Literalists forget that Mount Ararat is 15,000 feet high, so just to cover that in 40 days and nights would take a rain so hard it could break the strongest boat, in order to cover the entire world,it would mean that since Everest is 29,000 feet it would double the amount of water to cover it, then figure out the amount of water that would have to evaporate, all plant life would be destroyed, as it would not be able to pollenate in the nearly a year that was covered with water…(yet a dove found a olive branch…a little hard to swallow). since the Ark was left on Ararat it would mean 29,000 feet of water evaporated in such a short time; how would the animals and people breath? The air would be full of water coming down, and then evaporating for nearly a year, then each animal would have to swim the oceans etc. to get to the other continents, (such as the Koala bears< Llama’s etc.) where they came from originally
I’m not sure why they couldn’t just be extinct, but he insisted that not only had they coexisted with man and gone on the ark, but there was a good chance that they weren’t extinct at all, just rare and elusive. IIRC, the Loch Ness Monster was cited as a probable dinosaur.
I know, I know, I know. I don’t go to that church anymore.
And it’s what? Maybe 2% of us(not necessarily even scientists) who are “fooled” enough to consider ourselves agnostic or atheist. To the believers, no fossil evidence, iridium layer et al is going to convince them anyway so why the “fooling.” Perhaps because there is no god to be doing the fooling at all?
I believe it’s so that Job’s “behemoth” and “leviathan” could be more easily identified with dinosaurs. My fundamentalist church used to claim that stories of dragons and sea serpents proved the co-existence of man and dinosaur, proving science wrong about the extinction of dinosaurs, and therefore invalidating the fact of evolution.
Or something like that.
I too no longer attend that particular congregation.
Monavis, why was that directed at me? At what point did I ever imply that I am a bible literalist?
I might have been more clear that debating opponents who aren’t on this message board is like beating up kids on the short bus. A debate between a group of people who all take the same position is kind of pointless now isn’t it. Some people are providing straw man arguments but I haven’t seen any bible literalists defend their position in this thread.
Not all Christians explain Noah’s ark the same way. Many believe it literally with no room for interpretation. I am not one of those Christians. I believe that many bible stories are allegorical and this may be one of them. I do not know if Genesis was dictated to Moses directly from God or if the story was written and handed down by the Hebrews but I do believe the main thrust of the story is sinfulness in the world.
I am not opersonally a bible literalist, or even particularly religious. Nor am I a bible scholar, nor do I read ancient Hebrew. But from what I’ve heard most of the problems with the story of Noah come from:
a) mistranslations of the original text
b) watching biblical epics, rather than reading the bible itself.
What I’ve heard is that the original story is somewhat more reasonable. It describes how the country was flooded, rather than the world. Noah took his own livestock onto the ark, rather than every animal in the world. Then he sailed away until he reached a country that wasn’t flooded.
I’ve also heard that there is considerable evidence of a massive flood that devastated the Middle East several thousand years BC, and the belief among quite intelligent historians that it’s probably based on a real event. There was a real person who built a boat and saved his family from a massive flood, inspiring the Utnapishtim story.
Well, you did qualify it by saying you’re not a Bible literalist, but Genesis 7 says "…and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
…and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered."
There are lots more like this. It clearly says that the whole earth was covered, not just the local countryside. And it says he took every kind of beast on the earth, not just his livestock. It’s hard for me to imagine that it’s meant to be taken metaphorically when it clearly goes to great lengths to specify that it means every kind of animal, and the whole earth.
On second read, I see you’re implying that the King James version might not be an accurate translation from the Hebrew. In which case we can consult the more modern translations, such as http://www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm , which just as clearly describes the same non-figurative use of language.
This makes my blood boil… That’s the belief spouted by a handful of sensationalistic historians who fail to examine the evidence in any way that might allow disproving their beliefs. The quite intelligent historians mock these people like the melodramatic fantasist losers that they are.
It’s a STORY. You don’t need some real life catastrophic event to have actually happened in order for a STORY to come about.
The earliest civilizations lived on flood plains. They flooded some times, which was really annoying and disrupted their lives. So naturally some storytellers took this and exaggerated it beyond all belief, because THAT’S WHAT STORYTELLERS DO, not because it was at all accurate to something that really happened.
These people trying to come up with pseudoscientific fantasies to try to explain away ancient fantasies are the bane of everyone who understands how these kinds of narratives are formed. Just the other day some geophysicist pretending to be a foklorist was in some newspaper trying to claim that some old Native American tales of a giant bird dropping a fish into the waters was based upon a cataclysmic tsunami. Yeah, right.
OK, I am a semi-literalist on this- literalist in that I do believe God warned Noah & family to build an Ark for the impending Flood, that all the basic animal families in the area were to be taken on that ark, that all of corrupted Adamic humanity was wiped out by the Flood; semi- in that I believe the Flood did not cover the globe, but the “land” (a valid translation), and may have spared whatever other tribes of humans might have existed not of the corrupted-Adamic line.
As to the logistics- the animals did not have to be of every single species, but of every basic family (a coupla dogs, a coupla pigs, either seven pairs or seven cattle & kosher fowl, etc.); young & smaller; hibernation. Plus, the Ark could have had a decent venting & plumbing system to keep it clean.
And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort
shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee;
they shall be male and female.
Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every
sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
So being a semi-literalist means you can just make up stuff as you go along?
I am sorry if you felt I was directing my reply to you, I did not mean you, but Bible literalists. You seemed to be in agreement with my ideas I was just pointing out some more reasons to doubt the Noah’s Ark stories that Literalists have not seemed to have considered, I could also point out all the insects,birds etc. that would have to be on the Ark. There may have been a flood in that area, and a fabelist took up the idea. It is my belief that the writer was trying to get a point across that; his God punishes the wicked and saves the just.
Sorry, unconvincing. One of the most famous translation errors in the Bible is “The parting of the Red Sea.” Everyone knows this is wrong. Everyone knows the original text actually says “sea of reeds.” Despite everyone knowing it’s wrong, the version you cited makes the same error.
Given the certain inaccuracies in this translation, it could still be mistranslated. The "land " was flooded and was translated wrongly as the world being flooded.
I assume you’re talking about how he said seven pairs, but the bible says one pair. Genesis 7:2 says “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female; and of beasts that are not clean by two; the male and his female.” It then goes on to say that birds go by sevens as well. The verses you were quoting were from Genesis 6:19 and 6:20.
No, I mean that when you come to the conclusion that the story can’t be true, why do you go and make stuff up to make it just a tad more convincing.
Why not go all the way and say it didn’t really happen like that, it’s just a STORY a MYTH, one that was nicked off the Babylonians and it found its way into the bible.
