ancient tablet proves the Book of Genesis is A myth

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/24/ancient-tablet-reveals-new-details-about-noah-ark-prototype/

What are people's reactions? Should religions admit to the myths that make up their holy texts?

not all religions use text

I don't particularly care for the Old Testament.

Damn those retcons!

Didn't we already know that based on... what's the word... logic?

Lol!

Eh, I don't really think it's enough to have any significance on what people believe, to tell you the truth

Surprise! I consider myself a bad Catholic, meaning I don't go to Church, commit "sins" on the regular and occasionally pray. But I've never believed those stories. I think they're meant to give meaning/message in a story. Though religious fanatics take these as they are in the text.

....

Genesis was proven false a long time ago.

Only an ignorant or uneducated person would believe such an obvious fairy tale.

meh

Well there are alot of these people knocking about :/

That just goes to show how much religion has people brain washed.

I have a dream that someday religion will become as extinct as the dinosaurs.

I can't believe we still have the nonsense "Creation vs Evolution" debate going on these days either.

You do know that all sort of stories are deriven from other stories. This is nothing new.

@omega_ray_jay said:

Exactly.

Ha one thing I have learnt is that no matter how inconceivable something is chances are there will some people who believe it.

Agreed.

I dont need a tablet to tell me that Genesis is pure allegory.

@mrdecepticonleader:

Ha one thing I have learnt is that no matter how inconceivable something is chances are there will some people who believe it.

LOL. That's the saddest part about it......In 2010 a poll was taken in America and it showed 40% percent on us believe the Earth was created, in it's current form 10,000 years ago....I..... just...Can't......

-____________________________________-

The long face sums things up perfectly :)

@dccomicsrule2011: 10, 000 years ago? That american education system; why just why america

Killing part about it is America, did not even have the highest percentage total for said subject.

The only Genesis I care about is in Star Trek.

@dccomicsrule2011: Modern day & age: Killing intelligence since facebook

Ummm... that didn't prove anything.

Galaxy or kindel?

@tomlikesfries: How about the book of Genesis on the Sega Genesis with music by Genesis and read by Genesis Rhapsodos?

Damnit now the Bible is having retcons

@tifalockhart:

Blah I still believe the bible

You do realize that the great flood took place way more than 4000 years ago. 4000 years ago was the time of Abraham and Isaac. The flood took place at least 5000 to 7000 years ago. All because it is old doesn't mean it is accurate.

@hillbillymorangie:

Not quite sure how you arrived at the conclusion ancient tablet proves the Book of Genesis is A myth from the single article you cited.

It is perfectly feasible that the newly discovered tablet, the biblical flood narrative, and the previous allusions in the Epic of Gilgamesh (as well as other global flood narratives within other cultures) are all referencing the same event. An event which may have occurred chronologically before all of them were set in stone and other methods of recording.

LةL

Back when I was a Catholic, this sort of stuff have already been popping up and even way before that. I vaguely remember the epic of Gilgamesh being compared to Noah's arc or something like that. Would my faith had been shaken before? I would say no. I think the only religious that would be affected by this are the ones who read the Bible and take it too literally. A lot of Christians are like that now. Especially in the Catholic circle being open to evolution and whatnot.

That said, I don't think I could care with this stuff right now. I'm no longer a theist, after all.

So you're saying a story from a couple thousand years ago about a dude gathering 2 of every one of the billions of animal species on Earth together on a boat is a myth? I guess next you're gonna tell me the tooth fairy isn't real.

geoff johns might be involved in this.

Fox news have a science section on their website?

@maccyd: fox news knows what science is?

@kuonphobos: I doubt it, floods happen, even today, they are never biblical, it woul be scientifically impossible to flood the earth. The Article refers to other research, but ill only put a list of citations if you really want... I didn't think comicvine was an accademic forum. You can find the information in the article and people can use google if they are that interested. ;)

@joshmightbe: the Tablet shows that putting the animals on two by two was part of the instructions, but every life form on earth? That's the bible, more likely every Mammal in a region of Iraq at the time... So not so impossible

Looks like they are going to build it, maybe they will fill it too http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jan/24/babylonian-tablet-noah-ark-constructed-british-museum

...

