What do you believe was the Great Deluge as recorded in Scripture?

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

This is an area of interest for me, and I’ve found this to be one area which contains an extremely wide angle of interpretations, even within Catholicism.

For the record, I believe the Great Deluge was real catastrophe in human history. And while I’m not sure if science can fully explain the cause and effects of this tremendous event in the ancient past of human history, I still believe this to be an article of faith to believe that humanity was severely impacted by it’s effects.

The extent of this impact is what I’m curious to know more about.

So what do you believe to be true in regards to Noah’s Flood?

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

By the way…um…feel free to comment too.

Just saying.

 

[Nan_S]

The best modern evidence of the Great Flood is found in the geography of the Black Sea. It has two layers. The top is a large, shallow basin of saltwater. The bottom is a narrower, deep bowl of now-poisonous water that used to be an enormous freshwater lake. The now-underwater shores of this ancient freshwater lake show evidence of human habitation.

At the end of the last ice age, when the icecaps melted, the rising Mediterranean Sea broached the mountains separating the two seas and the salt water rushed in, complete with catastrophic atmospheric effects → the Great Flood.

It is interesting that the ancient myths of the non-Hebrews in the Middle East also reference the Great Flood and a lone man (with family) who built a boat to ride it out. But I don’t know of any ancient myths from Japan, China, or the Americas that tell stories of the flood.

 

[AlegreFe]

I answered the second one because it was closest to what I would answer;

The Great Deluge was a global event triggered by
humankind’s sins whereby God re-created the world.

But I would like to create my own answer and combine the second one with the fourth one. This is my own take on this so don’t quote me as a learning tool of course.
I say this because I think of the waters cleansing the earth therefore “purging” the earth of sin. The waters from the flood prefigured Baptism in the New Testament. Baptism by water saves us which actually cleanses us from sin whether original if infant or personal if teen, young adult or adult. Baptism also invokes the Holy Spirit so I see the winds as God’s Breath. So I guess my answer would be more like this;

The Great Deluge was a global event triggered by
humankind’s sins whereby God purged the earth
of sin by the flooding waters and winds which were
the breath of His Spirit.

 

[AlegreFe]

I just wanted to make a wee little comment; when I saw this post I was actually working on another post and I was commenting on how the waters of the flood saved Noah on the ark and how it prefigured Baptism.

This is no coincidence.

btw, I’m still working on that post.

 

[puzzleannie]

none of the above
the story of the Flood in Genesis is a poetic narrative about an actual geologic historical event, of which evidence is preserved in the geological record, a narrative involving real people and telling the story of how God intervened in their lives, and this story was handed down because it has timeless relevance for all people. It shows how God uses natural events, even those with seemingly evil consequences, to operate for good in the lives of men, and how these events of divine intervention have global relevance and significance and shape human history.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

3. The Great Deluge was a large yet localized event sent by God to destroy a specific portion of humanity.
4. The Great Deluge was a large yet localized event [triggered by humankind’s sins whereby God purged the land of sin.]
5. The Great Deluge [is a continuation of smaller event which] contains the memory of a primal event exaggerated over time.

**I believe the brown bits - as to the black, I don’t know. So - some of the above, & none of the above **

**I think there was a real event, perhaps c. 2900 BC, and that the account in Genesis is based on this; & that the event was given a theological/ethical ****interpretation. **

This site** is devoted to a very interesting book about the** Flood, by someone called Robert Best -** the link shows some remarkable parallels between the oldest versions of the story ##**

 

[spauline]

I believe this is a question that has broader implications than just the Flood. For there are extremes in modern society, and here I speak on one hand of fundies, on other of modernist liberals. Fundie extreme is Bible is like totally literal, everything is literastically true in every detail scientifically and historically. Other extreme is, well Bible is mostly just complete fiction and very little history, if any, just mostly just fictitious parables meant to illustrate moral lessons and ideas.

