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

[brotherhrolf]

I didn’t vote because none of the descriptions really characterize what I believe. We know that there were massive climatic shifts across the earth at the end of the Ice Age. Whole species died and mankind had to adapt to the rapidly changing climate and changing ecologies.

We know that mankind moved from a hunter/gatherer lifestyle into a sedentary lifestyle in which they domesticated animals and began the rudiments of farming.

We know that around 6 or 7,000 years ago they had developed to the point where they were able to write. We know that the Epic of Gilgamesh was written BEFORE the Bible and that it contains the basic parameters of the Noah story.

We can fast forward a few thousand years to around 1400 BC and we know that the island of Thera or Santoriki exploded and ended a pretty good civilization and that this volcanic event MAY, I say MAY have had some bearing on one Moses being able to cross the Reed Sea and escape the Egyptian chariot force behind him.

Obviously something happened in each of the cases (and there are more) but a) you have to look at what happened in the eyes of the culture as it existed during that time and b) you have to acknowledge that God is perfectly capable of using events to His will and c) you have to admit that God gave us brains to use and if you want to go off and believe that Noah was able to collect two of each species across the biota of this Earth, put it in an Ark and save them…hmmm. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, why would Noah need to take all of the creatures who swam in the sea?

I just can’t do the allegory thing. These were people who had obviously experienced something and were saved by the Hand of God.

 

[brotherhrolf]

Now, let me give you another scenario.

There is a people abiding upon a great river. They live a debauched lifestyle in great abundance. A great storm rises to the south and a prophet shouts that God’s wrath has fallen upon the city. “Leave the city”, shouts the prophet. “Gather your belongings and animals and leave! God’s wrath descends!”

The storm gathers it’s strength and the people do not believe. But God sends a dream to Wheahy’at, telling him to gather his family and his animals and depart the city. Wheahy’at does as the Lord commands and leaves.

The storm approaches the city. The winds howl and the inhabitants bemoan that they followed not the warning. God causes the great waters to rise and they flow into the city, destroying it, and its inhabitants. Great were the cries of the inhabitants! Yea! If only we had listened to the prophet!

Now, I know we all have TVs, radios, internet, etc. But put yourself back into an era in which the populace could not read nor was there all the communication, no HMC, no education, no understanding of the physical forces of the world. How would a culture have remembered such an event.

Oh, the event? I just described Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans. Fifteen months after Katrina, the city of my birth lies in ruins. You don’t think that we have a whole bunch of Katrina survival stories down here? Were our ancestors any different?

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Obviously something happened in each of the cases (and there are more) but a) you have to look at what happened in the eyes of the culture as it existed during that time and b) you have to acknowledge that God is perfectly capable of using events to His will and c) you have to admit that God gave us brains to use and if you want to go off and believe that Noah was able to collect two of each species across the biota of this Earth, put it in an Ark and save them…hmmm. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, why would Noah need to take all of the creatures who swam in the sea?

But Noah didn’t gather the animals. God apparently brought them to him…according to the Scriptural record…and Noah secured them as they came…

And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

Besides that, I’m not sure if the scriptural record actually talks about the creatures who swam in the sea.

Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

Although I wouldn’t say this list is comprehensive on a scientific level by any means, at the same time it needs to be noted that there doesn’t appear to be any reference to anything in the waters to be fair.

brotherhrolf:

I just can’t do the allegory thing. These were people who had obviously experienced something and were saved by the Hand of God.

I agree.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Now, let me give you another scenario.

There is a people abiding upon a great river. They live a debauched lifestyle in great abundance. A great storm rises to the south and a prophet shouts that God’s wrath has fallen upon the city. “Leave the city”, shouts the prophet. “Gather your belongings and animals and leave! God’s wrath descends!”

The storm gathers it’s strength and the people do not believe. But God sends a dream to Wheahy’at, telling him to gather his family and his animals and depart the city. Wheahy’at does as the Lord commands and leaves.

The storm approaches the city. The winds howl and the inhabitants bemoan that they followed not the warning. God causes the great waters to rise and they flow into the city, destroying it, and its inhabitants. Great were the cries of the inhabitants! Yea! If only we had listened to the prophet!

Now, I know we all have TVs, radios, internet, etc. But put yourself back into an era in which the populace could not read nor was there all the communication, no HMC, no education, no understanding of the physical forces of the world. How would a culture have remembered such an event.

Oh, the event? I just described Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans. Fifteen months after Katrina, the city of my birth lies in ruins. You don’t think that we have a whole bunch of Katrina survival stories down here? Were our ancestors any different?

Yes we do have these survival stories. There’s also a lot of survival stories about the highly destructive waves of the tsunamies that raged around the Indian Ocean and destroyed the lands there too.

If, however, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina or the Tsunamies of 2004 are a good example of the kind of stories that the Scriptures were describing, one has to wonder why God is not honoring his promise to never deluge entire landscapes again…

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

“I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said,

“This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah,

“This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

I suppose that, if one is taking this event to mean a loclized event, then the promise would be only extended to those who are descended from Noah.

Nonetheless, wouldn’t there be any descendents of Noah living in New Orleans or along the Indian Ocean?

