by
Damien F. Mackey
I have previously pointed to the ironical - and I
think humorous - situation whereby
the likes of an anti-fundamentalist professor
Plimer can sometimes be clearer about
certain principles of biblical exegesis than are
those who embrace sola scriptura;
whilst the latter can sometimes, here and there, be
more scientifically accurate
than are the professional scientists.
ARK MOUNTAINS
Hopeful Ark-eologists have climbed the high, snow-capped Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) in Turkey in search of remnants of Noah’s Ark. These, captivated by boat-shaped natural rock formations in the area, some with iron-like weathered volcanic materials, will claim to have discovered the massive boat complete with its, so they think, iron filings or brackets.
It appears that Byzantine Christian explorers, keen to locate famous
biblical mountains, had locked onto the most impressive ones, such as Mount
Ararat, without due regard for biblical details and the more ancient
traditions. That is also how the marvellous peak, Jebel Musa (“Mountain of
Moses”), in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, was chosen for biblical Mount Sinai
(or Horeb).
Now, in our own times, certain fundamentalist Christians in particular -
some of these being decidedly charlatan, but attracting their equally blind
supporters - will claim to have located famous biblical places, or artefacts
(Sodom and Gomorrah, Egyptian chariots in the Red Sea, the Ark of the
Covenant), all under the influence, allegedly, of the Holy Spirit.
See e.g. my articles:
Reflecting
on the biblical Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell (Lee)
(3) Reflecting on the biblical
Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell (Lee)
More on
the Egyptology of Ron Wyatt and Mary Nell
(2) More on the Egyptology of Ron
Wyatt and Mary Nell
None of this ever, of course, sees the light of day, the excuse being
photographic problems or, most conveniently for them, the perfectly timed
intervention of the local authorities.
Telling lies for God: Reason vs creationism (1994), by Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences,
Ian Plimer, wonderfully exposes such shams by fundamentalist charlatans who do
the Word of God much harm by their unscientific ignorance and quackery.
That is not to say, however, that all ‘Creationist’ types are charlatans
or are scientifically inept.
I have previously pointed to the ironical - and I think humorous -
situation whereby the likes of an anti-fundamentalist professor Plimer can
sometimes be clearer about certain principles of biblical exegesis than are
those who embrace sola scriptura; whilst the latter can sometimes, here
and there, be more scientifically accurate than are the professional
scientists.
Ian Plimer will, in the case of the fundamentalists’ global Flood,
absolutely and hilariously ridicule - and rightly so - such a notion, using a
heady mix of science, common sense, and sailing nous.
He will describe the preposterous situation of a Queen Mary sized Ark
being tossed hither and thither in a turbulent global sea, it being overloaded
with dinosaurs and other massive animals, not to mention those swarms of
irritating insects and pests.
In his section, “The Freighter’s Cargo” (ibid., Ch.4, pp.
109-134), Plimer raises such points as:
How did Noah build a system to preserve Eucalyptus leaves for the Koala
passengers from Australia, which was then undiscovered, and had an unknown
flora and fauna?
Whales would have bloated with clay as they tried to strain for the odd
krill which had not choked and sunk. The flood waters would have been so muddy
that light could not have entered the top centimetre of water, hence aquatic
animals would die.
Some organisms just don’t survive as a couplet. For example, bees, flies
and other organisms live in swarms and without community activity they can
neither function nor survive.
… the literal interpretation has no exceptions – not one species of
bacteria to be omitted, no 80-tonne Ultrasauri, no Tyrannosaurus rex, no
whales, no maritime organism. Nothing!
Some organisms only eat live food and, if it is not available, then they
eat their partner (for example, praying mantis).
Many carnivores need to gnaw on bones to avoid dental diseases and many
animals such as rodents need to gnaw to stop teeth overgrowth. Did the
thousands of known rodents gnaw on the timbers structurally supporting the ark?
Another problem was clean potable water. A bucket could not really have
been thrown overboard as it is felt that there would have been mass carnage if
all organisms were fed on 1:1 saline water-mud mix.
Many animals are so sensitive that they do not survive in zoos, and yet
they managed in this wildly lurching overcrowded ark for a year.
The magnitude of the feeding task is astronomical. If the crew of four
males worked 24 hours a day for the 371 days at sea, then each animal would
have received a total of six seconds of attention for the whole year.
It is a little difficult to calculate the volume of excreta generated by
extinct animals, however even the most basic calculations shows that thousands
of tonnes of urine and excreta were generated on a daily basis by those
unwilling passengers. We must remember that the ark had a ventilation port of
one square cubit. …
And then there are those manifold varieties of termites ….
