2 Genesis, Chapter 8 - The "Minnow" has landed!
Chapter 8 begins with the information that, (8:1) "...God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark:..."
Can't you just see this god whacking himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand, saying, "Oh yeah, I just remembered - I've still got a guy floatin' around out there in a boat somewhere - I should probably do something about that --"
Now assuming that this is the only planet in the entire universe that this god chose, on which to create life - and Creationists will be quick to tell you it is - we can also assume, with our limitless suspension of disbelief, that part of this god's job - and likely the reason he created everything in the first place, in order to have something to do (being a god can be a rather boring job without anyone to worship you) - is to manipulate the lives of all of the creatures on the planet. But since he reduced that number to a boatload, one would think he wouldn't have a lot of trouble remembering them, and after only a hundred and fifty days, he finally did.
Notice he mentioned, "all the cattle that was with him in the ark" - now that's a lot more like the Zuisudra story, in which our hero escapes a local Euphrates river flood in a commercial barge loaded with livestock. Once in a while in the Bible, a little truth accidentally leaks out, but you really have to look for it.
Having already turned off the waterworks after forty days and forty nights, at the end of a hundred and fifty days, he made a great wind pass over the earth, "and the waters asswaged; (sic)" - (I had to quote that, my spelling is bad enough without taking the blame for someone else's mistakes).
According to the book, the ark finally came to rest, "upon the mountains of Ararat" - note that it doesn't say, as many assume, that it came to rest on Mount Ararat, which is a real mountain in southern Turkey, near Turkey's border with Iran (see insert, above, left), but rather on "the mountains of Ararat," and there are, in fact, a collection of them in the same area (see insert, above, right).
This took place - according to the book - (8:4) "in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month," and if you'll recall, they set sail on the 17th day of the second month, which means they've been drifting around for five solid months!! And that's assuming their month was anything similar to our own, set by Julius Caesar and revised by Pope Gregory XIII.
So if you're not too busy, can we chat for a moment about cows?
Cows munch mostly grass and hay - yet they grow big and hefty. Why? Because of the rumen, the first and largest of a cow's four stomachs. The rumen holds 160 liters (42 gallons) of food and billions of microbes. These microscopic bacteria and protozoa (single-celled organisms that reproduce by dividing) break down cellulose (plant-wall substance) and fiber into digestible nutrients.
"A cow couldn't live without its microbes," says animal nutrition expert Dr. Floyd Byers of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But as the microbes digest cellulose, they release methane. The process, called enteric fermentation, occurs in all animals with a rumen (cows, sheep, and goats, for example), and it makes them very gassy.
"It's part of their normal digestion process," says Tom Wirth of the EPA. "When they chew their cud, they regurgitate some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out."
The average cow expels 600 liters - 157 gallons - of methane gas per day, climate researchers report.
Let me repeat that, just so I can be sure you understand - one cow - ONE, count 'em, ONE! - produces 157 gallons of methane every single day! Can you see where I'm going with this?
Assuming a 28-30 day month, and most older calendars were based on a Lunar cycle, so let's go with 28 just to be on the conservative side - over the 9-month, ten-day voyage, one single cow on board would have produced six thousand, eighty-six point forty-seven (6,086.4733, actually) cubic feet of methane gas! And we know that there were either one or seven pairs of cattle on board. Assuming only one pair - again, to be conservative - that's still 12,172.947 cubic feet of methane gas, just for the two cows!
We have no way of knowing how many other species of animals there were on board - by all indications, thousands! - and they ALL farted, along with Skipper Noah and his fearless crew. Face it, I fart, you fart, Pat Robertson farts, for that matter, I'd bet a dollar that the Pope farts (though very, very quietly) - in fact, anyone who doesn't fart is a freak of nature, and in serious need of health care.
Now the ark, by this god's own blueprints (Genesis, 6:15) was three hundred cubits long, by fifty cubits wide, by thirty cubits deep - translated, assuming a cubit to be the standard definition's eighteen inches, that means the ark was 450 feet long, by 75 feet wide, by 45 feet deep - basically the size of a small ocean liner. Volume-wise (450 X 75 X 45), that amounts to an entire volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet.
