Flood Legends: Sorted


Book Description

There are hundreds of ancient flood legends around the world that tells of vast inundations in ancient times caused by catastrophic events. It's often assumed that these legends refer to the flood of Noah and his ark. Although many do mirror this biblical story, some people say these legends simply refer to local floods that only affected the world of the locals, not the whole globe. There are three types of flood legends: global, local, and a confusion of global mixed with local floods. We sorted these legends into categories, presented the evidences, and exhibited the causes of each type. From this discussion emerges a frightful picture of the ancient world where civilizations were affected time and time again by vastly destructive cataclysmic events. The world changed—mountains rose, continents shifted, cities and islands sunk, species were obliterated, and whole populations were wiped off the face of the earth. Legends regularly validate others as true histories. If the floods they spoke of were not global, their effect was. This roller coaster ride of evidence will challenge the worldview of ancient and geologic history that have been taught to us. Legends of the floods often mentioned God or the gods, which were considered to be either responsible for the floods or saved people from them. The age when the gods ruled is associated with advanced technology and flood legends. Atlantis is considered central in flood legends, and many researchers have incorrectly linked its destruction with all flood legends. The gods, too, are related to Atlantis and are frequently tied with floods, which necessitated a section devoted to the age of the gods wherein we discover their origins and who they are.




The Flood Myths of Early China


Book Description

Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China. In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.




The Real Story of the Flood


Book Description

In this picture book, scholar and author Paul L. Maier explains the Great Flood in a unique way. No myth or romanticized version, but the true story of mankind's second chance and our loving God's promise to preserve us for all time. Paul L. Maier wrote the Gold Medallion Book Award winner for children, The Very First Christmas, and three other Gold Medallion finalists, The Very First Easter and The Very First Christians, and Martin Luther. Dr. Maier lectures widely, appears frequently in national radio, television, and newspaper interviews, and has received numerous awards. Maier is the Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University.







Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story


Book Description

This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, through the lens of a pivotal passage in the Gilgamesh Flood story. It shows how, using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed, the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark. The volume argues that Ea used a ‘bitextual’ message: one which can be understood in different ways that sound the same. His message thus emerges as an ambivalent oracle in the tradition of ‘folktale prophecy’. The argument is supported by interlocking investigations of lexicography, divination, diet, figurines, social history, and religion. There are also extended discussions of Babylonian word play and ancient literary interpretation. Besides arguing for Ea’s duplicity, the book explores its implications – for narrative sophistication in Gilgamesh, for audiences and performance of the poem, and for the relation of the Gilgamesh Flood story to the versions in Atra-hasīs, the Hellenistic historian Berossos, and the Biblical Book of Genesis. Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story will interest Assyriologists, Hebrew Bible scholars and Classicists, but also students and researchers in all areas concerned with Gilgamesh, word-play, oracles, and traditions about the Flood.




The Lost World of the Flood


Book Description

The Genesis flood account has been probed and analyzed for centuries. But what might the biblical author have been saying to his ancient audience? In order to rediscover the biblical flood, we must set aside our own cultural and interpretive assumptions and visit the distant world of the ancient Near East. Walton and Longman lead us on this enlightening journey toward a more responsible reading of a timeless biblical narrative.




Dirt


Book Description

Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.




The Ark Before Noah


Book Description

The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.




Atra-ḫasīs


Book Description

Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.




Flood Legends


Book Description

The story of the Deluge - or the Global Flood of Noah - permeates nearly every culture in the world in some way, shape, or form. While details vary between the different cultures, the same basic elements, occur in all versions. Despite the striking similarities of these accounts, some mythologists have looked at the minor differences in the stories and declared: "This never happened!"There is another alternative - to accept that the different versions all refer to the same event - passed on from generation to generation, through various developing cultures. Through these legends, this epic event has remained woven into the tapestry of cultural history - sharing not just the story of survival, but the power of obedience, and the fulfillment of God's enduring promise.