first installment of 6-part series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07gxxbggJs&t=25s
Showing posts with label Noah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noah. Show all posts
Friday, March 27, 2020
Thursday, October 17, 2019
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.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
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.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Window or mural?
A quick follow-up to my previous post:
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.
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.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Saturday, August 31, 2019
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:
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 07, 2019
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.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
What's a rainbow?
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth” (Gen 9:8-17).
i) As a rule, the aim of biblical exegesis is to read the text like the original audience would read it. Modern readers know both more and less about the world than the original audience. We know less about a particular time and place in the ancient world than the original audience to whom a book of the Bible was addressed, but we know far more about the world in general than the ancient audience. This carries the risk that we sometimes unconsciously import assumptions into the text that the original audience didn't share.
For instance, a 21C American doesn't have to travel to Africa to recognize African animals. In theory, a 21C American could never travel beyond a 50-mile radius of his birthplace, but know a lot about the rest of the world. By contrast, many ancient readers had an extremely provincial knowledge of the world they lived in. In many cases, no knowledge of the world at large. Just their little corner of the world. Their village and thereabouts.
ii) In addition, the same text can reflect more than one viewpoint. In the case at hand, there's the viewpoint of Noah and his descendants (e.g. Abraham), to whom the covenant sign was first revealed. In addition, there's the viewpoint of audience that Moses was writing for. The Exodus generation.
iii) Consider the impression a rainbow might have on the original audience. Let's assume that Noah resided in Mesopotamia. And that's certainly Abraham's fatherland. At least by modern standards, rain is rare in most of that region. Mind you, we have to be careful about extrapolating from the present to the past. From what I've read, the ancient Near East has become more arid over the millennia. But that means for Noah and his descendants (e.g. Abraham), sightings of rainbows might be highly unusual.
Egypt is much drier. And depending on the area, rainfall is rarer by far in the Sinai desert.
Now the implied audience for the Pentateuch consists of people who migrated from Egypt to the Sinai. It's possible that most of them never saw a rainbow. An unheard of phenomenon. Imagine the impact of a downpour in the Sinai, followed by a rainbow–if that was a novel experience. An extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
On the other hand, Palestine has rainy seasons, so they will be moving into a region where rainbows are more common. As such, the text had a shifting significance, depending on the reader's experience of rainbows. It's a useful exercise for a modern reader to put himself in the situation of Noah and Abraham, then Israelites in Egypt, then Israelites in the Sinai, then Israelites in Palestine, to consider the impression a rainbow would making depending on the regional climate.
Saturday, June 23, 2018
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.
Thursday, April 05, 2018
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.
Friday, November 17, 2017
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.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
The dove and the flood
In his recent book on Genesis, Iain Provan recycles a number of stock objections to Noah's flood, specially on a global interpretation. I'm not going to respond to most of those objections, in part because I've discussed that issue on multiple occasions, in part because these don't pose the same challenge for the local flood interpretation, and in part because young-earth creationists (e.g. Jonathan Sarfati, Andrew Snelling, Kurt Wise) have propose solutions–which Provan simply ignores. But I'd like to comment on one particular objection, which is somewhat unusual:
At its most extreme, this approach results in a highly literalistic reading of the flood story that leads us into very problematic areas when it comes to squaring its perceived truth-claims with what is otherwise known (especially nowadays) about reality…If the sea level rose all over the earth as high as the peak of Mount Ararat (c. 16,946 feet), the oceans would have had to triple in volume in the corse of 150 days and then speedily return to normal…And after the floodwaters receded, how did the dove fly down the mountain to find an olive tree (only found at low elevations) and then back up again to the top of the mountain, given that doves are not physically equipped to fly at such altitudes? How did Noah, his family members and the animals make the trek down such a formidable mountain? I. Provan, Discovering Genesis (Eerdmans, 2015), 117-18.
