Eric,
Today, I received an email from an organization working on the ruins in the area of Sodom and Gomorrah. I had sent them an email, telling them I had done a side-by-side comparison of The Lost Book of Enki and Genesis, which seemed to indicate Sitchen was correct in his assertions with respect thereto.
As I am not qualified to address all of their comments, which can be condensed into three central areas, I addressed the one I am qualified to address. I would appreciate the courtesy of your addressing their remaining comments, as they raised some questions I would like to see addressed as well. I will in turn (or you may) use your rebuttals and forward them to their website.
Thank you for your assistance,
Michael M. Hobby
These were my initial comments to accuracyingenesis.com:
I was greatly impressed by your article on Sodom and Gommorah, and the link to the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics.
Your Genesis references are “spot on,” as the British would say. They caused me to wonder if you had compared the first ten chapters of Genesis with the 14 clay tablets comprising the Sumerian original, written some two thousand years earlier, and now available on Amazon.com: The Lost Book of Enki.
I have done a side by side comparison of the Genesis creation account with the Sumerian original, and it was far beyond enlightening. Although many passages in Genesis are word for word repetitions of the Sumerian clay tablets, 14 in number, other omissions and insertions completely distort and twist the originals, in that the motivation of the authors of Genesis was to advocate Monotheism, thereby furthering the promotion of their belief system.
However much one might love the Bible and the Semitic peoples who translated it from the originals 2,000 yrs earlier, he must admit that if they were the early farmers and source of agriculture and shepharding, they could not possibly have understood gene-splicing which we ourselves have only recently achieved. Yet, there it is, and it is coming from clay tablets written in ancient Sumerian and therefore cannot be labeled as fraud.
The big question is, where does that leave us?
If you have not yet done this comparison yourself, I would be very interested in your reaction to the same side by side comparison I did. I hope to hear your thoughts.
Your friend,
Michael M. Hobby
-------------------------
My response to their reply:
Thank you for your very enlightening comments. They have compelled me to review the three essentially refutable areas I resolved from your material. I intend to forward these and a copy of your remarks to Sitchen's website, requesting a response, particularly to two which I am not qualified to address. I am qualified to address the first.
The orbital period and eccentricity of "Nibiru" is the principal feature of ALL of Sitchen's fundamental constructs I initially found most troubling, and first considered myself. It is, however, the weakest of your arguments in plausibility (as presented), because you do not appear to take into consideration (at least not within the context of your remarks) the Expanding Earth model, which competes with virtually every aspect of the "Continental Drift" model.
To help you understand why I make this observation, subduction, within Plate Tectonics, if it were actually occurring (and must within the same for Tectonic theory not to be ludicrous), could, and likely would, reduce orbital eccentricity over time, as you argue, perhaps to its present eccentricity of only 0.0167, though Earth's tri-axiality, apart from eccentricity, should be added to (and acknowledged by) your comments in the future. I and many professionals, some competent to teach plate tectonics, including structural geologists (who, within the present consensus, still point out to students inconsistencies, such as over 100 miles of EXTENSION, NOT compression, within the Basin and Range province of the western United States alone-and they are many, including some who taught me) actually believe that the Expanding Earth model is the more correct. I am of the opinion that subduction does and is occurring, but that the earth must also be expanding, and that certain problematic phenomena, such as the Grand Canyon stratigraphic sequences, may be attributable to processes not inherent with either the Drift or Expansion models. I regard the Drift/Expansion debate as over-polarized, which produces inflexibility in advocates of either. This is not the path to greater knowledge and understanding.
One of the principal reasons for this that you will readily recognize is the impossibility of reconciling the known stratigraphic age of (un)subducted land masses, such as the Grand Canyon, which are an order of magnitude greater in age than the 200my since sea floor spreading along mid-oceanic ridges commenced. The reason we do is that the (limiting my remarks to the Grand Canyon for the sake of brevity) stratigraphic sequences contain many evaporite deposits, which by their very nature require long periods of time to develop, Velikovsky and Creationist arguments notwithstanding. Sedimentary unconformities (or discontinuities) with obvious missing periods of unknown duration, as well as other geologic and geomorphological and structural considerations. All are further increased in age yet more by the fact that the whole was once covered by a warm, shallow sea of indeterminate duration. The Great Salt Lake is all that remains of former Lake Bonneville, fed by deglaciation.
