The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood

This book accomplishes what it sets out to achieve. The story is fascinating; the writing is scholarly, learned, and weighty, but it is done with a light touch and is fully accessible. The problem (I should say, my problem) is that the subtitle is very misleading. "Decoding the Story of the Flood" is an overstatement.The author is an expert on ancient Mesopotamia at the British Museum. He works with cuneiform tablets. This work is very 'literary'; he characterizes it (appropriately) as "philology". Once upon a time English Ph.D. students had philology requirements as part of their programs. This meant such courses as Beowulf, Old English and the History of the Language. This meant bibliography (physical as well as descriptive) and it meant paleography and graphology. This was the hyper-scholarly side of 'literary' study, not like literary 'criticism' or literary history. At one point the author reminisces about the giants in his field and notes that they came equipped with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac and Aramaic "before they even looked at Babylonian" (p. 39).Note that this sort of work is language-driven. When the story of the flood is examined the materials used are literary texts, not, e.g., oceanographic, anthropological, archaeological or historical materials/evidence. The only (brief) historical excursus in this book is a fascinating, speculative passage on the possible impact of the Babylonian Captivity on the creation of the Hebrew Bible.The impetus behind the study is the author's extensive study of a single cuneiform tablet concerned with the construction of the ark. Interestingly, this ark is circular. It is a coracle, a very common form of nautical vehicle in this part of the world, i.e., contemporary Iraq. From this single tablet the author expands his examination to include other ancient texts (particularly the Gilgamesh text) and studies the pieces of the puzzle which they contribute.We never, however, really leave that bubble. We do not learn whether or not there actually was a great flood, when it occurred, where it occurred, whether or not the landing on Mt. Ararat is historically plausible. Within the texts examined there are other possible mountain sites and they are identified on a map and studied closely within the literary texts themselves, but we never go beyond the texts.The 'outside world' if it might be so described is represented by an actual building of an ark of the sort described in the central tablet. It is far smaller than the original, by necessity. It was also built in India, where the bitumen used for sealing was of far poorer quality than that available in Iraq. This is all very interesting, but it is far less interesting (to me) than the larger story.One version of the larger story, e.g., is William Ryan and Walter Pitman's book, NOAH'S FLOOD: THE NEW SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE EVENT THAT CHANGED HISTORY (1998). Ryan and Pitman (Columbia U. oceanographers and marine geologists) study the Black Sea and argue that the Black Sea was once the Black Lake. Approximately 7,600 years ago the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and the Mediterranean plunged through the Bosporus Strait. This occurred over a period of months and the sound would have been horrific—sufficient to launch a panoply of tales and legends. The point is proven by the existence of now-lost settlements beneath the Black Sea and the existence of fresh water mollusks below the Sea and salt water mollusks above. Negotiating the Strait is traditionally very, very difficult—a problem solved by suspending weights below ships so that the cross-current problem is ameliorated.This book, which appeared 16 years prior to THE ARK BEFORE NOAH, does not appear in the latter's bibliography. This was profoundly disappointing to me. I expected THE ARK BEFORE NOAH to complement Ryan and Pitman's argument or at least address it, but the larger questions concerning the Flood are totally avoided (unless they are represented literarily within existing texts).What was interesting was the author's introduction to cuneiform writing (with many helpful illustrations) and the literary analysis which he was able to provide. I wanted and expected much more. This may be 'my problem' but potential readers should be aware of the circumscribed subject matter of the book. The historicity of the bible is of enormous importance. It is (to me) the central question here. The physical evidence represented by cuneiform tablets is interesting to the extent that it bears on larger questions. Those are not addressed here.

