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It's kind of like you with global warming or evolution. You haven't really seen any physical evidence, but you read something and believed it.

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You don't seem to get how evidence works. shocking.

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It's kind of like you with global warming or evolution. You haven't really seen any physical evidence, but you read something and believed it.

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You don't seem to get how evidence works. shocking.

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Like most evolution and climate change deniers, they assume we take it on blind faith instead of evidence.

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It's kind of like you with global warming or evolution. You haven't really seen any physical evidence, but you read something and believed it.

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You don't seem to get how evidence works. shocking.

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I know how it "works".

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Right.

But most cultures of the regions around Armenia, where the story of Noah is about, have similar huge flood stories that appear around the same time.

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And those regional stories likely do refer to the same large flood. Nobody is saying large floods and other natural disasters don't happen, just that there is no reason to believe in a global flood event.

Or that a 400 year old man built a boat and gathered a bunch of animals for a long cruise.

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It's kind of like you with global warming or evolution. You haven't really seen any physical evidence, but you read something and believed it.

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You don't seem to get how evidence works. shocking.

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I know how it "works".

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That you think scientific evidence for evolution and AGW is even in the same neighborhood as a Bronze Age morality tale is all I need to know.

Everyone needs something or a cause to believe in.

Proof is in the rainbow.

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Proof is in the rainbow.

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The rainbow is a problem with a local flood conclusion. They still occur.

OP - I don't believe it's literal. To interpret as such is to miss the point.

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Pretty sure a large number of Christians believe that the Great Flood was local because of the impossibility of it being global.

You pretty much MUST be YEC if you believe the flood was global and wiped out every bit of life on the Earth.

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You know, this thread and YEC threads bring to mind this quote from Augustine waaaaaaaaayy back when:

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"Whenever [non-Christians] catch out some members of the Christian community making mistakes on a subject which they know inside out, and defending their hollow opinions on the authority of our books, on what grounds are they going to trust those books on the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they suppose they include any number of mistakes and fallacies on matters which they themselves have been able to master either by experiment or by the surest of calculations?" St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (I.19.39)

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A medical examiner may tell me the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life is impossible. A medical doctor may tell me human disease cannot be healed instantly by touching a robe, a zoologist may tell me a donkey can't talk, an oeneologist may tell me water cannot turn into wine, an astronomer may tell me the sun cannot stop, a geologist may tell me the flood could not have occurred, a paleontologist may tell me life was not created instantly, a psychologist may tell me so-called prophets hearing voices were schizophrenic, an anthropologist may tell me humans did not derive from one male & female, an archaeologist may tell me the Exodus did not occur, a meteorologist may tell me the weather is not subject to prayer, a lawyer may tell me blood does not justify...

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OP - I don't believe it's literal. To interpret as such is to miss the point.

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Did Peter miss the point? Typology requires the type to have literally occurred.

1 Pet. 3:20 which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

My memory is sometimes not as good as it should be, but aren't you the person with a PhD in history specializing in American Puritanism? It doesn't reflect in your posts.

And have you found those sermons I requested last year?

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Did Peter miss the point? Typology requires the type to have literally occurred.

1 Pet. 3:20 which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

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huh? Whether it was a story or a literal event is irrelevant to Peter's comments - he could have made them regardless. Peter might have believed it really happened...but everyone might have with what little we knew about the world then.

My knowledge of Puritanism does not mean I believe in their doctrines. Or should I believe that Indians were led in a reverse Exodus by Satan to his land of milk and honey since that's what Puritans held?

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Physical evidence doesn't "say" anything

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Yea it does, if you know the laws of the universe physical evidence tells a great deal. It's exactly how we identify a murderer.


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And I hold a position that is fact

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Nope. YOu hold an opinion, you believe to be fact but is in fact disproven unless god is a trickster. No thinking person can regard such a thing as a fact.

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As facts can't lie, I can't alter my factual position using another fact. Maybe that's where you are confused.

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You have facts, opinion, and evidence all confused. Hence the complete willingness to ignore facts and evidence when formulating an opinion. You are a presuppositionalist.

Thousands of ways to prove that the flood story is a myth. That is unless god also performed thousands of miracles after the event to account for all those facts.

My favorite recent one pointed out was the genetic diversity in animals can be measured. In some animals like the cheetah we know that breeding population at one point in history became incredibly small (not 2 animals small but small). This can be measured in the cheetah population and lots of problems stem from their lack of genetic diversity. Modern cheetahs are so inbred that a skin graft from any living cheetah will be accepted by any other living cheetah. This is only happens in populations with little genetic variation and does not happen in other mammals.

If all animals went through the bottleneck described in the bible you would see more animals with genetic problems that cheetahs have but we don't.

For any flood story.. Local or, Global.. The better question is...


