Just offering this up for consideration..I admit limited knowledge of
bible verse...but I do enjoy history..I always revert to the same
thought....If we have a historical document (like the bible) but also
have an older source...shouldnt we look at the origonal more closely..

The Chaldean Flood Tablets from the city of Ur in what is now Southern
Iraq, describe how the Bablylonian God Ea had decided to eliminate
humans and other land animals with a great flood which was to become
"the end of all flesh". He selected Ut-Napishtim, to build an ark to
save a few humans, and samples of other animals.

The Babylonian text "The Epic of Galgamesh" 1,8 and the Hebrew story are
essentially identical with about 20 major points in common. Their texts
are obviously linked in some way. Either:
*Genesis was copied from an earlier Babylonian story, or
*The Galgamesh myth was copied from an earlier Hebrew story, or
*Both were copied from a common source that predates them both.

In both the Genesis and Galgamesh stories:
*The Genesis story describes how mankind had become obnoxious to God;
they were hopelessly sinful and wicked. In the Babylonian story, they
were too numerous and noisy.
*The Gods (or God) decided to send a worldwide flood. This would drown
men, women, children, babies and infants, as well as eliminate all of
the land animals and birds.
*The Gods (or God) knew of one righteous man, Ut-Napishtim or Noah.
*The Gods (or God) ordered the hero to build a multi-story wooden ark
(called a chest or box in the original Hebrew).
*The hero initially complained about the assignment to build the boat
*The ark would be sealed with pitch.
*The ark would have with many internal compartments
*It would have a single door
*It would have at least one window.
*The ark was built and loaded with the hero, a few other humans, and
samples from all species of other land animals.
*A great rain covered the land with water.
*The mountains were initially covered with water.
*The ark landed on a mountain in the Middle East.
*The hero sent out birds at regular intervals to find if any dry land
was in the vicinity.
*The first two birds returned to the ark. The third bird apparently
found dry land because it did not return.
*The hero and his family left the ark, ritually killed an animal,
offered it as a sacrifice.
*God (or the Gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh) smelled the roasted meat of
the sacrifice.
*The hero was blessed.
*The Babylonian gods seemed genuinely sorry for the genocide that they
had created. The God of Noah appears to have regretted his actions as
well, because he promised never to do it again.

If I was Satan, I would work hard to incorporate Biblical events into
non-Christian theology. Then when people looked through history, they
might find that the oldest record of an event wasn't in the Bible,
leading people to believe it was copied by the Jews or early Christians.

so you dont think it is written by people to be past down thru the
ages.but rather intentionally placed there by satan?..

davinci1952,

I'm saying it's possible. It's also possible that some of the people
who were on the Ark recorded the story of the flood, but it was
corrupted by time. Moses wrote Genesis under divine inspiration, but
any other accounts would have been written from oral history.

..but if these stories come from Sumeria...recognised as the oldest
culture in history..then it predates the bible..dont you think..

davinci1952,

The Pentateuch was written by Moses sometime before 1513 BC, which is
about 500 years before the 11th Tablet (the one containing the flood
myth) was written.

there are sources that would dispute that....which would be pointless
for us to try to solve...
I tend to believe it's older than the bible...but thats only my
position..

And I have presented my opinion. The reader can decide whom they
believe based on their existing faith.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. I'm totally convinced that all
of the stories in the Old Testament are based on folklore. I've
believed this for quite some time now.

There is another possibility. After God decided to flood the world he
took a look about and discovered their were others worth saving besides
Noah in other parts of the earth. There are biblical type stories of
the flood times in nearly all ancestral records in all ancient
civilizations. Perhaps then God went to each civilization from
creations where they had populated the world and spoke to an individual
from that civilization.

That would mean that not only was Noah saved but also a representive of
each of the other civilizations scattered around the world. Not in
seperate floods but all at the same time each in a different area.

Since the Book of God called the bible has its roots in the line of
Israel that book only mentions those that were saved in the linenage of
Israel (how would they have known of others lineages) it required a
dedicated priest hood to keep track just of their own history let alone
that of another line of man.

