I don’t know why, but I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of a supernatural creator destroying his or her own work and starting over. This is a summary of the events of the deluge as described in the Hebrew Bible. The two names most often used for the creator are Elohim, God and Yave, The Lord. These may be two different gods or from two different stories that were combined together.
According to the story, The Lord was upset with humanity’s wickedness and regretted ever creating them. So he sought to destroy man. The Lord took a liking to a man named Noah. It is mentioned too that God- the other creator- took a liking to him as well. God now found earth to be corrupt, all except for Noah. He instructed him to build an ark 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. One cubit is the length from the tip of your middle finger to your elbow. As for the materials, it was to be made with the ribs of cypress trees, covered with reeds and be coated in pitch. On the gigantic boat would be one pair of every living creature. Noah would live on the ark with his family and the animals, living off a store of every possible food. Then The Lord repeats pretty much the same thing but with one major difference: Noah was to take seven pairs of all ritually clean beasts, one pair of each unclean beast, and seven pairs of every bird. Then, oddly, Noah obeys only one of his gods and picks two of every beast on earth, one male and one female. Either way, there would not have been enough room for every animal. Aside from that, do you know how much food a ship full of animals can use up? What about the feces? What about the plants? Did they simply reappear on land as if a flood never happened? What about sea creatures and aquatic animals? Were they taken on board too?
Then another great inconsistency occurs. It is said that water came crashing from the skies. Once the earth was flooded it took 150 days to disappear. On the 17th day of the 7th month, the ark grounded at the mountain of Ararat. The tops of the mountains could not be seen until the first day of the 10th month. This hardly makes sense because the ark grounded before the tops of the mountains could be seen. There is still another great inconsistency, however. It is later mentioned that Noah sent out a raven to see whether the flood had subsided; then a dove and yet another dove. The last dove never returned and Noah concluded that there must be land. Then it is said that by the 27th day of the second month the whole earth was dry. One of the unexpected things about these two descriptions of the flood is that in both, Noah is aided by Elohim God, but Yave the Lord is never mentioned. Then , Noah and his family, as well as his many non-humanoid guests on the boat repopulate the world.
When I read the story, I think about the oddness of the deluge. It makes me think, of all ways to destroy earth, why a flood? Floods are common themes in many legends, often about destroying the world. But why would a flood be used as a weapon rather than other even more destructive cataclysms? What I presently believe is that there was either a single flood or many floods many times in different regions that over time, by word of mouth, were twisted and distorted into tales of world destruction. For example, if there is a flood caused by global warming that swallows up Los Angeles within a few years, even if the flood only lasts a few hours, my generation would be telling our grandchildren stories about a giant flood that engulfed a world-famous metropolis. They would tell their grandchildren, and so on and so on, until it turns into a story of a world-wide flood. Another possibility is that people were ignorant of distance and the world around them, so a flood that may engulf only a certain valley, would seem to them like a world-wide flood. In fact, there is proof of a tremendous flood of the Black Sea, which to many people who are familiar with that area, may have seemed like a tremendous disaster. The Black Sea, in fact, used to be only about half the size it is now; the Mediterranean overflowed into it and covered the land for hundreds of miles around it. This catastrophic flood happened as long as 7,500 years ago. This may have been inspiration for the Greeks, Mesopotameans, Hebrews, and several other cultures in that area because the stories are all almost identical, as I will soon explain. There is evidence and even the remains of an ancient boat on the coast of the Black Sea. If the story is true as described, then perhaps there really was an Atlantis. Off the coast of Cuba, what seems to be the remains of an ancient city has been found underwater. Evidence is a bit faulty but until disproved, it’s still something to think about. Perhaps the story of Noah’s ark was only a story and nothing more.
If it is just a story, then who first thought of it? The Babylonian text describing the epics of Gilgamesh- a famous king who had many adventures and who may have existed in reality, is almost the same. Gilgamesh ruled Sumer for 126 years. This amount of time does not seem like very long compared to Noah, who was in his 600's during the whole flood incident. Basically, Gilgamesh was a strong and wise ruler but was also oppressive so his people called to the gods to make a nemesis for him. After Gilgamesh fights his nemesis, Enkidu, they become great friends. Enkidu dies and leave Gilgamesh with a fear of death. Gilgamesh goes on a great journey and has many adventures but the one that compares most with the biblical flood is his encounter with Utnapishtin. Utnapishtin, very much like Noah, was told by gods to build a great ark that could withstand a flood that would destroy mankind. He brought his relatives and every species of animal in the world with him. Very much like with Noah, he released birds to find land and anchored at a mountain. Utnapishtin, as well as Noah, were both blessed after the flood. Gilgamesh himself, is said to have written his story at the end of his life. The cuneiform tablets date back to 650 B.C.E. and fragments can be found on tablets from around 2,000 B.C.E.. Experts believe it was written long before then and Sumarian cuneiform can be traced as far back as 3,300 B.C.E.. Unfortunately, linguists are still trying to decipher Sumarian writing so even if they are lucky enough to unearth the tablets, which tell the story, they may not be able to read it and know for sure exactly how far back it goes. Assuming that it was written in 3,300 BC and the flood was 4,200 years before, there would have been plenty of time for such an incident to turn into a legend and then a religious writing. Coincidentally - or is it?- the book of Genesis in the Old Testament also goes back as far as several thousand years ago.
