Noah's Flood: Global or Regional?

first installment of 6-part series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07gxxbggJs&t=25s

Hydrodynamics

One issue regarding the scope and historicity of Noah's flood is the depth of the flood waters. I recently ran some questions by a field geologist who specializes in fluvial geomorphology. Before reproducing our exchange, I'll quote something I recently said:

Regarding Gen 7:20, the text doesn't say the waters rose to a depth of 15 cubits above the mountains. The Hebrew text simply says the waters rose 15 cubits above, and the mountains were covered.

So "15 cubits above" may well have reference to ground level, which was sufficient to wash over the surrounding hillside. Think of a flood plain or river basin skirted by hills. Keep in mind that "mountain" isn't a technical term in Hebrew, but a synonym for "hill".

With that in mind:

Hays

Is this a correct understanding of the issues:

i) In some river systems, the riverbanks are higher than the surrounding terrain. Due to periodic flooding, which deposits silt and coarse gravel, the riverbanks build up over time. They become high ground in relation to the surrounding terrain. 

Geologist

Yes, the coarse material carried by rivers tends to settle out on the margins of the channel during floods, thereby building levees and high ground right next to the river.  This means that the surrounding valley bottom can readily flood to the level of the levees when the levees do (eventually) overtop in a big enough flood.  The Mesopotamian rivers are classic examples of this kind of river (which tends to be in estuarine environments).

Hays

ii) Is it the case that riverbeds acquire layers of silt? If so, does that mean riverbeds rise/become higher over time?

Geologist

Rivers can aggrade (fill in) or incise (cut down) over time depending on the balance of sediment they receive to the power of the flow to move it. 

A river with a balance between the two will just shunt sediment on downstream. 

Hays

If there was nothing to counteract the accumulation on riverbeds, would that make rivers shallower over time?

Geologist

The transport capacity of the flow keeps the channel open.  Most channels are adjusted (in the width/depth) to carry what is known as the “bankfull” flow, which tends to be close to the annual high flood.  Floods are events that overtop the banks and spill out on to the floodplain or surrounding terrain. 

Hays

iii) Is that offset by (i)? Do rivers retain the same general depth, even if the beds are higher, because the banks are higher? 

Geologist

In aggrading rivers (those with excess sediment) the bed can fill in and the river can shallow — unless the sedimentation on the floodplain raises it (which happens if the floodwaters can spread across the floodplain).  

Hays

iv) This seems to imply that the low ground becomes incrementally lower in relation to the river banks (or levees) as the riverbanks become incrementally higher due to the cumulative effect of flood deposition. 

Geologist

Yes, this can happen when a river aggrades.

Hays

v) The upshot, I take it, is that it takes less volume of water to inundate the surrounding terrain when the terrain is lower than the riverbanks. If the surrounding terrain was higher, it would take more water to submerge the area, or submerge the area at the same depth. 

Geologist

What happens when a river aggrades and builds its levees up higher is that when a big enough flood comes along to overtop the higher levees then the surrounding terrain is inundated under deeper flow.

Hays

vi) Not only depth but breadth. It takes less water for the scope of a flood to be on the same scale if the surrounding area is low ground compared to the riverbanks. 

vii) Is that intensified if there's something like a mountain range (or ridge of hills) to form a barrier that contains the water? 

viii) I've read the claim that "Noah's flood" couldn't be merely regional because Mesopotamian topography is a drainage system, so there's nothing to keep the water building up. It will pour downriver into the Persian Gulf. 

Geologist

I don’t understand the logic of the argument here; a big enough flood there will of course eventually drain into the Persian Gulf, but it could be a monstrous flood while doing so because it can take a lot of time to drain the whole valley bottom after if floods under tens of feet of floodwaters that the levees keep from flowing rapidly back into the channel.  So to me that claim you reference is simply nonsense that demonstrates the writer doesn’t understand what he/she is talking about.

Is Noah's flood a legend?

Some people view Noah's flood as sheer fiction. Others view Noah's flood as a reflection of a dim historical memory that's undergone legendary embellishment. 

One of the striking things about the flood account is how it presents the flood as a natural event. The account as a supernatural framework. It gives God's motivation for sending the flood. God repeatedly speaks to Noah. And God "shuts" them in. Those are the most explicitly supernatural elements. 

