The Great Flood and Other Myths and Legends of the Old Testament

[Antaletriangle]

http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0109/greatflood.html

Most readers of the "UFO Digest" website already have an interest in ancient history as it has been redefined by scholars like Erich Von Daniken and Zechariah Sitchin and have come to look differently at the scriptures than the mainstream religious community would have us do. Much has been written on the universality of the Great Flood legends, for example, which serves to demonstrate how the same story is told and retold among a vastly widespread number of cultures and beliefs.

Meanwhile, the study of the Bible itself has been in a nearly constant state of change since the mid-19th century, when the notion of what is sometimes called "critical scholarship" began in earnest. Scholars began to see patterns emerge in the ancient scriptures that had somehow lain dormant for centuries. For instance, no one had previously challenged some of the variations found in the text of Genesis, where the story of the Great Flood is told with conflicting details and seems to be the combination of two different accounts somewhat clumsily edited together by a member of the Jewish priesthood during the Babylonian captivity.

But along with advances in the sciences came advances in the anthropological study of the folklore of ancient peoples, a field in which Sir James G. Frazer was perhaps the most notable and groundbreaking scholar of his day. His seminal book, "The Golden Bough," set the pattern for the comparative study of world religions, and such superstar scholars of myth as the late Joseph Campbell owe Frazer a debt they can never repay.

So it is with gratitude that we take up "The Great Flood and Other Myths and Legends of the Old Testament," recently reissued by Global Communications. The original book, published in 1918, is faithfully rendered and the new edition includes an excellent old-timey drawing on its cover of the horrified wicked perishing in the waters of the Great Flood.

The main thrust of Frazer's work is to analyze not only the Biblical stories themselves, but also to show how the same basic storylines are repeated throughout the ancient world as well as in the myths of indigenous people discovered more recently. It seems that everyone, from the ancient Sumerians to the Babylonians, told the same story of the world-destroying flood and the small remnant of people and animals that survived. Indian and Chinese writings also offer their own version of the flood story, and tribes from Africa and South America give similar accounts of a watery cataclysm.

Frazer acknowledges that some of those similarities may be due to simple contact between the various cultures, or even the simultaneous inspiration of different peoples by the same events. (As a member in good standing of the 21st century UFO believers community, one might ask if all the obviously related accounts sprang from the same alien source?)

One particularly liberating aspect of Frazer and the whole school of comparative mythology is that it frees the mind from the strait-jacket of what one was taught in Sunday school, namely that the Bible is infallible and literally correct at all times. When one studies the scriptures closely enough, with the help of Frazer, one can see that it is undeniably a flawed and imperfect work. That so much of what we had assumed to be the stories of just the Biblical cast of characters alone are also found in myths throughout the world and even in times preceding the writing of the Bible opens the seeker to new horizons and fresh interpretations.

Frazer also tackles the weighty subject of creation myths, comparing the account in Genesis to a multitude of other primitive accounts that also describe God creating man out of clay and earth and breathing life into him, as well as the story of the fall of Man from the grace of Eden by deception and jealousy. For instance, the Hottentots of Africa substitute a hare for the serpent of Genesis, but the same sad outcome of death and misery quickly follows. There is also a fascinating section on the Mark of Cain, which details how many widely-separated cultures dealt with murder and bloodguilt. While these stories may today be looked on as superstitious and silly, Frazer points out that they nevertheless served the invaluable purpose of frightening man into following certain moral prerogatives. Without these stories and the religious laws that came from them, we would be a sorry lot indeed.

"The Great Flood and Other Myths and Legends of the Old Testament" is required reading for the spiritually inclined. Sir James George Frazer spent a lifetime compiling a mountain of research and some of the fruits of that mighty labor are offered here again in this timely Global Communications reprint. It's the kind of religious scholarship that both endures and enthralls nearly a century later.

[Ashatav]

This is the conclusion after puting 1000 prooves of an existing superrace killed by this cathaclismic event and, then, the survivors funded, 5000, years ago, the greatests ancient civilizations, like Egypt, Sumeria, China and the Maya's root people.

