Was the flood/creation account Historical?

[John_of_Woking]

miguel:
Just because subjective observation is open to error doesn’t mean it is in error.

Personally, I’m not aware of the “many Jewish holy men…” you are referring to. But if that is correct, how many of them were able to attract and keep a large following? You can only fake it so long before people will catch on.
Well put.

 

[rwoehmke]

You guys remind me of the story about the medieval philosophers arguing about the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. Are the miracle stories in the Bible true? Why not, miracles occur even today. Are certain events history? Most likely, but remember history as written and recorded several thousand years ago does not follow the same rules as we have today. Even in modern history two different historians can differ widely on exactly what happened and its significance. is not quite the same. As for the historicity of the flood, there is plenty of solid scientific evidence for at least a major local flood near the Black Sea. Indications are that the rise in the water level was nearly 500 feet. Do you think the local residents experienced a real flood? Indications are thaat salt water from the Med flowed at a catastrophic rate into the Black Sea which at the time was a freshwater lake. You betcha baby!

 

[patg]

miguel:
Just because subjective observation is open to error doesn’t mean it is in error.True, but even modern day witnesses to public events come up with amazingly different accounts. The errors and exaggerations have multiplied greatly with the generations of oral storytelling, hand copying, and multiple translations of non-original documents, etc. We are a long, long way from original accounts and original documents.

Personally, I’m not aware of the “many Jewish holy men…” you are referring to. But if that is correct, how many of them were able to attract and keep a large following? You can only fake it so long before people will catch on.

Many of them had large followings. I think what separated them from Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith and others was the lack of really zealous PR people and promoters like Paul and Peter.

Pat

 

[space_ghost]

in the big picture… if you get to heaven and discover it was a story to get a point across… how does it effect your salvation… weather it’s real water, or just a parable… bottom line, like jonah and the whale, fish, whatever… if you wish to believe it litterally, do so…

 

[miguel]

patg:

True, but even modern day witnesses to public events come up with amazingly different accounts. The errors and exaggerations have multiplied greatly with the generations of oral storytelling, hand copying, and multiple translations of non-original documents, etc.

So what? Does that mean all witnesses to all public events are wrong? If what you say is correct, then we can’t believe any witnesses at all. At some point, the average person has to have faith in what people say. And we use our ordinary critical thinking skills to assist us. And that applies not only to religion but history, physics, etc. If you drive across a bridge, you are exercising your faith in its designer. If you believe your history professor, you are exercising your faith in his scholarship, as he has exercised his faith in the scholars he has studied. But is their faith blind? No. Historians use rigorous rules to evaluate the credibility of their sources. Eyewitness accounts are generally accorded the highest level of credibility, unless there is more than one eyewitness and their versions not only differ, but actually contradict, etc.

patg:

We are a long, long way from original accounts and original documents.

patg:

Many of them had large followings. I think what separated them from Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith and others was the lack of really zealous PR people and promoters like Paul and Peter.

That’s your opinion. I think the opinion of the Catholic Church is that the apostles were careful to get things right. And the people who copied these writings for posterity were also careful to preserve them. That is a study in itself. But your assumption that these people played fast and loose with the truth is a bad one. The truth sells itself. It doesn’t need spinmeisters.
John of Woking:

When Dei Verbum said

“Therefore since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings [5] for the sake of our salvation”

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

patg:

This is a serious misuse of the term “historical”. The events you are referring to are matters of faith and are accepted or not accepted based on one’s faith. History deals with actual physical events which can be verified in some way. Yes, there may have been some type of major flood - that qualifies as history. Was it caused by God for the reasons given in the bible? History has no way of determining this. Thus it is a matter of faith NOT history.

Did Christ’s miracles realy happen? These are supernatural events and as such are outside the realm of history - again, matters of faith.

Events involving Our Lord are awkward - the Resurrection and the Ascension are “meta-historical”: they occur within time & space, yet they also transcend it.​

So, AFAICS, does creation: that too seems to be meta-historical, because it did not begin within time and space; time and space are its terminus, not its starting-point.

