How Our Family Got Here Through All The Challenges

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

I've always wanted to tackle this, and time's a-wasting.  Before mankind kills itself off, I want to look at our human genealogy. (Oops, the announcement that Israel hit Iran's nuclear facility and Trump is pulling an Obama.-(6:35pm Thursday ) ; It's official, The War between Iran and Israel.  Israel has been been hitting Iran with wave after wave this evening.  The latest is that  Iran's top military leaders have been killed.)  Retaliation will be coming soon. 

Our genealogy   is awesome!  Our version of the world's beginnings is from my religion of Judaism, and I think it's awesome, too.  It's a wonderful explanation for man then and even now, so that all minds can understand it.  This explanation is for my children, grandchildren and great-grandson and all else of this new generation of technical and awesome mechanical tools and computers. 

Mankind has been around eve since about 10,000 years ago along with the Mammoths who gave us meat.  We weren't the top- grade production of mankind yet.  The models were getting there, though.  

It happened more like 6,000 years ago that man with our type of thinking came into being.  Exactly 5,785 years ago, appeared Adam, a full-fledged man.  Now, like a robot, how could he produce his own kind?  The plan was to take his DNA from his rib-bone to produce his co-worker and mass production, and that human was called Eve.  Pretty clever.  It was Adam who carried the DNA of both sexes, meaning the Y haplotype and the Mt haplotype  to continue onwards from one model to the next in line model.  Eve only had to carry on her own line of Mt haplotype  to be repeated with each generation.  Everything else the duo needed to survive existed before they came into existence.  They were given a wonderful existence in a garden of plenty, but they needed a challenge to develop their brains which were pretty empty.  They had no experience in their life so far.  

It suddenly occurred to Eve where she was, and things could improve.  She was the impetus for their development of food and housing, since she was the baby-carrier of their future people who bore both of their haplotypes in a balanced amount in their veins. Her body changed slightly each time with hormone production.  Adam and Eve blinked and realized that there were man-eating animals in their existence, but plenty of food if they worked at it-still being able to pick much fruit from trees like they had first done to survive.  

Their first production models were Cain and Abel who fought each other, and they were both strong, but In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel. Cain was jealous that   HaShem-God,  accepted Abel's sacrifice, but not his. Cain then murdered his brother in the field. In the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. Cain was described as a worker of the ground, tilling the soil and cultivating crops. Abel, on the other hand, was a keeper of sheep, tending to flocks and ensuring their well-being.  Cain, the firstborn,  a farmer, and his brother Abel,  a shepherd.  made sacrifices, each from his own fields, to God, their maker.   God had regard for Abel's offering, but had no regard for Cain's. Cain killed Abel and  (G-d) cursed Cain, sentencing him to a life of transience. 

 In the beginning, hunters migrated following the herds in order to have food.  Later, the farming community migrated in finding better soil to grow the flora AND fauna used as food.  

               Abram/Abraham and Sarai moving to Canaan

A descendent of Abel was Abraham, whose model was tapped by G-d to understand that life, this line of humans, had only one G-d called Ha-Shem (the name).  All other models had surmised that it took many of them to make their creation.  Abraham's creation was about 1948 BCE, in the 2nd millennium BCE (before the common era). That was 3,973 years ago.  Abraham and his family before and after were also shepherds herding sheep, using the meat, milk, and covering of wool for clothing as well.  They also learned to forage and kept adding information to those brains of theirs.  Each generation was getting smarter and smarter.  Their experiences were recorded in their brain as part of their memory.  

Here is Jacob and his 4 "wives."Leah , Rachel with one of her two sons, and their handmaids, with their children.  Jacob is the younger son of twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).  Jacob was the 3rd of the patriarchs of ours.  The other twin was Esau; and the story goes that Jacob took Esau's birthright away to keep for himself, another long story more exciting than  a fictional novel.  

