by frogit 67 Replies latest watchtower bible
This might be worth a watch for us UK ers. Noah's Ark will be broadcast in the UK on BBC One on Sunday 21 March at 1900 GMT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3524676.stm
It's also an interesting read. Bit supprised about the mention of only 7 days to build it tho?
frogit
Did Noah really build an ark?
Apparently not, but Gilgamesh may have.
Yes, he really did build the Ark.
Oh no he didn't!!
This is something I can happily agree on with my City Buddy! (There's always next season)
The story of Noah's Ark is accepted by Ancient Bible History scholars and The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism as being penned after the Epic of Gilgamesh (see Ancient Near Eastern Mythology, by Robert Wexler, president of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles).
The fact that the flood of Noah is included in the Bible is not proof that it occurred! (I can see this being a long thread).
I look forward to the programme.
Ian
Dansk,
See we can agree on some things!!
Looking at the program notes it looks as though they will take the viewpoint that the Flood myth is based on flooding of the Euphrates/Tigris basin rather than flooding of the Black Sea coastline.
This is a viewpoint I'd agree with as the Black Sea flood event was too far back in time (circa 7000 BC).
All the biblical specifics aside, scientific proof seems to point that there really was a flood, just not at the time stated to make bible chronology true. The book "Before the Flood" by Ian Wilson gives scientific theory and some facts that there really was a flood about 5600 BCE.
It is theorized from evidence that ice melting during a warming phase in geological history caused the sea levels to rise. This, in turn, caused the Mediterranean to overflow thru the Bosphorus strait and -- presto! -- the small body of water that should probably have been known as the "Black Lake" 5000+ years ago now became the Black Sea.
This is also supported by undersea pictures by Dr. Bob Ballard (the guy who discovered the Titanic) of what look like remnants of buildings and other artifacts of civilization at the bottom of the Black Sea. This would indicate a settlement of sorts along the shore of what was the Black Lake before the melt and subsequent flooding.
No Ark or Noahacian involvement is provided so it seems to be real enough and was used in the bible for their purposes but is a good fable and nothing more.
Robert
The idea that a historical local flood inspired the Mediterranean flood legends is plausible but by no means necessary. Too often the purpose and symbolism of myth is lost when trying to establish a hypothesized historical kernel. Seasonal rains and periodic destructive flooding and drought established water as the central theme in many mythologies. As Leolaia has demonstrated in recent posts the Baal cosmic battle with the sea was not an historical event but symbolism wrought from familiar experience woven into a narrative. The Summerian and Babylonian flood myths are varients of this basic theme. This mythicist approach adaquately explains the Hebrew version, without necessitating some specific local flood as it's inspiration.
Well, if he really did build an Ark believing the entire planet was to be flooded, then he was one of the biggest crackpots and losers in history.
Farkel
The program seems to be the same one I saw on the Discovery Channel, which was based on the book by Robert M. Best. I believe the Flood story is a through-and-through myth, a folkloric archetype that stands apart from mere cultural diffusion and which likely preceded the rise of civilization in the Near East. There is thus no historical "kernal" at the core, unless one recognizes the widespread fact that early homo sapiens sapiens migrated largely along coastal routes which were inundated at the end of the last glaciation (and perhaps several times before that as well).
But I do believe that the Sumerian-Akkadian version of the Flood myth (of which the biblical story is a later descendent) represents a local historicization of a more general and far more ancient myth, embedding memories of actual floods experienced by the ancestors of the Sumerian civilization into the repertoire of Flood traditions. According to the Sumerian King List and the Instructions of Shuruppak, the Flood occurred before the rise of Early Dynastic I and after the antediluvian dynasties of Eridu, Sippar, and Shuruppak, and involved the survival of Ziusudra, the lugal (king) of Shuruppak. That is a specific historical context, and archaeological evidence attests just such a flood at that time -- and another several hundred years before. Unusual alluvial strata were found at nearly contemporaneous levels during excavations at Shuruppak (modern Fara), Uruk, the earliest level at Kish, and possibly Lagash. These strata were deposited about 2900 BC, about 2 feet of yellow sediment in Shuruppak. The alluvial stratum was found directly aboce a polychrome jar, seal cylinders, and stamp seals from the Jemdet Nasr period (3200-2900 BC), and directly below plano-convex bricks from ED I which followed the Jemdet Nasr period (which according to radiocarbon dating began around 2900 BC). A 3-foot layer dating to about 2900 BC was found at Uruk, and the first of four flood strata at Kish dated to the same time. In all three cases, the flood layer stands at a "cultural break" between the Jemdet Nasr period and ED I. There was also an earlier flood from around 3800 BC that deposited an alluvial layer at a maximum 11 feet thick at Ur that came near the end of the Ubadian civilization (5000-3800 BC) and preceded the Uruk period (3800-3200 BC). There is a thin layer of Ubadian pottery after the flood layer, suggesting that Ubaidian culture lingered on for a short while before being replaced by a quite different culture from immigrants from the north. These two floods would have been catastophic to the early civilizations in the alluvial plain and I find it hard to believe that they would have been forgotten only 500 years afterward (in the case of the Jemdet Nasr flood) when the Instructions of Shuppurak was first composed. It is clear that the antediluvian period from the Sumerian King List preserves memories of the Ubaidian, Uruk, and Jemdet Nasr periods (e.g. Eridu began in the Ubaidian period and was an important city in the Uruk period, and Shuruppak was founded in the Jemdet Nasr period and was a significant urban center in that period), so it seems possible that that the elements locating the flood in Shuruppak and prior to the rise of ED I likely incorporate memories of the 2900 BC (and possibly the 3800 BC) flood. But one should not however take the Ziusudra or Gilgamesh Epic story and read it as history, as the story identifies a catastrophic flood of proto-historical memory with a pre-existing tale (as cross-cultural evidence suggests) that likely included folkloric motifs already in existence when the historical flood occurred.
