Noah's flood
Although this is still an unproven theory, at least it was derived by real-life scientists who happen to know about these sorts of things.
By their own admission, it's not exactly good science to go about trying to find facts to fit a myth, but at least they seem to be doing it the right way.
What little evidence there is seems to corroborate their story... so far.
Which is more than I can say for some other Great Flood theories I've read of late.
Hmm… yet another “true” story of Noah’s flood.
ReplyDeleteI’ve heard many different versions of “what really happened” some more convincing than others.
Although most mythology is loosely based on fact, this particular myth has been told, retold, copied and translated so many times, it’s unlikely that the versions of the story we have today bare much resemblance to what really happened.
Even the Sumerian texts you refer to were a retelling of the story 3rd-hand. It actually happened to Ziusudra (who the Babylonians refer to as Utnapishtim and the Judeo-Christian tradition named Noah). He told Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh told his people, and then, presumably, one of those guys wrote it down where Mr. Sitchin “translated” it.
So just in that chain, Ziusudra may have exaggerated the story (or just made it up to begin with), then Gilgamesh could have altered it to make it sound more impressive, then the writer of the tablets could have added his own artistic license to the mix, and you know my opinion of Mr. Sitchin’s ability to translate Sumerian.
Personally I think there was a flood, and there may well have been an actual person named Ziusudra. But I don’t think it was a flood that covered the entire Earth, or some sort of global cataclysm. And I don’t think Ziusudra was instructed by some higher being to construct his ark.
My version goes something along these lines:
We know that about 12 000 years ago the last ice age began receding. With those massive ice-caps slowly melting there would naturally be a rise in sea-levels. It’s quite likely that during the ice-age, humans had built settlements along the existing coast-lines or oceans, seas, and lakes. With those sea-levels constantly rising, many of those settlements would have been flooded out.
Now the idea of the Bosporus giving way to the Mediterranean Sea sounds a pretty likely explanation since this would have caused a relatively quick flood that could have been perceived by the local people as cataclysmic.
Ziusudra was probably a carpenter or fisherman living in one of the settlements along the banks of the inland lake we now know as the Black Sea. He was most likely quite a smart lad, and had decided to build himself a nice big boat… for whatever reason (I doubt that he was instructed to do so by either God or aliens).
Once the water started to come, he loaded his family, possessions, domestic animals (not every animal in the world) and anything else he could fit into his large boat and waited. He then, most likely sailed his boat to shore (probably not on Mount Ararat as the Bible would have us believe).
Not as dramatic as the Hand of God, or a polar shift or any such silly nonsense… but to the folks on the boat it would have been quite a story, worth retelling.
I suggest that most myths have back-stories like this one. Unusual events or extraordinary people, elevated to god-like status through the retelling of stories by people who lacked the basic understanding of the world around them that we have today.
Remember, these people lived in a world surrounded by magic. They didn’t know where lightning came from, or what caused the tides. These every-day phenomena that we understand fully were mysterious to them… in their minds these things could only be the work of supernatural beings.
But nowadays we know better. And we should know better than to interpret the writings of such primitive people as fact, since they didn’t know the facts themselves.
An afterthought...
ReplyDeleteSince there are a few differing versions of the event, it's possible that Noah may have been more than one person.
If there were coastal settlements around the lake, chances are quite a few of those people had boats. There may have been a number of them who managed to cram their families, goats and cook-ware into their little fishing boats in order to escape the flood.
Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, Noah, Deucalion and Queen Cesair may have been different people from the same region who all had a similar solution to the same problem.
Some scholars suggest that the combining of several characters into one is fairly commonplace in mythology and folklore.
Another example is the biblical Joshua. It's highly unlikely that one man could have done all the things he is alledged to have done in his life-time. It's more likely that Joshua was one in a line of leaders who all got mixed up together in the retelling of the story... or perhaps Joshua was the title for a leader ie 'The Joshua', and this designation was confused as a personal name over the centuries.