Did God really part the Red Sea for Moses?
an essay by Dahn Batchelor
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The King James Version of the Bible states in Exodus 14;


"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided."


There has long been a continuous debate about the account of the crossing of the sea in Exodus 13-15, including the number of people, the route taken, the date, etc. For some, these details, none of which are clear from Scripture, have become the battleground for arguing about the inerrancy of Scripture and, indeed, about the very nature of Scripture itself. Millions of people over the centuries have questioned that aspect of the Bible with a jaundiced eye. They have asked themselves, is it really possible for the deep waters of the Red Sea to be parted to the point where the floor of the bottom of the sea suddenly becomes dry?


Looking at that event scientifically, one can easily arrive at the conclusion that it flies in the face of nature. We live in a time when people simply don't believe the Red Sea crossing really happened. Some people want to continue preserving a very narrow literal reading of the Exodus narrative. For example, many adamantly argue that the point of exit from the land while escaping from the pharaoh’s soldiers was across the Red Sea "as the Bible clearly says. (at least in some translations). This would mean that the Hebrews journeyed far to the south before turning across the Red Sea into the Sinai Peninsula. Some like to point out the great width of the sea as a further proof of the miraculous nature of the escape, since the Red Sea averages about 150 miles in width.


If Moses and his people chose to cross the Red Sea, they would have been faced with incredible obstacles. For one thing, the crossing would have taken days. The sea at its widest is over 190 miles (300 km) and averages 150 miles. The sea floor has a maximum depth of 8,200 feet (2,500 m) in the central median trench and an average depth of 1,640 feet (500 m).


Let’s presume that Moses and his people (600,000 men and over a million and a half women and children) really did walk across the floor of the Red Sea in the dark of night. Walking at 5 miles an hour, it would take a minimum of 30 hours for any one of them to go from shore to shore. And if they did cross the Red Sea by walking along the floor of the sea, they would first have to climb down at least 1,600 feet to get to the bottom and then climb up on the other side another 1,600 feet to get to the shore on the other side. This could mean it could take as much as 38 hours and I feel confident that if you consider mothers carrying babies and old people struggling and tiring all the way, it could take as much as 48 hours for all of them, young and old to cross the sea and that is if they walked and never stopped for a rest or for meals. I don’t think that is what happened for obvious reasons. This is far too much a distance for a large group of people of all ages to traverse in a single night.


Even if God did part the Red Sea, there is nothing in the Bible that says that he gave Moses and his people such strength that they could walk non-stop for four days and nights to make the crossing.


There is no mention of a narrow pathway through the sea as it is often pictured in religious art and movies. This agrees with the simple logistics of the crossing: for a couple of million people to file through single file or even in several lines would have taken days if not a week. Only if the gap was at least 5 km (3 miles) wide and less than 20 km (12 miles) in length from shore to shore could they have crossed in a single night.


There has been much controversy through the years over which Red Sea is being referred to in the Exodus account. The "Red Sea" is used to refer to all sections of that sea --- the main body, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba. If you will get a large map of that part of the world, you will note that the Red Sea is quite large --- beginning at Ethiopia on the southwest and Yemen on the southeast. It separates northern Africa from Arabia. At its northern end, it splits into two arms from west to east; the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba, which is same Red Sea that existed in Moses’ time.


It’s obvious that he didn’t cross the lower portion of the Red Sea notwithstanding the fact that the Bible states that he moved southward. Traditionally it is believed that the Red Sea crossing took place somewhere in the area of the Gulf of Aqaba which is several hundred kilometers east of the Gulf of Suez.


One view is that the route that Moses took seems to have begun in Goshin which is hundreds of miles northeast of Cairo and just at the edge of the Nile delta and from there, he headed southeast along the western shore of Bitter Lake and then crossed a river that connects Bitter Lake with the Gulf of Suez. From there he passed through the city of Soccoth (which is midway between the Bitter Lake and the Gulf of Suez) and then headed eastward through the wilderness of Sinai and when he was a hundred or so miles from the eastern edge of Sinai, he headed south to a small city called, Pi hahiroth. It is here that Moses allegedly crossed the open water of the Gulf of Aqaba to get to Baal-zephon. Their belief is based on scripture, specifically verse 2 of chapter 14 in Exodus which says;


"Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-ha-hi'roth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Ba'al-ze'phon; you shall encamp over against it, by the sea.”


The migdol in that location was not a place name, but an elevated land mass between two river beds, rising to about 300 metres.(984 feet)


The Gulf of Aqaba is 12 to 17 miles (19 to 27 km) in width and is 100 miles (160 km) in length. It stretches from the Straits of Tiran to a point where the border of Israel meets the borders of Egypt and Jordan.


If the crossing took place here (and many people believe that it did) it is inconceivable that Moses and his two million people could have crossed that part of the Gulf in one night providing of course that we are willing to accept the premise that God really parted that body of water for Moses.


The site of Pi-hahiroth, where God alegedly led the people constituted a strategic trap for the fleeing Israelites. On either side were mountains and desert. Before them was the Gulf of Aqaba. As God intended, within a day or two, this predicament invited pursuit by Pharaoh and his company of chariots. In such an hour of extremity, Moses exhorted the fearful people, "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." Thus God intervened to provide for the crossing of the Red Sea.


Since most biblical scholars believe that Moses marched his people down the east side of the Sinai Peninsula and then up the west side of the peninsula over a period of twenty years, he had no reason to part the Gulf of Aqaba since that would have been too far and too long a period of time for the pharaoh’s soldiers to follow Moses. That would seem to rule out him and his people crossing the Gulf of Aqaba.


The biblical account never refers to the Red Sea by name. Instead in the Hebrew text the reference is to the yam suph. The word yam in Hebrew is the ordinary word for "sea," although in Hebrew it is used for any large body of water whether fresh or salt. The word ‘suph’ is the word for ‘reeds’ or ‘rushes’, the word is used in Ex. 2:3, 5 to describe where Moses' basket was placed in the Nile. So, the biblical reference throughout the Old Testament is the ‘sea of reeds’. Many scholars feel that since the original text implies this was a "Reed Sea" (later misconstrued to mean ‘Red Sea’) the body of water actually was not the gulf of Aqaba but a northern inland lake that is now extinct.


Whatever body of water Moses and his people crossed, it is self-evident that it was no insignificant body of water, for the entire army of Egypt was destroyed by the returning waves. Scripture points out that before long, the bodies of dead Egyptians littered the shore and Josephus (a Jew who was a Roman citizen who wrote about his times in the time of Jesus) reports that the Israelites armed themselves with weapons that were salvaged on this occasion.


What body of water did Moses and his people cross to escape the soldiers close behind then? More importantly, where is the ‘Sea of Reeds’? In the first place there are no reeds in the Red Sea so it has to be somewhere else and obviously, it cannot be in the Sinai Peninsula.


‘Yam suph’ would be more correctly translated “sea of seaweed,” and could refer to any body of water – freshwater or saltwater – in which aquatic weeds flourish. It is conceivable that the ‘Sea of Reeds’, had been saltwater swamps around El Balah, the now extinct lake. If that is where Moses and his people crossed, then there is some truth to this story. However, one must consider certain factors. First, a lake in the Middle East has since time immemorial, been referred to as a sea. Take for example, the ‘Sea of Galilee’ is really a lake. The reason is obvious. It is a freshwater body of water. It is also called Lake Tiberius, named after a Roman emperor.


Second, if a strong wind were to blow from the east, it would push the water westward and that being so, the crossing would have to be from north to the south or visa versa. This rules out a crossing from west to east.


It is possible that the volcanic eruption on the Greek archipelago of Santorini triggered a chain of natural catastrophes recorded in the Bible as the 10 plagues that God visited upon Egypt as punishment for enslaving the Jews. The story of the parting of the Red Sea may have been told as a result of a tsunami coming from the Mediterranean Sea that destroyed the pharaoh’s army as it pursued the escaping Jews. The episode occurred not at the Red Sea but at the smaller Sea of Reeds, the marshy area at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez. An underwater earthquake may have also released poisonous gases that turned the waters red.


