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Creation Myths, Ancient & Modern (Philosophy)
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People who have been on Wireloop's Treasure Hunt should take care not to spill recognisable beans when contributing to this thread.
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Mick Harper
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I attended a course this weekend on Greek/Jewish/Gnostic/etc philosophy (didn't we all?) and the dude at the front was telling us about Plato's explanation about how the universe was made. (I think it was Plato, it was all a bit early for me...certainly some Bubble or other.) Anyroad, the way we got here was like this
a) God, the male principle, acting in an ejaculatory fashion, caused the universe to come into existence
b) God, the female principle, acting as a holding-type womb, then took over
c) But God cannot be associated in any way with less-than-perfection, and the universe is by definition imperfect, so the whole thing was handed over to sub-gods, angels, archons etc to fashion into what we see all around us.

Now it immediately occurred to me that this was exactly the same as the Big Bang Theory
a) the universe comes into existence with a Big Bang (male ejaculation)
b) the universe is now formed solely of hydrogen atoms, the only 'perfect' element (the female womb)
c) then "chemistry" takes over and the perfect hydrogen atom is broken down into all the other, 'imperfect' elements to form the universe that we see all around us.

The questions that arise are:
Did the Ancients know more than we give them credit for?
Are the Moderns simply guilty of putting an ancient archetype in their own particular language?
Does this concordance between Ancient and Modern make Big Bang more likely to be true, or less?
Is it just a coincidence (since Big Bang is presumably a here-today, gone-tomorrow type theory and most modern explanations bear no relation to ancient ones?
Or do they?
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Wireloop


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stated:
"People who have been on Wireloop's Treasure Hunt should take care not to spill recognisable beans when contributing to this thread."

response:
I second the motion.
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Wireloop


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Mick Harper wrote:
a) God, the male principle, acting in an ejaculatory fashion, caused the universe to come into existence


The root of Plato's thought is Pythagoreanism, Orphism, ism ism ism..., which of course are classified as 'fertility religions'.
Judaism with all of its 'seed of Abraham', circumcision and festival business obviously has the veneer of a 'fertility religion', but has lost its substance. Philo, Paul and the gospels, are all about reinterpreting/restoring the ole time religion, and demolishing the status of 'literal' Abraham, and 'literal' Law.

It is interesting to note that in Judasim Abraham not only 'means' father, but he is called the 'father' of their faith. Christianity, at its core, has taken the 'concept of Abraham and his seed' and made it a 'God and his seed'.
Abraham's seed in a sense has become an allegory for God's creation.
We are a 'new creation' in Christ....Genesis revisited, etc... And just as Abraham had two sons he born of Hagar, Ishmael (cast out), and he born of Sarah, Isaac (promise), so God has two sons, the 1st Adam (physical-cast out) and 2nd Adam (spiritual-promise).
Ishmael is associated with the elemental cosmos, the world of change and corporeality, the physical Jerusalem, whilst Isaac is associated with the spiritual, the unchangeable, incorporeal realm, the heavenly Jerusalem. We in our preChristian 'son of God-cast away' state are 'Ishmael', but we in our postChristian 'son of God-promise' state are 'Isaac'.
God casts out Ishmael in order to redeem Isaac, the Way of temperance.
Paul develops this concept throughout his epistles, but most particularly in 1 Cor 15 and Gal 4.

You see, Jewish Platonists (like Philo and Paul) allegorically granted divinity to Abraham, but only to harmonize Platonism with the scriptures....the hidden meaning. Whilst the rest of Judaism, much to Paul's chagrin, clung to the 'flesh, blood and semen' of a mortal, dead man....literal Abraham.
After all, we're childen of 'appetite' and of 'Law'.

Galatians (NIV)
What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.....Before this faith came, we were held under guard by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law....so...What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic elements of the universe......So...Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written: "Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband." Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son." Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman."

John:
"I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father." They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father." Then they said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father--God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me."

Matthew:
"But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones."

We should probably wait for the TH to finish before pursuing this line of thought any further 'here'.
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Marduk


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As far as I know, Abraham was a real person but his son Isaac was entirely fictional. Ismael was a real person, even Melville knew that much. They were both kings of Isin not Ur which had recently been knocked to the ground again in an interstate conflict. There's whole stories written about them in Akkadian
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Wireloop


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Marduk stated:
"as far as I know Abraham was a real person..."

response:
Were Odysseus and Gilgamesh real people?

