Reader question:

Hello. I wanted to know if it is known in what year the global flood took place? Were there any cities that were not flooded, or were all the cities flooded?

Philip

Archpriest Pyotr Guryanov answers:

In what year did the Great Flood occur? The Bible contains chronological information that allows us to count back time with great accuracy back to the beginning of human history. Genesis 5:1-29 records the genealogy from the creation of the first man Adam to the birth of Noah. The flood began “in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah” (Genesis 7:11). To determine when the Flood occurred, it is necessary to start from some historical milestone. That is, the countdown must be carried out from a date recognized by secular history and corresponding to a specific event described in the Bible. From this starting point, it is possible to calculate when the Flood occurred, according to the Gregorian calendar generally accepted today.

We can take 539 BC as one of the historical milestones. e., when the Persian king Cyrus defeated Babylon. The reign of Cyrus is evidenced by such secular sources as Babylonian tablets, as well as the documents of Diodorus Siculus, Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Caesarea and Ptolemy. By decree of Cyrus, the remainder of the Jews left Babylon and returned to their homeland in 537 BC. e. Thus ended the 70-year desolation of the Kingdom of Judah, which began, according to biblical chronology, in 607 BC. e. Taking into account the reigns of the judges and the kings of Israel, it can be established that the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt occurred in 1513 BC. e. The Bible-based chronology then takes us back 430 years to 1943 BC. e., when the covenant was made with Abraham. Further consideration must be given to the birth times and lifespans of Terah, Nahor, Seruch, Raghab, Peleg, Eber, and Shelah, as well as Arphaxad, who was born “two years after the flood” (Genesis 11:10-32). Thus, the beginning of the Flood occurs in 2370 BC. e.

However, as soon as serious scientific study of the problem of the exact dating of the flood described in the Bible began, the date of 2370 BC was one of the first to be rejected. No evidence, neither archaeological nor geological, confirmed the fact that at least in the Middle East region there was a large-scale flood during this period. However, data was discovered that made it possible to formulate several theories about when the events actually occurred that gave real grounds for the emergence of the narrative of the Flood.

The most acceptable hypothesis for academic science is the hypothesis according to which the tales of the Flood among the peoples of the Middle East, later reflected in the Old Testament, are memories of a cataclysm dating back to approximately 5500 BC. It was during that period that, due to a huge earthquake, the Black Sea ceased to be a closed sea (which, for example, the Caspian Sea is today). The water level rose by 140 meters, the Mediterranean Sea was connected to the Black Sea through the straits, and the coastline doubled in size, flooding areas that at that time were among the most densely populated areas. The memory of this natural disaster, which destroyed a huge number of people at that time, according to this theory, was then transformed into legends about the Flood.

5. All land animals also died during the Flood. The population of the entire earth (all breathing creatures) inhabiting the dry land (except those in the ark) was destroyed by the waters of the Great Flood (Genesis 7:21, 9:16). If the flood had been local, there would have been no need to save the animals, there would have been no need for the ark.

6. It was a great cataclysm, not just a small flood. The word “flood” that is used in the Bible to describe the Great Flood is different from the word commonly used to describe small local floods. [Hebrew = “Mabbool” and Greek = “Kataklusmos” (cataclysm!)]. Thus, the Bible emphasizes the uniqueness of the flood that occurred during the time of Noah.

Was there a Great Flood?

This article is intended rather for ordinary readers, not armed with any spiritual or mystical knowledge, ordinary people who are in habitual doubts regarding the inflated density of various predictions in the media about the approaching end of the world. Not with the aim of intimidating or earning dividends on speculation, but as a solid analytical argument for the mind in favor of the fact that our planet Earth, plowing the expanses of seemingly lifeless outer space for millions of years, nevertheless “lives” according to the strict laws of cyclicity, which we have not yet discussed We will write on the pages of the site in the near future. Extreme interview with I.M. Danilov's "This is Coming" again made me think about the deceptive illusion of material values, the transience of life and the invaluable importance of the chance for the sake of which a person lives his short life.

So, were there catastrophes on a planetary scale in the distant past? Yes. We have written on this topic many times before, so it would be useful to remind you:

And now I suggest we remember where we first heard about the historical great flood? Well, of course, a vague reference from the Bible about how, in time immemorial, a global flood destroyed unrepentant sinners. It sounds like a terrible religious horror story; many today believe in little or nothing at all, this is understandable. However, let's not forget that it is the totality of sources independent of each other that makes an objective picture, for this reason I am writing this article today, wanting to provide them.

And I’ll start, perhaps, with the fact that in one of the previous interviews I.M. Danilov mentioned the treatise “Omnipotence” authored by Sheikh Said Bereke (7:20), you will not find it either on the Internet or in any library in the world, but nevertheless, in the context of our narrative, the first words of the treatise look extremely interesting:

After Atlantis was destroyed for all the evil done... (from video with I.M. Danilov -10:50)

Destroyed means sunk, I hope they won’t argue with that. On the other hand, they may say, who cares about the myth of Atlantis, whether it existed or not - what does that matter to us? And here they will be wrong, because the unfolding climate changes outside our windows in recent years speak eloquently about the approach of something clearly bad; at such a moment it would not hurt to listen to what wise people are talking about. At least listen to the saying that “forewarned is forearmed”...

Today I will again quote from Graham Hancock's book "Traces of the Gods". Not because he is in favor, but we must still give him his due, this man has done a tremendous amount of research work, collecting myths, legends and tales from all continents of the globe so that we can more clearly see what is hidden from view. picture and make your choices more consciously. Without wishing to intimidate, I repeat - a research project, at this stage of development, dealing with the collection of thematic argumentation.

The above passage is too long, but cutting it down seemed to be the same as robbing the general meaning.

Echoes of our dreams

In a number of myths that we have inherited from ancient times, we seem to have preserved a distorted but resonant memory of a terrifying global catastrophe. Where do these myths come from? Why, coming from unrelated cultures, are they even textually so similar? Why do they contain the same symbolism? And why do they often feature the same set of characters and plot points? If this is really a memory, then why are there no records of the planetary catastrophe with which they are associated?

Is it possible that myths themselves are historical records? Is it possible that these fascinating and immortal stories, penned by anonymous geniuses, served as a means of recording such information and sending it into the future from prehistoric times?

AND THE ARK FLOATED THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF WATERS

Once upon a time there lived in ancient Sumer a ruler who strove for eternal life. His name was Gilgamesh. We know about his exploits because the myths and legends of Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform on clay and then burnt tablets, have survived. Many thousands of these tablets, some of them dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. BC, were excavated from the sands of modern Iraq. They bear a unique picture of a lost culture and remind us that even in those hoary days of antiquity, human beings retained the memory of times even more distant, times from which they were separated by the great and terrible flood:

I will tell the world about the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was a man who knew all things. This was a king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he possessed secrets and knew secrets, he brought to us the story of the days before the flood. He had come a long way, was tired and exhausted from work. When he returned, he rested and carved the whole story into stone.

The story that Gilgamesh brought from his wanderings was told to him by one Ut-napishtim, a king who reigned thousands of years earlier, who survived the Great Flood and was rewarded with immortality for preserving the seeds of humanity and all living things.

It was a long time ago, said Ut-napishtim, when the gods lived on Earth: Anu, the lord of the Sky, Enlil, the one who implements divine decisions, Ishtar... and Ea, the lord of the waters, the natural friend and patron of Man.

In those days the world prospered, people multiplied, the world roared like a wild bull, and the Great God was awakened by the noise. Enlil heard the noise and said to the assembled gods: “The noise made by humanity is unbearable, because of this noise it is impossible to sleep.” And the gods decided to exterminate humanity.

However, Ea took pity on Ut-napishtim. He addressed him through the reed wall of the royal house, warned him of the impending disaster and advised him to build a boat in which he and his family could escape:

Destroy your house and build a boat, give up your business and save your life, despise the riches of the world and save your soul... Destroy your house, I tell you, and build a boat, the dimensions of which, length and width, will be in harmony. Take the seeds of all living creatures into the boat.

Ut-napishtim built the boat as ordered, and just in time. “I immersed everything I had in it,” he said, “the seeds of all living creatures.”

I put all my relatives and friends, cattle and wild animals, and all sorts of artisans into the boat... I met the deadline. With the first rays of dawn, a black cloud came from behind the horizon. From within it, where the lord of storms Adad was, thunder was heard... Everything was overcome with despair when the god of storms turned the daylight into darkness, when he broke the earth like a cup... On the very first day the storm blew fiercely and brought a flood... No one could see his neighbor It was impossible to understand where the people were, where the sky was. Even the gods were afraid of the flood and left. They ascended to the sky to Anu and fell to the ground at the edge. They cowered like dogs, and Ishtar cried and cried: “Did I really give life to my human children only in order to saturate the sea with their bodies, as if they were fish?”

For six days and nights the wind blew, rain, storm and flood dominated the world, storm and flood raged together like fighting crowds. When the morning of the seventh day arrived, the bad weather subsided, the sea calmed down, and the flood stopped. I looked at the face of the world - silence everywhere. The surface of the sea became as smooth as a roof. All humanity turned to clay... I opened the hatch and the light fell on my face. Then I bowed low, sat down and sobbed, and tears flowed down my face, for on all sides I was surrounded by water, and nothing but water... At a distance of fourteen leagues there used to be a mountain, where the boat ran aground; on Mount Nisir the boat was stuck tightly, so tightly that it could not move... On the morning of the seventh day I released the dove. She flew away, but not finding a place to land, she returned. Then I released the swallow, it flew away, but, not finding a place to sit, returned. I released the raven, he saw that the water had receded, fed, cawed and did not return.

Ut-napishtim realized that it was now possible to land:

I made a libation on the top of the mountain... I piled wood and reeds, cedar and myrtle... As soon as the gods smelled the sweet aroma, they flocked like flies to the sacrifice...

This text is far from the only one that has come down to us from the ancient land of Sumer. On other tablets - some 5000 years old, others less than 3000 - the figure of Noah-Ut-napishtim is alternately called Ziusudra, Xisuthros or Atrahasis. But he is always easily recognizable: this is the same patriarch, who is warned by the same merciful god. Each time he emerges from the universal flood in an ark that is torn by a hurricane, and again his descendants populate the world.

It is obvious that the Mesopotamian flood myth has many similarities with the famous biblical story of Noah and the flood. Scientists are engaged in an endless debate about the nature of this similarity. But what is really significant is that with all the variety of options for tradition, the main thing is always passed on to posterity, namely: there was a global catastrophe that almost completely destroyed humanity.

CENTRAL AMERICA

A similar message was preserved in the Valley of Mexico, on the other side of the Earth, very far from the mountains of Ararat and Nisir. There, in conditions of cultural and geographical isolation from Judeo-Christian influence, many centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards, stories of the Great Flood were already told. As the reader will remember from Part III, they believed that this flood swept away everything from the face of the Earth at the end of the Fourth Sun: “Destruction came in the form of torrential rain and floods. The mountains disappeared and people turned into fish..."

According to Aztec mythology, only two human beings survived: the man Costostli and his wife Xochiquetzal, who were warned about the cataclysm by God. They escaped in a large boat, which they were encouraged to build, and then moored to the top of a high mountain. There they went ashore and had a large number of children, who were mute until a dove on the top of a tree gave them speech. Moreover, the children began to speak languages ​​so different that they did not understand each other.

The related Central American tradition of the Mechoakanesek tribe is even closer to the story told in the Book of Genesis and Mesopotamian sources. According to this legend, the god Tezcatilpoca decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood, leaving only a certain Thespi alive, who boarded a spacious ship with his wife, children and a large number of animals and birds, as well as a supply of cereals and seeds, the preservation of which was essential for future survival of the human race. The ship landed on an exposed mountain peak after Tezcatilpoca ordered the waters to recede. Wanting to find out whether it was already possible to land on the shore, Tespi released the vulture, which, feeding on the corpses with which the earth was completely strewn, did not think of returning. The man also sent other birds, but only the hummingbird returned, which brought a twig with leaves in its beak. Realizing that the revival of the Earth had begun, Tespi and his wife left the ark, multiplied and populated the Earth with their descendants.

The memory of the terrible flood, which occurred due to divine displeasure, was preserved in the Popol Vuh. According to this ancient text, the Great God decided to create humanity shortly after the Beginning of Time. First, as an experiment, he made “wooden figurines that looked like people and talked like people.” But they fell out of favor because they “did not remember their Creator.”

And then the Heart of Heaven caused a flood. A great flood fell on the heads of the wooden creatures... Thick resin poured from the sky... the face of the earth darkened, and black rain fell day and night... The wooden figurines were destroyed, destroyed, broken and killed.

However, not everyone died. Like the Aztecs and Mechoa-Canesecas, the Mayans of Yucatan and Guatemala believed that, like Noah and his wife, the "Great Father and Great Mother" survived the flood to repopulate the Earth, becoming the ancestors of all subsequent generations.

SOUTH AMERICA

Moving south, we meet the Chibcha people of Central Colombia. According to their myths, they lived at first as savages, without laws, agriculture or religion. But one day an old man of a different race appeared among them. He had a thick long beard, and his name was Bochika. He taught the chibcha to build huts and live together.

Following him, his wife appeared, a beauty named Chia, she was evil, and she took pleasure in interfering with her husband’s altruistic actions. Since she was unable to defeat him in a fair fight, she used witchcraft to cause a huge flood in which most of the people died. Bochica became terribly angry and sent Chia into exile in the sky, where she turned into the Moon, whose task was to shine at night. He also forced the flood to recede and made it possible for the few surviving people who managed to hide there to descend from the mountains. Subsequently, he gave them laws, taught them to cultivate the land and established the cult of the Sun with periodic holidays, sacrifices and pilgrimages. He then transferred his power to two leaders and spent the rest of his days on Earth in quiet ascetic contemplation. When he ascended to heaven, he became a god.

Further south, in Ecuador, the Canary Indian tribe has an ancient story about a flood from which two brothers escaped by climbing a high mountain. As the water rose, the mountain also grew, so the brothers managed to survive the disaster.

The Tupinamba Indians of Brazil also worshiped civilizing heroes or creators. The first of them was Monan, which means “ancient, old,” about whom they said that he was the creator of humanity, but then destroyed the world with flood and fire...

