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

[Solvedit]

I mean it's a cool reinterpretation of the Noah's Ark tale, but it's historically and scientifically as implausible as the Biblical interpretation.

There is no archaeological, textual, or historical evidence that supports such an event.

Watch PBS Nova "The First Horse Warriors" and fast forward to 36 minutes and 12 seconds, although the part about people self-quarantining on ships is admittedly conjecture.

And the ancient Near Eastern flood myths, including the Biblical one, are derived from Mesopotamian stories like Gilgamesh and Atrahasis.

Which is consistent with a pandemic.  Many cultures must have been involved.

Those tales predate Moses by centuries and clearly describe divine floods, not epidemics.

They symbolised the likes of divine judgment and renewal, not disease avoidance.

The people who created the stories could have had their reasons for rewriting the record.  One wild guess I just thought of off the cuff: perhaps they didn't want the newcomers to realize they were outsiders.  Perhaps there would have been ethnic persecution.

This is the Bronze Age, and the people back then lacked ships capable of sustaining even small communities for months, much less with animals aboard.

People have survived months at sea on small rafts with just the fish they could catch.  The record was written down so long after the events in question that they may have forgotten minor details like going to shore for fresh water if they didn't see anyone around. 

As to knowing how to fish, there were only eight people on the Ark, and two pairs of every predator. I'm apt to ponder feeding them fish is still rather an impossible task to accomplish, given the limited manpower available.

If they were avoiding a plague, they need not have brought any predators, only the animals they were accustomed to growing on their farms.  They could have gone to shore from time to time when there were no people around and gathered hay for the animals. 
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[Solvedit]

Thread redirect alert.  

Eureka, I've got it.  

I was thinking there may have been a somewhat flood-like event such as people fleeing an epidemic on boats.

However, if the event being explained was the outbreak of bubonic plague 5,000 years ago which resulted in the loss of 90% of Europe's population, followed by the moving in of the plague-resistant Yamnaya, then there need not have been any people fleeing the epidemic in ships at all.  

Suppose someone perceived a good reason to portray the way things were as the result of an act of God and concocted a story.  There need not have been any people fleeing the plague on ships.

I just thought of a scenario off-the-cuff.  What if the newcomers were a little hard on the plague survivors and wiped out the menfolk including the storytellers?  What if they needed the descendants of the survivors to feel integrated and accepted, and not resent their new countrymen as invading outsiders, even though they could feel it in their bones that there had been a "turnover event?"  I am guessing people probably understood there was something like epigenetics before it became an official field of scientific study.  The descendants of the survivors could have held farming knowledge which was necessary to make life work for the newcomers.  

The Annunaki of mythology could have been self-quarantining plague survivors who created a different legend to explain their re-integration into society.  Perhaps they were aware that the particular newcomers who had moved to their area had been a little harsh on other survivors, or perhaps they simply wanted to be venerated as gods or demigods or descendants of gods.

[chr0naut]

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.

- The text of Genesis does not say that Noah's flood was planet-wide.

- The text of Genesis does not say that they were to collect every species that existed on the planet. (It only spoke of birds and of creatures that moved on "the land", and the borders of "the land" are specifically defined in other parts of the Bible, as limited to the area we would call the Levant).

Of course, if you ignore what the actual text says, over some popular modern Sunday school reimagining, it does seem absurd. But you can't reasonably debunk a written account on the basis of stuff that just isn't in the written account. You have to interpret what you read based strictly only upon what is written, and not go beyond that.

Let me demonstrate how a few 'common knowledge' things differ from the actuality:

Time and distance, and therefore motion, is relative to the observer. Einstein showed that, and it has been experimentally and objectively verified thousands of times, by very many methods. This has consequence upon how we should understand reality.

So, if someone is travelling at 99.9999% of C (commonly called the speed of light - except it isn't because the propogation speed of light is variable and relative to the observers frame of reference...), and they shine a flashlight ahead of themselves, the photons of light from the flashlight aren't travelling additively faster than light, they are still travelling at about C, the speed that photons generally propogate at.

