The Flood has been made known to nearly all peoples through the mouth of prophets conveying the Religion of Truth, but it has been turned into legends by those communities and been both extended and corrupted on the way.

Allah has conveyed news of Nuh's Flood to people through messengers and books He has sent to different communities so that it may be a warning and example. Yet, each time the texts have been altered from their originals, and the Flood descriptions have been expanded with mythological elements. The Qur'an is the only remaining source that is in substantial agreement with the findings of empirical observation. This is only because Allah has guarded the Qur'an from undergoing even a single change and has not permitted it to be corrupted. According to the following judgment of the Qur'an "We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption)" (Surat al-Hijr: 9) the Qur'an is under the special protection of Allah.

In the latest part of this chapter dealing with the Flood, we will see how the incident is envisioned - though quite corrupted - in various cultures and in the Old and New Testaments.

The book in truth revealed to the prophet Musa was the Tawrah. Almost nothing at all of this revelation remains, and the biblical book, the "Pentateuch", has long lost its connection to the original revelation over time. Even then most parts of that dubious entity have been altered by the rabbis of the Jewish community. Similarly, the revelations all the other prophets were sent with to the Children of Israel after the prophet Musa were subject to the same behaviour and greatly altered. Therefore, this characteristic, which calls us to rename it the "Altered Pentateuch" because it has lost its connection to its original, drives us to regard it as a product of human beings attempting to record their tribes' history rather than a divine book. Unsurprisingly, the nature of the Altered Pentateuch and the contradictions it contains are well revealed in its telling of the story of Nuh despite it having some parallelisms with the Qur'an in parts.

According to the Old Testament, God proclaimed Nuh that everybody except the believers would be destroyed because the earth was full of violence. To this end, He commanded him to make the Ark and described him in detail how to do it. He also told him to take along his family, his three sons, his sons' wives, two of every living thing and some provisions.

Seven days later, when the time for the Flood came, all the underground sources burst open, the window of the heavens opened and a big flood engulfed everything. This lasted for forty days and nights. The ship sailed over waters covering all mountains and high hills. Thus those who were on board with Nuh were saved and the rest were carried away by the waters of the Flood and were drowned to death. The rain stopped after the Flood, which lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, and the waters started to recede 150 days after that.

Thereafter, on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship came to rest on the Ararat (Agri) mountains. Nuh sent out a dove to see whether the waters had fully receded or not and when finally the dove did not come back, he understood that the waters had totally receded. God told them to disembark from the ship and spread out on the earth.

One of the contradictions in this story in the Old Testament is that, following this summary, in the "Yahwist" version of the text, it is said that God commanded Nuh to take along seven of those animals, males and females, He called "clean" and only pairs of those animals He called "unclean". This contradicts with the text above. Besides, in the Old Testament, the duration of the Flood is also different. According to the Yahwist account the rising of the waters took 40 days whereas it is said to be 150 days according to the account of the laymen.

Some parts of the Old Testament account of Nuh's Flood are as follows;
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; .....

........And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein [is] the breath of life, from under heaven; [and] every thing that [is] in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. 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.....

......Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he. (Genesis, 6: 13-22)
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. (Genesis, 8: 4)

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. (Genesis, 7:2-3)

And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. (Genesis, 9:11)

According to the Old Testament, in accordance with the verdict that "every thing that [is] in the earth shall die" in a flood covering all the world, all people were punished, and the only ones who survived were those who embarked on the Ark with Nuh.

The New Testament we have today is not a Divine book in the real sense of the word either. Being comprised of the words and deeds of 'Isa (Jesus), the New Testament starts with four "Gospels" written up to one century after 'Isa by people who had never seen him or kept company with him; namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are very obvious contradictions between these four Gospels. Particularly, the Gospel of John differs to a great extent from the other three (Synoptic Gospels) which are to some degree, but not totally, compatible with each other. The other books of the New Testament comprise the letters written by the Apostles and Saul of Tarsus (later called Saint Paul) describing the deeds of the apostles after 'Isa.

Therefore the New Testament of today is not a Divine text, but rather a semi-historical book.
In the New Testament, Nuh's Flood is briefly described as follows; Nuh was sent as a messenger to a disobedient community who were astray, but his people did not follow him and went on in their perverseness. Upon this, Allah called those who rejected faith to account with the Flood and saved Nuh and the believers by putting them on the Ark. Some chapters of the New Testament related to the subject are as follows;

But as the days of Noe [were], so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (Matthew, 24: 37-39)

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth [person], a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. (Second Peter, 2: 5)

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. (Luke, 17: 26-27)

Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. (First Peter, 3: 20)

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. (Second Peter, 3: 5-6)

Sumer: A god called Enlil told people that other gods intended to destroy humanity, but that he himself was willing to save them. The hero of the story is Ziusudra, the devotee king of the city of Sippur. God Enlil told Ziusudra what to do to be saved from the Flood. The text relating the making of the boat is missing, but the fact that such a part once existed is revealed in the parts in which it is told how Ziusudra is saved. Relying on the Babylonian version of the flood, one reaches the conclusion that in the complete Sumerian version of the event there must have been much more comprehensive details of the reason for the Flood and how the boat was made.