If Continental Drift (Plate Tectonics)were actually occurring (only if argued as the sole mechanism accounting for stratigraphy and geomorphology), the Grand Canyon could not exist, yet it does for all to see. Further, the subduction model can account for, yet neither adequately explains nor adequately refutes expansion of the magma sphere, and seems to entirely ignore mass-loading by meteorite dust today, let alone enormous mass-loading during more archaic periods during which much larger volumes were added to both the earth and all other members of the solar system, including the sun itself. Extraterrestrial mass-loading is not fundamental to our subduction model. Today, we are in a relatively quiet period of swept space, you might say, yet even now mass is accreting at a rate which, when extended over the geologic time span of the Grand Canyon, would have increased the diameter of the earth by over 40%, entirely ignoring any expansion of the molten sphere above the ferric core.
If indeed, Niburu exists, or did exist, displacement of both its orbital eccentricity and its own mass increase could still be closely correlated, but not remain constant as Sitchen's primary assertions suggest. Sitchen's own recent publication (which I do not claim to have read, but isn't relevant) maintains that Nibiru is scheduled to return in 2012. However, if you calculate multiples of 3600yrs using his own dates from his earlier works, you will find that 2012 does not fit. [This, however, constitutes orbital contraction, consistent with, and providing evidence for, both your and Sitchen's assertions of orbital period.]
Neither I, nor I think it is fair to say, the majority of scientists, dispute the possible existence of a rogue planet or asteroid with an highly elongated orbital period. In fact, is is debated among scientists that one or more of the rings of Saturn, or even one or more of its moons may share this origin. But that does not lend credence (necessarily) to Sitchen's major hypothesis. Neither does it constitute "evidence," which must be much more rigorously established, if not defended. Not all aspects of the Drift/Expansion debate however, are as complex. Simply cutting out the continents from a model of present-day earth and pasting them on a larger globe reveals the same telltale wedges at the southern and northernmost tips or extensions of the continental masses. They will appear much the same as they do on our own maps, and are, in my opinion, poorly explained by the Drift model. I will address the Drift/Expansion debate rigorously within more conventional contexts; this brief and arguably vague synopsis is merely to give your readers an awareness that some of the claims leveled against Sitchen and others they would like to see disappear are tongue-in-cheek, to say the least.
Generally, academic and social contexts prevent geologists who favor the Expansion model from openly advocating as much for obvious reasons. However, as I am relatively isolated from the consequences, you may use my remarks as you wish, as they further challenge (but also support) Sitchen's assertions. If you DO, it should be indicated that there is also much of Sitchen's work that I do not presume to contradict, because even though I am an archaeologist as well (geoarchaeologist), I am not an expert in Sumerian, transitional(pre-Nubian), or Semitic languages. I have studied Hebrew, but only to enable me to determine if any elements of that language were present in Mayan glyphs. There were none. Had I waited a few years, it would have been unnecessary, because we now know that Mayan is one of the three entirely unique mother languages occurring on our planet, which poses an insurmountable problem capable of producing a fumble for a certain religious group.
