Was the Flood literally global?

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

A friend has e-mailed the following:

 

 

“…. A couple of matters related to one of my classes last night:

 

1. Reason(s) that we hold that the Flood was literally global.

 

1. I was told many years ago that there had never been rain until the Flood and that people were at first delighted and amazed at what they were seeing.

 

Can you help me with either of these? ….”

 

 

My response: A ‘literally global’ Noachic Flood is what I used firmly to believe, as well as the notion that rain was formerly unknown to the antediluvians.

But I don’t anymore.

 

And I feel sorry and embarrassed, now, for those, such as ‘Creationists’ with their ‘Creation Science’, who hold to 1) in particular, “the Flood was literally global”.

Why?

Because, as I see it, they are reading the Bible in a modern language, say English, with a modern ‘scientific’ - even to a great extent a pseudo-scientific - mentality, instead of in a way that gives due consideration to the meaning of the language used by the ancient (not modern) scribes with those scribes’ intended meanings.

 

Previously I have quoted Tim Martin on the modern tendency to reduce everything to science – and one could probably add, to numbers and statistics. Tim Martin has actually called ‘Creation Science’ “a right-wing form of modernism”: http://planetpreterist.com/content/beyond-creation-science-how-preterism-refutes-global-flood-and-impacts-genesis-debate-%E2%80%93-par-5

 

We live in a world dominated by materialism and scientism. The reduction of every aspect of life to “science” has corrupted the soul of Western Civilization. This is one key to understanding the related popularity of both futurism and Creation Science. They are both perfectly compatible with the scientistic spirit of the modern age. In fact, dispensational futurism, at least, is impossible apart from it. Christians aid this scientistic syncretism through Creation Science methods of reading Scripture. They do it by reducing even the language of the Bible to the “scientific.”^[1]

Viewed in this light it is not difficult to see that Creation Science ideology is a right-wing form of modernism. Conrad Hyers puts it this way:

 

Even if evolution is only a scientific theory of interpretation posing as scientific fact, as the [young-earth] creationists argue, [young-earth] creationism is only a religious theory of biblical interpretation posing as biblical fact. To add to the problem, it is a religious theory of biblical interpretation which is heavily influenced by modern scientific, historical, and technological concerns. It is, therefore, essentially modernistic even though claiming to be truly conservative.[2]

 

Catholics (those tending to be of the conservative variety) who have followed Creationism over the years would be well aware that mainstream Catholic scholars have shown virtually no interest whatsoever in its teachings, and that official Catholic documents never seem to support Creation Science.

Why might this be so?

Surely Creation Science, teaching a belief in God the Creator of all things, and vehemently defending the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures, ought to be warmly welcomed by the Church as an invaluable ally.

On the other hand, the God-fearing are not always right in their estimations, no matter how sincere, and they may need to be corrected.

 

Consider Our Lord’s constant corrections of good people along the lines of:

 

‘You have heard it said … but I tell you’

(e. g. Matthew 5:21-22).

 

‘Creationists’ will take biblical phrases such as “the whole earth”, or “all flesh”, and bestow upon these a universal or global status – intending the entire globe.

 

At least they do so when it suits them, such as in the case of the Flood or Babel.

For they are not consistent. If they were they would have the Queen of the South, who came “from the ends of the earth” (Matthew 12:42), making her way northwards from somewhere in the southern hemisphere.

And how do they account for the fact that, at Pentecost, people “from every nation under heaven” are actually listed as being inhabitants of only a very small part of the global world – basically, Rome, Crete, and Egypt, through Syria and Turkey, to Mesopotamia? (Acts 2:5-11):

  

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?  Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God’.

 

The misinterpretation of the ancient texts by modern (say, Western) minds in regard to the Flood is well explained in the following piece by Rich Deem:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

 

The Genesis Flood
Why the Bible Says It Must be Local

Many Christians maintain that the Bible says that the flood account of Genesis requires an interpretation that states that the waters of the flood covered the entire earth. If you read our English Bibles, you will probably come to this conclusion if you don't read the text too closely and if you fail to consider the rest of your Bible. Like most other Genesis stories, the flood account is found in more places than just Genesis. If you read the sidebar, you will discover that Psalm 104 directly eliminates any possibility of the flood being global (see Psalm 104-9 - Does it refer to the Original Creation or the Flood?). In order to accept a global flood, you must reject Psalm 104 and the inerrancy of the Bible. If you like to solve mysteries on your own, you might want to read the flood account first and find the biblical basis for a local flood.

The Bible's other creation passages eliminate the possibility of a global flood

The concept of a global Genesis flood can be easily eliminated from a plain reading of Psalm 104,¹ which is known as the "creation psalm." Psalm 104 describes the creation of the earth in the same order as that seen in Genesis 1 (with a few more details added). It begins with an expanding universe model (reminiscent of the Big Bang) (verse 2,¹ parallel to Genesis 1:1). It next describes the formation of a stable water cycle (verses 3-5,¹ parallel to Genesis 1:6-8). The earth is then described as a planet completely covered with water (verse 6, parallel to Genesis 1:9). God then causes the dry land to appear (verses 7-8,¹ parallel to Genesis 1:9-10). The verse that eliminates a global flood follows: "You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth." (Psalm 104:9)¹ Obviously, if the waters never again covered the earth, then the flood must have been local. Psalm 104 is just one of several creation passages that indicate that God prevented the seas from covering the entire earth.² An integration of all flood and creation passages clearly indicates that the Genesis flood was local in geographic extent.

