The Story Of The Great Flood (Biblical / Noah's Voyage; Other Ancient Traditions)

[Anonymous]

Its interesting that nearly all cultures across the world have a version of the Noah / flood myth

 

[Beakmoo]

Its interesting that nearly all cultures across the world have a version of the Noah / flood myth

Perhaps that tells us the flood is a basic idea from Jung's collective unconcious rather than based on a historical event. Rather like the symbolism in dreams, perhaps floodwater represents something else.
On the other hand I could be talking through my cloaca, and it's based on the formation of the Med, which I suppose could have been a story that travelled round the ancient world spread by sailors.

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps that tells us the flood is a basic idea from Jung's collective unconcious rather than based on a historical event. Rather like the symbolism in dreams, perhaps floodwater represents something else.

I would tend to agree, especially as ancient near-eastern cultures used the image of large bodies of water as a symbol of primaeval chaos and anarchy. Probably the best known example of this is the first of the two creation myths found in Genesis.

 

[rynner2]

...the formation of the Med, which I suppose could have been a story that travelled round the ancient world spread by sailors.

More likely the formation of the Black Sea, which did occur within ancient historical times - I think the Med was much earlier.

Signs of human occupation have been found below the surface of the Black Sea, and the flood that caused it when the Med broke through is thought to have resulted from a huge temporary waterfall by present day Istanbul.

One thing I've never seen anywhere else, but which sounds plausible to me, is that this flood could also explain the breaking up of the "Fountains of the Deep" which (together with the 40 days of rain) were supposed to have caused the Biblical flood. Since the Black Sea basin was below sea-level before the flood (much like the Dead Sea now), there may well have been a few sea water springs in the barrier holding back the Med. When the flood was imminent, these springs would indeed have broken up, in the most dramatic fashion, as the barrier crumbled away.

You read it here (I hope!)

 

[rynner2]

Co-Inky-Dinks!

Since making my post about the Black Sea, I discover there is a prog on telly tonight about the underwater explorations there!

C4, 7 pm, "Secrets of the Dead".

 

[Anonymous]

The tower of babel actually has historical evidence of it's possible existence. But that's what the christian archeologists and the churches would have us believe. ...

Then of course you have Noah's ark....not a bible story...a babylonian story with Sumarian origins....but that I dare say should be another thread. But its another example of where the bible has appropriated other stories for its own teachings.

 

[Anonymous]

Then of course you have Noah's ark....not a bible story...a babylonian story with Sumarian origins....but that I dare say should be another thread. But its another example of where the bible has appropriated other stories for its own teachings.

There's another school of thought about the similarities of tales; if there was indeed a deluge and flooding to the degree listed in both stories, the area would have widespread flooding and there may well have been more than one boat built. Me, I don't know for sure. But saying that the tale of Noah is definitively a hijacked Sumerian myth is as objectionable as the flip side, which would be to say that the Bible is the one and only true piece of literature from that era to survive. No one who actually studies the Bible believes that. And yes legends and even songs overlap from culture to culture in the middle east in ancient times. I believe there is a good example of this in the Psalm (can't recall the number, dang it) that is very similar to an Eqyptian hymn to the sun god.

 

[Anonymous]

There's another school of thought about the similarities of tales; if there was indeed a deluge and flooding to the degree listed in both stories, the area would have widespread flooding and there may well have been more than one boat built. Me, I don't know for sure. But saying that the tale of Noah is definitively a hijacked Sumerian myth is as objectionable as the flip side, which would be to say that the Bible is the one and only true piece of literature from that era to survive.

I just recently learned that Bob Ballard is doing some pretty serious research into the Flood. This is probably old news here, but I'll post it anyway.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

 

[Timble2]

Another (almost believable) theory about Noah's Ark....

At:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3524676.stm

Did Noah really build an ark?

By Jeremy Bowen
Presenter, Noah's Ark


In the Bible, God tells Noah he has to build an ark and load a pair of every kind of animal before a great flood engulfs the world. It is widely regarded as a myth, but could it actually be true?

........

God warned Noah - the only good man left in a world full of corruption and violence - to prepare for a great flood. With his sons he built a great ark and the animals marched in two by two. By the time the rain started to fall, Noah was ready. The ark was a refuge until the waters went down, leaving Noah and his menagerie high and dry on Mount Ararat.

