Was the flood/creation account Historical?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John_of_Woking
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Nonetheless, Steve Andersen, there’s pretty good evidence that the flood account is true.
 
40.png
twf:
JackQ: That’s a bit of a stretch, I think. Yes, I’m sure that could be one of the things God is saying indirectly in that passage; however, that would have absolutely no relevence for the originally intended audience (the pre-Christian era Jews). I think most of us can accept that at the very least, a great flood was sent. God promised He would never send a flood of such magnitude. The question is whether or not the Flood was global or limited to the MIddle East. (Both options could account, I suppose, for the widespread Flood myths and stories around the world…assuming that all of humanity was localized in the Middle-East, or wherever Noah was, at that time).
Click to expand...
It’s not a stretch at all. St. Peter himself made the comparison between the flood and baptism (1 Peter 3:19-21). “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:10-12.)
 
40.png
twf:
If the Flood was local, what of the various Flood myths world-wide? Even the Aztecs had a flood myth that the gods sent upon the earth to wipe out many…a single couple surviving by building a boat. How is this possible? Unless you would say that all homo sapiens dwelled in the Middle-East at the time of the Flood. (There are so many examples of flood myths).
Click to expand...
The Legend of Gilgamesh being the basis for our biblical account of Noah, there are too many unexplained circumstances in the biblical account, yet I would never try to pose my personal opinions.

As for the theory of evolution…I see it as a theory that condraticts Christian teachings. It would be impossible to be descended from apes & be unique creatures created in God’s own image, not to mention the racist aspects of evolution.

Question: What exactly did Hamm do to his father Noah that was so horrible? Some have suggested sodomy, which is filthy.
 
40.png
BibleReader:
I personally believe that the creation accounts are pure unhistorical myths teaching faith and morals, and that even ancient Hebrew children were aware of this and would think that today’s fundamentalists, who believe that the creation accounts are historical, are astonishing and funny.

I personally believe that the flood account IS basically historical, but that the Holy Spirit couldn’t care less about its historicity, and that that story, too, is nonetheless a myth teaching faith and morals.
Click to expand...
So there is no history in these accounts? Why did God choose these specific ways to teach faith and morals? He could have made up anything He wanted. Why these?
 
I personally believe the flood account was true. The catch is that the flood covered Mesopotamia and the Middle East, where Noah lived. In his eyes the entire world was flooded, that’s the world as he new it. In my studies of ancient Mesopotamia I have found that ancient cultures would call it the world. Also the epic of Gilgamesh records a great flood, it leaves me to believe that this was indeed true, I flood whipped out Mesopotamia and the surrounding lands, possibly a combination of melting glaciers in the mountains with flash floods. In any case, God warned Noah, and Noah heeded his warning.
 
40.png
RedDeathsMask:
I personally believe the flood account was true. The catch is that the flood covered Mesopotamia and the Middle East, where Noah lived. In his eyes the entire world was flooded, that’s the world as he new it. In my studies of ancient Mesopotamia I have found that ancient cultures would call it the world. Also the epic of Gilgamesh records a great flood, it leaves me to believe that this was indeed true, I flood whipped out Mesopotamia and the surrounding lands, possibly a combination of melting glaciers in the mountains with flash floods. In any case, God warned Noah, and Noah heeded his warning.
Click to expand...
Thinking out loud -

God says to Noah, I will send a local flood, Spend 100 years building an ark for a local flood I will send. Gather all the animals and put them in the ark.

Noak asks God - exaclty how big is this flood gonna be?

God says - Oh, about 3,000 square miles.

Noah gets busy building the ark.

Then he gets to thinking. I can walk about 15 miles per day. If I walk 6 days a week for 1 year I can walk 6,240 miles.

So Noah asks God. Why do you make me spend 100 years buidling an ark when I can spend 1 year walking with my family and the animals and outrun it? When the waters subside I can then walk back?

Question - What is God’s reply to this? :hmmm:
 
40.png
buffalo:
Thinking out loud -

God says to Noah, I will send a local flood, Spend 100 years building an ark for a local flood I will send. Gather all the animals and put them in the ark.

