The historicity of Noah

  • Thread starter Thread starter Contrabass101
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Contrabass101

Guest
Hey everyone,

I’m reading through Genesis right now, and I got to wonder about Noah. As far as I understand Catholic doctrine, we are allowed to agree with Darwin, but not to deny that Adam and Eve were real persons. Likewise, I suppose, that Noah was a real person, but then some other questions come to mind.

What was the Flood? What happend? Did it happen? There’s a lot of symbolism and “storytelling” to the first half of Genesis… how much of it is to be taken literally? When did Noah live, and when did those things happen? Are there anything in archeology and geography that supports the Flood?

It seems to me, that most of the Christians that have actual theories about the Flood, are Fundamentalists who don’t believe in evolution either, but then again, I havent looked very hard 🙂

All help appreciated.
  • CB
 
Jesus himself, as well as Peter and some of the others, believed it to be true and preached about it. That settles the issue for me. The flood story and Noah’s place in it are literally true. Either that, or Jesus and Peter were fibbing, and I don’t believe that for a minute.
 
Contrabass101 said:
It seems to me, that most of the Christians that have actual theories about the Flood, are Fundamentalists who don’t believe in evolution either…
Click to expand...
No, it’s just that most of today’s “Catholics” are modernists, who reject Genesis. They’d have you think you must be a fundamentalist to believe a literal Genesis, and that it’s “not catholic to believe in creation”.

www.kolbecenter.org
catholicintl.com/
 
I know a strawman when I see one…

You dont have to reject Genesis to believe in evolution! Even the pope believes in evolution - you hardly get more catholic than that - and as far as I know, he doesn’t reject Genesis.

I am convinced that evolution is true - as convinced as a scientific theory will allow you to be. I think Ken Miller (also a Catholic) does a great job in explaining the theory and arguments in a way that laymen can understand. If it wasn’t for the things he said, he migh be taken for a creationist. He was the guy that finally convinced me (to be more exact, a two-hour lecture of his found on youtube) that evolution was both sound and evidence-based.

That is also one of the reasons the Catholic faith appeals so much to me - it doesn’t jump unto the creationism-bandwagon as most other churches I know of do. And since my reason and what I percieve to be the scientific data points to evolution, I would have a hard time believing something, that would forbid me to hold that view.

Yet, when you stop just repeating the things you were taught in Fundamentalist (or Modernist) sunday school, some questions pop up. For instance, were the eight people on the Ark the forefathers of the whole world’s population, or were the aboriginals and south american natives all right and safe in their own home countries? Was it global or local? Where is the evidence?

The thing is, I know the Liberal explaination quite well (there was no Flood, it’s just some Babylonian myth etc) and also the Fundamentalist (world wide Flood, but the scientists are hiding the geological evidence from us etc). What I want to know is what the intermediate position is, if there be such a thing.
  • CB
 
Contrabass101 said:
I know a strawman when I see one…

You dont have to reject Genesis to believe in evolution! Even the pope believes in evolution - you hardly get more catholic than that - and as far as I know, he doesn’t reject Genesis.

I am convinced that evolution is true - as convinced as a scientific theory will allow you to be. I think Ken Miller (also a Catholic) does a great job in explaining the theory and arguments in a way that laymen can understand. If it wasn’t for the things he said, he migh be taken for a creationist. He was the guy that finally convinced me (to be more exact, a two-hour lecture of his found on youtube) that evolution was both sound and evidence-based.

That is also one of the reasons the Catholic faith appeals so much to me - it doesn’t jump unto the creationism-bandwagon as most other churches I know of do. And since my reason and what I percieve to be the scientific data points to evolution, I would have a hard time believing something, that would forbid me to hold that view.

Yet, when you stop just repeating the things you were taught in Fundamentalist (or Modernist) sunday school, some questions pop up. For instance, were the eight people on the Ark the forefathers of the whole world’s population, or were the aboriginals and south american natives all right and safe in their own home countries? Was it global or local? Where is the evidence?

The thing is, I know the Liberal explaination quite well (there was no Flood, it’s just some Babylonian myth etc) and also the Fundamentalist (world wide Flood, but the scientists are hiding the geological evidence from us etc). What I want to know is what the intermediate position is, if there be such a thing.
  • CB
Click to expand...
The Special Creation of Man.
 
Yes, a pre-historic flood did happen in that area after the glaciers melted at end of Ice Age;

"In 1998, William Ryan (geologist) and Walter Pitman, geologists from Columbia University, published evidence that a massive flood through the Bosporus occurred about 5600 BC. Glacial meltwater had turned the Black and Caspian Seas into vast freshwater lakes, while sea levels remained lower worldwide. The fresh water lakes were emptying their waters into the Aegean Sea. As the glaciers retreated, rivers emptying into the Black Sea reduced their volume and found new outlets in the North Sea, and the water levels lowered through evaporation. Then, about 5600 BC, as sea levels rose, Ryan and Pitman suggest, the rising Mediterranean finally spilled over a rocky sill at the Bosporus. The event flooded 60,000 mile² (155,000 km²) of land and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline to the north and west. Ryan and Pitman wrote:

“Ten cubic miles [42 km³] of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls. …The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days.”

The review of sediments in the Black Sea in 2004 by a pan-European project (Assemblage – Noah Project) was compatible with the conclusion of Pitman and Ryan. Calculations made by Mark Siddall predicted an underwater canyon that was actually found."

