Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Newbie]

The story of Noah's ark is a ridiculous fabrication. There is no sustainable evidence for it, and it is as false as any ancient myth. Can you explain it to me?

[jimwalton]

Era (when this supposedly happened)? Totally unknown. Best guesses are in the vicinity of 10,000 BC to 7500 BC. It's possibly as early as 20,000. The Bible names a guy: Noah. No extra-biblical record of him, but that's no surprise. Why should there be? The Bible says he was a righteous man, and the people of his culture were not. OK. Sounds like society was spinning out of control and reckless in evil. Civilization was deteriorating in animal-like existence of murder, sexual abuse, who knows what all else, but the impression given is that there is no hope for civilization if this is to continue. The world was self-destructing, and taking whatever was good with it. To save creation, God has to act. To me, it's like WWII for the US. Nobody likes war, but if the world was to be saved, we had to act an action of destruction to redeem what was good. It was an illustration of the eye-for-eye principle: Hitler was destroying the world with war, so we had to destroy Hitler with war. It was the only way to stop him. The flood story has the character of a just retribution.

The boat Noah builds is probably a tied boat. Examples a such are known in antiquity, and the dimensions of it are completely logical, what one would expect to find in a floating barge. There was no steering mechanism; it was just for floating. Some have calculated that there was room on the ark for about 7,000 species.

There is presently no convincing archaeological evidence of a global flood, but I don't believe it was global anyway. It doesn't have to be global to conform to what the Bible says. Akkadian texts estimate the land surface of the "whole earth" to be equivalent to a diameter of about 3,000 miles: southern Turkey to southeast Iran, deep in Egypt, and west into the Mediterranean. That's what they considered to be "the whole earth" and "all life under the heavens." It's simply impossible that it was global on many counts, one being the number of species of animals on the whole planet. (There are many many many more reasons and insurmountable evidences why this cataclysm is not even possibly global.) Plus the fossil record shows an abundant animal population with no evidence of sudden destruction. He was to bring two of each animal, and seven of every kind of clean animal. Noah and his family enter the boat, and the flood came. What I believe happened was that Gibraltar, which was once closed off, was opened (probably by seismic activity), allowing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to surge into the area and devastate the region. Gn. 7.11 says "the springs of the great deep burst forth." It is a possible explanation of why the Black Sea and the Dead Sea have salt water in them. Such seismic activity could also bring other water up from below. There was also torrential rain. Climate changes in the region throughout history are known to cause heavy rains that last for days and even weeks, so the heavy rains of the narrative are not so exceptional. It need not have lasted 40 days (though it could have), for "40" in numerology is a number signifying trial. It was a severe cataclysm. Now, the text says that all the mountains were covered to a height of more than 20'. In ancient Israeli geography, what they consider to be "mountains" were the local ones; the huge ones (like Mt. Everest, though they probably didn't know about that one in particular), were thought to be pillars holding up the firmament. So we have to understand their narrative according to their own terminology. All life in the (massive) region was ended. The waters receded over a normal timespan, and the ark came to rest somewhere in the Ararat mountain range (Ararat is a region as well, so it's impossible to know exactly where the barge came to rest).

There's a pretty rough and brief summary, but until I know where your issues and questions are I don't know which points to expand on and give more evidence for.

Talk to me.

[Newbie]

"The Bible says he was a righteous man, and the people of his culture were not. OK."

No, the bible says that angels were coming to earth and breeding with mankind, causing women to spawn half-angel babies, known as Nephilim. I noticed you glazed over this point. What's your take on that?

"To save creation, God has to act."

Oh, so instead of popping down himself, and showing his power to the people to put them into line, he decided to kill the little bastards and wash his hands of it. No corrections, no three strikes. Just kill'm all and sort it out later?

"There's a pretty rough and brief summary, but until I know where your issues, questions, and abuse : ) are I don't know which points to expand on and give more evidence for."

How about since the time period for this is such a long time ago, and writing wasn't even invented for a couple thousand years later, what makes you think this isn't more than a myth?
Also, do you realize how much justification you're using to make this story even slightly viable? You're disagreeing with most of what the bible says of the account.
7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
God says specifically 40 days.
7:6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth
Really? 600? That's pretty elderly for a man building an ark alone.
7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
Two of EVERYTHING. Now we know this can't be true. I doubt kangaroos swam hundreds of miles with koala's on their back, got on the boat, got off the boat, and swam back. So answer me, is the bible wrong?
7:14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
Just to reiterate.
7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.
Everything not on the boat died. Everything. So about 100-200 year after this, the pyramids were built by the three sons of Noah, way, no, only two because he cursed one of them after this whole event. So two people populated the world in a couple hundred years.
Oh, no, you said the bible is wrong and didn't kill everyone. Which is it?
7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
Yeesh, I dunno. The bible is really sure about the 'everyone died' thing.
7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days
So, we have, by your account, 7,000 species. Now I'm pretty sure that 7,000 types of cow, deer, crocodile, and everything else would have put the Ark at capacity. (Because by most accounts, I think you're exaggerating.) So if we take the 40 days of rain, plus the 150 days of water, that's 190 days, or about a 6 months. So not only did he need to bring the animals, but 6 months of provisions. For everyone. Somehow I think 6 months of tiger chow is gonna take a lot of space. Plus stuff for his family to eat, and clean water, because there was plenty of dead stuff floating in the water around them.
Now, you'll have to grant, that most of the plants at this point would have died. You don't get drowned for 6 months and just be fine. So no matter where they land, or after the flood, no vegetation.

remember, that all of this is just because God said screw it, instead of just handling it with grace and dignity.

