Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Most Definitely]

> You understand what I'm talking about, then. Using hyperbole as a figure of speech, his reference to "all" doesn't necessarily mean "all." It might mean "all the countries in the known world at that time."

Yes.

>Right, I remember. What I'm saying is that the judgment may have been on a very limited population of people. Depending on when the flood was (for instance, if it was before 10,000 BC), the population of the area may not have been that large. Jericho was first settled in about 7,000. Even by the time of Abraham (approx. 2000 BC), the population of the land was mostly nomads with some small (10 acres or less) cities scattered around. Before 10,000 BC, who's to know, but the "kill everyone" may have been a relatively small number.

It's physically impossible to make a flood that kills everyone that doesn't dissipate for 40 days. The 40 days would have to be a lie or an exaggeration. If 40 days is an exaggeration, then so can the size of the boat, the number of animals, and pretty much the entire story is a fairy tale. There is a difference between using hyperbole to make a point and creating a fairy tale.

>The text approaches the narrative from a contrast of wickedness & corruption (violence, evil) vs. righteousness, of the hearts of humans being depraved and the heart of God being grieved by it. We also know that the story is somewhat of a redux of the creation story, where all was in chaos and God was acting to bring order and functionality to what he had made. (Gn. 9 is a clear mirror of Gn. 1.) Noah got to live because it was the only chance for humanity to have a chance at life, survival, and godliness. Aside from Noah, the region was beyond hope and help.

It's bizarre that god keeps saying the one good person and then that person makes lots of people that turn into sinners.

> Obviously the author's choice, but it does speak of the thorough corruption of the population.

Surely. But we don't know the author or what is hyperbole or what is real. Did Jesus really fly to heaven on a cloud?

> I don't think so. I think hyperbole is a reasonable literary tool for the narrative, just as it is for the many situations we use exaggeration to try to adequately describe.

Not when it comes to stories like this it isn't a reasonable tool. It blurs the line and creates confusion. See our confusion?

[jimwalton]

> It's physically impossible to make a flood that kills everyone that doesn't dissipate for 40 days.

Well, that depends what possibly natural phenomenon caused the Flood (since God often uses natural means of uncanny timing). For instance, in a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than 3000 feet deep and 15 miles wide, filling the Mediterranean Basin in less than 9 months. The Straight of Gibraltar, which was once a solid dam holding back the Atlantic Ocean, was broken, and the ocean water inundated the entire continental region. “As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basic. The air would pick up moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour in to the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upward simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential.”

Now, I'm not saying that was it, the biblical Flood, but it shows that the data recorded in the Bible isn't necessarily specious. There's another possibility (at least for our understanding): 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).

So I would say the 40 days isn't automatically a lie or a fairy tale. Who's to say what it was, especially if it was before 10,000 BC.

> It's bizarre that god keeps saying the one good person and then that person makes lots of people that turn into sinners.

Hm. People choose sin, and people choose goodness. God doesn't make people be good or evil, they make their choices.

> But we don't know they author or what is hyperbole or what is real.

Agreed. That's why we study, and use every linguistic, contextual, historical, cultural, scientific, and geological resource we can find to infer the most reasonable explanation.

We can legitimately ask, "Is the text deceptive?" Can we infer from the hyperbole that Noah (or Moses, or even God) is a liar, and that the text is unreasonably confusing? I don't think so. The point of the text is well understood: God judges sin. 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. So the author says "the whole earth" was killed. God's intent is not to school them in geography, but in morality. He accommodates their limited view of the earth, and 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 perspectives. Lots of people in the Bible had faulty perspectives, but that doesn't make the text unreasonable. We just have to study it, and to 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 flooded 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.

[J Lord]

> Noah built a boat, and there was a flood so severe that all he could see in any direction was water he would say that the whole earth had been flooded and that every living thing had been killed.

I could see why he might think that, but he would be wrong.

> Can we infer from this that Noah is a liar, and that the text is deceptive?

In this scenario where a local flood occurs he is not lying, he's just wrong. So the text is deceptive because the human writer is claiming to know something he doesn't. Or if the text is written or inspired by god it is deceptive because it incorporates the human's incorrect understanding of geography.

> God's intent is not to school them in geography, but in morality.

But by doing so he has deliberately misled people with regards to geography. Making factually incorrect statements (whether hyperbole or figure of speech or otherwise) is not necessary or beneficial when it come to teaching people about morality. I'm not saying you couldn't teach someone a lesson in morality while also misleading them about scientific facts, so I agree that the message is not necessarily compromised.

> Certainly there was a flood—I don't doubt its historicity

Do you mean a flood to the extent that a person of normal intelligence would have believed that all life on earth died other than what he saved in his boat? I don't understand how you can be so certain.

[jimwalton]

> So the text is deceptive because the human writer is claiming to know something he doesn't.

Effective communication must accommodate to the culture and the nature of the audience. If you were to take a trip to aboriginal Australia or into the jungles of Ecuador (or some such place), and try to describe a car or a computer to them, you'd have to find some way to do in their language (where they have no such words), accommodating their cultural understandings to get your point through. When I used to live in Rochester, NY, there was a place where two interstates overlapped for a few hundred yards, and every day at rush hour the thing became a tangled mess. On the radio they referred to it as "The Can of Worms," and all Rochesterians knew what they were talking about. If I were to try to explain this to someone else (such as yourself), it would help me to know a place of traffic tangle-ups in your city, and that might give me the words and concepts I need to describe it to you. That's accommodation, and we do it all the time in communication. When a person says "I do" at a wedding, it means something completely different than when a person says "I do" in response to the question of, "Hey, you wanna get some pizza tonight?"

God accommodates human language, culture, and era when he communicates. He may use words that communicate very well to his audience, but they are misunderstandings the people in the audience have. For instance, let's go back to aboriginal Australia, and let's assume I have to explain to them what a car is. First I'll look around for some critter that moves on all fours. Then I'll look for maybe a big enough one that I can ride on it (I dunno, a big goat?). Are you getting the picture? I have to accommodate my communication to bring them to some sense of understanding. Am I being deceptive? No, I'm trying to communicate, and accommodation is a necessity. This applies to all revelation in the Bible: science, cosmology, geography, astronomy, etc. The words are not misleading, they are accommodating. Where the authority lies is in the message: the prophecy, the blessing, the promise. This is why the Bible has to be interpreted, and why it has to be taught. It's a 2000- to 4000-year-old document from a different culture, era, and mentality. But it's not deceptive, any more than I'm deceiving the Australians to try to communicate to them what a car is. Without the words and the concepts, I have to figure out a way to relate that they can understand. Otherwise, there is no communication.

> I don't understand how you can be so certain.

Did you see "Zero Dark Thirty"? It's not a matter of certainty, but of the weight of evidence. I have to examine the evidence at hand, and infer the most reasonable conclusion. Given that a global flood doesn't make any sense, that local floods (even monster ones) are possible (earthquake? tsunami?), that there are many accounts in many cultures of such a flood (even in the ancient Near East), and the plausible statements in the Bible (and even that God is the kind of judge to not let people get away with murder without consequence), I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the historicity of the flood, and I don't doubt it.

[Most Definitely]

I don't see how you can fit the scripture to make sense of a non-worldwide flood.

Let's presume for a minute that a flood really did happen and a bunch of people really did die and that a sole family did survive...it still has the problem in that they build a boat and then put an insane number of animals on it.

When a flood occurs, you don't have time to build a boat and gather animals.

If instead you wanted to say that god warned them about the flood...then still...why bother with all the animals?

[jimwalton]

> it still has the problem in that they build a boat...

"Noah's ark was likely a sewn boat. The technique is still used today in the Arab world and India. A sewn boat is the simplest, and perhaps earliest, technique for building wooden boats consisting of more than one type of timber. It can be built without metal tools; with soft woods; and stone and bone tools are more than adequate for crafting it. The sewn boat is essentially Stone Age technology, but is still in use in some areas around the Indian Ocean. The characteristics of sewn boat construction all appear in the account of the building of the ark in the Gilgamesh epic (13th – 11th c. BC), lines 48-79." (Ralph Pedersen, “Was Noah’s Ark a Sewn Boat,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2005, pp. 18-ff.)

> then put an insane number of animals on it.

It's impossible that the ark could accommodate all of the species then in existence around the globe, but altogether possible to fit the regional animals on it. This boat was about 95,000 square feet (for 3 stories)—a little larger than a large grocery store. And he would only have to fit on it the animals that didn't exist elsewhere in the world and would have to be preserved through the duration.

> you don't have time to build a boat

God did warn him ahead of time, and while it is unknown how long it took Noah to build his barge, the best estimates are 60-70 years. It is certainly reasonable that Noah, his sons, and other hired hands could have built what was essentially a 4-story building in 60 years.

> why bother?

Sure, why couldn't God just move the animals, or have them run away? I would say it's because Noah was living out a parable that God was using 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.”
2. The deluge of water represents baptism, and again, the idea of being saved from death.
3. Being saved through the storm is a spiritual truth; running away from danger is not.

