Skeptical views on noahs ark Essay Example For Students

Skeptical views on noahs ark Essay Skeptical view of the flood mythAs skeptics have long been aware, there was no global flood in the last 5000 years, a boatload of animals did not ground on so-called Mount Ararat or on any mountain, and the worlds animals are not descended from two or seven pairs of each species that lived during the third millennium BC. Nor is there any archaeological proof that a man survived a flood by being on a boat loaded with animals, food, and drinking water. The Noahs Ark book summarized here does not claim historicity for Noah or the ark story, but the book does claim that some of the story elements in the Ancient Near East flood were based on an actual river flood. This archaeologically attested flood of the Euphrates River has been radiocarbon dated to about 2900 BC. This flood left a few feet of yellow mud in the Sumerian city Shuruppak, the ruins of which have been found at Tel Fara about 125 miles southeast of Baghdad. Some but not all Sumerian cities also show signs of this river floo d at the beginning of the Early Dynastic I period. According to the Sumerian King List, a legendary king named Ziusudra lived in Shuruppak at the time of the flood. There was also a flood myth about king Ziusudra which includes several story elements very similar to the Genesis flood myth. Shuruppak was also the flood heros city according to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh was adapted from an earlier myth, the Epic of Atrahasis which is also very similar to the Genesis flood myth. Six of these Ancient Near East flood myths contain numerous distinctive story elements that are very similar to the Genesis flood myth and indicate a literary affinity or dependency on a common body of myths about the flood hero Ziusudra and based on the Euphrates River flood of 2900 BC. Parts of the original myths were physically possible, but other parts were not possible. The possible parts can be treated as an ancient legend to which mythical material was added later. How ever, without contemporary artifacts, it is not possible to prove how much of the original legend was true and how much was fiction based on a real flood. In the Noahs Ark book, the original legend is reconstructed by piecing together fragments from the various surviving editions of the flood myth, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This reconstruction is governed by the requirement that each story element in the legend be physically possible, technologically practical, consistent with archaeological facts, and plausible for 2900 BC. Some of the impossible story elements were mistranslations or misunderstandings, and these are corrected before including them in the reconstructed legend. The reconstructed legend is this: Ziusudra reigned for ten years as king of Shuruppak, a Sumerian city then on the Euphrates River. Ziusudras reign was at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period that ended with the flood of 2900 BC. Then as now, river barges were used for transporting cargo on the Euphrates R iver. This cargo included livestock, beer, wine, textiles, lumber, stone, metals, dried fish, vegetable oil, and other cargo. In June about 2900 BC during the annual inundation of the Euphrates River, the river was at crest stage. A six-day thunderstorm caused the river to rise about 15 cubits (22 feet) higher and to overflow the levees. By the time the river began to rise, it was already too late to evacuate to the foothills of the mountains 110 miles away. Ziusudra boarded one the the barges that was already loaded with cargo being transported to market. The runaway barge floated down the Euphrates River into the Persian Gulf and grounded in an estuary at the mouth of the river. After moving to dry land, Ziusudra offered a sacrifice to a Sumerian god on an alter at the top of a temple ziggurat, an artificial hill. Later, story tellers mistranslated the ambiguous word for hill as mountain. The story tellers then erroneously assumed that the nearby barge must have grounded on top of a mountain. Additional details in the reconstructed legend about Ziusudra (Noah) can be found in the Noahs Ark book. home pageTour of subjectsFor Old Testament scholarsThe Noahs Ark book reviewed here does not claim historicity for Noah or the ark story, but the book does claim that some of the story elements in the Ancient Near East flood were based on an actual river flood. This archaeologically attested flood of the Euphrates River has been radiocarbon dated to about 2900 BC. This flood left a few feet of yellow mud in the Sumerian city Shuruppak about 125 miles southeast of Baghdad. Some but not all Sumerian cities also show signs of this river flood at the beginning of the Early Dynastic I period. According to the Sumerian King List, a legendary king