the same person. Jesus was in the water being baptized by John, the Spirit ascended in the form of a dove, and God spoke from heaven. Why would God use cheap parlor tricks to confuse us? Jesus was on the mount of transfiguration with Moses and Elijah, God spoke from heaven. Same question. Jesus stepped out from the right hand side of the throne, then took the scroll from the figure seated on the throne, who is purported to be God. Same question. Hebrews clearly states that at some specific point in time Jesus was formed, but that the Father already existed. Yet "through Him (Jesus) was all creation formed.

-Tony Lisenby, Alabama

I enjoy you site, and though I may greatly differ with you on certain subjects I have no doubt that you are a sincere man and fear God. I have much I could say with regard to your understanding of Torah. I feel a primary reason for so many declaring abolished what God so very, very often declared eternal is the common practice of reading Hebraic writings from a westernized, Greek, Alexandrian/Platonic mindset. Of course, the foundational anti-Semitic spirit of the Christian "fathers" no doubt is alive and well also. But, I digress, that is another matter....

I do have this question: With Matthew 5:18 in mind, would you please tell me when heaven and earth ceased to exist? I suppose I missed it. Perhaps I was asleep and do not realize I am in some sort of perpetual dream state, having missed the catastrophic destruction of earth.

Of course this highlights another problem - the VERY common habit most "teachers" have of ignoring the very words of our Lord Yeshua!

Oh, I agree with you regarding the fanaticism some "name fanatics" have and do NOT consider it a redemptive issue. However, the question must be asked, who is truly practicing error or "heresy"? I find it oddly hypocritical for so many that use what is CLEARLY NOT the Lord's name (Jesus) to criticize those of us that prefer to use His actual name. Why is it that Christians the world over refuse (often angrily) to use the Lord's actual name despite the certainty that "JEEZUS" is NOT his name? What is it that keeps the leaders of the Christian world from using the Lord's Jewish name. Oops! I think I just answered my question - he is "Jewish", and Christians HATE that. Nevertheless, this question continues to leave me wondering.

While I have no idea what mtDNA is or how it could pose a substantial threat to the credibility of the Bible, I agree that our scientific knowledge is constantly changing. Advancements occur so frequently that it seems that only the smallest fraction of the most spectacular scientific discoveries make the news. Remember the media blitz surrounding the first photos of the Face On Mars? Did anyone catch a glimpse of higher resolution images of the Face released last month? No? Well, let's just say that it bears a striking resemblance to an uninteresting mesa. In this sort of environment, I think it wise to take scientific "breakthroughs" with a measure of skepticism, at least for a few months.

The search for the four rivers of Eden may be a bit more difficult than it seems. Bear in mind that the four rivers are introduced before the great flood of Noah. If the flood was truly global, as many believe ( I think this might certainly be possible, provided all water on earth was in liquid form and not suspended as vapor or locked away as ice), the topography of Eden would have been severely altered and the garden destroyed. Even if the flood were not global but confined to the area around say the Black Sea, after almost a year of being locked up in a boat adrift Noah would be understandably lost. In either case, the nearest large rivers -- doubtless choked with mud and debris from receding flood waters -- could have easily been the rivers of Eden.

(I think the prospect of a global flood is so much more intriguing. How far could the ark drift in the months it was on the water? What would ocean currents and weather patterns be like in a situation like that? What if there were a hurricane that moved over submerged land, what happens when the flood recedes?)

Anyway, if you don't subscribe to the global flood theory, Dr. Robert Ballard of Titanic fame has recently done research in the Black Sea. There he found compelling evidence for a cataclysmic flood that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. Basically, as glaciers receded, sea levels rose every where except in the Black Sea. The Bosporus Strait, then a land bridge, could not hold back the Mediterranean and BOOM!

Another perspective is that the account of creation, the garden of Eden, and the Flood are not firsthand accounts handed down through many generations, but were related to Moses by God on Sinai (or whatever that mountain is called.) Exodus says Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, and he probably wasn't playing Twister up there all that time. I think God gave Moses the book of Genesis, in which case He would have given him the right names for the right rivers. Even then, I think these names are applied to the channels that were left after the Flood, provided that the Flood was global or at least affected the garden of Eden. The Tigris and Euphrates of Moses' day looked nothing like the rivers that flowed from under the garden. I live near the Rio Grande and this area is full of resacas, narrow lakes left in the old river bed after a big flood carves a new channel. Of course, these floods were before the river was dammed and diverted to the point where it literally no longer flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway, my point is that if God told Moses the names of the existing rivers then modern scientists have a slight chance of finding where the garden of Eden might have been. The garden isn't there anymore and the rivers that once served as landmarks are dramatically different.

The note about radar imaging from the space shuttle is very interesting. I remember images of ancient river beds under the Sahara, also taken from the shuttle. Science is cool.

