Genesis 6:11-22, 7:24, 8:14-19
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of cypress[b] wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 Make a roof[c] for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. 21 Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
7:24,
24 And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.
8:14-19
14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.
The Priestly Document continues with the Flood story, interwoven into the canonical text of Genesis 6-9: Genesis 6:9-22, 7:6, 11, 13-16a 17a, 18-21, 24-8:2a, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19, 9:1-17. The final writer of the flood narrative has woven together the accounts from J narrative and the P narrative, being faithful to both sources. The names of Noah's sons in verse 10 repeat information already presented in 5:32. The use of the divine name 'elohim, "God," in 6:22, as well as the repetition of information already given in passages using the divine name YHWH (e.g., 6:11-13, which essentially repeats 6:5-7), suggests that this section of the story comes from the Priestly tradition.
Almost every culture on Earth includes an ancient flood story. Details vary, but the basic plot is the same: Deluge kills all but a lucky few. 1) The story most familiar to many people is the biblical account of Noah and his ark. Genesis tells how "God saw that the wickedness of man was great" and decided to destroy all of creation. Only Noah, "who found grace in the eyes of the Lord," his family and the animals aboard the ark survived to repopulate the planet. 2) Older than Genesis is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, a king who embarked on a journey to find the secret of immortality. Along the way, he met Utnapishtim, survivor of a great flood sent by the gods. Warned by Enki, the water god, Utnapishtim built a boat and saved his family and friends, along with artisans, animals and precious metals. 3) Irish legends talk about Queen Cesair and her court, who sailed for seven years to avoid drowning when the oceans overwhelmed Ireland. 4) European explorers in the Americas were startled by Indian legends that sounded like the story of Noah. Some Spanish priests feared the devil had planted such stories in the Indians' minds to confuse them.[1]
In aboriginal mythology, Tidilick the Giant Frog is said to have drained every drop of water in the Outback. His friends, the kangaroos, grew thirsty, as you might expect they would, but they did not know what to do. Finally, one smart kangaroo thought to tickle Tidilick. When the frog laughed, his water broke, as it were, creating an enormous flood that washed everyone out of their homes. It was a wet, wild day. It is just a story. It never really happened. A giant frog? Of course not. But a giant flood?
The Outback is desert. Dry. Dusty. Flat. Big horizon. Nothing much there. But it was not always that way. Long ago there was water, and plenty of it. And a terrific flood once flowed out there in the Outback about 5,000 years ago. Dr. Mary Bourke, a geomorphologist for the Smithsonian Institute, who is also known in her professional circles as "Mary, the Mother of Floods," found proof of the flood while trying to understand and predict floods all around the world. She finds that the biggest clues about the biggest floods come from the least likely places of all - deserts, like the Outback. While working in the Australian Outback among the Aborigines, Bourke heard the myth of a giant frog called "Tidilick." Although the white settlers had long dismissed Tidilick as a campfire story for children, Bourke drew meaning from the native recounting of a frog of long ago that drank all the water in the desert. By digging deep holes in deserts to examine sediment layers, Bourke discovered an undamaged record of floods dating back 5,000 years.
Scientists have discovered the long-ago flood of the Black Sea area. First came the theory proposed by William Ryan and Walter Pitman of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, showing that there was indirect evidence, based on seismic profiles and sediment core samples, that the Black Sea used to be a much, much smaller freshwater lake that was cataclysmically flooded with salt water sometime after the last Ice Age ended when the ice sheets melted. The scientists theorized that the melting significantly raised the level of the Mediterranean Sea, causing it to burst through the solid rock barrier of land which once connected the European and Asian continents. As the melting progressed, the rising sea flooded the land bridge, then trickled over the edge, dripping down toward the lake, slowly carving as the sea continued to rise. Then one day it happened, perhaps in the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventh day of the month, the salt water burst forth like a great fountain (7:11), cutting a deep channel with a force and volume estimated at six times greater than the water that daily pours over Niagara Falls. The great flood submerged the original shoreline of the fresh lake under hundreds of feet of saltwater. It all