As the narrative switches back from "Elohim" (God) to “Yahweh” (LORD), we find out that Noah is godly compared to everyone else around…again. Although in fairness, it is a different word this time (tsaddiyq in lieu of tamim). Why would Moses suddenly perfer to use a different name for God and a different word to describe Noah's character? Well, if it turns out we're dealing with two or more different authors, we would seem to have our explanation.
Here the instructions concerning how many animals
to take are modified. Back in 6:19 Elohim told Noah it was to be two of every kind of living creature
from all flesh. Now Yahweh tells Noah here that it’s actually seven of every clean animal and
seven of every kind of bird, but only two of every unclean animal that’s not a
bird. This is odd for a few reasons. First, back in 6:20 Noah was specifically
told by Elohim that birds and cattle (a clean animal) will come to him “two of
every kind.” Second, we were told in 6:22 that Noah did all that Elohim
commanded him. Here, though, Yahweh changes that and adds, “You must take” not they “will
come to you.” Later the narrative will switch back to emphasizing just two, oddly enough at the same time
the writer begins referring to the deity as "Elohim". It’s almost as if there’s one source who likes
referring to God as “Yahweh” who’s concerned that animals will be available for
sacrifice after the flood and another source using “Elohim” to refer to God who
doesn’t share those same concerns. But that can't be because Jesus and the apostles said Moses wrote the whole thing.
Something else that’s odd about this passage
is that the distinction between clean and unclean animals will not be spelled
out until the book of Leviticus. Noah is supposed to pre-date the establishment
of the sacrificial system at Sinai, so presumably in his day there should be no
distinction between clean and unclean animals or any formal sacrificial system,
right? Apparently whatever covenant or dispensation Noah is under, which is
assumed to be applicable to all of mankind - as the argument for things like
the death penalty goes for example - there appears to be a distinction between
what is ceremonially clean and unclean. One is left to conclude that some
kind of sacrificial system must have been in place. At least that’s what the
author of this portion seems to want us to conclude anyway.
Yahweh tells Noah “for seven days yet I will
cause it to rain…” Of course, within the narrative itself this means that the
forty days of rain is coming in another seven days. What’s interesting about
this is that in the Atrahasis myth the
flood itself lasts for seven days. Given how seemingly pointless (and
contradictory) this seven-day warning is to the narrative, one can’t help but
wonder if this detail is an echo of the original Babylonian source material.
Another odd thing is that it appears that now,
after the instructions were apparently changed or added to in 7:2-3, Noah has a
mere seven days to get his crap together and collect the additional clean
animals and birds. But I guess Noah isn't really in any position to negotiate or complain if Yahweh wants to change things up a bit.
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| I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. |
In 6:22 we learned that Noah did all that
Elohim commanded him. Here we learn that Noah did all that Yahweh commanded him
as well. It sucks having two bosses, but it must really suck when you have one boss
with multiple personality disorder. Or, you know, maybe this is two separate accounts that have been woven together by a later redactor.
Here we’re told that Noah was 600 years old
when the flood came, making his sons 100 years old. We don’t really need to
remember that Noah was 600 years old when the flood came as Moses is going to be sure to remind us of this fact a mere
five verses later.
Here the text literally says “two two” male
and female came into the ark of clean and unclean animals and birds.
Commentators trying to get around the fact that the narrative is now back to
emphasizing pairs of animals rather than seven of every clean animal and birds
and two of every other kind as in verses 2 and 3 will say that what this really
means now is pairs of sevens with respect to the birds and the clean animals.
How do they know this? Well because the text can’t possibly contradict itself, of
course.
On the heels of verses 6-8, these verses give
the impression that Noah took the animals into the ark just as Elohim had
command him and then seven days later the floodwaters engulfed the earth. This
is exactly the way AiG understands the text (see under "Description" for day 0).
Here we’re reminded that Noah was 600 years
old, but one could argue that information was repeated as a dating method so
perhaps the repetition is warranted, but if that’s the case, why mention it
back in verse 6? Moses can be downright forgetful sometimes. Oh, wait. That’s
right, he’s a literary genius. Expositors just can’t seem to agree on how
exactly this shows his genius; but trust them, it’s totally intentional.
