On 04/27/2010 08:28 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 03:04 PM 4/27/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
>> On the other hand, if it *is* >> inerrant, then we can also take as true the fact that the rains lasted >> 150 days, not more, not less, and that *all* the high mountains were >> covered to a depth of 15 cubits. "Cubit" is a little hazy, but the >> point is the water level rose to a level *at* *least* as high above sea >> level as the highest mountain peak. > > That's taking a literalist interpretation. Of course it's a "literalist" interpretation. Do you know any Christian fundamentalists? How do you think the folks who believe the Ark existed and is likely to be found on Ararat interpret that passage? Where do you think the idea that it's all "for real" comes from? From the fundamentalists, of course. And where do you think the notion that the grounding place *was* *Ararat* comes from? The fundamentalists, of course. > What does the text actually > say? I don't read Hebrew so we'll need to be content with translations, unless someone here does and has access to the Masoretic Text, or unless someone here reads Greek and has a copy of the Septuagint. NRSV (generally considered a good translation) says "The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered". I think that's pretty clear. You can twist it around to try to make it fit the facts, but really, either *all* the mountains on Earth were covered, or the passage is in error. (And if it's in error, then the text isn't inerrant, and normal rules of textual interpretation apply, and the whole Ark story becomes very suspect ... to put it mildly.) Nouvelle Segond (also an excellent translation, entirely independent of the NRSV/RSV/KJ series of translations) reads "Toutes les hautes montagnes qui sont sous le ciel furent recouvertes." That, also, is absolutely clear: All the high mountains which are under the sky were covered. The Nouvelle Segond also has a lovely set of study notes, and in this particular case, when I looked up the passage I was surprised to learn that the story can be traced back farther than the OT. It appears, in *very* similar form, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is a rather older Babylonian document. As the earliest bits of Genesis seem to be Babylonian, this suggests that the stories are not just similar, but rather they are indeed the same story, *retold* in Genesis. There are, however, a few differences. The most notable, in the current context, is that Mount Ararat is not mentioned in Gilgamesh; the grounding place of the Ark in Gilgamesh is commonly translated as Mount Nitsir but is, ultimately, obscure. Since Gilgamesh is the older text, it appears, therefore, that the specification of Ararat as grounding place is probably a late addition, made long, long after the story was first told. Therefore, whether or not there was a flood of some sort at the origin of the story, there would seem to be no reason whatsoever to think the remains of the Ark, if they still exist, would be found on Mount Ararat. The *only* reason, in fact, for expecting it to be Ararat where they'd be found would be the assumption that the Bible is literally true, for that is the only assumption that'll give precedence to the late, retold version of the story as it appears in Genesis. And that was more or less what I was driving at to start with. > And what are "mountains?" Oh please, don't go there. This is like saying "Genesis is all correct but 'days' don't really mean 'days' they mean vague long chunks of time at least a million years in duration." So maybe "mountain" really meant "ant hill". But in that case, maybe "Ararat" really meant "Pike's Peak", and maybe "ark" really meant "small tent", and maybe "animals" meant "plants". The point is, if it's not literally true *as* *written* then, as I said, there's no reason to expect to find the Ark on Ararat, or anywhere else -- and it's obviously not literally true. End of lecture.