Ian Plimer will also have much fun at the expense of the ‘Creationists’
in regard to the aftermath of the Flood (ibid., p. 91):
… the maiden voyage of Noah’s love boat was a dreadfully harrowing
journey with no chance of survival for the passengers. It makes the maiden
voyage of the Titanic look like a Sunday afternoon ferry trip in calm waters.
This trip is recognized in the Yahwist’s version as traumatic because, once on
dry lands, Noah planted vines (Genesis 9:21)! It appears that the ark trip was
so harrowing than Noah reverted to periods of dreadful drunkenness and slept
naked in his tent (Genesis 9:21)! This I can identify with. ….
“… on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest”,
according to Genesis 8:4, “on the mountains of Ararat”.
That is “mountains” (הָרֵ֥י) plural.
Bill Crouse and Gordon Franz bring some much-needed perspective to the
situation:
http://www.christianinformationministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/BAS19_4.pdf
For the most part, the search has been confined to the massive 16,945 ft
(5165 m) Mt. Ararat in northeastern Turkey. Despite Herculean efforts and
countless heroic attempts, no Ark remains have ever been properly verified at
this location.
We believe there are a number of reasons why these efforts failed.
First, there is the mistaken belief by many that the Bible designates
Mt. Ararat as the landing place. …. Contrary to this belief, the author of
Genesis does not designate a specific mountain. As most of our readers are
already aware, the 8:4 passage refers only to a mountainous region, i.e., the
mountains of Ararat …. No exact peak is referred to. The earliest reference to
this region outside of the Bible is Assyrian in origin, and it referred to the
mountainous territory directly north of the Assyrian kingdom. …. It is the
consensus among scholars that the Urartian state at the time Genesis was
written … did not extend as far north as the present-day Mt. Ararat. …. W. F.
Albright, known as the dean of Biblical archaeologists, wrote:
There is no basis either in biblical geography or in later tradition for
the claim that Mount Ararat (the mountain bearing this name in modern times) is
the location of the settling of the ark. (Genesis 8:4 says the Ark
“rested...upon the mountains of Ararat.”) ....
Mount Judi (or Çudi) Dagh in the Urartian region - that particular
mountain being the one favoured by Crouse and Franz - had previously seemed to
me to be the best candidate for the approximate place of the Ark’s landing.
But I now think that there may be a better alternative. See e.g. my
article:
Noah’s
Ark Mountain
(7) Noah's Ark
Mountain | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Tradition has it that the neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib (who campaigned
in Urartu) actually worshipped a beam of bituminous wood taken from the Ark.
No doubt the local ancient people in-the-know would have collected the
revered portions of the Ark as sacred relics (or even for fire wood).
It is unlikely, though, that Sennacherib was (as according to further
tradition) worshipping his piece of the Ark when he was assassinated: “And it
came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that
Adrammelech and Sharezer [two sons] smote him with the sword: and they escaped
into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead” (2 Kgs.
19:36-37).
He would instead have been worshipping his god Nusku (rendered in
translations as “Nisroch”), the ‘evening star’ aspect of the planet Mercury.
One of Sennacherib’s alter egos was of the supposed Middle
Kingdom ruler, Tukulti-Ninurta 1, of whom there is a bas-relief worshipping
this particular god.
The animals that Noah and his family chose to dwell with them in the Ark
must have been only such as would have been necessary for that period of time
to provide for the basics of food, clothing, and, later, sacrifice (e.g.,
sheep, cattle, goats, fowls) – domestic animals. Noah’s Ark like legends from
other parts of the ancient world have animals such as these on board their
various forms of ark. They do not include the more exotic, or dinosaurian,
types of species.
Now, the many animals depicted at the Göbekli Tepe ‘zoo’, which is geographically
close to the mountain landing of the Ark, Karaca Dağ, might afford a clue to
the types of animals with which Noah was familiar.
They are not necessarily the ones usually depicted in our Noachic
illustrations.
God made a covenant with Noah, as he later would with Abraham (Genesis
15) and with Moses.
In the case of Noah, the covenant was ‘underwritten’ with a brilliant
rainbow (9:16):
“Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember
the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on
the earth”.
This is the true meaning of the rainbow. It belongs to God.
According to pope Pius XII (Ad Caeli Reginam, # 51): “… the
Mother of God. …. Is she not a rainbow in the clouds reaching towards God, the
pledge of a covenant of peace? …. Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that
made it; surely it is beautiful in its brightness. It encompasses the heaven
about with the circle of its glory, the hands of the Most High have displayed
it”. ….
Catholics and Orthodox find much Marian symbolism in the story of the
Ark and the rainbow.
https://www.suscopts.org/messages/lectures/marilecture4.pdf
“While by Noah the Prophet eight souls were saved through the ark, by
Lord Jesus Christ we all are saved through baptism. Accordingly, the ark that
received the prophet and became the means of salvation is a symbol of St. Mary
who received the Word of God giving Him the Human body by which He died for our
salvation”.
The dove sent out by Noah (Genesis 8:8-9) symbolises “the Spirit of God
hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2), and this is picked up again by the
Evangelists at the Baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit over the waters (e.g.,
Luke 3:21-22): “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized
too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on
him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son,
whom I love; with you I am well pleased’.”
Following on from the symbolism of Mary as the new Ark, we read in
Luke’s Gospel of her espousal to the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation (1:35):
“The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the
Son of God’.”
The Polish priest-martyr at Auschwitz, St. Maximilian Kolbe, would
define the Holy Spirit as “the Uncreated Immaculate Conception” and the Blessed
Virgin Mary, spouse of the Spirit, as “the created Immaculate Conception”.
‘Je suis l'Immaculée Conception’, she declared to St. Bernadette at
Lourdes (in 1858).
Moses will be ‘a new Noah’. He, too, will have an Ark built.
While Mount Har Karkom near the Paran desert, and not the distant Jebel
Musa, is to be more favoured as the biblical Mount Sinai – professor Emmanuel
Anati shows it to have been a holy mountain of very long standing, he
designating it as a “prehistoric Lourdes” – I have more lately veered towards
the identification of one of his co-workers in the area, Flavio Barbiero:
Mysterious
mountain in the Karkom valley may be the sacred Mount Horeb
(2) Mysterious mountain in the
Karkom valley may be the sacred Mount Horeb
Legend has it that Noah had to escape to the land of Egypt (whatever it
was called back then) for a time – like the Holy Family would have to do when
Herod was king (Matthew 2:13-23).
Did Noah, then, on his return from Egypt - like Moses would do later -
build the Ark at the mountain in the Karkom valley, thereby consecrating it
forever as a holy mountain?
Who knows? It is a thought.
But it is interesting that some sceptical of professor Anati’s claims re
Har Karkom had ribbed him with: ‘Next you should look for Noah's Ark’.
GENESIS TOLEDÔT
Did Moses write the Book of Genesis, as according to tradition?
No. As already discussed in relation to the findings of P. J. Wiseman re
the structure of the Book of Genesis, Moses, as editor, compiled the extant
ancient family histories (toledôt) of the Patriarchs who had gone before
him: Adam, Noah, Noah’s three sons, etc:
Toledôt
structure of Genesis
(2) Toledôt structure of Genesis
Moses substantially wrote the rest of the Pentateuch, though.
P. J. Wiseman has best written on all this in Ancient Records and the
Structure of Genesis (Thomas Nelson, 1985), pp. 102-103 (my emphasis):
We suggest that the internal evidence of the book [Genesis] indicates
the tablets of Creation were extant in the time of Noah, and we suggest that
the record of the Garden and the Fall (to which Moses added a geographical
description) had been written by this time. These would descend to Noah, for
we notice that in his own tablet (5:29) he makes a reference (3:17) to the
first tablet. Noah added the genealogical list contained in chapter 5.
Already several cuneiform tablets bearing some resemblance to this chapter have
been found; they refer to ten men who “ruled before the Flood”.
Actually the whole documentary theory (JEDP; Graf-Wellhausen) seems to
have been founded upon an intuitive insight, French physician Jean Astruc’s
(1684-1766) awareness that the Flood narrative account in Genesis was written
by more than one author.
Of course it was the toledôt of three people, Shem, Ham
and Japheth (Genesis 10:1-11:9). Unfortunately, after that, the documentary
theory grew into an uncontrollable monster, its exponents finding sources
within sources within sources, “confusion confounded”, as one commentator has
described it. Single biblical verses became butchered, procrusteanised,
sometimes with a different source accredited to each of two halves of some
unfortunate verse.
Both the Old and the New Testaments need to be rescued from the literary
straightjacket imposed upon them by the imposition of artificial chapters and
verses. So many structural and literary problems are solved by the recognition
of P. J. Wiseman’s simple, but archaeologically (ancient scribal methods)
attested structure – it being so profound and yet easily explainable even to a
child.