A few issues:
i) I don't know what Provan means by "literalistic". Does he mean the account is stylized? Or does he mean the account is legendary?
ii) Since I'm not an ornithologist, I can't assess Provan's claim. Sarfati says:
Doves and pigeons have very strong light muscles, around a third of their weight. So they are powerful flyers… J. Sarfati, The Genesis Account (2015), 574.
iii) Be that as it may, the text doesn't say the ark ran aground on Mt. Ararat. Rather, it bottomed out somewhere in that general mountain range:
4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen (Gen 8:4-5).
Many of us have seen mountain ranges from above when we flew over them in airplanes. At least in my experience, arial views of mountain ranges frequently show rows of mountains with a trough in-between. Parallel ridges. Small areas may be encircled by the massif.
I can envision the ark becoming caught within a mountain range. Mountains on all four sides would be higher than the draught of the ark. The ark wouldn't rest on a mountain peak, but in a basin within the massif. Water would drain through slopes. As the waters lowered, the ark lowered until it bottomed out on the floor of the basin. So it wouldn't be at anything like the elevation of Mt Ararat.
Do the "tops of the mountains" refer to all the mountains the region, or just the cluster that trapped the ark within their well?
Noah's party and the animals could climb out or climb down the slope or dip, between mountains, which functions like a natural mountain pass.
I'm not saying that's necessarily correct. I wasn't there. I don't know exactly or even approximately where the ark came to rest. But on the face of it, Provan's objection lacks imagination. Is he really trying to visualize the scene?
Friday, May 05, 2017
Floating zoo
A common objection to Noah's ark is that prescientific people found the story credible because they didn't know any better. I'm going to quote two ancient Jewish sources which show that prescientific Jews were quite capable of raising logistical questions about Noah's ark. My point is not to comment on their solutions, or to provide my own solutions–which I've discussed on various occasions–but to simply document that it's fallacious to discount Noah's ark on the grounds that the narrator was too ignorant to anticipate practical objections to his account. Even before the advent of modern science, ancient readers were in a position to pose common sense questions like how and what to feed all the animals on the ark:
This applies to Noah, who fed and sustained the animals. What food did he feed them? R. Akiba maintained: All of them ate dried figs, as it its written: And it shall be for food for thee and for them (Gen 6:21). Our sages, however, said, This is not so. He provided each of them with the kind of food it was accustomed to eat–straw for the camel, barley for the ass, and so forth. Each animal was fed what it was accustomed to eat.Certain animals were fed at the first hour of the day, others at the second, and still others at the third; while some animals were fed at the third of night, others at midnight, and still others at the time of the crowing of the cock. Our sages declared that during the twelve months in the ark, Noah slept neither during the day nor at night because he was occupied constantly with feeding the creatures in his care [Tanh. B. 58.2]. Samuel A. Berman, Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu: An English Translation of Genesis and Exodus from the Printed Version of Tanhuma-Yelammedenu with an Introduction, Notes, and Indexes (KTAV, 1996), 41-42.R. Hana b. Bizna said: Eliezer [Abraham's servant] remarked to Shem [Noah's] eldest son,42 'It is written, After their kinds they went forth from the ark. Now, how were you situated?'43 - He replied. '[In truth], we had much trouble in the ark. The animals which are usually fed by day we fed by day; and those normally fed by night we fed by night. But my father did not know what was the food of the chameleon. One day he was sitting and cutting up a pomegranate, when a worm dropped out of it, which it [the chameleon] consumed. From then onward he mashed up bran for it, and when it became wormy, it devoured it. The lion was nourished by a fever, for Rab said, "Fever sustains for not less than six (days) nor more than thirteen."44 As for the phoenix,45 my father discovered it lying 'in the hold of the ark. "Dost thou require no food?" he asked it. "I saw that thou wast busy," it replied, "so I said to myself, I will give thee no trouble." "May it be (God's) will that thou shouldst not perish," he exclaimed; as it is written, Then I said, I shall die in the nest, but I shall multiply my days as the phoenix.' Sanh. 108b.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Friday, April 04, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
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