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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

An Interesting Literalist Puzzle

Reading Fawn Brodie's No One Knows My History, a biography of Joseph Smith (Knopf 2d ed. 1971). In the Book of Mormon, the Jaredites bring animals to the New World from the Levant. But Brodie adds this interesting observation:

This little detail regarding cargo, flung casually into the story, partly settled the question of how animals had come to America, a problem men had puzzled over for centuries. Some believed that angels had carried them, others that God created two Adams and two Edens. One historian, in speculating on whether or not the animals had been brought in boats, was mystified by the presence of cougars and wolves in the New World. 'If we suppose those first peoples so foolish as to carry such pernicious animals to new countires to hunt them, we cannot still think them to have been so mad as to take also many species of serpents for the pleasure of killing them afterward.' (pp. 71-72)

This would seem to be a particular problem, for a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, especially after the Flood. If Noah landed the ak, with cougars, wolves, and serpents aboard, on Mount Ararat, why are there wolves in the New World? How did they get there?

The options:
(1) Angels (or other miracle);
(2) Boats;
(3) Land bridge (in the last 5000 years on a young earth?).

Where is intelligent design on this, I wonder?

BTW, expect more posts on the Brodie book. Absolutely fascinating.

2 Comments:

At 10:30 PM, Blogger Stephanie said...

Pangea rules.

What about Pangea? Proponents of the one original continent theory have used the genetic heritage of animals on the various continents as support for continental drift.
Since Noah and his menagerie were on Eurasia, the animals on other continents weren't affected.

Did you know that there used to be teeny tiny elephants?

 
At 3:46 PM, Blogger Number Three said...

Steph--

Do you mean that only Eurasia was flooded during the Great Flood, not the other continents? Or can we even mix the continental drift theory with a literal reading of the Scriptures?

 

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