17.9.06
The Calm Before The Flood
It's been raining non-stop for hours now, which makes it the perfect time to write about the Flood. Yet, I find the task daunting.
Legends and stories about a global flood are found on all continents, among all people.
Geologists tend to agree that there were catastrophic local floods in different parts of the world that left traces. Hardline Christians believe that the fossils were some of the creatures that disappeared during the Flood. Progressive Christians often think that the Flood is a legend. Scholars claim that the Israelites borrowed this legend from the Mesopotamians and reshaped it several times.
The Bible says that all life in the world disappeared because God couldn't stand the living anymore.
It is possible that not all parts of the world got affected. Those who drafted Genesis were not aware of the world like we are now. An area was the whole world to them.
Still, all over the world there are legends about a global flood. Some legends and paintings in South America show a dragon in the sky bringing torrents of water. It has been said that a comet my have plunged into the ocean. This would have generated tsunamis and catastrophic rains on a large area of the planet. The force such an event would have created is incredible. Besides, Black Sea explorers confirmed that the sea did not use to contain any salt. There must have been a raising of the level of the sea, that in turn poured into the once fresh-water Black Sea.
The poetic and exaggerated words of Genesis might not be accurate: I am not sure about the water covering all the mountaintops or about a gigantic chest holding a pair of all living creatures and their respective food for over 10 months! Yet I do believe that something worse than we can imagine occurred during the lifetime of a man the tradition calls Noah...
Noah was the only righteous man of his time. The word the Bible uses means "intact, without blemish", like the animals pure enough to be sacrificed to God. It has been said that Noah's bloodline was the one bloodline that hadn't got mingled with the one of the Sons of God who had married mortal women. -See post: The Sex of Angels-
God realized that humans and animals had gone "wild". The antropomorphic God of the Old Testament became so upset that he decreed he would kill all living things, but Noah, his family and a pair of every animal.
Legends and stories about a global flood are found on all continents, among all people. Geologists tend to agree that there were catastrophic local floods in different parts of the world that left traces. Hardline Christians believe that the fossils were some of the creatures that disappeared during the Flood. Progressive Christians often think that the Flood is a legend. Scholars claim that the Israelites borrowed this legend from the Mesopotamians and reshaped it several times.
The Bible says that all life in the world disappeared because God couldn't stand the living anymore.
It is possible that not all parts of the world got affected. Those who drafted Genesis were not aware of the world like we are now. An area was the whole world to them.
Still, all over the world there are legends about a global flood. Some legends and paintings in South America show a dragon in the sky bringing torrents of water. It has been said that a comet my have plunged into the ocean. This would have generated tsunamis and catastrophic rains on a large area of the planet. The force such an event would have created is incredible. Besides, Black Sea explorers confirmed that the sea did not use to contain any salt. There must have been a raising of the level of the sea, that in turn poured into the once fresh-water Black Sea.
The poetic and exaggerated words of Genesis might not be accurate: I am not sure about the water covering all the mountaintops or about a gigantic chest holding a pair of all living creatures and their respective food for over 10 months! Yet I do believe that something worse than we can imagine occurred during the lifetime of a man the tradition calls Noah...
Noah was the only righteous man of his time. The word the Bible uses means "intact, without blemish", like the animals pure enough to be sacrificed to God. It has been said that Noah's bloodline was the one bloodline that hadn't got mingled with the one of the Sons of God who had married mortal women. -See post: The Sex of Angels-
God realized that humans and animals had gone "wild". The antropomorphic God of the Old Testament became so upset that he decreed he would kill all living things, but Noah, his family and a pair of every animal.
Noah's Ark
God saw the lawlessness of the world and decided to "destroy" the living, who had been "destroying" the world. The same verb is used, as if God carried on the destruction humans started. It often happens that people blame God for the disasters we brough upon ourselves, from the great wars to global warming.
So, God decided to save Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. God's act of destruction is not the final word. While doing it, God also preserves.
God ordered Noah to build a 450 x 75 x 45 feet "chest", rendered as "ark", and Noah did as he was told, no question asked. The material for the ark was gopher wood -whatever that is. The ark was completely enclosed, except for one door and a window.
There have been speculations as to where the ark rests. See for instance MSNBC's "Explorers plan quest in search of Noah's Ark".
The first covenant between mankind and God takes place: God swears he will keep Noah and co. safe in the ark. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. Here, God is king, but he respects the free-will of people. God then orders Noah to take with him two of every animal "according to its kind" and enter the ark with his household.
Another tradition that found its way into the text seems to indicate that the animals, two by two, came to the ark without Noah's intervention. An editor of the text also wrote that there were seven pairs of each animal OK for food and sacrifice and one pair of each of the others. The account is rather opaque.
Most scholars agree that this episode in Genesis is an amalgam of different traditions. These traditions follow the same pattern but differ in their details: Hence the verse about a pair of every animal getting in the ark and the other verse about 7 pairs of animals.
But once every required person and animal was in the ark, God shut the door on them. They were all going to stay in for over 10 months.
So, God decided to save Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. God's act of destruction is not the final word. While doing it, God also preserves.
God ordered Noah to build a 450 x 75 x 45 feet "chest", rendered as "ark", and Noah did as he was told, no question asked. The material for the ark was gopher wood -whatever that is. The ark was completely enclosed, except for one door and a window.
There have been speculations as to where the ark rests. See for instance MSNBC's "Explorers plan quest in search of Noah's Ark".
The first covenant between mankind and God takes place: God swears he will keep Noah and co. safe in the ark. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. Here, God is king, but he respects the free-will of people. God then orders Noah to take with him two of every animal "according to its kind" and enter the ark with his household.
Another tradition that found its way into the text seems to indicate that the animals, two by two, came to the ark without Noah's intervention. An editor of the text also wrote that there were seven pairs of each animal OK for food and sacrifice and one pair of each of the others. The account is rather opaque.
Most scholars agree that this episode in Genesis is an amalgam of different traditions. These traditions follow the same pattern but differ in their details: Hence the verse about a pair of every animal getting in the ark and the other verse about 7 pairs of animals.
But once every required person and animal was in the ark, God shut the door on them. They were all going to stay in for over 10 months.
It Rained - And Then It Rained -
One week after God shut the Ark's door, "the underground waters burst forth on the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. 40 days and 40 nights of rain", as God had told Noah.
The ark rose above the water. The hilltops were all covered and after the rain stopped, the earth was covered with water for another 150 days.
Then "God remembered Noah", as he would later remember other Patriarchs after their ordeals, and the water started to recede.
5 months after the beginning of the flood, the ark rested on a mountain top in the Ararat range, to the Biblical writer the highest peak in the world.
2 months and a half after, other hilltops appeared. "Another 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and released a raven that flew back and forth until the earth was dry". He then sent a dove that found the land dry after 3 weeks of going back and forth. The Roman author Pliny, in the 1st century CE, tells of Indian sailors who release birds, so as to follow them as they turn toward land in "Natural History 6.83".
Noah later looked out the window: The land around the ark was dry indeed. It was the first day of the first month. The land was like it was on the day of creation.
Another 2 months went by and finally, after over 10 months spent with the animals in the ark, in almost total darkness, God ordered Noah to leave the Ark. The animals came out, and so did Noah and his family...
The ark rose above the water. The hilltops were all covered and after the rain stopped, the earth was covered with water for another 150 days.Then "God remembered Noah", as he would later remember other Patriarchs after their ordeals, and the water started to recede.
5 months after the beginning of the flood, the ark rested on a mountain top in the Ararat range, to the Biblical writer the highest peak in the world.
2 months and a half after, other hilltops appeared. "Another 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and released a raven that flew back and forth until the earth was dry". He then sent a dove that found the land dry after 3 weeks of going back and forth. The Roman author Pliny, in the 1st century CE, tells of Indian sailors who release birds, so as to follow them as they turn toward land in "Natural History 6.83".
Noah later looked out the window: The land around the ark was dry indeed. It was the first day of the first month. The land was like it was on the day of creation.
Another 2 months went by and finally, after over 10 months spent with the animals in the ark, in almost total darkness, God ordered Noah to leave the Ark. The animals came out, and so did Noah and his family...