It also says the animals "came" to Noah, which might suggest God sent them. And there's a reference to God sending a "wind" (which may be a Hebrew pun). 

But the flood itself is depicted as an event caused by natural mechanisms. In that respect it's not different in kind from other floods. If you were an outside observer, you wouldn't notice anything about this particular deluge to distinguish it from other floods in terms of what caused it.  

Put another way, the flood account has far fewer supernatural elements than the Exodus. In that regard, the flood account is conspicuously unembellished. 

If you think any supernaturalism is a mark of mythology or legendary embellishment, so that we must strip away all the supernatural elements to arrive at the historical core, then the flood account reflects legendary embellishment. But that says everything about secular prejudice and nothing about the realism of the account. Reported miracles are only ipso facto evidence of pious fiction or legendary embellishment on the assumption that naturalism is true. 

Window or mural?

A quick follow-up to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/flood-topography.html

This illustrates a limitation or weakness of many OT scholars. Most of them are trained in the literature and languages of the ancient Near East. As a result, they interpret passages like Gen 2-3 or 6-9 in abstraction from the physical would outside the text, which the narrator and his audience inhabited. This can lead to overly literary and generic interpretations that are cut off from the concrete world to which the text refers. They view the text as a mural rather than a window.

Despite his secular outlook, Montgomery has a realistic eye for the world of Gen 6-9 that's ironically missing in many commentaries on Genesis. That's clearly a problem for liberal scholars, but it can also be a problem for conservative scholars. 

We're scolded by scholars (e.g. Peter Enns, Paul Seeley, John Walton) on how we ought to construe Genesis in light of its ancient Near Eastern setting. That's an undeniably valid principle, yet they themselves suffer from a blinkered view of what it means, due to the tunnel vision of their training and interests. They fail to take their own principle as seriously as they should. 

Flood topography

Around the 19-20 min. mark, secular geologist David Montgomery has an interesting discussion regarding the topography of river deltas and flood patterns. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMaUzNlDnSY

In big river deltas you'll find that the high ground is right along the river and the levees of the river, and the land slopes off to the side, [which is] why, when it floods, the coarse sand settles out right by the river and builds the high ground.

The far area though, when the river overtops its banks, as big rivers eventually do in a big enough rain somewhere upstream, basically the surrounding terrain fills up like a bathtub. Well, the delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers were very similar…flooding the valley wall-to-wall at a depth that you couldn't stand in and survive [might] have been the origin of the story of Noah's flood.

That's a model of a catastrophic regional flood. Standing water needn't be terribly deep to make an area uninhabitable.

Dawkins on the Flood

https://twitter.com/GHeathWhyte/status/1175081067943997440

Seven is your lucky number!

In his new commentary on Genesis, Andrew Steinmann says: 

The crafting of the table can be seen in the fondness of its use of the number seven and its multiples... (122). 

In correspondence, I asked him if he could be more specific. He responded:

The table contains 70 names listed as “sons” of Ham, Shem, Japheth or their descendants. (The Philistines are different, since they are not said to be “son,” but are part of the Casluhim “from whom came the Philippines.”) Japheth has 7 sons and 7 grandsons. Mizraim has 7 “sons.” Shem has 21 grandsons/ great-grandsons.

That septunarian pattern could be produced by starting with real, albeit larger figures, then omitting certain links or individuals to get it down to groups of seven or multiples of seven. The result of editorial selectivity. 

In the past I've noted how the seven motif is embedded in the flood account:

Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate (Gen 7:2)

and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth (Gen 7:3)

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made” (Gen 7:4)

And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth (Gen 7:10)

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened (Gen 7:11)

and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Gen 8:4)

He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark (Gen 8:10)

He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him (Gen 8:12)

By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry (Gen 8:14)

If Noah's flood is a real event, then it has a certain natural rhythm. So we wouldn't expect it to be so repetitively septunarian. As such, the seven motif in the flood account seems to be a stock number, just like forty is a stock number in Scripture. In some cases is might be due to rounding up or rounding down to seven of something. And in some cases there's no natural interval, so the interval will be stipulative. But the frequency appears to be artificial by design. 

