August 11 – Worldwide Cultural Remembrances of The Flood

Dr. Duane Gish, author of Dinosaurs by Design, documents a few of more than 270 stories from various cultures around the world that talk about a devastating worldwide flood.1 Here are just a few examples:

• Hawaii – Long after the death of the first man, Kuniuhonna, the world became a wicked, terrible place to live. There was one good man left; his name was Nu-u. He made a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals. The waters came up over all the Earth and killed all the people. Only Nu-u and his family were saved.
• China – Fuhi is considered the “father of their civilization,” Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood. He and his family were the only people left alive on Earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the Earth.
  Babylonia – Ancient documents list 10 great kings that lived before a great flood came to destroy the Earth. One man survived this flood, and all people on Earth descended from this one man.
• Toltec – The Toltec Indians of Mexico tell of a “first world” that lasted for 1716 years before a great flood covered even the highest mountains. A few men escaped this flood in a “closed chest.” Following the flood, the men built a great tower to provide safety. Their languages, however, were confused and they wandered to other parts of the world.
• Genesis– God sent a worldwide Flood to judge the sinfulness of man. One righteous family of eight was saved by building a boat and bringing animals on board. At the end of the Flood, the boat rested on top of a high mountain. They came down from the mountain and repopulated the world.

All of the 270 cultural stories have similarities to the Genesis Flood account described in the Bible because they all came from the same original source – people’s knowledge of this real event. The stories just became distorted over time.

Genesis 8:18-19

KJV: And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

NIV: So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Reference

Gish, Duane. 1992. Dinosaurs by Design. Master Books: Green Forest, AR. p. 74.

Chart adapted from B.C. Nelson. 1931. The Deluge Story in Stone. Appendix 11, Flood Traditions, Figure 38, Augsburg Publishing, Minneapolis, MN.

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