
Modern
reconstruction of Noah's Ark |
The Great
Flood:
mythological
story about a great destruction that once befell the earth. There are
several variants; the Biblical version is the most famous. The
possibility that there is a historical
event behind the story (a local
flood in southern Babylonia
in the twenty-eighth century BCE) can not
be
excluded.
Genesis 7
Then YHWH said to Noah, "Go into the
ark, you and all
your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in
this generation. Take
with you seven pairs of all clean
animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not
clean, the male and his mate; and
seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep
their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. For
in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty
nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from
the face of the ground."
And
Noah did all that YHWH had commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the
flood of waters came upon the earth. And
Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into
the ark, to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, and of animals that are
not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two
and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had
commanded Noah.
And after seven days the waters of the
flood came upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's
life, in the second month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the
great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days
and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and his sons,
Shem and Ham and Japheth, and
Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, they and every beast according to its
kind, and all the cattle
according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the
earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind,
every bird of every sort. They went into the ark with Noah, two
and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. And they that entered, male and female
of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and YHWH shut him
in.
The flood continued forty days upon the
earth; and the waters
increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased
greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily
upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were
covered; the waters prevailed above the
mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth, birds, cattle, beasts,
all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose
nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that
was upon the face of the ground,
man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were
blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were
with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth
a hundred and fifty days.
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