The thing about the Incarnation is that it seems to bring eternity “into” time and space: C. S. Lewis illustrates this brilliantly in his book “The Last Battle”, where one of the characters says that “in our world too what was within the stable was bigger than what was outside it” - Christ, by His Incarnation, is within the very universe that is within Him: time and space included. Some trick ##

 

[miguel]

Gottle of Geer:

Events involving Our Lord are …“meta-historical”: they occur within time & space, yet they also transcend it “…what was within the stable was bigger than what was outside it”

The same thought occurs to me when I go to Communion.

 

[BayCityRickL]

I think the issues have been brought here, to span the range of opinions about whether the flood was a historical event. And, the skepticism about the flood is well documented.

The Catholic Church took a quite literal view of scripture until the sixteenth or seventeenth century. At that time, the Enlightenment was well underway and rationalism was punching through a lot of statements in the Bible. Consider Galileo’s problem of denying that the sun rotated around the earth.

The historical-critical method of bible study slices and dices the Bible and strips away all supernatural occurrences and the like and nothing is left. Many people have lost their faith as a consequence.

An ordinary reader like myself can trip up on the first chapters of Genesis, for example, by considering the narration. Who was the observer and what was his vantage point for saying (Gen 1:1) that In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth? Obviously the narrator couldn’t have been there to witness the events that he is relating.

John Paul II said (crossing the threshold of truth) that many compromise their faith because they refuse to accept the way that God has revealed Himself. I think that’s a more astute explanation rather than the statements about the genres of scripture. I think a healthy Christian approach to scripture is to accept it and take it for all the wisdom, truth, and beauty that it contains. Skepticism just gives everybody an intellectual flat tire and you get noplace fast.

 

[buffalo]

Everyone seems to ignore this verse.

One has to reconcile this :

11 I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth.

15 And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh.

What exactly was God saying here?

 

[miguel]

buffalo:

Everyone seems to ignore this verse.

One has to reconcile this :

11 I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth.

15 And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh.

What exactly was God saying here?

Weren’t you happy with John of Woking’s post?

 

[buffalo]

miguel:

Weren’t you happy with John of Woking’s post?

Yeah, I was. I am really addressing the skeptics with this question.

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

How do I, an orthodox Jew, view the Tanakh (what we call what Christians call the “Old Testament”)?

First, about a “literal reading” of the Tanakh. I don’t think that any two people could agree on a “literal reading” of, say, Genesis (certainly mine, as an orthodox Jew and based on the original Hebrew, will probably differ in many particulars from that of a fundamentalist Protestant, based on the KJV); such a thing is inherently subjective and based on our own idiosyncrasies, psychological/emotional/spiritual baggage and personal it-seems-to-me’s. Thus, we should be very leery of basing beliefs and/or arguments on a “literal reading” of the scriptures. Those who do insist on a strict, narrow, “literal” interpretation of this or that section of scripture are, I believe, forcing it into a literary and spiritual strait-jacket entirely of their own devising that does no justice to the scriptures…

So, that being said, how do I, the orthodox Jew, view the Torah? Well, of course, I believe that it (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) is the literal word of God as He revealed it to Moses our Teacher. We believe that the Torah can be understood/appreciated/interpreted on any of four general levels ranging from that which is most in accord with a close reading of the (original Hebrew!!!) text, to the metaphorical, to the most rarefied and esoteric (the grasp of which is waaay beyond most of us). Who is to say which chapter and verse of Genesis is to be best understood or appreciated on which level? Moreover, our Sages say that the Torah is like a diamond with many facets, each with its own brilliance, each offering a different perspective from which to behold the wondrous jewel.

Lastly, I would humbly argue that we are grasping at trees & missing the forest. What is more important, (sterile?) debates over whether Genesis proves/supports or disproves/opposes this or that theory of creation or evolution, or whether the Flood “really happened” or discussing, studying and seeking to internalize its sublime moral, ethical and spiritual truths (such as befit the word of God)?

I heard a story that Karl Barth once gave a lecture on Genesis 3 at the University of Chicago. When it came time for the question and answer portion, a student spoke up and said “Dr. Barth, you don’t really believe snakes could talk do you?” Barth replied, “I could care less whether or not snakes could talk. What I’m interested in is what the snake said.”

I couldn’t agree with Dr. Barth more!

Be well!

ssv

 

[ICXCNIKA]

Both are true historical accounts.

