Noah's Ark. "Who farted here? I really want to know". A story about The Great Flood of Noah.

Original sin explained. The first fart. Before Noah entered The Ark.

Noah and his family were a bit cramped in The Ark.

The worst thing about being on Noah's Ark was the prohibition on farting.

And the penalty for farting on Noah's Ark is???

Hear the author reading the story on You Tube.

Elephants are good.

There are times and places for every activity. An action, that might be considered natural and appropriate in the middle of a field, is totally unacceptable when engaged in under the bedclothes, when one is in company with a totally demure wife. It is considered to be inexplicable when the totally demure wife is engaging in the socially tabooed activity herself. But that is all bye the way, and not related to the story I am about to tell.

The activity that this spellbinding tale is spun round is the expulsion of gas from the rear end exit from the body. This exhalation of methane is known as farting. It has been a constant biological provocation to the frictions that bedevil all marriages ever since Adam farted under the marital bed of leaves, thus sending Eve off on a sulky walk round the garden, where she met the serpent, and engaged in a conversation, the results of which we have all being paying for ever since.

However since there is little doubt about who the culprit was when one fart precipitated the fall of man, ( there were only two of them, and it definitely wasn’t her), We have to move on a bit in history to find the incident that prompted the line immortalised in the title of this, not overly erudite, story.

Most of you have probably heard of The Dead Sea Scrolls. These documents were found in a cave in Palestine around sixty years ago. They are currently housed in a museum in Jerusalem. The study of these documents has given historians, and theologians, some very valuable insights into how life was conducted in Palestine around the time of Christ, and in some centuries earlier.

I am not going to write about these scrolls here. No, in this tale I want to reveal to the world some information that came to me in my capacity of President of The Ancient Society of Secret Historians. And this revelation, which only I am privy to, comes from a document known as the even deader than The Dead sea Scrolls scroll, and it was found in a toilet that was excavated underneath The Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in 1907.

The ancient parchment, that has the alternative name of The Solomon's Temple Toilet Toilet Roll, gives an account of a court martial that occurred on Noah’s Ark. It is written in Hebrew that predates the Jewish Babylonian exile, and may be considered to be the oldest extant evidence for the flood, and also only the second reference to farting in history. The first one is that unfortunate incident in Eden which I referred to earlier.

Rather than bore the reader with a direct translation of the ancient "toilet roll", I am going to summarise the story in modern language. I hope in this way to convey the sense of the heinousness of the offence, and the justifiable wrath of the victims, in a manner more suitable to the perception of the modern reader.

The incident took place around three months into the enforced voyage that Noah and his family had to take, when God decided to flood the entire globe, and destroy all his creation with the exception of the Noah family, and two of every kind of animal. All of these were cooped up together in a gigantic ship called The Ark. It took Noah 120 years to build his ship.

The human accommodation on this vessel was not exactly conducive to the promotion of domestic harmony. Ninety nine per cent of the ship was taken up by the various animals. In a tiny cabin at the very top of The Ark Noah, his wife, their three sons,(Ham, Shem, and Japheth) and their three wives, had to exist with nothing to amuse themselves, and with only a tiny little window to glance out of occasionally at a very watery world.

Bickering became the order of the day. Half the time Noah wasn’t talking to his wife, and neither of them were on terms with the sons' wives. As is often the case, when people become institutionalised by confinement, small things become inordinately important. For instance Ham's wife fell asleep in a corner that Mrs Noah considered to be her space. The row over that lasted at least two weeks.

The constant racket from all the animals did not exactly help to soothe frayed nerves either. The trumpeting of elephants, the roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas, and the constant squawking of the various birds, meant that sleep could only be taken in snatches.

To top their misery, the absolute prohibition on any type of farting, meant that their confinement together became a kind of nightmare.

This ban on flatulence had been in force since the time of Adam and Eve. Since farting had led to the expulsion from The Garden of Eden, it was considered to be the most dammnable of all sins. It wasn’t such a problem prior to The Flood. If someone really needed to let rip, they could always go out into the fields to do so. God would know, and it would still be a sin. But at least no other human would be offended by the abomination.

In the tiny cabin on The Ark it was a different story. No wide open spaces here to dissipate the offending gasses.

And everyone would hear.

So what we had here was a situation where eight people, who didn’t really get on, were confined together in a tiny cabin at the top of a ship packed with representatives of every animal on the planet; and there was little immediate prospect of them getting to enjoy the wide open spaces, or let rip in the middle of a field, like they had been accustomed to do all their lives.

You see the problem was that though they had been farting all their lives, it was always only when they were unobserved. If asked, none of them would ever admit to the heinous solecism. Now privacy was unobtainable.

Noah, his wife, their sons, and their wives, were reduced to standing sullenly in the corners of their tiny prison, afraid almost to move, lest the movement might force an evacuation of the gasses that were churning uncomfortably around in their respective intestines.

It was a potentially explosive situation.

The cleverest among the sons of Noah was Japheth. He was the kind of boy that would fall down crying, when his mother was in sight, and then pretend that Shem or Ham had pushed him. Of course Mrs Noah would give him a sweet, and clout the other two puzzled siblings around the head for "Bullying their poor little brother". He was a sneaky little brat, and he got away with that one for years. The result was that the two other kids resented him, and they held the grudge for decades, and were only longing for the opportunity to exact revenge.

So while the rest of the family were clenching their cheeks resolutely, lest a sudden judder in The Ark might drive them into sin, while praying that God might send His angel to advise them that the prohibition was temporarily lifted, Japheth was devising a cunning plan.

He had noted the trumpeting of the elephants, which was the loudest sound to be heard on the ship. The sneaky sod only decided to wait until the pachyderms bellowed again, and then to loosen his cheeks at the same time. He guessed that the sounds of the trumpeting would more than mask any sound that his rear end might produce.

He got away with it a few times. Ham and Shem suspected that he was up to something, when a relieved grin started to spread across their brother's face, instead of the clenched grimaces that adorned the visages of the rest of The Ark's crew. But they weren’t absolutely sure. They did note that the smile seemed to coincide with the trumpeting of the elephants. But that was not absolutely conclusive.

What ruined it for the malefactor was the smell.

Anyone who has studied the nature of flatulence can tell you that you can't predict which one you release into the atmosphere will be the smelly one. People have frequently stood in the presence of royalty, while slipping silent ones into the atmosphere unobserved, because they were without odour. But then, without warning, a real stinker can worm it's way out, and social disgrace can dog the rest of the unfortunate farter’s earthly existence.

This is exactly what happened to the cocky son of the great patriarch.

The elephants trumpeted.

Japheth farted.

Noah was the first to notice the awful smell.

As the head of the family, and a bone fide prophet of God, to boot, he uttered the immortal words.

"Who Farted? I Really Want to Know".

"He did"! Ham and Shem simultaneously shouted, while pointing their accusing fingers at their red faced brother.

"We must now have a court martial trial", Noah said.

"Can we stone him afterwards"? the two righteous brothers asked eagerly. (They really had it in for Japheth).

"No I have a much better idea", the wise old patriarch replied.

"O.K let's make the trial a quick one then".

So that is what they did. All the resentment that had built up over the years was vented on the head of, the once cocky, now shamefaced, Japheth.

With Ham and Shem as the jurors, (women didn’t count in those days), the verdict was a foregone conclusion.

"Guilty as charged".

The punishment that Noah handed down to his wayward offspring was to be confined with his friends, the elephants, for the rest of his sojourn on The Ark.

He considered that the proximity to these beasts, and their enormous intestinal eruptions, would cure him of the tendency to sin for the rest of his life.

But, if anyone had cared to observe closely the expression of the criminal as he was dumped with the elephants, they would have noticed a most curious thing.

Instead of the penitent expression that one would expect to see on the visage of a sentenced malefactor, there was a delighted grin spread all over the face of the younger son of the prophet.

For Japheth knew, that while the "Righteous Ones “were screwing their faces into a rictus of pain, and clenching their buttocks, in their efforts to avoid offending God, with a sin that The Creator wasn’t bothered about anyway,("Righteous Ones") all over the world are still jumping through the same hoops), he would be down in the hold with the elephants having a fartfest.

This true account never made it into the official bible. I sometimes think it is a pity that it did not.