Noah’s Ark. To some a true Biblical Story.

[VaughanJB]

..in your opinion true or untrue?

A point of contention for many believers is whether the flood was a global or a local event.

I'd not only say it's untrue, I'd say it is ludicrous. It's an obvious instance in the Bible where it can't possibly be an actual event.

Was there a flood? Probably, floods aren't unusual. But Noah, the Ark, the animals in the Ark? No, that's some crazy stuff,

 

[oldman]

My faith leads me to being a believer. God does perform miracles as 911 stated. And, Grandpa Don has it right also. Nothing written here is going to change anyone’s mind one way or the other. I realized a long time ago that some of the passages written in the Old Testament are difficult to believe, but for us believers, our faith gives us the ability to believe even without indisputable evidence.

 

[VaughanJB]

My faith leads me to being a believer. God does perform miracles as 911 stated. And, Grandpa Don has it right also. Nothing written here is going to change anyone’s mind one way or the other. I realized a long time ago that some of the passages written in the Old Testament are difficult to believe, but for us believers, our faith gives us the ability to believe even without indisputable evidence.

The God of the Old Testament killed a lot of people. This includes children. I assume you believe this too?

Which isn't intended to be confrontational, but the OT is often a true hell on earth, instigated by God.

 

[Naturally]

I can see some teaching points in the parable.

And as a parable, the Noah’s Ark story works less like a ship’s log and more like a moral compass. It tells us that corruption has consequences, that obedience and faith can be a refuge, and that renewal follows even the worst storms. The ark itself becomes a symbol of safety for the faithful, while the flood represents a cleansing of what has gone wrong. In this light the details about cubits and animals are not the point so much as the lesson. When the waters rise, where do you seek shelter, and who do you trust to steer ... and hopefully it's not someone who gets seasick.

 

[outlander]

Let's talk genetic diversity. How can animals be repopulated with just one pair and not end up with genetic issues?

 

[horseless carriage]

Not laughing at flood, which I believe is based in reality. Laughing about Noah & his ark. Beyond stupid

I have always wondered about the chickens. Did they become known as fowl, and that's how they tasted, as a way of protecting them from being eaten? Or was it because they were forever using fowl language?

 

[DebraMae]

I ain't sayin' nothin'.

 

[astralcat]

The Bible is full of symbolism. Symbols illustrate concepts. It is up to an individual to interpret these symbols and he navigates through life seeking the purpose of life and for some, an afterlife.

 

[C50]

I've read a couple versions of the bible, and attended church for many years because I truly wanted to believe.

My conclusion. The bible is historical fiction, a bit of truth but plenty of speculation and wild exaggerations.

Guy named Noah put his family and a pair of goats in a boat to save them from a flood. Pass that story on a few thousand times and see how it changes.

 

[Knight]

The Bible instructs that Noah took two of every "unclean" animal kind and seven of every "clean" animal kind onto the ark, for a total of approximately 6,744 individuals for roughly 1,400 animal kinds, rather than every single species.

Timeline of the Flood:
40 days: The period of continuous rain that began the flood.
150 days: The total time the floodwaters covered the earth after the rain stopped.
Day 150: The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
Total Duration: The entire process, from the beginning of the flood to the earth being dry enough for Noah and his family to disembark, took approximately one year and ten days.

The Bible does not specify the exact construction time of Noah's Ark, but common interpretations of the text, particularly Genesis 6:3 and the ages of Noah's sons, suggest a construction period of roughly 50 to 75 years or potentially longer, with some estimations extending up to 120 years.

All that in the bible grabs the imagination like the story "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Some believe it some don't, what difference does it make?

 

[Nathan]

We all have our own opinion on this subject. And, no one is going to change their mind due to anything written here. Unless this is just a survey, it really serves no purpose.

If anyone is interested in what modern archeology says about the Old Testament or Torah, I recommend The Bible Unearthed by two Israeli archeologists. I got my used copy in good condition on Ebay for $7 including shipping.

I used to love the program The Naked Archaeologist, very interesting and educating.

 

[IKE]

 

[MACKTEXAS]

The Bible was written to convey religious lessons and theological truths, not as a science or history textbook.

Some biblical scholars point out that the story of the flood was written from the perspective that the "whole earth" likely meant the world known to the authors, not the entire globe.

Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to matters of faith and doctrine, not to matters of history and science, nor does the Bible intend to explain science. On the other hand, acknowledging the limits of science is a core principle of science itself, and that has been expressed by many renowned scientists with humility. There have been countless revisions to scientific theory over the centuries.

Even so, there are some passages in the Bible alluding to scientific concepts, which science did not confirm until much later. Isaiah 40:22 says, "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in". That scripture, expressing the earth as a round sphere, was written around 740-700 B.C.

The word "scientist" was not coined until centuries later, but Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras did not concede that the Earth was round until 570–500 B.C., and Aristotle himself did not provide the first solid evidence until another 2 centuries later, around 330 B.C. Then it was yet another hundred years (240 B.C.) before Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference. [Science finally "caught up."]

 

[Lewkat]

I never gave this story much thought, but I see it as a metaphor. In times of great distress and troubles, it conveys how we should pull together and help each other. The Blitz during WWII comes to mind, when the Nazis were bombing GB continuously. All members of that kingdom pulled together and helped one another out to the best of their ability. Taking children and women into the country, or sending them to Canada to be safe. The U.S. also took in some of them. In present day, there are examples everywhere as folks come together in bad times.

