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thistle
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I just checked. There appears to be a problem with Catholic Answers home page.
The error seems to be with their server.
The error seems to be with their server.
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Noahic flood interpretation under a non-fundamentalist view
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Hope1960
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Will it possibly work in the future?
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thistle
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It should. Server has problems from time to time. Remind me periodically and I’ll try the link.
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Gorgias
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Looks like they need to renew their security certificate. The whole site is down. (I’m guessing this is what happens when you convert to https and then don’t keep your cert up to date?)
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thistle
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Its okay now.
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Hope1960
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Read it. Thanks.
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Vonsalza
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Small regional event where a man succeeded in floating his choicest livestock on a wooden structure he already had built, avoiding the total financial ruin that befell most everyone else in his region.
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Gorgias
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That doesn’t really explain why the story took root in a variety of cultures, though, does it? I mean “ya’ll thought I was crazy till I saved my pigs and chickens” isn’t exactly a compelling storyline…
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Vonsalza
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Survival stories are naturally compelling.
But to spice it up a little, the driftwood turned into an ark. A couple days turned to forty. His livestock turned into all the animals on the earth.
We do the same thing when we talk about our ancestors. They walked 20 miles to school. Up hill. Both ways.
But to spice it up a little, the driftwood turned into an ark. A couple days turned to forty. His livestock turned into all the animals on the earth.
We do the same thing when we talk about our ancestors. They walked 20 miles to school. Up hill. Both ways.
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Gorgias
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Oh… so, then, your take on it is that the Scriptural narrative is merely a tall tale, and worse yet, one that grew and grew in the retelling?
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Vonsalza
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My take on the story of Noah is that it’s probably a grain of truth wrapped in layers of hyperbole and exaggeration - similar to virtually every other ancient story or mythos.
I don’t refer to “the narrative of scripture” because they’re all different books. Written in different times by different people for different purposes.
I don’t refer to “the narrative of scripture” because they’re all different books. Written in different times by different people for different purposes.
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Gorgias
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Sure. And I’m not trying to say that you’re lumping all Scripture into one description. What I think I’m trying to ask is how you can juxtapose the notion of the truth of Scripture with a process of redaction that presupposes that the details of the narrative undergo significant change.
Fair enough, but do we say that Scriptural accounts work like “virtually every other ancient story or mythos”?
The big question would be where we should put down our fingers and say, “here! Here’s the spot where we assign the ‘intent of the Scriptural author’!”… 'cause after all, that’s the point where we say that inerrancy is located, right?
So – just as devil’s advocate – I’m asking you how you can hold on to both notions (ongoing modification and inerrancy) simultaneously. Does it only happen when it’s written down? Do later redactions happen before or after inerrancy kicks in? Is this a blanket rule for all OT accounts ('cause, after all, we see evidence of later redaction all over the place in the OT!), or do we have a different standard for each – and if so, how do we determine this characteristic for each?
Let’s go one step further, and address only the flood epic. The version in all cultures shares certain descriptions and characteristics. Are you saying that these developed independently and concurrently? Or, that the “hyperbole and exaggeration” happened first and then the distribution of the tale between cultures happened later? If so, then who gets ‘credit’ for being the inspired Scriptural author?
If we’re going to go with your approach, much depends on the answers to these questions…
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buffalo
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Everyone knows the context.
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Vonsalza
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Fair question.
My answer is that the particulars are unimportant. They’re the salad dressing that helps you eat the salad, or the smell that helps persuade you to buy the new car.
The message of the story is that God delivers His faithful. It’s no more hard history than Jesus’ parables.
To be frank, if anyone wants to travel around the Caucasus mountains looking for the ruins of an boat that would have been the largest in the world for centuries, if not a few millennia, to come… well… I have a bridge in New York I’d like to sell them. Cheap.
Because unless proven otherwise, the unattached rationalist would assume the Naive Hypothesis which in this case approximates to “It’s most likely similar to other tales of this era unless otherwise proven”.
Keep in mind, we’re talking an event that would have occurred before 2000 BC if it were factually true. The enlightenment was still roughly 4 millennia away. To look at these stories with a literal, post Age-of-Reason lens is anachronism.
I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to glean the moral of the story… Either way, as a religious matter (rather than a historical matter) the RCC circumvents the problem by being an episcopal religion rather than individual, textual one. As least as it pertains to religious interpretive authority.
So in short, I’d have to believe in the infallibility of the Church before I could believe in the literal truth of Noah’s story. Not the other way around.
That’s a great question for a devout Catholic to answer. How does one hold to religious inerrancy AND theological development?
The soft-ball pitch answer is “ongoing revelation”. I suppose a literary scholar would give a very similar answer. We learn more, it changes (or adds to) our interpretation of what we already knew previously.
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Vonsalza
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That’s not a difficult problem. The ancient tendency for superstitious exaggeration and hyperbole (even if not deliberate) certainly appears universal to me. And ancient Mesopotamia certainly wasn’t the only place to experience flooding on disaster-levels. Humanity arose near water, for obvious reasons. There are no rivers that don’t occasionally flood. There are no coasts that don’t occasionally experience an inundation.