Keep in mind too that at that time people were completely unaware of the
size of the Earth as a whole or that it was even a globe. If they lived
in a basin and that basin was flooded then their ‘world’ was flooded.

I’m totally convinced that the stories of floods that covered the world
were indeed just local events. Folklore always has a way of becoming
bigger than life.

well it's interesting that China has the same flood/noah story
also...different names for the characters of course..but the basic story
line is there...I'm fascinated by the old myths.....would be nice to
figure out the source area that it origionated in...I find the whole
Sumerian story amazing...cuz all of a sudden "poof" ...there is an
advanced culture suddenly...

I saw a documentary once on natural disasters that could have explained
many of the stories in the Bible.

One of them had to do with a major flood that was caused when a natural
dam burst. I think it was somewhere near Turkey but I’m not sure. It’s
been a while since I saw the documentary.

Anyway, what happened was that there was a major population living in an
area what was below the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea. The water
was kept out by a natural dam created by a mountain range. So a huge
population lived there. This was a huge area which included several
separate villages (basically a small ‘world’.

It is believed that there was an earthquake that caused the natural dam
to collapse thus allowing the entire basin to be completely flooded
instantly.

Now obviously this scenario has nothing to do with rain. However, it is
quite possible that it just happened to coincide with a very rainy
season. To the people living back then this would have been a major act
of God. I mean, they would have had no rational explanation for it
whatsoever.

In that same documentary they also gave an explanation for what might
have caused the parting of the waters for Moses. It has been suggested
that a major volcano erupted near an island off the coast of Greece.
That erupting mountain would have cased a tsunami in the Mediterranean
Sea to head toward Egypt. Now you might thing that would cause a major
flood to, but according to the science of tsunamis waves the water
ahead of the wave would have actually drained out of inland rivers
first. Thus causing the rivers to run dry (or part) momentarily.

So this natural phenomenon could have actually been recorded as Moses
having ‘parted’ the waters.

It’s interesting stuff.

I’m totally convinced that the stories were either sparked by natural
events, or in some cases just purely fabricated as folklore.

Like some other people have mentioned in other thread. If God is the
kind of God that sticks his hands into things why doesn’t he still do it
today?

I think the reason is simple. People today aren’t as superstitious and
simply don’t make up these things anymore. I mean, we’ve seen tsunamis
hit places out of the blue. If we didn’t know that they were caused by
earthquakes we might think it was an act of God. The only reason we
don’t make up stories anymore is because we now understand what causes
these things to happen.

My Dad has always been a great story teller. On Sunday Mornings, he
would get up and fix breakfast and as we ate he would tell us stories of
his childhood. Years and Years of stories. I believed them, I believed
I was getting to know Dad - the person. We never minded when he retold
a story, for there was always some new thing added or some preface or
addition that we had not heard. Some were quite amazing and I would
share them with some of my friends, they made me proud of who my dad
was, and what he had to overcome to be that person.

One day, in my twenties, talking with my Aunt, my dad's sister, she told
a story from her life. She too was a story teller but this was the
first story that ever seemed to cross over into one of my Dad's. I
mentioned that to her. She laughed and said "so tell me exactly what
your dad said". I did, she laughed very hard, made me laugh too. Then
she told me what 'really' happened. It was then we shared the truths of
my dad's tales.

I walked away from the experience realizing, in my twenties, that every
story has a perspective and every story has a reason to the teller to be
remembered and re-told. That re-telling our stories validates the truth
we percieve in them, validates our lives.

I never told my Dad, that I had heard a different side of his stories.
But to this day, I love to hear him tell them and I love to ask my Aunt
her view of the same story.

The Bible holds many stories that can be percieved from many points of
view. Their truth served to validate some event perceived by others in
history, and in the re-telling, thereby, validated the lives of those
who lived the history. Today, I see them holding the same truth.
Nothing more, nothing less.

so true...