Do you think God caused it to kill humans because of their abundance of sins?

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For any flood story.. Local or, Global.. The better question is...


Do you think God caused it to kill humans because of their abundance of sins?

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Possibly.

Or maybe the great local flood was used as a metaphor to make the point that sin eventually leads to destruction.

I'm not sure.

I believe the concept more than the details. The flood, Adam and Eve, Jonah and the great fish, and some other things in the Old Testament may be parables. Or they may be literal truth. I have no idea because I'm nowhere near being a scholar.

Yes, I do believe there was a huge flood that wiped out most of humanity, but do I believe it was a literal global flood where the entire earth was covered in water and it looked like a big watery orb? No.

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It's not tough. They bible doesn't describe a local flood. It describes a global one. It's a moral tale.

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An exegesis on the text lends to a different conclusion.

There are three Hebrew words which get transliterated as "earth" in the bible:

Earth as in planet Earth = kadur ha'arets
earth as in soil = adamah
earth as in land or territory = erets

There are numerous instances of erets used to describe a span of land or region. Had the author wanted to describe a whole Earth flood, erets would not have been the word used. However, erets is the exact word that would be used to convey a local or regional flood.

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Yes, I do believe there was a huge flood that wiped out most of humanity, but do I believe it was a literal global flood where the entire earth was covered in water and it looked like a big watery orb? No.

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That doesn't really account for all or even most of the problems in the story.

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Yes, I do believe there was a huge flood that wiped out most of humanity, but do I believe it was a literal global flood where the entire earth was covered in water and it looked like a big watery orb? No.

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That doesn't really account for all or even most of the problems in the story.

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I personally think most of the "problems" arise from assumptions and interpretations that have been cemented or ingrained into the account by fundamentalists, skeptics, etc over the centuries.

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It's not tough. They bible doesn't describe a local flood. It describes a global one. It's a moral tale.

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An exegesis on the text lends to a different conclusion.

There are three Hebrew words which get transliterated as "earth" in the bible:

Earth as in planet Earth = kadur ha'arets
earth as in soil = adamah
earth as in land or territory = erets

There are numerous instances of erets used to describe a span of land or region. Had the author wanted to describe a whole Earth flood, erets would not have been the word used. However, erets is the exact word that would be used to convey a local or regional flood.

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This seems pretty important.

I am interested to know more about how Jews interpret the story. Is there a tradition of literalism within Judaism? If so, how widely adopted is it?

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It's not tough. They bible doesn't describe a local flood. It describes a global one. It's a moral tale.

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An exegesis on the text lends to a different conclusion.

There are three Hebrew words which get transliterated as "earth" in the bible:

Earth as in planet Earth = kadur ha'arets
earth as in soil = adamah
earth as in land or territory = erets

There are numerous instances of erets used to describe a span of land or region. Had the author wanted to describe a whole Earth flood, erets would not have been the word used. However, erets is the exact word that would be used to convey a local or regional flood.

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This seems pretty important.

I am interested to know more about how Jews interpret the story. Is there a tradition of literalism within Judaism? If so, how widely adopted is it?

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I believe that the tradition of bible literalism is kind of new and the jews of antiquity took stories like the flood to be moral stories and not history. I can problibly find some stuff I have read in the past where early christian church fathers comment on the story being an alagory and not an actual event. I think most of the bible literalism we know today sprang into existance in the 1700s or so.

From our friends at the Jewish encyclopedia who detail some of the history behind this particular story. There's a lot more research available, but most conclude that the story was added late and that it subsequently changed over time until arriving at the version now in the Bible.

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This story has been shown, by a careful study of the Hebrew text by scholars throughout the last century (see Cheyne, "Founders of Old Testament Criticism: Biographical, Descriptive, and Critical Studies," New York, 1893), to be a compilation by a late redactor from two (or even three) different sources, which, while agreeing in general outlines, differ considerably in details, style, and character of language. The collection or codification, in writing, of the oral traditions concerning these legends was not done by one hand nor at one period, but in the course of a very long process and by several or many hands. Many collections must have been made from time to time. Among these several have survived. Two stages are still noticeable (J1 and J2), to the earlier of which are referred the collections of the Jahvist (J) document and the Elohist (E) narrative; while the later is a thorough revision known as the "priestly writing" or "priests' code" (P), whose common theme was "the choice of Israel to be the people of Yhwh" (Wildeboer). The oldest strata of J did not know the story of the Flood: it is preserved in the later strata (J2, about 650 B.C.).