Peru, as we saw in Part II, was especially rich in flood legends. A typical story tells of an Indian who was warned about a flood by a lama. The man and the lama ran away together to the high mountain Vilka-Koto:

When they reached the top of the mountain, they saw that all kinds of birds and animals were already fleeing there. The sea began to rise and covered all the plains and mountains, with the exception of the peak of Vilca Coto; but even there the waves washed over, so that the animals had to huddle together on the “patch”... After five days, the water began to subside, and the sea returned to its shores. But all the people, except one, had already drowned, and it was from him that all the peoples of the Earth came.

In pre-Columbian Chile, the Araucanians preserved a legend that once there was a flood from which only a few Indians escaped. They fled to a high mountain called Tegteg, which means "thundering" or "glittering", which had three peaks and was capable of floating in water.

In the extreme south of the continent, a legend from the Yamana people of Tierra del Fuego tells:

The flood was caused by the Moon woman. It was a time of great upsurge... The moon was full of hatred towards human beings... At that time, everyone drowned, except for those few who managed to escape to the five mountain peaks that were not covered by the water.

Another tribe from Tierra del Fuego, the Pehuenche, associate the flood with a long period of darkness:

The Sun and Moon fell from the sky and the world remained without light until finally two huge condors carried the Sun and Moon back into the sky.

NORTH AMERICA

Among the Inuit of Alaska there was a legend about a terrible flood, accompanied by an earthquake, which swept so quickly across the face of the Earth that only a few managed to escape in their canoes or hide on the tops of the highest mountains, petrified with horror.

The Louisens of lower California have a legend about a flood that drowned the mountains and destroyed most of humanity. Only a few escaped by escaping to the highest peaks, which did not disappear, like everything around them, under water. They remained there until the end of the flood. Further north, similar myths were recorded among the Hurons. An Algonquin mountain legend tells how the Great Hare Michabo restored the world after the flood with the help of a raven, an otter and a muskrat.

In Lind's History of the Dakota Indians, the most authoritative work of the 19th century, which preserved many native legends, the Iroquois myth is set out about how “the sea and waters once swept over the land, destroying all human life.” The Chickasaw Indians claimed that the world was destroyed by the waters, “but one family and a couple of animals of each species were saved.” The Sioux also spoke of a time when there was no dry land left and all the people disappeared.

WATER, WATER, WATER ALL AROUND

How widely do the circles from the Great Flood diverge in mythological memory?

Extremely wide. In total, more than five hundred such legends are known in the world. Having examined 86 of them (20 Asian, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and Oceania), Dr. Richard Andre came to the conclusion that 62 are completely independent of the Mesopotamian and Jewish variants.

For example, Jesuit scholars, who were among the first Europeans to visit China, had the opportunity to study in the imperial library a voluminous work, consisting of 4,320 volumes, which was said to come from ancient times and contain “all knowledge.” This great book included a number of legends that spoke of the consequences of how “people rebelled against the gods and the system of the universe fell into disorder”: “The planets changed their path. The sky has moved to the north. The sun, moon and stars began to move in a new way. The earth fell apart, water gushed from its depths and flooded the earth.”

In the tropical forests of Malaysia, the Chewong people believe that from time to time their world, which they call Earth-Seven, is turned upside down, so that everything sinks and collapses. However, with the assistance of the creator god Tohan, new mountains, valleys and plains appear on the plane that was previously on the lower side of Earth-Seven. New trees grow, new people are born.

Flood myths from Laos and northern Thailand say that many centuries ago the ten beings lived in the upper kingdom, and the rulers of the lower world were three great men: Pu Len Xiong, Hun Kan and Hun Ket. One day, the Tens declared that before eating anything, people should share their food with them as a sign of respect. The people refused, and the thens, enraged, caused a flood that devastated the Earth. Three great men built a raft with a house, where they put a number of women and children. In this way they and their descendants managed to survive the flood.

A similar legend about a global flood, from which two brothers escaped on a raft, exists among the Karen in Burma. This kind of flood is part of Vietnamese mythology. There the brother and sister escaped in a large wooden chest, along with pairs of animals of all breeds.

A number of Australian Aboriginal tribes, especially those traditionally found along the northern tropical coast, believe that they originated from a great flood that swept away the pre-existing landscape along with its inhabitants. According to the origin myths of other tribes, the responsibility for the flood lies with the cosmic serpent Yurlungur, whose symbol is a rainbow.

There are Japanese legends according to which the islands of Oceania appeared after the waves of the great flood receded. In Oceania itself, a Native Hawaiian myth tells how the world was destroyed by a flood and then recreated by the god Tangaloa. Samoans believe in a flood that once wiped out all of humanity. Only two people survived it, sailing out to sea on a boat, which then landed in the Samoan archipelago.

GREECE, INDIA AND EGYPT

On the other side of the Earth, Greek mythology is also replete with memories of the flood. However, here, as in Central America, flooding is seen not as an isolated phenomenon, but as an integral element of the periodic destruction and rebirth of the world. The Aztecs and Mayans used the concept of successive "Suns", or eras (of which ours is the fifth and last). Similarly, the oral traditions of ancient Greece, collected and written down by Hesiod in the 8th century BC. e., they say that before present-day humanity there were four races on Earth. Each of them was more developed than the next. And each at the appointed hour was “absorbed” by a geological cataclysm.

The first and most ancient race of mankind lived, according to this legend, in the “Golden Age”. These people “lived like gods, free from worries, without sorrows and sorrows... Forever young, they enjoyed life at feasts... Death came to them like a dream.” With the passage of time and at the command of Zeus, this entire “golden race” “fell into the depths of the earth.” It was followed by the “silver race”, which was replaced by the “bronze” one, then the race of “heroes” came, and only then our “iron” race appeared - the fifth and final stage of creation.

Of particular interest to us is the fate of the “bronze” race. Having, according to the descriptions of myths, “the strength of giants, powerful hands,” these formidable people were destroyed by Zeus, the king of the gods, as punishment for the sin of Prometheus, the rebellious titan who gave fire to humanity. The vengeful deity took advantage of a general flood to cleanse the Earth.

In the most popular version of the myth, Prometheus impregnated an earthly woman. She bore him a son named Deucalion, who ruled the kingdom of Phthia in Thessaly and took Pyrrha, the red-haired daughter of Epimetrius and Pandora, as his wife. When Zeus made his fateful decision to destroy the bronze race, Deucalion, warned by Prometheus, knocked together a wooden box, put “everything necessary” there and climbed in there himself along with Pyrrha. The king of the gods caused heavy rains to fall from the sky, flooding most of the earth. All of humanity perished in this flood, with the exception of a few people who fled to the highest mountains. “At this time, the mountains of Thessaly split into pieces, and the entire country up to the Isthmus and Peloponnese disappeared under the water surface.”

Deucalion and Pyrrha sailed across this sea in their box for nine days and nights and eventually landed at Mount Parnassus. There, when the rains stopped, they landed and made a sacrifice to the gods. In response, Zeus sent Hermes to Deucalion with permission to ask for whatever he wanted. He wished for people. Zeus told him to collect stones and throw them over his shoulder. The stones that Deucalion threw turned into men, and those that Pyrrha threw turned into women.

The ancient Greeks treated Deucalion as the Jews treated Noah, that is, as the progenitor of the nation and the founder of numerous cities and temples.

A similar figure was revered in Vedic India more than 3,000 years ago. One day, the legend says:

“A certain sage named Manu was taking a bath and found a small fish in his palm, which asked for its life. Taking pity on her, he put the fish into the jug. However, the next day she grew so big that he had to take her to the lake. Soon the lake also turned out to be too small. “Throw me into the sea,” said the fish, who was in fact the incarnation of the god Vishnu, “it will be more convenient for me.” Vishnu then warned Manu about the coming flood. He sent him a large ship and ordered him to load a pair of all living creatures and the seeds of all plants into it, and then sit there himself.”

Before Manu had time to carry out these orders, the ocean rose and flooded everything. Nothing was visible except the god Vishnu in his fish form, only now it was a huge one-horned creature with golden scales. Manu drove his ark to the horn of the fish, and Vishnu towed it across the boiling sea until it stopped at the peak of the “Mountain of the North” sticking out of the water.

“The fish said, ‘I saved you. Tie the ship to a tree so that the water does not carry it away while you are on the mountain. As the water recedes, you can go down." And Manu descended with the waters. The flood washed away all the creatures, and Manu was left alone.”

With him, as well as with the animals and plants that he saved from death, a new era began. A year later, a woman emerged from the water, declaring herself the “daughter of Manu.” They married and produced children, becoming the progenitors of existing humanity.

Now about the last one (in order, but not least). Ancient Egyptian legends also mention a great flood. For example, a funerary text discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I speaks of the destruction of sinful humanity by a flood. The specific causes of this catastrophe are stated in Chapter 175 of the Book of the Dead, which attributes the following speech to the moon god Thoth:

“They fought, they were mired in strife, they caused evil, they stirred up enmity, they committed murder, they created grief and oppression... [That's why] I am going to wash away everything that I have done. The earth must be washed in the abyss of water by the fury of the flood and become clean again, as in primeval times.”

FOLLOWING THE MYSTERY

These words of Thoth seem to close our circle, which began with the Sumerian and biblical floods. “The earth was filled with... evil deeds,” says the Book of Genesis.

“And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt: for all flesh had perverted its way on the earth. And God said to Noah: “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with evil deeds from them. And behold, I will destroy them from the earth."

Like the flood of Deucalion, Manu, and the one that destroyed the Aztec “Fourth Sun,” the biblical flood brought an end to an era of humanity. It was followed by a new era, ours, populated by the descendants of Noah. However, from the very beginning it was clear that in due course this era would come to a catastrophic end. As the old song sang: “The rainbow was a sign to Noah: enough of the floods, but fear the fire.”

The biblical source for this prophecy of the destruction of the world can be found in 2 Peter chapter 3:

“Know this first of all, that in the last days there will appear arrogant scoffers, walking according to their own lusts, saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers began to die, from the beginning of creation, everything remains the same.” Those who think so do not know that in the beginning, by the word of God, the heavens and earth, contained by the same Word, are reserved for fire for the day of judgment and destruction of wicked people... But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will come with a noise, and the elements will burn , will be destroyed, the earth and all the works on it will be burned.”

The Bible, therefore, predicts two eras of our world, with the current one being the second and last. However, other cultures have a different number of cycles of creation and destruction. In China, for example, past eras are called kis, and it is believed that ten of them have passed since the beginning of time before Confucius. At the end of each kisa, “in general, a convulsion of nature, the sea overflows its banks, mountains jump out of the ground, rivers change their course, human beings and everyone else perish, and ancient traces are erased...”

The sacred books of Buddhists speak of Seven Suns, each of which is destroyed in turn by water, fire or wind. At the end of the Seventh Sun, the current world cycle, "the earth is expected to burst into flames." The legends of the Sarawak and Sabah natives of Oceania remind us that the sky was once "low" and tell us that "six Suns perished... now the world is illuminated by the Seventh Sun." Likewise, the prophetic Sibylline books speak of “nine Suns, which are five ages,” and predict the coming of two more ages, the Eighth and Ninth Suns.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Hopi Indians of Arizona (distant relatives of the Aztecs) counted three preceding Suns, each of which culminated in a burnt offering, followed by a gradual rebirth of humanity. By the way, according to Aztec cosmology, our Sun was preceded by four. But such minor differences regarding the exact number of destructions and creations appearing in one or another mythology should not distract us from the amazing convergence of ancient traditions that is quite obvious here. All over the world, these legends perpetuate a series of disasters. In many cases, the nature of a particular cataclysm is obscured by poetic language, a heap of metaphors and symbols. Quite often, different types of natural disasters (two or more) are depicted as if they happened simultaneously (most often floods and earthquakes, but sometimes fires combined with terrifying darkness).

All this contributes to a confusing picture. But Hopi myths are distinguished by their extreme simplicity and specificity of description. Here's what they say:

“The first world was destroyed for human misdeeds by an all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second world ended when the globe turned off its axis and everything was covered with ice. The third world ended with a global flood. The current world is the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether its inhabitants behave in accordance with the plans of the Creator."

Here we are on the trail of a mystery. And although we have no hope of ever comprehending the plans of the Creator, we must be able to understand the mystery of the myths about the global catastrophe.

MASKS OF THE APOCALYPSE

Like the Hopi Indians of North America, the Avestan Aryans of pre-Islamic Iran believed that our era was preceded by three ages of creation. During the first era, people were pure and sinless, tall and long-lived, but by its end the devil declared war on the holy god Ahuramazda, which resulted in a violent cataclysm. During the second era, the devil had no success. In the third era, good and evil balanced each other. In the fourth era (the current one), evil triumphed at the beginning and has continued to triumph ever since.

According to prophecies, the end of the fourth era is expected soon, but in this case we are interested in the end of the first. It is not directly related to the flood, but is similar in so many ways to the legends about the Flood that the connection is clearly visible.

The Avestan sacred books take us back to the times of heaven on Earth, when the distant ancestors of the ancient Persians lived in fabulous and happy Aryan Wedge, the first creation of Ahuramazda, which flourished in the first era and was the mythical birthplace and home of the Aryan race.

In those days, Ariana Wedja had a mild and fertile climate, with summer lasting seven months and winter five. And this garden of pleasures, fruitful and rich in animals, where rivers flowed through the meadows, turned as a result of the attack of the devil Angro Mainyu into a lifeless desert, where there is winter for ten months and summer for only two:

“The first of the two happy lands and countries that I, Ahuramazda, created was Aryana Veja... But after this, Angro Mainyu, the bearer of death, created in contrast to it a mighty snake and snow. Now there are ten months of winter and only two months of summer, the water is freezing there, the ground is freezing, the trees are freezing... Everything around is covered in deep snow, and this is the most terrible of misfortunes..."

The reader will agree that we are talking about a sudden and drastic change in climate in Aryan Wedja. The sacred books of the Avesta leave no doubt about this. Previously, it described the meeting of the heavenly gods, which Ahuramazda organized, and said how “the just Yima, the illustrious shepherd from Aryan Wedge,” appeared at it, accompanied by all his wonderful mortals.

