Obviously, the Lord didn't call the snakes or the insects. They sort of stowed away.
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Posted on 01/02/2010 11:48:34 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside.
According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.
The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.
The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script.
There are dozens of ancient tablets that have been found which describe the flood story but Finkel says this one is the first to describe the vessel's shape.
"In all the images ever made people assumed the ark was, in effect, an ocean-going boat, with a pointed stem and stern for riding the waves – so that is how they portrayed it," said Finkel. "But the ark didn't have to go anywhere, it just had to float, and the instructions are for a type of craft which they knew very well. It's still sometimes used in Iran and Iraq today, a type of round coracle which they would have known exactly how to use to transport animals across a river or floods."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Gen 6:15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.
Not according to God's instructions. Maev should check all the facts...
Not surprising really.
The most common kind of water craft in ancient Mesopotamia were round, much like the Irish coracle.
They work well enough for a fishing platform and are basically just a basket and easy to make.
If this was the most common type of boat to Mesopotamians, it would make sense they would make the story fit their perceptions.
So, reeds are the same as Gopher Wood???? yeah, right!
forbidden planet?
It could be bitumen. Iraq has plenty of oil, and oil seeps are not unknown.
La Brea tar pits comes to mind.
As to the circular craft, it would be difficult to manage (as would the Ark as described (more like a raft). But I’d wager the circular craft would be the more difficult.
However, as I read the Bible the Ark wasn’t all that ‘controlled’ as a surface craft. It floated atop the waters, then “came to rest atop the mountains of Ararat”. That doesn’t imply control. With that in mind, either style might have worked, but I go with the Bible every time.
One might think that such an amazing historical tale, persisting across such a wide variety of cultures, would reinforce the fact that there was in fact a literal basis for the story.
But, no, the focus is on regional variations and embellishments, particularly those that run counter to the Biblical account, and that is supposed to relegate it all to myth.
I recall a relatively recent test of a scale craft built to the Biblical proportions, in a wave tank, somewhere in Asia, possibly Japan.
I’m recalling that the proportions were nearly ideal for preventing roll, pitch and yaw on rough seas, according to this research. Nearly ideally stable, in other words.
bump
I vaguely recall something of that myself. I put it farther back than ‘relatively recent’, though. Yet ‘Nearly ideally stable’ doesn’t necessarily lend itself to navigable. And the Bible doesn’t address navigation of the Ark. Simply that it ‘floated, and ‘came to rest’. I suspect Noah and the crew had much more to attend to, and they were at God’s will in any event.
UK cubits?
http://www.unitconversion.org/length/cubits-uk-to-feet-conversion.html
Or Rubiks cubits?
.Well, in a world that was covered in turbulent water, the notion of “destination” would be more than just abstract, so “navigable” would of necessity take a backseat to stability, wouldn’t you think?
God knew the outcome of the chaotic forces at work, and the Ark came to rest where it was intended. There was no more navigation involved than throwing a message in a bottle into the Atlantic on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and it ending up in County Cork, Ireland.
I was just going to post that verse.
This guy is a fraud.
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