More than a dozen archeological relics suggest that the exodus took place three centuries earlier than biblical scholars estimate. By reinterpreting artwork at museums in Luxor, Cairo, Athens and elsewhere, archaeologists believe that the exodus might have occurred around 1500 BC. That was about the time when some geologists believe the Santorini volcano, 400 miles north of Egypt, erupted in the eastern Mediterranean. Scientists and historians have long speculated that the 10 “plagues” suffered by Egypt might have been linked in a “domino theory” of natural causes such as the Santorini volcanic explosion and subsequent undersea earthquake.


A series of earthquakes may have “destabilised the entire Nile Delta system and resulted in part of the delta sliding off the African continental shelf”. This would have raised the level of land around the Sea of Reeds. Water would have cascaded from higher ground to lower ground . . . creating dry land on which the Israelites could cross. This event would also have caused an enormous ‘backsplash’ of water, a veritable tsunami. If the waves went a mere seven miles inland, they would have engulfed the Egyptian army.


If this version is true, then this would explain how Moses and his people were able to cross over ther marshy lake and how the Egyptians perished later in the same lake when the water returned to that area.


Anyone who ever saw Cecil De Mill’s movie about Moses would have seen a narrow pathway at the bottom of the sea with a wall of water on either side of them that reached at least as high as a ten-story building. Of course it really didn’t happen like that. Notwithstanding that, it still was a great movie. But then so was Star Wars.


It is doubtful that a purely natural wind could produce a “wall” of water that high. If a strictly natural wind blew from the east, the water most likely would have been walled up in a north/south direction, which would have prevented the Israelites’ crossing. Further, if a natural wind came from the east, and continued its force, sustaining the north and south walls of water (which later returned and drowned the Egyptian army), how could the Israelites possibly have crossed the area in the face of such fierce winds velocity?


Ask yourself this question. Did God really cause the volcanic eruption at Santorini thereby causing a series of earthquakes that destabilized the Nile Delta and killed so many of the people there so that the Jews could escape the pharaoh’s soldiers? It would make God’s role highly suspect considering the fact that the scriptures say that he is a merciful God.


Although this was a fantastic event, it's not the only time this has ever happened. Another event (the blowing of a fierce wind) is mentioned in a story dating all the way back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom period, in which the water of a lake piled up on one side, laying the lake bed bare, before it came back again. There are also modern reports of the wind blowing back the water of these desert lakes. But as I said earlier, if the wind was so strong that it could empty a lake at one end of it, it would be too strong for anyone to walk through. If any of my readers have ever been in a hurricane and tried walking in it, my point will be accepted as obvious.


Water levels in recent years are not necessarily an accurate indication of levels in the past, since the water found in lakes in arid regions can vary dramatically from year to year and from season to season. But it wasn't just the depth of the water that killed the pharoah’s soldiers----surely some of them knew how to swim; it was the force of the sediment-laden flood waters as they rushed back into the lake bed, creating deadly undertows and whirlpools as they washed together, just as in much more recent floods around the world that have destroyed homes and lives.
A Russian scientist announced that one of the Old Testament's most monumental events — Moses' parting of the Red Sea — was due to stormy weather and a shallow reef rather than divine intervention. He publicly said, "I am convinced that God rules the Earth through the laws of physics."


The senior researcher at St. Petersburg's Institute of Oceanology spent six months studying the tides, winds and reefs common to the Red Sea, then developed a series of differential equations to chart out the parting of the waters, as detailed in Exodus 14. The researcher determined that if a strong wind blew at 30 meters per second over a shallow reef, then yes, it could have blown that reef dry. He also calculated it would have taken the fleeing Jews about four hours to make their crossing. Of course, explaining away the miracles and mysteries of the Bible is a perennial favorite among scientific researchers, who find a ready audience for such things.


When you discuss the credibility of the Bible, you have to be careful not to try to explain something that is presented in the Bible as a miracle. A miracle is, by definition, something that you cannot explain naturally.


It is this writer’s opinion that it is highly unlikely that anyone in this century will ever really be able to explain satisfactorily as to whether of not Moses was able to cross a large body of water with assistance from God.


It certainly is convievable however that he did cross a large body of water such as a lake at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez and if he did, it was the direct result of some natural event that by co-incidence, occured just at the time when Moses and his people were fleeing the pharoah’s soldiers.


No matter how Moses and his people crossed a body of water, it wasn’t the Red Sea and I strongly doubt that Moses was told by God (if there really is a God) to raise his staff and the sea would be parted right then and there.

Will a Sexual Predator’s Risk Initiative program help?
By Dahn Batchelor


At first blush, the words, Sex-Offender Registry gives us a feeling of security and well-being until we look into its purpose with a jaundice eye. Its purpose is to see to that convicted sex offenders are registered with the police so that wherever the sex offenders reside, the police will always know. That being as it is, it will be easy for the police to track down convicted sexual predators if they are suspected of re-offending.


In Ontario, it is called, Christopher’s Law which was named after 10-year-old Christopher Stephenson who was raped and murdered in 1988 by a sex-offender who was on statutory release from prison at the time.


On December 11, 2002, Federal Solicitor General Wayne Easter and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Martin Cauchon introduced similar legislation to implement a national sex offender registration system.


The backbone of the sex offender registration system will be a special new Sex Offender Database on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system. The sex offender database will allow police to conduct a search according to a full or partial address and the offence of a sex offender or both. Offence information and registration information will be included, as well as other pertinent identification information such as tattoos, other distinguishing marks and DNA information.


Under the proposed legislation, convicted sex offenders will have to register within 15 days of being released from incarceration. Re-registration would be required annually and within 15 days of a change of residence. Offenders will be required to provide local police with current information such as addresses and telephone numbers, names and alias(es) and identifying marks and tattoos. Penalties will be provided for failing to comply with a registration order or for not giving truthful information.


In the United States, a similar law to the two aforementioned ones is referred to as Meagan’s Law. It was the brutal 1994 rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey that prompted the public demand for broad based community notification. It is applied in all 50 states.


Some of the states have the particulars of the registrees on the internet. For example, in Delaware, the Sex Offender Central Registry shows the picture of the offender, his or her date of birth, the offender’s current address and a description of the particular sex law that was broken. Publication of offender’s names and addresses and particulars of their offences on the Internet in the United States has resulted in some disastrous results such as some of them being victims of vigilantes who have committed arson and murder to re-punish the offenders.


There are unfortunately, failings in sexual offender registration systems that don’t make public the whereabouts of sex offenders that have been released from prison. There is nothing in these systems that make it possible for potential victims or their families to be warned in advance that a sexual predator is amongst them. Admittedly, some police forces in Canada have publicly announced the whereabouts of released violent sex-offenders but for the most part, this has been counter productive. The public reaction has been so negative, most of the released sex-offenders exposed thusly have been forced to move time and time again, which makes it more difficult for them to re-enter the community, that which is conducive to rehabilitation. Generally, only the police know where they are. What the police don’t know is what the ex-offenders are up to after his or her release from prison.


An example of this failing in these kinds of systems occurred recently and it hit right in my own home. A close friend of mine, a 55-year-old man whom I had known for twenty years, was a regular visitor to our home and recently, I observed that he was becoming all too familiar with my five and a half-year-old granddaughter. I spoke to my daughter and asked her to speak to her daughter to see if anything was being done to her by my friend that she considered was improper. Both my daughter and I studied criminal law, deviant behaviour and abnormal psychology at the University of Toronto and generally we can spot conduct like this. She spoke to her daughter and concluded that nothing was amiss. It could be because at that time, nothing was amiss.


A month later however, my friend sexually assaulted my granddaughter and left his semen behind. Within a day, he was arrested and charged and at the time of this writing, he is still in custody awaiting trial. The police investigators told my daughter that this particular man was a bad one and his lawyer told me that his client is very sick and needs treatment.


I asked a close friend of mine who is a police officer in the city this man resided in for some background on his criminal record. My friend apologized and said that he couldn’t give me that information because it was against police policy. When I spoke to the investigating officer in Mississauga where the alleged crime took place, she too said that she couldn’t give me that information. It’s ironic when you think of it. Both I and my daughter can only learn of this man’s criminal record if he is convicted and it is brought out during his sentencing.


I asked the investigating officer if she would have given me the information before the alleged offence took place if I was suspicious that he might be a sex offender molesting my granddaughter. She said that she still couldn’t give me that information even under those circumstances.


Before I go on any further, let me add that if the man was a mere acquaintance of mine, I wouldn’t have let him be that familiar with my granddaughter. But the man had been a close friend for twenty years and I knew his wife had left him, his children were grown up and he was lonely. And of course, I didn’t want to believe that he might be a sexual predator. I was probably too close to my friend to see his behaviour for what it was.


