Noah's Ark

According to Genesis 8:4 the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the 7th month. Rather confusingly, in Genesis 8:5 it says the tops of the mountains only started to appear after 10 months. Ignoring that, the question becomes where are the "mountains of Ararat"? Abrahamic tradition says this is Mount Ararat in Turkey. Josephus, the Jewish historian, places the Ark on an Armenian mountain - which doesn't exclude Mount Ararat. The ancient Jewish Book of Jubilees specifies mount Lubar in the mountains of Ararat.

According to one source by Paul Phelps, the East Asians were descendants of Joktan, who was the son of Eber, the father of all Hebrews, and ultimately was a descendant of Shem, the son of Noah. According to another source by E. L. Martin, however, the East Asians are actually descendants of Japheth. Shem is usually looked upon as having "brown/yellow skin" while Japheth as, "fair/light skin". Overall, It is uncertain which sons of Noah was the forefather of the Eastern Asians (the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc.), their origin is obscured, but it could have been either Shem or Japheth, in a biblical point of view.

As for the South Asians like India and Middle Easterns, they are most likely descendants of Shem, according to George Hamartolos and Symeon the Metaphrast in Wikipedia. Furthermore, according to Isidore of Seville (ca. 600) and Hippolytus of Rome (c. 234), the Indians are actually the ones descendant of Joktan, son of Eber and descendant of Shem. This is all proposing the origins of the ancient Indians and Middle Easterns, but perhaps they of today are different and mixed.

How much are you asking ? The value of the gold alone is worth 63,500,400 US Dollars. That is not including the bronze,silver, and other precious stones. Simple answer ALOT.

Answer:

Because of its religious value, it is literally without price. (Note, however, that it did not have "bronze, silver" or "precious stones.")

There is no contradiction in these verses at all. First of all, this poor translation reads "living substance" instead of "living creature" which solves the problem right there. Also, later in Genesis 7:22-23, more specification is given that the creatures that died were those who moved along the ground or flew in the air and had the breath of life in them. Again, this would not have applied to plants. Notice that the animals that would have lived in the oceans and seas would not have died either. The story makes note of this as well as just common sense.

Previous answer:

Genesis 7 verse 4 says For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

Chapter 8 verse 11 says And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

Ch. 7 v 4 seems to contradict Ch. 8 v 11 when the Lord says "and every living substance".

So we ask ourselves how could the dove bring back an olive leaf? Are not plants living sunstances? Was not EVERYTHING destroyed?

The Olive tree can only grow at low altitudes, so the plant was not on a mountain. Where then did the leaf come from?

The answer to the question must include "The ways of God are a mystery to man".

Verse 20 "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered". A cubit is about 21 inches so that means about 26 feet of water covered the mountains and the earth. Does this mean in fact that 26 feet fell upon the mountains and then ran to lower ground, where at ground level the water remained at 26 feet. At this height above gound level the Olive Tree would have grown.

This is all guess work on my part, but it could be possible that this is how it happened.

Well, no.

This is what used to be believed in the Holy Land before globalization. We now know about the diversity of civilizations that existed prior to and after the biblical "flood" (ie Africa, Asia, etc) One only has to look at Japan's interesting history to know that their civilization was never completely wiped out.

But, in biblical terms, the "world as they knew it" flooded and all known lives were lost except the decendants of Noah. For those that take the bible literally it is important to understand the biblical context (I have included the original Hebrew definitions below to substantiate what I am saying) to know that even though the "world flooded", looking to the original context allows the acceptance that it was only part of earth. (Please see below) I also wanted to share that the lineage back to Noah has been evidenced now with our new understanding of genetics. Only a small portion of the worlds polulation is actually decended from Noah (we have the genetic capability to determine that Ashkenazi Jewish are decendants of Japheth).

Re: God flooded the earth

"The Hebrew word from which the English word "earth" is a translation in Genesis 1:1 is Éeres, and it is generally rendered "ground," "earth," or the like.

