Noah and the Flood is a Legend?

[itsjustdave1988]

Ghosty,

Faith is silent about how it is to be interpreted

This is where you and I disgree. The Catholic Church has stated that the literal sense is foundational. If you’d like to provide the solid reasons why the literal sense is not tenable, then start by giving us your exegesis in accord with Catholic principles for interpreting the text. Nobody here has attempted Catholic exegesis to prove their case, and that is what makes your position less compelling. Everyone instead seems to have run to science to prove their theological view. Is that the Catholic hermeneutic?

The best argument using the traditional Catholic hermeneutic has come from a Protestant … Mel. (how ironic).

 

[Ghosty]

The problem with demanding an argument of exegesis is that such a tool is not designed to deal with non-textual evidence. Were this a matter purely of reading, I would hold the exact same opinion as you. We are not dealing with an argument of exegesis at its root, however, but an argument of nature. Exegesis can not approach such difficulties because it’s a tool for dealing with text and Scripture. Since the geological record is not a matter of text and interpretation of writing styles, exegesis is useless. It’s like asking for a geometrical argument as to why cake tastes good.

The rules which you are citing are absolutely wonderful for handling matters pertaining exclusively to textual interpretation, but they in no way seem to address the broader scope of the question, nor were they intended to. In this instance, exegesis must initially be left aside in favor of natural arguments, only later to be picked up once those issues are settled. Since the argument begins in nature, not in text, it seems fitting to meet it there first. Once you’ve established in the natural realm where something stands, you can take exegesis to the text and explain how, in that light, the story is to be read.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

The problem with demanding an argument of exegesis is that such a tool is not designed to deal with non-textual evidence.

Sorry, but that’s what the Church requires when one opines that a passage of Scripture, heretofore understood to be historical is only “appearantly” historical.

The deposit of faith comes from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Feel free to cite evidence from either that describe the worldwide flood of Genesis to be only appearantly historical. From my studies, Catholic tradition has always taught from the position that the people saved in the Ark of Noah were the only human beings to survive the flood. Tradition substantiates the historicity of a worldwide flood. It is still unlawful to admit that historical passages of Scripture are not history in the true sense unless solid arguments are put forth and accepted by the magisterium. I don’t believe such arguments have been accepted by the magisterium.

My goal is not to harmonize science with religion (although I am an engineer by trade, and so have had my fair study of science), but to follow Catholic principles when interpreting Scritpure.

The question pertains to interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Catholic principles of exegesis are indeed where we ought to start.

 

[Ghosty]

My point is that an exegesis CAN be made demonstrating that the Flood was local, but it can’t start there. One can’t attack a natural argument with textual exegesis initially. This is the mistake that people made against the claims of Copernicus when Galileo raised them to a fevered pitch. The exegesis for a non-geocentric universe came only AFTER the natural evidence was no longer in doubt. The Church accepts the non-geocentric model despite the apparent contradictions posed by exegesis not informed by natural understanding.

With this taken into account, your stance that textual exegesis must come first falls flat on its face. I agree that exegesis must be made in the case of a local Flood argument, but it most certainly can’t come first. The Church teaches that exegesis is necessary, but it does not teach that the cart must be put before the horse. We must evaluate the natural evidence in this case, and then use it to inform an exegesis. This is how exegesis must ALWAYS be performed, as texts general can not attest to their own veracity. Supertextual understanding is paramount in proper exegesis. After all, we even rely on our understanding of the cultures of the day outside of what is written in the text themselves to inform proper exegesis. To claim that exegesis must be based purely on the text itself is self-defeating, and destroys the whole process.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

your stance that textual exegesis must come first

This is not my stance, but that of the Church.

The Catholic Magisterium teaches, quoting St. Jerome, the: "office of a commentator … is to set forth not what he himself would prefer, but what his author says." (Providentissumus Deus, 13) It seems to me you are offering what you yourself prefer, but not what the author himself says regarding the worldwide deluge.

Matt 24:37-39 builds upon the basis of the worldwide deluge to describe the universality of the coming judgment of Christ. I simply assert that we are to follow Catholic guidance regarding the interpretation of Sacred Scripture as given by Pope Benedict XV in his encyclical, Spiritus Paraclitus(1920): "we ought not to desert the path mapped out by Christ and His Apostles."

If the apostles themselves understood the deluge to be universal, that is, totally encompassing all of humanity as too will be the judgment of Christ, which Matt 24:37-39 makes evident, then Catholics are simply not permitted to lawfully claim otherwise unless the Church admits that this historical event can be understood as merely appearantly historical.

In what way are you not in violation of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s decision of 1905 which I referred to earlier?

 

[itsjustdave1988]

I also recommend that we consider the distinction between a geographically universal deluge, and anthropologically universal deluge. The following article may be of some interest.