After asking my daughter to speak to her daughter and later being apprised by her that I didn’t have to worry, I let it go at that other than to speak to him and ask him not to be too familiar with her. As it turned out, other than some brief pain, my granddaughter was not savagely ravaged. She is her normal self again, even laughing at her own jokes. As time moves on, the experience will probably disappear in her mind.


But had she suffered terribly and been seriously injured as a result of this man’s alleged sexual assault on her, and it was because the police in the community in which we live had previously refused to give me information about this man’s criminal past as a relates to his previous sexual crimes, my daughter may very well have sued the police for their failure to look into the matter and warn us of the existence of this sexual predator in our midst.


In the famous Jane Doe case in Toronto in which she was victimized by a serial rapist because the police refused to warn the public of his presence in their midst, the court said in part, “In spite of the knowledge that (the) police had about this sexual rapist and their decision not to warn, they took no steps to protect Ms. Doe or any other women from this known danger. In my view, in the circumstances of this case, the police failed utterly in the duty of care they owed Ms. Doe.”


I think that same principle applies in cases where a potential victim or the family of such a potential victim makes enquiries to the police about someone whom they suspect may be a sexual predator for example, who is visiting their home on an ongoing basis and appears to be acting in an improper manner towards a child.


On October 5, 1999, Citizenship, Culture and Recreation Minister Helen Johns launched the $1.2 million Ontario Screening Initiative (OSI) to safeguard community groups, a program to protect children in sports from sexual abuse or the elderly being subjected to some form of abuse. She said, "We all want our loved ones to be safe in community programs -- whether it's a child playing soccer or an elderly parent receiving home care." The program is funded by the Ontario Government and operated by various community groups such as sports organizations, summer camps and church groups etc. The OSI promotes the adoption of safety practices for community groups to use to screen people in positions of trust, such as reference checks, job orientation, training, supervision and monitoring.


Perhaps a similar program could be implemented in Ontario and perhaps even across the country in which a group of volunteers in each community, comprising of retired police officers experienced in sexual abuse crimes and retired social workers who have the same kind of experience, could send a member of their group to interview a potential victim and his or her family and if the volunteer concludes that there may very well be a risk to the child, the volunteer ( who has been approved by the police ) can obtain from the police, information as to whether or not the person being enquired about has a criminal record for sexual crimes. That information obtained could then be passed onto the victim or his or her family via the volunteer. The program could be called the Sexual Predator’s Risk Initiative. ( SPRI )


Section 63.7 of the Criminal Records Act permits the police to disclose to authorized persons who are recognized by the police as being responsible for the wellbeing of children with respect to them evaluating volunteers who wish to work with children, information on any potential volunteer that may disclose a criminal record as a sex offender so it follows that an amendment to that Act could be created so that it would apply to members of SPRI. The disclosure to the child’s parents doesn’t have to be specific but it could disclose the fact that the person being enquired is a person that shouldn’t be near children.


Those in need of its services could be single mothers whose boyfriends have shown an unusual interest in their children, parents whose children appear to spend a lot of time in single adult’s homes, parents who feel that their children’s friends of the same sex are far too old for their children to be playing with, parents who have suspicions about the conduct of their babysitters or wives who have suspicions about their husbands molesting their children or visa versa.


The reasons for any parent being suspicious could be that the adult or older child is spending too much time roughhousing with the younger child or is constantly inviting the younger child to sit on his lap, is constantly telling jokes or stories of a sexual nature, is always wanting to be the one to bathe the child in the bathtub, or the child is afraid to be near a particular adult, or an adult is constantly giving money or gifts to the child or permitting the child to drink alcohol in the presence of the adult or wants to take the child on overnight camping trips all the time during the warm months of the year.


If professionals like my daughter and I can be fooled as we were, what about those persons who are untrained in recognizing sexual deviance in others. Unless something like SPRI is brought about, victims such as my granddaughter and her mother and thousands more like them will only learn of the sexual predator’s intentions after the sexual attacks have been committed on them or their loved ones and only learn during the sentencing aspect of the predator’s trials, when it is too late, about the sexual predators’ previous sex crimes.

Don't shoot flies with shotguns
( A paper on spousal abuse )
By Dahn Batchelor _____________________________________________________

From 1983 to 1986, federal and provincial Attorneys General and Solicitors General adopted policy directives that required police and Crown prosecutors to charge and prosecute all incidents of spousal abuse where there were reasonable and probable grounds to believe that an offence had been committed. These measures included the establishment of dedicated domestic violence courts. This is a big step forward from the days when the police were instructed to ignore the plight of wives who were beaten by their husbands unless the police actually saw the assault or the wife’s injuries were so serious, they required stitches.

In 1983, the Federal Provincial Task Force on Justice for Victims of Crime recommended the development of written guidelines directing that wife assault be treated as a criminal offence and the decision to charge or prosecute this offence should be made independently of the victim’ s wishes.
For the most part, these policy directives and written guidelines are appropriate because spousal abuse is an ongoing evil that must be eradicated if couples and their families are to have a decent and happy life together.

But you don’t shoot flies with shotguns as a means of getting as many as you can with one pull of the trigger. Unfortunately, these policy directives and written guidelines have resulted in the police and the prosecutors firing in all directions and in some instances, hitting the wrong people. The end results can have terrible consequences on families undergoing these processes.

To prove this point, this writer refers you to the case of Regina v. N.N of Brampton, Ontario who was arrested, charged and tried with the crime of assault, to wit; assaulting his wife in April 2003.

To appreciate the significance of this issue this writer is attempting to point out, the reader has to know what occurred on that particular night. The particulars became known to this writer after he interviewed the parties and attended the trial of N.N as his court agent.

N.N and his wife ( they have been married for twenty years and have two children ) got into a loud and angry argument about whether or not their daughter could go to a dance out of town with her friends. N.N finally went into the bathroom to avoid any further confrontation with his wife.
His wife attempted to push the bathroom door open so that she could continue with the argument and he attempted to keep it closed and in doing so, his hand slipped off the edge of the door and struck her face, which according to her statement to the police at the time of her husband’s arrest, seemed to her like it was a slap. Later in court, she testified that she realized that it wasn’t a slap and that when his hand slipped off the edge of the door and struck her, it was merely an accident.

In any case, she went to the phone and dialed 911. Before anyone answered the phone, she hung up. She testified that while she was waiting for the police to come onto the line, she wondered why she was calling 911 in the first place. But as everyone knows, the police will immediately call back and for good reason. The victim may have been forced to hang up the phone.

The 911 operator told the wife that the police were on their way. She then asked if everything was OK. The wife said that everything was OK and that she didn’t need any assistance. The 911 operator continued to ask questions and finally the wife said that her husband had slapped her on the face but that she wasn’t hurt.

This, in this writer’s opinion is the correct procedure. The 911 operator can assume that when someone calls 911 in the first place, it is quite conceivable that there is a problem and the caller saying that everything is OK without investigating to make sure that everything is OK, could have consequences that can result in a loss of life or serious injuries.

The police arrived and N.N’s wife told them that everything was OK. She said that she and her husband had been arguing and that he slapped her once in the face. That’s was all that the police needed to make the arrest. Despite the pleas of the wife, the police handcuffed her husband and put him in the police cruiser after patting him down for weapons.

On the way to the police station, he complained that the cuffs were too tight around his wrists and asked that they be loosened. His plight was ignored. To this day, he has scars on his wrists from the cuffs being too tight.

When he arrived in the police station, he was ordered to strip naked while a nearby video camera was filming the search. The close circuit television receiver was behind the front desk where anyone, including female police officers could see N.N slowly rotating while naked. N.N is a Moslem and being stripped naked in front of anyone other than his wife is an insult to his way of life as it is to all Moslems.


He was then taken to a common cell, which was quite cold, and since he didn’t wear any warm clothes and didn’t have his shoes on, he lie on the cold floor. When he asked if he could have a blanket to lie on, he was reminded by a police officer that he wasn’t in a hotel.

Three times he made a request to make a phone call so he could retain a lawyer and three times his request was refused. At no time did anyone in the police station offer to connect him to duty counsel. Later at his trial, the court observed that his charter rights with respect to his right to contact his lawyer had been violated but since he hadn’t said anything to the police that could incriminate him, his application for a stay of proceedings was denied.

