If we don't necessarily need to believe in Noah's ark as a historical reality, do we have to believe in Noah's existence?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jdavani
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

jdavani

Guest
I personally believe Noah was a real person but I have my doubts on whether or not the ark was a historical reality, which seems to be a valid interpretation according to the RCC. How to reconcile these seemingly contradictory positions?
 
You absolutely do have to believe in every part of the Bible, if you deny any you’ve essentially denied it all.

The Bible is wrote by man yes but it’s inspired by the Holy Spirit so to deny anything within is to call God a liar.
 
Last edited:
I’m pretty sure that I don’t have to believe everything in the bible literally and that’s a valid interpretation according to the RCC
 
I think you can believe it was a fable, however, secular science and archaeology might be close to actually having evidence to support Noah’s Ark.

Though let me clarify - Noah was real… the only part I mean that you could believe is a fable is whether the flood was world wide and whether ever single animal on earth was on the ark.

But there was a flood and God did create a covenant with Noah.
 
Last edited:
Our blood types and DNA matches those who got off the boat to Noah’s ark. The chances are good we might see them in heaven because the NT and Even Quran says they were saved so yes Noah was real. In muy opinion. Trouble for me is the Exodus… or at-least part of it.
 
Noah took his family into a boat (an ark). It doesn’t matter if the flood was all over the world or only partial. Noah and his family survived and God made a covenant with Noah. Since the cvenant is made betwwen them Noah had to be real. It is the covenant that is important + the types it points too. The way I see it, it points to Eve and/or the Church. Eve became the mother of the Savior (had him in her womb (the ark). Jesus instituted the Church (the ark) who carries all of us.

That’s how I interprete this. As far as I know such an interpretation is OK with the Church. Correct me if I’m wrong.

There is one more “thing” to point to here: Water can symbolize destruction (destructive power) and peace/hope (baptism). There may be more to it, but this is what makes it reasonable to me. Hope this helped to gain meaning out of the story!
 
Last edited:
God made a covenant with Noah.
I think that qualifies him to be real.
 
A book like Job or Judith I think is fair to take as something like a moral or philosophical fable. Noah, though, I think needs to be historical in some fashion, even if the telling has mythological proportions.
 
Last edited:
Unless Jesus was being allegorical, I think he believed it was real when he prophesied about his 2nd coming:

" But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’’
(Mathew 25:37)
 
Last edited:
That’s my litmus test too. If our divine Lord believed in it and implied its existence then it’s real despite what any biblical criticism may say
 
If we are being rational and logical there is no way Noah existed in that no one can live to be 350 and it is and would be physically impossible to put 2 of every animal on the planet. There are millions and millions of different species of animals and just from a basic approach it’s absolutely has zero credibility.
 
I recommend looking to verse 115 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.
Click to expand...
Also, the verses immediately following 115 spell out a bit more of these different senses. But in short, not everything the Bible says is intended to be taken as a literal fact.

Is that the case regarding Noah? My guess is this story is based on a real event but uses a lot of metaphorical language. I don’t worry about trying to figure out how literal it is; I try to think about what the event tells us about God’s relationship with us and with creation as a whole.
 
Jamie5 said:
If we are being rational and logical there is no way Noah existed in that no one can live to be 350 and it is and would be physically impossible to put 2 of every animal on the planet. There are millions and millions of different species of animals and just from a basic approach it’s absolutely has zero credibility.
Click to expand...
This is the part that might be myth… or it could simply be that it was ever species that Noah was aware of and could get his hands on.

In regards to being 350 years old, I’ve heard a few different theories regarding this:
  1. We have to remember they used a different calendar in the time of Noah. Perhaps the “350 years” was really supposed to be what we would call “350 months” - that would make Noah almost 30 at that time. If he stared having kids at 14, then his boys would already be young teenagers by then. In antiquity a boy was considered a man by then and was often involved with dangerous work young (look at the number of navy midshipmen back in the 1400 - 1700s who were just kids).
  2. In antiquity it was not uncommon for writers to embellish numbers because they were never concerned with exact numbers. They would use large numbers to emphasize their points and often because they actually didn’t know the exact number. So using a number like 350 years old would emphasize that Noah was an older man, but not as old a Abraham (who comes later in Genesis)
  3. The 3rd idea is the one that I find to be the lest possible (but still possible). Some creationists believe that centuries ago, humans used to live longer before our genes were mutated to shorten our lives. They turn to current science which is seeing that genes and something in the brain actually controls ageing. They look at this and propose that it’s possible that in the past the gene that controls aging was different, but was changed over time when the number of humans on the planet started growing. And that scientists are actually discovering how our genes used to be.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4732684/Brain-cells-control-ageing-discovered.html
 
Last edited:
I believe that Noah existed at some point in human history. That being said, I don’t believe that there was a genetic bottleneck a mere 4000 years ago (when creationists date the Flood)…such a position is completely and absolutely at odds with modern understandings of genetics.
 