"It's simply impossible that it was global on many counts, one being the number of species of animals on the whole planet. (There are many many many evidences and insurmountable reasons why this cataclysm could not possibly be a global event.) Plus the fossil record shows an abundant animal population with no evidence of sudden destruction."

So who's wrong, the bible or you? Here's my point. You, again, have to run around and jump through hoops, and even then this story isn't even halfway believable. You're saying "The bible says this FOUR times, but really it only meant this other thing." That's justification of unparalleled magnitude, and again, doesn't really help with the absurdity of the story.

"Akkadian texts estimate the land surface of the "whole earth" to be equivalent to a diameter of about 3,000 miles: southern Turkey to southeast Iran, deep in Egypt, and west into the Mediterranean."

This doesn't hardly make sense. The only way to get water that high, and make it stay there is to put it into a bowl, otherwise it's just going to flow off at a faster rate than it accumulates. So unless you're saying this area is a 3000 mile bowl, I really find your reasoning here absurd.

There are tons more points to make, but go ahead, justify away.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the reply. Wow, long post. Tough to deal with it all at once. I didn't "glaze over" the Nephilim part; I ignored it. ; ) It's a preface to the Noah story, but not really part of it. I'll admit that no one understands Gn. 6.1-4. It's a very weird section, and until more archaeological discoveries are made, it won't be understood. The text does say, despite your objection, that Noah was a righteous man (6.9), and that the flood was sent because of corruption and violence (6.10). Now, the word "corruption" in v. 10 and the word "destroy" in v. 13 are the same Hebrew word, showing intent that the punishment fit the crime. God is not acting arbitrarily or like a spoiled deity, but more like a judge in a courtroom. He is moved to action by injustices: "only evil all the time" (6.5). The text says God was grieved (6.6), not angry. Other parts of the Bible say that people had been warned (Jude 1.14-15; 2 Pet. 2.5), and steps had been taken to make things right, but it was beyond hope or help. Is God both cruel and immoral in choosing to completely destroy these people? I would contend that any governing entity recognizes its role as to reward the good, punish the bad, protect the innocent, and to function for the general well-being of its people. It is within its scope and right to use necessary but righteous force to subdue elements in its population contrary to its raison d’etre. Therefore, God is acting in accordance with both and human estimations of justice in pursuing this course of action. To me it's much like WWII. Hitler was crushing country after country, subjugating people, and exterminating people groups. The United States had a right and responsibility to act with violence to stop the violence, to save humankind. God's act, as the US per my example, is acting with just retribution for crimes committed.

As to what I said about the "whole earth" and Akkadian texts, in the Epic of Etana, the hero is carried up to heaven on the back on an eagle, where he can look down and see the whole earth. According the Akkadian understanding (the context of the Noah story), the sea is described as encircling the land, and the land described is a disk of of roughly 3,000 miles in diameter, as I explained. That's what they called, "The Whole Earth." Also, in the same sense that sailors before Columbus only knew of the land mass on which they lived, so also in this story the context speaks to the cultural understanding of the participant, Noah. (He knows nothing of America or Australia, or even of China for that matter). The words spoken to him are spoken to his mentality, not to ours. We know what an "earth" is; it would be anachronistic to insist that's what it meant to him.

Mountains, in both the Akkadian and Egyptian view, were at the edge of the world and were viewed as intersecting the sky, perhaps even supporting it, and having roots in the netherworld. Sometimes they were also viewed as a boundary to the cosmic waters. One Sargon inscription says of Mt. Simirria: "...Above, its peak leans on the heavens, below, its roots reach the netherworld." The Egyptians also thought of the mountains as holding up the sky. They were not considered part of the geography as were the local mountains.

As I mentioned, there is no archaeological evidence for this event, leading us to believe it was before 7,000 BC, when humans started leaving behind what archaeologists are now digging up.

Regarding space for species, according to what the Bible says, there were 3 floors, and we are told the rough dimensions of the ark, so people have worked to calculate roughly how many species, given certain amounts of space for each, and come up with 7,000. No matter. It's a guess. But this tells us the flood could not have been global, because there's no way a barge that size could accommodate all of the abundant animal population on the planet at the time. So it was a limited diameter of land mass. Also, there's absolutely no explaining how the specific animal groups that now inhabit places like Australia could have gotten back to an island after the flood, so it doesn't even make sense that it's a global event. Providing food for so many would have been a colossal task, but reduced at least to some extent by their general inactivity and the hibernation periods of some.

I should get on to your major concern, though, that of the universal language: whole earth, all people, every living thing, all the mountains, etc. First of all, there is culture embedded in their words. We must understand their words in the context of their culture. We must see the text the way they saw the text. The words mean what they meant to that audience and to that author. We can’t give new meaning to his words and bring new authority to the picture. We can’t assign our authority to the author’s words.

"40 days and 40 nights." Certainly you're familiar with numerology, and that numbers have symbolic meaning. It could have been a literal 40 days, but not necessarily. We do the same thing, when we say, "Well, there must have been a thousand people there!" when in actuality, if someone had bothered to count, there may have been 712. When they wanted to express God's judgment, they would use the number 40. I'm not playing loose with the text; they used numbers in symbolic ways, and we need to understand that. So it's pretty difficult for us to tell if they meant it literally or figuratively, because it could honestly be either.

