Is the Black Sea a leftover from Noah's Biblical Flood?

[Norman]

I believe there is some evidence to show that the great biblical flood may have started in the Black Sea or it is thought that it could have been created by the great flood (40 days, 40 nights of non stop rain) by God to destroy the sinful population on earth at that time, leaving only Noah and his immediate family and a bunch of wild animals (two of each kind) to survive on his humble ark until the rains stopped and where supposedly the ark landed was on top of one of the mountains of Ararat........Does anyone have any insight on this? Your comment(s) are welcome.

Atta Boy

 

[SkinWalker]

The myth of Noah's flood as told in genesis is an expanded version of several Near Eastern myths of Akkadian, Sumerian and Babylonian origin. They culminate in the Epic of Gilgamesh and a comparisson of the two stories shows a clear pattern of evolution from Gilgamesh to genesis.

Like many stories that began in oral histories, the flood myths of the Near East seem to have a correlation to the Black Sea, which has been demonstrated geologically to have had a sudden rise in level... perhaps as much as a km/day.

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

Like many stories that began in oral histories, the flood myths of the Near East seem to have a correlation to the Black Sea, ...

Great. Then you should have no trouble whatsoever demonstrating/referencing those correlations.

 

[§outh§tar]

The myth of Noah's flood as told in genesis is an expanded version of several Near Eastern myths of Akkadian, Sumerian and Babylonian origin. "

Please provide a proper exegisis. Postulating stupidity is not something generally worthy of encomium on sciforums, I would expect.

If you have any more questions, I'll try to help you out as best as I can.

Without wasting any more time, I would invite you all, especially Skinwalker, to take a look at this:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-273.htm

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

Please provide a proper exegisis. Postulating stupidity is not something generally worthy of encomium on sciforums, I would expect.

And I would expect that such pretentious blather is unlikely to impress anyone other than you.

If you have any more questions, ...

Sure. When was your flood, and how do you know?

 

[§outh§tar]

You are obviously missing the point ConsequentAtheist. Please forgive me if I appear to have tried to impress you. I assure you this was not my intent. But to the matter at hand:


As far as I know, current research has placed the flood in 24th century B.C.

Sorry once again if you were hoping to be impressed.

 

[Preacher_X]

science has said that there was a great flood around the time of Noah and in that area. the Bible and the Quran both say the same thing at the same time and place. there is a huge remain of somtheing that appears to be some sort of huge ship found in that region. ill try to get the sources for this but their are loads of documentries about Nohas flood and the historical eveidence and the remains of the mystery ship. i have seen documentries on the Discovery Channel, Adventure One and on Channel 4 (uk)

 

[Preacher_X]

also accordin to historical evidence (non religious). the ten plagues of Egypt did actually happen aswell.

 

[SkinWalker]

The myth of Noah's flood as told in genesis is an expanded version of several Near Eastern myths of Akkadian, Sumerian and Babylonian origin. "

Please provide a proper exegisis.

By the standards of the time (second and third millennium B.C.E. perhaps), the borrowing of literature from other cultures, adapting it to one's own culture and adding the heroes of the new culture, then re-telling the story as original was acceptable and even expected. By today's standards, however, it would be plagiarism. If I were to rewrite the latest John Grisham novel, change some of the details and names, perhaps a few quantities and units of time, embellish it some, then call it my own.. . I would have something to answer for. Particularly if the work was half the best-seller of the KJV Bible.

I'll include passages from both Genesis and Gilgamesh here in a line-numbered format to compare:

1. 
   [*]At the end of forty days
   [*]Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and released a raven,
   [*]Which flew back and forth as it waited for the waters to dry up on the earth
   [*]Then he released a dove to see whether the waters were receding from the earth
   [*]But the dove, finding nowhere to perch, returned to the ark, for there was water over the whole surface of the earth. Putting his hand out, he took hold of it and brought it back into the ark with him.
   [*]After waiting seven more days, he again released the dove from the ark.
   [*]In the evening the dove came back to him and there in his beak was a freshly-picked olive leaf! So Noah realized that the waters were receding from the earth.
   [*]After waiting seven more days, he released the dove and now it returned no more.
   