Dr. Scott Hahn has brilliantly shown for instance that, when the
artificial chapter arrangements - in this case, chapters 11 and 12 of the Book
of Revelation - are ignored, something marvellous is discovered: the Ark of the
Covenant (11:19) merges into “the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon
under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head” (12:1).
Mary, Hahn thus concludes, is the new Ark of the Covenant.
Here is one excerpt from Dr. Hahn:
Ark the Herald Angels Sing
To Jews of the first century, the shocker in the Apocalypse was surely
John’s disclosure at the end of chapter 11. It is then that, after hearing
seven trumpet blasts, John sees the heavenly temple opened (Rev 11:19) and
within it—a miracle!—the ark of the covenant.
This would have been the news story of the millennium. The ark of the
covenant—the holiest object in ancient Israel—had been missing for six
centuries. Around 587 B.C., the prophet Jeremiah concealed the ark in order to
preserve it from defilement when Babylonian invaders came to destroy the
temple. We can read the story in 2 Maccabees:
Jeremiah came and found a cave, and he brought there the tent and the
ark and the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance. Some of those who
followed him came up to mark the way, but could not find it. When Jeremiah
learned of it, he rebuked them and declared:
“The place shall be unknown until God gathers His people together again
and shows His mercy. And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the
glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear.” (2 Mac 2:5-8)
When Jeremiah speaks of “the cloud,” he means the shekinah, or glory
cloud, that shrouded the ark of the covenant and signified God’s presence.
Within Solomon’s temple, the ark had occupied the holy of holies. In fact, the
ark was what made that inner sanctum holy. For the ark held the tablets of
stone on which the finger of God had traced the ten commandments. The ark
contained a relic of the manna, the food God gave to sustain His people during
their desert sojourn. The ark also preserved Aaron’s rod, the symbol of his
priestly office.
Made of acacia wood, the ark was box shaped, covered with gold ornament,
and overshadowed by carved cherubim. Atop the ark was the mercy seat, which was
always unoccupied. Standing before the ark, within the Holy Place, stood the
menorah, or seven-branched candlestick.
Yet the first Jewish readers of the Apocalypse knew these details only
from history and tradition. (1) Since Jeremiah’s hiding place had never been
found, the rebuilt temple had no ark in its holy of holies, no shekinah, no
manna in the ark, and no cherubim or mercy seat.
Then along came John claiming to have seen the shekinah (the “glory of
God,” Rev 21:10-11, 23)—and most remarkable of all, the ark of the covenant. ….
Early Settlements
For how long did the small band of Flood survivors tarry in the area
where the Ark had landed?
They must have continued to remain there until the Flood waters had
subsided throughout the surrounding regions. They would not immediately have
been able to venture into more distant regions like those parts of Egypt
affected by the wild Nile that would create the northern Delta, nor the Persian
Gulf Delta, nor would they favour settling in regions that were still
ice-bound.
Returning to hypothesis, might even the Eocene (Tethys?) Sea (supposedly
to be dated somewhere between 56 to 33.9 million years ago) be connected with
the Noachic Flood?
Terry Lawrence (N.Z.) has proposed a Flood-related revision of some of
the Geological Ages and the Ice Age that, if realistic, would bring this closer
to being a possibility:
Pick up a copy of Kummel’s History of the Earth and glance at
pp.447-455 and you will see the fallacy of this time-gap.
The maps on these pages clearly show that during the Tertiary Age
Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor were in a state of complete ruin, being
mostly under water. Note in particular the Great Tethys or Central Sea which
stretches 9000 miles from Spain to India and is up to 2000 miles wide.
On p.453 the map for the Oligocene subdivision of the Tertiary shows
that the sea invasion of Europe plainly stops at the boundary of the area
covered by the ice age in Scandinavia.
This is curious because under the conventional scheme the ice age does
not occur for another 23 million years. During the Eocene subdivision of the
Tertiary the sea covered the south of England up to a point where the later ice
age reached, supposedly 38 million years later.
During the whole period of these disastrous sea invasions and large
scale fresh water floodings the northern part of the British Isles along with
Scandinavia was not touched. In North America it is a similar story for the
Canadian Shield. While the rest of the continent was subject to sea incursions,
rain storm flooding in the mid-west and volcanic eruptions in the Rockies and
Central America all was tranquil in north-east Canada.
It is absolutely impossible that while the rest of the world was
drowning, most of the British Isles, Scandinavia and Canada escaped. There can
only be one solution, i.e. the ice age struck these lands at the same
time as the Noachian Deluge. Conventional geologists have therefore
reconstructed the ages of the past incorrectly by placing too much time between
the end of the Tertiary and the ice age. If either follows immediately or
happens at the same time as the subdivisions of the Tertiary i.e. the
Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods are all contemporary with one
another). ….
