Noah and the Great Flood

Everyone called Noah a Conspiracy Theorist... until the rains began to fall.

The "name" Noah comes from the Hebrew "Noach" which means "rest" or "repose", and is in turn derived from the Babylonian word "nukhu," which also means repose or rest. Note the ch/h/kh interchange.
 

Historical Context

Many ancient cultures around the world record a story of a great flood from which only one man and his family escaped by building a boat. The accounts closest to the biblical narrative originate in Mesopotamia from texts dating to around BC 1,600. Noah was a tenth generation descendant of Adam, the first human being on earth. Scripture tells us Noah was a farmer (Genesis 9:20). He was already 500 years old when he fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Noah lived 350 years after the flood and died at 950 years old.

Major Themes and Life Lessons

The two major themes in the story of Noah and the flood are God's judgment of sin and his salvation to those who trust in him. Before God decided to wipe the people from the face of the earth, he first warned Noah, making a covenant to save Noah and his family. The whole time Noah and his family labored constantly to build the ark (120 years), Noah also preached a message of repentance. With the coming judgment, God provided plenty of time and a way of escape for those who would look to him in faith. But the wicked generation ignored Noah's message.

Noah’s story serves as an example of righteous living and enduring faith in the face of completely immoral and faithless times.

Noah and the Flood - Genesis 6:9-22

⁹ This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. ¹⁰ Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. ¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. ¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³ So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. ¹⁴ So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. ¹⁵ This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. ¹⁶ Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. ¹⁷ I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. ²⁰ Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹ You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” ²² Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

The Flood

Most of the water for the great Flood of Noah came from the so-called "fountains of the great deep" (Gen 7:11). This source of water is mentioned before the rain from the "windows of heaven."

The “fountains of the great deep” are mentioned before the “windows of heaven,” indicating either relative importance or the order of events.

What are the “fountains of the great deep?” This phrase is used only in Genesis 7:11. “Fountains of the deep” is used in Genesis 8:2, where it clearly refers to the same thing, and Proverbs 8:28, where the precise meaning is not clear. “The great deep” is used three other times: Isaiah 51:10, where it clearly refers to the ocean; Amos 7:4, where God's fire of judgment is said to dry up the great deep, probably the oceans; and Psalm 36:6 where it is used metaphorically of the depth of God's justice/judgment. “The deep” is used more often, and usually refers to the oceans (e.g., Genesis 1:2; Job 38:30, 41:32; Psalm 42:7, 104:6; Isaiah 51:10, 63:13; Ezekiel 26:19; Jonah 2:3), but sometimes to subterranean sources of water (Ezekiel 31:4, 15). The Hebrew word (mayan) translated “fountains” means “fountain, spring, well.”

So, the “fountains of the great deep” are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water. In the context of the flood account, it could mean both.
If the fountains of the great deep were the major source of the waters, then they must have been a huge source of water. Some have suggested that when God made the dry land appear from under the waters on the third day of creation, some of the water that covered the earth became trapped underneath and within the dry land.

Genesis 7:11 says that on the day the flood began, there was a “breaking up” of the fountains, which implies a release of the water, possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor. The waters that had been held back burst forth with catastrophic consequences.

There are many volcanic rocks interspersed between the fossil layers in the rock record—layers that were obviously deposited during Noah's flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great deep involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water bursting up through the ground. It is interesting that up to 70 percent or more of what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam.

The other source of the waters for Noah's flood was “the windows of heaven.” Genesis 7:12 says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights continuously.
Genesis 2:5 tells us that there was no rain before man was created. Some have suggested that there was no rainfall anywhere on the Earth until the time of the flood. However, the Bible does not actually say this, so we should not be dogmatic.

Some have argued that God's use of the rainbow as the sign of His covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:12-17) suggests that there were no rainbows, and therefore no clouds or rain, before the flood. However, if rainbows (and clouds) existed before the flood, this would not be the only time God used an existing thing as a special “new” sign of a covenant (e.g., bread and wine in the Lord's Supper).

It is difficult to envisage a pre-flood water cycle without clouds and rain, as the sun's heat, even in that era, must have evaporated large volumes of surface waters which would have to eventually condense back into liquid water. And droplets of liquid water form clouds from which we get rain.

The expression “windows of heaven” is used twice in reference to the flood (Genesis 7:11, 8:2). It is used only three times elsewhere in the Old Testament: twice in 2 Kings 7:2 and 19, referring to God's miraculous intervention in sending rain, and once in Malachi 3:10, where the phrase is used again of God intervening to pour out abundant blessings on his people. Clearly, in Genesis the expression suggests the extraordinary nature of the rainfall attending the flood. It is not a term applied to ordinary rainfall.

What about “the waters above”?