There are many problems with the story. It would have taken 35 years for Noah and his family to load the animals. And a flood that engulfed the Earth would have left a signature for geologists - yet none has been found.

But it is possible to build a much more credible version of the story based on a different reading of the Bible, on ancient Babylonian sources that predate the Book of Genesis, and on archaeology and science.

The traditional shape of Noah's Ark comes from the imaginations of 19th Century artists. It would have been about 450ft long, and experts say it would have broken apart.

Even if such a feat of marine engineering had been possible, there are about 30 million species of animals in the world. With Noah's deadline of a week he would have had to have loaded 50 pairs a second. For so many creatures, a fleet of enormous arks would have been needed.

But just because the details of this familiar story do not add up, should we turn our backs on Noah and the ark?

We have to forget the idea that such a huge boat carrying all known animals existed, that it came to rest on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey, and that a flood covered the entire Earth.

In 1851, British archaeologists discovered hundreds of clay tablets while digging in ancient Babylon.

It was 20 years later that British Museum assistant George Smith became the first person to read them. He found the story of Gilgamesh, which bore strong similarities to that of Noah. He was visited by the great gods, who decided there would be a great deluge, told him to make a boat and carry in it the seed of all living things.

Further Iraqi texts were discovered, showing the story emerged in Mesopotamia. And in the 1930s conclusive evidence of a huge flood in the area about 5,000 years ago - the time of the story of Noah - was found.

What we know of the culture of what is now Iraq gives the first glimpse of the real-life historical figure behind the myth.

Noah might have been king of a city called Shuruppak. He would have had a kilt, a shaven head and eye make-up, like the figures portrayed in artworks created in what was then known as Sumeria.

The epic of Gilgamesh says Noah had silver and gold, then the currency of wealthy merchants, suggesting he was a businessman.

Could this story have provided the inspiration for the Jewish priests who wrote the Book of Genesis 2,000 years later?

Instead of building an ark to survive a great flood, he is more likely to have built boats to trade goods like beer, grain and animals.

All the big trading centres of the era were on the River Euphrates and it was cheaper to move goods by water than land. Sumerians were able to build barges about 20ft in length, and marine archaeologists have not found remains or inscriptions of larger vessels.

But they believe they would have had the technology to have built a series of barges and used them like pontoons on which a much larger boat, or ark, could have been constructed.


Parts of the Euphrates were only navigable at certain times of the year, when the waters were deep enough for large boats.

Noah was likely to have waited for the melt waters to arrive in June and July and, if these had combined with a tropical storm, the river could have flooded the Mesopotamian plain.

The currents in the area would not have taken him towards Mount Ararat, but out into the Persian Gulf. Life would have been difficult, but they could have survived on the animals and beer on board.

One Babylonian text suggests the ark came to rest on what is now the island of Bahrain, providing a very different yet plausible end to the adventure.

Could this story have provided the inspiration for the Jewish priests who wrote the Book of Genesis 2,000 years later? When they first heard the story, how could they fail to recognise its moral power, that if humankind falls short of God's laws, there's a dreadful price to pay. Behind that moral message lies one of the world's greatest stories.

And behind that story we can just glimpse a real man, a real boat and a real adventure.

 

[mendhak]

Considering how every culture has it's own Flood Myth, I'd say that this occured a very long time ago, much before the scriptures today claim it to have happened.

I think it's a legend passed on by word-of-mouth before it started being written down.

What's more, it was probably some localized flood, but over time, things got exaggerated. We are probably looking for something that doesn't even exist.

 

[rynner2]

A four kilometre deep flood around Ararat? It seems very unlikely - where would all that water come from? Just as important, where did it all go afterwards? There ought to be huge scars on the landscape, remnants of the drainage channels carved out by that water. And Geologists know what they'd look like; eg, in the USA:

Lake Missoula
...
The glacial lake, at its maximum height and extent, contained more than 500 cubic miles of water. When Glacial Lake Missoula burst through the ice dam and exploded downstream, it did so at a rate 10 times the combined flow of all the rivers of the world. This towering mass of water and ice literally shook the ground as it thundered towards the Pacific Ocean, stripping away thick soils and cutting deep canyons in the underlying bedrock. With flood waters roaring across the landscape at speeds approaching 65 miles per hour, the lake would have drained in as little as 48 hours.

