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dmar198
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[post deleted because I changed my mind about the prudence of a quotation I made]]
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Dorothy
Guest
It is my understanding that the flood occurred in the known world at that time.
In the OT Columbus hadn’t sailed to America yet.
On the other hand, my response here may sound ridiculous, as I am not a scholar.
Do we all need to bother our heads about such things? I suppose we do when others raise questions about it.
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dmar198
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By the way, this isn’t something that only happened in the Old Covenant. First of all, the Catechism says, “the fear of punishment and certain temporal promises have been necessary, even under the New Covenant, to incite [people] to [virtue].” (CCC 1964)
And there are several examples in Church History where God has inflicted a swift death on a wicked man in order to incite others to virtue. A classic example is Ananias and Sapphira, who died immediately when they lied about holding back some property they had pledged to God. Acts 5:11 says that when they died, “great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard of these things.”
In 336 A.D. the heresiarch Arius died on the eve of the day that the Church of Alexandria was going to be forced to restore communion with him and thus join his heresy. According to St. Athanasius, he died of a sudden pain in his stomach while at a public bathroom. “It then became evident to every one that the menaces of Eusebius were absolutely futile, and that the expectations of Arius were vain. It also became manifest that the Arian madness could not be fellowshipped by the Savior both here and in the church of the Firstborn.” (Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History Book II Chapter 30)
In 869 A.D. King Lothair II died suddenly after receiving Holy Communion while living in a state of adultery. Pope St. Nicholas the Great had refused to grant him an annulment so that he could marry his new wife, and Lothair II had therefore marched on Rome, and the pope hid in St. Peter’s for two days without food. The king withdrew without getting his marital situation reconciled, and when Pope St. Nicholas died, his successor issued a challenge to King Lothair: if he was really innocent re: his marital situation, he should receive Communion, and if he was really guilty, he should abstain from it. King Lothair received Communion, fell ill, and died during his return to Switzerland (which was at the time called Lotharingia after his name). This showed that he really had been guilty, and died in accord with the words of St. Paul: “For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” (1 Corinthians 11:29-30)
As you can see, what the Catechism says is true. Even in the New Covenant, God still sometimes uses the fear of punishment to incite people to virtue. And in some cases He deals death swiftly upon the guilty in order to show people clearly that the wages of sin is death. We can all take inspiration from this and from His fearful deeds and learn to avoid evil and do good.
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zz912
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If we understand it as a huge localized flood, then the passages of Scripture make sense. Imagine the area around the Black Sea, living there several thousand years ago. After 40 days of heavy rains, the tiny land area around present-day Istanbul collapses from the rains, and the Mediterranean Sea is opened into the Black Sea. Water floods in, appearing to those on the opposite shores of the Black Sea as if the underground springs had been opened forth. The water levels would have risen very quickly, and would have looked as if the entire world had flooded.
Don’t be so quick to dismiss the flood story.
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zz912
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Seems very convenient, but lacking support.
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dmar198
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I believe I have heard Fr. Mitch Pacwa speculate that worldwide flooding may have taken place during the glacial melt after a Snowball Earth period. These two theories, yours and Fr. Mitch’s, may be related. See this article: abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119949
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Achilles6129
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Guess those OT writers weren’t inspired by God then.
The Bible says it covered the entire planet.
Absolutely. The entire Bible and the entire realm of theology is at stake.
Scripture tells us that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The only way this could happen is if the flood was global.
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clem456
Guest
Perhaps the greatest point of confusion in Scripture is that accepting God’s inspiration does not require literalist interpretation. The Catholic Church does not read Scripture through literalist eyes.
One of the senses of Scripture is the literal, but that is not the same thing as literalism.
There is an important difference. Inspired truth in Scripture is larger than literal interpretation of words, facts, and historical proof.
How and when and where did the Red Sea part? No One will ever know, no one will ever explain it, but the truth is, God surely does save his people from oppression.
To read the bible with literalism is to put Truth in a human sized box.
One of the senses of Scripture is the literal, but that is not the same thing as literalism.
There is an important difference. Inspired truth in Scripture is larger than literal interpretation of words, facts, and historical proof.
How and when and where did the Red Sea part? No One will ever know, no one will ever explain it, but the truth is, God surely does save his people from oppression.
To read the bible with literalism is to put Truth in a human sized box.
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Achilles6129
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Either God is telling the truth in Scripture or he isn’t. If you can’t trust one part of Scripture what makes you think you can trust the other parts? Based on your interpretation we could claim that Abraham/Isaac/Jacob were all parallels and that Simon Peter didn’t even exist (or perhaps Christ didn’t even exist!).
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clem456
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Who said God is not telling the truth. How did you get there?
Are you aware there are several different stories of Paul’s conversion with different details?
How about two different Genesis accounts?
Do you not trust scripture then, because there are difficult and contradictory passages?
I would invite you to read the catechism section on scripture interpretation.
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm
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Achilles6129
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There is nothing in Scripture that can’t be reasonably reconciled. There is an entire literature on this subject.
I invite you to answer the question again: if what’s being presented as factual in Scripture really didn’t happen but is all a parable or metaphor, then how do we know which parts really did happen and which parts didn’t?
