Multicultural Evidences For Noah’s Flood?

Introduction

Most people are at least somewhat familiar with the Bible story of Noah and the flood (Genesis 6-8). Of course, this has proven to be a target of criticism by many atheists over the years.

Commonly, people would like to claim there is no evidence at all for a historical flood of such a scale, and would regard such a tale as mythology. Even some Christians have been persuaded to believe that the account is just a myth for the purposes of moral teaching, or that the Bible text is an exaggerated account of what really happened.

Of course, whether we interpret the Genesis flood as truly a global, or a local one, Yeshua himself attested to the flood of Noah in the Gospels (Luke 17:27). So seeing that Yeshua took this account seriously, it behoves Christians to do so also. But is there any actual evidence, contrary to what some claim?

There are in fact a few lines of evidence raised by proponents of the flood. In this article specifically today, we will be looking into but one aspect of these evidences, and that is the multicultural evidence.

Flood Stories From Across the Globe

The main premise of the Biblical flood, is that God warns Noah and his family that he is going to punish an evil world corrupted by demonic offspring with a deluge. Noah builds a seaworthy vessel to withstand the flood, save himself, his family, as well as numerous animals.

By the end of the story, the vessel lands on a mountain, Noah sends out numerous birds to seek out dry land before the floodwaters go down and the survivors depart. God then promises mankind he will never harm the Earth in such a drastic way again, and seals his promise by making a rainbow appear in the sky. The man gives thanks by sacrificing an animal to God and then re-establishes the population of the human race.

So our main Biblical plot points are:

• God is displeased with mankind
• The world is corrupted by evil
• There are a race of demonic beings
• Flood of a massive scale
• A craft that saves a small group of survivors of people
• Animals are saved
• Birds sent out to seek dry land
• A mountain is where the craft lands
• A rainbow is sent as a sign from God
• A sacrifice to God to give thanks
• Human race is reset

If such an event like the deluge really happened, it would surely be something not easily forgotten by mankind. And therefore we would expect that there would be records of such things from multiple sources, especially if the survivors were the ancestral progenitors of all mankind to this day.

What is fascinating, is that when searching for said records, we actually find that globally, in a great multitude of cultures, that there are ancient coinciding tales, though all with slight variation, regarding a global flood akin to Biblical descriptions. They even go as far to include the details of arks, mountains, giants, spirits, and rainbows. And yet, many of these tales originate from ancient cultures all around the world that do not have any ties to Abrahamic religions, or even the Middle East, places such as the Americas, East Asia, South Asia, Africa and Australia.

To examine just a few of these flood stories from the hundreds there are, we have:

• Sumerian Flood Story of Eridu Genesis
• Mesopotamian Flood Story of Utnapishtim
• Mesopotamian Flood Story of Atraḥasis
• Greek Flood Story of Ogyges
• Greek Flood Story of Deucalion
• Babylonian Beroossus Flood Story
• Norse Flood Story of Bergelmir
• Indian Flood Story of Matsya
• Andaman Flood Story of Pūluga
• Malaysia Temuan Flood Story
• Tai-Kadai Flood Story of Khun Borom
• Hawaiian Nu’u Flood Story
• Mayan Popol Vuh Flood Story
• Aztec Flood Story of Coxcox & Xochiquetza
• Inca Flood Story of Unu Pachakuti
• Colombian Muisca Flood Story
• Cañari Flood Story
• Native American Kaska Flood Story
• Native American Cado Flood Story of The Voice & the Turtle
• Native American Delaware Flood Story
• Chinese Miao Flood Story of A-Zie
• Chinese Flood Story of FuXi & NüWa
• Chinese Flood Story of Gun-Yu

When we examine these tales individually, it is very interesting to take note of the details akin to the Genesis account.

Whilst some clearly may have been a result of outside cultural influences or Christian preaching, so many of them are not, and yet share akin details regardless.

For the sake of critical analysis, we will steel man our position and will group together the stories from neighbouring cultures as “one source” (for the sake of the argument of potential plagiarisation). With this, we will then put precedent on the ancient stories from far away cultures that we can 100% confirm that had no influence from other visiting cultures, such as Christian Missionaries, or from international trade routes and cross-cultural interactions where it was proven one culture had direct impact on another during that time period the story was written (such as Greece and Mesopotamia).

