Is Noah’s Flood Rooted in Reality?

The story of Noah’s flood is a well-known biblical account, but its historical reality is a topic of debate among scholars and researchers. Some evidence and theories suggest that a large flood may have occurred in the ancient Mesopotamian region, potentially inspiring the story of Noah’s flood. However, the idea of a global flood, as described in the Bible, is not supported by geological evidence.

Dr. Robert Ballard, an underwater archaeologist, has proposed that the biblical flood was based on real events, citing evidence from his exploration of the Black Sea, where he and his team found an ancient shoreline about 400 feet below the surface, indicating a catastrophic event that may have inspired the flood story[2].

On the other hand, geologists and scholars like David Montgomery and Ira Spar argue that there is no geological evidence for a global flood and suggest that the story of Noah’s flood is likely allegorical rather than a literal historical account. They point to the lack of evidence for a global flood in the geological record and the presence of similar flood stories in older traditions[1][3].

While some evidence and theories support the occurrence of a large flood in the ancient Mesopotamian region, the idea of a global flood as described in the Bible is not supported by geological evidence. Therefore, the historical reality of Noah’s flood remains a topic of ongoing research and debate.

Personal Thoughts

I realize today (2009) that what has driven many of my posts on a blog is lingering annoyance towards organized religion because I was given wrong information in Sunday school’s as a kid. I trusted the adults there to tell me the truth about the world, about history, about what we really are, why we are here, and so on.  We learned about Noah, the ark, the animals, the dove. They never told us about Gilgamesh, written long before Genesis.

… the closest to Genesis 6-9 was found in a 7th century BC Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh: the hero Gilgamesh meets the immortal man Utnapishtim, who tells how the god Ea warned him to build a vessel in which to save his family, his friends, and his wealth and cattle from a great flood which the gods planned to use to destroy all life on earth.^[29]

I now feel the Old Testament is the result of stories being handed down orally over many thousands of years.  As in a game of “telephone” the stories changed. Face it, we humans aren’t very accurate. We exaggerate. We simplify. Our memories change things over time, and we repeat stories which are factually incorrect. The changes made by our brains are usually done to fit the story we are telling to the facts we already know, to make “sense” of the information we have.

In 1932 someone named Bartlett observed in experiments that human memory for even the simplest material is extremely inaccurate.  Stories become shorter, more concrete, and more modern in phraseology as they are passed on. Most people are completely unaware that they are making changes. The reason is due to the way memory works. Each time we recall an event or story, we actually build the story fresh every time by recalling, not the event, but the last time we remembered the event.  Memory is a re-construction of a re-construction and changes creep in each time the story is re-told and as each person alters facts to make the story fit his or her own experience.

Thus, Utnapishtim’s Ark was built in a few days, while in the later story Noah’s was built over a sensible time period. Utnapishtim’s Ark was a Cube in the original story and eventually became Noah’s seaworthy ship. Utnapishtim’s raven released from the Ark at sea finds food and does not return. Noah’s dove brings an olive twig back to show it has found land.

Having learned the details of the Noah story so well,  I was convinced upon reading the older story that these are not two different disconnected tales. There are too many common elements. I think the Noah story is a modification of the original. (Which seems itself to be a compilation of previous stories much morphed by repeated telling.)

Realizing how human memory really works has freed me from my anger at being misinformed. I now understand that in most cases people are not purposeful liars, nor are they mostly fools who ignore reality in favor of wishful thinking, they are, in fact, only human with normal defective human brains.

With our unique human self-awareness, we have realized these flaws, and have thus invented writing, audio recording, photographs, movies, computers, the Internet, social media and blogs like this, which are more advanced forms of memory than ancient people had available. Using this blog entry, in December, in the year 2023 I am reviewing my above thoughts from over a decade ago in February 2009.

Citations:

^{[1] https://www.livescience.com/human-behavior/religion/did-noahs-flood-really-happen
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533
[3] https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/plate-tectonics.pdf
[4] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-flood-102813115/
[5] https://ncse.ngo/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth}