Does the Catholic Church recognize the story of Noah and the flood as being literally true?

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buffalo said:
He didn’t write it - he compiled it. There is a big difference.
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For that to be true, you would, at the least, need to show evidence that the written form, which was subsequent to the oral traditions, existed during the lifetime of Moses. I believe, though, you are trapped in an anachronism with your claim.
 
buffalo said:
Nowhere did I quote a creationist source.

I simply pointed out the flaws in your two points because they are not valid arguments.

And you will note and should admit that I very rarely link or use “creationist” web sites.
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What about all of your links to Catholic Apologetics International on the topic of “toledoths?” CAI is a creation science website that advocates a fundamentalist literalism in regard to the Bible. The theory of Mosaic authorship the site promotes is unconvincing. It creates many more problems than it solves.

The website in general is very odd from my perspective. It claims that the golden calf and Noah’s Ark have been found. LOL

The site claims the earth is the center of the universe. (I did not read that article to find out why they think that)

Regarding Genesis 1, the site adheres to a literal, direct creation in six days. To support that position the site invokes the “Consensus of the Fathers of the Church”, saying the Church teaches that “All the Fathers who wrote on the subject believed that the Creation days were no longer than 24-hour-days.”

That is not true and Robert A. Sungenis, M.A., is aware the above claim is not true, so he posts an article elsewhere on the site trying to convince readers that they should ignore the fact there was no consensus among the Fathers. Sungenis notes Origen as one exception, but St. Augustine is his main target of attack. The most learned of the Church Fathers, St. Augustine, believed everything was created at once, and not over six days. New organisms can and do arise over time because they were created in the beginning in their rationis seminales. Sungenis and CAI cannot have any of that kind of talk.

Curiously, Sungenis does not even mention St. Gregory of Nyssa and his school as another exception to the consensus on Genesis 1.

In sum, CAI represents rank scholarship, creationist psuedo-science, biblical fundamentalism, and the site even contradicts itself, as I indicated in the above example…
 
I still can’t believe that science can disprove the flood; consequently, I think they really haven’t enough global evidence to disprove the flood. I think that the claim of disproving the flood, by common sense, is based on inadequate evidence. So, I believe that people in science are making a premature claim of disproof.

And, since WWI, airplanes have been photographing something that looks the size of the Ark, in a glacier 2/3 of the way up the mountain, I think there’s a chance that’s the Ark. Also, there’s documented anecdotes from people who say they found and saw the Ark when the glacier melted a bit, before it refroze, the early twentieth century.

Subsequently, I think there’s something on that mountain, and I believe skeptics are premature in discounting the anecdotal evidence.

Don
 
donsnow said:
I still can’t believe that science can disprove the flood; consequently, I think they really haven’t enough global evidence to disprove the flood. I think that the claim of disproving the flood, by common sense, is based on inadequate evidence. So, I believe that people in science are making a premature claim of disproof.

And, since WWI, airplanes have been photographing something that looks the size of the Ark, in a glacier 2/3 of the way up the mountain, I think there’s a chance that’s the Ark. Also, there’s documented anecdotes from people who say they found and saw the Ark when the glacier melted a bit, before it refroze, the early twentieth century.

Subsequently, I think there’s something on that mountain, and I believe skeptics are premature in discounting the anecdotal evidence.

Don
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Donsnow, here are some perspectives from Talkorigins (talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH500.html)
  1. What the reports of ark sightings have in common is that none has been corroborated. Most have few if any witnesses. Photographs and newspaper articles disappear, sometimes inexplicably, or they are too vague to be meaningful. Physical evidence either is not retrieved, is faked, or comes from recent wood carried up the mountain. They have the appearance of fables, not fact.
  2. The reports are inconsistent. The ark has been found in different places on the mountain (and on different mountains, if you include earlier accounts). Its condition varies from almost intact to broken in half to only isolated timbers. The character of the wood varies from too hard to cut to falling apart at a touch. Some accounts make it sound like local residents visited the ark routinely, while other accounts stress the hardships encountered.
  3. Noah’s ark is the sort of subject that people would tell stories about. Some people might be motivated by misplaced piety to make up stories. Some have been motivated by money. Others might elaborate a story simply to get attention. Since the ark story is so famous, some people might conclude they have found the ark on the basis of ambiguous evidence. For example, they might misinterpret a blurry photograph or a shape seen through fog, or they might conclude that any wood they find is from the ark, although wood has been carried up Ararat in historical times for building crosses and huts.
 
