I find "the part with the Ark" fascinating. The number of different traditions that have a deluge myth has to make you wonder if there isn't something behind it.
Obviously if you take it very literally, every species on earth in the back of a homemade boat, the entire planet being wiped out, etc - it doesn't stand up very well. But I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the story is the fossilised remains of an oral tradition that predates the written record - perhaps the loss of lands after the last ice age, etc.
There have been a number of catastrophic floods in history, as well, which could possibly account for some of flood stories being shared by so many cultures--including some in the Americas, like the Maya.
> I find "the part with the Ark" fascinating. The number of different traditions that have a deluge myth has to make you wonder if there isn't something behind it.
The biblical account isn't the oldest version, however. So it seems unlikely that that version is correct, whereas older versions were wrong. Although the older known versions weren't very believable either, so it's possible something might have happened, but it doesn't seem like there's really much to go on beyond "there was a huge flood, and a few people survived." Which definitely did happen, repeatedly.
I think "correct" is a weird way to think about it. I mean, if we take the theory that these are an oral tradition of post ice-age sea level changes - then there was more time between the ice age and the start of the written record, than there is between the bible and the present. These would have been myths told for thousands of years before they appeared in the written record.
That's the part that fascinates me - it seems obvious that the OT gets more realistic the closer events get to the written record. But some of the parts we write off as unrealistic could be the remains of stories as old as the human race. If the flood myth describes the end of the ice age, that would mean you and I are sharing an oral tradition 10,000 years old. I find that a lot more exciting than how factually accurate it is.
Here is something from Zoroastrianism akin to the Ark, connecting it with winter and "foul frost":
FARGARD II. Yima (gamshêd).
And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying: 'O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvî deep on the highest tops of mountains. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables. Before that winter, those fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle: now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world, the land wherein footprints even of sheep may still be seen. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square , and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires.
Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men; a Vara, long. as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be a fold for flocks. There thou shalt make waters flow in a bed a hâthra long; there thou shalt settle birds, by the ever-green banks that bear never-failing food. There thou shalt establish dwelling places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth.
Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of ever, kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara. There shall be no humpbacked, none bulged forward there; no impotent, no lunatic; no poverty, no lying; no meanness, no jealousy; no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainyu stamps the bodies of mortals. In the largest part of the place thou shalt make nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest. To the streets of the largest part thou shalt bring a thousand seeds of men and women; to the streets of the middle part, six hundred; to the streets of the smallest part, three hundred. That Vara thou shalt seal up with the golden ring, and thou shalt make a door, and a window self-shining within.'
Obviously if you take it very literally, every species on earth in the back of a homemade boat, the entire planet being wiped out, etc - it doesn't stand up very well. But I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the story is the fossilised remains of an oral tradition that predates the written record - perhaps the loss of lands after the last ice age, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth