Monday, February 20, 2017

From Post-Flood Babel to the Irish Annals

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth:
Genesis 11:8
"One of the questions often raised concerning the early post-Flood history of Europe, is that of the Ice Age, the impression being no doubt that the Ice Age poses some kind of a problem for the Biblical model. Few creationists would question the historical reality of the so-called Ice Age, although we would certainly question the vast span of time allotted to it under the evolutionary scheme of things. In other words, it is something that would have lasted only a few centuries, perhaps even a thousand years or more, ....But of added interest to us in this present study is the fact that the receding of the ice sheets over northern Europe seems to have been witnessed by some of its earliest colonists who have left intriguing records behind them.

Nennius, for example, in the 13th chapter of his Historia Brittonum, has preserved a fascinating account of an unexpected encounter with an iceberg by some early colonists of Ireland. Having
arrived from the warm Mediterranean basin via the Spanish peninsula at an unspecified date, and being entirely unfamiliar with ice at sea, at the end of their first year in Ireland they looked out at sea and saw what they described as a 'tower of glass.'(...conspiciunt turrim uitream in medio mare). Moreover, upon the tower they could see what they took to be men, but could get no reply from them when they shouted (...et homines cons piciebant et quaerebant loqui ad illos nun quam respondebant). They therefore launched an attack upon the tower. Some of their boats were wrecked on the ice, while some men who had managed to land upon it were washed off by the heavy seas and drowned .(...et demersi sunt).

... in the Irish Annals of Ctonmacnoise, translated into English in the year 1627 by Conell Mageoghagan, where firstly we are told that during Partholan's coming to Ireland (15th century BC) he counted 'but three laughs [lochs or lakes] and nyne Rivers in the Kingdom'.  But then, during the later second colonisation of Ireland, we are told that 'Many Laughs and Rivers broke out in their time'.

Lakes and rivers don't just suddenly 'break out' in a short period of time without a source of water that is truly vast. So it would seem, therefore, that we are given in the early Irish records an intriguing glimpse into the melting of the north European ice-sheets which occurred some short time after the 15th century BC."
AfterTheFlood Appendix14