- Global flood
- Worldwide flood (regional but all of humanity)
- Local flood - Middle East
- Local flood - Black Sea
- Local flood - Caspian Sea
- No literal Noahâs flood
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voters
I feel like non liquet should be an option. I feel like there are strong reasons as a Christian tying me to some form of the story as actually happening in history but the Biblical account looks like two later versions melded together into one --both of which rearrange Mesopotamian furniture. If there is anything historical in there-- or even if most of it is or isnât, it is beyond us to reconstruct with any confidence. I think we just have the story and we have to let it speak to us and not worry about things we just cannot know. If anyone wants some lengthy reading material, here are my thoughts on Jesus and the flood and If Noahâs ark is fiction, what about the Resurrection as both of those seem important to many Christians.
Vinnie
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I tend to go with local, but tying it to one specific locale is above my pay grade.
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What about a local flood as part of a worldwide catastrophe (such as an asteroid strike) that affected the Earth differently in different places?
Such as, for example, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis?
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I only made my choice loosely, my impression from most of what ive studied leads me to generally state
âMesopotamia and surrounding regions ââŚ
Storms move , they arent stagnant.
Even considering â rising â waters from a rapid glacial event and freak monsoonsâŚ
Iâd, personally, be hard pressed to nail down specific defined regions within a reliable degree of accuracy without spending a lifetime stdying topography.
I admit , I dont care as much about the accuracy of where exactly. Iâm more concerned with what I can rule out , what I know its least likely to be .
Global flood covering mountains just doesnât have enough supporting evidence.
God doesnât author confusion.
The account itself defies a global flood.
â noahs known world â for my short answer.
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Thatâs what the Hebrew term means in context, so I second this notion.
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Local flood, Middle East. The similarities between the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis flood are hard to ignore, and the story in the Epic of Gilgamesh is older and is set in Mesopotamia.
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Who was âNoahâ? âRestâ?
Whereâs the impact crater? And who was building arks 10,000 BCE, at the start of the Neolithic?
âStatistical analysis shows that the Younger Dryas is merely the last of 25 or 26 DansgaardâOeschger events (DâO events) over the past 120,000 years.â wiki
Move on. Business as usual. Nothing to see here.
I chose âNo literal Noahâs floodâ, because there wasnât anything remotely like it until you go back to the possible Black Sea Flood 5600 BCE, but Iâd also want to add âLocal flood - Middle Eastâ which inundated Mesopotamia to an average depth as low as 1m in 2850 +/- 50 BCE, concentrating up to 5m deep, depositing half that depth of mud, for weeks at riparian Ur, which was then reoccupied. That gave rise to the written Flood myths, starting 750 years later. Still 1,500 years before the Jews blatantly used it with the invented name of Noah.
Historically? Philosophically? Religiously?
I never met him personally, the best I have is ananecdotal account passed down through oral traditions a few thousand years ago âŚ
An account thatâs been translated and retranslated again and again since it was first recorded in text .
Thatâs not a commentary on its reliability or accuracy, its just the facts as I understand them .
â who was Noah? â ⌠A dude on a boat with at least some local livestock trying to keep his feet dry ⌠not unlike many of the people in the iowa â93â floods .
The size of the boat , the volume of water , the amount and types of animals , the number of flood victims , etc etc ⌠are highly debated and certainly unsubstantiated by any reliable evidence.
But , i dont think any of that really matters that much ⌠I dont think any of that has anything to do with the PURPOSE of the account .. the message being conveyed .
Its the same message repeated throughout the bible âŚ
Acknowledging the Spirit of God ,repentance, forgiveness ,faithfulness, trust , knowledge, foresight, prophecy , mercy/salvation .
Kind of a running theme . 
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So? That someone translates a text into another language does not change the text.
YECs miss the message for the details.
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Well ⌠on translations⌠it kinda does .
A prime example⌠â fowl â
Kjv lists bats as â Fowlâ ..â the lapwing and the bat â
But the hebrew doesnât say fowl .
It translates â flying creature â or â the flyer â .
