Noah And The Great Flood

[mortify]

[center][img]http://uploads2.wikipaintings.org/images/gustave-dore/the-deluge.jpg!xlMedium.jpg[/img][/center]



[color=#222222]When Spanish missionaries began evangelizing the Incans of Peru, they discovered their civilization had not forgotten the great flood that had destroyed early humanity. Indeed, virtually all cultures bear such a memory, and the stories usually follow the same pattern. Earth is full of sin, God punishes mankind through a flood, but saves those on a boat. Each culture pointed to the highest mountain in their region, and said that is where the boat landed. Interestingly, a few cultures record humans surviving by climbing to the tops of these mountains. Either way, we have a widespread and independent memory of a distant event. Some venture to say that this is the result of local flooding these various cultures experienced, and then it was enlarged into the mythical flood that we now believe to have happened. However the similarities and agreement on the timing of this event don't fit that hypothesis.

The two main thoughts on the flood in our day are that it either was literal, and occurred some 4,000 years ago, or that it's closer to a metaphor, a parable if you will. Since our Lord spoke of Noah as if he was a real figure, and the long standing tradition of the Church is to take these Genesis events as historical in some sense; I am inclined to not believe the flood was a mere metaphor. But at the same time, I don't agree with the young earth creationist world view.

So what is another, perhaps more likely view? First some recent discoveries that help establish a global and catastrophic event occurring.

A couple years ago I read an article about scientists discovering a bottleneck in human history. A drop in genetic diversity some 50,000 to 70,000 years ago suggested that the human population was a low as 2,000 people. The exact cause of the bottleneck is unknown, speculations are that it's linked to climate changes caused by the super volcano Toba's explosion in Indonesia. Keep this volcanic explosion in mind as we go one. Whatever the cause, there is evidence to suggest that humanity was significantly reduced by some unknown calamity, this is point one.

Secondly, by further studying genetics, scientists have been able to link all males to one male living some 50,000 years ago. All males bear a Y-chromosome that stems back to this one male, and scientists have named him genetic Adam. Any reader of the Bible will know that a more appropriate title would be genetic Noah, since eight people are recorded to have survived the flood, and three of them were the sons of Noah. Therefore, there is a genetic link between all human males to this one male, living in the time of the bottle neck mentioned above.

Thirdly, these events roughly coincide with another significant event in human history, the crossing of the African land bridge. According to the out of Africa theory, humans were confined to the African continent, until some 50,000 years ago they crossed the land bridge to colonize other parts of the world. Again, returning to the Bible we see that it was Noah's sons who spread to the other parts of the world, Japheth who colonized Europe, Ham who colonized Africa, and Shem the Middle East and Asia.

All these facts form a pattern that fits nicely with the Genesis account, but who is to believe that these events really took place 50,000+ years ago? I read the Old Catholic Encyclopedia, and to my surprise there are some things that can warrant this consideration. For one, the genealogies in the Old Testament need not be comprehensive. In other words, when the Bible says Person X was son of Person Y, "son" may really mean descendent, and that therefore there may be numerous links in-between the two. This fact alone renders the dating based for a young earth as untenable. Furthermore, Genesis never explicitly indicates that the whole earth was flooded; rather the "land" was flooded. This opens the possibility that the flood was global [i]anthropologically[/i], but not [i]geographically[/i]. If humanity was confined to one continent, then this is totally possible. Even the possibility of humans surviving outside of Noah’s ark is discussed by the article, but I would refer the reader to the article itself for more information.

So in the end, there is justification for greater open-mindedness on the Great Flood. This of course is all speculation, but I have discovered that I am not the only one who has come to such conclusions. Browsing the internet, I see that many have come to the same exact conclusion as I have. In the end however, it remains a good though untested hypothesis. The past few centuries have shown zealous Christians digging a few thousand years into the strata, hoping to find a layer indicating a flood. The reality is a much greater distance may have to be investigated, and in an entirely different area.

Before I end this, I want to talk on the mechanism of the flood. Popular belief holds that rain was the predominant cause, but could rain alone garner the volume of water that is said to have wiped out virtually all humans? There is an often overlooked verse of the bible that needs to be carefully considered:

[i][b]"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened". [/b][/i]
Genesis 7:11

The breaking up at the bottom of the sea has been interpreted as a tectonic event, and indeed it would have been a catastrophic one. At the bottom of the ocean there are expansive ridges where a great amount of geologic activity occurs. If you ever look at the shapes of continents, you will see they almost fit like puzzle pieces, as if they were once attached (e.g. the eastern coast of South American and the western coast of Africa.)[/color]