It is at this moment that strange parallels with the biblical legends about the flood begin, because Ahuramazda uses this meeting to warn Iima about what is about to happen as a result of the machinations of evil spirits:

“And Ahuramazda turned to Yima and said to him: “O fair Yima... A fatal winter is about to fall on the material world, bringing with it a furious destructive frost. A destructive winter, when a huge amount of snow falls... And all three types of animals will die: those that live in wild forests, those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the depths of the valleys under the protection of barns.

Therefore, build yourself a barn the size of a pasture. And bring there representatives of every kind of beast, great and small, and cattle, and people, and dogs, and birds, and blazing fire.

Make sure there is water flowing there. Along the shore of the pond, plant birds among evergreen foliage on trees. Plant there samples of all the plants, the most beautiful and fragrant, and the most juicy fruits. And all these objects and creatures will survive while they are in the var. But don’t even think about placing here creatures that are ugly, powerless, insane, immoral, deceitful, evil, jealous, as well as people with uneven teeth and lepers.”

Apart from the scale of this refuge, there is only one significant difference between the ark instilled in Yima from above and the ark that Noah was inspired to build: the Ark is a means of surviving a terrible and destructive flood that can destroy all life by plunging the world into water. Var is a means of surviving a terrible and destructive winter that can destroy all life by covering the earth with a layer of ice and snow.

The Bundahish, another Zoroastrian holy book (believed to contain ancient material from a lost portion of the Avesta), provides further information about the glaciation that hid Aryan Vejo. When Angro Mainyu sent down a raging, destructive frost, it also "attacked the sky and threw it into disorder." The Bundahish relates that this attack allowed the wicked to take possession of “one-third of the sky and cover it with darkness,” while the creeping ice compressed everything around.

INCREDIBLE COLD, FIRE, EARTHQUAKES AND DISRUPTION OF THE SKIES

The Avestan Aryans of Iran, about whom it is known that they migrated to Western Asia from some distant homeland, are not the only owners of ancient legends in which the echo of the great catastrophe is heard. True, the flood most often appears in other legends, but the familiar motives of divine warning and salvation of the remnants of humanity in various parts of the world are often associated with sudden glaciation.

For example, in South America, the Toba Indians from the Gran Chaco region, located at the junction of the modern borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Chile, still repeat the myth of the coming of the “Great Cold”. In this case, the warning comes from a semi-divine heroic figure named Asin:

“Asin told the man to collect as much wood as possible and cover the hut with a thick layer of reeds, because the Great Cold was coming. Having prepared the hut, Asin and the man locked themselves in it and began to wait. When the Great Cold came, trembling people came and began to ask them for a firebrand. Asin was firm and shared coals only with his friends. People began to freeze, they screamed all evening. By midnight they all died, young and old, men and women... The ice and slush lasted for a very long time, all the lights went out. The frost was thick as leather.”

As in the Avestan legends, here the great cold was also accompanied by great darkness. In the words of the Toba elder, these misfortunes were brought down “because when the earth is full of people, it has to change. We have to reduce the population to save the world... When the long darkness came, the sun disappeared and people began to starve. When the food was completely gone, they began to eat their children. And in the end they died..."

The Mayan book Popol Vuh associates flooding with “great hail, black rain, fog and indescribable cold.” It also says that at this time it was “cloudy and gloomy throughout the world ... the faces of the Sun and Moon were hidden.” Other Mayan sources say that these strange and terrible phenomena befell humanity “in the time of the ancestors. The earth darkened... At first the sun shone brightly. Then it became dark in broad daylight... Sunlight returned only twenty-six years after the flood.”

The reader may recall that in many flood and catastrophe myths there is mention not only of great darkness, but also of other visible changes in the sky. The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, for example, said that the Sun and Moon “fell from the sky,” and the Chinese said that “the planets changed their path. The sun, moon and stars began to move in a new way.” The Incas believed that “in ancient times the Andes split apart when the sky was at war with the earth.” The Tarahumara of northern Mexico have legends about the destruction of the world as a result of the change in the path of the Sun. An African myth from the lower reaches of the Congo says that “long ago, the Sun met the Moon and threw mud at it, causing its brightness to decrease. When this meeting took place, there was a great flood...” The Cato Indians of California simply say that “the sky fell.” And in ancient Greco-Roman myths it is said that the Deucalion flood was immediately preceded by terrible events in heaven. They are symbolically described in the story of how Phaeton, the son of the Sun, tried to drive his father's chariot:

“The fire horses quickly felt that the reins were held by an inexperienced hand. Now backing away, now rushing to the side, they left their usual path. Then the whole earth saw with amazement how the magnificent Sun, instead of following its eternal and majestic path, suddenly tumbled and flew headlong down like a meteor.”

This is not the place to examine what could have caused the frightening changes in the skies that appear in cataclysmic legends around the world. For now it is enough for us to note that these legends speak of the same “disorder in the heavens” that accompanied the fatal winter and icing described in the Persian Avesta. There are other connecting points as well. Fire, for example, often follows or precedes a flood. In the story of Phaeton’s solar adventures, “the grass withered, the crops burned out, the forests were filled with fire and smoke. Then the exposed earth began to crack and crumble, and the blackened rocks burst from the heat.”

Volcanic events and earthquakes are also often mentioned in connection with flooding, especially in the Americas. The Chilean Araucanians directly say that “the flood was caused by volcanic eruptions, which were accompanied by strong earthquakes.” The Mam Mayans of Santiago Chimaltenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala, preserve the memory of a “stream of burning tar,” which they say was one of the instruments of world destruction. And in the Gran Chaco (Argentina), the Mataco Indians talk about “a black cloud that came from the south during a flood and covered the entire sky. Lightning flashed and thunder roared. But the drops that fell from the sky looked not like rain, but like fire..."

THE MONSTER CHASED THE SUN

There is one ancient culture that retains more vivid memories in its myths than others. She belongs to the so-called Teutonic tribes of Germany and Scandinavia, and is remembered mainly from the songs of the Norwegian skalds and sagas. The stories that these songs retell go back much further than scientists realize. In them familiar images are intertwined with strange symbolic devices, and allegorical language tells of a cataclysm of terrible power:

“In a distant forest in the east, an elderly giantess gave birth to a whole litter of wolf cubs, whose father was Fenrir. One of these monsters chased the Sun to take possession of it. The chase was in vain for a long time, but with each season the wolf gained strength and finally managed to catch up with the Sun. Its bright rays went out one by one. It turned a blood red hue, and then completely disappeared. Following this, a terrible winter came to the world. Snow storms came from all sides. War began all over the world. Brother killed brother, children stopped respecting blood ties. The time came when people became no better than wolves and longed to destroy each other. A little more, and the world would have fallen into the abyss of universal destruction.

Meanwhile, the wolf Fenrir, whom the gods had carefully chained long before, broke his chains and ran away. He began to shake himself off, and the world began to tremble. The Yggdrasil ash tree, which served as the axis of the earth, turned its roots upside down. The mountains began to crumble and crack from top to bottom, and the dwarfs desperately but unsuccessfully tried to find the familiar, but now disappeared, entrances to their underground dwellings.

Abandoned by the gods, people left their homes, and the human race disappeared from the face of the earth. And the earth itself began to lose its appearance. The stars began to float from the sky and disappear into the yawning void. They were like swallows, tired from a long flight, who fall and drown in the waves. The giant Surt set the earth on fire. The universe has turned into a huge furnace. Flames burst from cracks in the rocks, steam hissed everywhere. All living creatures, all vegetation were destroyed. Only bare earth remained, but it, like the sky, was all covered with cracks and crevices.

And then all the rivers and all the seas rose and overflowed their banks. From all sides the waves collided with each other. They rose and boiled, hiding the sinking earth beneath them... However, not all people died in this great catastrophe. The ancestors of the future humanity survived, hiding in the trunk of the Yggdrasil ash tree, whose wood survived the flames of an all-consuming fire. They survived in this shelter, eating only morning dew.

And so it happened that from the ruins of the old world a new one was born. Gradually the earth rose from the water. The mountains rose again, and the veil of water fell from them in murmuring streams.”

The new world that the Teutonic myth proclaims is our world. There is no need to repeat that, like the Fifth Sun of the Aztecs and Mayans, it was created a long time ago and is not at all new. Could it be a mere coincidence that one of the many Central American flood myths, telling of the fourth era, the fourth Atla (Atl - water), places the Noah couple not in an ark, but in a huge tree, like Yggdrasil? “The Fourth Atl ended in floods. The mountains disappeared... Two survived because one of the gods ordered them to hollow out a cavity in the trunk of a very large tree and crawl there when the heavens fell. This couple hid and survived. Their offspring repopulated the world."

Isn't it strange that the same symbolism is used in ancient traditions of regions of the world so distant from each other? How can this be explained? Is this some kind of pervasive wave of subconscious cross-cultural telepathy or the result of the fact that the universal elements of these wonderful myths were constructed many centuries ago by intelligent and purposeful people? Which of these incredible assumptions is more likely to be true? Or are there other possible answers to the mystery of these myths?

We will return to these issues in due course. In the meantime, what can we conclude about all these apocalyptic visions of fire and ice, floods, eruptions and earthquakes that the myths contain? In all of them there are some recognizable, familiar realities. Maybe it's because they talk about our past, which we can only guess about, but can neither remember it clearly nor completely forget? ...

THE FACE OF THE EARTH DARKENED AND THERE WAS BLACK RAIN

Terrible misfortunes befell all living beings during the last Ice Age. We can imagine what this meant for humanity based on what we know about the consequences it had for other major species. Often such evidence is stunning. Here's what Charles Darwin wrote after visiting South America:

“I don’t think anyone has puzzled over species extinction more than I have. When I found a horse tooth in La Plata, along with the remains of a mastodon, megatherium, toxodon and other extinct monsters that coexisted in a relatively recent geological period, I was dumbfounded. It is known that the horses brought by the Spaniards to South America partially went wild and, having multiplied, quickly filled the entire country.

What, one wonders, could have relatively recently destroyed that old horse, which apparently lived in favorable conditions?”

Of course, the answer is the Ice Age. It was he who destroyed ancient horses in both Americas, as well as a number of other, previously quite prosperous mammals. Moreover, extinctions were not limited to the New World. On the contrary, there were several distinct extinction events in different parts of the world (for different reasons and at different times) during the long glacial period. In all regions, the vast majority of extinct species disappeared during the seven thousand years between 15,000 and 8,000 BC. e.

At this stage of our research, there is no need to accurately establish the specific nature of the climatic, seismic and geological events associated with the advance and retreat of the ice cover, which caused the mass death of animals. It can be reasonably assumed that tidal waves, earthquakes, and hurricanes, as well as the advance and melting of glaciers, could have played a role. But what is most important, regardless of the specific factors at play, is that the mass extinction of animals did occur as a result of the turmoil of the last Ice Age.

This turmoil, Darwin stated, was supposed to shake “the foundations of Our World.” Indeed, in the New World, for example, over seventy species of large mammals became extinct between 15,000 and 8,000 BC. e., including all North American representatives of 7 families and the whole genus of proboscis. These losses, which essentially meant the violent death of over 40 million animals, were not evenly distributed throughout the period; on the contrary, the bulk of them occurred in the two thousand years between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. e. To get a sense of the dynamics, we note that during the previous 300 thousand years, only about 20 species disappeared.

The same pattern of mass extinction was observed in Europe and Asia. Even distant Australia was no exception, losing in a relatively short period of time, according to some estimates, nineteen species of large vertebrates, and not just mammals.

ALASKA AND SIBERIA: SUDDEN FROST

The northern regions of Alaska and Siberia appear to have suffered the most from the deadly cataclysms 13,000-11,000 years ago. As if death had swung its scythe along the Arctic Circle, the remains of a myriad of large animals were discovered there, including a large number of carcasses with intact soft tissues and an incredible number of perfectly preserved mammoth tusks. Moreover, in both regions, mammoth carcasses were thawed to feed sled dogs, and mammoth steaks even appeared on restaurant menus. As one authority commented, "Hundreds of thousands of animals apparently froze immediately after death and remained frozen, otherwise the meat and ivory would have spoiled... For such a catastrophe to occur, some extremely powerful factors must have been involved."

Dr. Dale Guthrie from the US Institute of Arctic Biology shares an interesting observation about the diversity of animals that lived in Alaska before the 11th millennium BC. e.:

“Having learned about this exotic mixture of saber-toothed cats, camels, horses, rhinoceroses, donkeys, deer with giant antlers, lions, ferrets and saigas, one cannot help but be amazed at the world in which they lived. This great diversity of species, so different from today, raises the obvious question: were their habitats also so different?”

The permafrost in which the remains of these animals are buried in Alaska resembles fine, dark gray sand. Frozen into this mass, in the words of Professor Hibben from the University of New Mexico:

“... lie twisted parts of animals and trees, interspersed with layers of ice and layers of peat and moss... Bison, horses, wolves, bears, lions... Entire herds of animals, apparently, died together, struck down by some common evil force... Such piles bodies of animals and people are not formed under normal conditions...”

At different levels it was possible to find stone tools frozen at a considerable depth next to the remains of the Ice Age fauna. This confirms that humans were contemporaries of extinct animals in Alaska. In Alaska's permafrost you can also find:

“...evidence of atmospheric disturbances of incomparable power. Mammoths and bison were torn to pieces and twisted as if some cosmic hands of the gods were at work in fury. In one place we discovered the front leg and shoulder of a mammoth. The blackened bones still held remnants of soft tissue adjacent to the spine along with tendons and ligaments, and the chitinous shell of the tusks was not damaged. There were no traces of dismemberment of the carcasses with a knife or other weapon (as would be the case if hunters were involved in the dismemberment). The animals were simply torn apart and scattered across the area like products made from woven straw, although some of them weighed several tons. Mixed in with the accumulations of bones are trees, also torn, twisted and tangled. All this is covered with fine-grained quicksand, subsequently frozen tightly.”

Approximately the same picture can be observed in Siberia, where catastrophic climate change and geological processes occurred almost at the same time. Here, the extraction of ivory from the cemeteries of frozen mammoths has occurred since Roman times. At the beginning of the 20th century, up to 20 thousand pairs of tusks were mined here per decade.