Babylonia: Ut-Napishtim is the Babylonian counterpart of the Sumerian hero of the Flood, Ziusudra. Another important character is Gilgamesh. According to the legend, Gilgamesh decided to seek and find his ancestry to obtain the secret of immortality. He was warned against the dangers and difficulties of such a journey. He was told that he is supposed to make a journey in which he should pass over the "Mashu Mountains and waters of death"; and that such a journey had only been accomplished by the sun-god Shamash up until then. Still, Gilgamesh braved all the dangers of the journey and finally succeeded in reaching Ut-Napishtim.

The text is cut off at the point where the meeting of Gilgamesh and Ut-Napishtim is told; and when it next becomes legible, Ut-Napishtim said to Gilgamesh that "the gods reserved the secret of death and life to themselves" (that they did not give it to people). Upon this, Gilgamesh asked Ut-Napishtim how he had acquired immortality; and Ut-Napishtim told him the story of the flood as a reply to his question. The flood is also told in the famous "twelve tables" of the Gilgamesh epic.

Ut-Napishtim started by saying that the story he was about to tell Gilgamesh was "something secret, a secret of the gods". He said that he was from the city of Shuruppak, the oldest among the cities of the Akkad land. According to his account, the god "Ea" had called out to him through the walls of a cane hut and declared that the gods had decided to destroy all the seeds of life with a flood; but the reason of their decision was not explained in the Babylonian Flood account just as it had not been in the Sumerian Flood story. Ut-Napishtim said that Ea had told him to make a ship in which he should bring together and put the "seeds of all living things". He informed him of the size and shape of the ship; according to it, the width, length, and height of the ship were equal to each other. The storm turned everything upside down for six days and nights. On the seventh day it calmed down. Ut-Napishtim saw that on the outside, it had "turned into sticky mud". The ship came to rest on Mt. Nisir.

According to Sumerian and Babylonian records, Xisuthros or Khasisatra is saved from the Flood by a ship of 925 metres in length, along with his family, friends, and some birds and animals. It is said that "the waters outspread towards the heavens, the oceans covered the shores, and rivers overflowed from their beds". The ship then came to rest on the Corydaean mountain.

According to the Assyrian-Babylonian records, Ubar-Tutu or Khasisatra was saved along with his family, servants, flocks and wild animals on a ship which is 600 cubits long, 60 cubits high and wide. The Flood lasted for 6 days and 6 nights. When the ship reached the Nizar Mountain, the dove that was set free came back but the raven did not.

According to some Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian records, Ut-Napishtim with his family survived through the Flood which lasted for 6 days and 6 nights. It is said: "On the seventh day Ut-Napishtim looked outside. It was all very quite. Man had once more turned to mud.". When the ship came to rest on the Nizar mountain, Ut-Napishtim sent out one pigeon, one raven and one sparrow. The raven stayed to eat the corpses, but the other two birds did not return.

India: In the Shatapatha Brahmana and Mahabharata epics of India, the person called Manu is saved from the flood along with Rishiz. According to the legend, a fish which Manu caught and whose life he spared, suddenly grew and told him to make a ship and tie it to its horns. This fish was accepted to be a manifestation of the god Vishnu. The fish drove the ship over huge waves, and brought it to the north, the Hismavat mountain.

Wales: According to Welsh legend (from Wales, a Celtic region of Britain), Dwynwen and Dwyfach escaped from the great disaster on ship. When the dreadful deluge that occurred from the bursting of Llynllion, which was called the Lake of Waves, subsided, Dwynwen and Dwyfach started to repopulate Britain afresh.

Scandinavia: Nordic Edda legends report that Bergalmir and his wife escaped from the flood in a big boat.

Lithuania: In Lithuanian legend, it is told that a few pairs of men and animals were saved by taking shelter in a crust up on the top of a lofty mountain. When the winds and floods that lasted for twelve days and twelve nights reached to the high mountain so much as almost to swallow those on it, the Creator threw a giant nut shell to them. Those on the mountain were saved from disaster by sailing in this nut shell.

China: Chinese sources relate that a person called Yao with seven other persons or Fa Li with his wife and children, were saved from the deluge and earthquakes on a sailing boat. It is said that "the earth was all in ruins. The waters burst forth and covered everywhere". Finally, the waters receded.

Nuh's Flood in Greek Mythology: The god Zeus decided to destroy people, who have become more wrongdoing every day, with a flood. Only Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved from the flood, because Deucalion's father Prometheus had formerly advised his son to make a boat. The couple set foot on Mount Parnassos on the 9th day after embarking on the boat.

All these legends indicate a concrete historical reality. In history, each community received the message, everybody received Divine revelation, and thus many communities learned about the Flood. Unfortunately, as people turned away from the essence of the Divine revelation, the account of the Flood underwent many changes, and turned into legends and myths.

The only source where we can find the real story of Nuh and the people who denied him, is the Qur'an, which is the single unaltered source of Divine revelation remaining.

The Qur'an provides us with correct information not only on Nuh's Flood, but also about other historical events and peoples. In the following chapters, we will review these true stories.