Compelling evidence showed Adam existed 60,000 years ago. Our remaining hominid cousins, Neanderthal and Denisovan, went extinct by 30,000 to 20,000 years ago because of competition and interbreeding with Homo sapiens.
According to biblical scholars, one of Adam’s descendants, Noah, the last patriarch of Genesis, built an ark and witnessed the destructive power of the Great Flood in around 2400BC. The scholars measured the timeline of Noah’s existence to be in about 1000 Anno Mundo (AM).
However, putting Noah’s presence on this earth around two thousand four hundred years before Christ is impossible because ancient civilizations around Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India, and China had been going on since 5,000 to 4,000BC.
Most of these civilizations mentioned the myth of the Great Flood orally or had recorded it in writing in their literature or scriptures. Some characters mentioned had striking similarities with Noah.
So, if the ancient civilizations mentioned the Flood over four to five thousand years ago, how is it possible Noah only existed in 2400BC based on the understanding of biblical scholars? The only reasonable period Noah could fit in was during the Neolithic Period.
Why is it possible Noah existed during the Neolithic Period?
The Neolithic Period is the final division of the Stone Age, rising independently in several parts of the world, about 12,000 years ago when the first farming developments appeared.
The Late Stone Age introduced the Neolithic Revolution, comprising a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, especially the introduction of farming and the use of domesticated animals.
The Neolithic Period also corresponded to the Late Maxim Glacier or the Last Ice Age.
The Great Flood
As I mentioned earlier, ancient people had been talking about the Great Deluge. The Flood must have been critical that many of the civilizations said about this catastrophic event.
Among the civilizations mentioning the Flood are Mesopotamian flood stories, Manavantara-Sandhya in Hinduism, the Gun-Yu in Chinese folklores, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek fables Bergelmir in Norse mythology.
It’s a shred of circumstantial evidence, but all these stories reinforced the fact that Noah existed. The ancient civilizations had been passing these stories from their ancestors to their descendants. Thus the Flood must have occurred way back before their time.
The Bible mentioned the Great Flood was a universal flood, which meant the entire earth submerged underwater. Based on the scripture’s account in the Book of Genesis, God sent down the Flood to punish humankind as they had turned wicked.
However, based on scientific evidence, a universal Flood covering the entire globe is impossible. Scientists reason, the fossilized remains of ancient animals and plants would not have clustered uniformly together but scattered around in a mess.
The Last Maxim Glacier and localized floods
Before 10,000BC, ice-sheet covered the world. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent.
Ice sheets covered much of North America, Northern Europe, and Asia and profoundly affected the earth’s climate by causing drought, desertification, and a significant drop in sea levels. Then, deglaciation began causing an abrupt rise in sea level and the decline of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The Last Maxim Glacier happened during the Neolithic Period. The melting ice cut off land-route connections because of the rising sea level. Homo-sapiens couldn’t travel around freely, but those who had ended up permanently stuck in their new environment.
The Last Maxim Glacier also caused many floods around the world. These floods created sedimentary deposits and constructional landforms. Among the most famous geographical landmarks created by the Last Maxim Glacier was the Black Sea.
The world never experienced a universal flood. But many ancient people might have encountered Paleoflooding, including Noah and his tribe. These floods were common during the Last Maxim Glacier. Therefore, Noah must have been the viceroy appointed by God during the Last Ice Age.
The Ark and the animals
In the Book of Genesis, God warned Noah of an impending flood and commanded Noah to build an ark. The Bible mentioned the size and dimension of the ship which Noah constructed. The Ark could carry Noah’s family and the entire pairs of animals of the world.
Scientists believed constructing the Ark as described by the Bible was possible. However, housing all the world’s animals into the ship would be unfeasible. Noah will have to accommodate millions of animals, which will be a logistical nightmare for the caretaker.
However, if Noah existed during the Neolithic Period, then bringing the pairs of animals makes sense. People of the Late Stone Age were taming wild animals and collect edible grasses. Therefore, protecting and preserving these domestic species would become essential for future generations. In that case, Noah must have only carried pairs of recently domesticated animals.
The birth of idol worshipping
Adam received a gift from God, as he inherited the power to understand art and language. God also inspired Adam to commit himself to serve the One true God and also purifying his commitment.
But generations later, Adam’s descendants strayed from his commitments. Since Adam had transmitted his knowledge down, Homo sapiens not only make better tools and invent extra words, they shaped carvings, especially female figurines.
Primitive men related their experiences through oral stories as they invented more and more new words. Soon, Homo sapiens mixed facts with fantasy, and their generations after accepted all their stories as the truth.
Because of men’s inquisitive nature, they asked questions about things they could not understand or see, such as natural phenomena, death, and God. Humankind then invented fiction stories to explain the unexplainable. Soon, the figurines they created became deities, which they claimed became God’s intermediaries.
Symbolic Revolution influenced the Neolithic Religion. By examining figurines and early art depicting women as goddesses and bulls as gods, archeologists developed several vital ideas about the evolution of perception and duality during the Neolithic Period. Marija Gimbutas, the pioneer of feminist archeology, put forward a notion of a woman-centered society surrounding goddess worship.
Conclusion
Adam and Noah, viceroys of God
After Adam, God assigned probably many viceroys or messengers to the various Stone Age tribes. Mentioned in the Bible and Quran, the most significant of them all was Noah, who lived during the Neolithic Period.
Adam had reminded his children to continue serving One God, but Homo-sapiens marveled at what they could create as time passed. Because of their creativity, they shaped figurines, which they later worshipped.
The last Stone Age before civilization
Humans achieved so much that by the Late Stone Age, they were on the way towards developing early civilization. Men had forgotten to serve One God.
The Agricultural Revolution made men independent from depending too much on nature. The Symbolic Revolution made Homo sapiens obsessed with their artifacts to the extent they worshipped their creation.
The Flood and the Ark
Because of this, God sent Noah to warn his people of impending doom if they continue to worship idols. If they listened to Noah, they would have been saved by following him into the Ark. However, since they refused to listen, the Great Flood destroyed them.
Noah and the Neolithic Period
Noah must have existed during the Neolithic Period and witnessed the end of the Maxim Glacier. The melting of the ice created many localized floods, enabling Noah and his tribe to see the Great Flood.
During the Neolithic Period, humankind domesticated wild animals. These were the beasts that Noah carried in his Ark. Noah and the people who survived produced descendants that eventually created ancient civilizations.
*Jason referred to his Bible and then the Quran. He had stayed up all night to uncover the story of the flood. Many Jews, Christian, and Muslims were very sure that the great flood during the time of Noah was a universal catastrophe, and the whole world was flooded. They believed that only Noah and his family survived, while all the rest of humankind, up to that point, were wiped out. To them, the seed of humanity had began with Adam and ended during the flood.
The Flood story proclaims God’s grace and love for his people.
The story of Noah, the ark, and the Flood in Genesis 6-9 is one of the most famous and controversial passages in the entire Bible. The story, centered around a global cataclysm and a floating wooden zoo, has captured the imagination of people for millennia. Until modern times, most Christians assumed the story referred to an actual worldwide event that happened in the relatively recent past, and this interpretation of the Flood continues to be a central feature of Young Earth Creationism. However, the discoveries of modern science, as well as an explosion of new knowledge about the ancient world of the Bible, have decisively challenged whether this interpretation is the best reading of the text. This includes the work of many Christian scholars and scientists who were (and continue to be) guided by a belief that all truth is God’s truth, that Scripture is inspired, and that the testimony of God’s creation should not be ignored. The scientific and historical evidence is now clear: there has never been a global flood that covered the entire earth, nor do all modern animals and humans descend from the passengers of a single vessel.
Relating science and Scripture
When discoveries in God’s world conflict with interpretations of God’s Word, Christians have three options:
Abandon our faith in order to accept the results of science,
Deny the scientific evidence to maintain our interpretations of Scripture,
Reconsider our interpretations of Scripture in light of the evidence from God’s creation
Christians, by definition, reject Option 1. Option 2 has a terrible historical track record, and many prominent historical theologians have urged Christians not to ignore or dismiss the findings of science. Option 3 represents the best tradition among Christians, and history provides many examples of our knowledge of the natural world helping to correct faulty interpretations of Scripture. The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo (that the Earth is not the center of the universe), for instance, changed the Church’s perspective on whether the Bible intends to teach us about Earth’s place in the solar system.
Because we take God to be the author of the “book of nature” as well as the divine author of the book of Scripture, we believe the proper interpretation of the Flood story will not be in conflict with what we have discovered in the natural world.
The Bible in ancient context
The Bible is a record of encounters between Almighty God and ordinary humans that lived thousands of years ago. As biblical scholar John Walton puts it, the Bible was written for us all, but it was not written to us. Thus, for us to understand what Genesis means, we first need to understand what it meant to those who wrote and received it.
It was common practice in the ancient world to use an event (or memory of an event) and retell it in a figurative way to communicate a message to the hearers. There is good scriptural and historical evidence that the Flood story is an interpretation of an actual historical event retold in the rhetoric and theology of ancient Israel. The Genesis account is one of many stories of catastrophic floods in the ancient world, including the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, which bears striking similarities to the story of the Flood.
This doesn’t mean that Genesis 6-9 is borrowed from the stories of other cultures, but that it is based on a common cultural memory of a watery cataclysm.
The exact nature or date of this historical flood is not important to the meaning of the Genesis account, however, because the purpose of the biblical story is not to give a list of facts about that flood, but to communicate a message about God and humanity to the original hearers (and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to all God’s people throughout history)
Interpreting the flood story
The Genesis Flood story contains many literary clues that its writers (and original audience) were not intended to narrate an actual series of events. The story employs the literary device known as “hyperbole” throughout, describing a massive ark which holds representatives of “every living creature on Earth”, and a flood which flows over the tops of the highest mountains in the world. These are not meant to challenge readers to figure out the practicality of such descriptions, but rather they are important clues that we are dealing with a theological story rather than ancient journalism.
There are other clues that the writers are not intending to relate a literal series of events. One is the command given to Noah to treat “clean” animals differently than “unclean” animals, even though those categories were not given to the Hebrew people until the time of Moses, much later in the biblical story. Another clue about how to interpret the Flood story comes from its place in the book of Genesis and specifically in the “primeval narratives” of Genesis 1-11.
