The treasures of Egypt was used to make a golden calf idol at the base of Mt. Sinai. Moses ground it into powder and made them eat it.
The Sea people’s came and went 2 or 3 times. Also the Mediterranean was not yet a fixed body of water. That is why the Sea People came and went. They kept getting flooded out of their homeland in the west.
It seems we are between a rock and a hard place.
No matter which part of the Bible we accept, it forces us to reject some other part.
The Bible’s Flood Story seems to be the perfect example of the Biblical scribes wanting to take a pagan story (non-historical) and turn it into a story that fit the Biblical theology.
The Bible’s Flood Story seems to be the perfect example of the Biblical scribes wanting to take a pagan story (non-historical) and turn it into a story that fits the Biblical theology.
Flood stories were rampant across all of the ANE and the Bible having one certainly doesn’t suggest it copied it. James K. Hoffmeier states:
“If this movement towards monotheism occurred during the Babylonian captivity…it seems counterintuitive to take the polytheistic mythic literature of Babylon and place it into the Hebrew monotheistic writings”
If all the ANE flood accounts are describing the same event than it is no surprise they are similar. The Hittite and Egyptian records of the Battle of Kadesh a very similar, does that mean one of them plagiarized?
What if we frame it like this:
IEveryone knew a/the flood story. Perhaps within Babylonian captivity it’s version of the flood stories were reason to ‘correct’ the flood story/stories the Hebrews were being influenced by.
I’m not proposing that this is what actually happened. However, I don’t know that there’s any real way to give preference to this story over Hoffmeier’s
Agreed. And if the Bible presented us with a regional flood, then there would be a stronger inclination for me to think it was historical.
But the Biblical narrative of the Flood has been tainted by editorial efforts to make a regional flood into a GLOBAL flood! And on those grounds, it must be rejected as a GLOBAL historical event.
Why do I say this? Because unlike most of the other events described in the Old Testament, virtually the entire story of Noah requires super-natural events and intervention to make sense of it:
If I somehow suspected a regional flood was coming, I would move my entire family up to higher ground - - not attempt to build an ark that has never been built before.
And so there has to be series of miracles that a person has never made a boat before is going to make a giant boat, on the first attempt, without even a test voyage.
If the flood were really regional, there would not be texts saying that every human is dead, except for Noah and his family.
The references to the Kenites clearly pre-date including the Flood narrative, because the descendants of Cain are believed to exist in the Kenites. How can we say that Cain’s descendants taught humanity how to work with metal, when only Noah and 3 sons exist to teach all humanity about musical instruments, smelting metal and so on?
How do the animals get into the ark? God has to bring them. How do they all fit in the ark? God uses his miraculous powers to make it possible.
How do the animals survive for a whole year in the ark? Again, yet another miracle of God to make sure the food is ample.
NONE of the Global Flood story rings true or makes sense.
But if we see the Biblical story as a co-opting of pagan stories - - to make a HEBREW version of these strange events, we can better understand why such an outlandish story is found in the Bible… just like we find a talking mule, or wrestling with God, or Samson with magical hair. These are pagan stories that have been co-opted into the Bible to fit the Biblical world view.
If you were trying to write persuasive metaphysics to a superstitious audience, re-writing a polytheistic story as a MONO-theistic one is EXACTLY what you would.
If I somehow suspected a regional flood was coming, I would move my entire family up to higher ground - - not attempt to build an ark that has never been built before.
If God tells you to build an ark, you build an ark. Noah was essentially a prophet to the wicked of his world and it makes no sense for a prophet to pack up and leave the people he is trying to minister to. Moving to a high mountain wasn’t an option, as the flood would’ve swept over everything within hundreds of miles.
And so there has to be series of miracles that a person has never made a boat before is going to make a giant boat, on the first attempt, without even a test voyage.
The dimensions of the ark have great numerical significance, and probably don’t represent the actual dimensions of the boat. Better translations of the Hebrew have shown that the ark Noah build was most likely a circular reed boat, not the massive wooden boat Ken Ham has put together. Most of the populations of the ANE knew how to sail, as they were right next to rivers and bodies of water like the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The references to the Kenites clearly pre-date including the Flood narrative, because the descendants of Cain are believed to exist in the Kenites. How can we say that Cain’s descendants taught humanity how to work with metal, when only Noah and 3 sons exist to teach all humanity about musical instruments, smelting metal, and so on?