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.

[J Lord]

> But it's not deceptive, any more than I'm deceiving the Australians to try to communicate to them what a car is.

There are lots of ways for communication to be accomodating without being deceptive. Explaining what a car is by relating it to a goat is not necessarily deceptive or incorrect. If you go on say that your car can fly through the air like a bird that would be incorrect and deceptive.

So the writer of Genesis could have said that the earth was covered with water as far as the eye could see and all known mountains were covered with water. That would be true (according to your flood theory) and would have equally conveyed the same moral message. There is no need to claim that every mountain on earth was covered in order to communicate with ancient people.

There are two possible ways to tell the story that are both equally understandable to ancient people but one is true (according to your flood theory) and one is false. Why did god or the writer of genesis go with the incorrect version?

> It's not a matter of certainty, but of the weight of evidence

You said "certainly there was a flood." This is why assumed you had a high level of certainty. But your reasons don't make sense given this level of certainty. You admit a global flood doesn't make sense, but then you cite a bible as a reliable source for flood information even though the bible implies a global flood. You say floods are possible, but I don't think it is possible for rain to cause even a local area to flood to the point that mountains are covered. At least it has never happened in recorded history. So for something so rare I would not have a lot of confidence relying on ancient accounts as my best evidence, especially given all the types of implossible stories ancient people made up all the time.

[jimwalton]

> So the writer of Genesis could have said

You're right. It could have been expressed in multiple ways, but I don't fault the writer to choosing what he did. "All" not only denotes the scope of the physical flood for the intended population, but it can also connote the completeness of the judgment. If he had said something like "as far as the eye could see" (I know it was an off-the-top-of-the-head suggestion) it might be assumed that the judgment was less than accomplished.

Since you mentioned it, "covered" (Gn. 7.19 et al) is an interesting word. The Hebrew word (root *ksh*) that is used here is a word of a wide variety of meanings.

- A people so vast they "cover" the land (Num. 22.11)
- Weeds "covering" the land (Prov. 24.31)
- Clothing "covering" someone (1 Ki. 1.1)
- Something "covered" in the sense of being overshadowed (2 Chr. 5.8; Ps. 147.8)

But what about "covered" with water?
- Job 38.34; Jer. 46.8; Mal. 2.13 all use the word FIGURATIVELY

If Gen. 7.19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were "drenched" with water, or coursing with flash floods, but it doesn't demand they were totally submerged.

But, you may say, Gen. 7.20 says "covered the mountains to a depth of more than 20 feet." The Hebrew word is "from above": 15 cubits from above rose the waters, and the mountains were covered. It's not clear at all whether the peaks were covered. The word can mean "above", "upward", or "upstream". If this were the case, it could suggest that the water reached 20' upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

> This is why assumed you had a high level of certainty

I do have a high level of certainty. I didn't give you all my reasons, because you don't want to read several pages of text.

> bible as a reliable source for flood information even though the bible implies a global flood

The English translation implies a global flood, and here is a translation issue: Do we translate the words exactly as they are ("all," "covered") or do we translate them with some kind of interpretation on them? It's a very tough call.

> I don't think it is possible for rain to cause even a local area to flood to the point that mountains are covered. At least it has never happened in recorded history.

In a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than 3000 feet deep and 15 miles wide, filling the Mediterranean Basin in less than 9 months. The Straight of Gibraltar, which was once a solid dam holding back the Atlantic Ocean, was broken, and the ocean water inundated the entire continental region. “As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basic. The air would pick up moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour in to the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upward simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential.”

Now, I'm not saying that was it, the biblical Flood, but it shows that the data recorded in the Bible isn't necessarily specious, or that it has never happened in history. There's another possibility (at least for our understanding): 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).

> I would not have a lot of confidence relying on ancient accounts as my best evidence, especially given all the types of impossible stories ancient people made up all the time.

Except that this story is told in many separate cultures. Just my opinion, but I happen to believe it. To me it has biblical and evidentiary credibility.

[Most Definitely]

So the flood is practical and realistic, but the gathering of animals was just a symbolic action?

[jimwalton]

No. The flood was a historical event, and it really happened, and the animals were actually assembled (Gn. 7.8-9 implies that God brought them to the ark). The whole thing was historical, but the event was symbolic also. It symbolizes salvation from sin and death, baptism, and death and resurrection. It symbolizes God's ability to preserve life in the midst of death, and God's judgment on sin.