Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Nuker]

It's a story with no historical evidence to back it up, that to me is a myth.

[jimwalton]

I'll just assume you know that the further back we go in history, the fewer evidences we have of anything. We have no documents from anywhere prior to about 3500 BC.

Now (disclaimer coming), I take the flood to have been a local, large, regional flood and not a global one, based on both biblical and scientific evidence. Supposing such a flood were in about 5000 BC, I sit around and ponder what evidence I might expect to find, in a realistic sense, of the event of the biblical flood. The answer is: nothing. There's nothing to find that's even possible.

To me the event stands more on the book of Genesis. A bunch of what's in there has evidence to back it up (people groups, cities, political realities [Gn. 14], Tower of Babel, Hittite treaty culture, etc.), which leads me to be open the idea that the book was intended to be a theological interpretation of actual historical events.

The Noah story, then, could be true. Guy builds a boat (certainly not the size written in the text; the whole narrative is couched in hyperbole), gathers populations of local animals, a large regional flood, and he thanks God for His protection. Nothing unbelievable there. If you think that's unbelievable, you need to say why.

[Nuker]

Right, I'm fine with the notion that the story in the Bible maybe was somewhat based on reality, I'd argue that the way it's described in the Bible it's probably very impossible. Now, I see no reason to believe God had anything to do with a local flood. I am not saying it's unbelievable, just that we have no good reason to believe such a thing. I think it's pretty clear this was about the actual story in the Bible although I could be wrong. That story is a myth.

[jimwalton]

> I'm fine with the notion that the story in the Bible maybe was somewhat based on reality

Yeah, I wouldn't agree with this. I would say that it's a historical narrative with the theological explanation attached. Everyone in the area could see the flood, everyone in the area knew about the boat, but Genesis tells us that Noah built the boat because God spoke to him, and the flood was God's judgment on the corrupt people. It doesn't change the history, but it gives the reasons.

> I'd argue that the way it's described in the Bible it's probably very impossible

If you take it as a global flood, yes, but I don't because the Bible doesn't require it. For instance, we know from the Bible that "all" doesn't always mean "all." This is where a little more probing beyond the simple words of the text is beneficial.

In Gn. 41.57 (same book, same author), we read that "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph because the famine was severe in all the world." Was Brazil experiencing famine? Did the Australians come to Joseph? No. "All" means the countries of the immediate vicinity in the ancient Near East.

Also, Deut. 2.25 (same author): "I will put the...fear of you on all the nations under heaven." Did that include the Mayans? The people of Madagascar? I don't think anyone would argue that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan, and perhaps a few others.

Another example is from Exodus. In Ex. 9.6 we learn that the plague on livestock killed "all" of the Egyptian livestock. Or did it? In the very next plague, the animals get the boils too. But aren't they all dead? Nope.

There are plenty of other references like this throughout the Bible (Acts 17.6; 19.35; 24.5; Rom. 1.8). We have to give serious consideration that quite possibly "all" doesn't mean "global". We have to take "all" in context and figure out what the author meant by it. In this case, it's hyperbole to make a theological point.

In our era, one might say, "All the Biden supporters flooded the streets to celebrate his election." We'd say that, but we know it wasn't "all." It's hyperbolic to express our joy and make a point. In the Bible, it's hyperbolic to express God's judgment and to make a point.

> Now, I see no reason to believe God had anything to do with a local flood.

Because it accomplishes what God wants to accomplish. The people around Noah were hopelessly corrupt and thoroughly incorrigible. Noah had preached to them (2 Pet. 2.5), but to no avail. So God judged them, just as He did Sodom and Gomorrah (not all the corrupt people in the world, but those of this particular focus).

Noah was a living parable, and it's instructive even for us. God used him to represent many different truths, and as such the ark represented other realities. Some of those are:

1. The ark was shaped like a coffin, and so Noah was "subjected to death" and then "risen out of the tomb." It was a picture of resurrection common to the Bible and eventually literally with Jesus.

2. The deluge of water represents baptism, and again, the idea of being saved from death (for those who belong to God). Salvation from death is probably THE prominent theme in the entire Bible, and the flood, even a regional one, expresses that same thought.

3. Being saved through the storm is a spiritual truth; running away from danger is not. The flood, even if regional, expresses a common biblical spiritual truth.

There are plenty of people in the Bible whose literal lives are also parables for the rest of us: Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jonah, 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.