The next morning, he was brought before a justice of the peace and the condition of his bail was that he was to have no contact with his wife until after his trial.

Shortly thereafter, his wife had written a letter to the judge which invariable ended up in the hands of the Crown’s office in which she stated that her husband was not a violent man and that she didn’t want the police to come in the first place and that she wanted her husband to be returned home to her and their family. She added that she only called 911 because during their verbal confrontation, she thought the matter might get out of hand.

Later when N.N’s court agent attempted to get the Crown to consider a peace bond, there was a negative response from the Crown because N.N was not willing to admit that he purposely struck his wife in the face.

The trial was scheduled for December 22nd 2003 but the morning and early afternoon was spent dealing with N.N’s Application for a stay of proceedings. Then the assistant crown attorney asked for an adjournment before the afternoon really got underway.

A request was made by N.N’s court agent that his client be permitted to return to his family for Christmas. His req uest was denied after the Crown argued against the request.

The matter was adjourned to January 20th 2004 but because the crown had neglected to bring N.N’s wife back into the courtroom on December 22nd to bind her over to January 20th, she didn’t appear and the matter was adjourned again to February 4th 2004.

When N.N’s wife was called to the stand, before the Assistant crown began to examine her, she said that she wanted to make a statement to the court. The judge permitted this.


She complained that this matter had gone on far too long. She said she never wanted the police to come in the first place. She pointed out that for almost ten months, she and her husband had been separated from one another and couldn’t even communicate with each other on the phone. She said that it was hurting her family that her husband couldn’t return home.

It was when she finished with her statement that the judge asked the assistant crown as to why the crown couldn’t considered a peace bond. The response was that if a peace bond is to be considered, it should be after her testimony was heard. The judge agreed.

During her testimony, N.N’s wife said that she was satisfied in her own mind that she wasn’t slapped by her husband and that his hand struck her in her face purely by accident when it slipped off the edge of the door. The crown suggested that she was making that up and that her original complaint was the truth---that her husband had really slapped her in the face. He asked the court to consider her as a hostile witness and the judge conceded to his request.

It was at this point that the judge made an interesting observation. He said that it was most unfortunate that wives under circumstances such as in this case should find themselves being compelled to falsely testify under oath in order to protect their families from enduring more hardship caused by their husbands being separated from their homes.

The assistant crown spent the better part of an hour trying to get the wife to recant her statement that the slap was an accident and that her original written statement to the police that her husband really slapped her in the face was the truth but she kept maintaining that she was at fault and that the slap was an accident. She said that it was she who had instigated the problem in the first place, that her husband went into the bathroom so that the arguing would stop and that it was she who tried to force the bathroom door open so that she could continue arguing with him and as a result, his hand slipped off the door and struck her in the face and that it was nothing more than an accident. Incidentally, the police wrote in their notebooks that there was no visible mark on her face when they arrived on the scene.

No questions were asked by the defence and the accused was not put on the stand. The judge asked the crown to begin its argument.

It became apparent to anyone in the courtroom following this case that the crown’s case was weak to begin with and the fact that the crown even suggested that when the accused tried to push the bathroom door closed, that that too constituted as assault, the weakness of his case was even more apparent.

The hopelessness of the crown’s case then became obvious when it was then the turn of the defence to address the court and the judge told him it wasn’t necessary.

The judge said that he didn’t believe everything that N.N’s wife had said but that he added that he wasn’t totally convinced that her husband deliberately slapped his wife and he further added that when N.N was pushing the door against his wife’s body to keep her out of the bathroom, that didn’t constitute an assault at all. The charge was dismissed.

As a cruel irony, the defence had repeatedly asked the Crown to consider a peace bond as a means of resolving this matter and was repeatedly rebuffed, month after month by the crown, but after N.N was acquitted, the crown then asked the judge to order a peace bond. The judge asked N.N’s wife if she wanted a peace bond against her husband, She told the judge that it wasn’t necessary. The judge then refused the crown’s request.

Now one is forced to ask this rhetorical question. “What benefits did society gain from all of this?” The answer is obvious. Nothing. As a result of this terrible incident in the lives of this family, the family was almost destroyed. They underwent financial hardship because the husband had to pay over four thousand dollars for his defence and he had to pay additional money for living quarters for himself over and beyond what he had to pay in mortgage payments towards his family’s home. Further, he and his wife suffered loneliness and anxiety as a result of their almost ten months of separation.

Should there have been a better way to deal with this so-called case of spousal assault? Absolutely. But how?

To begin with, we have to accept the reality that all families experience some form of conflict. For the most part, it is verbal but unfortunately, in many thousands of instances, it can become violent.

But there are degrees of violence and even then, there is some doubt that violence at the extreme lower end of the spectrum is really assaultive in nature. For example, if both a man and his wife get into a minor shoving match, is that to be construed as an assault, especially when neither partner is hurt in any manner whatsoever? Can exerting any form of pressure against another human being’s body be construed as an assault” Technically yes but should such a person being charged with assault? If a man points his finger in the direction of his wife’s face, is that to be construed as an assault? Technically yes but should he be charged with assaulting his wife? Hardly.

There is a Latin legal term which best describes this kind of physical activity. It is, ‘de minimis non curat lex’. Simply put, it means, ‘The law does not bother itself about trifles.’ But in N.N’s case, the law bothered itself for ten long months. It interjected itself into this family’s existence and in the process, almost destroyed it. There is an adage that says that absence makes the heart grow fonder but there is another truism that says that absence makes the heart forget. If it wasn’t for the love that both N.N and his wife had for each other, this separation could have resulted in a divorce.

Admittedly, there are times when society has an interest in the goings on of families and in N.N’s case, this may apply. Obviously, what occurred on that night in April 2003 between N.N and his wife shouldn’t have happened. Both children were crying during the confrontation between their parents and this isn’t conducive to raising children in a happy environment.

It is this writer’s belief that an alternate way to resolve this problem would be first, after the police had been called, they would take a very close look at the situation before deciding to arrest the husband. If they were satisfied that the wife was in no danger and that she didn’t want her husband arrested or charged, they would back off and follow it up with a female community officer who would interview the wife separately to satisfy herself that everything really is OK.

Second, if the police have reason to believe that if the husband remains in the home at that time, the problem may continue after they have left, then they should arrest him and as a condition of his release on his own recognizance, he should find a temporary place to live until a resolution can be brought about as soon as possible. A temporary restraining order can be in place so that there is no contact between the spouses.

Having the husband undergo an interview with a psychologist experienced in spousal abuse cases and the wife being interviewed by a victim services person also experienced in spousal abuse cases who can ascertain in her own mind whether or not, the wife isn’t in a state of denial, can bring about a satisfactory resolution for both the husband and the wife.

If, as a result of the interviews, the professionals determine that neither spouse is at risk, then the matter can be stayed by the crown and a peace bond can be ordered if that is the wish of the complaining spouse.

Tarek Haddad, a probation officer in the Brampton courthouse included in his paper on ‘Family Mediation in the Presence of Spousal Violence’ that there are some who will argue that mediation involving spousal assault is inappropriate because the process would serve to legitimize violence rather than sanction the perpetrator and that mediation isn’t enough to ensure the safety of the abused spouse.
In this writer’s opinion, there is some truth in such a view however, it would hardly apply in cases were the assault is of such a minor nature that no injuries are sustained and it is a one-time incident as it was in N.N’s case.

He does point out that proponents of therapeutic family mediation insist that all parties have legal representation while engaged in the mediation process. This ensures that both parties receive a fair and just settlement of their problem that led to the confrontation in the first place.

Erickson and McKnight in their book, ‘Mediating Spousal Divorces’ (1990) said in part;

“We believe that mediation sessions with both spouses present can reduce the likelihood of future abuse. We believe that because a mediation process encourages cooperative interaction, it should be used as an additional method of treatment modality to end spousal abuse after divorces.” unquote.

It is this writer’s opinion that mediation sessions with both spouses present can be used as a form of an alternative dispute resolution. This will free the courts from the time-consuming process of trying cases that shouldn’t be in the criminal courts to begin with and thusly freeing up the courts so that other criminal cases aren’t held up as long as they are.

Most importantly, it will make it possible for spouses to reunite again as soon as possible so that the family can begin living a normal life together.