On the land of Nod, I tend to think that this just describes Cain's state of wandering and that he literally could have wandered anywhere in Asia. Adam lived to be more than 900. If Cain's life span was anything like that, he could have walked all over the world several times. As to Cain's wife, I have a question:

If I take the Bible to be literal, which I like to do, then Adam and Eve are the very first and only humans God created with his own hands. Therefore, all humans on earth are descended from them. By that reasoning, all genetic diversity in the human race, plus all the diversity wiped out in the Flood, would have been present in Adam and Eve. It would seem that their children would have something like the Challenger Deep for a gene pool. Would there be any genetic harm in Cain marrying one of his sisters? Don't laugh; I'm not very good at genetics and nearly failed biology. If this is how the children of Adam and Eve had their own families, would the gene pool in each generation get smaller? If so, might this be the reason God wanted Noah and his wife and Noah's three sons and their wives on the ark even though the Bible says that only Noah was found righteous? Would this preserve a reasonable portion of the genetic diversity that was present in Adam and Eve?

I can't believe someone asked about shearing sheep. It seems obvious they could use a sharp rock or something. I saw part of a Discovery Channel show where anthropologists butchered an already-dead-of-natural-causes elephant with stone tools. It took a while, but it worked and I could see where one could get really efficient with a favorite rock honed to a custom edge. Bring on the sheep...

Actually, the shearing question started a train of thought in my head that I feel like sharing. For some reason, modern humans take a very snobbish attitude regarding past peoples, as if our ancestors were intellectually inferior to their successors. Scholars take this attitude with them when they explore ruins of long-dead civilizations and marvel at the sheer scale of some construction. I visited the State Capitol building in Austin, TX, recently and was struck by how massive that building is with its solid granite exterior, cast iron columns and stone floors. Yet the Capitol of Texas is feather light compared to the Mayan's Temple of the Sun, built entirely by hand by a civilization that died out long before Columbus wandered into the Caribbean. What was lost in the conquest of the Americas? How much ancient knowledge has faded away? How many modern discoveries are just repeated effort? It's absurd to think that humans as a whole just suddenly got smarter a few hundred years ago with the Industrial Revolution. I'd say that the people walking the streets of Rome in Nero's day were every bit as intelligent as the people of New York or Tokyo or modern Rome. Maybe I'm wrong and this attitude is not as prevalent among academics as it seems in the bourgeois. In any case, what we now know of human history seems so skimpy.

--Debra W.

The people of biblical Israel did not originate in Africa. They came from Asia, specifically Mesopotamia. They are a Semitic people as are the Arabs. Semitic peoples have migrated all over the world in the past 4,000 years. This is too short a period for large evolutionary leaps. With intermarriage and commingling of genes there are African, European, and Asian populations with traceable Semitic genes. In the Diaspora, which has had several phases, biblical Israel has spread and often become assimilated by local peoples. 

The term Jew arose for a member of the kingdom of Judah (the southern kingdom) as opposed to the kingdom of Israel (the northern kingdom) after the separation of the ten tribes. Note that in II Kings 16:5-7 Israel and Syria besieged Jerusalem (the capital of the kingdom of Judah). The Syrians ran the "Jews" out of Elath (vs. 6). The Judahites became the Jews in Babylon. Today the word Jews usually has a religious context. Anciently, however, the context of the Hebrew Scriptures was ethnicity. In that culture all Jews were Israelites, but not all Israelites were Jews. The Jews were the three tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. Israel withdrew and disappeared from history as the northern 10 tribes. Even today, there are millions of people who carry Israelite genes and are part of Abraham's descendants (who only know themselves as Gentiles) but who are not Jews.

Where are the tribes of Dan, Naphtali, and the other lost tribes? They appear to have become part of other nations. Their identity is a mystery, but one which will soon have a scientific answer. See Researchers Determining the Genetic Composition of Major Populations Throughout the World.

I am a fourteen year old Christian freshman that loves biblical archeology, but I am not sure as to whether that is what I want to spend my whole life doing. Could you give me some information that will either persuade me or turn me away form doing it and if I am to do it what classes should I take in high school?

I'm planning to major in art with the eventual goal of getting my masters (I'm not sure in what yet) and my doctorate in Egyptology...I'm also not at all a math or science kind of person. I want to be an archaeologist, but I'm wondering if that will be possible considering my major and such...any opinion concerning this will be appreciated

--Gwen

Archaeology as part of anthropology is a social science. You will have to master the use of the scientific method but it is not all that difficult. Egyptology is a different matter. It lies more in the humanities. A career in archaeology is usually in academe or at a museum. Expect to teach, do original research out in the field, and receive low wages.

I am a student at Southwest Missouri State University and am required to write a research paper on a self-inflicted subject. I have had a keen interest in biblical archaeology for some time, and I was wondering if you could send me some information on a known happening or thesis.

--Robb Bippes 

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