Since 5th grade, I’ve been familiar with the epic of Giglamesh story, but I never thought it would be such an inter-cultural idea. I noticed, but was not surprised that there was yet another similar legend from Greece. Just as in the other stories, the head god, in this case, Zeus, is angry at the wickedness of men of the Bronze Age. Prometheus, who had defied Zeus with his gift of fire to humankind, tells his son Deucalion to build a great chest. Deucalion and his wife, Pyrsha, hid in the chest when a great flood sent by Zeus covered the world and killed all but those who hid in the mountains. When the flood was over, Deucalion threw stones over his head and they became men. His wife did the same thing, and her rocks became women. This story has several differences from the others I’ve described, but it still has that same basic theme of a righteous, or in this case, just plain lucky, man who is told of a great deluge sent to destroy man and brings his family on to a great boat. When the flood ends the hero always seems to repopulate the world. These three stories, no doubt, have similar if not the same origins.
If the flood may have been merely local, either there were more than one such floods or as the story of Noah says, a world-wide flood. All the way up in Wales, there’s a story. It’s short and non descriptive but it tells of the same events, except with a non-religious cause. Instead of raining like in some of the other myths, the Lake Llion burst and flooded the world. For this story, the flood was probably only local. Because how much land can a lake flood? Dwyfan and Dwyfach escaped the deluge on a mastless ship and kept pairs of every living creature. They landed in Britain and repopulated the world. It’s funny that even back then the English thought that Britain was the center of the world. Maybe that’s why it was always conquered and re conquered throughout ancient times.
Beyond Europe and the Middle East another story comes from the Inca in the Andes mountains in western South America. The flood rose above the highest mountains in the world, so all things perished. Just as in every other story, a man and a woman escaped in a floating box. As the flood subsided, the box drifted to Tiahuanacu. I don’t see how this story could be so vague about when and who and know the exact location of where they drifted to, so it may just be a buba misa, or a camp-fire story. On the other hand, its vagueness might mean that it’s extremely old. There are stories and rumors of great deluges from all the Americas. Most of them are very crazy and involve names I can’t pronounce, so they aren’t the best examples I could use. Now,lets look to the far east.
First of all, the great country of China. The Lolos who once lived in modern southwest China have a very theistic view of the flood. As the story goes, in primal times, when men were wicked, Tse-gu-dzih ruled. He was a great patriarch with attributes of divinity. He sent a messenger to earth asking for flesh and blood of a mortal. Only one man did as his lord commanded. His name was Du-mu. Tse-gu-dzih was angered that he had but one true follower and locked the rain gates. It rained until the world was engulfed by a great flood. Du-mu and his four sons were saved in a hollowed out log with otters, wild duck and lampreys. From his four sons, all civilization descended. I don’t completely understand how civilization could start with four males. Now, lets go south of China, to Sumatra.
The Bataks of Sumatra have a much more interesting idea. They believe the earth was old and dirty so the creator, Debata, sent a flood to destroy, or as I think of it, wash everything away. The last humans were on the highest mountain and once the water reached their knees, the flood stopped. Debata took a clod of earth, kneaded it into a shape, lay it on the water, and the humans stepped on to it and were saved. As their descendants multiplied, the clod grew into our earth, as we know it now. This is one of my favorite ideas because instead of humans filling up the world and overpopulating it, the world grows in proportion to the people. If this were true, though, earth would be much bigger by now and we might be crushed by the intense gravity that such a large planet would cause, so I can’t say that I want it to be that way. Now let’s go even farther south to Australia.
One group of aborigines believed that earth is a living thing with a body made of water and skin made of land. The land merely floats above the water and holds it together. If the skin breaks, the world bleeds and because water is the blood of the world, it happens in the form of a flood. Obviously, these people lived inland, because if they witnessed the ocean, they may have thought the world had serious blood loss. Although it’s not really a flood story, it’s still an interesting idea of why floods happen.
All of these stories seem to have certain aspects in common. They all involve a good person getting in a boat with his family and animals and later repopulating the world. Most of them also involve gods or goddesses who either send the flood or warn people of the flood. I personally think there were many floods, some great catastrophic deluges and other unusually large seasonal floods, especially the story of Noah and Gilgamesh, who lived in a land between two rivers. Some of the Polynesians were much more realistic about how floods happen. I won’t get into their stories but they are often described as only destroying one or two islands with a giant wave.
I know that many people here came to listen to me talk about myself and not about Noah’s Ark. “What does this have to with my Jewish identity or who I am?” Well, I think of the Hebrew Bible as somewhat of a historical document. I interpret it as a documentary wrapped in mythology. Or even more likely, mythology wrapped in morality. Part of what I have done for my Bar Mitzvah project is to try to break away the myths in the bible and find what truth I could. By doing that with other stories too, I tried to gain greater knowledge from the ancient text than I ever could have by closing my mind to the stories in the Hebrew Bible without looking to other cultures. For me, part of being Jewish is understanding the Bible, even if not believing in it, and to find a personal interpretation of what happened. People should look for truth in the bible and if they are not satisfied, go beyond. Because I feel that there are many vague areas and loose ends in the bible, I have looked not only in it, but in the bibles and stories of many other people, trying to find common ideas that may lead to a better understanding.
I think it’s a good idea to know, not just Jewish holidays or culture, but to have an understanding of the writings which they are based on. I think that all people should have their own personal opinions that they can develop themselves and not be told by others what to believe so that they can find truth in the Bible even if the truth is that it’s not true. What is important is familiarity with your own heritage.