And again it turns out that some mystical factor is involved in this mass death. After all, it is generally accepted that mammoths, with their thick hair and thick skin, are well adapted to cold weather, and therefore we are not surprised to find their remains in Siberia. It is more difficult to explain the fact that human beings, as well as many other animals that cannot be considered frost-resistant, met their death along with them:

“On the plains of northern Siberia lived a huge number of rhinoceroses, antelopes, horses, bison and other herbivorous creatures, which were hunted by various predators, including the saber-toothed tiger... Like mammoths, these animals roamed across Siberia right up to its northern outskirts, to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and even further north, on the Lokhov and Novosibirsk islands, already very close to the North Pole.”

Scientists confirm that of the thirty-four species of animals that lived in Siberia before the disasters of the 11th millennium BC. BC, including the mammoth Ossipus, the giant deer, the cave hyena and the cave lion, no less than twenty-eight were adapted only to moderate climatic conditions. Therefore, one of the most amazing things about animal extinction is that, contrary to the current geographical and climatic conditions of our time, the further we move north, the more remains of mammoths and other animals we encounter. Thus, according to the descriptions of the researchers who discovered the New Siberian Islands, which lie beyond the Arctic Circle, they consist almost entirely of bones and tusks of mammoths. The only logical conclusion, as French zoologist Georges Cuvier pointed out, is that “permafrost did not previously exist where the animals froze, because at such temperatures they would not have survived. The country where they lived froze at the same moment when these creatures lost their lives.”

There are many other arguments in favor of the fact that in the 11th millennium BC. e. A sharp cold snap occurred in Siberia. While exploring the New Siberian Islands, polar explorer Baron Eduard von Toll discovered the remains of “a saber-toothed tiger and a 27-meter-tall fruit tree. The tree was well preserved in permafrost, with roots and seeds. The branches still bore green leaves and fruits... At present the only woody vegetation on the islands is an inch-high willow.”

Likewise, evidence of the catastrophic change that occurred at the very beginning of the cold snap in Siberia is the food that the dead animals ate:

“Mammoths died suddenly, during a sharp cold snap, and in large numbers. Death came so quickly that the ingested vegetation remained undigested... Herbs, bluebells, buttercups, sedges and wild legumes were found in their mouths and stomachs, which remained quite recognizable.”

There is no need to emphasize that such flora does not grow everywhere in Siberia today. Her presence there in the 11th millennium BC. e. forces us to agree that the region then had a pleasant and productive climate - temperate or even warm. Why the end of the Ice Age in other parts of the world should have been the beginning of a fateful winter in the former paradise, we will discuss in Part VIII. However, it is certain that at some point, 12-13 thousand years ago, a destructive cold came to Siberia with terrifying speed and has not loosened its grip since then. In an eerie echo of the Avesta legends, the land that previously enjoyed seven months of summer was transformed overnight into an area covered in ice and snow, experiencing brutal winter for ten months of the year.

A THOUSAND KRAKATAU AT ONCE

Many cataclysmic myths tell of times of bitter cold, darkened skies, and black rain of burning tar. This must have continued for centuries along the arc of death through Siberia, the Yukon and Alaska. Here, “in the depths of the permafrost, sometimes interspersed with piles of bones and tusks, lie layers of volcanic ash. There is no doubt that simultaneously with the pestilence, volcanic eruptions of terrifying force occurred.”

There is compelling evidence of an unusually large volcanic eruption during the retreat of the Wisconsin Ice Shell. Far south of Alaska's frozen quicksand, thousands of prehistoric animals and plants drowned overnight in the famous La Brea bitumen lakes near Los Angeles. Among the creatures recovered from the surface are bison, horses, camels, sloths, mammoths, mastodons and at least seven hundred saber-toothed tigers. A dismembered human skeleton was also found, completely submerged in bitumen, mixed with the bones of an extinct species of vulture. In general, the remains found at La Brea (“broken, crushed, deformed and mixed into a homogeneous mass”) clearly indicate a sudden and terrible volcanic cataclysm.

Similar finds of typical birds and mammals from the last Ice Age were made in two other asphalt deposits in California (Carpinteria and McKittrick). In the San Pedro Valley, mastodon skeletons were discovered in a standing position, buried in a layer of volcanic ash and sand. Fossils from glacial Lake Floristan in Colorado and John Day Basin in Oregon have also been found in volcanic ash.

Although the powerful eruptions that produced such mass graves were most intense at the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation, they were repeated repeatedly throughout the Ice Age, not only in North America, but also in Central and South America, in the North Atlantic, on the Asian continent and in Japan .

It is clear that these widespread volcanic events meant a lot to the people living in those strange and terrible times. Those who remember the cauliflower-shaped clouds of dust, smoke and ash thrown into the upper atmosphere by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens may believe that a large number of such explosions (occurring sequentially over a long period at different points globe) could not only cause local devastation, but also cause serious global climate change.

Mount St. Helens spat out an estimated cubic kilometer of rock, which is quite a bit compared to typical Ice Age volcanic eruptions. In this sense, more representative is the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia, whose eruption in 1883 was so powerful that it killed over 36 thousand people, and the roar of the eruption was heard at a distance of 5 thousand kilometers. From its epicenter in the Sunda Strait, a thirty-meter tsunami swept through the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean, washing ships ashore kilometers from the coastline and causing floods on the east coast of Africa and the west coast of America. 18 cubic kilometers of rocks and huge amounts of ash and dust were thrown into the upper atmosphere. The skies over the entire planet darkened noticeably for more than two years, and sunsets turned purple. During this period, average temperatures on Earth dropped markedly because volcanic dust particles reflected the sun's rays back into space.

The intense volcanic events of the Ice Age are equivalent to not one, but many Krakatoas. The first result of this would be increased glaciation, as sunlight was weakened by dust clouds and already low temperatures dropped even lower. In addition, volcanoes release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas,” into the atmosphere, so it is possible that global warming could occur as dust settled during relatively quiet periods. A number of authoritative experts believe that the cyclical expansion and contraction of the ice sheet is associated precisely with this combined effect, when volcanoes and climate “play hide and seek.”

UNIVERSAL FLOOD

The source of water from which these ice caps were formed were seas and oceans, the level of which at that time was about 120 meters lower than today.

It was at this moment that the climate pendulum swung intensively in the opposite direction. The melting began so suddenly and over such a wide area that it was called "something of a miracle." In Europe, geologists call this period the Bolling phase of a warm climate, and in North America - the Brady gap. In both regions:

“The ice cap, which had been growing for 40 thousand years, disappeared within just two thousand years. Obviously, this could not be the result of slow-acting climatic factors that are usually used to explain ice ages... The rate of melting suggests the influence of some unusual factor on the climate. Evidence suggests that this factor first manifested itself about 16,500 years ago, destroying most (perhaps three-quarters) of the glaciers within two thousand years, and that the bulk of these dramatic events occurred within a thousand years or less.”

The first inevitable consequence was a sharp rise in sea levels, perhaps by 100 meters. Islands and isthmuses disappeared, and significant sections of the low-lying coastline were submerged. From time to time, large tidal waves rolled onto the shores higher than usual. They rolled away, but left unmistakable traces of their presence.

In the United States, traces of Ice Age seas are present in the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, in some places at elevations above 60 meters. The skeletons of two whales have been discovered in marshes covering glacial sediments in Michigan. In Georgia, marine sediments occur at elevations of up to 50 meters, and in northern Florida - over 72 meters. In Texas, well south of the Wisconsin glaciation, fossils of Ice Age mammals are found in marine sediments. Another marine deposit, where walruses, seals and at least five species of whales are found, is located along the coast of the northeastern states and the Arctic coast of Canada. In many areas along the Pacific coast of North America, Ice Age marine deposits extend more than 300 kilometers inland. The bones of a whale were found north of Lake Ontario, about 130 meters above modern sea level, the skeleton of another whale was found in Vermont, at a level of over 150 meters, and another near Montreal, in Quebec, at a level of about 180 meters.

Flood myths persistently describe scenes of people and animals fleeing the rising tide and finding safety on mountain tops. Fossil findings confirm that similar things did happen as the ice sheet melted, but that the mountains were not always high enough to save the escapees. For example, cracks in the rocks on the tops of isolated hills in central France are filled with the remains of the bones of mammoths, hairy rhinoceroses and other animals. The top of Mont Genet in Burgundy is strewn with fragments of the skeletons of a mammoth, reindeer, horse and other animals. “Much further south is the Rock of Gibraltar, where, along with animal bones, a human molar and flints processed by Paleolithic man were discovered.”

The remains of a hippopotamus in the company of a mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, bear, bison, wolf and lion were found in England, near Plymouth on the English Channel. In the hills around Palermo, Sicily, "an incredible amount of hippopotamus bones - a shaped hecatomb" - was discovered. Based on this and other evidence, Joseph Perstwig, once a geology lecturer at Oxford University, concluded that Central America, England and the Mediterranean islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily were, on several occasions, completely submerged as the ice rapidly melted:

“Naturally, the animals retreated, as the water advanced, to the hills until they found themselves surrounded by water... They accumulated there in huge numbers, crowded into more accessible caves until they were overwhelmed by the water... Streams of water washed away rocks and hillsides, stones collapsed and bones were broken and crushed... Some communities of the first people must also have suffered in similar catastrophes.”

It is likely that similar disasters occurred in China around the same time. In caves near Beijing, along with the remains of human skeletons, the bones of mammoths and buffalos were found. Some experts believe that the eerie mixture of mammoth carcasses with broken and jumbled trees in Siberia “owes to its origin in a huge tidal wave that uprooted trees and drowned them along with the animals in the mud. In the polar regions, all this was frozen solid and has been preserved to this day in permafrost.”

Fossils from the Ice Age have also been discovered throughout South America, “in which the skeletons of incompatible animal species (predators and herbivores) are jumbled together with human bones. No less important is the combination (over fairly extended areas) of fossil land and sea animals, randomly mixed, but buried in the same geological horizon.”

North America was also hit hard by floods. As the Great Wisconsin Ice Sheet melted, large but temporary lakes emerged that filled very quickly, drowning everything in their path, before drying up within a few hundred years. For example, Lake Agassiz, the largest glacial lake in the New World, once had a surface of 280 thousand square kilometers, occupying a large part of what is now Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan in Canada and North Dakota and Minnesota in the United States. It lasted less than a thousand years, with melting and flooding followed by a quiet period.

(from the editor of the article) Well, I’ll end this historical collection with stunning words, the meaning of which, thank God, is already clear to many today:

As we have already seen, these New World myths are not isolated in this respect from the Old World myths. Throughout the globe, the terms “great flood,” “great cold,” and “time of great upheaval” appear with remarkable unanimity. And it’s not just that experience gained in similar conditions is reflected everywhere; this would be quite understandable, since the Ice Age and its consequences were global in nature. Much more curious is how familiar motifs sound again and again: one good man and his family, a warning coming from God, saving the seeds of all living things, a life-saving ship, a shelter from the cold, a tree trunk in which the ancestors of the future of humanity, birds and others hid. creatures that are released after a flood to find land... and so on.

Isn't it also strange that so many myths describe figures like Quetzalcoatl or Viracocha, who arrived during the dark times after the flood to teach architecture, astronomy, science and law to the scattered and now small tribes of surviving people?

Who were these civilizing heroes? A figment of primitive imagination? Gods? People? If by people, then could they somehow manipulate myths, turning them into a means of transmitting knowledge over time?

Such ideas may seem fantastic. However, amazingly accurate astronomical data, as ancient and universal as that of the Great Flood, appears again and again in a number of myths.

Where did their scientific content come from?

Prepared by: Dato Gomarteli (Ukraine-Georgia)

Hello dear reader. Never before did I think that I would have to write these lines. For quite a long time I did not dare to write down everything that I was destined to discover, if you can even call it that. I still sometimes wonder if I’ve gone crazy.

One evening my daughter came up to me with a request to show me on a map where and what ocean is located on our planet, and since I don’t have a printed physical map of the world at home, I opened an electronic Google map on my computer, I switched her to satellite view mode and began to slowly explain everything to her. When I reached the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific Ocean and brought it closer to show my daughter better, it was like an electric shock struck me and I suddenly saw what every person on our planet sees, but with completely different eyes. Like everyone else, until that moment I didn’t understand that I was seeing the same thing on the map, but then it was as if my eyes were opened. But all these are emotions, and you can’t cook cabbage soup out of emotions. So let's try together to see what the map revealed to me Google, and neither more nor less was discovered - a trace of the collision of our Mother Earth with an unknown celestial body, which led to what is commonly called the Great Flood.

Look carefully at the lower left corner of the photo and think: does this remind you of anything? I don’t know about you, but it reminds me of a clear trace from the impact of some rounded celestial body on the surface of our planet. Moreover, the impact was in front of the mainland of South America and Antarctica, which from the impact are now slightly concave in the direction of the impact and are separated in this place by a strait named after the Drake Strait, the pirate who allegedly discovered this strait in the past.

In fact, this strait is a pothole left at the moment of impact and ending in a rounded “contact spot” of the celestial body with the surface of our planet. Let's take a closer look at this “contact patch”.

Looking closer, we see a rounded spot that has a concave surface and ends on the right, that is, on the side in the direction of impact, with a characteristic hill with an almost vertical edge, which again has characteristic elevations that emerge on the surface of the world ocean in the form of islands. In order to better understand the nature of the formation of this “contact spot,” you can do the same experiment that I did. The experiment requires a wet sandy surface. A sandy surface on the banks of a river or sea is perfect. During the experiment, you need to make a smooth movement with your hand, during which you move your hand over the sand, then touch the sand with your finger and, without stopping the movement of your hand, apply pressure to it, thereby raking up a certain amount of sand with your finger and then after a while, tear off your finger from the surface of the sand. Did you do it? Now look at the result of this simple experiment and you will see a picture completely similar to the one shown in the photo below.

There is one more funny nuance. According to researchers, the north pole of our planet has shifted by about two thousand kilometers in the past. If we measure the length of the so-called pothole on the ocean floor in the Drake Passage and ending with the “contact patch,” then it also approximately corresponds to two thousand kilometers. In the photo I took measurements using Google Maps. Moreover, researchers cannot answer the question of what caused the pole shift. I don’t presume to say with 100% probability, but it’s still worth thinking about the question: was it not this catastrophe that caused the shift of the poles of planet Earth by these same two thousand kilometers?

