Most of us have probably heard the famous bible story about Noah’s Ark and The Flood. What most may not know, is that this story is just one of a great many. A variety of ancient cultures, from the Greeks and the Middle East, to Asia and the Americas, have in their mythologies a story of a Great Flood that drowns the earth. These stories mostly contain the same themes: a god or group of gods becomes angry; they flood the earth but save a small group of people. These people build a boat to survive. After the flood they repopulate the earth. Author James Perloff studied two hundred or so flood legends and provides examples of the percentage of these similarities. Ninety five percent of them depicted the flood as being worldwide. Eighty eight percent gave an account of a special family that was singled out for saving. Seventy percent had building a boat as the method of their survival, and fifty seven percent had them finally coming to rest on a mountain. (Perloff 1999:168) Another amazing commonality is the fairly consistent number of people who are said to have survived. A majority of myths agree on eight. A quick examination of three very different cultures, from three very different places in the world provides a glimpse at this consistency. In India, the Mahabharata tells the fish story of Manu. It claims Manu and seven Rsis (enlightened beings) as the survivors. In the Middle East, the Torah has Noah, his wife, three sons and their wives equaling eight. The Karina peoples of Venezuela have the crew at four couples, also eight people. (Martin 2009:58) This may be more than just a coincidence. There are several theories to explain why so many diverse cultures share a similar story. I believe that this was the result of an actual ... ... middle of paper ... ... and catastrophic reality: using myth to identify cosmic impacts and massive Plinian eruptions in Holocene South America.” In Myth and Geology, ed. L. Pacardi and W.B. Masse, pp. 177-202. London: The Geographical Society of London, 2007. Masse, Bruce W. “The Archeology and Anthropology of Quaternary Period Cosmic Impact.” In Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society, ed. Peter Bobrowsky and Hans Rickman, pp. 25-71. New York: Springer Media, 2007. Perloff, James. Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism. Arlington: Refuge Books, 1999. Ryan, William B.F. and Walter C. Pitman. Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event That Changed History. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1998. www.whoi.edu (2009) Website for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution a non-profit organization dedicated to oceanic research and education.
hydrology of a great flood on a great river, you many only be interested in parts of the book, and I would suggest looking elsewhere for more detail.
It contains useful comparisons and historical data to help support his analysis. The author considers the story to hold very value for Christians. It concerns the typical myths that were tied to pagan people. Despite that theory, there have been many Christians who have studied the afterlife and creation in the epic. He suggests an interesting thought when he starts to explain the story. The author hints that maybe the main character, Gilgamesh, was a historical figure. The base analysis for his line of thought is the story of the flood found in the bible. After looking at the lengths of time of each story, he considers it to not be a problem. To provide some evidence, the author shows a chart of a series of questions about each flood and compares the two. The most striking comparison in the chart was the command to build a boat; "O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, tear down thy house, build a ship; abandon wealth, seek after life; scorn possessions, save thy life. Bring up the seed of all kinds of living things into the ship which thou shalt build. Let its dimensions be well measured."17 The text from the quote can almost match what the bible said. In both stories the person was commanded to build a boat because a flood is coming due to man’s sins or man’s wickedness. In the conclusion of the article, the author says a bold statement; “the widespread nature of flood traditions throughout the entire human race is exce...
*A man is warned by a god to build a ship so he could survive a coming flood, sent by the divine powers.
The story of the great flood has been debated many times as far as its historical accuracy. Many experts seem to think that such an event would be unnatural while others believe that this great worldwide flood actually did occur. In today’s society, more people are beginning to question catastrophic events that occur in nature. This great flood seems to be a very common example of this. This research paper will investigate the Holy Bible’s reliability as scientific and historical literature by focusing on its recording of the great flood. Many people are interested in these world phenomena’s; this paper will aim to end some of the controversy about this particular phenomenon.
Though scientists cannot agree on whether or not a global flood occurred, the effect of these stories on science has been monumental, as well as the effect of the stories on cultures and religions throughout the world. If this great flood did , in fact, occur, it’s effect on history would have been great because of the huge numbers of people lost to it. Though they may be fables, one must keep asking themselves if they may have been based on fact.
