quote:
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."
As noted in an earlier post, which Hebrew word for "earth" was used in this translation?
This is one of my biggest complaints about literalism among us Christians. We are , at best, reading a translation. More likely, we are reading a translation of a translation of a translation. Even more difficult, it's a translation from ancient languages. We have almost no grasp of the context involved.
It reminds me of a cheesy afternoon movie I saw one weekend where an assassin says to his client, "So you want me to draw a bead on the pigeon." In context, that means to aim a rifle at a target individual so as to shoot them dead. But without context, the phrase is complete nonsense.
What if there was a turn of phrase in ancient Hebrew where, with proper context, the word for year really means moon? What if Noah was 900 "moons" old? That would put him in his 80's. This changes things immensely. All of the sudden, what was seen as balderdash becomes very plausible.
What if the verse really reads like so: "I establish my covenant with you: Never again will your people be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy Israel (or Canaan or where ever it was said to have happened)." But we don't know because all we have is a translation.
