Product Code Database
The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is a Hebrew flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre-creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's Ark.
The Book of Genesis was probably composed around the 5th century BCE; although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), including the flood narrative, may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BCE. It draws on two sources, called the Priestly source and the non-Priestly or Yahwist, and although many of its details are contradictory, the story forms a unified whole.
A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology, archeology, paleontology, and the global distribution of species.
A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred. Some Christians have preferred to interpret the narrative as describing a local flood instead of a global event. Still others prefer to interpret the narrative as allegorical rather than historical.
It is generally agreed that the history draws on two sources, one called the Priestly source, the other non-Priestly or Yahwist, and their interweaving is evidenced in the doublets (i.e., repetitions) contained within the final story. Many of these are contradictory, such as how long the flood lasted (40 days according to , 150 according to ), how many animals were to be taken aboard the ark (one pair of each in , one pair of the unclean animals and seven pairs of the clean in ), and whether Noah released a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up" or a dove which on the third occasion "did not return to him again," or possibly both. But despite this disagreement on details the story forms a unified whole (some scholars see in it a "chiasm", a literary structure in which the first item matches the last, the second the second-last, and so on), and many efforts have been made to explain this unity, including attempts to identify which of the two sources was earlier and therefore influenced the other. Some scholars have even questioned whether the story is actually based on two different sources, noting that some of the doublets (such as the dove and raven) are not actually contradictory and in fact appear as linked motifs in other biblical and non-biblical sources, that the method of doublets is inconsistently applied in that the alleged sources themselves contain doublets, and that the theory assumes a redactor who combined the sources inconsistently (in some cases extensively editing together the text and in some cases faithfully preserving contradictory versions) for unclear reasons. Similarly, the complete Genesis flood story matches the parallel Gilgamesh flood story in a way which neither of the proposed biblical sources does.Gary A. Rendsburg, The biblical flood story in the light of the Gilgameš flood account, p.116
| 6:5–8 | Introduction: humanity's wickedness, God regrets creating, announces decision to destroy; Noah's righteousness. | |
| 6:9–22 | Introduction: Noah's righteousness, humanity's wickedness, God's decision to destroy; Ark described, Covenant described, 1 pair of all animals, Noah does as God commands. | |
| 7:1–5 | 7 pairs of clean animals, 1 pair unclean; 7 days to gather animals; Noah does as God commands. | |
| 7:6 | Noah's age: 600 years | |
| 7:7–10 | Noah enters Ark with animals after 7 days | |
| 7:11 | Year 600, month 2, day 17: firmament breaks, waters fall from above and rise from below. | |
| 7:12 | Rains 40 days and 40 nights. | |
| 7:13–16a | Noah and family and animals enter Ark on same day as flood begins. | |
| 7:16b–17 | Waters rise for 40 days, the Ark begins to float. | |
| 7:18–21 | Waters rise, all creatures destroyed. | |
| 7:22–23 | All creatures destroyed. | |
| 7:24–8:5 | Flood lasts 150 days; God remembers Noah, fountains and floodgates closed, waters recede; Month 7 day 17, Ark grounds on mountains of Ararat. | |
| 8:6–12 | After 7 days Noah opens window, sends out raven, dove, dove, 7 days between flights | |
| 8:13–19 | Year 601, month 1, day 1: Noah opens cover; ground begins to dry; Month 2, day 27, dry land appears, Noah and family and animals exit, animals begin to multiply | |
| 8:20–22 | Noah builds altar, sacrifices clean animals, God smells sweet aroma, promises not to destroy again. | |
| 9:1–17 | Noah and family told to multiply, given animals to eat; Covenant established, rainbow as sign, God promises not to flood again. |
Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c. 1300–1000 BCE.