Further, using only his "Lost Book of Enki," even asserting that large portions of his text are or may be incorrectly translated, there remain many puzzling elements which suggest accurate translation. Two examples come to mind:
1)Of particular interest, the linear count of the calendar introduced which is in earth years is remarkably consistent with the Maya Long Count of Mesoamerica(p.276). This exceeds the odds of coincidence, as numerous later dates within that calendar are given in exact terms in the Book of Enki, which also agree with the LC. With respect to Velikovsky, it should also be noted that the Tun, the LC year, is not of 365 days, but of 360 day's length. Velikovsky was not a geologist, and during the years when Worlds in Collision and the Ages in Chaos series were written, geologists were still plagued by the old Geosyncline model, which was even less useful than the Drift. I and all geologists know that his geologic premises were incorrect, but remember that in his day, there were still active debates among consensus professionals over whether earth's petroleum had fallen from the sky during passage of some rogue planet or comet!, something that would generate hoots and catcalls today. However, that does not mean that he was not correct about anything, and in the case of the 360-day year prior to 700 B.C., he is, as far as I have been able to determine, correct. The LC itself is based upon a 360 day year, not just calendars from Indo-European and Asiatic civilizations cited by Velikovsky. I suspect that one's inclination can result in completely overlooking data which lend credence both to "The Lost Book of Enki" and modern astronomical discussions of Lunar origin stemming from a glancing collision of the earth with another planetary body, such as Lloyd's translation of Timaeus, where in his discussion of celestial phenomena in the same, he says, "For Orpheus calls the moon "celestial earth" (quotes mine, as in a part of the earth ABOVE the earth). . . And in Book III he says: "The Pythagoreans say . . . the Moon is ethereal earth." [Temple, op. cit., p.233]
2)Linguistic evidence COMBINED with geographic claims also occur which it would be difficult to argue stem from mistranslation. For example, on pp. 274-275, the city built to celebrate Anu's return, in the southern half of the western hemisphere, was by a lake, built of enormous perfectly fitted stones, and was the source of a newly discovered metal, "Anak," which, when combined with plentiful copper, produced a much harder alloy. Anak was obviously tin, and the resulting alloy, bronze. Remarkably, this corresponds with conventional datings of the ensuing Bronze Age.
More remarkably, the city with perfectly fitted stones, named Anak as well, which, according to Sitchens' translation of The The Lost Book of Enki, was built adjacent to a high, intermontane lake, still persists in its name today, Tia(HUANAC)o, Bolivia, which was obviously the city. The lake was Lake Titicaca, and the region, Bolivia. So rich in tin is Bolivia that, since the days of the Eisenhower administration, Bolivia has been the primary source for U.S. tin imports. Within this same context, major structural and geomorphologic disruptions have occurred within historic time. Tiahuanaco has extensive existing harbor works, encrusted with preserved oyster beds, that are 300 feet above lake Titicaca's present elevation. This is due to the uplifting of the lake's northern end in the Andes, which resulted in a 400-foot difference in elevation between the northern end and the southern, which now terminates in the salt flats of Uyuni, northeast of Antofagasta. Uyuni, a town in the Potosà Department in the south of Bolivia, was founded in 1890 as a trading post, with a population even today of less than 11,000.
Given the existence of point sources of chloride in the region and the spatial distribution of the generated plumes in saturated zones, only uplift by subduction can account for the source, not an imagined catastrophic event, as extensive chloride migrations (in both vertical and horizontal cross-sectional planes of the aquifers) cannot be explained by catastrophic events within an historic time interval. These chloride migrations and intra-basin accumulations became evaporite deposits over time as the hydrogeology of the region changed. It is the regional distribution of the deposits and salty lakes which gave rise during the colonial period to the inclusion of salt (salta) in regional names of settlements. The migration of chloride shows patterns which are affected by the lithologic heterogeneities of the aquifer and regional groundwater flow . This geomorphology could not by any strech be attributed to an Expanding earth model. Throughout, for instance, Devonian evaporite series are facies which occur which are clearly marine, but derive from entirely natural geologic processes, such as series which progress, from bottom to top with a predominance of dolomite, then anhydrite, then rock salt. These transitions are not saltatory, but are progressive crystallization intervals derived from available solutes not yet precipitated. Seepage basins, such as Lake Chad Basin at the midpoint of the Yobe River drainage basin approximately 1000 km northeast of the confluence of the Niger and Benoue rivers in Africa act both as preconcentration and load-shedding basins, IE, receivers of chloride migration.
Anciently the entire lake was surrounded by solid deposits formed by calcareous algae. Thus, the tilt of the basin in which Lake Titicaca is located can be accurately determined merely by comparing the elevation of the strand line at the water's edge at the northern end (where at its northernmost point, terraced mountainsides formerly used for agriculture are now above the line of eternal frost), with the elevation of the strand line at the southern end, some 800 miles distant.