We are told in Genesis 1:6-8 that on the second day of creation God divided the waters that were on the Earth from the waters that He placed above the Earth when He made a “firmament” (Hebrew: raqiya, meaning “expanse”) between those waters. Many have concluded that this “expanse” was the atmosphere, because God placed the birds in the expanse, suggesting that the expanse includes the atmosphere where the birds fly. This would put these waters above the atmosphere. However, Genesis 1:20, speaking of the creation of the birds, says (literally) “let the birds fly above the ground across the face of the expanse of the heavens.” This at least allows that “the expanse” may include the space beyond the atmosphere.

Dr. Russell Humphreys has argued that since Genesis 1:17 tells us that God put the sun, moon, and stars also “in the expanse of the heaven” then the expanse must at least include interstellar space, and thus the waters above the expanse of Genesis 1:7 would be beyond the stars at the edge of the universe.

However, prepositions (in, under, above, etc.) are somewhat flexible in Hebrew, as well as English. A submarine can be spoken of as both under and in the sea. Likewise, the waters could be above the expanse and in the expanse, so we should be careful no to draw too much from these expressions.

So what were these “waters above”? Some have said that they are simply the clouds. Others thought of them as a “water vapor canopy,” implying a blanket of water vapor surrounding the Earth.

According to the  Gilgamesh flood myth, Enlil, the highest god, decided to completely destroy the whole world by means of a great flood as the humans had increasingly become noisy. Ea, the god who created human beings of divine blood and clay, warned Utnapishtim secretly about the flood and gave him instructions to build a boat and be saved.

In the Bible’s  Book of Genesis , it is written that Yahweh who created man from dust, decided to bring the great flood to Earth because of mankind’s increasing corruption.

According to Hindu mythology there is a story about "manvantara-sandhya," a great flood. In the story, Vishnu's Matsya Avatar warned Manu, the first man, about the impending flood and instructed him to construct a giant boat. 

According to Zoroastrian Mazdaism, Ahriman tried to destroy the whole world by means of a drought. It is believed that Mithra shot an arrow at a rock, and the flood poured out. Only one man, along with his cattle, survived the flood in an ark.

As per Plato,  Timaeus describes a flood myth that is quite similar to the other versions of the great flood. In the Timaeus version, the Bronze race of humans made Zeus angry with constant warring. Zeus decided to cause a flood to punish humanity. The Titan Prometheus , who created humans with clay, shared the plan with Deucalion and advised him to build an ark. It took nine days and nights for the water to recede, and the ark landed on a mountain.

Dead Seas Scrolls Reveal that Noah's Ark Was Shaped Like a Pyramid

According to a reading from a newly digitized fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Noah's Ark was something different than what is currently believed. The 2,000-year-old text may be prove that the Ark was the shape of a pyramid.

Over 50 years ago, a stone thrown by a Bedouin shepherd into a cave led to what some have called the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. The Bedouin heard the stone crack open an earthenware jar. Upon investigating, he found the first of what came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. When all the scrolls and fragments were sorted out, they accounted for about 800 manuscripts. About one quarter, or just over 200 manuscripts, are copies of portions of the Hebrew Bible text.

New Fragments Deciphered

Haaretz reported that the new reading of the fragments has changed our understanding about Noah's Ark. Thanks to the high-resolution imagery, a word following the phrase “the ark’s tallness” had previously been illegible. However, the new scans showed that the correct words is ne’esefet, meaning “gathered,” which according to researcher Dr. Alexey Yuditsky, means that the ark’s ribs were gathered together at the top in the shape of a pyramid. Dr Yuditsky said that the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Bible dating to the third century BC, used a Greek verb with a similar meaning to describe the Ark. Moreover, medieval authors like Maimonides suggested that the ark's roof was pointed.

The newly deciphered words on the ancient parchments stayed hidden for centuries, but are now bringing answers to many long standing questions, as well as raising new ones. Previously, the story of Noah's Ark was known mainly from the Book of Genesis. However, the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran cave in the Judean Desert shed new light on this story.

Noah’s Ark – Not Just a Biblical Story

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain information about many controversial and fascinating topics from the past, the story of Noah and the legendary flood being just one of them. Christos Djonis, guest author of Ancient Origins, explained in his articles ''Evidence of The Great Flood – Real or a Myth? '', that the story of Noah is not just a Biblical account:

''The story of a “Great Flood” sent by God (or gods according to much earlier testimony) to destroy humanity for its sins is a widespread account shared by many religions and cultures around the world, and dates back to our earliest recorded history. From India to ancient Greece, Mesopotamia and even among North American Indian tribes, there is no shortage of such tales that often enough sound very much alike. Some of these stories truly sound so similar that one could wonder whether all cultures around the planet had experienced such an event (...)