An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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Cosmas Indicopleustes

Deluge of Noah *

The Deluge or Noah’s Flood are the commonly used terms when referring to the biblical flood of Genesis. It might perhaps be more accurate to use the plural, as there is evidence of several large-scale catastrophic inundations within the human memory. The Noachian deluge has been the subject of continuous debates: was it real or pure fantasy, was it local, regional or global and is the Ark to be found on Mt. Ararat?

Reginald Fessenden controversially noted in his The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus [1012] that “the traditions were collected, tabulated and compared. This developed the fact that there were only five traditions of an inundation of more than local character.”

1. The Greek tradition; of Deucalion; the Aegean, 100 to 250 miles southwest of the Black Sea.

2. The Egyptian-Phoenician; of Atlantis and the Greeks; the western and northeastern shores of the Black Sea.

3. The Cimmerian; of the Crimea; the north shore of the Black Sea.

4. The Hebrew-Babylonian; of Noah and Atra-Hasis; the southeast shore of the Black Sea.

5. The Phrygian; of Noe; the south shore of the Black Sea.

The Flood of Noah is an echo of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which in turn has a resonance with the deluge story of Manu in Indian mythology. If all three relate to the same event it would be of great interest to discover if there was an even earlier shared origin.

Noah is the hero of the Deluge story in Genesis. He was also an accomplished shipbuilder and viticulturist. According to some he was also an Atlantean! Cosmas Indicopleustes a 6th century AD theologian and geographer from Alexandria wrote of Atlantis as a large island in the western ocean. He also added a twist to the tale by recording an ancient tradition that Noah had resided on Atlantis! More recently, Frank Joseph [108.85] has endorsed this daft idea.

Interestingly, so many of the deluge stories include a scenario where the ’hero’ is warned of impending doom. To me, this would make sense that where a landbridge was threatened by gradually rising waters on one side, simple observation would have provided adequate time to warn those at risk on the other side. 

Another identification, by Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., is that Noah is Nereus in Greek mythology and widely depicted in Greek art(c). Confusingly, it has also been suggested(a) that Enoch, usually accepted as the grandfather of Noah, was the same person.

According to Plato, Atlantis was destroyed by the gods as a punishment for their wickedness, while the same reason is given in the Bible for the obliteration of Noah’s people. Coincidentally, both Atlantis and Noah’s homeland, which was probably located in Mesopotamia, were destroyed by water leading to the not unreasonable suggestion that the two stories are related.

While the biblical account of the Deluge does not stand up to detailed scrutiny(j), the global ubiquity of Flood stories is seldom adequately explained. Some possibilities that occur to me are related to the ending of the last Ice Age, which had watery consequences around the world. While the rising sea level took place in fits and starts, there were more dramatic events during this period such as the huge meltwater lake discharges and Heinrich Events that occurred across North America and Eurasia. The effect in the southern hemisphere was less spectacular. Survivors would have been forced to migrate in all directions, bringing their account of these floods with them. Another explanation, but in my view, a more likely cause of global floods would have been a close encounter with a large extraterrestrial body, an idea promoted by various researchers such as Emilio Spedicato.

Apart from the story of the actual flood, global or otherwise, the detailed biblical account of the building of the Ark along with the gathering of the animals and the voyage itself does not hold water (sorry)(y). Some decades ago, Roger A. Moore offered a forensic study of the account, which, is still impressive(x).

In March 2019, a paper by Roger M. Pearlman put forward another radical idea, namely, that Göbekli Tepe had been founded by Noah (Noach) and his sons(u).

A more light-hearted look at the story of Noah is also worth a read(n).

Every aspect of Noah’s Deluge story in the Bible has been a source of controversy for centuries. From the nature and cause of the Flood itself, as well as the building of the Ark and its final resting place and of course the date of the event.

Some years ago, Pastor Bertrand L. Comparet (1901-1983), a staunch racist(w), denied that the Flood of Noah had been a global event(v).

2018 began with matters hitting rock-bottom when an English-language newspaper offered the following headline(l) Turkish academic claims Prophet Noah used a cell phone to call his son before the flood.Unsurprisingly, Jason Colavito has covered this story with an interesting blog(m).

DATE

Plato’s Atlantis story contains a curious reference in Timaeus (23a-c) to a series of floods that occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean(ah) since the Atlantean war, namely, those of Ogyges, Deucalion and Dardanus. If based on historical fact, on its own, the Biblical Flood or the breach of a landbridge cannot explain this succession of inundations but suggests that there could be a much more complex story, still to be revealed, which was spread over millennia.

Anastasios Stamou presented a paper [750.183] to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in which he reviewed the evidence relating to three floods that befell ancient Greece and alluded to by Plato. Drawing on ancient Greek texts including the Parian Marble, he places these events in chronological order beginning with the flood of Ogyges, then Deucalion’s and finally that of Dardanos.

Three very ancient global floods are proposed by Marin, Minella & Schievenin in The Three Ages of Atlantis [972] and date them to 10,500, 9600 and 6700 BCE.

Stamou accepts that conventional wisdom has it that these flood events occurred in the 2nd millennium BC and based his paper on that assumption. However, he expressed serious doubts about this dating suggesting a much earlier date for some inundations and promising a future paper dealing with this revision.

Stephen Oppenheimer mentions [0004] three sudden ice melts, 14,000, 11,500 and 8,000 years ago that would have had a global effect. It should be considered that the second date is close to Plato’s apparent date for the destruction of Atlantis.

Since writing, as we know it, did not develop until long after de-glaciation, it is virtually impossible to precisely identify the date, location or extent of any of the early myths relating to these possible de-glaciation inundations.

In an August 2017 paper, on the Migration & Diffusion website(s), Stuart L. Harris put forward his reasons for dating the Flood of Noah to 3161 BC and the Exodus Flood to 1445 BC.

Similarly,  Gérard Gertoux places the Deluge circa 3200 BC in a lengthy paper(z), in which he also controversially touches on subjects such as radiocarbon dating, the age of the patriarchs, the Ice Ages, evolution and more.

China has its own ‘Great Flood’ tradition, which in the August 2016 edition of Science journal had its reality given strong support in a paper(bi) by a mainly Chinese team of researchers, who date the event to 1920 BC.

Recent years have seen the above-mentioned flooding of the Black Sea or even more controversially, the flooding of the desiccated Mediterranean basins, following the breaching of a suggested landbridge at Gibraltar, proposed as possible sources of the story of Noah in the Bible. These inundations are dated to around 5600 BC and their memory should have survived in the traditions and mythologies of the region. In addition to that, the Persian Gulf is also accepted by many to have been dry during the last Ice Age but also began to flood around 5000 BC. In Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea and the Celtic Shelf both suffered post-glacial inundations, while around the same time in the South China Sea the enormous Sunda Shelf suffered extensive flooding.

