The Creation Wiki is made available by the NW Creation Network

Chinese characters for Noah's ark

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

Jump to: navigation, search
There is a story from ancient China which is very similar to Noah's ark. This story also describes a global flood. In the story, the water from the flood reached to the sun and the heaven, and covered all the mountains and made all the living things in the earth sink into the water. In the middle of the global flood period, a hero appeared named Noah (女嬅). In the story, the hero is woman. She turned back the flood and helped to repopulated the world. The story was written in ancient Chinese characters. Researchers analyzed the ancient Chinese characters and found that oracle Bone and Seal characters are related with flood(洪) and boat(舟)and they represent the discovery of evidence for Noah's ark in the Chinese characters. Also, the story includes that Noah built the ark and took eight worshipers and 'the remnants of the world' and then finally found ground. In many ways, we can see the similarity between Noah's ark and Noah's ark in Chinese version.


Story Summary

We can see the similar story lines between Noah's ark in the Bible and Noah' ark in the ancient Chinese. These two story have same based- story lines. Rebellious group of people caused to make a global flood from the heaven, a hero saved the some of the creatures in the world, and fixed wrong things and repopulated living creatures in the earth.

Noah's ark

Genesis in the Bible describes about Noah's ark. God warned Noah about the serious concerning event; he would judge the people in the earth because of their sins from a global flood. Thus, Noah built the ark directly as God commended how to make it, and after then, he took his eight family and pair of animals in the ark. Other peoples, except Noah's family, they did not believe what Noah said and kept doing against God. Finally God made a global flood for entire seven days and nights. From the flood, the water filled the earth as high as all the mountains in the earth were covered by water. Every living creatures in the earth were died during the flood. After flood, Noah tried to find dry ground using a bird. Finally he found dry land and repopulated the creatures in the earth.

Noah's ark in Chinese version

The Chinese version of Noah's ark also started from the rebellion group of people occurred a great flood during legendary period(about 2500 BC). In the text of Huai Nan Zi(南子, written in 200 BC), the North, South, East, and West poles supported the heavens as a roof. Somehow, the roof was broken in nine parts, thus, the land of China split out continentally. Because of the broken heaven, the water from the heavens could not be stopped and the fire broke out, which caused a global flood. The flood even reached to the heavens and the sun, and covered all the living creatures even high mountains. In the middle of these calamity period, a hero named Noah(女嬅) appeared and filled the holes in the sky with colorful stones and fixed the broken poles using four turtle legs. She helped the living creatures, humans and animals to repopulate in the world.

Researchers analyzed four Seal and two Oracle Bone characters that were related with a flood, a boat and eight people. The characters represents that the ancient Chinese Flood clarify originated from Noah's family and that Noah's family and the 'remnant creatures' were on the Ark.

Chinese Character

In the Chinese story of Noah's ark, they use the characters which represent similarity.

This character is combined of the Chinese character of mouth, eight, and vessel, which is related with the story of Noah's ark.

The meaning of the character is BOAT The character combine of 舟(which means vessel), 八(meaning eight), 口(meaning mouth).In the Chinese character of boat have multiple characters and when we look at the character separately, we can found the meaning of combination; 八+口(it sometimes also have a meaning of person)+舟= eight people in the boat. This character was used in the ancient Chinese story of Noah's ark. In the ark of Noah story, eight of worshiper took the ark. Eight of people also mentioned in the story of Noah's ark; they also took eight people in the ark. Preparing the Chinese story (and the using of characters in the story) and the story of Noah's ark, we can see the similar story lines.

Other evidence for Noah's Ark

Not only the ancient Chinese Flood story, but also many non-christian countries also have similar story line of Noah's ark in the bible. Indians(Manu), Sumerians, Egyptians, American Indians, Peruvians and the Chinese wrote about the universal flood, and even some of them tells about the eight person in the Ark. In Indian(Manu) story, a hero named Manu warned by fish about the global flood and was advised to built the ark for protecting from coming flood. Unlikely the story of Noah, those ancient stories from non-biblical countries do not described about specific story of cause and events but the base of the story lines are very similar to the story of Noah' ark.

More Chinese characters

Even though china is excluded for long time ago, a lot of Chinese character include meanings from bible story. Here is more Chinese characters which related with the bible. In Genesis, Adam and Eve were tempted by servant. The men should not eat the apple which is from the tree of knowledge, but the evil tricked them. Thus, Adam and Eve ate the apple and were kicked out from the Eden.

First Chinese character of the image is meaning of forbidden, to warn. The character of forbidden is combined of trees and to see. In the book of Genesis, God warned Adam and Eve to do not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and he watched them whether they keep what He said or not. Like the story of Genesis, the character of forbidden(to warn) is made up of the characters of to see and trees. Second Chinese character of the image is meaning of evil. In the book of Genesis, the evil tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The word "evil" is made up of two word, tempter and devil. The devil approached to Eve in the garden very secretly, and spoke with the voice of a man to take a apple from the tree of knowledge. Eve was cheated by what the devil said and took one of the apple from the tree. The character of temper is combined of the "devil" character with two trees. Two trees represent the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. The devil made them to decide wrong decision and that caused Eve to eat the fruit of Knowledge. The character of tempter is also added the character of cover because the devil does not work in the light but under the shadow of trees. Third character of the image is meaning of to covet, desire. The word is combined of two trees and woman. Because she was tempted by the devil, Eve considered between two different trees; one of them is the free of knowledge and another is the tree of life. She desired to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge and made a wrong choice to eat the fruit.

See Also


External links

Personal tools