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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 9:10:14 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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I am afraid that there is no Adam or Eve in Sumerian literature. From the myth The Affairs of the Water God we have a story of where the god Enki grows ill after eating a certain plant and is cursed by the goddess Ninhursag. She is persuaded by a fox to heal him, and gives birth to 8 different healing goddesses, 1 for each of his ailments.

   Ninhursag: "My brother what hurts thee?"
   Enki: "My rib hurts me."
   Ninhursag: "To the goddess Ninti I give birth for thee."

As the Sumerian word for rib is ti, the goddess in charge of healing the rib is Nin-ti, or the Lady of the Rib. But the word in Sumerian also works out as a pun, the Lady who makes Live. Many theologians and Biblical historians believe that this is how Eve came to be from Adam's rib, through some dim recollection of their Sumerian cultural heritage and a rib/life pun. There is however no Adam, Eve, or Eden in Sumerian mythology, though the island ( not land as the Sumerian word for land is Ma ) if Dilmun has been identified with the Eden legend, and the word for a plains or desert area in Mesopotamia is Edin in Sumerian and Edinu in Accadian, but you don't find gardens in plains or deserts so the Eden/Edin connection is a very weak argument that is not taken seriously by most Biblical scholars or archaeologists.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 9:32:02 AM

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I am afraid that is not correct. Here is a lengthy essay on the origins of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve:

http://www.ldolphin.org/eden/

In particular:

quote:

It was in Saudi Arabia that Zarins encountered the Ubaidians, and there that he began developing his hypothesis about the true meaning of the Biblical Eden. One clue lies in linguistics: the term Eden, or Edin, appears first in Sumer, the Mesopotamian region that produced the world's first written language. This was in the third millennium B.C., more than three thousand years after the rise of the Ubaid culture. In Sumerian the word "Eden" meant simply "fertile plain." The word "Adam" also existed in cuneiform, meaning something like "settlement on the plain." Although both words were set down first in Sumerian, along with place names like Ur and Uruk, they are not Sumerian in origin. They are older. A brilliant Assyriologist named Benno Landsberger advanced the theory in 1943 that these names were all linguistic remnants of a pre-Sumerian people who had already named rivers, cities-and even some specific trades like potter anti coppersmith-before the Sumerians appeared.

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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:10:11 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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I am familiar with Landsberger, who wrote The Ritual Calendar of Babylonia and Assyria and Assyrian Comercial Colonies in Asia Minor from the Third Millennium. I am also aware that he attempted to associate Eden with Edin, but many finds ( such as those of the library ar Ugarit ) since then have shed considerable light on our understanding of Mesopotamian linguistics since his time, and the word Edin is now associated with plains or desert due to findings such as these.

The only reference to the claim that Adam is a pre-Sumerian loanword of possible Ubadian origin is from people that are attempting to prove that Eden existed. Some of these do indeed cite Landsberger, but invariably fail to cite the work in which he allegedly made this claim. I would be quite happy to review the work were the title made avaliable, and would be equally happy to review the cuneiform text from which it was allegedly found.

Here is a list of Sumerian words that begin with ada, taken in full from A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts, Second Revised and Expanded Edition

ada-ab: type of song
ada-alta: from now on
ada-gaba: to stand near the water
ada-lam: now
ada-min: to contest, a fight among equals
ada-tus: to live near the water
ada-tun: a fish

No Adam there, and this is the most up to date lexicon of Sumerian avaliable. I really don't know where the claim that Adam is a settlement in Sumeria came from, but suspect that it is an invention of people that desperately want to prove their holy text true at any cost.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:30:46 AM

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Interesting that through all the discussion about which is true no one actually quoted what the Bible says that seems to be the basis of so much argument. Oddly while it does say "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It also says "Now, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Whoa...wait a minute, the earth-apparently something was here. Surface of the deep, and the waters would indicate that this place we call earth was not totally non existent. The following parts of Genesis seem to go on to suggest more what I would call "ordering" or landscaping. My understanding is also that there has been proven life on earth for millions of years. However during one period (maybe those scientists here remember what period) there was a sudden and drastic expansion of the types of life on this planet.

If we go with forms of religion most have a creation story, and most have a flood story. Again, I'm content to not have concrete answers. I'm here, we are here. Blaise Pascal had an interesting take on whether we should believe in God its called "The Wager" http://www.probe.org/content/view/807/77/

(in reply to BrutalAntipathy)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:41:03 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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The Deep is Tehom, related to Tiamat in Babylonian mythology, chaos water personified, and was very much a story about bringing order from chaos.