The flooding of the Celtic Shelf along with parts of southwest Britain and southeast Ireland is the subject of a 2016, thought-provoking book [1166] by Philip Runggaldier

On a more controversial level, Donald Patten and Samuel Windsor presented evidence [0277] for a series of close encounters between Mars and the Earth during the 1st millennium BC. David Rohl, the Egyptologist, dates Noah’s Flood to 3114 BC [0229] and links it with the climatic consequences of a major catastrophe in the Aleutian Islands.

Alexander and Edith Tollman linked the Noachian Deluge with the consequences of a cometary impact in 7552 BC. On the other hand, G.F. Dodwell the Australian astronomer, after studying ancient gnomons, concluded that it was a worldwide catastrophe in 2345 BC that altered the Earth’s tilt, leading to the Deluge. This is comparable with the 1696 claim by William Whiston that the earth had an encounter with a comet in 2346 BC, which caused the Flood of Noah. Emilio Spedicato advocates 3161 BC as the date of the biblical Deluge(ac), which has also been endorsed by Stuart L. Harris(ad).

In a paper(r) revised in 2017, Barry Warmkessel noted that theologians and historians have attempted dating Noah’s Flood event, both recently and as far back as the time of Christ. The following are just a few of the results from these attempts:

  • JOSEPHUS GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3148 BC)
  • HALES GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3155 BC)
  • SEPTUAGINT GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3246 BC)
  • SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH GREAT FLOOD DATE: (2998 BC)

Therefore. theologically at least, it seems quite reasonable (to Warmkessel) that Noah’s Flood occurred between 3000 and 3250 BC and the Ark would have been built slightly before that time.

When Ryan & Pitman(ae) published their 1997 theory that around 5600 BC, the Black Sea had been flooded by water from the Aegean breaching the Bosporus, it did not take long before it was speculated that the event was reflected in the story of Noah’s Deluge. With little delay, strong objections to the idea were raised by many others(af)(bz)*.

T.R.Holme has an interesting article(ax) on the flooding of the Black Sea and the migration from the region that resulted. He also links that event with the work of the late Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994).

Nick Thom, an engineering lecturer at Nottingham University has written The Great Flood [776] which gives an overview of many Flood myths, but more importantly, he identifies the emptying of glacial Lake Agassiz around 6250 BC as the mechanism that caused a tilting of the Earth, which in turn generated a global deluge remembered by the survivors in myth and later recorded in scriptures. This is also fully outlined in a lengthy entitled, A Re-interpretation of the 8.2ky BP Event(ag). Also relevant to our subject is his claim that the flow of water was from the Black Sea into the Aegean rather than the other way around!

The most radical date for the Flood of Noah comes from Rich McQuillen who in a 2022 paper links the flood of Noah to the flood of Ahmose and Atrahasis, and shows it to be a real flood caused by Santorini”!(bv)

THE CAUSE

Jeffrey Goodman, the controversial author of Psychic Archaeology [781], maintains that “Noah’s Flood was, in reality, a tsunami caused by a comet” and supports this contention with a retranslation of Genesis 7:11 (ar).

Kirk Kirchev in a recent (April 2018) two-part article(bb) “offers a unifying scientific hypothesis that connects diverse ancient flood myths with mainstream scientific fact.” and concluded that “If my calculations and assumptions are correct, an object of around 900 km in diameter passing the earth at an altitude of less than 1000 kilometres (621.37 miles) (of average, rocky density) would be large and heavy enough to create a strong localized tidal uplift in the oceans beneath its flight path (approximately 50 times the current tidal amplitude). That is large enough to destroy most of humankind, and a large portion of the fauna, but small enough to not cause a major extinction event or to disturb earth’s orbital path and rotation.”

Immanuel Velikovsky’s controversial cosmological ideas suggest that our Earth had at one point been a satellite of Saturn! In his unpublished book, In the Beginning (bk), he proposed that “The conflict between the larger planets resulted in long-stretched filaments ejected by a disturbed Saturn to cross the Earth’s orbit. The hydrogen of the planet combined with the oxygen of the terrestrial atmosphere in electrical discharges and turned into water” and so generated the Deluge!

In 1993, Alexander Tollman and his wife Edith published, Und die Sintflut gab es doch. Vom Mythos zur historischen Wahrheit, “which claimed that Noah’s flood was the consequence of a bolide impact about 9500 years ago, and supported the claim through geology (impact craters, iridium, shatter cones, stress lamination of minerals, radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, a peak of acid in the Greenland ice) and legends and folk traditions.”(bj) Christian O’Brien has endorsed the Tollmans’ ideas(bl).

Aloys Eiling (1952- ) a German researcher has offered a variation on the close encounter theory, suggesting that the Deluge was one of the consequences of the capture of our Moon that took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes(bn) that “the capture of the Moon caused worse than a flood; it changed the geography of the world. Earth’s surface was devastated, millions died, and life in total was brought to the brink of extinction. In the collective memory of mankind, the event indelibly remained in the myths about a Deluge.”

Nevertheless, there is one rather disturbing element to be found alongside some of the flood myths, namely that the deluge event was concurrent with the sun seemingly standing still and in some cases, it is recorded that the Moon also appeared to stop(o)(av)! One explanation on offer is that it is a reference to an eclipse(aw). This might be acceptable if it was compatible with other myths from different parts of the world, which does not appear to be the case. Furthermore, it does not explain the association of the stopping of the sun with the global deluge. A very close encounter between the Earth and another large celestial body might.

As I see it, we are left with the two popular explanations for the global flood myths, either a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body that created a megatsunami that was on such a scale that it swept around the globe, perhaps many times before dissipating or the melting of the Ice Age glaciers produced the cyclical bursting of ice-dams and landbridges and the inundation of vast areas of low-lying land. I’m inclined to believe that the balance of probabilities favours the latter explanation, although I find it difficult to accept that gradual deglaciation would or could have generated floods that ‘covered mountains’ (Gen. vii.19)!

Other floods may have been caused by tsunamis resulting from underwater earthquakes and/or storegga. Quite recently it was discovered(bh) that around 6000 BC, a calamitous tsunami was generated in the Mediterranean when Mt. Etna in Sicily sent approximately 6 cubic miles of rock and rubble crashing into the sea. One could be forgiven for speculating that this event may have triggered the flooding of the Black Sea, which is dated to this same period.

GLOBAL or LOCAL

The scientific case against a global deluge is presented in a paper by Lorence G. Collins.(bt)

In 2013, Geologist David R. Montgomery, a professor at the University of Washington, authored The Rocks Don’t Lie [2029] which offers a fresh open-minded look at Noah’s Flood and how it is viewed today by both science and religion. He concluded – Like most geologists, I had come to see Noah’s Flood as a fairy tale—an ancient attempt to explain the mystery of how marine fossils ended up in rocks high in the mountains. Now I’ve come to see the story of Noah’s Flood like so many other flood stories—as rooted in truth.”