So how do you think the story of Noah and the flood took place?
 
I don’t know. I don’t think we can know this side of heaven. Many cultures have oral traditions of a great flood. At some point in our primordial history I do believe there was a terrible flood (though not literally a global one as everything we know about geology disproves that), and there was a Noah with whom God made a covenant.
 
Hope1960 said:
So how do you think the story of Noah and the flood took place?
Click to expand...
Noah really happened and you should believe it mostly because:

1 Pet 3:20-21 in the days of NOAH… eight SOULS were SAVED THROUGH WATER. This is an antitype which NOW SAVES US - BAPTISM (NOTE: Noah’s Children saved through water on behalf of their father. Children were never asked their belief. Hence we also baptize children).

We need Noah or else we can’t explain how we have different, incompatible blood types and different human races:

Genesis 7:15-16 And they went into the ark to Noah, two by TWO, OF ALL FLESH in which is the BREATH OF LIFE. So THOSE that entered, MALE and FEMALE of ALL [TYPES OF] FLESH, went in as God had commanded him

“Genetic evidence for the Flood - a human population bottleneck matching Noah’s Flood (Genesis 6-9) - is GLARINGLY OBVIOUS when our DNA is examined truthfully and logically. You will learn how mutations in both Y Chromosomes and Mitochondria DNA can DEFINITELY point to the 4 MEN and 4 WOMEN who were on the Ark, around 4,500 years ago.” -astirinch .com

It’s not just the OT that claims a flood. It’s a world-wide historical account:

200 HISTORIC FLOOD MYTHS WORLDWIDE! WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON? Is there a favored family?–88%, Is catastrophe only a flood?–95%, Was flood global?–95%, Is survival due to a boat?–70%
 
Last edited:
SnoopSword said:
“Genetic evidence for the Flood - a human population bottleneck matching Noah’s Flood (Genesis 6-9) - is GLARINGLY OBVIOUS when our DNA is examined truthfully and logically. You will learn how mutations in both Y Chromosomes and Mitochondria DNA can DEFINITELY point to the 4 MEN and 4 WOMEN who were on the Ark, around 4,500 years ago.” -astirinch .com
Click to expand...
Your source is wrong here. See Hawks J, Hunley K, Lee SH, Wolpoff M (January 2000). “Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution”.

From the abstract:
However, there is one detail that these data are sufficient to address. Both genetic and anthropological data are incompatible with the hypothesis of a recent population size bottleneck.
Click to expand...
In this context, “recent” is a reference to the Toba catastrophe theory, which proposed a bottleneck about 70,000 years ago due to the Toba eruption.

Specifically, Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are not representative of human genetics because they are inherited exclusively through the male or female line respectively. For a better picture of population sizes we need to look at the whole genome, not two small atypical parts.

It is not just humans. You have to show a recent genetic bottleneck in every species of land Tetrapod. There is enough data from enough species to show that such a universal worldwide bottleneck does not exist. If the flood was global, then kangaroos should have a bottleneck. Where is your genetic data for kangaroos, showing they have a bottleneck at the right time?
It’s not just the OT that claims a flood. It’s a world-wide historical account:
Click to expand...
Humans live near water: rivers, lakes, the sea. Rivers lakes and seas flood. Stories of floods are passed down within communities. Nobody in the ANE could know whether or not a big flood also covered America or Australia.

As to the flood being global, that depends on the translation of the Hebrew word “eretz”. I suggest that you have a look at Genesis 12:1, which uses the same word:
And the Lord said to Abram: Go forth out of thy country (eretz), and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land (eretz) which I shall shew thee.
Click to expand...
If the flood covered the whole of the planet, then Abraham came from a different planet and God moved him to planet Earth. An interesting suggestion, and one which would explain the absence of geological evidence for a single worldwide flood in the last 10,000 years. The evidence is on a completely different planet, the one Abraham originally came from.

Alternatively we can interpret eretz as “country, region” and solve a great many problems.

$0.02

rossum
 
rossum said:
Alternatively we can interpret eretz as “country, region”
Click to expand...
Says the Jews 😉

I guess that means you believe Mary was a ‘young woman’ not a Virgin because you allow the Jews to dictate and feed you their versions of truth.

I prefer other sources 😉

It’s up to you what you chose to believe. The evidence of a flood (oil deposits, natural gas etc), layers of earth, etc. etc. is overwhelming in my opinion. As far as dinosaurs, well… lol… it’s an antiquities hoax. A complete Masonic fraud. The problem is you only chose to see one side of the evidence and keep yourself in ignorance to the rest.

Here’s another. After all, you want to get into actual evidence, well:

The world isn’t as you think it is.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top