In response to Vernon Jenkin's contention that the Noachian flood was
global, Christopher Sharp writes:
> One could envisage that in its original Hebrew in the culture of the day,
> world wide could have meant known to the whole world, and only today does
> world wide mean global. By insisting that the flood was global you are
> reading modern concepts back into the Bible.
I thank Christopher for making a very important point, and I should like to
enlarge on it. I believe strongly that we must read and thus interpret the
Bible contextually, and the context of the story of Noah is the comological
model of "the heavens and the earth" (a merism in Hebrew for "the whole of
creation"), the one implicit and explicit in Genesis 1-11 and throughout the
Old Testament. This conceptual model is the following:
"What the ancient Hebrews saw was an earth that was comparatively
speaking flat and apparently a circular disk, as its circular horizon
reveals (Isa. 40:22a). The Earth, here meaning "the land" (and not "the
other part of the creation from the heavens") apparently rests upon and is
surrounded by a huge body of water, which the Hebrews referred to as "the
Deep" (Prov. 8:27; Job 26:10). The portion of the waters that lies under
the earth is the source of the springs that well up from below the ground
(Gen. 2:6; "the waters under the earth--Exod. 20:4). Above the land is a
great expanse of the sky, which appears dome-like, called the Firmament
(Hebr., "raqi'a"), It is held up by "pillars," high mountains on the edge of
the earth (Job 26:11). That this dome-like expanse was thought to be solid
is clear from the fact that there exists above it another great sea,
referred to in the Bible as the "waters above the heavens" (Gen. 1:6-7; Ps.
148:4). The Firmament contains openings through which rain falls from these
waters above the heavens (Gen. 7:11-12) and poetically described
"storehouses" which hold snow, hail, and lightning (Job 38:22).
It is not clear from biblical references just how large the ancient
Hebrews thought the land mass was, though it must have included Egypt (in
part), Mesopotamia, and the land of the Hittites (perhaps including
Mycenaean Greeks on the now Turkish coast). In no way could it have been
thought of to include the entire Old World (the New World being unknown) as
we know it. The notion that the land mass was surrounded by "the Great Sea"
or "Ocean" was part of the cosmology of other peoples, e.g., the early
Greeks. What is very clear from the texts is that the early Hebrews and
their neighbors had no notion that they lived on a spherical earth or a land
mass the size we know it to be today. So, I agree entirely with Christopher
that it is a mistake to read our knowledge of the earth into the ancient
text. It is wrong to describe the Noachian flood as global. Those who
wrote this story had no notion that they lived on a globe! If the flood
account preserved in Genesis is based on a historical occurance, and I see
no reason to reject this position, then the flood must have been local, as
several persons, including some of our colleagues on this discussion list,
have argued.
A careful reading of the story of the flood in Gen. 6-9 will show that
in part the Flood constitutes an unmaking of creation, a return to chaos.
These literary elements in the story call for careful attention, for they
give us clues as to how the inspired author(s) or editor intended their
readers to understand its meaning.
When I read literature by YECs, who often claim to take the Bible
literally, I do not find any recognition of the literal cosmological model
that is implicit in the text. How the Hebrews actually conceived the world
is ignored. Instead, they interpret the text anything but literally. They
read into the text scientific knowledge that is not there (e.g., a spherical
earth); or they explain away what is there--a good example is interpreting
"waters above the earth" as "an ozone-rich vapor canopy," as one of my YEC
students once put it. I do not think this is a proper way to respect the
ancient text. A proper way is to recognize the concept of the world our
spiritual ancestors had, respect it for being the useful and good model it
was at the time, and put it in the same category as any scientific model, as
one to be replaced by a better model. That is the way of scientific
modelling: why should we think God would expect us to not look upon the
Hebrew model as true for its time but now superceded? The theological
truths about creation in Genesis, the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, and many other
places in the Old Testament do not depend upon the cosmological model in
which they are placed. They are true for us believer however we understand
the creation to be, including an evolving creation. The same is true of the
story of Noah's flood. Its primarily purpose is theological, not
scientific, and we shouldn't treat it as a historical, scientific account,
even if a historical event lies behind it.
Grace and peace,
Bob Schneider
rjschn39@bellsouth.net
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