“It appears that humanity’s rich legacy of flood stories reflects a variety of ancient disasters. The global pattern of tsunamis, glacial outburst floods and catastrophic flooding of lowlands like Mesopotamia or the Black Sea basin, fits rather well the global distribution and details of flood stories.”

So Montgomery considers the source of Noah’s Flood to have been a local event such as the flooding of the Black Sea region and refers to Angelos Galanopoulos who similarly associated the tsunamis generated by the mid-second millennium BC eruption of Thera (Santorini) with the Flood of Deucalion. Montgomery’s views were given further exposure on the LiveScience website(bx).

A decade later (May 2023), the Greek Reporter website re-examined the possible extent of Noah’s Flood(by).

THE ARK

An interesting overview of traditional as well as modern thinking regarding the possible historical reality behind the Deluge of Genesis is presented(ai) by Robert Squillace on the New York University website.

On January 1st 2010 it was revealed(b) that a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet which, unlike the biblical record, describes an ark made of reeds, 70 metres in width and round in shape(aj)(ak). This would have been recorded a thousand years before the Genesis story was written down. Understandably, this has caused the knickers of some fundamentalist Christians to become seriously twisted! The discovery has now been expanded on by a cuneiform specialist at the British Museum, Irving Finkel, in The Ark before Noah [0995]. Jason Colavito offers an interesting review of the book(d).

Even more radical is the result of a high-tech study of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls which suggest that Noah’s Ark was pyramidal in shape(al)! Commenting on this report, Jason Colavito has pointed out that the concept of a pyramid-shaped ark is not new(am).

There is an unexpectedly large number of books written over the last century on the subject of Noah’s Ark that is listed on a specialist website(e). One such offering, resurrected by Jason Colavito(f), provides some comic relief with the claim in 1922 by C. E. Getsinger, who wrote that Noah’s Ark was the Great Pyramid!(g)  Even earlier, John Taylor (1781-1864) claimed [1451] that Noah had built the Great Pyramid! Nevertheless, a recently deciphered fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls has suggested that the Ark was shaped like a pyramid!(h)(i)

Barry Warmkessel also entered the fray with the suggestion that aliens had been involved in the design and construction of the Ark(r)! Nevertheless, that idea certainly competes with the suggestion of Xavier Séguin that the ‘Ark’ of Noah had been an Earth satellite(aa)!

Even more radical is the claim by Hebrew scholar Richard Seary that the Ark never actually existed, but that conventionally accepted understanding of the Genesis text is the result of some incorrect translations(aq). One example is that there is no such material as gopher wood and that the word ‘gofer’ means lava!

A life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark was due to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Holland in the summer of 2016(an). It was built over four years by a carpenter, Johan Huibers, completing it in 2012. It is 410 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet tall. It weighs 2,500 tons and is said to hold more than 5,000 people at any one time. However, there is no provision for live animals! The replica was sold to Aad Peters, a Dutch artist, who in 2019 brought it to Ipswich in Britain. Unfortunately, it has been impounded by the authorities there as it lacks the appropriate paperwork to permit it to leave. There are also serious concerns regarding its seaworthiness and it is also clocking up port fees of £500 a day(ao)(ap).

Michael Hearns, an Irish researcher, has just published (Aug.2023), an interesting article on the Ancient Origins website recounting the many anomalies in the biblical story of the Ark(bw).

UBIQUITY OF FLOOD MYTHS

Flood myths are found throughout the world and for centuries were seen as confirmation of the reality and universality of the Biblical Flood of Noah. However, when it was discovered that the Earth had endured a series of Ice Ages and that following each of these, the melting ice caps led to worldwide inundations with consequent immortalisation of these events through locally developed myths, it led to speculation that Noah’s Flood may have been just a regional but a catastrophic event. It is also probable that separate regional inundations would have occurred as deglaciation continued at the end of the last ice age, so when recounted through mythology many centuries later they may appear to refer to a single global event.

The competing concepts of global deluge versus local inundations are discussed in a brief paper(bc) by L. James Gibson, who concluded that “these local floods do not explain important features of the biblical flood.”

Nevertheless, megafloods are not necessarily only caused by tsunamis and melting glaciers. “A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern California underwater for up to six months” a catastrophic event that is now generally forgotten. An extensive 2013 article(bd) in Scientific American has full details.

These ancient flood stories are to be found to contain content with a remarkable similarity of detail. It is worth pointing out that none of these legends ever recount the ‘hero’ of their particular tale returning to his former home. One simple explanation for this might be that the original homelands no longer existed. This would not normally be the case if the floods in question were tidal, storm-driven or even giant tsunamis. However, if the inundations were the result of rising sea levels, resulting from the melting of Ice Age glaciers, we could expect two principal effects. The first would have been the gradual submergence of all low-lying flood plains that are now identified as continental shelves. Two of the best known of these would be the Sunda Shelf (Sundaland) and the area stretching from the west coast of mainland Europe across the North Sea encompassing the British Isles and into the Atlantic beyond Ireland. The second effect would have been the dramatic inundation of valleys and basins protected by low landbridges or dams. Again, we have examples, some debatable, such as the Baltic, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and perhaps the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Sea of Japan.

An extensive and more general collection of Flood myths can be found on the internet(be). A USGS list of the world’s greatest floods, ancient and recent, is available as a pdf file(bf). Similarly, a website by Mark Isaak offers an extensive overview of flood myths around the world, although the site does not appear to have been updated for some years(bg).

Despite the existence of these huge collections of worldwide flood myths(ay) there appears to be one glaring omission, from all such databases, namely a contribution from Egypt where, inexplicably, there is no such deluge tradition apart from the predictable annual flooding of the Nile. However, there is the Egyptian story of Hathor/Sekhmet(az)(ba) who flooded the land with blood, which some may interpret as a mythological code for water!

The flooding of all these worldwide locations would have occurred quite slowly over an extended period following the last Ice Age, possibly providing the basis for the widespread existence of these flood myths. However, it could not explain the biblical claim that the flood covered mountains.

Dhani Irwanto, author of Atlantis: The Lost City in Java Sea [1093], offers a number of interesting articles on his website including an extensive overview of the ubiquity of Deluge stories, concluding with the following comment “Thus, Noah and the waters of the great Flood are not only recalled in the ancient traditions of all nations, but their names have also become incorporated in many and varied ways into the very languages of his descendants. The trails are tenuous and often almost obliterated so that some of the inferred connections are speculative and possibly mistaken, but the correlations are too numerous to be only coincidental, thus adding yet one more evidence for the historicity of the Great Flood.(bs)

 Many Atlantologists have sought to link the Deluge with the inundation of Atlantis. As early as 1915, Garrett Serviss put forward the possibility that a lost continent in the Arctic Ocean, containing Atlantis, was destroyed and that this cataclysm also generated Noah’s Flood(ca).