happened rapidly, too rapidly for escape, unless, like Noah, at 600 years old, you already had built a big boat. When Robert Ballard, famed finder of another large boat called the Titanic, found real evidence of this cataclysmic flood under the Black Sea, headlines appeared around the world. In 1999, Ballard's expedition unexpectedly discovered the theorized ancient shoreline, complete with an ancient settlement deep beneath the sea, and remains of ancient saltwater mollusk shells and extinct fresh water mollusk shells. These shell samples were radiocarbon-dated. The saltwater mollusks proved to be 2,800 to 6,820 years old, while the fresh water mollusks were between 7,460 and 15,500 years. What does this imply? It implies that a great sea flooded over a smaller lake between 6,820 and 7,460 years ago, near where and around the time in which Noah was recorded to have lived.[2]
I might like to dig into the matter of the Ark at another time to update the following material. Satellite images of Mount Ararat show an anomaly which some say looks like a boat. Insight asked experts to analyze them. Here are the results. During a routine U.S. Air Force mission over Turkey on June, 17, 1949, cameras captured something strange on the northwest corner of the Western Plateau of Mount Ararat at about 15,500 feet. The excited fliers thought they had stumbled on the ruins of Noah's ark. According to the book of Genesis, the first in the Bible, the ark "came to rest on the mountains of Ararat" after spending 150 days at sea. Their superiors reviewed the film, wrote a report and filed it under "Ararat Anomaly" where it remained classified as "Secret" for half a century. In 1993, Porcher Taylor began asking hard questions about the file. Taylor is a scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies specializing in satellite intelligence and diplomacy. He also is a professor of law at the University of Richmond Law School and knows how to ask questions. To Taylor's amazement, this professional scholar discovered that in addition to the 1949 military film footage there also were classified photographs of the anomaly snapped by a U-2 spy plane in 1956, high-resolution images taken by the CIA in 1973 using a KH-9 military remote-sensing satellite and even more sophisticated images obtained by the CIA from flyovers in 1976, 1990 and 1992 by an advanced KH-11 satellite .... The object appears to be about 534 feet in length and 80 to 98 feet wide. Its height could not be measured because it is unclear how deep it is seated into the snow and ice. Still, the measurements are comparable to the ark described in Genesis - 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Biblical scholars say a cubit is about 20 inches, which would make the ark about 500 feet long, 83 feet wide and 50 feet high.[3]
And now, sometimes, like in the Outback, there is proof that mythology has a basis in history. Bourke's research gives rise to the question: "What sort of modern person thinks to look to ancient biblical stories, while using contemporary science, to propose that a mythic flood actually occurred?" And what kind of a woman looks for ancient flood evidence by digging holes out in the driest, most remote deserts, and finds what she seeks? They are people whose minds are as large as the floods they seek to understand. They are the ones who see what others do not see. They look where others do not look. They think thoughts others do not dare to ponder. They are people who take risks, who think, and plan, then act. They are persistent, counterintuitive, revolutionary people. Their successful work speaks for itself.
The biblical story of the flood shares a theme, and even some details, with many of the stories from a variety of cultures of a universal deluge. Since the discovery of the Babylonian flood story in the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, scholars have noted many similarities between the biblical account of Noah and the stories of floods from Israel's neighbors. One of the striking features of the biblical account, however, is the emphasis placed on the religious faith of the story's chief human actor, Noah. (God is the story's true protagonist, and Noah does not actually speak in the story of the flood proper.) This theme, sounded in the opening words of the story, echoes not only through the rest of the narrative, but also elsewhere in the biblical tradition (e.g., Ezekiel 14; Hebrews 11). Three characteristics distinguish Noah from his contemporaries: He was righteous, blameless, and he "walked with God," a phrase used only of Noah and Enoch (5:22, 24, also from the Priestly tradition).
Often overlooked in reading Genesis 6-9 is that God is in a punishing-then-promising relationship with all of creation, not just sinful/rescued humanity. “In the beginning … God created the heavens and the earth ….” (Genesis 1:1). Nevertheless, God’s creation, including especially human beings, ceased being content to honor the Creator; so, God is grieved and sorry to have made humanity and other living beings (6:6-7 J), and God punished the creation by means of flood.
