Sure. The beholder’s share. What we bring to the party.
To me, I dont see a problem noting that the first chapters of Genesis are repurposed from ANE myths. Thats sort of the whole point anyway - God is showing people a difference between who He is claiming to be versus the caananite gods in the cultures around them.
That it could be a retelling (in a different light) is no conflict to me - it makes sense. God is speaking into a specific culture telling them specific things - many of which are lost on us as modern westerners.
Now how you feel about what is being said may differ from individual to individual, but thats not the point of this thread.
Sorry, had to edit this a few times due to auto correct on my phone
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Because of the common existence of a flood in ANE and other ancient culture narratives, I am inclined to believe something happened significantly in the collective human memory that was somewhat like that. I think this was likely a significant localized flooding event in a certain ancestral population of humans, probably some glacial flood or the like given the time frame humans have existed in. But the fine details of it are not so important to me for understanding the text.
But given the widespread nature of the myth among cultures, it may go further back than we can possibly know.
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That’s my take as well. Even in modern culture we take old stories and refresh them, such as “The Lion King” being a retelling of “Hamlet” and “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” being a retelling of “The Odyssey”. Myths have always been tool that humans use to communicate deeper philosophical and theological lessons.
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I never thought of it that way but it’s true – and it would explain where all the water went: it drained off to form the rest of the oceans.
LOL – nice.
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It strikes me that this fits with a theme Jesus used: “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you”. In the opening of Genesis the writer is taking the stories everyone knew and recasting them. Overall, the argument is just a repetition, “Those guys aren’t gods, YHWH-Elohim is God!” with some additional lessons tacked on.
And many of which are quite deliberately (or possibly just ignorantly) thrown in the trash by treating the text as newspaper reports.
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After I posted, I thought about the exact same thing!
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I see it this way. It seems to be a myth. Does not seem to be historical in any meaningful way.
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Was there a named named Noah and only he and his family survived the flood globally? No.
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Was there a man named Noah and only he and his family survived the flood locally? Probably not.
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Was there a man named Noah who survived any kind of flood and his stories became what we see in the Bible? Probably not. His name seems to be symbolic and means rest, comfort or peace and is connected into several potential reasonings for it. Such as part of the cursed ground being lifted.
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Was a giant boat built to house two of every animals globally to locally? No.
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Did God cause a flood to come and kill almost everyone? Probably not.
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Before this story or event, if real, occurred relatively new in human history was everyone vegetarian? No.
So everything seems to be a myth. Why would some big flood be the only literal thing? Seems to just be a reinterpret of older stories.
Dont you start me on another tangent…
Vegetarians that didnt eat plants … because PLANTS ARE ALIVE , parts of plants are alive , cells of plants are alive……and the whole “ death didn’t exist before the fall “ assertions because God didnt understand botany???…or …ummm.. yeah
Just highlighting that it mentions animals were not eaten until after the flood. That implies vegetarianism beforehand. There has never been a time when all humans were vegetarian.
However I don’t think the death and plant argument is legitimate. Science does not lean towards plants being conscious beings. I’ve been a vegan for almost two decades and I’m a huge fan of botany and while plant intelligence is cool, there is no consensus that they are conscious beings.
Hi!, this probably belongs in the ‘humour’ thread, but since we’re on the topic of murdering vegetables, I thought you’d get a kick out of this folk song by the Canadian band The Arrogant Worms. The song title: Carrot Juice is Murder:
Well … conscious or not .. plants are alive, they fill all the prerequisites for living beings.
If death didnt exist before adams fall , as YECs maintain, then God gave them plants to eat according to the genesis account , but they didnt eat any … making the verse concerning God providing them pointless.
Or they did eat them and death existed prior to “ the fall “, rendering the verses in the NT yecs use specific to human death and not all life … ruining the common YEC anti evolution/ death argument “ death entered the world through adams sin “ .
Life is life … no matter how intelligent… coma patients may not be self aware … unconscious people arent necessarily self aware .
Further, we have a bad habit of looking down on less complex lifeforms and making unsubstantiated assumptions .
There have been some very interesting studies suggesting plants may be self aware , using a non centralized nodal nerve network, a form of a non centralized nervous system… A plant version somethinglike what we see in sime invertebrates.
Its worth a google search …
I’m not willing to rule it out simply because we’re uncertain.
Either way … they are alive .
If God didnt know we’d learn plants were alive and kept vital information out of the bible ..hes essentially authoring confusion.