> just that we have no good reason to believe such a thing

I think we have plenty of good reasons to believe it, and very few, if any, to not believe it. Floods happen all the time. Even large floods. The geology of the Black Sea suggests a flooding that occurred when the then-small lake in the center of the Sea rapidly became a large sea. This happened when waters from the Mediterranean found a pathway to the much lower Black Sea area. This change in the lake has been known since the 1920s. Since then, it has become clear that the flooding occurred about 7500 years ago (5500 BC) and that about 60,000 square miles (more than 100,000 square km) of the coastal areas of the lake became part of the sea in a relatively short time. Human settlements were destroyed. (BAR, Nov/Dec 2007 p. 74). A flood “burst through Bosporus in 5600 BC so violently [that it] cleaved Europe from Anatolia.” The flood was so overpowering that it turned a freshwater lake into what is now the Black Sea. Many who lived on the shores of that non-longer existent freshwater lake and in the general vicinity either were killed or displaced from their homes. This actually could have been Noah's flood. It's in the right vicinity and possibly in the right era. But Noah's flood could have been something else. The point is that the narrative has many good reasons to believe in it.

Another possibility: Recent disclosures concerning the geological background of Lower Mesopotamia claim that not very long ago, as geological ages are reckoned, waters from the Persian Gulf submerged a large coastland area, owing probably to a sudden rise in the sea level. If that rise was precipitated by extraordinary undersea eruption, the same phenomenon could also have brought on extremely heavy rains, the whole leaving an indelible impression on the survivors. (Speiser, Genesis, the Anchor Bible, Vol. 1 p. 56).

> That story is a myth.

I disagree, as you can tell. I'm convinced it's a historical narrative with a theological interpretation, and there are good reasons to believe it.

[Nuker]

> And what kind of evidence would even be acceptable to achieve such a proof? It seems that you're setting up a situation of, "Well, there is no evidence that would accomplish the goal, so you can't claim God did it." The problem with that is, even if God did it, there would be no evidence that He was the source—even if He did it.

You'd need very convincing evidence indeed fpr such an extrordinary claim, and if you don't have it, you don't start geussing. Maybe he did it, depending on the version of God you mean he surely didn't, but maybe he did. Now, if invisible flying unicorns were to exist, I would have very little evdence for them either, that doesn't make it fair to just assume they exist.

> I'm not aware of any proof of what you're saying. So, back at ya: if you want to claim Genesis doesn't always get the facts right, without proof that is just an assumption.

The earth is not the oldest thing in the universe, our sun is older than the earth and it's just another star, the moon doesn't produce any light as genisis would suggest but rather reflects it, there is no firmament and outer space is not filled with water, we know rain comes from the clouds now and not from holes in the firmament and we know the earth way older than 6000 years. Science has got these covered and unless you want to deny all the evidence we have for these things you really shouldn't be claiming that genisis is reliable. Are there any of those claims you'd like to object to?

[jimwalton]

> You'd need very convincing evidence indeed fpr such an extrordinary claim

I'm not making an extraordinary claim, I'm stating a fact of logic. You're asking for evidence in a situation you have designed so that no evidence is admissible. I'm asking you this question: What evidence would you accept that proves to *you* God did the Flood? Obviously Noah knew it was God, but what evidence would prove it to YOU?

> Now, if invisible flying unicorns were to exist, I would have very little evdence for them either, that doesn't make it fair to just assume they exist.

Agreed, but this has nothing to do with our discussion. You're asking for evidence that the Flood was sent by God. Tell me what you're looking for.

> The earth is not the oldest thing in the universe

Of course it's not. Genesis never says it is.

> our sun is older than the earth and it's just another star

Of course it is. Genesis doesn't say any different.

> the moon doesn't produce any light as genisis would suggest but rather reflects it

Genesis portrays the moon as a light-bearer, not as a producer of light. It calls them "luminaries," which the moon is. It's not a god, as it was perceived in the surrounding cultures, but a source of light to the Earth and a marker of seasons. There's nothing false about that.

> there is no firmament

The firmament was in their scientific mindset the source of climate and weather, which is true. Our atmosphere (though they knew nothing of the chemistry of what we call atmosphere) is the source of weather and climate, and that was their perspective and their point. There's nothing incorrect about that.

> outer space is not filled with water

Correct. And the Bible doesn't claim it is.

> holes in the firmament

???? No Bible verse says this.

> we know the earth way older than 6000 years.

Of course it is. The Bible doesn't claim it's only 6000 years old. Genealogies in the ancient world were often telescoped—generations left out. That's how Jesus can be a "son of David," even though there's 1000 yrs between them. That's pretty typical. You can't just do the math and find out when creation was.

> Science has got these covered and unless you want to deny all the evidence we have for these things you really shouldn't be claiming that genisis is reliable.

Science is very reliable, until it changes. Genesis is also reliable.

