P
PeterK
Guest
Hi pzona,
I believe a flood did occur. I even believe some mountains somewhere were covered. But from today’s perspective it wasn’t a global flood and the mountains weren’t very tall. Jerusalem sits on a “mountain”. The story teller first related his story orally - it wasn’t written at all. The story was handed down with other stories. Moving forward through generations details were added, emphasized, merged and omitted as deemed necessary by the story tellers. Finally, the account was set to script. By this time the original “eyewitness account of the flood” had undergone quite a transformation, a transformation guided by the Holy Spirit, but a transformation all the same.
This is the transmission legacy that is my backdrop for my understanding of Gen1 - 11. The stories probably do refer to actual historical people and events but the text cannot be put forward as anything close to an eyewitness account. So to haggle about historical fact is really a waist of time and missing the point. What is the point? You seldom hear it brought up. The amazing point of the whole narrative is the flood was morally initiated. It wasn’t just a haphazard natural event. Corrupt mankind was being eradicated save Noah and kin.
Now to be clear I do not hold that God could not flood the entire earth if he so desired. Of course he could, but this doesn’t mean he did. And, hey, if the material evidence becomes undeniable that a global flood occurred I’m fine with that also. I probably would have resisted the idea of dinosaurs at first and then accepted the idea later as hundreds and hundreds of skeletons were increasingly unearthed. The point is faith and belief in Christ and his Resurrection as historical fact are not put in jeopardy in the least if details of the flood narrative are found wanting in historical fact. That just does not follow.
So to get back to your point, we don’t need to worry about evaporation rates or how tall mountains are. In all likely hood a global flood just did not happen, however the ancient story teller thought ‘his entire world’ was covered by water - and it actually could have been, all 15 square miles of it. His world perspective was much different than ours.
Now also, the literalists do have to be admired for their cleverness. So to answer your question about evaporation from some literalists p.o.v., the water didn’t evaporate - it froze. And it is still frozen on both polar caps. And if this ice were to all thaw the entire globe would be covered in water again - or close to it since the tectonic plates have moved around a bit since the last global flood. Trust me, they have an answer.
Oh well, hope this helped.
PeterK