Biblical scholars almost universally see these chapters as having a different purpose than the rest of the book of Genesis. The primeval narratives cover a huge swath of cosmic history and are highly figurative in their language. They serve as the grand and poetic “introduction” to the story of God’s people which commences with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. While they speak of real events (such as the creation of the universe and the special calling of humankind), they do so in rhetorical and theological ways that have more to do with the purposes of the story than a plain narration of facts. This is completely typical of how ancient people (including the Israelites) wrote historical accounts, especially concerning “primeval” events near the beginning of history.
Ancient cosmology in the flood story
Not only do we need to read the Flood story through the lens of ancient literature, but also ancient cosmology. Because the ancient Israelites (like all people in the ancient Near East) lacked telescopes, satellites, and other modern scientific equipment, they pictured the universe as it appeared to everyday observation. Ancient Near Eastern people thought that rain comes from an ocean above the sky (which explains why the sky is blue), and that this ocean wraps all the way around the earth (which explains why deep wells always hit water). They also thought of the “whole Earth” as simply the edges of their current maps, which mostly consisted of today’s Middle East.
The Flood narrative relies on this same ancient understanding of the world. As the “firmament” (a solid dome in the sky which holds the cosmic ocean in place) collapses and the “fountains of the deep” explode upward, the Earth experiences a cataclysmic return to the watery chaos described in Genesis 1:2. To deal with the chaos of sin, God returns the Earth to chaos, and then restores order with a “restart” and renewal of creation.
Modern people read the Flood story with a completely different perspective on the shape of the Earth and universe. Those who say the story portrays a “global” flood, for instance, are imposing that term upon the text, because the original audience had no idea that the Earth was a globe. Similarly, any speculation about the water sources or ark buoyancy or geologic effects or post-Flood animal migrations or similar questions is missing the point of the story.
The meaning of the flood
To some, the view outlined here of the Flood account denies the divine inspiration of the text and instead makes the story entirely a human invention. But it’s important to remember that God chose to communicate his message through ordinary people, accommodating himself to their limited knowledge in order to draw themselves to him. God did not give the ancient Israelites scientific data, nor did he give the Israelites new genres of literature.
The story of Noah, the Ark, and Flood speaks an inspired and powerful message about judgment and grace, that has instructed God’s people throughout the ages about God’s hatred of sin and his love for his creation. Most importantly, we see God’s promise never to destroy the Earth again fully realized in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, where God takes the judgment for sin upon himself rather than humanity. Thus, through the lens of Christ, the biblical Flood story proclaims the marvelous news of God’s grace and love for his people.
* * * * * * *
Yes, Noah's Flood May Have Happened, But Not Over the Whole Earth
Reports of the National Center for Science Education
Volume 29. No. 5 | September-October 2009
Introduction
The Bible (Genesis 6–9) describes a worldwide flood (the Noachian Flood) covering even the highest mountains of the earth and the construction of a huge boat (a rectangular box-like craft) that transported animals, at least two of a kind of all land animals on the earth. The Qur'an (Suras 11 and 71) has almost a duplicate story with a similar huge boat that transported animals and a worldwide flood. In addition two older stories exist in ancient Babylonian epics that describe a huge flood. One is the Epic of Gilgamesh, describing a flood on the Euphrates River (Academy of Ancient Texts nd). The other is the Epic of Atrahasis, which has a huge flood on the Tigris River (Byers nd).
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, [Utnapishtim] is warned that a god plans to destroy all humanity and is told to build a ship to save himself, his family, friends, and cattle. In the Epic of Atrahasis, a tribal chief survived with his family by floating in a boat down to the Persian Gulf. After the flood subsided, the chief got out on dry land and erected an altar and sacrificed to a water god so that such a flood would not happen again (Anonymous nd-a). Noah also built an altar when he got off the Ark and offered sacrifices (Genesis 8:20). Because these stories all describe an ancient huge flood in Mesopotamia, it is extremely likely that a huge flood could have occurred. However, the next question is: "Did the Noachian Flood cover the whole earth?"
Scientific Evidence Against a Whole-Earth Flood
The Bible says that the rains that created the Noachian Flood lasted for 40 days (Genesis 7:17), that the waters prevailed on the earth for 150 days (Genesis 7:24), and after these 150 days the waters gradually receded from the earth so that by the seventh month and the seventeenth day, Noah's Ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4). A year plus two months and twenty-seven days later the earth was dry enough so that Noah,his family, and the load of animals could disembark from the Ark (Genesis 8:14).
Because this flood was intended by God to destroy all flesh on earth (Genesis 6:13) and because sedimentary rocks on all continents contain fossils that supposedly represent the "destroyed flesh of all life," it might be thought that the Bible story, describing a wholeearth flood, was true. However, interlayered with these fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks on all continents are layers of evaporite rock salt (sodium chloride), gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate), anhydrite (calcium sulfate), and various potash and magnesium salts, which are associated with red beds (shales) containing fossilized mud cracks (Schreiber and others 2007).
Many of these mineral compounds and red beds have combined thicknesses on different continents of more than one kilometer (~3,281 feet) (Collins 2006). The red beds are red because they contain red hematite (iron oxide) which formed from magnetite grains that were oxidized while the muds were exposed to oxygen in open air. The mud cracks can form only under drying conditions that cause the mud to shrink and form polygonal cracks. The evaporite mineral compounds in the layers are deposited in the correct chemical order predicted by the solubility of each kind of ion in these compounds and whose increasing concentrations during the evaporation of water would cause them to precipitate in a predictable depositional sequence as the water volume decreased. Such evaporite deposits would be expected to occur where a marine sea was once present and to disappear when the sea became completely dry. Therefore, one could expect these evaporites to be at the top of the supposed Noachian Flood deposits when the water supposedly receded and the land dried out, but certainly not in different levels in between older and younger fossiliferous "Flood deposits".