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glac ... soula.html

The origin of the Noah's Ark myth was probably the creation of the Black Sea, when water broke through from the Med, flooding the low-lying land to the east.

The Real-Life Basis for Noah's Flood
by Tina Blue
December 16, 2000

In their book Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), Walter Pitman and William Ryan detail the overwhelming evidence that the Old Testament story of Noah and the Great Flood (Genesis 6:9-9:17) was actually based on a real-life event, a cataclysmic flood that took place approximately 7,600 years ago, in 5,600 b.c. Other ancient oral literatures, most notably the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh and an older Sumerian version, called The Deluge, also tell of a Great Flood that would have occurred at about the same time as the one recorded in Genesis.

All of the world's saltwater oceans are really one great connected body of water, the "world ocean." The Black Sea, which lies between Turkey and the former U.S.S.R., is connected to the world ocean by way of the Sea of Marmara, through the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The narrow passageway between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus Strait, is marked by certain anomalous physical characteristics that point to a time when the Black Sea was actually an isolated freshwater lake, and the Bosporus Strait a mighty natural dam.

etc...

http://salvoblue.homestead.com/noah.html

Here, we know where the water came from (the World Ocean, via the Med) and we know where it went, because it's still there - it's the Black Sea.

If there ever was an Ark, it probably landed on the new coast (maybe near Ararat, who knows), but has since then been covered by further post-glacial sea level rises. But up a mountain - I don't think so!

 

[Bigfoot73]

Personally I think evidence for flooding could be obscured relatively quickly, or maybe mistaken for the product of glaciation. whether such an event would actually break the planet up is rather uncertain I would have thought, after all it's survived the impact of huge meteorites before. ...

Yeah, the Biblical version, with Noah living to 900 and his sons managing about 500, and him rounding up specimens of every last creature on the planet, is BS. more like he just lived to a ripe old age, and had rounded up whatever he could find in the immediate vicinity.

Besides which the story was borrowed from the Sumerians anyway.

 

[Bigfoot73]

I think the claim that 2 of each of all the world's animal species csn safely be ascribed to mythological exaggeration. It was supposed to have rained for 40 days and nights: how many times is the number 40 used in old myths? Loads.

 

[Analis]

Yeah, the Biblical version, with Noah living to 900 and his sons managing about 500, and him rounding up specimens of every last creature on the planet, is BS.

Only because of that ?
If such a devastating event had happened, the evidence would be overwhelming. Earth could recover from huge asteroid strikes, but it took many thousands, if not millions of years. If such a catastrophe had taken place a few thousands years, we would still see its imprint everywhere. What would remain in human memory would be much more than vague legends from old religious books. Same for other 'catastrophic' nonsense relating to recent prehistory / early history, like crustal shift or velikovskian twaddle.
There is evidence for a number of local floods during the ten thousand years the retreat of ice lasted. And sometimes of global floods, when sea level rose of tens of centimeters for a few months. These various events led to the widespread global flood legends. The Bibical tale being only a late and very distorted version. The floods were discussed on other threads, about Atlantis or flooded kingdoms.
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... t=atlantis
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... t=atlantis

 

[Bigfoot73]

What would remain in human memory would be much more than vague legends from old religious books. Same for other 'catastrophic' nonsense relating to recent prehistory / early history, like crustal shift or velikovskian twaddle.

The account in the Book of Enoch says,in so many words, that Noah awoke one day to see that the Earth had tilted. Perhaps there actually was some catastrophic nonsense and Velikovskian twaddle going on .

It has been suggested the Black Sea was formed abruptly only a few thousand years ago, perhaps by such an event. It has also been suggested, usually with regard to the age of the Great Pyramids, that the regional climate was much different then, with much higher rainfall. This would have been conducive to soil formation, and the soil would have borne most of the evidence. The climate change led to the soil depleting and the evidence went with it.

some of those global flood legends are not versions of the Ark story, they are accounts of other cultures' flood experience - for instance the Yakima indians of western America, who built their own Ark which allegedly came to rest on Mount Jefferson.

 

[Analis]

The account in the Book of Enoch says,in so many words, that Noah awoke one day to see that the Earth had tilted. Perhaps there actually was some catastrophic nonsense and Velikovskian twaddle going on .

