Interpretation of the flood account in Genesis

[Mental flatliner]

I've been looking into the claims of some liberal Christians that the story of Noah's flood was never intended to be understood as a description of actual events, and that interpreting it that way is a modern phenomenon and has always been a minority view.

So what do the more learned members of this forum think? Did the author(s) of Genesis want the reader to think of the flood as being an actual event? Was an exclusively non-literal interpretation ever in the majority? Do you know of any ancient/medieval Christian/Jewish authors who rejected the story of Noah's flood?

I myself am an absolutist when it comes to interpreting historical texts (of which the Bible is obviously one).
My rule is that I interpret nothing beyond what the original writer intended. If I go beyond that, it's tantamount to rewriting history.

(Yes, I know this is no fun atoll, but I don't have time for the magical merrygoround of competing views. I'll take one, please: the original. Das' it.)

Since the story was originally Sumerian, I interpret from a Sumerian perspective, and since the flood is mentioned in nearly a dozen different documents as a (datable) historic event, I take the Bible's version literally.

[Andrew]

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.

[Mental flatliner]

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.

[Andrew]

That's roughly my interpretation as well. I wasn't sure just how literally you were taking it though. I also doubt some elements of the story, and consider it a heavily modified version of the actual event.

[Mental flatliner]

That's roughly my interpretation as well. I wasn't sure just how literally you were taking it though. I also doubt some elements of the story, and consider it a heavily modified version of the actual event.

By literally, I mean every word, every meaning and innuendo is authoritative.
This is mostly because the contrast would be a fraud: any attempt on my part to insert words, meanings or innuendo would be a rewriting of the document.

I'm a purist when it comes to history because of this. I go so far as to try to see the story through the eyes of the writer by learning as much of his time, culture and language as I can get my greedy little mits on.

Simply put, nobody in that time and culture had the first clue what a "planet" was, and so it would be a fraud for me to read that into the story, wouldn't it? They thought their world was about the size of Texas, so when they say "the whole world", that's what they're referring to, as best as I can tell.

[srd44]

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:

[semiopen]

Thanks for the insight srd.

I really didn't know there was an academic position that the deluge didn't involve the entire earth; after reading your post I'm still not sure.

However, your point about כָּל (all, everything) is excellent.

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְנֹ֗חַ קֵ֤ץ כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ בָּ֣א לְפָנַ֔י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֥ה הָאָ֛רֶץ חָמָ֖ס מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

God said to Noah, "I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth. (Gen 6:13 TNK)

Here we see כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ - all flesh. The thing is that whoever wrote this (and the many other kl examples) seems to have played a little loose with this word. It seems that almost every time it appears it is an exaggeration.

כִּי֩ לְיָמִ֙ים ע֜וֹד שִׁבְעָ֗ה אָֽנֹכִי֙ מַמְטִ֣יר עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אַרְבָּעִ֣ים י֔וֹם וְאַרְבָּעִ֖ים לָ֑יְלָה וּמָחִ֗יתִי אֶֽת־כָּל־הַיְקוּם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשִׂ֔יתִי מֵעַ֖ל פְּנֵ֥י הָֽאֲדָמָֽה׃


For in seven days' time I will make it rain upon the earth, forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the earth all existence that I created." (Gen 7:4 TNK)

כָּל־הַיְקוּם֙ = all existence.

Jewish exegesis claims that the seven days must be the time of sitting Shiva for Methuselah http://books.google.com/books?id=5ZtBby ... va&f=false

וְהַמַּ֗יִם גָּֽבְר֛וּ מְאֹ֥ד מְאֹ֖ד עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַיְכֻסּ֗וּ כָּל־הֶֽהָרִים֙ הַגְּבֹהִ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־תַּ֖חַת כָּל־הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃

When the waters had swelled much more upon the earth, all the highest mountains everywhere under the sky were covered. (Gen 7:19 TNK)

כָּל־הֶֽהָרִים
= all of the mountains

Joshua, is famous for going overboard on the kls but Noah is not exactly a stranger to them either

Perhaps these are symptomatic of what you allude to with the worldview. It seems Christians worry much more than Jews about the kangaroos and sloths (not to mention dinosaurs) so perhaps your post will partially alleviate the concern over these technical issues.

[Andrew]

For a while, there have been a few theories about the flood that allow for an actual flood event, but do not have the whole world being covered. One of these is that the Great Flood was a flood that destroyed the city of Ur, spawning the Sumerian myth story, as well as the Hebrew one (which possibly came from Abraham according to some). Another theory places the flood earlier in human history. It has been suggested that when the Black Sea joined the Mediterranean Sea, there was a violent storm, and the water covered the settlements in that area (towns have been found on the floor of the Black Sea, supporting this view).

The latter theory is described in a book called Noah's Flood, which I have not read. I did not read the first hand descriptions of these theories, but I'm sure you could find out more about them if you dug into it a bit more.

[srd44]

Hey Semi

I really didn't know there was an academic position that the deluge didn't involve the entire earth; after reading your post I'm still not sure.

Actually, my point was to detour this whole discussion by simply pointing out that the use of eretz does not mean the "planet earth." So I guess that collapses the whole debate??

Contributing to your list of hyperbolic kols, here's the penultimate example: וַיָּמָת כֹּל מִקְנֵה מִצְרָיִם -- "and all the cattle of Egypt died" (Ex 9:6) --- Not! See Ex 9:18, 10:25, 11:5, 14:28, etc.

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/all ... ed-or-not/

[ficino]

srd44, maybe your hyperbolic sense of "all" is what is operative in the famous opening of the Iliad, where it says that Zeus rendered many heroes as "prey for dogs and all birds." Our prof in sophomore year took this to mean "all kinds of birds," but "all the birds around there" as hyperbole works better, I think.
OK, enough of derailing!