Noah's Flood : The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History

Rating:
Summary: Finding the truth
Review: This was an excellent book and did an outstanding job of relaying the facts to the reader. I am totally convinced that this was Noah's flood. However, the authors left out information that would actually support the biblical narrative. For one thing, they disregard the fact that looking at various other cultures, the biblical narrative is the closest to the origninal and to their scientific findings. What is more, if you take the biblical narrative in its historical context and learn what the words meant to the early Hebrews (The Bible wasn't written in English), everything fits together really nicely. Also, they acknowledge that every language known to the Hebrews would have spread from the same region shortly after the flood, but they completely ignore the biblical story of the tower of Babel, which, surprise, comes right after the flood. It is obvious that there is a non-christian slant on the authors' opinions, but with a little bit of pulling out the facts and detective work, your faith in the Bible can only be strengthened. If I was vindictive I'd knock the book down for it's non-christian slant, but the authors did an outstanding job of getting the point across given their presupposition that the Bible is wrong. Peace out, and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Noah, Move Over!
Review: What has fascinated me since childhood about the story of Noah's Ark is how similar it is to other (older) flood myths from the near east. A popular trend among Old Testament scholars has been to highlight the differences between the biblical account and earlier near eastern flood stories. (Yet, I would argue that while there are differences in the number of gods involved, the results for the human race were pretty much the same, regardless of the provocation). Ryan and Pitman do an outstanding job of gathering and presenting evidence from a number of scientific disciplines that bolsters the case for a major and memorable cataclysmic event in our distant past giving rise to the flood mythology in that part of the world. What I found particularly fascinating was their discussion of the origins of agriculture and its spread outward from the Black Sea region some 7,000 years ago. That the catastrophic Black Sea flood happened is now beyond question, and the fact that it happened at the dawn of human civilization would make it a ripe candidate for the origins mythology of any people. A fascinating and scholarly, yet very accessible, synthesis of science and cultural history. Highly recommended.