From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Noach question...
Date: 6 Nov 92 20:29:20 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1992Nov5.165254.12744@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (seth.r.rosenthal) writes:
>In article <1dbadnINNl3k@TERMINATOR.AI.CS.YALE.EDU>, engelson-sean@cs.yale.edu (Sean Philip Engelson) writes:
>> 
>> In article <4NOV199215174825@utkvx2.utk.edu>, egw@utkvx2.utk.edu (Wolpert, Edward Greenwal) writes:
>> |>         Going back to last week's dvar,... I was talking to a friend, and
>> |> we were discussing about fish and Noach.  Specifically, did Noach bring two
>> |> fish on board (For each kind)?  I'm looking to create a discussion about
>> |> this, and profess no 'true' wisdom on this.  
>> 
>> Well, the issue seems relatively clear from the text.  In Breshit 6:20:
>> 
>> 	From the birds by their species and from the land animals by their
>> 	species, and from the crawling things by their species; two from each
>> 	will come to you to be saved.
>> 
>> So it seems that the fish were note included.  A better question than the
>> "storm" aspect of fish survival is the difference between salt-water and
>> fresh-water fish---since the whole world was covered in water, it was either
>> all salt or all fresh.  This could cause serious problems for some of the fish.
>> Any ideas??
>> 
>
>The obvious detail here is that "world" is a relativistic
>term in this context.  How do the writers know the whole
>world was inundated?  They only know about the world
>as they defined it, so there was much real world that
>was unknown to them.  Likely if some large-scale fresh-water
>kill occurred, it would be replenished from the "Unknown world".
>
>Has anyone looked at the theories that the implosion of Thera
>(a Greek Minoan Island, now Santorini) was the basis of the
>flood story?   Most of the flood legends are from areas that
>would be effected by such an implosion, and the timeframes
>roughly fit with what most archeologists consider to be
>pre-mosaic times.
>
>
>		Seth Rosenthal

Immanuel Velikovsky claimed in excerpts of a still unpublished volume that
the Flood did involve a planet-wide showering of the earth with water in
a series of cataclysmic events around 9,000-10,000 BCE.  The Thera 
catastrophe would have happened much more recently, probably with one
of the catastrophes he associated with the Exodus or possibly a few
centuries before that. I think he also indicated that the sea may not 
have been salty prior to this time, obviously raising some interesting 
questions about saltwater fish and sea life in prior ages.  Thirteen 
years after his death the book remains unpublished.

Rudolf Steiner confirmed from his own sources of spiritual investigation
that the biblical account of the flood accurately reflects a real series
of catastrophes involving the atlantean continent.  Both men agree that
the face of the earth and the configuration of the natural order were
drastically changed in the process.

Both religious and scientific folk will reject one or both of these sources.
But it is interesting that two men, one a materialistic scientist (though
a religious Jew), and the other a spiritual scientist (though not working
out of any religious tradition) both confirm the scriptural account from
rather widely independent viewpoints.

g.p.

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