To ask a stupid question? Noah's Ark

I did theology at university 40 years ago, most of which is now forgotten, but I remember enough to agree with this.

We know that there were 4 sources of the Old Testament. The oral tradtion, the first written version and then two revisions. Outside of these changes scribes had very strict procedures to ensure that the new copy was an exact reproduction of the previous one.

Noah is from the oral tradtion. They're were seen as informative bedtime stories. Even when it was first written down they knew they weren't literal, but they were seen as important. It's fascinating because if you know what you're looking for you can tell which version any given bit comes from.

Hinduism has voluminous written texts that pre-date the written Torah. Buddhism has quite a few as well that are almost as old.

I know the bible is treated as something more that just historical record because people living now still believe in the God it describes. I believe there were other religions of the time that have fallen to the side (I'm including Judaism and Christianity as one) do any of them have such detailed written records? I'm guessing the Egyptian Gods have multiple written records, does anyone still believe in those Gods though?

Deary me you are rude aren’t you

during my time as an academic, I worked at a russel/ red rock uni and taught in many departments one being the theology department (but not actually teaching theology), and I never met an academic there who thought Moses and the like was real as such, parts inspired perhaps but as I said no archeological evidence, not too unsurprising but no third party evidence either, his existence was viewed with a large amount of scepticism hence why I’m asking for the name and ideally paper of scholars who’ve argued his existence is grounded in fact so I may read the paper. The bible is obviously a historical document as is the Quran but that doesn’t mean that everything detailed in there is grounded in fact

and for the record those doubting Mohammed’s existence were students and not scholars

I'm not really sure here what you are asking.

As I said, there are no historical records of Moses outside of the Bible. There are however some scholars who believe he was a real person. It's not an uncommon viewpoint. I know this because I've talked to plenty of Biblical scholars, it's not a particularly hot debate topic, most others tend to take a sort of agnostic view. Some people think he was historical but may actually be a number of different people.

You'd find that Noah is not necessarily seen in the same way, he's much more likely to be interpreted as a sort of mythological figure. Some of this is to do with the period they would have existed, had they in fact lived.

No serious scholars of ancient history dispute that Jesus existed and if you took that line as an applicant for such a position you'd be unlikely to get it. (Mohammed also is not disputed as a historical person. Nor was Siddhartha Gautama, for that matter, though there is no record of him until about 150 years after he lived.)

If you don't understand why the Bible is considered a historical document like other historical documents, it's not really a subject that can be encompassed in MN post, but there is lots of good material on the internet about it, and about how historians treat ancient texts in general.

It’s still just a rock

Slightly more sensible video here.

LOL, you are right, sis. If only we had science.

This is the first episode

Quite. And lots of murder too. Especially kids.. . oh, and also the ever so kind offering of virgins as spoils of war..

Lots of incest, rape and slavery in the Bible 👍🏻

Oh no, that was Lot's daughters. My mistake!

But there was definitely something about Ham and. Noah. The wording like "he saw his nakedness" or something

Isn't the noah story the one where a girls has sex with him whilst he's sleeping??

We've found evidence for at least 2 mass extinction in the fossil record, but none of these correspond to a biblical flood. Surely we should have found by now some strata containing the fossilised remains of the badgers, bison and bull terriers that didn't have a ticket on the ark.

Why though is it 'important' to be clear about the semantics of something that cannot fit the evidence whichever way you view the text? Sure, it's saying nearly all life was destroyed (even if 2 of every species was saved then nearly all life was destroyed). This simply did not happen, whatever you think 'kind' meant. The people transmitting an oral tradition wouldn't have been clear about what it meant.

on my trip to India many years ago, I learnt a fascinating fact that they too believe there was a massive “reset” kind of flood that happened. They believe this flood (called Pralaya) at the end of every cycle of time. One cycle consists of 4 Yugas. Each yuga is several thousands of years long. We are currently the the last yuga of a cycle. Summary: End is near.

Yes... so, the proposition is presumably that the common ancestors of each current species of animal were all present at the time of the alleged flood (onviously this is completely unsupported by the fossil record) and it was a pair of each of these that showed up for the boat trip and then they speciated in a very short space of time - if not the few thousand years allowed by young earth creationists, then at most within the period of human civilization (again, zero evidence for any such thing happening).

It's all ludicrous, and debating what the word 'kind' may or may not be supposed to mean is quite pointless.

All right, assuming kind just means families or similar. Take bears then. He took two bears on board. Does that mean you believe in the Ark and in evolution? For polar bears, grizzlies, brown bears, etc to now exist must mean that they evolved from that pair, and you think both the bible and evolution are true.

This really isn't true. The claim is that there was an actual global flood, which is also nonsense. Trying to explain it away as symbolism is a complete misrepresentation of the story as written.

it talks about 'kinds' of animals, and we should understand that 'kinds' doesn't mean species, you silly lot, it means....some higher order of classification

We should understand that "kinds" may not have been used to mean what we'd today call "species", but it might have been. For all we know it might even have been some tighter classification, eg brown cows being a separate "kind" to black cows so there may have had to have been seven pairs of each.

Ancient Hebrew didn't have a specific word for "species" in the sense we mean it today so any modern interpretation of what "kind" means is very much open to interpretation. Claiming that "kind" definitely didn't mean "species" and, instead, meant a broader classification is a relatively recent apologetic. It appears to have come from a need to justify the kind of absolute literal reading of the Bible spearheaded by some some American Baptist congregations.

all your questions are fully answered in the bonkers website linked earlier
the whole thing about how did they fit so many animals is because, if you read Genesis properly it talks about 'kinds' of animals, and we should understand that 'kinds' doesn't mean species, you silly lot, it means....some higher order of classification, like maybe genus or family (they were vague here, but as an example, Noah wouldn't have needed very single sort of turtle, just a turtle - or 2- would do)
If you want to see dinosaurs frolicking with modern species, watched by humans, its all there

What worries me about the Noah story is that there is a minimal gene pool. All the offspring of those couples on the Ark are effectively brothers and sisters and in order to perpetuate they would have to fornicate.
"C'mon Bro, or we'll die out".

That's not a great plan. God should have had 2 Arks to preclude this situation arising.

It's surprising that he didn't think of that.