myth flood

In the literary world a great deal of interest has been given into interpreting the story of the flood, found very often in literary, historical, ethical or religious accounts of literature. There are documents mentioning the flood that are old thousands of years and the area of their discovery spreads all over the Middle East, India, China, Southern Europe and even the Central and Southern America. It has been proven that the ancient world was fully aware of this myth1 and I am going to find out why it was so popular and what the purpose of the story was. I have found five possible uses of this myth and I am going to explore every single one with a focus on the nature of documents mentioning the flood and the story itself. I am going to take a closer look at the most known and popular stories and I will analyze the purpose of telling this story in the past days.

Firstly, the probably most known story mentioning the flood destroying the world is the biblical narrative of Noah. He was the only righteous man on the Earth while the others were wicked, sinful and wretched.2 Therefore, the disappointed God sent a destructive flood to the world and he spared only Noah and his family. Before the flood, Noah, following the command, built an ark and took one male and female of every animal species and led them into the ark. Then heavy rain started and the water filled the surface of the Earth. When the rain finally stopped Noah sent a dove to find out whether there was a part of land dry. When it returned with a leaf in its beak the ark drifted towards the dry land and it finished its journey on the Ararat hill. The family of Noah then repopulated the Earth. 3

As I see it, the purpose of this story was quite simple and clear for the Isra...

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...he sinners perished. In essence, these stories deliver a moral lesson to the readers. They talk about good and evil, they try to prevent us from sinning and they show how life works, as after mistake there is always a consequence. Yet more importantly, the stories are based on common sense, saying that we all are just humans, therefore, never perfect. We make mistakes from which we take lessons and try not to make them again. Moreover, not even God is flawless. After all, the Babylonian Gods regretted sending the flood on people and the biblical God ‘made man to His image’ meaning that they shared both physical and psychological features and characteristics. In other words, we all are equal, we all make mistakes and we all sin sometimes. However, me must try not to make these mistakes as much as possible and that is exactly what the flood story is trying to tell us.