I think this was a local flood, involving the line of Adam. Adam’s line was completely destroyed except for these 8 people. When the promise is made, it’s specifically made to those on the ark and their descendents. Basically, he won’t destroy Adam’s line with a flood again. And i think that promise is not necessarily just talking about floods. God doesn’t destroy Adam’s line again period. Even when they sin over and over and over again through the period of the judges and then the divided kingdom, God doesn’t wipe them all out. I think that’s pretty significant.
1 Like
?
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.”
Which includes all animals…
Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 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.
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…
"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.”
So I’d be curious what you think about the nature of this promise that God made to all creatures… that he would never again destroy some animals in a flood or only those specific animals that descended from the animals on the ark will not die in floods, or what, exactly?
Yes, a flood is specifically mentioned, but He never kills them all by any means, even when they really deserve it. I see some massive restraint (mercy!) on God’s part.
I still think he’s talking about Adam’s line here, and the livestock and such that they would have. I don’t think any of the animals were actually aware of this covenant or cared about it. 
This covenant is being told to the humans, who are the ones who are sinning. The sheep and cattle aren’t the ones sinning.
I am reminded of Jonah 4 and the concern for animals:
11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
1 Like
So God promised that neither any of Adam’s/Noah’s descendants, nor any of their animals or their animals, would ever be destroyed in a local flood?
No I think, the promise is to not destroy the whole line of Adam (and their animals) as was done in the flood. I think the main point was destroying the line of Adam, not the method of destroying. And when you look at the rest of the Old Testament, you see the line of Adam repeatedly turning away from God, and yet God never wipes them out. He punishes them, but they still exist as a people group. He never reduces them to just one family like he did with Noah.
From a global flood perspective with the promise to all humanity and animals on earth, do you think God’s saying he won’t destroy everything with a flood, but he might destroy it with a virus or an asteroid or some other means? That’s clearly not what God is saying. The point is to not destroy everything period, right? That’s what I always took from it when I was YEC. 
If it’s all about the means of destroying, that rainbow isn’t very comforting.
3 Likes
That viewpoint makes sense. But, when I was YEC I’m pretty sure I heard so much from AIG about how it had to be a global flood that I read into it the idea that it was just saying God wouldn’t judge the entire earth with a flood again.
On a side note, James Baldwin’s famous essay, “The Fire Next Time” apparently comes from a song written by enslaved people that went, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time.” So I guess there have been a fair amount of others who saw it along the lines of simply crossing “flood” off the list of the many potential means God had of judging the world next.
Um, yes?
the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved…
I know, right? That idea can only be found if it is forced into the text. No one would ever get the idea that God was saying 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” if they were just reading the text at face value.
People like Peter?
Perhaps I should have been clearer – I read “global proportions” into it when it may have been simply referring to God’s treatment of the line of Adam, as Boscopup was saying. AIG has implied that if the flood of Noah was regional, then God is breaking his promise every time a local flood happens.
I can’t speak for AIG, but I simply so no legitimate alternative. If the flood as presented in the text was portrayed as local, and God promises, “I will never do that again…”. Then what other alternative is there than that God was making a false promise?
I’m genuinely open to hearing your or @Boscopup’s alternative, but I simply can’t see how one could see anything else there without a major violation of the words in the text.
The idea that God was referring only to one select group of people within the earth is clearly something being inserted or massively read into the text of Genesis; that is not something anyone would get from reading the text…
“The Lord regretted that he had made the line of Adam on the earth…”?
“I will blot out the line of Adam whom I have created from the face of the land… and the line of Adam’s animals_…“?
“And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh of the lime of Adam…”?
“And all flesh belonging to the line of Adam died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind of the line of Adam…”?
Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature that belongs to the line of Adam as I have done…”?
These ideas are clearly not in the text as we have received it. Everything about a straightforward reading communicates a catastrophic flood that destroys all life, with a promise that this will never happen again. I simply cannot see how a straightforward reading of the text by any objective reader (say an atheist, agnostic, Hindu, or Buddhist)… would they read this text and say, “Oh, clearly, the threat and judgment was only against the line of Adam, and against the animals that belonged to the line of Adam; and the promise to never do that again only applied to those in the line of Adam…?? I simply cannot see this as a legitimate interpretation of what the text says no matter how generous and open minded so try to be to entertain alternative interpretations.
But I am genuinely interested in hearing, and better understanding, the alternative you are proposing. You really think that the text of Genesis 6-9, by straightforward reading, is really trying to communicate that God only judged, and destroyed a limited and particular selection of humanity, and destroyed only a particular selection of animals, and the promise clearly was intended to communicate merely that he would never wipe out the descendants of those same selections of humanity, and the descendants of those particular animals?
If by “straightforward reading” you mean reading the text from a Western, 21st Century perspective, then sure. But is that the perspective the text was written for? I’m not sure that the text was written to an “objective reader,” so I’m not sure what I would gain by trying to be one. No doubt the flood is written about as catastrophic and world-ending, but the scope of the “world” to a reader today would be vastly different than it would be to someone in the ancient near east. I do think we tend to read a global scope into the text that perhaps we shouldn’t.
1 Like
No, I mean what an alien from Alpha Centauri, once he learned English grammar and the meaning of words, would understand upon reading it, or (as I did mention), someone from Asia steeped in Hinduism or Buddhism that had never read or even heard of this text before and had absolutely no need to find any particular reading in the text.
