Wednesday, October 02, 2013

The Mountains of "Kardu" and Noah's Ark

The Aramaic Targum Onkelos translates Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark landed, as Mountains of "Kardu" (Gen. 8:4).

Kardu suggests "Kurdistan", today an area that spans Northeast Syria, Southeast Turkey, Northwest Iran and Northern Iraq. And right there, next to today's Armenia, inside Turkey, is where we find Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is most probably the highest mountain in this region because flood-water calculations based on scriptural text reckon the depth of the ark's hull in water from this peak (למדת שהייתה משוקעת אחת עשרה אמה במים שעל ראשי ההרים [Rashi ad loc]).

The Ba'al Haturim says (ad loc), referencing our sages, "Sancheirev cut out a piece of Noah's Ark to serve as his idol because the ark had saved Noah from the flood." It stands to reason, therefore, many more idolators cut away pieces of the Ark for their own pagan worship!

Besides that Gentiles use poor sources for their Tanach-based research, we certainly can shrug off their "sightings" of so-called remnants of the Ark. The Ark was probably all hacked away by heathen carvers long ago. If a Gentile king lopped off pieces, as did Sancheirev, he provided a strong example for his citizenry to follow suit. Which respectable citizen of that time wouldn't want a piece of that "god"?

(Another example of poor Gentile "research" that occasionally appears on their religious sites is the location where the actual, original Exodus took place. They always point to the northeastern tongue of the Reed Sea.  That's where they say the Jews originally crossed. Besides contradicting Torah scholars, they err too in that Jews never "crossed" the sea in the first place. Jews made a U-turn inside the sea, coming out on the same seashore they went in from! But it happened in the northwestern tongue of the Reed Sea! [see red arrow])

Anyhow, Kardu, or Kurdistan, seems to point to the perfect place where an archeological dig would prove to be a great waste of time because undoubtedly there's nothing there to be found!

UPDATE!
If any more confirmation is needed to believe the Ark remnants have disappeared, I happened upon Yalkut Shimoni Esther (End of Chpt. 5). Haman used a beam of length 50 amma taken from Noah's Ark to erect it as a gallows upon which to hang Mordechai the Jew (Esther 7:9). Haman's son acquired it for him. Now get this -- Haman's son, says the Midrash, ruled a country called Kardonia (in the Mountains of Ararat)So here we have yet another monarch involved in ransacking remnants of Noah's Ark!

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