Can someone verify the meaning and age of these ancient Chinese characters? I came across this interesting article which attempts to support the Christian Genesis story by showing the meaning of some ancient Chinese characters. I would like to verify the meaning of these characters and their use*.

Supposedly, the characters are based on the Oracle Bone scripts which I think are the oldest known Chinese manuscripts. Since this would place them at about 3000 years old it is likely that if these characters are still in use today their meanings have changed some or completely.

I am not interested in opinions on whether these characters lend credence to the Genesis story. I am interested only in the meaning of the characters for the time frame suggested.

[EDIT:]
As the address of the article changed(fixed), I would list the characters mentioned in the article here, in case the link goes dead again:

船  婪  造  完  禁  園  魔
Most characters are composed of a phonetic and a semantic component.
The phonetic component is a character with a similar pronunciation (...or at least the pronunciation was similar at the time the character was created). The semantic component (or signific) indicates the meaning, although usually very vaguely (again, meanings--like pronunciations--change over time). For more info, see the wiki article.
Classic example:

妈 (mā, mother) ＝ 女 (nǚ, woman) ＋ 马 (mǎ, horse)
The &quot;horse&quot; component is purely phonetic (and a relatively good phonetic too!), and the &quot;woman&quot; component hints as to the meaning.

The author of the linked article is obviously grossly mistaken as to the construction of Chinese characters, both in general, as well as in the specific cases he brings up. I'll offer non-ridiculous analyses for the characters listed, based mostly off of the very useful Chinese character etymology website. I give the pronunciations for the phonetics and the meanings of the semantics:

船 (chuan2, boat) =  舟 (older word for boat) + 㕣 (yan3)
婪 (lan2, covetous/greedy) =  林 (lin2) + 女 (woman... sorry ladies)
造 (zao4, create/cause) = 告 (report) + 辶 (foot, walk); original meaning in Old Chinese: &quot;appear in court&quot;
完 (wan2, complete) = 宀 (building/roof) + 元 (yuan2)
禁 (jin4, to forbid) = 林 (lin2) + 示 (omens)
園 (yuan2, garden) = 袁 (yuan2) + 囗 (enclosure)
魔 (mo2, wizard/magic/demon) = 麻 (ma2) + 鬼 (ghost/monster)

As you can see, almost all of the characters are semantic-phonetic compounds. Also, the forms of the characters shown in the article are modern ones, not oracle bones forms.
Addendum:
I chose not to give the meanings of the phonetic components in my analyses because I don't want to encourage the widely held (and incredibly wrong) perception that characters have no phonetic content and that every part of a character &quot;means&quot; something. Certainly some characters are pictograms (e.g., 马 = horse) or semantic-compunds (e.g., 焚), but the vast majority are semantic-phonetic compounds. I also chose not to repeat the analyses given in the article, since I think it would only increase the likelihood of people taking them seriously.
For the OP's benefit, I will do a more detailed analysis for &quot;garden&quot; which looks at the makeup of the phonetic character and compares it to the analysis given in the article:
The analysis given to us in the article is:

園 (garden) = 土 (dust) + 口 (breath literally &quot;mouth&quot;) + ??? (two people) + 囗 (enclosure)

I think I made clear how the entire inner content of the box is a component used purely for its phonetic value (and therefore the article writer is mistaken in analyzing it for its meaning).
However, the article's analysis is flawed in several other ways as well:

It treats the character as being made up of 4 components. Even if it were a semantic-compound, it would be made up two parts: 袁 (???) + 囗 (enclosure). The former character survives in modern Chinese only as a surname, so it's unclear what in the hell they would mean put together. I think 袁 once meant graceful, so I guess &quot;graceful wall&quot;.

The phonetic part (袁) is itself a pictogram of a pendant over the character for clothing; not 土 + 口 + ???. The fact that the modern form (which doesn't look like the Seal script form) appears to contain a 土 and a 口 isn't really relevant.

Even assuming it made sense to analyze 袁 into sub-components, and even assuming the seal-script components were the same as the modern ones, the author has done it wrong. The &quot;two people&quot; fragment given is not even a character. You could write &quot;two people&quot; as the character for person twice 人人 (doesn't look like it), use the &quot;two people radical&quot; 彳 (also doesn't look it), use the word &quot;from&quot; 从 (still doesn't look like it). What the fragment the article author wrote down as &quot;two people&quot; is actually the bottom part of 衣. It's a pictogram that originally depicted fabric.


You commented &quot;I just need a clear answer: do the characters mean that or not?&quot;. I hope this answer has elucidated how the article's author was wrong on pretty much every level you can be wrong on. If you want that in yes/no format, I'm pretty sure it's &quot;no no no no no...&quot;.