Now let's ask ourselves: what happened after the celestial body hit the planet tangentially and again went into space? You may ask: why on a tangent and why did it necessarily go away, and not break through the surface and plunge into the bowels of the planet? Everything here is also very simply explained. Do not forget about the direction of rotation of our planet. It was precisely the coincidence of circumstances that the celestial body presented during the rotation of our planet that saved it from destruction and allowed the celestial body, so to speak, to slip and go away, and not bury itself in the bowels of the planet. No less fortunate was that the blow fell on the ocean in front of the continent, and not on the continent itself, since the ocean waters somewhat dampened the impact and played the role of a kind of lubricant when the celestial bodies came into contact, but this fact also had a flip side to the coin - the ocean waters played and its destructive role after the body has been torn off and gone into space.

Now let's see what happened next. I think there is no need to prove to anyone that the consequence of the impact that led to the formation of the Drake Passage was the formation of a huge multi-kilometer wave, which rushed forward at great speed, sweeping away everything in its path. Let's follow the path of this wave.

The wave crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the first obstacle in its path was the southern tip of Africa, although it suffered relatively little damage, as the wave touched it with its edge and turned slightly to the south, where it hit Australia. But Australia was much less fortunate. It took the blow of the wave and was practically washed away, which is very clearly visible on the map.

Then the wave crossed the Pacific Ocean and passed between the Americas, again touching North America with its edge. We see the consequences of this both on the map and in the films of Sklyarov, who very picturesquely described the consequences of the Great Flood in North America. If anyone hasn’t watched it or has already forgotten, they can re-watch these films, since they have long been posted for free access on the Internet. These are very educational films, although not everything in them should be taken seriously.

Then the wave crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the second time and with its entire mass at full speed hit the northern tip of Africa, sweeping away and washing away everything in its path. This is also clearly visible on the map. From my point of view, we owe such a strange arrangement of deserts on the surface of our planet not to the quirks of climate or reckless human activity, but to the destructive and merciless impact of the wave during the Great Flood, which not only swept away everything in its path, but also literally this word washed away everything, including not only buildings and vegetation, but also the fertile layer of soil on the surface of the continents of our planet.

After Africa, the wave swept across Asia and again crossed the Pacific Ocean and, passing through the gap between our mainland and North America, went to the North Pole through Greenland. Having reached the north pole of our planet, the wave extinguished itself, because it exhausted its power, successively slowing down on the continents on which it flew, and by the fact that at the north pole it eventually caught up with itself.

After this, the water of the already extinct wave began to roll back from the North Pole to the south. Some of the water passed through our continent. This is precisely what can explain the still flooded northern tip of our continent and the abandoned Gulf of Finland and the cities of Western Europe, including our Petrograd and Moscow, buried under a multi-meter layer of earth that was brought in from the North Pole.

Map of tectonic plates and faults in the Earth's crust

If there was an impact from a celestial body, then it is quite reasonable to look for its consequences in the thickness of the Earth’s crust. After all, a blow of such force simply could not leave any traces. Let's look at the map of tectonic plates and faults in the Earth's crust.

What do we see there on this map? The map clearly shows a tectonic fault at the site of not only the trace left by the celestial body, but also around the so-called “contact spot” at the site of the separation of the celestial body from the surface of the Earth. And these faults once again confirm the correctness of my conclusions about the impact of a certain celestial body. And the blow was so strong that it not only demolished the isthmus between South America and Antarctica, but also led to the formation of a tectonic fault in the Earth’s crust in this place.

Oddities of the trajectory of a wave on the surface of the planet

I think it’s worth talking about one more aspect of the wave’s movement, namely its non-linearity and unexpected deviations in one direction or the other. Since childhood, we have all been taught to believe that we live on a planet that has the shape of a ball, which is slightly flattened at the poles.

I myself held the same opinion for quite a long time. And imagine my surprise when in 2012 I came across the results of a study by the European Space Agency ESA using data obtained by the GOCE apparatus (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer - a satellite for studying the gravitational field and steady-state ocean currents).

Below I present some photographs of the actual shape of our planet. Moreover, it is worth taking into account the fact that this is the shape of the planet itself without taking into account the waters on its surface that form the world’s oceans. You may ask a completely legitimate question: what do these photographs have to do with the topic being discussed here? From my point of view, this is the most direct thing. After all, not only does the wave move along the surface of a celestial body that has an irregular shape, but its movement is affected by impacts from the wave front.
No matter how cyclopean the size of the wave, these factors cannot be discounted, because what we consider a straight line on the surface of a globe shaped like a regular ball turns out to be far from a rectilinear trajectory, and vice versa - what in reality is a rectilinear trajectory on the irregularly shaped surfaces on the globe will turn into an intricate curve.

And we have not yet considered the fact that when moving along the surface of the planet, the wave repeatedly encountered various obstacles in the form of continents on its path. And if we return to the expected trajectory of the wave along the surface of our planet, we can see that for the first time it touched both Africa and Australia with its peripheral part, and not with its entire front. This could not but affect not only the trajectory of movement itself, but also the growth of the wave front, which, each time it met an obstacle, was partially broken off and the wave had to start growing again. And if we consider the moment of its passage between the two Americas, then it is impossible not to notice the fact that at the same time the wave front was not only truncated once again, but also part of the wave, due to re-reflection, turned south and washed away the coast of South America.

Approximate time of the disaster

Now let's try to find out when this disaster occurred. To do this, it would be possible to send an expedition to the site of the disaster, examine it in detail, take all kinds of soil and rock samples and try to study them in laboratories, then follow the route of the Great Flood and do the same work again. But all this would cost a lot of money, would last for many, many years, and it would not necessarily be enough for my entire life to carry out this work.

But is all this really necessary and is it possible to do without such expensive and resource-intensive measures, at least for now, at first? I believe that at this stage, to establish the approximate time of the catastrophe, you and I will be able to make do with information obtained earlier and now in open sources, as we have already done when considering the planetary catastrophe that led to the Great Flood.
To do this, we should turn to physical maps of the world from different centuries and establish when the Drake Passage appeared on them. After all, we previously established that it was the Drake Passage that was formed as a result and at the site of this planetary catastrophe.
Below are the physical maps that I was able to find in the public domain and whose authenticity does not raise much doubt.

Here is a map of the World dating back to 1570 AD

As we can see, there is no Drake Passage on this map and South America is still connected to Antarctica. This means that in the sixteenth century there was no catastrophe yet.
Let's take a map from the early seventeenth century and see if the Drake Passage and the peculiar outlines of South America and Antarctica appeared on the map in the seventeenth century. After all, sailors could not fail to notice such a change in the landscape of the planet.
Here is a map dating from the early seventeenth century. Unfortunately, I do not have a more accurate dating, as was the case with the first map. On the resource where I found this map, the date was exactly this: “early seventeenth century.” But in this case this is not of a fundamental nature.

The fact is that on this map both South America and Antarctica and the bridge between them are in their place, and therefore either the disaster had not yet happened, or the cartographer did not know about what happened, although it’s hard to believe in this, knowing the scale of the disaster and everything the consequences to which it led.
Well, let's move on, again take a more recent map and look for the Drake Passage on it. After all, it should appear on the maps someday.
Here's another card. This time the dating of the map is more accurate. It also dates back to the seventeenth century - this is 1630 from the Nativity of Christ.

And what do we see on this map? Although the outlines of the continents are drawn on it not as well as in the previous one, it is clearly visible that the strait in its modern form is not on the map.
Well, apparently in this case the picture described when considering the previous map is repeated. We continue to move along the timeline towards our days and once again take a map more recent than the previous one.
This time I did not find a physical map of the world. I found a map of North and South America; in addition, it does not show Antarctica at all. But this is not so important. After all, we remember the outlines of the southern tip of South America from previous maps, and we can notice any changes in them even without Antarctica. But this time the dating of the map is in perfect order - it is dated to the very end of the seventeenth century, namely 1686 AD.
Let's look at South America and compare its outlines with what we saw on the previous map.
On this map we finally see not the already tired antediluvian outlines of South America and the isthmus connecting South America with Antarctica in the place of the modern and familiar Drake Passage, but the most familiar modern South America with a curved towards the “contact patch” southern end.

What conclusions can be drawn from all of the above? There are two fairly simple and obvious conclusions:
If we assume that cartographers actually made maps at the times in which the maps are dated, then the disaster occurred in the fifty-year period between 1630 and 1686.
If we assume that cartographers used ancient maps to compile their maps and only copied them and passed them off as their own, then we can only say that the catastrophe occurred earlier than 1570 AD, and in the seventeenth century, during the repopulation of the Earth, the inaccuracies of the existing ones were established maps and clarifications were made to them to bring them into line with the real landscape of the planet.
Which of these conclusions is correct and which is false, to my great regret, I cannot judge, because the available information is clearly not enough for this yet.

Confirmation of disaster

Where can you find confirmation of the fact of the disaster, except for the physical maps that we talked about above. I’m afraid to seem unoriginal, but the answer will be quite simple: firstly, under your feet and secondly, in works of art, namely in the paintings of artists. I doubt that any of the eyewitnesses would have been able to capture the wave itself, but the consequences of this tragedy were fully captured. There were quite a large number of artists who painted paintings that reflected the picture of terrible devastation that reigned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the place of Egypt, modern Western Europe and Mother Rus'. But they prudently told us that these artists did not paint from life, but depicted on their canvases the so-called world they imagined. I will cite the works of just a few fairly prominent representatives of this genre:
This is what the now familiar antiquities of Egypt looked like before they were literally dug up from under a thick layer of sand.

What happened in Europe at that time? Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Hubert Robert and Charles-Louis Clerisseau will help us understand.

But these are not all the facts that can be cited in support of the disaster and which I have yet to systematize and describe. There are also cities in Mother Rus' covered with earth for several meters, there is the Gulf of Finland, which is also covered with earth and became truly navigable only at the end of the nineteenth century, when the world's first sea canal was dug along its bottom. There are salty sands of the Moscow River, sea shells and devil's fingers, which I dug up as a boy in the forest sands in the Bryansk region. And Bryansk itself, which according to the official historical legend got its name from the wilds where it supposedly stands, really doesn’t smell like wilds in the Bryansk region, but this is a subject for a separate conversation and God willing, in the future I will publish my thoughts on this topic. There are deposits of bones and carcasses of mammoths, the meat of which was fed to dogs in Siberia at the end of the twentieth century. I will consider all this in more detail in the next part of this article.

In the meantime, I appeal to all readers who spent their time and effort and read the article to the end. Do not remain open-hearted - express any critical comments, point out inaccuracies and errors in my reasoning. Ask any questions - I will definitely answer them!

, released by the Sretensky Monastery in 2006.

The biblical teaching about the global flood (Gen. ch. 6-7), which, according to the Bible, ends the primitive (“antediluvian”) history of the human race, after which a new period begins, a new era of humanity, is most disputed by rationalistic scientific criticism. What is being disputed is mainly the volume of the flood, i.e. its universality. In addition, particulars are disputed, for example, the existence of Noah’s Ark, the possibility of placing all animals in it, etc. However, all geologists recognize the certainty of some huge geological catastrophe associated with flooding or icing. Doubts arise only about the universality of this catastrophe and its duration. Geology contrasts the flood with the hypothesis of the so-called “ice age”, considering this geological phenomenon to be more ancient, longer and more comprehensive.

Christian flood apologetics first seeks to find out what significance the biblical account of the Flood has for the Christian worldview, and then seeks scientific evidence to confirm its truth.

The issue of the flood is not a particularity, but one of the extremely important provisions of the Christian worldview. The Flood is a world event associated with the history of Noah and his sons, from whom biblical history produces all tribes and peoples existing to this day.

In addition to historical significance, the flood also has dogmatic and moral significance. The worldwide flood is associated with the dogmatic doctrine of the unity and continuity of the human race from Adam through Noah to our time. The cause of the flood has a deeply moral meaning: the flood was sent to humanity as punishment for sins, for general moral decay.

The truth of the global flood is attested to by the words of the Savior Himself, which is of decisive importance for a Christian. For the Christian consciousness can more easily assume that the whole world is mistaken than to think blasphemously that the God-man was mistaken (see Matt. 24:37).

The Apostolic Epistles also often speak of the global flood as an actual event (see 2 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 11:7). The Savior and His apostles, by the very nature of their preaching of the truth, could not cite “legendary” and “false” stories about the flood as proof of God’s justice.

Different peoples have over seventy different legends, reminiscent of the description of the flood in the 6th chapter of the book of Genesis (the Babylonian legend is closest to the Bible). The universality of the legend about the flood suggests that it was based on some actual world event, imprinted in the memory of peoples and preserved for many centuries.

On the question of whether the biblical flood was global in the sense that it covered the entire surface of the globe (i.e., it was a geological phenomenon), or in the sense that all antediluvian humanity perished in its waves (i.e., that he was an anthropological phenomenon), there are different opinions in Western theology. Trying to reconcile the biblical legend with geological scientific hypotheses, some Western theologians admit that the flood may not have been widespread throughout the entire globe, but only captured those areas and countries that were inhabited by people.

Orthodox theology cannot agree with this, firstly, because it contradicts both the meaning and the letter of the biblical narrative, which clearly states that the flood covered all the highest mountains throughout the entire earth, and secondly, because from a scientific point of view, there are much more difficulties in explaining a local flood than in explaining a global flood.

Scientific geological hypotheses about the flood have changed several times. While no remains of people were found in the antediluvian layers of the earth, geologists appeared who decisively asserted that the flood took place on earth before the appearance of man. At present (after the discovery of traces of man in the antediluvian layers of the earth), the fact of the existence of man before the flood is undeniable. With this fact, many old geological hypotheses that “contradicted” the Bible collapsed. But new and recent geological hypotheses about the flood have presented new “contradictions”, which, however, are not shared by all learned geologists. The main points of disagreement between geological hypotheses and the biblical legend can be reduced to the following points.