The strand line itself has long intrigued me. So much so that, while completing my Masters degree in hydrogeology at Cal State, Stanislaus, I engaged in a special credit project overseen by a prominent oceanographer at Berkeley. The project involved research to determine if the strand line was formed by salt water calcareous algae, and/or fresh water calcareous algae, and if the evaporite deposits in Uyuni were marine in origin, or could just as easily be terrestrial, as in the case of erosion of Triassic beds as point sources for chloride. Evaporites themselves are neither reservoirs nor source rocks.
It has been claimed that seahorses were at one time sold to tourists by the natives. Others have made assertions that Tiahuanaco was once at the elevation of the Pacific. If the strand line could have been made by fresh water algae, or a mixture of both fresh and salt, then whether reports of seahorses being sold to tourists are mythological or correct, asserting that the ruins were once at the elevation of the Pacific is unnecessary, because, as discussed above, chloride migration is a principle process throughout the region, and Lake Titicaca was a seepage basin. The reason I do not advance that the tilt is thus a reflection of subduction along the Pacific littoral, a typical feature observed adjacent to subduction zones, is that uplift due to subduction cannot be reasonably argued as the process by which man made agricultural terraces were lifted above the line of eternal frost. To assert such an agency posits an unrealistic rate of uplift due to subduction within historic time; it more likely occurred either during partial cancellation of gravity when a Newtonian object (spherical shape and planetary mass) passed over the area, or alternatively, because the earth is expanding. However, arguing that expansion is responsible for lifting the terraces suffers from the same failure of logic as arguing plate tectonics. Both are problematic, yet the strand line exists.
There is a puzzling phenomenon, however, which does seem to offer evidence of catastrophic (very rapid)rise, the Grey Gull. The Grey Gull (Leucophaeus modestus) is a gull found along the Pacific coast of South America. Unusual among gulls, it only breeds in the extremely arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile which nests in a line parallel to the Pacific.
Gulls usually nest along the coast above the high tide boundary zone. There, close access to marine prey and moist, landward breezes, establish a suitable ecosystem. The Grey gull of the Atacama is upwards of twenty miles inland, with innumerable nests in a band parallel to the Pacific. There, the aridity is so high, and the heat so intense, that either the male or female must remain in the nest, wings outspread during the day, to protect the eggs and young from certain destruction. The other must endure a twenty-mile flight to the coast, engorge themselves, then complete the rigorous twenty-mile flight back to the nest. Arriving after dark with so many nests present, it can only find its own by recognizing the call of its mate, then must up gorge the contents of its stomach into the mouths of the young. The next day, that gull remains at the nest and the other repeats the vigil.
It is difficult at best to account for such a phenomenon. If the uplift had occurred over geologic or even historic time, the nests would still hug the coast. If it was sudden, however, it would not seem that the gulls left the sea, but that the sea left the gulls. The latter seems to me the more reasonable conclusion. This should NOT be taken to imply that Tiahuanco was once on the Pacific littoral. It merely indicates rapid uplift of the entire crustal block containing Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, including northwestern Argentina in the area of the Chaco province.
A phenomenon like the Grey Gull of the Atacama desert, for me at least, becomes a persistent matter of reflection. When I encounter such, they take on the aura of an Easter egg, with an associated awareness that it might be more, perhaps even a Pearl of Great Price. When I was 18, I abandoned prejudice against the Black man. From that experience, I began to suspect that prejudice was like rock which, when overturned, revealed a truth. I have since striven to find the prize, the truth, underlying all such rocks of prejudice, and have benefited from that attitude. If there is one, their might be more.