Egerton Sykes was a keen supporter of the idea of a connection between the destruction and Noah’s Deluge. Joseph S. Ellul has interpreted the biblical story to support the idea of a landbridge at Gibraltar, which eventually collapsed when the waters of the Atlantic rose after the last Ice Age. Ellul maintains that Genesis 7:11 ‘All the springs of the Great Deep broke through’ is a reference to the percolation of the Atlantic waters, through the Gibraltar dam, which eventually led to its collapse as the sea level rose or was shattered by seismic or tectonic movements. I find it hard to accept this, because the pressure that is exerted by the Atlantic, would have rapidly changed any such seepage into a major breach and the subsequent collapse of the dam. Gerhard F. Hasel, Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology offers a more conventional interpretation of “the fountains of the great deep” in a paper with the same name(ab).

MT. ARARAT

Nevertheless, 2017 finished with renewed interest in Noah’s Ark being generated by media reports(k) of statements emanating from The Geoscience Research Institute, which is sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which claims that a 2010 expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey, carbon-dated timbers found there to 4,800 years ago.

A sceptical 2019 article has looked critically at many aspects of the story of the Ark, including the most commonly offered Turkish site as the resting place of the Ark – “One of the most famous supposedly-Noah’s-ark sites is the admittedly very boat-looking Durupinar site in the Mount Tendurek area in Turkey. According to Atlas Obscura, the site was exposed in the late 1940s after a series of earthquakes and storms.”(an)

The late David Allen Deal was another investigator to propose the Ararat region as the landing place of the Ark, with Mt. Judi (Judi Dagh) as the specific location(o). A more recent article supports his ideas(p). David Rohl has also been drawn to Mt. Judi as a probable contender(bu). The precise location of the biblical Ararat is a matter of continuing and intense debate(q).

The UK’s Daily Mail added that talking after the initial claims in 2010, Mike Pitt, a British archaeologist, said the evangelical explorers had yet to produce compelling evidence. He said: ‘If there had been a flood capable of lifting a huge ship 2.5 miles [4km] up the side of a mountain 4,800 years ago, I think there would be substantial geological evidence for this flood around the world. And there isn’t.’

In his 2020 book, Apocalypse [1874], Dr Sean Welsh agreed that Noah’s Ark finally rested on Mt. Ararat, but took everyone by surprise by claiming that it was not Ararat in Turkey but Ararat mountain on Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula! Welsh does not explain where Shinar was in relation to his Ararat. Conventional wisdom locates it in southern Mesopotamia, placing them around 2,500 km apart.

Angelo Palegro was an Italian researcher who spent 35 years seeking Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat (Mount Agiri) on the Turkish-Iranian border(bq). Unfortunately, in 2021 he fell ill while in Turkey and died on August 15th, aged  86, and in accordance with his wishes was buried on the slopes of Mt. Ararat(bp).

However, a more valuable offering was a paper(ab) delivered in 2008 to the Sixth International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, PA by Anne Habermehl. She finished her contribution, Review of the Search for Noah’s Ark, with the following conclusions;

“(1) It would appear that the Ark cannot have landed on Mount Ararat, because scientists have shown that this mountain did not exist until some time after the Flood had ended. (Also, the area that Mount Ararat occupies was probably not yet included in Urartu at that time.)

(2)  In light of historical and geographical considerations, Mount Cudi near Cizre, Turkey, is the most likely place where the Ark landed.

(3)  It seems doubtful that anyone has actually seen the  Ark anywhere in modern times. The alleged sightings all seem to evaporate on careful examination.

(4) It is unlikely that very much of the Ark exists today; it is probable that over the millennia it has decayed, and various scavengers have taken most of it away.

(5) Because of 14C dating problems, it may not be possible to prove that any given samples are or are not the right age to have come from the Ark.

(6) More archaeological work needs to be done if we are ever to reasonably prove the Ark’s landing spot anywhere.

(7)  It is probable that no matter what is found in any location, there are those who will remain unconvinced.

(8) Interest in finding the Ark is unabated, and the Ark search will go on.

At the end of the day, we have to face the reality that it may be difficult, or even impossible, ever to prove where the Ark landed. This author would have liked to end on an optimistic note for the soon recovery of a largely intact, proven Ark, but this seems unlikely; and this paper therefore ends, in the words of T. S. Eliot (1925): “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

In 2021, author S.H. Scholar in a short book entitled Heavenly Flood [1891]  modestly claimed to have “uncovered history’s greatest secret – the influence of ancient astrology on the development of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood Tale.” John McHugh has also offered a comparable zodiacal link with the biblical Deluge story in The Celestial Code of Scripture [1892] which has been critiqued by Gary D. Thompson(bm).

Eugenio Ralbadisole who advocates India as the home of Atlantis also locates the landing place of Noah’s Ark in the same region. Based on texts in the Vedas where we read that a man after a catastrophic flood arrived with his ship full of animals in a village called Naubandhana. A location with similar names can be found near “Barda Hills” in Gujarat.” (bo)


(a) The First Eden (archive.org)  *

(b) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/01/noahs-ark-was-circular  

(c) http://njbiblescience.org/presentations/Greek%20Mythology%20and%20Genesis.pdf

(d) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/05/on-irving-finkels-the-ark-before-noah.html

(e) http://www.throneofgod.com/SBG/sbg.htm

(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/wednesday-roundup-templar-carvings-masonic-pyramids-and-a-bizarre-claim-about-noahs-ark

(g) The Thomson Review, Thomson, Illinois, July 19th, 1922 – p.3,

(i) http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/christianity/was-noahs-ark-shaped-like-a-pyramid-digitized-dead-sea-scrolls-reveal-new-secrets

(j) https://www.scientificexploration.org/forum/noah%E2%80%99s-ark-the-biblical-flood-reality-or-nonsense

(k) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5020131/Experts-claim-Noah-s-Ark-Mount-Ararat.html

(m) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/turkish-chemist-claims-noah-had-nuclear-powered-ark-called-son-on-cellphone 

(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20190926154926/http://www.jokesoftheday.net/joke-NOAH-S-ARK-2017/2017050249

(o) https://noahsfloodnoahsark.wordpress.com/category/chapter-13-discovery-of-lost-ancient-city/

(p) http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/evidence-noah-s-ark-landed-mountain-17-miles-south-ararat-009725  

(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20190128072213/http://compmyth.org/journal/index.php/cm/article/view/15

(r)  Archive 3514

(s) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

(t) The First Eden – Part One (archive.org)

(u) https://www.academia.edu/38664571/Gobekli_Tepe_founded_by_Noah_and_sons

(v) https://israelect.com/ChurchOfTrueIsrael/comparet/comp19.html 

(w) https://web.archive.org/web/20200608082026/https://truth-over-tradition.com/2018/12/26/god-is-racist-and-you-should-be-too/ 

(x) https://ncse.ngo/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark 

(y) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/ 

(z) https://www.academia.edu/17026643/Noah_and_the_Deluge_Chronological_Historical_and_Archaeological_Evidence