In Genesis 6:9-22 begins with an account of the descendants of Noah. Noah was righteous and blameless. He walked with God. He had three sons. The earth was corrupt in the sight of God and filled with violence. 11 Now the earth was corrupt. The “earth” is at fault before God, so God will destroy the earth (6:11-13, 17), corresponding to "wickedness" in 6:5. This notion features prominently in this section of the story, occurring, in various forms and translations, some five times in seven verses. The earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. God brought the flood due to the corruption and violence of “all flesh” (apparently including that of animals). Another strand of narrative (see Genesis 6:5 J) attributes the destruction especially to the “wickedness of humankind” — “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5; also 8:21). 12 And God saw that the earth, note use of this term, was corrupt; for all flesh, note of this term in Genesis 9:11, 15 (two times), 16, 17; also in 6:12, 13, 17, 19; 7:15, 16, 21; 8:17, had corrupted its ways upon the earth. The reference seems to be not merely to humans but to all living things. All living things are entangled in the guilt that brings down the judgment of the flood. God made the world good, but creatures have corrupted it.[4] 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, all living things, human as well as animal had corrupted itself, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. The corruption in the present context is the "violence" (or "lawlessness") that has engulfed ("filled" foreshadows the watery disaster to come) the entire world. Now I am going to destroy (mabbžl) them. The word used to describe the devastation God intends to bring upon the earth, is found, with one exception (Psalm 29:10), only in the story of Noah. While biblical Hebrew has several words denoting floodwaters (see, for example, verse 3 in Psalm 29, where a different word for waters is used), the flood described here is unique. Based on a verbal root meaning "to flow," the waters here denote the destructive chaos of both falling and rising waters, which will return the earth to its original uninhabited state when the wind or spirit of God moved over the primordial deep (1:2). Whenever the Greek translation of the Hebrew word is used in the New Testament, κατακλυσμὸς, always refers specifically to the flood (Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:27; II Peter 2:5). God is going destroy them along with the earth. God does not address Noah in a special way, which shows that they already knew God.[5] This account of the flood reports the exact instructions Noah is given for the construction of the ark (6:15-16). 14 Make yourself an ark. The Hebrew word translated "ark," the vessel Noah is commanded to construct, is almost unique to the story of the flood. Of its 25 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, 23 of them occur in the present narrative. Elsewhere the word occurs in the story of Moses' birth, when it describes the vessel that bore the infant Moses upon the waters of the Nile (Exodus 2:3, 5). It is perhaps not coincidental that the Hebrew word is probably of Egyptian origin and means "box" or "chest" ("basket" in the Moses story), although the dimensions given it (roughly 440 X 73 X 44 feet) would make it more ship like than box like. It has been estimated, perhaps too literally, that a vessel of these dimensions would have been of approximately 43,000 tons. Noah is to make the Ark of cypress wood, formerly "gopher wood" (simply a transliteration by KJV, RSV) - is not known precisely, since the word is unique to this passage. He is to make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 For my part, the use of the independent personal pronoun plus the pronominally suffixed presentative particle hineni at the opening of 6:17 emphatically presents the contrast between what Noah is to do and what God is about to do, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. One cannot separate life from the Spirit. Animals have the spirit of life in them. In this regard, humans simply share in what distinguishes all living things from the rest of creation.[6] Everything that is on the earth shall die. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you. The following action, establishing a covenant with Noah, is the second part of God's action, subordinate to the first action; it lacks the emphatic grammatical introduction of the first, destructive action. The word and monumental idea of covenant appear for the first time in the biblical record in 6:18: "But I will establish my covenant with you ...." As the subsequent biblical tradition makes clear, covenant can take many forms, and in this context it takes the paradigmatic form of a gracious offer of salvation: God's covenant with Noah precedes God's instructions to Noah to save himself, his family and earth's animal life forms (vv. 18-20). Linking of humanity and animal is familiar in the Old Testament, viewing animals as a prefiguration of humanity.[7] And you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. 21 Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” The commission of dominion does not have in view a dominion of force, but a relation such as we find with domestic animals or flocks, which includes caring for the continued existence of animals.[8] This ordering of the elements of the passage make clear that the covenantal act on God's part is the preservation of a righteous remnant from the midst of comprehensive perdition. 22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. The response of Noah is faithfulness. 7:24 And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days. 8:14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, we should note that it is not possible to correlate this calendrical notation with current times of the year, since the Hebrew Bible does not present consistent evidence on whether the ancient Israelite year began in the spring or in the autumn. It is quite possible that the agricultural year began and ended in the autumn (as is celebrated today), and that the cultic year began and ended in the spring. Regardless of whether one assumes that the intent is the latter time of the year, as seems reasonable, it would be contrary to the intention of the passage to push the date too literally. The reference is meant to indicate that this natural catastrophe, like all things, occurred within the cultic frame of reference given by God to the covenanted people. In that time, the earth was dry. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” Repeats the first commandment to all living creatures (1:22). Thus, only after the flood is the blessing extended to animals.[9] It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this commandment for the Priestly tradition, being committed to writing, as it most likely was, after the decimation of the Israelite population during the Babylonian conquest of Israel. Apart from Jeremiah 23:3 (a passage likely influenced by the Priestly tradition), the phrase is found entirely within the Priestly strand in Genesis (1:22, 28; 8:17; 9:1, 7; 35:11). Its impact on subsequent biblical and post-biblical religious and secular tradition is beyond calculation. 18 So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families. The concluding verse of the passage, mirroring the opening of the passage, confirms the instructions given by God, and those saved from the flood, human and animal, depart from the ark "by families," preserving the Priestly tradition's emphasis on making careful distinctions. The most important distinction in that tradition in the present passage, of course, is the distinction between the faithful Noah and those surrounding him who lacked that saving faith.