The Earth tilted ? If this was the case, all evidence we would have would be a quote in the Book of Enoch ?

some of those global flood legends are not versions of the Ark story, they are accounts of other cultures' flood experience - for instance the Yakima indians of western America, who built their own Ark which allegedly came to rest on Mount Jefferson.

Yes. Many people all around the world faced gigantic floods at the end of the last Ice Age, and evolved their own myths. Sometimes similar to Noah's story, sometimes different. It is also possible that human memory was impressed with huge meteoritic strikes, like the one some supposed to have caused the extinction of big mammals.

 

[Bigfoot73]

What I think happened - purely speculation of course- is that Earth had a close encounter with another planet, the gravity from which pulled the Mediterranean and Black Sea into a pile over the Ararat region and that this dissipated as the effect wore off.

 

[stu neville]

What I think happened - purely speculation of course- is that Earth had a close encounter with another planet, the gravity from which pulled the Mediterranean and Black Sea into a pile over the Ararat region and that this dissipated as the effect wore off.

As postulated by Velikovsky. He crops up in a few threads, but we have one dedicated to him here.

As you can see, opinion is divided upon the subject.

 

[rynner2]

Any close encounter with another planet just a few thousand years ago would have caused immense destruction on the surface of both planets (via tidal forces acting on the 'solid' Earth as well as the oceans), and almost certainly altered the Earth's rotation rate and disturbed the orbit of the Moon, for all of which there's no evidence.

It would also have left traces in anomalous movements in the solar system, but again there's no evidence. Just as we can predict the future positions of planets using computer programs, so we can run the programs backwards to find their positions in the past, and these simulations are in agreement with the oldest historical records, such as those of eclipses.

Passing planets are so rare as to be non-existant: even encounters with large asteroids or comets only occur at intervals of thousands or millions of years.

There are plenty of more conventional ways to explain ancient flood legends, so until we know for sure that there is an ark made of gopher wood high on Ararat there's no point contemplating improbable theories for which there's no other evidence.

 

[Bigfoot73]

Perhaps it was Venus, being dragged into he solar system by the gravity from the Sun and Jupiter. Perhaps it was something else altogether.
So because there isn't a complete and convincing explanation of how it got there, it isn't there.
Because there isn't an explanation for the reactions of established Christianity,again it isn't there.
This is rather like saying that because there is no explanation for falls of frogs and fish etc. they don't actually happen. To which I suppose either of you would counter that the frogs and fish are demonstrably existent. To which I would counter that the accumulated evidence was sufficient even before the recent expedition, and both of you have a lot of homework to do.

 

[stu neville]

Perhaps it was Venus, being dragged into he solar system by the gravity from the Sun and Jupiter. Perhaps it was something else altogether.
So because there isn't a complete and convincing explanation of how it got there, it isn't there.

No. Venus is demonstrably there. The point is, it didn't come past us on its way there. IIRC, it's been where it is now as long as we've been where we are.

This is rather like saying that because there is no explanation for falls of frogs and fish etc. they don't actually happen. To which I suppose either of you would counter that the frogs and fish are demonstrably existent...

..and, most Forteans would agree that fish and frog falls do happen, too. We know they happen. What we don't have in those cases is an explanation (or explanations, who's to say there's one universal cause?) Comparing a known phenomenon with this case isn't really a runner, in all honesty.

 

[Bigfoot73]

No. Venus is demonstrably there. The point is, it didn't come past us on its way there. IIRC, it's been where it is now as long as we've been where we are.

Yes it is there, but there are other theories of solar system history which suggest it might not have been so for very long.

Evidence of what? Noah's Ark (primary source - Genesis), Venus swinging by in a celestial game of Boules (Velikovsky), or something else?

There is far more to the evidence for the Ark than Genesis , and it was originally a Sumerian story anyway. That's why I made the fish -fall comparison, the evidence for the Ark does make it a runner. Noahs arksearch.com is as good a starting point as any although most of the evidence there is available elsewhere too.

 

[stu neville]

No. Venus is demonstrably there. The point is, it didn't come past us on its way there. IIRC, it's been where it is now as long as we've been where we are.

Yes it is there, but there are other theories of solar system history which suggest it might not have been so for very long.

There are - but, 99% of astronomers and physicists are content that it evolved in its orbit at the same time as the earth in its respective orbit. The mechanics and evidence all fit, as opposed to the theories about Venus swinging in from elsewhere, wherein huge gaps are ignored or filled with other theories that make even less sense.

