NōꞋakh 4th Eve
NōꞋakh's Barge
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 NōꞋakh's Barge - full-scale replica by Johan Huiber in Dordrecht, the Netherlands |
ä' warned NōꞋakh that a qeitz was coming to all flesh, and to make a barge of tree-resin caulked-woods: 1½ football fields long with a beam wide enough to park 2 typical school buses end-to-end and, with its 3 decks, NōꞋakh's barge was 3½ stories tall.
NōꞋakh had seen flooding every winter all his life. So he had some idea of the dangers and devastation that could result. Though ä' was about to destroy all flesh with an unparalleled annual Ma•bulꞋ, nevertheless, He promised to raise-up a bᵊrit with NōꞋakh to preserve NōꞋakh's family, even a male and female of each of the animals in the area, through the Ma•bulꞋ.
The Ma•bulꞋ (late spring, ca. B.C.E. 2475)
Normally, winter is the rainy season in the Middle East. Ominously, late spring, in the 600th lunar-cycle of NōꞋakh's life, there was an unseasonal downpour, and the deluge persisted for 40 days and nights straight, breaching a land bridge, allowing sea-water to burst through in a massive tsunami that magnified a bad flood into a cataclysm. The Ma•bulꞋ lasted throughout that summer, with floodwaters persisting into mid-autumn. The Ma•bulꞋ submerged all of the hills, and drowned all of the people and animal life in NōꞋakh's world.1
Optional parental preparation:
- Since there is no evidence of humans living hundreds of years, and there is solid evidence of use of a lunar calendar, and since the impossibly long lives correspond, in lunar "years" (modern months), it makes sense to correlate, for example, 600 ancient "years" to the ancient lunar calendar (i.e., months), which (divided by 12 months) = 50 (solar, modern) years.
- A trip to a football field, showing how far 1½ football fields is, or pace off 150 meters or yards (the length of the barge) somewhere to demonstrate the length of the barge.
- Find something(s) 25m (or yds) long; e.g. half-length (or full-width) of an Olympic swimming pool, length of a "short course" standard swimming pool to demonstrate the beam of the barge.
- Find something approx. 4½ stories tall to show.
- Find some things to show around the house that are caulked (tiles, bathtub, etc.).
- Familiarize yourself with what are the required components for a valid contract (bᵊrit, which is not a unilateral gift)
- Familiarize yourself with qeitz (rhymes with Kate's) and Ma•bulꞋ
- Familiarize yourself with what a "land bridge" is and what a land bridge would have been across the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz; be prepared to show it on your globe (always relative to where you live on the globe).
- You might want to show a video of usual annual flooding as well as a video of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
- Note 1 – Ancient peoples didn't understand "the world" as well as modern people. The earliest Biblical characters all emerge from the area of what today includes south-eastern Iraq and submerged under the north end of the Persian Gulf. Outside of their ancient "world" (Mesopotamia), the earliest Biblical characters saw peoples who were noticeably different from them; and regarded that to be an alien world, inhabited by alien semi-humans.
Questions you might anticipate that your child might raise and be prepared to discuss:
- How is a barge different from a boat or ship? (no propulsion; sail, oars or modern engine; nor steering control)
- What is pitch, tar, resin and caulking?
- What is a deck on a ship?
- What is a qeitz?
- What is a Ma•bulꞋ?
- What is a tsunami?
- What is autumn / fall, winter and spring (and summer)? (Review demonstration using globe and flashlight)
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