Universal Flood and Posterior Migrations

By Janusz Meyerhoff

The story of the Universal Flood and the posterior migrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304358820

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Universal Flood and Posterior Migrations

Universal Flood and Posterior Migrations

Copyright

Janusz Meyerhoff

First Edition 2013

All rights reserved.

ISBN  978-1-304-35882-0

The Stories of Deluge

The biblical flood story (800 – 900 BC).

The story of universal flood was written, around the 8th century BC, in Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Genesis chapters 6-9 in which God gave instructions to Noah to build a waterproof vessel that would house his family, along with a sample of animal life. The vessel is an ark which was to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Seven days before the flood, God told Noah to enter the ark with his household and to take seven pairs of every clean animal and every bird, and one pair of every other animal, to keep their kind alive (Genesis 7:1-22). After Noah and the remnants of animals were secured, the flood waters drowned everything that was not in the ark.

The Jahwist(YHWH) version is indicated in Genesis 7:12 - A torrential downpour that lasts 40 days, then recedes in seven days periods. During this time, the ark came to rest on the mountain of Arafat where Noah opens the window and sends a raven that went and came back. After seven days he sends out a dove to see if the waters had decreased, but the dove could not find a resting place and returned to the ark. He waited another seven days and again sent a dove and the dove came back with an olive leaf. He waited another seven days and sent a dove and it did not return. When Noah removed the covering of the ark, he saw that the ground was draying. (Genesis 8:1-13)

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The deluge

The sumerian flood story (2.750 – 2.500 BC).

This account is of a great flood written on the clay Tablet XI, in cuneiform writing system in Sumer, of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

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Tablet XI

The Sumerian hero Gilgamesh traveled the world in search of a way to cheat death. On one of his journeys, he came across an old man, Utnapishtim, who told Gilgamesh a story from centuries past. The gods brought a flood that swallowed the earth. The gods were angry at mankind so they send a flood to destroy him. The god Ea, warned Utnapishtim, and instructed him to build an enormous boat to safe himself, his family, and the seed of all living things. He does so, and the gods brought rain which caused the water to rise for many days. When the rain subsided, the boat landed on the mountain, and Utnapishtim set loose first a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven, which found land. The goddess Ishtar created a rainbow and placed it in the sky, as a reminder to the gods and a pledge to mankind that there would be no more floods.

Flood stories.

These two versions of the Flood are very similar, in spite that a time gap of almost 2.000 years existed between them. It’s obvious, that this event caused a tremendous shock in all people that lived through this catastrophe. Later on they repeated this story to their children who also repeated it… and so it went throughout many generations. The original account has