What I learned from watching Noah's Ark documentaries

This weekend, I watched two documentaries on the subject of Noah's Ark. One produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2003 (Bragard, 2003)and another based on the findings of an amateur archaeologist produced in 1988 (Snider, 1988). BBC's production relied on experts who poured doubt over the Bible's story of Noah and instead, relied on Babylonian sources to recreate a different version of what they considered the historical reality upon which the flood story was based. After watching their documentary, one got the feeling that Jewish priests just adapted the Babylonian story into the Bible to make a point that disobedience to God's laws has consequences. However, I asked the question, why would Jewish scribes go through all the trouble of giving names and indicating genealogies if they just wanted to concoct a parable to make a point? They could have easily omitted names, just like the Babylonian source, and ignore the presentation of genealogies and all the details which just takes away from the flow of the story. Below is the Noah's Ark video by the BBC for those who want to watch it for themselves.

 

Another thing that turned me off from the BBC presentation is its poor journalism. Good journalism in my view presents balance: two sides of a story and allows for the audience to draw their own conclusion and make up their own mind about which story to believe. For me, all the experts used by the BBC seemed to doubt the authenticity of the Noah's Ark story as presented by the Bible. However, one would have expected that a good journalist would present a debate, between the experts against and the experts for the Noah's Ark story. Hence, I decided to watch another video, a more amateur and not so big name one, that was entitled the best evidence. This video, licensed to UFOTV, highlighted actual evidence and not just theories about how the world works, nature and material things work, but actually presented visual evidence of the presence of a boat like shape and structure in a mountain region corroborating with the Biblical dimensions of the ark in the Bible's story. Watch the following documentary for yourself for details, if you have the time.

 

 At the end, I wondered why a BBC production in 2003, would ignore and not even mention this particular event and work by this amateur archaeologist, and present his side in their documentary. Lesson: be critical of all information sources and media, and evaluate them for balance in presenting truth and reality, especially in so-called documentaries.

References:

Bragard, Jean Claude (dir.)(2003).Noah's ark: The real story. British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/NZu3GXoKXU4 [uploaded by Dara Kosnav on Jul 16, 2011]

Snider, Douglas A. (dir.) (1988). Noah's ark found. Retrieved from: http://youtu.be/io3P2b68DHk [uploaded by UFOTVstudios on Nov 11, 2010)