 

[miguel]

I think skepticism (about scriptural truth, miracles, floods, etc.) can be easily overcome once a person accepts that God is real. And this can be known by unaided human reason. Personally, I find the existence of life to be very compelling evidence in this regard. I mean, what mechanism did inanimate matter use to construct itself into a living critter, with all the functions that a living critter would need (e.g., food capture, digestion, reproduction, etc.)? If science has demonstrated such a mechanism, I’m not aware of it. Inanimate matter would need a competent understanding of these functions to be able to do that. Of course this is absurd. But it’s a whole lot less absurd to believe that there had to have been an intelligence behind it.

After one accepts that God is real, then it’s not too hard to accept Our Lord’s teaching that “…with God all things are possible…” (e.g., his dominion over nature, life, etc.) His miracles proved to people that he was who he claimed to be. And all this flows into acceptance of the Church’s teaching that:

"God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.” (CCC 106)

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

stillsmallvoice:

Hi all!

How do I, an orthodox Jew, view the Tanakh (what we call what Christians call the “Old Testament”)?

First, about a “literal reading” of the Tanakh. I don’t think that any two people could agree on a “literal reading” of, say, Genesis (certainly mine, as an orthodox Jew and based on the original Hebrew, will probably differ in many particulars from that of a fundamentalist Protestant, based on the KJV); such a thing is inherently subjective and based on our own idiosyncrasies, psychological/emotional/spiritual baggage and personal it-seems-to-me’s. Thus, we should be very leery of basing beliefs and/or arguments on a “literal reading” of the scriptures. Those who do insist on a strict, narrow, “literal” interpretation of this or that section of scripture are, I believe, forcing it into a literary and spiritual strait-jacket entirely of their own devising that does no justice to the scriptures…

So, that being said, how do I, the orthodox Jew, view the Torah? Well, of course, I believe that it (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) is the literal word of God as He revealed it to Moses our Teacher. We believe that the Torah can be understood/appreciated/interpreted on any of four general levels ranging from that which is most in accord with a close reading of the (original Hebrew!!!) text, to the metaphorical, to the most rarefied and esoteric (the grasp of which is waaay beyond most of us). Who is to say which chapter and verse of Genesis is to be best understood or appreciated on which level? Moreover, our Sages say that the Torah is like a diamond with many facets, each with its own brilliance, each offering a different perspective from which to behold the wondrous jewel.

Lastly, I would humbly argue that we are grasping at trees & missing the forest. What is more important, (sterile?) debates over whether Genesis proves/supports or disproves/opposes this or that theory of creation or evolution, or whether the Flood “really happened” or discussing, studying and seeking to internalize its sublime moral, ethical and spiritual truths (such as befit the word of God)?

This Christian could not agree more.​

Is the historical-critical approach - such as is exemplified in the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906, say - a divisive issue in Judaism ? ##

I heard a story that Karl Barth once gave a lecture on Genesis 3 at the University of Chicago. When it came time for the question and answer portion, a student spoke up and said “Dr. Barth, you don’t really believe snakes could talk do you?” Barth replied, "I could care less whether or not snakes could talk.

That last phrase is a good example of the need for exegesis - for where USA English says:​

“I could care less…”

British English says:

“I could not care less…”

The two phrases are superficially not identical in meaning - yet they do denote identical meanings.

And this is one example of different idioms within a common language which are current at the very same time.

If this specific difference can arise within two contemporaneous forms of one language, surely we can be certain that Biblical Hebrew will differ even more from both types of English now in use ? The ambiguities of English should be a warning that we may be misunderstanding a literature hundreds of years old from a culture very different from ours, if we insist on treating it as a piece of contemporary English. ##

What I’m interested in is what the snake said."

I couldn’t agree with Dr. Barth more!

Be well!

ssv

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

miguel:

I think skepticism (about scriptural truth, miracles, floods, etc.) can be easily overcome once a person accepts that God is real. And this can be known by unaided human reason. Personally, I find the existence of life to be very compelling evidence in this regard. I mean, what mechanism did inanimate matter use to construct itself into a living critter, with all the functions that a living critter would need (e.g., food capture, digestion, reproduction, etc.)? If science has demonstrated such a mechanism, I’m not aware of it. Inanimate matter would need a competent understanding of these functions to be able to do that. Of course this is absurd. But it’s a whole lot less absurd to believe that there had to have been an intelligence behind it.

