Flood Legends "Proof" of Global Flood... (page 3)

Focus

I can smell some freshwater fish rotting somewhere .. in Brooklyn!

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Focus
(They would die in 0.5% salinity! Class)

I just love hearing people try to argue that the flood really happend.Lets take some isrealite fables and argue them as fact.I take great offence at people who ridicule MY holy book written by asop.Did you know that at some point in history a hare and a tortise did indeed have a race.And other cultures have simalar storys,that just proves the divine in asops scriptures.There are scientists who say it is possible for a hare and a tortise to have a race, and just last week the bones of a hare and a tortise were found in the same feild.In light of all this scientific evadence is a wonder why people dont belive in asops scriptures.They just need some more faith I think.

Earnest

Alan,

While I do not agree with everything you say I withdraw any implication of cowardice in the light of your teaching your daughter to drive.

Your revelation (to me at any rate) that the Egyptians had no legend of a flood is quite a mystery. Just as the fact that a civilization has a legend of a global flood does not prove in itself that such a flood took place, so the lack of such a legend does not prove it did not. But I would have expected there to be such a legend simply because it was current in the Middle East, and (as you said) "particularly entertaining or frightening legends propagate easily from culture to culture."

I have come across a few references which might allude to such a flood. Frederick Filby suggests that "...the ship of Isis and the chest or coffin of Osiris which floated on the waters for a year are confused Egyptian recollections of the Flood" in his book The Flood Reconsidered: A Review of the Evidence of Geology, Archeology, Ancient Literature and the Bible, Zondervan, 1977, Fifth Printing, p.106. In addition, in Egyptian mythology Nu [with overtones of the Sumerian Anu and Noah] was the god of waters who sent an inundation to destroy mankind. (Andrew Tomas, Atlantis from Legend to Discovery, London: Sphere Books, Ltd., 1972, p. 25.) Nu and his consort Nut were deities of the firmament and the rain. Nu was identified with the primeval watery mass of heaven, his name also meaning "sky." (Lewis Spence, Myths and Legends of Egypt, London: George C. Haffap & Co., Ltd., 1915.)

But even if these are allusions to a flood the question still remains as to why there is so little in Egyptian literature on the subject. The most reasonable explanation I have come across is that because they had their own flood from the Nile every year, they couldn't attribute the beginning of everything to such a common event.

Earnest

"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson

DB

Alan F, this is a very interesting post. I have been reading some info on this matter at talkorigins.com. There, the argument weighs heavily against and earth-wide flood, and the idea that the flood was localized seems to have strong support.

Though a jw, my personal feeling on the matter, after reading in the info at talkorigins and reading Research On The Watchtower at freeminds.org, is that there seems to be good reason to consider the Flood as local in scope, with the term "earth" being used in a relative sense. Also, the apostle paul's statement that the good news had been preached "in all creation under heaven" is always understood as a relative term, Paul certainly not meaning the entire earth.

Seeker

I haven't been following these flood discussions too closely recently, but I've noticed a rise in the number of posts arguing that the Genesis account was only describing a local flood. I would agree that the geologic record only allows for this, not a global flood at all. But I'm curious to know how the Genesis account can be argued as a local event. What is the answer to someone who says, "But what would be the point of the Genesis account if it were local? There would be no need of an Ark, it wouldn't be true that God was going to kill all flesh, animals wouldn't have to be preserved. All a local flood would require is a warning for Noah to move to higher ground."

Is there a brief answer to this, without posting pages of information or just giving me a link and saying, "read this"?

Moxy

vm44: the 'water canopy' theory, though refered to seldomly, and always in speculative terms like, 'could be,' 'possibly' or 'evidently,' is still firmly entrenched in modern JW thinking, in fact moreso in the brothers with teaching roles than the average publisher. the restoration of the canopy is continually mentioned as the means by which a global temparate climate will be restored in the paradise.

i might note that in the complete legend matrix that appears in IT-1 egypt is listed as having a flood legend, namely that contained in 'Book of the Dead.' i remember during my more intense flood research, finding that this was reference was on pretty shaky footing, but i dont recall why at the moment. a reminder anyone?

mox

aChristian

The "Noah's flood, local or global?" topic was discussed here at great length a couple weeks ago in a thread entitled, "space.com dates Noah's flood to 2350 BC" here: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=17590&site=3

In that thread I posted the following comments, which include an answer to Seeker's question on why God may not have simply told Noah to move to higher ground.

That our earth has never been completely covered with water since land masses first arose from its primordial global sea has been firmly established by modern science in more ways than I can possibly here begin to mention. For a discussion of this subject matter see Problems with a Global Flood at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html .

