The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is a well-known biblical tale, but is it a factual historical event or simply a work of fiction?
According to the story, God sees that the earth has become corrupt and filled with violence, so he decides to destroy it with a flood. However, he also chooses to save one righteous man, Noah, and his family, as well as representatives of all the world's animals, by commanding Noah to build an ark, or large boat, to save them from the flood.
Most Christina scholars argue that there is an abundance of historical and cultural references to a worldwide flood in ancient cultures. From the Sumerians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia to the Greeks and Romans to the Chinese and Native Americans, nearly every ancient culture has a story of a great flood that wiped out humankind. This suggests that a flood of catastrophic proportions did indeed occur in ancient times and was remembered and passed down through generations.
But if such a devastating event did occur, why is there little or no evidence to back it up?
The story of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark is unlike the many mysteries of the Bible. Peter walking on water, Jesus feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fishes, and Jonah being swallowed for three days by a whale are all Biblical events that have lots of significance, but there is no way to prove them because they didn’t leave anything behind.
However, when it comes to the Great Flood, such a devastating disaster would leave behind undeniable evidence that reminded people of all ages of what once happened. In fact, finding Noah’s Ark won’t be a problem for archeologists, who have been able to uncover hundreds to millions of years of fossils and unearth ancient Roman and Egyptian mysteries.
However, it seems that one of the greatest tales in the Bible that should have shaken the earth is the hardest to prove.
So, did a man like Noah really exist? Was there ever a great flood that covered the entire surface of the earth? Or does the story of Noah tell us that the Bible is not as unfaultable as we once assumed?