Biblically Compatible Archaeology and Geography

   by   Damien F. Mackey     A friend has e-mailed the following:     “…. A couple of matters related to one of my classes last night:   Reason(s) that we hold that the Flood was literally global.   I was told many years ago that there had never been rain until the Flood and that people were at first delighted and amazed at what they were seeing.   Can you help me with either of these? ….”     My response: A ‘literally global’ Noachic Flood is what I used firmly to believe, as well as the notion that rain was formerly unknown to the antediluvians. But I don’t anymore.   And I feel sorry and embarrassed, now, for those, such as ‘Creationists’ with their ‘Creation Science’, who hold to 1) in particular, “the Flood was literally global” . Why? Because, as I see it, they are reading the Bible in a modern language, say English, with a modern ‘scientific’ - even to a great extent a pseudo-scientific - mentality, instead of i

    by   Damien F. Mackey         “[Rameses III’s] … children turned out to resemble Rameses II’s not only in their names but also in their early deaths”.   N. Grimal         Part One: Some ‘ramifying’ similarities       Should revisionists perhaps have realised, in their efforts to streamline the later Egyptian history, that the troublesome Ramses II ought to be merged with the similarly troublesome Ramses III?   From N. Grimal ( A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994) we can pick up certain amazing similarities between pharaoh Ramses (or Rameses, Ramesses) II, conventionally - but quite wrongly - dated to c. 1200 BC, and Ramses III, conventionally dated to c. 1150 BC.   P. 271:   From the very outset Ramesses III’s role-model was Ramesses II. His successors also modelled themselves on the earlier Ramesses, but it was Ramesses III who went to the greatest lengths, from the choice of his titulature to the construct