Reading "The Ark Before Noah" makes you feel like you're in a comfortable armchair in a book-lined study. There's a brandy snifter in your hand, and you're listening to one of the most charming raconteurs you can imagine. He's spinning a yarn so compellingly and amusingly that, almost against your will, you're becoming interested in a topic about which you'd never before cared. The vast majority of humankind has no clue what cuneiform writing is. But the man in the comfy chair opposite yours, Dr. Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Scripts at the British Museum, would like to change that.Ostensibly, this book is about a millennia-old slab of clay with some wedge-shaped writing on it and what it reveals: a Primordial Flood story unlike any other. As Finkel informs us, there are plenty of other Babylonian cuneiform tablets in the British Museum and elsewhere with bits and pieces of Flood narratives (twelve, if memory serves). But this one was unique. Not only does it give precise instructions and dimensions for building a giant round boat (surprising enough in and of itself), it also contained the phrase "the animals entered the ark two by two"--a phrasing not found in any other Babylonian Flood narratives, but one which DOES occur in the Hebrew Bible.Now, were this book only about this tablet, it would be fascinating enough. But "The Ark Before Noah" is much more than that. "The Ark Before Noah" is a love story, an account of the lifelong romance between Dr. Finkel and cuneiform writing.Not only is it the oldest form of human writing known of, it's also, as Dr. Finkel informs us, far and away the most fun--a cryptographical challenge for the nimblest of brains. Woven through the story of the Ark Tablet is a chatty, witty, humane, and at times very funny memoir of a life spent deciphering these baffling indentations in once-wet mud. It's also a marvelous introductory history to the discipline of Assyriology itself.But it goes beyond that. One of Dr. Finkel's many gifts is to be able to see behind the inscriptions, and recognize the very human people who made them. The millennia between us and them notwithstanding, they were, he points out, people precisely like us. They struggled with the same dilemmas, had the same worries and concerns, and felt the same emotions. And, using our shared humanity across the millennia as a point of departure, he asks some much larger questions about the Bible: who wrote it? When? Why? And why would its anonymous writers or compilers, forcibly exiled in Babylon, have included stories cribbed from their pagan oppressors in their own holy book?Dr. Finkel has pulled off a rare feat: a lucidly scholarly, readable, personal, and personable book about a subject which, in the hands of the wrong writer, would be as boring as watching paint dry--but which, in his telling, becomes mesmerizing.

I had seen the video that they shot as a documentary on the construction of the coracle ark and I was fascinated with the discoveries of the ark tablet and the other flood stories. The book delves much deeper into all the details of this amazing tablet that was discovered. I did enjoy the deep dive and the details but I almost felt this book could have been half the thickness it was. I suppose that because the reading and translation of cuneiform is almost experiencing it's second death (Dr. Finkel might be one of the handful of those who can read it anymore) that it was good he included such an extensive section on just describing the languages and the writing. However, it was kind of difficult to slog through that part to get to the main topic. But I do highly recommend people check out this subject either online or via this book. His hypotheses of how these stories were incorporated into the biblical ones of Genesis (after the fact) while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon really seems very very likely. Explains a lot actually!

I do not know what was the purpose of the first three introductory chapters, one would expect that the information in those chapters would prepare the reader to understand the culture that produced the flood story, or will have some use in understanding what come later in the book, but this is not the case. The topics covered here appear to have being selected randomly and without any specific purpose.As an introduction to cuneiform writing, or text translation or Babylonian culture or whatever the intention, it is not a good one.Then we have chapters 4 to 11, this is the best part of the book, here the author deals with the ark tablet: its discovery, translation, intepretation, the flood story in the literature of ancient Sumer and Babylon , and a very interesting and plausible theory about how this story ended up in the Old testament. Very engaging and interesting reading.Then we have chapter 12, well..chapter 12, how can I put it...from 4 to 11, he drove and showed off his brand new BMW, in chapter 12 he crash it beyond repair. Here the author deals with the aftermath of the deluge. There are several interesting bits of mesopotamian history and the world map tablet ( of which I would like to read more about ), but his entussiasm to link them all to the flood story goes too far. Too many assumptions and suppositions to be taken seriously. Perhaps I am being mean, but the picture that came to my mind while reading this chapter was that of watching one of these pseudo-scientific TV "documentaries" where some Von Daniken-like "expert" claim to have found a new hidden secret in the texts of Khufu's funerary chamber (by the way, there are no texts in Khufu's funerary chamber)The final recapitulation chapters 13 & 14 are not bad, 14 much better than 13 ( in 13 the BMW is being towed).Then we have an extra chapter 15 explaining how they built a real coracle for a TV documentary.The whole book is sprinkled with unnecessary autobiographical and humorous quotes, and several annoying digressions.I would have left 4 stars if not for chapters 1-3 & 12. But mostly 12 !

In 'The Ark before Noah' Dr Finkel gives an enthralling and authoritative account of a 150 year old problem. His analysis is solidly based on his knowledge as an expert in cuneiform, and he successfully conveys his enthusiasm for the subject. Huge amounts of information are communicated in a deceptively easy style, covering not just the technicalities of flood texts but the whole range of Mesopotamian writing - business documents, court records, dreams and omens, educational primers, mathematics, myths and rituals and works of reference - a whole world now lying in innumerable fragments on museum shelves or still buried in Iraq. He take us through the many 'flood tablets' which have been identified since George Smith made his epoch-making identification in 1872, not just the nine main texts in Sumerian and Akkadian but the related sources in Genesis, the Qur'an and the Greco-Babylonian Berossus, then, conjuror-like, adds his own contribution, an unrecognised version of the Atrahasis myth, the so-called 'Ark Tablet', which gives new details of dimensions, design and construction methods. On this he founds a wholly original theory: in its original Babylonian conception the ark was a gigantic 'quffa', a huge circular coracle. Traces of this extraordinary idea survive in other tablets, and Dr Finkel is able to show how the design evolved from the early reed-boat of the Sumerian texts to the Babylonian circular ark, then to Utnapishti's cube and finally the rectangular box of Genesis 6-9. Necessarily this takes the discussion to the relationship with Genesis, and the author seeks to argue, again in my view convincingly, that we are not dealing with parallel, independent traditions but direct literary dependence, in which a version of the Utnapishti narrative in Gilgamesh XI was incorporated in Genesis at the time of the Babylonian Exile (597-538 BC). Here he has useful things to say about the crisis in Judaean history and its effects. There is a large measure of speculation in all this - maybe the author lets his enthusiasms run away with him at times - but there is nothing in the book that is not scholarly or worth considering. There is also valuable supporting material about the construction of coracle boats in Iraq, now alas a lost art, drawn from the pages of the Mariner's Mirror. This is a fascinating and rewarding investigation, and I thoroughly recommend it.

This was a very interesting book about a very interesting subject. Irving Finkel has tried to explain the history of the well known story about Noah's Ark based upon his studies in Cuneiform and ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets. It is no doubt that Dr Finkel is a world expert on the subject.There is a lot of information in the book and I learned a lot but the approach to the subject was to in great detail penetrate old Sumerian and Babylonian languages and their written form, Cuneiform. There are large parts of this book that gets very technical and for a serious student in those languages is is probably of great value. My interest was more toward the story itself and of course there are a lot to learn here but it takes some time since you have to go through a lot of Cuneiform discussions.Dr Finkel tell us how the Ark was constructed, what it looked like and who went on board. There is also a discussion where it ended it's voyage. He is comparing old Babylonian and Assyrian records with the Bible and even the Koran. It is very clear that the story is far older than what is presented in the Bible.Dr Finkel is also one of those really enjoyable English scholars that lets his fine sense of humor be presented in the book.But after having more or less proven when the story was created, how the Ark was constructed etc. there are still a lot of questions. If we accept the story of the Ark as a real event, we must also accept that some god told Noah to build it and collect all the animals. If there are no gods, it all falls apart since how would Noah know about the storm so far in advance that he had time to construct, build and man the Ark?Dr Finkel does not state that the story about Noah's Ark is an historical proven fact, just that the story is very old and that if it is true the Ark would have looked like he describes.This is far from the last book on the subject but if it interests you read it. It is well wort doing that.

As one who has a very large, and personal, library, I have to admit to an obsession in topping up Information. This is a subject that really should be required reading-because it's so much more than a 'history,' but a dedicated investigation into how the human species thought about Things. So very unlike how little far too many think about them, in the 21st century.

Fascinating stuff, written with wit, enthusiasm and authority. I did get confused now and again about which tablet version was from where and when, but that's my fault not the author's. If you have an interest in the history of the middle eastern flood myths then this book is for you. I know he's been doing this all his working life, but the knowledge and insight of Irving Finkel is mind blowing - it's difficult to imagine that another non-academic book on the subject could surpass it.And it has a surprising link to the kids TV show The Double Deckers!Great man. Great book.