Catholic Encyclopedia - "Deluge"
newadvent.org/cathen/04702a.htm

 

[Ghosty]

Of course we are to explain what the author said, not what we prefer they say. The problem is that, in order to determine WHAT the author was saying, we must have recourse to something outside the text. That is one of the defining characteristics of the Historical-Critical Method.

Read bsw.org/journal/bsw3/bsw00-1m.html and see what it says about the Historical-Critical Method, namely that it holds the place of primacy in Catholic exegesis. The Historical-Critical Method is specifically about applying knowledge of non-textual realities to understanding the text.

As for the potential of an anthropologically, as opposed to geologically, universal Flood, I honestly have no problem with that explaination so long as the Flood is pushed WAY back in history, in the measure of tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Geological evidence attests only to a lack of a geologically universal Flood, though genetic evidence would be the possible hurdle to an anthropologically universal Flood, and I’m in no way equipped to handle such a question other than to assert that the genetic evidence precludes such an event in the last 50,000 years.

 

[SojournerOf78]

Ghosty:

Absolutely not! I would never argue that God couldn’t do such a thing. What is unreasonable to assume, however, is that all physical evidence would indicate that such an event never occured if, in fact, it had. We’re not talking about absence of evidence, but rather cohesive and contridictory evidence. I believe it is unreasonable to conclude that God would intentionally mask the event from our Reason without a strong argument as to why. God certainly COULD mask it, but throughout history we see just the opposite occuring, as miracle after miracle are attested to by science and Reason. Miracles are, practically by definition, a way for God to break through the veil of perceived normalcy and awaken us to Divine reality. Why would God go against this trend in this specific instance?

In short, if we had evidence of a world Flood, yet science couldn’t explain where the water came from or went, I would say “you can’t explain it because it’s a miracle of God,” and be done with it. In this case we have not only a lack of evidence for the Flood, but we have things that, quite simply, shouldn’t be if such a Flood occured. So I say, “you can’t explain the Flood because it is a Mystery of God, but you can show what did not occur.” I accept the Flood 100%. I believe that God directed Noah, and that God led the creatures to the Ark, and I believe that the relevant civilizations were wiped out, and that from Noah sprang a line leading to Abraham and Jesus. What I do not believe is the reading of the story that is contridicted by reason at this time. This in no way shakes my faith. If someone were to put a gun to my head and say “Recant your belief in the Flood, and in the Ark, or I will shoot,” I would gladly accept death.

Ghosty, what the heck??? Youre failing to mention the fact that other respected scientists affrim the Flood model, you should bring this up when you speak ex cathedra

 

[hecd2]

SojournerOf78:

Ghosty, what the heck??? Youre failing to mention the fact that other respected scientists affrim the Flood model, you should bring this up when you speak ex cathedra

Really???!!! What respected scientists are we talking about here?

Alec

 

[Ahimsa]

It seems to me that the Noahide narrative has a problem similar to that found in the Adam/Eve narrative, namely, “Where did the wife come from?”

Where did Cain get his wife? Likewise, if the Flood was literally true, and if everyone except Noah, his wife, and their sons and their sons’ wives, died, then where did Noah’s grandsons and granddaughters find spouses?

Ahimsa

 

[PhilVaz]

hecd << Really???!!! What respected scientists are we talking about here? >>

Steve Austin, a man “barely alive” – we can re-build him. No, not stone cold Steve Austin either. This Steve Austin, Ph.D. Geology from Penn State Univ. One in a million.

Two points I get out of this thread:

(1) there are Catholics and Christians who don’t give a squat about science (or else pin their hopes on one of the Steve Austins above), since I’ve brought up some of the main scientific objections to a global flood (facts accepted by 99.99% of all professional geologists today), and none have been addressed. This is one of the few things in the Bible that can be tested scientifically so the comparison with the Virgin Birth, transubstantiation, or the Incarnation (which cannot be tested by science) is false. No need to bring that up again.

(2) there are theologians/scientists who have credibly interpreted the Genesis text as referring to a local flood, and it is quite plausible exegetically. I would recommend (once again) Hugh Ross (this article and his book The Genesis Question), Glenn Morton (book Foundation, Fall, and Flood), and Keith Miller. All Protestant-evangelical-scientist sources since this is mainly a “debate” among them, it’s not an issue among Catholics it seems to me (except those influenced by the Protestant fundamentalist-evangelical debate).

Perhaps I can delve more deeply into (2) since (1) has been completely ignored by the “global flood” theorists. To a Catholic who respects both science and Scripture, they are both equally important it seems to me. If there is a plausible exegetical case for a “local flood” we should go with that, the same with the “day” of Genesis 1, or the rest of Genesis, etc.

