Noah and the Flood |
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Noah and his ark are found in similar Deluge
stories to be found thoughout the middle East, Asia and Africa. All
these stories have the elements
of a named man building a box, putting many animals in it and
surviving a great flood with his family.
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We should note that Noah did not land on Mt. Ararat. He landed on "the
hills of Ararat". Ararat has been identified as the territiory south
east of the Black Sea in Eastern Turkey. If all the glaciers in the
world were to meltm and the Mediterraen Sea empty itself into the
Black Sea, the water level of the Black Sea would only raise about
300 feet or so, not the 1300 feet necessary to place it atop
the modern Mt. Ararat. 
Here is possibly
what happened: |
Sometime before 5000 BC, Noah was living aling the Southeastern border of the Black Sea. This was home to a growing civilzation with vast farmklands, many growing town and much commerce. Through revelation from God, intuition, or reports from travellers, realized that an ice dam, or bockage to the north was about to give way He built a large raft, put walls and a roof on it, maybe a couple of decks, and moved in his farm animals(perhaps a hundred), food and animal feed. The family (maybe a dozen people or so) lived on board the raft until the dam broke. The raft floated and drifted eastward to finally come to rest on some of the higher hills in Ararat., maybe 200 or 300 feet higher than where he had once lived- and maybe fifty miles eastward. He survived when thousands perished. It was quite an adventure and the story was passed on down to his descendants as they spread south and eastward to what became Sumeria, Babylon and Assyria |