Posted on 03/27/2014 7:58:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe unveil “Noah” in U.S. cinemas this week, British archaeologist Irving Finkel offers a new perspective on the story with his book “The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood.”
In his book, published in the U.S. by Doubleday, Finkel tells the story of how he managed to get his hands on a cuneiform tablet, which was part of the flood story. As a curator for the British Museum, he relies on members of the public bringing artifacts to him for inspection.
He was on duty one afternoon in 1985 when a man named Douglas Simmonds showed up “with a small collection of stuff. He poured it out on the table and asked me to have a look at it. It contained two or three pieces of cuneiform, lamps, coins, a few seals, a sort of miscellaneous group.”
There was also a virtually complete tablet, which Finkel assumed to be an ancient business letter. It was made of clay and about the size of a smartphone. “It turned out to be a piece of literature, which was obvious to be part of the floods story. It’s an important aspect of Mesopotamian literature and it circulates in more than one composition,” he said.
Think about it this way: Humans passing this story for hundreds of years and at some point in time an anonymous person putting it in writing and then other anonymous authors writing their own version of the story at different points in time.
“It would be something that would be copied and then recopied but the names of the contributors, the poets whose input was there was never recorded. All this literature is anonymous,” Mr. Finkel explains.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
I still can’t get around Robert Cornuke’s assertion that Genesis 11:2 stipulates that Noah’s descendants journeyed “from the east” or “eastward” (depending on the translation) and settled on a plain in Shinar. Shinar (the plains of Mesopotamia) is due south of Mt. Ararat in Turkey. Also, Genesis describes other mountains around the mountain where the ark landed and Mt. Ararat is a “lonely mountain”. Cornuke made the claim that the ark actually settled in the mountains of northern Irag or Armenia (a k a the land of Urartu”). This has always made sense to me. Besides, nothing in the Bible indicates that that ark is still around today - never understood why folks expected to find it. That’s some old wood, pitch-coated or no.
I think the retold stories are stories of when the glaciers melted and mankind all over the world had to move inland as the waters rose and the land changed. So many populations lived near the waters edge as we do today so it was told and retold, the story of the rainbow was a poetic touch as well.
I think the retold stories are stories of when the glaciers melted and mankind all over the world had to move inland as the waters rose and the land changed. So many populations lived near the waters edge as we do today so it was told and retold, the story of the rainbow was a poetic touch as well.
Review by Randall Price ...
Noah, The Film: All Washed Up
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3138756/posts
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