Inspired by all the discussion about the new Ark Theme Park. The developer was quoted as saying
What does the ark have to do with Christianity? Even by creationist timelines (1 page PDF file), the ark story happened 2349 years before the birth of Christ. Why do some Christians claim this as their own? The flood story appears in various forms in other religious texts as well (Qu’ran, Torah) not to mention other cultural flood myths.
You know that the Qu’ran and Torah are same tradition as the Old Testament, right? Ffor purposes of Noah, the Torah and OT are identical, AFAIK, and there is a reason that Muslims refer to Christians and Jews as ‘people of the book’ - all three faiths trace back to Abraham.
Right. But the central question here is, “Why do some Christians claim this as their own?”
Ken Ham doesn’t say that the ark story is part of the Abrahamic tradition. He says it’s Christian.
Ken Ham is a kook; it’s pointless to try to decipher his nuttiness.
I think Ham is part of the group that believes that Jesus always existed, and that if you close one eye and squint just right in the proper light while praying real hard you can find mention of Jesus throughout the Old Testament.
The literal veracity of the flood story plays a pivotal role in the brand of literalist conservative Christianity that’s hung up on evolution vs creation. In order to explain many types of phenomena that point to a very old earth, such as sedimentary rock and the stratification of fossils, these biblical literalists point to the supposed Noahic flood.
What Jews and Muslims there are that take the Noahic flood story to be literally true are not at all prominent in American culture, so in that respect a replica ark really is a Christian thing.
The Christian Bible consists of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many Fundamentalist Christians are biblical literalists, believing that the entire Bible (both OT and NT) is the literal word of God – and I would be stunned if Ken Ham is not a literalist.
Additionally, the rainbow at the end of the Flood story represents God’s first covenant with his people (God’s promise to never again flood the earth), while Jesus is the “New Covenant”, so there’s some symmetry there, as well.
Christian belief is generally that what they call the Old Testament is essentially a prophecy foretelling the appearance of Jesus. So what would otherwise be seen as the history of Judaism is seen as the early history of Christianity before Jesus’ birth.
Echoing the correctness of both of these statements.
What it has to do with Christianity is that it’s in the same book (the Bible) as the gospels that tell of Jesus. And presumably in Ham’s mind, if the story of Noah and the Ark (as well as every other thing written in the Bible) isn’t literally factually true, then nothing in the Bible – including the gospels – can be relied on to be true. So his version of Christian faith hinges on the ark.
Strikes me as a rather weak faith if it can be obliterated by the relative veracity of an unrelated story, but he can go to his church and I’ll go to mine.
Same thing Creation has to do with Christianity, as far as literalists are concerned. It’s a part of the Christian myth that is challenged by modern science.
In the other thread I made a post, #51(tooting my own horn here) as to how non-literalist Christians view the OT stories, particularly the Flood. Genesis 1-11 was mainly a set of relationship stories, how humanity and God are related, and how they will deal together. In those stories it’s seen how our ancestors developed a relationship with God, and how it’s different that the dealings other peoples had with their own deities.
If you had the slightest familiarity with real Christian theology, instead of making fun of it whenever you can, you would know that most Christians believe that Jesus, as part of the triune God, has always existed. I’d rather you stuck to talking about things you know.
Oddly, the flood is one of the few parts about the bible that might have actually happened-not a world-wide flood, obviously, but some kind of local disaster in the middle east. It’s mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh and most of the cultures in that area have a myth about a flood.
Which is more corroboration than pretty much any other event in the bible.
He didn’t deny that belief; he only noted that it can’t be found in the Old Testament, as a number of literalist theologians have claimed. (Harold Camping, I’m thinking of you.)
When I went to Hebrew School no one there claimed that the Creation story and the Flood story were real - our “real” history book began with Abram. So maybe he says it is Christian because most Jews have disowned it as anything but a myth?
My point is that it has been standard Christian theology for most of the last of the past two millennia, not just with the Hams and Campings.
I have, on more than one occasion, heard a sermon regarding “The Angel of the Lord”…Archangel Michael, IIRC…is in fact pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus Christ throughout the Old Testament.
Other “sons of God” do show up in the OT … but they don’t resemble Jesus very much. Genesis 6:4
More like the fathers of Heracles: man/god hybrids who were heroes.
I don’t get this discussion at all. Don’t Christians consider the New Testament to extend the old one? The God of Abraham is Jesus’ dad to Christians. It’s like saying your maternal grandfather isn’t related to you because he has a different last name. The OT doesn’t have just one part, the creation of the NT doesn’t say to throw away the OT. There are many internal inconsistencies within both books, but having a volume 1 and volume 2 here doesn’t increase the inconsistencies if you belief in the sequel.