Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Gator Vortex]

Why would God use a flood instead of just magically turning everybody into dust? Why would God use a flood instead of just magically stopping everybodies hearts or turning everybody into dust?

Both of these solutions would allow him to get rid of the "wicked" on the Earth, but with the advantage of not killing all the innocent animals, and also not requiring Noah and his family to build a boat, and also not requiring God to cover up all geological evidence of the flood having happened.

Why would he instead opt to use the painful, imprecise method of drowning to do the job? Similar question applies to the treatment of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I suggest that a perfect God wouldn't have this need for dramatic, theatrical displays to people who were going to die anyway, and that this is just anthropomorphization by his human inventors who expected a God would behave like a narcissistic human dictator of the sort they were used to (with magic powers of course) would.

With a hint of "adapted the story from sumerian myths" and "thought natural disasters were his judgement, so they thought obviously this is the kind of thing a God would do" of course.

[jimwalton]

> Why would God use a flood instead of just magically stopping everybodies hearts or turning everybody into dust?

First of all, God often uses methods that have a parable effect: there are elements in His methods that connect with truths in other categories. Here a flood speaks of disorder (in the ancient world their primary worldview concerns were order, disorder and non-order), which is one important point the text is making. God is returning the landscape back to disorder (Gn. 1.2) since the people had made it a place of disorder with their sin. The cosmic sea was an element of chaos, so this was important imagery to the ancients.

Secondly, the analogy is made later in the New Testament that the waters of the flood were like a baptism of sorts (1 Peter 3.21).

Third, (similar to the first), water was seen as a spiritual force, so it spoke of divine judgment more than turning people to dust would have.

> Why would he instead opt to use the painful, imprecise method of drowning to do the job? Similar question applies to the treatment of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The work of God is usually in the vein of lex talionis: let the punishment fit the crime. They had committed spiritual treason, and so were judged with what was perceived by them as a spiritual force. They had also grieved God's heart (Gn. 6.6), so their punishment was grievous.

> I suggest that a perfect God wouldn't have this need for dramatic, theatrical displays

Please don't jump to conclusions before having the facts. It wasn't a dramatic, theatrical display, but one with spiritual and symbolic meaning. You just assume God is melodramatic, that the story was a human invention, and that God is narcissistic before you have even discussed it!

> With a hint of "adapted the story from sumerian myths"

Again, what makes you think that the author "adapted the story from sumerian myths" rather than that the Bible, Sumer, Babylon, and Mesopotamia are all recording the same historical event from their own theological perspectives? We see the same thing today. President Trump does something—oh, anything—and the Republicans and Democrats interpret it according to their political perspectives. But the thing actually happened. It was an event in history.

[Korrupt]

Incredible analogy, great comment and content!

“What if the God is not such an active entity, nor a figure, but the world as nature and as culture. And that flood as a methaphor, for a form of destruction.

What if what the stance at Noah’s time is anarchy. People doing “bad” things. There wasn’t a greater spirit they obeyed, but everyone for themselves. Absolutist individualism, hence Anarchy. This system was unstable in terms of society and maybe also nature and thus vanished with only the “worthy” surviving. Then came the tower of Babel, where everybody talks the same language. They try to build a tower so high, it wants to reach to heaven and take the place of god. A system that everybody belongs to, absolutist collectivism. This system becomes unstable and collapses and everyone want away and spoke a different language, became different.

We need the individual as an entity and we need the collective. The absolutist approach to either isn’t desirable and neither stable on the long term. The question is how much we need for each? This is probably up to debate for every “collective” and every individual within that collective to decide, for every situation.”

[jimwalton]

The problem with your approach, as I read it, is that it makes the existence of God and the entire Bible (apparently) a metaphor for social and political phenomena. This goes against the whole grain and purpose of the Bible: the revelation of the true God who is actually at work in history and desires a relationship with people in space/time reality.

We have to take the Bible in its cognitive environment, which was not one in which the worldview was as you are describing. The socio-psychological frame of your comment would be foreign to the ancient world, who perceived reality through a theological lens (which may be an accurate way to perceive reality, though foreign to us who see everything through a scientific paradigm). Your theory is more Marxian or psychological than it is an accurate description of the ancient Near Eastern cultural river.

[Gator Vortex]

> God often uses methods that have a parable effect: there are elements in His methods that connect with truths in other categories. Here a flood speaks of disorder (in the ancient world their primary worldview concerns were order, disorder and non-order), which is one important point the text is making. God is returning the landscape back to disorder (Gn. 1.2) since the people had made it a place of disorder with their sin. The cosmic sea was an element of chaos, so this was important imagery to the ancients.

But why? Again, this supports my point. More drama and theatrics.

