Noah's Ark - True Story or Fiction?

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buffalo:
The Bible says a global flood.
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Not neccessarily. Some translations & versions say the earth, some say the world, etc. But note it’s a lower case “earth,” which can have multiple meanings. A lot like the debate over Thou Shall Not Kill / Murder. Which is it? Depends on the translation.
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buffalo:
If they find the ark at 17,000 feet above sea level then we will know.
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Well, they haven’t.
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buffalo:
Side note: If God only flooded the earth locally why isn’t the Bible more clear? He does know the future and He does know we would be examining this through modern day lenses.
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Because whoever wrote the Old Testament had no clue how big this planet was. To the author, the earth could have been just one or 2 regions of the planet.
 
Jim Baur:
Thank you!

How does that apply to Noah’s Ark?

Has the Church given a Papal teaching?

Does she teach it through tradition (Fathers, Doctors, saints)?

I have read Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, et cetera.

Ken Ham gives lots of answers. I do not know if his answers are to the correct questions. H. C. people give lots of answers. Again, I do not know if their answers are to the correct questions.
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I noticed on his website that he also believes the world is only a few thousand years old.
 
Jim Baur:
Thank you!

How does that apply to Noah’s Ark?

Has the Church given a Papal teaching?

Does she teach it through tradition (Fathers, Doctors, saints)?

I have read Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, et cetera.

Ken Ham gives lots of answers. I do not know if his answers are to the correct questions. H. C. people give lots of answers. Again, I do not know if their answers are to the correct questions.
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Noah’s Ark - New Advent

from the article:

Suffice it to remark that the text of Genesis (viii, 4) mentioning Mount Ararat is somewhat lacking in clearness, and that nothing is said in the Scripture concerning what became of the Ark after the Flood. Many difficulties have been raised, especially in our epoch, against the pages of the Bible in which the history of the Flood and of the Ark is narrated. This is not the place to dwell upon these difficulties, however considerable some may appear. They all converge towards the question whether these pages should be considered as strictly historical throughout, or only in their outward form. The opinion that these chapters are mere legendary tales, Eastern folklore, is held by some non-Catholic scholars; according to others, with whom several Catholics side, they preserve, under the embroidery of poetical parlance, the memory of a fact handed down by a very old tradition. This view, were it supported by good arguments, could be readily accepted by a Catholic; it has, over the age-long opinion that every detail of the narration should be literally interpreted and trusted in by the historian, the advantage of suppressing as meaningless some difficulties once deemed unanswerable.
 
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wabrams:
Because whoever wrote the Old Testament had no clue how big this planet was. To the author, the earth could have been just one or 2 regions of the planet.
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The problem is whether the author was inspired or not. If inspired then he can only transmit the truth. So we are trying to examine the truth that he wrote at his time, through the lens of our time.

Without Tradition, we are examining the Bible like it fell out of the sky in the last few years and we are left to figure it out looking through a modern lens.

Now if the author was inspired then his writings would transmit what God intended. God certainly knew how big the world was.
 
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buffalo:
The problem is whether the author was inspired or not. If inspired then he can only transmit the truth. So we are trying to examine the truth that he wrote at his time, through the lens of our time.

Without Tradition, we are examining the Bible like it fell out of the sky in the last few years and we are left to figure it out looking through a modern lens.

Now if the author was inspired then his writings would transmit what God intended. God certainly knew how big the world was.
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So did God write through a human, or was the human merely inspired by God and wrote to the best of their knowledge? I think what is literally written is taken way out of context sometimes. Was the Earth created in only 6 days? Well, we know the Earth is over a million years old and our history (man’s) doesn’t go back that far, so obviously God’s clock is vastly different than ours.
 
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wabrams:
So did God write through a human, or was the human merely inspired by God and wrote to the best of their knowledge? I think what is literally written is taken way out of context sometimes. Was the Earth created in only 6 days? Well, we know the Earth is over a million years old and our history (man’s) doesn’t go back that far, so obviously God’s clock is vastly different than ours.
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In either case the inspiration has to result in true writings. They cannot be false by definition. If they wrote throught the best of their knowledge they could make mistakes. But if the Bible is the Word of God, it therefore has to be true.

Your other point about the age of the earth - We can only theorize based on our limited view and intellect as to the age of the earth. You and I were not there. We are trapped into 4 dimensions. There well could be others. It would be interesting to investigate the age of the earth with that vantage point.
 
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buffalo:
In either case the inspiration has to result in true writings. They cannot be false by definition. If they wrote throught the best of their knowledge they could make mistakes. But if the Bible is the Word of God, it therefore has to be true.

Your other point about the age of the earth - We can only theorize based on our limited view and intellect as to the age of the earth. You and I were not there. We are trapped into 4 dimensions. There well could be others. It would be interesting to investigate the age of the earth with that vantage point.
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No one is saying the Word of God is wrong, it’s the context we read it in as flawed humans is what is wrong.

There is more scientific evidence leaning towards a several million year old earth versus severl thousand years.
 
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buffalo:
The Church affirms the historicity of the Bible.
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What exactly does this mean, then, global flood, regional flood, or story?
 
