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Why a flood?

Ethnikos said:
That's a pretty good analogy, I think.
I came to this realization after reading an essay on how the gods created religions.
"The rules" were known to the god, who gave them to the proper scribes to write down, to have the people carry out, in order to bring the presence of the god near to them.
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I think you have that backwards, Ethnikos.
It's people who invent the rules to bring power near them.

In any case, could you give a link to the essay, please?
 
edge said:
From Pauls' post:
What you have there from Jesus is the guide.

What was going on before the flood, you may have to read into Enoch to get it.

From what I gather from many writtings is, the fallen angels and men were doing genetic manipulation, not only animals and plants but humans.The second thing is God buried the fallen during this time but not all of the fallen.
If he was not willing to put down all of them, then he obviously relented and didn't kill off all of humanity also.

In our time now, what are we doing to our food sources, animals and plants?
What is it that science wants to accomplish with humans?


Third did you ever notice how all abduction cases reported or 99% are about genetic manipulation, extraction of genetic materials and is horrific to those who are abducted?
Some of us they can't abduct.
Those that they can't abduct but try to attempt to abduct, when pushed, have to answer our questions.

The one third that God didn't bury under mountains are still here, that is the simplest answer to the questions you have presented.
Because it’s true.
The things people all over the world see and the physics they demonstrate are the last of the demons/fallen...and the control they possess over sciences we haven't figured out yet is what they will offer to us sometime in the future with the great lie. There are things we aren't supposed to do; I believe genetic manipulation is definitely one of those things. Have you tasted the tomatoes lately?
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Concerning the first hilited area: Just about every animal or plant we eat is the product of genetic manipulation. If you believe in the flood as a historical fact, then you must also accept that Noah and his family came out of the ark with genetically modified seeds and animals.

As to the the second hilited area: Now you want us to accept not only the literal historical veracity of Bible, but of New Age alien abduction stories as well. For the sake of argument, if aliens or demons wished to practice genetic manipulation, they could do it by means a whole lot less invasive than abductions, which would, as well, attract much less attention.
 
sowhat said:
I know you're looking for an explanation from a believer, but I'll stick my own opinion in here. This is a story, like so many others, written by priests to terrify the populace.
The more blood thirsty God is, the better.
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The flood story has a germ of truth. The end of the iceage caused rising sea levels to destroy many areas especially the lower land masses and settlements near the oceans and seas. The black sea area is a good example. Humans tend to live by large sources of water and these areas go drowned out first. The tales the world over grew with the telling.
 
pakeha said:
I think you have that backwards, Ethnikos.
It's people who invent the rules to bring power near them.
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Do you believe in the gods? If not, understand it as "according to the scribes".
In any case, could you give a link to the essay, please?
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It's not on the internet.
It's in a book on the Gospel of Mark by Adela Yarbro Collins, as an explanation of what Peter James and John meant when they said they should set up three booths for the three transfigured beings on the mountain.
She went into a long survey of how the gods established cults of worship, and I found it very enlightening.
 
Cainkane1 said:
The black sea area is a good example.
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There is a book that I recommend,

Early Israelites: Two Peoples, One History: Rediscovery of the Origins of Biblical Israel, by Igor P. Lipovsky

that makes a good case for the theory that the origins of the original Hebrews was from there, meaning the land that was flooded by the Black Sea, or rather what is now the Black Sea.
 
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Paul Bethke said:
The question to be asked is why did God destroy the world as is recorded?
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You are focusing on the why-God-destroyed-the-world part. The opening post question is why a flood? Couldn't God have snapped His Fingers and popped all the evildoers out of existence? What is gained by having 5-year-old children spending their hour Earth in sheer terror?
 
Ethnikos said:
Do you believe in the gods? If not, understand it as "according to the scribes". ...
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No.
Do you?

ETA
According to the scribes?
Or according to the local shaman?
 
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Ladewig said:
You are focusing on the why-God-destroyed-the-world part. The opening post question is why a flood? Couldn't God have snapped His Fingers and popped all the evildoers out of existence?
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Although I think the original post was looking for a modern theological explanation, I think an ancient theological explanation makes more sense, and is more interesting.