After one accepts that God is real, then it’s not too hard to accept Our Lord’s teaching that “…with God all things are possible…” (e.g., his dominion over nature, life, etc.) His miracles proved to people that he was who he claimed to be. And all this flows into acceptance of the Church’s teaching that:

"God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.” (CCC 106)

I believe in God - that does not imply a belief in the existence of Nelly the Elephant, munchkins, or in the ability of children to get inside a cartoon as characters taking part in it ​

Despite the implicit assertions of Hanna & Barbera, “The Wizard of Oz”, & “The Simpsons” to the contrary.

The point being, that belief in God, does not bring with it belief in the truth of any old thing. It does not bring with it any implication that there is a talking feline wearing a hat with red and white stripes. Believing in God is belief in an intelligible yet mysterious Being, a Being Who has a definite character, a Being Who can be known, loved, served, obeyed.

This is the problem with appealing to the supernatural: anything can be justified, if that is invoked. If a donkey can be endowed with speech, then the same power that makes that possible, can make it possible for human children to become characters in a cartoon and to undergo the same adventures as Bart and Lisa.

So, the appeal to the supernatural, is open-ended - it becomes impossible to say “God would not act in this way, because it is not consistent with His character”. For God, Who is admittedly greater than we, can do anything at all, however bizarre it may seem to our limited understandings. So He may do exactly that - it becomes impossible to deny that He might. The result is, to make God wholly unknowable. The Christian revelation ceases to be intelligible. And so does Christian faith.

It is because of reasons such as these, that the supernatural is not used as a category by scholars - it is too open-ended to be of any use for scholarly purposes.

Church historians don’t use it - they don’t say, “Although rationalists say that Clement I of Rome lived about 90 or so AD, a believing Christian will accept that he was alive in 150 or so, as he must have been, if the Second Letter of Clement is by him”. So long a life would be miraculous, and within the power of God to give. They, go by ascertainable facts, as they should. So why are Biblical scholars, who seek to do likewise, singled out for such severe criticism ? ##

 

[miguel]

Gottle of Geer:

…This is the problem with appealing to the supernatural: anything can be justified, if that is invoked. If a donkey can be endowed with speech, then the same power that makes that possible, can make it possible for human children to become characters in a cartoon and to undergo the same adventures as Bart and Lisa.

So, the appeal to the supernatural, is open-ended - it becomes impossible to say “God would not act in this way, because it is not consistent with His character”. For God, Who is admittedly greater than we, can do anything at all, however bizarre it may seem to our limited understandings. So He may do exactly that - it becomes impossible to deny that He might. The result is, to make God wholly unknowable. The Christian revelation ceases to be intelligible. And so does Christian faith.

It is because of reasons such as these, that the supernatural is not used as a category by scholars - it is too open-ended to be of any use for scholarly purposes…

The sacred writings constitute God’s revelation. To approach them with an anti-supernatural bias is to approach them as a skeptic. That’s fine. But the scholarship that follows from that shouldn’t then be presented as Christian scholarship. That’s dishonest. After all we’re talking about God. Supernatural is part of the territory. Just because the appeal to the supernatural can be open-ended, in the sense that you have described, doesn’t mean it has to be. The sacred writings have a fixed content and they don’t include Bart and Lisa. But trying to obliterate the supernatural from them is what makes them unintelliglbe.

 

[miguel]

I like that one by Dr. Barth. Thanks for sharing it.

A few points:

“Old Testament” is not to say “Obsolete Testament”.

The Cathechism of the Catholic Church affirms that:

According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church. (CCC 115)

The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal (St Thomas Aquinas).” (CCC 116)

The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St Paul says, they were written “for our instruction.”
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. (CCC 117)

The flood, in the allegorical sense, is also a sign of Christian Baptism (i.e., the flood waters and the waters of Baptism wash away sin, the saving ark and the saving Church).

 

[oriel36]

stillsmallvoice:

Hi all!

How do I, an orthodox Jew, view the Tanakh (what we call what Christians call the “Old Testament”)?

