Why build an Ark?

[Fake Messiah]

Why did God require Noah to build an Ark, instead of just saying, "Let there be an Ark" or "Let everyone but Noah's family be dead?"

[arewethereyet]

Had to show that 'true believers' will do anything ordered by gawd, no matter how ridiculous.

[Fake Messiah]

Had to show that 'true believers' will do anything ordered by gawd, no matter how ridiculous.

But he already knew that all other people are bad and impossible of fixing, so watching Noah build that ark made no effect on them. I guess it is the same now.

[Anomalocaris]

Why did God require Noah to build an Ark, instead of just saying, "Let there be an Ark" or "Let everyone but Noah's family be dead?"

Most likely because mythology about some lucky chosen family surviving a flood using a home built boat had already been in wide circulation in the ancient Middle East since Sumarian times more than two millennia before anyone has ever heard of genesis, before even the times when Noah was alleged to have been told to build the ark.    See the epic of Atra-Hasis

hijacking and repurposing existing fables with cultural resonance is a far quicker and more reliable way to overawe a broad swath of the gullible.        Why seek to invent an airtight fable that may still be treated skeptically because it is unheard of before, when a somewhat dubious fable would serve that had already gained adequate credibility amongst the uncritical through centuries of retelling?

[arewethereyet]

The whole building of the ark pads the plotline. All those cubits and things spelled out instead of how the hell do we get two of each 'kind' of animal to the damn thing.

[The Grand Nudger]

That part was likely taken to be obvious by the storyteller. It's helpful to remember that the whole narrative started out as a parable about a wise man who saved his family's livestock from a creek overrunning it's banks. The barge may get bigger with retelling but the central task is always as small as walking a goat and a few chickens up a ramp.

[Angrboda]

God vs. Thanos.

God: Instructs a peasant to build a boat and then opens the heavens for 40 days, and then arranges for a bird to show up.
Thanos: Snaps his fingers.

Advantage Thanos.

[Angrboda]

The whole thing is stupid. Why didn't he just let it rain a few fewer days and have Noah and his menagerie go to high ground?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Riff raff might have followed.

[Anomalocaris]

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 the truth is the bible is the product of the conflict between the need to pass off lies big enough so the gullible would be overawed along the bigger lies are more easily believed than small ones line, and the need to avoid exposing the liar’s deep ignorance that any big lie might reveal even to minds with average penetration.