[img]http://www.platetectonics.com/oceanfloors/images/Worldmap_2D.jpg[/img]




[color=#222222]A slow and steady plate tectonic mechanism over millions of years is said to have placed the continents where they are today. But perhaps, through a Divine act, this process was invariably sped up to cause catastrophic geologic activity, including the movement of continents, volcanic eruptions, and displacement of vast amounts of the earth's oceans.[/color]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrXAGY1dmE&list=FL6rynzsbpz-Ins52w_ZMGgw&index=17&feature=plpp_video[/media]


[color=#222222]So we begin to see that Noah's flood may have been a far more complex event than simply 40 days of rain. The event would have reshaped the earth, caused volcanic eruptions that would ultimately lead into an ice age, and it certainly would have wiped out a significant population of the earth's inhabitants. Again, this is merely hypothesizing, but many of these points do fit nicely into the Genesis account. I offer this only to show that we need not be limited between fundamentalism and modernism, and that an open mind needs to be maintained when reading the bible, all the way defending its integrity and inspiration.[/color]

God bless,
Mort

[Autumn Dusk]

You have to be careful with all this stuff becuase you can get caught up with the young earth creationsts who are, quite bluntly, wacky.

Now, if you read some of Hahn's work you can understand a few things. From God's perspective the Jews are the chosen people not the ONLY people. Which means that the Bible acknowledges that there were a huge number of non-God worshiping people sometime between Noah and Abraham.

These people populated in the world and would of relied on the same oral traditions that the pre-jews did. Therefore, the elements of Christianity and Judiam...like the Flood, a singular God, ideas about life and other things can be found in other world religions and cultures. And based on their geographic locations it makes sence.

Some would say this "proves" that God is made up and that all people naturally come up with the same sorts of ideas. But feral children and highly isolated tribes seem to show otherwise.

[Archaeology cat]

One nitpicky thing: humans left Africa earlier than that, I think. I don't know enough about that time period to comment further, though.

[CatherineM]

80% of the world's population lives near water today. I suspect that was the same umpteenth years ago too. End of the last ice age, water levels rose everywhere, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. The stories that come out of cultures in the Middle East probably all came from the flooding over the Bosporus.

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1334167526' post='2415859']
80% of the world's population lives near water today. I suspect that was the same umpteenth years ago too. End of the last ice age, water levels rose everywhere, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. The stories that come out of cultures in the Middle East probably all came from the flooding over the Bosporus.
[/quote]Civilisation has always been near water, for that allows for drinking water and transportation. Look at the early civilisations: they centre on rivers (the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, etc).

[mortify]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1334167526' post='2415859']
80% of the world's population lives near water today. I suspect that was the same umpteenth years ago too. End of the last ice age, water levels rose everywhere, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. The stories that come out of cultures in the Middle East probably all came from the flooding over the Bosporus.
[/quote]

That's an interesting hypothesis however I'd have to disagree. "Myths" of a great flood that parralel closely to what we read in the Bible are found all over the world. The Incans, Hopi Native Americans, Indians, Chinese, etc all record such an event, and clearly a flood in the Bosphorus can't account for them. I believe this was an event that deeply made an impression on the collective memory of early humanity. As thousands of years passed, the story gradually changed, and perhaps was even incorporated with local flood myths on a smaller scale (e.g. Gilgamesh and the flooding of the Bosphorus.) However there is an underlying theme that is common to them, and being that there is strong evidence that humanity was virtually rendered extinct some 50,000 years ago, I believe that is the most reasonable time period to place this event.

But God knows best

[Autumn Dusk]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1334177508' post='2415956']
That's an interesting hypothesis however I'd have to disagree. "Myths" of a great flood that parralel closely to what we read in the Bible are found all over the world. The Incans, Hopi Native Americans, Indians, Chinese, etc all record such an event, and clearly a flood in the Bosphorus can't account for them. I believe this was an event that deeply made an impression on the collective memory of early humanity. As thousands of years passed, the story gradually changed, and perhaps was even incorporated with local flood myths on a smaller scale (e.g. Gilgamesh and the flooding of the Bosphorus.) However there is an underlying theme that is common to them, and being that there is strong evidence that humanity was virtually rendered extinct some 50,000 years ago, I believe that is the most reasonable time period to place this event.

But God knows best
[/quote]

What I said in other words.

We also have to remember the Bible is an allegory for many things, so the actual facts that may be concretly true (like a worldwide flood that destroyed all HUMANS) should not be held with the same gravity as the symbolic numbers like 40. (as in days of rain)

[mortify]

Interestingly enough, there is an Old Earth Creationist site that corroborates the dating of the Flood to 50,000 years ago, albeit [i]independently[/i].