We read in the Bible that there is only one time in which the Flood waters are said to recede and leave the earth dry. That is, no multiple worldwide climatic conditions are described in which flooding, then drying to a dry earth, more flooding, more drying to a dry earth, in repeated cycles that occur over and over again in that Flood year. On that basis, it is logical that all the kinds of evaporite deposits and red beds in many different levels in the supposed Noachian Flood deposits could form only in local climates with desert drying-conditions and could not possibly have formed all at the same time — a time when a flood covered the whole earth for more than one year (Collins 2006). On that basis, the Noachian Flood story cannot describe a whole-earth flood, but it could only represent a large regional flood.
Regional Evidence for the Noachian and Similar Floods
Two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris flow through Mesopotamia, which is now the country of Iraq (Figure 1). There are several layers in exposed rocks near these two rivers in southeastern Mesopotamia (Iraq) that are likely flood deposits. Most are about a foot (0.3 m) thick, but one is as much as 3 meters thick (MacDonald 1988). Flood debris from this same thick deposit along the Euphrates River near the ancient Sumerian city of Shuruppak about 200 km southeast of Baghdad has been dated by the C14 method, giving an age of 2900 BCE (Best nd). Flood deposits 2.4 meters feet thick are also reported by MacDonald (1988) as far northeast as the ancient Babylonian city of Kish (120 km south of Baghdad). At any rate, the many flood-deposit layers show that flooding in southeastern Mesopotamia was not unusual in ancient times.
Figure 1. Map of Mesopotamia (Iraq).
Similar large local floods are common throughout history around the world. For example, monsoon storms in Bangladesh frequently produce much rain over the country and in the Himalaya Mountains, which rise in the northern part of the country (Anonymous nd-b). Runoff of water from the rain and melting snow during such storms create great floods in four rivers that converge to the Wang River, which then drains into a huge delta in the Bay of Bengal (Anonymous nd-b). Thousands of people have been drowned in this delta region by many such floods during the last century. Almost every culture through history has a flood story to tell, as would the people in Bangladesh, but in each of these times and places, the floods would have been local and not worldwide.
Many creationists have pointed out that the Bible indicates that God promised not to cause another huge flood to occur and, therefore, there cannot be any floods that are similar to the Noachian Flood (Genesis 9:13–15). Therefore, the geological record should show at least one unique flood event that is different from all the large regional floods for which there is geological evidence.
Why Was the Local Large Flood Possible?
Storms that occur in Mesopotamia usually come from the Mediterranean Sea, cross the mountains in Syria, Turkey, and western Iran, move southeasterly over Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, and then exit in the Gulf of Oman. The Euphrates and Tigris Rivers that would transport water from these storms leave higher land in northern Mesopotamia and enter a nearly flat area about 130 km north of Baghdad. In this 130-km interval the gradients of these rivers are small, with the elevation dropping about 3 m per km along the course of the rivers. Both the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers near Baghdad have elevations of about 30 m above sea level, and at the city of As Samawah (280 km south of Baghdad), the Euphrates River has an elevation of 9 m (a drop in elevation of 21 m) (NOAA nd). A similar 21-meter drop occurs along the Tigris River. On that basis, the gradients of the two rivers in these intervals are 0.075 m per km. In the additional 360 km to the Persian Gulf (sea level) the gradients are only about 0.025 m per km. Therefore, in both southeastern and central Mesopotamia the gradients are so low that the rivers barely flow downhill, and frequent flooding could be common.
A large river has natural levees. During a big storm, water rushing down the channel carries abundant sedimentary debris. If the water in the channel overflows its banks onto the adjacent flood plain, the velocity immediately slows because of friction with the flat land, and the water at lower speed cannot carry its entire load of sediment. Heavier coarser particles are deposited abruptly on tops of the banks adjacent to the river while finer silts and clay particles are transported onto the flood plain. When such overflowing floods are repeated year after year, the coarser sediments deposited adjacent to the river build up natural levees on both sides of the channel. Natural levees along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers rise up to 4 to 5 meters above the river channels, and the surface of these levees slope gently away from the rivers for 5 to 8 km toward lower, adjacent, nearly-flat flood plains that are up to 105 km wide (Tactical Pilotage Chart TPC G-4C, H-6A, and H-6B). The people living in Mesopotamia in biblical times would have had their villages on the natural levees because the flood plains would have been swampy.
What Happened During the Flood?
The watershed for the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers on which the flood could have occurred extends for more than 1600 km from the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia into Syria and Turkey and laterally for about 1000 km from eastern Saudi Arabia to southwestern Iran — an area of more than 1.6 million square kilometers. On that basis, if abundant rain fell, not only in the mountains of Syria and Turkey, but also in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the tributary streams from these countries would all contribute their volumes of water to the flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Map showing elevation contours around the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers that extend NW-SE through Mesopotamia.