StAnastasia said:
You’re quite right – vocation is the issue here. As fewer and fewer young men at called, perhaps God will call women to fill their shoes. Or perhaps that is not God’s plan.
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If women were to be ordained as Priests, then Mary Magdalene would have most assuredly been.
 
itinerant1 said:
What about all of your links to Catholic Apologetics International on the topic of “toledoths?” CAI is a creation science website that advocates a fundamentalist literalism in regard to the Bible. The theory of Mosaic authorship the site promotes is unconvincing. It creates many more problems than it solves.

The website in general is very odd from my perspective. It claims that the golden calf and Noah’s Ark have been found. LOL

The site claims the earth is the center of the universe. (I did not read that article to find out why they think that)

Regarding Genesis 1, the site adheres to a literal, direct creation in six days. To support that position the site invokes the “Consensus of the Fathers of the Church”, saying the Church teaches that “All the Fathers who wrote on the subject believed that the Creation days were no longer than 24-hour-days.”

That is not true and Robert A. Sungenis, M.A., is aware the above claim is not true, so he posts an article elsewhere on the site trying to convince readers that they should ignore the fact there was no consensus among the Fathers. Sungenis notes Origen as one exception, but St. Augustine is his main target of attack. The most learned of the Church Fathers, St. Augustine, believed everything was created at once, and not over six days. New organisms can and do arise over time because they were created in the beginning in their rationis seminales. Sungenis and CAI cannot have any of that kind of talk.

Curiously, Sungenis does not even mention St. Gregory of Nyssa and his school as another exception to the consensus on Genesis 1.

In sum, CAI represents rank scholarship, creationist psuedo-science, biblical fundamentalism, and the site even contradicts itself, as I indicated in the above example…
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You should know that the Tablet theory is not Sungenis’s work now is it?

That is if you read it:

**The “Toledoths” of Genesis **
By Damien F. Mackey
This article is all about the true structure of the Book of Genesis; a structure that is so simple and straightforward - as the reader is going to discover - that even a child would have no trouble understanding it in its basic form. The chief credit for having laid bare this structure in all its profound simplicity belongs to the British scholar, P. J. Wiseman(1), upon whose thesis the following article will be based.

and by the way you should also know that Sungenis does not totally agree with it.
 
StAnastasia said:
Donsnow, here are some perspectives from Talkorigins (talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH500.html)
  1. What the reports of ark sightings have in common is that none has been corroborated. Most have few if any witnesses. Photographs and newspaper articles disappear, sometimes inexplicably, or they are too vague to be meaningful. Physical evidence either is not retrieved, is faked, or comes from recent wood carried up the mountain. They have the appearance of fables, not fact.
  2. The reports are inconsistent. The ark has been found in different places on the mountain (and on different mountains, if you include earlier accounts). Its condition varies from almost intact to broken in half to only isolated timbers. The character of the wood varies from too hard to cut to falling apart at a touch. Some accounts make it sound like local residents visited the ark routinely, while other accounts stress the hardships encountered.
  3. Noah’s ark is the sort of subject that people would tell stories about. Some people might be motivated by misplaced piety to make up stories. Some have been motivated by money. Others might elaborate a story simply to get attention. Since the ark story is so famous, some people might conclude they have found the ark on the basis of ambiguous evidence. For example, they might misinterpret a blurry photograph or a shape seen through fog, or they might conclude that any wood they find is from the ark, although wood has been carried up Ararat in historical times for building crosses and huts.
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Hi, StAnastasia -

Well, that’s quite a list, and based on common sense.
  1. There’s also honest, that is…truthful, human nature. Some of those lost photographs could be real and were actually lost.
  2. Some, or one, of those inconsistent reports could be accurate.
  3. Sometimes, I’ve been cynical about human nature, and with reason. So, I’m not arguing against human nature.🙂 (Also I can’t see deception to prove the Ark as misplaced piety; piety, like our Heavenly Father, has no deception, imho. So, I think you are too kind, there 🤷) The father and son at the beginning of the 20th century said they walked into the Ark. That may or may not be true, but I give them the benefit of the doubt.
All in all, I see probability, not just the possibility, of something on Mt. Ararat. I would like to think that it’s the Ark. I am hopefully waiting for one of the several expeditions to there, to find and document an artifact which is not doubted, from the Ark.