      12 sons of Jacob (1791 BCE) or {3,816 years ago} from sisters Leah and Rachel and each handmaiden of sisters

Their production line included Isaac and then Jacob of each generation, and Jacob had 12 sons and finally a daughter.  Luckily, they weren't the only ones producing.  The world was getting more and more populated with this human line.  Another line, who also existed for a long long time, were called Neanderthals, but they were dying out. They got to a point of not being able to mentally take on  the challenges given them, and they couldn't solve their problems to continue existing.  However, their DNA was carried in many of the humans in small amounts.  According to the Jewish Bible, Jacob was born in 1791 BCE. This is based on the Exodus's dating of Abraham's birth around 1951 BCE, with the birth of Isaac 25 years later in 1851 BCE and Jacob's birth 35 years after Isaac's, according to Armstrong Institute. Some Jewish sources also provide the birth year as 2108 from creation, according to Chabad. 

  Jacob of the Bible lived from approximately 1836 BC to 1689 BC. His life spanned the period between the birth of Isaac (1896 BC) and the death of Jacob (1689 BC), according to a chronology published by Bible Truth Publishers.  This is a different calendar than our Jewish one, so is off about several hundred yearsfrom ours.                                                      

Moses, son of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi (3rd son of Jacob and Leah)  (1391 BCE) or 3,416 years ago, was from Abel, a shepherd, and he did take on the challenge of his people being held by Egyptians as slaves, and could react to the messages of Ha-Shem given to him in order to free the people.  He led the people out of Egypt and back to Canaan, which had altered greatly after their 400 year hiatus.  Another challenge to  stimulate the brain!  Moses was a Levite.  

There is also research exploring how environmental factors and experiences can lead to epigenetic changes - modifications to DNA that don't change the sequence but can affect gene expression. This is a field of active research, exploring how experiences might influence the way our genes are used.  These changes, which can be influenced by environmental factors and lifestyle, can turn genes "on" or "off" and impact how they function. 

Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. These changes don't alter the DNA sequence itself, but they can modify how the DNA is read and used. 

• Stress and trauma: Experiences like stress and trauma can leave lasting epigenetic marks. Our ancestors have had, throughout the ages, more stress and trauma than anyone up to 
• this very minute.  I believe that's why Balfour wrote his Doctrine, not realizing that other 
• parts of his English government were already giving away the Jewish Homeland he hoped
• to help to achieve.  

Some epigenetic changes can be passed down to future generations, meaning that a parent's lifestyle or environmental exposures can influence the health and development of their offspring. 

• Epigenetics refers to the way your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.
• Epigenetics turns genes "on" and "off."
• Your epigenetics change as you age, both as part of normal development and aging and because of exposure to environmental factors that happen over the course of your life.
• Epigenetic changes can affect your health in different ways.

One thing that caused me to think about this is the way our young children can manipulate our cell phones and TV so well.  They have taken to these devices like a duck takes to water.  All the time we seniors hem and haw at what to do and need guidance.  Many now go without the use of a phone or even a TV set.  They can't do it!  The question is, has this epigenetic capability caused the youngsters, some even at age 5, to be so capable?  Are our children born knowing???

Through all our challenges to continue living, we have taken them on with the feeling of guidance from our G-d, our creator, the maker of the universe.  May we always live up to the challenges and continue on.  The slings and arrows from others shall not deter us in our mission to set a good example-like of the Golden Rule of Life.  We've been toughened up to slough it all off and keep on going.  

Time lines are important.  I think of the fact that the USA was created in 1776, which was only 249 years ago, and look at their clothing back in their day, or their transportation of ships.  Our minds have developed tremendously since then so that now we've started visiting other planets! 

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This Is The Year of 5784: What Happened In 6000? 216 Years Before?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

The Jewish calendar shows that this is the year 5784.  What happened in the year 6000?  Creation?  The starting point of Hebrew chronology is the year 3761 BCE, the date for the creation of the world as described in the Old Testament or Tanakh.  This is in the Torah, the 5 Books of Moses.  

The Jewish calendar is luni-solar, based on lunar months of 29 days alternating with 30 days. An extra month is intercalated every 3 years, based on a cycle of 19 years. Dates of the Jewish calendar are designated AM (Latin anno mundi,"the year of the world")  and BCE (before the Common Era).

The Jewish calendar, derived from the ancient Hebrew calendar, has remained unchanged since about AD (CE) 900. It is the official calendar of the modern state of Israel and is used by Jewish people throughout the world as a religious calendar. 

What has science told us about the period before this?  They tell us of cave man and dinosaurs and mammoths living 10,000 years ago.  There are some people of other beliefs who do not believe science, especially in the theory of evolution.