Normally, in lesser storms most water runoff would have come primarily from the mountains in Syria and Turkey and not also from Saudi Arabia and Iran. During the flood, upstream where water first accumulates, the depth of water on the flood plains may be barely over the tops of the natural levees, but downstream the water "piles up" because it does not flow very fast downhill on a nearly flat surface. Therefore, downstream water depths could reach 32 m or more above the tops of the levees.
This increase in depth would be intensified where the two flood plains with a width of 275 km in the northern section would be squeezed into a 220-km width in the lower part of the drainage system where the two rivers join. The joining of the two rivers would also increase the volume of the water in the flood plains, thereby increasing the depth. At any rate, all higher land on the natural levees where the people in the villages were present would be completely submerged. Thus, it would be possible for a flood to have occurred in mid- Mesopotamia, perhaps about 2900 BCE, as evidenced by the scientifically dated flood deposits.
Remnant Evidence of the Flood
When the huge storm ceased that caused the flood, there would have been huge lakes, and it could have taken months to drain the water in these lakes into the gulf — which could easily explain why the Noachian Flood took so long to recede (as much as one year, according to Genesis 8:14). Evidence for this poor drainage can be seen in the present-day lakes in the flood plains. Lake Hawr al Hammar is 32 km wide and more than 80 km long, lies on the flood plain of the Euphrates River west of Basra, and several other large lakes are on flood plains adjacent to the Tigris River (for example, Hawr as Sa'diya and Hawr as Saniyalt). The poor drainage would be caused by the fact that the water covering the flood plains would have no channel through which to flow, would not flow uphill over the sloping natural levees to re-enter the river channels, and the slopes of the bottoms of the lakes would have been nearly flat with gradients toward the gulf of 0.025 to 0.075 meters per kilometer.
Effects of the Curvature of the Earth
Because of the curvature of the earth, the horizon drops from where the viewer is standing. However, the drop is proportional to the square of the distance between the viewer and an object on the horizon (Young nd). From these relationships, it can be seen that a tribal chief (or Noah) standing on the deck of a large boat (Ark), perhaps 7.8 meters above the water,would not be able to see the tops of any hills as high as 15 m from as little as 24 km away across flood plains covered with water because the curvature of the earth prevents it (See the Appendix for examples of calculations). Most hills in this region that are as much as 15 m high are more than 95 km away from the river levees. Therefore, the survivors of the Flood could see only water in all directions while they were floating down the Tigris River and over the flood plains. Many of these hills would also be partly covered with water which would make their tops project less above the water level, and therefore, the curvature of the earth would make them disappear from the line of sight in even a shorter distance than 24 km.
Northeast and southwest of the nearly flat surface that contains the two rivers, the topography rises to more than 455 m in Saudi Arabia and in Iran. Calculations show that elevations of 455 m high cannot be seen beyond 86 km away, and these places are more than 160 km from the Euphrates or Tigris Rivers. Therefore, none of the high country in Saudi Arabia or Iran would be visible to a tribal chief (or Noah). On that basis, the "whole world" would definitely appear to be covered with water during the Flood, and that was the "whole world" for the people in this part of southeastern Mesopotamia at that time.
Conclusions
If the 3.4-meter–thick layer of flood deposits in southeastern Mesopotamia (MacDonald 1988) represents a huge flood of ancient times, and if it is the remnants of the one described in the early Babylonian epics, then the authors of these epics were likely survivors who lived in a village on natural levees on the lower parts of either the Euphrates or Tigris Rivers where the flood waters covered their village, natural levees, and adjacent flood plains for distances of 160 to 320 kilometers so that no land could be seen, and their "whole world" would have been under water.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Kevin Collins, Fred Tonsing, Eugene Fritsche, Warren Hunt, Jarvis Streeter, Steve Peralta, and Barbara Collins for helpful comments that greatly improved the manuscript.
Note
In the printed version, "Gilgamesh" erroneously appears in the second paragraph; it is replaced by the correct "Utnapishtim" here.By Lorence G Collins
This version might differ slightly from the print publication.
Noah's Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: Tevat Noaḥ)[Notes 1] is the ship in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a global deluge.[1] The story in Genesis is based on earlier flood myths originating in Mesopotamia, and is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the Ark appears as Safinat Nūḥ (Arabic: سَفِينَةُ نُوحٍ "Noah's ship") and al-fulk (Arabic: الفُلْك).
