Aetas

lolz, noah's ark. I truly don't know how anyone can honestly still believe in it. Why dont all you christians just resort to the god of the gaps and we'll keep chipping away at your faith until theres none left.

Sparrow

A mutation by any other name would smell so sweet. That explains a lot.

Don't confuse a true believer with logic.

We've got at least one theist here who has chosen to not "check his brain at the door". He clearly realizes that some of his bretheren do just that. Instead he is actually working at his faith in an honest way and I, for one, am more than willing to let that take him whereever it may. While he may never come to a complete agreement with me, it seems he respects our right to believe as we do. I'll certainly and happily grant the reverse.

Lucretius

IF the Flood is based on a real historical event and I know that its a big IF,
I can see it being possible that some farmer would want to save his own particular farm animals, if only for the fact it would save time building up his stock when the waters subsided and not having to start from scratch possibly having to re-domesticate wild or semi wild ones.

Clivedurdle

What is the concensus about when this story was invented?

What does the writer's description of the technology of the ark tell us about the society he or she (unlikely?) was from?

I'm asking questions eqyuivalent to those in Bible Unearthed about camel trains - the story of Noah's Ark feels like it betrays knowledge of quite sophisticated sea going technologies, expanded in the tradition of how big was that fish you caught.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't know anything about the technology of arks but as to when the story was invented, the earliest Sumerian version (in Gilgamesh) dates to something like 2000 BCE.

markfiend

...which would make it some of the oldest literature in the world?

Hey, what time-frame do the creationists put Noah's flood in? It's about the 2000BCE mark IIRC? So maybe Gilgamesh contains eye-witness testimony to the global flood? :rolling:

Clivedurdle

Be very careful saying things like that - a preacher somewhere will use it in a sermon, although on the other hand, what else can we make up....

Celsus

The version you're thinking of is Atrahasis and is not part of the Gilgamesh epic, Enuma Elish, or what have you, even if Enki features in both. Those are Babylonian and date to the 7th century, while Atrahasis is Akkadian. Its earliest fragments might date to about the 22nd century (er, BCE), but the form of Atrahasis we are familiar with comes from the 17th. Alongside these Flood myths and the Bible, it became really popular in the Hellenistic period, where you have the versions in Berossos, Hesiod, Ovid, and quite a few others.

Joel

Chili

Hello Clive, I don't know if this was addressed to me but I'll just pretend it was to make a point.

I was invited to a large Christmas celebration in a protestant Church and they had lots of candles there. Lots of singing, and yes, also an Advent wreath. It is not that I like candles or advent wreaths but I saw it as a positive thing towards unity until I noticed that the white candle was missing from the Advent wreath. Then I thought, what is all this singing about is if there is no hope for them.

Sheshbazzar

Seriously, and from a scientific standpoint,
Before jumping into an endless multitude of questionable conclusions extrapolated from faulty mensuration,
Who gave you these dimensions?
What is their degree of accuracy?
A peculiarity of Math and geometry is, error in = error out.