So I have sought for additional anomalous phenomena in the same location. Pertaining to the Atacama, I did encounter another:
"The nitrate deposits in the extremely arid Atacama Desert of northern Chile are among the most unusual of all mineral deposits. In fact, they are so extraordinary that, were it not for their existence, geologists could easily conclude that such deposits could not form in nature. The nitrate deposits consist of water-soluble saline minerals that occur as cement in unconsolidated surficial material - alluvial fill in valleys, loose rocky debris on hillsides, and windblown silt and sand - and as impregnations and veins in porous and fractured bedrock. They are found chiefly along the eastern side of the Coastal Range, but also within the Coastal Range, in the Central Valley to the East, and along the lower Andean front. Features of the deposits that appear to defy rational explanation are their restricted distribution in a desert characterized throughout by saline soil and salt-encrusted playas; the wide variety of topography where they occur; the abundance of nitrate minerals, which are scarce in other saline complexes; and the presence of other, less abundant minerals containing the ions of perchlorate, iodate, chromate, and dichromate which do not exist in any other saline complexes. Iodate,, chromate, and dichromate are known to form under such conditions, but no chemical process acting at temperatures and pressures found at the earth's surface is known to produce perchlorate."
(Ericksen, George E.; "The Chilean Nitrate Deposits," American Scientist, 71: 366, 1983.)
Note that both the Grey Gull and the nitrate deposits, ENTIRELY DIFFERENT in their nature, one biological behavior, the other a geochemical phenomenon, are each the SOLE instance known, and additionally, that, "were it not for their existence, geologists could EASILY conclude that such deposits could NOT form in nature." The same applies to the nesting locale of the Grey Gull. If then, I have found two instances of extraordinary phenomena in the same region - the Atacama - , my suspicion increases accordingly, because they suggest an extraordinary agency was involved in their creation. As I concluded that a Newtonian object passing overhead and causing a rapid rise of the crustal block where the phenomenon occurs seemed to be the simplest explanation (Occam's Razor), the nitrates (the mechanism for which is entirely unknown) might also become subject to the same conclusion. As I need not remind you that the tilt of the strand line is a THIRD associated phenomenon of, again, a different nature, for me, this is something to keep in mind, because NEITHER plate tectonics, NOR the Expansion model can account for these three phenomena. Only a THIRD type of agency will accommodate them all simply - again, Occam's Razor. I do not make this observation lightly. [See, Michael M. Hobby, "THE CATASTROPHIC ROLE OF FLUID PRESSURE AND GEOMAGNETIC PHENOMENA IN THE MECHANICS OF OVERTHRUST FAULTING,"; Kronos Vol. IX No. 1 (Fall 1983). It will be uploaded and available to read on this site within a few weeks.
The enormous size and weight of the foundation stones still remaining at Tiahuanaco, some of which which exceed the lift capacity of today's largest cranes, are so uniformly cut that we cannot produce perfectly flat surfaces across such extended horizontal distances. Even with our finest sanding surfaces, minerals lower in hardness than quartz are preferentially removed. Clearly, an unknown hand of superior technological capability produced these works. To maintain otherwise is intellectually dishonest and arrogant.
One additional error in your comments, if I understand them correctly, is your inclusion of quoted material from Sitchen's detractor, Peter James. His assertion that Sitchen claims Marduk overthrew the Nibiru dynasty and created earth as the twelfth planet, if you are correctly quoting him, is incorrect and indicates that Jame's reading of Sitchen was either hurriedly completed or that he misunderstood Sitchen or the text itself. Unless you have misread James, or I have misread Sitchen, Marduk was the son of Enki, and it was Enki, not Marduk, who was the first, not to create, but to land upon earth.
My remarks have been somewhat long, but as you exerted obvious effort in compiling yours, I felt I owed you equal time in return.
One final point:
Just because a scholar accepts certain assertions, or even categories of assertions, from such sources as Sitchen and Velikovsky does not suggest that they accept the whole. There is much to be gleaned from both of benefit to other scholars. Of course, as the great LDS scholar, Hugh Nibley once noted, mentioning such openly doesn't just acknowledge your frontier-extending work; it also generates skeptics who incorrectly presume (or contemptibly imply) you have swallowed the whole.
