Very nice looking site … Am not too sure about the reliability of the site owners research though.
They have the first five books of the bible as written in 1400 BCE by Moses … I should not need to expand on this to members here.
They claim the Chinese language to be the oldest in the world been first written over 4500 years ago. This puts it on the same timeline as the Sumerian and Egyptian writing systems.
The site it’s self appears to be hosted on the student section of the University of Washington server. Also I noticed at the end it invites you to “start learning the bible” with the World Bible School … which it’s self appears to be linked to the Johnson Street Church of Christ which appears to have been founded around 1898. There also appears to be a connection with a Evangelist called T.B.Larimore.
With the site been hosted on a university website it would appear to be aimed at “attracting” students into bible studies organized by the “Johnson Street Church”. Looking at the “Johnson Street Churches” own website and seeing that all the Church leaders are men and terms such as “Elders” used it sets some alarm bells ringing for other such groups I have encountered and researched.
Maybe the “Johnson Street Church of Christ” is an above board organisation doing good work (I would need to research them a lot deeper to find out). I am always a little sceptical about organizations that have their roots around the 1900’s though as there were a lot of wacky ideas been thrown around during that period … Personally I would approach them with a lot of caution. I also wonder if the University is aware of this group’s site on their system.
That’s my input … @manx
jennybee said
So I came across another interesting thing online–the Hanzi of Genesis–early chinese characters predicting Genesis. Here’s the link. Thoughts?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Much of the content of this exposition is about decomposition of complex Chinese ideograms into root ideograms. It would require expertize in Chinese to judge if the examples hold water. I suspect that if you twist the meaning of a root ideogram, you may be able to “prove” anything. I also think that it is too easy to find parallels when comparing rather general concepts. The basic flaw however is that the biblical story of Genesis is much younger than the origin of the Chinese ideograms. The influence, if any, would have been in the reverse direction.
Most people confuse between an alphabet (ie separate letters with taken together make one word that has a meaning) and ideograms of sorts (ie a symbol which describes an idea, an object, an event).
The Egyptian hieroglyphs are comparable to Chinese “writings”. BUT … neither is an alphabet. The same goes with Sumerian cuneiforms but in a different way. I believe the Sumerian cuneiforms are somewhere in between symbols and a propper alphabet. The Sumerian cuneiforms are the oldest system that comes closer (but not quite there yet) to writing with an alphabet.
Hebrew is an alphabet. As far as I know, it is THE oldest real alphabet. Of course the letters composing the alphabet have changed – a little or a lot – over time. But I am not aware of an older real alphabet, usable in the same way we use our current days alphabets in each language.
In the Western world, most people refer to Greco-Roman alphabet as being the origin of our culture. This alphabet writing system started with the Greek letters and continued with the Romans adopting almost the same alphabet but changed the order or some sounds of letters in order to adapt to Roman language.
Now I come to the most interesting part :
Hebrew PRECEDED Greek ! Not by a little time, we are talking centuries earlier.
I give you here the first 4 letters of each alphabet, you be the judge of who inspired the other :
Hebrew: Greek
Alef Alpha
Beth Beta
Gimmel Gamma
Daled Delta
As writing is at the basis of our culture, the irony is that our so-called “western culture” is based on the Hebrew and not the Greek as commonly thought. I bet there is not even 1 in a 1000 who knows this.
I am a newbie here, one day i shall submit the question to Bart Ehrman who is a true scholar. I would love to hear his opinion on all this
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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