Oral Tradition

Mappa mundi, 1472¹

“There have been laws on the books aimed at curtailing murder for millennia; in fact, the oldest known law code…”²

It is always so frustrating to hear that phrase “the oldest known” whatever!

 When Moses compiled the book of Genesis, he cites the “first” of his sources “the book of the generations of Adam”:


“This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him” (Genesis 5:1).


 

Yes, Moses composed the book of Genesis in ~ 1500 BC, but as an “editor,” or as any historian, he compiled it from records “predating” his composition!

 For example ─ this abbreviated ship log and the “time stamped” detail “never” found in “oral tradition,” i.e., circumstances of specific days ─ and the month and year they occurred:

“In the six hundredth year (שָׁנָה) of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day (יוֹם) of the month (חֹדֶשׁ), the same day (יוֹם) were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11). 

“And the ark rested in the seventh month (חֹדֶשׁ), on the seventeenth day (יוֹם) of the month (חֹדֶשׁ), upon the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4).

 “And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month (חֹדֶשׁ): in the tenth month (חֹדֶשׁ), on the first day (יוֹם) of the month (חֹדֶשׁ), were the tops of the mountains seen” (Genesis 8:5).

"And in the second month (חֹדֶשׁ), on the seven and twentieth day (יוֹם)of the month (חֹדֶשׁ), was the earth dried” (Genesis 8:14).

And there are many other records too frequent to mention. Genesis chapter 10 contains the “Table of Nations” ─ nothing like it in the history of mankind ─ in it Moses documents the “only” extant account of the origin of nations!

Even today, with transgenesis CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing capabilities, man has yet to present a more specific and credible depiction of the origin of the nations than ─ than that displayed in the image above!

The following is but the introductory verse of that the table ─ please click on this link for a more complete multi-generational discourse on the sons of Noah ─ and on this link for the more definitive discussion of the descendants of Shem ─ one being Abraham the father of the Hebrews!

“Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood” (Genesis 10:1).

Now back to the beginning: “There have been laws on the books aimed at curtailing murder for millennia; in fact, the oldest known”² is the following:

“And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Genesis_9:5-6). 

¹By Isidore of Seville - This file has been extracted from another file: Etimologías - Mapa del Mundo Conocido.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=164605

T and O style mappa mundi (map of the known world) from the first printed version of Isidorus' Etymologiae (Kraus 13). The book was written in 623 and first printed in 1472 at Augsburg by one Günther Zainer (Guntherus Ziner), Isidor's sketch thus becoming the oldest printed map of the occident. Note: T-O-maps are typically displayed "East-up", show Jerusalem at the center and the paradise at the outmost East, balanced by the pillars of Hercules at the outmost West.

 ²Greg Jones, The American Spectator, Legislating Human Nature Is a Pipe Dream of the Left, November 14, 2018.

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