To keep a husband away from his family for ten or more months when all the time he is innocent of any criminal wrongdoing is a mockery of justice. To call that form of interference in the lives of families as being justice, then justice had better apply for a name change.

-30-

Dahn Batchelor practices law as a court agent and as a criminologist, he has addressed the United Nations 19 times on matters of criminal justice and crime prevention.

3217 Monica Drive
Mississauga, Ontario L4T 3E6
905-677-0397

Should mentally handicapped students be given high school diplomas?

By Dahn Batchelor

A group of parents in Ontario have voiced their concerns that the Ontario government is demanding that their children, some of who are mentally handicapped, should be permitted to be given a high school diploma even though they are unable to pass a literacy test. They state that they don’t want their children ending up serving burgers for the rest of their lives.

Do these parents have any idea of what they are asking the citizens of Ontario to accept? They want our schools to graduate their unfortunate offspring who can’t even read properly, to enter the work force with a high school diploma.

Will that diploma get them into university or even college? Not likely. Will it get them a job as a bookkeeper? No, it won’t. Will it get them a job as a transport driver? Hardly. How about a job as a cab driver. Forget it. Perhaps a job as a teller in a bank.

If they get a job serving hamburgers or are given work as common labourers, then they are indeed fortunate. Many handicapped people do excellent work in these kinds of occupations and it is because employers recognize their abilities to do certain jobs that don’t require a high school education. We see them all the time and we should see more of them doing this kind of work because they are entitled to earn a living so that they can be self-supporting.

But to give them a high school diploma when they can’t read properly or do basic math, is an insult to all the students who fortunately have all of their faculties and study hard to pass their exams. It will make a mockery of our school system, which boasts that it is one of the best in the world.

Imagine if you will what would happen if your child is retarded and he applies for a job in another country and in his application he states that he graduated with a high school diploma and his or her potential employer asks if it is true that Ontario high schools graduate mentally retarded children whose reading skills don’t even surpass those of students in grade three. How embarrassing that will be to your child who wants them to think that he was smart enough to graduate from high school. Will he truly understand what was written in the letter or will you have to explain it to him?

The parents of the mentally handicapped children now wish to have the matter taken to court. Should the court be ruling on matters in which the
applicants are asking that a special exception be made for their children?

A similar dilemma happened in Florida where the court and the Florida legislature were fighting over who had the final say in whether or not a comatose woman should be permitted to live or be starved to death. The court says it was their right to make the decision and the legislators say it was their right.

My personal view is that we elect who is to run our schools in Ontario and we should leave these issues up to them. For the court to interfere, there would have to be a terrible injustice heaped upon the children before they can interfere with school policy.

I think the real injustice would be to give mentally retarded children high school diplomas that would never be recognized in the business world. These children would then believe that they are being cheated out of jobs despite the fact that they have high school diplomas. They have to realize in their own minds that in this highly competitive world, jobs are hard enough to find even for university graduates and that in the real world, they must accept the realization that they are destined to have to accept lower paying jobs that will not really lead to advancement. That is unfortunate, of that there can be no doubt but alas, it’s life. To be more direct to the point, it sucks but unless by a miracle, these unfortunate kids suddenly become bright kids who qualify for high school diplomas, this is how their lives are going to be. The parents who are not mentally handicapped should have enough common sense to realize this and accept it.

If parents can’t brag that their mentally handicapped children have high school diplomas, at least they can brag that their kids are working and are self-supporting and for a mentally handicapped person, that in itself is quite an accomplishment that both they and their parents can be proud of.


____________________________________________________________________
Dahn Batchelor spent a year working with mentally retarded
children in a residential school for mentally retarded children
in Toronto in the early 1960s as a senior supervisor.

Noah's Flood: Did It Really Happen?

An essay by Dahn Batchelor

According to the Bible, Noah’s Flood was both universal and catastrophic, resulting in the wholesale destruction of both human and animal life on the earth. But is it possible that it really happened?


“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.”


Many Christians take this account of the flood as described in Genesis as the gospel truth. Others, however, wonder if the story of Noah isn't rooted in some more local and less globally catastrophic event --- one memorable enough, however, to spawn a series of flood legends. Besides the Biblical story of the flood, other civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean area also had significant flood legends, including the Greeks (who has Zeus creating a flood to punish the wicked), and the Sumerians and Babylonians, whose flood legends also include a righteous family, and an ark filled with creatures (the Sumerian version even had the ark's owner, a fellow named Utnapishtim, who released birds to find land.


The Epic of Gilgamesh is, perhaps, the oldest surviving written story on Earth. It comes to us from Ancient Sumeria, and was originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE-meaning ‘before the common era’ as an alternative to ‘Before Christ’).


This story took place several thousand years after Noah appeared on earth. One of the stories included in the epic relates to the deluge. The essential story revolves around the relationship between Gilgamesh, a king who has become distracted and disheartened by his rule, and a friend, Enkidu, who is half-wild and who undertakes dangerous quests with Gilgamesh. Much of the epic focuses on Gilgamesh's feelings of loss following Enkidu's death however the eleventh (XI) tablet contains the flood myth that was mostly copied from the Epic of Atrahasis. Some aspects of the epic also seem to be similar to the story of Noah's ark in the Bible, and also parallel flood stories in many other cultures around the world, although it is a complicated matter to say what is the original inspiration for any of these, on which modern commentators have always been divided. The epic doesn’t go into much detail as to the depth of the deluge but it is suffice to say that when the rivers in that area overflow, it is conceivable that the writer of the epic thought of the flooding of the plains as a deluge.


In 1999, two Columbia University researchers named William Ryan and Walter Pitman put out a book called Noah's Flood, which offered a tantalizing suggestion. According to them, the flood in question happened near the Black Sea around 7,000 years ago. At this time, their theory goes, glaciers left on the European continent from the last ice age melted, sending their runoff into the Mediterranean Sea. As the Mediterranean Sea swelled, it breached the land at the Bosporus Strait, near where Istanbul stands. This breach released a flood of water into a freshwater lake that sat where the Black Sea is today. This freshwater lake was quickly inundated with salty Mediterranean water (at the rate of six inches per day) and grew to the present size of the Black Sea within a couple of years --- bad news for the humans whose homes and villages were situated on the shores of the former freshwater lake, and certainly memorable enough to be the basis for many a flood story.


Ryan and Pittman's flood theory appeared to get a major boost in 2000, when famed underwater explorer Robert Ballard discovered the remnants of human habitation in 300 feet of water, 12 miles into the Black Sea, off the coast of northern Turkey. Ballard also found evidence of the Black Sea changing from fresh water to salt water: Sets of freshwater shells that dated back 7,000 years, followed by saltwater shells that dated back 6,500 years. Somewhere between those times, it seemed, the Black Sea was born out of a freshwater lake and it was sometime during that period of time that Noah and his ark allegedly appeared on the scene. The catastrophic flood in the general area of the Black Sea doesn't live up, perhaps to the flood in Genesis, which says it extended across the entire Earth, until "all the high mountains on the whole heaven were covered." But a deluge of the scope and depth documented by the new study may well have seemed to its survivors in the ancient Middle East as though the waters had covered the whole of the Earth.


The enormous glaciers of the Pleistocene ice age began to retreat approximately 10,000 years ago, and the melting took several millennia. Researchers think that some of the largest continental-scale glaciers, as they retreated, created "ice dams" that held back vast seas of melt water. When these dams broke, there would have been unimaginable inundations covering hundreds of miles. To those who were there when these dams broke, would think of the inundations as deluges that covered the entire world. Remember, they didn’t have any real idea as to just how large the world was. Their world would probably have covered no more than a hundred square miles in their minds. If there were ice-dam floods at the end of the last ice age, they would have occurred all over the world, and thus many faiths and cultures might have accounts of an ancient horrible deluge.


According to the Genesis account, it indicates that much of the water came from inside the earth. Even today large underground reservoirs of water and a surprising number of underground streams exist throughout the earth. But in the pre-flood world of Noah, these were likely even more common.


In the book, “In the Beginning” written by Walt Brown, he refers to reservoirs of water under the surface of Earth prior to Noah’s time. He wrote about a time when the earth was very young. He said;


“The earth had a large amount of salty, subterranean water ---- about half of what is now in the oceans. This subterranean water was contained in interconnected chambers that collectively formed a thin, spherical shell. It averaged about 5/8 of a mile in thickness and was located 10 miles below the earth’s surface.” unquote Most of our planet’s surface is covered with sedimentary rocks—those that are often deposited under water or associated with water. In some areas, sedimentary deposits cover the earth to a depth of some five miles.