Pascal's wager is flawed because it assumes 2 choices, God or no god. The flaw is that both positions could be wrong. There may be a god, but not the god of the Bible or Koran. Perhaps some long forgotten god is the ' one true god ". Or again, maybe the Romans were right, or the Egyptians, or the Indians....

If we wish to rely on the wager, we must pay lip service to not only every known god and goddess, but must beg unknown gods for forgiveness too on the odd chance that one of them is " it ", and hope that whichever god is the right one is forgiving enough to allow us to have prayed to false gods out of adherence to the wager. To say that " I chooose to believe because if I am right I go to heaven, and if I am wrong I lose nothing " is quite mistaken when you actually think about it.

(in reply to sharainks)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:43:37 AM

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Brutal:

The name Adam, spelled Adamu, occurs in the cuneiform texts from Ebla, a Canaanite city discovered in current Tell Mardik in Syria (I believe it was in 1977). The tablets discovered in Ebla contain a very similar cuneiform to ones discovered in Shuruppak and Abu Salabikh, dating to the same period.

These tablets were written in Sumerian. If you do not believe Me, here is a link that will change your mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla

EDIT: Oh, and if you do not believe Me about Adam, see the following link. Do a find on that page for Adam, but just in case you do not, I will quote it for our listeners:

http://www.factbites.com/topics/Ebla

quote:

The vocabularies at Ebla were distinctively Semitic: the word "to write" is k-t-b (as in Hebrew), while that for "king" is "malikum," and that for "man" is "adamu." The closeness to Hebrew is surprising.

Notice who it is doing the research:

quote:

About Us
Factbites was created by Rapid Intelligence, a content technology company based in Sydney, Australia.
Our focus is upon computational linguistics, data mining, data warehousing and artificial intelligence. These competencies are demonstrated on Factbites, a search engine more interested in content analysis than link popularity.
Other credits of ours include AskTheBrain and NationMaster, a free educational resource and the world’s largest statistical database on comparing counties.
If you are interested in our technology or have any queries at all, please contact us.

< Message edited by SirKenin -- 8/6/2006 10:52:16 AM >

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(in reply to sharainks)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:55:48 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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Ebla was Canaanite, not Sumerian. In fact, several Eblaite to Sumerian dictionaries were found there, and the words are not at all similar. As I had previously mentioned, Adama ( or in this case Adamu, they didn't write vowels at all ) meant land in Semitic. The Canaanites were Semites.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 10:59:37 AM

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Well, how about you just ignore all the data I just gave you, completely ignore My entire damn post and it's links, wave it all away, and you go on thinking whatever you want.

Or, you could actually be an astute debater and actually read what I just gave you. That would help.

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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 11:15:53 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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Pardon me? First up, I was writing my response even as you posted your next to the last one, so I did not see it. Secondly, I have said exactly the same thing that your article does about the meaning of the word Adamu, so I fail to understand what you mean about ignoring anything. I have from the beginning stated that Adama/Adamu was a Semitic word meaning land, and since both Canaanite and Hebrew are Semitic languages, the fact that they share a word for land is hardly surprising.

Upon reading the link, I notice that it does mention that the tablets are written in Eblaite as well as Sumerian, and that vocabulary lists were found with the tablets ( I beleive that I mentioned this too, but lets not talk about someone ignoring someone ) that allowed them to be translated. Nowhere in the article does it mention Adam being a Sumerian word, as it simply is not. I have given an honest and full rendition of the current Sumerian words that begin with ada as well as the source they were derived from, but you are free to ignore this if you so wish.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 11:22:57 AM

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And I am saying that the word "Adamu" was written in Sumerian cuneiform, as proven by the Wikipedia link which you obviously did not read. That is what the articles prove, and this is what I have been trying to get at from the beginning. It's semitic origin is irrelevant. Also, the article proves that Adamu does not mean "land" at all. If you had in fact read what I posted you would see that in that one article it is translated as man. I can find many more on the subject, but that will serve the purpose as you obviously can not be bothered to read what I DO give you.

I stand by what I said. You are not reading the data that I provided for you, so I hardly see the point in going any further.

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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 11:32:13 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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I went directly to the link you presented, and it mentioned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the word Adamu. It discussed Ebla. the Eblaite library, economy, government, and religion. so PLEASE have the curtesy to quit accusing me of not reading your links. Nor does your garden of Eden link shed any light on the word meaning anything other than what I have said it meant. However I DID notice that the garden article mentioned Dilmun as a possible source for the Eden myth. Are you sure that you read the article?

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 11:41:57 AM

BrutalAntipathy

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Ahhh, I found an article in hyperlink that does state this. I will look into it further. Was expecting a direct link rather than a hyperlink.