So it's interesting to see the same motif in the Table of Nations. That kind of numerology suggests the narratives are somewhat stylized to highlight artificial septunarian patterns. Nature in the raw isn't that symmetrical. It doesn't normally operate in cycles of seven. 

There's nothing deceptive about that so long as the numbers were understood to be stock numbers, sometimes used for their symbolic connotations. It may be code language for God's control over events. Septunarian iterations clue the reader to the hidden hand of providence. Too coincidental to be sheer coincidence.  

Since we see this in the flood account as well as the Table of Nations, it has backward casting implications for the creation account. By analogy with the flood account and the Table of Nations, is the number of days in Gen 1 a stock number, too? 

Flood traditions

1. One argument for the Noah's flood, in particular for the global scope of the flood, is appeal to flood traditions scattered worldwide. While that's a tantalizing line of evidence, what's been lacking in my experience is primary source documentation. I haven't seen young-earth creationists point reader to collections of flood traditions from around the world. Instead, there's just a vague reference to their existence. But that's a poor substitute for reading actual accounts.

I recently read Bernhard Lang “Non-Semitic Deluge Stories and the Book of Genesis a Bibliographical and Critical Survey.” Anthropos, vol. 80, no. 4/6, 1985, pp605–616.

Over the decades, anthropologists have collected flood traditions. Lang reviews a large number of collections. He himself regards Noah's flood as a myth, so his survey reflects that bias. It is, however, useful in sifting many collections, some in foreign languages.

2. There are multiple complications in attempting to correlate an extrabiblical flood tradition with Noah's flood. The best-known examples are Mesopotamian flood traditions. And these have some unmistakable parallels. If Noah's flood was a regional flood, centered in the Middle East, then it's not surprising that there are independent traditions of that catastrophe from the same area. And I do think those count as extrabiblical corroboration for Noah's flood.

3. What about other traditions? Lang mentions "some patristic references relating to Armenian flood stories." It would be interesting to read those.

4. In addition, he says that "when the New World was discovered, Christian missionaries and travelers reported that natives had their own stories of the flood." Again, it would be interesting to read the accounts of missionaries who first made contact with indigenous peoples and recorded their flood traditions.

5. One difficulty with correlating extrabiblical flood traditions with Noah's flood is that many examples come from oral cultures. That makes it hard to determine the antiquity of the flood traditions. In the case of the Mesopotamian traditions, we know that these were committed to writing thousands of years ago. But in the case of oral cultures, one issue is how long authentic flood traditions could be transmitted orally. Even on a young-earth creationist timeline, Noah's flood happened thousands of years ago.

6. Another issue is the interval between the time missionaries make contact and anthropologists collect flood traditions. There's the danger of cultural "contamination," where the flood tradition the anthropologist records from some indigenous people-group is not in fact an independent flood tradition, but something they absorbed from Christian missionaries long before the anthropologist arrived on the scene. Lang mentions:

A map of the world indicates where the author was able to locate elaborate flood stories, traces of them, and versions which refer to the rainbow. According to his map, flood traditions are most common in Asia and on the islands immediately south of Asia, and on the North American continent. Though found in Africa, they are not nearly as common as on other continents (cf. map 1).

One issue is whether those cultures were deeply impacted by Christian missionaries. If Christian contact was superficial or negligible, then I assume that indicates the independence of their flood traditions.

7. In addition to missionary diffusion, it's necessary to rule out other factors. One theory is that some flood traditions are etiologies to explain petrified seashells on mountaintops.

However, I have questions about that theory. Did observers have a penchant for inventing tales to provide a backstory for that phenomenon? And even if individual observers did that, would it catch on and become part of the canonical lore of that people-group?

8. Another consideration is whether the area from which the flood tradition is found is subject to disastrous coastal or fluvial flooding. If so, then while it may be an independent flood tradition, it probably memorializes an indigenous deluge.

9. Here's a further question: suppose some of Noah's descendants carry the flood tradition with them as they migrate to another part of the world. But in the absence of written records, and separated from the original landmarks (e.g. the landing zone for Noah's ark), would the original setting of the flood tradition begin to blend with the fauna, flora, landscape, and climate of the new environment? The description might reflect the local conditions of the new environment. At this distance in time, is it possible to untangle the two and recover the underlying original?

