The story of Noah and his Ark is a story in the Bible which is often told to children and often accompanied by
cute pictures. God tells Noah to big boat because God is going to create a big
flood. And two of every type animal happily
go up the gangplank into the big boat. (Can you see the elephant and the
bunny rabbit, Johnny?) Then it rains.
(Look at all the people drowning. But God save the bunny rabbit.) At the end,
Noah's family and all the animals leave the boat and a beautiful rainbow appears.
Forget that this horrific flood never happened. Forget that this is wanton and
pointless act by God for a creation made by God. Forget that the end of the
story is not told in the children's books because it is full of bad behavior of
the type that caused the flood in the first place and resulted in rationalizing
hate, bigotry and racism we are confronted with to this very day.
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The tale of Noah and his Ark
is the story
the
Old
Testament,
Hebrew Bible and the
Quran. In the
Bible, the story is in
the book of
Genesis, chapters 6 through 9. According to the story, the only
righteous man in the world which was at that time believed to be flat, saves
himself, his family, and two of each kind of the world's animals, birds and
insects from the world-wide flood. In the story, God gives Noah detailed instructions
for building the ark. The three deck vessel is to be of
gopher wood, at one time or another
believed to be cedar, cypress, pine, fir, teak, ebony, wicker, sandalwood,
juniper, acacia, boxwood, resinous wood or slimmed bulrushes. The vessel was
then smeared inside and out with pitch.
According to God's instructions, the ark was to be 300
cubits long (137.16 m; 450 ft), 50 cubits wide (22.86 m;
75 ft), and 30 cubits high (13.716 m; 45 ft). And, it had to have a
roof "finished to a cubit upward" and an entrance on the side. The
story goes on to describe the great flood, the receding of the waters before it
came to rest on
Mount Ararat
(now in Turkey) and some incidents involving Noah after the flood including one
involving incest. Scholars maintain that the
story is a myth and is not literally true. And, many expeditions on Mount
Ararat have searched for the
ark's remains
but no evidence that anything like Noah's Ark was ever discovered.
There are many flood myths besides the story of Noah. A flood myth (aka: deluge myth) is a narrative in which a great flood
is created by a deity or deities to
destroy civilization in an act of divine retribution. In these stories,
the floods are described as a method for the cleansing of humankind as a
preparation for rebirth. It is also a show of divine power, a warning of divine
displeasure with human behavior, and of the ability to destroy humanity anytime
he wishes. Most flood myths also contain a culture hero, who creates rebirth. A flood story exists in many cultures,
for example, in the Ancient Mesopotamian flood stories, in Greek mythology, and in the stories of the K'iche'and Maya peoples of Central America, the Lac Courte
Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native
Americans in North America, and the Muisca people in South America. This leads many people to believe
there actually was a world-wide flood in spite of the fact that there is no
evidence for it.
According
to some Talmudic writers, while Noah was building the ark, he attempted to warn
his neighbors of the coming deluge, but they ignored and mocked him. They also
said that in order to protect Noah and his family, God placed lions and other
ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who tried to stop them from
entering the ark. According to one
sacred text, it was God or his angels who gathered the animals to the ark along
with their food. Another text said that
the ark distinguished between the clean animal and unclean animals and admitted
seven pairs each of each clean animal but only one pair each of the unclean. The chosen animals were the best of
their species and so they behaved well and did not attack each other while on
the ark. and, they abstained from procreating while on the ark so that the
number of creatures that disembarked was equal to the number that boarded the
vessel. According to one tradition, general waste was stored on the lowest of
the ark's three decks, humans and clean beast's waste on the second level, and
the unclean animal and bird waste on the top level. But, a different document
said all of the refuse was stored on the top level from where it was shoveled
into the sea through a trapdoor.
According to
Genesis 7:11;8:1-2 after Noah and the remnant of animals were secured,
the fountains of the great
deep and the floodgates or
the windows of the heavens were opened. This caused rain to fall on the Earth
for 40 days. The waters elevated, with the summits of the highest mountains under 15 cubits (22 feet 6
inches) of water, flooding the
world for 150 days, and then receding for 220 days.
