"Doc Notes" Lesson 2 Part 5 Gleanings from Genesis ~The Flood~

 

                         Doc notes lesson 2 part 5 Gleanings from Genesis The Flood


Dear Gentle Reader,

If there were one period of Biblical history more than another about which we could wish for fuller information, it is the antediluvian, the period between the Fall and the Flood. I have been recently reading a book called Edgar Cayce “The sleeping Prophet” in which he gives his perspective on what happened with the “Sons of God” and why the flood took place (see our research on the canopy “the shining waters”. There are many Flood narratives we want to examine a few so that we may better understand our Biblical view point.

The Chaldean Flood Tablets from the city of Ur in what is now Southern Iraq, describe how the Babylonian God Ea had decided to eliminate humans and other land animals with a great flood which was to become "the end of all flesh". He selected Ut-Napishtim, to build an ark to save a few humans, and samples of other animals.

The Babylonian text "The Epic of Galgamesh" 1,8 and the Hebrew story are essentially identical with about 20 major points in common. Their texts are obviously linked in some way. Either: In both the Genesis and Galgamesh stories:

The Genesis story describes how mankind had become obnoxious to God; they were hopelessly sinful and wicked. In the Babylonian story, they were too numerous and noisy.
The Gods (or God) decided to send a worldwide flood. This would drown men, women, children, babies and infants, as well as eliminate all of the land animals and birds.
The Gods (or God) knew of one righteous man, Ut-Napishtim or Noah.
The Gods (or God) ordered the hero to build a multi-story wooden ark (called a chest or box in the original Hebrew).
The ark would be sealed with pitch.
The ark would have with many internal compartments
It would have a single door
It would have at least one window.
The ark was built and loaded with the hero, a few other humans, and samples from all species of other land animals.
A great rain covered the land with water.
The mountains were initially covered with water.
The ark landed on a mountain in the Middle East.
The hero sent out birds at regular intervals to find if any dry land was in the vicinity.
The first two birds returned to the ark. The third bird apparently found dry land because it did not return.
The hero and his family left the ark, ritually killed an animal, offered it as a sacrifice.
God (or the Gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh) smelled the roasted meat of the sacrifice.
The hero was blessed.
The Babylonian gods seemed genuinely sorry for the genocide that they had created. The God of Noah appears to have regretted his actions as well, because he promised never to do it again.

The were a number of differences between the two stories:

Noah received his instructions directly from Jehovah; Ut-Napishtim received them indirectly during a dream.
Noah's ark was 3 stories high and rectangular in shape. Two estimated dimensions are 547 x 91 ft. and 450 x 75 ft. The Babylonian ark was 6 stories high and square.
Ut-Napishtim invited additional people on board: a pilot and some skilled workmen.
Noah's ark landed on Mt. Ararat; Ut-Napishtim'sat on Mt. Nisir; these locations are both in the Middle East, and are located few hundred miles apart

In the Bible, some of the water emerged from beneath the earth. And the rains from above lasted for 40 days and nights. A 40 day interval often symbolized a period of judgment in the Hebrew Scriptures. 2 In the Babylonian account, the water came only in the form of rain, and lasted only 6 days.

Noah released a raven once and a dove twice; Ut-Napishtim released three birds: a dove, swallow and raven.

The significance of the two stories

To conservative Christians, Genesis is inerrant: it is completely truthful and contained no error in its original form. God inspired Moses to write the book and preserved him from including any errors. Thus the Noachian flood really happened exactly as stated in Genesis. The similarities between the Babylonian and Hebrew texts were probably caused by two factors:

1.Both were accounts of the same worldwide flood.

2. The Genesis account is absolutely true and was written during the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. The Babylonian account was written later; its author may have copied elements from the Hebrew story.

"The Epic of Gilgamesh, then, contains the corrupted account as preserved and embellished by peoples who did not follow the God of the Hebrews." Frank Lorey, Impact #285: The Flood of Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh", Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA (1997)

Imagine: 
A Flatter Earth because mountains had not yet been heaved upward by the weight of new water on the earth's mantle.........

40 days of steady, pouring rain.........

