Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Megaphone]

I'm working my way through the Bible and am currently in Genesis. After reading Noah's Ark, which I always interpreted as a metaphoric, parabolic story, is taken literally by some.

http://www.365daysofthebible.com/the-science-behind-noahs-ark/

I did some research and wrote down my thoughts. There are arguments on both sides and I'm curious what everyone thinks!

[jimwalton]

"Literal" isn't a helpful word here. But the story's not a metaphor either.

I believe the flood happened in history, but it wasn't global.

- The Bible often uses the literary technique of hyperbole to make its theological point.
- The Bible often uses rhetorical devices to make its theological point
- "All" is used in many place in the Bible to speak of the context of their culture, not the whole globe (Dt. 2.25; Gn. 41.57; Acts 17.6, et al.).
- Both science and the Bible are ways God reveals himself to us. They must be concordant. There is no geological evidence of a global flood.
So the Flood historically happened, but it was a large regional flood not a global one. "Literal" is a bad descriptor.

There was a boat, but not the size the Bible describes. Numbers in the Bible are always to be taken with a grain of salt; often they are symbolic. "Literal" doesn't help us, but I don't think it's metaphorical either.

Animals were rescued, but not every animal on the planet. Not only would they not fit in the boat, but there are many reasons this doesn't make sense.

> What happened to all the poop?

Shovel it, overboard it.

> Was the Flood global?

No. The Bible uses the hyperbolic language of universality to make its point. We can discuss this further with many examples if you wish.

> What happened when an animal died on board?

Shovel it, overboard it, but there's no reason to think an animal would die in that time. Besides, there were others of that specie still around. There's no reason to think an animal dying on the ark would make it extinct.

> What about animals from different parts of the world? For example, kangaroos and polar bears.

They weren't on the ark.

> If we interpret Noah’s Ark literally, then we likely would interpret the 6,000-year earth age literally.

This doesn't even follow. I think the ark is historical, may have occurred in about 10,000 BC (who knows, really), and that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. If don't have to accept a young earth to interpret the Noah story as historical.

> How could 4 couples repopulate to our earth in that time with the racial and genetic diversity we currently have?

They didn't have to. The population of the Earth wasn't wiped out.

The story of the ark is a story told with hyperbole and rhetorical devices to express something that really happened in history and interpreted theologically. It is not what you probably mean by "literal," nor is it metaphorical. It's historical narrative meant to be understood as God acting in space and time history. But it wasn't global, the ark wasn't the size of multiple football fields, and every species on the planet wasn't there.

Let's talk more.

[Megaphone]

I think you're right that it's a balance between literal (I know you don't like that word here) and metaphorical. That some sort of flood event did happen, but it was likely localized as opposed to global.

And yes on hyperbole.

But what I found in my research is that some actually believe that it did literally happen as it's described in the bible. That the entire world was flooded. For 150 days. And all animals were on the boat. I ran into plenty of sources (one main one linked at the end of my article) that attempt to find fact in the literal interpretation of the story. I can't get that far.

I can get to the same place you are...a balance.

Thanks for your insights!

[jimwalton]

Yeah, it doesn't take long to pick up that I don't care for the "literal" label. The Bible is a rich literary collection containing music, poetry, metaphor, allegory, archetypes, parable, hyperbole, metonymy, irony, simile, and many other literary forms, as well as genres such as prayer, prophecy, blessing, covenant language, legal language, etc. "Literally" quickly becomes a word with very little meaning or helpfulness. If a poet says the trees of the field will clap their hands and the mountains will jump for joy, is that literal? Of course not, it's poetry. If a man prays, "God, kill all those people," we may all understand that his prayer is inappropriate, and is not blessed by God, but is it literal? Well, how does that word even apply? And how does it apply to archetype, allegory, parable, and all the others? It's a word that should be dropped from the discussion because it doesn't take us anywhere except to the Land of Misunderstanding.

It's better to think that the Bible should be taken the way the author intended it to be taken. If he was using hyperbole, we're to take it that way. So also allegorically, historically, parabolic, poetic, etc. Our quest is to understand the intent of the author. In that case we'll take the Bible *seriously*, but "literally" doesn't take us anywhere.

> hyperbole

The opening chapters of Genesis, as well as the rest of the Pentateuch, are rife with literary forms, hyperbole being one of them. That doesn't mean we can disregard the text, but we do have to read it the way the author intended it to be taken.

> But what I found in my research is that some actually believe that it did literally happen as it's described in the bible.

Yes, many people do, but on examination it doesn't hold water.

> I ran into plenty of sources

You may be interested in a brand new book by Tremper Longman and John Walton (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Flood-Mythology-Theology/dp/083085200X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534358986&sr=8-1&keywords=longman+walton). I like their perspective. It's not terribly expensive nor a long read.

Glad to talk. We can dialogue further if you wish.

[Spartacus]

If we interpret the Noah story as literal, but a local flood, then the reason behind it, God starting over by destroying life for a reset, kind of loses its point.

If the flood was brought as a result of the wickedness of man, and a way to kill nearly every living creature on land, then a local flood just means that the wicked men and women elsewhere were saved, and never punished. So killing all of the locals would seem, to me, to be a waste.

