Is the Noah's Ark story true?

Originally posted by flyUnity
There are evidences of a flood, but its a scientist job to explain it scientifically, cause surely there was no flood.... *sarcasm*

Petrified wood with no growth rings is one that I can think of off hand, before the flood the earth was a perfect environment so trees did not have growth rings. Im sure there is more evidence, but Im not going going to goog ...[text shortened]... ove sea level in WY, hmm, Im sure there is a scientific reason for that as well, am I not right?

Petrified wood without growth rings meas very very little...... All it means is that the tree doesn't have growth rings.... There exists trees today that, particularly those with thin or now bark that don't form growth rings.... Is the environment perfect today also in some places? no.....

Explanations "made up by scientists" are all reproducible independently and without special conditions or offsetting factors..... It's how science works

Come on give me more of your flood evidence, I bet there's very little that isn't ambiguous at best and an exercise in ridiculousness at worst....

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
You said "younger ones" and you specifically said that this would reduce the size required.

You're right, you didn't say "babies" but even so - the suggestion there were only "younger ones" (YOUR exact words) is that they would need to grow until they got to be older ones - otherwise if they were the same size as older ones then there wouldn't be a red ...[text shortened]... that more than likely younger ones went
one reducing the size required as well. "

From that you got babies, yea okay.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
There were not meat eaters before the flood, even man
wasn't suppose to eat meat before the flood though he may have in
the state of sin they were in.
Kelly

Just as a matter of interest. Do you believe that?
If so:
How do you explain the existence of meat eaters today? Did God create them after the flood, or did they evolve from animals living before the flood?
If they evolved, doesn't that contradict your claims about the possible extent of evolution? (Many animals require special organs to eat meat)
Or did God use his guiding hand in that particular case, to violate the normal laws of evolution that you propose?
If such large changes are possible - by whatever means - then maybe we can resolve the whole Noahs ark problem by simply suggesting that maybe all animals alive today are descended from a tiny number of species collected by Noah?

Originally posted by KellyJay
From that you got babies, yea okay.
Kelly

You're focusing on one word instead of actually addressing the actual point made.

Originally posted by Badwater
To approach the story of Noah and the flood from a factual perspective completely misses the point of the story. Other ancient cultures of the time also point to a flood event in their own way, so perhaps a prior flood evolved from oral traditions to the story known to us today. But to take the story at face value completely misses what the story is trying ...[text shortened]... alone. That is but a layer of the spiritual truth of the story of Noah and the flood.

Yes I know fact must be suspended for the sake of a good story, thats fine. But there people here who honestly believe the story happened in the exact form it was written.... Which is just insanity.....

Originally posted by Badwater
The story places no importance on the logistics of Noah's task or feat. It does not concern itself with 'facts' as we do today.

Yet I believe it does describe the measurements of the Ark. Aren't those unnecessary facts?

Of course what we read into a story like that has a lot to do with what you want to see. You see a message about environmentalism, I see a message about the incompetence of God ie he made a mess of things and had to start over.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yet I believe it does describe the measurements of the Ark. Aren't those unnecessary facts?

Of course what we read into a story like that has a lot to do with what you want to see. You see a message about environmentalism, I see a message about the incompetence of God ie he made a mess of things and had to start over.

Nice, lacking in subtlety but nice none the less....

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yet I believe it does describe the measurements of the Ark. Aren't those unnecessary facts?

Of course what we read into a story like that has a lot to do with what you want to see. You see a message about environmentalism, I see a message about the incompetence of God ie he made a mess of things and had to start over.

Are there any “unnecessary facts” in Lord of the Rings? Are there multiple possible interpretations of different layers of the story/myth?

A thought-experiment: Can one imagine, if LOTR were lost and rediscovered, say, a thousand years from now, that there might be some people who take it as literally as some now take the Genesis stories? Would there be any more or less reason to? Might some people reject the whole thing based on the same kind of literalism that LOTR “believers” subscribe to? Might there not be some who try to sort out the mythological symbolism and metaphors? Might people not be having a discussion just like this one?

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Jewish hermeneutics (midrash) is not literalistic, nor—and this is based on the nature of the Hebrew language, as well as various literary devices—does it assert a “one-right” reading. Torah study takes the form of argument among differing interpretations; it is the argument that is the norm. The only real creedal “dogma” in rabbinical Judaism is: Sh’ma Ysrael, YHVH eloheinu, YHVH echad—divine one-ness, which can be taken non-dualistically as well as monotheistically (in fact, the former may be the majority view).

Basically, tw, both your reading and Badwater’s would be taken into account, and neither considered “heretical”. (Yes, criticism of God is allowed.)

One of the literary devices in the Torah is based on the fact that there are no numerals in ancient Hebrew: letters stand for numerals and can sometimes be read as words (see example below). Another “openness” in midrashic hermeneutics is based on the fact that the original text (like a Torah scroll today) has no vowel-points. With regard to this latter feature, here is a quote:

“The scroll of the Torah is written without vowels, so you can read it variously. Without vowels, the consonants bear many meanings and splinter into sparks. That is why the Torah scroll must not be vowelized, for the meaning of each word accords with its vowels. Once vowelized, a word means just one thing. Without vowels, you can understand it in countless, wondrous ways.”

—Bahya ben Asher (13th-14th centuries), quoted in Daniel Matt, The Essential Kabbalah.

Also: “The Torah scroll may not be vowelized—so that we can interpret every single word according to every possible reading.” (Jacob ben Sheshet, quoted by Matt in a footnote to the above quote.)

And: Rabbi and Talmudic scholar Marc-Alain Ouaknin says, “The Book of the beginning is illegible and meaningless. Before the book can be read, it must be composed; the reader is actually a creator. Reading becomes an activity, a production. And so an infinity of books are constantly present in the Book [Torah]. There is not one story but many stories.

