ANCIENTS II by Merwin
The Book of Job 3:13-14 (Amplified Bible)
For then would I have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then would I have been at rest [in death] With kings and counselors of the earth, who built up [now] desolate ruins for themselves.
We are going to be going over some real old stuff here, so we do need to establish some perspective or the value of what is being written may become a little muddled.
First and foremost the book of Job is extremely old, nearly everyone agrees it is the oldest book in the Bible. Some say it may have been recorded by Moses or one of his contemporaries, and that the story itself was an old Hebrew oral tradition handed down from generation to generation, before having been recorded.
Scholars... secular and Biblical, agree that Moses lived around 2300 B.C.E. placing him at about 4300 years ago. This, oddly enough is about the same time (it is estimated by many) that the Great Pyramid was built. And if Job was recorded about this time, but was an "old" story at the time, Job could not then be talking about the Pyramids in verse 3:14, "...kings and counselors of the earth, who built up [now] desolate ruins for themselves." (Unless the Pyramid age estimations are off)
So what was he speaking of..?
Remember our perspective... 4300 years ago Job's story was an old Hebrew oral tradition, if the scholars were right.
Job is referring to very expensive (kings and counselors) structures, edifices that would be a testimony of the builder's worth. And Job speaks of not just one area or one city, he speaks of kings and counselors "of the earth", at least suggesting a very broad region, perhaps the entire world.
We should consider that the Bible refers to Job as being very rich, he could have been well travelled, and he was famous enough for news of his condition to make its way to his friends. I suggest that these structures that he speaks of, "that now sit desolate", are utterly remarkable.
There are some that say that the story of Job may even be a pre-flood, oral account passed along by Noah's family. In any case, we are focusing on extremely old, and I assume, astounding "ruins" at the time of Job, and much older still, at the time of Moses and the estimated building of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh.
In more recent times... the last couple of years, The History Channel has broadcast a program called, Ancient Aliens (mentioned in my previous Hub, with many links, also provided below). This program has provided film footage of structures that so defy all explanations that the contributors to the programs feel comfortable attributing these stone constructs to extra-terrestrials, or aliens.
Some of the reasons for their conclusions are, these sites can be found all over the world, and they have many strong similarities. But, more than this, is the quality of the workmanship and the immensity of the material used to build these edifices and in many cases the distance and difficulty involved with transporting the material from the quarry site to the building site.
Sometimes these stones that weighed in excess of 20 tons each were transported many miles over marshes or up to unbelievable heights.
And then the workmanship; the precision of the work, character etchings/carvings, that are the envy of today’s stone cutters. And 20, 30, to 60 tons or more, stones cut so perfectly, that to this day you cannot slip a sheet of paper between them. And in many cases these precise cut stones are fitted together in interlocking jigsaw patterns that cannot be duplicated today no matter the expense, we just do not have the technology.
Now let’s put this in perspective...
Say we today wanted to build a, Sacsayhuaman at 12000 feet in the Andes, we could not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583-HsdvhLg&feature=related (10 minutes into the 15 minute clip)
If you look at the site in the History Channel's episode of Ancient Aliens (above), you can see the near jigsaw pattern mentioned before. In this case the rocks may have been quarried nearby, I don't know, but even were they transported a short distance, again, I don't know, fitting them together so perfectly cannot be duplicated today.
The slightest slip could chip the face of one of the stones perhaps more than one, rendering it unacceptable to a king. A major drop of a stone would mean that a domino effect could potentially ruin the settings and stones of the entire lower course of the wall and would have to be replaced or at least readjusted.
There is no evidence of any mistakes in these precision fit mega-stones. In the footage shown there is no evidence of any chips... not a crack anywhere, unbelievable..! And should these primitives had more than a few mistakes with their primitive apparatus... where is the debris of the damaged material..?
There is the one example I know of in Egypt where an obelisk, already beautifully carved, lies on its side cracked from one end to the other, but this is the only example and it looks like it stayed where it fell.
Let us take a closer look at our "today" technology. When we today, want to build anything we believe to be on a grand scale, we have to build massive infrastructure to and from the site just to make the building of that site feasible. In other words we have to tear up a lot of real estate just to build on an acre.
There is the heavy equipment that we use, it must be stored somewhere when not in use, and to use it on site it needs roadways to get it there. We need to drill for oil to run the equipment etc. And this is just for our tiny inky dink buildings and the ancient sites dwarf our largest endeavors.There are modern scars upon the land that will probably last longer than the beautiful buildings they contributed to.
As Job spoke of our "Ancient Alien" builders, and I believe he did, he mentioned them in passing. He referred to those builders, not as Gods coming from the skies like the Inca occupiers who referred to the first builders of Sacsayhuaman... but Job simply referred to them as kings and counselors.
Job does not mention a flood nor is one mentioned in the oral tradition that is recorded, possibly a strong suggestion that his story is pre-flood.
Another reason that the Ancient Alien promoters feel confident in saying these sites were built by extra terrestrials is our common Judeo-Christian belief that the world is about 6000 years old. This concept is bolstered first by the Jewish tradition, and then again by Archbishop Ussher in the 1600's calculating lineages from the KJV of the Bible, thereby setting the Creation at 4004 B.C. These supposedly "Alien sites" are "dated" as being much, much older.
In the modern era (not a good commendation really), Ussher's method of setting ancients dates might not get it close enough. It has been put forward by many "young earth" proponents that perhaps using what I call the "begat calculus" for setting the age of the world could be very flawed. Flawed enough, that I would be willing to more than triple Ussher's estimate, making the world perhaps as old as 25,000 years.
Setting aside the exact time of Creation, let us look at what affect that “The Flood” might have on our modern society.
Let us imagine what would occur as a result of a yearlong "Biblical Flood" occurring two years ago wiping out everything except four couples and four couples managed to save quite a few animals in a large boat. What would have happened to our societies, now, a year later..?
Remember they were able to save their lives and a few animals, some domesticated, but mostly not.
How big a hurry would you imagine them to have been in, to save souvenirs from the technology that contributed to the flood. Our eight modern people would have left the modern ark, likely wanting to divorce themselves from the previous behavior of mankind and teach their children a more peaceful, less arrogant way of treading upon the planet.
And with no way of replenishing the technology once used up, the battery operated devices become little more than paperweights... with no easy way, or even a reason to make paper.
Seriously, if all our arrogance was wiped out, a year after the fact, where do you think our societies would be..?
And then say… 16,000 years in the future, a culture finds one of our old, but still kind of beautiful ruins and builds on it, because after all, its deserted... might they not attribute the beauty to the gods like the Incas... or even aliens.. especially if they saw miracles in the sky?
There is only about 1,000 years separating us today, from the Incas at their height. And who knows maybe our pre-flood ancestors could fly, and oral traditions around the world are simply calling them gods, because that explanation was easier for them in their day, than "kings and counselors" might have been.
In any case… I don’t think I am done with this, there may be an ANCIENTS III.
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Below History Channel’s, Ancient Aliens (Season 2: Episode 8) in three parts at top… part one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583-HsdvhLg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA0SR8HLlcg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK2HDN6jPNs&NR=1
Underwater, parts one, two and three…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1k1uw--gY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbu_ZHKuaCY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSkUbKAKCGA&feature=related
And probably the most amazing…
Tihuanaco & Pumapunku
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMviviXAIVI
Below are some Wikipedia text references to sites that were featured in the above links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwanaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku
