The Great Flood — Myth, Memory, or Something In Between?

[Creaky]

We know for a fact that the Noah story, as described by the bible, is not literal truth.
It is not the inerrant Word of God.   It's allegory.
God did not come down and save 8 people floating on a boat full of the worlds animals for a year.
Speculate about the origin of the story all you want ... but just don't say it's literal truth.
Cuz' it's not.
There was a thread at ATS on this ... something like 70 pages.

 Et that was you repeating the same thing over and over trying to force your opinion on everyone

[BeyondKnowledge]

I have several thoughts on this.

It could be the ocean rise after the last ice age mostly melted. It is still melting.

It could be that comet that hit North of Australia. A huge amount of water could have been added to the oceans almost instantly along with the water thrown into the atmosphere to cause the rain. It took a while for the land to become waterlogged enough to expand as the flood water soaked in, eventually settling to what we have now.

Ether of these two cound be mistaken through race memory as being the biblical flood and even the Atlantis legend.

If you want a really wild one, how about the ark was a ship from Mars or another planet with an entire genome stored on board to populate a suitable planet. The travel on the flood waters was actually through space. The people remembering that history just had no understanding or words to explain that happening.

[Tecate]

Sorry but I didn’t want to read a bunch of anti-biblical stuff or anything believing that it happened biblically.

A lot of the Bible is story retelling and this story is kind of fantastic. Pretty incomprehensible really. But, as a story of local inundation like the story of the Black Sea. Believable. At least to me.

 I think that most of these stories are based on actual events. Adam and Eve? We’ll see, but what if??

The people before perhaps weren’t sufficiently sentient…

Anyhoo, I guess I will believe what I do. And you do you!!

Meh, my 2 pesos…

Tecate

[rickymouse]

There are stories of great floods all over the world in history, but they do not seem to match up in time.  It appears that something major did occur in the middle east but that does not match up with the disasters in America very well.  In Europe there were some big events, but again they do not match up with other areas

Even in Africa there are tales of a major flooding, not related to the jewish timeframe though.

[chr0naut]

How could you get two of every species into a boat that small? And what does the issue have to do with Christmas?

Asking for a friend.

Tell your 'friend' that Genesis doesn't say two of "every species" at all. Just like the fact that the Bible also doesn't say that there were three wise men.

Also, have you seen the size of some zoos? Tiny.

[FlyersFan]

We should start a fund to buy you tickets for Christmas:
[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa5ZpUlk3cg]

https://arkencounter.com/about/

I was watching TV news on FOX one morning.   There is a talking head on there named Ainsley.  She took her children there and the FOX cameras followed them and reported on it.   The people at the exhibit said 'this is history'.   I wanted to pull my hair out.  That's child abuse.

[FlyersFan]

If it's allegory, then what does it mean?.

Frankly I think it's horrid.   It paints a story that there is a God that would painfully wipe out the entire world ... all the animals and plants and everything ... make a total wreck of everything ... all to try to 'wipe out sin'.  (Think of all the terror and pain the animals would have gone through.)   But God would know that He couldn't wipe out sin and that it would just come back so the story is a failure.   And that makes God a failure for not being able to wipe out sin.    Horrid horrid story.

[FlyersFan]

 Et that was you repeating the same thing over and over trying to force your opinion on everyone

Scientific and historical fact isn't 'my opinion' .... it's just the truth.
The Noahs Ark story did not really happen.   Deal with it.
Oh .. and you failed to address the massive numbers of facts presented.
It's a PAGAN story reworked and adapted by the Hebrews to fit t heir own religion.


Arizona EDU

Most biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars argue that the flood is a mythical story adopted from earlier Mesopotamian flood accounts. These earlier accounts include the 17th century BCE Sumerian flood myth Eridu Genesis,[5] the 18th century BCE Akkadian Atra-Hasis Epic,[6] and the Epic of Gilgamesh,[7] which are some of the earliest known examples of a literary style of writing. The most complete version of the Epic of Gilgamesh known today is preserved on 12 clay tablets from the library of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (685-627 BCE). This extant Akkadian version is derived from earlier Sumerian versions. In the story, Gilgamesh and his companion, a wild man-beast named Enkidu, travel the world on a number of quests that ultimately displease the gods. After the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh embarks on a journey to learn the secret of eternal life by visiting the immortal flood hero, Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh how the god Ea (equivalent to the Sumerian god Enki) revealed the gods' plan to destroy all life with a great flood, and how they instructed him to build a vessel in which he could save his family, friends, and livestock. After the flood, the gods repented for destroying the world and made Utnapishtim immortal.


These flood stories appear to have been transmitted to the Israelites early in Israel's history. Contact between the Assyrians and the Israelites is known from the conquest of Israel and its capitol, Samaria, in 721 BCE by Assyrian King Shalmaneser V (727-722 BCE),[8] and from the attempted conquest of Jerusalem by the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704-681 BCE). These stories were apparently modified to conform to a monotheistic faith, but retained characteristics such as the destruction of nearly all living things via a flood, the salvation of a select few people and animals by the construction of a boat, and the regret of the deity for the flood, prompting a promise not to do so again. Thus, like many of the early stories in Israel's primordial history,[9] the flood story appears to be an adaptation and integration of a previously known myth into the theology of Israel

[FlyersFan]

Tell your 'friend' that Genesis doesn't say two of "every species" at all.

Yeah .. it says 'two of every kind' and it says 'seven' of some other kinds.   That's the excuse that those who believe the story is real say .. that it just says 'kinds'.  (they didn't know the term 'species')  But that doesn't work at all.   Even if there were 'kinds', you couldn't get the massive number of species that you have on the planet today.   Evolution doesn't work like that.  The 'kinds' excuse fails.

[FlyersFan]

Some interesting math here

There isn't enough water on/in Earth to cover the highest mountains like the bible claims happened for Noahs flood.   So where did the water for the flood come from?  And where did it go?   Answer ... it never happened so it came from nowhere and went nowhere.  

AI GOOGLE ASSIST 

There is not enough water on Earth to account for a global flood like Noah's, even with rain and underground water, because the total volume of water is insufficient to cover the highest mountains. If all the water in the atmosphere rained down, it would only cover the ground to a depth of about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch), and even adding the water from the oceans would only raise global sea levels by about 70 meters, which is not enough to submerge the highest peaks.