Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 30

 Noah's Ark

The story of Noah's Ark is a children's favorite, but it is one of most absurd stories in the entire Bible, and that's saying a lot.  It also demonstrates the twisted morality of the Bible: God destroys every living thing in the world, including innocent children and animals, because he gets pissed off at some wicked men.  Obviously, God needs to go to anger management classes.

Here's my take on the story of Noah's ark.  I will intersperse quotations from the Bible (King James version) with my own telling of the story, which will include a conversation between Noah and God.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:8)

My comment: yes, Noah is pretty easy on the eyes.

God's actions are so bizarre in this story, the only way we can make sense of them is to imagine Noah and God talking, much like John Denver does in the movie Oh, God (above).

God: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood ... The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits."  (Genesis 6:15-16)

Noah: "Um, what's a cubit?"  (Note: a cubit was about 18 inches.)

God: "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." (Genesis 7:2)

Noah: "Um, you do realize, don't you, that seven isn't divisible by two?  So you can't have seven beasts where each male is paired with a female."

God: "Well, math isn't my strong point."

Noah (under his breath): "Yeah, neither is morality."

God: "All right, you figure it out.  Just get two of each.  Like two lions."

Noah: "How about these two from the Cardiff Lions gay rugby team?"

God: "Whatever.  You handle it."

Noah: "Great.  I'll also take these two tigers from the Detroit Tigers."

(Photo: World Series finale, 1945, by LIFE photographer Scherschel.  Tigers star Hank Greenberg is drinking beer in the locker room.  I added the color.)

Noah: "And of course we need two bears.  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

Noah: "Hey, God, am I supposed to take two of every kind of insect, too?  You know, there are over 350,000 species of beetles alone."

God: "Don't bother me with these details."

(Photo: a dragonfly on the penis of a guy called Zuerigay.  We'll see him in a future post.)

Noah: "How about plants?  You know, if the whole Earth is flooded, all the plants are going to die, too.  Something tells me that you didn't think this through."

And the rain was upon the Earth ...

forty days ...

and forty nights. (Genesis 7:12)

Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered. (Genesis 7:20)

(Illustration: The World Destroyed by Water by Gustave Doré, 1866)

Note 1: fifteen cubits is about 23 feet deep, hardly enough to cover mountains, but it would have been a huge flood on a flat floodplain like Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).  The Biblical story of the flood was cribbed from earlier Babylonian flood stories from Mesopotamia, including a newly-deciphered (in 2014) Babylonian cuneiform tablet that not only tells a flood story, but has the animals going into a boat two by two.  This Babylonian tablet dates from about a thousand years before the Bible was written.

Note 2: No matter how much it rained, although there might be local flooding, mean sea level would not rise an inch, let alone enough to cover Mt. Everest.  This is because of the hydrologic cycle, which kids learn about in elementary school.  Water evaporates from oceans and lakes to form clouds, which produce rain, which runs back into the oceans and lakes.  The total amount of water is constant.  Obviously, whoever wrote the Bible didn't know about the hydrologic cycle.

You don't think the Bible is the word of God, do you?  If it is, then God is both a plagiarist and an ignoramus.

Another note on why this story is idiotic: it assumes that nobody in the world except Noah had a boat, so everyone else would drown.  Obviously a false assumption; at the very least, fishermen would have boats.  Thank you, Rick, for posting a meme pointing this out in your blog Sicko Ricko's Crap.

(Photo: Boats on Lake Travis, Texas)

We resume our story:

And the waters prevailed upon the earth for an hundred and fifty days. (Genesis 7:24)

Noah: "A hundred and fifty days?  What am I supposed to do on a boat for a hundred and fifty days?"

God: "I'm sure you'll think of something."

[Noah] sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. (Genesis 8:10-11)

(Illustration: The Dove Sent Forth from the Ark by Gustave Doré, 1866.  Except the dove isn't finding an olive leaf; it's only finding rotting dead bodies.)

And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. (Genesis 8:4)

Noah: "Hey, God, how come we had to land on this desolate mountain top?"

(Photo: Bighorn mountains, Wyoming)

Noah: "I mean, the whole Earth was covered with water, so we could have landed anywhere.  Why didn't we land somewhere nice, like Hawaii?"

God (ignoring Noah): "Be fruitful and multiply." (Genesis 8:17)

Noah: "Did you say be fruity with multiple guys?  OK.  See ya."

(Photo: Shipwreck beach, Lanai, Hawaii)