Early Christian and Jewish writers such as Flavius Josephus believed that Noah's Ark existed, even though unsuccessful searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275–339 CE). Believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times, but no scientific evidence that the Ark existed has ever been found,[2] nor is there scientific evidence for a global flood.[3] The ship and natural disaster as described in the Bible would have been contingent upon physical impossibilities and extraordinary anachronisms.[4] Some researchers believe that a real (though localized) flood event in the Middle East could potentially have inspired the oral and later written narratives; a Persian Gulf flood, or a Black Sea Deluge 7,500 years ago has been proposed as such a historical candidate.[5][6]
Description
The structure of the Ark (and the chronology of the flood) is homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship.[7] Accordingly, Noah's instructions are given to him by God (Genesis 6:14–16): the ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high (approximately 134×22×13 m or 440×72×43 ft).[8] These dimensions are based on a numerological preoccupation with the number 60, the same number characterizing the vessel of the Babylonian flood hero.[1]
Its three internal divisions reflect the three-part universe imagined by the ancient Israelites: heaven, the earth, and the underworld.[9] Each deck is the same height as the Temple in Jerusalem, itself a microcosmic model of the universe, and each is three times the area of the court of the tabernacle, leading to the suggestion that the author saw both Ark and tabernacle as serving for the preservation of human life.[10][11] It has a door in the side, and a tsohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight.[8] It is to be made of gopher wood, a word which appears nowhere else in the Bible – and divided into qinnim, a word which always refers to birds' nests elsewhere in the Bible, leading some scholars to emend this to qanim, reeds.[12] The finished vessel is to be smeared with koper, meaning pitch or bitumen; in Hebrew the two words are closely related, kaparta ("smeared") ... bakopper.[12]
For well over a century, scholars have recognized that the Bible's story of Noah's Ark is based on older Mesopotamian models.[13] Because all these flood stories deal with events that allegedly happened at the dawn of history, they give the impression that the myths themselves must come from very primitive origins, but the myth of the global flood that destroys all life only begins to appear in the Old Babylonian period (20th–16th centuries BCE).[14] The reasons for this emergence of the typical Mesopotamian flood myth may have been bound up with the specific circumstances of the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE and the restoration of order by the First Dynasty of Isin.[15]
Nine versions of the Mesopotamian flood story are known, each more or less adapted from an earlier version. In the oldest version, inscribed in the Sumerian city of Nippur around 1600 BCE, the hero is King Ziusudra. This story, the Sumerian flood myth, probably derives from an earlier version. The Ziusudra version tells how he builds a boat and rescues life when the gods decide to destroy it. This basic plot is common in several subsequent flood stories and heroes, including Noah. Ziusudra's Sumerian name means "He of long life." In Babylonian versions, his name is Atrahasis, but the meaning is the same. In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood.[16]: 20–27
The version closest to the biblical story of Noah, as well as its most likely source, is that of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh.[17] A complete text of Utnapishtim's story is a clay tablet dating from the seventh century BCE, but fragments of the story have been found from as far back as the 19th-century BCE.[17] The last known version of the Mesopotamian flood story was written in Greek in the third century BCE by a Babylonian priest named Berossus. From the fragments that survive, it seems little changed from the versions of 2,000 years before.[18]
The parallels between Noah's Ark and the arks of Babylonian flood heroes Atrahasis and Utnapishtim have often been noted. Atrahasis' Ark was circular, resembling an enormous quffa, with one or two decks.[19] Utnapishtim's ark was a cube with six decks of seven compartments, each divided into nine subcompartments (63 subcompartments per deck, 378 total). Noah's Ark was rectangular with three decks. A progression is believed to exist from a circular to a cubic or square to rectangular. The most striking similarity is the near-identical deck areas of the three arks: 14,400 cubits2, 14,400 cubits2, and 15,000 cubits2 for Atrahasis, Utnapishtim, and Noah, only 4% different. Professor Finkel concluded, "the iconic story of the Flood, Noah, and the Ark as we know it today certainly originated in the landscape of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq."[20]
Linguistic parallels between Noah's and Atrahasis' arks have also been noted. The word used for "pitch" (sealing tar or resin) in Genesis is not the normal Hebrew word, but is closely related to the word used in the Babylonian story.[21] Likewise, the Hebrew word for "ark" (tevah) is nearly identical to the Babylonian word for an oblong boat (ṭubbû), especially given that "v" and "b" are the same letter in Hebrew: bet (ב).[20]
However, the causes for God or the gods sending the flood differ in the various stories. In the Hebrew myth, the flood inflicts God's judgment on wicked humanity. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh gives no reasons, and the flood appears the result of divine caprice.[22] In the Babylonian Atrahasis version, the flood is sent to reduce human overpopulation, and after the flood, other measures were introduced to limit humanity.[23][24][25]
A consensus among scholars indicates that the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis) was the product of a long and complicated process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile.[26] Since the 18th century, the flood narrative has been analysed as a paradigm example of the combination of two different versions of a story into a single text, with one marker for the different versions being a consistent preference for different names "Elohim" and "Yahweh" to denote God.[27]
The TalmudictractatesSanhedrin, Avodah Zarah, and Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the Ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. God placed lions and other ferocious animals to protect Noah and his family from the wicked who tried to keep them from the Ark. According to one Midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals and their food to the Ark. As no need existed to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the Ark.[citation needed] A differing opinion is that the Ark itself distinguished clean animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter.[28][non-primary source needed]
