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. Its 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 ...
Genesis 11:1-9 explains how all cultures have a story of a flood, a boat and a family.
My Goodness, how wonderful! Can you show me it? A film? A photo? Nothing? Who wrote this drivel?
What's your opinon about 70 year old, long hair rednecks? ;^)>>---
“how those who got destroyed by the flood CAUSED this disaster....”
Through excessive use of campfires and slash and burn farming, obviously!
The final crash came when the people we call Neanderthals left en mass in their hydrazine (N2 H4) powered space ships. The heat those ship generated when they lifted off from the glacier tops was tremendous. You should have seen them - awesome!
Might want to cut back on the mushrooms, dude/dudette.
I don’t care. I do not dispute the story of the Ark, but I strongly dispute that it has been found on Mount Ararat. Pieces retrieved? Film? Photo? The photo I saw in the article could have been anything, anywhere, except that boat-shaped rock formation which I have seen many times before from many angles.
You obviously did not watch what I liked to, because your response did not allow enough time for you to have watched them.
nope, the bible sure does though.
The beard looks great. The long hair looks ridiculous.
God dictated the story to King James in Elizabethan English?
A lot of “old hippies” are on blood thinners and don’t like the daily bloodletting of shaving. Many of them are your friendly FReepers.
One of the privileges of being old is the ability to say what you want to say and look like you want.
That is true. I am currently engaged in the fourth day of a life or death struggle with AT&T and you are scheduled down the to do list. If they keep this up, I may never get to you.
Aside from the impossible logistics of gathering two of every animal on earth and all the requisite food to keep them alive, what about the myriad fishermen alive during that time? Surely their boats could survive during this time and they could drink the rain water and catch fish for sustenance, right? So why would Noah’s boat be the only one to survive? And did he have two white people and two Asians and two Africans and two Indians and two people of every race? Did they then all commit incest to grow their numbers sufficient to repopulate the planet?
This particular story has always bothered me. And when one calculates the sheer volume of water to accomplish what the story says, it’s simply preposterous on its face. Even if every bit of ice melted the sea level change wouldn’t even come close to covering the whole earth up to the mountaintops. Sure, it would swamp the low-lying areas and all the coastal towns would be inundated, but the people and animals could simply move to higher ground and survive.
I think the Noah story was about a regional flood and as it was retold numerous times the size and impact of the flooding got exaggerated and when it was finally written down it wasn’t even remotely accurate any more.
But that’s just my two cents. Your mileage may differ.
Roughly translated it means: “What’s a cubit?”
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