Noak asks God - exaclty how big is this flood gonna be?

God says - Oh, about 3,000 square miles.

Noah gets busy building the ark.

Then he gets to thinking. I can walk about 15 miles per day. If I walk 6 days a week for 1 year I can walk 6,240 miles.

So Noah asks God. Why do you make me spend 100 years buidling an ark when I can spend 1 year walking with my family and the animals and outrun it? When the waters subside I can then walk back?

Question - What is God’s reply to this? :hmmm:
Click to expand...
Why don’t you ask God?

Peace

Tim
 
40.png
Orogeny:
Why don’t you ask God?

Peace

Tim
Click to expand...
Maybe the question shuold be posed to Noah. Noah why did you listen to God and build the ark?

Evolutionists often argue that God cannot deceive or be deceived in support of their limited observations. So did God deceive Noah?
 
40.png
buffalo:
Maybe the question shuold be posed to Noah. Noah why did you listen to God and build the ark?

Evolutionists often argue that God cannot deceive or be deceived in support of their limited observations. So did God deceive Noah?
Click to expand...
Only if you assume that the story of Noah occurred exactly as written in Genesis (and not as recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh).

Peace

Tim
 
40.png
Orogeny:
Only if you assume that the story of Noah occurred exactly as written in Genesis (and not as recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh).

Peace

Tim
Click to expand...
The story is essentially the same. What is your point?
 
40.png
MichaelTDoyle:
For you a star means a glowing ball of hot gas and fusion reactions that are really hot.

For me, it’s a light in the sky at night when I look skyward.

Both are stars in a literary and a historical sense. Both can describe an actual event with the word star. By jamming a scientific meaning of the word star rather than a phenomological one I think you are forcing yourself to read the bible in errancy :b

Historians are wrong
Theologians are wrong
Scientists are wrong
Literary buffs are wrong.
Physicists are wrong

…sometimes…

All these things get reworked in every generation. It’s good to strive to understand, but really important to do it prayerfully.
Click to expand...

To be human, is to be wrong - frequently. Even so, what we think a star is, does not change what it does - and if a star had done as the Gospel describes, and had “stood over” the place where infant Jesus was close enough to do what it is said to done - to show where Jesus was - it would have incinerated the Holy Family, and a lot of the country round about.​

God makes stars, and stars have certain well-defined features; features which make it far from easy to accept that a star really did what is it described as doing. If stars were not immense balls of blazing gas, or if they could be stars without being hot and large, so as not to have the destructive effects described, the Gospel would be easier to accept as straightfoward history in this passage. Since human beings and the surface of the globe would be destroyed by the stellar activity described in the text, the event described can hardly be intended to be taken as an event which is in principle able to be described by an observer or an historian.

If stars had different features - such as shrinking, or losing heat once they came within a distance of the earth - the text would be credible as a description of observed fact. But they do not; so it is not. I don’t reject the gospels - I reject interpretations of the entities in them when these interpretations make a nonsense of the world which God has created. Miracles are not nonsensical - but, if taken as description of an event, the Matthean Nativity-account does (even though the evangelist probably did not know this) imputes nonsensical behaviour to a star, by making it act as no star can or does, for no reason that anyone is told (unlike signs in the Bible, the meaning and occurrence of which are indicated when or before they occur). And I don’t believe the evangelists were fools in the least; another reason to understand the text in a way which does not make them look foolish, and does assume they meant something intelligible to their contemporaries. Why, after all, should we Gentiles living now suppose that they then, most of whom were Jews, must have understood the Bible and God as we do ?

Which is why I see no point in taking as straightfoward description a text which can perfectly well make excellent sense if one reads it as a picturesque and profound description, in the form of many OT ideas about Messianic Kingship, of who Jesus is. Not because this is an escape from the problems mentioned above, but because the entities in the passage - star, Magoi, and so on - are accounted for, if the passage is read in a way which looks at the ideas instead of treating the passage as history alone.