He made this remark specifically with reference to his belief that Velikovsky was generally correct, at least with reference to the Ages in Chaos series, He, together with prominent physicist, Robert Bass, who, funded by a million-dollar grant, was conducting a project to develop a magnetic bottle that could contain a nuclear fission reaction at the time at BYU (Brigham Young University), felt Velikovsky should receive an Honorary doctorate from BYU. Nibley was a scholar of such eminence that he cannot, in my opinion, with a wave of the hand, any more than Sitchen, be relegated to the "Lunatic fringe" because he accorded value to Velikovsky's work. There are many other scholars of far greater repute than I who would agree with me on this point. A layman might make such statements, but professionals should not, because it evidences lack of intellectual sophistication and emotional restraint; further, it retards the progress of science.
I hope to hear your comments regarding my remarks, as well as additional information you may have or encounter which suggest additional errors Sitchen might have made either in translation or hypothesis. As you quote sources who disparge Sitchen's ability to translate, are you aware of any translations of the same material relying upon the Sumerian Lexicon you cited? Should I receive responses from Sitchen to your other two basic criticisms, I will likewise make them available to you.
Sincerely, Michael M. Hobby
These are the comments to which I was responding
Accuracy in Genesis
Michael;
You did not give a URL reference for the translations that you are using. If you were using Sitchin, then the following are some comments concerning the theories of Sitchin on the internet copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin
When Sitchin wrote his books, only specialists could read the Sumerian language, but now anyone can check his translations by utilizing the 2006 book, "Sumerian Lexicon."[4] Sitchin's translations of both individual words and of larger portions of ancient texts are generally found to be incorrect.[5][6]
Sitchin's "planetary collision" view does superficially resemble a theory which is seriously entertained by modern astronomers — the giant impact theory of the Moon's formation about 4.5 billion years ago by a body impacting with the newly-formed Earth. However, Sitchin's proposed series of rogue planetary collisions differ in both details and timing. As with Immanuel Velikovsky's earlier Worlds in Collision thesis, Sitchin claims to have found evidence of ancient human knowledge of rogue celestial motions in a variety of mythological accounts. In Velikovsky's case, these interplanetary collisions were supposed to have taken place within the span of human existence, whereas for Sitchin these occurred during the early stages of planetary formation, but entered the mythological account passed down via the alien race which purportedly evolved on Nibiru after these encounters.
Sitchin's scenario for the creation of the Solar System is hard to reconcile with the Earth's current small orbital eccentricity of only 0.0167. Sitchin's supporters maintain that it would explain Earth's peculiar early geography due to cleaving from the celestial collision, i.e., solid continents on one side and a giant ocean on the other. The scenario outlined by Sitchin, with Nibiru returning to the inner solar system regularly every 3,600 years, implies an orbit with a semi-major axis of 235 Astronomical Units, extending from the asteroid belt to twelve times farther beyond the sun than Pluto. "Elementary perturbation theory indicates that, under the most favorable circumstances of avoiding close encounters with other planets, no body with such an eccentric orbit would keep the same period for two consecutive passages. Within twelve orbits the object would be either ejected or converted to a short period object. Thus, the search for a trans-Plutonian planet by T.C. Van Flandern of the U.S. Naval Observatory, which Sitchin uses to bolster his thesis, is no support at all."[7][8]
Sitchin claims that "from an equal start, the Nefilim evolved on Nibiru 45 million years ahead of comparable development on Earth with its decidedly more favorable environment. Such an outcome is unlikely, to say the least, since Nibiru would spend over 99% of its time beyond Pluto. Sitchin's explanation that heat from radioactive decay and a thick atmosphere keep Nibiru warm is absurd and does not address the problem of darkness in deep space. Also unexplained is how the Nefilim, who evolved long after Nibiru arrived, knew what happened when Nibiru first entered the solar system."[9] Sitchin bases his arguments on his personal interpretations of Pre-Nubian and Sumerian texts, and the seal VA 243. Sitchin claims these ancient civilizations knew of a 12th planet, when in fact they only knew five.[10] Hundreds of Sumerian astronomical seals and calendars have been decoded and recorded, and the total count of planets on each seal has been five. Seal VA 243 has 12 dots that Sitchin identifies as planets. When translated, seal VA 243 reads "You're his Servant" which is now thought to be a message from a nobleman to a servant. According to semitologist Michael S. Heiser, the so-called sun on Seal VA 243 is not the Sumerian symbol for the sun but is a star, and the dots are also stars.[10][11]
