Summations Only

Actually the answer is likely "yes" to both questions. At the general time of the flood myth right on through to sometime around when Kings was compiled the view was of local deities tied to one place and one people.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Lots of fuzzy ideas about that.The Bible is a great example. Look at the Bible stories of the Origin of the Moabites and Ammonites. In the Hebrew tales they are the children of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters and so bad guys. Each of the religions have side stories that account for the existence of other people, usually a story that explains why they are friend or foe. And of course, each of the different religions have mutually exclusive stories.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

And we find just that variation, much like the beaks. The descriptions of when the flood will happen, what gets killed, what should be taken, how long the flood lasted all are different. That is particularly obvious in Genesis 6&7.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I'm not sure what your point is. The Moabites well still considered the result of the incestuous incident with Lot and REALLY, REALLY unclean.Ruth is an interesting story though, one that I've found almost all modern Christian misunderstand. There is NO mention or even a connection between the story of Ruth and Jesus, the little genealogical stuff that got stuck on the end of Ruth 4 is almost certainly a later addition and most likely stuck there regarding David, not Jesus.But Ruth is still important for many reasons. It is one of the stories when the Hebrews were beginning the transition stages of monotheism. They still recognized that there were many Gods and that Gods were most powerful in relation to one area, tribe or people.It is also important in relation to the other thread because it revolves around legality, inheritance and fidelity. The key to Ruth is property rights. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

It's important to remember that Genesis is NOT one book but rather an anthology itself, a collection of stories from a variety of writers during many different periods and from many different cultures.