(aa) https://eden-saga.com/en/looking-noahs-ark.html

(ab) https://www.academia.edu/39177466/A_Review_of_the_Search_for_Noahs_Ark 

(ac) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=498

(ad) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

(ae) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222471228_An_Abrupt_Drowning_of_the_Black_Sea_Shelf

(af) https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/why-black-sea-is-not-site-of-noahs-flood.html

(ag) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304674803_A_Re-interpretation_of_the_82ky_BP_Event

(ah) https://web.archive.org/web/20200216200648/http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/mythologyhome.htm 

(ai) Untitled Document (archive.org)  (link broken) 

(aj) https://web.archive.org/web/20170102033030/http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/6746/20140128/noahs-ark-round-mesopotamia-flood-cuneiform-instructions-mathematically-accurate.htm

(ak) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/noahs-ark-round/283335/

(al) http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/07/digital-analysis-of-dead-sea-scrolls-says-ark-was-a-pyramid/

(am) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/fringe-writers-shocked-by-text-from-dead-sea-scrolls-claiming-noahs-ark-was-pyramid-shaped

(an) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/

(an) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/life-sized-noahs-ark-to-sail_us_571f99cbe4b0b49df6a91ffc  

(ao) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan%27s_Ark 

(ap) Noah’s Ark Replica Faces Biblical Fines For Return Voyage To Holland! | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(aq) Fortean Times, April 2014, p.55

(bl) Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

(ar) http://www.newscientificevidenceforgod.com/2011/03/noahs-flood-was-really-tsunami-caused.html

(as) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/

(at) http://religiondocbox.com/Judaism/67170515-A-r-t-i-c-l-e-s-the-fountains-of-the-great-deep-gerhard-f-hasel-associate-professor-of-old-testament-biblical-theology-andrews-university.html

(av) https://biblehub.com/joshua/10-13.htm

(aw) https://www.timesofisrael.com/3224-years-later-scientists-see-first-ever-recorded-eclipse-in-joshuas-battle/

(ax) http://www.geocities.ws/gardenofdanu/the_great_deluge.htm

(ay) https://web.archive.org/web/20200922201924/http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(az) A Drunk, Bloodthirsty Goddess: The Flood Myth Of Egypt – Parallel Myths (wordpress.com)

(ba) https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1443&context=honors-theses

(bb) http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/did-astronomical-body-fly-earth-and-produce-floods-myths-12000-years-ago-021883 

(bc) https://www.grisda.org/origins-52053  

(bd) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/

(be) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(bf) http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1254/pdf/circ1254.pdf 

(bg) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(bh) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061128083754.htm

(bi) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579

(bj) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tollmann

(bk) http://varchive.org/itb/hydrox.htm

(bl) Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

(bm) Critique of John McHugh’s Astronomical Interpretation of Noah’s Flood (westnet.com.au) (Link Broken)

(bn) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/ 

(bo) City of Atlantis – Atlantide (archive.org) 

(bp) Italian researcher buried in Turkey after decades… | Rudaw.net 

(bq) Studies by Palego (noahsark.it) 

(bs) Great Flood and the Repopulation of Man | Atlantis in the Java Sea (atlantisjavasea.com) 

(bt) https://ncse.ngo/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth 

(bu) https://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/03/ 

(bv) (99+) A Simple Chronology for Biblical Archaeology | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu

(bw) Stairway To Heaven In Noah’s Ark | Ancient Origins Members Site (ancient-origins.net) 

(bx) Did Noah’s flood really happen? | Live Science 

(by) https://greekreporter.com/2023/05/15/noah-flood/ 

(bz) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-19-adfg-noah-story.html 

(ca) https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045389/1915-01-03/ed-1/seq-46/ 

* See Atlantis Vol.6, Nos.1,2&3,  May, July & September 1953

Timaeus (historian)

Timaeus (c. 345 – c. 250 BC) was a Greek historian, born in Tauromenium, Sicily. After migrating to Athens he wrote an extensive work, The Histories, thought to consist of 40 volumes. He introduced the method of noting dates by Olympiads. Only fragments of his output still exist. Zhirov notes[0458.40]  that Cosmas Indicopleustes quotes Timaeus recounting that the first ten kings of Chaldea came from the island of Atlantis, although Timaeus does not give his source.

>Timaeus of Tauromenium, who was born about 20 years before Plato died, is not the Timaeus referred to in the Dialogue of the same name. This Timaeus was a noted historian, who among others, was heavily relied on by Diodorus Siculus(a).<

(a) https://www.academia.edu/32364554/Diodorus_use_of_Timaeus *

Kings of Atlantis

The Kings of Atlantis were, according to Plato, originally the sons of Poseidon and Cleito. They were ten in number and consisted of five sets of male twins. The firstborn was Atlas who was given authority over the others, each of whom controlled their own territory. Some commentators reacted with such incredulity to this story, that they have either dismissed this detail or in some cases the entire Atlantis tale as pure fantasy. Of course, it is highly improbable, if not virtually impossible to accept that Clieto had five sets of all-male twins. However, we are dealing here with a myth that is an echo of the legends of many other cultures describing their antediluvian origins. Lenormant & Chevallier wrote [424] of this over a hundred years ago:

“…The ten kingdoms of Atlantis are perpetuated in all the ancient traditions. ‘In the number given by the Bible for the Antediluvian patriarchs we have the first instance of a striking agreement with the traditions of various nations. Other nations, to whatever epoch they carry back their ancestors…are constant to the sacred number of ten… In Chaldea (Babylon), Berosus, writing in the third century BC, numerates ten Antediluvian kings whose fabulous reigns extended to thousands of years. The legends of the Iranian race commence with the reign of ten Peisdadien (Poseidon?) kings…. In India we meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who, with Brahma, their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris, or Fathers. The Chinese count ten emperors, partaking of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical time. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites”.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the 6th century AD, contended[1245] that Atlantis was the Garden of Eden and that Plato’s 10 kings of Atlantis were the 10 generations between Adam and Noah!

It may be just a coincidence, but Plato tells us that the domain of Atlantis extended as far as Tyrrhenia (modern Tuscany), just south of which was Rome, a city, which according to legend was also founded by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. It has been claimed that the story of their origins is a variation of the story in the Hindu epic Ramayana concerning the twin sons of king Sri Rama, Luva and Kusha(c). 

In the same region, Sicily has the legend of the divine Palici twins (Palikoi in Greek).

>Aelian in his Natura Animalium has recorded [0619 xv.2] how the natives who live on the shores of ‘Ocean’ have a legend that tells of the Atlantean kings, who, to symbolise their authority from Poseidon, wore a crown reminiscent of the white band that ran around the forehead of the male ‘ram fish’ while their queens wore headgear made from the skins of  ’marine ewes’.

