Truth you can trace
Genesis and the new sciences
What was actually dug up and published in the nineteenth century, and what each writer claimed: the night the Babylonian flood tablet was read out in London in 1872, who the flood hero in it really is and why the names have changed, how old the tablets are, and where the two flood accounts' birds agree and differ. Where a source we hold contradicts another source we hold, it prints both and alters neither.
The night the flood tablet was read out: 3 December 1872
A British Museum assistant named George Smith pieced together broken tablets from Nineveh, found a flood story with an ark and birds sent out…
ReadWho is the flood hero: the names have changed three times
In the epic, the flood survivor is not the hero, the hero goes to ask him about it; and the names in the 1880 book ("Izdubar", "Xisuthrus") are not the names used today (Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim).
ReadHow old are the tablets: the discoverer and the encyclopedia disagree
Smith's own book says the copies are seventh-century BC transcripts from Ashurbanipal's library, made from older Babylonian originals; the 1915 encyclopedia we also hold says the tablets date "from 3000 BC".
ReadThe birds: where the two accounts agree, and where they do not
Both accounts have birds sent out to test whether the water has gone, and that is a real parallel, but the birds differ in kind and in order, and a reader should be shown both facts.
Genesis 8:6 · Genesis 8:7 · Genesis 8:8
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4 entries, every one citing its sources. See our sources and licences.
On contested questions we show every major view, attributed and cited, and pick no winner. Answers are synthesized from primary sources, truth you can trace, not opinion.