First, about a “literal reading” of the Tanakh. I don’t think that any two people could agree on a “literal reading” of, say, Genesis (certainly mine, as an orthodox Jew and based on the original Hebrew, will probably differ in many particulars from that of a fundamentalist Protestant, based on the KJV); such a thing is inherently subjective and based on our own idiosyncrasies, psychological/emotional/spiritual baggage and personal it-seems-to-me’s. Thus, we should be very leery of basing beliefs and/or arguments on a “literal reading” of the scriptures. Those who do insist on a strict, narrow, “literal” interpretation of this or that section of scripture are, I believe, forcing it into a literary and spiritual strait-jacket entirely of their own devising that does no justice to the scriptures…

ssv

A Jewish Assyriologist named Julius Oppert presented a paper on the structure of Genesis from the creation of Adam to the first drop of rain of Noah’s flood as a mathematical work of art.

134.76.163.65/servlet/digbib?template=hitlist%2Ehtml&search-attribute1=Author&search-value1=Oppert%2C%20Julius

The Hebrew scribes used these mathematical facets for multiple purposes within the Genesis narrative without destroying the exquisite Spiritual messages the narrative conveys.

The later Christian scribes also made effective use of mathematical structures within the texts such as the Genealogy of Matthew which mirrors the Genesis chronology based on Gen 5.Unfortunately crypto-Christians tend to read Genesis and Revelations as ‘newspaper’ accounts of beginnings and endings.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

miguel:

The sacred writings constitute God’s revelation. To approach them with an anti-supernatural bias is to approach them as a skeptic. That’s fine. But the scholarship that follows from that shouldn’t then be presented as Christian scholarship. That’s dishonest. After all we’re talking about God. Supernatural is part of the territory. Just because the appeal to the supernatural can be open-ended, in the sense that you have described, doesn’t mean it has to be. The sacred writings have a fixed content and they don’t include Bart and Lisa. But trying to obliterate the supernatural from them is what makes them unintelliglbe.

But there is nothing anti-Christian about not making use of the supernatural as means of study.​

The history of the Second World War, is as much within the Providence of God, as the Exodus or the earthly ministry of Christ. The same God is at work in all human history. It is as legitimate to require evidence of the existence and ministry of Jesus Christ, as it is to expect evidence of Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, or of Guderian, Rommel. Patten, Bormann, Hitler, or Stalin. Because historical method is based on evidence, not on revelation, not on the supernatural. A Christian writing about the economic policy of Stalin or the decline of the Weimar Republic has to rely on evidence - not on revelation, not on the supernatural, not on anything except evidence. And the same is true of a Muslim, a Jew, or an atheist who is writing about these things - all have to rely on what evidence is available: not on their own beliefs or doctrines.

And because Biblical study is largely connected with history, evidence is what is needed. The supernatural, though a reality for a Christian, can’t be used in scholarship because it is not a category common to all. Any more than the supernatural can be used as an argument by a Christian at NASA. Evidence from astronomy is appropriate for supporting a thesis in astronomy; so is a mathematical proof. Saying “God revealed to me in a dream that planet X has so many moons”, is not appropriate, because it cannot be tested, weighed, examined by others. Such a claim rests entirely on the word of the person making it. The same could be said of any subject that, whatever else it may be, is also an academic discipline - including, in the present case, the study of the Bible.

A Christian builder does not rely on revelation. A Christian economist would not say, “God has revealed to me that economic policy is should be protectionist.”

The point is, that, not only is the appeal to the supernatural too open-ended to be useful; it is not even appropriate as a method. It makes ideas in this particular discipline impossible to test, because anyone would be then be able to claim anything. Were that to happen, it would quite possibly be impious to ignore some one who claimed that Biblical Hebrew was derived from Scots Gaelic - it would be appropriate to heed them. In point of fact, Semiticists, Hebraists, philologists, are the people to consult on such a matter - no matter what their religion. That - rather than listening to people with uncontrolled theories about languages - is an appropriate course of action. Whether they believe in a supernatural realm or not. Because such matters can be tested by evidence common to those who delve into such matters. Which is not the case with relying on the supernatural - it is not common to all, the evidence is ambiguous, and the very concept is difficult to apply even to those texts where there is some sort of case for applying it.

Not least because the very notion of the supernatural has a long history: so that it is far from certain that what Catholics understand by “the supernatural” in 2004 AD, would be what an Israelite in 1000 BC would understand by it. ##

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