Was the Noah flood real ? Did Noah put all living things in his boat?

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Is the flood account a figurative narrative or did it actually happened?
 
John10 said:
Is the flood account a figurative narrative or did it actually happened?
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It certainly contains elements that appear more like ‘legend’ than ‘literal, historical narrative,’ and which defy logical explanation. Some – who wish to claim a strict literalistic reading of the narrative – tend to bend over backward to explain away the aspects of the story that strain credulity.

Perhaps, from a Catholic perspective, the more appropriate question might be “what’s the literal sense of those chapters of Scripture?”, which means “what was the inspired writer’s intent in conveying this narrative?”

To answer the question, I think we need to look at the beginning of the narrative and follow it through to the end (and BTW, the end of the Noah story isn’t “there was a rainbow and a covenant”). If the point of the story is that humans sin, and the ‘goal’ of the flood was to wipe away sin from the earth, you have to ask yourself “did the flood succeed?”

All you have to do is read Genesis 9, from verse 18 to the end of the chapter. Clearly, the answer is “no – sin wasn’t wiped away from the earth.”

So, in that reading, the inspired writer is telling us that committing or avoiding sin is a choice that each and every one of us makes; it’s not a matter of saying “these people are sinners” or “those people are not sinners.” Even among the people who were saved because they were virtuous, sin continued to be committed.

In that sense, the narrative is true.
 
The Church has not issued a definite teaching. I really don’t know enough about the science involved to have much of an opinion.
 
According to articles on this website, the Church allows for interpretations that don’t involve global flooding. There’s no scientific support for a worldwide flood, but there is evidence of massive regional flooding in the Near East a few thousand years ago.
 
Hobgoblin said:
According to articles on this website, the Church allows for interpretations that don’t involve global flooding. There’s no scientific support for a worldwide flood, but there is evidence of massive regional flooding in the Near East a few thousand years ago
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Could be it. As I said, I don’t know enough to say.
 
I found this Scripture passage which seems to imply the Flood and Noah story actually did happen as a historical event.

“Everybody kept on eating and drinking, men and women married, up to the very day Noah went into the ark and the Flood came and killed them all” (Luke 17:27)

It does seem Jesus was saying the above in a literal way.
 
For me, it is my favourite Hebrew Bible story and is real. It may be figurative for another. This is a deeply personal question IMHO in our beliefs, do we take different stories of Genesis as figurative or real, and why. Our Catholic faith says it is ok to take them as real or figurative
 
The science involved is extensive, however God created and can overcome any science He sees fit.
 
You are correct. Jesus mentioned Noah and the flood so both are true. The debate is whether the flood was a regional or global event.
 
Actually, there is evidence of major floods in a number of places throughout the world. For example, the Bonneville flood was due to a natural dam caused primarily by the receding of the glaciers at or near the end of the last ice age (somewhere between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago. Estimates indicate that when the dam broke, there was a wall of water estimated at over 400 feet high flooding out of the general Utah area of about 32,000 square miles, into southern Idaho and eastern Washington.

Likewise, there were the Missoula floods which repeated over about a 2,000 year period, flooding down the Columbia River.

There are stories in various countries of floods; of particular interest is the Gilgamesh story(s) which closely parallel the Noah story.

And writing first seems to have appeared somewhere around 3,000 BC, so there is a bit of a gap between when something could be written about, and when the actual occurrence may have been, in the range of 8,000 to 11,000 years. None of that is to say that Noah did not exist; we need to keep in mind that the writers of the OT were not on the payroll of a national news organization - in other words, if we start to assume they were writing history as we in the 21st century understand the definition of the term, we are mistaken.

The Bible also describes the world far, far differently than science describes it. In short, it is not written to describe natural history or science; it is written to convey God’s self revelation to man, and man’s relation to God.

And there is evidence of major flooding in areas in the near/middle East.
 
There’s evidence of regional floods around the world. There’s not evidence of a global flood though. In fact, the amount of water required to submerge the tallest mountains is about 3 times the amount of water currently in the worlds oceans.
 
The Flood story is old. Really old. The earliest known one involves King Ziusudra of Sumeria who more or less fulfills the same purpose as Noah. There are something like 8 or 9 different versions of this story. One also appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim is the hero.
 
Then there are issues such as the thousands of species of animals that were unknown in the mid-East, then or now — think of the species unique to places such as Australia and New Zealand. And the fact that the Aboriginal culture in Australia has been dated to 30,000 - 40,000 years ago.
 
JimmyTolder said:
It actually happened. The Church has always held and will always hold that all the World was drowned, excepting the family of one man and those animals which he took with him and that all living men are the descendants of that one man.
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That is actually not correct but I would be happy to read the Church document where you got this information. Can you direct me to it.
 
Orthodox Judaism, in general, believes the flood was real. And, according to the Talmud, Noah was 480 years old when G-d told him to construct the ark and 600 years old when it was finished, thus giving people ample time to mend their wicked ways. The only animals not put in the boat were fish, which were spared. But even the animal kingdom had become corrupt. Further, before the flood, mankind was thought to be vegetarian, but they converted to carnivores after the flood.
 
The Church permits you to understand the flood narrative as a divinely inspired pious legend, or as something that actually happened. There was very probably a real Noah as Jesus mentions him. There was likely some kind of a massive flood, as evidence of flooding was found. Whether it happened exactly as written in the Scripture is the question. Some Catholics say yes, others say no. The Church does not take a definitive position.
 
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It is quite possible that at the time of Noh mankind had not spread further than a thousand mile so from their starting point.
In which case “all the world” might mean a small part of one continent, more or less what we now call the Middle East.
 
Of the millions of animal species in the world, a breeding pair of each was loaded onto the arc? Polar bears? Penguins? Elephant seals? Orangutans? Gila monsters? North American bison? Piliated woodpeckers? Baltimore orioles? American goldfinches? Kiwis? Galapagos tortoises?
 
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