First, geology looks at the flood as a natural cosmological phenomenon, and not as a special phenomenon of God's punishment to people. The inconsistency of various geological hypotheses and, in the end, the powerlessness of science to only “scientifically” explain the phenomenon of the flood only confirm in the minds of Christians the undoubted miraculousness of this event.

Further, geology looks at the flood not as a sudden catastrophe, prepared according to the Bible for only forty days, but as a continuation of an entire geological epoch, enormous in time. The flood, according to geological hypotheses, was preceded by a gradual, extremely slow decrease in temperature on the earth, which finally reached an icy state, and the masses of water on the earth's surface turned into glaciers that covered vast areas of the earth. According to the Bible, the flood came suddenly and passed relatively quickly, while the “ice age,” according to geology, took a very long time to prepare for and lasted even longer (for many millennia).

According to the Bible, the flood was worldwide in both the geological and anthropological sense, that is, the entire globe was flooded with water above the highest mountains, and all antediluvian humanity, with the exception of Noah’s family, perished. The opinions of geologists on this issue differ, with a minority suggesting that once polar ice and snow covered the entire earth's surface (which suggests that the flooding that preceded the formation of ice was widespread), while the majority is inclined to recognize only local, albeit extensive icing. Further, geologists tend to push their flood back millions of years and do not think that all of humanity perished in it. These disagreements between theologians and geologists involuntarily lead to the thought: are they arguing about the same phenomenon? And shouldn’t we distinguish the biblical “flood” from the “ice age” of geologists?

Many modern geologists believe that the “ice age” is a hypothesis, and the flood is an unresolved problem. The reasons for the widespread decrease in temperature that led to the onset of the “ice age” have not yet been determined with sufficient accuracy by science. If the biblical flood cannot be strictly scientifically proven, then it cannot be scientifically refuted either. Therefore, there are no “scientific” obstacles to Christian trust in the Bible.

The universality of the biblical flood is often objected to on the grounds that the Bible itself does not provide sufficient reasons for such a flood. Forty days' rain, say objectors, is not sufficient to produce such an enormous flood. Regarding this objection, it should first of all be said that the main cause of the flood, according to the Bible, lies not in one or another natural causes, but in the almighty will of God. But natural causes, indicated in the Bible as causes subordinate to the highest Divine will, were sufficient for the global flood.

The main reason for the flood, according to the Bible, was that “all the sources of the great deep opened up” (Gen. 7:11), and rains were placed in the background (Gen. 8:2). What is meant by “the sources of the great deep”? This could also mean oceans gushing as a result of a global cataclysm associated with earthquakes and changes in the bottom of the oceans and seas; these could also be underground water sources, which, according to some geologists, are so huge that they could deliver an even more significant amount of water mass than was required for the global flood.

Consequently, all objections to the geological sufficiency of the causes of the flood indicated in the Bible are not founded.

It should also be noted that the Bible refers to the rainbow, which first appeared only after the flood. According to some scientific hypotheses (for example, the hypothesis of Professor Rome), the existence of a rainbow in the antediluvian atmosphere was physically impossible, and only with the fall of huge masses of water did it become possible for a phenomenon called a rainbow to appear in the altered atmosphere. This rainbow, emphasized in the biblical narrative as a sign of the promise that “there will be no more flood,” gives the entire biblical narrative a special significance and truthfulness.

Mysteries of history. Data. Discoveries. People Zgurskaya Maria Pavlovna

Ermanovskaya A.E. Was the Flood global?

Ermanovskaya A.E.

Was the Flood global?

One of the most famous stories and at the same time the most curious secrets of antiquity is, of course, the story of the Flood. “After seven days the waters of the flood came to the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the sources of the great deep burst open, and the windows of heaven were opened; And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. And the flood continued on the earth for forty days, and the waters increased, and lifted up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters increased... and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters. And the water increased greatly on the earth, so that all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered. The water rose above them fifteen cubits, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh that moved upon the earth lost its life; and birds, and cattle, and beasts, and all creeping things that crawl on the earth, and all people. Everything that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils on the dry land died. Every creature that was on the surface of the earth was destroyed; from man to cattle, and creeping things, and the birds of the air - everything was destroyed from the earth, only Noah remained and what was with him in the ark, and the waters increased on the earth for one hundred and fifty days. And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God brought a wind upon the earth, and the waters stood still.

And the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed, and the rain from heaven ceased, but the water returned from the earth gradually, and the water began to subside at the end of one hundred and fifty days. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. The water continually decreased until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared.” (Genesis, 7, 10–24; 8, 1–5).

This is how the holy book of Christians and Jews talks about the Flood. According to the Bible, the cause of the disaster was the wrath of God, which fell upon a completely corrupt humanity. The history of religion, mythology, and folklore give us many examples of how natural disasters, such as drought, volcanic eruption, earthquake, flood, were interpreted as “God’s punishment.” Therefore, we are talking about a natural phenomenon, interpreted by the creators of the Bible in full accordance with their worldview.

Floods were caused by various natural phenomena. These are earthquakes that generate giant tsunami waves, and spring floods, and hurricanes, and storms that drive sea water into river mouths and onto low-lying shores, and torrential rains, and dam breaks. The biblical "open windows of heaven" are apparently torrential rains. How to understand the gaping “sources of the great “abyss”” is a controversial issue. These can be tsunami waves, waters driven by a hurricane, or a storm wave.

The Bible reports the following about the water level during the flood: “all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered with water,” and the water above them rose “fifteen cubits,” that is, 7.5–8 meters.

The scale of this disaster is truly universal. The entire earth was flooded. The land remained only “on the mountains of Ararat,” where the pious Noah stopped with his ark. All known disasters are a mere trifle compared to the terrible flood that an angry God brought down on the human race. After all, “every creature that was on the surface of the earth was destroyed; from man to cattle and creeping things and birds of the air! Everyone perished, “only Noah remained and what was with him in the ark.” And in the ark, besides Noah, there were “his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives... both of clean cattle and of unclean cattle, and of birds, and of every thing that creeps on the earth,” one pair each.

When did this disaster happen? The Bible says that the flood began "in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month." How can we correlate this date with the chronology that we use? The date of the “creation of the world” is known from the Bible; the genealogy of various characters is given there and the dates of their lives are named. And in the Middle Ages, and in modern times, and to this day, believing Christians and Jews, as well as unbelieving scientists, argue about the “reference point”, thanks to which it would be possible to compare the biblical time scale with the modern one. Therefore, we have several different dates for the global flood that the Bible tells about.

Some authors call 2501 BC. e. Others, relying on the chronological system developed by the English Archbishop Usher, date the flood to 2349 BC. e. 3553 BC e. calls an Orthodox theologian, hiding under the pseudonym F.R. According to calculations based on chronological data from the Greek translation of the Bible - the Septuagint (“Seventy Interpreters”), the global flood took place in 3213 BC. e. Thus, the spread of dating, despite the fact that it is quite large (from 3553 to 2349 BC), limits the time of the catastrophe to the 4th–3rd millennia BC. e.

In later times, Jewish fantasy embellished the legend of the flood with many new details. In these bright and sometimes pretentious additions to the ancient legend, we read about how easy life was for man in antediluvian times, when people fed on the harvest from one sowing for forty years in a row and when they could use witchcraft to force the sun and the moon to serve themselves. Instead of nine months, the babies were in the mother's womb for only a few days and immediately after birth they began to walk and talk, not fearing even the devil himself. But it was this free and luxurious life that led people astray from the true path and drew them into sins, most of all into the sin of greed and debauchery. By this they aroused the wrath of God, who decided to destroy sinners through a great flood. However, in his mercy, he gave them a timely warning. Noah, at the behest of God, taught them and called for correction, threatening them with a flood as punishment for their dishonor, and he did this for a whole hundred and twenty years. But even after this time, God gave humanity another week, during which the sun rose every morning in the west and set every evening in the east. But nothing could lead to the repentance of the wicked. They did not stop mocking righteous Noah, seeing that he was building an ark for himself. He was taught how to build an ark by one sacred book, which the angel Raznel once gave to Adam and which contained all human and divine knowledge. It was made of sapphires, and Noah, putting it in a golden casket, took it with him to the ark.

The flood supposedly occurred from the meeting of male waters falling from the sky with female waters rising from the earth. To drain the upper waters, God made two holes in the sky, moving two stars from the Pleiades constellation; and subsequently, in order to stop the flow of rain, God plugged the holes with a pair of stars from the constellation Ursa Major. This is why the Bear is still chasing the Pleiades: she demands her children back, but she will not get them until the end of time.

When the ark was ready, Noah began to collect animals. They approached him in such large numbers that he could not take them all and sat down at the threshold of the ark to make a choice between them. Animals that lay down at the threshold he took with him, but those that stood on their feet were rejected. Even after such a strictly carried out selection, the number of reptile species taken on board the ship turned out to be no less than three hundred and sixty-five, and bird species - thirty-two. A count of the number of mammals taken into the ark was not made, but in any case it was large, as can be judged at the present time.

Before the flood, there were much more unclean animals than clean ones, and after the flood the ratio became the opposite, because (according to apocryphal legends, and not the book of Genesis) from each type of clean animals seven pairs were taken into the ark, and from each type of unclean - only two pairs each. One creature, called “reem,” turned out to be of such enormous size that there was no room for it inside, and therefore it was tied by Noah to the outside of the ark. The giant Og, the king of Bashan, also could not fit inside the ship and sat on the roof, thus saving himself from the flood. Along with Noah, his wife Naamah, his daughter Enosh, and his three sons with their wives were placed in the ark. One strange couple, Lies and Misfortune, also found refuge in the ark. At first, Lie came alone, but she was not allowed into the ark on the grounds that only married couples were allowed to enter. Then she left and, meeting with Misfortune, persuaded him to join her, after which they were both admitted. When everyone was already on board and the flood began, the sinners - about seven hundred thousand people - gathered and surrounded the ark, begging to be taken with them. Noah flatly refused to let them in. Then they began to press on the door, trying to break it, but the wild animals guarding the ship attacked them and devoured many; the rest who escaped their clutches drowned in the rising water.

The ark sailed for a whole year; huge waves tossed him from side to side; everyone inside was shaking like lentils in a pot. The lions roared, the bulls roared, the wolves howled, and all the other animals screamed, each in its own way. The issue that gave Noah the most trouble was food supplies. Long after the flood, his son Shem told Glieser, Abraham's servant, how difficult it was for his father to feed the entire menagerie. The unfortunate man was on his feet all the time, running back and forth day and night. For diurnal animals had to be fed during the day, and nocturnal animals at night; food was supplied to the giant Og through a hole on the roof. Leo was sullen and could flare up at the slightest irritation. One day, when Noah was late with lunch, the noble animal hit the patriarch with such force that he remained lame for the rest of his life and was not even able to perform the duties of a priest.

On the tenth day of the month Tammuz, Noah sent out a raven to see if the flood had stopped. But the raven found a corpse floating in the water and began to devour it; carried away by this matter, he forgot to return to Noah with a report. A week later, Noah began to send a dove on reconnaissance, which, after the third flight, finally returned, holding in its beak an olive leaf that he had picked on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, for the holy land had been spared by God. Noah came out of the ark onto the shore and began to cry at the sight of the general devastation caused by the flood. She brought a thanksgiving sacrifice to God for salvation.

From another story one can glean some interesting information about the internal structure of the ark and the distribution of passengers. Livestock and wild animals were placed separately in the hold; the middle deck was occupied by birds, and Noah and his family were located on the upper deck. Men were separated from women. The patriarch and his sons occupied the eastern part of the ark, and Noah's wife and his daughters-in-law occupied the western part; between the two, in the form of a barrier, lay the dead body of Adam, which thus escaped death in the water element. This story, which also gives information about the exact dimensions of the ark in cubits, as well as the exact day of the week and month when the survivors came ashore, is taken from an Arabic manuscript found in the library of the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai.

The fact that the biblical legend about the Flood is not the only one of its kind has been known for a long time. The Babylonian legend of the great flood has come to us thanks to the Babylonian historian Berossus, who in the first half of the 3rd century BC. e. wrote the history of his country. Berossus wrote in Greek, and although his work has not reached us, some fragments have been preserved thanks to later Greek historians. Among these fragments was a story about the flood. For a long time it was considered a retelling of the Bible.

The Great Flood occurred during the reign of Xisutrus, the tenth king of Babylonia. The god Kronos appeared to him in a dream and warned him that all people would be destroyed by a flood on the fifteenth day of the month, which was the eighth month in the Macedonian calendar. Considering the coming disaster, God ordered the king to write the history of the world and bury it in Sippar, the city of the sun. In addition, he ordered him to build a ship and board it with his relatives and friends, take with him a supply of food and drink, as well as poultry and four-legged animals, and when everything was ready, set sail. To the king’s question: “Where should I sail?” - God answered: “You will sail to the gods, but before sailing you must pray for the sending of goodness to people.” The king obeyed God and built a ship; The ship was five stadia long and two stadia wide. Having collected everything he needed and put it in the ship, he put his relatives and friends there. When the water began to subside, Xisutrus released several birds into the wild. But, not finding food or shelter anywhere, the birds returned to the ship. A few days later, Xisuthrus released the birds again, and they returned to the ship with traces of clay on their feet. Released a third time, they did not return to the ship. Then Xisutrus realized that the land had emerged from the water, moved apart several boards on the side of the ship, looked out and saw the shore. He steered the ship towards land and landed on the mountain with his wife, daughter and helmsman. The king paid homage to the land, built an altar and made a sacrifice to the gods, and then disappeared along with those who disembarked from the ship with him. Those remaining on the ship, seeing that neither he nor the people accompanying him were returning, also landed on shore and began to look for him, calling out his name, but could not find Xisutrus anywhere. Then a voice was heard from heaven, which ordered them to honor the gods, who had called Xisutrus to themselves for his piety and showed the same mercy to his wife, daughter and pilot. And that voice also told them to go to Babylon, find the hidden scripture and distribute it among the people. The voice also told them that the country they were in was Armenia. Hearing all this, they made a sacrifice to the gods and set off on foot to Babylon. The wreckage of the ship that landed in the mountains of Armenia still exists, and many people remove resin from it for talismans. Returning to Babylon, people dug up the scriptures in Sippar, built many cities, restored sanctuaries and repopulated Babylonia.

