101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

78
yth #34:
Noah released birds to determine if the land had dried.
The Myth: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters
were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the
waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the
sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face
of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto
him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove
out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was
an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again
unto him any more. (Gen. 8:7–12)
The Reality: The biblical redactor combined a scene from the Egyptian story of
the benben bird at the birth of Re with an episode from the Babylonian flood stories.
Another piece of the Hermopolitan Creation myth tells of the appearance of the
benben bird at the birth of Re. Though, as we saw above, the biblical redactors presented
a confused account of Canaan’s birth, the context made it clear that he was born
during the flood. It also implied that he was more than a baby when he came off the
ark, a rather puzzling problem that we shall deal with in a moment.
While we can’t correlate the appearance of the benben bird to the birth of Canaan,
we can show that the benben bird appeared in the original flood story.
In Genesis, after Noah and his family arrived at the top of a mountain, he simultaneously
released a raven and a dove in order to see if they could find a place dry enough
on which to land. The dove returned, but the raven flew about for two weeks while the
ground dried out. Noah released the dove two more times and, on the third flight, the
dove failed to come back, indicating that the flood had receded.Why Noah couldn’t simply
look around the mountaintop to see if they could get off the boat isn’t explained. Nor
do we have an explanation for why he released two birds on the same day.