Phil P

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Ghosty,

Ghosty:

Of course we are to explain what the author said, not what we prefer they say. The problem is that, in order to determine WHAT the author was saying, we must have recourse to something outside the text.

Certainly … it’s called Sacred Tradition.

That is one of the defining characteristics of the Historical-Critical Method.

Sorry, but the historical-critical method is not equivalent to Catholic hermeneutics. It is just one method. Catholicism has asserted that as a method, it is insufficient for interpreting Sacred Scripture.

Read bsw.org/journal/bsw3/bsw00-1m.html and see what it says about the Historical-Critical Method, namely that it holds the place of primacy in Catholic exegesis.

Instead of that article, I suggest you go directly to the original texts regarding the interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

For example,

the Golden Rule of the Doctors, clearly expressed by Aquinas: “**All the senses are founded on one–the literal–from which *alone ***can any argument be drawn.” This rule the Supreme Pontiffs have sanctioned and consecrated by prescribing that, before everthing else one must seek out the literal sense.

[Pontifical Bible Commission, Letter to the Archbishops and Bishops of Italy, August 20, 1941]

Historical-critical method, of course, tries to find the literal sense. Yet, it has limitations.

From the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 1993 document on Interpretation of the Bible in the Church:

What value should we accord to the historical-critical method, especially at this present stage of its development?

It is a method which, when used in an objective manner, implies of itself no a priori. …

To be sure, the classic use of the historical-critical method reveals its limitations. It restricts itself to a search for the meaning of the biblical text within the historical circumstances that gave rise to it and is not concerned with other possibilities of meaning which have been revealed at later stages of the biblical revelation and history of the church. …

To sum up, the goal of the historical-critical method is to determine, particularly in a diachronic manner,** the meaning expressed by the biblical authors and editors. Along with other methods and approaches, the historical-critical method opens up to the modern reader a path to the meaning of the biblical text such as we have it today.** …

No scientific method for the study of the Bible is fully adequate to comprehend the biblical texts in all their richness. For all its overall validity, the historical-critical method cannot claim to be totally sufficient in this respect. It necessarily has to leave aside many aspects of the writings which it studies. It is not surprising, then, that at the present time other methods and approaches are proposed which serve to explore more profoundly other aspects worthy of attention.

to be continued …

 

[itsjustdave1988]

In the final analysis, this judgment of the Church still applies:

June 23, 1905

*Question: *Whether we may admit as a prinicple of sound exegesis the opinion that those books of Sacred Scripture regarded as historical, either wholly or in part, sometimes narrate what is not history properly so-called and objectively true, but only have the appearance of history and convey a meaning different from the strictly literal and historical sense of the words.

Answer: Negative, except in the case–which must never be admitted too easily or rashly, and then only if it is not opposed to the mind and decision of the Church–when it can be proved with solid arguments that the sacred writer intended not to give a true and strict history but to set forth under the guise and form of history, a parable or an allegory or some meaning distinct from the stricly literal or historical sense of the words.

[Decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, AAS (1905/06) 124-25; DS 3373; EB 161, as cited in *The Scripture Documents,

Dean P. Bechard, S.J., Editor and translator, (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), pg. 188]
I await a sound argument that the sacred writer intended not to give a true history but some meaning distinct from the strictly literal or historical sense of the words.

 

[patg]

It is often the simplest explanation which provides the cleanest reasoning…

Let’s see, ancient people found limestone deposits containing fossils of shells and other sea creatures on hills and mountains. They didn’t know much about seismic or volcanic activity but they did create stories and myths to explain the unusual. They also had experienced floods, sometime really big ones. So lets connect the dots and figure out how the sea artifacts got up on the mountains…

There must have been some huge flood that covered the hills and mountains! The “whole earth” wasn’t very big to these people so that wasn’t all that much of a stretch to believe. And how did people and animals survive? Well they must have had a boat. And how did they know to build a boat? - well, we needed God to help out here. Of course, while you’re telling a story that explains the nature of things, you might as well throw in a spiritual lesson to condemn sin and praise God.

The magisterium clearly allows for this explanation since 60 years after the previously mentioned 1905 document, the magesterium states:

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

Pat

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Patg,

I understand literary forms and Catholic hermeneutics. Just because there are literary forms such as “epic,” that are not history in the strict sense, doesn’t prove that the deluge was merely local.

Just like the Creation story, the Catholic church affirms that Genesis pertains to actual history. Figurative language does not make polygenism, for example, a viable interpretation for those applying Catholic hermeneutics.