Thus, Berossus is the first to mention the location of the ark after the flood. According to the Greek historian Nicholas of Damascus, a contemporary and friend of Augustus and Herod the Great, “in Armenia there is a large mountain called Baris, on which, as legend says, many people who fled from the flood were saved; They also say that a man sailing in an ark landed on the top of this mountain and that the wooden remains of that ship remained for a long time. This man was probably the same one mentioned by Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews.” The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius ​​in his work “Jewish Antiquities” writes that many brought particles of Noah’s Ark from Ararat.

In the Middle Ages, the testimony of the Bible was believed unquestioningly. And who would dare to doubt the Holy Scriptures? Only a heretic or a pagan. Therefore, doubting the reality of the global flood is a heresy - with all the ensuing consequences.

The Middle Ages are sometimes unjustifiably called the “Dark Ages.” Science existed at that time, but philosophers, mathematicians, and logicians created their works in the form of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, trying to prove its correctness with the help of their research. The beginnings of many earth sciences - medieval hydrography, geology, oceanology - arose as a kind of “commentary” to the biblical story of the Flood.

Sea shells are found on the tops of high mountains: is this not proof that, as the Bible states, “all the high mountains that are under the whole sky” were covered with water? The valleys of Lombardy, the fields of the Netherlands, the cities located in the lower reaches of the Rhine are hit by terrible squalls, floods, giant waves, claiming hundreds and thousands of lives, destroying buildings... Isn’t this direct proof that God’s wrath can fall on the entire earthly firmament? If the ocean is an abyss and no one manages to reach its bottom, then there is enough water in this abyss to cover the entire earth with it, right up to the tops of the highest mountains.

In modern times, the beginnings of sciences turn into real sciences about living and inanimate nature. But biblical dogmas dominate many talented and even brilliant scientists (including Newton and Kepler). And the Flood, accepted as an axiom that did not require proof, became one of the cornerstones of the emerging sciences about the Earth: it was not the facts that had to prove its reality, but on the contrary, the “fact of the flood” explained certain facts of geology, hydrology, and oceanology.

Even in the 18th century, the “age of enlightenment,” the first geologists, laying the foundation for this fascinating field of natural science, were under the strong influence of the “flood axiom.” A characteristic figure was the Swiss scientist A. Scheichzer. Developing the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci and other scientists that fossils are not “a product of the creativity of nature” (as the greatest scientist of antiquity Aristotle, the great sage and scientist of the Middle Ages Abu Ali ibn Sina and many other authorities believed), but the remains of living organisms, Scheichzer interpreted them as material evidence of the Flood.

Moreover, according to Scheichzer, not only land animals and people died, but also freshwater fish. In Switzerland, in the Jenningen quarries, a huge fossilized pike was found. It is she who is not devoid of poetic talent and gives the floor as a representative of the entire fish kingdom in an essay entitled “Complaints and Claims of Fishes.”

Pike complains about injustice: fish are quiet and silent - and yet “we were destroyed for the sins of people during the flood, and now they don’t even want to consider us what we used to be, but are considered as mineral formations.”

In the same quarries, Scheichzer made a sensational discovery: he discovered “one of those wicked sinners who witnessed the flood.” Sheikhtser sang his find in a solemn ode dedicated to the “rare monument of the antediluvian man cursed by God.” This monument “contains undoubtedly half or a little less of the skeleton of a man,” whose flesh and bones “were embedded in the stone.” Here “one can clearly see the outlines of the frontal bone, the edges of the orbital sockets, the holes through which the great nerve of the fifth pair passed, the remains of the brain, the zygomatic bone, traces of the nose, a piece of masticatory muscle, sixteen dorsal vertebrae and scraps of skin.” Scheichzer concluded his ode with a moral:

The decayed ashes of the poor wicked man,

Soften the atrocities of these times!

Soon, the largest paleontologist of that time, the Frenchman J. Cuvier, having studied Scheichzer’s find, unmistakably identified it as the fossilized remains of a giant salamander, a relative of those that still live in Japan, and christened it the Andrias Scheichzer salamander in honor of the discoverer.

However, Cuvier himself paid tribute to the biblical “flood axiom.” According to this scientist, rightly called the “father of paleontology,” the globe periodically undergoes catastrophes that dramatically change its appearance: the relief changes, the seas and mountains change, the animal and plant world changes. The last such catastrophe was the Great Flood, which the Bible tells about. “The surface of the globe was the victim of a great and sudden revolution, the remoteness of which cannot be much later than five or six thousand years; as a result of this revolution, countries inhabited until that time by people and the most famous species of animals fell and disappeared; the same revolution drained the bottom of the last sea and formed the countries now inhabited,” Cuvier wrote in his “Discourse on revolutions on the surface of the globe.”

Another great compatriot and contemporary of Cuvier, naturalist J. Buffon, well aware that the scale of the flood described in the Bible does not correspond to the data of science, tactfully resolved the contradiction between knowledge and faith, declaring: “The Flood must be considered as a supernatural means, which was used by divine omnipotence for punishment of people, and not as a natural phenomenon in which everything would happen according to the laws of physics.”

For many years attempts have been made to prove the Bible's account of the Flood with facts.

Expeditions to Ararat began in 1829. The first scientist to visit here was F. Parrot, a professor at the University of Dorpat. Two of his expeditions never reached the summit, but the third time his efforts were successful. Upon his return, he claimed that he had made a mark on the wall of the ark. However, he failed to provide evidence to support the discovery.

In 1840, a journalist from Constantinople announced that Noah's Ark had been found. A Turkish expedition, the purpose of which was to study the snow covers on Mount Ararat, discovered a huge wooden frame of a certain structure protruding from under the ice, almost

Residents of villages in the vicinity of Ararat, in response to questions from expedition members, said that they had always known about the existence of this wooden frame, but did not dare to come close, since they allegedly saw an evil spirit in the opening of the upper part of the structure. The Turkish expedition, despite significant difficulties, finally got to the ark and made sure that it was preserved in good condition, only one side was damaged.

Noah's Ark. Hood. 3. Hicks

completely blackened.

One of the expedition members said that the sides of the ark were made of a tree mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, which, as far as is known, grows in the valley of the Euphrates River. Upon entering the ark, the expedition members were convinced that the vessel was intended to transport animals, since the inside was divided into compartments 15 feet (4.5 m) high. The Turkish expedition managed to penetrate only three of these rooms, since the rest were filled with ice.

In 1893, the Archdeacon of the Nestorian Church, Dr. Nurry, published a note that “only the bow of the ark and its stern can be accessed, while the central part is hidden under ice.” The ark was built of heavy beams of a dark reddish-chestnut hue. Nurri, having measured the ark, found that its results completely coincided with the dimensions indicated in the Holy Scriptures. Later, a society was created that was supposed to finance Dr. Nurry's second expedition, which had the goal of delivering the ark to the World's Fair in Chicago. These plans, however, were not destined to come true, since the Turkish government did not allow the ark to be taken abroad.

In August 1916, Russian pilot Vladimir Roskovitsky, making a reconnaissance flight along the Turkish border, found himself over Ararat and noticed a frozen lake on the eastern side of the snowy peak. Near the edge of the lake one could make out the skeleton of a large ship. Although the ship was partially frozen in the ice, its sides, one of which had holes, remained outside. In addition, half of one of the double doors was visible. When

Roskovitsky reported his discovery, his superiors wanted to get more accurate confirmation of this information. After repeated flights over the mountain, it was convinced of the presence of the mentioned object and sent messages to Moscow and Petrograd. Emperor Nicholas II ordered an expedition to be sent to Ararat. This expedition measured and photographed the ark, took wood samples, and the research results were sent to Petrograd. But the collected documents were apparently destroyed during the revolutions.

The story of Roskovitsky became known during World War II. The head of the Soviet intelligence services allegedly reported that one of his subordinates flew over Ararat, driven by curiosity and a desire to see if there was any truth to the claims of his predecessor and colleague. The Soviet pilot also noticed a certain structure, part of which was frozen into the icy lake.

On July 6, 1955, climber Fernand Navarra, together with his eleven-year-old son Rafael, discovered an object that he considered Noah's Ark. It took Navarre seventeen years to prepare the expedition. The fact that Mount Ararat is located on the border of three countries - Iran, Turkey and the Soviet Union - and that an agreement was signed between them prohibiting the ascent of this mountain turned out to be a serious obstacle for the researcher. Navarre made three secret attempts, crossing the danger zone at night. This is how the last of the expeditions, crowned with success, went: Navarre reached the edge of the glaciers by nightfall, following the instructions of his Armenian guide, and set up a tent there for the night, hoping in the morning to continue the path that ran along completely icy inaccessible rocks. At night, a terrible hurricane broke out, as a result of which everything around was covered with a dense ice crust, and Fernand and Rafael almost froze, as they found themselves under a deep layer of snow at a temperature of 30 degrees below zero. In the morning, as Navarra said, he managed to set off to the place that he had noticed from afar during one of his first expeditions. However, he chose the wrong time; everything was covered with snow and ice. Despite this, he managed to reach his goal. With great difficulty, being exposed to mortal danger, he extracted from under the ice a piece of timber 1 meter long and 8 centimeters thick, from which the sides of the ark were made. There were no hewn boards in this place. When it was time to return, Navarre was arrested by border guards. In the end, he was released, leaving him with all the photographic films and a sample of wood. Radiocarbon dating of the wood, carried out in laboratories in Cairo and Madrid, showed that its age is five thousand years. Navarre's book, published in French, is illustrated with photographs in which the author is seen breaking off a piece of wood from the side of the ark, and which depicts the place where the ark is hidden under the ice; it also presents laboratory test results, drawings, diagrams, and the like.

There were several other attempts to find Noah's Ark, led by the missionary historian Dr. A. Smith of Greensboro (in 1951), an expert on the Flood, and the French explorer J. de Riquet, who climbed the volcanic peak in 1952. These attempts were unsuccessful.

In August 1982, a message appeared that an American expedition consisting of eleven people had set out in search of Noah’s Ark, passing through Turkey. A member of this scientific expedition, on which about 60 thousand dollars were spent, was even a former astronaut, the American D. Erwin, who in 1971 landed on the Moon during the Apollo 12 space expedition. In his interview, Erwin said that observations from previous expeditions leave no doubt that there really is a mysterious vessel on the top of Ararat. To this, the American astronaut added that he believes that this ship is Noah's Ark. To this day, attempts are still being made (one of them was repeated, for example, by the Americans in 1994) to find the ark.

However, there is an opinion that in order to find out the truth about the great flood, it is not at all necessary to go on distant and dangerous expeditions. It can be found on the pages of the Book itself.

The Bible says that the flood lasted “forty days,” and then states that it lasted “one hundred and fifty days.” What is this - a typo or a mistake? There are also discrepancies in the timing of the water decline - either three weeks, or about six months. There is one more discrepancy in the story about the flood: did righteous Noah take pairs of all living creatures into his ark, or did he take one pair of unclean creatures, and seven of clean ones? Naturally, these discrepancies could not go unnoticed.

The court surgeon of Louis XIV, J. Astruc, who, in Goethe's words, performed a surgical operation on the Bible, reasonably assumed that the holy book contained two different versions, two opposite options. One of them may be true, the other may be false. Both options may be false, but something else is also possible: we are talking about different floods, about events that took place at different times, but then merged into one - and then, therefore, both versions are true.

Critics of the biblical text unanimously admit that in the Hebrew legend of the great flood, as it is presented in the book of Genesis, it is necessary to distinguish between two originally independent stories; Subsequently, these two stories were artificially combined in order to give them the semblance of a single and homogeneous legend. But the work of merging the two texts into one was done so carelessly that the repetitions and contradictions found there are striking even to the inattentive reader.

Of the two original versions of the legend, one originates in the Priestly Code (Elohist), and the other in the so-called Yahwist. Each of the sources has a distinct character and style, and both belong to different historical periods: the Yahwist account is probably more ancient, while the Priestly Code is more recent. The Yahvist was apparently written in Judea during the early period of the Jewish state, most likely in the 9th or 8th century BC. e. The Priestly Code appeared in the period following 586 BC. e., when Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jews were taken into captivity. But if the author of the Yahwist shows a lively, genuine interest in the personality and fate of the people he describes, then the author of the Code, on the contrary, is interested in them only insofar as he sees in them an instrument of divine providence, intended to communicate to Israel knowledge about God and all those religious and social institutions , which, by the grace of God, were supposed to regulate the life of the “chosen people.” He writes not so much secular and civil history as sacred and ecclesiastical history. The history of Israel in Elohist is the history of a church rather than a people. Therefore, its authors dwell in detail on the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, whom God has honored with His revelation, and hastens to pass by a number of ordinary mortals, mentioning only their names, as if they served only as links connecting one religious era to another, or as a thread on which with rare At intervals are strung precious pearls of revelation. The attitude of the Code to the historical past is predetermined by the contemporary political situation of its authors. Israel's greatest prosperity was already in the past, its independence was lost, and with it hopes for worldly prosperity and glory disappeared. Dreams of power, evoked in the souls of the people by memories of the brilliant reigns of David and Solomon, dreams that could have survived for a while even after the fall of the monarchy, have long since faded in the dark clouds of the nation's decline under the influence of the harsh reality of foreign domination. And so, when there was no outlet for secular ambitions, the unquenchable idealism of the people found an outlet in another direction. The people's dreams turned in the other direction. If they could not find a place for themselves on earth, then the sky remained open to them. The leaders of Israel sought to console their people, to reward them for all the humiliations that befell them in material life, and to raise them to the highest level of spiritual life. For this purpose, they created a complex religious ritual in order to, with its help, appropriate all divine grace to themselves and make Zion a holy city, beauty and the center of the Kingdom of God on earth. Such aspirations and ideals gave public life an increasingly religious character, highlighting the interests of the temple and increasing priestly influence. The king was replaced by a high priest, who even inherited purple robes and a golden crown from the monarch.