10. A final question is whether it's possible to distinguish a local flood tradition from a global flood tradition. Consider two scenarios:

i) The flood was universal. Descendants of Noah who migrated to far-flung corners of the world carried flood traditions with them.

ii) The flood was regional, centered in the Middle East. Descendants of Noah who migrated to far-flung corners of the world carried flood traditions with them.

Are these distinguishable? Can someone on the ground gauge the scale of the disaster? It's not like they have a bird's-eye view. They only take in as much as they can see, from their limited vantage-point.

Suppose you're living in a village. You know about the existence of other tribes or villages. But those are the only other humans you know about. You have no idea how many human beings there are in general. Suppose a flood devastates your homeland. For you, that's the known world. From an outsider perspective, it's a local flood, but from your perspective, it's worldwide.

When we see news reports of massive flooding, the natural disaster is put on a map. We have an aerial view. Satellite photography. And we place it in the context of world geography. But a ground-based observer lacks that larger frame of reference.

11. Even if the narrator was shown the deluge in a vision, would he be in a position to tell if it was regional or global in scope? What was his geographical frame of reference? Would he recognize the Rockies, Andes, or Hindu Kush if he saw them in a vision? Modern people are able recognize landmarks from parts of the world they never visited. But prescientific observers on the ground lack that context, and even direct revelation doesn't automatically provide it.

Where does the Bible say that?

Sometimes, when I'm defending the Bible, my opponent will challenge me: "Where's that in the Bible?" Here's a recent example:

Hays

Regarding Gen 7:20, the text doesn't say the waters rose to a depth of 15 cubits above the mountains. The Hebrew text simply says the waters rose 15 cubits above, and the mountains were covered.

So "15 cubits above" may well have reference to ground level, which was sufficient to wash over the surrounding hillside. Think of a flood plain or river basin skirted by hills. Keep in mind that "mountain" isn't a technical term in Hebrew, but a synonym for "hill".

Kenton

Okay, if I accept that dubious definition then how come there weren’t survivors? Surely people could have headed toward higher ground that wasn’t covered or, more importantly, use their own boats? Pretty sure boats were a common thing back then.

Hays

Heading for higher ground may save you from drowning, but with contaminated drinking water, how long will you survive?

Kenton

I missed that part of the Bible. Which verse was that in? 

Hays

The account doesn't say they all died by drowning. It just says they all died in the flood. You do realize, do you not, that there's more than one way people may die as a result of flooding? Having a boat might prevent you from drowning, but it doesn't prevent you from death by starvation, exposure, or cholera.

1. Kenton's objection represents a misunderstanding of sola scriptura. When we interpret the Bible, we combine what the Bible says with extrabiblical background knowledge. To take a comparison, if I read a news report about a passenger plane crashing, I can mentally fill out certain details not included in the report. Indeed, the reporter expects me to know what airplanes are. 

At one level, my knowledge of the event is dependent on the report. Absent the report, I wouldn't know that a passenger plane crashed on that day in that place. However, I can mentally supplement the report with my general knowledge of airplanes and airplane crashes. 

So there's the direct information supplied by the report. It tells me that a particular kind of event occurred. But over and above the report, the nature of the event in itself is an additional source of information. It would be silly for someone to object: "Where did the report say that?"–if I'm making common sense assumptions or drawing reasonable inferences from the nature of the event. The report doesn't have to say that. Once the report says it happened, then the nature of the event is an implicit source of information, in addition to what the report explicitly mentions. An event of that kind may raise a number of possibilities. More than one possible explanation or reconstruction. 

If the Bible says King David was a man, we can infer certain things from that identification. He had hands and feet, fives senses, and male anatomy. To ask, "Where does the Bible say that?" is confused. For certain things follow from what the Bible says. That's understood. The reader is responsible for filling the gaps. If the Bible says King David was a man, that's both a direct source of information about David as well as an indirect source of information about David. There's what it specifically says. But based on what it says, we justifiable draw further conclusions. And the reader is supposed to do that.