Let's talk about the "every" and "all" stuff. In Deuteronomy 2.25 (traditionally written by the same author), the Lord says, "I will put the terror and fear of you on al the nations under heaven." Few, if anyone, would argue that this refers to anything other than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. I don't think the Native Americans were trembling. That's not what it means, nor what was expressed by it. In Genesis 41.57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt, and "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain... because the famine was severe in all the world." I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included. We need to understand words the way they intended them, not what seem to us on a shallow reading. Words have nuances and contexts that must be taken into consideration.

What about "covering the mountains"? Well, Numbers 22.11 says "a people so vast they covered the land." Prov. 24.31 speaks of weeds covering the land. 1 Ki. 1.1 talks about clothing covering someone, and something can even be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (2 Chr. 5.8). So covered can certainly be used with different nuances and senses. But what about covering with water? In Job. 38.34, Jer. 46.8, and Mal. 2.13, covering with water is used figuratively. If we were to take this in the the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.

But in Gn. 7.20 in says the waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than 20'. But remember that "covered" can mean different things. It can mean "above"; it can mean "upward" or "upstream." If this were the case in Genesis, it could suggest that the water reached 15 cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

In 8.5 it says "the waters continued to recede until ... the tops of the mountains became visible." But remember, the Mesopotamians didn't consider the mountains at the fringes of the world to be part of their geography. These mountains were the places of the gods and would be impervious to floodwaters sent by the gods. The local mountains are what are inundated, and the ark drifts to rest against the foothills of Ararat.

I hope you understand. Linguistic, archaeological, and scientific discoveries have motivated a far more realistic understanding of what happened there, hopefully setting aside drastic and ridiculous notions of a global flood. I'm not twisting reality to fit; I'm adjusting perspective to fit reality. It's a good scientific mindset. The scope of the flood is the scope of Noah's worldview. The words are to be interpreted in his cultural and linguistic understanding. As you can see, it becomes a real problem as it comes into English, because people just read it shallowly and simple verbatim rather than in nuance and perspective. I'm not "running around and jumping through hoops." It's an understanding of a matter of speaking. In Romans 1.8, Paul said that the faith of the Roman Christians "is being reported all over the world." This isn't rocket science. He's talking about "the whole world" as "the Roman Empire." It's not a twist; it's a reasonable understanding. I understand this is a radical paradigm shift for you; it certainly was for me. But a person of reason shifts their understanding to the weight of evidence, which is what I feel I have done.

Whatever the flood was, it wasn't global. I could give you about 20 scientific reasons off the top of my head as to how that's impossible. Being scientifically and linguistically minded, then, I search for better answers and a deeper understanding. I consider that to be responsible, not absurd. Maybe it was something like the Straight of Gibraltar giving way, and the Atlantic Ocean submerging massive amounts of land. Maybe it was something akin to the Black Sea deluge that submerged thousands of square miles of land. Whatever it was, it accomplished its goal. Justice was served, Noah and the animals of the region were spared, and civilization continued on.

There are two others matters I need to touch on, lest you accuse me of avoiding them. What's up with Noah being 600 years old? Dude, that's a lot of candles. Two things to say. Interestingly, there are Sumerian lists of kings who purportedly reigned before the flood with reigns recorded as long as 43,200 years. The Sumerians used the sexagesimal number system (a combination of base 6 and base 10), and when the numbers of the Sumerian king list are converted to decimal they are very much in the range of the age spans of the pre-flood genealogies of Genesis. The Hebrews, like most other Semitic peoples, used a base ten decimal system as far back as writing extends. So that's a curiosity that has nothing to do with the biblical record, but exists alongside it. I'm still wondering what to do with that.

My other observation is the cultural use of numbers, which I wonder comes into play. In certain parts of Indonesia today, people identify ages based on how much experience or wisdom the person was accorded by the community. At age 35, a man could be introduced as being fifty because that number identified his status as a wise person who should be listened to and heeded. It had nothing to do with his actual age. In another similar story, a woman reported that she was forty, and two years later said she was fifty. She explained that this was a measure of her status and respect in the community. The numbers has rhetorical value, not quantification value.

For another example, this one from Ethiopia. They told my brother they were going to leave for the airport at 8:00 for his flight to Kenya. He said no, we have to leave at 2:00, my flight is at 5:00. They said, that is what we meant—8:00 local time. He said, my watch is on local time, and my schedule is on local time. They said, no it isn’t, there is no watch for local time. Ok, he said, you will have to explain this to me. In local time, they explained, “2:00” means somewhere around lunchtime; “8:00” means middle of the afternoon. Just another example about how numbers mean different things in different cultures and often are used more in culturally rhetorical ways than as rigid quantifications. This should warn us about being overconfident as we try to understand the numbers in the Bible.

Let's see, last comment to a long post. How did this story pass down through so much time? All I can say is all I know: In oral cultures, the transmission of stories is a value, a pastime, and an art. The story has an awful lot of specifics in it to have wandered from actuality, as in the children's games of passing a whisper down the row. It has specific dimensions, accurate dates (though no universal calendar), and even words spoken. I understand that these things are perfectly normal in oral cultures, but I'm not an anthropologist or a sociologist, so I have to rely on the words of others.

