Noah's Serendipitous Four-Hundred Seventeen Day Adventure

By Frank J. Verderber

What would you do aboard a ship that floats on havoc and is menaced by sea monsters, tyrannical Nephilim, and a Dragon bent on revenge? Feeding the animals and cleaning stalls could get a bit old, and so it musts be that God intended Noah’s family to experience the whole range of human existence, while aboard a dank and musty barge. The air quality index may have reached red, however, there was a way to build a barge that would have natural ventilation and carry enough representative families of living creatures - to satisfy a rebirth of earthly life. The author, Frank Verderber, has also based the family’s trials and triumphs on the norms and expectations of contemporary humanity. He laces this epic together with known archeological and engineering facts, romance and a strong dose of imagination. The book takes the reader through the trials and aspirations of the last people on earth, who must content with death and survival, while fulfilling a life of love, entertainment, with salient technical enterprising. Additional mental and physical agility, with mystical weapons, are required for the final victory against evil. In this case, the saving of the world builds to a common street fight, and the outcome of a bare-knuckles scuffle. For those who wish to go beyond the entertaining facets of this adventure, the author has included a serious expository - concerning the known archeological, engineering, geological, and historical facts surrounding the ancients and the flood. Photographic and unofficial information supplied by NASA and the DIA are also presented. The story of the Flood and Noah, have bearing in the oral and written annals or many civilizations across the globe. There are also many scientific geologic discoveries analogous to this epic. Design Drawings are provided based upon scale, proven ancient techniques, and known effects of a wild ocean upon ships greater than 300 feet in length. However don’t expect the remains of The Dragon to be found in a photo summary. This part will have to be conjured by the reader’s imagination!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank J. Verderber
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311428486

Frank J. Verderber

FRANK J. VERDERBER resides in Sandisfield, Massachusetts. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Westfield University and has authored several non-fictions,historical fictions, and professionally written for several trade journals and served as a news reporter.He served in the USAF during the Vietnam War, from 1968-1972, and was employed as a technician and engineering specialist in the Nuclear, Night Vision, and Metals Plating industries - later teaching high school biology and physical science.He worshiped at First Congregational Church of Otis, Massachusetts, First Baptist, Chicopee, Christian Life Center and Bethany Assembly of God, Springfield, Massachusetts. He has held secular educational positions and music ministry posts at the aforementioned churches.Frank, likes outdoors, and specifically, the mountain woodlands. He has interests in studying wildlife and photographing the flora and fauna in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts.

Book preview

Noah’s Serendipitous

Four-Hundred Seventeen Day

Adventure

Revised E-Download Edition

7/2015

Written By:

Frank J. Verderber

Cover: Pictorial has been cropped from Middle Age art found in the 1953 Challoner-Douay Roman Catholic Bible, pg. 7

This book or its contents may not be reprinted, translated, or copied without written permission of the author or his authorized agents pursuant to the section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act or its amendments, under penalty of law.

Copyright © MMV

Under the title: Voyage of Noah an Akkadian Epic

LOC #: 2004115134

E-download ISBN: 9781311428486

Verderb Publishing

PO Box 106

Sandisfield, Ma 01255.

[e-mail]

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

DEDICATION PAGE

To:

Stephen Vantassel, a good friend and an irritatingly logical theologian, and a stubborn friend. Without his influence I would not have become an author of literary fiction. It is he who has created the monster.

CREDITS

Dennis Conrad, Naval History Center

Ben Thomas, Archaeological Institute of America

NASA

DIA

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: A Great Discovery

Tablet 1: Day 1 - Packing for the Trip

Tablet 2: Day 7 - Why Me?

Tablet 3: Day 40 - The Tempest

Tablet 4: Day 190 - A New World Emerges

Tablet 5: Day 197 - New Things

Tablet 6: Day 237 – Waiting, Watching and Fighting

Tablet 7: Day 340 - Releasing the Birds

Tablet 8: Day 417 - Reviving the Earth

Engineering and Historical Supplement

Notes

PREFACE

Whether your interest is spiritual or secular, a believer or skeptic, the story of Noah and the flood is a timeless epic. It carriers all the elements of adventure, romance and dread, yet finishes with a happy ending. Shakespeare, Aldous Huxley, G. K. Chesterton, and W.E. Ayoun, used Noah and his circumstances for tweaking their poems and plays. Chesterton amplifies my inquiry of Noah’s predicaments when he poetically writes;

"And Noah, he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, ‘I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.’" [Wine and Water]

This book is rightly classified fictional entertainment, although I try to squeeze out a few moral lessons and prevail upon the physics of the universe to explain how it would be done. In all, I have fashioned the answers to the knotty questions begged for four millennia - what the Bible is mute to explain in Chapters 6 – 9 of Genesis, I have taken the liberty of addressing what happened during that voyage, by using the known facts of archaeology, paleontology, biology, and physical science. Rightly, I have addressed the thorny issue of; what did that family do for a year aboard that boxy raft?

My story opens with my overly heady and philanthropic zealot of a narrator, searching for hidden answers among the strange events of his town. Wandering into a cave, he finds baked pottery and sealed containers, from antiquities origin. He correctly recognizes that the clayware is a special find. Relying on his wit and self-eulogized charm, he obtains the help of a university professor. Together, they open the sealed pottery - only to find the Biblical Noah’s journal that had recorded his adventure and trial.

