Why build an Ark?

[Angrboda]

Because then to maintain the illusion that the Bible knows what it’s talking about, it would need to name the high ground.

By the time the Bible was written down, people of the Middle East would have had vague notions that many mountains far higher than the ones with which they were familiar existed somewhere beyond the area which they knew well or even marginally.

Given the yokelish knowledge horizon of the prophets of the omniscient yalweh, any place worth naming would open the Bible to the later question of “well the Hindu Kush, to say nothing of Andes and further Himalayas, or even Alps and Urals, were far higher, and so, what happened to people would naturally would have sought safety there?”

So shortening the period of rain and pointing Noah to a high ground where he could live when everyone else drown would open points of predictable vulnerability that would not serve the purpose for which the narrative was scripted.

I think you're attributing a level of insight and self-consciousness to these authors that they simply didn't have.

[Anomalocaris]

The urals and the hindu kush were both within the boundary of bronze age trade network centered around the middle east that dates to at least 2000 years bc.   so the existence of numerous tall mountains and high plateau near or just beyond the known world would likely have been as well known amongst the educated or well traveled circles as well as the fact the earth was round had been known before columbus. 

In the meantime, most yokels which are the bible’s main targets think the making and breaking of the whole world will revolve somewhere between mt Ararat and valley of megiddo and can’t relate at all to anything beyond babylon and memphis.

So i think it does not require insight or omniscience for the writer of bible to perceive the need to simultaneously overawe the yokels and not be too specific so as to make enemies of the relatively more knowledgeable.

[Angrboda]

The point is that these stories endured, not because they were great fiction, but because they were good entertainment. Though I suppose if you're competing with a tale of wandering the desert for 40 years thanks to an early version of Mapquest, a sort of "Lord Of The Rings in reverse" is not the most promising.

[The Grand Nudger]

The functional ambiguity of the details is intentional. It's what makes the story transportable.

[Anomalocaris]

Riff raff might have followed.

more likely the yokels can’t relate to a family without armed escort surviving travel to exotic places in the 9th century BC

[The Grand Nudger]

Rift Raft. Couldn't help it. Redeeming myself through topical contribution, I'd like to point out that the story we have was not written in the 9th century. Closer to the 2nd in the descriptive context of the 4th, narratively..internally.. contended to be in antiquity

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

God had Noah build the Ark precisely because it was a ludicrous thing to do.

God wrecked the world because people weren’t behaving properly. The example of Noah shows that there are benefits (ie, not drowning) to doing what God tells you to do, no matter how silly and stupid it is.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

god told noah to build a boat because people had already told the tale centuries before the eternal un-caused cause had first been caused

[The Grand Nudger]

God had Noah build the Ark precisely because it was a ludicrous thing to do.

God wrecked the world because people weren’t behaving properly. The example of Noah shows that there are benefits (ie, not drowning) to doing what God tells you to do, no matter how silly and stupid it is.

Boru

Exactly so.  If you take anything else away from the story...like some dispute about the height of various mountain ranges or the feasible dimensions and construction style of a diy barge or the practical considerations of livestock transport...you weren't listening.

If god told you to jump to the fuckin moon, you'd best spend the rest of your life in the attempt. It's an absurd story, but the absurdity isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's part of what makes it stick in mind, and not just the minds of one particular village or idiot. On that count, the higher the mountains and the more impossible the boat..the better.

[Anomalocaris]

The point is that these stories endured, not because they were great fiction, but because they were good entertainment.  Though I suppose if you're competing with a tale of wandering the desert for 40 years thanks to an early version of Mapquest, a sort of "Lord Of The Rings in reverse" is not the most promising.

Lord of the ring didn’t survive because it was taken to be true.

The bible survived by being taken to be true because it managed the balancing act between overawing the yokels and not stimulating an effective pushback by the relatively knowledgeable until it had gained critical mass and can shout down any pushback.