Sorry so long, but we bit off a lot. I'll look forward to your reply.

[Newbie]

I have to commend you, that was very well written and you get about an 8 or 9 in clarity. Bravo for that. Now obviously I know the global flood is ridiculous, that why I was pointing out the bible's view on it. I understand your contextual reading, and we can base the conversation on that point.

Oh, and you didn't really address the part that a flood with the water THAT high, and that radius would need to be contained somehow, and that whole area isn't a 3000 mile valley, I'm sure.

I'd like to start off by stating I never claimed Noah wasn't righteous. I wouldn't ever make such a claim, like I would never claim bigfoot is a rocket scientist: It has no relevance to me. I can see how you thought that, but I was only clarifying your part about 'wicked people' being half angel giants.

You said, "God is acting in accordance with both and human estimations of justice in pursuing this course of action. To me it's much like WWII. Hitler was crushing country after country, subjugating people, and exterminating people groups."

To this I reply: What was the crime so fierce that they had to be exterminated? The bible doesn't specify anything, it only says ambiguous things like wicked and godless. So your assertion that god acted within his right is not only unfounded, you're saying it is so only because you can't believe the opposite, a presupposition that is faulty.

Secondly, if God wanted to kill everyone, why use a flood? It's inefficient, and would definitely ruin any agriculture there for a few years at least. Why not just make them dead? The flood is probably the worst way to serve justice.

You said, "3,000 miles in diameter, as I explained. That's what they called, "The Whole Earth.' "

Right. But these are Gods words. God said he was flooding everything. If you think the book is divinely inspired, and I have the cause to think you do, do you really believe God would let himself be misquoted? Let me pose to you another idea: It was written by uninspired men who knew nothing of the world around, and to them, that was the whole world. So you have ignorant people writing a story thousands of years after it actually happened. We'll expound on this again later.

"there is no archaeological evidence for this event, leading us to believe it was before 7,000 BC,"

Technically, this leads us to believe it never happened. You're asserting it happened, so it had to be before X year, or we would have found it. I don't want to harp, but if you're making assertions, do not confuse that with factual history, or even consensus.

"but reduced at least to some extent by their general inactivity and the hibernation periods of some."

Assuming it was during a hibernation period. I'm not going to argue with you that the context here is local, and that sufficient room was provided. However this seems to conflict with other parts of the argument. Most of the animal types could have easily left the area once the water was ankle deep. Only certain things like livestock would be brought, and mostly just for food purposes after the fact, so you'd want to bring quite a few. Especially since there would be no agriculture at all. And the birds? Forget it. They'd be out of there. No point in collecting them at all.

"We must understand their words in the context of their culture."

Yeah, I get that. But I think the point you're missing (even though you kinda admitted it as well) is the fact that the author and the characters REALLY thought this was a worldwide thing. They didn't know any better! And why didn't they know? Because A) It was written thousands of years later, and B) as a tall tale, became more exaggerated as time when on before it was ever written down. I'm not really concerned with the language, because like I said, I don't attribute any of this to fact. The absurdity is what begrudges me.

"I'm not "running around and jumping through hoops." It's an understanding of a matter of speaking."

Let's make up a story. Ok, here it goes. A long long time ago, my DAD told me a story about his DAD, and how it rained so hard that the Mediterranean sea swelled up and flooded the whole area for a month. People were riding little boats to get around until the waters went away.
Ok, neat story.
Oh, let me tell you this story. My DAD told me about his GREAT GREAT GRANDAD about this monstrous flood all around the middle east. It drowned a lot of people in the area except the ones who owned a boat.
Neat story.
One more. My GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT Grandad had to build a boat because God told him he was flooding the planet to get rid of evil angel men who were committing some sort of crime that we're not really sure of, and he had to save all of the animals.....you get the point.
Now, what seems more likely? That there was a pretty bad flood around the Mediterranean, (And there's evidence to suggest such a thing) and people had to be relocated. They told this story about the flood for generation after generation until it turned into 'God dun it.' 2000 years later and they wrote it down. Because remember, this story passed by word of mouth alone, and the language does imply that they really thought this was global, because they wouldn't have known any better.
OR:
God used a really ineffective method of killing Demi-Angels for...some reason, and commanded one 600 year old man to build a boat, collect wild animals, and float around for maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, we don't really know. Even though in the 120 years it took him to build the boat, he could have just....moved. And, not to mention the fact that given the dimensions you listed, how do you know all the evildoers there were killed? Couldn't they have possibly escaped? It's just water. You could float on a door titanic style and paddle to dry ground.

The simple point is this: The story is really incoherent, has no proof, was passed by word of mouth for thousands of years by really religious people. Everything was attribute to A God, or many Gods. We can see this in other flood stories. There is no viable evidence to prove that even a flood that you're talking about even came close to happening. Sure, it was probably massive, but not 20-30' of water on the ground. In order for that to happen, everything on any side of the Mediterranean would HAVE to be equally as high, and that is an unbelievably massive amount of water. So if we apply Occam's razor here, which is the practical story? This is why I say you're jumping through hoops to demonstrate a fairy tale instead of considering the easier explanation.

[jimwalton]

Hey, thanks for the points. It’s nice to have a few on the board.

