Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Newbie]

I've read that you don't think the flood was global. Can we talk about that? God said, "I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish."

[jimwalton]

The "universal" language of the text is not necessarily global, but may mean something different.

Look at Dt. 2.25 (traditionally the same author): “I will put the…fear of you on all the nations under heaven.” Very few people would argue that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others.

Look at Gn. 41.57 (same book!): 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." Really? Did the Eskimos come? The Mayans? The Australians? No, that's not what "all" means, and that's not what "all the world" means. So what do we do with that? It calls for interpretation.

Was Noah a preacher of righteousness to the whole world (2 Pet. 2.5), or to the ancient Near East, specifically Canaan? And if "the ancient world" means the region of the ancient Near East, then what are the implications of that for the extent of the flood? The language of the story is normal for Scripture, describing everyday matters from the narrator’s vantage point and within the customary frame reference of his readers.

The ancient view of the world (according to Akkadian texts and Babylonian maps), was a land disk of about 3,000 miles stretching from the mountains of southern turkey in the north to southeast Iran, to the east to the Zagros mountains, and the west into the Mediterranean. Is this what Noah understood by "the whole world"? It's likely. It's possible that "destroy all life" denotes the scope of the physical flood, from the vantage point of the author, for the intended population. Such a phrase could also denote the completeness of God's judgment, conveying that God would judge every creature that has the breath of life in it that he intends to judge. There is far more to say about all of this, but I don't want to just write endlessly. If you want to talk about it further, I'm be glad to.

[By George]

> So, question for you: Does "all" always mean "all"?

Yes. They thought it meant all, the problem was their knowledge was lacking. There were whole continents they knew nothing about. But their lack of knowledge does not stop them from claiming the whole world was flooded. By saying it was to over the height of the highest mountains again they are saying the whole world was covered. If you top the highest mountain that must be the level of water everywhere. Which means they were wrong, which means the bible is wrong.

They explicitly state and believed it was global. It just proves they had no special knowledge about this and made it up.

[jimwalton]

Columbus's sailors thought the world was flat when they sailed west, but they came across another land that they thought was India. They were wrong on both counts. But that by no means necessitates or insinuates that they made it up the account of their voyage or their discovery.

> By saying it was to over the height of the highest mountains again they are saying the whole world was covered.

In the ancient world, "the mountains" and even "all the high mountains" were the regional mountains of their locale. They believed that the summits of the mountain chains were the abodes of the gods and the pillars that held up the firmament. When they talk about "all the high mountains", they were referring to peaks such as Mt. Hermon.

> They were wrong

Of course they were wrong. Their geographical and scientific knowledge were quite limited. You'll notice in Scripture (as is common to all of us) that the purpose was to communicate, not to talk to them in scientific and geographical terms that would have been sheer nonsense to them. Effective communication accommodates to the audience. Talking to Noah about other continents and oceans would have left him going, "What in the WORLD are you talking about? What's an ocean?" When we communicate, we assess what someone knows, determine what words will be meaningful to produce the desired understanding, and tune into images and concepts that coincide with their environment. Knowing that, there can be no question that accommodation is essential in God's communicating with humans. Every act of communication requires accommodation that will tailor the communication to the needs and circumstances of the audience. without this, effective communication couldn't take place.

Secondly, the Bible contains no new revelation about the workings and understanding of the material world. We know that the moon is a piece of rock. In God's revelation to Israel, he never let them know that the moon was a satellite of the earth in outer space, revolving at the same rate of its orbit so that we see only and always the same side... They thought it was the lesser of the two great lights in the dome they called the firmament. The Bible's messages don't offer scientific description or explanation. They accommodate the understandings of the people to whom they were revealed.

Can we infer from this that Noah (or Moses, or even God) is a liar, and that the text is deceptive? No. Noah (or Moses) is telling us that the intent to judge the guilty parties was accomplished. The people Noah knew of ("every living creature on the earth") were all killed. God accommodates their understanding of geography and the world in the genres and literary devices in which they speak. God's intent is not to school them in geography, but in morality. He accommodates their limited view of the earth, but that's incidental to the message. The message (God judges sin, he favors righteousness, and he is the sovereign) comes through loud and clear. There's where the authority of the text lies. We are committed to the message, not to their faulty science. Noah believed that was his whole world; we don't. Israel believed in a solid sky; we don't. To set aside his culturally-bound words doesn't negate the authority of the message. So to understand Scripture properly we discern between the language and culture of Noah's day and the message that is the intent of the text. We are committed to the message. In asking whether or not the entire planet was inundated with water, we are dealing with how to read the terms, the figures of speech, and the hyperbole. But the text becomes authoritative as we deliberate over the truths the communicator intends to affirm through the language he has chosen? Certainly there was a flood—I don't doubt its historicity, but the extent of it can be negotiated. What cannot be negotiated, and where the text has punch, is in that God judged the corruption and depravity of guilty parties before evil humans completely ruined everything.

[By George]

> Columbus's sailors thought the world was flat when they sailed west, but they came across another land that they thought was India.

No they did not. They though it was round, that was the whole point of the voyage. To show you could get to the East faster by going west. It is just his calculations on the size was off by quite a bit and there were some rather large pieces of land in the way he did not know about.

>In the ancient world, "the mountains" and even "all the high mountains" were the regional mountains of their locale.