Greg Neyman, the author of the article, identifies the dispersing of human beings around the world in Genesis 11 as the last common denomintor that can be reasonably dated in history. With that marker point, he is able to count back and determine when events like the Flood may have taken place. Using his method, he estimates the flood occured some 45,000 years ago, which fits nicely with the genetic evidence I mention above.

Here is the link to the article: [url="http://www.answersincreation.org/biblicaldating.htm"]http://www.answersincreation.org/biblicaldating.htm[/url]

But God knows best,

Mort

[cmotherofpirl]

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam[/url]

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve[/url]

[CatherineM]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1334177508' post='2415956']
That's an interesting hypothesis however I'd have to disagree. "Myths" of a great flood that parralel closely to what we read in the Bible are found all over the world. The Incans, Hopi Native Americans, Indians, Chinese, etc all record such an event, and clearly a flood in the Bosphorus can't account for them. I believe this was an event that deeply made an impression on the collective memory of early humanity. As thousands of years passed, the story gradually changed, and perhaps was even incorporated with local flood myths on a smaller scale (e.g. Gilgamesh and the flooding of the Bosphorus.) However there is an underlying theme that is common to them, and being that there is strong evidence that humanity was virtually rendered extinct some 50,000 years ago, I believe that is the most reasonable time period to place this event.

But God knows best
[/quote]

That's why I said the middle eastern myths probably came from the Bosporus. Asian myths or American myths came from the same sea level rises, but in other waterways.

[mortify]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1334427821' post='2417758']
That's why I said the middle eastern myths probably came from the Bosporus. Asian myths or American myths came from the same sea level rises, but in other waterways.
[/quote]

I don't think that's a tenable hypothesis. For one, the "great flood" of the Bosporus proposed by William Ryan and Walter Pitman has been largely rejected by geologists, both in terms of magnitude and suddeness. The whole event is far too questionable to propose as a source for the Great Flood.

I'm also not convinced that a gradual rise in sea levels over the millenia lead to such 'myths.' These myths record a sudden, virtually global event, that utterly destroyed everything in the past. For example the oldest narratives of the Hopi Native Americans, told in Oraibi, record the entire world being destroyed by a great flood due to its sinfulness. The few survivors protected in reed boats created by Spider Grandmother, were the progenitors of the whole human race. Again, I just don't see the explanatory power in suggesting stories such as these were inspired by gradual rises in sea levels, or even local river floods.

We are left with the startling reality that a water event did occur, that nearly rendered humanity extinct. It would be easy to label it simply a story if infact there was no evidence that humanity was nearly wiped out. Genetics tells a different story, one far more grim, and one that I believe is a key to the dating of the flood recorded in Genesis.

[AnneLine]

I once learned a definition of 'myth' that I just love.... 'a myth is an attempt to explain a truth that can't be conveyed except in story.' I think we are all saying the same thing here -- different stories, all about the same phenomena, and together they tell us more about the 'truth' than pure science allone could do.

I've always loved how STNG used the Gilgamesh story in the 'Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra' episode that ArcheologyCat uses for her tag line. Absolutely. An attempt to speak using ... beyond words. yes.

[Archaeology cat]

We studied a lot of the flood stories in my first university history class, and it was very interesting. Although I did find one of the explanations rather wanting, as I think I remember one saying that there was just a need for this type of myth. That seems to be stretching it quite a bit. I don't think all the stories can be dismissed, and I think there is some truth behind it. Is the Genesis account absolutely literal? I don't know.

[mortify]

[quote name='Archaeology cat' timestamp='1334432488' post='2417799']
We studied a lot of the flood stories in my first university history class, and it was very interesting. Although I did find one of the explanations rather wanting, as I think I remember one saying that there was just a need for this type of myth. That seems to be stretching it quite a bit. I don't think all the stories can be dismissed, and I think there is some truth behind it. Is the Genesis account absolutely literal? I don't know.
[/quote]

In answer to your last question the answe is yes, but properly understood. Genesis is historical in the sense that it deals with actual events, but at the same time it's not History in the modern sense of the word. The Divine Author is not overly focused with details, and the primary intent is the spiritual improvement and salvation of mankind.

[Archaeology cat]

Sorry, Mort, I wasn't clear. I was reverting back to the meaning of literal as used by the Southern Baptists around whom I was raised, who used it in the sense of an absolute play-by-play. This, as you rightly mention, ignores the ancient conception of historical accounts. So we're in agreement there.

By the way, Mort, I wouldn't mind seeing more sources, as I'm interested. It's earlier than my area of expertise (ie: Old Kingdom Egypt).