I think so far in Catholicism, only historical events that are dogma are Creation, Fall, details of Jesus’ life as in Creed, and the things that occur consummate with Second Coming. but what about in between Fall and First and in between first and Second Coming. That’s not settled. But I think the genearl thinking of Church is somewhere between fundies and liberals. For on one hand, we cannot necessarily believe that all minor details of OT history are absolutely accurate down to every thing. For Church understands that if there be things in Scripture not necessary to salvation, there is room for error. But on other hand, saying, like some s.o.b. modernist, everything between fall and first coming is irrelevant, is not true. For there is true reality that God had to, TRULY, pave way for coming of Messiah through signs and actions and interventions in history, both of our wills and to reveal. So saying, for example, when this King of Israel killed some Phillistines over here and the date is innaccurate, is one thing, but saying, well, there never really was any flood of any sort, confounding of languages and calling of Abraham is just fiction, never was any enslavement of Jews, there really was no Exodus, no kingdom of Isreal, no exile, no ordeal with Seleucids in 165 BC, that is another thing altogether.

For Jesus doesn’t come out of nowhere. God truly guided OT history to prepare way for Christ.

Interesting to note that some ECFs seem to provide basis for what bare minimum in OT we must get. They discuss five ages of old law. Here’s our friend auggie:

39. "Five ages of the world, accordingly, having been now completed (there has entered the sixth). Of these ages the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood. Then the second extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations which should follow the example of his faith, but who at the same time in the way of natural descent from his own flesh was the father of the destined people of the Jews; which people, previous to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Christian faith, was the one people among all the nations of all lands that worshipped the one true God: from which people also Christ the Saviour was decreed to come according to the flesh. For these turning-points of those two ages occupy an eminent place in the ancient books. On the other hand, those of the other three ages are also declared in the Gospel, where the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh is likewise mentioned. For the third age extends from Abraham on to David the king; the fourth from David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia; and the fifth from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. With His coming the sixth age has entered on its process; so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations; to the intent that no man should worship God but freely, fondly desiring of Him not the visible rewards of His services and the happiness of this present life, but that eternal life alone in which he is to enjoy God Himself: in order that in this sixth age the mind of man may be renewed after the image of God, even as on the sixth day man was made after the image of God.

I think, in fact, days of creation and heads of beast summarize what we are to get from salvation history. I have article if anybody interested.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

By the way, I made the results of the poll public. In other words, if you click on the toll numbers, you can see who voted for what so far-- like this.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

The best modern evidence of the Great Flood is found in the geography of the Black Sea. It has two layers. The top is a large, shallow basin of saltwater. The bottom is a narrower, deep bowl of now-poisonous water that used to be an enormous freshwater lake. The now-underwater shores of this ancient freshwater lake show evidence of human habitation.

Interesting.

I’ve come across some information about these findings before.
Nan S:

At the end of the last ice age, when the icecaps melted, the rising Mediterranean Sea broached the mountains separating the two seas and the salt water rushed in, complete with catastrophic atmospheric effects → the Great Flood.

It’s interesting to note how some groups interpret the data in a radically different way. For example, I’ve read how some young earth creationist groups state that the icecaps are the result of the flood instead of the cause of the flood.
Nan S:

It is interesting that the ancient myths of the non-Hebrews in the Middle East also reference the Great Flood and a lone man (with family) who built a boat to ride it out. But I don’t know of any ancient myths from Japan, China, or the Americas that tell stories of the flood.

This is something that caught my attention too.

And, actually, it has been claimed that China, along with many other ancient cultures, apparently do have a flood tradition-- with some of the details being remarkably similar to the Genesis account.

For example…

One deluge legend from China tells the story of a man named Fuhi who, along with his wife and three sons and three daughters, was saved from a great flood. One ancient temple in China has a painting that depicts Fuhi’s boat in the water and a dove with an olive branch in its beak (Gish, 1992, p. 74).

TalkOrigins attempts a rebuttal of some of these claims here if anyone’s interested.

Nonetheless, on the previous page, there is also further information found as such…

Anthropologists who study legends and folktales from different geographical locations and cultures consistently have reported one particular group of legends that is common to almost every civilization. Legends have surfaced in hundreds of civilizations that tell of a huge, catastrophic flood that destroyed most of mankind, and was survived by only a few individuals and animals. In fact, over 250 such legends have been reported from nations such as China, Babylon, Mexico, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Persia, India, Norway, Ireland, Wales, Indonesia, Romania, and the list could go on for many pages (Perloff, 1999, p. 167).