Would they have died too?

If so, why didn’t God keep his promise?

 

[brotherhrolf]

You miss my point. I was simply trying to point out that there could be some primordial recollection of a catastrophic event that affected everyone in a community. God is still in control but it takes a real stretch of the immagination to conjur up an image of the entire - ENTIRE biosphere of the ENTIRE Earth which could be contained within an Ark.

Obviously it’s NOT allegory, yet obviously it’s not literal truth. I can tell you that if I was a member of a pre-literate society, I could take the Katrina story and morph it into a complete story of sin, destruction, and redemption. Our ancestors were no different.

So, it doesn’t change anything. God is free to do whatever He wants on the face of the Earth and we humans can only sit back and observe…and record our observations through the lens of our culture.

I see the handiwork - or to put it in the words of Gerard M. Hopkins - The world is charged with the grandeur of God… God gave us brains that we should not put square pegs in round holes.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

You miss my point. I was simply trying to point out that there could be some primordial recollection of a catastrophic event that affected everyone in a community. God is still in control but it takes a real stretch of the immagination to conjur up an image of the entire - ENTIRE biosphere of the ENTIRE Earth which could be contained within an Ark.

Obviously it’s NOT allegory, yet obviously it’s not literal truth. I can tell you that if I was a member of a pre-literate society, I could take the Katrina story and morph it into a complete story of sin, destruction, and redemption. Our ancestors were no different.

So, it doesn’t change anything. God is free to do whatever He wants on the face of the Earth and we humans can only sit back and observe…and record our observations through the lens of our culture.

I see the handiwork - or to put it in the words of Gerard M. Hopkins - The world is charged with the grandeur of God… God gave us brains that we should not put square pegs in round holes.

I understand that.

But I’m still curious why God promised not to destroy a huge section of land again by tremendous flood waters-- and then proceeded to routinely destroy huge sections of land by tremendous flood waters many times since that time throughout human history?

If God is not held accountable to his word, then why should we trust other promises that he made to us?

 

[Nan_S]

We know that around 6 or 7,000 years ago they had developed to the point where they were able to write. We know that the Epic of Gilgamesh was written BEFORE the Bible and that it contains the basic parameters of the Noah story.

We can fast forward a few thousand years to around 1400 BC and we know that the island of Thera or Santoriki exploded and ended a pretty good civilization and that this volcanic event MAY, I say MAY have had some bearing on one Moses being able to cross the Reed Sea and escape the Egyptian chariot force behind him.

Obviously something happened in each of the cases (and there are more) but a) you have to look at what happened in the eyes of the culture as it existed during that time and b) you have to acknowledge that God is perfectly capable of using events to His will and c) you have to admit that God gave us brains to use and if you want to go off and believe that Noah was able to collect two of each species across the biota of this Earth, put it in an Ark and save them…hmmm. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, why would Noah need to take all of the creatures who swam in the sea?

I just can’t do the allegory thing. These were people who had obviously experienced something and were saved by the Hand of God.

Moses’ volcano is Santorini.

Two questions for anyone who has serious doubts:

How did Noah find out that the flood was coming, and far enough in advance to build an ark three football fields long practically all by his lonesome, using only handmade tools?

And who told Moses that the plagues were coming - in order, with details? Yeah, the volcano was probably the source of the Nile turning red, the firery hailstones, and the 3-day darkness. And a “pillar of smoke by day/pillar of fire by night” is a real good description of a volcano in active eruption. Much of the rest of it fits very nicely with the description of an Anthrax epidemic.

But Moses knew what each of the plagues were going to be before they happened.

 

[spauline]

Ok, I’m not sure which one I would check, I believe that in some sense, after the Fall, the majority of humanity descended into a general state of sin, that there was just a remnant of righteous, which included the man as we know as Noah, and that God supernaturally intervened in history, revealed the coming chastisement to Noah, who, a long with whatever remnant there was, was spared of the Divine Intervention of a Flood that destroyed the vast majority of wicked humanity. Now whether the Flood was local, in the sense that man had not settled very far from the central regions of earth, or whether it was absolutely global, or how we understand the “animals” thing. I don’t think that is important.

But the definite history of the first age of sin following the fall and its cleansing through a redemptive flood, I believe that is true.

I also have theological beliefs about the parallel between the wickedness in Noah’s day, that is, the first great age of sin, and the last great age of sin, that is, of the end of the world. For just as Noah’s day was the first “day” in the redemption of humanity, and that the Flood was the first day of Redemption, so at the end of the world, in the great apostasy of the eighth day, Christ shall destroy the world not by water but by fire, so as to judge what will then be an irredeemable world, and to usher the final salvation, the New Creation:

… the beast of revelation 17 seems to symbolize, in its broadest sense, the fallen nature of man as exhibited throughout salvation history. hence, in revelation 17, the beast “was”, that is, prior to Flood, the fall reigned amongst human kind because God had not yet begun any significant Redemption of humanity. But beginning with the Flood, God’s Redemption of man began, and so, even then, the fallen nature of man is taking “a back seat”, so to speak, that is, the beast “is not.” But this doesn’t prevent repeated manifestations of the fallen nature of man even during the course of God’s redemption of man. Hence, as in Rev. 17, there are “heads”, or “kings”, that rise and fall. And so, as the text implies, five “kings” (that is, great stages of sin) evidently arose and fell in the OT (“five have fallen”). These are easily distinguished here by St. Augustine:

