semiopen2 wrote:The flood is clearly a global event.
The only way one can argue against a universal deluge is to ignore the actual story.
Not quite.
1) Modern words, and the ideas they invoke, such as "global" and "universal" are absent in the worldview of the ancient Hebrews who penned these texts. There is no globe, nor universe to speak of!
2) It's good to have the Hebrew in mind, but we must also understand that Hebrew from within the historical context of these ancient writers. The Hebrew eretz never means the planet Earth; for no such concept existed, and if you read carefully Gen 1:1-10 you see that even there the use of eretz means land, the material substance (see my post on Gen 1). So the expressions כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ and עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ are best understood as "all the land" and "upon the land" with the further recognition that "all the land" from the viewpoint of our author most likely only extended to the region of the Mediterranean and/or Black sea.
3) Having said that, the cosmology, if it can even be called that, envisions a flat-land fixed and supported upon the waters below (Gen 1:9; Ps 136:6) and under the waters above which are held back by the solid barrier or raqi'a created in Gen 1:6 and then called "skies"; this barrier has been breached in P''s flood narrative (Gen 7:24, 8:3) and thus the waters above now pour down to flood the earth/land like water filling an inverted bowl! That 7:19 mentions these waters re-covering the mountains (see Gen 1:2) and touching this solid barrier or skies also reaffirms this cosmological portrait. The waters are filling up the habitable finite space that God created by originally separating these waters in Gen 1:6-8---a space or air-pocket inside a water bubble---that is kept dry because the waters above are held up there by the solid skies and the waters below have been tamed and collected to form seas. This all goes to shit in the flood narrative. This is what gets flooded:
I think you have the cosmology wrong.
Everyone seems to think they can base cosmology on merely the physical descriptions given us by the ancients without taking into account the symbolic references in the myths. The Bronze Age view of the world was that it was a placenta, not a planet. The world was the product of seed planted by creator deities, and it was created by and surrounded by water, as a fetus would be.
semiopen2 wrote:The flood is clearly a global event.
Yes, The intention of the rainmaker was to kill everything that lived anywhere.
Genesis 6
6And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created
13And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth
17For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
7
17For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
19The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered
semiopen2 wrote:The flood is clearly a global event.
The only way one can argue against a universal deluge is to ignore the actual story.
Not quite.
1) Modern words, and the ideas they invoke, such as "global" and "universal" are absent in the worldview of the ancient Hebrews who penned these texts. There is no globe, nor universe to speak of!
2) It's good to have the Hebrew in mind, but we must also understand that Hebrew from within the historical context of these ancient writers. The Hebrew eretz never means the planet Earth; for no such concept existed, and if you read carefully Gen 1:1-10 you see that even there the use of eretz means land, the material substance (see my post on Gen 1). So the expressions כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ and עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ are best understood as "all the land" and "upon the land" with the further recognition that "all the land" from the viewpoint of our author most likely only extended to the region of the Mediterranean and/or Black sea.
3) Having said that, the cosmology, if it can even be called that, envisions a flat-land fixed and supported upon the waters below (Gen 1:9; Ps 136:6) and under the waters above which are held back by the solid barrier or raqi'a created in Gen 1:6 and then called "skies"; this barrier has been breached in P''s flood narrative (Gen 7:24, 8:3) and thus the waters above now pour down to flood the earth/land like water filling an inverted bowl! That 7:19 mentions these waters re-covering the mountains (see Gen 1:2) and touching this solid barrier or skies also reaffirms this cosmological portrait. The waters are filling up the habitable finite space that God created by originally separating these waters in Gen 1:6-8---a space or air-pocket inside a water bubble---that is kept dry because the waters above are held up there by the solid skies and the waters below have been tamed and collected to form seas. This all goes to shit in the flood narrative. This is what gets flooded:
I think you have the cosmology wrong.
Everyone seems to think they can base cosmology on merely the physical descriptions given us by the ancients without taking into account the symbolic references in the myths. The Bronze Age view of the world was that it was a placenta, not a planet. The world was the product of seed planted by creator deities, and it was created by and surrounded by water, as a fetus would be.
Eisegesis is not a useful response. Once again you fail to deal with what you claim to be responding to. Sweeping generalizations such as "the Bronze Age view" are also pretty much nugatory, given that the period covered would be well over 1000 years. Stop shitting on the forum and think a bit more before posting nonsense. Oh, and read what you are trying to respond to.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
semiopen2 wrote:The flood is clearly a global event.
Yes, The intention of the rainmaker was to kill everything that lived anywhere.
Genesis 6
6And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created
13And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth
17For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
7
17For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
19The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered
Frankly I wrote that post to provoke Arnoldo into participating, but perhaps he is now too normal for this forum.
I found srd's comments interesting but obscure. I wanted to learn more about the issues before replying.
I'm not sure this is the greatest commentary ever (or even a very good one), but remember a comment some idiot made, doubting that Dr. Friedman understood Hebrew.
srd's link to the discussion of the overuse of kol is also interesting. Perhaps these were added later and serve as a very early commentary (even before the text was finalized).
Anyway the plain meaning of the text seems to say the whole world, but I have an older man's caution.
semiopen wrote:Anyway the plain meaning of the text seems to say the whole world, but I have an older man's caution.
I wonder if a younger man's caution is up to the job
Isaiah 54:9-10
For this is the waters of Noah to Me
And all flesh will not be exterminated again by the waters of the flood. For this is as the waters of Noah to Me... is understood by some to indicate that Noah could have spared the sinful generation.
The attitude of Noah is contrasted with the response of Moses who was prepared to give up his life rather than allow the nation of Israel to be destroyed as a result of the sin of the golden calf.