The flood begins on the 17th day of the second month, Marcheshvan,Based on the Old Aramaic translation of Genesis 7:11, which reads (translated): "In the six-hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, being the month of Marcheshvan, insofar that up until that time, the months were not being counted except from Tishrei, seeing that it is the start of the Year as to the perfection of the universe, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day, all the flood waters of the great deep burst forth," etc. source:. when "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened", and after 40 days the ark floats (Genesis 7:11–12). The waters rise and then recede, and on the 17th day of the seventh month (or the 27th day in the Greek version) the ark rests on the mountains (Genesis 8:4). The waters continue to fall, the ark is uncovered on the 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, and is opened on the 27th day of his 601st year (Genesis 8:13–14).
The period from the beginning of the flood to the landing on the mountain is five months (the second month to the seventh, Genesis 7:11 and 8:4) and 150 days (8:3), making an impossible five months of 30 days each; the number is schematic, and is based on the Babylonian astronomical calendar of 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). This means that the flood lasts 36 weeks according to the flood calendar, in which an extra day is added to every third month. The number of weeks is symbolically significant, representing the biblical cypher for destruction (the number 6, expressed as 6x6=36), while the number 7 (the number of days in a week) represents the persistence of creation during this time of destruction.
Scholars have long puzzled over the significance of the flood lasting one year and eleven days (day 17 of year 600 to day 27 of year 601); one solution is that the basic calendar is a lunar one of 354 days, to which eleven days have been added to match a solar year of 365 days.
The "original", Jahwist narrative of the Great Deluge was modest; a week of ostensibly non-celestial rain is followed by a forty-day flood which takes a mere week to recede in order to provide Noah his stage for God's covenant. It is the Priestly source which adds more fantastic figures of a 150-day flood, which emerged by divine hand from the heavens and earth and took ten months to finally stop. That the Jahwist source's capricious and somewhat simplistic depiction of Yahweh is clearly distinguished from the Priestly source's characteristically majestic, transcendental, and austere virtuous Yahweh.
The Priestly flood narrative is the only Priestly text that covers dates with much detail before the Exodus narrative. This is perhaps due to a version of the flood myth that was available at the time. There is a text discovered from Ugarit known as RS 94.2953, consisting of fourteen lines telling a first-person account of how Enki appeared to the story's protagonist and commanded him to use tools to make a window ( aptu) at the top of the construction he was building, and how he implemented this directive and released a bird. Antoine Cavigneaux's translation of this text made him propose that this fragment belongs to a Mesopotamian flood myth, perhaps Atrahasis or Tablet IX of Gilgamesh, which has a version found in Ugarit (RS 22.421) that contains a first person account of the flood. If this suggestion is correct, then RS 94.2953 represents a unique version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Line 1 of the text says "At the start of the time of the disappearance of the moon, at the beginning of the month". This reference to the lunar date giving the specific date the protagonist released the bird is significant as it is the only variant of the flood story giving a specific date and the rest do not attribute specific dates or calendrical details to the various stages of the flood. Both RS 94.2953 and Genesis 8 are about the flood protagonist releasing a bird on a specific calendrical date to find land in the middle of the flood.
Intertextuality is the way biblical stories refer to and reflect one another. Such echoes are seldom coincidental—for instance, the word used for ark is the same used for the basket in which Moses is saved, implying a symmetry between the stories of two divinely chosen saviours in a world threatened by water and chaos. The most significant such echo is a reversal of the Genesis creation narrative; the division between the "waters above" and the "waters below" the earth is removed, the dry land is flooded, most life is destroyed, and only Noah and those with him survive to obey God's command to "be fruitful and multiply."
The flood is a reversal and renewal of God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1 God separates the "waters above the earth" from those below so that dry land can appear as a home for living things, but in the flood story the "windows of heaven" and "fountains of the deep" are opened so that the world is returned to the watery chaos of the time before creation. Even the sequence of flood events mimics that of creation, the flood first covering the earth to the highest mountains, then destroying, in order, birds, cattle, beasts, "swarming creatures", and finally mankind. (This parallels the Babylonian flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where at the end of rain "all of mankind had returned to clay," the substance of which they had been made.) The Ark itself is likewise a microcosm of Solomon's Temple.