I think the Irish Rovers, The Unicorn Song, set my mind to thinking about the story of Noah and the Ark. I probably can convey many interpretations, as is shown in these comments.

 

[Pink Biz]

I used to love the program The Naked Archaeologist, very interesting and educating.

Yes, I miss that show!

 

[David777]

As I have posted a few times on the SF board, I lean towards the hypothesis that Earth is likely a zoo planet loosely the work of a race of ancient Milky Way aliens, either purely organic (little green men), or purely AI non-organic, or as I lean towards, non-organic/organic brain. The latter two if not-physically destroyed would be immortal if maintained. I also lean towards light speed being an absolute limit in our local universe, that given the distances between stars, would severely limit travel between star systems, especially for organic entities. The below is necessarily terse that I could write far more about.

Organic entities might dominate home worlds but would use intelligent AI entities to explore worlds beyond that could be easily maintained over long time spans. Over hundreds of millions of years, much less, billions of years, they would be able to dominate our whole galaxy and inhibit other latter intelligent entities of rising into that roll.

They would likely have surveyed the Milky Way for solar system planets within habitable zones of stable suns like our own and worked to seed via direct panspermia DNA organics into such water world planets as soon as possible that might take a billion years and more as with Earth to produce oxygen rich atmospheres capable of multicellular lifeforms. Eventually, such planets might evolve intelligent enough species that they would intervene in ways. That is what I suspect created Adam and Eve via their DNA science that was superior to resident homo sapiens. The strongest evidence for that is how his descendants lived for as long as 969 years until after that era they mixed with ordinary humans which diffused out that gene pool.

The Biblical Timeline

The above webpage contains a reasonable scholarly researched vague timeline of that ancient period, though much differs somewhat dependent on specific scholars. Within such, The Flood is placed at about 2300 BC or almost 2 millennia after Adam. Before that period given clay tablet history, we know ancient Ubaid city states arose after about 6500 BC or well before Adam and the Mesopotamian Sumerian period. Other ancient civilizations across the planet and those in Mesopotamia worshiped lizard like humanoids given statue remains, that may be when if they actually existed had more open contact with humans.

The Ubaid and then later Sumer cities were continually warring against each other. Conquered city people were either slain or made into slaves. Young attractive women were likely put into concubines, while youth slaves given training were made in adult soldiers. Unlike other ancient civilizations, the key reason that recent archeological science knows so much now is because of their writing system has uniquely preserved information on long-lasting clay tablets science can still read.

My reason for tersely presenting the above is to relate if indeed Earth is such a zoo planet, then alien entities would have plenty of reason to intervene into the widespread human moral decay once these early Ubaid civilizations arose. They may have become weary of constant murderous warring and moral depravity, so at some point worked to enhance atmospheric storm systems over the northern mountain ranges at the Tigris and Euphrates River headwaters, causing an epic flood over the level plain, thus allowing a restart. If they as moral entities noted some individuals as being moral, they may have led them to save themselves. And that would be Noah's family.

After the flood, the failure to change human ways may have led to moving moral individuals out of the plains and into the adjacent lands near Egypt and Israel in order to isolate that influence. It wasn't only the people of the Mesopotamian plain that were warlike, but also those in the surrounding mountainous regions that regularly raided the Ubaid cities. Thus, a need for more distant isolation away from the murderous, immoral, early city civilizations. As a planet base, the arid deserts of Arabia would be an excellent site for spacecraft without humans being aware.

By the era of Abraham about 1900 BC , the aliens may have tried one last time to create a more moral human civilization as an example of how humans might exist, that led to the Moses era about 1500 BC. But of course, that eventually failed too. By then, homo sapiens had spread far too widely across the planet, making another restart impossible. After many centuries of these failures, they essentially washed their hand of trying to help human failures by their final act of the birth and mission of Jesus after which they mostly left our world into the hands of Peter and the Christian Church. That could also be a reason it seems the church has been so misguided because they left it to us to deal with.

Of note, I suspect the special DNA of Adam had to be used by impregnating Mary to create a superior human and offer possible eternal life as a reward for doing so. Would have been very easy for advanced beings to do so without targets being aware. The Transfiguartion in all 3 synoptic gospels shows they had apparently figured out how to do so, as Moses and Elijah appeared alive. However, over centuries the value of eternal life as a carrot for we humans to change, has been blurred by religious authorities with other self-serving agendas.

 

[smiley]

In other words we eventually started creating mythical tales to explain our existences and slow developments - put pen to paper ; called it the bible and then became scientific??

 

[Fritz]

The God of the Old Testament killed a lot of people. This includes children. I assume you believe this too?

Which isn't intended to be confrontational, but the OT is often a true hell on earth, instigated by God.

Actually it was instigated by sin. People often blame God for everything.

 

[smiley]

Yup? - one version says God provided some first blueprints and said [and I paraphrase] follow these "religiously" and you can't go wrong but we did - not follow that is - so went wrong and - look wot a mess it got us all in Ollie??

 

[January]

What if all the animals were babies? Just a thought, lots less area needed, lots less food to feed them

if the babies were mammals they would need the mother animals to feed them milk.

as t o whether I believe the story literally - No.

most religions have some similar flood symbolism story - which tells me floods are common and early religious people gave them mythological status.
Most of them have some moral to them too - which is more important really than whether the story has much factual basis.