The Bible mentions a gopher wood which went into the building of Noah’s Ark. Historians still don't know what the Biblical word means. It doesn't exist in modern Hebrew and skeptics tell us it is one more example of fabricated stories. Nothing has ever been discovered that refers to a gopher tree. It is not likely that such a tree will ever be discovered. Gopher was not a tree or a type of wood but the product of a process, much like ply wood was the product of a process and was not cut from a ply tree. The word is a Hebrew pronunciation of the Sumerian gpr, which was a type of adhesive used to build strong lumber. The word kopher meant a covering or pitch. The ancient “kufa” water craft was made of finely woven willow branches and palm leaves with a coat of bitumen on the inside. The Arabians called it kufr and the Hebrews kofer (gopher). There are words still in use that were derived from gopher, which include, wafer, gauffer, goffer and gopher. They all denote a laminated or woven style, including the gopher which was named for its honey comb style burrows. Kopher was a process used to build the ocean going vessels known as Ma-gur. The Egyptian used a similar process called “gupru.”According to experts building a boat the size of Noah’s ark would require overlapping wood glued together. That is exactly what gpr did. It was “super glue” made with pitch that took a great deal of knowledge. There are some scholars that believe Kpr should be interpreted as a type of tree, perhaps cedar or cypress. Wood from both was used in ship building, and may have been the source for the adhesive Gpr. Pitch was made primarily from tree resin and not tar. Bitimun was present in Mesopotamia, especially near Babylon and was used in buildings and in mounting precious stones as wells as figurines.
Whether or not one believes the Biblical flood was global, it does reflect a much older catastrophic event that appears to be local to Mesopotamia. There is an inscription from the Ararat mountain chain in Armenia known as the The Ahora Covenant Inscription: "GOD'S SACRIFICIAL COVENANT OF THE SKY-BRIGHT BOW (RAINBOW), GO FORTH, PROCREATE, AND BE FRUITFUL.”
It was inscribed 2,000 years before the time of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, when critics claim the Bible was first written. It was accompanied by symbols of male and female sex organs and mentions the animals sacrificed as a wild ox, a ram and a lamb. The Sumerologist,Veysel Donbaz,confirmed their translation and claimed it suggested that the tale of a flood was carried from Armenia to Sumeria.
The Hebrew word that was translated into earth was “erets”. It could mean, field country, earth or ground and sometimes was used as a nation The ancient Semites wrote about their immediate homeland and their memory of stories of past lands. They had little concept of distant lands that they or their ancestors had never seen. There was no news media or history books to tell them there were lands beyond what they or their ancestors had seen. Genesis 11:1-2 states that the whole earth was of one language when the people traveled east and entered the land of Shinar. Did everyone on the planet travel westward to a Mesopotamian plain? Genesis 41:56 also used the word “erets”
"And the famine was all over the face of the earth."
Very few people would claim that a famine in Egypt affected the entire globe. One of the dead Sea Scrolls, Tales of the Patriarchs claim that Noah divided the land of Mesopotamia among His descendents, not the land of the entire earth: Col. 16 Noah divided the land among his decedents.... all the land of the north as far as... this boundary, the waters of the Mediterranean .... the Tina River. Col. 17 "Noah further divided the land West, to Asshur, as far as the Tigris. He gave Aram land as far as the source of.... this Mountain of the Bull, and he crossed it westward as far as.... where the three parts met.... For Arpachshad[12]... He gave Gomer[13] a part in the northeast to the Tina River.... To Magog[14].
All of the flood texts agree on at least one thing, that the boat used to escape the flood landed in mountains, whether or not it was the Ararat Mountains in Armenia or the extended chain of the Ararat to the east of Mesopotamia. The texts that mention a division of tongues agree that it was shortly after the flood. The Bible is the best preserved reference to that flood. The Mesopotamian valley was prone to flooding and they were common. Although evidence of a country wide flood has yet to be discovered, the fact that the Sumerians took time to write about one makes it one of major proportions that had never been seen before. It may have been an event that was ancient to the Sumerians. The belief is that the Sumerian texts were written from the memory of much older tales carried down through memory.
There is no doubt that there was a devastating flood that affected the whole of Mesopotamia. There were survivors, especially from north of Mesopotamia and possibly from the mountains in Iran as well as the Arabian Desert west of the Tigres-Euphrates valley. The movement of people from Armenia into Mesopotamia and Syria are in harmony with the Bible. In all fairness to those who believe in a global flood, we should consider the possibility. In their book, Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes authors Richard A. Muller & Gordon J. MacDonald, who are leading experts on the Ice Ages, explain the possibilities. At the end of the last ice age, the melting caused a series of worldwide floods unlike anything previously experienced by Homo sapiens. The flood dumped enough water into the oceans to cause the average sea level to rise 110 meters (360 feet) enough to inundate the coastal areas. This rising of the sea level has been shown to have occurred in a number of sudden stages, the last of which is dated to about 3,500 BCE. That this last catastrophe was identical to Noah’s Flood is possible and even probable. The claim that there is no scientific evidence of a global flood, does not take into account that water covered the earth for only a year. Although the Biblical and Sumerian texts tell of much more than slowly rising water, would not have been running swift enough to have left sediment behind, nor would it have carved telltale signs in rock in only a year. It is likely that storms pushed sea water northward from the Persian Gulf, it receded slowly. A rise in the oceans would not have receded which does not seem to be the case.
The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of heavy rain, hail, deafening noise and a cyclone that frightened even the gods. The Tale of Atrahasis also speaks of a cyclone, and seems to be the source of the flood tale for Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh wrote down what was being told him by Utnapishtim, who was turned into a god and claimed to have given Atrahasis the vision of the coming flood. Gilgamesh was an actual king who lived in the period of 2700 to 2600 BCE, and the theory is that the flood would have been 200 years prior to that. The cyclone raged for seven days:
"For six days and nightsThe wind, the storm raged, and the cyclone overwhelmed the land. When the seventh day came the cyclone ceased, the storm and battle which had fought like an army. The sea became quiet, the grievous wind went down, the cyclone ceased. I looked on the day and voices were stilled, And all mankind were turned into mud, The land had been laid flat like a terrace."
A cyclone would contradict those skeptics who claim that a flood would drain to the south and thus carry a ship south instead of north to Armenia. The text claims that the storm rocked the huge boat. It was much more than a heavy rainfall. The land south of the mountains slopes gradually and is only a few feet above sea level. Sea water would have entered faster than it could have possibly drained off, creating a northward flow. The Tale of Atrahasis claims that the storm was very noisy and the sun was blocked out:
"] the Flood [came out (?)]. The kasusu-weapon went against the people like an army. No one could see anyone else, They could not be recognized in the catastrophe. The Flood roared like a bull, Like a wild ass screaming the winds [howled] The darkness was total, there was no sun. [ ] like white sheep [ ] of the Flood. [ ] [ ] [ ] the noise of the Flood. [ ] Anu (?) went berserk, The gods (?) … his sons … before him."
The Tale of Atrahasis doesn’t mention a cyclone, as such, although that may be the meaning of the “kasusu weapons” but it does mention a torrent and a storm: For seven days and seven nights The torrent, storm and flood came on.
