Noahs Secret: The Beginning

Ur was one of many cities that arose in this water world. The Euphrates River was its life source. It delivered fertile soil, fish and wildfowl, but it could also bring disaster.

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The Tigris, the Euphrates also had super floods every 10 years, every years, every 1, years. When we have the first recorded stories of the flood myth, the cities where these were being written down are exactly in that precarious position. They created around them fragile environments. With the right amount of water, they can be incredibly productive and incredibly wealthy, but with the wrong amount of water, the very irrigation works they need to produce that wealth are blown away.

Everyone has a vested interest in this flood story. Everyone knows that it makes or breaks their careers, their livelihoods.

That would be the power of the flood myth in this part of the world. So it wasn't a single great flood that inspired the myths, but centuries of periodic flooding. And would a large round boat have helped these ancient people to survive these floods? The boat-building team is trying to figure out if it could even have been built at all. They found a place to build their Babylonian coracle in Southern India, where they can access the materials listed in the tablet, and the skills to put them together.

Construction begins on the shore of Lake Vembanad. The fibrous plants they will use for the hull will be reeds from a nearby marsh. Some of the They've settled on the size of their ark, about 40 feet in diameter, just a fifth the size of the ark described in the tablet. But at 40 feet, it will weigh 35 tons, right at the limit of what they believe the materials and the ancient techniques will stand. Once the ark is in the water, the bottom will flex, straining the frame, possibly causing it to break. The bigger the ark, the bigger the pressure. The largest quffas that I'm aware of may be six meters.

This, we're pushing beyond that. It's actually eight times as big as the six-meter one. So we're increasing the forces we have to contend with, exponentially. To hold the frame together, they will reinforce it, combining basic engineering with known Babylonian carpentry techniques. The Ark tablet states that the flood vessel has 30 ribs. They lock these ribs in a latticework. Tensioned bands will hold the tops of the ribs together. The deck layer will add further rigidity.

And a forest of stanchions will prevent the bottom from collapsing upwards. Maybe it's all going to fall apart. The ark will contain more than pieces of wood, in 6, individual connections, cut and shaped using traditional tools. There will be no metal, modern sealant or adhesive. As instructed by the tablet, the team also begins to bind reeds into tightly packed lengths of rope.

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They'll need a mile and a half to cover the entire hull. You have this little coil that spirals out. The idea is that you gradually create a gigantic basket, basically made of grass. As the beginning of the reed coil is lashed into place, they turn their attention to the next major challenge: The tablet calls for natural bitumen, which doesn't exist in India but is found, oozing out of the ground, in Iraq. Natural bitumen has unique impurities, which make it adhesive and resistant to heat. Alessandro, the team's expert in ancient boat technology, needs to re-create these properties, starting with refined, industrial bitumen.

He adds animal fat and fish oil to make it sticky, and lime powder made from burnt lake shells, to give it heat tolerance. Getting the balance of these ingredients right is critical. If you put too much lime powder, it will get very hard, it will resist at high temperature, but it won't stick. If you put too much fish oil or animal fat it will, it will stick easily, but it will melt under the sun, basically.

Alessandro's cooking skills will determine whether the ark will float or not. They've given themselves six months to build, the recorded gap between seasonal floods in ancient Mesopotamia. Then, they'll face the greatest challenge of all: A boat usually has a keel that can support it as it slides into the water.

A round boat has no keel. And this one will be covered in a fragile layer of bitumen. You cannot drag the boat on the ground, you cannot pull it.

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The bitumen layer is extremely delicate. And you don't want it damaged, because it's the only, basically, layer that keeps your boat waterproof. Without the bitumen, the boat won't float. How would the Babylonians have launched the boat? The Ark tablet doesn't say. The hero, Atra Hasis simply waits for the flood.

It is one of these big questions, sort of a burning question, you know, if a boat this large could actually have been built. Unless there was a flood, it would have been incredibly difficult to launch. A vessel like this could have meant survival in a world of constant flooding. But at some point, those floods become mythologized into a single great deluge, and real coracles are turned into a single giant ark of legend.

And somehow, that legend of the round ark becomes the familiar boat shape in the story of Noah. How does such a transition occur? The answer lies in a great innovation of the ancient world: Originally, all these stories circulated orally. And from that moment, they are fixed rigidly, so, you have an established text, which all the scribes copy. And in the process of copying, errors creep in.

