uwot wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:23 pm
My favourite explanation for the Noah's flood myth is the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. I think you might prefer Adrienne Mayor's take in 'The First Fossil Hunters'.
I agree that the Black Sea's deluge may have value of general flood myths but it wouldn't defend how the same
kind of deluge involving the whole world would and all animals everywhere. I saw Adrienne Mayor's name on the Wikipedia entry for "
Flood myth" but cannot comment on her arguments. I will have to look at that source but do not need sourcing for this other than our imaginations of how the world would be like if we were there in the most charitable of interpretations.
All of my religious related theories or speculation derives from my assumption that all religions originate from actual reality that only devolved into myths and misinterpretation through time. The majority of people prior to the last few centuries were not literal readers and had to rely on memory, entertaining stories, or to any pre-established 'authenicating' sources as accepted by political powers affecting culture. As such, I proposed other theories/speculation, like the origin of temples and sacrifices similarly.
As for the Noah's Ark variation that involves destroying the whole world's population, this flood story is a second stage type of explanation assuming a prior world that was different before. Given floods are not assumed to kill off water-based animals and assuming the people back then were not ALL idiots, it would be a clever justification in light of COLLECTIVE societies of differing backgrounds in places where people meet, such as the Middle East or India. When formally writing them down, they would have already contained a lot of religious sounding content because the norm of learning anything required mnemonic devices that best gets passed on through entertainment and exaggeration of significant key things.
The names also had signficance and my have acted as Rosetta-like stones for various cultures. As such, the "Noah" likely had some common generic meaning and thus the lessons also taught about languages as well as real 'scientific' knowledge shared in common to most diverse groups of people. [Maybe "Noah" comes from a word meaning "new" for instance(?)]
The Greeks had their Titans as did many religions. This suggests the link to dinosaurs and other strange but structurally related beings to humans that would be spread from far reaches. The news of such would not be trivial news and so in such 'meeting' places as the early cities of the Middle East would be known even if some never directly witnessed the evidence. I imagine it would be so absurdly interesting that those discovering such fossils would also likley bring samples where possible (most of which likely no longer exist if highly valued). I believe we falsely interpret archeology and other scientific wisdom as recent and arrogantly dismiss the ancients as utilizing religion irrationally like those extreme cults of today. No doubt that religions that exist now would contribute strongly to ridiculing the ancients like this. You can't find too many professionals in Egyptology, for instance, who wouldn't read into everything regarding the apparent records of the ancients as always speaking about 'gods'! To me this is absurd. You cannot expect a society without very powerful weapons to maintain a cult of such broad scope of power.
I argue by assuming the times and what it would be like if I were there, being sure to try to include as many
foundational factors from all different aspects of life. In this way, the Noah's ark story would be
rational giving charity to the past people as equally credible as people today. AND, I don't trust relying on interpreting the mythologizing as any different than how we entertain ourselves in audio or visual art creations we find more powerful when they can tie our emotions to secular reality. The ancients had to rely more on making everything cartoonish or it would not get passed on. The originators of these stories and their expected audiences who were mature would be more skeptical of other people's myths unless they were understood not to be literal and had a shareable common theme.
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