After examining a 3,700-year-old
clay tablet with instructions on how to build an ark, the expert who translated
it says he doubts Noah’s Ark ever existed.
The ark instructions call for
construction of a huge circular coracle, 3,600 square meters large and made
like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, waterproofed with
bitumen inside and out. What’s described is a giant version of a craft the
Babylonians knew very well, in daily use up to the late 20th century to
transport people and animals across rivers, according to British Museum expert
Irving Finkel.
According to the Guardian: "I am 107% convinced the ark never existed," Finkel said. 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.
The tablet was brought to Finkel 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.
1 comment:
Don't need no archeologist to confirm my belief in God, the Word says there was a Noah, an Arc, his families, and two of each living kind, and guess what, sent an rainbow in the sky to promise man He would never destroy the earth by water, but fire next time. I BELIEVE GOD!
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