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What is the moral of the story if the flood never happened?
I think it is an event that happened a very long time ago, pre-history. Why do so many ancient civilizations tell the story? It varies what happened but each early civilization had their version of the flood.
Because floods of one kind or another . . .rivers, tsunami's, etc. have always happened all over the world and gave rise to flood legends among ancient peoples.
OK, thanks for setting the record straight on the canopy theory. If Noah's flood never happened , why even have it in the bible? Christ mentioned it as well. The reason I struggle with it possibly being a local flood is the rainbow thing. According to the story, there was never a rainbow in the sky before that. Plus, it may not have been the Earth tilting either that caused it, just threw that out there.
I think you answered your own question there. "According to the story". We know what causes rainbows. Does it really make sense there were no rainbows before this flood?
And AGAIN--just because Christ mentions a story that would be known to the members of the culture to whom he is speaking, there is no reason to make the giant leap to the idea that this means the story MUST be something that actually happened. It astounds me no end that people make that leap. THINK.
We refer all the time to cultural stories--Shakespeare, Gone With the Wind, even Disney movies*, that hold truths despite the the fact that these are not accounts of real events.
*This came up yesterday in conversation when a man in his thirties mentioned his love for Beauty and The Beast when he was a child. I recalled the line from the song "Kill the Beast" that goes:
We don't like
What we don't
Understand
In fact it scares us
I am just throwing this out there as a theory.....the reason I believe the flood may have happened is this. Modern man has been around for 200,000-300,000 years. We only have recorded history going back 6,000 years or so. What if during these hundreds of thousands of years of lost history, man's technology became advanced, even for a moment. Look at just the past 100 years, an instant explosion of knowledge.
Jesus said as in the days of Noah so shall it be in the last days. Other reasons, our life span was in the hundreds of years before the flood, after it, it dropped to 100 or so. What about the rainbow? It never rained before the flood. The Earth was watered by springs and morning dew. Plus, if Noah was advanced, he could have built the ark.
Something happened to the Earth to change it's axis. The sun's radiations now penetrates everything. The canopy over the Earth was destroyed. I just happen to believe this event happened maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago and there are sea fossils practically everywhere. Not sure Christ would talk about it much even it was a story. He confirmed it.
Another possibility is that is was a story about Homosapien winning out instead of Neanderthals. They did live together at one time.
If you believe all that stuff then you have to account for the fact that despite all that water different animals (of which there were generally only two) managed to disperse to the ends of the earth. Despite all that water Wombats got to Australia and Penguins got to Antarctica, skunks got everywhere.
The story of the flood is within an ongoing cycle of the.appointed rain.
Jesis said it will be.the same as Noah's flood because the second appointed rain IS the flood.
Noah's flood was Shemini Atzeret, and the flood Jesus talked about in.the.future is the same flood appointed for the second coming.
The flood story simply exists to instruct you about the.last flood.
It will be the same thing, it will be just as in the days of Noah before the flood came.
Before Noah's flood came, it had never rained before and they had no concept of the rain they never saw before.
The flood covers every high mountain
That is Shemini Atzeret, and just as it was before Noah, people have never seen the rain, and they have no concept in what is appointed to come, it is a spiritual flood.
The Ark represents salvation...through Jesus Christ. Everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus and mankind's need for a Savior bc he cannot save himself through his good deeds or anything he attempts to use to cover his sins. The door of the Ark also has symbolism: Jesus said "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." (John 10:9)
Also someone here said that there wouldn't be enough rain to cover the earth...people wouldn't be able to breathe etc. But the source of water also came from below the earth's surface:
Genesis 7:10-12 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Also--
Genesis 7:17-20 Now the flood was on the earth forty days. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered.
I'm getting confused here. I just read Biologos take on the Flood, along with other scholars who don't think the Flood was world-wide, then where does that put Noah? Since he is mentioned as a real historical figure in the Bible.
If the Flood is a polemic (my new word, lol) against other ANE flood literature, then what do we do with Noah? The Ark is figurative, but Noah is real? That gets kind of complicated.
Google didn't get me far on this question.
There is an eye witness account in the NT--Jesus--Luke 17:26-- all can be confident it did occur.
If you believe all that stuff then you have to account for the fact that despite all that water different animals (of which there were generally only two) managed to disperse to the ends of the earth. Despite all that water Wombats got to Australia and Penguins got to Antarctica, skunks got everywhere.
Gods angels could have carried them all over the earth.
"And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man"
How is that an eye witness account of a flood?
Jesus was speaking of an appointed flood that will take place on the feast of Tabernacles.
This flood is a flood of spirit, not rain.
What the flood story actually does is to connect all people to one region, it traces people on every continent back to the middle east. It doesnt matter whether you look to south or north America or to Africa and Asia, people all over the globe have their own story of a lone survivor with his family saved out of a global flood, even Hawaii has their own name for Noah, and there probably isnt another person with as many names as Noah had, only his grandson and his wife come close.
What is certain is the story, a story linking the earth, linking all religions and although the Gilgamesh record is the oldest written document of the flood, it pales in .comparison to the Bible's actual ship log that marks actual dates and events.
Somebody once argured that Egypt had no flood story, but what Egypt has proves the flood more than most, the boat of Osiris is still carried in the streets of Egypt on the 17th of the second month marking the day Noah came out of the water.
I dont believe in a global flood, but I do believe in a flood of spirit.
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