Noah and the Flood

[enki]

There are over 300 flood epics, well written before the Noahnic epic. The Biblical flood is written about 1700 BCE or so, while the older Sumer flood is a Nippur cuneiform tablet that was found by Thorkild Jacobsen. Thorkild Jacobsen is also a historian on the Eridu Genesis.

The younger revised epic of Noah is interesting as the epic of Noah is a much younger epic than that of the Epic of Ziusudra, who is a pious man and is saved from a flood. We see this later on with Noah and his family. Cool fact about the time of Noah, the common method of making rafts was to inflate sheep bladders like balloons and lash those together. Planks of wood or more likely reed mats could be placed on top.

A little on the ark of Noah, we begin with a Bible verse

Genesis 6: 14-16

Make yourself an ark (tēv�h) of gopher wood [came the instruction]; make rooms
(qinnīm) in the ark, and cover it (k�par) inside and out with pitch (kopher). This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.

The biblical word tēv�h, which is used for the arks of Noah and Moses, occurs
nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The flood and baby episodes are thus deliberately associated and linked in Hebrew just as the Atrahasis and Sargon Arks are linked associatively in Babylonia.
Now for something extraordinary: no one knows what language tēv�h is or what it
means. The word for the wood, gopher, is likewise used nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and no one knows what language or what kind of wood it is. This is a peculiar state of affairs for one of the most famous and influential paragraphs in all of the world’s writing

The associated words kopher, ‘bitumen’, and k�phar, ‘to smear on’, are also to be found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, but, significantly, they came from
Babylonia with the narrative itself, deriving from Akkadian kupru, ‘bitumen’, and kap�ru, ‘to smear on’. In view of this it is logical to expect that tēv�h and gopher are similarly loanwords from Babylonian Akkadian into Hebrew, but there has been no convincing candidate for either word. Suggestions have been made for gopher-wood, but the identification, or the non-Hebrew word that lies behind it, remains open.

Ideas have also been put forward over the centuries concerning the word tēv�h, some linking it – because Moses was in Egypt – with the ancient Egyptian word thebet, meaning ‘box’ or ‘coffin’, but these have ended nowhere. The most likely explanation is that tēv�h, like other ark words, reflects a Babylonian word.

A cuneiform tablet dealing with boats from around 500 BC, now in the British
Museum, mentions a kind of boat called a ṭubbû which is found at a river crossing, apparently as part of a vessel swap among boatmen:

BM 32873: 2

… a boat (eleppu) which is six cubits wide at the beam, a ṭubbû which is at the
crossing, and a boat (eleppu) five and a half (cubits) wide at the beam which is at the bridge, they exchanged for (?) one boat which is five cubits wide at the beam.

The consonants t (in tēv�h) and ṭ (in ṭubbû) are distinct from one another, so it is impossible that ṭubbû, a masculine noun of unknown etymology, and tēv�h, a feminine noun of unknown etymology, represent the same word etymologically. I think that the Judaeans encountered the Akkadian boat word ṭubbû used for the Ark in the story along with the other Akkadian ark words and Hebraised it as tēv�h. In this case the original consonants are less important; the idea was to render the foreign word, for it was only to be used twice in the whole Bible, once for Noah, once for Moses. The relationship between the words is thus that they are neither cognate nor loaned: the Babylonian was given a Hebrew ‘shape’. It is much the same as the way in which Nebuchadnezzar’s eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin became Nebusarsekim in the Book of Jeremiah. This would perforce mean that the word ṭubbû must have occurred in place of eleppu, ‘boat’, for Utnapishti’s Ark, in some first millennium BC Babylonian source for the Flood Story that we do not have now.

(Irving Finkel- The flood before Noah)

[OnceConvinced]

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[Falling Light 101]

.
I am still reading through all of the posts here. I believe that the flood happened exactly as the Bible says.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by enki]

Interesting read thank you.

JW

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 1 by enki]

I choose to interpret the flood and the story of Noah and the Ark metaphorically as well.

There are reasons for this:
1. You can't make all animals come aboard the Ark like that, in addition you need all sorts of food, preferably fresh, most certainly for the meat to lions. This suggests that the story is a kind of fairy tale, i.e., a story of other intention than fact.
2. The science of such a flood suggests that the flood hasn't happened in that global scale. At most, one can identify a limited flood for a certain area. This has been discussed for many years.

So, what can the numbers suggest? What should the message be? I think a useful angle is to consider the whole issue a matter of new times for the human kind. That there's a flood to happen in order to kill all sinful people and to save just and rightful people in a really big boat that carries them to a new beginning or a promised land that's approved by God self.