Irving Finkel believes one of these errors changes the shape of the ark. The Ark tablet, dated around B. But here, scribes omit the mention of the circle. We have these later scribes who have an old text. Like a kind of sky scraper. What would happen if that were put in the water? It would sink, wouldn't it?

Especially if it was full of animals. Over time, the mythical ark loses touch with the reality that likely inspired it. It sets off on a literary journey, changing with new interpretations. There is a rather ironic consequence. You have the possibility of an error being consolidated, copied and recopied, until nobody thinks about it anymore and just take it for granted. And that is surely what happened with the shape of the ark. It eventually adopts the boat shape we know in the story of Noah, and the rest of the story changes, too.

Almost 2, years after the first Babylonian version, the flood story is found outside Mesopotamia, in the Hebrew Bible. There's just no way of explaining the story in Genesis, except as a borrowing. The question is when, how and why? It's long been assumed that trade and cultural exchange bring the Babylonian story to ancient Israel, but this doesn't explain why Biblical writers adopt the tale, and give it a moral twist.

In the Mesopotamian myth, pagan gods are disturbed by human noise and use the flood to reduce their numbers, but in the Book of Genesis, the flood is a disaster that God uses to punish people for their sins. The Noah story serves to provide a platform of understanding for all disasters. It was not just natural disasters that were attributed to God, it was also historical disasters.

The history of the people to be known as Jews is filled with disasters that are reflected in the Bible. But many experts believe there is one, in particular, which provides an explanation for the story of Noah: If somebody is not paying their taxes, not paying tribute as they're supposed to, you have to make an example of them, so you need to come in and show what your powers are capable of enforcing. Several thousand Judeans, the educated and the powerful of ancient Israel, were marched, about 1, miles, to Babylon. The Babylonians needed manpower.

They had fields that needed to be cultivated and craftsmen that needed to be imported, to make their tremendous buildings and other things that they did. So, you imported manpower to do those kinds of things. I think, for a lot of people, there probably was a sense that this is the end of the world as we know it.

Yet, this traumatic uprooting brought the Judeans into direct contact with Babylonian culture, and that would shape the destiny of their scripture and the story of Noah. One of the greatest collections of Babylonian relics in the world is found here, at the Pergamon Museum, in Berlin. It includes a reconstruction of the entrance to Babylon. The newly arrived Judeans would have walked through this gate.

On the other side was a world they could scarcely have imagined. In the 6th century B. But what was the Judean experience? Cornelia Wunsch is an Expert in Neo-Babylonian culture. She has evidence suggesting exile in Babylon wasn't as bad as the Judeans might have feared. They have been allotted land, and they are tilling the land and building houses, and they are doing reasonably well there.

It may have been awful at the beginning, and nobody wanted to be in exile, but, very quickly, things got good.

Judea made it after one or two generations. They were well-ensconced into the Babylonian economies. A Babylonian-style personal seal of a Judean merchant named Arricam suggests how assimilated some Judeans were in this new society. He certainly led a dual existence. Arricam is clearly showing himself as a person of Judean descent, but on the other hand a typical Babylonian businessman. Many Judeans in Babylon were well-integrated into Babylonian culture, but they also preserved their own traditions.

This was the case for Judean scribes, who were editing traditional stories and prayers and writing new ones that would ultimately become the Hebrew Bible. These priestly authors, who were writing in Babylon, obviously had the exile on their minds. And one of the most significant aspects of this event was the formation of the Bible. Wait, Is Mary Poppins a Witch? Films seen during History -- Ancient -- Mid E - Mesopo. Share this Rating Title: Use the HTML below.

The Longevity Secret: Is Noahs Ark the Key to Immortality? (Video ) - IMDb

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Edit Cast Episode credited cast: Himself - Narrator Eric Staples Usually water refers to purifying the environment, the light of Hassadim mercy. However here the strong streams of water surrounding man became inundating and deadly. What are these forces that outwardly resemble waters, but in reality bring along death?

When external and all sorts of conflicting thoughts and desires overwhelm a person, this becomes like the Flood. Although the Flood comes as a very harsh force that can destroy everything, this very force purifies with its harshness. However, it only purifies us if we, as Noah did, erect the ark around ourselves. Noah represents a person who falls into a state in which the heavy waters of the Flood try to distract him from the path. If a person continuously consorts with foreign forces and intentions, they will turn into the Flood. He will not be able to escape them.