If the Bible says people died in the flood, it needn't specify how, exactly, they died, as if they all had to die the same way. While it's possible that they all died the same way, that's not an implication of death by flooding. Death by drowning is a direct result of death by flooding, but that doesn't rule out death by "complications" caused by flooding. A massive deluge may well generate different causes of death. Some more immediate while others are more drawn out and roundabout. To take modern examples, consider people stranded on the roof of their house, waiting to be rescued. Although they survived death by drowning, that doesn't mean they survived death by flooding. Some of them still perish as they wait in vain to be rescued. 

You needn't agree with that interpretation of the flood account. I'm just using it to illustrate a hermeneutical principle. 

2. Of course, that's a question we frequently press against Catholics: "Where does the Bible say that?" But there's a difference. 

i) We wouldn't object to Catholic dogmas if those were implied by what Scripture does say. The problem with Catholicism isn't simply that they believe things we can't find in the Bible. Rather, they believe things when there's no good evidence anywhere! No good evidence in Scripture. No good evidence outside of Scripture. Indeed, they believe some things that run contrary to extrabiblical evidence (not to mention things contrary to the witness of Scripture). 

ii) In addition, they insist on a duty to believe or firmness of belief that goes beyond what the evidence warrants. Suppose there's some evidence that Peter ministered in Rome. Fine. But they turn that into a dogma. They make that belief obligatory. A sacred duty. Yet our late, spotty, even contradictory records of Peter's stay in Rome might be mistaken. We should be able to make allowance for the possibility of error. 

The flood waters

John Walton makes the following remarks in The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis:

The main questions, however, concern what is demanded by the language of the text. Four textual issues contribute to the discussion and require investigation: universal scope of the language (7:21–23), covering the mountains (7:19), fifteen cubits above (7:20), and the tops of the mountains becoming visible (8:5). If an interpreter maintains the support of the authority of the text but does not believe in a global flood, how can these four issues be handled?

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word "all" is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, "This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven." This verse even uses "under heaven" in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world." I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that "Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven."³⁴ Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word "all" to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of "covering" possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, "You’re covered with water!"

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.

Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders "depth." The Hebrew text says, "Fifteen cubits from above [milma'la] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered." It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.³⁵

The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition al is consistently attached to the one noun with milma'la connected to the object that is being located.³⁶ It can also mean "above" when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, "heavens above"). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as "upward" (Ezek. 1:11, "spread upward") or "upstream" (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb "rose," it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land,³⁷ or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

Most interpreters have inferred that the ark became lodged on the tops of one of these mountains that was still under water and that the mountains did not become visible for ten more weeks. If this were a proper inference, the observation in the text would be a matter of experience, not perception. Noah did not just assume that all the mountains were under water; he was in the mountains and they were under water.

Operation Noah's Ark

As I've remarked on more than one occasion, long-range Bible prophecies picture the future in terms of the past. They use imagery that would be intelligible to the original audience. If we take futuristic Bible prophecy seriously, we have to mentally update it. 

With that in mind, consider the stock objections to a global flood: On the one hand, it isn't big enough to accommodate a representative sample of every animal. On the other hand, a wooden ship that large already lacks structural integrity. 

How would animals cross natural barriers before and after the flood? How could such a tiny crew care for so many animals? What about specialized diets? What about specialized habitats? What about waste disposal? What about dinosaurs? 

What about aquatic animals? Are they on the ark? If not, how do they survive the blending of fresh water and salt water? What about flora? 

Since I incline to the local flood interpretation, my own position sidesteps most of the stock objections to the global flood. Mind you, most of the stock objections make anachronistic assumptions by reading things into the text that aren't there. 

Suppose, just for fun, we do a futuristic take on Noah's flood. In the 23C AD, God dispatches the angel Gabriel to recruit Noah. Noah is sent back in time to build the ark and save the planet. He brings a tech team. 

The ark is a floating storage facility for DNA samples. The ark is powered by a fusion factor. Aerial drones and underwater drones collect DNA samples from all terrestrial, marine, and fresh-water species–including insects. Samples are stored in onboard freezers at –80°C. After the flood, faunal and floral species are recreated from stem cells, using advanced robotics. 

I could go into more details about engineering and terraforming but that would disrupt the timeline by giving Triablogue a preview of future technology. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement and run a draft past the Archangel Gabriel (head of celestial security) to redact classified information. In fact, there's the possibility that we're actually caught in a time-loop, having done all this before, because the timeline was already disrupted by the initial temporal incursion.  