Yes, but if the gods live in those high places and those high places were all covered then the water must be over all lower places. If that is the highest place they know, then they think all was covered. But still it says the whole world. It says all but Noah and family died.

> You'll notice in Scripture (as is common to all of us) that the purpose was to communicate, not to talk to them in scientific and geographical terms that would have been sheer nonsense to them.

See, that I can agree with. My problem, as an American, is the large amount of people who claim it IS scientific, factual, etc. The people who take it as stories to convey messages, similar to Aesop's fables are fine. But those that say it is literal and every world factually true are not. Saying it was to communicate ideas allows people to add the new information we learn to those stories. Saying it was fact limits us to knowing only what those people then knew.

> Secondly, the Bible contains no new revelation about the workings and understanding of the material world.

I agree, but the majority opinion here is that it does.

> The people Noah knew of ("every living creature on the earth") were all killed.
and
> The message (God judges sin, he favors righteousness, and he is the sovereign) comes through loud and clear.

Combined though with modern knowledge leads on to ask, "Were the tribes in the Americas less sinful than the ones in the Middle East since they did not get judged?" It would seem so since the descendants of them were slaughtered by the descendants of these "chosen" people.

> We are committed to the message, not to their faulty science.

I am fine with that too. It allows us to say this was right, and this was wrong about them and build on it. But those that say the message it literal, infallible, inerrant in all ways prevent this.

> What cannot be negotiated, and where the text has punch, is in that God judged the corruption and depravity of guilty parties before evil humans completely ruined everything.

Yet the people in the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe did not get killed and judged. So apparently they were not quite so depraved and evil. Why let Noah live, when the flood did nothing about the "sin" and evil in his family and would spread again? Why not finish off that area and go work with one of the people not so bad you wanted to wipe them out? A lot of the holes in the messages still become more visible with time and knowledge.

[jimwalton]

Just to be clear, I am not putting the story of Noah's flood on the same plane with Aesop's fables. I believe Noah's account to be historical, just not global.

Were the people in the rest of the world as depraved as the Canaanites? I can't say that, but I would assume not. We know from history that the Assyrians armies were extremely brutal and barbaric, while the Persian ones were far more merciful and "civilized". We know that certain kings and empires were known for their cruelty and others for their justice. Were the populations of the world as sinful as the Canaanites? Sin affects us all. Were they as dissolute? I can't say. Even in modern times, there was a vast difference between, say, Stalin and Khrushchev. I'm not in a position to make that evaluation. But we do know, from Biblical witness, that the Canaanites were described as utterly wicked and unconditionally evil. That is the information we have to go by.

> Why let Noah live, when the flood did nothing about the "sin" and evil in his family and would spread again?

You're right that the flood didn't change the condition of human heart. Only Jesus can do that. But the flood did stop the momentum of sin in the region, speak a message of both judgment and grace for the rest of history, and judge a people whose time for judgment had come.

[J Lord]

Some people and animals die in a normal flood. This is to be expected. But in any normal flood there is not going to be a mass extinction because people and animals move to higher ground as the flood waters rise. If you are saying that the waters covered an entire continent leaving no dry land to escape to then there would be mass extinction but we would also be talking about an event that is not possible.

[jimwalton]

> we would also be talking about an event that is not possible.

It depends how fast it comes. If it's a wild rainstorm, the gradual rising of river water, and fast flooding, that's escapable. But even in that case we know a lot of people seem to get caught in it. But what of the nature of flood that come from things like tsunamis (for which there would be little warning)? We don't know the nature of the biblical flood except that the FIRST thing mentioned (Gn. 7.11) is that "all the springs of the great deep burst forth." We don't exactly know what this is trying to describe, but it sure sounds like it's coming from down below, not up above. Their scientific understanding is limited, so I'm not expecting a geological study, but the observation is something from earth, not from the sky. Whatever it was, it "burst forth"—a vast upheaval of some kind.

[J Lord]

But if this happened over an entire continent I think there would be evidence of it. Or at least some evidence of a mechanism by which it could have happened. Otherwise it is just as improbable as a global flood.

[jimwalton]

Yeah, I'm aware that there is no evidence, but (not being a geologist), I'm not sure what evidence such an event would leave behind to be found 20,000 years later. Water submerges a continent for 40 days, maintains that level for 110 days (3.5 months), and then recedes. If we do all the math in Genesis, it is claimed that the water of the flood was around from the 17th day of the 2nd month of the 600th years of Noah (Gn. 7.11) until the 27th day of the 2nd month of the 601st year of Noah (Gn. 8.14), which ads up to 12 months and 11 days—the exact period required to equate the year of 12 lunar months, 354 days, with the solar year of 365 days. So the flood lasted one solar year. Seriously (and I'm not a geologist, archaeologist, or paleontologist, so I don't know), what evidence would that leave behind? Would it change the topography, leave a flood layer, or create archaeological remains that could be found? I honestly don't know. In ways it sounds too "minor", if I may use the term, to do that. It wouldn't level city walls or stone houses, even though it would kill the people in them. It would leave animal and human remains around, but not that we'd find 20,000 years later. Would it leave some kind of "flood layer"? I dunno, but I'm not sure it would.

And what about the mechanism by which it happened? If it was an earthquake (very common in that region), would we know about that 20,000 years later? Again, I'm not a seismologist. I just don't know if evidence of a mechanism is really as forthcoming as you expect, and until I run across information like that, I don't know whether or not that's warrant to doubt its veracity. Just being honest here.