And hence exactly the point - if the words as written communicate a universal/cosmic/worldwide phenomenon, then the promise is a solemn oath never to do something universal/cosmic/worldwide again.
I am suggesting that it is we 21st Century Westerners, with our ideas of a “local” flood, that are forcing that very foreign interpretation and those very foreign concepts back into that text that itself clearly was not trying to communicate a limited or local phenomenon. The reason this seems so obvious to me is that I still can’t make any alternate sense of the promise, (as generous and loose with interpretation and words as I try to be) the “I’ll never do this again” promise, a promise made both to men and animals. If the text is trying to communicate a limited/local event, I still can’t make sense of what sense the promise makes, “I’ll never make a limited/local flood again that will destroy some men or animals…?”
Just so I understand… You really think that the text as written has absolutely nothing in it that warrants someone interpreting the author as trying to communicate a global event? Rather, that anyone who reads Genesis 6-9 and comes away with the idea that the author was describing a global or universal event, one which killed “all” life except for those in the ark, and wherein a promise is made that “all” life (both men and animals) will never be destroyed in similar fashion again, is the one guilty of “reading into” the text?
That seems to be a different scenario than the flood, whose purpose was to destroy the people in the land. The final coming doesn’t include killing everyone on earth with that fire. Everyone is raised and then judged. There aren’t people left behind on the old earth that passes away.
In the beginning of chapter 6, he talks about the sons of God taking wives of the daughters of men. Who are the sons of God? I think they’re Adam’s descendents, God’s chosen people. Who are the daughters of men? I think they’re women from the other people who are worshiping other gods (much like Saul takes women who worship other gods and then falls away himself). If that’s the case, then this whole story is about God’s chosen people (“Adam”) and the “land” they live in. It’s not just any subset of humanity. It’s God’s chosen. It’s not just any local flood. It’s one that wipes out God’s chosen.
In chapter 9, God makes a covenant with Noah and his family - again, God’s chosen people. He hasn’t made a covenant with the people in the Americas or the people in China, or even the Egyptians. He’s made a covenant with Noah’s family, which is all that’s left of Adam’s family.
Even if it is just a promise about a flood, that promise is still kept. God’s people were never again wiped out by a flood - global or local. No matter how many times they rebelled against God, Israel didn’t get wiped out by a flood (or any other means).
2 Likes
I’d suggest that’s not really possible, because no one, no matter who they are or where they’re from, reads text in a vacuum. (For one thing, it would be too loud to think in there 
). The text was created in a very particular time and place and didn’t just fall out of the sky on gold tablets. It just makes a lot more sense to me to try to approach the text with at least some attempt to understand how the original audience would have perceived it. And ancient peoples did not tend to have the same “global perspective” that we do and often take for granted – so I try to keep that in mind when interpreting. For example, I also don’t believe the entire globe came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph even though a “straightforward reading” of the text might suggest that.
1 Like
My problem (one of them, anyway 
) is that ANE scholarship wasn’t even a thing until 150 years ago. So, for example, the numerical sequence, 1-[7], was always there in Genesis 1. Christians were misbelieving (and still are) until after that? (I am not talking about the translation of the Hebrew word rendered ‘day’.)
I’m a bit baffled because that is what I am advocating for. I am pleading that we understand what the original audience would have understood, and not force our modernistic idea of a “local” flood into what the original author and/or audience would have understood in the very universal words.
So of course the original audience would certainly have understood “the whole world came to Joseph” to be a figure of speech or hyperbole. That is “straightforward” reading, rather than literalistic reading.
Are you suggesting that this is what is going on in Genesis 6-9? That the author really wasn’t trying to communicate a flood that destroyed all life, but that when he wrote “all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind”… this wasn’t intended by the author, nor received by the original audience, as meaning “all”… but rather the author intended, and the original audience would have understood, this to mean “many, but obviously not all”?
But if so, I remain baffled: If “all” is just colloquial term meaning “many”, I am still baffled by this bizarre promise that “never again will there be a flood that will destroy many living creatures…”
The fact that the original audience would have viewed it in universal terms of their day does not mean it necessarily matches up with something that is truly global.
The author may have been communicating that everything died to the scope of their geographic understanding. So what was “all” to them is obviously not “all” from a global perspective. Since I’m not a scholar, I’m still learning about this – perhaps “land” is a better translation than “earth,” but I don’t know.
2 Likes
Right, That much makes sense to me insofar as it goes. In and of itself that proposal holds together, and would cover all the basic concerns and be faithful to what is in the text, etc. And if that was all that was in the text I wouldn’t see any major objection…
But if “all” wasn’t really all, but we should really understand it as “many”, I am still trying to understand exactly how you can make sense of God’s promise, which then becomes, “Never again will I strike down many living creatures as I have done…”
I can understand why this would seem to not line up. But if this is, in fact, about a regional flood, then God could have been using the same kind of limited universal language as the rest of the text does. If this is primarily about Adam’s line, then God’s covenant is with Noah’s line specifically – not the Chinese, Australians, Native Americans, etc., and so his use of “all life” is within that context, not within the context of a globe the original audience didn’t even know the scope of.
1 Like