[JP Cusick]

I think a useful angle is to consider the whole issue a matter of new times for the human kind. That there's a flood to happen in order to kill all sinful people and to save just and rightful people in a really big boat that carries them to a new beginning or a promised land that's approved by God self.

I agree with this view - and especially for Bible study.

It hardly matters or makes any difference whether it was a real flood or a localized flood or if it must be totally literally accurate as that helps nothing.

What does help is to view the flood story as a metaphor and as a prophesy for the end times:

Isaiah 46:
9 " Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,

10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: "
-

When we view the flood story as a metaphor and as an end time prophesy = "declaring the end [times] from the beginning" = then the Bible tells us that waters are a symbol of people, see Revelation 17:15, so a flood of the entire earth would be people all over the planet earth.

The Arc is far more complicated to decipher because even the type of wood is a metaphor as are the animals and the 7 persons.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by enki]

I choose to interpret the flood and the story of Noah and the Ark metaphorically as well.

There are reasons for this:
1. You can't make all animals come aboard the Ark like that

Have you done any research on the topic?

[justme2]

There are over 300 flood epics, well written before the Noahnic epic. The Biblical flood is written about 1700 BCE or so, while the older Sumer flood is a Nippur cuneiform tablet that was found by Thorkild Jacobsen. Thorkild Jacobsen is also a historian on the Eridu Genesis.

The younger revised epic of Noah is interesting as the epic of Noah is a much younger epic than that of the Epic of Ziusudra, who is a pious man and is saved from a flood. We see this later on with Noah and his family. Cool fact about the time of Noah, the common method of making rafts was to inflate sheep bladders like balloons and lash those together. Planks of wood or more likely reed mats could be placed on top.

A little on the ark of Noah, we begin with a Bible verse

Genesis 6: 14-16

Make yourself an ark (tēv�h) of gopher wood [came the instruction]; make rooms
(qinnīm) in the ark, and cover it (k�par) inside and out with pitch (kopher). This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.

The biblical word tēv�h, which is used for the arks of Noah and Moses, occurs
nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The flood and baby episodes are thus deliberately associated and linked in Hebrew just as the Atrahasis and Sargon Arks are linked associatively in Babylonia.
Now for something extraordinary: no one knows what language tēv�h is or what it
means. The word for the wood, gopher, is likewise used nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and no one knows what language or what kind of wood it is. This is a peculiar state of affairs for one of the most famous and influential paragraphs in all of the world’s writing

The associated words kopher, ‘bitumen’, and k�phar, ‘to smear on’, are also to be found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, but, significantly, they came from
Babylonia with the narrative itself, deriving from Akkadian kupru, ‘bitumen’, and kap�ru, ‘to smear on’. In view of this it is logical to expect that tēv�h and gopher are similarly loanwords from Babylonian Akkadian into Hebrew, but there has been no convincing candidate for either word. Suggestions have been made for gopher-wood, but the identification, or the non-Hebrew word that lies behind it, remains open.

Ideas have also been put forward over the centuries concerning the word tēv�h, some linking it – because Moses was in Egypt – with the ancient Egyptian word thebet, meaning ‘box’ or ‘coffin’, but these have ended nowhere. The most likely explanation is that tēv�h, like other ark words, reflects a Babylonian word.

A cuneiform tablet dealing with boats from around 500 BC, now in the British
Museum, mentions a kind of boat called a ṭubbû which is found at a river crossing, apparently as part of a vessel swap among boatmen:

BM 32873: 2

… a boat (eleppu) which is six cubits wide at the beam, a ṭubbû which is at the
crossing, and a boat (eleppu) five and a half (cubits) wide at the beam which is at the bridge, they exchanged for (?) one boat which is five cubits wide at the beam.

The consonants t (in tēv�h) and ṭ (in ṭubbû) are distinct from one another, so it is impossible that ṭubbû, a masculine noun of unknown etymology, and tēv�h, a feminine noun of unknown etymology, represent the same word etymologically. I think that the Judaeans encountered the Akkadian boat word ṭubbû used for the Ark in the story along with the other Akkadian ark words and Hebraised it as tēv�h. In this case the original consonants are less important; the idea was to render the foreign word, for it was only to be used twice in the whole Bible, once for Noah, once for Moses. The relationship between the words is thus that they are neither cognate nor loaned: the Babylonian was given a Hebrew ‘shape’. It is much the same as the way in which Nebuchadnezzar’s eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin became Nebusarsekim in the Book of Jeremiah. This would perforce mean that the word ṭubbû must have occurred in place of eleppu, ‘boat’, for Utnapishti’s Ark, in some first millennium BC Babylonian source for the Flood Story that we do not have now.

(Irving Finkel- The flood before Noah)

At 67 I am still capable of learning something new

Thank you Irving Finkel for sharing this
somethings need repeatring