“Ram-fishes, whose name has a wide circulation, although information about them is not very definite except in so far as displayed in works of art, spend the winter near the strait between Corsica and Sardinia and actually appear above water. And round about them swim dolphins of very great size.” (15.2)(f) 

Although these animals have not been clearly identified, their size suggests a species of whale. I suggest that it was a fin whale which has a grey or white chevron marking on top of its head and is frequently found in the Strait of Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia, at the southern end of the Pelagos Sanctuary.

“Fin whales, the second largest animal on the planet after blue whales, are represented in the Mediterranean by a resident population separated from the Atlantic.(e)

So, it would appear obvious from this excerpt that Aelian did not have any doubt regarding the reality of Atlantis. Perhaps even more interesting is that Aelian seems to also associate these kings of Atlantis with Corsica and Sardinia. For me, this is compatible with a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis.<

Although Babylon is supposed to have had ten kings before the Flood, it must be noted that they reigned successively rather than concurrently, as was the case in Atlantis.

Attention has been drawn to the fact that Manetho (c. 300 BC), the Egyptian historian called the first sequence of Egyptian god-kingsAuriteans’, which has been seen as suspiciously like a corruption of  ‘Atlanteans‘.

Plato gives the names of the first ten kings as; Atlas, Gadeiros (Eumelos), Ampheres, Euaimon, Mneseos, Autochthon, Elasippos, Mestor, Azaes, Diaprepres (Critias 114b).

Some writers have attempted to link these names with specific regions; such as Atlas with Morocco, Eumelos (Gadeiros) with Gades (Cadiz) and Elasippos with Lisbon. Beyond these three there is very little agreement. Lewis Spence correctly points out “Plato expressly states that these names had been Egyptianised from the Atlantean language by the priest of Sais, and subsequently Hellenised in Critias, so that there is little hope that they were transmitted in anything like their original form.” Spence also commented on the similarity of the Phoenician gods and the early kings of Atlantis, an idea suggested earlier by Ignatius Donnelly.

Reginald Fessenden claimed to have identified at least six of Plato’s Atlantean king-list with names in the Caucasus.(d)

Even more distant locations were proposed by the French cartographer Guillaume Sanson (1633-1703), who generously distributed the Americas among the ten brothers, allocating Mexico to Atlas.

R. Cedric Leonard is convinced that Manetho’s list of Egyptian god-kings is in fact a list of the first kings of Atlantis and expands on this idea on his website(a). However, in his 1979 book, Quest for Atlantis[0130], Leonard has suggested that the kings of Atlantis were human-alien hybrids and that humans are the result of alien genetic experiments!!

Another site(b) identifies the kings of Atlantis with the pantheon of Phoenician gods, an idea first mooted by Ignatius Donnelly (part IV. chap. III). But Donnelly, also suggested, unconvincingly, that the gods of the Greeks were just the deified kings of Atlantis (part IV, chap. II), while it is also possible that they were just personifications of natural phenomena.

An unusual feature of the Atlantean kings is the meeting every fifth and sixth year. Plato explains this as a way of honouring odd and even numbers. However, Bacon & Galanopoulos suggest[263.152] that in fact, this may have been the result of an awareness of the eleven-year cycles of rains.  I believe that this explanation is equally weak and the subject requires further investigation.

(a)  https://web.archive.org/web/20170608084749/http:/www.atlantisquest.com:80/Hiero.html

(b) https://phoenicia.org/godidea.html#Atlantis

(c) https://vediccafe.blogspot.ie/2014/05/the-ramayana-in-roots-of-pre-christian.html

(d) The Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus [1012] (chap 3.29) *

(e) https://tethys.org/activities-overview/research/fin-whales/ *

(f) http://www.attalus.org/translate/animals15.html *

Classical Writers Supporting the Existence of Atlantis

Classical Writers Supporting the Existence of Atlantis
Although many of the early writers are quoted as referring to Plato’s Atlantis or at least alluding to places or events that could be related to his story there is no writer who can be identified as providing unambiguous independent evidence for Atlantis’ existence. One explanation could be that Atlantis may have been known by different names to different peoples in different ages, just as the Roman city of Aquisgranum was later known as Aachen to the Germans and concurrently as Aix-la-Chapelle to the French. However, it would have been quite different if the majority of post-Platonic writers had completely ignored or hotly disputed the veracity of Plato’s tale.

Sprague de Camp, a devout Atlantis sceptic, included 35 pages of references to Atlantis by classical writers in Appendix A to his Lost Continents.[194.288]

Alan Cameron, another Atlantis sceptic, is adamant that ”it is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously, no one did so in antiquity.” Both statements are clearly wrong, as can be seen from the list below and my Chronology of Atlantis Theories and even more comprehensively by Thorwald C. Franke’s Kritische Geschichte der Meinungen und Hypothesen zu Platons Atlantis (Critical history of the hypotheses on Plato’s Atlantis)[1255].

H.S. Bellamy mentions that about 100 Atlantis references are to be found in post-Platonic classical literature. He also argues that if Plato “had put forward a merely invented story in the Timaeus and Critias Dialogues the reaction of his contemporaries and immediate followers would have been rather more critical.”  Thorwald C. Franke echoes this in his Aristotle and Atlantis[880.46]. Bellamy also notes that Sais, where the story originated, was in some ways a Greek city having regular contacts with Athens and should therefore have generated some denial from the priests if the Atlantis tale had been untrue.

Homer(c.8thcent. BC)wrote in his famous Odyssey of a Phoenician island called Scheria that many writers have controversially identified as Atlantis. It could be argued that this is another example of different names being applied to the same location.

Hesiod (c.700 BC) wrote in his Theogonyof the Hesperides located in the west. Some researchers have identified the Hesperides as Atlantis.

Herodotus (c.484-420 BC)regarded by some as the greatest historian of the ancients, wrote about the mysterious island civilization in the Atlantic.

Hellanicus of Lesbos (5th cent. BC) refers to ‘Atlantias’. Timothy Ganz highlights[0376] one line in the few fragments we have from Hellanicus as being particularly noteworthy, Poseidon mated with Celaeno, and their son Lycus was settled by his father in the Isles of the Blest and made immortal.”

Thucydides (c.460-400 BC)refers to the dominance of the Minoan empire in the Aegean.

Syrianus (died c.437 BC) the Neoplatonist and one-time head of Plato’s Academy in Athens, considered Atlantis to be a historical fact. He wrote a commentary on Timaeus, now lost, but his views are recorded by Proclus.

Eumelos of Cyrene (c.400 BC) was a historian and contemporary of Plato who placed Atlantis in the Central Mediterranean between Libya and Sicily.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) Plato’s pupil is constantly quoted in connection with his alleged criticism of Plato’s story. This claim was not made until 1819 when Delambre misinterpreted a commentary on Strabo by Isaac Casaubon.  This error has been totally refuted by Thorwald C. Franke[880]. Furthermore, it was Aristotle who stated that the Phoenicians knew of a large island in the Atlantic known as ’Antilia’. Crantor (4th-3rdcent. BC) was Plato’s first editor, who reported visiting Egypt where he claimed to have seen a marble column carved with hieroglyphics about Atlantis. However, Jason Colavito has pointed out that according to Proclus, Crantor was only told by the Egyptian priests that the carved pillars were still in existence.