My point is:
What 'evidence', other than The Bible, do we have for the historicity of Abraham and Ishmael?
By all conservative observation, the earliest texts of the Bible were most likely composed more than 1000 years after the supposed life and times' of Abraham.
Could it be that 'Abraham' is simply the mythological forefather of the people of 'Israel', and that the Old Testament texts that describe him are more of an esoteric teaching aid of some sort?
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Marduk


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What 'evidence', other than The Bible, do we have for the historicity of Abraham and Ishmael?

This evidence: it is a list of kings from the Sumerian Kings List.
Isin
Ishbi-Erra
Su-ilī'u
Iddin-Dagan
Isme-Dagan
Lipit-Eshtar
Ur-Ninurta

The fourth King of Isin, as you can see, is known as Isme-Dagan. Isme is a Semitic Akkadian pronunciation which in Hebrew would be pronounced Ishme. Dagan is the Akkadian word for "totality" the corresponding Hebrew word is "El". So Isme-Dagan becomes Ishme- El, father of the Arab race, or so I am told.

Iddin is along the same lines where you transcribe Iddin which means "pure watercourse" for the other Semitic Akkadian equivalent which is Abra. Dagan is also the name of a Babylonian god of the earth whose symbol was a bird. Bird in Akkadian is Hamun so Iddin-Dagan, in a slightly different Semitic dialect, becomes Abra- hamun.

Isin was a city state which was hastily put together after the collapse due to external conflict of the jewel in the Mesopotamian crown, the city of Ur. It lasted such a short time that it was forgotten for millennia until modern archaeology discovered it again in the 1930s. Many of the Kings of Isin took the title King of Ur because basically they were all anally retentive (in my opinion), as you can see from the 6th name on the list Ur-Ninurta (and if I had been bothered to post it the 13th name on the list which is Ur-du-kuga). What can I say? They liked Ur a lot and didn't feel very manly without attaching themselves to it in some way.

Abraham being from Ur of the Chaldees has always been known to be incorrect because the Chaldean empire didn't exist until around 1000 bce but it was of course in power when the Hebrews were writing their little book at the library of Nineveh around 700bce, and it was the empire at that time which ruled Ur. It's a mistake any half-witted Biblical redactionist would make without the proper historical resources. So they are both attested in a real Kings List and the circumstances surrounding their existence at a location other than Ur is supported by all the facts.

There are some texts that name Iddin Dagan as an Enlil as well. Giving a king that epithet is to say that he claimed to be a living incarnation of the God and thus claimed provenance to rule. It was a tactic used well by the Akkadian gardener's assistant, Sargon the Great, when he came to power. People might argue against the king's decisions but no-one questioned a living god.

You won't see any of this information at any other location on the web, by the way, nor in any published book. Yet.

Also plenty of statues of rams caught in thickets excavated from the royal cemetery at Ur


which just so happen to predate the life of Abraham, real or fictional, by several hundred years. So if that part of the story is known to be fictional, what about Isaac himself of whom there is no sign at all, because if he was around he would have ruled right after.

You may be aware (or not) that the start of the Sumerian King List features 23 Kings who, using the Sumerian numbering system, appear to have lengths of reign between 300 and 1200 years. This is purely because when power changed to Semite hands with the rise of Akkad, people forgot that the Sumerians used a sexagesimal-based system -- so 1200 years is in fact 20 years -- which means that the 23 Biblical patriarchs based on this idea of extraordinarily long-lived rulers aren't quite as old as they have been made out. Methuseleh. the oldest man in the Bible for instance, died just after his 16th birthday! You heard it here first.

As for Odysseus and Gilgamesh
It was always my opinion that Odysseus was based on Gilgamesh anyway but added to over the years. And the story of Gilgamesh was either loosely based on the Sumerian king of the same name or the name Gilgamesh itself was a little more common than we currently have realised. If you aren't aware that storytelling was a popular pastime in ancient Mesopotamia have a look at these extracts from Gilgamesh and Genesis side by side to see how it remained a popular pastime with some stories staying almost unchanged over thousands of years:

Gilgamesh
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.

Genesis 7 8
And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth

Gilgamesh
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.

Genesis
7 And he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth

Let's face it, if this happened today Mr Ezekial of downtown Babylon would be in copyright court so fast his feet wouldn't touch the ground.
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Wireloop


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I have absolutely no doubt that the Hebrews borrowed from the Babylonian (Akkadian, etc...) culture...that being said.....