According
to the end of the flood story in the
Bible, after the ark landed on Mount
Ararat and the release of the animals from the ark, Noah planted a vineyard,
created the first wine and was the first person to get drunk. Early classical commentaries tended to excused
Noah’s excessive drinking because of his long ordeal on the ark, because he was
considered to be the first wine drinker, and because he had no idea what effects
of excessive drinking of wine might be.
In
some Jewish traditions, rabbis blame
Satan for saturating the vine with intoxicating properties from
the blood of certain animals.
The Bible
says that Noah begat
Shem, Ham and
Japheth when he was 500 years old and that
Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood. The most controversial part of
the story of Noah is what occurred after Noah got drunk. It is the story of Ham and it is told in
Genesis 9:20-27.
It reads:
And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;
and he was uncovered within his tent. And
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two
brethren without. And Shem and
Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon
both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father;
and their faces were backward, and they saw not their
father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son
had done unto him. And he said,
Cursed be Canaan; a
servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his
servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem;
and Canaan shall be his servant. (
The
King James Bible)
The
majority of both ancient and modern biblical authorities have felt that Ham's
seeing his father naked was not a sufficiently serious reason to explain the
punishment that follows. Nevertheless, Genesis 9:23, in which Shem and Japheth
cover Noah with a cloak while averting their eyes, suggests that the words are to
be taken literally because in 1st millennium Babylonia, looking at another person's
genitals was regarded as a serious matter. But, others suggest that Ham was
guilty of more than what the Bible says. Several ancient sources
had Ham gossiping about his father's drunken disgrace "in the street"
so that being held up to public mockery was what had really angered Noah. Who
these other people in the streets who did the mocking is unclear because all of
humanity was wiped out during the flood.
Ancient
commentaries have also debated that "seeing" someone's nakedness
meant to have sex with that person (e.g.: Leviticus 20:17). The same idea was raised by 3rd-Century
rabbis who argue that Ham either castrated his father, or sodomized him. The
same explanations are found in three Greek translations of the
Bible, which replace the word "see" in verse 22 with another
word denoting homosexual relations. Finally, some modern scholars have suggested
that to "uncover the nakedness" of a man means to have sex with that
man's wife (e.g.: Leviticus 20:11). If Ham had sex with his mother, and
Canaan was the product of this forbidden union, it could explain why the curse
falls on his son. After all, except through incest, how else could people replenish
the earth after the flood?
Whatever
was the intended meaning of the myth-creators, it is important to understand
the following:
·
The Genesis flood narrative is a myth. It is one of a number
of similar flood myths, the earliest of these was the Sumerian flood myth found in the Epic of Ziusudra. Later and very similar Mesopotamian
flood stories are found in the Epic of Atrahasis and Epic of Gilgamesh. Many scholars
believe that Noah and the biblical flood story are derived from the
Mesopotamian versions, predominantly because biblical mythology that is today found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
Baha'i Faith and Mandeanism share an overlapping consistency with far older
written Mesopotamian stories of The Great Flood, and that the early Hebrews were known
to have lived in Mesopotamia particularly
during the Babylonian captivity.
·
There is no scientific evidence to support the idea of a
world-wide flood. If there was such a global flood, there would be a global
sedimentary level around the world and there is none.
·
Searches for Noah's Ark, sometimes mockingly referred to as
"arkeology” have been made
from at least the Third Century BCE to the present day. Despite many
expeditions, no scientific evidence of the ark has been ever found. The
practice of looking for Noah's Ark is widely regarded as "a fool's
errand" and as pseudo-archaeology.
·
The
story of Ham has led to religion-based and condoned bigotry. Africans were
traditionally understood to be the sons of Ham, particularly his descendant
Cush, as Cushites are referred to throughout scripture as being the inhabitants
of
East Africa,
and they and the
Yoruba still
trace their ancestry through Ham today. This religion-based hate was often used
to rationalize racial hatred, bigotry, slavery, and the South African Apartheid
system.
