Over fifty years ago Henry Morris and John Whitcomb joined together to write a controversial book that sparked dialogue and debate on Darwin and Jesus, science and the Bible, evolution and creation -- culminating in what would later be called the birth of the modern creation science movement. Now, fifty years, forty-nine printings, and 300,000 copies after the initial publication of The Genesis Flood, P & R Publishing has produced a fiftieth anniversary edition of this modern classic. - Back cover.
In this picture book, scholar and author Paul L. Maier explains the Great Flood in a unique way. No myth or romanticized version, but the true story of mankind's second chance and our loving God's promise to preserve us for all time. Paul L. Maier wrote the Gold Medallion Book Award winner for children, The Very First Christmas, and three other Gold Medallion finalists, The Very First Easter and The Very First Christians, and Martin Luther. Dr. Maier lectures widely, appears frequently in national radio, television, and newspaper interviews, and has received numerous awards. Maier is the Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University.
The Genesis flood account has been probed and analyzed for centuries. But what might the biblical author have been saying to his ancient audience? In order to rediscover the biblical flood, we must set aside our own cultural and interpretive assumptions and visit the distant world of the ancient Near East. Walton and Longman lead us on this enlightening journey toward a more responsible reading of a timeless biblical narrative.
The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.
This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, through the lens of a pivotal passage in the Gilgamesh Flood story. It shows how, using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed, the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark. The volume argues that Ea used a ‘bitextual’ message: one which can be understood in different ways that sound the same. His message thus emerges as an ambivalent oracle in the tradition of ‘folktale prophecy’. The argument is supported by interlocking investigations of lexicography, divination, diet, figurines, social history, and religion. There are also extended discussions of Babylonian word play and ancient literary interpretation. Besides arguing for Ea’s duplicity, the book explores its implications – for narrative sophistication in Gilgamesh, for audiences and performance of the poem, and for the relation of the Gilgamesh Flood story to the versions in Atra-hasīs, the Hellenistic historian Berossos, and the Biblical Book of Genesis. Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story will interest Assyriologists, Hebrew Bible scholars and Classicists, but also students and researchers in all areas concerned with Gilgamesh, word-play, oracles, and traditions about the Flood.
Understand this highly debated flash point for scientific debate, academic criticism, and common confusion with this unique presentation. Delve into the technical aspects of the chronology, historicity, and significance of understanding this landmark event, including what we can learn from the Hebrew words used to describe it. Examine the numerous geological, geophysical, and paleontological indications pointing to the reality and global scope of the Flood. Learn how and why the authors' exhaustive research began, putting forth objectives, criticisms they would address, and identifying obstacles to be resolved. The Flood as described in the Book of Genesis not only shaped the global landscape, it is an event that literally forms our understanding of early biblical history. Now an experienced team of scientists and theologians has written a definitive account of the Genesis Flood with detailed research into the original biblical text and evidences unlocked by modern science and study. Often recounted and discounted as just a myth or children's story, what we find with deeper study is instead a cataclysmic event, one that truly wiped out life on our planet with the exception of those preserved through God's plan. The devastation the Genesis Flood wreaked upon a rebellious world remains an important part of the biblical narrative we should understand for what it was - a divine act of judgment on a sin-immersed world.
An exploration of the origins, development, and varying interpretations of the ancient story of Noah's flood, and an assessment of its impact on the history of ideas. It includes accounts of the scholars and theologians who have endorsed or rejected the flood story.
Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China. In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.