> Are there any of those claims you'd like to object to?

Yeah, obviously, all of them. You still need to show me where Genesis has been proven to be false.

[Nuker]

Genisis claims the heaven and the earth were created first and only after that does it even mention some kind of light and only after that does it mention the sun or moon as then God proceeds to seperate night and day, then he created the firmament which devided the waters and it clearly states there are waters above the firmament. When it comes to the story of Noah it claims there are "windows of heaven" that were opened implying that's where the water came from. The firmament was called "Heaven" as it says in Genisis 1:8. And later God decides to add even more lights, clearly the sun and the moon, one to rule the day and one to rule the night. You'd really have to go to great lenghts to frame these ridiculous claims as factually correct. The evidence doesn't agree with the Bible here, at all. The Bible does claim the earth is older than the sun and it does claim that there is a firmament that literally has water above it and it does claim the firmament has windows.

> I'm asking you this question: What evidence would you accept that proves to you God did the Flood? Obviously Noah knew it was God, but what evidence would prove it to YOU?

To prove God did it you'd have to not only show it's possible but also that it's the only possibility. Otherwise best you can do is make it more likely to have been the case, which I'd argue also isn't the case because there just is no good evidence that God did such a thing and claiming that Genisis is generally reliable requires so much interpretation for it to even come close to what the evidence shows that the story is no longer recognisable. And even if Genisis would be reliable most of the time, it wouldn't mean the story of Noah is too.

[jimwalton]

> Genisis claims the heaven and the earth were created first...

Ah, it seems to me that you are going with a Sunday School version of Genesis 1. Let me try this—and try to have an open mind. if you read Genesis 1 literally, you'll see that it's literally about how God ordered the world to function, not about its material manufacture. If it were about manufacture, the text would start with nothing. If it were about giving order to what was there, it would start with disorder, which is just what it does (Gn. 1.2).

Certainly God created the universe (as taught in other verses in the Bible), but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about. The first "day" is clearly (literally) about a period of light called day, and a period of light called night. It is about the sequence of day and night, evening and morning, literally. Therefore, what Day 1 is about is God ordering the universe and our lives with the function of TIME, not God creating what the physicists call "light," about which the ancients knew nothing.

Look through the whole chapter. It is about how the firmament functions to bring us weather (the firmament above and below), how the earth functions to bring forth plants for our sustenance, how the sun, moon, and stars function to order the days and seasons. We find out in day 6 the function of humans: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. We have to look at the text through ancient eyes, not modern ones, and the concern of the ancients was function and order. (It was a given that the deities created the material universe.) The differences between cultures (and creation accounts) was how the universe functioned, how it was ordered, and what people were for.

And on the 7th day God rested. In the ancient world when a god came to "rest" in the temple, he came to live there and engage with the people as their god. So it is not a day of disengagement, but of action and relationship.

So Genesis 1 is not about manufacturing chronology (God manufactured this, and then that, light before the sun, plants before the sun, etc.), but instead about how He ordered what was there to function in a certain way: the alternation of light and dark, day and night, to give us time. The Earth brings forth life. The sun and moon function to give us seasons. Etc.

> Noah it claims there are "windows of heaven"

What's wrong with figurative speech? We do it all the time. When we say Donald Trump is a donkey's butt, it's figurative. No one is going to try to take it literally. "Windows of heaven" is a poetic phrase, not scientific language.

> The evidence doesn't agree with the Bible here

The problem is that you are trying to read science and chronology into a text that's about order and function.

> The Bible does claim the earth is older than the sun

No it doesn't. Genesis 1 is not about the chronology of material manufacture.

> To prove God did it you'd have to not only show it's possible but also that it's the only possibility.

Well, we know that anything is possible. The issue is to discern what is plausible, then probable, then true.

Wait a minute. You will accept only evidence to show that "it's the only possibility"? That's not "possibility" at all, but proof. Science can't even do that, most of the time. Science works on the idea that this is what will happen, as long as nothing interferes with that.

So, again I'll ask, what kind of evidence would you accept to show that God's causality was the only possibility? What are you looking for, and what would you be willing to accept as evidence of that?

> Otherwise best you can do is make it more likely to have been the case

There's nothing with abductive reasoning. It's how *all* of history works and how much of science works. Scientists used abduction to build theories. Darwin's theory of evolution is the result of inference to the best explanation for the data at hand.

You still have shown me any evidence proving anything false in Genesis. Right now Donald Trump is claiming the election was a fraud, and people are saying, "The burden of proof is on you to prove it was a fraud." Well, you are claiming Genesis is a fraud, and I'm saying, prove it. You haven't done that yet.