“Five ages of the world, accordingly, having been now completed (there has entered the sixth). …”
…

One king reigned then (Rome, or pagan resistance to conversion). Of course, this king “fell”, in that pagan Rome fell and was redeemed by Catholic Christendom, but another king has arisen, which is our current [Minor] apostasy. But it will be slain by the Minor Chastisement and Age of Peace, and this will complete Christ’s Redemption of the Gentiles *within *human history, so that when man falls away again, in the darkness of the eighth day, at the end of the age of peace in the great apostasy, he will no longer be able to redeemed, and so the beast “will be again”, so that the Great Apostasy will be the fullest consequences of the fall, and will once again prevail in human history, hence warranting the destruction of the world.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Ok, I’m not sure which one I would check, I believe that in some sense, after the Fall, the majority of humanity descended into a general state of sin, that there was just a remnant of righteous, which included the man as we know as Noah, and that God supernaturally intervened in history, revealed the coming chastisement to Noah, who, a long with whatever remnant there was, was spared of the Divine Intervention of a Flood that destroyed the vast majority of wicked humanity. Now whether the Flood was local, in the sense that man had not settled very far from the central regions of earth, or whether it was absolutely global, or how we understand the “animals” thing. I don’t think that is important.

But the definite history of the first age of sin following the fall and its cleansing through a redemptive flood, I believe that is true.

I also have theological beliefs about the parallel between the wickedness in Noah’s day, that is, the first great age of sin, and the last great age of sin, that is, of the end of the world. For just as Noah’s day was the first “day” in the redemption of humanity, and that the Flood was the first day of Redemption, so at the end of the world, in the great apostasy of the eighth day, Christ shall destroy the world not by water but by fire, so as to judge what will then be an irredeemable world, and to usher the final salvation, the New Creation:

http://sodki.org/imagens/solar_flare.jpg

I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

 

[spauline]

I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

Wow! What a picture!

 

[spauline]

He, ex nihilo, we’re the same age as of today. I turned 37 this very day, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

He, ex nihilo, we’re the same age as of today. I turned 37 this very day, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Happy Blessed Birthday!

My birthday is not far from another Feast Day for Mary, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

[spauline]

Happy Blessed Birthday!

thank you!

My birthday is not far from another Feast Day for Mary, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

awesome!

 

[Reepicheep]

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.

I agree with AllegreFe, and also voted the second option.

 

[AlegreFe]

He, ex nihilo, we’re the same age as of today. I turned 37 this very day, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Oh WoW! Happy Birthday!! Well belated by now 'cause it’s already tomorrow even though it’s still today for me. :yawn:

My bday falls on the feast of Our Lady of Mercy even though we don’t celebrate that day in Church or anything. I wonder why. I know it better as "Nuestra Señora de la Merced."

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/legiondemaria/ninos/z_merced.jpg

I have a link about Our Lady of Mercy for those of you who can read Spanish.

Okay, sorry off topic… you can have your thread back.

 

[spauline]

Oh WoW! Happy Birthday!! Well belated by now 'cause it’s already tomorrow even though it’s still today for me. :yawn:

My bday falls on the feast of Our Lady of Mercy even though we don’t celebrate that day in Church or anything. I wonder why. I know it better as "Nuestra Señora de la Merced."

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/legiondemaria/ninos/z_merced.jpg

I have a link about Our Lady of Mercy for those of you who can read Spanish.

Okay, sorry off topic… you can have your thread back.

that’s OK! Thank you! And what a beautiful picture of Our Lady. I took three years of Spanish in high school and got all A’s I’ve also gotten phenomenal grades in college French, good grades in German, and have taught myself beginners Czech. I’ll see if I can check your site out, maybe I’ll understand a little!

 

[jbuck919]

Well, I managed to vote with the plurality (it is an allegorical story with no basis in fact).

I find it interesting that just within the last couple of days it has been announced that scientists have discovered evidence of a catastrophic tsunami affecting the Mediterranean basin. My first thought was, oh dear, more grist for the literalists’ mill. As a matter of fact (I mean in the figure of speech sense), I would not be surprised if such an improbable and unmotivated myth which turns up in several different Mediterranean cultures has some seed of a historical reality that survived through tales from generation to generation. I doubt, however, that we will ever know. In the meantime, we can debate even the edifying aspects of the Noah story.

 

[Sixtus]

I had never thought of the Great Flood as an allegory.

It is just possible that it was a naturally occuring event. The ice caps melt, the world’s water increases, it evaporates, there is a huge deluge. That is the scientfic explanation.

There is sound evidence to support it. The North Sea came from such an event. Recent trawling of the North Sea has brought up elephant tusks, wolf bodies and other land based animals which have been found in mid-sea, suggesting it was once ‘dry’ land.

Something caused the deluge. I believe it was a natural event which supported God’s plan.