How are we to explain why our calendar, we Jews, the the people of the book,  which started only 6,000 years ago?   Much of mankind has been tested by DNA scientists who have found that men are of a clan or line of men deemed the Q's.  My Jewish father is one of them, an offshoot of the tree of life of the Q's who now inhabit as the native Americans of North and South America.  Somewhere along that line, our very distant Y ancestor lived as a shoot off the Q line who lived 20,000 years ago;  originating in Asia.  The earliest well documented of the human presence in the Americas was 15,000 years ago by the Native Americans.  My father's Q line left the other Q line and went into the land of Judah and stayed.  His is a Jewish line of the Y being Q1b1a  or (QBZ67).  Most of the men there today are the J1 line on the tree of life.  

Judaism accepts all experimentally proven facts and observations of the theory of evolution. 

Judaism accepts some of the assumptions and interpretations embedded in the theory of evolution, but rejects other assumptions and speculations which contradict fundamental Jewish beliefs, and which are anyway not scientifically proven; to those Judaism offers different interpretations.

 Judaism strongly rejects all the extensions of the theory of evolution beyond natural sciences, which endorse the biological assumption of the “survival of the fittest” in commerce and human societies as a whole by justifying claims of social inequality, sexism, racism, Nazism, eugenics, and other moral-social deviations as “laws of nature”.

The two sets of human thought—religion and science—are fundamentally different in their aims and purposes, in their methods of operation, in their scope of interest and issues, and in their origin and ramifications. 

Whenever science surpasses its limits, or religion exceeds its boundaries, it actually is a form of an abuse of both. This has happened to the theory of evolution in a more powerful mode than any other interaction between science and religion.

The agenda of many scientists who promote the theory of evolution is to achieve the goal of understanding the existence of the universe as a random, purposeless, natural development, evolved slowly over billions of years from a common ancestor by way of natural selection, devoid of any supernatural metaphysical power.

I might add that people 6,000 years ago or even 5,000 years ago would never understand today's scientific concepts  of the theory of evolution, and one can say that G-d tried to make it as easy as possible for their level of understanding. as they must have been asking for answers.  

What is science? …Science is the study of the natural and social world through a systematic method that uses evidence, observation, and experimentation. It involves building knowledge through testable hypotheses and predictions.    That means one can go through a test on something over and over and get the same

results.  Science is a strict, systematic discipline that uses a specific methodology. Evidence-based:  Science is based on evidence, including objective observation, measurement, and data. It's not an untested idea.  It must be proven to be true

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A famous rabbi, the Rambam (1135-1204) , had lectured on this subject. The Rambam and Abarbanel on Bereishit

In several places, the Rambam posits that what the Torah portrays at the beginning of Breishit, it is not intended to be understood literally. Rabbi Natan Slifkin, in his book, Challenge of Creation, translates one portion of the introduction to the Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed as follows:

The word day in Hebrew does not have the same meaning as in English. In English, day is a word that you have to remember to use for יום but יום in Hebrew has a meaning יום- ים של זמן- יממה מהמילה ים וים הוא ללא הגבלה כמו שעון

“Now, on the one hand, the subject of Creation is very important, but on the other hand, our ability to understand these concepts is very limited. Therefore, God described these profound concepts, which His Divine wisdom found necessary to communicate to us, using allegories, metaphors and imagery. Our sages put it succinctly: “It is impossible to communicate to man the stupendous immensity of the Creation of the universe. Therefore, the Torah simply says ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’.” Thus, they pointed out that the subject is a deep mystery, as Solomon said, “It is elusive and exceedingly deep; who can discover it?” (Kohelet 7:24). It has been outlined in metaphors so that the masses can understand it according to their mental capacity, while the educated take it in a different sense.”

Rabbi Slifkin quotes a more succinct statement from the Guide: “The account of creation given in Scripture is not, as is generally believed, intended to be literal in all its parts.” He also quotes the Abarbanel in his commentary: 

The Rambam believed that there were not separate creative acts on six days, but rather everything was created on one day, in a single instant [again, in line with the Big Bang Theory]. In the work of Creation, there is mention of “six days” to indicate the different levels of created beings according to their natural hierarchy; not that there were actual days, and nor were there a chronological sequence to that which was created in the acts of Genesis.