When the earliest versions of the flood myth were written, nobody had yet imagined omnipotence, and the Jews/Hebrews still had a pantheon of multiple non-omnipotent gods, just like everybody else around did. Along with true omnipotence and monotheism, another concept they either hadn't yet thought of or at least hadn't yet incorporated into their myths/religion was utter nothingness, and with it the modern absolute sense of creation (something from nothing) or destruction (something into nothing). That's why the closest they had to a creation story, like all others, actually started with something, which one or more gods would merely tinker with and rearrange: in their case, a great abyss of water.

So their story of the destruction of the world would naturally take the form of whatever was the greatest form of destruction that they did have a concept for, converting the world into the closest thing their mythology had to a concept of nothing: just a great sea. The Babylonian version of the flood story makes the equivalence between the flooded world and the primordial abyssal sea pretty straightforward in a couple of ways. First, Ut-Napishtim must destroy his home in order to use the materials to build the ship, which makes the ship the direct replacement for everything he has, his personal little world. Then, the description of the ship's design is equal in length and width (more like the disk-shaped rendering of the world than the shape of a boat) and directly compares its roof to the sky (which they thought of back then as a solid dome over the world, holding back the water outside it). Ut-Napishtim isn't putting things from this world in storage to bring back out later; he's recreating a small version of the world to replace the one that's getting destroyed.

The Hebrew version doesn't include some of those little details, but does add something else that still indicates a reason why the world's destruction would be in the form of a great storm instead of, for example, fire or plague or plain old personal violence against everybody: the choice of which god did the destroying. In both versions, it's done by the warrior-god, the guy who represents the imposition of one group's will on another by force (Enlil/Yahweh). But Yahweh also had a specific association with destructive storms, such as in a treaty between two Semitic-language-speaking kings in which Yahweh was invoked to enforce the treaty by destroying either side's ships & docks with waves & wind if they violated it. If the Semitic deity of choice to wipe us out had been Anat, for example, then the mechanism would have been running around personally pulling our guts out and rolling our heads down the streets instead of a flood.
 
Ethnikos said:
...I meant in Greek mythology.
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Why take things only back to Greek mythology?
Granted, it's most attractive and if you haven't read The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia I'm willing to bet you'd like it very much.

But I think it's clear the biblical flood has other, deeper roots than Greek ones, don't you?
 
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Gawdzilla said:
Not Egypt?
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Maybe there is and I don't know about it.
Is there an older Egyptian document spelling out instructions from a god on how to set up a religion devoted to them?

The specific case that I was thinking of earlier was of Demeter and the "people of Eleusis".
This is mentioned on page 418 of Mark: Hermeneia, by Adela Yarbro Collins.
 
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TimCallahan said:
Since there are already three flood threads going at the present time, I was originally thinking of putting this question into one of them. However, it would have been a bit off-topic for any other them. So, I'm starting this thread in hopes that DOC, edge or any others who consider the flood a historical event can offer a logical explanation for their god's actions. So, here's the question:

If God wanted to wipe out the human race (except for Noah and his family) why also exterminate all the animals and plants? Why not, instead, after conferring immunity on Noah and his family, create a deadly plague that would only kill all the other human beings? Why annihilate sinless animals and plants as well?
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The most logical explanation is that God, in spite of being omniscient, isn't particularly bright.
 
pakeha said:
Ah, not Mesopotamia?
Nor China?
Nor India?
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If you have the words of the god giving instructions to people on how to set up a religion based on worshipping it, let me know.
What I was saying was that we do have that sort of thing from the Hellenized world.
You also have such a thing in the Old Testament, with Moses, so the idea is to see whatever other religion had such founding documents in order to make a comparison.
There may be only so much information like that. Adela was bringing up cases that she knew about in order to see if what the disciples were suggesting fit that pattern. They told Jesus of their idea, and Jesus is not recorded as saying it was a bad idea.
 
CORed said:
The most logical explanation is that God, in spite of being omniscient, isn't particularly bright.
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Especially when he knew that the flood wasn't going to eradicate evil and that he'd have to take a personal hand in it later.
 
Didn't the story start as an explanation for seashells being found on the tops of mountains? I mean, I can just see it:

"Daddy, look at this! It's a shell! How did a shell get clear up here?"

"Well, Son, nearest thing I can figure, there must've been one hell of a flood"

And...there you have it. The seed of a story to be passed around the campfires, and retold for generations.

Gen 9:5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
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But he's not going to demand an accounting from each animal about his fellow animal? Why would men have to explain or excuse the actions of other men?
 
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