Dr. Finkel and the Tiny Tablet Photo: AP/Sang Tan

We recently endured the media farce in which dozens of newspapers and websites reported that “a ghost ship filled with cannibal rats may be headed straight for Britain,” even though the ship has probably sunk and the bit about the rats started out as an April Fools joke.  We now have multiple media accounts that “new evidence suggests Noah’s ark may have been round.”   The only problem here is that the evidence is not so new, the “discovery” is four years old, and it really doesn’t apply to Noah’s ark.

Raw Story had fun with the sloppy reporting, posting their own version of the story, “Noah’s Ark revealed to be filled with cannibal rats, drifting toward British coast.”

Back in 2010, British Museum cuneiform expert Dr. Irving Finkel deciphered the cuneiform writing on a small 3,700 year old clay tablet which describes a flood and an ark.  While there are many tablets which tell the Mesopotamian flood myth, this tablet described the ark as round, constructed of reeds, rope and wood.  The description appears to describe a sort of coracle, similar to those still in use in the Middle East, but on a  much larger scale.  The story has resurfaced because the tiny tablet has gone on display in the British Museum and Dr. Finkel has just come out with a new book, “The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood.”

To be fair, the book’s title is almost an invitation for journalists to pen the headline, “Was Noah’s Ark Round?”  The short answer is, of course, no.  The title is the “Ark Before Noah.” It has been generally concluded that the Mesopotamian ark myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh and other accounts predates the Biblical account of Noah and the flood by hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.  The Biblical story appears to have been borrowed from the Babylonians.

The reaction to the news account on the Christian Right has been interesting. On one hand, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, tweeted a link to an Associated Press article with the statement: Ancient Mesopotamian tablet confirms biblical account: worldwide flood, huge ark, animals in pairs. Mr. Fisher obviously did not read the article where Dr Finkel said, “I’m sure the story of the flood and a boat to rescue life is a Babylonian invention.”

Other fundamentalist Christians are not as pleased as the description on Dr. Finkel’s bears no resemblance to the ark described in Biblical accounts.  They are claiming that Noah came first and that the Babylonians just messed up the story.

Dr. Finkel’s conclusion is clear enough enough.  He is quoted as saying, “I am 107% convinced the ark never existed.”