> Also, why would he return the landscape to "disorder" if the problem is that people are making it disordered?
> Third, (similar to the first), water was seen as a spiritual force, so it spoke of divine judgment more than turning people to dust would have.

This part seems to be about what people thought in their ignorance was specific judgement when it was actually just normal disasters that happened according to the normal physical laws, not due to miracles.

> The work of God is usually in the vein of lex talionis: let the punishment fit the crime. They had committed spiritual treason, and so were judged with what was perceived by them as a spiritual force. They had also grieved God's heart (Gn. 6.6), so their punishment was grievous.

Doesn't explain the unnecessary suffering of the animals and babies.

"Grief" is among the emotions an omniscient, omnipotent being shouldn't be able to feel (though again, more drama typical of a narcissist). If you fully expect/know something to happen, and you have the power to prevent it, there's no reason to let it happen if you don't want it to.

> Please don't jump to conclusions before having the facts. It wasn't a dramatic, theatrical display, but one with spiritual and symbolic meaning. You just assume God is melodramatic, that the story was a human invention, and that God is narcissistic before you have even discussed it!

How is this symbolism stuff not a melodramatic, theatrical thing? That's one of the aspects of what makes something theatrical or melodramatic in the first place.

Many behaviors of God are uncannily similar to those of narcissists, and my point is that these details are more indicative of human invention than actually representing an omnipotent, omniscient, perfect being.

> Again, what makes you think that the author "adapted the story from sumerian myths" rather than that the Bible, Sumer, Babylon, and Mesopotamia are all recording the same historical event from their own theological perspectives? We see the same thing today. President Trump does something—oh, anything—and the Republicans and Democrats interpret it according to their political perspectives. But the thing actually happened. It was an event in history.

Historical events don't get twisted to such massive degree, especially when they all sprout from the same family.:

Causes of flood: Angry god, annoyed group of gods, giant being slain and spilling blood, people dropping containers with inexplicable amounts of water in them

Purposes of flood: Restart human race, creating the world to begin with, getting rid of twisted monsters,

How they survived: Hiding on mountain, hiding inside a shell, hiding inside a barrel, floating on driftwood, built a boat in advance (shape of boat varies wildly, may be drawn by giant fish), boat built for them by non-human beings,

How many survived: One couple, many people friends with the couple, many unrelated people surviving on their own, none of the animals whatsoever, many animals, 2 of each kind, ogres
https://youtu.be/DrDTaHjg2IQ?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMJP95iZJqEjmc5oxY5r6BzP&t=253

Just a handful of the stories really. Lots more exist.

This clearly isn't a case of the same story being remembered. On the contrary, with Trump, the variations are mostly all about his personal motivations for given actions or his competency (or lack thereof). With a couple of variations on whether he was elected fairly or with manipulation. Nobody disagrees that he made this bill or that bill, or went to this talk or that one.

[jimwalton]

> But why? Again, this supports my point. More drama and theatrics.

No, no, absolutely not. Just because events have deeper meanings doesn't mean it's "drama and theatrics." Some people see the present immigration situation in America as a parable of what has been wrong with our immigration policy for decades. It doesn't mean we can cavalierly relegate it to drama, theatrics, and narcissism.

> Also, why would he return the landscape to "disorder" if the problem is that people are making it disordered?

Genesis 6-9 mirror Genesis 3. They both follow the same pattern: human sin, judgment, and grace in the midst of judgment. It is also the pattern of the Cain/Abel story and the Tower of Babel story. It is often thought that the flood story is an "un-creation" and a "re-creation": the formless and void of Genesis 1.2 is reflected in the flood story. Adam & Eve's sin is pictured in the corruption of humanity (Gn. 6.5ff.). From the water chaos God orders the world to be functional and livable. The flood is a reversion to thew watery mass, and the beginning of Gn. 9 is a "re-creation" story. It all ties together in literary and theological unity.

> This part seems to be about what people thought in their ignorance was specific judgement when it was actually just normal disasters that happened according to the normal physical laws, not due to miracles.

Well, this reveals your bias. How do you know this is true, or are you making an assumption based on some a priori opinion?

> Doesn't explain the unnecessary suffering of the animals and babies.

It can, because they weren't necessarily unnecessary. The testimony of the text was that these were failed cultures without hope of being civil. People also need to learn that the fallout from their evil reaches beyond themselves, even to what some deem as "innocents" around them. These are pretty important lessons to learn. We're even seeing the need for this kind of wisdom in our current political crisis. Behavior reaches beyond ourselves and affects the innocents in our orbit.

> "Grief" is among the emotions an omniscient, omnipotent being shouldn't be able to feel (though again, more drama typical of a narcissist).

You are right if the god is impersonal and just a spiritual force. But if the God is personal, and a God who desires a love relationship with His people, then grief is to be expected when the relationship is marred by defiance and rebellion. Again, your bias is showing. You have a chip on your shoulder about God and assume the worst. He is saddened by evil, so you consider him to be narcissistic. That just doesn't follow.