According to Sanhedrin 108b, Noah was engaged both day and night in feeding and caring for the animals, and did not sleep for the entire year aboard the Ark.[29] The animals were the best of their kind and behaved with utmost goodness. They did not procreate, so the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to leave the Ark when Noah sent it forth, and accusing the patriarch of wishing to destroy its race, but as the commentators pointed out, God wished to save the raven, for its descendants were destined to feed the prophet Elijah.[28][non-primary source needed]
According to one tradition, refuse was stored on the lowest of the Ark's three decks, humans and clean beasts on the second, and the unclean animals and birds on the top; a differing interpretation described the refuse as being stored on the topmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured the food remained fresh.[30][31][32] In an unorthodox interpretation, the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as a vessel that remained under water for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.[33]
Christianity
The First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD[34]) compared Noah's salvation through water to Christian salvation through baptism.[35]Hippolytus of Rome (died 235) sought to demonstrate that "the Ark was a symbol of the Christ who was expected", stating that the vessel had its door on the east side—the direction from which Christ would appear at the Second Coming—and that the bones of Adam were brought aboard, together with gold, frankincense, and myrrh (the symbols of the Nativity of Christ). Hippolytus furthermore stated that the Ark floated to and fro in the four directions on the waters, making the sign of the cross, before eventually landing on Mount Kardu "in the east, in the land of the sons of Raban, and the Orientals call it Mount Godash; the Armenians call it Ararat".[36] On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the lowest of the three decks was for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top for humans. He says male animals were separated from females by sharp stakes to prevent breeding.[36]
The early Church Father and theologian Origen (circa 182–251), in response to a critic who doubted that the Ark could contain all the animals in the world, argued that Moses, the traditional author of the book of Genesis, had been brought up in Egypt and would therefore have used the larger Egyptian cubit. He also fixed the shape of the Ark as a truncated pyramid, square at its base, and tapering to a square peak one cubit on a side; only in the 12th century did it come to be thought of as a rectangular box with a sloping roof.[37]
Early Christian artists depicted Noah standing in a small box on the waves, symbolizing God saving the Christian Church in its turbulent early years. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work City of God, demonstrated that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which according to Christian doctrine is the body of Christ and in turn the body of the Church.[38]Jerome (circa 347–420) identified the raven, which was sent forth and did not return, as the "foul bird of wickedness" expelled by baptism;[39] more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and eventually, peace.[40] The olive branch remains a secular and religious symbol of peace today.
Gnosticism
According to the Hypostasis of the Archons, a 3rd century Gnostic writing, Noah is chosen to be spared by the evil Archons when they try to destroy the other inhabitants of the Earth with the great flood. He is told to create the ark then board it at a location called Mount Sir, but when his wife Norea wants to board it as well, Noah attempts to not let her. So she decides to use her divine power to blow upon the ark and set it ablaze, therefore Noah is forced to rebuild it.[41]
In contrast to the Jewish tradition, which uses a term that can be translated as a "box" or "chest" to describe the Ark, surah 29:15 of the Quran refers to it as a safina, an ordinary ship; surah 7:64 uses fulk,[42][43] and surah 54:13 describes the Ark as "a thing of boards and nails". Abd Allah ibn Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote that Noah was in doubt as to what shape to make the Ark and that Allah revealed to him that it was to be shaped like a bird's belly and fashioned of teak wood.[44]
Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawi, writing in the 13th century, explains that in the first of its three levels, wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second human beings, and the third birds. On every plank was the name of a prophet. Three missing planks, symbolizing three prophets, were brought from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the flood. The body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide the men from the women. Surah 11:41 says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of Allah it moves and stays!'"; this was taken to mean that Noah said, "In the Name of Allah!" when he wished the Ark to move, and the same when he wished it to stand still.[citation needed]
The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (died 956) wrote that Allah commanded the Earth to absorb the water, and certain portions which were slow in obeying received salt water in punishment and so became dry and arid. The water which was not absorbed formed the seas, so that the waters of the flood still exist. Masudi says the ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, circling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judi, which surah 11:44 gives as its final resting place. This mountain is identified by tradition with a hill near the town of Jazirat ibn Umar on the east bank of the Tigris in the province of Mosul in northern Iraq, and Masudi says that the spot could be seen in his time.[30][31][better source needed]
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith regards the Ark and the Flood as symbolic.[45] In Baháʼí belief, only Noah's followers were spiritually alive, preserved in the "ark" of his teachings, as others were spiritually dead.[46][47] The Baháʼí scripture Kitáb-i-Íqán endorses the Islamic belief that Noah had numerous companions on the ark, either 40 or 72, as well as his family, and that he taught for 950 (symbolic) years before the flood.[48] The Baháʼí Faith was founded in 19th century Persia, and it recognizes divine messengers from both the Abrahamic and the Indian traditions.