*
Related Topic
A British
scholar has found that a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet from what is now Iraq
contains a story similar to the biblical account of Noah’s Ark. It is the oldest known Mesopotamian version
of the Great Flood Story. The
newly decoded cuneiform tells of a divinely sent flood and a sole survivor on
an ark, who takes all the animals on board to preserve them. It even includes
the famous phrase “two by two,” describing how the animals came onto the ark. But,
there is one important difference: The
ark in this version is round.
We have
known for well over a century that there are flood stories from the ancient
Near East that long predate the biblical account. Even the most conservative
biblical scholars wouldn’t date any earlier than the ninth century B.C. What’s
really interesting is that scholars have changed the description of the ark itself. The
Bible says the ark was a standard boat shape- long and narrow. The length being six
times the measure of the width, with three decks and an entrance on the side. The
newly discovered Mesopotamian text describes a large round vessel, made of
woven rope, and coated (like the biblical ark) in pitch to keep it waterproof. Archaeologists
are planning to design a prototype of the ark, built to the specifications of
this text, to see if it would actually float, especially given the estimated
weight of the animals.
Why does
this new discovery matter? It matters because it serves as a reminder that the
story of the Great Flood Story had many versions and was not set in stone from its earliest
version all the way through to its latest. Every version reshapes the Great
Flood Story and the ark itself according to the norms of their own time
and place.
In ancient
Mesopotamia, a round vessel would have been perfectly reasonable. In fact, it is well known that this type of boat was in
use, though perhaps not to such a gigantic scale, on the Mesopotamian rivers. The
ancient Israelites, on the other hand, would naturally have pictured a boat
like those they were familiar with: which is to say, the boats that navigated
not the rivers of Mesopotamia but the Mediterranean Sea.
This detail
of engineering can and should stand for a larger array of themes and features
in the flood stories. The Mesopotamian versions feature many gods; the biblical
account, of course, only one. The Mesopotamian versions tell us that the Flood
came because humans were too noisy for the gods; the biblical account says it
was because violence had spread over the Earth. Neither version is right or
wrong; they are, rather, both appropriate to the culture that produced them.
Neither is history; both are theology.
What, then,
of the most striking parallel between this newly discovered text and Genesis:
the phrase “two by two”? Here, it would seem, we have an identical conception
of the animals entering the ark. Although most people steeped in Sunday School
tradition will tell you without even thinking about it that the animals, they
came on, they came on the ark two by two, that’s not exactly what the Bible
says. More accurately, it’s one thing that the Bible says that Noah is instructed to bring not one
pair of each species, but seven pairs of all the “clean” animals and the birds,
and one pair of the “unclean” animals. This is important because at the end of
the story, Noah offers animal sacrifices which, if he only brought one pair of
each animal, would mean that, after saving them all from the Flood, he then proceeded
to relegate some of those species to extinction. This is not news. In the 17th century, some biblical
scholars recognized that there must be two versions of the Flood intertwined in
the canonical Bible.
There are also plenty of significant differences between
the two Flood stories in the Bible, which are easily spotted if you try to read
the narrative as it stands. One version says the Flood lasted 40 days; the
other says 150. One says the waters came from rain. Another says it came from
the opening of primordial floodgates both above and below the Earth. One
version says Noah sent out a dove, three times. The other says he sent out a
raven, once.
Even if we
acknowledge that the biblical authors
learned the Flood story from other sources, it is important to understand that the Bible gets its authority from us and
not because it is either the first or the most reliable witness to history. There
is no doubt that the discovery of this new ancient Mesopotamian text is
important. But from a biblical perspective, its importance resides mostly in
the way it serves to remind us that the Flood story is a malleable one. There
are multiple different Mesopotamian versions, and there are multiple different
biblical versions. They share a basic outline, and some central themes. But,they
each relate the story in their own way.
As with much in the Bible, a person should not take the
story as literally or as fact. The power of
the Flood story as with much of the Bible is in what it tells us about
humanity’s relationship with God. But as usual, the devil is in the details.