> Many behaviors of God are uncannily similar to those of narcissists, and my point is that these details are more indicative of human invention than actually representing an omnipotent, omniscient, perfect being.

You miss the point of the text entirely. I would guess that your bias is skewing your view.

> Historical events don't get twisted to such massive degree, especially when they all sprout from the same family.:

You misunderstand the nature of mythology. Mythology was to place a theological understanding on the roots of their culture. In the Bible, theology is used to interpret history. When there is a cataclysmic event such as a large regional flood, each culture would interpret that circumstance according to their prevailing theological worldview.

As far as your link, the mythographies of the surrounding culture do not disprove the flood. The general counters of the flood story as we hear it in the Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis Epic, and the Gilgamesh Epic are similar. There are striking similarities to the biblical account, and radical differences, especially in how they interpret the event. Since the flood precedes the invention of writing, it's no surprise that each culture, when they finally do write, record the event in their own theological worldview.

> This clearly isn't a case of the same story being remembered.

That's not so clear as you imagine.

[Evil Stevil]

> what makes you think that the author "adapted the story from sumerian myths" rather than that the Bible, Sumer, Babylon, and Mesopotamia are all recording the same historical event from their own theological perspectives?

Mostly because the other accounts pre-date the Bible.

[jimwalton]

You're right that the Mesopotamian writings predate the writing of the Bible, but since the flood event itself predated all of the writings, we can see how each cultural river and cognitive environment gave theological interpretation to the common historical event.

[Gator Vortex]

> No, no, absolutely not. Just because events have deeper meanings doesn't mean it's "drama and theatrics." Some people see the present immigration situation in America as a parable of what has been wrong with our immigration policy for decades. It doesn't mean we can cavalierly relegate it to drama, theatrics, and narcissism.

Huh?, immigration stuff isn't a "parable" of anything. It's not a simple story meant to show a point, it's an actual consequence of some policies or other.

> This part seems to be about what people thought in their ignorance was specific judgement when it was actually just normal disasters that happened according to the normal physical laws, not due to miracles.
> Well, this reveals your bias. How do you know this is true, or are you making an assumption based on some a priori opinion?

Which of the following do you disagree with:

1. People experienced normal disasters such as floods regularly.
2. People have "paradoliea" or "hyperactive agent detection" tendencies to project agency onto situations where there is none.
3. People, not knowing the actual cause or mechanisms behind the weather, often attributed it to wilful agents such as spirits or gods.
4. This attribution causes a perception that these disasters are "divine judgement", both the actual events and concept of the events. For example, if you as a historic human were to encounter a specific type of weapon used only by certain nations, you would associate that weapon with them.

> It can, because they weren't necessarily unnecessary. The testimony of the text was that these were failed cultures without hope of being civil. People also need to learn that the fallout from their evil reaches beyond themselves, even to what some deem as "innocents" around them. These are pretty important lessons to learn. We're even seeing the need for this kind of wisdom in our current political crisis. Behavior reaches beyond ourselves and affects the innocents in our orbit.

I see no justification here of why he needed to kill the animals and plants. I don't think there's any possibility of you convincing me that mans actions had made the ants and deer and butterflies and birds, and human babies "evil" or "non-innocent" via some corruption.

Of course, I can understand that dustifying the babies despite being innocent would probably be merciful compared to letting them starve without their parents. But most animals have no such dependence on humans.

> You are right if the god is impersonal and just a spiritual force.

Irrelevant. This kind of knowledge very much alters ones thinking. You can't maintain a human-like emotional landscape when you know absolutely everything and are all powerful.

> But if the God is personal, and a God who desires a love relationship with His people, then grief is to be expected when the relationship is marred by defiance and rebellion.

Sorrow and grief is a response to regret and misfortune. Both of these indicate a desire that things had happened differently, but a God not only knows in advance what WILL happen, but made the decisions that lead to it knowing fully well the consequences, AND also could stop it at any time.

Knowing everything and having all power makes grief impossible. After a brief time, they would render anybody, even me and you, incapable of being sad about anything. Or feeling anger, or disappointment, or fear, or surprise.

> Again, your bias is showing. You have a chip on your shoulder about God and assume the worst. He is saddened by evil, so you consider him to be narcissistic. That just doesn't follow.

He could have prevented it entirely if he wanted, and knew it was coming, and also that the flood wouldn't fix the problem anyway.
I call it narcissistic because it's deceptive, not a realistic response for someone omnipotent and omniscient, and conveniently deliberately evokes lots of emotion that distracts from what he's actually doing. Like his displays of anger (response to provocation or things not going ones way), it's theatrics and overblown displays that don't make sense for a being in his position.

