I think that most of the Bible, or at least the Old Testament with which I'm more familiar, is a mixture of fables meant to teach lessons and historical reporting, much of which was distorted and embellished as it was passed down orally before it was finally written. My take on whether the Bible was written by God is that belief in God inspired man to write it. Any work of art, poetry, or inspired creation can be said to be created by God with man as His instrument. This, of course, can never be proven or disproven because it is a matter of faith.

I see the analogy between the ark and Christ, but I think it's a strtetch . . . or maybe two unrelated stories, both of which are expressions of man's hope for divine salvation.

I would say it's a stretch, but it will depend upon who you ask. Any Jewish person will tell you to get lost, since they don't believe in Jesus as the Messiah. A Christian might make that connection. I still think it's taking two unrelated things and desperately trying to make a connection. To each his own I suppose.

That said, any sane person will tell you to get lost since the story of Noah's Ark is a fable and not meant to be taken literally.

I LOVE the story of Noah's Ark, but I also really enjoy debuking the literal interperation of the story, which I did in great detail on the other froum about 3 years ago.

BTW really good thoughts Spider.

So what is being inferred is that The Ark never ended up in the Urartian mountains as is written. if it but an analogy, the why a such a detailed history that specifies where the arc landed? Why the Urartian mountains and not some other locale closer to the Middle East? If Moses truly extsted and Moses was the one to write of the great flood and where the ark landed, then wouldn't the analogy be an erroneous assessment?

Not saying an Ark of some sort didn't exist, just that the story was greatly exaggerated.

Also the Urartian mountains aren't that far away from the Middle East. It's not like they said it landed in Italy. It could simply have been a place they knew of.

QS, I tend to agree with you, but the counter argument to your point is probably that the men who wrote the Bible were not infallible--because they were inspired by God, i.e, they merely served as conduits for God's word.