This is because of time-dilation effects that are relative to the different frames of reference of every single observer. So, time is very flexible. A bit like they said on Doctor Who, "time is all wibbly wobbly and timey-wimey".




So, everyone who suggests that the universe couldn't have come into being in 7 days (10,080 seconds or 3,021,907,976,640 meters by equivalence) has no idea that the observed time-frame is entirely dependent upon the reference frame of the observer.

For example, close to the Swartzchild radius of a singularity (like the one that possibly birthed our current universe), the total time of the expansion of the universe up till now would have appeared to have been a few days from one reference frame. Further from the singularity, as we clearly are, it would have appeared to have been tens of billions of years, from our frame of reference.

And, in this way, everyone who suggests that because science shows us a universe that appears 13.4 billion years old, that it couldn't have happened in 7 days, is a complete science numpty (especially as God, the only observer of those first six days, would most likely be really close to the initial point of his creation, and we are roughly 13.4 billion years away, travelling at the speed of light, from that point of origin).

Or, how about that the Bible, that everyone probably has on a shelf at home, has no account of three wise men, despite the populat Christmas nativity traditions?

And those un-numbered Zoroastrian priests (hereditary Magi from Iran and India, who are today called Herbad, Mobad and Dastur depending on their rank), didn't go to see a new-born in a stable, but they arrived specifically at a house (as mentined in Matthew 2:11) in Bethlehem two years later (they had been following the star for two years, and Herod sent his soldiers to kill all the male children in, and around, Bethlehem two years old and under). And nowhere in the original text does it describe the Magi as 'kings' or as 'wise men' (in the KJV it describes them as "kings", which is another demonstration of why that version is so crap).

So much for the things people popularly believe (and think they are being 'scientific minded' about)!

[Bootless]

- The text of Genesis does not say that Noah's flood was planet-wide.

- The text of Genesis does not say that they were to collect every species that existed on the planet. (It only spoke of birds and of creatures that moved on "the land", and the borders of "the land" are specifically defined in other parts of the Bible, as limited to the area we would call the Levant).

Yes it does. Genesis 7 does say that even the highest mountains were covered, up to 6.9 meters above the highest mountains. "All flesh died". "Every living thing was destroyed". Not just local; "...that were under the whole sky."

17The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth. 18The waters rose, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ship floated on the surface of the waters. 19The waters rose very high on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered. 20The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship. 24The waters flooded the earth one hundred fifty days.

-WEB

[chr0naut]

I think there is evidence that suggests that major population shifts occurred in Europe around 5,000 years ago.

Likely due to migrations from the Eurasian steppe, but not a catastrophic global flood.

As far as im can determine, the migrations introduced the indo-european languages.

There is simply no geological or archaeological record that supports a flood covering the world.

The story of Noah parallels the older Mesopotamian flood myths.

And putting to sea for a year is a bit of a stretch.

As no civilisation back then had ships capable of surviving a year at sea.

Especially not while carrying pairs of every animal.

Ancient vessels were river barges or coastal boats, not ocean-going arks.

The story's logistics, food, waste, ventilation, and animal care, are simply impossible the way it is told.

There are very ancient Egyptian heiroglyphs found carved in stone in many South Pacific countries.

Thor Heyerdal travelled 8,000 km over 101 days in a mainly balsa wood raft for the Kon-Tiki expedition. he was trying to prove how Polynesians may have migrated from the Americas.

The Polynesians themselves have clearly been able to build ocean vessels of many kinds with primitive technologies and to have stayed at sea for significant lengths of time.

But, none the less, something like Noah's ark is clearly singular and exceptional in conception, execution and purpose.

[SurferSoul]

Yes it does. Genesis 7 does say that even the highest mountains were covered, up to 6.9 meters above the highest mountains. "All flesh died". "Every living thing was destroyed". Not just local; "...that were under the whole sky."

So the creatures of the sea survived then and those that were on boats? 

Whatever I find it interesting that different cultures from all over the world, with no apparent contact or prior influence on each other, all have flood myths in their oldest tales. 