named Ziusudra lived in Shuruppak at the time of the flood. Zuisudra was the Sumerian Noah. There was also a flood myth about king Ziusudra which includes several story elements very similar to the Genesis flood myth. Noah was a Sumerian king of Shuruppak and son of Lamech (SU.KUR.LAM in Sumerian) who preceded Noah as king of Shuruppak. Shuruppak was the flood heros city according to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh was adapted from an earlier myth, the Epic of Atrahasis which is also very similar to the Genesis flood myth. Six of these Ancient Near East flood myths contain numerous distinctive story elements that are very similar to the Genesis flood myth and indicate a literary affinity or dependency on a common body of legends about the flood hero Ziusudra (Noah) and based on the Euphrates River flood of 2900 BC. Parts of the original myths were physically possible, but other parts were not possible. The possible parts can be treated as an ancient legend to which mythical material was added later. In the Noahs Ark book, the original legend is reconstructed by piecing together fragments from the various surviving editions of the flood story, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This reconstruction is governed by the requirement that each story element in the legend be physically possible, technolog ically practical, consistent with archaeological facts, and plausible for 2900 BC. Some of the impossible story elements were mistranslations or misunderstandings, and these are corrected before including them in the reconstructed legend. These are some examples of mistakes: The ambiguous word for hill or country was mistranslated as mountain. The words that identified the flood as a river flood were changed to indicate an ocean deluge. The archaic number signs in which the Genesis 5 numbers and Noahs age were recorded, were mistranslated which made them about ten times their original value. The flood of Genesis 6-7 was confused with the waters of Genesis 8. A journey on foot to Mount Judi in the Mountains of Ararat was confused with a journey on the water of the Persian Gulf. The numbers in the Sumerian King List were also mistraslated by an ancient scribe. The reconstructed legend is this: Ziusudra reigned for ten years as king of Shuruppak, a Sumerian city then on the Euphrates River. Ziusudras reign was at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period that ended with the flood of 2900 BC. Then as now, river barges were used for transporting cargo on the Euphrates River. This cargo included livestock, beer, wine, textiles, lumber, stone, metals, dried fish, vegetable oil, and other cargo. In June about 2900 BC during the annual inundation of the Euphrates River, the river was at crest stage. A six-day thunderstorm caused the river to rise about 15 cubits (22 feet) higher and overflow the levees. By the time the river began to rise, it was already too late to evacuate to the foothills of the mountains 110 miles away. Ziusudra boarded one the the barges that was already loaded with cargo being transported to market. The runaway barge floated down the Euphrates River into the Persian Gulf and grounded in an estuary at the mouth of the river. After m oving to dry land, Ziusudra offered a sacrifice to a Sumerian god on an alter at the top of a temple ziggurat, an artificial hill. Later, story tellers mistranslated the ambiguous word for hill as mountain. The story tellers then erroneously assumed that the nearby barge must have grounded on top of a mountain. Additional details in the reconstructed legend about Ziusudra (Noah) can be found in the Noahs Ark book. Answers to Creationists argumentsNoahs flood is the keystone in the belief system of the young-earth creationists who believe the flood was global and created massive geological changes in the earths crust. But there was no global flood. Creationist arguments are printed here in boldface:According to Genesis 7:19-20 all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered with flood water. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep. The reference to 15 cubits (22 feet) refers to the draft of the ark. Mountains is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word harm meaning hills in this context. The King James Version of Genesis 7:19 translates hills correctly. There is no mention of draft or deep or depth in the Hebrew text of Genesis 7:20. A literal translation from Hebrew is Five ten cubits upward rose the waters and they covered the hills. Note that hills is not in the same clause as cubits or rose. The 15 cubits was how much the water rose, not how deep the water was. The depths would be different at different places. The tops of the hills in the clause and they covered the hills were less than 15 cubits above the normal water level during the annual inundation and were