Considering how many religious traditions have a story of a global flood, perhaps the story was partially true, but heavily embellished. Most folklore is embellished, and the Bible is clearly no exception. While the story is clearly unbelievably that ONE FAMILY survived for a very long period of time on a boat with every (hungry, pooping) wild animal on earth (no boat could hold every species), it is possible that a catastrophic flood event happened that flooded HIS part of the world with his immediate extended family and all of his livestock on the boat. Considering that Native Americans and other older religious traditions talk of a flood, this could have been related to a global cataclysm.

One thing modern religions sure don't talk about (and how it is a missing link in archeology and even in how the continents connect together) is Atlantis. While Atlantis is tough to prove on its own, it is a piece of traditional folklore that never dies and does have some possible evidence (such as a street grid found underwater in the Bermuda triangle a couple years ago). If it did exist, it was a small continent that had remarkably modern technology (thus the incredible engineering feats of the pyramids). Of course, any concrete proof of Atlantis would further prove the fraud of TSCC, because the evidence that Egypt and the Maya civilization were connected by Atlantis is stronger than the claim of a couple disaffected Jews starting up a whole civilization that ended up having remarkably Asian physical features.

I like greek mythology so of course I'm going to see the Movie Noah when it comes out because Jewish mythology is great too! I mean where else do you get a sea parting and wiping out armies, tall towers explaining why there are different languages, and dudes living in whales er um sorry a Large Fish for three days?

Any science is easily and comfortably explained away by a god of mystery and miracles.

The bigger question is why? Why would a god kill everyone but a handful of people? Finding a comfortable answer to that question is infinitely more challenging.

Why would a god kill everyone but a handful of people? That is easy: it is all about free agency. It is probably the most sacred principle upon which the God-Man covenant is based. It is SO sacred, that we fought a war in heaven over it and 1/3 of ALL humans who have ever lived and will ever live on the Earth were thrown out in defense of free agency.

Wait a second...what was the question?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 03:47PM by Facsimile 3.

We can't even keep a couple thousand people healthy on a five day sea cruise.

I would pay to watch Russell Crowe read the phone book...and he looks adorable in the Noah trailors. I'm going to see it! Who cares if it's "true" or not?? Movies are there to entertain.

It also has the terrific Ray Winstone playing the villain.

What's a phone book?

The vast majority of humans have,and always have, lived close to water. If you live close to water you will experience flooding and the occasional catastrophic, wiped out everything but a few survivors flood, at some point in your history. It would be surprising if this wasn't a common story is no surprise.

Even if somebody were to want to take the story at face value, please remember that "world" did not mean an 8,000 mile diameter ball floating in space. To most people of the time it was written, their "world" was limited to what they could see from the highest hill around. They had no concept of what we call the "Earth".

This is not to say that I even believe the story in that context but it at least makes a tiny bit more sense if you see it in the context in which it was first told.

It is even more important to remember the actual words in Genesis. Trying to localize the myth does not improve the plausibility, since it claims that "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered" and then the mountains were covered. Which mountains? We cannot be sure, but they at least encompassed the "mountains of Ararat", which range over 16k feet above sea level.


Genesis 8:

4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.



Also, it is important to understand that localizing the flood would make God a liar, since he promises to never likewise flood the Earth like he did with Noah to destroy all flesh.

I had no intention to comment specifically on the story in Genesis. Merely the fact that many cultures have stories of a flood covering the "whole world". So far as the Jewish scriptures are concerned, I believe that there are many stories that have moral significance without being a report of literal world history.

But most cultures did not have a flood tradition. The Greeks didn't, the Romans didn't, the Egyptians didn't, the Aztecs didn't, etc. About the only people who did were the early middle-east groups like the Babylonians and Sumerians, if I remember correctly.

The Greeks didn't have flood stories? What about the tsunami that wiped out the population of the Island of Minoa?

The Egyptians didn't have flood stories? The Nile floods regularly.

Also, google "Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome".

The Aztecs also have interesting flood stories from ancient times.

As I mentioned in my last comment, every culture has flood stories is because practically every culture live next to a source of water - which is prone to flooding and WILL flood periodically.

Were are you getting your info from?

No, the reason that practically EVERY culture has flood stories is because practically every culture live next to a source of water - which is prone to flooding, sometimes severely.

Just a couple of years ago in AUstralia there were floods that would have submerged SPain and France combined.

Giant Scorpion Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, the reason that practically EVERY culture has
> flood stories is because practically every culture
> live next to a source of water - which is prone to
> flooding, sometimes severely.
>
> Just a couple of years ago in AUstralia there were
> floods that would have submerged SPain and France
> combined.