Genesis 8:6-12

Now Gilgamesh:

1. 
   [*]When the seventh day arrived,
   [*]I sent forth and set free a dove.
   [*]The dove went forth but came back since no resting place was visible, she turned around.
   [*]Then I set forth a swallow
   [*]The swallow went forth but came back, since no resting place for it was visible, she turned around.
   [*] .
   [*] .
   [*]I then set free a raven. The raven went forth and, seeing that the waters had diminished, he eats, circles, caws, and turns not around.
   

Gligamesh XI, 145-54

In the Gilgamesh passage, I left two blank lines to maintain the correlation between the two and show the parallels. The Genesis passage shows clear embellishments (again, a common literary device of the period) I took the Gilgamesh passage from Pritchard (1955, pp 94-95).

But we must also consider that Gilgamesh itself is not original with its flood story. A Sumerian myth was recorded in the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. on a cuneiform tablet that described the destruction of the "seed of mankind" by the gods. This story is referred to as The Deluge and describes how Ziusudra, a particularly pious man, attentive to divine revelations, was chosen by the gods to survive the flood and who built a "huge boat."

The flood of The Deluge sweeps the land for 7 days and 7 nights until Utu, the Sun god, appears, at which point Ziusudra sacrifices an ox and is rewarded for his obedience with eternal life. "Ziusudra," by the way, means "life of long days."

The Deluge is then incorporated into the Akkadian Atrahasis epic, some details are added (i.e. the survivor's family is among the boat's passengers) and this is later incorporated into the Gilgamesh epic, which is a story that spread throughout the Near East.

Until recently, Biblical readers of Gen. 8:6-12 only had the Biblical account of the flood to go by until archaeological and linguistic recovery of the ancient languages occurred. It's now obvious that the Genesis author was drawing on an older oral tradition for the details of the flood and that it wasn't divinely influenced at all.

Key Elements

• Deciding to send a flood to wipe out life on earth
• Selecting a worthy man to survive
• Building a boat
• Riding out the storm on the boat
• Offering a sacrifice on dry land at the end.

** The details of the birds are absent from The Deluge and Antrahasis epics, making Gilgamesh the biblical source.

The parallels of Biblical creation mythology to earlier Near Eastern mythology is also interesting.. .

Postulating stupidity is not something generally worthy of encomium on sciforums, I would expect.

One should hope not.

Without wasting any more time, I would invite you all, especially Skinwalker, to take a look at this:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-273.htm

I've seen that fundamentalist propaganda before. What it boils down to is, "my beliefs are correct because you can't disprove them." An unbounded concept such as religion will always defy scientific explanation, which relies on the boundaries of physical laws.

If biblical accounts were so accurate, they'd each have annotated bibliographies and in-text citations.


Pritchard, James (1955). Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.

 

[SkinWalker]

Great. Then you should have no trouble whatsoever demonstrating/referencing those correlations.

Sure. Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians (among others) in the Near East each had written mythologies about "great floods." It's commonly accepted that many early written texts (that weren't of accounting practices, inventories, etc.) had their origins in oral traditions.

As oral traditions go, they are transmitted from culture to culture by visitors, traders, slaves, immigrants, etc.

As to the Black Sea flooding, Ryan (et al, 2003) concluded that "there is a compelling but not irrefutable, possibility that the Black Sea experienced a catastrophic salt water flood at 8.4 kya BP. They concede that more study is needed, but effectively refute some criticisms that the hypothesis recently received from those such as Aksu (2002).

Aksu AE, Hiscott RN, Yasar D, Isler FI, Marsh S (2002). Seismic stratigraphy of late Quaternary deposits from the southwestern Black
Sea shelf: evidence for non-catastrophic variations in sea-level during the last »10,000 years. Marine Geology 190:61?64

Ryan, William B.F.; Major, Candace O.; Lericolais, Gilles; Goldstein, Steven L. (2003). CATASTROPHIC FLOODING OF THE BLACK SEA. Annual Review of Earth & Planetary Sciences. 31:1 pp 525-554

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

science has said that there was a great flood around the time of Noah and in that area.

What science? Around what time? This is nothing but inane chatter, predictably devoid of evidence.

The Black Sea event is dated to 7500 years ago. Meanwhile, §outh§tar, referring to what s/he pretentiously labels "current research", locates the flood some 3 thousand years later.

The choices are threefold.:

1. The people of Mesopotamia and the Levant evolved a folklore based on an event thousands of years in the past.
2. A global flood was spawned by YHWH in contradiction to all available evidence and unbeknownst to more than one culture - the Egyptians didn't even get wet.
3. Primitive societies were tied to riverways, which periodically confronted these societies with the so-called 100 year floods - floods of disastrous proportions, and the resulting folklore was eventually conflated into common themes.

The Black Sea is unnecessary to explain flood myths, and YHWH is unnecessary to explain anything whatsoever.

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

It's commonly accepted that many early written texts (that weren't of accounting practices, inventories, etc.) had their origins in oral traditions.

Therefore? Show me any sociology or anthropology that suggests the possibility of sustaining an oral tradition spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures. Show me how positing an oral tradition as a foundation for written texts gets you to roughly 5600 BCE. Show me how this is anything other than a rather silly instance of the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.

 

[§outh§tar]

YHWH is unnecessary to explain anything whatsoever.

Tell me this, do you hold your knowledge to be above that of Jesus Christ?

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

Tell me this, do you hold your knowledge to be above that of Jesus Christ?

Absolutely, though I suppose that the details might depend on just which Jesus you intend. Are we speaking of the pesher fabrication of Matthew or the near-gnostic supposition of John? Do you intend the Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel of Thomas, or the pompous little brat described in the Infancy Gospels?

Whatever the answer, I must admit that I do not know how to properly curse fig trees or infest innocent pigs with demons. But, then again, it's not the type of knowledge that I'm likely to need in the immediate future.

 

[§outh§tar]

Absolutely, though I suppose that the details might depend on just which Jesus you intend. Are we speaking of the pesher fabrication of Matthew or the near-gnostic supposition of John? Do you intend the Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel of Thomas, or the pompous little brat described in the Infancy Gospels.

Albeit I am appaled by your response, I will first and foremost respond by saying NEITHER. I was referring to the Son of the Father of lights. Have you read Romans 1? I think you are in denial, don't worry, so was I. Then again, I may be wrong, as I have been countless times and I would not wish to "put you down" without hearing your side.

Your phrase "a pompous little brat" leaves me questioning your sense of judgement. How can Deity be referred to as little? Yes, pompous, I can agree to, God is pompous and rightly so, but Jesus, during his reign on Earth was neither a brat, nor was he pompous. (Aye, what a long sentence)

Unless you are omniscient I fail to see how your intellect is even remotely comparable to God. I am currently reading some of Luther's works concerning the knowledge of man, and thus I would like to know your views. Thank you.

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

Albeit I am appaled by your response, ...

That's OK. I'm appalled by your spelling.

... I was referring to the Son of the Father of lights.

Leave Thomas Edison out of this.

Have you read Romans 1?

Yes. It was written a twenty-five years after the purported crucifixion by someone who never met your hypothetical Jesus.

I think you are in denial, don't worry, so was I. Then again, I may be wrong, as I have been countless times and I would not wish to "put you down" without hearing your side.

I deny that it is reasonable to believe in poppycock for which there is zero evidence.

Your phrase "a pompous little brat" leaves me questioning your sense of judgement.

Your belief in Jesus leaves me to question yours.

How can Deity be referred to as little? Yes, pompous, I can agree to, God is pompous and rightly so, but Jesus, during his reign on Earth was neither a brat, nor was he pompous. (Aye, what a long sentence)

No, he just had a bad attitude when it came to recalcitrant fig trees.

Unless you are omniscient I fail to see how your intellect is even remotely comparable to God.

I see no evidence suggesting the existence of God(s), and even less suggesting the divinity of some Jesus construct.

I am currently reading some of Luther's works concerning the knowledge of man, and thus I would like to know your views. Thank you.

Hopefully they lack the antisemitic quality that characterizes his work on Jews.

 

[SkinWalker]

Therefore? Show me any sociology or anthropology that suggests the possibility of sustaining an oral tradition spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures. Show me how positing an oral tradition as a foundation for written texts gets you to roughly 5600 BCE. Show me how this is anything other than a rather silly instance of the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.

First, I fail to see how it is post hoc ergo propter hoc to suggest that among the first things for a culture to write would be it's stories. Nor would I think it post hoc ergo propter hoc to suggest that oral tradition of a culture can survive a few thousand years and be transmitted from one culture to another.

You asked for a citation to support the notion of sustainment of oral tradition over thousands of years and multiple cultures. Several examples come to mind, such as language itself. There are many languages in the world that are obviously of the same origin and have survived without being written, Navajo and Apache for instance. Along with linguistic structure and meaning, these cultures also pass stories, prayers, and origin myths from one generation to the next.

I can give you direct citations if you want, but that brings me to my final point: I'm not defending the biblical account of the flood nor am I suggesting that there is any conclusive evidence to sugges that the mythologies of the Near East are depicting actual events. I'm only saying that there is a correlation between the events we know occurred in the region at various times and the belief systems of the peoples that lived there. In fact, such correlations should be expected.

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

First, I fail to see how it is post hoc ergo propter hoc to suggest that among the first things for a culture to write would be it's stories. Nor would I think it post hoc ergo propter hoc to suggest that oral tradition of a culture can survive a few thousand years and be transmitted from one culture to another.

The Black Sea flood preceeded the Flood myth, 'therefore' [sic] the Black Sea Flood was the source/cause of the oral tradition which, thousands of years hence, manifested itself in the Noah narrative: post hoc ergo propter hoc.

You asked for a citation to support the notion of sustainment of oral tradition over thousands of years and multiple cultures. Several examples come to mind, such as language itself.

Language is not an oral tradition but, rather, the means of conveying one.

I can give you direct citations if you want, but that brings me to my final point: ...

That is an interesting sentence. You "can give you direct citations ..., but" you choose not to do so. Why?

I'm only saying that there is a correlation between the events we know occurred in the region at various times and the belief systems of the peoples that lived there. In fact, such correlations should be expected.

You claim a correlation, but have shown none. You assert that they should be expected, but withhold citations. You confuse correspondence with correlation. On the other hand, Manfred Bietak, citing, among others, D.P. Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition (Oxford, 1974) and J. Vasina, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), notes: Ancient philology indicates that the historical reliability of oral tradition can be sustained for only about three to six generations -- say 200 years at most. To seek the source of Gilgamesh to some 5600 BCE event, while ignoring some 2600 intervening years punctuated by periodic and disastrous floods is, in my opinion, unfounded. One might just as well point to the disastrous flooding which attended the end of the last Ice Age.

[edited to add the following ...]

In one discussion of the Protohistory in Mesopotamia, the author writes:

The motive of the Flood, a ''word wide'' catastrophe, circulates in all of antiquity. All kinds of versions of the catastrophe are passed down from generation to generation and from country to country. There are Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hittite versions and probably independently in much of the world's folklore elsewhere. When the first texts about the Flood (Akkadian abübum, a devastating storm surge) were discovered in 1872 by George Smith, it made headline news in all papers, because of the similarities with the story in the bible (dated almost two millennia later). Fantasy was further stirred by the English archeologist Sir L. Woolley. He found (1929) in excavations a deposit of silt of a few meters thickness, under which artifacts were found dated to the 5th millennium. These deposits, however, are always localized to a small area, as Woolley himself has later discovered. Time, place and extend of this flood are inconsistent with the literary tradition. A local breakthrough of the river is a sufficient explanation.

