Almost there but the Ark confuses me

[ArthurInEngland]

Good Afternoon/Morning (Depending on what time it is while you’re reading this)

For two years I have been debating Catholicism. I have come to believe that there is more to the world than we see and I agree with virtually everything in the bible and the traditions of the Catholic Church. There is one thing that has always bugged me though, and it probably will seem foolish, but it is about Noah’s Ark.

Some say it is meant to be figurative; yet how can it be figurative if Noah was sent the details of the boat? I can’t see how two, or seven, of every animal could possibly make every animal fit inside the ark? Did God make it larger on the inside or something? I know it would be within his power but is it possible the Ark didn’t cover the whole world? Maybe only Israel for example?

If it was in Israel could the animals fir?

 

[promethius]

Good Afternoon/Morning (Depending on what time it is while you’re reading this)

For two years I have been debating Catholicism. I have come to believe that there is more to the world than we see and I agree with virtually everything in the bible and the traditions of the Catholic Church. There is one thing that has always bugged me though, and it probably will seem foolish, but it is about Noah’s Ark.

Some say it is meant to be figurative; yet how can it be figurative if Noah was sent the details of the boat? I can’t see how two, or seven, of every animal could possibly make every animal fit inside the ark? Did God make it larger on the inside or something? I know it would be within his power but is it possible the Ark didn’t cover the whole world? Maybe only Israel for example?

If it was in Israel could the animals fir?

There are several interpretations of the flood story, one of which is that it was a regional flood which drown out the whole KNOWN world, not the world as a whole (this interpretation being more in keeping with the physics portion of the flood dynamics). Another is that it was the whole world and that the ark was huge. As in the case of the latter, a man in the Netherlands (I believe) built an ark to a scale only 1/6th the actual size, by hand, to prove that such a ship COULD be built AND to show its proportions… and believe me, it is HUGE. The 1/6th size was chosen because, had the ship been built to full size, it would have been far too large to travel into most european ports.

Given, however, the idea that it was a regional flood over the known world, the proportions of the ark are even larger still (for holding that number of animals). Still, here is an interesting site which gives some calculations to show the massive size of the ark:
biblestudy.org/basicart/was-noah-ark-big-enough-to-hold-all-animals.html

Interesting to note: the interior dimensions of the ark would have had the same capacity as 500 train cars… MORE than capable of holding all of the animals, plus twice their body weight in feed.

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

Good Afternoon/Morning (Depending on what time it is while you’re reading this)

For two years I have been debating Catholicism. I have come to believe that there is more to the world than we see and I agree with virtually everything in the bible and the traditions of the Catholic Church. There is one thing that has always bugged me though, and it probably will seem foolish, but it is about Noah’s Ark.

Some say it is meant to be figurative; yet how can it be figurative if Noah was sent the details of the boat? I can’t see how two, or seven, of every animal could possibly make every animal fit inside the ark? Did God make it larger on the inside or something? I know it would be within his power but is it possible the Ark didn’t cover the whole world? Maybe only Israel for example?

If it was in Israel could the animals fir?

Noah never existed.
The story is a tale with a morale.

 

[GEddie]

Good Afternoon/Morning (Depending on what time it is while you’re reading this)

For two years I have been debating Catholicism. I have come to believe that there is more to the world than we see and I agree with virtually everything in the bible and the traditions of the Catholic Church. There is one thing that has always bugged me though, and it probably will seem foolish, but it is about Noah’s Ark.

Some say it is meant to be figurative; yet how can it be figurative if Noah was sent the details of the boat? I can’t see how two, or seven, of every animal could possibly make every animal fit inside the ark? Did God make it larger on the inside or something? I know it would be within his power but is it possible the Ark didn’t cover the whole world? Maybe only Israel for example?

If it was in Israel could the animals fir?

Noah did not live in Israel, so the flood, if local, did not take place there.

The patriarchs ante-Abraham lived in Iraq, near the closed Garden of Eden. Babel was near modern Babylon/Baghdad. The ark landed on Mount Ararat in Turkey.

Not until Abraham did they go to live in Israel; then with Joseph, on to Egypt; then in the Exodus, back to Israel.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Over, and over, and over again my friend the earth, tribe, city, family, town…….is cleared of sin and yet sin is re-established. Over, and over, and over again my friend man is cleared of sin and yet sin is re-established. So maybe all will live in the presents of sin, and all will sin, and some will strive to reduce sin and repent, maybe that is the story?

 

[losh14]

This is an example of a spiritual truth that should not be confounded by obvious problems with literal truth. Take God’s punishment and repentence as the theological lessons, and His promise to not destory the world. Take also our identity as those chosen to be saved, and the pre-type of Baptism. In other words, take it literally enough to accept Noah’s perspective on it but not so literally that you have to make faith and reason duke it out uncompromisingly.

Bear in mind that not all known animals are mentioned in Scripture, and likely not even all living animals lived in Israel at the time. For example, the domestic cat is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible, despite Israel coming into contact with them in Egypt (almost certainly). This proves to me that cats are really satanic in origin. More importantly, it could be that enough of the Earth was flooded for Noah to have not seen land but other animals could survive. It’s not inconceivable that a low-lying area of land in the Arabian peninsula could be flooded and thus carry a boat of the Ark’s reported size. It’s a little harder to consider that such a flood would even cover the tops of the Himalayas, though with God nothing is impossible.

Also, if it is just Noah and his boys and their families surviving, then all of us are pretty heavily-inbred. I’d expect to have fewer toes, an additional nose, and probably wings or something.

I should point out that nearly every surviving ethnic tradition keeps record of a flood, whether as the beginning of the world or the beginning of the current age. Greeks, Mayans, Chinese, Hindu, Hopi, all have a deluge as a major feature of their history. I personally take Noah’s story as true on details from Noah’s point of view (since he’d be passing along the oral history) but don’t require the story to be literally true by implications. Consider how Joshua bade the Lord to hold the sun still in the sky. You can take this as true from Joshua’s perspective without involving incredibly complex descriptions of astrophysics, gravitation and solar atmospheric refraction.

 

[Spencerian]

Noah never existed.
The story is a tale with a morale.

The Church disagrees with you. They make no such pronunciation on the story’s history or scientific probability. As with all things, they are centered on the theology.

Christ also disagrees with you, as he speaks of it in Matthew 24:37-39. Why would God lie? That is not to say that Noah may not be a parable, but if God speaks of Noah as a real person, isn’t that a matter to consider?

See this Ask an Apologist question and answer on the Flood, teachings from the Catechism on the lessons from the Flood,

 

[GEddie]

Considering that there are no human genes for 2 noses, etc., it does not surprise me that we do not see that.

However, according to Genesis, human life was initially very long, then goes off a cliff post-Flood. Might that be genetic-decline related?

ICXC NIKA

 

[Blacksword]

The story is allegorical, with parts likely factual, and parts mythical, and was probably never even intended to be understood as absolute and entirely accurate historical accounting. The geological and anthropological data seem to support that a large, catastrophic, but local flood, occurred in the area, giving rise to the epic of Gilgamesh and Noah’s ark stories.

The dimensions of the ark are provided well because the ancients were outstanding ship builders and quite simply knew how to build ships at necessary proportions to float.

It’s telling that the actual Hebrew word used, “erets”, itself doesn’t mean literally the whole Earth, “tol-erets”, but rather “the land”, or, perhaps colloquially understood in their time, the known world around them.

However, could a man have received divine inspiration to build a ship and saved his family, even taking on much local wildlife and livestock? Sure, why not? The account need not be completely true as read or interpreted by some today in order to contain factual elements and contain important spiritual Truth.

God bless on your journey of faith!

 

[Darran]

youtube.com/watch?v=kz-W6nsBJPQ

 

[nordskoven]

Wow. There is no more cultural universal than the Flood, and all sharing these elements, however corrupted: God is mad; Ark; animals; landing on a mountain–usually with these various cultures naming a local mountain as the landing spot, like Mt. Fuji for the Japanese. The literal translation is the Ark of Noah landed on the “mountains” of Ararat, with the Koran naming Mt. Cudi, a place where an Ark-y structure was uncovered by an earthquake a few decades ago. Now the Turks have a sign that says, Nu’hum Gemisi, Noah’s Ark. The G root is “reed” and suggestive of the reed flotation raft posited by David Fasold with three stories of timber frame and a reed mat seald with rosin on top. This part of Turkey is a good place to get killed by Kurds, guards of the Ark. The Ark used to be visited by tourists, and Egyptians used to covet amulets of the rosin/tar used to seal the Ark. Varuna’s House of Mud is the Hindu story after it was covered by overburden eroding over the top. Returning Crusaders passed through the area identified by Fasold as the landing spot, leaving graffitti.

All the Middle East king lists share ten kings/patriarchs with the tenth being the Flood King. The Ark has really close technical specs in the Bible. The volumetrics are good maritime engineering–not a box, a volume. Extra-biblical sources let us construct an accurate idea of how it was done and it’s fabulous: high concept, low tech brilliance.

The Great Pyramid, probably built by Noah’s son, Shem or his family/school to memorialize the Flood and as a reliquary for Adam’s bones (a heiroglyph says were on the Ark or “sacred boat of Nu”) had a boat buried at the base. The Great Pyramid has butterfly granite doors to create a hydraulic ram pump to fill the lagoon to float the mini-Ark to memorialize the great salvation wrought by God. Totem poles and Greek pillars are based on the stem and stern post of the Ark, bundled timbers banded tight. It’s all beautiful, and the socio-cultural influence is universal and hiding in plain sight. Read David Fasold’s The Ark of Noah. He was a merchant marine and grand scholar. “Fear nothing and trust in God.”

 

[rdscheirer]

Robert Ballard-the man who found the Titanic wreck-several yrs ago found evidence of a huge flood in the Baltic Sea that dated to around the same time as Noah would have lived according to Bible lineages.

 

[patrick457]

Wow. There is no more cultural universal than the Flood, and all sharing these elements, however corrupted: God is mad; Ark; animals; landing on a mountain–usually with these various cultures naming a local mountain as the landing spot, like Mt. Fuji for the Japanese.

Um, no, AFAIK there is no connection between Mt. Fuji and a flood in Japanese mythology - in fact, there doesn’t seem to be any surviving flood story in Japanese myth at all. But come to think of it, Mt. Fuji was more active in ancient times than today. Why would anyone think that a boat landed on a smoking mountain of fire, which has a tendency to explode every now and then (last one was in 1707)?

The literal translation is the Ark of Noah landed on the “mountains” of Ararat, with the Koran naming Mt. Cudi, a place where an Ark-y structure was uncovered by an earthquake a few decades ago.

According to good ol’ Wikipedia:

Christian tradition

The Syrians of the east Tigris had a legend of the ark resting on the Djûdi mountain in the land of Kard. This legend may in origin have been independent of the Genesis account of Noah’s flood, rooted in the more general Near Eastern flood legends, but following Christianization of the Syrians, from about the 2nd century AD, it became associated with the Mountains of Ararat where Noah landed according to Genesis, and from Syria also this legend also spread to the Armenians. The Armenians did not traditionally associate Noah’s landing site with Mount Ararat, known natively as Masis, but until the 11th century continued to associate Noah’s ark with Mount Judi.

According to Josephus, the Armenians in the 1st century showed the remains of Noah’s ark at a place called αποβατηριον “Place of Descent” (Armenian: Նախիջեւան, Nakhichevan, Ptolemy’s Ναξουανα), about 60 miles southeast of the summit of Mount Ararat (ca. 39°04′N 45°05′E / 39.07°N 45.08°E / 39.07; 45.08).

The “mountains of Ararat” in Genesis have become identified in later (medieval) Christian tradition with the peak now known as Mount Ararat itself, a volcanic massif on the border between Turkey and Armenia and known in Turkish as “Agri Dagh” (Ağrı Dağı).

Islamic tradition

The Qur’anic account of the Flood and Noah’s Ark agrees with that given in Genesis, with a few variations. One of these concerns the final resting place of the Ark: according to Genesis, the Ark grounded on the “mountains of Ararat”; according to surah 11:44 of the Qur’an, the final resting place of the vessel was called Mt. Judi:

“And the word was spoken: “O earth! swallow up thy waters! And, O sky, cease [thy rain]!” And the water sank into the earth, and the will [of God] was done, and the ark came to rest on Mount Judi. And the word was spoken: “Away with these evil doing folk!” (Quran, 11:44).”

Mingana, assumed that the Muhammad got the name Judi from a misunderstanding of the name Qardu as he heard it in the story from Syrian Christians. Nöldeke, on the other hand suggests that in the Quranic name is a confusion between the Mesopotamian Qardu and the Arabian Jabal al-Judi in the territory of Tayy mentioned by Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), and celebrated in a verse by the pre-Islamic poet Abu Sa’tara al-Baulani. It would seem that the Quran imagined that the people of Noah like those of ʿĀd and Thamud were Arabs, and Judi being the highest peak in the central Arabia would be confused with the Qardes of the Judaeo-Christian story. [5]

The 9th century Arab geographer Ibn Khordadbih identified the location of mount Judi as being in the land of Assyria (Al-Akrad), and the Abbasid historian Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas’ūdī (c. 896-956) recorded that the spot where it came to rest could be seen in his time. Masudi also said that the Ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, where it circled the Kaaba, before finally travelling to Judi. Yaqut al-Hamawi, also known as Al-Rumi, placed the mountain “above Jazirat ibn Umar, to the east of the Tigris” and mentioned a mosque built by Noah that could be seen in his day, and the traveller Ibn Battuta passed by the mountain in the 14th century.​

 

[patrick457]

Now the Turks have a sign that says, Nu’hum Gemisi, Noah’s Ark. The G root is “reed” and suggestive of the reed flotation raft posited by David Fasold with three stories of timber frame and a reed mat seald with rosin on top.

Actually, the word gemi in Turkish just means, well, ‘ship’, derived from Old Turkic kémi, in turn from Proto-Turkic *kēmi, *gẹ̄mi.

Turkish belongs in the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. Here are the cognates of gemi in a few other Turkic languages (dug out by yours truly; question mark indicates some uncertainty in my part):

Azerbaijani (Oghuz: gəmi
Crimean Tatar (Oghuz): gemi (‘boat’)
Gagauz (Oghuz): gemi
Karakalpak (Kypchak): keme (‘boat’)
Kazakh (Kypchak): keme (‘boat’, ‘ship’)
Kyrgyz (Kypchak): keme (‘boat’, ‘ship’)
Salar (Oghuz): kimö/kimu (‘boat’) ?
Turkmen (Oghuz): gami/gämi
Urum (Oghuz): gyämi
Uyghur (Uyghuric): keme, kemä (‘boat’)
Uzbek (Uyghuric): kema (‘boat’, ‘ship’)

As for ‘reed’ (the plant):

Azeri: qamış
Crimean Tatar: kamış
Gagauz: kamis
Karakalpak: qamys
Kazakh: qamys
Kyrgyz: qamyš
Turkish: kamış
Turkmen: gamysh
Uzbek: qemiš
Uyghur: qomuš

Varuna’s House of Mud is the Hindu story after it was covered by overburden eroding over the top.

LET me not yet, King Varuṇa, enter into the house of clay:
Have mercy, spare me, Mighty Lord.
When, Thunderer! I move along tremulous like a wind-blown skin,
Have mercy, spare me, Mighty Lord.
O Bright and Powerful God, through want of strength I erred and went astray
Have mercy, spare me, Mighty Lord.
Thirst found thy worshipper though he stood in the midst of water-fijods:
Have mercy, spare me, Mighty Lord.
O Varuṇa, whatever the offence may be which we as men commit against the heavenly host,
When through our want of thought we violate thy laws, punish us not, O God, for that iniquity.

• Rigveda VII.89

Nowhere else does the term mṛnmayaṃ gṛhaṃ (‘enclosure of clay/mud’) occur in Vedic literature. Some scholars think that the “house of clay” is a poetic expression referring to the urn in which the deceased’s bones are placed after cremation, others compare it to the adjective bhūmigṛha- (‘whose house is the earth’; as a noun, bhūmigṛha refers to an ‘underground chamber’) found in the Atharvaveda, still others think it a term for the underworld (cf. “the house of dust” in the Gilgamesh epic). That the context is about death and dying cannot be doubted, given the hymn’s context (it is traditionally attributed to the sage Vasishtha, who at the time was dying of thirst) and its poetic assonance.

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

The Church disagrees with you. They make no such pronunciation on the story’s history or scientific probability. As with all things, they are centered on the theology.

Christ also disagrees with you, as he speaks of it in Matthew 24:37-39. Why would God lie? That is not to say that Noah may not be a parable, but if God speaks of Noah as a real person, isn’t that a matter to consider?

See this Ask an Apologist question and answer on the Flood, teachings from the Catechism on the lessons from the Flood,

The Church agrees with me. Better, I agree with the Church.
There are pronunciations about that. Please study the layers of the Pentateuch, you can find them in wikipedia. I tell you, it is tough reading but I think you SHOULD study that. Every Catholic MUST study the recent studies about the Bible not to be left behind.
Christ taught many things on parables and did not teach anything but in Parables. So, the force of the Parables is as strong as if they were real. The prodigal son story teaching is so strong as if the persons were real.
I am with the Church and with the Pope.

 

[nordskoven]

Thanks for your research, Padraic. Varuna is Neptune/Noah, the ‘water god’ and Varuna’s House of Clay (not “mud” & thanks for the correction) is, I suggest, Noah’s Ark after it slid down Mount Cudi/Judi, lodged on Fasold’s rock, and was covered with detritus. The Ark was always a pilgrimage site and, I further suggest, after it was covered, had a lot of the underworld-type mystery religion bogwash connected with it. I also suggest it was the basis of the fabled Augean Stable that Hercules cleaned out; a necessary task in re-establishing agriculture in a world scrubbed of humus.

I see the de-volution of monotheism into popular religious fervor stemming from the pop star status of the Ark-onauts. After the Flood, everybody was hot to trace their lineage to the four couples on Noah’s Ark, symbolized by the eight-branched Wheel of Life, the Sun-turning swastika; or the eight-branched Tree of Life.

Noah was commonly depicted with the Ark’s stem and stern post, which became the symbol of the twin pillars of religious orthodoxy universally adopted in the Middle East. That’s why Samson could topple the temple of Dagon (another deified Noah–who himself would have strenuously objected to this elevation to divinity) because it was an architectural conceit that was unstable as the whole temple was apparently connected to these twin pillars. Solomon’s temple had twin pillars.

At any rate, it was after the Flood that ancestor worship came into being as people deified their Ark forebearers. Totem poles with clan lineages and tree and grove worship intermix here. The banded pillars of the stem and stern post were miniaturized in the Egyptian ankh, and seen more generally as scepters, symbols of authority. The Tree of Life is rooted in the mountain that is the center of the world, all varieties, even Fuji, ultimately PROBABLY honoring the mountain landing site of Noah’s Ark. The Great Pyramid was a fake mountain that was set up by the Shem-ites as the navel of the world, where east is separated from west. Babylon profanely usurped this privilege with their mud brick omphalos/world navel and were punished by God for this.

The Ark landed on the side of the mountain, and was coated with tar/resin and KPR mistranslated as “gopher” with “wood” emended: actually volcanic ash, kephra/tephra. The light volcanic ash (like that at Santorini) coating the Ark would have given the gleaming appearance of an egg, and I agree with Fasold this likely is the Egg of Life of Middle Eastern popular symbolism as held in the hand of the Creator, a motif one can see on white meerschaum stone pipes, for example.

I would again humbly offer the G root as reed. Boats were bundled reeds. Only later were boats built as water-displacing cups. I’m referencing the Ark’s posited flotation raft per David Fasold, built with bundles of now-extinct triangular shafted reeds. They were stout, three inches on each side. These would have locked nicely together in bundles and, like Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, would have created a free-bailing boat that rainwater ran through, an unsinkable craft upon which the three-story log truss superstructure was placed. This is not a displacement vessel like a cup that could get swamped but a flotation raft with a superstructure. Unlike Kon-Tiki, the tar/resin and kephra coating would have prevented waterlogging. Reed boats were found all over the ancient world.

To generalize, the Great Flood was so overwhelming that people overbalanced their regard for Noah & Family, and their popularity seems to have surpassed the Creator in various sectors, an orthodox remnant always being preserved. The cultural artifacts of the Great Flood are plentiful.

 

[Deconi]

Good Afternoon/Morning (Depending on what time it is while you’re reading this)

For two years I have been debating Catholicism. I have come to believe that there is more to the world than we see and I agree with virtually everything in the bible and the traditions of the Catholic Church. There is one thing that has always bugged me though, and it probably will seem foolish, but it is about Noah’s Ark.

Some say it is meant to be figurative; yet how can it be figurative if Noah was sent the details of the boat? I can’t see how two, or seven, of every animal could possibly make every animal fit inside the ark? Did God make it larger on the inside or something? I know it would be within his power but is it possible the Ark didn’t cover the whole world? Maybe only Israel for example?

If it was in Israel could the animals fir?

As you can see Arthur, being Catholic doesn’t mean you surrender your intellect. We are free to disagree with each other and argue until we’re blue in the face about a multitude of things about the world, politics, life, Scriptures and anything you care to bring up.

But when the Church decrees something we must assent to, we submit. Not because of the Church, per se, but because of our trust in WHO established it. Many things we do not fully understand and may never will…but ‘we’ stay and argue it out. Not leave and ‘protest.’

Noah was a real person, just as Jonah was a real person. In time, more evidence will bear these out. We have Catholic scientists saying there was NO flood, and we have Catholic scientists say there was! We even have Catholic scientists on BOTH sides of the evolution arguments. In other words, it’s O.K. to hold to whatever view your knowledge tells you…until the Church has made a definitive statement about any matter and make someting DOGMA!

As I said, regarding your query, Noah and his Ark were as real as the nose on your face. Both Scriptures and scientific examination bear these out, if you know what you’re looking at.

Now stop ‘blocking the doorway’ and Come On Home!

God Bless

 

[Spencerian]

The Church agrees with me. Better, I agree with the Church.
There are pronunciations about that. Please study the layers of the Pentateuch, you can find them in wikipedia. I tell you, it is tough reading but I think you SHOULD study that. Every Catholic MUST study the recent studies about the Bible not to be left behind.
Christ taught many things on parables and did not teach anything but in Parables. So, the force of the Parables is as strong as if they were real. The prodigal son story teaching is so strong as if the persons were real.
I am with the Church and with the Pope.

