Flood Narratives

Intro:
Ist die Sintflut heute geologisch oder hydrologisch denkbar? Kann die Sintflut anhand von Indizien identifiziert und rekonstruiert werden wie es beispielsweise bei den spät- und nacheiszeitlichen Megafluten der Fall ist? – Es werden die jüngeren
Entwicklungen zum Verständnis der Sintflut aufgezeigt, und es wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob und gegebenenfalls wie und mit welchen Prämissen die Möglichkeit einer wissenschaftlichen Erforschung der Sintflut gegeben ist.

This work is set within the wider framework of an argument defending the thesis that the image of the ark of gopher wood is to be understood  as a    mythological representation of the Jerusalem temple. The objective of the resent article therefore is to explore a single piece of literary evidence which shall, in an accumulative manner, assists in the substantiation of the whole. By a thorough examination of the translation of k'ni'm (Genesis 6:14b) it shall be shown that its somewhat anomalous rendering as ‘rooms’ or compartments’ betrays an ancient error in translation. Such an inaccuracy, is shall be argued, is most likely due to the gradual loss of the mythological presuppositions of the author. Consequently this work shall survey both the
traditions of translation and the mythological background of the biblical flood narrative in order to demonstrate that the primordial reed hut temple of Mesopotamian tradition is preserved in the Genesis account. The presence of which shall be shown to be evinced in the k'ni'm vocabulary.

In order to achieve this end there shall follow a comprehensive look at the numerous parallels between the Genesis redaction and the earlier Mesopotamian accounts in the Gilgamesh Epic and the myth of Atrahasis. Such, it is hoped, shall establish firmly the notion that the Genesis account follows the same method of ark construction as was already established in its
Mesopotamian antecedents. In conclusion this article shall provide contemporary readers with evidence sufficient to reconstruct an allusion to the reed hut Urheiligtum at the heart of the Genesis redaction of the flood myth.

Pre peer-reviewed version of contribution to edited volume on Violence in the Hebrew Bible: Text and Reception, focusing on the nature of violence in the biblical Flood Narrative (Genesis 6-9), also against the background of its dialogue with Mesopotamian worldviews and its reception in 1 Enoch and Jubilees, as well as in the film Noah (2014). All of these stories are more or less intertextually related and take a primeval cosmic imbalance as their point of departure. Despite this fact, their different descriptions of the incentive for the divine violence in the deluge turns out to be of major importance for their views of the nature of this violence and the relations between the divine and human realms. In addition, the reception history of the biblical text shows that serious interactions with the biblical text itself evoke the question of the nature of the relation between these readings and their biblical source.