"THE DELUGE

A world war was raging at the time.
In the thirty-fourth century B.C., a catastrophe of incredible magnitude
intervened, causing the world to wobble and ripping the crust of the earth to
shreds. A great Flood swept the whole planet.

November 17, 3398 B.C. 7 That day was probably like most others:
temperate, balmy.

In one longitude, millions were dining…entertaining…relaxing.

Precisely at 8 P.M. the earth gave an enormous shudder.

Prodded by an outside force, the planet tilted on its axis, and amidst
lightning and the worst thunder ever heard by man, the pristine vapour
canopy began to disintegrate. A floodgate of rain was released upon the
earth.

There could be no gentle rising of water. Cosmic forces of horrific
violence came unleashed.
With a dreadful shock, large land masses with their populations slipped
into the sea. The surface of the entire globe became as a giant maelstrom, in
which continents and seas were churned up together.
Attended by a screaming hurricane, tidal waves of 6,000 feet swept
toward the poles. A blanket of lava and asphyxiating gases extinguished all
life.

This cataclysm wiped the Mother Civilization from the face of the earth
and consigned its products to a watery grave forever.


Not only were the antedeluvian people buried, but their technological
achievements were destroyed, including all form of machinery and
construction.

It is quite possible that areas which were most densely populated were
submerged by the sea or buried under thousands of feet of debris. It has
been scientifically estimated that over 75 percent of the earth’s surface is
sedimentary in nature, extending, as in India, to 60,000 feet deep.
Indeed, the earth, torn and twisted and shaking, was not to quiet down
for centuries. With no less than three thousand volcanoes in eruption, a
dense cloud of dust enshrouded the earth, blocking out the sun and distorting
the climate for hundreds of years. Thus began the Ice Age. 8
Of the human race a mere handful remained; Indeed, their survival was
in every sense a miracle.

Forewarned, they had salvaged what records they might: a compilation
of knowledge which, in due course, would be imparted to their descendants.
Now for the sake of the reader who is unfamiliar with this event, it
should be stressed that the global Flood catastrophe is one of the key facts of all history. Not only is there a mass of geological evidence-it has left an
indelible impression on the memory of the entire human race.
9
An analysis of some 600 individual Flood traditions reveals a
widespread concurrence on essential points:

• the prior corruption of mankind,
• a Flood warning unheeded by the masses,
• a survival vessel,
• the preservation of up to eight people with representative animal
life,
• the sending forth of a bird to determine the suitability of reemerging
land,
• significance in the rainbow,
• descent from a mountain,
• and the repopulation of the whole earth from a single group of
survivors.

Especially remarkable is the persistence of that biblical name Noah.
And this is particularly so when you consider the ultimate language
differences between peoples, and the extreme local distortions which
developed in Flood legends.


Yet the name survived virtually unchanged in such isolated places as
Hawaii (where he was called Nu-u), the Sudan (Nuh), China (Nu-Wah), theAmazon region (Noa), Phrygia (Noe) and among the Hottentots (Noh and
Hiagnoh).

Think about this. Did each of these nations independently concoct the
same name for its flood-surviving ancestor? Or did these widely separated
peoples refer back to the same family of survivors?
The table of nations in Genesis 10 records the gradual dispersion of
Noah’s descendants and lists names, thus offering clues to their history and
dwelling place. It contends that all nations of the earth have sprung from the
family of Noah. 10

Professor W.F. Albright, internationally recognized archaeological
authority, describes this as an astonishingly accurate document…[which]
shows such remarkable ‘modern’ understanding of the ethnic and linguistic
situation in the modern world, in spite of all its complexity, that scholars
never fail to be impressed with the author’s knowledge of the subject. 11
So, in a nutshell, there is good reason to believe that, after the Deluge,
mankind sprang from a single group of people. Chapters 2 to 6 will confirm
that these were not idiots, imbeciles or illiterates; they were in a civilized
state, with an enormous cultural heritage, before they separated. Chapter 5
traces their ultimate slide into oblivion; while Chapters 7 to 9 raise three
challenging questions that need to be answered.
Thus prepared, we shall more intelligently evaluate clues salvaged from
the ancient world; an exercise to which the major portion of this work is
devoted.


Cheers.