He will be constantly bombarded by the deadly desires of the surrounding people, dictating to him what he has to do. Some crave money; others want power or fame, etc…Everything around us is impregnated with somebody else's desires. Only one thing can save one's soul: We have to build a surrounding layer, a screen, around ourselves.

This screen will protect us from outside obstacles that attempt to distract, seduce or frighten a person.

Secrets of Noah's Ark

If we cannot construct the protective shield that will shelter us from all the useless folly of this world, we will not able to progress spiritually. The ark represents a make-shift screen, this is a shielding force that one builds for themselves. One who holds the purpose of creation cannot be exposed to any other influences. The ark is only one of many actions that we need to perform if we want to advance spiritually.

Noah is the next man after Adam. He starts the entire journey on Earth. In Hebrew, earth is " Eretz "; it is our internal desire " Ratzon ". One cannot embark on their journey on Earth transform something inside without first securing this power, support, and internal system which will free man from any external obstacles. The ark is the means that Noah that is, the soul that reached this spiritual degree chose in order to progress towards the goal. The entire world exists inside of our soul. Representatives of the entire existence and the root of the world are inside of it. We exist at the highest level of our world, meaning that our soul includes all the animate, vegetative, and inanimate souls.

The entire world changes in accordance with us: By ascending, that is correcting ourselves by overcoming obstacles we elevate the rest of nature along with ourselves. In this Chapter, the example of Noah shows us how we should behave when we find ourselves in a peculiar environment or face obstacles. In such a state, we have to take the already corrected parts of our soul i.

That is, a surrounding shield that will protect us from all external obstacles. This shield has to be absolutely altruistic. If we need nothing, if we are completely indifferent to all but the purpose of creation, then nothing around can harm us. If we are connected with the purpose of creation we simply raise above all the obstacles so much that we stop feeling them. They cannot affect us or alter our path. The Creator instructs us how to build our protective shield from above. It is said that Noah enters this shield and the Creator "closes the door behind him".

Enormous impure and infringing forces separate Noah from the Creator. Noah had to work against them all the time so that he could correct all these infringing forces during the next stage — the Flood. This is the essence of our advancement. It is necessary to try isolating oneself, to limit oneself from external influences. This is what is called making the ark.

We need to examine ourselves a little; to brake away from all infringing forces of this world and try not to interact with the cruel environment. We need to do it in order to bear something inside of ourselves that will subsequently trigger the development of humankind. Then all the forces that are about to drown us are gradually corrected, their correction allows us to reach the purpose of creation. However, under no circumstances should any influence be interpreted as a negative one. On the contrary, one should relate to everything as necessary, and as the desired means for the attainment of the goal.

This is why the powers that emerge as obstacles are not really harmful. On the contrary, one should feel in them the Creator's call to use them for the next spiritual correction. Afterwards, we will be able to step on the new land. This land will be purified for us, and we will look at it differently. Then, truly, we will be able to continue our spiritual ascent and our spiritual growth. Noah resides in his ark until the land, that is, all the desires " Eretz " — land, from the word " Ratzon " — desire are completely immersed in the waters and drawn in it, meaning in the light of Hassadim in Kabbalah, water refers to the purifying light of Hassadim.

Until the rest of the desires are sufficiently purified, Noah remains in the ark so as to utilize them correctly, that being only for the sake of his inner personal desire. How did this happen? First, Noah managed to separate his desires from the desires of other people, developing his yearning for the spiritual as the sole driving force.

He then turned back to the remaining desires, the actions of this world, and began using them for spiritual progress. When Noah goes forth from the ark, the Creator offers him a Covenant, that is, a connection, a union with Him. Why was this Covenant offered? Its purpose was to receive strength from the Creator and commence living.

Meaning Noah has to use these newly received desires, the new bare ground that emerged out of the waters, and cultivate his further states on top of them. The correction Noah performed that is, had kept all of his inner spiritual forces suppressed , resulted in his worthiness of having the ground emerge. The land previously cursed by the Creator now yields fruit and bears life, which gradually brings man towards the correction, the purpose of creation. We must understand that everything around us was created solely of sheer necessity for our spiritual adhesion with the Creator.

Nothing was created in vain, or for another purpose.