Is Genesis real history? (new Common Questions page)

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

@still_learning

Though in the case of the flood, if it happened in another ‘dimension’, there humans would have been decomposed and if it didn’t affect the land, there only evidence would have been the ark. Maybe that ark was part of the ‘flood multiverse’?

You are running off the rails here. Parallel universes popping in and out of ours. Step back for a minute and think about what you’re proposing. It turns our entire experience of the world into nonsense, and all of it is pure speculation. We have no idea how God “does it” when he intervenes in his creation.

@still_learning

If God just appeared to all with no doubt, that wouldn’t require much faith, and He wants faith.

Exactly, which is why we will never find definitive proof of his existence. The world is ambiguous because it is a test.

@still_learning

I don’t think they are literally transported into a different location/universe, rather another ‘universe’ that is 99.9999% identical comes to us for a small moment. Which if we think about it, kind of makes sense.

No, this doesn’t make sense at all. Did the people in our universe who ate the fish have counterparts in the other universe? The multiverse with the dancing sun – How did that affect the earth in that universe? Were there people on that earth? I could go on and on. The questions never end, and the answers are speculation pulled out of the thinnest air possible. I think this is called letting your imagination run away with you. Come back to Earth!

@gbrooks9

Okay, let’s check these off.

1] you reject the Globall Flood.

2] you reject the Regional Flood.

3] you reject the idea that it is fiction with moral content.

1. I reject a literal global flood. However, the language of the text is clearly universal in scope. If we cannot understand it as a blow-by-blow account of actual events (YEC), then we must understand it in its literary context (everyone else).
2. I reject the literal regional interpretation of the text as a blow-by-blow account of events. I accept Walton and Longman’s conclusion that a regional flood inspired the many flood myths of the ANE; I only disagree with the importance of that conclusion.
3. I reject the label. “Fiction with moral content” is inadequate. The genre of Genesis 1-11 is something else.

@gbrooks9

Are you able to say what you think the Flood narrative in the O.T. might be?

Sure. It’s not too difficult if we’re willing to look at Genesis 1-11 as a cohesive literary composition, regardless of how many hands may have played a part in shaping the text. Sketching with a broad brush: Genesis 1-11 is a polemic against Mesopotamian religion and culture, and at the same time, it was meant to inoculate Israel against the temptation to syncretism and assimilation into the Babylonian/Assyrian/Neo-Babylonian empire(s). This theme runs from the Pentateuch to the prophets. (Edit: Actually, all the way to Revelation.) The temptation to adopt their neighbors’ gods and customs was always the greatest threat to Israel. Indeed, unfaithfulness to the covenant was the nation’s undoing, according to the prophetic interpretation of the Exile.