therefore covered when the water rose 15 cubits higher. Under the whole sky means within Noahs visible horizon. All of the hills within Noahs visible horizon were covered by the water when the river rose 15 cubits. If the flood water had been more than ten thousand cubits deep, the authors of Genesis would have said so. Fifteen cubits is consistent with a local flood. The flood continued for more than one year. This cannot be reconciled with a local-flood theory. If nothing could be seen but the tops of mountains after the waters had subsided for 74 days, we must conclude that the flood covered the whole earth. All commentators have assumed that the flood mentioned in Genesis 7:6-17 was the same as the deep waters that lasted more than a year. But nowhere in Genesis 8 is the word flood mentioned. Noahs encounters with deep water were in two phases: a river flood phase that lasted less than a week and a deep water phase that lasted a year. The river flood floated Noahs barge down into the Persian Gulf and the barge floated about the deep water of the Gulf for a year. The deep water that Noah experienced for a year was not a flood; it was the deep water of the Persian Gulf. The tops of hills above the water surface are commonly called islands. If only islands could be seen after the water became more shallow for 74 days, it means only that Noahs barge was still several miles or more from the shore and dry land beyond the horizon. Deep water in the Persian Gulf for more than a year is consistent with a local river flood. According to Genesis 7:11, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up. The great deep refers to oceanic depths and underground reservoirs. Presumably, the ocean basins were fractured and uplifted sufficiently to pour water over the continents. This continued for five months. Such vast and prolonged geologic upheavals in the oceanic depths cannot be reconciled with a local flood theory. Instead this upheaval was global. The Hebrew word baqa translated as broken up in the King James version is translated burst forth in the Revised Standard Version and New International Version. The Hebrew word mayan for fountain can also mean a well or spring which share a common meaning: a source of water. References to sources of sea water breaking or bursting may have meant only that water from the Persian Gulf was bursting onto the shore during a storm. This frequently happens along a seashore during a storm. Noah and the others could not report on oceanic depths because they would have no way of knowing what was happening at oceanic depths. Bursting of Gulf water onto the shore during a thunderstorm was a local condition. The Ark was unusually large. For Noah to have built a vessel of such huge magnitude simply for the purpose of escaping a local flood is inconceivable. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the Uni EssayCould Noah have been so ignorant of the topography of southwestern Asia, where the highest mountains of the world are located, as to actually think that the Flood covered all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens (Genesis 7:19), when it really covered only a few foothills?Noah may have known about the Zagros Mountains 110 miles east of Shuruppak. But since he could not see beyond the horizon, he would have no knowledge of whether the Zagros Mountains were flooded or not. He reported only what he could see and he could see only sky and water, because he was several miles from shore. From Noahs point of view, the whole world was flooded and all the high hills (less than 15 cubits high) were covered. Note that the word hills is used in the King James Version of Genesis 7:19. Mountains is a mistranslation in other versions of Genesis 7:19. A flood in Armenia 17,000 feet deep while Egypt or India were not flooded would be a more incredible miracle than anything implied by the traditional understanding of a universal flood. The flood water rose 15 cubits (Genesis 7:20) and had no connection with a 17,000 foot mountain. Mountains is a mistranslation. The flood covered hills not mountains. Additional creationist arguments are answered in chapter 13 of the Noahs Ark bookFrequently Asked QuestionsQuestions are in bold face. Answers are in regular type. Was Noahs flood story fiction or fact?Much of the flood story was fiction, but there was a real river flood on which the original flood legend was based. Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah was listed in the Sumerian King List and therefore may have been a real person, but there is no hard evidence that Noah/Ziusudra existed. Was there a global flood?No. The flood of Noah was a Euphrates River flood in southern Sumer similar to the flood of 1985 in southern Iraq. The earth in Genesis 7:17-18 refers to the ground/land in the flooded region, not the entire planet. Did the ark ground on Mount Ararat?No. Mount Ararat was not involved in the original flood legend. The ark grounded in an estuary at the mouth of the Euphrates River. The mountains of Ararat got involved in the story because Noahs son Shem traveled on foot to the mountains of Ararat after the barge grounded. Story tellers confused the mountain that Noahs son visited with the hill on which Noah offered a sacrifice. The ark never came close to a mountain. But doesnt the Epic of Gilgamesh have the ark grounding on Mount Nisir?No. The word KUR usually translated Mount can mean mound or country. The river barge grounded on a mound of mud or sand in an estuary at the mouth of the river. When did the flood occur?The Euphrates River flooded about 2900 BC at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period and the beginning of the Early Dynastic period. This river flood left a few feet of yellow mud in Shuruppak and a few other Sumerian cities. Polychrome pottery from the Jemdet Nasr period was found immediately below this flood lawyer. Hence Noah/Ziusudra reigned during the end of the Jemdet Nasr period. The flood layer has been radiocarbon dated to 2900 BC. How did Noah build such a large boat without help?He had lots of help. Noah was a king and kings delegate responsibility to managers who hire workmen to do the job. Noah did not build the ark with his own hands. How could a wooden ark 450 feet long withstand the stresses from a storm and not break up?The ark was not a mono-hull galleon, it was an array of small flat-bottom pontoons roped together. Large modern river barges are also assembled from dozens of small barges chained together. What was gopher wood?Gopher wood was a transliteration of gish gipar (meadow wood) or kupar (cypress wood). How could all species of animals fit in the ark?They didnt. All of the kinds of animals that Noah had in his stockyard were put in the ark, but these were domesticated ranch animals and there were less than 280 of them. How could the animals know when to come to the ark and where to find it?The owners of the animals had their herdsmen take the animals to the ark to be transported as cargo. Noah had his herdsmen load into the barge all of the livestock in his stockyards. How did Noah prevent all the other people in his city from boarding the ark?He didnt have to. The other people climbed high hills far from the river.These hills are not mentioned in Genesis 7:19-20 because they were too far from the river for Noah to see. Did everybody drown in the flood except Noah and his family? Are all the people of of the world descended from Noah?No. Everybody did not drown. Hundreds, possibly thousands of Sumerians drowned in the flooded area, but there were many thousands of survivors of Noahs river flood, even in his own city, and especially in distant lands not affected by the flood. Did people live to be more than 900 years before the flood?No. That was an ancient mistranslation of archaic numbers. Noah lived to be 83. How could Noah know years in advance that a flood was coming to provide enough time to build the ark?The ark was not built as a lifeboat. It was built long before the flood as a commercial river barge for transporting cattle, grain, and other cargo. Noah learned that the flood was coming only when he saw heavy rain falling. This was a few hours before the river overflowed the levees. Noah did not know the flood was coming when he commissioned building the river barge. How do you explain the conflict between the 1-year flood in Genesis 8:13 and the 6-day flood in Gilgamesh XI,129-131?There is no conflict. The river flood lasted 6 days. During the rest of the year the ark was drifting about the Persian Gulf. Genesis 8 refers to the waters and does not use the word flood or ocean or sea. Legends about Noahs flood can be found all over the world, such as the Hawaiian legend about the god Kane sending a flood and only Nuu escaped in a large boat that grounded on a mountain. Doesnt this prove that Noahs flood was global?No. Wherever there are rivers there are floods and local storytellers tell stories about these local floods. Later when Europeans taught the Genesis stories to the Hawaiians, local storytellers incorporated the name Nuu and the mountain into the older Hawaiian river flood story. How did the kangaroos get from Mount Ararat to Australia?There were no kangaroos in Noahs barge. Kangaroos are not mentioned in Genesis nor in Deuteronomy 14:4-18 where the kinds of clean and unclean animals are listed. But Genesis 6:19 says every living thing.Noah loaded into the barge every living animal that he had. He did not load any animals he did not have. The 15 cubits in Genesis 7:20 must refer to the draft of the ark when it grounded on Mount Ararat and cannot refer to how much the water rose. Otherwise how could only 15 cubits of water cover mountains?Mountains were not