To ask a stupid question? Noah's Ark

[Besttimelftheyear]

So I am not religious, but I would say I was brought up Christian. I would say my parents were non practicing Christians, but I was taught bible stories as truth and facts. The logical adult in me now says that most of the events can be explained quite simply.

Onto the question. Noah's Ark, is there any evidence of a global flood? Noah was supposed to have taken two of each animals onto the boat while the earth was flooded and wiped out everything else.

Surely this was simply a regular flood like we see today?

What are peoples beliefs or knowledge on this?

This is the first episode

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

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Slightly more sensible video here.

It’s still just a rock

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If you don't understand why the Bible is considered a historical document like other historical documents, it's not really a subject that can be encompassed in MN post, but there is lots of good material on the internet about it, and about how historians treat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

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 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?

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

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.