“The first function of the reader is to introduce breaks between the letters to form words; between certain words to produce sentences….” (The Burnt Book: reading the Talmud)

And: “The words of Torah are fruitful and multiply!” (tractate Hagigah)

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Here is a light-fingered “midrash” I did a long time ago. It might seem far-fetched to those who are caught up in Biblical literalism, but I assure you it is not out of line with regard to traditional Jewish reading—

Second Kings: 23 He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" 24 When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of YHVH. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

In Hebrew, each letter also stands for a number (there are no numerals in Biblical Hebrew). Now, the word for bear is spelled dalet bet (DB, pronounced dob; there were no real vowels in Hebrew either: sometimes a consonant could also have a vowel sound, and vowel markings were added later). Dalet is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, bet is the second letter: 4 and 2.

The words used to identify the number of children in the story are arba’im v’sheni. arba’im is the plural form of arba, which means four-fold, quadruple, a four-count; hence, arba’im was used for the word “forty.” v’sheni means “and a double.”

A Jewish reader schooled in Hebrew would likely recognize the complex pun on the word dob, meaning bear, but also the numerals 4 and 2. Traditional midrashic exegesis gets a lot of mileage out of such word-plays.

Since Hebrew is based on a consonantal root system (usually three, but in this case two), words with the same consonantal roots can be related, regardless of the order of the letters. Now, the word spelled bet-dalet (BD), also means idle talk or prattle. It would not be outside of midrashic exegesis to propose that this verse means, symbolically, that “idle chatter ate them up.”

Basically, in Talmudic and Midrashic exegesis, Jews do not look for “the one right meaning,” but all the possible meanings, looking for symbolism, metaphor, allegories, word-plays, even puns.

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I am neither going to argue for such readings as opposed to others. Nor am I going to go look up the numbers for the dimensions of the ark, or how they have been variously interpreted by creative midrashists. (If I had a source handy on that, I would; but I don’t.)

My basic point is that story is story, myth is myth, allegory is allegory—and they ought to be neither “literalized” nor criticized for not being “literalized”. The writers/redactors of the Torah kept (and interwove) all of the ancient “sacred myths” (David S. Ariel) and stories—the good, the bad and the ugly. And rabbinical Judaism applies very open, multi-vocal, and creative readings of them. (I personally know of four different readings of the Abraham/Isaac story—in addition to the standard Christian reading—and they are not all apologetic, either of God nor of Abraham.)

This is an over-long post, I know. And I still have done no more than scratch the surface with regard to traditional rabbinical readings (some more liberal than others, certainly; and, yes, there are likely some “literalists” there; but they are a definite minority).

If leveled at traditional Jewish hermeneutics and exegesis, the arguments leveled at Biblical literalists/inerrantists become—at that point!—arguments against a strawman.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yet I believe it does describe the measurements of the Ark. Aren't those unnecessary facts?

Of course what we read into a story like that has a lot to do with what you want to see. You see a message about environmentalism, I see a message about the incompetence of God ie he made a mess of things and had to start over.

Just as a matter of interest--how do you account for the almost universal presence of a flood myth among the world's cultures? I haven't heard a good explanation yet.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Just as a matter of interest--how do you account for the almost universal presence of a flood myth among the world's cultures? I haven't heard a good explanation yet.

Lots of floods? 😉

How “universal” is it—especially geographically? I offhand can’t recall any flood in Norse mythology. There are, I think, rising waters in previous underground worlds in Navajo (and Pueblo?) mythology—but that seems to be a very, very highly stylized mythology. There is in Sumerian myth, of course.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Just as a matter of interest--how do you account for the almost universal presence of a flood myth among the world's cultures? I haven't heard a good explanation yet.

There’s this from wiki:

The publication of The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor, followed by Fossil Legends of the First Americans, have caused the hypothesis that flood stories have been inspired by ancient observations of fossil seashells and fish inland and on mountains to gain ground. Indeed, there is much documentary evidence to support this view, as the Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese all commented in ancient writings about seashells and/or impressions of fish that they found inland and/or in the mountains. The Greeks theorized that the earth had been covered by water several times, and noted the seashells and fish fossils that they found on mountain tops as the evidence for this belief. Native Americans also expressed this belief to early Europeans, though they had not written these idea down previously.

Some geologists believe that quite dramatic, greater than normal flooding of rivers in the distant past might have influenced the myths. One of the latest, and quite controversial, theories of this type is the Ryan-Pitman Theory, which argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea.
There has also been speculation that a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea caused by the Thera eruption dated ca. 1630-1600 BC geologically, but to ca. 1500 BC archaeologically, was the historical basis for folklore that evolved into the Deucalion myth. One might argue that although the tsunami hit the South Aegean Sea, and Crete, it did not affect cities in the mainland of Greece such as Mycenae, Athens, Thebes which continued to prosper, therefore it had a local rather than a regionwide effect.

—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth#Americas

I do remember finding all sorts of such fossils growing up in Pennsylvania.

I’m not sure they have the Hopi myth exactly right: I recall the story as having the people climb up out of each successive world. But I’ll go take a look at it. I’m not sure that some of them represent the kind of myth that would necessarily point to any historical origins.

I stand corrected on Norse myth.

Originally posted by vistesd
Lots of floods? 😉

How “universal” is it—especially geographically?

Every continent provides multiple examples. Common motif: humans anger god(s); flood destroys world; chosen couple / unit repopulates it. I like the idea about sea-shells...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(mythology)
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/floods.htm

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
You're focusing on one word instead of actually addressing the actual point made.

You were speaking to the words I was using and twisting the point
I made, so yes! Duh
Kelly