When the flood commenced, God caused each raindrop to pass through Gehenna before it fell on earth for forty days so that it could scald the skin of sinners. It was a punishment that befitted their crime because like the rain, humanity's sensual desires made them hot and inflamed to immoral excesses.Ginzberg, Louis (1909). The Legends of the Jews Vol I : The Inmates of the Ark (Translated by Henrietta Szold) Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
/ref> however, if the flood narrative is derived from a more localized event and describes a founder effect among one population of humans, certain explanations such as the events described by the Black Sea deluge hypothesis may elaborate on the historicity of the flood narrative.
Localized catastrophic floodings have left traces in the geological record: the Channeled Scablands in the southeastern areas of the state of Washington have been demonstrated to have been formed by a series of catastrophic floods (2025). 9781879628397, Keokee Books. ISBN 9781879628397Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A. Jackson, eds. (2005) Glossary of Geology (5th ed.). Alexandria, Virginia, American Geological Institute. 779 pp. originating from the collapse of glacial dams of glacial lakes in the region, the last of which has been estimated to have occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago.Balbas, A.M., Barth, A.M., Clark, P.U., Clark, J., Caffee, M., O'Connor, J., Baker, V.R., Konrad, K. and Bjornstad, B., 2017. 10Be dating of late Pleistocene megafloods and Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreat in the northwestern United States. Geology, 45(7), pp. 583–586.
Another geologic feature believed to have been formed by massive catastrophic flooding is the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet.Montgomery DR."Biblical-Type Floods Are Real, and They're Absolutely Enormous."
Some also relate the climate change phenomena associated with the Piora Oscillation, which triggered the collapse of the Uruk period, with the Biblical flood myth.Lamb, p. 128.
The current understanding of the prehistoric Altai flood is that several glacial lake outburst floods from the Altai Mountains caused massive flooding along the Katun River (in the present-day Altai Republic) some time between 12000 BC and 9000 BC,Baker, V. R., G. Benito, A. N. Rudoy, Paleohydrology of late Pleistocene Superflooding, Altay Mountains, Siberia, Science, 1993, Vol. 259, pp. 348–352
Rudoy A.N. Mountain Ice-Dammed Lakes of Southern Siberia and their Influence on the Development and Regime of the Runoff Systems of North Asia in the Late Pleistocene. Chapter 16. (pp. 215–234) – Palaeohydrology and Environmental Change / Eds: G. Benito, V.R. Baker, K.J. Gregory. – Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1998. 353 p.Grosswald, M.G., 1998, New approach to the ice age paleohydrology of northern Eurasia. Chapter 15. (pp. 199–214) – Palaeohydrology and Environmental Change / Eds: G. Benito, V.R. Baker, K.J. Gregory. – Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1998. 353 p. as demonstrated by the fact that much of the gravel deposited along the Katun valley lacks a stratigraphic structure, instead showing characteristics of a deposition directly after suspension in a turbulent flow.
In 2020, archaeologists discovered evidence of a tsunami that destroyed middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B coastal settlements in Tel Dor, Israel, as it traveled between 3.5 and 1.5 km inland. The tsunami was approximately 16 m high. Recovery in the affected areas was slow but overall, it did not significantly affect the social development of the southern Levant. Whilst the tsunami is not identified with the Biblical flood, it is believed to contribute to the flood myths found in numerous cultures.
In 1862, William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion focused not on the viability of this theory of deep time, but on the derivation of a more precise figure for the age of the Earth. Lux Mundi, an 1889 volume of theological essays which marks a stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that readers should rely on the as completely historical, but should not take the earlier chapters of Genesis literally.
By a variety of independent means, scientists have since determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old.
