The Bible as Literature: The Noah/Flood Story

[Munshie]

The Comedian

I don't know if you are aware that Muslims also have the same story as Noah's flood. The only really significant difference is that while Christians tend to believe it was a global flood, Muslims claim it was a local/regional flood. I presume this avoids some of the criticisms levelled at the fundamentalist Christians who are regularly savaged by evolutionists for some of the serious difficulties thrown up by a belief in a global flood.

[HCabret]

The Comedian

I don't know if you are aware that Muslims also have the same story as Noah's flood. The only really significant difference is that while Christians tend to believe it was a global flood, Muslims claim it was a local/regional flood. I presume this avoids some of the criticisms levelled at the fundamentalist Christians who are regularly savaged by evolutionists for some of the serious difficulties thrown up by a belief in a global flood.

The Flood motif is common in literature from all over the world. The Sumerians have several accounts of a large flood; several of which influences the later Henrew tellings.

[Munshie]

HCabret

You're correct there. Some people argue that the older versions of the sumerians etc. were 'copied'/'borrowed' by the Torah, then the Christian Old Testament and later by the Muslims.

[HCabret]

HCabret

You're correct there. Some people argue that the older versions of the sumerians etc. were 'copied'/'borrowed' by the Torah, then the Christian Old Testament and later by the Muslims.

The Sumerian language is oldest recorded language in the world. Pretty much all literary motifs ultimately derive from ancient Sumerian literature.

[Pompey Bum]

Pretty much all literary motifs ultimately derive from ancient Sumerian literature.

You are at least a bridge too far there, HC. Sumer may have produced the earliest form of writing (depending on what you call writing) but other forms of written language developed independently at around the same time (some would say earlier) in the Indus River valley, and shortly afterwards in the Nile River valley, and later (also independently) in other places, such as China and Meso-America. Because these cultures developed their own literatures, it is incorrect to say "Pretty much all literary motifs ultimately derive from ancient Sumerian literature." And while flood stories of one kind or another occur in many cultures, the closeness in detail between the stories in Genesis and the Flood Tablet are usually taken to indicate some kind of literary (that is, documentary) relationship rather than the simple recurrence of a common literary motif.