Rainbows Before Noah's Time

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Hi, Were there Rainbows before Noah? Thanks
 
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I actually have a tattoo of a rainbow - on my left shoulder / bicep
between the bow - is a storm cloud that’s shooting down a lightning bolt !
Above the rainbow, I also have the planet Saturn ( with the ring about it )
That was my big idea - when I turned 21 😏
 
I’d imagine that there were rainbows in Eden. East of Eden??? 😀
 
The rainbow is a sign of God’s Covenant with Noah.
Only Noah can say if there were rainbows before that discussion with God.

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈💥
 
Cecilia_Dympna said:
So what was the craic with the refraction of sunlight through raindrops prior to Noah?
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Not sure that’s covered in the Old Testament, although God holds a very fine scientific discourse with Job. It does refer to rain…
 
I am deadly serious about God giving Noah the sign of the rainbow as remembrance of His Covenant with Noah and us.

And yes, Job and God have a fine scientific discourse about nature. Well really, Job just listens…
 
People in the Old Testament were always arguing with God…
 
Well the first thing you should know about me is that I have a few stamped pieces of paper,declaring me a scientist…and I have been known to engage in fossil studies. .
 
I also believe in all God’s Covenants with us. And Genesis.
 
They can be more then one thing though right?

They can be God’s symbol of God’s Covenant with us as well as a play on atmospheric conditions and light refraction.

Which afterall is God’s creation as well.
 
I have this wild guess, based on the hebrew text, that God didn’t exactly mean rainbow. He only said bow.

And there is a much greater bow in the heavens that we can look at and be marveled at. A bow that is beautiful, majestic and perenial, for us to remember a covenant made with God Himself : )
 
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Aulef said:
I have this wild guess, based on the hebrew, that God didn’t exactly mean rainbow.
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There are distinct words in the Latin and in the Greek for “bow” (think ‘archery’) and “rainbow”. The word for “bow” is what’s used here in Genesis. The word for ‘rainbow’, which is distinct, is what’s used in Revelation 4:3 and 10:1.

So, we’re left with the (surprising?) consideration that Genesis isn’t talking about a _rain_bow, but a shooting bow. (And, when you go back to Genesis 9 after reading this post, you’ll see that the text just says ‘bow’.) How can we make sense of this?

Well, I was in a Bible study a number of years ago, and the story was told that, if an archer wanted to demonstrate that he didn’t have hostile intent, he would do so by lifting his bow hand straight up into the sky, holding the bow aloft, signaling that he wasn’t preparing to do you harm.

And so, if we read the context in Genesis 9, we see that this is precisely what God’s talking about! He’s promising, through a covenant oath, not to destroy humanity again!

So, if we want to ask “what came first?”, we would probably have to conclude that (if we believe this etymology then) first came archery, followed by the societal convention for a signal that meant “I’m peaceful”, and only then the narrative that we read in Genesis that takes advantage of this understanding. 😉
 
Poetic language.

Like when someone says “whenever I see a red cardinal, I remember my mom” or “when I look up at the moon, I remember that you are looking at that same moon.”
 
Did you ever hear the theory that, at some point, the Earth was covered in a vapor canopy? In my opinion, there could be any number of reasons for the Flood and the appearance of rainbows.

There’s more water in the Earths’s crust and I’m not discounting the possibility of volcanic activity or meteor impacts… Oh, how I wish I could witness these events! At the very least, we should use ice penetrating radar to check Mt. Ararat for the Ark!
 
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Do you know what I am referring to as far as this Covenant?

And yes, cruciferi, the Old Testament does talk about the upwelling of water from the earths crust, in achieving the flood
 
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Even if the story is supposed to be literal, the passage doesn’t seem to read that God invented rainbows at that time. It just says he put one in the sky. It’d be no different if he put something more permanent to memorialize the event, like a tree or a rock on the mountain.

Trust me. I’m a non-believer who finds all sorts of faults in the Bible, but this just doesn’t rise to that level.
 
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