First part of article from New Advent

The Hebrew name to designate Noah’s Ark, the one which occurs again in the history of Moses’ childhood, suggests the idea of a box of large proportions, though the author of Wisdom terms it a vessel (Wisd., xiv, 6). The same conclusion is reached from the dimensions attributed to it by the Bible narrative: three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and thirty in height. The form, very likely foursquare, was certainly not very convenient for navigation, but, as has been proven by the experiments of Peter Jansen and M. Vogt, it made the Ark a very suitable device for shipping heavy cargoes and floating upon the waves without rolling or pitching. The Ark was constructed of gofer wood, or cypress, smeared without and within with pitch, or bitumen, to render it water-tight. The interior contained a certain number of rooms distributed among three stories. The text mentions only one window, and this measuring a cubit in height, but there existed possibly some others to give to the inmates of the Ark air and light. A door had also been set in the side of the Ark; God shut it from the outside when Noah and his family had gone in. Apart from Noah’s family, the Ark was intended to receive and keep animals that were to fill the earth again (Gen., vi, 19, 20; vii, 2, 3) and all the food which was necessary for them. After the Flood, the Ark rested upon the mountains of Armenia (Gen., viii, 4 – according to Vulgate and Douay, the mountains of Ararat, according to Authorized Version). Tradition is divided as to the exact place where the Ark rested. Josephus (Ant., I, iii, 6), Berosus (Eus., Praep. Ev., IX, ii, P.G., XXI, 697), Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, St. Ephrem, locate it in Kurdistan. Berosus relates that a part of Xisuthrus’s ship still remained there, and that pilgrims used to scrape off the bitumen from the wreck and make charms of it against witchcraft. Jewish and Armenian tradition admitted Mount Ararat as the resting place of the Ark. In the first century B.C. the Armenians affirmed that remnants of it could yet be seen. The first Christians of Apamea, in Phrygia, erected in this place a convent called the monastery of the Ark, where a feast was yearly celebrated to commemorate Noah’s coming out of the Ark after the Flood.
 
Krasnaya Kometa:
What exactly does this mean, then, global flood, regional flood, or story?
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Story is out. Global vs Regional Flood is the debate.
 
From my reading of the City of God, Saint Augustine has a real flood of the entire world. I have read it recently.

However, I do not know if remember if correctly.

Also, I cannot find anything in the Catechism (it may be there, but I cannot find it).

Also, Saint Augustine is a Doctor of the Church, but I am still not sure if that is the official teaching of the universal Church.

I will believe what the Church teaches, I am not intelligent enough to undersand it myself.

HELP!!!
 
Jim Baur:
Help!!!

Please!!!
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Remember, Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Hear Him in stillness. This should not distress you so much.

A fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of Noah is not required of a Catholic.
 
MichaelTDoyle

I am not worried.

I would like to know the official teaching on Noah’s Ark, if there is an explicit teaching.

I wanted this topic to be viewed. I can only image a clear teaching on such a basic or important historical event.

HELP!
 
How do you skeptics deal with the fact that both Jesus and Peter assumed the story was literal? Do you think the second person of the Trinity and the Apostle who was the first pope were just unenlightened simpletons? Or is the New Testament record also not to be trusted?

As for me I will stick with Jesus and Peter on this one. 🙂

Mel
 
I don’t have a dog in this fight. Just curious if anyone knows if Jewish tradition gives us a name for Noah’s wife?
 
I don’t have a dog in this fight. Just curious if anyone knows if Jewish tradition gives us a name for Noah’s wife?
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Wasn’t it Joan? 😉
 
**From the Catechism of the Catholic Church **
The senses of Scripture
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.
**116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.” **

117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written "for our instruction."
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.
**118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses: **

The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;

The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.
**119 “It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.” **
But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.
 
Adapted from Question 1, Article 10 of the Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas
Two main senses in scripture

1. Spiritual- hidden meaning contained in the literal.

**A. **Anagogical (anagogical type), when things are in reference to future glory

Examples: Our Lord’s transfiguration on Mount Tabor was a foreshadowing of our glory in heaven

** His resurrection, a sign of our own **

Anagogical (Garrigou-Lagrange), as the New Law is itself a figure of future glory

Summa: “But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory”
**B. **Moral or tropological, when things done in piety in the past were examples of what we should do in the New Law

For example: Abraham’s faith and obedience was the type of faith the future Christian should possess

**Moral (Garrigou-Lagrange) according as the things done in Christ are types of what we ought to do **

Summa: “so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do”
**C. **Allegorical (allegorical type), when it is in reference to something that really happened and simultaneously a foreshadowing of something yet to happen in the future (usually, the distant future)

For examples: Noah’s Ark was real but foretold the Church

The manna fell as a sign of the Blessed Sacrament yet to be instituted

Isaac carried wood on his shoulders and trudged up the mountain to be sacrificed as a symbol of Him who carried His cross up Calvary Hill.

Allegorical (Garrigou-Lagrange) in so far as the things of the Old Law signify in figure the things of the New Law

Summa: “so far as things in the Old Law signify the things of the New Law”
**2. **Literal- means what is says

**A. **Literal has two senses

**2. Parabolical, that is, metaphorical **

(Parabolic or parabolical- adj. 1. Of or like a parable. 2. Of or having the form of a parable)

Example: Thus when God’s arm is mentioned, the literal sense is to be taken metaphorically as expressing God’s power

The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure, but that which is figured, the literal sense.

When Scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely, operative power.

**1. **Proper

Summa: “These three—history, etiology, analogy—are grouped under the literal sense.”

A. Analogy- whenever the truth of one text of Scripture is shown not to contradict the truth of another.

B. Etiology- when its cause is assigned, as when Our Lord gave the reason why Moses allowed putting away of wives—namely, on account of the hardness of men’s hearts

C. History- whenever anything is simply related, the death of Jesus Christ
My question: St. Thomas gives several levels to the literal, which sense has the Church used for Noah’s ark?

I am not smart enough to figure it out, but I am not dumb enough not to ask for the Church’s official teaching.
 
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