Noah’s Ark and the Flood in Judaism and Islam: A Bi-optic Perspective of Salvation and Sacred Space
Abstract
This article analyses Noah’s ark and the flood events from the sacred texts and traditions of Judaism and Islam in an integrative manner. After juxtaposing the Flood Narrative in the Tanakh and the Noahic sūrahs of the Qur’an, key cognate lexemes are examined and their ideological trajectories traced. It is argued, particularly, that, in addition to the evident message of salvation in the Flood texts and traditions, there is a discernible ideological motif of sacred space in both religions, specifically the ark of Noah equivalent to or associated with a temple structure. Further, the Noah’s ark tradition seeps into various ancillary religious practices, both in various eras of Judaism and in Sunnism and Shiism. Thus, the convergences and divergences between Judaism and Islam, the Hebrew Bible and Qur’an concerning the reception history of a common patriarch (Noah) and shared spaces (ark, temple/mosque) is richly variegated from a bi-optic hermeneutical perspective.Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
This is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors’ publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal webpage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: “This is an electronic version of an article published in Scriptura, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX–XXX”, DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://scriptura.journals.ac.za/pub) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University’s’ Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