First I’ll address you reference to Occam’s Razor. While a reliable standard, I don’t think it applies as easily across a few thousand years a cultural barrier and a language barrier. Even in the last half century the meanings of several words have changed completely (such as “gay”). To cross millennia, languages, and cultures, I’m not convinced that taking our simple understanding of the English term is really the wisest pursuit in unstring the story.

My daughter is an illustrator of children’s books, and she has a contract with a London publisher. She often calls me, complaining that the English words they use in London differ from the English words we use in America, and how frustratingly often it creates communication problems and publishing problems. I read in the news magazines how our state department struggles to understand the cultures and communications of the Middle East, as well as North Korea, because their words and the ideas behind the words, even when translated into English, are not clear to us.

If I understand the bulk of your response properly, most of your questions circulate around the reliability of the story: what was its source, and can it be trusted? Your assumption crashes quite clearly through your writing: oral tradition over that span of time suffered from faulty transmission so that the story turns into a fairy tale, if it was even historical to begin with. There was too much time, without writing, to give any serious credibility to the story.

I think there are reasons to at least give the text the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, Genesis 1-11 have shown historic and geographic reliability in the issues that can be examined. For instance, Genesis 2.10 mentions 4 rivers flowing from Eden. Right now there are only two rivers there: the Tigris and Euphrates. Recent satellite photos of the Kuwait/Saudi Arabia region now reveal an ancient river channel there that cross the Arabian peninsula from about 10,000 BC until about 3000 BC. There are also climatological evidences that there have been dramatic climatic changes during this time. Dubbed the Kuwait River, the river channel – along with evidence of floods in Mesopotamia, deep lakes in Africa, grasslands and lakes in Arabia, and heavy forest cover along the eastern Mediterranean coast—provides testimony to a lengthy wet period in the ancient Near East. Kuwait, in addition, is rife with pebbles, which is a clue that a river used to be there.

Gn. 2 also mentions gold, bdellium, and onyx. A place called Mahd edh-Dhahab, in this general region, is one of the richest gold mines in Saudi Arabia. Scholars have often identified Havilah with the Arabian peninsula because it is rich in bdellium and precious stones, but they have previously been unable to pinpoint the location of the river in this desert. The recent discovery of the Kuwait River through this area has led to the suggestion that this dry riverbed may be the Pishon. Now, these certainly don’t prove the existence of the garden of Eden, but since the text says these same things, it shows at least some tenability.

Some of the names of Genesis 10 have proved to be historical. Well, as for Shem, the alleged son of Noah, his name lives on in the Semites, both Jews and Arabs. Madai or the Medes, now known as Iranians. Javan are the Ionians, or Greeks. There’s Cush, Canaan, Hittites, Elamites—the guy (writer) has a source of information that has some reliability to it.

Other connections are possible: Gomer (Germans), and his son Ashkenaz (the Jews still identify Ashkenaz with the Germans), Meshech (Moscow), Tiras (Etruscans). Asshur (Assyrians), Aram (Arabians). You can look a bunch of these up on Wikipedia.

These people groups are known. There’s some historicity here. Now, as I mentioned, this doesn’t prove anything, but it does give some weight of evidence to the reliability of the information.

And his writing about Babylon in Gn. 11 is pretty much spot on. Many of the features of this account point to the end of the 4th millennium, 2000 years before Genesis was traditionally written. Archaeologists have confirmed many of the descriptors here to be authentic to the era and culture. In Canaan and Egypt, they used sun-dried mud bricks, and stone for foundations. How did the author know that thousands of years earlier they used kiln-fired brick, and that you have to use bitumen for mortar in kiln-fired construction? Plus, this kind of construction, it has been discovered, is used just on public buildings and temples, not on the normal residences. He also knows about ziggurats (some of which have been found).

All I’m saying is this: when juries deliberate over cases, they are not necessarily looking for absolute proof, but for “reasonable doubt”. Whoever wrote Genesis 1-11 (and we didn’t even touch on the rest of Genesis, which has even more such evidences), had access to at least a modicum of reliable information. So there’s at least a possibility that the Noah story also is “reliable information.”

As far as the reliability of oral traditions, I told you I wasn’t an anthropology major. So I did what any responsible person would do—I googled it. This was the very first listing (http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/ ... 4_25.1.pdf), and it speaks highly and strongly of the reliability of truth transmission by oral means. This one, the third one down (http://www.ubs-translations.org/fileadm ... 5_Voth.pdf) says it’s impossible to know the accuracy of the transmission. Ha! I even found an “Oral Tradition Journal,” a regular print magazine. Sort of self-contradictory, don’t you think? : )

It’s hard to find an article without a possible religious slant, but I finally came across this one (http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.c ... tions.html) that admits while oral tradition occasionally has elaborations, “Oral history has been increasingly recognized in academia as a valuable contribution to the historical record.”

So saying, my point is still what I mentioned before: There is in my mind enough fair-minded reason to consider that at face value the story has historicity, at least enough that it can’t be brusquely brushed aside as utter nonsense.

And, of course, if you believe in the inspiration of the Scripture, it's a done deal. God told him, and that's his accurate source.

[Newbie]

The Bible says "All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died", "He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground ... they were destroyed from the face of the earth", "Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.", "The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh" ... but you say you don't believe in a global flood. Do you think in each of these passages when God says "all" that He really meant "most"? What are the Bible verses that make you think the flood wasn't world-wide? Once again, do you have a source of truth that's greater than scripture that's determining how you interpret scripture?

