It is possible that the Black Sea overflowed within the most remote edges of human memory, but probably took place over a period of generations, not as a single cataclysmic event. It wouldn't have been a worldwide flood so much as, "gee, wasn't the shore a little farther away when I was a kid?" And the area around the Black Sea isn't one of the primary sources of flood mythology anyway.
Even if a cataclysmic flood occurred in some region, the resemblance between various Near Easter deluge narratives is far better explained by shared influences and even direct literary dependence than by the memory of some long-past geological event. There is nothing surprising about Jews living in exile in Babylon writing a flood story which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one the Babylonians were telling at the time. The Sumerian, Babylonian and Hebrew flood myths share specific narrative features: a god or gods seeks to wipe out humanity by a flood, a righteous man is forewarned and survives, etc. That would not happen if the myths resulted from the memory of an historical event from the dawn of human civilization, unless one wishes to argue for the historicity of Noah/Atrahasis/Utanapishtim, which is comparable for arguing for the historicity of Adam and Eve.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-08-18 08:44 pm (UTC)Even if a cataclysmic flood occurred in some region, the resemblance between various Near Easter deluge narratives is far better explained by shared influences and even direct literary dependence than by the memory of some long-past geological event. There is nothing surprising about Jews living in exile in Babylon writing a flood story which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one the Babylonians were telling at the time. The Sumerian, Babylonian and Hebrew flood myths share specific narrative features: a god or gods seeks to wipe out humanity by a flood, a righteous man is forewarned and survives, etc. That would not happen if the myths resulted from the memory of an historical event from the dawn of human civilization, unless one wishes to argue for the historicity of Noah/Atrahasis/Utanapishtim, which is comparable for arguing for the historicity of Adam and Eve.