Noah's Flood - W. Bruce Masse

[Ron_Conte]

Researcher W. Bruce Masse has an interesting theory about Noah’s Flood. There are many cultures around the world that have flood myths; he thought that all these stories might be based on a real historical event. Some of these stories mentioned various astronomical events (eclipses, conjunctions) that he could use to date the year of the event: 2807 B.C.

There was also a comet sighting recorded by a number of cultures. Masse’s theory is that a comet strike in the ocean caused a huge amount of water to be thrown into the atmosphere, which caused immense rainfall worldwide and severe flooding. There is some evidence for such a comet strike in the Indian Ocean. The dating of the event, though, is controversial.

The date of 2807 B.C. fits within the general lengths of time given in Sacred Scripture between the flood and later events.

An alternate theory about the great flood, that it was just a local flood near the Black Sea, would place the flood about 5600 B.C., which is thousands of years too early given the lengths of time in the Bible.

 

[DOShea]

I haven’t read his theory but just off the cuff the date 2807 BC seems a little recent. The pyramids in Egypt date to around 2500 BC, and it doesn’t seem like in only 300 years, about 10 generations, the Egyptian civilization could have risen to the level of culture it had, developed a highly sophisticated language and art, AND had all those people around to cut the stones and build the structures - while other history was going on elsewhere. There just wouldn’t be enough people to go around.

 

[Ron_Conte]

My interpretation of the story of Noah is that it has both literal and figurative elements. So the extent of the flood, and the extent of the deaths from the flood, is figurative; the flood was very extensive and many persons died. The spiritual level of meaning is better served by figures in the extent of the flood, for the need for salvation, and the offer of salvation, are both very extensive, like the flood.

Most commentators either interpret the account of the flood as entirely literal (which conflicts with historical and scientific information) or entirely figurative (which is untenable because the story is an integral part of the history presented in Scripture). But our interpretation need not be all or nothing.

There are literal elements: There was a Noah, he built an ark, there were animals on the ark.

There are figurative elements: only a modest number of animals was needed, as a figure to represent all life on earth; the great flood was extensive, but the description is by way of figures, etc.

We need not hold that all human lives were lost, except those in the ark; this is a figure. And the same is true for animal life.

 

[garysibio]

Researcher W. Bruce Masse has an interesting theory about Noah’s Flood. There are many cultures around the world that have flood myths; he thought that all these stories might be based on a real historical event. Some of these stories mentioned various astronomical events (eclipses, conjunctions) that he could use to date the year of the event: 2807 B.C.

There was also a comet sighting recorded by a number of cultures. Masse’s theory is that a comet strike in the ocean caused a huge amount of water to be thrown into the atmosphere, which caused immense rainfall worldwide and severe flooding. There is some evidence for such a comet strike in the Indian Ocean. The dating of the event, though, is controversial.

The date of 2807 B.C. fits within the general lengths of time given in Sacred Scripture between the flood and later events.

An alternate theory about the great flood, that it was just a local flood near the Black Sea, would place the flood about 5600 B.C., which is thousands of years too early given the lengths of time in the Bible.

If you believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, then you have to believe in a planet-wide flood. The other option is to believe that the Holy Spirit can’t tell the difference between a local flood and one that covered the entire planet. There is nothing about the Genesis account that indicates that it is to be taken any way other than historically.

 

[diggerdomer]

If you believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, then you have to believe in a planet-wide flood. The other option is to believe that the Holy Spirit can’t tell the difference between a local flood and one that covered the entire planet. There is nothing about the Genesis account that indicates that it is to be taken any way other than historically.

Nope. At least, this is not what the Catholic Church teaches. You are free to believe the story literally or allegorically (etc.). It’s not the either/or you suggest. See the Catechism para 109-118, that should help for starters.

 

[garysibio]

Nope. At least, this is not what the Catholic Church teaches. You are free to believe the story literally or allegorically (etc.). It’s not the either/or you suggest. See the Catechism para 109-118, that should help for starters.

Not true. The guiding principle is that you take the Bible literally unless there is reason not to do so. There is no good reason to assume that Genesis is not intended to be read as history and, if you take a look at Dei Verbum 14, that is how the Church accepts it.

 

[shoewindow3000]

If the waters were high enough to make the Ark settle on** top** of a mountain, then the water would be high enough for a world-wide flood.