Flood geology (a pseudoscience which contradicts a number of principles and discoveries of fact in the fields of geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology in an attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features on Earth in accordance with a literal understanding of the Genesis flood narrative)Senter, Phil. "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology." Reports of the National Center for Science Education 31:3 (May–June 2011). Printed electronically by California State University, Northridge. Retrieved 7 June 2014. can be traced to "Scriptural geologists," a heterogeneous group of writers from the early 19th century, most of whom lacked any background in geology and also lacked influence even in religious circles.
Flood geology was largely ignored in the 19th century, but was revived in the 20th century by the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price,
Most scientific fields, particularly those contradicted by flood geology, rely on Charles Lyell's established principle of uniformitarianism, which for much of their history was seen to contrast with the catastrophism inherent in flood geology. However, with the discovery of evidence for some catastrophic events, events similar to those on which the flood narrative may be based are accepted as possible within an overall uniformitarian framework.Allen, E. A., et al., 1986, Cataclysms on the Columbia, Timber Press, Portland, OR.
Browne, among the first to question the notion of spontaneous generation, was a medical doctor and amateur scientist making this observation in passing. However, biblical scholars of the time, such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–1680), had also begun to subject the Ark story to rigorous scrutiny as they attempted to harmonize the biblical account with the growing body of natural history knowledge. The resulting hypotheses provided an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and indirectly spurred the emergence of biogeography in the 18th century. Natural historians began to draw connections between climates and the animals and plants adapted to them. One influential theory held that the biblical Ararat was striped with varying climatic zones, and as climate changed, the associated animals moved as well, eventually spreading to repopulate the globe.
There was also the problem of an ever-expanding number of known species: for Kircher and earlier natural historians, there was little problem finding room for all known animal species in the Ark. Less than a century later, discoveries of new species made it increasingly difficult to justify a literal interpretation for the Ark story. By the middle of the 18th century, only a few natural historians accepted a literal interpretation of the narrative.
/ref>University of Washington. "Historic Himalayan Ice Dams Created Huge Lakes, Mammoth Floods."
/ref> As with the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington, breakthroughs of glacial ice dams are believed to have unleashed massive and sudden torrents of water to form the gorge some time between 600 and 900 AD.
Flood geology
The development of scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the biblical flood narrative by undermining the biblical chronology, which placed the Creation and the flood no more than a few thousand years back in history. In 1823 the English theologian and natural scientist William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiæ Diluvianæ (relics of the flood) "Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge". His views were supported by others at the time, including the influential geologist Adam Sedgwick, but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that the evidence suggested only local floods. Louis Agassiz subsequently explained such deposits as the results of glaciation.
(2025). 9781862392168, Geological Society. ISBN 9781862392168 The geologic views of these writers were ignored by the scientific community of their time.
(2025). 9780830828760, IVP Academic. ISBN 9780830828760 who was inspired by the visions of Ellen G. White. As Price's career progressed, he gained attention outside of Seventh-day Adventist groups, and by 1929 he was a popular scientific author among Christian fundamentalists, though those who were not Seventh-day Adventists rejected his young Earth theories.
72"> Through the middle of the 20th century, despite debates between Protestant Christian scientists,
72"/> Flood geology maintained traction amongst evangelical Christian circles. Historian Ronald Numbers argues that an ideological connection by evangelical Christians wanting to challenge aspects of the scientific consensus that they believe contradict their interpretation of religious texts was first established by the publication of the 1961 book, The Genesis Flood.
Species distribution
By the 17th century, believers in the Genesis account faced the issue of reconciling the exploration of the New World and increased awareness of the global distribution of species with the older scenario whereby all life had sprung from a single point of origin on the slopes of Mount Ararat. The obvious answer involved mankind spreading over the continents following the destruction of the Tower of Babel and taking animals along, yet some of the results seemed peculiar. In 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wondered why the natives of North America had taken with them, but not horses: "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature, a Horse, is very strange".
See also
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
(2025). 9781405189217, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405189217
Further reading
|
|