It is not totally unbelievable to suggest that Cain’s line started working with metal, as they lived in the Near East, and that is precisely where metalworking began. This knowledge was not only known by Noah and his sons, as they were not the only humans on earth to survive the flood.
How do the animals get into the ark? God has to bring them. How do they all fit in the ark? God uses his miraculous powers to make it possible.
Since the flood was only regional it would not have been difficult to gather all the different species from the region. I would also suggest that God aided Noah, but apparently miracles are ridiculous, and God never does them.
How do the animals survive for a whole year in the ark? Again, yet another miracle of God to make sure the food is ample.
I don’t think it is a stretch that Noah could provide food for all the animals, as he probably only had a couple hundred.
But if we see the Biblical story as a co-opting of pagan stories - - to make a HEBREW version of these strange events, we can better understand why such an outlandish story is found in the Bible… just like we find a talking mule or wrestling with God or Samson with magical hair. These are pagan stories that have been co-opted into the Bible to fit the Biblical world view.
If God never does the miraculous then who’s to say we can’t just throw away the resurrection. You want to look at things from a purely naturalistic way, but when God is involved that is just not the way things work.
The Global Flood is certainly one long pearl necklace, with each pearl being a miraculous or super-natural event or process.
Do you accept the idea that God uses evolutionary processes as part of his Creation tool kit?
This being the Biologos forum is does not surprise me that we have happened upon this question, because it is most certainly EXTREMELY relevant to a discussion of Noah’s Flood. I do, however believe in evolutionary processes, although I am most certainly not a Neo-Darwinist. I know you were hoping I would say no, so you could drag me into a long argument.
Well, actually, I was hoping to AVOID a long argument.
But then you go and say something that has me quite puzzled:
You say you are NOT a Neo-Darwinist.
Okay… what kind of Evolutionist are you? Can you specify the key distinction that you hold to in a sentence or two?
I don’t believe that evolution is simply a process of randomness, something Neo-Darwinism preaches. In my mind if evolution repeated itself the universe would be exactly the same, or very similar to the way it is today due to the laws and principles that God has set up the universe to abide by. Then again I wouldn’t consider my views on evolution rock solid.
Only if everything went exactly the same way. Same meteors hitting earth, same preys and predators and earth quakes and so on. Or what about how people killed some animals into extinction if instead we did not kill one bird species in 10,000,000 year it could have diverged into several species and so on.
Questions like these are mildly irrelevant, as they are all theoretical anyway. I don’t think that the world would be much different in terms of broad categories of life, of course, there would be some differences. However, my views are still developing and I’m willing to listen to suggestions.
Well it’s all chance interactions.
Look at the specific interactions with passion flowers and butterflies with egg mimicry.
If a random flower did not have a mutation resulting in a petiole bump then this interaction would not have happened. Evolution is full of these specific examples. I would be hard pressed to believe these things would just happen again.
I am mainly referring to humans and an environment that can accommodate humans as happening again.
So… as soon we add God to the equation, it’s the Christian embrace of Evolutionary Processes.
What is ironic is that for many years, BioLogos has been uncomfortable with the idea that God guides evolution with extreme precision and in great detail.
I was pretty much the only one who came forward and insisted that God used Evolutionary Processes to get exactly what God wanted.
It may look like chance interactions, but in my view, it only LOOKS like chance interactions. God precisely invoked evolutionary processes to produce exactly hat He wanted.
Well it’s no different than my faith that there is life on other planets and that some of those planets are bound to have intelligent life , maybe more advance or more primitive than us, and they may look extremely different and they have some connection to God much like ours awaiting the kingdom of god to completely overlap with a restored heaven and planet.
Well there are several that believe something along the lines of the laws used to create the universe results in Gods will being fulfilled. But , many don’t believe that means a gap in evolution needs to be filled by God. If God controlled evolution than it means it was not done by random chance which means all the choices, such as a specific caterpillar feeding on a specific leaf was predestined by God to bring about this or that change which ultimately means there is no free will. I disagree with that.
I believe that you are just adding God to evolution because you can. If God is not essential to evolution then there is nothing to stop us from taking him out of the whole process. I think the Bible makes one thing very clear: God is the architect of the universe and all life and has been intimately involved with his creation from the very beginning. We are not deists for crying out loud!
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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