We’re also told the watery deep burst open
and the floodgates of the sky were opened. This isn’t just narrative imagery
for rain either. Ancient people believed there were literally transparent gates
in the sky that held back the waters above the invisible, solid dome (see
Genesis 1:6-8).
Noah and his family enter the ark. Again?
Didn’t they just enter the ark back in verses 9-10?
Again we have emphasis on “two two” and male
and female when it comes to every animal on the ark. There is nothing about
seven of clean animals and birds. This is, once again, “just as Elohim
commanded him.” Elohim does not appear to share Yahweh’s concerns about having
a sacrifice later.
Another problem arises when we note that the
flood comes “on that very day” and not after seven days as in verses 9 and 10.
The other problem with “on that very day” is that Noah and his family along
with all the animals entered on the same day. Everything. Thousands of animals. On. The. Same. Day.
We’re told here that in forty days enough
water was released to cover all the high mountains to more than twenty feet above
them. Even if the Himalayas were smaller back then (a solution proposed by at
least one creationist group), the water needed to accomplish this would be well
more than double the volume of all the water on earth currently in any form.
The amount of kinetic energy released during a forty day event of this
magnitude would be astounding. Again, God has to miracle all of the laws of
physics away to accomplish this in addition to blowing the water away into
nothing.
If only the earth were a flat disk set on pillars the way people in the Ancient Near East envisioned it. That way when God blows on the water, it would just run over the side and drain back into the giant caverns that surround Sheol below the earth. Too bad it's not.
If only the earth were a flat disk set on pillars the way people in the Ancient Near East envisioned it. That way when God blows on the water, it would just run over the side and drain back into the giant caverns that surround Sheol below the earth. Too bad it's not.
The totality of the destruction is
emphasized. Those who would suggest a localized flood here have to ignore the
obvious wording of passages like this. Why bother? Why not just admit it never
actually happened and it’s just an "allegory" or something? Or just say that God performed all
of this miraculously and wiped away all of the expected geologic evidence that
such a catastrophe ever occurred.
Additionally, when it was over and God had
teleported all the animals back to their proper places, sped up natural
selection and mutations on those proto-species to a phenomenal rate, manipulated genetics to prevent
bottlenecking, and instantaneously restored all the complex ecosystems both on
land and in the ocean, he made sure not only to put into place geologic and
organic structures that would strongly suggest a much older earth and
arbitrarily alter decay rates among various elements, but he also made sure
civilizations like the Sumerians and Egyptians would have written histories going
back thousands of years prior to this event just so mankind would have to
literally take his word for it that all of this stuff actually happened. Pity
the silly fools with hard hearts professing to be wise that follow the conclusions
of the mountains of physical evidence to the contrary that God left behind to
be misinterpreted.
If one does try to just explain the whole
thing away with miracles, this little story becomes easily the most
miracle-laden story of all time, making Jesus rising from the dead look like a card
trick. Most of the miracles would not only be pointless, but also downright
deceptive on God’s part, yet that is the only way to salvage the literalism of
this story. The heavens and the earth may declare the glory of God and show his
handiwork, but don’t ask the heavens and the earth any questions
about how old they are or what actually took place in them. On those points
what the heavens declare and the earth shows apparently cannot be trusted.
Isn’t it interesting that over time, Yahweh’s
miracles become less and less astounding and easily verifiable for contemporary
observers? He goes from creating everything from nothing to all the Flood
miracles to parting the Red Sea to fire coming down and burning up sacrifices
to men surviving a furnace to the miracles attributed to Jesus in a backwater
territory of the Roman Empire to protecting an apostle from a snake bite. It’s
almost as though when certain events become easier for historical contemporaries
to falsify, God’s ability to do miraculous, readily-verifiable things that are
beyond naturalistic explanation diminishes considerably.
So now the focus is 150 days, not 40 days? Recall
that in verse 17 the text says, “The flood engulfed the earth for forty days.”
It’s not incredibly difficult to reconcile these two verses by simply saying
that what it means is that for forty days it was actively raining and the
waters were increasing and then for 150 days the waters prevailed over the
earth. It’s not clear what that distinction really is, however, because in 8:3
the waters are said to have already been in recession and had gone down a bit
by the end of the 150 days. Maybe, just maybe there were two accounts? Perhaps there was one that focused on 150 days and added up to a full calendar year and one that focused on a 40 day event and some editor came along and stuck them together? Nah, that's just silly. Let's just stick with the convoluted timeline.
