Check the Hebrew calendar to find out what year this is. It is dated to one year before Creation. Regarding Noah and the Flood, I was taught that it literally happened while I was in Catholic school in the 1960s. What is faith? The Bible records things God actually did. There are things that Jesus did that offer no natural, scientific explanation. If we believe He rose from the dead, then we believe He called Lazarus from the tomb, brought others to life and so on. I won’t hurry to reconcile science to God’s work. There is no urgent requirement to reinterpret the Bible based on a science that cannot study God or the supernatural.
I’ll save y’all some effort; it’s early 5770. The year turns at Rosh Hashanah.
INDEED. If HE can release a human being from being dead, then the mechanics of epic flooding is no big deal. Actually, If HE can release us from death, that is all we need be concerned about!
As long as you think he’s a man of his time and place, you have nothing to neither prove nor disprove. It’s our article of faith that Jesus Christ was/is/always will be the son of the Living God come in the flesh. He is the man of all time. This gives his word much weight.
First off as Catholics, we do take the Bible literally. 2nd. Even though we take scriptures literally, we don’t take them in a literalist sense. Noah was real and so was Adam and Eve. There were events in the Bible called parables that there were no names involved and the events weren’t real, but they did have a message relating to Christ and the Father’s will. If one can distinguish the difference between literal and literalist then that is the key to understanding stories such as Noah and his arc or Adam and EveIf so, how could that be? And please, not the ‘All things are possible through God’. If I’m to explain catholic theology to non-catholics, I’d better come better equipped than that.
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?
Any insight would be most helpful. Thanks!
What’s so funny? You refer to the writers of the Old Testament as if they were responsible for the words, and yes, the Church does acknowledge that they were aware of other stories circulating at the time.
theology is the science that studies God
Thank you for your comments. Science then, is not the science that studies God.
Nope doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m sure there are many different calendars that different cultures have. Doesn’t have anything to do imho with the question at hand on this Thread.
Yeah, Jesus is God/man .He was always God.Not always man.As a man, as the Incarnation, He took on flesh and lived as one of us.That doesn’t mean He acted as man-He was a man.He was a member of a particular people, with a particular culture in a particular time and place.He would interact with people using their cultural references or else He could not reach or teach the people.Scripture would be the prime cultural reference used, He would utillize that which the people would understand.When He spoke he used imagery that they would understand. When Jesus talked about Jonah and the great fish.What was His focus, his message?Jonah’s existence? No.The three days in the belly of the fish-three days in the grave-that was the message He wanted to get across.And he used images, frames of reference that the people understood.Same with Noah.Noah is a reference so He could expound and teach .Nothing more.
Hi, Ms juliamajor -
What’s funny is getting caught up inthe flotsam and jetsom and forgetting the moral/message of the story being told.Old testament writers responsible? to certain extant , yes. Or do you believe God dictated to the writers and used them as robots.?
Jesus, who is the truth - why pick passages that are “false” to teach the truth. It doesn’t wash. He references those passages for a reason.
Thanks for your judgment on me. Mis- teach- no my friend mis understood. Noah as mentioned by Jesus was a frame of references-something that they could grasp. Noah in and of himself IS important.He is just not the prime focus of Jesus’ message.Period.
The passages are not “false”…Truth is truth - even if you misunderstand what I’m saying.
Squeezing truth out of an orange isn’t such a big deal. Oranges are true, they have true being, in any case
A fabricated thing has being as well, or else said fabricated thing would be undefinable. What I am saying is that an orange has no less being than a unicorn for example. If God can squeeze truth from an orange, since an orange has being and God is being, then He could also bring truth out of a unicorn since a unicorn also has being.Squeezing truth out of an orange isn’t such a big deal. Oranges are true, they have true being, in any case
Squeezing truth out of a fairy tale would be much harder. And that’s the gist of the conflict on the thread. To some modern minds, there is a strict dichotomy between literal, descriptive accuracy, on the one hand, and childrens stories on the other. There is no middle ground. In this way of thinking even minor criticism of Biblical events is verboten because it suggests that Scripture is untrue.
As with the soul/body problem, the dichotomous paradigm makes further understanding almost impossible.
ICXC NIKA
Oy!-such literalists
Ma’am -