Evidence of what? Noah's Ark (primary source - Genesis), Venus swinging by in a celestial game of Boules (Velikovsky), or something else?

There is far more to the evidence for the Ark than Genesis , and it was originally a Sumerian story anyway. That's why I made the fish -fall comparison, the evidence for the Ark does make it a runner.

I think you misunderstood my point - that fish fall from the sky is a known and tangible quantity, it's the mechanism that's unknown. With the Ark, what we have is a lot of very old anecdotal evidence (I know there's lots of similar motifs in a number of cultures), and an unverified claim that it's been found. That's the difference.

 

[stu neville]

No. Venus is demonstrably there. The point is, it didn't come past us on its way there. IIRC, it's been where it is now as long as we've been where we are.

Yes it is there, but there are other theories of solar system history which suggest it might not have been so for very long.

There are - but, 99% of astronomers and physicists are content that it evolved in its orbit at the same time as the earth in its respective orbit. The mechanics and evidence all fit, as opposed to the theories about Venus swinging in from elsewhere, wherein huge gaps are ignored or filled with other theories that make even less sense.

I read Rynner's and Analis's comments as meaning it couldn't possibly be the Ark because there's no way it could have got up there.
There are plenty of witnesses who did not go up Ararat , or fly over it, with the sole intention of finding it. However most explorers who go looking for anything do so because they believe what they seek exists.

Can't argue with that, but I would add the rider that there's a subtle difference between the search for geographic areas or zoology, and religious artefacts - faith adds another dimension to it.

Evidence of what? Noah's Ark (primary source - Genesis), Venus swinging by in a celestial game of Boules (Velikovsky), or something else?

There is far more to the evidence for the Ark than Genesis , and it was originally a Sumerian story anyway. That's why I made the fish -fall comparison, the evidence for the Ark does make it a runner.

I think you misunderstood my point - that fish fall from the sky is a known and tangible quantity, it's the mechanism that's unknown. With the Ark, what we have is a lot of very old anecdotal evidence (I know there's lots of similar motifs in a number of cultures), and an unverified claim that it's been found. That's the difference.

I'd love it to be Noah's Ark. Just as much as I'd have loved the thing in the freezer touted about by Biscardi to be the corpse of a Sasquatch, or Santilli's film to be genuine - but deep down, most of me suspected they probably weren't. I'm not saying that the Ararat team are deliberately faking it, but as I said earlier faith can by definition eclipse non-biased thought. There's no point in rolling out the bunting until any discovery is authenticated by independent parties with the requisite expertise.

 

[Bigfoot73]

Venus may indeed not be a new entry to the solar system, there are any number of possible causes, none of which can be conclusively linked to the global evidence for catastrophes.

that fish fall from the sky is a known and tangible quantity

So is the Ark, it's just that the awareness of it has never been universal and the tangibility has had a turbulent history. Biscardi's rubber monkey suit and the Santilli film are transparent BS touted by con artists.

 

[stu neville]

Oh, I'm well aware of the huge and venerable oral and written tradition surrounding the Ark - as I said, I'd love this latest discovery to be the genuine article. That in mind, I can qualify this:

that fish fall from the sky is a known and tangible quantity

So is the Ark, it's just that the awareness of it has never been universal and the tangibility has had a turbulent history.
Biscardi's rubber monkey suit and the Santilli film are transparent BS touted by con artists.

..by rephrasing my previous angle - I'd have been very happy had either of the fake examples transpired to be genuine, but, deep down, I was pretty sure they weren't. The point is, just because the most high-profile soi-disant evidence has proved to be invalid, it doesn't follow that the entity or entities they sought to represent are therefore fake as well. Same with the Ark.

 

[INT21]

I don't recall any mention of the situation immediately after the flood.

The whole world being littered with the rotting corpse of every person and animal that wasn't on the ark.

One would think it would at least get a mention.

INT21.

 

[Xanatic*]

The sharks ate them.

 

[Mythopoeika]

The sharks ate them.

And the crocs.

 

[EnolaGaia]

The sharks ate them.

That relates to a relevant point ... The Biblical account of Noah's instructions makes no mention of completely aquatic animals. At face value, this means aquatic animals were left to fend for themselves because they had no need for Noah's intervention.