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Yet if it was a global flood, it would be possible to find olive branches there, and maybe even an uprooted olive tree.
That's wrong. Now you are making stuff up, again. If that were the case, the dove bringing it back to the Ark would have been meaningless. There would be no significance behind the dove bringing back the olive leaf since it could have just been floating on the water, during the entire time of flooding, with no indication that water had subsided at all, and nothing would have prevented the raven from bringing some leaves back to Noah, the first time. No, it is obvious where it came from.
Let's look at the verse, why don't we.
Quote:
11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
Do you see that? This was not from an uprooted olive branch that had been soaking and floating around in saltwater for a few months, and killing it. No, it was "freshly plucked" from an olive tree, which only grew in the foot hills. Now, can you come up with a scenario of an ark climbing up to this ludicrous elevation you suggest, after the water has subsided to below the foot hills?
Q.E.D. What you are looking at in those photos is not the Ark. Scripture reveals that. You suffer from what ailed Ron Wyatt, "believing-is-seeing-ism."
Folks, I think some you (especially our bible literalist) are missing the point of the white dove carrying an olive branch. I've stated it before and I'll state it again: to read Jewish scripture, you must read it with Jewish eyes. Many of the stories in the Torah were recognized to be symbolic and to teach...not necessarily to be a literal truth, but to reveal truths about G-d.
In Hebrew culture, a white dove carrying an olive branch is a sign of peace. It was not the dove coming back to the ark and yelling "LAND HO!" like so many pirates in a crows nest to show the waters had receded as has been recounted to millions of Sunday School children. It was to show that G-d was no longer angry and was bringing he peace back to the humanity.
Until you start understanding the symbolic nature of so much of the OT (and the NT for that matter), you will continue to argue that which:
a) cannot be proven with science or to be science no matter how hard you try
b) is absurd and illogical in the face of physics, geography, geology, and archaelolgy...and a host of other "ologies" when you look at the whole of the Noah story.
By taking it literally, you are missing the greater meaning of the story which every Hebrew understood.
Folks, I think some you (especially our bible literalist) are missing the point of the white dove carrying an olive branch. I've stated it before and I'll state it again: to read Jewish scripture, you must read it with Jewish eyes. Many of the stories in the Torah were recognized to be symbolic and to teach...not necessarily to be a literal truth, but to reveal truths about G-d.
In Hebrew culture, a white dove carrying an olive branch is a sign of peace. It was not the dove coming back to the ark and yelling "LAND HO!" like so many pirates in a crows nest to show the waters had receded as has been recounted to millions of Sunday School children. It was to show that G-d was no longer angry and was bringing he peace back to the humanity.
Sure, you can assign a larger meaning to it, and we have all seen the imagery of extending an olive branch, but the immediate significance in the dove bringing the olive leaf is seen in the passage. It was that the water had receded.
6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
I hate to nit pik (that's not true, I enjoy it) but if Noah only had a male and female of every species that missing dove would seem to indicate that we'd come up one dove short and that species should now be extinct but it isn't. Can anyone explain why?
I hate to nit pik (that's not true, I enjoy it) but if Noah only had a male and female of every species that missing dove would seem to indicate that we'd come up one dove short and that species should now be extinct but it isn't. Can anyone explain why?
I suppose that the dove patiently waited for its mate's eventual release. You know when we were little and we were moving, Dad went to the new place to find a house, and when he found one, he sent for the rest of us. Or was it one of the clean animals for which there were 7 of each.
I suppose that the dove patiently waited for its mate's eventual release. You know when we were little and we were moving, Dad went to the new place to find a house, and when he found one, he sent for the rest of us.
Why didn't you? You have been taught by the best of "just making things up." But most likely the dove was one of the seven pairs of each of the five species of clean birds out of a total of as many as some 70 clean birds according to commentators. Could you imagine the smell, I don't care how clean they were. hehe
"It's Real, I tell yah! An escaped Russian told me so!"
Our friend C34 will NOT respond to my ecologist's question about the absolute necessity for there being far more than one pair of anything if that species is expected to attain reproductive success and re-population.
I keep asking Tom about the situation in southern California where anxious biologists retrieved all the remaining California Condors when their numbers in the wild dropped below 50, because without a sufficient starter population, usually a minimum of about 50 or 70, but often up in the hundreds with more sensitve species, the species cannot rebound, and they instead go extinct.
Yet, since the Sunday School cartoon drawings always show a single pair of everything, and the scientifically illiterate see a smiling pair of elephants, cobras, giraffes, wolves, T-Rexs, etc., they innocently assume that's all it takes to rebuild an entire global population in short order.
One good ecological crisis, or disease, or one of the pair getting "bagged" by the just released and very hungry carnvorous predators on the boat ("I've had my eye on those two sheep for the last 18 mo, and all bets are off once we're ashore, Martha!") effectively finishs off the entire species.
What if the offspring dies in childbirth? What if it's easily eaten by a carnivore, or it falls into a river? What if, what if...
This is even more problematic when there's no vegetation at all to eat after 18 months under salt water.
Or, that dove comes back to Noah and he has to park his yacht up at the 15,000 foot level, on a rugged mountain, surrounded, one assumes if he floated there, by about 14,500 feet depth of salt water. So, there's nowhere for the departing animals to go for months. Let 'em eat snow and ice, I say!
They just ignore this stuff and press on. Hey; the line for Santa's right over here, kids! Got your list?
Overall, the endless illogic and stupidity of a literal interpretation of this myth is mind-boggling. Add to it the nonsense of devoted Christians stating they've seen and touched a wooden Ark up on Ararat, and you just know this is one of the best religious jokes of the millenium.
And yet, some still cling to it with a stubborn ferocity that belies common sense!
I wonder where they kept the komodo dragons, black widows, brown recluses, diamondback rattlesnakes, black mambas, and king cobras.
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Do you see that? This was not from an uprooted olive branch that had been soaking and floating around in saltwater for a few months, and killing it. No, it was "freshly plucked" from an olive tree, which only grew in the foot hills. Now, can you come up with a scenario of an ark climbing up to this ludicrous elevation you suggest, after the water has subsided to below the foot hills?
Or was it one of the clean animals for which there were 7 of each.
"It's Real, I tell yah! An escaped Russian told me so!"