[jimwalton]

I'll make 3 points, so make sure you find them all amid all the content.

First of all, a global flood is impossible, for the reasons I'll put below. There are more reasons, but these will be enough. A typical Christian response is, "God did the impossible with a miracle." Yes, while that is possible, it is totally out of character and completely inconsistent with how he did every other miracle listed for us in Scripture. If God did a global flood, it would have to have been an agglomeration of hundreds, if not thousands, of miracles, including teleporting animals in both directions before an after, creating water ex nihilo and then making it disappear, changing the biological structure of animals for a temporary period—that's are all things that are not the style of God in any other miracle. While it's possible, since God can do anything, it's not the best explanation. So, here are SOME of the reasons a global flood is absolutely impossible (short of God doing hundreds of simultaneous miracles):

1. The fossil record, which yields a record of life with a consistent pattern: more and more complex life forms appearing at progressively higher and newer levels. Burials for fish and mammals follows the same pattern of increasing complexity. A global flood theory requires the fossil record to be a somewhat haphazard jumble of odds and ends dumped by the flood, which is not the case.

2. There is no single, consistent, global, sedimentary flood layer.

3. The nature and composition of coal beds are not consistent with young earth and floodwater scenarios.

4. Thick salt bed formed by the slow evaporation of sea water (the Paradox Basin of Utah, where they reach a depositional thickness of 1.5 km with at least 29 separate cycles of salt deposition) is inconsistent with a theory that requires them to have formed in a single year (at a minimum rate of 4 m/day).

5. Typical ocean floors are covered by about 800 m of sediments. Assuming an average deposition rate of 0.01 mm/yr, an 800-meter accumulation would require 80 million years. Young earth creationists would require most of this accumulation to have taken place late in the flood year. The very delicate layering and fine grain size characteristic of these oozes and muds argue strongly against such wholesale dumping rates.

6. The top 2 km of Mt. Ararat’s 5.2 km height is a volcano built over deformed sedimentary rocks. Young creationists’ model requires that the entire volcanic growth took place very late in the flood year. This volcano had to violate all laws of thermal physics in order to cool completely in a few months in time for the ark to land on it.

7. Grand Canyon geology. For the Grand Canyon to have formed in one year would require massive layers of wet sediments to be deposited and hardened at astounding rates over the course of just a few weeks, leaving them solid enough to be incised into mile-high cliff by receding floodwaters. This could be true of limestone, but not of sandstone and shale, which require major loss of water, compaction and/or chemical cement to become a strong rock—all processes that involve significant amounts of time.

8. The examination of silt levels at the Sumerian cities of Ur, Kish, Shuruppak, Lagash and Uruk (all of which have occupation levels at least as early as 2800 BC) are from different periods (some from 4th millennium and some from 3rd) and do not reflect a single massive flood that inundated them all at the same time. Similarly, the city of Jericho, which been continuously occupied since 7000 BC, has no flood deposits whatsoever. Climatological studies have indicated that the period from 4500 to 3500 BC was significantly wetter in this region, but that offers little to go on.

9. Environmental Evidence:

a. According to Genesis, the sea level rose for 150 days until it covered the tops of the mountains, and then subsided for another 150 days. This is physically impossible. The local sea level can rise several feet an hour during a hurricane, but for the sea level to rise to the 17,000’ peak of Ararat it would have to rise to that height around the entire planet. That would require 620 million cubic miles of additional water weighing 3 quintillion tons. All the oceans of the world would have to triple in volume in only 150 days and then quickly shrink back to normal. Where did the water come from, and where did it go?

b. For the water to reach 17,000’ in 150 days, it would have had to rise at the rate of over 100’ per day, almost 5’ per hour. Even if that was possible, it would have created currents that would have made survival in the ark unlikely.

c. It has long been know that rain clouds cannot possibly hold even 1/10th of 1% of the water required for a flood of this magnitude.

d. If the ark ran aground on the still submerged summit of Mt. Ararat on the 17th day of the 7th month, and the tops of the mountains became visible on the first day of the 10th month, was water receded only 15’ in 75 days. Yet it would have to have receded 17,000 in the next 75 days, because by the first day of the first month, the earth was dry.

e. What did the carnivorous animals eat until their prey populations were reestablished?

f. If the dove flew down into a valley to get an olive leaf (only growing in low elevations), how did it manage to fly back up to 17,000’ to the ark? Doves can’t do that.

g. There are a number of animals that have been confined to local areas since before the Pleistocene Ice Age. If these (the kangaroos of Australia being an example) were to be brought to the ark in Mesopotamia and then released after the flood, it does not seem possible that they would or could migrate back to their previous locations without populating other parts of the world.

h. A universal flood would mix all salt and fresh water, killing all freshwater fish and some saltwater fish. Those would not have been on the ark.

10. There would not have been enough room in the ark to accommodate two of all the species then in existence. Fossil evidence around the globe shows that there was an abundant animal population in every continent. Plus, they had one week to get 42,000 on board. Even if God brought them to the ark, that’s a traffic jam that would take more than one week to unsnarl.

11. Assuming 21,000 species of amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammals, we’re assuming at least 42,000 on board. Of the 8 caretakers, each would have to visit 2637 cages a day for feeding and cleaning. If each person worked a 12-hr shift, each cage would get 3 2/3 minutes of care a day.

