Genesis, Flood, Ark Mountain

 

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).