Does the Church believe that only Noah and his family were present on the Earth at a particular point in history and that the human race was re-populated from them?
First, I should ask what is the likelyhood that Noah as portrayed in the bible even existed?!!!
Before I address your questions I would like to say I find that to poll the account of Noah and the flood as either “real” or “just a story, an analogy”, is both vague and loaded. “Real” is not defined, so one must assume that what is meant is “historical”. Yet, the term “real” biases the poll. Some people would not want to say that a Biblical account is not real when “real” is contrasted with the alternative “just a story”.
The word “just” in “just a story” has a pejorative nuance. This biases the poll, further. Also, the word “story” can be ambiguous. People will interpret the word “story” in different ways. For instance, there are true stories and there are false stories. The word “story” was left undefined. The qualification of “analogy” only contributed to the ambiguity. What possibly could the Noah account be an analogy of?
Sorry to have to say this, but there are no good choices in this poll as it is worded. I am not trying to be unduly critical. I’m just trying to help the person who constructed the poll, even though he did not ask for my two cents worth.
Now, on to your questions. To know what the Church is saying about Noah story can be seen by familiarizing oneself with modern Catholic Biblical scholarship that the Church considers acceptable. One approach interprets the Noah story as a theological polemic. There is overwhelming literary and historical evidence to support this approach.
It is impossible to attach any historical value to the Noah story or to the Mesopotamian flood story. Noah appears to be a composite personality of two or three Old Testament figures.
Accordingly, the Noah story is a theological polemic against such flood stories as were common in the ancient Near East, especially the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Noah polemic is then worked into the historical framework of the O.T.
The Noah story gives the Israelites a flood story that has true or corrected theology, as opposed to the pagan theology of the Gilgamesh Epic.
For instance, in Gilgamesh, floods are the result of the irrational anger of the gods who do not distinquish between good and evil. In Noah, the anger of the one, true God, Yahweh, is a matter of justice. And his justice reaches to the ends of the earth. Hence the vast extent of the flood.
“The deluge story is an extremely clear example of how the Hebrews could take popular traditions of other people, often almost entirely devoid of historical value, and retell them in such a way as to present important theological conceptions through them: here, divine justice and providence, the security and stability of nature resting on the assured good will of God to mankind in spite of evil the inclinations of man’s heart.” (Fr. J.L. McKenzie)
Two books that give good background on the Noah story are *Dictionary of the Bible *(see entry “Deluge”), and
The Two-Edged Sword. Both are by Fr. John L. McKenzie, S.J. Also, reading ancient Near Eastern literature helps with understanding literary genres and the cultural milieu of the times. J.B. Pritchard put out a nice 2 volume collection of texts with pictures: *The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (*0691002002). Of course, read
The Epic of Gilgamesh. And finally, *The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels *by Heidel (0226323986).
The bottom line for the die-hard literalist is that a Biblical literary genre does not have to be historical in order for it to convey God’s message about salvation. Catholics are free to take the Noah story literally or to understand it according to modern Biblical scholarship as I have briefly described. Each to his own. I prefer the modern interpretation. Yet, we should not ignore the more literal interpretations of some of the early Church Fathers, as they are of great spiritual value.
itinerant1 :tiphat:
…here is why