Naturally, the message is written upon clay tablets in the style of cuneiform, as it would be found in any Middle Eastern archaeological dig. Like a message floated in a bottle, they find that Noah had sent off to humanity’s future, the events of the flood - in the hope that someone may find his testimony and know the event was so.

My book opens darkly, with matter-of-fact attitude. All those corpses and the seemingly unending churning of the sea together with the Dark clouds, howling winds, and foreboding signs in the heaven, make up a good portion of the beginning. However, after the judgment of those proved unworthy of life, Noah rehashes events leading up to the flood, and recalls his neighbors’ moral failures. Later the family learns to survive the onslaught by personal wit, and divine grace.

As C. S. Lewis has done in his works, I too have made one of the characters a type Christ, and entered him into battles and quests. Naturally, the narrative is not complete without a really nasty villain. Together, the hero and his nemesis battle for supremacy and the rights to the earth. They battle above and below ground. Hell itself is opened for the reader with all the vile creatures and torments of Gehenna.

Special armor protects our hero as he does battle, yet in the end, he must face his cosmic enemy with his bare flesh. Divine grace promises to keep the frail human in his safe in his greatest hour of need. His faith proves better that a sword. However, I do explore the more probable bare-knuckle event, one might experience in a similar situation.

The common cultural and mundane exercises that families everywhere experience, are weaved into the story, so that spousal and family irritations that all of us have come to know, become part of the routine life aboard the Ark. In all, I hope the reader enjoys the intrigue, and common motif I have interlaced into this well-known Bible story.

For those who relish proving the Ark’s existence, who exhibit a taste for the esoteric and arcane, I have added a few pages of commentary, web sites, photographs, and conceptual engineering drawings, from which the reader may continue the quest. This can be found at the end of the book. My hope is that the reader would place to the side, preconceptions and arguments - for or against - and enjoy this interpretation of a timeless tale.

Frank J. Verderber, author

Blandford / Sandisfiled Ma.

"In that day,

the Lord will punish with his sword,

his fierce, great and powerful sword,

Leviathan the gliding serpent,

Leviathan the coiling serpent;

He will slay the monster of the sea"

Is. 27:1 - NIV

Introduction

A Great Discovery

What ill-gotten gains have all of us have held within our hands. Each of us, at those very moments, fear that others may take our treasure as their own, or send upon us retribution for lack of sharing. All great adventure stories start in such manner; when a glamorously esoteric find is kept within the circle of a select few. Suddenly, the event finds itself exposed to the public and others having a covetous interest. This news becomes the impetus to search out the ultimate holy grail. Oh the mischief that follows is the engine, or shall I say spice, that stirs up miscreants.

I have such a find. Strangely, I had not wished to uncover this secret or had ever ventured to believe that the secret existed. This town that I live in, has before, bared itself to me, and shared its treasures; even though there has been that proverbial person or two who wishes me failure. Yes, a find so old, so unique, and so valuable that I dread the affect it may hold on those within government circles. A treasure so rare, that if known to all the inhabitants of the earth, it would change dramatically, their ethics and moral values.

In a previous book, I had cataloged odd occurrences within the boundaries of the town of Blandford, Massachusetts. Here it seems, the occult has settled itself, and menaced the population with rare glimpses of its power. It opens doors and shuts them before the seeker’s eyes, as well as, to the occasional bumbler, who just happens to fall prey to fate. Whether it be white witchery or Divine blessing, is often skewed from reason.

I will not keep this find to myself, but offer it, as I have in the past - to all those who desire truth. Therefore, I ask you to mock me not, or throw to the earth my words, before you have given full exposure to the facts concerning what I am about to tell you.

It was about one year ago that I stumbled upon a cave in the area of Russell Road. I had been searching for evidence of an odd cult that had once used the woods near the old Blandford reservoir. A strange coven of beastly Celts who took the old religion quite seriously, would as the story goes, dance quite in the natural on full moons, and with paint upon their persons. My tireless cataloging of these typical happenings within this township, have preoccupied me for years, yet I know that someday the Historic Society, as well as, the residents will thank me.

The Celts, who provided the ancient culture for the modern Scots, Irish, and Welch, have left their mark on this land; even though the present descendants, and followers of Calvin, deny such things. I need however, to reach the discussion for which you have so kindly given your time. It is not this culture, which I found, but quite unexpectedly, a cave full of artifacts.

The cave - a small one at that - was hidden by brush and talus, fallen from removal of granite stone, and mica. The chamber can be found on the property now owned by a Mr. Willy Lobakis, near an old stone quarry. The opening was a mere foot square, and normally, passersby would never have inspected it – thinking it a den for fox or coyote. However, the hole caught my eye, and I felt compelled to look closer. It wasn’t long before I was scratching at the soil, and looking into a cave large enough to hold an automobile. The light was of poor quality, but I was able to ascertain the contents. An earthen jar, about the size of a large cooking pot, lay against the farthest wall. Other remnants were scattered about, and upon closer examination, I found them to be clay tablets and broken pottery.

Upon removing the intact vessel to the light, I could see it was extremely old and had been stoppered by use of a soft woody material, and bathed in tar pitch. When I had rolled it on its side, the distinct sound of its contents talked back, as if tapping out at my person - leaving a queer sensation within the pit of my stomach. Other than the cuneiform markings on the outside there were no other marks, from which to identify this marvelous find. However, I was riff with glee when at once I realized that the artifact was of Middle Eastern origin.

You may ask, How did I know that the writing was cuneiform and of noble age? Normally I shun answering such inquiries, but I believe occasional horn blowing has its timing and purpose. Suffice to