12. To cover mountains 6 miles high would require 8 times more water than we have on the planet. Where did it come from and where did it go? That much additional water, if created specially for the purpose, would have altered the earth’s weight and disturbed the earth’s orbit around the sun, as well as the moon’s orbit around the earth.

13. Though there are accounts of a great flood around the globe, the differences between them are too extensive to allow confident claims that they must be narrative reflections of the same event. Flood stories are entirely lacking in Africa, occur only occasionally in Europe, and are absent in many parts of Asia. They are widespread in America, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific.


So there's a few. Secondly, what about the "all" statements, you ask. First of all, the book of Genesis is in the context of the characters in the story. For instance, Gn. 41.57 (same book as the flood) says, "And all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world." Are we to understand that the Eskimos came down? In Deut. 2.25, also written by Moses, God says, "This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven..." Um, seriously? Were the Australians quaking? the Aztecs? Of course not. This refers to their context: the nations of Canaan and the surrounding regions. So "all", according to Moses, doesn't necessarily always mean "all," meaning global.

Yeah, but you may ask, it covered the mountains! That's in Gn. 7.19. That word "covered" is the root ksh. Here's how it's used:
Num. 22.11: the people covered the land. It means there were a lot of them. So, yeah, there was a lot of water.
Prov. 24.31: weeds covered the land. it means there were a lot of them.
1 Ki. 1.1: clothing covering someone.
2 Chr. 5.8: a cloud covered the ark, meaning it created a shadow over it.
Job 38.34; Jer. 46.8; Ma. 2.31: "covering" is figurative.

So the word could mean the mountains were drenched with a lot of water. It doesn't demand they were submerged. And if "all" doesn't necessarily mean "all", and "covered" doesn't necessarily mean "covered"...

Gn. 7.20 says (in Hebrew) "15 cubits from above rose the waters, and the mountains were covered." it's not clear what this means. It can mean "above; it can mean "upward" or "upstream." If it means "upward," it may mean that the water reached 15 cubits upward from the surface, the plain, covering at least part of the mountains.

Gn. 8.5 says the tops of the mountains became visible. It could mean, in a global flood, that the water had receded far enough to see the tops of the mountains. In their culture, the mountains of the landscape were what they called mountains. The humungous mountains (like the Zagros or Taurus Mountains, where Ararat is), were thought to be pillars holding up the firmament. They would not have counted those as "mountains" to be "covered". They were the places of the gods.

A global flood is not required by the text. Noah's culture (Canaan and the surrounding regions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and Babylon) was hopelessly corrupt with sin. God instructed Noah to build an ark to house the animals of his region (size of ark was about right for that number of species), and a flood of catastrophic proportions destroyed the entire continental region, destroying "all" life in its wake.

Thirdly, so, then, what happened? Well, we're not exactly sure. According to geologists, about 5 million years ago, the Straight of Gibraltar was holding back the Atlantic Ocean, and an earthquake split and separated it, causing a bazillion gallons of the Atlantic to spill over a monstrous amount of landmass. Something like that could surely qualify. Another kind of thing: in about 5500 BC, the geology of the Black Sea suggests a catastrophe that caused the then-small lake to become huge. The flooding of that event covered about 60,000 square miles, and human settlements for many miles around were destroyed. These kinds of events are much more in keeping with God's style, would suit the intent of judging the evil of the region, would cause God to instruct Noah to build and ark to save himself and preserve species. They are not at all unreasonable kinds of guesses for the way the text reads.

[Newbie]

The bulk of my reply was actually about all of the ridiculous points in the story, and how much easier it would've been to not to do that.

Point 1) The flood itself. A horrible way of ending the life in the area. By your reasoning, it's not global, and therefor, not guaranteed to be effective.

2) Timeframe. The flood happen over a hundred years after God commissioned Noah for the Ark. You're telling me, that in 100 years, none of those wicked people relocated to a place outside the flood area?

3) The ark itself. A big, useless boat, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense to take ANY animals, except livestock, because the rest of the animals outside the flood area would be fine. And most animals could take off once the rain started. Food is another issue, which brings me to....

4) Food. Noah would have to bring enough meats and grasses to feed all of the animals. Not only for the 6 month boat ride, but also for the months following. The land would be totally useless for months afterwards. Everything would just be soggy, mud, and dead. No plants, nothing. So he would have to keep enough livestock to eat, and enough grass to feed them for the 6 months, plus the months after until new things could be planted and reaped AFTER the ground was even usable. That's probably close to a years worth of food for all of the animals, plus the food for himself and his family.

Now, they have to endure ALL of this, instead of God just striking everyone dead who was doing wrong. And we don't even know why all of the non-nephilims had to die. There wasn't one decent human being born within 100 years of God telling Noah about the flood? Not one person worth saving besides Noah? I honestly just can't buy it.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the reply. Late doesn't matter; all that counts is the quality of the discussion.

