The Biblical account of the Flood raises some hard questions for Christianity and Judaism. We try to address these here.

Literal or Metaphor?

Theologically I am leaning toward a somewhat symbolic interpretation of the events of Genesis at least in part, for example that perhaps the events that are supposedly global could not have been literally global. I am happy for anyone to disagree with me on this and also admit I might be wrong. So I guess I am agnostic on this issue overall. Here are my reasons for leaning towards a more metaphorical reading.

Logistical problems

It does not seem like “every living creature” could possibly have been in the Ark. Leave alone all the diverse fauna of the different habitats on every continent, how is Noah supposed to identify the “pairs” of every “swarming thing”? Many insects have male and female, but Noah would have to spend years in the bush studying insect mating habits before he could decipher what really needed taking into the ark.

It does sound like Noah is tasked with finding these mating pairs, for in v.6:19 he is commanded “you shall bring with you…” and again in v.7:1 “take with you…”, while in the verse in Ch. 6 immediately following he is told “two of every kind shall come to you…”. This does not sound like the explicit statement of a miraculous “sending” of the animal pairs by God, rather just reinforcing what he has already been tasked with in v.19. However that is not to say that this could not mean that God has in fact miraculously brought the animals to Noah, indeed it would seem that his job were impossible were this not the case.

At the same time one might perhaps take the view (again, as I am inclined to) that it is not necessary that all the animals on every continent be brought into the Ark if all the events only really have local implications. When an ancient is told “the whole earth”, he is only conscious of a limited part of the earth, he might not have even seen the sea or know what lies beyond it.

In the story of Joseph a bit further on in Ch.41 the Bible states that “all the world” came to Joseph, twice in v.57, and its the same words as those used here “kal ha-eretz”, a singular noun. This can therefore be translated as “world”, or “earth”, but equally also simply “land”, as is used today in “eterz Israel” which refers simply to the land or nation of Israel itself, not the whole world. The ancients would not use “world” in the way that we do today, they did not have the concept of a globular planet.

This would avoid holding a belief that Noah himself were metaphorical,  which seems prudent since he is mentioned in the genealogical lists (which themselves are possibly not meant to be fully accurate: in some places “father” might be “ancestor” and therefore compress generations).

I can state this much for certain: the only way the Flood could literal is if its a miraculous project from start to finish, with God taking care of everything, as in the Crossing of the Red Sea. It seems like the time spent on the Ark is certainly more than 6 months (The rain lasts 150 days (5 months), then 40 days from the time that the rain stop till Noah sends the birds out to search for land, and then a few more weeks perhaps till dry land is found) while traditional estimates are usually up to 1 year, as calculated from the specific months mentioned.

In that period at least half of the animals would have had litters, while many animals have several young at a time. With respect to the food supply, there is no explicit miraculous intervention, Noah is commanded to do it himself “Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them” (v.6:21). God would have to keep the animals miraculously docile, and with suspended reproductive status.

And I can’t even begin to think of the problem of waste. The waste of pigs and the big carnivores are going to be quite disgusting. The total number of land animals in the world alone is around 25,000 species, which means 50,000 animals. The estimated floor-space of the Ark is around 100000 sq. feet (about 2 football fields). This gives around 2 sq. feet per animal. Bearing in mind that Noah would also need to provide some form of habitat for the animals, like perches for the climbing animals, birds and snakes (yes even the birds had to be taken since there was no food or dry land for them. Birds cannot live in the sky!)

An operation the size of this could not be performed with today’s technology, leave alone 4 or five men on a boat. So its miraculous, period, no doubt, if its literal. The thing is that God does not state to Noah that there will be a miraculous intervention in the project, we would need to read that into the text.

Morality of the Flood Account

What we do know is that it is specifically the inveterate violence of these peoples which is the reason that God puts an end to them in the Flood, for it is clearly stated as such:

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Gen.7:5) and

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. “ (Gen.7:11,12)

We see here God stating that humans at this time had suffered total moral failure. That God was “grieved”, rather than evidence of his mercilessness, is evidence for quite the opposite- that he felt sorrow for those innocents who suffered at the hands of these peoples. God “regretted” creating human beings precisely because he regretted the manner in which they were inflicting suffering on one another- were God merciless, he would enjoy human mercilessness too, since it could not affect him either way.