You are emphasizing my points precisely. I was drawing attention to your overly simplistic original answer. I appreciate your clarification and your sincerity–but one point. In Scripture, Christ explained that He taught primarily in parables to all but the Twelve because He knew they would understand it better.

Wikipedia will be the last so-called resource I will use in this matter for obvious problems of bias and misunderstanding of parable and allegory within its editors. It would be like reading “Harry Potter” to gain a grasp on metaphysics, in my opinion.

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

You are emphasizing my points precisely. I was drawing attention to your overly simplistic original answer. I appreciate your clarification and your sincerity–but one point. In Scripture, Christ explained that He taught primarily in parables to all but the Twelve because He knew they would understand it better.

Wikipedia will be the last so-called resource I will use in this matter for obvious problems of bias and misunderstanding of parable and allegory within its editors. It would be like reading “Harry Potter” to gain a grasp on metaphysics, in my opinion.

Everybody is against Wikipedia that is made by everybody.
If there is a place with less bias is wikipedia.
But I respect your opinion.
I prefer so go there for simple subjects than to go to Googgle and receive 5 million pages. Anyhow, you can always check Wikipedia against other sources.
On and All, it is very good, special the English version.

 

[patrick457]

Thanks for your research, Padraic.

Thanks for using the Gaelic version of the name. I really wish more people would use the equivalents of ‘Patrick’ in other languages#

Varuna is Neptune/Noah, the ‘water god’

The association of Varuna with water is a fairly late, post-Vedic development. Originally, Varuna seems to have been more of a solar (one of many) or sky deity, and a god of law and order. He is also an asura as opposed to a deva: whereas in later Hinduism the asuras are very much considered to be evil beings and the mortal enemies of the devas, there was still no such clear-cut distinction in early Vedic religion: within the Rigveda, deities such as Varuna, Mitra, Rudra, Agni, Aryaman, Pusan and Parjanya are all called asura in places without any implication of them being demonic.

Second only in importance to Indra (if we go by the number of hymns addressed to him in the Rigveda), Vedic Varuna has certain aspects of a solar deity (which makes him one amongst many Vedic solar deities): his eye is the sun, he wears a golden mantle and a resplendent robe, and rides a shining chariot. The sun is even considered to be his golden-winged messenger. When paired with Mitra (who hardly has individual traits; the two together have practically the same attributes and functions as Varuna alone) as Mitra-Varuna, Varuna could be associated with night and the ‘dark’ side of the Sun as it travels back from West to East during the night. Vedic Varuna also has elements of a sky deity and a king: he is an omniscient samaraja (‘universal monarch’), his abode is in the heavens, where he sits down observing the deeds of all men. He (or in the case of Mitra-Varuna, they) also has undeceivable spies, the stars, who watch the worlds for him.

Most importantly, however, Varuna (and Mitra) is also the god of moral and societal affairs, the supreme keeper of physical and moral order. He is also said to have fixed and regulated the course of everything in heaven and earth; even the other gods follow his ordinances. Varuna is also at times twinned with Indra as Indra-Varuna, when both cooperate at New Year in re-establishing order. Varuna punishes the sinner, and is also merciful to the penitent. As Arthur Macdonell in A Vedic Reader for Students says: “There is in fact no hymn to Varuna in which the prayer for forgiveness of guilt does not occur.”

All in all, Vedic Varuna is more closer to the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda than his diminished later counterpart. While Varuna does already have some association with water in this early stage (Mitra and Varuna are thought to be bestowers of rain, and Varuna is thought to have regulated the course of the waters), it was only in post-Vedic texts that Varuna became the god of oceans and rivers and keeper of the souls of the drowned - and by extension, a god of the dead - outright.

If anything, the closest we can get to a Vedic water deity is Apam Napat “grandson of waters”, lord of rivers and lakes. (We get warmer here: some do propose a connection between Vedic Apam Napat and Celtic Nechtan, Etruscan Nethuns, and Latin Neptune.)