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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 12:14:02 PM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: philosophy

surely this is just a semantic confusion. The theory that allows us to understand how the earth goes round the sun isn't called the earth-going-rouind-the-sun theory. It's just a specific application of celestial mechanics. The sun going nova et al are just other parts of the same body of knowledge which gives rise to the working theory.

The body of knowledge involving knowing the 'celestial mechanics' of novas, asteroids, etc. was what gave rise to the theory of heliocentricity when it was first developed thousands of years ago?.

If you say so.....

(in reply to philosophy)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 12:39:32 PM

BrutalAntipathy

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I have finally managed to find a single use of the word Adamu in the Eblaite library, and it refers to one of the fourteen provisional governers, not to a people, tribe, or group. See Ebla and the Bible, Biblical Archaeologist, volume 43, number 4, pages 203-216. There is also a brief mention of this to be found in the BAS archives, linked below, a few paragraphs down in the What Can We Learn from Personal Names at Ebla section.

http://http://members.bib-arch.org/nph-proxy.pl/000000A/http/www.basarchive.org/bswbSearch.asp=3fPubID=3dBSBA&Volume=3d6&Issue=3d5&ArticleID=3d6&UserID=3d0&

(in reply to Alumbrado)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 12:46:34 PM

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"philosophy, that was a common notion up until the 80's. Before that in the earlier part of this century (20's 30's 40's) people believed that we did absorb things through our skin. Then "science" told them that wasn't true. Then "science" told them that people did absorb things through their"

.......when, specifically, did 'science' say that we do not absorb stuff through our skin? Please give an actual example of a scientist saying this............you seem to be suggesting that sometime in the 40's there was some attempt to tell people that they did not absorb stuff through the skin. Clearly if you are able to assert this you can give an example of it.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 12:50:09 PM

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"The body of knowledge involving knowing the 'celestial mechanics' of novas, asteroids, etc. was what gave rise to the theory of heliocentricity when it was first developed thousands of years ago?.

If you say so.....

"

...well yes, i do say so...of course nowadays we call it astronomy or astrophysics or some such, but i think celestial mechanics is so much prettier a phrase.........hundreds of years of observations, passed on to succeeding generations to try and find ideas that seem to explain the observable data. It's called science.

(in reply to philosophy)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 1:36:11 PM

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Geez philosophy, I guess in the UK you missed out on all the hoopla the states had when men started using Rogaine to regrow hair. There was plenty of talk over here about that time about the "science" of it and shortly after that along came the transdermal patches for everything. As I remember it was the early 80's when that all went on. I can remember being taught in school science classes that we did not absorb things through our skin and that was back in the 60's.

At this point I'm done with the topic.

(in reply to philosophy)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 1:42:32 PM

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I am done too. I woke up from a nap and discovered that this damn puppy we have ripped into the garbage bag just after we finished cleaning and spread fucking garbage from one end of the house to the other. I am so pissed I can not even see straight, so I can hardly debate philosophy.

DAMN I HATE THIS DOG!!!!!!!! He shits and pisses everywhere and destroys everything, but it is up to both of us to get rid of it and of course she will not. AAAAGH. I am going to lie back down nice and calm before I do something I regret.

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(in reply to sharainks)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 1:51:39 PM

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"Geez philosophy, I guess in the UK you missed out on all the hoopla the states had when men started using Rogaine to regrow hair. There was plenty of talk over here about that time about the "science" of it and shortly after that along came the transdermal patches for everything. As I remember it was the early 80's when that all went on. I can remember being taught in school science classes that we did not absorb things through our skin and that was back in the 60's."

so you believe an advertising campaign to be a scientific source worthy of consideration? And as for what you were taught in school, then i'm afraid that just points to a failure in whatever educational system you were raised in. No sensible scientist throughout the 20th century would claim that substances are not absorbed through skin. The crux of your argument is based on a false premise about the nature of science.

(in reply to SirKenin)

RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 8/6/2006 4:26:41 PM

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Alumbrado,

What a bunch of nonsense. The theory that the earth goes around the sun is extremely predictive. In fact, sunrises and sunsets are predicted with amazing accuracy in newspapers every day. Moreover, Newton's theory of gravity was sufficiently predictive to enable many satellites and other space vehicles to be placed exactly where their launchers wanted.

Should something smash into the earth and throw it off of its orbit, that would in now way invalidate the theory of gravity. So I don't know what you are saying.

If evolution is predictive, tell me, what will humans evolve into and when? Or more generally, give me one prediction based on evolution.

(in reply to Alumbrado)

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