The fact that heavy hitters like the Rambam and Abarbanel are “in the camp” that could support a deviation from the classical understanding of the age of the universe being less than 6,000 years old may help many students process the discrepancy they see and feel when they look at their high school science

Resource:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6VEeCFcNPA:  WOW AMAZING LECTURE

 textbooks.https://prizmah.org/blog/responding-questions-about-torah-and-science-sources-high-school-

Deep Ancestry Genographic project by Spencer Wells

educatorshttps://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/hebraica/about-hebrew-calendar#:~:text=The%20Jewish%20calendar%20is%20luni,(before%20the%20Common%20Era).https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721658/

https://www.academia.edu/32595370/Phylogeography_of_human_Y_chromosome_haplogroup_Q3_L275_from_an_academic_citizen_science_collaboration?email_work_card=reading-history

Eridu, Neighboring City of Ur-Oldest City in Mesopotamia

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

                                         The ruins of Eridu.

Eridu is an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia. Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia. Located 12 km southwest of Ur, home of Abraham,  Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another.

What is the brief history of Eridu?  Founded in circa 5400 BCE, Eridu was thought to have been created by the gods and was home to the great god Enki (also known as Ea by the Akkadians) who would develop from a local god of fresh water into the god of wisdom and magic (among other attributes) and stand with other deities such as Anu, Enlil, and Inanna as …

Is Eridu in the Bible? The Genesis Myth of Eridu is an ancient Sumerian text written around 1600 BCE, and it contains a version of the flood story used in Gilgamesh and later the Old Testament of the Bible.  Gilgamesh was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified.

What god did Eridu have? Enki as patron of the city or Eridu is significant to his role as god of wisdom. Eridu was thought to be the first city created by the gods upon which order and law was conferred at the beginning of time and was later known as the “city of the first kings”.

The Eridu Genesis may have been the first written record of a long oral tradition of a time around 2800 BCE when the Euphrates rose high above her banks and flooded the region. Excavations at Ur by Leonard Wooley in 1922 CE revealed an eight-foot layer of silt and clay, consistent with the sediment of the Euphrates, which seemed to support the claim of a catastrophic flood in the area around 2800 BCE. Notes of the excavation taken by Wooley's assistant, Max Mallowan, however, showed the event was clearly a local, not a global, event.                                   

A proto-Genesis tale of the Garden has been found at Eridu in which Tagtug the Weaver (or gardener) is cursed by Enki for eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree in the garden after being told not to. Eridu is further associated with the tale of the great sage Adapa (son of Enki), who was initiated into the meaning of life and all understanding by the god of wisdom but was ultimately tricked by him and denied the one thing he most wanted: knowledge of life without death, to live forever.                            

The desire for immortality features prominently in Mesopotamian literature, and Sumerian writings specifically, and is epitomized in the story of Gilgamesh of Uruk. Uruk's link to Eridu is significant in that Eridu's initial importance was later eclipsed by the rise of Uruk. This transferrence of power and prestige has been seen by some scholars (the historians Samuel Noah Kramer and Paul Kriwaczek among them) as the beginnings of urbanization in Mesopotamia and a significant shift from the rural model of agrarian life to an urban-centered model. The story of Inanna and the God of Wisdom, in which the goddess of Uruk takes away the sacred meh (gifts of civilization) from Enki, the god of Eridu, can be seen as an ancient story symbolizing this shift in the paradigm of Sumerian culture. The prosperous commercial center of Uruk superceded the rural Eridu.

Eridu appears to be one of the earliest settlement in the region, founded c. 5400 BCE, close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River. Because of accumulation of silt at the shoreline over the millennia, the remains of Eridu are now some distance from the gulf at Abu Shahrain in Iraq. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand-dune site with no previous occupation. 

Piotr Steinkeller has hypothesised that the earliest divinity at Eridu was a Goddess, who later emerged as the Earth Goddess Ninhursag (Nin = Lady, Hur = Mountain, Sag = Sacred), with the later growth in Enki as a male divinity the result of a hieros gamos, with a male divinity or functionary of the temple.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

https://www.worldhistory.org/eridu/