Which are some of the reasons why I don’t see any point in treating this text as history; I don’t think it was meant to be taken that way. ##
 
40.png
buffalo:
Thinking out loud -

God says to Noah, I will send a local flood, Spend 100 years building an ark for a local flood I will send. Gather all the animals and put them in the ark.

Noak asks God - exaclty how big is this flood gonna be?

God says - Oh, about 3,000 square miles.

Noah gets busy building the ark.

Then he gets to thinking. I can walk about 15 miles per day. If I walk 6 days a week for 1 year I can walk 6,240 miles.

So Noah asks God. Why do you make me spend 100 years buidling an ark when I can spend 1 year walking with my family and the animals and outrun it? When the waters subside I can then walk back?

Question - What is God’s reply to this? :hmmm:
Click to expand...
Thinking out loud- God says the world will be flooded, the world in Noah’s eyes is the Middle East. Thus the world (in Noah’s eyes) was flooded, Noah did not know how big the world really was.
 
I don’t usually take it literally but then again who knows what really happened.
 
catholics were traditionally not encouraged to read the bible
Click to expand...
This again? Does this go for Catholics, say, throughout the time that the written Bible was available (and considering that the majority of the population was not literate throughout history up until the late 19th and early 20th century?) Or is this a purely U.S. “phenomenon” which apparently everybody in the 20th century “knew” or “experienced in THEIR school”, or was told by Father X or Sister Mary Z–IOW, “personal knowledge” which, assuming it was “true” for one, is then perceived of as being true for ALL?

Come on, patg, this sort of tactic of repeating a “questionable” statement over and over, hoping that repetition will “make it so”, is unworthy of you.
 
Tantum ergo:
This again? Does this go for Catholics, say, throughout the time that the written Bible was available (and considering that the majority of the population was not literate throughout history up until the late 19th and early 20th century?) Or is this a purely U.S. “phenomenon” which apparently everybody in the 20th century “knew” or “experienced in THEIR school”, or was told by Father X or Sister Mary Z–IOW, “personal knowledge” which, assuming it was “true” for one, is then perceived of as being true for ALL? Come on, patg, this sort of tactic of repeating a “questionable” statement over and over, hoping that repetition will “make it so”, is unworthy of you.
Click to expand...
Wow, you had to dig back 6 months for that one!

If you look at the context you’ll see that I wasn’t making a serious statement about that subject at all - it was really an attempt use what most consider to be an old cliche about Catholics to make a humorous comment on the current discussion.

There was no “tactic” and I wasn’t trying to get anyone to believe Catholics don’t read the bible (although I never knew very many who did…oops, there I go again…)
 
40.png
miguel:
How do know it isn’t the reverse?
Click to expand...
Correction: How do you know it isn’t the reverse? Or how do you know the same historical flood event didn’t influence independent written accounts of it (i.e., Noah and Gilgamesh)? Gilgamesh could have been the product of one line of Noah’s descendants with the memory of the flood event passed down orally until someone finally wrote it down. And the story of Noah could have been the product of another line of Noah’s descendants. Is it not biased to just assume that Noah was influenced by Gilgamesh?
 
40.png
patg:
It is interesting that you specifically mention John’s gospel as it is generally considered to be the least historical of all - written long after the others with a very highly developed Christology and very heavy Greek influence. Its Jesus is a far cry from from the simple, human Jesus of the earlier works. It even places the passion and death on a different day than the synoptics so be careful basing historical truth on anything contained therein.
Click to expand...
patg,

No way. It was written by John as an eyewitness.

Did you read “The Gospels are Historical”? It is all explained here. You may have been duped by the modern (modernistic) scholars.
 
40.png
buffalo:
patg,

No way. It was written by John as an eyewitness.

Did you read “The Gospels are Historical”? It is all explained here. You may have been duped by the modern (modernistic) scholars.
Click to expand...
Funny how so many oppose the plain teaching of the Church. Of course, I’m sure that “scholars” 2000 years later know so much more about Jesus than those that walked the earth with Him.

From Dei Verbum:

The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.(1)
  1. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top