The Bible says water covered the whole earth... Really?

When you read an English translation of the biblical account of the flood, you will undoubtedly notice many words and verses that seem to suggest that the waters covered all of planet earth.³ However, one should note that today we look at everything from a global perspective, whereas the Bible nearly always refers to local geography. You may not be able to determine this fact from our English translations, so we will look at the original Hebrew, which is the word of God. The Hebrew words which are translated as "whole earth" or "all the earth" are kol (Strong's number H3605), which means "all," and erets (Strong's number H776), which means "earth," "land," "country," or "ground."⁴ We don't need to look very far in Genesis (Genesis 2) before we find the Hebrew words kol erets. ….

[End of quote]

 

‘Creationists’, having arrived at their completely artificial - and quite laughable, if they weren’t so serious - interpretations of the Bible, will then insist upon one’s adhering to their peculiar ‘biblical’ Weltanschauung as behoving Christians dedicated to the preservation of scriptural inerrancy.

 

Well, I would suggest that no one would have been more surprised than Noah (and his family) to learn that he had once ridden out a global Flood in a sea-going vessel the size of the Queen Mary!

 

As to point 2) ‘there had never been rain until the Flood’, it has no solid biblical support as far as I can tell.

And even some ‘Creationists’ now seem to have dropped this idea. For example: https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/was-there-no-rain-before-the-flood/

 

Was There No Rain Before the Flood?

 

Some Christians claim that there was no rain before the Flood;

however, as Dr. Tommy Mitchell shows us,

a close examination of Scripture does not bear this out.

 

….

 

Conclusion

 

While we cannot prove that there was rain before the Flood, to insist that there was not (and even to deride those who think otherwise) stretches Scripture beyond what it actually says. ….

Part Two:

Were all antediluvians affected?

 



Some comments on Part One:

Thank you for sending this through. It is very
interesting and well written.
It reminds me of what I was explaining in class last
week, the difference between "literal" and
"literalistic" readings of Scripture. Literal is
adhering to the text's meaning as literally intended by
the author. Literalistic doesn't consider this, but
rather merely what the words mean in their most obvious
meanings, accounting for no use of idiom or figurative
language.
Without using this terminology, Damien highlighted this
distinction in the case of the flood.

I agree with his analysis.

However, I don't think he ruled out that the
flood might have extended to all the inhabited world?

You might want to ask him?

He does suggest that this is not necessarily the case with
reference to Acts "every nation under the sun".
Perhaps then it is inconclusive.
That it extended to all the inhabited world would be my
favoured interpretation, however, I would like to hear what
Damien thinks.
This issue is a good case study to indicate that
Biblical studies is quite challenging!

The historical-critical methods can be helpful at establishing
what the original text literally meant, and shouldn't be
written off as useless. But, very frequently
I think modern scholarship tends to manipulate the
scripture in a way that undermines the literal meaning. ….

 

 

My response: In Part One:

https://www.academia.edu/37490862/Was_the_Flood_literally_global

it was suggested that those who approach Genesis with a Fundamentalist mentality will take ancient biblical phrases such as “the whole earth”, “all flesh”, and, unhappily, re-present them in global terms.

 

St. Peter writes of “… the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6).

Now, rather than for one instinctively here to seize upon the phrase, “the world”, and automatically take it to mean global world, one would do better to learn from Genesis what “world”, “earth”, the Book of Genesis had so far presented to us.

We find that only a few chapters before the Flood, in Genesis 2.

It is a “world” that basically constitutes what would later come to be known as “the Fertile Crescent” – appropriately also known as “the Cradle of Civilisation”. It stretches approximately from Iraq to Egypt (Ethiopia).

Thus editor Moses geographically updates the primeval toledôt account of Adam, which would have pre-dated “Ashur” and “Cush” (Genesis 2:10-14):

 

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

 

The Noachic world is not really very much different in its span from that rendered as “every nation under heaven” in Acts 2:5-11.

 

Presumably, though, the Noachic (the Adamic) world was significantly different, both geologically and topographically, from the post-diluvian world.

For instance, it is possible that the antediluvian world was circumscribed by a sea (the earth-encircling river Okeanos of the ancients – Tethys Sea?), thereby preventing Noah from escaping the Flood and the burden of having to build an Ark. In this regard, “… the flood might have extended to all the inhabited world?”

That is the view that I personally would favour.   

It seems to accord with St. Peter’s other statement (I Peter 3:20): “In the Ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water”.

Common sense, I think, would tell us that (as according to the Catholic mystic Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich) there must have been significantly more than just eight people aboard the Ark, and that the eight were the progenitors from whom every person on earth - including those others in the Ark - are descended.

Practically every nation today, great or small, has its Flood legends that bear greater or lesser similarities to the Genesis Flood account.

 

Noah and his family did not need to take on board every type of animal then in existence, much less the dinosaurs.

No wonder scientifically-minded people laugh at this sort of desertion of common sense, that once again takes a “literalistic” approach to a global sounding phrase, “every living thing of all flesh” (Genesis 6:10).

Other flood stories throughout the world have the surviving flood-man, whatever he may be called, with only domestic animals on board his boat or raft.

Noah simply would have taken pairs of such animals as he and his family would need for food and sacrifice, and to kick-start his new life on terra firma, until conditions began to revert back to normal.