involved. Sumer was very flat. All the hills that Noah could see were less than 15 cubits high and therefore were submerged when the water rose 15 cubits. If the flood was a local flood, why would Noah bother with a boat? Why not just move the animals and family overland to the foothills of the Zagros mountains?Your hidden assumption is that Noah knew long in advance that the flood was coming. Actually he knew the flood was coming only when heavy rain began to fall. By then it was too late to travel to the mountains that were more than a hundred miles away. How did Noah know the flood was coming?During the annual inundation, the Euphrates River was at crest stage just below the top of the levees. When Noah saw heavy rain falling in the distance, he knew the river would be rising in a few hours. He did not have to be a metorologist to understand that the river would soon overflow the levees. Why did Noah offer a sacrifice after the ark grounded?It was the duty of ship captains to offer sacrifices to the gods at a local temple when their boats arrived safely. More questions are answered in chapter 12 of the Noahs Ark book. Noah was king of ShuruppakAccording to the Genesis version of the flood story, Noah was closely associated with animals. But he was not a mere shepherd or cattle rancher. In the Epic of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah is repeatedly called a king or chief (lugal). According to the Weld-Blundell king list WB-62, Ziusudra (Noah) was king of the city-state Shuruppak. Lugal literally means great man and was normally a young man of outstanding qualities from a rich landowning family. The flood hero was a respected leader who spoke to the city people and the elders of Shuruppak according to Gilgamesh XI,35 and Atrahasis III,i,39-41. In the WB-62 king list, Ziusudra (Noah) succeeded his father as king of Shuruppak. The flood of 2900 B.C. deposited sediment in Shuruppak directly above artifacts from the Jemdet Nasr period. Hence, the flood hero was probably chief executive of Shuruppak during the end of the Jemdet Nasr period and the flood story began to circulate during the Early Dynastic I peri od that followed the flood. Shuruppak was then a capital city and a commercial center located on the Euphrates River. As head of the Shuruppak city-state government, Noah was probably a wealthy land owner. Wealthy people then invested in cattle and other domesticated animals and so apparently did Noah. A clue to what he did with these animals is found in Gilgamesh XI, 81-82: All I had of silver I loaded, all I had of gold I loaded into the boat. Gold and silver were not a common medium of exchange prior to minting of standard-weight coins in the seventh century BC. In earlier times, gold and silver were used largely by professional merchants and those involved in caravan trade. Possessing gold and silver, Noah was probably a merchant or government trade official before becoming chief executive of Shuruppak. Perhaps he owned a private merchanting business or managed foreign trade for his father, king of Shuruppak. Early in his career, Noah probably controlled large numbers of workers who transported livestock and other commodities in overland caravans and on small river barges to nearby cities. His workers may also have grown grain, hay and other crops near Shuruppak to feed the animals and to have surplus fodder and food to sell. Noah also had a vineyard (Genesis 9:20) which suggests he had a winery business. As a wealthy leader of the city-state Shuruppak, Noah would have access to the labor and materials needed to build a large commercial barge. Although popular versions of the story have Noah being ridiculed by the townspeople, actually the elders of Shuruppak probably encouraged and supported building of the barge under control of their own leader Noah, because they may have envisioned that the barge would substantially increase their own personal wealth and the wealth of Shuruppak. Noah promoted this vision and told the elders that the gods would shower plenty on you, an abundance of birds, a profusion of fish when the new barge became operational. For several weeks each year, Noahs barge probably hauled cargo to cities on the Euphrates River including the port city Ur then near the mouth of the river. Although surviving versions of the flood story suggest that the flood hero rode on the barge only once, and that the barge made only one voyage, it is not likely that the storm and flood happened at exactly the right moment to interrupt the barges maiden voyage. It is more likely that the barge was used many times to transport cargo, but without Noah on board. Kings have better things to do with their time than to ride on cattle barges. Only the final voyage was mentioned in the story, because that may have been one of the few times or the only time that Noah rode on the barge.