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Yes, it is the common practice to translate from the original language into the some word in the destination language rather than leaving it as the source language. Words like this are notoriously difficult to translate because the interpreters have to pick some word in the destination language that will make sense to the readers of that language. ...

Well modesty does mean much more in the Bible than what it means in our modern culture, but the best view I've seen is the maternal incest idea. "Uncover Nakedness" is used in Leviticus to describe heterosexual incest the "nakedness of the father" is identified with the "nakedness of your mother" (Lev 18:7-8) If this is about Ham's incestuous sex with his ...

If we look at verses beyond Genesis 6, we get more information on Noah's righteousness. Eze 14:13 Son of man, if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it and cut off from it both man and beast, Eze 14:14 even though these three men, Noah, Daniel ...

The text tells us that he was both "a righteous man" and "blameless in his generation". The latter seems to be pretty clear that he was the best of that lot, as you comment in the question, but that still leaves us with "Noah was a righteous man". Also, he merited to be saved (with his family) when God could have wiped out everybody and restarted. So a ...

There are some very close similarities but also some drastic differences. For similarities, there are a hero who builds a boat to preserve those chosen by a god. They build the boat with levels inside and seal it with bitumen. Both gather his family and animals in the Ark. The floods come. After the flood, they dismebark and sacrifice to the gods. Those ...

According to evidence presented by P.J. Wiseman concerning the toledoth, the Genesis account was written by eyewitnesses to the events and therefor is the primary and older source. The word translated 'generations' in the repeated formula "these are the generations of" should be considered the signature line on a clay tablet, and Genesis read as a string of ...

On why Canaan and not Cham, I asked on J.SE and among the possibilities suggested in this answer is that God had already blessed Noach's sons and you can't counter a blessing with a curse. So even if Noach had intended to curse Cham, he couldn't and went for his son instead. (There are other opinions there too, but that's the only one so far that comes ...

I can't comment on the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient poem from Mesopotamia, but interestingly your observation about the Hebrew is identical to Luther's. the carelessness of a translator has given rise to a question in connection with this passage. The Hebrew does not say that the raven did not return, as Jerome renders it. There was, therefore, no need ...

Observations on the Genesis flood It was not a historical event in the technical sense that we have no surviving written contemporary accounts. However, it was recent enough prehistory that it could be located in a particular location in the Genesis genealogies. There are also a number of details that suggest a robust oral history from the time of the ...

The Midrash (as quoted by Rashi) records a disagreement about exactly this topic. Either it means “he was relatively righteous for his generation” or it means “he was righteous even in his perverted generation”. Note that the two explanations are not quite contradictory; and a case can be made that this ambiguity in language is deliberately implying both ...

The apparent contradiction is made plain by simply reading the passage carefully: 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two [of every sort] shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Please notice that [of every sort] is not in the original language. The emphasis is that the animals will be ...

This is not really a direct answer to the question so much as some tangential musing on the Hebrew alphabet and "unknown" words, specifically as they relate to this passage. However, it might also lend some support to the "cypress" translation as well. Gopher/cypress: Strongs H1613 גֹּפֶר gphr / go'fer; "from an unused root, probably meaning to house in". ...

James Jordan (who has done a lot of work on biblical chronology) asserts that the reasons are to reinforce the flood process as a new creation. He writes: As regards the Flood year itself, it began in the second month, which would be in the spring. We can make a good guess as to the various days of the year by taking note of the number of seven-day ...

As noted by Luther quoted in this answer, and also rabbinic literature I've seen but can't now find, when the raven flew "to and fro" it was feeding on the bodies floating in the receding floodwaters. The raven is a carrion-eater and the flood had provided it an endless buffet. The raven therefore had no need to return to the ark. Another interpretation ...

According to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the flood in Genesis is "rooted in actual historical events, even if the narrative is not couched in the language of descriptive history. Mesopotamia had many flood myths, all of which testify to the memory of disastrous inundations, especially on the flat lands of the Tigris-Euphrates valley (See Commentary of R. ...