Global flood. Hood. G. Dore

The Yahwist and the Elohist, who together formed the account of the Great Flood in the book of Genesis, differ from each other in both form and content. Of the formal distinctive features, consisting of a different set of words from both sources, the most important is the different name of the deity in the Hebrew text: in Yahwist it is invariably called Yahweh, and in the Priestly Code - Elohim. In the Russian Synodal Translation of the Bible, these names are conveyed by the words “Lord” and “God”, respectively. The replacement of the Hebrew Yahweh with the word "lord" is based on the imitation of the Jews, who, when reading scripture aloud, always replace the sacred word "Yahweh", wherever it appears in the text, with the word "adonai", which means "lord". But in the story of the flood, and indeed in the entire book of Genesis, the author of the Code avoids calling the god Yahweh, replacing him with the word "elohim", which in the Hebrew language serves to designate god, on the grounds that the divine name Yahweh was first revealed by God to Moses, and therefore cannot be applied to God before the appearance of this hero. The author of Yahwist does not share this view of the origin of the name Yahweh and therefore freely applies it to the deity starting from the very creation of the world.

Even more striking than the verbal differences are the differences in the content of the Yahwist and priestly stories, sometimes reaching direct contradictions, which is the best proof of the existence of different sources for the legend of the flood. Thus, the author of the Yahwist distinguishes between clean and unclean animals, the former being introduced into the ark in the number of seven from each type of animal, and the latter in only two. Meanwhile, the author of the Code does not make any distinction between animals, but limits the number of animals saved in the ark to one pair from each species. This contradiction can be explained by the fact that, in his opinion, the difference between clean and unclean animals was first revealed by God to Moses, so that Noah could not know anything about it; The author of the Yahwist naively believed that already in the earliest times it was common for the human race to distinguish clean animals from unclean ones, believing that such a distinction was based on a natural law of nature obvious to everyone.

Another major disagreement between authors concerns the question of the duration of the flood. According to the Yahwist story, the downpour lasted forty days and forty nights, after which Noah remained in the ark for another three weeks, until the water subsided and the earth appeared. Thus, the flood lasted only sixty-one days. From the priestly source it is clear that one hundred and fifty days passed before the water subsided, and the flood itself lasted twelve months and ten days. Considering that the Jews adopted a lunar calendar, twelve months are three hundred and fifty-four days; adding ten more days here, we get a solar year of three hundred and sixty-four days. Since the author of the Code thus determines the duration of the flood to be approximately one solar year, it can be unmistakably stated that he lived at a time when the Jews had already learned to correct the error of the lunar calendar by observing the sun.

The sources reveal a discrepancy in the indication of the “mechanism of implementation” of the flood: according to the Yahwist, the only cause of the catastrophe was rain, and the Code says that water poured out simultaneously from the sky and from under the earth.

Finally, the author of the Yahwist forces Noah to build an altar on which he offered a sacrifice to God in gratitude for saving him from death during the flood. The Code says nothing about the altar and sacrifice, no doubt because, according to the law to which the author remains faithful, there can be no talk of any altar outside the Temple of Jerusalem, and also because for Noah, as a simple a layman, it would be an unheard-of audacity to perform the sacrifice himself and thus assume the functions of the clergy. And the author of the Priestly Code could not allow this on the part of such a respected patriarch.

So, a comparison of both stories gives grounds to assert that initially both had independent existence and that the Yahwist story was much older than the priestly one. Its author, obviously, was not aware of the law on a single sanctuary, which prohibited sacrifice everywhere except Jerusalem - this law was first clearly formulated and put into practice under King Josiah in 621 BC. e., therefore, the Yahwist text was compiled earlier and, perhaps, much earlier than this date. The priestly text appeared some time, probably quite a long time after this date, since its author knows the law of the one sanctuary and does not allow the thought of Noah violating it.

The Bible reports the exact dimensions of the ark, in which Noah and his family and “clean and unclean” pairs of animals were placed: “the length of the ark was 300 cubits, its width was 50 cubits, and its height was 30 cubits.” The Ark had three floors. Since the size of the ancient Eastern “elbow” is well known - it is 45 centimeters, it is not at all difficult to calculate the “living area” of Noah’s ship. Multiply 300 by 0.45 meters and you get the length of the ark equal to 135 meters. The width will be equal to the product of 50 by 0.45 meters, that is, 22.5 meters, and the deck area will be the product of 135 and 22.5, that is, about 3040 square meters. Since the ark had three decks, 3040 must also be multiplied by 3, and as a result we get the “usable area” of the ark - 9120 square meters. Noah, his wife, sons and daughters-in-law were housed here. They took on board “in pairs” of all living creatures, who, like Noah and his family, required space and food supplies for at least forty days.

Now the number of mammal species on the globe is considered to be about three and a half thousand, and since they were taken in pairs, we get seven thousand individuals: lions and elephants, rabbits and wolves, foxes and hyenas, hippos and gorillas, buffalos and shrews, etc. etc. At 9120 square meters it would be a bit cramped.

But there are also about twenty thousand species of birds (and this number must be multiplied by two, for “every creature was taken in pairs”), about five thousand species of reptiles and amphibians (multiply by two again) and more than a million species of insects! Obviously, all this jumping, croaking, growling, chirping, meowing, grunting, mooing, screaming horde could not fit in Noah's ark. What can we say about the food reserves for all these living creatures, among which were herbivores, carnivores, insectivores, omnivores, birds, reptiles, insects...

Noah's Ark. Hood. G. Dore

Equally implausible is the Bible’s testimony that the peaks of the highest mountains disappeared under water, with the exception of the “Mountains of Ararat.” Firstly, because there are mountains on the globe that are twice the height of the handsome Ararat. How could they go under water if the “mountains of Ararat” became a refuge for Noah and his family? Secondly, none of the existing water reserves would be enough to cover our planet with a layer of water at least 200 meters high - even if all the ice in Antarctica and the Arctic, all the glaciers in the mountains and all the moisture contained in the atmosphere, it would fall as heavy rain.

Supporters of the authenticity of the biblical legend about the flood point to the fact that legends about catastrophic floods are found among different nations as proof of their correctness. You can list the countries in which they occur or have occurred. In Asia: in Babylonia, Palestine, Syria, Phrygia, ancient and modern India, Burma, the Malay Peninsula and Kamchatka. Interestingly, legends about the flood are concentrated mainly in South Asia and are practically absent in East, Central and North Asia. What is especially remarkable is that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese preserved in their vast and ancient literature a single folk legend about such a general flood, from which all of humanity or a significant part of it perished.

In Europe, legends about the flood of local origin are much less common than in Asia; they were known in Ancient Greece. In Africa, including Egypt, legends about the Great Flood appear to be absent.

Legends about the Great Flood circulate on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, among the native tribes of the Philippine Islands, and among the isolated inhabitants of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. In New Guinea and Australia there are also tales of the Great Flood; They are also found on the small islands of Melanesia, forming a large arc that covers New Guinea and Australia from the north and east. Still further to the east, legends of the flood are widespread among the Polynesians, who make up a population of mostly small islands scattered across the ocean, from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. In Micronesia, the flood legend is popular in the Palau Islands.

There are many legends about the flood in South, Central and North America, from Tierra del Fuego in the south to Alaska in the north, on both continents from east to west; Moreover, they exist not only among Indian tribes, but also among the Eskimos, from Alaska in the west to Greenland in the east.

This is, in general terms, the geography of the spread of such legends. Are they all connected with each other or did they arise independently in different parts of the globe? Previously, scholars, influenced by the biblical tradition, tended to identify the legends of the Great Flood, wherever they were found, with the biblical tradition of Noah's Flood, believing that all such legends were more or less corrupted versions of that one, reliable and genuine account of the great catastrophe which is set out in the book of Genesis. Let us take as an example the ancient Indian legend of the flood.

We do not find any story about the great flood in the Vedas, this ancient literary monument of India, apparently compiled at the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. But in later Sanskrit literature, various versions of the legend of the flood are repeatedly found, and each of them, although generally similar, retains its own characteristics. The oldest tradition known to us is contained in the so-called Satalatha Brahmana, a prose work devoted to questions of sacred ritual and believed to have been written shortly before the advent of Buddhism, that is, no later than the 6th century BC. e.

“In the morning they brought water for Manu to wash, just as now they always bring him water to wash his hands. While he was washing his face, a fish fell into his hands. She told him this word: “Grow me up, and I will save you!” - “What will you save me from?” - “The flood will destroy all earthly creatures; I will save you from the flood!” - “How can I raise you?” The fish replied: “While we are small, we cannot avoid death: one fish devours another. First you will keep me in a jug; when I outgrow the jug, you will dig a well and keep me there. When I outgrow the well, you will let me go into the sea, for then I will no longer have anything to fear from death.” Soon the fish became ghashi, and this breed is the largest among fish. After this she said: “In such and such a year there will be a flood. You must then remember me and build a ship, and when the flood begins, board it, and I will save you from the flood.” Having raised the fish as she asked, Manu released it into the sea. And in the very year that the fish predicted, he remembered her advice and built a ship, and when the flood began, he boarded it. Then the fish swam to him, and he tied a rope from his ship to its fin and thus soon sailed to that distant mountain in the north. Then the fish said to him: “I saved you; Now tie the vessel to a tree, but be careful that the water does not carry you away while you remain on the mountain; when the water subsides, you can go down little by little.” And he gradually descended from the mountain. That is why that slope of the northern mountain is called the “descent of Manu.” All creatures were destroyed by the flood; only Manu survived...

Wanting to have offspring, he began to lead a pious and strict life. He also performed a pa-ka sacrifice: standing in water, he offered a sacrifice of clarified butter, sour milk, whey and curds. From this a woman came a year later. When she became completely dense, she rose to her feet, and wherever she stepped, her footprints left pure oil. Mitra and Varuna, meeting her, asked: “Who are you?” “I am the daughter of Manu,” she answered. “Say that you are our daughter,” they said. “No,” she insisted, “I am the daughter of the one who sired me.” Then they wanted to have a share in her, but she, without saying “yes” or “no,” passed by. She came to Manu and he asked her: “Who are you?” “Your daughter,” she answered. “How, you, glory of creation, are you my daughter?” - he asked. "Yes! - she said. “Those sacrifices of pure butter, sour milk, whey and curds that you offered in water, you produced me.” I am grace; use me when you make sacrifices. And if you use me when you make sacrifices, you will become rich in offspring and livestock. Every good thing you think of asking for through me will be given to you.” And so he began to use it for the glory of God in the middle of the sacrifice, and the middle of the sacrifice is everything that happens between the introductory and final sacrifice. Together with her, he continued to lead a pious and strict life, wanting to have offspring. Through her he produced the human race, the race of Manu, and every good he asked through her was given to him.”

Baigent Michael

The Flood Water could have inundated the earth in a few horrific years of complete disaster or decades of non-stop rain and flooding. Or it could slowly cover the land over millennia of steadily rising tides and destructive storm surges. How

From the book Great Secrets of Civilizations. 100 stories about the mysteries of civilizations author Mansurova Tatyana

The Great Flood as a reality The legend of the Great Flood is known to almost everyone. Remember how the Bible describes this cataclysm? “All the sources of the great deep burst open, and the abysses of heaven opened, the waters covered all the dry land, and only the righteous Noah with his family and

From the book Wars of Pagan Rus' author

2. THE GLOBAL FLOOD Natural conditions on Earth did not remain unchanged. The glacier was growing on the western side - moisture was frozen on it, which was carried by cyclones from the Atlantic. But on the eastern and southern sides it melted under the rays of the sun; the icy mountains themselves did not allow entry here.

From the book Rus' - The Road from the Depths of Millennia, When Legends Come to Life author Shambarov Valery Evgenievich

author Kubeev Mikhail Nikolaevich

The Flood In the residence of the Armenian Catholicos in Etchmiadzin, a small piece of wood is kept, which is one of the main relics of the monastery. According to legend, this is a piece of the casing of Noah’s Ark, once given to the monastery by a monk who climbed the slopes of Ararat

From the book 100 great disasters author Kubeev Mikhail Nikolaevich

THE FLOOD In the residence of the Armenian Catholicos in Etchmiadzin, a small piece of wood is kept, which is one of the main relics of the monastery. According to legend, this is a piece of the casing of Noah’s Ark, once given to the monastery by a monk who climbed the slopes of Ararat

From the book 50 Famous Mysteries of the Ancient World author

Global flood? About five thousand years ago, a catastrophic flood occurred in the area of ​​the Black and Marmara Seas caused by the Dardanelles breakthrough. Didn't it precisely this catastrophe that led to the emergence of myths about the Great Flood? Its scale was truly biblical.

From the book Ancient World author Ermanovskaya Anna Eduardovna

Was the Flood global? One of the most famous stories and at the same time the most curious secrets of antiquity is, of course, the story of the Great Flood. “After seven days the waters of the flood came to the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day

From the book Sumer. Babylon. Assyria: 5000 years of history author Gulyaev Valery Ivanovich

The “Worldwide” Flood In 1872, George Smith, a pioneer of British Assyriology, announced to an astonished world that he had discovered, among the many cuneiform tablets in the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, a text telling a flood story that was strikingly similar to the biblical legend. Story,

by Tseren Erich

Smith and the Flood When Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh, returned sick to England in 1851, and Rassam was searching Nineveh for the library of Ashurbanipal, Rawlinson, the “Behistun Mountaineer,” assumed supreme leadership of British archaeological research.

From the book Bible Hills by Tseren Erich

SMITH AND THE FLOOD When Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh, returned sick to England in 1851, and Rassam searched for the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Rawlinson, the “Behistun Mountaineer,” assumed supreme leadership of British archaeological research and

From the book Predictions of Disasters author Khvorostukhina Svetlana Alexandrovna

From the book History of World Religions author Gorelov Anatoly Alekseevich

From the book Among Mysteries and Miracles author Rubakin Nikolay Alexandrovich

The Assyrian legend does not say that the flood was worldwide. But here is what is especially worthy of attention: the Assyrian legend does not say at all that the flood was universal. On the contrary, even. It speaks not of a flood, but of a flood, and not global, but local. And this happened

From the book Mind and Civilization [Flicker in the Dark] author Burovsky Andrey Mikhailovich

The Flood According to data obtained in 1989 from deep cores taken from the Greenland ice cap, the glacier melted in just 20 years. Data from 1993 indicate an even faster melting of the ice - in 2-3 years. Perhaps the giant ice caps quickly became