• IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here.

    The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.

Babylonian tablet shows how Noah's ark could have been constructed

drifteri

Alfrescian
Loyal
British Museum expert says 3,700-year-old instructions describe how to build round boat – but he does not believe ark existed .

MesopotamiaClayTablet.jpg


Noah's ark was never built, still less crash landed on Mount Ararat, a British Museum expert has declared – despite holding in his hand 3,700-year-old instructions on exactly how to construct one.

"I am 107% convinced the ark never existed," Irving Finkel said. His discoveries, since a member of the public brought a battered clay tablet with 60 lines of neat cuneiform text to Finkel – one of the few people in the world who could read them – are outlined in a new book, The Ark Before Noah.

While every child's toy and biblical illustration – and the latest film version, due for release later this month and starring Russell Crowe as Noah – shows a big pointy-ended wooden boat, the Babylonian tablet gives what Finkel is convinced is the original version of the story.

The ark is a huge circular coracle, 3,600 square metres in dimension or two-thirds the size of a football pitch, made like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, and waterproofed with bitumen inside and out. This was a giant version of a craft which the Babylonians knew very well, Finkel pointed out, in daily use up to the late 20th century to transport people and animals across rivers.
The stories you need to read, in one handy email
Read more

Its people-and-animal-carrying abilities will soon be put to the test: the production company Blink is making a Channel 4 documentary based on his research, including building a circular ark.

The tablet gives a version of the ark story far older than the biblical accounts, and Finkel believes the explanation of how "holy writ appears on this piece of Weetabix", is that the writers of the Bible drew on ancient accounts encountered by Hebrew scholars during the Babylonian exile.

Texts about a great flood and the order by God to the one just man to build a boat and save himself, his family, and all the animals, clearly older than the Bible story, were first found in the Middle East in the 19th century. They caused both consternation and wild excitement, including an expedition to find the broken part of one tablet in a mountain of shattered clay fragments.

However, the tablet studied by Finkel is unique, the only one with precise instructions on how to build the ark – and the crucial detail that it should be circular. He believes the data on its exact dimensions, the two kinds of bitumen, and the precise amount of rope needed, are evidence not that the vessel once existed, but of a storyteller adding convincing details for an audience that knew all about boat-building.

The tablet was brought to him on a museum open day by Douglas Simmons, whose father, Leonard, brought it back to England in a tea-chest full of curios, after wartime service in the Middle East with the RAF.

When the Guardian originally broke the story of its discovery, Simmons said his father had once showed his treasures to some academics, and was bitterly disappointed when they were dismissed as rubbish. He suspects the tablet was either bought for pennies in a bazaar or literally picked up.

Finkel describes the clay tablet as "one of the most important human documents ever discovered", and his conclusions will send ripples into the world of creationism and among ark hunters, where many believe in the literal truth of the Bible account, and innumerable expeditions have been mounted to try to find the remains of the ark.

The clay tablet is going on display at the British Museum, loaned by Simmons, beside a tablet from the museum's collection with the earliest map of the world, as seen from ancient Babylon. The flood tablet helped explain details of the map, which shows islands beyond the river marking the edge of the known world, with the text on the back explaining that on one are the remains of the ark.

Finkel said that not only did the ark never exist, but ark hunters were looking in the wrong place – the map shows the ark in the direction of, but far beyond the mountain range later known as Ararat.
 

Agoraphobic

Alfrescian
Loyal
The Ark could never be found. It was eaten up by a family of woodworms that lived in its woodwork when Noah first got them aboard! They multiplied, and well, had to eat, so they ate the ship! No more evidence!

Cheers!

............................Finkel said that not only did the ark never exist, but ark hunters were looking in the wrong place – the map shows the ark in the direction of, but far beyond the mountain range later known as Ararat.
 

Frodo

Alfrescian
Loyal
Amazing how atheists just love to discredit the Bible from every angle. I guess they must be really hounded by the truth and very fearful of its contents! LOL!
 

drifteri

Alfrescian
Loyal
The Ark could never be found. It was eaten up by a family of woodworms that lived in its woodwork when Noah first got them aboard! They multiplied, and well, had to eat, so they ate the ship! No more evidence!

Cheers!

Bro, you really learned very fast from the zealots in explaining off. The Ark is real and historic, too bad the evidences were all eaten up. :wink:

My tries are:

1. Epic of Gilgamesh was copied from the bible. (Very authoritative, very easy to make)

2. Carbon dating is unreliable for dating of period more than 2000 years. (I have not scientific backup, just another easy dismissal tactic)
 
Last edited:

Frodo

Alfrescian
Loyal
Bro, you really learned very fast from the zealots in explaining off. The Ark is real and historic, too bad the evidences were all eaten up. :wink:

My tries are:

1. Epic of Gilgamesh was copied from the bible. (Very authoritative, very easy to make)

2. Carbon dating is unreliable for dating of period more than 2000 years. (I have not scientific backup, just another easy dismissal tactic)

Actually many atheists, including epic failed ones like DIVA, strongly believe that carbon dating can be used to date rocks and give results to be millions of years old. LOL!
 

drifteri

Alfrescian
Loyal
Finkel said that not only did the ark never exist, but ark hunters were looking in the wrong place – the map shows the ark in the direction of, but far beyond the mountain range later known as Ararat.

LOL, lol, lol !
 

Frodo

Alfrescian
Loyal
LOL, lol, lol !

DIVA stupidity shining bright here! On one hand say the Ark does not exist, but on other hand say searchers looking at the wrong place? So atheist is saying that if they search the right place they would find the Ark that never existed! wahahahahaha!
 

drifteri

Alfrescian
Loyal
You are not stupid but your mind is badly corrupted by the craps of the bible. The fact is the hunters are searching in the wrong place suggested by the stupid scripture. LOL, LOL! :wink:
 
Top