Crantor (4th-3rd cent. BC) was Plato’s first editor, who reportedly visited Egypt where he claimed to have seen a marble column carved with hieroglyphics about Atlantis. However, Jason Colavito has pointed out(a) that according to Proclus, Crantor was only told by the Egyptian priests that the carved pillars were still in existence.

Theophrastus of Lesbos (370-287 BC) refers to colonies of Atlantis in the sea.

Theopompos of Chios (born c.380 BC), a Greek historian – wrote of the huge size of Atlantis and its cities of Machimum and Eusebius and a golden age free from disease and manual labour. Zhirov states[458.38/9]  that Theopompos was considered a fabulist.

Apollodorus of Athens (fl. 140 BC) who was a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace (217-145 BC) wrote “Poseidon was very wrathful, and flooded the Thraisian plain, and submerged Attica under sea-water.” Bibliotheca, (III, 14, 1.)

Poseidonius (135-51 BC.) was Cicero’s teacher and wrote, “There were legends that beyond the Hercules Stones there was a huge area which was called “Poseidonis” or “Atlanta”

Diodorus Siculus (1stcent. BC), the Sicilian writer who has made a number of references to Atlantis.

Marcellus (c.100 BC) in his Ethiopic History quoted by Proclus [Zhirov p.40] refers to Atlantis as consisting of seven large and three smaller islands.

Statius Sebosus (c. 50 BC), the Roman geographer, tells us that it was forty days’ sail from the Gorgades (the Cape Verdes) and the Hesperides (the Islands of the Ladies of the West, unquestionably the Caribbean – see Gateway to Atlantis).

Timagenus (c.55 BC), a Greek historian wrote of the war between Atlantis and Europe and noted that some of the ancient tribes in France claimed it as their original home. There is some dispute about the French druids’ claim.

Philo of Alexandria (b.15 BC) also known as Philo Judaeus also accepted the reality of Atlantis’ existence.

Strabo (67 BC-23 AD) in his Geographia stated that he fully agreed with Plato’s assertion that Atlantis was fact rather than fiction.

Plutarch (46-119 AD) wrote about the lost continent in his book Lives, he recorded that both the Phoenicians and the Greeks had visited this island which lay on the west end of the Atlantic.

Pliny the Younger (61-113 AD) is quoted by Frank Joseph as recording the existence of numerous sandbanks outside the Pillars of Hercules as late as 100 AD.

Tertullian (160-220 AD) associated the inundation of Atlantis with Noah’s flood.

Claudius Aelian (170-235 AD) referred to Atlantis in his work The Nature of Animals.

Arnobius (4thcent. AD.), a Christian bishop, is frequently quoted as accepting the reality of Plato’s Atlantis.

Ammianus Marcellinus (330-395 AD) [see Marcellinus entry]

Proclus Lycaeus (410-485 AD), a representative of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, recorded that there were several islands west of Europe. The inhabitants of these islands, he proceeds, remember a huge island that they all came from and which had been swallowed up by the sea. He also writes that the Greek philosopher Crantor saw the pillar with the hieroglyphic inscriptions, which told the story of Atlantis.

Cosmas Indicopleustes (6thcent. AD), a Byzantine geographer, in his Topographica Christiana (547 AD) quotes the Greek Historian, Timaeus (345-250 BC) who wrote of the ten kings of Chaldea [Zhirov p.40]. Marjorie Braymer[198.30] wrote that Cosmas was the first to use Plato’s Atlantis to support the veracity of the Bible.

There was little discussion of Atlantis after the 6th century until the Latin translation of Plato’s work by Marsilio Ficino was produced in the 15th century.

(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-first-believer-why-early-atlantis-testimony-is-suspect

 

 

 

Cosmas Indicopleustes

Cosmas Indicopleustes was a 6th-century AD theologian and geographer from Alexandria who became a monk in later life. He wrote of Atlantis as a large island in the western ocean punished by god with submergence. He also added a twist to the tale by recording a tradition that Noah had resided in Atlantis. Cosmas was probably the first writer to use Plato’s tale as evidence for the veracity of the Bible. He contended that Atlantis was the Garden of Eden and that Plato’s 10 kings of Atlantis were the 10 generations between Adam and Noah!

His only extant book, Christian Topography, is a bizarre work that includes support for a Flat (Square) Earth. A translation[1245] by J. W. McCrindle was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1897(b).

>It seems to me that Cosmas has added little to the Atlantis story except for further confusion. However, Thorwald C. Franke has published an essay on the relevance of Cosmas Indicopleustes to Atlantis studies(c).<

One commentator described his work as a ‘monument of unconscious humour.’

Jason Colavito has traced(a) some of Graham Hancock’s theories back through Donnelly, Faber, and Bailly and even as far as Cosmas.

(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/a-byzantine-claim-about-atlantis-and-noahs-flood

(b) https://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/ct/index.htm

(c) Kosmas Indikopleustes – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

Bible *

The Bible offers no direct reference to Atlantis, but this is not to be seen as proof of its non-existence, when you consider that in spite of the fact that the Hebrews were in Egypt for hundreds of years, the Bible does not mention the pyramids either and they most certainly did then and still do, exist.

The Bible has been invoked as a justification for everything from war to slavery. It has been one of the most divisive books ever, having been instrumental in the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of competing Christian sects over the last two millennia. It is assumed that any theory, religious or secular that can be shown to have a biblical foundation will automatically have enhanced credibility.

Jean De Serres, the 16th-century historian, was probably the first to link Atlantis with the Bible when he wrote that Atlantis had been located in the Holy Land. Lewis Spence[259.33] accused Huet, Borchart and Vossius, in the 16th and 17th centuries of using ‘ingenious misreading of the Pentateuch’ to claim that the Platonic story of Atlantis was, in reality, a version of patriarchal history. In a similar vein, in 1726 a French lawyer, Claude Olivier, wrote of his conviction that the ten tribes of Israel were to be equated with the ten kingdoms of Atlantis.

The Book of Genesis in particular has inspired speculation regarding a possible link between the Bible and the Atlantis narrative. Ignatius Donnelly in his seminal Atlantis: The Antidiluvian World, devoted Chapter Six to ‘demonstrating’ that Genesis held a history of Atlantis(o).

Therefore, I advise that any new scriptural interpretation must be treated with extreme caution. With that in mind, I mention that an American researcher, J. D. Brady, who claims to be a scriptural scholar and as such has identified Atlantis, drawing on chapters 26-28 of Ezekiel. He refers to the Atlanteans as Tyrrhenians and names their leader as Satan! He claims that the Tyre referred to in these chapters was an island named Tyrus that Plato knew as Atlantis. He offers a range of data to suggest that this Tyrus was not the Tyre we know today located in Lebanon. Brady claims with great certainty that the remains of Atlantis are to be found in the Bay of Troy! A 2014 book[1016] by David Hershiser, Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, has taken up this idea that the reference in Ezekiel was concerned with Atlantis.

