slevesque writes:
(I want to specify that personnally, I believe that there was such an event in the past that do link all the different accounts of it in cultures around the world)
In other words, you hold (and assert) this belief without having (or in spite of) further evidence, because it tends to coincide with your belief in the Biblical legend. But consider what the relevant evidence would be in order to have a better understanding of these "different accounts ... in cultures around the world":
** Some of those cultures (e.g. Sumerian, Hittite) are related to the Hebrew culture by geographical location (and possibly by cohabitation and/or common or intermixed ancestry), so that the "different accounts" might very well describe the same event, but they do not expand its geographic extent. (And of course, they invoke different interpretations, involving different deities, different motivations, and different methods for living things to survive the event -- that's the mythology part.)
** Some other cultures and accounts (can you name any in particular?) might clearly involve a different geological location, but provide no basis to assume, without further evidence, that they stem from
a single event that occurred at the same time as the Mesopotamian event. If there are flood legends among (just guessing here) both Australian aboriginals and Mongolians, there's no telling whether they both were triggered by the same event, let alone whether either of them coincided with a flood in the Middle East. (I don't know whether Mongolians and Australian aboriginals even have any sort of flood story in their mythologies.)
The point is that floods have happened in lots of different places lots of times throughout human experience. Based on what we know about ice ages, atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions and so on, there may have been certain periods of time when flood events were more frequent than average, or more widespread. Some (surely more than one) of these events may have left a lasting mark on the cultures and mythologies of the particular groups that were affected. But the events are still relatively independent and isolated from each other; there has not been a single global event.
Apart from that, to the extent these events occurred before the affected groups had a writing system, it is in the nature of oral histories that such events become embellished by subsequent generations, adding causes and effects that are very different from what was actually experienced by those who witnessed the event.
Qualified geologists can look at the physical evidence in a given location, and deduce approximately at what points in time (if any) a given part of the terrain was under water (and subject to sedimentation), when it was above water (and subject to erosion), and when it was subterranean (subject to extreme pressure and/or heat). This is what geologists do, and the activity only makes sense -- the physical evidence only converges -- when they use a time scale that goes back a few billion years.
I don't know whether anyone has pointed to any specific physical evidence in the Middle East and said with any credibility "these features are the result of the particular flood that gave rise to Hebrew (/ Sumerian / Hittite) flood story." I don't know whether such an assertion can be made with any credibility. (Maybe someone could use archeological, anthropological and possibly some geological evidence to assert that one of several floods that apparently happened within a given range of time and locations could have given rise to these stories.)
But even if such an assertion could be made, it would be fairly quick and easy work to establish beyond doubt that most of the world was not affected by the particular event(s) in question -- and certainly not affected in the manner described in the Bible (i.e. killing off all land-based life except for the "kinds" that could be crammed pair-wise onto a boat).
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
™ Version 4.2