You're right, the tablet doesn't prove that the Genesis is aa myth. Because we already know it is.

This is not really news. The Tale of Gilgamesh is something which is fairly well documented. TBH to Christians, this doesn't change a think. Noah's family was suppossedly the only family which survived the flood, so wouldn't it make sense that stories of the Flood would be prevelant in many of the civilizations that according to the Bible, sprouted from Noah. Also don't forget that Abraham, the suppossed father of Isreal, was actually orginallly from Mesapptonia.........

I gave up on the idea of a christian God a while ago, but I honestly feel that there is more fruit in questioning the validitiy of Christianity via using Evolution, and adressing the contradictions in the Bible which simply can't be ignored, rather than stuff like this. It is an interesting read though

@laflux: I disagree, but your points are good, the main point of this article is that it is proof that the ark story existed before Noah existed, so he couldn't be the only person alive,

The clay tablet even predates records of "The Epic of Gilgamesh," the ancient Mesopotamian myth which also includes the flood myth.

http://www.examiner.com/article/noah-s-ark-prequel-ancient-tablet-reveals-flood-an-ark-that-was-round-video

Great. Now prove that ancient tablet. Lol.

I really don't believe those stories in the first place - it is impossible to substantiate any of those claims.

Ancient android tablet.

@hillbillymorangie: It was more than likely inspired by one of the 50 or so other mythological "Great Flood" stories that preceded it in that part of the world. In fact the "Great Flood" myth is so wide spread that some historians believe there may have been a massive flood at some point that most likely happened around the end of the Ice Age when the planet began to warm back up.

The end of the Ice Age is actually a pretty good explanation for the great flood myth, a few trillion tons of ice melting all at once is going to turn into a few trillion tons of water quickly causing sea levels to drastically increase, and a lot of that would evaporate leading to a massive amount of rain which would have spread the water even more widely meaning massive floods were probably a common world wide phenomenon and being that at the time we were just forming our concepts of religion and what not, its not too much of a stretch to believe that people would have given some divine significance to what was actually a natural response to the planet's temperature normalizing.

@joshmightbe: true

Guess I'm ignorant and uneducated along with the rest of my family

It's not that big a deal, let people believe what they want and get on with their life

I'm a theist and even this doesn't affect me. All my family and everyone in my Church knows, that we aren't going to live to 500 years old even though people in the Bible have done it. Most Christians don't take the word of the Bible literally anymore even though we believe in God.

@jnr6lil: good for you, but will you tell your children it's a myth or a fact? Would you be happy if the Church opened its vaults and admitted that a lot of what it teaches as truths is as mythological as Greek and Norse religions?

Belief in god is great, but surely that should involve honouring creation, not dismissing it and saying the words in some book are more important then gods dinosaurs and ice ages and weather systems etc?

For me I love this story as I love folklore and mythology, I love the stories not the religions that use them... I think a story about a man who had a vision to build a huge boat and rescue animals from future floods is great, it's nice to know that there is a good core of truth to the story as their are actual instructions on how to build the ark and I look forward to watching the British museums efforts when it's on tv later this year.

It's not a all or nothing post against religion, it's the fact that an ancient tablet shows a lot of bible story of Noah in the book of Genisis is adapted from older stories and should the church admit this could be true for most of the stories in the old and new testaments?

I've not heard anything from the Vatican yet, but I'm sure someone will ask their opinion on the ark before Noah at some point, I look forward to what they say.

This is pretty much what I have been thinking.

@hillbillymorangie: the main point of this article is that it is proof that the ark story existed before Noah existed

No it doesn't. It only proves that a similar narrative existed in Mesopotamia at the time the tablet was created. There is no definitive age for the life of Noah. Certainly the compilers of the narrative in Genesis were probably contemporaries or later than the creation of the tablet narrative but this doesn't shed any light upon the source they used for their narrative nor is it necessary to conclude that they borrowed from the Mesopotamian narratives. It could be two separate narratives of the same ancient event.

Chronologically (assuming he was a real person) Noah could have been much earlier than the Sumerian and subsequent civilizations.