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Question of the Week:
If you really believe the Torah to be the ultimate truth and the word of G-d, how do you explain the fact that the story of Noah's ark and the flood is replicated in myths of almost every culture around the world? Does G-d copy and paste?
Answer:
Let me follow your logic. If a book claims that an event happened all over the world to the common ancestors of every nation, and then every nation has a version of this event among their folk tales, this proves that the book is a forgery. Huh?
Peoples as diverse as Sumerians and Siberians, Maoris and Masai, Chaldeans and Cherokees all tell a strikingly similar story: the world was destroyed by a massive flood, leaving a few survivors to start the human family again. Either they all copied and pasted, or it really did happen. I would think this tradition shared by all peoples testifies to its own validity.
But the one thing distinguishes the Torah's account from all others is the reason Noah survived. In all the flood tales from around the world, the survivors lived on because they were mighty warriors, or powerful kings, or they just happened to make it through the flood for no apparent reason. In the Torah, Noah and his family survived because they were moral people in an immoral world. The story is not a tale of the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the righteous.
The message is clear. Our world may be flooded with false ideas and evil ideologies. I don't have to subscribe to the beliefs of a foolish majority. Noah teaches us, if just one good family has the guts to go against the tide, they can rebuild the world.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Moss
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