China’s Alphabet May Have References To Noah And The Flood
Posted on October 16th, 2004 by Anthony K. Valley
A connection between the Chinese Alphabet and Biblical History? Perhaps…
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Some of the evidence supporting the divine authorship of scripture can be found within scripture itself. And this only makes sense, because if the Creator of the universe chose to reveal His will in writing, clearly He could do so in such a way that we could verify its origin. But the internal evidence is not the only kind available to us. There is also external evidence based upon various phenomena we can observe, as well as information provided by various disciplines of science and history. This month, we will consider an example of external evidence which comes from a seemingly unlikely source: the Chinese written language.
Unlike our alphabet, which is a series of characters representing certain sounds, the ancient Chinese “alphabet” consists of characters which represent things or ideas: i.e., words. These characters are combined in various ways to make additional words. When a Chinese person reads a word so constructed, he does not read it as the sum of its parts, but rather as a distinct word. For example, consider the word for “west”:
…
Noah had three sons (Genesis 6:10). So, Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters-in-law add up to eight mouths or persons. The biblical account of the flood describes the ark as a large boat which carried eight persons, and the Chinese character for “large boat” is a boat with eight persons.
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Filed under: History
Rather than “proving” the literalness of the Bible, this more likely merely confirms that there are hundreds of different Flood myths from around the world largely focused on the events around the Black Sea. The Bible version of the myth is just one of many versions. Discovering some ‘clues’ in the characters of Chinese writing doesn’t prove the Bible. It suggests that the Chinese had myths similar to the Jews. It’s still fascinating to see all the links and connections, but we have to be careful not to get carried away in trying to “prove” the Bible is anything more than what it is: a collection of writings of people trying to express their own understanding of the workings of the Universe, in the context of their own times and customs and learnings, including the myths they had heard from previous cultures, as well as adapting/adopting much of the Code of Hammurabi into the Mosaic Law.
It could also prove that there was a global flood that all later histories recorded.
I agree that this does not “prove” the validity of the bible, but it may support the idea of a global flood.
It’s unmitigated crap. The current character for boat dates from medieval times — the ancient character is a completely different character (they used the left-hand radical, representing a dugout canoe, not an ark). The sound of the character is a loan-word for rudder, and the character refers to boats that have rudders. The “8″ radical and the “mouth” radical are worn-down forms of other radicals and the modern use of 8 and mouth to represent them is strictly a modern development. In short, this claim is nonsense.
Michael
claim in many apologetic forums, with many characters. A common one is that the modern Chinese character for “boat” tells the Noah story ( more Noah )(here’s a whole page of this garbage). A fundy whackjob Chinese author actually put together a whole book on the topic. No wonder these
Indeed there may have not only been one, but possibly TWO global floods. If one comes from the vantage point that the Bible is, in fact, the Word of God, and that it should be taken literally except where otherwise identified as a parable or a vision, and further, that it contains the very Hidden Code that all Da Vinci enthusiasts are seeking (e.g. the phenomenon observed in the ELS codes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code
It becomes curiously evident when reading the first two sentences of the first book, Genesis,
Verse 1:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
and then it goes on to say in Verse 2,
“And the earth was without form and void,”
that something cataclysmic happened between verse 1 and verse 2, most likely a previous global flood. If God created the earth in verse 1 then why was it described as formless and void (literal translation - in a state of chaos and upheaval) in verse 2? at the very least, it proves once again to be historically accurate and is, without exception, verified by archeological record as time goes on.
So we shall see… If the Bible is true the next flood will be in fire where the Bible explicitly says, the very “elements will dissolve with an intense heat”. I just hope the rest is true when the meltdown occurrs!!! It would be great to withstand the apocalypse knowing that you could not be destroyed and that you had a place in eternity. The only way to escape Noah’s flood was in the ark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ararat
BTW: in the multi-tiered language hierarchy of types and shadows (double meanings and hintings of future events) the ark is symbolic of the Messiah.
This is absolutely true. I knew a Chinese lady who, while she was living under her parents’ tutilage, hated her father for forcing her to learn to write the ancient chinese alphabet characters over and over again until she could write it backwards and forwards (or upwards and downwards… whatever). She did say she was thankful later though because she loved the symbolism and history of the characters and spent much time researching them. She said the language could be traced all the way back to those that first settled in China… all the way back to the ark! Check this out!
http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm
This is absolutely true. I knew a Chinese lady who, while she was living under her parents’ tutilage, hated her father for forcing her to learn to write the ancient chinese alphabet characters over and over again until she could write it backwards and forwards (or upwards and downwards… whatever). She did say she was thankful later though because she loved the symbolism and history of the characters and spent much time researching them. She said the language could be traced all the way back to those that first settled in China… all the way back to the ark! Check this out: http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm