From: "Martin Phipps" 

On Mar 30, 3:34 pm, "ZenIsWhen"  wrote:
> "Martin Phipps"  wrote in message
>
> news:1175177994.769316.81640{at}r56g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > >Fromhttp://www.flood-myth.com
>
> > General introduction
>
> > There are six surviving versions of the Ancient Near East flood story
> > including the Genesis version. One of these versions, written
> > centuries before Genesis, is called the Epic of Atrahasis and clearly
> > describes the flood as a river flood. Later story tellers changed
> > "river" to "sea" and thus changed the local
river flood into an ocean
> > deluge. The ambiguous word for hills was mistranslated as mountains.
> > There were several such mistakes or mistranslations during
> > transmission of Noah's flood story.
>
> > Noah's father Lamech was king of the Sumerian city-state Shuruppak, a
> > commercial center on the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. Noah
> > also became king of Shuruppak. The ark was a commercial river barge
> > for hauling cargo on the Euphrates River. The river barge hauled wine,
> > beer, stone, lumber, textiles, oil, and livestock which was less than
> > 280 head of cattle, sheep, goats, and other domesticated animals.
> > There were no kangaroos, giraffes, elephants, lions, etc. on Noah's
> > cattle barge.
>
> > About 2900 BC a freak thunderstorm caused the Euphrates River to rise
> > 15 cubits (22 feet) and it overflowed the levees. By the time Noah
> > recognized that the levees were about to be breached, it was too late
> > to evacuate his livestock to highground. He therefore boarded the
> > nearby river barge to ride out the storm. He had to cut the mooring
> > lines to prevent barge from heeling over in the rising river. The
> > runaway barge floated down the Euphrates River into the Persian Gulf
> > where it grounded in an estuary at the mouth of the river. This is
> > discussed and described in detail in the Noah's Ark book. Maps in the
> > book show the route taken by Noah's river barge.
>
> > Noah was a wealthy land owner and a merchant or trade official for the
> > Shuruppak government before becoming king. The flood of 2900 BC did
> > not destroy Shuruppak. There were thousands of survivors of the flood
> > and Noah met some of them after the barge grounded. Some of the things
> > they talked about are quoted in surviving versions of the flood story.
> > Noah was no longer king and had to flee into exile. A dispute occurred
> > between Noah and his sons. His family separated and he never saw his
> > sons again. A map in the book shows where the sons went and the route
> > they took to get there. Noah got angry with his sons after being seen
> > naked. The reason why he got angry is explained in the book.
>
> > The Noah's Ark book gives the exact location (within a few yards) of
> > Noah's altar where he offered a sacrifice after the barge grounded. It
> > is an archaeological site and has already been excavated by
> > archaeologists. The book describes in detail how the ark was probably
> > constructed using the technology of 2900 BC. It was much smaller and
> > shaped differently than it is usually described. The numbers in
> > Genesis 5 are deciphered in the book and compared with the numbers in
> > the Sumerian King List. The numbers were mistranslated. Methuselah did
> > not live to be 969 and Noah did not live to 950. Noah lived to be 83.
> > Methuselah was 85 when he died a few months after the barge grounded.
>
> > The barge did not ground on a mountain. The mountains of Ararat were
> > mentioned in the original legend, but the ark did not ground there.
> > How the mountains of Ararat got involved is discussed at length in the
> > book. After the barge grounded, Noah, his wife, his daughter, and his
> > boatman traveled to a island where they lived in exile. The island is
> > a real island and is identified in chapter 5 of the Noah's Ark book.
> > Noah was an interesting man and several new facts about him are
> > discussed in the book
>
> > Martin
>
> OK.
> I have no doubt the biblical flood did not happen.
> Now, do you have ANY valid evidence that these claims are nothing more than
> a different fairy tale?
> "It says so in the book" is no different than "it says
so in the bible".

Skeptical view of the flood myth

As skeptics have long been aware, there was no global flood in the last
5000 years, a boatload of animals did not ground on so-called Mount Ararat
or on any mountain, and the world's animals are not descended from two or
seven pairs of each species that lived during the third millennium BC. Nor
is there any archaeological proof that a man survived a flood by being on a
boat loaded with animals, food, and drinking water.

The Noah's Ark book summarized here does not claim historicity for Noah or
the ark story, but the book does claim that some of the story elements in
the Ancient Near East flood were based on an actual river flood. This
archaeologically attested flood of the Euphrates River has been radiocarbon
dated to about 2900 BC. This flood left a few feet of yellow mud in the
Sumerian city Shuruppak, the ruins of which have been found at Tel Fara
about 125 miles southeast of Baghdad. Some but not all Sumerian cities also
show signs of this river flood at the beginning of the Early Dynastic I
period. According to the Sumerian King List, a legendary king named
Ziusudra lived in Shuruppak at the time of the flood. There was also a
flood myth about king Ziusudra which includes several story elements very
similar to the Genesis flood myth. Shuruppak was also the flood hero's city
according to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh
was adapted from an earlier myth, the Epic of Atrahasis which is also very
similar to the Genesis flood myth. Six of these Ancient Near East flood
myths contain numerous distinctive story elements that are very similar to
the Genesis flood myth and indicate a literary affinity or dependency on a
common body of myths about the flood hero Ziusudra and based on the
Euphrates River flood of 2900 BC.

Parts of the original myths were physically possible, but other parts were
not possible. The possible parts can be treated as an ancient legend to
which mythical material was added later. However, without contemporary
artifacts, it is not possible to prove how much of the original legend was
true and how much was fiction based on a real flood. In the Noah's Ark
book, the original legend is reconstructed by piecing together fragments
from the various surviving editions of the flood myth, like pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle. This reconstruction is governed by the requirement that each
story element in the legend be physically possible, technologically
practical, consistent with archaeological facts, and plausible for 2900 BC.
Some of the impossible story elements were mistranslations or
misunderstandings, and these are corrected before including them in the
reconstructed legend.

Martin

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