Michael Heiser on the flood

http://drmsh.com/argue-biblical-text-local-regional-flood-instead-global-flood/

Calendar narratives

Flood stories were widespread in the ancient world. One distinctive of the biblical flood account is its use of dates. There are five dates in the Genesis flood narrative. This is remarkable, since those are the only dates in the entire book of Genesis. 

Typically in ancient literature, an event's timing was indicated by relating it to another event, not by using dates. Timeline dating–plotting events on a transcendent timeline with dates–is common today, but ancient texts used event sequencing, temporally marking an event by relating it to other events. 

Throughout Genesis, event sequencing is used. But five dates appear in the flood narrative and nowhere else in the entire book of Genesis.

An important insight emerges when these dates are potted against the festival calendar of Israel. Three of the five fall directly on Mosaic festival dates. The only exceptions are the first and last, which nonetheless fall at the midpoint of Israel's grain-harvest festivals. All five dates appear to be "scheduled" with reference to Israel's festivals. 

1. The beginning of the flood (Gen 7:11). The flood's beginning date (2/27) is at the center of Israel's grain festivals.

2. The ark's landing (Gen 8:4)…In later Israel, this date would fall during the Feast of Booths. 

3. When the mountaintops became visible (Gen 8:5)…In later Israel, that same date was a new-moon day in between israel's festival days.

4. When the waters were gone (Gen 8:13). By New Years Day (1/1) the waters were gone. New Year's Day is a natural "new beginnings" point.

5. When the ground was dry (Gen 8:14). The ground was completely dry on 2/27. The significance of the flood's beginning in the heart of the grain harvest has already been noted. The same applies to its conclusion on a date one year later and even ten days after. 

These correspondences suggest that the alignment between the five dated flood events and later Israel's festival calendar are not coincidental. Noah's flood was retold in a manner that related his "exodus" to Israel's festival worship and agricultural labors. If this reading is correct, one may still ask whether Noah's flood actually took place on these dates, or whether these dates were added anachronistically. One further feature indicates that these are not dates recorded from observation but are a literary construction: the flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months rather than actual varying-length months. This is prima facie evidence of a constructed (rather than observed) timeline. 

The flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months. The five months between the beginning of the flood (2/17) and the ark's resting on Mount Ararat (7:17) are rendered as 150 days (Gen 7:24; 8:3) being five months of thirty days each…The use of aesthetically balanced dates and numbers throughout the passage, such as 7s, 10s, 40s, 150, along with the use of schematic months, indicates the constructed nature of this narrative's dates for a legal (rather than journalistic) purpose). It is therefore proposed that the flood account is an agricultural and festival calendar in narrative form: a calendar narrative. 

This function for the flood narrative is comparable to the contemporary practice of telling Jesus' birth story on December 25. Churches do so, not to assure that Jesus was actually born on that date, but to inform Christian observances on that date. Similarly, the flood narrative re-maps the events of Noah's deluge to the calendar of Israel's agricultural labors and harvest festivals for its instructional value. 

There are at least three calendrical features of the flood narrative and exodus narratives that are also found in the creation week, suggesting all three date-laden narratives serve this calendrical purpose. First, the creation week is structured around dates like the flood and exodus narratives. The creation week does not provide month dates like those other calendar narratives, but it does give week dates. Days of the Hebrew week were identified by number. 

This reading cautions against both young-earth and old-earth efforts to read Genesis 1 as a chronology of original creation events…This reading leads to conclusions largely congruent with "analogical day," "literary day," or "framework" views. Michael LeFebvre, “Reading Genesis 1 with the Fourth Commandment: The Creation Week as a Calendar Narrative,” G. Hiestand & T. Wilson, eds.  Creation and Doxology: The Beginning and End of God's Good World (IVP 2018), chap. 1. 

How to read Genesis

I recently read/skimmed Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and the Truth in Genesis 1-11 (Zondervan 2018) by John Collins. 

1. It's a seasoned and erudite exegetical defense of old-earth creationism. Collins has a sophisticated hermeneutic that he applies to Genesis. 

The book fights on two fronts. On the one hand, it takes aim at the hermeneutics of young-earth creation. 