You are right that if the flood is not global, by my analysis, then it's not guaranteed to be effective. I agree, and that's part of the point. People had become desperately corrupt, but all hope was not lost. Though the damage was severe, there was still hope. Therefore the judgment would not be complete, but in measure. 2 Peter 3.5-13 talks about the End Times, when the corruption is complete, and so also will be the judgment. But here where the corruption is partial, so also the judgment. The verb in Gn. 6.13 ("destroy; gone to ruin") is the same verb used in vv. 11 & 12 ("corrupt; gone to ruin"). It is as if God was applying the "eye for an eye" logic of just retribution. Since humans plunged the world into moral chaos, they would be punished with a just proportion of physical chaos. The return of the land to chaos is a mirror image of Genesis 1, where the land is brought out of chaos. In other words, in Gn. 1 he created, in Gn. 6-8 he de-creates, undoing what has become, destroying what has self-destructed, and in Gn. 9 he creates anew. Many of the terms in Gn. 9 are the same terms of Gn. 1.

During the time frame that it took Noah & Co. to build the ark (which was probably more like 60 years), yes, people could have relocated. But that's within what God was doing, because the destruction was not meant to be complete, and to send the message of God's judgment on their immorality and godlessness. Even if some "escaped the bullet", the point was made and judgment was rendered. That some escaped doesn't make anything that God did unfair. If the U.S., for instance, were to invade the Middle East to eradicate Al Qaeda, and they get 99% of them, the mission is considered accomplished.

The animals. What makes sense is the preservation of species to repopulate the area after the flood. Rather than a destruction that makes some species extinct and reduces others to "endangered," they are preserved. The two other pieces of logic are (1) domestic animals for survival afterwards, and (2) some animals to sacrifice afterwards. Gn. 7.2 states Noah was to bring "seven seven" of every clean beast, which can mean 3 pairs and 1 for sacrifice. Again, since "all" doesn't mean "all" in this story, what is coming to the ark for preservation are representative populations of the animals that fit into those categories. It has been calculated that there was room in the ark for 7,000 species of animals, or 35,000 individuals. Despite your right to your opinion, my opinion is that a boat is a good idea for preservation in time of flood.

Food. The animals' food requirements were probably greatly reduced by the general inactivity and by the hibernation periods of some. But in an era without refrigeration, they became adept at food storage, either by drying, smoking, or salting, or by keeping grains in environments conducive to storage. The advice we read about Noah here is similar to Joseph's advice to the native Egyptians to gather up and store sufficient grain to withstand the coming 7-year famine. To store food for 1 yr could have been a challenge, but not impossible.

"They have to endure ALL of this, instead of God just striking everyone dead..." God used different methods for different occasions. In Egypt, the 10th plague was exactly that—just striking them dead. For Sodom and Gomorrah, it was fire from heaven, most likely an airburst similar to what happened over Russia earlier this year. During the days of Joshua, it was warfare. Here it's a flood. I don't know if the mechanism is really important; to me what I want to know is "Was it fair or not?" The Bible proposes its case in 6.5f: , great wickedness, engrained evil, ubiquitous corruption, and rampant and unchecked violence. While the nephilim are not clearly defined for us, the case made by the writer is that the depravity had spread to all, and therefore all were deserving of judgment. "Only one worth saving?" Apparently. Later we have similar scenarios, where one is saved from Sodom, and one from Jericho. The point is that God is perfectly willing to save anyone who is deserving, AND their families.

To me it's of addition significance that the two major pieces of writing we have from the era (The Atrahasis Epic and the Gilgamesh Epic) both have a flood story. As you're saying, it would be an odd thing to make up. Why do these ancient cultures from the same region have a "similar" story? To me it gives it a ring of "hmmmm.... Makes ya wonder."

It's not that there wasn't one decent human being on the planet. The Bible is strong in communicating that it's not goodness that God is looking for, but godliness. It's not "I'm a pretty good guy when it comes right down to it," but whether you are a person of faith who has a relationship with God. In our era, there are many good people, but far fewer godly people. In the Bible, godliness is the point. No one goes to heaven because they are good, but because they have a love relationship with God.

The story is consistent with the way God acts in the rest of history. He reveals himself in a way that anyone could get it. Many choose to rebel, and the rebellion is squelched just enough so that the truth may remain. The truth is always the underdog, but God sees to it that a remnant of people are always preserved, despite their oppression by the majority, to carry on the revelation of God and the message of truth.
The flood story and Noah
The Tower of Babel, but Abraham carries on
The children of Israel in Egypt, but they are preserved from assimilation
The conquering of Israel by Assyria, and later by Babylon, but a remnant is preserved
The story of Esther, where the Jews are almost exterminated, but preserved
The book of Revelation

It's what Tolkien had in mind with his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Tolkien was a man of deep Christian faith, and his story tells the same story: The great overwhelming power of evil, but a small remnant, and one in particular, topple the great darkness (with the help of outside powers).

So here we are in a discussion, where the Bible says "this is true," and you say, "I just don't buy it." Here's the story in a nutshell. Sin is contagious, and just as in nature, where a garden left to itself will quickly turn to weeds, people who don't remain in relationship with God quickly turn to self. Self, in turn, breeds self-interest, self-preservation, and self-authority. Society turns to survival of the toughest. (It's "The Lord of the Flies" in real life.) God sees it all happening, and is grieved by the evil. He decides to squelch the rebellion enough to stop the momentum, and in the course of it preserve both enough of creation and of humanity to start over on the right foot. A flood is the tool of choice, because the earth has been flooded with godlessness. He saves Noah and his family because they are the remnant who have the best shot at starting things back off on the right foot. (We'll find that they fail at this, predictably, and God implements the next phase of his plan in Gn. 12.)

I'd be pleased to talk to you more. What is it you just can't buy?