I could be wrong, and I know that you're familiar with some of these languages, but I thought that the Akkadian form of 'EL' was 'ILU' and not 'Dagan', and it meant 'strength' not 'totality', and was frequently associated with a bull. Dagon, in Hebrew, has as it's root 'dag' which means fish and not 'bull'.

I like where you are going but I would like to see the Akkadian-to-Hebrew transliterations of Abraham and Ishmael in more detail. Could you provide that?

They are both 'Semitic' languages, so the the jump from Iddin to Abra should make both 'phonetic' and 'etymological' sense...to me at least...; ) Also I thought that Smashiadad and not Iddindagan was the father of Ishmedagan.
What does 'Isme' mean in Akkadian?
What tools do you 'use' (Lexicons, etc..) to study Akkadian, and more importantly, where can I get them?

You make an interesting connection, Marduk, but if valid it does not mean that IshmaEL was an actual person per se. Through mythopoeic examination of the OT texts (which I won't go into detail here) I see IshmaEL as the Hebrew personification of the unconverted non-Yahwist, which BTW fits perfectly with your observation. Could it be that the Hebrew authors of the Abraham story cast the modified character of Ismedagon from as a personified adversary to the yahwist?
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Komorikid


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Biblical scholarship in the context of greater Middle Eastern religious history has always taken the names in the Bible as being historic people. This is a mistake. Virtually all the people of the Bible are dual- or multi-faceted. The Bible itself is layered with dual meanings just as the other famous book written around the same time; the Iliad/Odyssey by Homer. The Pentateuch -- the first five books were written BEFORE the Solomanid Empire was destroyed. Deuteronomy (the fifth book) however was drastically edited during or just after the Babylonian captivity to enhance the status of the politically-based Zadokite priesthood.

There is 'the story' and within that story there is the hidden meaning -- the mundane and the Gnostic. There are at least two Abrahams -- Abraham and Abram. They are not, as scholars interpret, the same man just written differently. They are two separate people written correctly. But they both can be dual representations of the mundane and Gnostic. As a person, Abraham came to be someone's actual name; it can also be a title (Abraham/Abram literally means noble/revered father) the title of the current tribal head (The Abraham- the noble father) and it can be the name of the whole tribe (The Tribe of Abraham). Abraham can also be a God (El-Abraham) there are several places in Arabia today that still bear derivatives of Al-brm -- literally The God Abraham.

The Abraham was the tribe of the God Abraham. The best example of this in the Bible is the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Each tribe is named after its founding patriarch. The twelve is actually a misnomer as there was ONE tribe of Jacob and ELEVEN tribes of Israel. Jacob and Israel were two distinct figures. The Israel tribes were Hebrews but the Jacob tribe were Aramaean. They became twelve tribes under one leader when Moses delivered his sermon to 'All Israel' just before they crossed the h-yrdn (wrongly interpreted as The Jordan River). The Semitic h-yrdn literally means ridge or escarpment. It is nowhere referred to in the Bible or any other ancient script that predates the Babylonian captivity as a RIVER.

The Promised Land was not present-day Israel, it was somewhere else entirely. St Paul knew where it really was and in two passages of his epistles he alludes to its true origin. One is quoted above. The other is mentioned after his revelation on the road to Damascus.
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Marduk


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I could be wrong, and I know that you're familiar with some of these languages, but I thought that the Akkadian form of 'EL' was 'ILU' and not 'Dagan', and it meant 'strength' not 'totality', and was frequently associated with a bull.

It's a comparison between the Babylonian god of the Earth, Dagan, and the corresponding deity that the Hebrews recognised that god as. That was El the Canaanite supreme god who you are thinking of .

This resource shows you Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian words
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html
If it doesn't list them through the search box at the bottom you can find them by going through the alphabetical listing down the left hand side.
isme means "stone" http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e2755.html

But here's the thing. As you say, whether or not I have found the real Abraham and Isaac mentioned in the Bible, the lifetimes and activities claimed for them by the Hebrew scribes is completely fictitious. But then what did you expect? They had no cosmology of their own. The small cosmology that they did have while in Canaan was derived from what they learned when Sargon the Great stormed thorugh there around 2400bce. So all roads lead back to Meso really, no matter which path you start out on.

Egypt has nothing to do with the Bible or any of the stories in it, and it never did. But it stops people looking elsewhere because everyone on earth finding out that the Bible is completely fictional is not something that the Church or the establishment which is based on its teachings could survive.
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Wireloop


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Marduk stated:
"Isme is a Semitic Akkadian pronunciation which in Hebrew would be pronounced Ishme."

response:
How did you determine that 'Isme' is pronounced 'Ishme'?
Is the ' s ' always pronounced ' sh ' in Akkadian?
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Komorikid


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I have absolutely no doubt that the Hebrews borrowed from the Babylonian (Akkadian, etc...) culture...that being said..... I could be wrong.

