Contradictions in the flood narrative

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In your opinion, what is the most convincing explanation for the apparent contradictions in the biblical flood story? Why? I haven’t been able to find any good information on this from Catholic sources… Please provide either a theological, religious, or academic explanation for each contradiction.
 
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That the flood is an allegorical story, not a historic event.
 
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The anagogical sense as opposed to the literal interpretation of scripture.
 
Probably the flood narrative is seen from the world that was known to the author then.
 
It would help if you first point out what you feel are contradictions in the text.
 
That doesn’t make sense.

Based on the logic of it being ‘put together’ it would have been the priestly person who put it together (say in the 7th century bc) and just left out the jahwist version.
 
A popular piece of “evidence” flood apologists like is the Grand Canyon, not understanding that floodwaters can’t cut through hundreds of feet of solid stone, and the winding canyon is more indicative of a slow moving stream
 
Though that’s not necessarily the view of all flood apologists, a lot seem to like iy
 
Another is the problem of the amount of water. Where does the water go when it recedes? Supposedly, there was enough water to cover some mountains. It would take millions of years for evaporation to slowly lower the water, unless the sun made the earth several times hotter than it is now, which would kill everything on the planet
 
Records from different civilizations don’t match eat other. People, especially back then, had to live very close to rivers and lakes. Rivers and lakes flood. There are tons of records of massive floods all over the world, but the dates don’t match
 
ConsistantlyBaffled said:
Another is the problem of the amount of water. Where does the water go when it recedes? Supposedly, there was enough water to cover some mountains. It would take millions of years for evaporation to slowly lower the water, unless the sun made the earth several times hotter than it is now, which would kill everything on the planet
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The surplus water could recede back into the earth from which it came as the Scripture says '…on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth…" Since the Flood was a supernatural event, the receding of the waters back into the earth in a short amount of time would also be supernatural. Incidentally, recent scientific research indicates vast reservoirs of water deep beneath the earth’s surface possibly three or more times the volume of all the earth’s oceans on the surface.
 
Right. I’d be happy to attempt to answer, but it’s difficult to do that unless the OP gives something specific about what he sees as a contradiction.
 
Can you point out which two verses contradict each other in this regard? I’m still not seeing it.
 
I think the poster probably means the 150 days and 40 days in genesis 8

Genesis 8 New International Version (NIV)
8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark.

If the tops of the mountains were visible after 150 days why did the raven and dove come back and couldn’t land on top like the ark did?
 
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Hereiam said:
The anagogical sense as opposed to the literal interpretation of scripture.
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The problem with that approach is that all Scripture has a literal sense. Are you simply suggesting that we shouldn’t take it literalistically? That’s reasonable. However, there would still be an applicable ‘literal sense’ to the passage…
 
wiggbuggie1 said:
I think the poster probably means the 150 days and 40 days in genesis 8

If the tops of the mountains were visible after 150 days why did the raven and dove come back and couldn’t land on top like the ark did?
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The narrative talks about perching. If the mountain top was visible, that doesn’t imply that there were trees on which to perch. 😉

On the other hand, I would have thought that the ‘discrepancy’ was between “two of every kind” and “two of every unclean and seven of every clean animal”. 🤷‍♂️
 
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