 

[Ron_Conte]

The Adam and Eve story contains both literal and figurative elements:

Adam and Eve - two real historical persons
Their sin - a real historical event at the origins of the human race

the fruit - a figure for the choice to obey or disobey God
a talking serpent - a figure for the devil

The commandment to “love your neighbor” contains both literal and figurative elements:

love - literal
neighbor - a figure referring even to strangers who live far away, meant to indicate that we should treat everyone as if they were neighbors

[Revelation]
{22:16} “I, Jesus, have sent my Angel, to testify to these things for you among the Churches. I am the Root and the Origin of David, the bright morning Star.”

Jesus is the root of David, a figurative term (root); Jesus is the origin of David, a literal term (origin); Jesus is the bright morning Star, also a figure.

Scripture often combines literal elements and figurative elements in the same verse, or the same passage. Therefore, we can take the story of Noah to have both types of elements.

 

[brotherhrolf]

We should all know that the story of Noah is predated by the story of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written long before the Bible. And we should acknowledge that flood myths exist in other cultures across the world.

Both Noah’s story and Gilgamesh were written in the Near East. Ian Wilson has an interesting hypothesis that the story is a memory of when the Black Sea basin connected to the Mediterranean.

amazon.com/Before-Flood-Biblical-Changed-Civilization/dp/0312319711/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251636438&sr=1-3

 

[DOShea]

The last time I did any kind of research into this, which was many years ago, I found there were some 50-odd different accounts that could be taken as a Noah-like scenario. Some are not quite the same, some have other details, but more than a few are eerily similar. The Hawaiian story of NuNu, for example. Tipped off ahead of time a flood was coming, built a big canoe with a house on it, brought only his immediate family and animals, etc. There are others that match the same story very closely, from China, South America, all over. The times of these stories vary, as you would expect from such a widespread array of cultures. The point is not lost, however, in the similarity of these accounts. Why do they all point to a flood? To one small group of sole survivors on a boat built before the waters came? I mean, why not a flood here, a fire there, an earthquake over here? Why in each instance a flood of epic proportions?

The Gilgamesh account would have no way of influencing all of those accounts. It makes a lot more sense to believe there was, in fact, some kind of world-wide event that influenced all those cultures.

I would also be very careful in making statements along the lines of “it doesn’t match the historical evidence.” There are bits and pieces of evidence out there, but some of them are dismissed quickly because they don’t fit into scenarios posed by some to explain what would represent a deviation from the norms of secular geologic theories. Realize that an important tool in age dating is geologic strata; that is, something on top lived later then what is below. Finding something out of sequence - a skeleton below a dinosaur fossil, for example, does not result in any sort of reevaluation of the dating notion. Instead, it triggers a search for geologic evidence that the layers were disturbed, flipped over on themselves as it were.

There have been many cases where such an overturning has been concluded without any apparent impetus for such an event. In North America, one area was “declared” as that kind of geologic flip-flop based on the idea that a glacial event - for lack of better term - “plowed” over the land and deposited the layers upside down. Good theory, but later discoveries showed this out-of-sequence layering extended all the way up into south central Canada, which would make that finding illogical, given other geologic data from that region. Glacial displacement leaves tell-tale signs, markers, and they are not present in the norther regions of this alleged flipped area. Also, the boundary layers of these strata are not flat, they contain irregularities that act like gear teeth to “mesh” the layers together. Any event that would push a layer across the other would shear off these bumps… but the bumps are not sheared, they are still in place. This negates the idea of upheaval and overturning.

The other aspect of all this is that a truly world wide flood of that proportion would have enourmous hydraulic power that would make glacial power pale by comparison. We see mountains as a partial result of glacial power, and can only imagine the kind of erosion that a world full of water could result in.

So you are really dealing with a sacred cow here, and the few pieces of evidence one might find will never be taken seriously by science. You can go to the Grand Canyon and see miles and miles of layers that appear out of sequence from the model of a geologic column - the evidence is right in front of your nose - but there are alternative theories that could explain it and those are what science chooses to go with. In the end, we really don’t have any evidence at all since no one was there to see it happen; the best we can do is guess.

Taking all into account, I think the many widespread and similar accounts tend to reinforce the idea of a world wide flood like the Noah event.

 

[Lev23]

We should all know that the story of Noah is predated by the story of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written long before the Bible. And we should acknowledge that flood myths exist in other cultures across the world.

Both Noah’s story and Gilgamesh were written in the Near East. Ian Wilson has an interesting hypothesis that the story is a memory of when the Black Sea basin connected to the Mediterranean.

amazon.com/Before-Flood-Biblical-Changed-Civilization/dp/0312319711/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251636438&sr=1-3

If other cultures acknowledge the truth(not myth) of the flood and Noah, it only adds to the veracity of the account.

If some claim that these other cultural accounts predate the one in the Torah, fine. We know the Torah account to be the most accurate because it is God-breathed.