Obviously, we must acknowledge that all of those animals occupied space on the ark, and the space they occupied should be subtracted from the total volume of the ark, if our intention is to determine just how much space was available to hold all of the methane gas produced by those animals over an nine-month, ten-day period of time. But since none of us knows how many animals were purportedly on the ark, clearly we can't make such an estimation, so we'll stick with the amount of space available on an unoccupied ark, while realizing that the actual amount of available space, that could possibly contain methane, to be much, much less than our calculations - in other words, we're using yet another conservative estimate.
However, there are several things we do know:
• the ark would have been built to be water-tight throughout a forty-day (and night) deluge, and water-tight means airtight.
• by this god's own instruction (Genesis, 6:16), the ark had only one window, about eighteen inches square, and it wasn't opened (Genesis, 8:6) until nine months and ten days after the cruise began.
• a single animal, of the size of a common cow, would produce over six thousand, eighty-six cubic feet of methane gas, over 9, 28-day months, plus 10 days.
That means that it would have taken less than 250 such animals to completely fill the ark with methane gas in less than the time the ark was closed up.
Now with only one window, on a boat that large, and it, closed for the entire nine months and ten days - the ark was dark. I mean, that was one dark ark - without a window, in an air-tight ark, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
But surely they had lanterns, didn't they? Or at least candles?
Have you ever heard of a kid holding a lit match near his rear end, to see if the gas in his fart will light? Trust me, it will, but I've been assured that the hair will grow back. Methane is one of the most flammable gasses on the planet.
Had I not already known about the other three Mesopotamian flood stories (almost exactly like this one, but written hundreds of years earlier, from which this one was clearly plagiarized), the 9-month, 10-day buildup of methane, and the 9-month, 10-day enforced blackout, would have been enough to convince me this story never happened, and if we can't believe the Bible, well, where would we be?
Where indeed?
So after nine months and ten days of inhaling solid methane, feedingthousands of 250 animals and shoveling up after them, all of this in total darkness (unless they had glow-sticks), Noah finally opened the window, no doubt hacking, coughing, wheezing, and gasping for a lungful of fresh air.
As Utanapishtim had, hundreds of years earlier, Noah sent out birds to determine if the ground had yet dried. Though he sent a raven and a dove (Utanapishtim sent a dove, a swallow, and a raven), the dove returned, with an olive leaf in its beak, not having found a dry place to alight - we're still waiting on word from the raven - my guess is that he was so glad to get clear of all of that methane, he got while the getting was good, deciding he'd fly til his wings fell off, rather than ever go back.
I like plants. You may have surmised that from my concern over the newly-created plants from Genesis: Chapter 1, that were left out on the ground overnight at minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you imagine the condition of all of the plants on the earth that were submerged for a year? I believe the technical, scientific term for it is dead!
Olive trees are especially grown in semi-arid climates, because they don't require much water. In fact, overwatering can kill them, and even the fundamentalists would have to admit (barring their insistence on a miracle), that living at the bottom of an ocean for a year could certainly constitute overwatering the hell out of them!
Noah waited another seven days - so we're nine months and twenty-four days into the voyage at this point - then he released another dove. This one took a hint from the raven, and made a break for it - he didn't return.
Finally, on the (8:14) second month, twenty-seventh day of the following year - a year and ten days after his initial launch, Noah, et al, disemb-ark-ed (last time I'll use that word, I promise!).
As soon as Noah hit the ground, he built an altar and took one of each of the animals he had taken such great pains to save from drowning, slit their throats, drained their blood, and burnt them on his altar as a sacrificial offering to the god who committed mass genocide.
Do you suppose that's where Adolph Hitler got the idea, and could it be it was this event he was recalling when he said: "Who says I am not under the special protection of God?" Of course, in his genocide, he killed far fewer people --
You'll never guess what this god did - (8:21) "the Lord smelled the sweet savor"!
From the Epic of Gilgamesh, written hundreds of years earlier: "The gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor and collected like flies over a sacrifice."
From the Babylonian myth, written hundreds of years earlier: "The smell of Atrahasis’ first offering after the subsiding of the flood announced his survival."