Apparently, Moses did not use the Hebrew word tebel, which means the whole world ( or world globe) in the description of the Flood. So from the Biblical evidence tebel is simply the poetic equivalent of eretz. It should be pointed out that while many of the biblical occurences of tebel are in a univeral context (as with eretz),this is not always so (see e.g., Ps 77:18 [Hebrew 19]; 97:4, where the lightning lights up the "world" tebel, obviously not the whole globe.) Furthermore, the basic meaning of tebel actually refers to "the inhabited world, the world where crops are raised" (see Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1:359), and for Moses to use this word might have given just the opposite impression than intended, i.e., that only the inhabited places in the "world" were destroyed. Thus, even though tebel does often refer to the whole world, it is also not free from ambiguity any more than eretz." (http://www.grisda.org/origins/08013.htm)

The human occupants of the ark were Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons. Gen. 7:13

According to the book of Genesis indeed the Hebrew word for earth is 'erets and is the same word used in GENESIS 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" God created the whole heavens and the whole earth.

In Genesis 6:11-12 the same word was used for earth ('erets) : "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on earth".

Genesis 6:17 tells us: "And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die". Again the same word for earth that was used in Genesis 1:1, meaning the whole heavens and earth is the same word used here, ie 'erets.

All flesh on the earth perished by the Great Flood with the exception of Noah, his wife and their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their wives and the animals that were taken into the Ark.

Genesis 7:19-20; "And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered". The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered". This would have been 22 ft above the highest mountain. The highest peak in that area is Mt Ararat, which is 17,000 ft high. This was a global flood and took almost 8 months before Noah could leave the Ark.

Are we descended from Noah? According to the book of Genesis we are because all humans with the exception of Noah and the other seven person on the Ark were destroyed in the Great Flood that covered the whole earth.

Depending on which son you descended from determines your race (Shem, Ham. and Japheth). Actually there are only two types of people on earth. Gentiles and Jews. Jews descended from Shem.

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View #3 and Response to "Another View"

Not sure where you are getting your info from but please be careful to take out the folklore. Just like we know the world is no longer flat, and that seizures do not mean you are possessed by the devil, we know that the world was poplulated in many different regions.

And your comment about Jewish people coming from Shem is totally incorrect. Note below that Eastern European Jews are decended from Japheth. And, our Asian and African neighbors bear no genetic relation to Mr. Noah. There are more than six billion people in the world...hello!!!

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Hebrew: אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים‎, pronounced [ˌaʃkəˈnazim], singular: [ˌaʃkəˈnazi]; also יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכֲּנָז, Yehudei Ashkenaz, "the Jews of Ashkenaz"), are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland valley (in the west of Germany) and northern France. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for the region which in modern times encompasses the country of Germany and German-speaking borderland areas. Ashkenaz is also a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). Thus, Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews are literally "German Jews."

Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere between the 10th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a Germanic Jewish language that had since medieval times been the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. To a much lesser extent, the Judaeo-French language Zarphatic and the Slavic-based Knaanic (Judaeo-Czech) were also spoken. The Ashkenazi Jews developed a distinct culture and liturgy; influenced, to varying degrees, by interaction with surrounding peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

Although in the 11th century they comprised only 3 percent of the world's Jewish population, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for (at their peak) 92 percent of the world's Jews in 1931 and today make up approximately 80 percent of Jews worldwide.[4] Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the Mediterranean region. The majority of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Ashkenazim, Eastern Ashkenazim in particular. This is especially true in the United States, where most out of the 5.3 million American Jewish population[5] is Ashkenazi, representing the world's single largest concentration of Ashkenazim.

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VIEW #4

And, Don't believe everything the Priest has told you!!!!!!!!!!!!! And so many people just believe it even though deep down they know it is not true or possible. Then we are told that is what faith is all about. That is not true at all. Believing in God does not mean ignoring what you know to be true. God gave you a brain... that is the biggest miracle of all. Don't depend on other people to tell you what you should believe. GOD GAVE YOU YOUR CONSCIENCE>> NOW start listening to it.

Church is a business. A huge, money making business.

There are many themes and stories in the Bible for which no hard evidence has ever been found:

I am so sorry. I was under the impression we were discussing the Old Testament and not someones off the wall thoughts.

The Old testament states that Abraham was a descendant of Shem. Abraham is the father of the Jewish people. There were no Jews before Abraham.

Ashkenas, was the first named of the sons of Gomer, son of Japheth, and equivalent to Assyrian, the Scythians. They were not very civilized and were basically known as barbarians. They at one time lived in the neighborhood of Ararat.

If no one is willing to discuss the O.T. I for one don't want to hear your babbling.

Yes we are all descendants of Noah!