The story of the Flood and similar stories show that in J2 are contained separate legends and legend cycles; delicate and coarse elements exist side by side; they do not bear the stamp of a single definite period or time, and still less of a single personality. There is a decided anthropomorphic flavor in the account of J which is not found in P; and yet it is much purer and more spiritual than the cuneiform account of the Deluge. P preserves the more detailed account, aiming at legal clearness and minuteness, having always the same expressions and formulas, and observing a tone of prosaic pedantry, dry and monotonous; giving the early stories, and few of them at best, only as a sort of preamble to the genealogies, the chief aim of this collection. In his account P manifests a wide contrast with the vivid colors of the older narratives, lacking all the concrete elements of a story. He attaches to the legends a detailed chronology which is absolutely out of keeping with the simplicity of the old legends. Noticeable, also, are the precise form of God's promises and the sign of the covenant made with Noah. Only the objective element is considered as the important feature of his religion, which to him consists in the prescription of ceremonies, etc. He does not, in the account of the Deluge, distinguish between clean and unclean. The theophanies are not of a character usually found in the Old Testament; God appears, speaks, and then ascends; and everything characteristic of other stories is omitted. P was written from its own definite point of view after the catastrophe of the people and the kingdom of Judah, when, overwhelmed by the tremendous impression of their measureless misfortune, they recognized that their fathers had sinned and that a great religious reformation was necessary.

It is clear, then, that J2 contains the early popular legends, while P represents the later learned redaction, preserving at the same time some very old traditions. To an entirely different collection may have originally belonged viii. 7, which was inserted when the two collections J (J2) and E were later on combined by an editor, the Jahvist (Wellhausen), prior to the addition of the still later priests' code. To the final redactor (R) who united J, E, and P may be ascribed some of the brief additions and glosses.

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t is maintained by many that the Hebrew tradition, especially as preserved in J2, was directly borrowed from the Babylonian at the time of the ascendency of Assyria, that is, about 700 B.C., when Judah was a vassal kingdom of Assyria (see Haupt, "Sintflut Bericht," 1881, p. 20; Usener, l.c. p. 256; Stade's "Zeitschrift," 1895, p. 160; Budde, l.c.p. 457; "Am. Jour.of Theology," Oct., 1902, pp. 706, 707). It is, however, more correct to assume with Zimmern ("Biblische und Babylonische Urgesch." p. 40) that these Babylonian legends were first made known about the Tell el-Amarna period among the original Canaanite inhabitants of Palestine, from whom they passed to the Israelites when the latter settled in the land. Others assume later Aramean or Phenician mediation (see Gunkel, "Genesis," pp. 67, 68; Winckler, "Altorientalische Forschungen," ii. 140 et seq., 160 et seq.).

In the Babylonian, and especially in the Hebrew, tradition there is the blending of two still earlier legends, the one of the destruction of mankind, wholly or in part, by the punitive judgment of the divine powers, owing to man's wickednessa legend of a character similar to that of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the story of Philemon and Baucis in classic lore; the other, that of a flood as such, either local or universal. The Flood was not in the tradition's view universal, as "universal" would be understood at present, simply because the world of the early writers was a totally different world from that of to-day. This latter legend again undoubtedly goes back ultimately to a nature-myth representing the phenomena of winter, which in Babylonia especially is a time of rain. The hero rescued in the ship must originally have been the sun-god. Thus the Deluge and the deliverance of Pr-napishtim are ultimately but a variant of the Babylonian Creation-myth (Zimmern; see also Cheyne, s.v. "Deluge," 18).

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Very interesting stuff. Thanks for the link.

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I think most of the bible literalism we know today sprang into existance in the 1700s or so.

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While literalism did predate the Reformation, biblical literalism has its roots in the Reformation and then really took off after the 19th century ended..

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When St. Jerome translated the Old and New Testaments into Latin in the 300s, he remarked that there appeared to be parts of the Gospels that might be original, and other parts that might be later add-ons. It was apparent to him from the difference in Greek. The church father Origen, commenting on these differences, pointed out that the purpose of scripture was spiritual instruction, not conveyance of facts, "The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in material falsehood." Medieval interpreters believed that Scripture existed on four levels, the Plain, Allegorical, Tropological and Anagogical senses. Considering this long tradition of more-than-literal interpretation, how did we get to statements of factual infallibility, such as the American 1978 Chicago Statement, which reads, "We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit?"

It all started with Martin Luther and his doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Luther wanted to move authority back in the church to that of the early witness of scripture to combat the abuses he saw committed in the church in the name of tradition. Luther was not a literalist - far from it - but the placement of scripture for the first time as the pre-eminent source of authority laid a basis for later development. Moody and Darby in the 1800s contribute to this heightening, but it is not until the early 1900s that a true doctrine of scriptural infallibility emerges.

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What is to be made of genesis 9:11 if it's a regional flood?


I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."

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No. From a biological and ecological perspective it's completely impossible.

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Impossible?

Can you show us how the sedimentary layers full of dinosaurs and mammals indicate there was no flood.