Now we all know that mountains are continually growing and what are high mountains today used to be small hills millions of years ago. So in effect, millions of years ago, the surface of earth was a series of hills interspaced with plains and oceans. It has been said that if you could reduce earth to the size of a billiard ball as representing present-day earth, the ball would be as smooth as a billiard ball. And if you then enlarged it to the size of a softball, as representing millions of years ago with its hills and no mountains, the ball would still be as smooth as a billiard ball.


What this means is that if a flood occurred millions of years ago, the surface of earth would be covered by water because there were no mountains on earth at that time ( only low lying hills) and as such, the amount of water needed to cover the surface of earth would be much smaller than if the flood took place in Noah’s time.


Walt Brown has suggested in his book that the original flood that took place millions of years ago occurred as a result of the following;



“Increasing pressure in the subterranean water stretched the overlying crust, just as a balloon stretches when the pressure inside increases. Eventually the shell of rock reached its failure point. At the time of its rupture, the strain energy in the crust (in any area of the crust) would have been about 20 X 1029 ergs. (That is 10 with 29 zeros behind it. Then multiply that figure by 20. When the volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883 and the entire island vanished, the energy released from that explosion was 8.4 x 1026. )


Failure began with a microscopic crack. Stress concentrations at both ends of the crack resulted in its rapid propagation at about 2 miles per second. ( 3.21 kilometers a second. Using 6,371 kilometers as the mean radius of earth, two ends of the crack moving in opposite directions would meet at the other side of earth in 2.13 hours. ) As the crack raced around earth, the ten mile ( 16 kilometer ) thick roof of overlying rock opened up like a rip in a tightly stetched cloth. The pressure in the subterranean chamber immediately beneath the rupture suddenly dropped to almost atmosphere pressure. Water (then) exploded with great violence out of the ten-mile deep silt which wrapped around the earth like a seam of a baseball. Along this globe-circling rupture, a fountain of water jetted supersonically into and above the atmosphere. The water fragmented into an ‘ocean’ of droplets that fell to the earth great distances away. This produced torrential rains such as the earth had never seen before.” unquote



It must be remembered that this occurred millions of years ago, long before Man ever appeared on earth and certainly long before Noah arrived.



Eventually, all that subterranean water that shot out of the water chambers beneath the surface of the earth had to land somewhere on earth. Most of it landed in the oceans which in terms of both lateral space and volume, exceeds the land size and mass at the surface of earth. Brown went on to say;



“The rising flood waters eventually blanketed the water jetting out of the rupture although water still surged out of the rupture. Global flooding occurred over the earth’s relatively smooth topography since today’s major mountains had not yet been formed.” unquote



This would be the first and only flood that covered the entire earth and it occurred millions of years before Noah was born. As to how the writers of the Old Testament concluded that the flood that was supposed to happen in Noah’s time took place on the 17th day of the second month in his six hundredth year is beyond my understanding. I think we call that poetic licence. Certainly, that aspect of Genesis doesn’t need to be elaborated on with respect to it being considered part of a larger fantasy.



If there was a second flood which took place in Noah’s time, did it cover Mount Everest which lies between Tibet and Nepal in southern Asia? That mountain is nine kilometers high. The waters from the worldwide flood of Noah's time would cover earth to a height of about three kilometers if it ever went that high. That being so, it follows that the so-called flood in Noah’s time didn’t cover the entire earth.



Mount Everest was formed prior to Noah’s time. We know this because its higher parts contain fossils of sea creatures and seashells, showing that it is made of rock that was once under water when Mount Everest was merely a hill after the first flood millions of years ago. As the hill grew in height, the fossils in the rock that gradually was created was slowly thrust upwards also.



Verses 19 and 20 of chapter seven of Genesis says; “And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.” unquote



A cubit was the length of one’s forearm. There was no way in which Noah could have measured the depth of the flood in the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies or the Alps since his ark didn’t float that far from where he first built it and that being as it is, whatever depth he concluded was fifteen cubits above solid rock, had to be somewhere in the Middle East. At the time the Noachian passages were composed, no one even knew other continents and their high mountains even existed.



The Taurus Mountain Range is a rugged chain that extends across southern Turkey to its borders with Iraq and Iran. The highest point (Mt. Ararat) is located in the Eastern Taurus range. This extinct volcano is 16,583 ft. (5,137m) high. It is believed by biblical historians that Noah's Ark landed there. For his ark to have settled on that mountain, it means that the water had begun to recede and there has been no conclusions by biblical scholars that it landed on the peak of Mt. Ararat. They believe that it landed on the side of the mountain. This means that if it landed on the side of the mountain while the water of the flood was receding, and if Noah took a sounding (a method used from time past to determine how deep the water was) it had to be somewhere in the vicinity of the side of the mountain. This being as it is, he couldn’t have rightly concluded that the world was covered by at least fifteen cubits of water since the peak of Ararat had to have loomed above him when he took the sounding unless he took the sounding when the peak of the mountain was immediately below him by fifteen cubits and that seems unlikely. If that was so, the writers of Genesis were wrong with reference to the depth of the water encompassing earth since there were a great many mountains far exceeding Ararat that were south, west and north of Noah while he took his sounding from the side of his ark.


This is clear proof that the world was not entirely under water when Noah and his family were floating about on the waters of the so-called flood and the writers of Genesis were wrong in concluding that the entire earth was covered by water to a depth of 15 cubits (20 feet) above any land beneath the surface of the water.



Now one of the most perplexing questions often being asked about Noah’s flood is, ‘where did the water of the flood go after it reached its zeneth?’



It has been said that the water on earth today, if placed in square cubes that are one cubic mile in volume and piled so high that the pile would reach the moon, that amount of water would equal what is on earth at this present time. In other words, if that water could pour down onto the earth from space, it would fill all the cracks, nooks and crannies, streams rivers, lakes, seas and oceans and what we would have is what we have today.



However, if all the water that allegedly rose to the highest peak in Noah’s time were poured back onto earth, where would it sink to? It would simply rise to the level of Everest and remain forever at that depth. That is because it would have nowhere else to go. But Everest is over 29 thousand feet above sea level so it is not conceivable that there was a flood that rose above Everest or any other high mountain including Ararat. The water simply would have nowhere else to go. It would remain at that level and Mankind simply would no longer exist beyond the lifetimes of Noah and his family.



Of course, scripture tells of many past events for which there is little or no firm evidence, and correspondences between scientific evidence and scripture might just be coincidence. Writers of scripture may have used as a starting point real events they personally witnessed or heard about, then created a supernatural gloss onto them and as the stories were passed from generation to generation and from millennium to millennium, the story of Noah’s flood grew in size and depth until it finally stopped growing when Genesis was finally put to print. In other words, what started out as a bad rainfall, ended up with a planet that was entirely covered with water at a minimum of 29 thousand feet. It didn’t happen.



It is great stuff for a movie but only if the movie is classified and recognized as pure fiction.


__________________________________

Was the Earth populated before the arrival of Adam and Eve?
An essay by Dahn Batchelor
________________________________________________________________________
The King James version of the Holy Bible says this about the creation of Adam and Eve in verses 26, 27 and 28 of chapter one of Genesis; “Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them; Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”


A question that has been asked by millions of Christians, Jews and Moslems alike is; was the world populated before Adam and Eve arrived?


In chapter two, the Bible says in verse 7; “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” In verse 19 of Chapter 3 of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit; “ In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”


Truly it would be a miracle for any living thing to be suddenly created from a non-living entity, such as dust. Living things, such as humans, animals and even trees must have the following major elements within them for them to be living things. I am speaking of, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and proteins ----- long chains of amino acids. Without these four main elements, especially proteins, a living entity, be it a tree, bird, fish, insect or a human being, wouldn’t exist.


A fundamentalist will argue that God (if there is a God) was capable of creating a man from dust and that by itself is the miracle. If that happened, it truly would be a miracle. However, how would a fundalmentalist define a miracle? According to fundalmentalists of many religions, a miracle is an intervention by God in the universe---a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of God. In one sense, most people would conclude that if they can't adequately explain a phenomenon according to their ideas of how the world works, it's must be supernatural.