Its a small thing , but it does change the perception of the unstudied reader .
It also creates a conflict ⌠God doesnât know a bird from a mammal ?
How can the interpretation avoid being nonsensical if the translation is nonsensical?
Iâll add , Ideally, every translation would be perfect , but that doesnât seem to be the case ⌠infact , it seems everytime its translated , another mistake is found , parts omitted or added or some such inconsistency.
I selected local flood middle east but that is the literal Noahâs flood. There is nothing in the text about a global flood â that isnât and cannot be the meaning of the word translated as âearthâ in that text.
It the same kind of confusion as flat earthers in reverse â one trying to replace the âearthâ in the Bible with the planet of modern science and the other replacing the planet of modern science with the description in the Bible. The planet is not flat but a small piece of the planet is close enough to flat â thus that is the âearthâ in Noahâs story. And trying to turn this into a global flood contrary to the meaning of the words in the text, frankly turns the whole story into complete nonsense. If you are going to insert some impossible divine magic into the text then it is more coherent (and true to the text) to simply have God magically turning a tiny flat earth into a huge globe after the flood.
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Historically, archaeologically, anthropologically, literarily, scientifically.
How did Noah acknowledge the Spirit of God? Repent? Who was forgiven? For what? Who exercised faithfulness? Which way? Trust? Knowledge? Foresight? Prophecy? Mercy/salvation?
What about them? I.e. psychologically? In the way folk belief is overwhelmingly powerful even in educated cultures.
How do those elements read in to the recycled, over 4,000 year old Gilgamesh epic, float Christianity? Itâs all very circular; a feedback loop, isnât it? That Jesus couldnât not tap in to.
Yeah, its repetitiveâŚ
Why wouldnât it be ?
The entire premise of religious experience is a common experience, a sense of a shared experience. Thatâs sorta the foundation of Christianity.
Since Christianity is essentially an offshoot of judaism , it carries similar shared experience.
I would suggest that the reason the bible exists at all is because people noted common experiences and shared their own .
as far as â evidence â of the noah account⌠ive already answered all that , im not certain why I need to address things ive already addressed.
Ill say it again differently if i need i guess
There is little to no evidence of the physical events , depending on oneâs interpretation of the text and oneâs bias .
Personally, I dont need a lot of physical evidence to think a dude got on a boat with some livestock during a flood .
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Iâm sure you donât. How big was the boat? Where was it? There were no artefacts, less than construction, at Ur, below Woolleyâs 8â of clay. Whyâs that?
It all dissolves away as anything other than a folk story doesnât it? Why, how do you appear to connect it to an actual person? A 2850 +/- BCE dude? Who bears no quantitative or qualitative comparison with the unique Noah - âRestâ - recharacterization of Utnapishtim in any way. By seven orders of magnitude.
Or donât you?
In Woolleyâs actual flood, I can understand people loading up papyrus rafts, already naturally on hand, way upstream, as the waters rose. To pole their way to higher ground. And the inhabitants of Ur loading up wagons and beasts and heading for the hills, metaphorically speaking. Getting 20â above Ur at sea level at least. I can tell that reasonable story at a time of rapid climate change.
Its like you dont read responses âŚ
So , type away my dude ⌠no matter if your questions have already been answered .
If you want to post your speculations, you dont need to do it as a response to me . Just post them .
I will thanks. Always in response. Bone and marrow and all that. Answers lead to questions. Itâs all very nuanced and ambiguous I find.
So Noah was a particular bloke on a grass raft with a cow whose story we have from nearly 5,000 years ago. Cool.
If you wanted someone to argue in favor of a literal guy whoâs parents named him specifically â Noah â who built a 500x90x60ft boat when he was around 500 years old and proceeded to load 40,000 animals on said boat in preparation for a Kevin Costner Waterworld
Then ..
â im not the theist youre looking for â
* waves hand like a jedi
As ive stated ⌠I just dont care that much about the details , I care about the point its trying to make .
If you want to argue its all tribal lore , im ok with that.. it doesnât change the message it conveys .
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