You are.

You reference the Old Testament in one breath to garner names and places to make an argument then condemn it in the next as esoteric babble. As long as you reference Biblical scholarship to make your assumptions your conclusions are invalid. The events of the Old Testament did not take place in Palestine nor in the immediate vicinity. Any references to places therefore are useless.

Example:
Abraham and his family came from Ur of the Chaldaeans, which is presumed to be the Mesopotamian city of Ur. This translation comes from the Greek Septuagint and is a geographical mistranslation of the Hellenistic period.

Abraham came from wr ksdym Hellenistically rendered as Ur of the Chaldaeans. Actually Abraham came from Waryah ( wr also written wry) in the region of Maqsud (ksdym also written mqsd) Waryah Maqsud is not in Mesopotamia it is in Western Arabia.

Everyone assumes the Old Testament is a literal translation -- it's not. The version we use is from the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, Greeks who had little idea of Hebrew vocalisation -- Hebrew being a language written without vowels. They translated it in the context of their time and consequently place names were assumed to be in the Levant and surrounds; the Hatti being mistranslated as the Hittites is just one of many examples. When they couldn't find a fit they assumed, quite wrongly, that the original text was corrupted and made their own interpretations

Any attempt to relate Old Testament place name and events with those Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia are useless. ksdym is not Chaldaea, nhrym is not Mesopotamia, prt is not the Euphrates and msrym is not Egypt. The events of the Old Testament up until the Babylonian Captivity did not happen in Palestine.
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Everyone assumes the Old Testament is a literal translation -- it's not. The version we use is from the Greek translation known as the Septuagint,

How do you figure that? The Septuagint was translated by Hebrews into Greek not by Greeks from Hebrew. And how do you account for all the details matching Mesopotamia?
Jonah goes to Nineveh
Shinar is a form of Akkadian, Shumer which is a translation of Sumer
the Tigris and Euphrates are mentioned in Genesis
Abraham is from Ur and there's no way that it's a mistranslation of anywhere else because the original Hebrew says the same. I suggest you go get yourself a modern Hebrew to English translation before you make any more wild assumptions. Or are you suggesting that it was translated from Hebrew into Greek and then back into Hebrew and then into English? What proof do you have of that -- you'd need it to support your claim which apparently every Bible scholar both pro and con has missed since the year dot.

When you actually study this subject you soon realise that the Bible stories with one notable exception are merely redacted versions of known and established Sumero-Akkadian texts which were available to the Hebrews during the Babylonian captivity which was at exactly the same time the Old Testament was actually written! And the Sumero-Akkadian texts are all set in locations very well known to the people who wrote them.
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You cannot cite the Old Testament as a resource of names and events and then dispute its validity. It either is valid or it isn't.

the Septuagint was translated by Hebrews into Greek

The Septaugint was written by Alexandrian Hellenised Jews who read and wrote in Aramaic and had done for several hundred years prior to the creation of the Septuagint. Hebrew had been a dead language for over 500 years when it was written. Aramaic had been the lingua franca from the time of the Archaemenids. The Hebrew Old Testament was transcribed into Aramaic (the Targums) during the Archaemenid period (immediately following Darius' capture of Babylon). The Septuagint was transcribed hundreds of years later by 70 Scholars who had no idea how Ancient Hebrew was actually vocalised. Yet virtually all Biblical Scholarship accepts their rendition. None until very recently have ever bothered to consult the actual extant versions of the Old Testament in its original Old Hebrew form.

When you actually study this subject you soon realise that the bible stories with one notable exception are merely redacted versions of known and established Sumero- Akkadian texts which were available to the Hebrews during the Babylonian captivity which was at exactly the same time the Old Testament was actually written

And you know this for a fact because...

What were all the Priests and scribes, who were taken to Babylon, doing before Solomon's Empire was destroyed? Do you seriously believe that no Hebrew scripts existed before the Babylonian Captivity? The original texts of at least the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) existed in Solomon's time. Archaic Biblical Hebrew was extant from the 10th to the 6th century BC, which is from Solomonid Period until the Babylonian Exile and is represented by a specific textural style in the Hebrew Bible, notably the Song of Moses (Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). It is also known as Old Hebrew, a form of the Canaanite script.

