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Michael Levine - Contributor

Michael Levine is the founder of the prominent public relations firm Levine Communications Office in Los Angeles. He is the author of 15 books. www.LCOonline.com - E-mail:mlevine@LCOonline.com [go to Levine index]

The Lesson of Noah's Ark
Condemnation and redemption...
[Michael Levine] 6/25/04

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” -–Thomas Alva Edison

We think we know Noah’s story pretty well, don’t we? Very old, very righteous man is simply minding his own business, when he gets singled out to save not only himself and his immediate family, but also the future of all humanity. Plus, he must collect and harbor a representative sampling of the world’s birds and beasts and bugs before a forthcoming deluge the Almighty One plans to unleash that will blanket the entire planet and wipe out each and every inhabitant who dwells upon it. Whew!

One can only imagine Noah’s dumbfounded response when he comes face to face with God, who complains that He is sick of all the sin He sees and thus intends to destroy the very folks He took the trouble to create in the first place.

“I shall wipe out men and women, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, for I am grieved that I have made them, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.”

Noah was the only man on the entire planet in whom God found favor. So He instructed the pious patriarch to build a vessel that would remain afloat throughout the forthcoming deluge for an unprecedented forty days and forty nights; and all this, mind you, to be accomplished long before blueprints, building permits or Home Depot.

“Make yourself an ark of cypress wood, make rooms in it, and coat it with pitch. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Put a door on the side, a window on top and build three floors: a lower, a middle and an upper deck. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all the life I have created under the heaven, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.

“You are to bring into the ark two of every living creature, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal, and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away for you and for them."

After his up-close-and-personal encounter with the Almighty, Noah abandoned his chores, his flocks and his fields and constructed a sea-worthy structure on the approximate scale of your average football stadium. He even did his best to warn the neighbors of impending catastrophe. But those who heard him scoffed and snickered, treating him less like a divine prophet and more like a wild-eyed lunatic.

But Noah steadfastly embraced his mission—- with zeal that was a glowing testament to the enduring vitality of his Faith.

And lo, these many millennia later, about the only thing upon which both scholars and scientists can agree, is that accepting this (or any other account from the Bible, for that matter) as a literal reconstruction of what actually occurred can best be seen as a matter of our Faith.

In their 1999 book, Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History, geologists Dr. William B.F. Ryan and Dr. Walter C. Pitman of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory conducted an expedition throughout the region that today is Turkey. They found artifacts and took soil samples that helped advance the long-held idea that a gargantuan deluge of water from the Mediterranean, rushing through the Bosporus with the force of twenty Victoria Falls, entered the Black Sea some 7,600 years ago. In a little under two years, they theorized, the Black Sea rose and inundated the surrounding plains, demolishing everything in its path and altering the landscape, until it arrived at its present dimensions.

Ryan and Pitman suggest that people living in the region fled, dispersing south, east and even up into northern Europe and that this astonishing upheaval became part of the collective folk memory. Refugees from the Black Sea flood carried their experience with them into the Levant. In time, this legend gave rise to the Babylonian flood myth found in the ancient epic of Gilgamesh and, later, the saga of saturation segued from local lore to the Biblical tale of Noah.

Great flood stories are by no means exclusive to the peoples of the Middle East. There are, in fact, hundreds of flood myths and ark legends found worldwide, including those of the Chinese, the ancient Hawaiian, Native American, New Zealand’s Maori and Australia’s Aboriginal cultures.

However, the task of separating myth from reality, legend from lore, facts from fiction, is not the point. Authenticating or disproving the Noah experience, or any part of his fantastic voyage, is for others to argue.

Noah was clearly ambitious. He was certainly devoted. And he was most definitely obedient. Additionally, he and his sons may have also been more than just a little meticulous, because the ark wasn’t seaworthy for nearly a hundred years.

When God announced the floodwaters were ready to be loosed upon the earth, as He commanded, Noah loaded all the creatures aboard, as tradition has so long held, two by two.

When Noah and his family entered the massive vessel, it was God, Himself, who sealed the ark and said, “Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I shall wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

On the seventeenth day of the second month, right on schedule, the rain began to fall and fall and fall. The floodwaters lifted the ark high above what was once the ground and the ark rose and rose and rose still more as water covered the trees, and then the hills, and finally the mountaintops.

Every living thing on the earth that was not tucked away safely inside the ark perished. Kapoot.

Finally, the rains stopped falling and God sent a great wind over the earth and the waters slowly, slowly receded.

On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat in Turkey.

After another forty days, Noah opened a window and released a raven into the cloudy sky. The black bird flew and flew until, finding no place on which to land, it returned to the ark. Seven days later, Noah sent out a dove. But the dove could find no place to rest because there was still nothing but water covering the earth. So she, too, returned to the ark.

Seven more days passed and again Noah sent the dove from the ark. When the dove flew back to him, there was in its beak a freshly plucked olive leaf—the first sign that the waters had begun to recede from the earth.

Noah waited seven more days and then again sent forth the dove.

This time she did not return to him.

Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every living creature that is with you-— the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground-— so that they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase their number upon it.

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all the living creatures as I have done.”

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. All the animals, the birds, the fish are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you… everything.”

And then God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between you and every living creature, a covenant for all generations to come. I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between the Earth and Me.”

Just what, you may ask, does all this Biblical condemnation and redemption have to do with us?

Simply this: Whether or not you believe Noah’s odyssey to be fact or fable, gossamer or gospel, legendary legerdemain or lyrical lunacy, his legacy offers much, much more than a how-to for building and launching a floating zoo long before power tools, air conditioning and indoor plumbing. Much, much more. CRO

copyright 2004 Michael Levine

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