This is not a disagreement over factual details, but whether or not the deluge was worldwide or merely local. I say that if one applies Catholic hermeneutics, there’s just one answer: yes, it was worldwide. Whether it was geographically universal (covering all land) is doubtful, but given the re-readings of the event in the New Testament and the historical interpretation throughout Catholic tradition, one cannot assert, in my opinion, that it was not anthropomorphically universal, that is, killing all humanity excepting the eight in Noah’s Ark. The Gospel of Matthew uses the basis of the deluge’s universal destruction as a point of comparison to Christ’s universal judgment at the end of time. Catholic principles of hermeneutics tell us to heavily weight apostolic re-readings of OT events when attempting to exegete the text.

I simply wanted the folks on this thread to return to Catholic hermeneutics as discussed in the 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document, *Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, as well as the magisterial texts that preceded that document. *Instead, it seems many were looking to science as their basis for an interpretation contrary to the long held Catholic interpretation of this text. this methodology is very popular within Protestantism, although our fine Protestant brother Mel seemed to be more Catholic in his approach to this text than most of the Catholics responding. To change from Catholic tradition, the Catholic Church will not accept flimsy hermeneutics as convincing. Catholics are bound to use the orthodox principles of Catholic hermeneutics. A gazillion answers are plausible, but that’s not what Biblical scholarship is about. One must make a case for their exegesis using Catholic hermeneutics, not fanciful possibilities “proved” by science.

The discussion pertains to the question as to whether the flood was merely local. The 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia article on “deluge” (link posted earlier) throughly covers Biblical scholarship up to that time. Nobody here has given a solid argument to the contrary based on Catholic hermeneutics. My view is that the text itself, as well as Catholic tradition, testifies to an anthropologically universal deluge which is seems unlikely if the flood was merely local. The Catholic Church insists, even to this day, that the literal sense is foundational for understanding the authorial intent. One ought to apply Catholic hermeneutics to determine that literal sense, as well as other spiritual senses that might be applicable.

 

[buffalo]

Ghosty:

Read bsw.org/journal/bsw3/bsw00-1m.html and see what it says about the Historical-Critical Method, namely that it holds the place of primacy in Catholic exegesis. The Historical-Critical Method is specifically about applying knowledge of non-textual realities to understanding the text.

The problem is that the Historical Critical Method is to be applied from the light of Catholic teaching. Many scholars have gone ay outside those teachings and Tradition.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Patg,

The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture.

Exactly! Now use Catholic hermeneutics to exegete the applicable passage. You’ll find that if you do so, a local deluge cannot be the authorial intent. It is certainly not the historical interpretation of the Catholic Church.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

**How to DO exegesis **

(Pilfered and summarized from an article by Rev. Leonard Obloy)

1. Delimit the text - narring what exactly will be the passage under consideration. Usually, the exegete will select a certain periscope, such as the deluge. This sets the limits that will be under observation, usually a selection of verses.
2. Set the text - This means teh work of textual criticism. The exeget must see whether or not there are any variant readings fro the delimited test. These must be examined, state which readings are chosen and why.
3. Work up the text - language, grammar, and syntax analysis. Every word is examined and parsed, sentences diagrammed out. How one understands certain words may be crucial to interpretation.
4. Check parallels - if parallels exist (especially in the synoptic gospels) these must be examined. Does the passage quote other books of the Bible? What is the context in these other books? The wider context is observed.
5. Check the history of the exegesis of the text - What have others throughout history said about this passage? How was it interpreted by the Fathers and others? Perhaps one will see how it has been used in the Liturgy of the Church.
6. Do one’s own exegesis, using:

Form Criticism
Source Criticism
Redaction Criticism
Analyze the Structure
See what are the elements that seem to make a structure
See what elements seem to disrupt that structure
Bring questions to the text
Answer problems in the text

Questions will be asked. What is the context of this passage? What does the author intend to say. This is an endeavor to get to the literal sense. After arriving at the literal sense, they will see if any fuller sense or typical sense is present.

The exegete will check his or her own interpretations against the rule of faith. Does anything one has proposed as an interpretation of the passage go against what is commonly held by the Church?

 

[patg]

itsjustdave1988:

You’ll find that if you do so, a local deluge cannot be the authorial intent.

I find that my suggested reasoning exactly matches what is logical as the author’s intent. The world view of the author was so radically different than our own that I see no other way of interpreting it. I understand the church’s traditional interpretation and teachings - they were formed long before it was even known that the earth was not the center of the universe.

Pat

 

[Orogeny]

Steve Austin, a man “barely alive” – we can re-build him. No, not stone cold Steve Austin either. This Steve Austin, Ph.D. Geology from Penn State Univ. One in a million.

Steve Austin of the Institute for Creation Research. Good old Steve, or maybe he still goes by the name of Stuart Nevins. What a great source to lean on!

Peace

Tim