 

[garysibio]

The Adam and Eve story contains both literal and figurative elements:

Adam and Eve - two real historical persons
Their sin - a real historical event at the origins of the human race

the fruit - a figure for the choice to obey or disobey God
a talking serpent - a figure for the devil

The commandment to “love your neighbor” contains both literal and figurative elements:

love - literal
neighbor - a figure referring even to strangers who live far away, meant to indicate that we should treat everyone as if they were neighbors

[Revelation]
{22:16} “I, Jesus, have sent my Angel, to testify to these things for you among the Churches. I am the Root and the Origin of David, the bright morning Star.”

Jesus is the root of David, a figurative term (root); Jesus is the origin of David, a literal term (origin); Jesus is the bright morning Star, also a figure.

Scripture often combines literal elements and figurative elements in the same verse, or the same passage. Therefore, we can take the story of Noah to have both types of elements.

The serpent in Gen 3 is not a snake, it’s Satan, not a figure of him. It’s him. See Rev 12:9.

 

[garysibio]

We should all know that the story of Noah is predated by the story of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written long before the Bible. And we should acknowledge that flood myths exist in other cultures across the world.

Both Noah’s story and Gilgamesh were written in the Near East. Ian Wilson has an interesting hypothesis that the story is a memory of when the Black Sea basin connected to the Mediterranean.

amazon.com/Before-Flood-Biblical-Changed-Civilization/dp/0312319711/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251636438&sr=1-3

Not true. We don’t know for certain which was written first. Liberal “scholarship” assumes Gilgamesh came first but the main purpose of liberal “scholarship” is to try to discredit the Bible.

A good case can be made for saying the biblical account predates Gilgamesh. First of all, the ark is nothing more than a floating box. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the “ark” is more technologically advanced. It can be maneuvered. In the epic it is claimed that the people lived to be 30,000 years. No one in the Bible exceeds 1,000. These factors indicate that the Epic of Gilgamesh is an exaggeration based on the biblical account.

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Researcher W. Bruce Masse has an interesting theory about Noah’s Flood. There are many cultures around the world that have flood myths; he thought that all these stories might be based on a real historical event. Some of these stories mentioned various astronomical events (eclipses, conjunctions) that he could use to date the year of the event: 2807 B.C.

There was also a comet sighting recorded by a number of cultures. Masse’s theory is that a comet strike in the ocean caused a huge amount of water to be thrown into the atmosphere, which caused immense rainfall worldwide and severe flooding. There is some evidence for such a comet strike in the Indian Ocean. The dating of the event, though, is controversial.

The date of 2807 B.C. fits within the general lengths of time given in Sacred Scripture between the flood and later events.

An alternate theory about the great flood, that it was just a local flood near the Black Sea, would place the flood about 5600 B.C., which is thousands of years too early given the lengths of time in the Bible.

Hi, Ron.

Two other mechanisms for a flood have been proposed. (1) Velikovsky’s comet theory: Venus used to be a comet with a 1,500 year period which used to bring it close to Earth twice every 1,500 years – once so close that it gravitationally pulled the waters of the Earth to one side of the planet, while the planet spun beneath the waters, creating what looked to us like an enormous flood. Not bad! (2) Chandler Wobble – the wobble of the Earth on its axis – going so out-of-control that the Earth turns over, so that east becomes west and west becomes east, causing the oceans to jump onto the western edges of the continents, flooding them. Not bad!

 

[Lev23]

Researcher W. Bruce Masse has an interesting theory about Noah’s Flood. There are many cultures around the world that have flood myths; he thought that all these stories might be based on a real historical event. Some of these stories mentioned various astronomical events (eclipses, conjunctions) that he could use to date the year of the event: 2807 B.C.

There was also a comet sighting recorded by a number of cultures. Masse’s theory is that a comet strike in the ocean caused a huge amount of water to be thrown into the atmosphere, which caused immense rainfall worldwide and severe flooding. There is some evidence for such a comet strike in the Indian Ocean. The dating of the event, though, is controversial.

The date of 2807 B.C. fits within the general lengths of time given in Sacred Scripture between the flood and later events.

An alternate theory about the great flood, that it was just a local flood near the Black Sea, would place the flood about 5600 B.C., which is thousands of years too early given the lengths of time in the Bible.

Hi Ron!

We got to remember the real reason behind the flood, no matter how one tries to scientifically explains it away.

2 Peter 2:5
…if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; …

 

[PeterK]

If you believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, then you have to believe in a planet-wide flood. The other option is to believe that the Holy Spirit can’t tell the difference between a local flood and one that covered the entire planet. There is nothing about the Genesis account that indicates that it is to be taken any way other than historically.