In the final two verses, this god appears to feel a little grudging remorse for committing mass genocide and promises not to curse the ground anymore, nor ever again "smite every living thing," except of course, later, in Sodom and Gomorrah, when he once again killed men, women and children, and in Egypt, when he killed only first-born babies, but other than those minor slipups, he's been on his best behavior ever since.
Fits the formula that I laid out in the last chapter, perfectly, doesn't it?
• a god or gods decide to kill all Humans
• a Man and His family are selected to be saved
• the Man is instructed to build a boat, and does
• the flood comes; everyone else dies; the Man & family are saved
• the boat lands on a mountain
• the Man sends out birds to determine if the flood has receded
• the Man, et al, disem-boat
• the Man offers a burnt sacrifice to the god/gods who killed everyone but Him
• the god/gods “smell the sweet savor,” and promise never to be so naughty again
He further promised that as long as this planet remained, (8:22) "seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
Of course, a Mesopotamian writer couldn't know that for those at the equator, cold has ceased, and for those at the poles, the same is pretty much true of heat, and of course, "day" ceases during an eclipse of the sun, but for a plagiarized story, written by an author ignorant of global geography and designed to terrify a gullible, superstitious people into doing what they're told, it's really rather effective.
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Now assuming that this is the only planet in the entire universe that this god chose, on which to create life - and Creationists will be quick to tell you it is - we can also assume, with our limitless suspension of disbelief, that part of this god's job - and likely the reason he created everything in the first place, in order to have something to do (being a god can be a rather boring job without anyone to worship you) - is to manipulate the lives of all of the creatures on the planet. But since he reduced that number to a boatload, one would think he wouldn't have a lot of trouble remembering them, and after only a hundred and fifty days, he finally did.
Notice he mentioned, "all the cattle that was with him in the ark" - now that's a lot more like the Zuisudra story, in which our hero escapes a local Euphrates river flood in a commercial barge loaded with livestock. Once in a while in the Bible, a little truth accidentally leaks out, but you really have to look for it.
Having already turned off the waterworks after forty days and forty nights, at the end of a hundred and fifty days, he made a great wind pass over the earth, "and the waters asswaged; (sic)" - (I had to quote that, my spelling is bad enough without taking the blame for someone else's mistakes).
According to the book, the ark finally came to rest, "upon the mountains of Ararat" - note that it doesn't say, as many assume, that it came to rest on Mount Ararat, which is a real mountain in southern Turkey, near Turkey's border with Iran (see insert, above, left), but rather on "the mountains of Ararat," and there are, in fact, a collection of them in the same area (see insert, above, right).
This took place - according to the book - (8:4) "in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month," and if you'll recall, they set sail on the 17th day of the second month, which means they've been drifting around for five solid months!! And that's assuming their month was anything similar to our own, set by Julius Caesar and revised by Pope Gregory XIII.
8:5, "And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen."Are you keeping count? They have now been cooped up for eight months, with either two or seven, depending on whom you believe, of every animal in the world.
8:6, "And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:"If we're talking about forty additional days, on top of the eight months, we're now up to nine months and ten days! As you'll recall, from Genesis, Chapter 6:16, Noah was instructed to make only the one window, which hadn't been opened for at least eight solid months, and possibly more than nine.
So if you're not too busy, can we chat for a moment about cows?
Cows munch mostly grass and hay - yet they grow big and hefty. Why? Because of the rumen, the first and largest of a cow's four stomachs. The rumen holds 160 liters (42 gallons) of food and billions of microbes. These microscopic bacteria and protozoa (single-celled organisms that reproduce by dividing) break down cellulose (plant-wall substance) and fiber into digestible nutrients.
"A cow couldn't live without its microbes," says animal nutrition expert Dr. Floyd Byers of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But as the microbes digest cellulose, they release methane. The process, called enteric fermentation, occurs in all animals with a rumen (cows, sheep, and goats, for example), and it makes them very gassy.
"It's part of their normal digestion process," says Tom Wirth of the EPA. "When they chew their cud, they regurgitate some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out."
The average cow expels 600 liters - 157 gallons - of methane gas per day, climate researchers report.