Many of the ancient cultures have a similar story in their myths & legends - the Greeks, Bablyonians Assyrians, etc.

So I believe Noah did actually exist but he certainly didn’t bring every animal under the sun into his ark.
 
What is particularly interesting about the issue of Noah’s Ark is that it is supposed to have come to rest on Mount Arrarat in Turkey. Here is a link to a site that has pictures of what is referred to as the Arrarat Anomaly: noahsarksearch.com/anomaly.htm

For many years…people…scientists and religious people have tried to get access to this area…but the Turkish Government…has refused all entry to the area almost completely. Turkey…has the area deemed to be a “military zone”… More on the issue: news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0427_040427_noahsark_2.html
 
Mister_De said:
No, it’s just that most of today’s “Catholics” are modernists, who reject Genesis. They’d have you think you must be a fundamentalist to believe a literal Genesis, and that it’s “not catholic to believe in creation”.

www.kolbecenter.org
catholicintl.com/
Click to expand...
I am a relatively “modern Catholic”, but I don’t reject Genesis. I see it as a historical document that was part of the Hebrew Oral Tradition until it was written down after ?how many generations had passed? I don’t see it as “inerrant”, because of how it was recorded. And the fact that are actually two stories of “creation” in Genesis.
 
I don’t see why people get their shorts in a knot about this either way. What difference does it make – here and now, for our salvation (which is the whole purpose of the Scriptures) – whether the details of this story (and all the curiosity about the related details) are literal or not?

I am perfectly happy to believe either way. If the details of the Flood narrative are blow by blow literalistic, well and good, as long as we don’t lose sight of what God is trying to teach us about himself, the world, and ourselves.

If not --if the details that might feed our idle curiosities are not forthcoming from Scripture, history, archaeology, etc – well SO WHAT?? Only someone ignorant of Scripture or - conversely - a wooden biblical literalist would lose their faith if the details of the story didn’t happen PRECISELY as they are laid out in the story.

The truth of Scripture does not rely on verifiable scientific facts on on secular model of history. It was never meant to. It is meant to teach us what God wants us to know to get to heaven.
 
RobHom said:
I am a relatively “modern Catholic”, but I don’t reject Genesis. I see it as a historical document that was part of the Hebrew Oral Tradition until it was written down after ?how many generations had passed? I don’t see it as “inerrant”, because of how it was recorded. And the fact that are actually two stories of “creation” in Genesis.
Click to expand...
Then you need to read - The Toledoths of Genesis
 
Fidelis said:
I don’t see why people get their shorts in a knot about this either way. What difference does it make – here and now, for our salvation (which is the whole purpose of the Scriptures) – whether the details of this story (and all the curiosity about the related details) are literal or not?

I am perfectly happy to believe either way. If the details of the Flood narrative are blow by blow literalistic, well and good, as long as we don’t lose sight of what God is trying to teach us about himself, the world, and ourselves.

If not --if the details that might feed our idle curiosities are not forthcoming from Scripture, history, archaeology, etc – well SO WHAT?? Only someone ignorant of Scripture or - conversely - a wooden biblical literalist would lose their faith if the details of the story didn’t happen PRECISELY as they are laid out in the story.

The truth of Scripture does not rely on verifiable scientific facts on on secular model of history. It was never meant to. It is meant to teach us what God wants us to know to get to heaven.
Click to expand...
Good points!

Some of us just like to argue.😃
 
Unlike the Garden of Eden story, there aren’t any Catholic dogmas or doctrines that depend on Noah’s Ark, so there isn’t anything that we’re required to take literally. The opinions range from it being a work of fiction based on the Epic of Gilgamesh, to it being a legend rooted in an actual event, to it being a historical account. But no matter which genre we believe this story is, Catholics must believe that the entire bible is inerrant and is the Word of God.
 
tobbias88 said:
Yes, a pre-historic flood did happen in that area after the glaciers melted at end of Ice Age;

"In 1998, William Ryan (geologist) and Walter Pitman, geologists from Columbia University, published evidence that a massive flood through the Bosporus occurred about 5600 BC. Glacial meltwater had turned the Black and Caspian Seas into vast freshwater lakes, while sea levels remained lower worldwide. The fresh water lakes were emptying their waters into the Aegean Sea. As the glaciers retreated, rivers emptying into the Black Sea reduced their volume and found new outlets in the North Sea, and the water levels lowered through evaporation. Then, about 5600 BC, as sea levels rose, Ryan and Pitman suggest, the rising Mediterranean finally spilled over a rocky sill at the Bosporus. The event flooded 60,000 mile² (155,000 km²) of land and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline to the north and west. Ryan and Pitman wrote:

“Ten cubic miles [42 km³] of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls. …The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days.”

The review of sediments in the Black Sea in 2004 by a pan-European project (Assemblage – Noah Project) was compatible with the conclusion of Pitman and Ryan. Calculations made by Mark Siddall predicted an underwater canyon that was actually found."

Many of the ancient cultures have a similar story in their myths & legends - the Greeks, Bablyonians Assyrians, etc.

So I believe Noah did actually exist but he certainly didn’t bring every animal under the sun into his ark.
Click to expand...

The reasoning that interprets Noah as building an Ark at all, also requires him to “bring every animal under the sun into [the] ark” - for the text affirms both. To believe in the historicality of the Flood & of Noah on the basis of Scripture while rejecting something else said in the same Scripture about the Flood & Noah, is to swallow a camel, yet strain out a gnat 🙂​

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top