All alluvial plains and river deltas in the world have suffered from major floods. A serie of floods in the 15th century CE, called the The St. Elisabeth Floods, has shaped part of the Netherlands in the Rhine delta. Millions of people even now are in constant danger because of flood threat, so it is not surprising that the story still addresses the imagination. There is no doubt that floods did have a great impact on the Mesopotamian civilization and that some of them occurred around 2900 BCE.​

Our differences can be summarized as follows. You insist that the flood myth(s) was to be 'expected' given the Black Sea event. I maintain that the flood myth(s) could be 'expected' irrespective of the Black Sea event, and that more recent events stand as far more likely sources of circa 3000 BCE folklore. While I am not a big fan of Occams Razor, this is one case where its application seems warranted.

 

[SkinWalker]

Language is not an oral tradition but, rather, the means of conveying one.

We'll have to disagree on that point. In a non-literate culture, the language itself is oral tradition since it's transmission from generation to generation will depend upon exactness and precision in transmission. Particularly with Navajo, one of the most complex languages I can think of.

But that is, perhaps, another thread.

That is an interesting sentence. You "can give you direct citations ..., but" you choose not to do so. Why?

I chose not to for a couple reasons: 1) I didn't think they were relevant to what I was trying to say, and 2) They're in my car, which is in the parking lot where I work (I took a company vehicle home)

You claim a correlation, but have shown none. You assert that they should be expected, but withhold citations. You confuse correspondence with correlation. On the other hand, Manfred Bietak, citing, among others, D.P. Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition (Oxford, 1974) and J. Vasina, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), notes: Ancient philology indicates that the historical reliability of oral tradition can be sustained for only about three to six generations -- say 200 years at most.

I can agree with that. But what one has to consider is that (and I will get you those citations now ) it may be that Bietak, Henige, and Vasina are referring to literate cultures rather than non-literate. Francis Harwood (1976) pointed out that non-literate cultures used spatial mnemonics to transmit oral tradition effectively. By tying individual myths to specific locations, the effect is that change can be restricted. He points out that oral traditions use two axes: spatial and temporal. Non-literate cultures relying more on the former, literate on the latter. Harwood gives some examples and offers furthter explanation of this, though I rembered the citation for references to the Zuni, which I recently wrote a paper on.

To seek the source of Gilgamesh to some 5600 BCE event, while ignoring some 2600 intervening years punctuated by periodic and disastrous floods is, in my opinion, unfounded. One might just as well point to the disastrous flooding which attended the end of the last Ice Age.

Heh.. I think we're more in agreement than not. I don't discount that. In fact I must agree. The geology of the Near East and Mediterranean is, in the words of some geologists, complicated. There is, and has been much activity in the region.

My original post in this thread wasn't meant to say that Noah's myth was correlated to a single actual event (though I suppose it did). Rather, I was trying to say that there is a correlation between the mythologies of the region and the geologic activity of the region. And that is why such myths are to be expected. This type of mythology exists the world over and relates to floods, volcanos, etc.

Also, thanks for the citations and links. I'm adding them to my ever growing database (I must seriously think about getting Citation).

Harwood, Francis (1976). Myth, Memory, and the Oral Tradition: Cicero in the Trobriands. American Anthropologist (New Series), Vol. 78, No. 4. pp. 783-796.

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

Francis Harwood (1976) pointed out that non-literate cultures used spatial mnemonics to transmit oral tradition effectively. By tying individual myths to specific locations, the effect is that change can be restricted.

And, therefore, it is reasonable to speak of a 'spatial mnemonics' sustaining an oral tradition over a span of millennia? I seriously doubt that you'll be able to extract such an argument from your hidden body of references, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. For now, I'll simple suggest that 'spatial mnemonics' are rendered less effective where the spatial referents are disolved in the wake of some flood-induced dispersal.

My original post in this thread wasn't meant to say that Noah's myth was correlated to a single actual event (though I suppose it did). Rather, I was trying to say that there is a correlation between the mythologies of the region and the geologic activity of the region. And that is why such myths are to be expected. This type of mythology exists the world over and relates to floods, volcanos, etc.

If all you are saying is that flood myths suggest flood experiences, there is little with which to disagree. If, however, you intend to claim that flood myths are a consequence of a Black Sea event, then the situation is quite different.