Part 2
This article is the continuation of an article previously published on Ghanaweb. The objective is to review the narrative of events to enable readers make their own decision as to whether the claims are supported by the evidence.
Genesis Chapter 7
001 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. 002 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
COMMENT: Wait a minute! Of clean beats Noah should take seven males and seven females, and the rest of the animals two-two. Now this is a new and different instruction from the original in Chapter 6 verse 19 which said two- two for all. Also note that the definition of a “clean” beast has not been given yet. That came later in a future generation, long after Lot had died and gone. Once can surmise that the author was attempting to retroactively establish (after the fact) that Noah clearly separated or treated differently the “clean” and “unclean” beasts as Jewish culture in later generations (as of the author of this story) would have found it unacceptable that unclean beasts and clean ones were given supposedly equal status.
003 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
COMMENT: And now for fowls of the air Noah should now take seven males and seven females. Now the only way this can be reconciled is to say the seven-seven was referring to seven types or species of say birds, and then two of each kind. But this is not what is being said here or in the first instruction to take two of every flesh because all of them will be destroyed.
004 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
COMMENT: OK. So every living substance including whales, fishes, etc and yet those water dwelling ones were not given instructions to be gathered. And if they were how would a primitive man Noah rear whales, dolphins and sharks in a wooden ark? So after this flood we expect no more whales, sharks, fishes etc on the earth?
005 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. 006 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 007 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 008 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
COMMENT: Again no water living animals mentioned.
009 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
COMMENT: So no more seven seven for some, all two by two.
010 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 011 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
COMMENT: This statement suggests there is some fountains or let’s just say some deep sea source putting water into the ocean to then fill it up. This is false, no such structure exists anywhere. If it is springs like we know from wells and ground water that’s fine but the amount of water in those systems is nowhere near that of the ocean. Anyone who learned water cycle in secondary school or some elementary geology knows this. Now water from the window of heaven. This is also a false claim. You see it is based on the notion which was widely held in the ancient time that god was living somewhere in the sky and could throw down water, thunder etc. rainfall is not from heaven. Again I will refer to our high school water cycle we learned in science class to explain how we have rainfall.
012 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 013 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 014 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. 015 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. 016 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.
COMMENT: Note ALL flesh, so marine creatures included. Even Noah was not told to gather them because in the original instruction they were not mentioned to be destroyed. 017 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 018 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 019 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 020 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
COMMENT: This is inconsistent statement fifteen cubits is less than 30 feet. How can that cover mountains? Or the author meant 15 cubits from the mountain top? So why all this error in a perfect document?
021 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 022 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. 023 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 024 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
COMMENT: A worldwide flood that lasted 150 days that is almost six months. If such an event occurred there would be overwhelming geologic evidence to prove it. This is a monumental event in the natural history of the world. Events such as earthquakes that last a few seconds have been detected in rock formations for example that enable geologists tell when the event occurred. For example we know that in 1644 there was an earthquake in Ghana. This was known by oral tradition and also confirmed from the rock core samples. With some simple calculations the exact time and location can be deduced. The problem with the flood is there is no such evidence in the geological record. Nowhere. None has been found anywhere. And this is not a 30 – 90 second event like an earthquake or volcano, it is a great flood washing up sediments to the mountaintops, burying carcasses, disrupting soil profiles, lasting SIX MONTHS, and yet not a shred of fossil evidence. Geologic coring studies have been conducted by various universities and researchers all over the world for one purpose or another, taking samples from the ocean beds to the mountains etc in every corner of the world to date. At least one layer or the other would at least give some indication during the relevant time period of the core samples. But not one has been found. NONE. The second problem is from biology. If such an event occurred, with DNA testing we would be able to trace any species DNA code (also called genome) back to a common ancestor that lived what 5 or 6 thousand years ago. And this would be true of at least the majority of species. No genome in the world today shows this characteristic. For humans we would expect our DNA markers to point to common descent from a few individuals that lived around that period. This has not been found. Dr Spencer of MIT conducted such a study and got amazingly opposite results but I will save that for another essay. The only species in the world today that exhibits such traits in its DNA is the cheetah. It turns out the cheetah went through a population bottleneck some 15 to 20 000 years ago ( way before the Great Flood) and was on the brink of extinction with only a few individuals left. They then began inbreeding (incest) as there were no other mates elsewhere. So all cheetahs living today can be traced to all have come from one small almost extinct group of individuals that inbred (incest) to keep the species alive. That is why cheetah has the highest hereditary disease of any species on earth, they have the highest infant mortality rate, and any cheetah can donate blood and organs to any other cheetah with absolutely zero rejection symptoms. No other species on earth has this. None. If the great flood story was true we would see such issues traced back to that same time period in at least the majority of creatures living today including humans. But this is not the case. There is zero evidence for this. But the most damning evidence against this story comes from archeology. It is accepted that writing was invented by the Babylonians. Their writing was called cuneiform. It was written on stone tablets by carving and etching it in. The famous code of Hammurabi is one example of this. What has been dated as the first or one of the earliest works of fiction writing (in cuneiform) is the so called Epic of Gilgamesh. This work has been dated to around 10,000BC therefore older than the Genesis story. The story narrates a great Flood that was sent by a deity to punish certain Babylonians tribes for bad behavior. The narrative and events are almost ditto ditto. The conclusion is the Noah story was plagiarized from the Babylonians and imbibed into the Hebrew culture and hence their holy writings. And this is easy to explain. Why? Who was the “father” of the Israelites? Abraham. And where was he from? According to the bible (Genesis 11;28-31) he was from Ur of the Chaldees, one of the Babylonian tribes in Mesopotamia. Babylon was also one city in Mesopotamia. Abraham’s father Terah was a high priest in the Babylonian religion and lived and preached at their temple (called ziggurat) so it is very plausible that Abraham himself was educated and well versed in the literary works of the Babylonians which he took with him when he moved to Canaan. And the rest as they say is history. This flood story is false. The significance of the story is in the allegorical and rhetorical lessons it teaches us, not the physical lists of events as mentioned. Don’t be wicked, don’t kill each other, don’t corrupt the earth, don’t steal, don’t rape, don’t lie, etc etc. Today we know better so we don’t need fairy tales to guide us. This topic will be continued in another post.
kwaku ba © July 2010