When you actually study this subject you soon realise that the historicity of the first four books - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers - are from an era prior to Babylon, only Deuteronomy shows signs of major additions. The Pentateuch may have been redacted in Babylon (along with other extant texts) but it certainly wasn't composed there.

Jonah goes to Nineveh

Does he indeed -- we'll see:
Elohim asks Jonah to go to the great city Nineveh and denounce its wicked ways.
Jonah was unwilling and went to Joppa and boarded a ship going to Tarshish.
Jonah is washed overboard during a storm, swallowed by a fish and disgorged onto land near his departure point.
Elohim appears again to Jonah and asks him to go to Nineveh and proclaim it will be destroyed in 40 days.
Nineveh was a great city to Elohim
It was a journey of 3 days.
Jonah took 4 days
When he prophesised to the people of Nineveh, who believed in the same god as Jonah, they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. The King did likewise, sat in ashes and ordered the people to cry mightily to God to spare the city. The city was spared.
Jonah who was awaiting its destruction some distance away was disappointed when his prophecy didn't come true, which discredited him as a prophet. To console him God pointed out the terrible consequences of destroying a city with 120,000 people and much livestock.

Is Jonah's Nineveh the great Assyrian city you assume it is -- I think not.
1. Assyrian Nineveh was a metropolis, it had more than 100,000 men-at-arms and a substantially greater population then the 120,000 people of Jonah's.
2. The people of Jonah's Nineveh are clearly monotheists who worship the same God as Jonah, even the King. The Assyrian Empire was never monotheist.
3. Jonah's Nineveh placed great values on livestock, so much so God was wont to destroy it. Assyrian Nineveh was a major commercial and political trading centre not a livestock centre.
4. Jonah's journey from the vicinity of Joppa (translated as Jaffa on the Med) was 4 days. The distance from Jaffa to Nineveh is 1400 kilometres by the shortest route, which would take well over two months to cover, whether on foot or by mule or camel.

Shinar is a form of Akkadian, Shumer which is a translation of Sumer

The land of Shinar to which the emigrants from the east arrived to start building a city could not have been in Southern Iraq. The story says they reached a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Biblical scholars have maintained that the Biblical Shinar (šn´r) was the Sumerian Shingi-Uri (šngr) and the Akkadian Sha-an-kha-ra (šnhr), and the Akkadian Sha-an-kha-ra (šnhr), which is today the ridge of Jabel Sinjăr (snğr) in Northern Iraq, well over 500 kilometres from the site of Babylon. What they assert is that the ancient Israelites took the Akkadian name of this Jabel Sinjăr transformed it into Shin'ăr or Shinar and applied it to the whole of Mesopotamia including its southern parts, where Babylon once stood. Apart from the fact that not only is the identification of Biblical Shin'ăr with Akkadian Shar-an-kha-ra and Sumerian Shingi-Uri is linguistically untenable (it has been challenged by orthodox linguists who are not Biblical scholars), but also in southern Mesopotamia the immigrants would not have had to 'reach a plain' on which to settle. The whole country is flat as a pancake.

There are two other points to consider. Firstly the Bible makes a point of explaining that the immigrants who reached the plain of Shinar and settled there set out to build a city of bricks instead of stone, specifically because they were accustomed to building in bricks instead of stone. This implies that stone for building was not available in the land of the 'east' where they came from, while it was available in Shinar where they settled yet they chose not to use it. Secondly Genesis makes clear that the settlers in the land of Shinar were dispersed into the world BEFORE their city was built.

The migration to the land of Shinar was from the East (h-qdm). The Bible translation ambiguously says 'eastward' but h-qdm in Hebrew can only mean FROM the East where they were used to building in brick and bitumen. Mesopotamia is devoid of stone and the predominant building material was brick and bitumen. If the immigrants came from the East and built in brick then it follows that the land of Shinar must have been somewhere WEST of Mesopotamia. Southern Iraq was their origin not their destination.

If the settlers of Shinar were dispersed before their city was built then the unfinished city cannot be Babylon, one of the greatest cities of the ancient world and twice the seat of powerful empires. Its construction could hardly be described as having been abandoned before completion, even in legend.

and the Sumero-Akkadian texts are all set in locations very well known to the people who wrote them

This should read:

and the Sumero-Akkadian texts are all set in locations very well known to the people who translated them
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Girls! The tone of your discourse is bordering on the bitchy. This is only permitted amongst old friends. Kindly desist.
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