Defend the Noah's Ark narrative

Don't you know that the current KJV is a 1769 rework of the 1611 KJV?

 

Both of which are horrible translations.

 

Do what other people have done, write your own version.

 

Here is the Urantia Book version of the Noah's Ark narrative (found in paper 78 ):

Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of the to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah's flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.
The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth's surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.
But Noah really lived; he was a winemaker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

Show THIS to Ken Ham! This story is also made up, but I love it so much more than the Biblical version!

 

I could google it but I like to hear others opinions. Can you tell me more about this Urantia book?

 

No problem. My opinion on it is mixed but increasingly positive as I learn more. I've already started a thread on the book: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/the-urantia-book.516121/#post-1070108917

I'm learning more as I read the book (I got a copy last month).

 

A near death experiencer was shown that he is the reincarnation of Doubting Thomas who according to many traditions ...... and according to his NDE and his meditations...... was martyred in India.

http://www.thomastwin.com/7 A Thomas samples.html

 

Periodically snow melt from the zagros mountains combined with spring rains caused flooding in the euprates river basin. That formed the delta below Basra and gave birth to the story, but it was never a global flood.... Nor did the ancient Jews call it a global flood.

 

....there were just flood stories from all over the world.

 

Well. there have been local floods all over the world.. but Jericho, Egypt, Turkey, China.. Arabia were never flooded.

 

It could have been 50" and it wouldn't have caused that much sediment deposit, but glad to hear you're open to things not always being as they are now.

 

Not really. See https://nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

"China
The Chinese classic called the Hihking tells about "the family of Fuhi," that was saved from a great flood. This ancient story tells that the entire land was flooded; the mountains and everything, however one family survived in a boat. The Chinese consider this man the father of their civilization. This record indicates that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters were the only people that escaped the great flood. It is claimed, that he and his family were the only people alive on earth, and repopulated the world."

 

Love the legends, but there is NO flood sediment footprint in China.. There is in the Euphrates river basin. Its 150 miles wide and 350 miles to the south.. Their whole world.. Look at the language.. "eretz" is not world.. or global..or earth... Its "land" over and over again.. There was famine in the land (eretz).. not in the world.

 

The bible is a book of stories designed to teach lessons the authors wanted to teach. I'll leave it up to you to decide what the lesson was in the Noah story.

 

Collect the DNA. No muss no fuss no bother. Don't have to clean up after them or feed them.

 

Noah had to collect all of the food for all of the animals as well. And when he got off the ark he killed about half of the animals. He was nuts.

 

As I understand it, the "flood" referred to in the Bible was a localized but severe flood of the Tigris & Euphrates river valley, with plenty of archaeological evidence to back that up. The idea that someone in the area not only had a boat ready, but managed to save himself, his family, and his domestic animals (2 or 7 of each) is not far-fetched at all. That the story then became more and more magnified with the retelling, with it being God telling Noah to build an ark, with the boat becoming very large, with the flood encompassing the whole earth, with Noah saving all the species on earth, etc., also is not far-fetched. Most myths have a basis in truth, however obscured that truth becomes.

 

The Noah story illustrates the First Commandment promise in Exodus 34:11-16 to do ethnic cleansing of the Israelites enemies. The basic story is repeated numerous times in the Old Testament. It also shows complete obedience and loyalty to the Boss. When Noah was first given the assignment he had no clue how he was going to get it done but by following orders without whining he was able to do it. All of the biblical stories teach the same lesson of complete obedience and loyalty regardless of what the characters are being what to do. Those who comply are rewarded; those who don't are punished.

Remember the Adam & Eve story and where the Garden of Eden was. All of those countries were there after Noah's flood and not one of them was destroyed in a flood. They existed with Adam & Eve and they existed after Noah's flood. People who think that Noah's flood was real have never actually read the biblical fairy tale and if they have they certainly don't understand any of it.

 

That's a key point.

I don't see a justification for the existence of a very real world wide flood to be a crucial element.

It seems like any possible meaning in the story should be evident regardless of whether one can figure out how that much water came (and left) or whether there were any mountains sticking up through the water - or whether it was purely metaphoric.

 

I don't think this is accurate. Adam & Eve are part of the creation myth. They are the first man and woman, so there were no other countries then. Noah's ark is a continuation of the creation myth, and explains a number of things, like why people don't still live to 900 years old, or why there are no giants in the earth, or why the rainbow exists. It's also a national origin story, since Noah's sons are supposedly the origins of all the nations of the world: Shem for the Jews (Semites), Ham for the Egyptians and Canaanites (dark-skinned), Japheth for the light-skinned nations of the north.

There's a lot to dislike about the God of the Israelites, but compared to Moloch, Ba'al, Dagon, and some of the other gods of the region, the God of the Israelites was remarkably tolerant.

 

I'm still confused about how Cain moved to the land of Lot and lived with the people there.

I find it exceptionally hard to accept the creation story as more than an allegory for a numberr of reasons - even if one totally ignores everything we know today from science.

Plus, I think it means more as an alllegory than as a literal history.

 

Very few creation stories make a lot of sense. In addition to the Cain problem, there's the problem of duplicate explanations of females. In the first instance, it says God created male and female together, but then later Adam is alone and God creates a female for him from his rib. Here's an AmerIndian creation myth that makes even less sense:

"In the beginning there was only darkness. Suddenly a small bearded man, the One Who Lives Above, appeared rubbing his eyes as if just awakened. The man, the Creator, rubbed his hands together and there appeared a little girl, Girl-Without-Parents. The creator rubbed his face with his hands and there stood the Sun-God. Again Creator rubbed his sweaty brow and from his hands dropped Small-boy. Now there were four gods.Then he created Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning-Maker and Lightning-Rumbler. All four gods shook hands so that their sweat mixed together. Then Creator rubbed his palms together from which fell a small round, brown ball. They took turns kicking it and with each kick the ball grew larger. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and blow it up. Then Tarantula spun a black cord which he attached to the ball and went to the east pulling as hard as he could.

He repeated this exercise with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west and a white cord to the north. When he was done the brown ball had become the earth. The Creator again rubbed his hands and there appeared Hummingbird. "Fly all over this earth," said Creator to Hummingbird, "and tell us what you see." When he returned Hummingbird reported that there was water on the west side. But the earth rolled and bounced, so Creator made four giant posts one each black, blue, yellow and white and had Wind place them at the four cardinal points of the earth. The earth was now still. The creation of the people, animals, birds, trees, etc takes place hereafter."

http://www.crystalinks.com/nativeamcreation.html

 

Will you please read the damn fairy tale once in your life?

What does it say in Genesis 2:10-15 (CEV) =
10 From Eden a river flowed out to water the garden, then it divided into four rivers. 11 The first one is the Pishon River that flows through the land of Havilah, 12 where pure gold, rare perfumes, and precious stones are found. 13 The second is the Gihon River that winds through Ethiopia.[a]14 The Tigris River that flows east of Assyria is the third, and the fourth is the Euphrates River.
15 The Lord God put the man in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to look after it.

And read Genesis chapter 10, especially verse 11 and all of the others that contain towns and countries.

 

I know you are not a believer as neither am I, but in case you are to some extent playing devil's advocate, greatly embellishing a possibly true story and declaring it God's words, makes God a partial liar.