Not content with identifying Atlantis, Brady also claims to know the location of the Ark of the Covenant, saying that It is currently secreted in an underground treasure crypt on Lemnos Island.”(b)

H.S. Bellamy, the Austrian researcher, also produced a volume[097], The Book of Revelation is History, devoted to demonstrating that the last book of the New Testament is a coded description of the catastrophes that accompanied the capture of our Moon! He claimed that the reference to the ten horns is an allusion to the ten Atlantean kings. He also interpreted the Book of Jeremiah I & II as well as Ezekiel as containing references to aspects of the Atlantis story. Earlier, Kurt Bilau had also been seduced by the theories of Hans Hörbiger and also like Bellamy endeavoured to use the Book of Revelations to support this belief.

However, R Cedric Leonard does offer(a) an interesting comparison of a passage in the Old Testament with the classical writers:

“And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose…

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same mighty men (heroes) which were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-2,4)

This passage has been frequently invoked to support the daft idea that extraterrestrial visitors had intercourse with human females, a contention that was debunked by Klaus Aschenbrenner some years ago(l).

 “The mixture between gods and men, which is reported in the sixth chapter of Genesis of the Old Testament, is to be interpreted in a similar way: “Then the children of God looked after the daughters of men, how beautiful they were, and took them for wives, which they wanted … and begot them children.”

The fact that offspring resulted from this union clearly speaks for the earthly origin of those Divine beings. There is a genetic barrier that makes it difficult for similar species to mix. For example, if one tries to cross closely related animal species, such as horses and donkeys, the stallions of the resulting mixed forms of mule or hinny are sterile. We must therefore not expect any offspring from a connection between humans and higher extraterrestrial beings because of the certainly greater genetic differences.”

Leonard points out that this same passage in Genesis coincides with Plato’s history of the Atlanteans and highlights that Hesiod referred to the Titans, of which Atlas was one, as the ‘sons of heaven’.

Leonard also offers a more rational translation of Job 26:5-6 that strengthens this view that the Atlanteans and Titans are identical:

“The Titans tremble beneath the waters and the inhabitants thereof. Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering”.

2011 saw the publication of Atlantis: The Eyewitnesses[749] by Walter Parks in which he also quoted extensively from the Book of Job, having claimed that it was written in 9619 BC and contained an eyewitness account of the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis!

In 2007, David Stewart Jnr., a prominent Mormon writer, offered support for Flem-Ath’s ‘Atlantis in Antarctica’ theory in an article on his scripture history website(p).

Thorwald C. Franke has reviewed a range of theories that have sought to associate various aspects of Bible history with elements of the Atlantis story. Most are rather speculative, but Franke concludes(d) that “the Bible should not be underestimated: There could indeed be indirect hints to Plato’s Atlantis in the Bible!” Furthermore, he also suggested that A basic error is to consider the Bible as a source of information on the most ancient times of humankind. In truth, vast parts of the Bible were written only very late (since the 6th century BC). For the question of Atlantis, this is much too late!”

The biblical references to Tarshish are also used by those who equate it with Tartessos and in turn identify it as Atlantis. The location of Tarshish is a highly contentious issue with scholars unable to arrive at any clear consensus. However, there is some agreement that Tartessos had been located in Southern Spain. Some proponents of that idea not only consider Tarshish identical to Tartessos but to Atlantis as well. Richard Freund is a proponent of a Spanish Tartessos, which he also identifies with Atlantis and of course with the biblical Tarshish. This Bible connection was taken further in James Cameron’s 2017 (a) documentary, Atlantis Rising, which shows Simcha Jacobovici also linking Tarshish with Atlantis(h) and offering as ‘evidence’ for a linkage between Atlantis and the Jewish Temple, the design of the Hebrew menorah(g), which he claims is a representation of one half the concentric rings of Plato’s city of Atlantis. This foolish idea is not new, as it has already been suggested by Prof. Yahya Ababni(f). Georgeos Diaz-Montexano has also considered this as a possibility(k).

Turning the tables on the idea of the Bible supporting the story of Atlantis, Marjorie Braymer[198.30] wrote that Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th cent. AD) was the first to use Plato’s Atlantis to support the veracity of the Bible.

Another line of investigation might be the suggested parallels between Greek mythology and Genesis(c). A 2023 paper by Neil Godfrey offers some comments on  Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [2066] by Russell E. Gmirkin supporting the idea that the creation of the world and the story of the first humans in Genesis both draw directly on Plato’s famous account of the origins of the universe, mortal life and evil containing equal parts science, theology and myth(n).

A paper on the Academia.edu website(e) by M. De Rosa argues that Atlantis was the ‘Beast’ in the Book Of Revelation!

More recently, a Dutch commentator, Leon Elshout, has also written extensively, in Dutch and English, linking Atlantis and Babylon(i) with details in the Book of Revelation. He claims “that there is a dualistic principle behind Atlantis, expressed by the twin pillars of Hercules and the twin kings, so that Atlantis was mirrored in time and space from Babylon AND Jerusalem.” He also claims that chapters 2 & 7 of the Book of Daniel offer mirror images of the Athenian-Atlantean conflict(m).

Among a number of odd ideas expressed by him is the suggestion that Tarshish was in Britain(j).

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170607013948/https://www.atlantisquest.com:80/Myth.html

(b)  https://www.ritmeyer.com/2008/05/15/the-ark-of-the-covenant-on-the-trail-again/

(c) https://njbiblescience.org/presentations/Greek%20Mythology%20and%20Genesis.pdf

(d) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_bible.htm

(e) https://www.academia.edu/6336088/ATLANTIS_AS_THE_BEAST_IN_REVELATIONS

(f) https://mosestablet.info/en/menorah-tablet.html

(g) https://www.wnd.com/2017/02/ocean-explorer-atlantis-found-and-linked-to-jewish-temple/

(h) Lost City of Atlantis And Its Incredible Connection to Jewish Temple (archive.org) 

(i) https://roodgoudvanparvaim.nl/atlantis-as-a-theological-model-of-tzaphon-and-end-times-babylon-rev-17-18-and-the-storylines-of-atlantis-and-athens/

(j) https://roodgoudvanparvaim.nl/8-tarshish-as-great-britain-and-the-paradox-with-atlantis/

(k) https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/5/5/1659107/-Descendants-of-Lost-Atlantis-may-be-wait-for-it-Jews 

(l) They didn’t come from other stars – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(m) 1903.0463v1.pdf (vixra.org)

(n) https://vridar.org/2023/02/12/two-covenants-israel-and-atlantis-biblical-creation-accounts-platos-timaeus-critias-7f/ 

(o) https://sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/ataw306.htm 

(p) http://scripturehistory.com/atlantisinantarctica.php (link broken) *