Hundreds of volcanoes exploding all at once and myriads of new, large springs gushing huge amounts of water because "the fountains of the deep were broken up." (Genesis 7:11)
This was the flood of Noah's day. It was a worldwide catastrophic flood sent by God to destroy all living things except for eight people who survived on the Ark. And I must say, in passing, that "all living things" means ALL!

Two problems about which there are great differences are: the date of the flood, and whether it was local or universal. As for the date, I do not insist on it being exactly 3000 BC. It could be somewhere between 2400 and 4000 BC.

Critics of the flood narrative consider it either a myth, or a local flood story. There are seeming conflicts between the Bible and some areas of "science" relative to the date of the Great Flood. However, both biblical and extra-biblical literature, being eye-witness accounts, should control the dating, with secondary importance given to scientific opinions, and radiometric dating techniques. (After all, the C14 scale was calibrated using artifacts with known historical dates.)

For nineteen centuries Christian scholars were convinced by God's Word that the earth was created by fiat in six days, a few thousand years ago. Only in the last 150 years or so have Christian scholars cooperated with evolutionary philosophers who insist that the universe and earth are billions of years old. Many scholars, if they believe in a flood at all, contend that it was a local event and happened as long as 100,000 years ago. In general they hold to the following principles:
"Universal" means all that Noah could see. Only his personal "world" was flooded.

Present high mountains have been there for millions of years and were as high before the flood as they are now. There simply was not enough water to cover them all (Mt. Everest, for instance, is 29,000 feet high, thus the flood waters would have to be almost six miles deep). "If that much water covered all the earth, where could it possibly have gone after the flood?" they ask.

The "days" of Genesis 1 were long periods of time. Most local flood proponents believe in a very old earth been in existence at least a million years with long palaeo-, meso-, and neolithic prehistorical periods.

Languages Used

The Hebrew word mabbul is the word for "flood" used throughout Genesis 6-9. It is a unique word used only for this stupendous event. Eight other Hebrew words are used to describe floods in local streams and rivers. But none of these compare with the extent of the Great Flood.

The Greek word, κατακλυσμὸ, used both in the Septuagint and in the New Testament, hardly needs interpretation. Cataclysm describes violent destruction. It occurs in Matthew 24: 38-39; and Luke 17: 26-27. In 2 Peter 3: 5-6 we are reminded of that which mankind desires to forget: that is, that God made the heavens and earth with its water, and by that water the world was "cataclysthized" destroying the surface of the earth and all living, breathing creatures. Peter prophesied in 2 Peter 3: 3-6 that scoffers will deny the world was destroyed by a flood. He said these willfully ignore this stupendous event.

In verses 10-11, a prophecy of the destruction of the entire universe is described, with the Great Flood used as an analogy. How could a local flood be the analogy for this awful event?
As you call see there is as much controversy over the issue of the flood narrative as any part of our Bible. And I have only touched on one small part of the issue. The Genesis narrative is severely reticent, and that for a plain reason. Sixteen hundred years are packed into two pages, so that whatever else we may see or desire to know, we may not miss the significant connection between the Fall and the Flood. Our inspired writer omits all that is not vital to his purpose. Biblical narrative is never concerned with the mere lapse of time, but with the moral significance of events.

There is an almost dramatic development from the Fall to the Flood. Let us get a handle on these first. In Chapter 3 we have the Fall. In Chapter 4 we have Cain and the Cain line- “the sons of men. ” In Chapter we have Seth and the Seth line- “the sons of God.” In Chapter 6 the two lines cross with tragic moral results. In Chapter 7 judgement falls - the Flood. Once this dramatic sequence is seen, it can not be forgotten. The separation of the two lines was vital. Their confusion was fatal. The resultant moral condition was appalling. The corruption was extreme. Divine Intervention became unavoidable. Retribution was inevitable. The Flood came, both as an act of judgement (and mercy) and as a moral salvage measure. This then is the Bible lesson on the indispensability of separation and no-compromise. The Divine insistence all the way through is that God’s spiritual seed shall “come out and be separate.”

Next time we’ll consider the “sons of God” in Chapter 6 men or monsters?

Love,

Denis