The symbol on seal VA 243 has no resemblance to the hundreds of documented Sumerian sun symbols. Peter James has criticised him both for ignoring the world outside of Mesopotamia and more specifically for misunderstanding Babylonian literature: “ He uses the Epic of Creation Enuma Elish as the foundation for his cosmogony, identifying the young god Marduk, who overthrows the older regime of gods and creates the Earth, as the unknown "Twelfth Planet". In order to do as he interprets the Babylonian theogony as a factual account of the birth of the other "eleven" planets. The Babylonian names for the planets are established beyond a shadow of a doubt--Ishtar was the deity of Venus, Nergal of Mars, and Marduk of Jupiter -- and confirmed by hundreds of astronomical/astrological tables and treatises on clay tablets and papyri from the Hellenistic period. Sitchin merrily ignores all this and assigns unwarranted planetary identities to the gods mentioned in the theogony. For example, Apsu, attested as god of the primeval waters becomes, of all things, the Sun! Ea, as it suits Sitchin, is sometimes planet Neptune and sometimes a spaceman. And the identity of Ishtar as the planet Venus, a central feature of Mesopotamian religion, is nowhere mentioned in the book--instead Sitchin arbitrarily assigns to Venus another deity from Enuma Elish, and reserves Ishtar for a role as a female astronaut.[12]
Similar ideas have been advanced by authors such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Däniken, Alan F. Alford and Laurence Gardner. Alford later recanted his views and became a critic of Sitchin's interpretation of myth. Sitchin in “the case of Adam’s alien genes” [13] claims that 223 unique genes found by the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium are without the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree. Later researchers have argued that the conclusion from the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium can not be drawn due to a lack of a comprehensive gene database for comparison. An analysis by Salzberg identified 40 potential genes laterally transferred into the genome from prokaryotic organisms. Salzberg also argues that gene loss combined with sample size effects and evolutionary rate variation provide an alternative, more biologically plausible explanation. [14] See also http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/sitchinerrors.htm
Now if we are in error, and you were not using Stichin please correct us!
Now concerning the chicken and egg theories that the Sumerian writings preceded the Semitic texts, it is difficult to know if anyone will ever have "proof" concerning this! Just because the earliest "writings" we have at this time are some clay tablets, is NOT "proof" that these are indeed the first "writings". There is a tradition that the patriarch Enoch before the flood did "writings". Per our understanding of the chronology the time of Enoch before the flood would have been before 11,000 year ago. "Very interestingly "11,600 years ago marked the beginning of the Rule of Mortal Humans on Earth according to Manetho (Egyptian historian ca. 343 BC)" prior to that was "Rule by Demigods and Spirits of the Dead (followers of Horus)". (from http://www.innerx.net/ personal/ tsmith/ iceciv.html) A very close correspondence to the indicated termination of the Younger Dryas (11,550 +-70 B.P. per the GRIP ice core data) and the time we would choose as the most likely time of the flood, and soon afterward the tribes would start multiplying and migrating from the "Ararat" area into lower lands of the most northern part of the fertile crescent where the archaeologists have uncovered the first evidences of large scale farming and community building, around 10,000 to 11,000 B.P.." Also note that the Sumerians in their own writings say they came from Ararat.
So doesn't it seem possible to assume that these migrating herdsmen and farming tribes had oral traditions and if they had writings most likely they were on skins and possibly not on numerous very heavy to transport clay tablets. That they started using clay tablet libraries only after they had settled into more permanent locations. Well there is just no real way to know, and to know what sort of library writings Moses possibly used as he was a student in Pharaoh's house. And exactly how Moses compiled his writings and which parts were from earlier written sources and which were from the inspiration of the Spirit of God? Since obviously Moses himself was not a witness to Genesis chapter 1, the Creation story, and all that preceded his coming of age as contained in the book of Genesis.
Thank you for the interesting comments. Accuracy Staff.
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