And if not, on what basis is it considered allegorical and not true? Why would Noah’s story be false, and our original parents Adam and Eve be true? How do you reconcile the similarities between the story of Noah and other ancient flood stories?
The contrast between
allegorical and
true is misleading. An allegory can be true. It can express truth in a figurative way. The question of the allegory’s meaning pertains to what the author is teaching, what his message is. Not everything in an allegory is what is being taught. For instance, many details may just provide the setting for the story. Those details of place, time, persons, and so on, may be fact or not. That does not matter because those kinds of things are not the message.
An allegory may have an historical basis, but that is not a necessary, or even common feature, especially if the message is a religious or moral one. Aesop’s fables are easily recognized as fables, so no one asks if they are historical, as if a fox could talk, and so on. Still, the fables are still true. The truth in Aesop’s fables is often a moral truth.
When it comes to the Deluge story with Noah, the matter is not as simple as it is with identifying Aesop’s works as fables. The Deluge story needs to be recognized as to its proper literary genre, or
genus litterarium, in order to correctly interpret the story and discern the author’s message. Identifying the* genus litterarium *of an ancient text requires familiarity with the cultural milieu and its literature. For example, one good source is
The Ancient Near East,
Volume I and
Volume II by James Pritchard.
Regarding the deluge, floods were common in the Ancient Near East. And there are a number of flood stories, notably the Babylonian stories, which refer to a flood that happened a very, very long time in the past. There may have been one flood that was greater than the others and is being recalled via tradition in the Babylonian stories as the basis for such stories as the
Epic of Gilgamesh. The Gilgamesh epic involving the hero, Ut-napishtim, a resident of Shuripak on the Euphrates, is the longest and best preserved of the Babylonian flood stories.
The idea there there was an actual world-wide flood is a physical impossibility. But then again, a flood covering the known world at the time, far back in history from the time of the stories, may be literary
hyperbole, but it would not involve an actual global flood, just one of the known world.
The similarities, as well as the very distinct differences, between the Babylonian *Epic of Gilgamesh *and the biblical Deluge story are very revealing. The similarities are discussed in a well-known book titled,
The Epic of Gilgamesh and Old Testament Parallels by Alexander Heidel. The similarities between the Babylonian stories and the O.T. are too numerous to assert an independence.
So, what is the relationship? The Hebrew’s ancestors came from Mesopotamia and would have passed on the flood stories they knew by means of oral tradition.The Hebrews later took this ancient tradition and re-worked it to conform to their own religion. In
Gilgamesh, the gods are arbitrary and vent their irrational anger on the human race with acts of nature, such as floods, without distinguishing between good and evil. When the gods decree a deluge, the god Ea secretly reveals the decree to Ut-napishtim, and instructs him to build a boat described as a cube, 10 dozen cubits on a side. In* Genesis*, the ark is rectangular. It is not a ship or a boat. It is a large box.
The Deluge story may be interpreted Judaism’s response to the
Gilgamesh epic. In the Deluge account there are not many gods. There is the one true God. The Deluge account in
Genesis incorporates the Hebrew notions of divine providence and justice. The disaster occurs because “all flesh was corrupt” (Gn. 6:12). Noah is a hero of righteousness. And a deluge covering the entire world expresses the idea that God’s justice extends to the farthest regions of the world. There is no escaping God’s justice.
When addressing the *genus litterarium *of the biblical Deluge account, we see that it is a theological polemic against the Babylonian flood stories. The Genesis story is now a true account, without it being an historical account. It’s truth involves a religious or theological message about God, his providence and justice.
The story was then worked into the biblical narrative of a religious history, which is not a literal, chronological history as we think of history. The majority of bible scholars do not see any evidence for the Noah story being historical. To emphasize this point, the story is true, yet it is not historical.
The literal sense of the story is the basis for interpreting the account. A true literal reading is one that fully recognizes and appreciates the *genus litterarium , *and how it functions to convey the author’s message. A literal reading in the common usage of “literal”, then, is not truly literal if it takes the story to be an historical account. The interpretation is simply wrong because it does not correctly recognize the
genus litterarium.
We cannot arbitrarily apply a method for interpreting one text in the Bible to any other such as the Adam and Eve story, since the Bible contains numerous ancient literary forms and genres that need understood as to how they function.
For studying the Bible, see
Dictionary of the Bible by Fr. John L. Mckenzie.
Jesus liked to miraculously heal people. 
**“The geographical universality of the Deluge may be safely abandoned.” **Is the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia modernist, also. Here is the link to the page right here on Catholic Answers: 
.