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clem456
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No one is claiming anything using the word “all”. Scripture is not “all” a parable, and is not “all” metaphor, but certainly there are parables and metaphors. Do you disagree with that?
Do you believe the parable of the prodigal son, given by Christ himself, powerfully communicates the truth of God’s forgiveness?
Or do you consider Christ’s own words untrustworthy because his parable is not reducible to facts?
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oldcelt
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I believe that most of the stories are fictional and designed to cover for other offenses on a lesser scale. “It was God who ordered the slaughter of thousands long ago and we only lopped off a few hundred heads.” What’s so bad about that? Moral relativism 4,000 years ago.
That is the problem with using such an ancient and disputed source to guide a modern society. We KNOW that some of it is false if taken literally, and suspect that a great deal more is a case of telling stories around the fire.
Remember, these stories were oral tradition first and likely bore little resemblance to the original by the time they were committed to parchment.
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sw85
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Yes, many flood stories, in virtually every primitive culture, despite the distance and lack of contact between them. Which makes one wonder if there was, perhaps, some kind of primeval flood, perhaps before man had yet left Africa – an event so traumatic that it was seared into his collective memory.
But “Scriptures occasionally make use of metaphor” is not the same thing as “Scripture tells lies.” Because truth is not always necessarily the same thing as literal truth. When my fiancee says “I want to spend forever in your arms,” I don’t accuse her of lying, even though she isn’t speaking literal truth.
All you’re doing in this post is pointing to the difficulty of puzzling out where metaphor ends and strictly literal recounting of facts begins. That’s a real difficulty, and it often admits to a plurality of plausible interpretations. But the solution to the difficulty is not mindlessly positivistic/autistic literalism, it’s prudence. Prudence is a virtue after all.
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oldcelt
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zz912
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Genesis: 7:17 The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 **And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; **20 the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; 22 everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.
Nothing in that passage says the entire planet was flooded. That is your personal view reading that into the passage. You can’t look at this as a scientific manual. It is storytelling, using storytelling language.
In other parts of Scripture, it says that all are sinful, and no one looks to God. Does that mean that every single person on the planet was not looking for God? Of course not.
Your personal interpretation of this passage is a plausible one, but revealed knowledge and science cast some serious doubts upon it (not that God couldn’t perform miracles that confound science). My person interpretation is of a localized flood, that to the storyteller, the waters covered everything they could see. Their whole world as they knew it was flooded underwater. This interpretation is also a plausible understanding of the passage. It doesn’t mean that it wasn’t miraculous, or a sign of God’s majesty. It was. But it is understood in a different context than a literalistic reading.
We can’t impose our own views and opinions on the text to rule out understandings that are plausible. And we must always look to the style of the author’s writing to better understand the message they are conveying. If I told you it rained cats and dogs yesterday, I’m not literally telling you that canines and felines fell from the sky. But I am telling you, very truthfully, that it rained very hard yesterday. I’m not being literalistic, but I am being truthful about a real event.
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RockPigeon
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Here are a few quotes from some Popes, although they are about Genesis. Although I’ve always been told that the purpose of the Noah’s Ark story is to answer the question “Why didn’t God ever try again with humanity?” People often stop the story at “and then there was a Rainbow. The End.” When really the entire point of the story is that the waters died down, they got off the boat, and immediately Noah got drunk and fell into sin again. Point being, God tried, humanity messed it up again. I’m not familiar with any quotes suggesting plainly that it is an allegorical piece, though I feel it can be extrapolated based on these following quotes:
Bl. Pope John Paul II had this to say about the story of Adam and Eve:
Following the contemporary philosophy of religion and that of language, it can be said that the language in question is a mythical one. In this case, the term “myth” does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.
And Pope Pius XII had this to say:
“…the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out), in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.”
Another key part of Genesis often unnoticed is its inconsistencies. If Genesis is literal, God wasn’t almighty and omnipotent until about halfway through the Bible. That doesn’t sound like the God of all ages to me. For instance, in Genesis 18: 20-21, God is shown as not knowing about something, and setting out to investigate it.
Bl. Pope John Paul II had this to say about the story of Adam and Eve:
Following the contemporary philosophy of religion and that of language, it can be said that the language in question is a mythical one. In this case, the term “myth” does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.
And Pope Pius XII had this to say:
“…the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out), in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.”
Another key part of Genesis often unnoticed is its inconsistencies. If Genesis is literal, God wasn’t almighty and omnipotent until about halfway through the Bible. That doesn’t sound like the God of all ages to me. For instance, in Genesis 18: 20-21, God is shown as not knowing about something, and setting out to investigate it.
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clem456
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The bottom line is, “inspired by the Holy Spirit” does not equate to factual or historical or scientific accuracy, although facts and history are certainly part of inspiration. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit conveys a much larger truth. As Pope Benedict says, we should not “treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit.”
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Thorns
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Or maybe the (attempted) ethnic cleansing was not successful…Often, this is a reference to wiping out entire cultures (including women and children). A careful examination of Scripture demonstrates that this didn’t happen – that is, those peoples continue to show up later in the Bible. Therefore, it’s evidence that ethnic cleansing isn’t what happened…
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