Let me repeat that, just so I can be sure you understand - one cow - ONE, count 'em, ONE! - produces 157 gallons of methane every single day! Can you see where I'm going with this?
Assuming a 28-30 day month, and most older calendars were based on a Lunar cycle, so let's go with 28 just to be on the conservative side - over the 9-month, ten-day voyage, one single cow on board would have produced six thousand, eighty-six point forty-seven (6,086.4733, actually) cubic feet of methane gas! And we know that there were either one or seven pairs of cattle on board. Assuming only one pair - again, to be conservative - that's still 12,172.947 cubic feet of methane gas, just for the two cows!
We have no way of knowing how many other species of animals there were on board - by all indications, thousands! - and they ALL farted, along with Skipper Noah and his fearless crew. Face it, I fart, you fart, Pat Robertson farts, for that matter, I'd bet a dollar that the Pope farts (though very, very quietly) - in fact, anyone who doesn't fart is a freak of nature, and in serious need of health care.
Now the ark, by this god's own blueprints (Genesis, 6:15) was three hundred cubits long, by fifty cubits wide, by thirty cubits deep - translated, assuming a cubit to be the standard definition's eighteen inches, that means the ark was 450 feet long, by 75 feet wide, by 45 feet deep - basically the size of a small ocean liner. Volume-wise (450 X 75 X 45), that amounts to an entire volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet.
Obviously, we must acknowledge that all of those animals occupied space on the ark, and the space they occupied should be subtracted from the total volume of the ark, if our intention is to determine just how much space was available to hold all of the methane gas produced by those animals over an nine-month, ten-day period of time. But since none of us knows how many animals were purportedly on the ark, clearly we can't make such an estimation, so we'll stick with the amount of space available on an unoccupied ark, while realizing that the actual amount of available space, that could possibly contain methane, to be much, much less than our calculations - in other words, we're using yet another conservative estimate.
However, there are several things we do know:
• the ark would have been built to be water-tight throughout a forty-day (and night) deluge, and water-tight means airtight.
• by this god's own instruction (Genesis, 6:16), the ark had only one window, about eighteen inches square, and it wasn't opened (Genesis, 8:6) until nine months and ten days after the cruise began.
• a single animal, of the size of a common cow, would produce over six thousand, eighty-six cubic feet of methane gas, over 9, 28-day months, plus 10 days.
That means that it would have taken less than 250 such animals to completely fill the ark with methane gas in less than the time the ark was closed up.
Now with only one window, on a boat that large, and it, closed for the entire nine months and ten days - the ark was dark. I mean, that was one dark ark - without a window, in an air-tight ark, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
But surely they had lanterns, didn't they? Or at least candles?
Have you ever heard of a kid holding a lit match near his rear end, to see if the gas in his fart will light? Trust me, it will, but I've been assured that the hair will grow back. Methane is one of the most flammable gasses on the planet.
Had I not already known about the other three Mesopotamian flood stories (almost exactly like this one, but written hundreds of years earlier, from which this one was clearly plagiarized), the 9-month, 10-day buildup of methane, and the 9-month, 10-day enforced blackout, would have been enough to convince me this story never happened, and if we can't believe the Bible, well, where would we be?
Where indeed?
So after nine months and ten days of inhaling solid methane, feeding
As Utanapishtim had, hundreds of years earlier, Noah sent out birds to determine if the ground had yet dried. Though he sent a raven and a dove (Utanapishtim sent a dove, a swallow, and a raven), the dove returned, with an olive leaf in its beak, not having found a dry place to alight - we're still waiting on word from the raven - my guess is that he was so glad to get clear of all of that methane, he got while the getting was good, deciding he'd fly til his wings fell off, rather than ever go back.
I like plants. You may have surmised that from my concern over the newly-created plants from Genesis: Chapter 1, that were left out on the ground overnight at minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you imagine the condition of all of the plants on the earth that were submerged for a year? I believe the technical, scientific term for it is dead!
Olive trees are especially grown in semi-arid climates, because they don't require much water. In fact, overwatering can kill them, and even the fundamentalists would have to admit (barring their insistence on a miracle), that living at the bottom of an ocean for a year could certainly constitute overwatering the hell out of them!
Noah waited another seven days - so we're nine months and twenty-four days into the voyage at this point - then he released another dove. This one took a hint from the raven, and made a break for it - he didn't return.
Finally, on the (8:14) second month, twenty-seventh day of the following year - a year and ten days after his initial launch, Noah, et al, disemb-ark-ed (last time I'll use that word, I promise!).
As soon as Noah hit the ground, he built an altar and took one of each of the animals he had taken such great pains to save from drowning, slit their throats, drained their blood, and burnt them on his altar as a sacrificial offering to the god who committed mass genocide.
Do you suppose that's where Adolph Hitler got the idea, and could it be it was this event he was recalling when he said: "Who says I am not under the special protection of God?" Of course, in his genocide, he killed far fewer people --
You'll never guess what this god did - (8:21) "the Lord smelled the sweet savor"!
From the Epic of Gilgamesh, written hundreds of years earlier: "The gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor and collected like flies over a sacrifice."
From the Babylonian myth, written hundreds of years earlier: "The smell of Atrahasis’ first offering after the subsiding of the flood announced his survival."
In the final two verses, this god appears to feel a little grudging remorse for committing mass genocide and promises not to curse the ground anymore, nor ever again "smite every living thing," except of course, later, in Sodom and Gomorrah, when he once again killed men, women and children, and in Egypt, when he killed only first-born babies, but other than those minor slipups, he's been on his best behavior ever since.
Fits the formula that I laid out in the last chapter, perfectly, doesn't it?
• a god or gods decide to kill all Humans
• a Man and His family are selected to be saved
• the Man is instructed to build a boat, and does
• the flood comes; everyone else dies; the Man & family are saved
• the boat lands on a mountain
• the Man sends out birds to determine if the flood has receded
• the Man, et al, disem-boat
• the Man offers a burnt sacrifice to the god/gods who killed everyone but Him
• the god/gods “smell the sweet savor,” and promise never to be so naughty again
He further promised that as long as this planet remained, (8:22) "seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
Of course, a Mesopotamian writer couldn't know that for those at the equator, cold has ceased, and for those at the poles, the same is pretty much true of heat, and of course, "day" ceases during an eclipse of the sun, but for a plagiarized story, written by an author ignorant of global geography and designed to terrify a gullible, superstitious people into doing what they're told, it's really rather effective.
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Posted by archaeopteryx at 9/23/2011 9:18 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion Christianity Judaism Islam Zuisudra Bible Mount Ararat the mountains of Ararat enteric fermentation animal flatulence methane gas Utanapishtim the Epic of Gilgamesh biblical mythology biblical inerrancy Atrahasis Noah
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion Christianity Judaism Islam Zuisudra Bible Mount Ararat the mountains of Ararat enteric fermentation animal flatulence methane gas Utanapishtim the Epic of Gilgamesh biblical mythology biblical inerrancy Atrahasis Noah
Hey -
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca
I love that guy's quotes and that one is witchy true. I think that that is in fact the reason why the Abrahamic religions were created in the first place.
- kk
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Exactly, Kir - if you haven't run across it already, you'll find in one or more of the chapters that the Bible was actually written between 900 and 600 BCE, during Israel's Babylonian Captivity, at a time when it was essential for the unity (and purity) of the Israeli nation for its priests not to allow its people to succumb to being absorbed into the Mesopotamian culture.
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
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When one reads the bible, and it says it rains for 40 days and 40 nights, one doesn't then think of how long it took for the water to drain away, and then, where did it drain too??? I didn't ralise it took so long, by bible standards - one year and ten days. what the??? Excellent research.
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Interestingly, and unfortunately, Suzanne, far too many people merely pay the Bible lip service, without really giving the actual facts any serious consideration - how much water would it take to cover the planet to 22.5 ft. higher than the highest mountains? Is there enough for the job? How much light could they have had to work in, with only one 18x18 inch window? And what about the methane with that window closed? I try to see what others don't. If you can answer all of those questions with, "God works in mysterious ways," then you clearly have no interest in the real answers.
pax vobiscum
archaeopteryx
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