A massive localized flood (like the Black Sea deluge hypothesis) could make sense as being the origin story for all the later flood myths. But yeah, that's about it.
ReplyDeleteYes. That could be the basis of the cultural memories that produced these stories. From what I've read of that event, though, it was a more gradual event (most people could've simply fled from it on foot) and it is dated much, much earlier than the internal Biblical markers would indicate for Noah's flood.
DeleteEarly civilizations formed near bodies of fresh water like the Tigris, Euphrates, Mekong, Yangtze, Indus, etc. These often flooded at intervals and sometimes quite considerably in a very short period of time in ways that probably seemed to the inhabitants like the end of the world or the judgment of a deity. I think that alone is enough to account for the existence of early flood myths among a variety of cultures.
That makes sense. I guess the image of the Black Sea roaring in like the end of the world is just more appealing to our movie-driven minds :)
DeleteObviously Genesis (And the entire Pentateuch) is the result of multiple authors, as has been adequately proven. It appears to have culled from different sources, and *THEN* it appears to have been revised several times over the centuries, reaching its present form in the 5th or 6th century BC. The result is kind off a hash job.
ReplyDeleteMoses is purported to be an author because the ancient Jews believe that the main character in a story wrote the story. As Moses is the primary protagonist from Exodus on, he must have been the author. They told Christians, Christians believed them. Since Job is set during Genesis, Moses often gets the credit for that one, too.
Thing is: there's not a serious theologian or historian in the world that believes Moses wrote any of this stuff. I'm not sure if his authorship is an article of faith in any particular church, but in my Bible college they flat out told us that Moses didn't write it, and that most of it wasn't literally true.
there's not a serious theologian or historian in the world that believes Moses wrote any of this stuff. I'm not sure if his authorship is an article of faith in any particular church, but in my Bible college they flat out told us that Moses didn't write it, and that most of it wasn't literally true.
DeleteOh, how I wish this were true everywhere. I’m not sure where you're from Randy, but here in the United States, Mosaic authorship is vehemently defended by quite a number of prominent theologians. This defense ranges from some Catholics who claim that Moses compiled and edited the documents and carried the “spirit” of their content to the standard evangelical position that he pretty much wrote everything but his own obituary and even that is attributed to Joshua.
Thanks to the so-called "Conservative Resurgence" that took place in the 1980s, every seminary run by the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, teaches Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Virtually every major accredited evangelical seminary including Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dallas Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell, etc. teaches it as well. In fact, if you look at the list of the 10 largest seminaries in North America, only one (Fuller) doesn’t. Even suggesting that Moses wasn’t the principal author of the Pentateuch will get you fired at most seminaries and bible colleges in the US.
If I emailed the clergy of the 100 churches closest to my house and asked them who wrote the first five books of the Bible, without a doubt the vast majority would say Moses. This isn’t really surprising in a country where around half of the people believe Adam and Eve were real people and that the Bible is the actual or inspired word of God without errors. Nearly 40% believe God created the universe in six literal 24 hour days.
I agree that no theologian and certainly no historian who believes Moses wrote any of this stuff should be taken seriously. However, there are quite a number of theologians in this country who do take it very seriously to the point where they believe denying Mosaic authorship is tantamount to calling Jesus and Paul liars and undermining the foundations of the Christian faith. I wish that were not so, but it is.
Sorry it took me so long to reply :)
DeleteBy "Serious Theologian," I meant an actual, serious, accredited theologian graduating from some respectable seminary, or an historical student from some secular school.
I'm fully aware that Preacher Bubba or whomever (Most of whom have no training at all) or some graduate from Bob Jones University believes Moses wrote it, but these people aren't "Serious" in the sense that no one who studies religion or theology academically takes them seriously.
Probably not the best word choice on my part.
I went to a pretty good Bible College in Tennessee in the late 1980s, and they were pretty explicit about the evolution of scripture over time, the fact that Moses didn't write nothin, that Deuteronomy was undoubtedly written in the time of King Josiah, and backdated to Moses' day.
I guess my point from six years ago (assuming I recall correctly) was simply that there's hayseed preachers and then there's *real* theologians, and the real ones don't believe that, even if the folks in the trenches do.