If a meteor or comet plus fragments hit the northern ice sheet near the end of the last ice age, it could be responsible for the younger dryas event that was another mini ice age, it would have also created a massive global flood. A catastrophe of biblical proportions indeed.

[Bootless]

Whatever I find it interesting that different cultures from all over the world, with no apparent contact or prior influence on each other, all have flood myths in their oldest tales. 

I agree with what IdeomotorPrisoner wrote on page 1.

The Norse are hard to get down. The oldest version could still be christianized. They only started largely writing their stories after The Bible showed up.

Oldest one is "Odin killed the last giant and created thr oceans from his blood."  

Much much later Flood Myths

The Story of Nuʻu - 1800 (Hawaiian)

"A man who built an ark to survive a great flood and saved his family and all living things." 

He landed ln Maunu Kea instead on Mt. Ararat! 

The claim is it was an Oral Tradition story that existed "before" missionaries showed up, but like the Norse, you cant really know what the oral story was. 

This also applies to the: Inca, Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee, Iroquois, Seminole... pretty much everyone except The Inuit.

But they are all learned about through missionaries. They all existed as "oral tradition" or some retconned interpretation taking linguistic liberties.

It's the magnifying glass of Jesus being carried. Everything must line up.

[SurferSoul]

I agree with what IdeomotorPrisoner wrote on page 1.

From that I’m getting a suggestion that missionaries influenced the oral tradition, maybe I’m reading it wrong? 
For me oral tradition is as good as anything written down, things written down over time are more likely to get “lost in translation” or generally altered. Things remembered verbatim don’t alter the same, they are at least as reliable as the written word in my opinion. 

I also don’t understand what’s meant by “ you can’t really know what the oral story was” why not? Did missionaries all over the world conspire to alter all the creation myths and storylines to include flood myths? What for? Their job was to convert them, not embellish their beliefs.

[Rigel4]

Looking at the news for the last 12 months, I think it could be just a coincidence.

Floods are relatively common and people in ancient times didn't know how far the world reached and didn't have the means of communicating with people from other places, so a big flood could look like it had covered all of their known world while being relatively localised.

If the flood happened then it happened this way.. The world was a relative term in the past .

Good thoughts Armap

[Bootless]

From that I’m getting a suggestion that missionaries influenced the oral tradition, maybe I’m reading it wrong? 
For me oral tradition is as good as anything written down, things written down over time are more likely to get “lost in translation” or generally altered. Things remembered verbatim don’t alter the same, they are at least as reliable as the written word in my opinion. 

I also don’t understand what’s meant by “ you can’t really know what the oral story was” why not? Did missionaries all over the world conspire to alter all the creation myths and storylines to include flood myths? What for? Their job was to convert them, not embellish their beliefs.

The only old myths that can be reliably considered older than Christian contact are those which have been recorded in writing before missionary contact. Other than that, cross cultural interchange of ideas changes things. Many examples of Mandela effect can be attributed to such, like someone hears "Hey, didn't that used to be ...?" And then the hearer's memory gets corrupted.

But speaking of oral tradition, I've thought back to what I heard as a child.

*** Warning: may be considered X rated *******

An Oral Tradition of the Flood

This is the oral tradition that I overheard my mother teaching to my oldest sister. It was assumed that I was asleep and couldn't have heard it from my bedroom. But I heard nonetheless.

Back before the flood, the World was very much different. God had not invented chromosomes yet. Wicked humans mated with all manner of animals which then bore abominations. The dinosaurs were some of the abominations. Man making dinosaurs was the very worst crime against God which necessitated the flood.

So God succeeded in destroying the dinosaurs, burying them deep under ground by means of the rapidly moving waters carving deep channels for the dinosaur bodies to then get covered over by layers of rock, sand, and silt. Over the centuries the dinosaurs became oil. Now days when the subterranean oil catches fire, volcanoes erupt.

But God had learned His lesson about the sexual deviance of man. God created chromosomes so that even if humans committed bestiality, no abominable offspring would result.