The interpretation of the flood waters seems to require a 'global' destruction of life, but I will accept an older man's caution
Andrew wrote:It's physically impossible for millions of animal species to have fit on the ark, be fed for a year, have their waste cleaned up by eight people, etc. There's no way the flood story could actually be literal, as can be seen by simply doing the math.
I agree.
The problem is that the Genesis flood was local, the ark was finite in size, and Noah probably only had 100 species at the most. (That's if you take the Genesis story literally, though.)
The Genesis flood story has been a strawman argument waiting to happen for 3500 years.
If the flood was local, then how could the flood cover all the highest mountains on the earth (Gen 7:19-20)? Water tends to flow *downwards* so it's pretty hard to cover all the highest mountains on the earth with water with a local flood.
hjalti wrote: If the flood was local, then how could the flood cover all the highest mountains on the earth (Gen 7:19-20)? Water tends to flow *downwards* so it's pretty hard to cover all the highest mountains on the earth with water with a local flood.
The only way to read any historical source is from the writer's point of view, not ours.
The writer of the flood story likely came from the city of Fara (southern Iraq) and wrote the story between 3500 and 2500 BC in the Sumerian language from the perspective of a Sumerian resident.
The writer could only have noticed this during the flood, while standing on the deck of the ark (or looking out the window). Line of sight for a boat the size of the ark with a 33% draft would have been perhaps 10-15 miles. The sky would have met the horizon not much further. From a launch point of southern Iraq, even Mt. Ararat would have fallen below the horizon and would have appeared to be covered by the waters.
Logically, this statement from Genesis means very little. If there were no rain, and the ark floated on the Tigris tied to a pier, Mt. Ararat would still have been below the horizon.
hjalti wrote: If the flood was local, then how could the flood cover all the highest mountains on the earth (Gen 7:19-20)? Water tends to flow *downwards* so it's pretty hard to cover all the highest mountains on the earth with water with a local flood.
The only way to read any historical source is from the writer's point of view, not ours.
The writer of the flood story likely came from the city of Fara (southern Iraq) and wrote the story between 3500 and 2500 BC in the Sumerian language from the perspective of a Sumerian resident.
The writer could only have noticed this during the flood, while standing on the deck of the ark (or looking out the window). Line of sight for a boat the size of the ark with a 33% draft would have been perhaps 10-15 miles. The sky would have met the horizon not much further. From a launch point of southern Iraq, even Mt. Ararat would have fallen below the horizon and would have appeared to be covered by the waters.
Logically, this statement from Genesis means very little. If there were no rain, and the ark floated on the Tigris tied to a pier, Mt. Ararat would still have been below the horizon.
Mental, I recall reading in some other thread that you were an inerrantist. Does my memory betray me?
Anyway, are you talking about the account in Genesis or some hypothetical earlier narrative? Because the Genesis flood story isn't written from the point of view of Noah, so when it says that flat out the mountains were covered with water it's hard to see how that should be interpreted as "Noah thought that the mountains were covered with water".
hjalti wrote: Mental, I recall reading in some other thread that you were an inerrantist. Does my memory betray me?
Yes, your memory betrays you. My only comments along these lines were that I take all historical texts, whether Biblical or not, to be authoritative until proven otherwise. I might also have stated that the Bible contains no errors (this because I find all alleged errors claimed to be in the Bible to be sophomoric fabrications that are rather easy to dispell).
I reject the "Word of God" doctrine because it understates the Bible's value by rendering it limited to a 2-dimensional view, and it robs the Bible of it's dynamic value. When Paul told Timothy that "all scripture is God-breathed", he was talking about pages of a book that had life breathed into them in a way words on a page normally couldn't project.
hjalti wrote: Anyway, are you talking about the account in Genesis or some hypothetical earlier narrative? Because the Genesis flood story isn't written from the point of view of Noah, so when it says that flat out the mountains were covered with water it's hard to see how that should be interpreted as "Noah thought that the mountains were covered with water".
I'm talking about the account in Genesis. I read the account as it appears in the text from the original writer's perspective, which is a mercy. There are so many stupid traditions built around the story that the poor original writer never got a chance to speak for himself, and I give hm that opportunity. Claiming that that account is not from Noah's point of view is simply a false claim. It could not be from anyone else's.
(By the way, I made a mistake above. The draft of the ark would have been 66%, the freeboard 33%.)
Mental flatliner wrote:Yes, your memory betrays you. My only comments along these lines were that I take all historical texts, whether Biblical or not, to be authoritative until proven otherwise. I might also have stated that the Bible contains no errors (this because I find all alleged errors claimed to be in the Bible to be sophomoric fabrications that are rather easy to dispell).
The belief that the Bible doesn't contain any errors is known as [biblical] inerrancy. So you are an inerrantist.
hjalti wrote: Anyway, are you talking about the account in Genesis or some hypothetical earlier narrative? Because the Genesis flood story isn't written from the point of view of Noah, so when it says that flat out the mountains were covered with water it's hard to see how that should be interpreted as "Noah thought that the mountains were covered with water".
Mental flatliner wrote: Claiming that that account is not from Noah's point of view is simply a false claim. It could not be from anyone else's.
Mental, the narrative is told from the point of view of an omniscient third person narrator. It isn't narrated from Noah's point of view (e.g. "When I, Noah, saw the waters rise, they covered all the mountains.") and it doesn't say that the statement "The waters covered all the mountains." is to be understood as from the point of view of Noah (e.g. "And Noah looked out from the Ark and to him it seemed as if the waters had covered the mountains.").
I've got one additional question for you: Why did Noah have to take animals on the ark to begin with if this was only a local flood? If it was so local, then surely there was no need for him to take e.g. birds on the ark to preserve those species.