Ancient accounts
Multiple Jewish and Christian writers in the ancient world wrote about the ark. The first-century historian Josephus reports that the Armenians believed that the remains of the Ark lay "in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans", in a location they called the Place of Descent (Ancient Greek: αποβατηριον). He goes on to say that many other writers of "barbarian histories", including Nicolaus of Damascus, Berossus, and Mnaseas mention the flood and the Ark.[49]
In the fourth century, Epiphanius of Salamis wrote about Noah's Ark in his Panarion, saying "Thus even today the remains of Noah's ark are still shown in Cardyaei."[50] Other translations render "Cardyaei" as "the country of the Kurds".[51]
John Chrysostom mentioned Noah's Ark in one of his sermons in the fourth century, saying ""Do not the mountains of Armenia testify to it, where the Ark rested? And are not the remains of the Ark preserved there to this very day for our admonition?[52]
Historicity
The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica from 1771 describes the Ark as factual. It also attempts to explain how the Ark could house all living animal types: "... Buteo and Kircher have proved geometrically, that, taking the common cubit as a foot and a half, the ark was abundantly sufficient for all the animals supposed to be lodged in it ... the number of species of animals will be found much less than is generally imagined, not amounting to a hundred species of quadrupeds."[53] It also endorses a supernatural explanation for the flood, stating that "many attempts have been made to account for the deluge by means of natural causes: but these attempts have only tended to discredit philosophy, and to render their authors ridiculous".[54]
The 1860 edition attempts to solve the problem of the Ark being unable to house all animal types by suggesting a local flood, which is described in the 1910 edition as part of a "gradual surrender of attempts to square scientific facts with a literal interpretation of the Bible" that resulted in "the 'higher criticism' and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of species" leading to "scientific comparative mythology" as the frame in which Noah's Ark was interpreted by 1875.[53]
Ark's geometry
In Europe, the Renaissance saw much speculation on the nature of the Ark that might have seemed familiar to early theologians such as Origen and Augustine. At the same time, however, a new class of scholarship arose, one which, while never questioning the literal truth of the ark story, began to speculate on the practical workings of Noah's vessel from within a purely naturalistic framework. In the 15th century, Alfonso Tostada gave a detailed account of the logistics of the Ark, down to arrangements for the disposal of dung and the circulation of fresh air. The 16th-century geometerJohannes Buteo calculated the ship's internal dimensions, allowing room for Noah's grinding mills and smokeless ovens, a model widely adopted by other commentators.[40]
Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, came into the possession of a cuneiform tablet. He translated it and discovered an hitherto unknown Babylonian version of the story of the great flood. This version gave specific measurements for an unusually large coracle (a type of rounded boat). His discovery lead to the production of a television documentary and a book summarizing the finding. A scale replica of the boat described by the tablet was built and floated in Kerala, India.[56]
Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c.275–339 CE) to the present day.[57] In the 1st century, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus claimed the remaining pieces of Noah's Ark had been found in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans, which is nowadays Mount Ararat in Turkey.[58] Today, the practice is widely regarded as pseudoarchaeology.[57][2][59] Various locations for the ark have been suggested but have never been confirmed.[60][61] Search sites have included Durupınar site, a site on Mount Tendürek in eastern Turkey and Mount Ararat, but geological investigation of possible remains of the ark has only shown natural sedimentary formations.[62] While biblical literalists often maintain the Ark's existence in archaeological history, much of its scientific feasibility along with that of the deluge has been contested.[63][64]
In the modern era, individuals and organizations have sought to reconstruct Noah's ark using the dimensions specified in the Bible.[65]Johan's Ark was completed in 2012 to this end, while the Ark Encounter was finished in 2016.[66]
^The word "ark" in modern English comes from Old English aerca, meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, teva, occurs twice in the Torah, in the flood narrative (Book of Genesis 6-9) and in the Book of Exodus, where it refers to the basket in which Jochebed places the infant Moses. (The word for the Ark of the Covenant, aron, is quite different.) The Ark is built to save Noah, his family, and representatives of all animals from a divinely-sent flood intended to wipe out all life, and in both cases, the teva has a connection with salvation from waters. (See Levenson 2014, p.21)
^Jerome (1892) [c. 347–420]. "Letter LXIX. To Oceanus.". In Schaff, P (ed.). Niocene and Post-Niocene Fathers: The Principal Works of St. Jerome. 2. Vol. 6. The Christian Literature Publishing Company.
^Baring-Gould, Sabine (1884). "Noah". Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters from Various Sources. James B. Millar and Co., New York. p. 113.
^From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, 28 October 1949: Baháʼí News, No. 228, February 1950, p. 4. Republished in Compilation 1983, p. 508
^From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, 25 November 1950. Published in Compilation 1983, p. 494
^Josephus, Flavius. "3" . The Antiquities of the Jews, Book I – via Wikisource. Now all the writers of barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: "It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs." Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them; where he speaks thus: "There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses the legislator of the Jews wrote.
^Williams, Frank (2009). The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. BRILL. p. 48. ISBN978-90-04-17017-9.
^Montgomery, John Warwick (1974). The Quest For Noahs Ark. p. 77. ISBN0-87123-477-7.
^Montgomery, John Warwick (1974). The Quest For Noahs Ark. p. 78. ISBN0-87123-477-7.
^Thomas, Paul (16 April 2020). Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 23. ISBN978-0-567-68714-2.
Bibliography
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Knight, Douglas A. (1990). "Cosmology". In Watson E. Mills (General Editor) (ed.). Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. ISBN978-0-86554-402-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
Young, Davis A.; Stearley, Ralph F. (2008). The Bible, Rocks, and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic. ISBN978-0-8308-2876-0.
Browne, Janet (1983). The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p. 276. ISBN978-0-300-02460-9.
Dalrymple, G. Brent (1991). The Age of the Earth. Stanford University Press. ISBN978-0-8047-2331-2.
Emerton, J. A. (1988). Joosten, J. (ed.). "An Examination of Some Attempts to Defend the Unity of the Flood Narrative in Genesis: Part II". Vetus Testamentum. XXXVIII (1).
Wenham, Gordon (1994). "The Coherence of the Flood Narrative". In Hess, Richard S.; Tsumura, David Toshio (eds.). I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood(Google Books). Sources for Biblical and Theological Study. Vol. 4. Eisenbrauns. p. 480. ISBN978-0-931464-88-1.
Young, Davis A. (March 1995). The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub Co. p. 340. ISBN978-0-8028-0719-9.