Noah Fresco in the Catacombs of Priscilla. Third Century.
Noah is depicted as praying and receiving a dove.
The Ark is represented as a small box.
The fresco reflects the belief of early Christians that the account of Noah’s Flood was
a story of divine salvation. (Fair Use)
Noah and the Presumed Universal Flood
By Ranger
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain.
“When multiple interpretations of Scripture are possible, the church can benefit from considering what God has revealed in the natural world, because a proper interpretation of Scripture will not conflict with what we find there.” – Biologos Website
“Modern science is now just beginning to admit that there really was a worldwide flood some 4,500 years ago in the days of the Noah of the Bible. The flood really did happen and drowned everyone on earth”. – Herbert W. Armstrong, World Tomorrow Radio Broadcast.
While the Flood Story is replete with symbolic meaning, I do not believe it is entirely allegory. The Yahwist (J) and Priestly (P) pericopes are not in agreement in some places in the account, but I believe there really was a Noah and there really was a remarkable flood in history. I just don’t believe key concepts in the ancient Biblical account have been accurately translated into modern English. All translators invest their work with political “enrichment” whether they intend to or not. They come to pen, paper, and desk with a set of influences they received from all the sources they have been exposed to. In addition to this, they sometimes have a lurking constituency to worry about. So, politics insinuates itself into translated word. It is not that translators are moral derelicts. It is just impossible for any of us to wholly set our indoctrination and personal connections aside. Let me cite the case of Noah and the putative universal Flood.
The Three-Story Universe as the Declared ContextThe Book of Genesis starts by giving us parameters. It specifies the ideological milieu that it is going to draw on. This is the initial definition stack that the subsequent text will rely on. This set of definitions is almost always neglected by criticizing atheists or people who take an apologetic interest in the universal Flood concept. To neglect the Biblical parameters is to veer off into a grossly mistaken scope for the Flood story – e.g., Herbert W. Armstrong’s statement above. HWA’s statement reflects the broadly accepted view among fundamentalists although I am not sure that scientists in large numbers are really admitting to anything as HWA asserts. Genesis in its first chapters gives the scope of this event by explaining ancient Hebrew cosmology. This cosmological model is very similar to the other cosmologies found among Near Eastern peoples around 3000 BC.
Our modern view is that the earth is a blue planetary orb hanging in the deep space of an immense universe - an understanding that comes from contemporary astrophysics. This is not what the ancient peoples of the Near East saw nor was it what was described in the pages of Genesis. What they saw was a flat earth – like a disc. And stretched over this flat earth was an arched vault of blue called heaven. And the vault had firmness to it, a firmament, and it held back waters. The waters are what made the sky blue. And the vaulted ceiling was close enough so that birds could fly up to it. And men could build a tower that could reach it. And if you ever got up there and could find a door, you could go to the other side and that is where God lives. Celestial bodies were small and embedded in this vaulted firmament and were not far away and they all revolved around the earth.
And the “world” was what you could see in a 360-degree scan of the horizon. And you might fall off the flat world if you got to the edge. There were pillars underneath this flat world that held it up. And down underneath somewhere was Hades and down further Tartarus. This is the Three-Story Universe of the ancient Hebrews and Greeks. It consisted of the underworld at the bottom, the surface of the earth at the middle, and heaven above. And heaven, the top story, was divided into the vault of heaven or sky and a higher heaven where God resided (The Book of Enoch divides heaven into seven levels with the third heaven being the abode of the righteous and the seventh heaven being the abode of God).
And the vocabulary of The Flood in Genesis refers to this Three-Story Universe. The vocabulary does not refer to what you will find in a modern text on astrophysics. This is the cosmological context that the Bible sets up as a given at the beginning of Genesis. To try to impose the modern model of the universe on the Genesis model can only result in frustration and error and maybe disbelief.
One thing is clear – this cosmology leads to an ideology and vocabulary of local events not global events for the Flood account. When the author wrote “earth” he did not have in mind the blue globular planet carefully obeying celestial mechanics that we know. And if the waters stretched as far as the eye could see as you stood on the deck of a boat, that was “the World”. This ancient Near Eastern cosmology comports nicely with the Biblical semantics of the Flood story as a local event, discussed later.
Interchangeable CosmologiesAnd why can such an archaic model as the Three-story Universe be used as a backdrop to Noah and the Flood? Because the Flood account is not about science but about theology. The Flood account is a source of theological principle. If you look at where Noah and the Flood are referred to in the New Testament, it is always about invoking some ethical principle and is never about science. The ancient Near Eastern cosmology used in Genesis is as good as any for conveying the central moral message. The ethical and theological principles would remain intact in their presentation even if today’s model based on the Big Bang Theory and Relativity were used anachronistically back then. For that matter, today’s model will one day seem archaic to future scientists so how would it be an effective improvement on the Three-story Universe in conveying the essential message? We don’t know what dark matter and dark energy are. Who knows what revolution in astrophysics there will be when we find out. What cosmology you use makes no difference to the intended ethical and theological message.
The Regional Flood Lost in TranslationThe Flood was a regional event that happened somewhere around 2900 BC. It was titanic because many nations in the Near East recall it. It was a regional event because to people in those days “The World” was local. To the Hebrews, eretz, the earth, was what you could see by scanning the horizon. Shemesh, the sun, was a lamp that hung in the sky and was not that far away. The area affected by the Flood was likely the flood-prone Mesopotamian alluvial plain. Flooding is endemic to this region. In 1954 heavy rains submerged hundreds of miles of this plain and threatened Baghdad with destruction. The Noachian Flood wiped out a small civilization with a limited population of people who were descended from a man named Adam who in the literature of Genesis represented humankind. The Ark was small by our standards but large for the day and the troupe of animals probably came out of Noah’s barnyard and pasture.
The reason why the local Flood became global has to do with the biases of the translators. They brought the idea of a global flood, already formed in their minds, to their work. So, they imbued Genesis 6-8 with universal, global language. The Hebrew word used for earth is “eretz”. Carol A. Hill, a consulting geologist at the University of New Mexico, stated: “In no way can earth be taken to mean the planet Earth, as in Noah’s time and place, people (including the Genesis writer) had no concept of the Earth as a planet and thus had no word for it…The clincher to the word “earth” meaning ground or land (and not the planet Earth) is Genesis 1:10: God called the dry land earth (eretz). If God defined ‘earth’ as ‘dry land,’ then so should we.” So, the Bible is not talking about God destroying the planet but, rather, flooding the Mesopotamian alluvial plain where the descendants of Adam were concentrated. And Mark Twain might say that the Global Flood advocates find in the word “eretz” the lightning bug rather than the lightning.
A further issue is where the Ark settled after the flood waters receded. Mt. Ararat is a favorite of entertainment-oriented documentaries. Yet, the Jewish Study Bible states, “Contrary to a common misimpression, the Tanakh knows of no individual mountain named ‘Ararat’.” A high mountain, like Mt. Ararat, suggests that the flood waters were above the mountain peaks, including Everest. Hill states, “…the Bible does not actually pinpoint the exact place where the ark landed, it merely alludes to a region or range of mountains where the ark came to rest: the mountains of Ararat (Gen. 8:4). Ararat is the biblical name for Urartu (Isa. 37:38) as this area was known to the ancient Assyrians.” And also, “…both Islamic and Christian tradition held that the landing place of the ark was on Jabel Judi, a mountain located about 30 miles (48 km) northeast of the Tigris River near Cizre, Turkey.”
As regards archaeology, Hill states, “There is both epigraphical and archaeological grounds for believing that Ziusudra (the Sumerian name for Noah) was a real prehistoric ruler of a well-known city, the site of which (Shuruppak, or the modern-day mound of Fara) has been archaeologically identified. Flood texts found in Mesopotamia and lands bordering it refer to a flood within Mesopotamia and to a righteous Mesopotamian man who survived the flood in a ship. The archaeological record thus definitely points to a flood within the confines of Mesopotamia, but not to a universal flood of planet-wide proportions.” Ziusudra was on the Sumerian King list as the last king of Shuruppak before the Flood.
As regards geology, Hill states “At Shuruppak (and also at Uruk), the last Jemdet Nasr (an archaeological time period corresponding to the age of the Flood – author) remains are separated from the subsequent Early Dynastic I Period by clean, water-lain clay deposited by a flood. This flood clay is nearly five feet thick at Uruk, and two feet thick at Fara… Above these flood deposits, a new era of building and technology was established in southern Mesopotamia starting in the Early Dynastic I Period…”
There are many more considerations too lengthy for this venue, and for a much more comprehensive analysis, see Carol A. Hill’s articles cited in the Reference section below.
A Case of Misdirected Literalism among Fundamentalists and AtheistsFundamentalists and atheists like to get literal about the English translations of the Flood story. This is because Fundamentalist believe that the word of God was delivered to mankind by some kind of automatic writing and later mapped, with fidelity, into the English language. And atheists like literal interpretations of the English translations because they are an easy target – and atheists have all their arguments already packaged and tuned for that body of writing. But this is not an issue of literalism directly. It is about being literal about the wrong thing. It is the wrong thing because the traditional Flood story has been improperly translated and exegeted. If anyone wants to get literal, they should get literal about the original language, not modern English translations. Otherwise, they’re just flogging a dead horse.
Conclusion
I wrote a longer conclusion but I thought the following statement by Augustine, though I differ with him on some unrelated points of theology, makes my point exceedingly well:
“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.”
The battle between those who are proponents of a local flood and those who are proponents of a whole planet flood has been going on for some time. In the last analysis, there is no archaeological, geological or genetic evidence for a worldwide flood in the Biblical timeframe. Further, there is no solid Biblical exegesis that affirms a global flood. There is abundant physical evidence for a large and catastrophic but regional flood in Mesopotamia. The traditional global flood account makes a good story-time fantasy for children. It’s fun to imagine the orderly march, like parading soldiers, of interesting and exotic animals into the Ark. But it does not comport with either Science or the Bible.
ReferencesEnns, Peter. Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible, Chapters 3 and 6, 2019.
Hill, Carol A. A Time and Place for Noah, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, v. 53, no. 1, 20001. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF3-01Hill.html
Hill, Carol A. The Noachian Flood: Universal or Local?, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, v. 54, no. 3, 2002. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2002/PSCF9-02Hill.pdf
Note: In reference to the fresco at the top, thanks be to our Christian brothers and sisters in the Third Century for receiving the deep meaning of the Flood story. Almost two millennia ago, they were way more spiritually advanced than many modern fundamentalists who are still squabbling about the impossible logistics of how kangaroos got all the way from Australia to the Near East and then back to Australia again. Bravo, brothers!
