Every society has flood stories. There are literally thousands of them, some similar, some different. Why is this? Well, I guess there were a lot of floods. Also, the end of the ice age, and the massive flood about 8,000 years ago in the Crimea may have left some memories.
Most of ancient mythology is actually based around natural events such as floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, eclipses and similar. In fact, if you imagine the very ancient world, these kind of things would have been the most monumental and literally earth shattering events that happened. There were no world wars, no TV, no 24hr entertainment. So when a volcano or earthquake or flood happened, it would have spawned a massive amount of story telling and mythology. For more details read ‘When they severed earth from sky’.
So what about Noach? It’s a story. It didn’t happen. There was no Teyvoh with all the world’s animals. There was no massive flood, global or regional, where everybody got wiped out. There may have been a massive flood 8,000 years ago, but that’s not the story of Noach. It’s just mythology.
Why would God write such mythology?
The obvious answer is that He wouldn’t. No way would Melech Malchei Hamlochim Hakodosh Boruch Hu write a fairy tale about all the animals in the world being saved from global destruction on a boat. It’s just mythology. And, like all mythology, much meaning can be read into it. Jews are especially good at reading meaning into things, just look at this long list of divrei torah.
It’s mind boggling to me the lengths that religious fundies will go to insisting that God write this story. In fact, assuming God exists, this is a tremendous insult to Him. What kind of retarded god would write a nonsense story such as this? Don’t be stupid, God didn’t write the story of Noach, man did. And it’s insulting to God to claim He wrote it.