[jimwalton]

> then the reason behind it, God starting over by destroying life for a reset, kind of loses its point.

It doesn't lose its point if the population of corruption—the target of the judgment—was the population of destruction.

The worldview and concerns of the ancient world (very different from our era) was that of order, disorder, and nonorder—stuff we couldn't care less about. God's destruction came because he had ordered the world to function in a certain way (Genesis 1-2). The advancement of sin had distorted ordered creation into a situation of disorder, and therefore imbalance in creation—in the ancient mindset. The flood represented a theological de-creation, with God restoring order in its wake. (There are many parallels between Genesis 1-3 and the Flood story.) Since the story is told with rhetorical force, the point is still intact: God judges sin. The hyperbole of the extent of the Flood, the size of the boat, and the universality of its effect keeps the point alive.

From Longman and Walton: "The flood account focuses more on how God is reestablishing a modicum of order in the world as he uses nonorder (the cosmic waters) to obliterate disorder (evil and violence). Though it doesn’t eliminate disorder (8.21), it resets the ordering process, and God indicates that the established order will not again be reset by a flood. The flood account specifically has the role of showing how God reestablished order after bringing the waters of the nonordered cosmos to wipe out the disorder that had come to dominate the antediluvian world. In this way the flood account recapitulates creation. This is why the narrator includes the story. He is showing how God had worked to bring about order in the past (creation and flood). This serves as an introduction to YHWH’s strategy to advance order yet again through the covenant. The covenant is an order-bringing strategy using the mechanisms of election, relationship, and revelation as the foundation for reestablishing his presence on earth (initially through the tabernacle)."

So it doesn't lose its point with a regional flood.

> If the flood was brought as a result of the wickedness of man, and a way to kill nearly every living creature on land

As a large regional flood, it was distinctly *not* a way to kill nearly every living creature on land.

> then a local flood just means that the wicked men and women elsewhere were saved, and never punished.

That's right. It was the particular perpetrators of corruption in a particular locale that were the focus of the judgment. The flood was never intended to wipe all sin from the earth (8.21). Even after the flood, "every inclination of [man's] heart is evil from childhood." The essence of the human heart hasn't changed. The flood wasn't to change human nature, but to express theological truths with a real-to-life occurrence:

* Humans are sinners
* God consistently judges sin
* God remains gracious toward his sinful creatures
* the covenant is a product of God's grace, not human merit

[Mercury]

Building a massive boat to save a hundred animals (and not to save any animal species... but just those individual animals?) is a mind-numbingly stupid plan. Why not just migrate to neighboring non-flooded areas? Iran is 90% mountainous highland, surely that's a good place to chill for a few months.

[jimwalton]

You're missing the theological point. Elsewhere in the Bible God had a prophet eat a scroll because of the message such an act would convey. He had the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute because of the message it would convey. He had Naaman the Syrian dip in the Jordan River seven times because of the message behind it. It's no different here: Noah is a living parable. He is commanded by God to do these things, not necessarily because of any practical necessary reason (as you said, it would'a been easier to pack a suitcase and move), but because of various theological lessons that Noah may have known nothing about (we really can't say how much he understood).

* The ark was shaped like a coffin, and so Noah "died" and then was "resurrected."
* The deluge of water represents baptism, and again, the idea of being saved from death.
* Being saved through storm is a spiritual truth; running away from danger is not.

There are plenty of people in the Bible whose literal, historical lives are also parables for the rest of us: Abraham (faith), Joseph (God's providence), Moses (salvation from slavery), Jonah (death and resurrection; God's grace), even the nation of Israel. Noah is the same. God instructs him to do the ark thing because of all it's going to represent.

[Less Wrong]

Which is more likely, that an all-knowing, wise and caring creator chose this confusing and convoluted way to transmit His message? Or that there was a flood, and it became mythologized by the people over time?

[jimwalton]

Neither. You haven't given me the real choices, or even good ones. The narrowness of your sight and thought may be showing your bias.

The all-knowing, wise and caring creator chose a very straight-forward way to transmit his message to his people. I would say that for thousands and thousands of years people have understood it correctly, because they were of an Eastern mindset—the worldview of the author. In the West, here, however, for the past number of centuries our way of thinking has changed. Between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, not to mention Existentialism and Postmodernism, our way of thinking has changed. When we try to read ancient documents with an Existentialist/Postmodern worldview, they come across as confusing and convoluted. It's not the text that is to blame but our Western way of thinking. We have become relativistic skeptics who subscribe to logical positivism, and it skews the way we think. Don't blame God for that.

So it's neither that God can't even figure out how to put two sentences together, nor that the flood is a myth. Instead, the flood was a historic event, written in a rhetorical way using hyperbole to express a theological point—a point, by the way, which has been well understood since its writing. The account of the flood is neither metaphorical nor mythological. Our goal is to understand the worldview, terminology, and culture of the author so that we can understand what he meant by the words and figures of speech he used. If we just try to read ancient texts as if they were written last decade, all the while ignoring the ancient culture, we're just fools distorting the text and blaming someone else.