And although the vast number of such legends is surprising, the similarity between much of their content is equally amazing. James Perloff writes:

In 95 percent of the more than two hundred flood legends, the flood was worldwide; in 88 percent, a certain family was favored; in 70 percent, survival was by means of a boat; in 67 percent, animals were also saved; in 66 percent, the flood was due to the wickedness of man; in 66 percent, the survivors had been forewarned; in 57 percent, they ended up on a mountain; in 35 percent, birds were sent out from the boat; and in 9 percent, exactly eight people were spared (1999, p. 168).

While I’m not sure I would agree with what has been claimed here, I would at least admit that this is consistent with what one would expect to find if the great deluge were a real event in the ancient past of humanity. In other words, if the great deluge were truly a massive global event that affected all of humanity, then I would expect to find ancient accounts of a flood story which did have details which were similar to the Genesis account-- albeit distorted over time by their cultural bias and traditions.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

I answered the second one because it was closest to what I would answer;

The Great Deluge was a global event triggered by
humankind’s sins whereby God re-created the world.

But I would like to create my own answer and combine the second one with the fourth one. This is my own take on this so don’t quote me as a learning tool of course.
I say this because I think of the waters cleansing the earth therefore “purging” the earth of sin. The waters from the flood prefigured Baptism in the New Testament. Baptism by water saves us which actually cleanses us from sin whether original if infant or personal if teen, young adult or adult. Baptism also invokes the Holy Spirit so I see the winds as God’s Breath. So I guess my answer would be more like this;

The Great Deluge was a global event triggered by
humankind’s sins whereby God purged the earth
of sin by the flooding waters and winds which were
the breath of His Spirit.

That’s a good point Sandy.

The flood waters did not just destroy and reshape the earth. The flood waters saved humanity by destroying evil. The flood story really appears to be a story of God saving humanity by God re-creating the earth as God resends his Spirit so to speak.

It harkens back to this Spirit moving across the face of the waters…
Genesis 1:2:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Consequently, when Noah sent out the dove here…
Genesis 8:12:

He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

We see the dove returning, architypically, here…
Mark 1:10:

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

The link between the account of Noah sending out a physical literal dove, and the account of Jesus having the Spirit descend on him like a dove, really connects all these passages right back to Genesis 1:2.

Unfortunately, many people who sinned before God were inevitably destroyed by the very thing which God was sending to save them. It would be like a mortal man walking the face of the earth during the original energetic and highly volatile days of creation-- like being caught in millions of years worth of volcanic eruptions, great fissures, flood waters, and geological upheavals. But instead of taking millions of years, it’s happenings would have been been reshaping the earth in a matter of a little over a year.

ouch

 

[AlegreFe]

That’s a good point Sandy.

The Holy Spirit was with me on that one. I was posting on another thread which happened to be on the subject of baptism and the saving waters of the sea on which Noah was afloat.
Mr. Ex Nihilo:

The flood waters did not just destroy and reshape the earth. The flood waters saved humanity by destroying evil. The flood story really appears to be a story of God saving humanity by God re-creating the earth as God resends his Spirit so to speak.

It harkens back to this Spirit moving across the face of the waters…

:yup: That’s one of the verses that I used in my post about the Holy Spirit and Baptism.
Mr. Ex Nihilo:

Consequently, when Noah sent out the dove here…

We see the dove returning, architypically, here…

Mr. Ex Nihilo:

The link between the account of Noah sending out a physical literal dove, and the account of Jesus having the Spirit descend on him like a dove, really connects all these passages right back to Genesis 1:2.

:yup:

When we are baptized with water, we receive the Holy Spirit… once that occurs we are “born again!”