Don
 
donsnow said:
The father and son at the beginning of the 20th century said they walked into the Ark. That may or may not be true, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. Don
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Don, who is this father and son who entered the Ark in 1900? I am not familiar with them or their trip.
 
StAnastasia said:
Don, who is this father and son who entered the Ark in 1900? I am not familiar with them or their trip.
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Hi, StAnastasia -

It’s coming on time for me to feed the dogs. And, I haven’t had lunch, yet. I have a book in the back room, about the Ark. I think those names will be in it.

So, I’m going to take a break, feed the dogs, eat and see if I can find those names and the actual date. I’ll get back to you. Give me about an hour.

'Bye for now,
Don
 
donsnow said:
Hi, StAnastasia - It’s coming on time for me to feed the dogs. And, I haven’t had lunch, yet. I have a book in the back room, about the Ark. I think those names will be in it. So, I’m going to take a break, feed the dogs, eat and see if I can find those names and the actual date. I’ll get back to you. Give me about an hour. 'Bye for now,
Don
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Don, just don’t eat the dogs…
 
buffalo said:
For what? Your claim is he would have to saved the fish from a flood?
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Yes. There are some anadromous fish who might do all right, but most would die. Noah had to have included aquaria set at particular salinity levels.

Noah also had to include a lot of extra animals to serve as food for the carnivores, blood sources for the mosquitos, etc. There was a lot of mating and gestation going on among the smaller creatures.
 
StAnastasia said:
No, not at that time and in the patriarchal culture of Ancient Near Eastern Judaism.
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That’s right, Jesus NEVER did ANYTHING that would upset the existing social order!! :rolleyes:

If the ordiantion of women were to be acceptable, at least one would have been ordained.
 
buffalo said:
You should know that the Tablet theory is not Sungenis’s work now is it?

That is if you read it:

**The “Toledoths” of Genesis **
By Damien F. Mackey
This article is all about the true structure of the Book of Genesis; a structure that is so simple and straightforward - as the reader is going to discover - that even a child would have no trouble understanding it in its basic form. The chief credit for having laid bare this structure in all its profound simplicity belongs to the British scholar, P. J. Wiseman(1), upon whose thesis the following article will be based.

and by the way you should also know that Sungenis does not totally agree with it.
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It was quite clear on the site who was the author of any particular.article. I don’t think anyone could easily mistake who wrote what.

I checked on Wiseman’s background on other websites. Again, I did not find the toledoths’ theory very convincing. If I wanted to, I could present good counter-arguments
to every one of Wiseman’s key points.

It makes no difference to me whether Sungenis disagrees with anything Wiseman says. I read articles by Sungenis and I was not impressed.

I am sure you are disappointed that I did not like the website, but I read enough articles on that site to get a fair idea of the positions it agrees and disagrees with. There are many more positions from the site I could have listed that I disagree with, such as the Fred & Barney hypothesis of humans co-existing with dinosaurs, etc. I would just need to see more evidence for many positions than what was presented.

Regarding the Pentateuch, I have basically followed the position explained by Peter F. Ellis, C.SS.R. in The Yahwist:The Bible’s First Theologian. This was published in 1968. Since then, there have been modifications of the Yahwist hypothesis suggested by some biblical scholars. For example: that the larger blocks of Pentateuchal tradition, primarily the stories of the patriarchs and Moses, were not redactionally linked before the Priestly Code, as the Yahwist (J) hypothesis suggests, but existed side by side as two independent, and perhaps rival traditions, of Israel’s origins.

On the other hand, I find that Wiseman’s hypothesis of authorship raises far too many questions, questions that his hypothesis is incapable of providing satisfactory answers to.
 
Did you know there are ranchers here in America who are extremely unhappy with Noah for putting coyotes and wolves in the Ark? The English, though, have had no objection about foxes boarding the Ark.
 
Hi, StAnastasia -

Having trouble with internet, hard to make and keep a connection.

Have found Charles Berlitz’ The Lost Ship of Noah. I need another half hour. I’ll be back.

Thanks,
Don
 
CWBetts said:
That’s right, Jesus NEVER did ANYTHING that would upset the existing social order!! :rolleyes:

If the ordiantion of women were to be acceptable, at least one would have been ordained.
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You know Jesus’ mind better than Jesus does?
 
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