The Sumero-Babylonian version of the epic of Gilgamesh, after two and a half millennia of dormancy, was resurrected by British archaeologists in the nineteenth century. Amid the rubble of an Assyrian palace, the twelve clay tablets inscribed the adventures of the first hero of world literature – King Gilgamesh, whose oral folk tales go back to at least 3000 years before Christ (Harris 1). Tablet XI contains the story of the Flood. In this essay let us compare this flood account to the more recent Noah’s Flood account in Genesis of the Old Testament.
Just look at two creation stories side-by-side and you should easily see their similarities. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to take one unknown creation story and compare it to one from one’s own culture. Below is an example of a Mongolian creation myth:
Creation stories have profound effects on humans. Those associated with ancient cultures/civilizations aim to ensure the successful survival or well-being of themselves and that particular culture/civilization of their association, but not all are beneficial, prosperous, or fortunate. Mesopotamia’s “The Gilgamesh Epic”, Egypt’s “Hymn to the Nile-Documents”, and Mesoamerica’s Mayan and Aztec creation stories/religion are influential to establishing significant relationships within society, whether that is between humans and nature or humans and their “god(s).”
In each of these stories, the tale of creation has been presented with a unique twist. Yet there are several important similarities among the various myths. Besides explaining creation, there is always one major creator. However, in some stories such as that of the Boshongo, the creator had helpers whereas in the Shilluk tale, Juok worked alone. In the Boshongo myth, Bumba creates nine animals and mankind. Then these animals and Bumba's three sons worked together creating everything else. In the Shilluk tale, obviously everything is related somehow because everything shares the same creator. Even in other stories where the creator has helpers, however, all of these helpers were made by the creator and thus everything is still connected.
Adam and Eve of Genesis and Izanagi and sister Izanami of Shintoism provide examples of myths that share both a passive and active pair of people who eventually create the Earth's population. In any case, certain popular creation myths, some closely tied to prominent religions, share more common characteristics than others. An entire sub-study, called comparative mythology, gives insight into this subject. Through studies such as comparative mythology, researchers and philosophers have discovered hundreds of parallels between the myths that make up every culture, including their creation myths. As most are deeply rooted in religion, comparisons based on geographic area, themes, and similar story lines emerge as religions form and migrate.
Flood myths help to explain events which cannot be controlled, such as natural disasters. The Hebrew flood myth tells of a man named Noah, who is selected, along with his family, to survive an epic flood. The flood must occur to cleanse the world of its impurities (Leeming, 47-53). The “flood” in Mabel’s own life involves the many things she loses: her mother, her family’s money, her idea of the future. However, these losses allow her to become a stronger person, to move away from merely being a daughter or a sister and become Mabel (Lawrence, 1-15).
People have faith in many things. Some believe in many gods, one god, or that their is no god. All those people have their opinions on how the world was made and each of these stories from different people have some similarities. Those stories are the Navajo, Inca, and Zulu creation stories. All three made by different people in different continents and at different times but they all have some wide ranges of similarities in them.
The flood story is one of the most well known and most repeated apocalyptic stories throughout time. Though, there is no evidence of an event at the time other than the sudden filling of the Black Sea basin by water flowing into it at an unimaginable rate, archeology suggests that this event was the cause of much change about 5200 BC. This flooding of the Black Sea may have been the basis of the flood story in Genesis. This historical event has served as the inspiration for countless stories and has most notably been represented in biblical literature. The Biblical literature addresses the themes of re-creation and the covenant and each of these things are represented differently by different authors because each author had a different message or focus serving as their purpose for the story.
The flood story that is told in The Epic of Gilgamesh has the same principle as the story of Noah told in the book of Genesis in the Bible, but there are some major differences. In the epic, Utnapishtim is immortal and, although Noah was extremely old when he died, he wasn’t immortal. Utnapishtim was a human, but because he saved mankind, Enlil said, “Hitherto Utnapishtim has been a human, now Utnapishtim and his wife shall become like us gods.” (Gilgamesh 11.206-207) In the Biblical story, God told Noah that he was going to send a flood and asked him specifically to make the ark in order to save mankind. In Genesis 6:13-22, God tells Noah why he’s flooding the earth and exact instructions to build the ark. “13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all arou...
Comparing each record of the flood can reveal how different cultural and religious backgrounds explain events of the world, and despite the stories differences, their similarities prove