When we do this and bring attention to the specific themes, we see the following:

Ancient Mesopotamian Flood Story Features:

• Seeking relief from intense labours
• Lesser gods who were men
• A deity feels regret over its creations
• A deity seeks to destroy mankind with a flood
• A man is warned about the flood
• A vessel acted as the method of salvation for a small group
• Animals were saved on the vessel
• The man sacrificed animals to give thanks to the gods
• Human race is reset
• There are lesser gods on the earth who flee from the flood
• A dove and a raven are sent out to find land
• The vessel lands on a mountain
• The holy man and saved animals acted as the foundation for a reset

Ancient Indian Flood Story Features:

• A flood is going to wipe out mankind
• A man is warned about the flood by a god
• A vessel acted as the method of salvation for a small group
• Natural resources were preserved on the vessel
• Doves and ravens are specifically mentioned at the end of the story
• The vessel lands on a mountain
• A rainbow appears
• The man sacrifices to give thanks to the gods
• An evil spirit is destroyed
• Human race is reset

Ancient Malaysian Flood Story Features:

• Mankind had become immoral
• God sends a flood
• A small group survive
• A mountain is the place of refuge from the flood
• The human race is reset

Ancient Chinese Flood Story Features:

• Mankind was interacting with evil spirits
• Mankind was to be destroyed by a flood (sometimes brought by a god)
• A farmer led the way to salvation
• A vessel acted as the method of salvation for a small group
• The human race was reset
• Animals survived
• Mankind thereafter developed farming techniques
• Mankind thereafter learned to dominate animals for their use

Ancient South American Flood Story Features:

• The gods send a flood
• A small group survive in a vessel
• The vessel lands on a mountain
• A dove is mentioned
• A race of evil giants rebelled against God
• Evil spirits rebel against the highest gods of Heaven
• Mankind had reached an immoral height
• People were rejected because they ignored the gods
• An evil race is eliminated
• The human race is created or reset

As we can see, using the most critical method, we still have plentiful similarities of themes in these various flood accounts to the Biblical account. If we were to include the other stories not put on this list, and give them the benefit of the doubt that they were not at all influenced or borrowed from other foreign sources, then we’d have even more!

Explaining the Multicultural Flood Stories

The fact there are so many flood accounts that are similar in their details have led to many theories to be conjured.

Christians and Jews for example, will draw connections as proof for the validity of the Biblical account. Meanwhile, more secular minded scholars and atheists will claim it may be a shared memory of an event such as the end of the Ice Age, which may have caused mass flooding all over the world in different locations, in which the local cultures blamed their gods.

However, whilst the idea of mass local floods being explained by the melting of ice or rising sea levels might sound feasible, what it doesn’t explain is why these stories share so many key ‘narrative’ details, such as gods, half-breed races, spirits, giants, monsters, arks, a period of immorality, the reset of the human race, and so on.

The fact that so many similar details are shared beyond just the mere flood waters, would imply the possibility that the story had a singular a root source, either via passed down tradition which somehow spread all over the world, or a shared memory from a real event. This would be more in line with the Genesis narrative, that all mankind was once in a single location before spreading out after the time of the flood, carrying the oral tradition with them.

Another factor not accounted for, is that each culture considers this “great flood” as a momentous event, which stood out in comparison to the typical floods and bad events throughout ancient history which were common, even if attributed to the curses or punishments of local deities.

For example, an argument often put forth by sceptics is that floods were common in places such as the Middle East, and therefore the stories there do not indicate a special flood event that happened at any one time, but that it would be expected for people to blame the gods for the local floods so often experienced. However, if this be the case, then we would expect hundreds if not thousands of deluge stories in these areas, with continual blame attributed to the gods for each and every one, but that is not what we see, we see that there was one “specific” flood at a specific point in time that stood out ‘in comparison’ the other typical floods in the memory of all these independent cultures.

If, for instance, man evolved from apes for hundreds of thousands of years, then mankind would have experienced many a flood for all that time since the beginning, both large and small.

Hence, it makes little sense that these people who would have experienced floods for hundreds of thousands of years, generation after generation, to then ‘suddenly’ point to just one local flood event in all of their respective independent cultures and areas, attribute it to an act of the gods, and record it in their histories as the greatest flood man had ever seen… Rather, it indicates something was ‘different’ or ‘special’ about said flood that these cultures seem to all recall, as legends do not originate from everyday common events, especially from events which would have been observed since time immemorial.

These flood stories also often tend to share similar estimated dates in many of these cultures, which also indicates, not only a narrative commonality, but a chronological one. Hence, even some sceptics truly believe it to be a real “global event” of sorts, but that it was merely “embellished by ancient religiosity”.

However, since rising sea levels cannot explain the narrative story similarities in these global cultures, this would indicate the very real possibility that there was some kind of truth to the Legends.

Of course, the question lies; “which one?”… And that will be an investigation for another article. But for the time being, the fact of there being multiple flood stories sharing many akin details all over the world, should give one reason to stop, think and consider the potentiality of these tales holding some kind of truth.