Yes. Thank you. Certainly many cultures have tales of flooding at some point in their history. In the case of Egypt they were not even stories- they were annual expectations, and continued to be up until the mid-1960's with the construction of the Aswan Dam. But to conflate all these accounts with the universal devastation/divine indignation that we find in Genesis, and to misinterpret the meager similarities as proof that around 3000 BC Elohim decided the entire human race was totally depraved and therefore deserved total destruction, except for eight people, is simply going too far. I think it is safe to say that most cultures didn't have stories about total destruction of humanity due to unforgivable depravity.


Request for mallcat: where is the underwater grid discovery documented? In my understanding, the story of Atlantis originated as a recollection of a single island, near Greece, that "disappeared" one day. It may have been a real, but hardly mysterious, event. It happened to another island in the time of Pliny the Elder (IIRC), who descirbes a (volcanic) island that, in the sight of hundreds of witnesses, simply totally blew up one day. IIRC, Plato also talked about Atlantis, but merely as the vehicle for a parable, and never intended that anyone whould construe his parable Atlantis as anything approaching a real place. But I could be wrong- it's been a few years. The main point is, we need references.
I'll shut up now.

The story was not original. Judaism borrowed it. It was a good excuse for not having old records.

In Greek mythology Deucalion and Pyrrha were chosen to survive. They were told to climb the highest mountain and wait out the flood. After the flood waters receded they repopulated the Earth by throwing rocks over their shoulders.

The oldest flood myth (which appears to be the one borrowed by the Hebrews) also involves an ark. The reason for the flood is that humans are too noisy. After the flood the gods start to miss the fragrance of their sacrifices and allow the waters to recede. When the humans offer the first sacrifice the gods crowd around the smoke like "flies."

It is quite likely that when the Mediterranean collapsed the Bosporus and spilled over flooding into and creating the Black Sea, pro-civilizations were living in the basin and around the perimeter.

It took several weeks for the levels between the two bodies to meet equilibrium.

This is likely the basis for the Great Flood. People in the area actually saw it and lived to tell.

And can anybody guess what's just south of the Black Sea? Mount Ararat.

in the Noah's Ark story. Before the thread was pulled it was surprisingly 50/50 (literal vs. story) by the majority tbm posters. Many thought the story was a metaphor, some thought it was a local flood only, not global, others believed it was a true story.

So now I am banned from any religious posting on the site, but it was refreshing to note not every Mormon really believes the literal story of the flood.

"it was refreshing to note not every Mormon really believes the literal story of the flood"

This is interesting because this means that these Mormons don't really believe in Mormonsim, something I've come to realize is more common than one would think. Mormonism clearly teaches in all the works of its cannon that the flood was real, and in the D&C it clearly states that humanity had its start in Jackson County Missouri on the continent of North America.

Smith later claimed that Noah & Co. left the Americas from the Carolinas in his floating zoo when the flood waters arrived. So if Mormons don't accept the global flood as a literal event, then how did Noah & Co. make it to the "old world" and begin the process of incestuous sex to repopulate the earth following the sacrifice of several of the animals that they were supposedly preserving?

*The literal global flood claim also washes away the claim of Mormon aplogists who want to fit the BoM narrative in Meso-America amidst an already extant population. If the flood was real, the land would be empty (much like the heads of many Mormons) as the BoM claims.

Check out the map of the Bosporus Strait.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1113865,28.9769746,11z?hl=en

It's not like two seas connected. It looks just like a rather short river. What the claim is now is that at the end of the ice age the sea level rose a few hundred feet. At some point it topped the land that separated the ocean from the area now known as the Black Sea. As the sea water started to flow into the basin it would grow exponentially as erosion deepened it. What would end up with would be an unbelievable rush of water that would continue until the Black Sea basin was filled.

Today there are two currents through the straits. The surface has fresh water pouring out of the Black Sea,which has fresh water at the top. Further down there is a salt water current pouring into the Black Sea as it is still displacing the fresh water.

Presumably, 8,000 years or so ago there were people living in the Black Sea basin farming around the edge of an inland sea. When the ocean burst through the Bosporus Straits, they'd find the water rising and they'd have to move away from the lake. Every day they'd have to move to where there was still land, which makes it hard to keep up with daily chores. So the idea is the stories survivors had after a few centuries of oral embellishment would eventually be the story of the great flood as told in the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as the Old Testament.

At least that's the way I heered it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 08:03PM by Cactus Jim.

can you say Gilgamesh ?

I knew you could.

Furthermore, if every population apart from Noah's crew was drowned in the flood, then how can there be legends about it around the world? All the witnesses to it drowned!