For many centuries after the birth of Jesus, no-one ever believed that Man would fly above the trees and yet if they saw such an event, they would believe that it was a miracle when in fact, in reality, there is a logical explanation for the possibilty of seeing a human being flying above them in some form of craft as the so-called miracle unfolds before them. It is a logical event that takes the event out of the realm of the supernatural. No-one believed that it was possible for humans to create diamonds and yet, in the last century, scientists were able to create diamonds from the bones of deceased human beings. That is not a miracle brought about by God but instead it is brought about by Man through the efforts of scientists. The early Christians believed that after the birth of Jesus, a star shone directly over the manger he was born in and guided the three wise men from the east. They say that that was a miracle. In actual fact, what the three wise men (who were not kings but astrologers from Babylon) saw overhead far away in space was the conjunction of two planets (Saturn and Jupiter) which even then they knew was not a star. To them, Saturn represented a king and Jupiter represented Jerusalem and that’s why they went to Jerusalem to search for the new king. They knew that if a king was born in Jerusalem at that time, their predictions after seeing the bright light (reflections of the sun bouncing off the surfaces of the two planets) would have come true. The brightness of the two planets was not a supernatural event. It was extraordinary but not miraculous and certainly not a star.


What I am trying to say is that whatever the people who populated the Earth after the onset of human beings believed were miracles, there was a logical explanation for the occurances or alternatively, many were myths that were told over and over again by the early human beings for many centuries even when the myths had no possibility of reality to them. It is far too easy for fundalmentalists to simply say that if the event cannot be explained, it must be a miracle brought about by God. In other words, if the first human being was created by dust, (and that event can’t be explained) that it must be a miracle, in other words, a supernatural act of God.


Without attempting to be disrespectful to fundalmentalists who honestly believe that the words of the Holy Bible should be interpreted literally, the possiblity of a human being (homo sapien ---- thinking man) being created from dust is pure undulterated nonsence ---- it is a physical and scientific impossiblity that defies logic.


The natural world is all-inclusive, and even if our world and the universe includes elves, spirits, honest politicians and space beings, then all those things are natural. It's just that our conception of what's natural is what is often eroniously referred to as miraculous.


'Adam' is very often understood simply as the proper name of the first human being. But 'Adam' is identical with the Hebrew word for human being (adam = 'human being') The Hebrew definition in the collective sense means ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’. The Old Testament uses the Hebrew term ‘adam’ many times in the sense of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’. Most recent translations of the Bible, such as the New Revised Standard Version, makes the point that the ‘man’ in this verse was meant to encompass all humanity, rather than a single individual.


From verse 7, one is being asked to consider that Adam was the first human being that lived on earth because the authors of the Bible used the word ‘man’ which is singular rather than use the words, ‘a man’ which could imply that he chose one of several or one of many men to form a human man in his own image.


This could mean that the correct interpretation of the word ‘Adam’ is ‘mankind’ and that the verse 7 in chapter two of Genesis is to be read as; “....then the LORD God formed mankind out of dust from the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life; and mankind became living beings.” The word ‘Adam” is a derivative of the word, ‘adamah’ which means ‘ground’ or ‘earth’ which may have been the clay that would have to be used to mold a body of a human man since a figure couldn’t be molded from dust. The words, ‘breathed into their nostrils the breath of life’; could simply means the air which God made earlier for mankind and the animal kingdom to breathe.


I refer you to chapter one, verse 26 of Genesis in which it states; that God said;, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”


The use of the word, ‘our’ is an august or regal term used by kings, emperors and the papacy so the authors of the Bible wrote of God in august or regal terms. But we are forced to ask ourselves, did he form human beings after his or her or it’s own image and likeness? If we are willing the accept that proposal, then we have to presume that God is both a man and a woman or is one or the other.


I will quote from the Concise Revised Bible Dictionary which has an answer to that question. It says in part; "The creation of Adam in God’s image and likeness is best understood as creation with all those qualities which make a being truly a person as God is a person ---- with spiritual, aesthetic, rational, emotional and moral capacities."


This implies that, according to the authors of 'The Abingdon Bible Commentary' “its is more probable that the expression ‘in the image of God’ has no physical implications but is meant to suggest that man differs from all the rest of creation in the possession of self-conscious personality, in which he alone of all creatures resembles God.” It’s ironic when one thinks about it. According to the Old Testament, God made man in his own image. But mankind believing that it is supreme over all living things (which mankind is) makes the presumption that God is made in the image of a man since the early writers never saw God and therefore believed that God must be like a human male. God’s image in paintings is as an old man. In the paintings, he was never pictured as a female because in verse 25 of chapter 2 of Genesis, God said that he would make ‘man’ in his own image. Could he have meant ‘mankind’? If so, why didn’t he choose to make the angels in his own image since they existed prior to him making mankind? Angels are painted as human beings with large wings. Now that really adds to the confusion.


Kenneth C. Davis in his book Don’t Know Much About the Bible, on page 50, said; "The universe was created by some force ---- call it the Big Bang or God or Allah or Vishnu or simply Energy ----- that set in motion the cataclysmic string of events that brought the earth into existence 4.5 billion years ago. So began the long line of events that brought the chemical chain reactions that created the spark of life on earth. That incredible process resulted in the appearance, a brief moment in time, a two-legged creature that walked upright. This creature (eventually) held tools in hand and his hands were no longer needed for moving through the trees. He built fires and eventually held a short, pointed stick that made intricate symbols in pieces of hardening mud, It was the beginning of the (written) word."


Somewhere in that early stage of evolution, Adam was supposibly created. According to The Bab,(the holy book of the Bahai faith) Adam lived about 10,500 B.C. When looking at the Christian Bible and then extrapolate back from the date of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, (1446 B.C.) and calculate the ages of the main characters in the Bible prior to that time, Adam came into existence approximately 4000 B.C. That premise conflicts with the conclusions of scientists world-wide who agree amongst themselves that the first species of the genus Homo (humans), evolved in South and East Africa in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene period.(1.81 million to 11,550 years before the birth of Jesus.


Man began walking on his legs about 1.8 million years ago. Homo sapiens (Latin for humans with intelligence) has lived from 200,000 years B.C. to the present. It follows then that human beings existed almost two million years before the biblical Adam came into existence. It also follows that human beings in that period of time had a self-concious personality long before the biblical Adam arrived.


There is another way to look at the question of Adam and Eve being the first human beings on earth but was Eve the first woman on earth? In strictly biblical terms, Eve was the first woman on earth and as such, was Adam’s wife. But Hebrew legend has another story about his first wife. As recorded in the medieval Alphebet of of Ben Sira, Lilith was Adam’s first wife who preceded Eve. In this version, Lilith was created from the earth, just as Adam was.


I point this out to illustrate that it is conceivable that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is simply another story that has been passed from one person to another for thousands of years.


Cain, the first born was a farmer and his younger brother, Abel was a shepperd. But were they really human beings?


In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, S.H. Hooke writes on page 181; "Cain and Abel represents two different types of community, the agricultural and the pastoral, each carrying out its regular ritual of sacrifice. In the story, one ritual is successful and the other is not.; that is what is implied when it says that Yahweh (Hebrew word for God) accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.”

It is the belief of many (and myself included) that the two sons of Adam and Eve as depicted in the Bible were in fact two groups of people ( planters of plants etc and shepherds ) living side by side in one gathering of human beings. At some period in time, someone in the agricultural community killed someone in the pastoral community which resulted in the killer or perhaps his clan being evicted from the community."


Genesis 5:4 tells us that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. Jewish tradition has it that they had 56 children altogether. They base that figure on the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who wrote;(in the time of Christ) "The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.” According to the Old Testament, Adam lived for 930 years (Genesis 5:5) although I don’t think that any scientist or most Christians, Jews and Moslems alike nowadays really believes that any human being could live that many years.


Justification for this doubt is the fact that the Old Testament also states that God created the heavens and earth in six days. No right-thinking person believes that either.

If Adam and Eve were the first humans, and all people have descended from them (Acts 17:26) ‘And hath made of one blood all nations of men . . .’), then somewhere on earth, brothers had to marry sisters. Many people believe that after Cain killed his brother Abel and was ordered out of the garden of Eden, he married one of his sisters. I don’t believe this is what happened considering the fact that there were already over a million human beings on earth at that time.

