Is belief in God or the Bible necessary to believe in a massive flood.

BTW, who wrote it if it is not Moses ?

Ok, maybe its me again misexpressing myself ... Ok I'll clarify my argument, then maybe all this will sort out. what I was saying in the OP was this:If you write down a story you heard, and say to me that it is a not true, Then there is no possibility of it being true, since you (the author) acknowledged it to be not true.If you write down a story you heard, and say to me you think it really happened. There both possibilities are possible: it may be true, or it may not be.Obviously my example doesn't include lying amongst other things, which would have made my example pretty long and boring. My point was only this: if the author of genesis thought it was real history, then it leaves us the possibility to test it to see if it is true. But if the author thought it was a myth, then there is absolutely no reason for us to think it could be history.Which is why I was trying to say that the author did think it was history, which leaves us the possibility to test it. Which is what we will be doing in other threads throughout the summer.I hope I was clear enough, because really, I don't disagree with the fact they misinterpreted myth as fact. Sorry I didn't express this concept in the OP, it would have saved both of us some time.BTW, theology is not the same as mythology.Here are some people that I know of who spoke on the intention of the author to record history: James Barr, Dr. Andrew Steinmann, Dr. Robert Mccabe, Dr Ting Wang.Dr. Clifford Wilson also said this which is pretty compelling:

Doesn't Moses die at the end of Deuteronomy ?When would this scribes have written it down ? I mean, the first five books of the bible are the basis of Judaism, and Judaism has been around for a long time.I know there is a tendency to invalidate every aspect of the bible, but I mean at some point you gotta say that the Jewish people do have a history and probably did keep a record of it. if you start saying ''the jews never were in egypt'',''Moses never existed'', ''David never existed'' etc. then at some point you have to replace it with something. you can't just say, well the Jewish people were actually a small tribe in the desert who invented themselves a historyI mean, no one questions Julius's Caesar Gallic wars even though we have a total of only 10 documents speaking about it, with the oldest one being 1000 years after the event.But everyone seems to question the jewish account of their own history, even though they have a shitload more manuscripts and very accurate methods of transcribing it.

Thats very interesting, is Haggadah only an oral tradition ?Because if it also is a written tradition, then we could look at the grammar-form of the writing.

I hope that my previous posts clarified this a bit. Dates are not my speciality. It seems there is a trend in archaeologist to reduce egyptian chronology by some 350 years I think, which would put it in line with the biblical account. I know nothing in this domain, so you can bash this all you want.But I do think that Moses wrote Genesis down from a collection of written manuscripts he had in his possession. This seems to be shown by the many times in Genesis when the ancient name of a place is mentioned (such as a river) but then a 'footnote' is added such as ''which is now called the euphrate''. As if the author (moses) was simply working on previous manuscripts he had. This would not happen in oral tradition, since the ancient name of the place would almost automatically be replaced by the new name very fast.

I didn't say we don't have any manuscripts of the gallic wars, I'm saying we have few, and that they are much later then the event.The Caesar's account of the gallic wars we have is not the copy Caesar himself wrote, it is a transcripted copy from copy from a copy ... from the original. May I ask how do you know it isn't true ? My fahter went to Israel with Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, who is one of the greatest scholar alive today. I think he knows a thing or two about jewish history and their transcription methods ...Besides, the OT remained the same to about 99,9% from the dead sea scrolls up to our current day bible. Why couldn't the Jews achieve similar transcription accuracy ?

I said he was one of the greatest scholars alive. Obviously, it is a very subjective thing. How do you compare scholars ? I surely don't know. It was my personnal opinion on him. You may disagree.Besides, I didn't say he was an expert on jewish transcription method. I said ''he must know a thing or two'' if I recall correctly. Nonetheless I would think he knows just about everything about jewish history, including their transcription method. Even though he may not have any official study on this. He came three times where I live, and all he does is read,read,read and translate,translate,translate. He must sleep like 2 hours a day.Nonetheless, I agree it was a bit off-topic. But when I read someone say that 'ancient jewish transcription methods were accurate' was a lie christians just tell amongst themsleves, I was like ''WTF how can someone seriously say that ?'' because I was remembering all the things Fruchtenbaum had said on this.

Ok I left this post a bit recently but maybe it is time to bring it back on topic.About that thing about mtDNA, you have to remember that the mtDNA would not have come from Noah's wife, but from his sons wives. This mixes things up a little bit more. As well, do you calculate those dates with carbon-dating or with the mutation rates in mtDNA ?