There will after all come a time when the World is ended and God will have at this time finished grieving at the suffering of the innocent for they will now be taken to Heaven to suffer no more. Those who remain faithful will find succor upon the Ark of the Church.

There are places in the world to this day where no reporter may venture, just like we will never know what those ancient peoples went through. When tyranny and torture are institutionalised in a system, then there is a sense in which all those who are part of that system share culpability to varying extent. In the Soviet state people were encouraged to inform on their own family members. With the breakdown of the family units, much akin to what we hear happening in those incarcerated in communist prisons today, truly the fabric of love and loyalties that we expect in normal society starts to be eroded, even to fade completely away. In such a police state, one is left with total and universal suspicion, repression, and thought control.

In the movie from the excellent early pre-Disney Star Wars franchise Revenge of the Sith, Anakin, a conflicted young Jedi warrior sets out to rescue his mother. The Tuscans, a desert tribe, who are a lot like Bedouins, have carried her off in a raid. The villagers try to get her back, but the Tuscans are so ferocious that of the 30 men that go out, only 4 return. Anakin arrives a month later to hear the news. The Tuscans, as his mother’s husband describes, might look human, but they are heartless and beast-like.

Anakin sneaks into the Tuscan camp, and finds his wounded mother tied to a post. She has only the time to tell him that he loves her and then dies in his arms in that dank little hut. Anakin in a fury put the whole village to the sword. He takes his mother’s body back for burial and confesses to Padme afterward (slight paraphrase) “I killed them, all of them, the women, the children…they were all like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals…”. Anakin effectively puts an end to this entire institution that fostered this terror. Padme looks concerned, yet does not seem to judge him- she was not there, she did not hold the broken body of her own mother in that dank dungeon nor experience the pain of that reunion which lasted only the duration of a dying gasp.

That can be taken as analogous to the grief that God feels for those that are unjustly dealt with, only far worse. Certainly that is the grief that he continues to feel for as long as he wills the world to continue in existence, and just as surely will the world end when the time comes for his Wrath to return.

Babies and children, we would have to think are not an issue for God, he looks after their souls. Even today in some African countries, infant survival below 5 years is only something like 1 in 5, due to malaria, diarrheal illness, HIV etc.. Further 1 in 8 pregnancies ends in still birth. So you can imagine that God has many more children to look after than just these that die in Biblical flood and violence.

The Metaphorical Significance of the Flood

We’ve just raised the possibility that the Flood might not be literal and rather be metaphorical, instead, so it obviously follows that we must state what it is likely to be a metaphor for. That is to say, what is the teaching/moral significance of the Flood narrative. The Flood is a type of Heaven and Hell type scenario playing out in the ancient world, as the foreshadowing of Judgement Day. As in the Flood, when the world ends, there will be those who are still babies, whose earthly lives will be cut short and not run their full course. Jesus gives this teaching himself:

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:37-39)

The Flood is a metaphor of the unexpectedness of Judgement Day which will come, as Jesus says elsewhere again “like a thief in the night”.

Finally as we stated also in the previous section, God “regrets” the suffering in the world, and there will come a time when he will have no further cause for “regret”, because as in the Flood, he will remedy the source of that regret. The second time round, as per his Promise, it will not be a Flood, it will be the End.

We explore the moral issues related to the Flood account in the article on Violence in the Old Testament, and related issues in Slavery in the Old Testament

Other Unlikely Incidents

Sun stands still for Joshua

With regards to the rest of the world being “veiled” from the miracle, it’s not impossible, but then its special pleading. At the time of Joshua, since we have very few reports from that time anyway, next to none, so the question as to why it is not reported in the rest of world literature might be related to that. One can also consider the possibility that God made the Sun continue to provide light to Joshua’s army through a local optical effect rather than a cosmological phenomenon, and the Bible is just giving us an experiential description. Or indeed the Earth stopped rotating and God took care of all the gravitational effects by maintaining all other times and places in suspended animation so that so one else was conscious of the time lapse, I don’t know.