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When the Land was Divided
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 7:55 pm
by _moksha
Just read an interesting post by JASH over at the Great and Specious Board.
JASH wrote:Missouri was in the old world when all the land was together. Afterward, the land was divided. (Gen 10: 25)
In the Bible quote, it says the land was divided in the time of Peleg, which was about four generations after Noah. The Biblical chronology online at LDS.org has the death of Adam at about 4000 BCE, so the Peleg division would have been between 4000 to 3000 BCE.
The Lehi Expedition to the Yucatan started around 600 BCE.
Historical geologists tell us that Laurasia broke up into Laurentia (which was later formed into North America) and Eurasia (minus the Indian subcontinent) around 55 million years ago.
JASH's claim is an impossibility in terms of geological science.
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/70302-why-isnt-the-book-of-enoch-accepted-in-the-lds-canon/
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:24 pm
by _Stem
moksha wrote:Just read an interesting post by JASH over at the Great and Specious Board.
JASH wrote:Missouri was in the old world when all the land was together. Afterward, the land was divided. (Gen 10: 25)
In the Bible quote, it says the land was divided in the time of Peleg, which was about four generations after Noah. The Biblical chronology online at LDS.org has the death of Adam at about 4000 BCE, so the Peleg division would have been between 4000 to 3000 BCE.
The Lehi Expedition to the Yucatan started around 600 BCE.
Historical geologists tell us that Laurasia broke up into Laurentia (which was later formed into North America) and Eurasia (minus the Indian subcontinent) around 55 million years ago.
JASH's claim is an impossibility in terms of geological science.
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/70302-why-isnt-the-book-of-enoch-accepted-in-the-lds-canon/
God is in charge of the sciences so as to make things appear to have happened as they did not. Joktan, his brother, living presumably at the same time, missed it the great upheaval because he was yet to be born.
or
the earth being divided is a reference to something else entirely, like some earthquake or something--localized that got carried in lore into something more than it ever was.
Or
it's really just mythical stuff. God told the ancients that the earth had changed in time, with lands being divided, and by the time Gen is was written they had already decided in the way of mythical story telling that it happened in the day of some guy named Peleg.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:44 pm
by _Doctor CamNC4Me
Maybe you could explain to him what would happen to the Earth if a rapid separation of tectonic plates were to occur resulting in massive supervolcanic activity? From what I understand Mormons are really open to science and scientific fact so just explaining to him the unreliability of his position from a purely logical point of view will most likely result in him changing his mind.
- Doc
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:36 pm
by _Fence Sitter
Doc,
I think you are talking about someone who believes a man can spend three days in a whale stomach and come out unscathed or asses that talk or wooden boats large enough to contain every living creature on earth for 40 days (or is it 120?) and so on.
deus ex machina and all that.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:44 pm
by _moksha
I suppose JASH's point could be technically correct if by Missouri he meant the many layers of sediments and sedimentary rock overlaid through millions of years on the Laurentia Craton and its deformations, and that by Old World he meant Laurasia which itself was a fragment of Pangea.
All in favor of this being what JASH meant please signify by the uplift of keyboards to the square.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:53 am
by _krose
I assume this is a way to explain Missouri as the location of Eve’s garden? Seems unnecessary when you can just say the Bible story relocated from Missouri to the Middle East as a result of the ark being dumped there. Surely there were plenty of fine gopher wood trees growing around the Jefferson City area.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:44 am
by _sunstoned
I find it so amazing that Joseph Smith could walk around and point to something and come up some BS story that people then as well as a 140 years later believe: A small Drumlin in NY becomes the hill that two (count them: Nephites, Jaradites) great iron age civilizations became extinct through a war of extermination. A mound builder hill in Illinois becomes the burial sight of a famous native American white chieftain-warrior named Zelph who was known from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. A pile of rocks in northeastern Missouri becomes Adam's (as in Adam and Eve) altar where he blessed all his children (the mental gymnastics needed for that one boggles my mind). Then we have his translation of the kinderhook plates and a nine foot skeleton who was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Looking at all of this from the outside now, it amazes me that I use to believe this crap.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:46 am
by _Dr Exiled
sunstoned wrote:I find it so amazing that Joseph Smith could walk around and point to something and come up some BS story that people then as well as a 140 years later believe: A small Drumlin in New York becomes the hill that two (count them: Nephites, Jaradites) great iron age civilizations became extinct through a war of extermination. A mound builder hill in Illinois becomes the burial sight of a famous native American white chieftain-warrior named Zelph who was known from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. A pile of rocks in northeastern Missouri becomes Adam's (as in Adam and Eve) altar where he blessed all his children (the mental gymnastics needed for that one boggles my mind). Then we have his translation of the kinderhook plates and a nine foot skeleton who was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Looking at all of this from the outside now, it amazes me that I use to believe this crap.
Social/family pressure can get anyone to believe nonsense. I think we were all there at some point. Luckily we saw that using our brains isn't the big sin religion claims.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:27 pm
by _krose
So even when the continents were all jammed together, how far apart were Missouri and Israel?
Looking at a map of Pangaea, to get from one place to the other would require a trek across half of North America, then across all of North Africa. Pretty conveniently located.
Re: When the Land was Divided
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:30 pm
by _I have a question
sunstoned wrote:I find it so amazing that Joseph Smith could walk around and point to something and come up some BS story that people then as well as a 140 years later believe: A small Drumlin in New York becomes the hill that two (count them: Nephites, Jaradites) great iron age civilizations became extinct through a war of extermination. A mound builder hill in Illinois becomes the burial sight of a famous native American white chieftain-warrior named Zelph who was known from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. A pile of rocks in northeastern Missouri becomes Adam's (as in Adam and Eve) altar where he blessed all his children (the mental gymnastics needed for that one boggles my mind). Then we have his translation of the kinderhook plates and a nine foot skeleton who was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Looking at all of this from the outside now, it amazes me that I use to believe this crap.
It’s probably more that you didn’t spend any time thinking it through.