If you look at verse 14 in chapter 4 in the book of Genesis, you will see the first hint that there were other human beings on earth before the death of Abel at the hands of Cain. After Cain murdered his brother, God told him that he had to leave his presence. Cain then said to God; "Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me." Who was he speaking about when he used the words, ‘whoever’ during his communication with God? Since there is no mention in the Old Testament that after Adam and Eve were ordered out of the garden of Eden, they had children that were old enough to murder Cain, then who was Cain afraid of? Obviously he was afraid of being slain by other human beings who were not his siblings and were east of the garden of Eden, the direction he intended to go.


Verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis says; "Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden." Cain knew his wife, (meaning he had intercourse with her) and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch."


Who did Cain marry? Were there not other people on the earth before he met his wife? Who lived in the land of Nod that was east of Eden when he met his wife? We don’t even know her name and yet she is the most talked about wife in the entire world. Many people believe that for Cain to find a wife, there must have been other ‘races’ of people on the earth who were not descendants of Adam and Eve.


To many people, this question is a stumbling block that obstructs their acceptance of the Biblical account that states that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on earth.


Defenders of the words in the Old Testament must be able to show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman. (Adam and Eve) Thus, believers need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly that she too was a descendant of Adam and Eve. That is not possible.

I realize that a lot of people say that Cain's wife was his sister, but that is impossible. Why? Because if you know anything about Anthropology, you will know that in all primitive societies, it was a general rule that brothers did not marry their sisters. The strictest of taboos were applied to this particular form of incest. They were aware of the physical and mental problems that were inherent when brought about by incest. Secondly, if you read the story carefully, Seth (Adam’s 3rd son) was not born until after Cain was banished, and thus after he spoke of whoever (Genesis 4:14) would slay him, who was Cain speaking about?
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After Seth was born, Adam (according to the Old Testament) lived another 800 years, producing more sons and daughters. This obviously shows that there was Cain, Abel, Seth, and THEN other daughters and sons followed. Thus the explanation that Cain's wife was his sister cannot be correct, because females (other than Eve) did not enter the current population until after Seth was born, and by that time, Cain was already banished from the face of God.

God planted a garden in Eden according to the scriptures. Note: the entire earth was NOT Eden, only a very small portion of the earth was Eden. What does the Bible say was outside of Eden? It doesn’t say anything about what was outside of Eden at the time Cain was banished from Eden.But there was desert and wilderness in that area if we believe that the land of Nod was in the middle east. And WHO lived in this wilderness? It was Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, who roamed the wilderness outside of Eden. Remember that this all occurred over a million years ago.


These beings were very tall, broad-faced, had retreating foreheads (indicating a small brain - unlike humans today) with massive brow ridges, and their bodies were covered in very course dense hair. This means that Cain was fearful to leave the place of his birth, because he knew there were other people out there who would kill him.


That is very strange considering that God marked him as the "first murderer?" If that is so, how did he know that others would kill him? The reason is because this type of very violent behaviour was typical throughout the species of Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, hence, Cain was not the first murderer amongst these beings.


Where did Cain get his wife from? She was one of these very primitive "creatures" roaming the wilderness. As a result of this successive hybrid inbreeding over thousands of generations, we get what we call the "other races." ie. Negroes, Orientals, Caucasians, etc. I refer you again to Verse 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis which says; “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”


From this, we are to understand that after Cain’s first son (Enoch) was born, Cain built a city which he named after his son. The word, ‘city’ is defined in The Revell Concise Bible Dictionary to mean; “a large or important population center, usually (especially in the Old Testament) walled or fortified.” Somehow, for Cain to build a large and important city that was fortified against the enemies of its inhabitants, there would not only have to be a great many people building the city, but also a great many enemies of the inhabitants outside of the city that necessitated the need for the inhabitants to build walls to protect them from their enemies. We are not talking about a few hundred people but perhaps thousands of people both inside the city and outside the city.


It follows that Cain had every reason to build a city of that size considering that there was approximately a million people on earth at that time and many of them in the area where he lived. It was about 5,000 years ago that farming communities finally led to the creation of cities. If that is so, then those cities predate Adam and Eve and their offspring so in effect, Cain simply built another city.


Now true believers of everything that is said in the Bible is to be accepted as absolutely true, may argue that Cain lived a long time, just as Adam did. Unfortunately, there is no record in the Old Testament with respect to the age of Cain before he died. This being as it is, there is no way that we can conclude that the city comprised of a great many of his sons and daughters. In fact, the only mention of his offspring is found in verse 17 of chapter 4 in which it says; "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch." That is the last time Cain is spoke of so we have no way of ever knowing whether or not Cain had other children.


If this is so, then this means that his city was not populated by his children other than Enoch and it hardly makes sense that he would build a city just for himself, his wife and his son. He would however build a city for other humans in Nod (with their assistance) and name it after his son and this means that there were many human beings in Nod when he arrived thereor at least, after Enoch was born. And if that is so, then Adam and Eve could no thave been the first humans on earth.


Pictures of Adam and Eve are painted as if they are human beings like we are so we are led to believe that Adam and Eve looked just like we do. Unfortunately, the first appearance of man did not look like us.


It seems beyond doubt that primitive man had religious beliefs. For instance, the Neanderthal man, who lived 50,000 years ago, is known to have buried his dead with ceremonies that clearly suggest a belief in a life after death.

There existed at that time the pre-historic custom of dusting corpses with red ocher (a mixture of clay and iron oxide) which is found throughout the prehistoric world. It is thought that the red pigment was a ritual substitute for blood, hence a symbol of life. Belief in survival after death would seem to be confirmed a fortiori by burial, since nothing else could explain the effort involved instead of simply abandoning the corpses of their loved ones.

The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. They walked and their bone structures and skulls were almost identical to that of modern man. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia up to 30,000 years ago. As I mentioned earlier, if you extrapolate back from the time of the exodus of the Jews, according to the Bible, Adam was allegedly created only 4000 B.C. That is far too late in history for Adam to have been created as the first human being.


Mankind (at the Neanderthal stage in history) would not have the ability to build a city such as the city built by Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. That being as it is, mankind did not begin with Adam and Eve.The difficulty we have finding the truth in Genesis is trying to discover where the source originated from. It was not God since it is written in the third person, not the first person. In a book written by Kenneth C. Davis called 'Don’t Know Much About the Bible', he gives a good explanation on page 16 when he wrote; "...researchers have learned that some of what appears to the most ancient sections of the Bible, including some of the stories in Genesis, was probably ‘borrowed’ from other more ancient civilizations, particularily those of Egypt and Babylon."


For example, various aspects of the ‘Laws of God’ given to Moses in Exodus are similar to Babylonian laws known as the ‘Code of Mammurabi’, which is a few centuries older than when the Old Testament was first written.

In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, that has 62 authors, S. H. Hoke, one of the contributors wrote on page 177; "What we have called as origin-stories represents a type of literature which is not peculiar to the Hebrew people. In the earlier literature of Egypt, Babylon, and Caanan, and indeed most so-called primitive peoples, similar stories are to be found, purporting to give an account of the beginning of things." unquote


What this means is that before opinions and stories were put to writing on hardened mud and later on tablets, they were passed oraly from person to person and anyone familiar with the popular game in which people sit in a circle and one says something to another and the second person passes that information to the one sitting next to him or her, they will realize that as the story is passed on from person to person, the more it will be changed. I believe that this is how Genesis came about; various stories passed about from one person to another until the original stories were vastly altered.

Although the purpose of the Book of Genesis is to give us some idea as to how the earth as we know it came about, it is not historically, scientifically or chronologically correct.


The story of Genesis was handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years before the coming of Jesus and obviously, during the retelling of the story, it got twisted about until finally in the time of King James of England, the body of scholars he appointed to revise the Bible, ( The King James Bible ) printed it into what it is today.


When I was a child, I accepted the writings of the Bible as being literally true. But as I got older and more knowledgeable about life, history and science, (just like many millions of other people around the world) I realized that not everything written in the Bible is to be taken as fact. And one of the things I am truly convinced of, is that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings on earth. It’s a great story but like many stories, the creationist view of the first people on earth is in fact, a myth. Although myths have some basis of truth in them for the most part, I find it difficult to really believe that the myth with respect to the origins of mankind, as defined in Genesis, has any semblance of truth in it at all.

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