On the other hand, it takes aim at scholars like Peter Enns, Dennis Lamoureux, Robin Perry, Paul Seely, Kenton Sparks, and John Walton–who think the Bible suffers from a hopelessly obsolete, prescientific outlook. (Kyle Greenwood is another example, but he doesn't figure in the discussion.) That target looms larger in his treatment than young-earth creationism. 

Collins does a nice job of showing that the way Enns, Walton et al. read the Bible is naive. Does a nice job of showing that ancient Near Easterners were more observant than Enns, Walton et al. give them credit for. 

That's not just his conservative opinion. Take this quote: 

People in the ancient Near East did not conceive of the earth as a disk floating on water with the firmament inverted over it like a bell jar, with the stars hanging from it…The textbook images that keep being reprinted of "the ancient Near Eastern world picture" are based on typical modern misunderstandings that fail to take into account the religious components of ancient Near Eastern conceptions and representations. O. Keel & S. Schroer, Creation: Biblical theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East (Eisenbrauns 2015), 259-60n34.

So his monograph defends the inerrancy of Scripture against an influential academic fad that's eroding evangelicalism. In that regard it's useful for young-earth and old-earth creationists alike. 

2. I disagree with some of exegetical decisions. And there's a disappointingly thin discussion of the flood account. But in general this is an exceptional treatment. 

3. I'd like to focus on one particular issue, and that's his provocative endorsement of anachronism in Scripture (6.C). 

i) Normally, anachronism is a telltale sign of fiction, forgery, or the limitations of an author who's out-of-touch with the period he's writing about. However, Collins argues that anachronism can be a technique to make the past come alive for a later audience. If successful, his argument pulls the rug out from under a stock objection to the historicity of some biblical accounts. 

ii) One concern his whether his argument proves too much. Anachronisms are a way in which we distinguish apocryphal Gospels from 1C Gospels. Or take the Donation of Constantine. Likewise, what if a Mormon apologist redeployed this argument to salvage the Book of Mormon? Admittedly, Mormonism has many defeaters. 

iii) At least from my reading, it isn't clear to me if by anachronism, he means a Biblical narrator sometimes updates the treatment, or if he's staking out the more radical position that there's nothing in the past which underlies the narrative. Consider two possible illustrations:

a) Long-range prophecy depicts the future in terms of the past. It uses imagery familiar to the original audience. The oracle reflects the kind of world they knew. 

b) The Warriors (1979) is a cinematic adaption of a novel by Sol Yurick, which is, in turn, a modern adaptation of a true story by Xenophon. In the original, the Greeks are trapped deep behind enemy lines and must fight their way back to the homeland. In the modern adaptation, this is recast in terms of New York street gangs. That preserves some correspondence between the original setting and the modernization, but with great artistic license. 

I don't know if that's the sort of thing Collins has in mind. One issue is whether that's too loose a view of historicity. I find some of his examples more plausible than others. 

Biblical hyperbole

This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits (Gen 6:15).

i) I'd like to revisit two issues I've discussed before. One objection to the historicity of Noah's flood is the claim that a wooden ship that big wouldn't be seaworthy. It would lack structure integrity.

But as I've noted in the past, we don't even know for sure that the ark was made of wood. Although that's sometimes how the word is translated, if you read commentaries you see that scholars don't know what they word means. They assume it refers to some kind of tree, but that's just a guess.

ii) Why does the flood account even state the dimensions of the ark? It could tell the same story without including that detail. One explanation is to stress the scale of the impending deluge. A big evacuation vessel for a big flood. 

However, that's also consistent with a hyperbolic interpretation. On that view, it states the dimensions of the ark in the same way that it uses other comparisons to indicate the scale of the deluge. Yet some of those phrases are used elsewhere hyperbolically. So it's possible that the ark, while a wooden vessel, was actually smaller and seaworthy. 

