The Flood

(6:10-8:20)

IT SHOULD hardly be necessary to repeat that in the prologue we are dealing with stories, parables, symbols and images and not with history. The details, therefore, of the measurements of the ark, the cubic capacity of its interior in relation to the housing and feeding of its numerous and varied occupants, the problem of the collection of the animals before the Flood and their redistribution after it, are as irrelevant as the periodic canards which claim that the skeletonic framework of the ark has been found on some Armenian mountain.

The Flood story is the Hebrew version of a much older Babylonian myth, which relates the adventures in similar terms and in almost exact parallel of one Utnapishtim, a Babylonian worthy who is 'warned by the god Ea of an impending deluge, builds an ark and is saved in the same manner as Noah. The details of the story as contained in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh can be found in any of the archaeological textbooks. There are major differences in the Hebrew version in respect of the religious and moral implications. Unlike the Babylonian tale it has moreover an outspokenly monotheistic tone. But basically the Genesis story is taken from the common fund of Near Eastern tradition and is used by the biblical writers in characteristic fashion to teach a religious lesson.

Evidence was found at Ur in 1929 by Sir Leonard Woolley, that a flood of some magnitude had covered that part of Mesopotamia in early times, possibly about 4000 B.C. It would seem as if the Persian Gulf had for a time perhaps in association with earth subsidence or other seismic activity encroached on the land at its northern end and submerged previously existing civilisation there. Archaeological evidence in Egypt, however, produces an unbroken record of civilisation throughout this period so that the flood was obviously a local one. If we were to take the Genesis story literally we should have to allow for the submersion of the whole earth to a depth of five miles. No doubt the story of the Flood, whether in its Babylonian or Hebrew version, goes back to this ancient occurrence, but in its present form it has lost contact with history entirely.

In the narrative there are certain inconsistencies, e.g. in the numbers of clean and unclean animals which enter the ark (cf. 6:19-20 and 7:14-15 with 7:2-3) or in the length of time that the Flood lasted (cf. 7:11 and 8:14 with 7:12; 8:10, 12). These are due to the fact that the editor of Genesis has combined the J tradition with the P tradition, interweaving their versions which differ in these and other incidental respects.

The story should not be read as an allegory, as if every item in it had some religious significance. It should be read as a whole, and treated as a dramatic and splendid tale which vividly portrays the total annihilation of the human race as a judgment upon its corruption, but which points through the divine preservation of Noah and his sons to the sequel which is now to be related, and which indeed is the real point that the story is being used to illustrate.