Pushback and Answers: Objections to a Literal Reading
Every objection a sharp reader will raise, with the answer the sources give.
No story will be unarguable to a professor. What we can do is make sure every objection has an answer that comes from the texts themselves. These are the objections a sharp reader will raise.
They are in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. Jude quotes Enoch by name as prophecy (Jude 14–15), and copies of both were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls next to Genesis.
In this reading that is the point. The older record is closer to the event. Each later culture kept the same history and put its own god in charge.
Some are, and the story admits it. But many are told as plain events with witnesses and dates: Livy's ships, Pliny's shield in a named consul's year, 2 Maccabees' forty days over a whole city.
Many of them did misquote. The catalog lists 14 of those mistakes and uses only what the texts actually say. A character who corrects Sitchin earns the reader's trust.
Floods are common. A warning from a god, a chosen survivor, a boat, animals, a mountain landing and a sacrifice afterward are specific. That package shows up in Babylon, Israel, India and Greece.
They were written from memory of the named public-domain translations. Check each line you use against the edition before the book is final.
Questions people ask about Pushback and Answers
Is the Book of Enoch in the Bible?
It is in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, along with Jubilees, though not in most others. The New Testament letter of Jude quotes Enoch by name as prophecy (Jude 14–15), and copies of both books were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls next to Genesis.
Did the Bible copy the Babylonian stories?
The Babylonian stories are older. This page's answer, within its literal reading, is that the older record is closer to the event and each later culture kept the same history with its own god in charge. That is a reading, not the mainstream scholarly view.
Why do so many cultures have flood myths?
Floods are common, the page grants. But a warning from a god, a chosen survivor, a boat, animals, a mountain landing and a sacrifice afterward are specific, and that whole package shows up in Babylon, Israel, India and Greece.
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