A conservative Christian's typical response to such information is to say that they choose to believe the Word of God over the findings of scientists. This certainly sounds quite noble. And I suppose I would commend them for their stance if such a stance was called for by the Bible itself. But it is not. For a careful study of the flood account in Genesis reveals that the Bible does not tell us that the flood of Noah's day was global. And an examination of the scientific "evidence" presented by Christian fundamentalists in support of a global flood, sea shells on mountain tops and the like, quickly reveals that the presenters of this so-called evidence have a very poor understanding of science. ( By the way, sea shells on mountain tops are the result of earth's plate tectonics causing land masses to slowly rise from the sea over many millions of years. This process is an ongoing occurrence and can be proven by comparing the measured heights of various mountain peaks today to their measured heights just a few years ago.)

That the Bible itself does not tell us that a global flood occurred in Noah's day can be seen from a careful examination of the text. To begin with we do well to keep in mind that the word widely translated as "earth" in the flood narrative, giving the impression that our entire planet was flooded, is often translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as "land." ( In acknowledging this fact, the translators of The New American Standard Bible chose to translate the same Hebrew word as both "land" and "earth" throughout the flood narrative.) We can certainly understand that without our modern means of global communication and global travel ancient peoples must have had a much more limited view of their world than we do today. That being the case, it seems more likely that the flood account in Genesis recounted the story of the whole "land" of Noah being flooded than the whole "earth" being flooded.

But doesn't the Bible's story of the flood say that all the high "mountains" were covered with water? And if that was true, since water seeks its own level, wouldn't that mean the whole earth had to have been flooded? For an answer to such questions we again have to look at the ancient Hebrew language. The ancient Hebrew word which has been widely translated as "mountains" in the flood narrative is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament simply as "hills." You see, the ancient Hebrews had only one word to describe what may have been either a small mound of earth or a Himalayan peak. That being the case, the flood narrative can certainly be understood as telling us that "all the high hills in the land of Noah were covered with water to a depth of about twenty feet." (see Gen. 7:20, 21)

But what about the unmistakably "universal" language used in the account? Doesn't the Bible tell us that God destroyed "all life under the heavens" (Gen. 6:17) during the flood? Yes, it does. But it also tells us that "all nations under heaven" lived in fear because of Joshua's conquest of Canaan. (Deut. 2:25) We are also told that during a famine that occurred at the time of Joseph, "The people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph." (Gen. 41:57) And it tells us that at the time of Paul the good news of Jesus Christ had been "proclaimed to every creature under heaven." (Col. 1:23) Are we to believe such statements included the nations of people which then lived in North America, South America, China and Australia?

We must remember that the world of the Bible writers was a much smaller world than our world today. Their part of the earth was then for them "the whole world." We should also accept the possibility that Bible writers may, at times, have used larger than life expressions, just as we often do today. We often use figures of speech such as, "This book weighs a ton," or "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." This common form of speech is called hyperbole. It is certainly possible that it may, at times, also have been used by Bible writers. When we use such exaggerated figures of speech for dramatic impact we are being neither inaccurate nor dishonest. The same can be said for the writers of Scripture.

But why would God have had Noah construct such a large ark if it was intended to carry only Noah, his family, and a collection of animals from his own land? Could it be that Noah was instructed to build an ark big enough to hold every person in the land that was about to be flooded! An ark with room enough for all those who might repent but didn't? We know that "God does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance." How could Noah be telling a land full of people to repent and get on the ark if that ark had no room for them? God's plan of salvation today has room for everyone on earth, does it not? Should we believe that God's plan of salvation in Noah's day did not?

Another question that is sometimes asked is, "If the flood was confined to the land of Noah, why would God not have simply told Noah to take his family and pairs of animals and flee to higher ground?" Many who believe that the flood of Noah's day, as described in Genesis, was confined to the land of Noah say that the answer to this question can be found in 1 Peter 3:20,21. There we are told that Noah and his family, "were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism." So, they say that by choosing to save the lives of Noah and his family as they passed through the waters of the flood, God was symbolically pointing to a time when his people (Christians) would find salvation as they passed through the waters of baptism.

I encourage all Christians to investigate the possibility that the Bible does not really teach that the whole earth was flooded at the time of Noah. For I believe that when Christians now promote this teaching, a teaching which conflicts with all serious scientific evidence, they only succeed in making themselves, and Christianity, look very foolish to very many people.
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The following was posted by COJ at H2O on September 01, 2000, before the meteor impact theory was put forth:

Hi Mike,

I haven’t found much time lately for visiting H2O (we now also have a Swedish discussion site!). But yesterday I noticed the new debate on the Flood and would like to add a few comments.

As has been discussed earlier on this site, and as most modern Bible dictionaries point out, the "Ararat" of the Bible was not a mountain, but originally a geographical area, which later, in the Assyrian period, was consolidated into a kingdom (2 Kings 19:37; Isa. 37:38; Jer. 51:27). The later kingdom lay north and northeast of Mesopotamia with its center around the seas of Van and Urmia. In cuneiform inscriptions the form of the name is "Urartu". Gen. 8:4 states that the Ark "came to rest on the mountains (or ’hills’) of Ararat." The plural, "mountains, hills," should be noted. It is only in later Christian tradition that the mountain of Agri Dag in northeastern Turkey came to be called "Ararat" and was identified as the site of the landing.

The Targums and the early Syriac translation render Ararat as "Korduene" (Karduchia), and this is also where Berossus locates the site of landing, according to Josephus (Ant. I.3.6). Korduene seems to refer to the area occupied by the Kurds, Kurdistan, or the former Armenia. The Latin versions, in fact, render Ararat as "Armenia". This roughtly corresponds to the earlier kingdom of Urartu, which was destroyed late in the 7th century BC, after which the name disappears. An excellent recent work on the Urartu/Ararat kingdom is URARTU—DAS REICH AM ARARAT, by Ralf-Bernhard Wartke (Mainz am Rhein, 1993).

Archaeological findings show that the southern border of the kingdom of Urartu extended down to the area of Nineveh (close to present-day Mosul) and the Zab rivers. (It is quite possible that the earlier geographical area called Urartu was larger and extended further south and southeast.) Vast areas of the southern kingdom of Urartu was only between 300 and 200 meters above sea level. The Hamrin range that you mention, which is further south, reaches to about 500 meters.

But at the time of the Flood these areas may have been much lower, as the mountain building movements of Iraq and southwestern Persia have been going on since that time. Drs. G. M. Lees and N. L. Falcon point out: "This mountain system has developed out of a broader zone of depression or geosyncline, by a relative approach between central Persia and the stable massif of Arabia which compressed the mobile strip between and formed a series of giant earth waves or fold mountains. The time of the maximum tangential movement was in the late Pliocene but THE ELEVATION OF THE MOUNTAIN BELT AS A WHOLE, AS DISTINCT FROM FOLD MOVEMENTS, CONTINUED INTO RECENT TIME AND IS IN FACT STILL ACTIVE." ("The Geographical History of the Mesopotamian Plains," The Geographical Journal, Vol. CXVIII, 1952, p. 27. My emphasis.)

With respect to the Hebrew plural noun ’harim’, which clearly can mean both "mountains" and "hills", J.H. insists that it is "typically bad exegesis to argue that ... it is possible to translate the expression ’high hills’." His statement implies that "high hills" is an impossible translation. If it is, why did the translators, not only of King James version, but also the modern translators of the New King James Version translate "high hills" at Gen. 7:19? Bullinger’s The Companion Bible, too, translates "high hills". And Ferrar Fenton’s The Five Books of Moses, has "all the hills and mountains". I do not think any of these translators chose the word "hills" because they believed the Flood was local, so that their choice of word was due to "bad exegesis". And contrary to J.H. (and myself, of course), they had a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew language. The only reasonable conclusion to draw, therefore, is that "high hills" is a fully possible and legitimate rendering. And it would be especially appropriate if the Flood story, as is commonly believed, originated in Mesopotamia, where the only mountains the inhabitants could see were hills.

I have checked just a couple of dozens translations. I’m sure there are more examples that could be added by a Bible collector.

That an enormous Flood, dated by geologists to approximately 3,500 BC, drowned at least the southern plains of Mesopotamia and swept away the pre-Sumerian Ubaid civilization in the area seems now to have been clearly established by recent geological and geomorphological research in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf area, as I pointed out in an earlier post (September 25, 1999). There I referred to and quoted from the summary of the evidence presented by Theresa Howard-Carter in the article, "The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun," published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 33, 1981, pp. 210-223.

It seems obvious to me that this disastrous catastrophe was the historical background of the Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions. It would be foolish just to ignore this evidence or wave it aside. How far northward this "giant flood" reached is still an open question. An enormous sea wave from the Persian Gulf could reach a very long way northwards along the plain, even up to the mountainous districts of northern Iraq. It should be remembered that most of the Mesopotamian plains below that area are very low. The whole delta lowland south of Baghdad, for example, is extremely flat and rises only a few meters from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad 600 kilometers north of the Gulf, so that Baghdad is still less than 10 (ten) meters above sea level! Therefore, to categorically reject the possibility that a local inundation of the Mesopotamian plains about 5,000 years ago could have reached the areas of southern Urartu, would be a sign of ignorance, stubborn dogmatism, and blind faith.

Marine shells, marine terraces, and other evidence show that the waters that drowned the cities of the Ubaid civilization was caused by a massive movement of the sea from the Gulf. This finding agrees with the statement at Gen. 7:11 that the waters of the Flood had two sources: (1) "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and (2) the windows of heaven were opened." The "great deep" (Hebr. ’tehom rabba’) is used in the Bible especially of the sea (e.g., Isa. 51:10; 63:3; Jonah 2:4). The inundation from the Persian Gulf explains why the ark of Noah (= the Sumerian Ziusudra, who is stated to have lived in the city of Shuruppak in southern Mesopotamia) was brought northwards. If the Flood had been caused only by rains from above and inundations of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, the ark would have been brought southwards to the Gulf.

AF, who in our previous discussion of this subject was careful not to be dogmatic, points out that, for a local flood to last more than a few hours or days there has to be an enclosed region that includes the entire Tigris-Euphrates region. This is an important argument.

The fact is that Iraq is often described as a "trough". The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12 (1969), for example, explains: "Iraq consists of a lowland trough lying between asymmetrical and very different upland massifs to the east, north and west, and continuing southeastward as the Persian gulf." (Page 527) Similarly, Dr. Susan Pollock says in her recent work, Ancient Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 1999): "Mesopotamia is, geologically speaking, a trough created as the Arabian shield has pushed up against the Asiatic landmass, raising the Zagros Mountains and depressing the land to the southwest of them. Within this trench, the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers and their tributaries have laid down enormous quantities of alluvial sediments, forming the Lower Mesopotamian Plain (also known as the alluvial Mesopotamian plain). Today the Lower Mesopotamian Plain stretches some 700 kilometers, from approximately the latitude of Ramadi and Baquba in the northwest to the Gulf, which has flooded its southeastern end." (Page 29)

As we don’t know exactly what caused the massive movement of the sea to inundate the Mesopotamian plain, there may have been circumstances involved unknown to us today that prevented the water from turning back too quickly to the sea again. These matters are still debated, and much research remains to be done.

Anyway, there was indeed a Flood. I believe it was local and limited to Mesopotamia, as is also indicated by the Sumerian Flood tradition, in which it is stated that the Flood covered "The Land", sum. ’kalam’. ’Kalam’ was the name the Sumerians used of their own country, which roughly covered the area from the Gulf up to present Baghdad, before it in the later Akkadian period was divided into Sumer and Akkad. The Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions are closely related, although it cannot be shown that the Biblical story was derived from the others, or vice versa. They clearly originate in a common source or event. That’s why it seems likely to me that the Biblical tradition, like the Mesopotamian traditions, speaks of a local catastrophe. As we have pointed out earlier, the Biblical word for "earth", ’erets’, usually was used in the sense of "land", and more rarely in the sense of "earth" (= the globe). It seems probable, therefore, that it referred to the "land" of Mesopotamia, like the Sumerian word ’kalam’. The context should always decide whether ’erets’ means "land" or "earth". And if the Scriptural context is not enough for deciding the matter, the historical context in which the story originated may be our best guide.

Carl

Earnest

moxy:

I found this described as a cosmogonic fragment from the "Book of the Dead" :

Furthermore I shall ruin all that I have made.
This earth will appear (?) as an abyss,
In (or as) a flood as in its primeval condition.
I [Nu] am the one remaining from it together with Osiris.
My forming is (then) made to me among other (?) serpents
Which men never knew,
Which the gods never saw.

However, I couldn't identify what fragment it came from and don't know how reliable it is. Interesting nevertheless.

Earnest

"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson

JanH

"Local flood" proponents ignore not only the very direct language in Genesis, they also ignore the fact that no place on earth has a contained area large enough to allow an ark to float around for a year without seeing land.

My total debunking of the "local flood" claims is still here: http://home.broadpark.no/~jhauglan/localflood.htm For some reason, local flood proponents have not even tried to answer those objections.

- Jan
--
The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.

JanH

Alan,

It's not surprising that the Egyptians did not have a legend about a destruction by flooding. To the Egyptians, flooding (from the Nile) was a blessing, not a curse. The annual flooding from the Nile, contolled thru a sophisticated irrigation system, was indeed the whole foundation of the Nile civilization. It made possible an agricultural production probably unmatched anywhere in the world at that time. Centralized food production enabled large populations, and the high level of organization necessary for irrigation made for a powerful central government. It was hardly coincidental that one of the world's olderst and long-lasting civilizations grew up in the Nile area. And Egyptians came to associate flooding with blessing, not destruction.

- Jan
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The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.

Flood Legends "Proof" of Global Flood...

Focus

gambler

Earnest

DB

Seeker

Moxy

aChristian

Earnest

JanH

JanH

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