Every eye shall see him (Rev 1:7). 

i) Critics say that reflects a flat-earth cosmography. But as I've noted in the past, if the sign of the Son of Man hovered for one rotation period, everyone would see it over the course of 24 hours. 

ii) But another possibility is that the statement is hyperbolic. A way of saying this is a public event. There will be many eyewitnesses, but not necessarily that every human being will see it. 

iii) Actually, the "sign of the Son of Man" comes from Mt 24:30. One question is whether the sign is distinct from Jesus or if Jesus is the sign. Does it refer to seeing Jesus in the sky or a symbolic celestial harbinger that heralds his impending approach?

iv) Even if everyone doesn't see Jesus at the moment of his arrival, everyone might eventually see Jesus after he arrives. Although the Parousia refers to the physical, bodily return of Christ, it's possible for Jesus to simultaneously appear in multiple locations as a visionary Christophany. In that mode, he could even be visible to the blind. 

Egypt and the flood

Every serious student of the Bible knows that there are other flood stories from the ancient Near East, particularly from ancient Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria. One brief account from Ugarit, but interestingly, none from Egypt. T. Longman & J. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood (IVP 2018), 53.

If Noah's flood happened, why are there no Egyptian accounts? Even if it was a regional rather than global flood, should we expect a notice in Egyptian records? 

i)  We only have a random sampling from Egypt. Most records never survived. And even if some records survived, there's a lot that has yet to be discovered, excavated, deciphered, and published. 

ii) Egypt is located in Africa, separated from Western Asia by the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Perhaps the flood didn't reach Egypt. And if it happened in prehistoric times, traditions might only be passed down by survivors and their descendants in affected areas–assuming a local flood.  

ii) It might also depend on when Egyptians think it happened. The ancients have a poor sense of relative chronology. If they thought it happened in Pharaonic times, royal historians might not record it because an ecological disaster like that would reflect a failure on the part of the "divine" Pharaoh to protect his country. 

Rainbows

i) Why is the rainbow the sign of Noah's covenant? An obvious reason is that rainbows signal the end of a rainstorm. Some rainstorms produce flash flooding. So there's a natural symbolic association. 

ii) Another reason may be the universality of rainbows, comported to regional phenomena like the Northern lights. The universality of rainbows match the universality of Noah's covenant. A covenant with creation. A covenant that signifies ordinary providence. 

iii) Because rainbows are generated by sunlight and rain water, they evoke the Creator God of Gen 1–the Maker of the sun and rainclouds. That points to the divinity of the Son of Man in Ezk 1:25-28, whose nimbic aura resembles a rainbow. 

iv) In a dry climate like the Middle East, rainbows have a beneficent connotation. They signify life-giving rain. A sign of divine favor and blessing. An emblem of divine benevolence. 

Reading Genesis Well

This should be the best exegetical defense of old-earth creationism:

https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Genesis-Well-Navigating-History/dp/0310598575/

Mixed nuts

I recently read The Lost World of the Flood (IVP 2018) by Tremper Longman & John Walton. It's like a can of mixed nuts. 

It's noteworthy that the two main collaborators, as well as one contributor, are all affiliated with the BioLogos Foundation, which is the flagship of theistic evolution.

1. This is part of an ongoing series: The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Scripture. 

Although it's not entirely fair to judge a book by its title, since a title is simpler than the content of a book, it is, nevertheless, misleading to frame the issue in terms of a "lost world" of Scripture, as if the Bible was a complete cipher until the advent of biblical archeology. 

Boys and their toys

One of the stock objections to the local flood interpretation is that if Noah's flood was merely regional in scale, the ark was unnecessary. Humans and animals could survive outside the flood zone. 

That's a reasonable question. I've addressed that from various angles. 

Now I'd like to consider it from one more angle. Last year, Ken Ham unveiled a theme park centered on his life-size reconstruction of Noah's ark. 

This is meant to graphically illustrate the feasibility of a global flood. There is, though, a sense in which the exercise subverts the aim. After all, we could redirect the objection to the local flood interpretation to the Ark Encounter. The outlay for financing, planning, and building the mockup was much greater than for Noah's ark. More resources were put into designing the floor plan, the furnishings, and so forth, than for the original ark. 

Yet it's not as if the survival of the human race was hanging on Ham's ark. It's not as if the survival of the animal kingdom was hanging on Ham's ark. In fact, his ark will never leave dry dock. His ark will never function as a boat. 

In one respect it's a giant model toy that serves no practical purpose. So what's the point? Its only purpose is the pedagogical value it serves. But ironically, that's in large part what local flood interpreters would say about the purpose served by Noah's ark.