Sure. How different can flood-survival stories really get?
Depends on how loosey-goosey you want to get with “concurrently”. The Hindu flood stories are probably based on a meteor impact in the Indian ocean. The Norse one is probably based on the inundation of Dogger Bank at the end of the last Ice Age. So if the period can be defined as “After the advent of spoken language but before the advent of sophisticated writing”, then yes. They all developed concurrently by naturally superstitious, pre-enlightenment people.
In fairness, if we go with yours it has a pre-requisite of faith were we decide information from a given source is undeniably true even before the information is granted. The investigative horse-and-cart are switched.
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Serpent_of_Paradise
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Apocalypse Chapter 4
In the Apocalypse, God is revealed in heaven to have a rainbow about his throne. This may be a reminder of his promise to put his bow in the sky as a guarantee to remember not to destroy the world with a Flood of water again. We should view the Flood as a true history and teaching. But it’s size may be a matter of debate.
In the Apocalypse, God is revealed in heaven to have a rainbow about his throne. This may be a reminder of his promise to put his bow in the sky as a guarantee to remember not to destroy the world with a Flood of water again. We should view the Flood as a true history and teaching. But it’s size may be a matter of debate.
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straykat
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The earth is only 6000 years old by Masoretic accounts. The early church never used it. For example, it’s year 7529 in the Orthodox calendars, simply because they used the Septuagint. And that’s only if you take everything literally, when it’s more likely than some of Genesis’ timelines were purposely written as symbolic (for example, all of ages in Shem’s line can are divisible by 5. That isn’t some coincidence). And if not symbolic, reactive, as a polemic against existing Egyptians and Sumerian accounts. Instead of strictly history or strictly myth, it’s also ancient priests from different regions taking jabs at each other.
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Gorgias
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I think the question really is “how similar can flood-survival stories get before the thesis of ‘independent development’ becomes untenable?”
No, that’s not “concurrently”, I don’t think, unless you’re doing a lot of hand waving. Remember, though, that it’s not just concurrently, it’s independently and concurrently. Do you think that the “naturally superstitious, pre-enlightenment” dynamic accounts for the common elements – advance warning by God, inclusion of land-based animals, etc?
Well, if we really want to be fair – and if we consider the Scriptures ‘inspired’ – then we really do have a different chicken-and-egg question, don’t we? There are now at least three prongs to the question – origin of the narrative, sources/timeline of redaction, and ‘ossification’ into “inspired text”…
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Vonsalza
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When you invent a way to measure tenability, let me know.
But again, they can’t get terribly different. There was a flood. I survived while many died. God must have chosen me because I was faithful.
*shrug
The span of time between verbal and written language being invented is when these stories happened. I don’t really know how else to reply to that.
Sure. Again, how different can floods be to pre-enlightenment folks?
“I lived and… dude… practically everyone else in the valley is dead. So… …I’m annointed by God. I’m either super special or I worked really hard to please Him in a way others didn’t.”
That’s not very difficult to see, in fairness.
It really depends on what baggage you attached to “inspired”. In itself, it’s just a demurral to vagueness so you never can be demonstrably wrong.
It can still be inspired and be an allegorical tale. The folks who think it’s a much more literal history get crushed under the boots of rational counter arguments.
Not difficult prongs to address, depending on how much specificity you require.
Origin? Pre-history Mesopotamia/Syria.
Timeline? From creation as a verbal story until first recorded in written form. It’s during this period that they all develop the things that make it really exciting. It grows from a guy who survived a flood with a few of his chickens and sheep intact to a dude who put them in a boat (instead of the driftwood remnants of his abode)! And not just them, but every creature that exists - 4 apiece! And the flood didn’t cover our valley - but the whole world! And it didn’t last for several days, but for 40 of them! And this wasn’t some guy. -GET THIS- He was actually a direct heir of the first people, so it actually ties-in to our other stories!
and so on…
When did it become sacred? When it was old enough that the origin was beyond living memory.
“Gather round children for the tale of our glorious long-dead ancestors.”
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Gorgias
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LOL! I guess it all depends on how gullible you are. You asked the question yourself – it all depends on how loosey-goosey you’re willing to be!
God (or His rep) told me the dimensions of the boat? God asked me to gather my extended family? God asked me to cram all the kinds of animals in the boat? C’mon… it’s starting to strain credulity, don’t you think?
Right. That’s why you asked about ‘loosey-goosey’. If you want to be really loose in your definition, you could say that Jesus’ lifetime, the Crusades, the man on the moon, and 9/11 were all ‘concurrent’.
No, I don’t think so. Hence the questions. How do we say “inspired” and “redacted” and “concurrently, independently developing” all in the same breath?
Agreed.
OK. That’s certainly one approach, and it’s a valid one. Let’s go back to your original comment, then: you cited a “small regional event” that was a “grain of truth wrapped in layers of hyperbole and exaggeration.” I guess that I looked at that and said, “wait a minute… that’s not an interpretation, that’s an account of how the story came to be.” If, by that description, you simply mean “allegorical account of pre-historical incident, meant by the inspired author to tell a theological truth”, well… then I could say that that’s an “interpretation under a non-fundamentalist view.”
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