> You miss the point of the text entirely. I would guess that your bias is skewing your view.

The point the texts try to make isn't really relevant, he's still easily describable as a narcissist because of his actions, declarations and general characterization.

> You misunderstand the nature of mythology. Mythology was to place a theological understanding on the roots of their culture. In the Bible, theology is used to interpret history. When there is a cataclysmic event such as a large regional flood, each culture would interpret that circumstance according to their prevailing theological worldview.

> As far as your link, the mythographies of the surrounding culture do not disprove the flood. The general counters of the flood story as we hear it in the Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis Epic, and the Gilgamesh Epic are similar. There are striking similarities to the biblical account, and radical differences, especially in how they interpret the event. Since the flood precedes the invention of writing, it's no surprise that each culture, when they finally do write, record the event in their own theological worldview.

Okay, so everybody over time forgot and contorted/twisted their memory of the actual events to extreme degrees not seen literally anywhere else. So lacking in evidence or plausibility that's basically grounds to reject it by itself, but let's go further.

So then, the real story comes along, and of ALL the completely different, twisted and contorted ideas that are so unrelated in content that one could almost think they came up with it independently, the true story just so happens to share many, many striking details with the geographical neighbours of the people who wrote the real story down?

That of ALL these non-similar myths, the one that preserved it most accurately just happens to be the same region that later has the real one arise, rather than the other possible scenario where the people who "got it closest" to the real story living somewhere far away?

Uh huh, sure. That's the most sensible and parsimonious explanation.

I propose that the more likely explanation is that they got it from the Sumerians story. Whether they did this over time as cultural adaptation/game of telephone, or some writers deliberately modified it to fit their monotheistic religion isn't something I know (I'm no historian), but most certainly it came from their neighbours.

> That's not so clear as you imagine.

It very much is.

[jimwalton]

> immigration stuff isn't a "parable" of anything. It's not a simple story meant to show a point, it's an actual consequence of some policies or other.

Thank you. Yes. So also the flood narrative. And as such, it becomes a teachable moment for other times and situation, hence a sort of parable. But it's not a simple story meant to show a point. The flood is an actual consequence of their behavior. This is exactly it. Thanks.

> People experienced normal disasters such as floods regularly.

Probably. There's no good reason to assume otherwise, but probably not floods of this magnitude. Floods this large would have been, an still are, and extremely rare occurrence.

> People have "paradoliea" or "hyperactive agent detection" tendencies to project agency onto situations where there is none.

While some people do this, we have to be judicious and not irresponsible in assigning this explanation too casually or in a biased manner.

> People, not knowing the actual cause or mechanisms behind the weather, often attributed it to wilful agents such as spirits or gods.

Some do, some don't. It's not necessarily responsible to generalize.

> This attribution causes a perception that these disasters are "divine judgement", both the actual events and concept of the events.

It can and still does in some cases, but again, we have to be judicious and not irresponsible in assigning this explanation too casually or in a biased manner.

> I see no justification here of why he needed to kill the animals and plants.

I can tell you don't. In my theories about evil, there is always and necessarily collateral damage that is part and parcel of the situation. It's once of the necessarily consequences of evil, but this is a much longer and focused discussion.

> This kind of knowledge very much alters ones thinking. You can't maintain a human-like emotional landscape when you know absolutely everything and are all powerful.

First of all, knowledge is never causative. It can't be. Only power can be causative. Second, God doesn't have a human-like emotional landscape. God is anthropomorphically described in human-emotional terms, but we are not to think he has a human-like emotional landscape. It's not a sound attribution.

> Sorrow and grief is a response to regret and misfortune.

It can also be an empathetic response to agony. If I see a baby suffering with cancer, it's neither because of regret (for any of my behavior) or misfortune (that I have caused), but rather on my capacity for empathy in witnessing suffering.

> AND also could stop it at any time.

Here's where you're wrong, but the discussion about the place of evil in the world and how it works, and what God can do is a much longer conversation. Just briefly, if God stopped all evil, he would contradict the cause-and-effect sequences so often that both science and reason would be impossible, and if He were to prevent all suffering and pain in us we would cease to be human but would instead be robotic machines. It's just not possible that God "could stop it at any time."

> Knowing everything and having all power makes grief impossible.

You misunderstand both omniscience and omnipotence. Knowledge is not causative, and God's omnipotence cannot stop all pain and suffering without depriving us of reason and humanity. Again, this is a much longer discussion. If you take your statement to its logical conclusions, it doesn't hold together.

> so everybody over time forgot and contorted/twisted their memory of the actual events to extreme degrees

See? Why do you assume distortion? Mythology isn't distortion but a theological template for explanation. The Biblical narrative isn't a distortion but a theological interpretation of an event in nature.