Noah’s Ark: Rated G Version — Suitable for All Audiences. Yet Noah’s Ark is usually portrayed as a cheery children’s story. Fisher Price Noah’s Ark toys and church preschool rooms painted with blue skies, smiling animals and a beautiful rainbow. Happy melodies that our kids sing in church:
God told Noah to build him an arky-arky
Build it out of gopher barky-barky.
Then after the flood:
The sun came out and dried up the landy, landy.
Everything was fine and dandy, dandy.
Fine and dandy except for the corpses that floated off and landed somewhere to decay. Even those who work on three-year lectionary that many pastors use to guide their preaching preferred to skip the gruesome realities of The Flood. Following the lectionary, we do not publicly read that “the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created’” (Genesis 6:6-7). Nor do we ever read the repeated theme of Genesis 7:21-23: “[A]ll flesh died that moved on the earth.” That feels just a bit like a cover-up, like we would prefer to ignore the hard parts of Scripture. We seem to want to get God off the hook for the whole Noah story. Some say the flood had minimal impact, i.e., it was local and not global. Some claim the story was merely a myth copied from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Or, like the lectionary readings, some just ignore the death of many in favor of the saving of Noah’s clan.
While there may be viability to the way many narrow the scope of this story, one point still sticks out: It is in the Bible. We may want to get God off the hook for the death of many, but God’s perfectly comfortable staying on the hook! God wants us to know that lives were taken, and it was for a reason.
Noah’s Ark: Rated R Version — Graphic Images of Violence. There is an appropriate neutering of this story for our kids, but as adults, we must look at the full reality of this horrific event and ask, “God — why?” That is where this text focuses its attention.
It is a terrible, terribly frightening story, this story of Noah, when you think about it. There is lots of death and destruction in this story. We may try to turn it into a cute little children’s story. But we cannot, not with all the death-dealing water. It is a sad, horrifying story.
It is an appropriate story to read any time we confront our sin and confess our guilt. We have lived in such ways as to make our Creator regret having given us life.
The rest of the world thinks that we are making too much of our sin. Focusing upon evil, sin, wickedness might lead us to negative thought, might engender in us a bad self-image. We live in an age that believes, not in the reality of sin, but in the need to go along in order to get along. Who am I to judge? We’re all doing the best we can. Why must the church dredge up this sordid story of our ill-fated, misbehaving ancestors? Why must we, their heirs in sin, admit to our continuing wickedness?
Because the church is not only about reconciliation, love, and comfort. The church is also about the truth. And this ancient story tells the truth about how we got to where we are today. We have been wrong, from the first, from the very first. Read this morning’s newspaper, check out a book on the history of our age, and there’s so much death, so much chaotic destruction. Not by water, not through the punishment of God, but through our own wickedness.
In too much of the contemporary church, we have substituted sentimentality for truthful conversation about our sin. We apparently are no longer sinners. Rather, we are victims, oppressed by sinister victimizers whom we relentlessly seek to track down and accuse. We no longer live in a guilt culture. Rather, we have a crisis of meaninglessness. If we are guilty, we must take responsibility as sinners. Who is responsible for meaninglessness? Since we are victims, we need affirmation and support. It becomes therapeutic rather than liberating good news. The truth that we are sinners is takes each of us seriously. It takes our reality seriously. Despite our attempts to avoid offense, we have not improved our situation. We seek affirmation for who we are, but we experience affirmation increasingly less. We may well need to return to seeing the truth of who we are and therefore the harsh reality that we are sinners.[10]
The truly amazing part of the story of Noah and the Flood is not that God allowed the world to be destroyed. But Noah fills up the boat with a future. We, too, may lose our world. But we must fill our boat with a future, with gratitude, and keep our eyes on the rainbow.
[1] -"The Legends," Ballard and the Black Sea: The Search for Noah's Flood, nationalgeographic.com/blacksea. Retrieved December 6, 2001.
[2] -Mary Jeanne Jacobsen, "Black Sea and Great Flood: New data support inundation theory," National Geographic Society, nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved December 5, 2001. Recent biblical flood research in the Black Sea region is abundant. Go online and use keywords Black Sea Flood, or Robert Ballard, to bring up the latest developments.
[3] -Timothy W. Maier, "Anomaly or Noah's Ark?" Insight on the News Magazine, November 20, 2000.
[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 163.
[5] Pannenberg Systematic Theology Volume 1, 190.
[6] Pannenberg Systematic Theology Volume 2, 186, 189.
[7] Barth Church Dogmatics III.1 [41.2] 180.
[8] Pannenberg Systematic Theology Volume 2, 132.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 130.
[10] Inspired by Gerhard Forde, “On Being a Theologian of the Cross,” Christian Century, October 22, 1997, pp. 947-949.
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