No, you do not have to believe that. The Holy Spirit is not limited in the ways it inspires the scripture.

I am not a heretic or in a position contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church if I hold the flood narrative to be a highly dramatized remembrance of a local event that has been handed down in the language of myth.

“Planet-wide” is an anachronism. The ANE had no concept of the earth as being a planet.
We do not have to hold that a flood covered the entire planet.
We do not have to hold every species of animal boarded the ark in pairs.
We do not have to believe the entire human race was extinguished save for six individuals.
Same goes for the release of the birds, landing on the mountain and the rainbow. And to assert this does not diminish the inspired quality of the scriptures. It also does not make the famous narrative any less appealing and thought provoking.

To be even-handed, you are also free to believe these things happened according to your ultra-literalistic understanding.

My sincere concern with the literal-only approach is that one looks at the story and not into it or through it. It’s all surface details nothing deeper - all skin and no meat. There does not have to have been an actual historical good Samaritan for the parable of the good Samaritan to make its point and instruct.

Most literalist flood discussions of the flood read the surface details and then engage in lengthy conversations proving all the details via comets, rock strata surveys, orbital variation theories, and satellite photos of Ararat, etc. Just search this forum.

That’s not my idea of Bible study.

The idea of the sacrament of Baptism being prefigured or anticipated seldom emerges.

PeterK

 

[PeterK]

Do a forum search using “flood”, “historical”, “Noah”, “literal” to see previous discussions and hopefully prevent the same arguments from being rehashed.

As an example, here’s a poll conducted on this forum addressing literal belief in the flood:* “as written in the bible.”*

flood poll

PeterK

 

[diggerdomer]

. The guiding principle is that you take the Bible literally unless there is reason not to do so.

The Church does not teach that. Can you show us where you think she does?

There is no good reason to assume that Genesis is not intended to be read as history and, if you take a look at Dei Verbum 14, that is how the Church accepts it.

I of course agree with Dei Verbum. I didn’t see Noah mentioned there so I don’t see how it applies to your point. I don’t think anything I’ve said here contradicts Dei Verbum but if you know where it does please help.

 

[BibleAnswer]

THE FLOOD
MAY 21, 4990 BC: GOD DESTROYS THE WORLD BY WATER.

Gen 7:4:“For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.”
God will destroy the world in seven days time hence.]

Gen 7:6:Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was on the earth.

Gen 7:10:And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth.

Gen 7:11:In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
The Jewish Sacred Calendar places this date as May 21. May 21, 4990 BC: 2nd month, 17th day. On the seventh day it began to rain.]

Gen 7:12:And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
[July 1, 4990 BC: 4th month. 2 months later. It rained 40 days and 40 nights.]

Gen 7:24:And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.

Gen 8:3:And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased.
[Oct 21, 4990 BC: 7th month, 17th day. 5 months later. Waters prevailed 150 days (5mon).]

Gen 8:4:Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.
[Oct 21, 4990 BC: 7th month, 17th day. The ark rested on Mt. Ararat.]

Gen 8:5:And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
[Jan 4990 BC: 10th month, 1st day. 8 months later. The tops of mountains were seen.]

Gen 8:13:And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry.
[Apr 4989 BC: 1st month, 1st day. 11 months later. Dry ground. Noah is 601. Shem is 101.]

Gen 8:14:And in the second month, on the twenty seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.
[May 4989 BC: 2nd month, 27th day. 1 year, 10 days later. Dry earth.]

Is 28:10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.

1 chor 2 spiritual things with spiritual things

Matt 13:34 All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them,
Matt 13:35 that is might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: “I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”

Ps 78:2 I will open my mouth in a parable.

Mark 5:33 And with many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it.
Mark 5:34 But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.

Taking into account this is a parable. And earthly story with a spiritual meaning

1. The earthly story about the flood and noah’s ark is true. The bible gives ample evidence and even dates the flood very accurately. For a very specific reason mind you, not just arbitrarily dated for us to never understand.
2. The spiritual meaning is very significant and ties into judgment day, and the end of the world and the elect.

 

[PeterK]

THE FLOOD …

Taking into account this is a parable. And earthly story with a spiritual meaning

1. The earthly story about the flood and noah’s ark is true. The bible gives ample evidence and even dates the flood very accurately. For a very specific reason mind you, not just arbitrarily dated for us to never understand.
2. The spiritual meaning is very significant and** ties into judgment day, and the end of the world and the elect.**

*…for a very specific reason… *
And that very specific reason is… what?

*…ties into judgement day, and the end of the world and the elect. *
Interesting. Please show how it ties in to these things.

PeteK