[End of quote]
Whether or not Terry Lawrence has his model exactly right, I believe
that he is on the right track, at least, by his use of the Flood sequence as an
aid towards bringing some degree of sensible manageability to the grossly
inflated Geological (Ice) Ages.
In a similar fashion we shall find later, when searching for the
historical “new Noah”, Moses, in Egyptian history, that he, Moses, will serve
to bring some manageability to the grossly inflated Egyptian history, its
supposed Kingdoms and dynasties.
The Eocene Sea, which professor Emmanuel Anati has found to have only
just covered Har Karkom, ought to be considered as a hydrographical candidate
for the Flood inundation, I suggest, along with the Great Tethys Sea as
referred to by Terry Lawrence.
Dr. John Osgood, who (to my knowledge) has not ventured into those murky
Geological Ages, has undertaken an important revision of the Stone Ages in
relation to the Flood, however, identifying the latter’s watery traces in the
very regions where I would expect these to appear, in Iraq and the Middle East,
Anatolia, Sinai and Egypt – all pointing to, for him, the great Genesis Flood.
Conventionally-minded (often evolutionary-minded) geologists,
palaeontologists, archaeologists and historians tend to adhere rigidly to an
‘Indian file’, or ‘chest-of-drawers’, linear arrangement – with little or no
overlap amidst their neatly filed compartments.
Revisionist scholars on the other hand, such as Dr. John Osgood, have
found that such an arrangement does not always reflect the testimony of the
received data, and hence can be quite artificial.
In due time, individual parties of survivors would have settled in
places such as Turkey, or Armenia, where we find some extremely ancient sites
(e.g., Göbekli Tepe and Çatal Hüyük), in Anatolia, northern Syria and northern
Mesopotamia.
A first place of settlement to which the Bible alludes is “the land of
Shinar” (Genesis 11:2): “And as people journeyed eastward, they found a plain
in the land of Shinar and settled there”.
The general assumption, for a long time, has been that “Shinar” is
synonymous with so-called Sumer in southern Mesopotamia.
But others, like W. F. Albright, have queried this identification.
Consequently, early archaeologists went to southern Mesopotamia, Bibles
in hand, in the hope of locating key biblical sites.
To this day, the famous capital city of Akkad has not been found in the
area.
We just read that the descendants of Noah “journeyed eastward” to “the
land of Shinar”.
Does that fit geographically for a trek to NE Syria?
The Hebrew word translated “eastward”, miqqedem (מִקֶּ֑דֶם), can also mean “from ancient times”, which I think may be more
appropriate here.
It is most unlikely, I would suggest, that all of the various groups
that eventually departed from the Ark mountain would have headed to Shinar, and
that all of them spoke the same language. During the approximate one and a half
millennia that separated Adam’s beginnings from the Flood, with Cain and his
people early separated from the rest, and then with the Cain-ites and Seth-ites
presumably branching out geographically - though there was intermarriage as
well, as Noah records (Genesis 6:4) – the various tribes would have embraced
various dialects (then languages?), customs and religious practices.
“Devilled Ham” (as Dr. Scott Hahn calls him) may have attracted some
less than pious characters to board the Ark.
Then, after the Flood had subsided, the three sons of Noah, who had
compiled the important Table of Nations (Genesis 10: 1-32), which does not
suffer from comparison with modern DNA science, must have become separated, for
only Shem’s name is attached to the next toledôt (concluding at 11:10).
Ham presumably
found his way to Egypt, “the land of Ham” (e.g., Psalm 78:51), with, or to be
followed by, his (perhaps eldest) son, Cush, who went yet further south, to
Ethiopia (Kush), around which country the river Gihon wound (Genesis 2:13).
Japheth became the
father of the Indo-Europeans, Indians (Prajapati), Greeks (Iapetos),
Romans (Jupiter). In fact, virtually all of the gods of the ancient
pantheons were based upon antediluvian notables (e.g., Tubal-cain =
Vulcan [Rome]) = Ptah [Egypt] = Hephaestus [Greece], the god of fire,
metalworking, stone masonry, forges, sculpture.
And Shem, the great and mysterious king-priest, Melchizedech,
would ultimately be found in the city of Salem (near Shechem, the “navel” of
Israel), where he would one day encounter, and bless “as a greater to a lesser”
(Hebrews 7:7), Abram (later Abraham). “… Melchizedek means “king of
righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.”
Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days
or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever”
(Hebrews 2:3).