 

[runandsew]

Up here in the Northwest, there have been ice age floods, know as the Spokane floods. An ice dam formed during the retreat of the ice age and formed Glacial Lake Missoula, one of the largest bodies of fresh water ever. When the ice dam broke it sent all the water through eastern Washington through the Columbia Gorge into the Willamette Valley, here in Oregon and then into the Pacific Ocean.
I have heard that it was a wall of water up to 1000 ft. and it filled the Willamette valley up to 600 feet of water. It is what carved the Columbia Gorge. This happened many times, with the last time being about 12,000 years ago. That is around the time when man first came to North America according to anthropologists. Maybe they witnessed the floods and brought back stories of it.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

Hi,
I just take the flood story at face value. The Scriptures described exactly how it happened and I simply believe it. As far as referencing baptism to it. I can understand that point of view.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

The hebrew word for “earth” simply meant “land” and thus I think it is a local flood.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Hmmm…so far there’s seems to be two major streams of thought emerging…

The Great Deluge was a global event triggered by humankind’s sins whereby God re-created the world.

The Great Deluge is simply an allegorical story, based partly on real events, used to teach a moral lesson.

The two are each tied at 6 respectively.

Just curious, has anyone looked into the early fathers on this. Admittedly, they are not authoritative on this matter. But I think it would interesting to look at the opinions they held.

If I recall correctly, I think they all had different opinions on what happened as far as the dynamics/mechanics were concerned (just as there was no universal agreement as to the length of the days of creation for example: some saw epochs, some saw lengthy periods, and others thought they were literal 24 hour days).

Yet, at the same time, at least as far as writings that are accepted as worthy of further examination, I think they were in agreement that the flood was a global event too.

I’d have to look into this further to be sure. But, if I recall correctly, there are a few resources online which talk about this.
Chapter 6 : Noah’s Flood & the Tower of Babel:

The evidence from the early church summarised in Table 6.1 is fairly conclusive. It was the unanimous opinion of the Jewish and early Christian writers who wrote on the subject that Noah’s Flood was a global event.

 

[brotherhrolf]

amazon.com/Before-Flood-Biblical-Changed-Civilization/dp/0312319711/sr=1-2/qid=1165773795/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-7695431-2175827?ie=UTF8&s=books

I just completed the above referenced book. It is about the Black Sea flood and climate change. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written before the Torah and contains an account of the flood. I tend to think it did happen and was such a catastrophic happening that it was remembered down through history.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

amazon.com/Before-Flood-Biblical-Changed-Civilization/dp/0312319711/sr=1-2/qid=1165773795/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-7695431-2175827?ie=UTF8&s=books

I just completed the above referenced book. It is about the Black Sea flood and climate change. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written before the Torah and contains an account of the flood. I tend to think it did happen and was such a catastrophic happening that it was remembered down through history.

Looks like an interesting book.

I realize that you are not aiming to prove the literal truth of the Bible story-- only that Noah had real-life counterparts who escaped the flood by ship. But I am still curious as to how literal the evidence presented portrays the flood event.

For example, I am curious why Noah (or whoever) would build a boat if it was only a localized flood.

Wouldn’t they simply be able to travel across the lanscape in a dozen years or so, and then, after the catastrophe subsided, move back to the land of their origins after another dozen years?

I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that God called people out of a particular land in order to bring them to refuge and safety, or a land of promise. In fact, if it were possible to do so, a long sojourn would seem more consistent with many travelling patterns throughout the Scriptures-- such as the exodus from Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, and the conquest by the Assyrians as well for example. Even Abraham was called out of the land of Ur to the promised land-- by foot or caravan.

Why bother building a boat when travelling along land would be just as effective?

Again, I realize that you are not aiming to prove the literal truth of the Bible story-- only that Noah had real-life counterparts who escaped the flood by ship. Nonetheless, going to such extremes as to build a huge boat to save themselves and hold many animals seems a bit like overkill to me-- especially if the flood were indeed a vast yet localized event.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Ok…we have one taking the lead…

**The Great Deluge is simply an allegorical story, based partly on real events, used to teach a moral lesson. **

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Well…holding the lead, we see Catholic Guy, cheddarsox, Chesterton38, daeve, First of 9, Kaninchen, mommyof4, Orogeny, and Rolltide leading with 9 votes for…

The Great Deluge is simply an allegorical story, based partly on real events, used to teach a moral lesson.

Interesting.