The story of Noah’s Ark has inspired considerable derision over the years, particularly from those with strong scientific leanings. Let me say from the start, though, that Christianity has no quarrel with genuine science. God created the physical universe. God created humans with bodies. To survive as a human it is necessary to embrace science, because humans exist in a physical universe. But it is also necessary to recognize the limitations of science, the primary limitation being that science is human observation and conjecture. Most of what we think we know is something someone else told us, and humans are notoriously mistaken, not to mentions frequently dishonest. Scientific inquiry may be self-corrective, but we also know it can take centuries to acknowledge and correct its own mistakes.
Christians who, by definition, believe that knowledge comes from science and other sources, also have the capacity for simple-mindedness. I read one argument that explained the feasible of Noah keeping dinosaurs in the ark. (I’m not certain whether the argument was serious or a satirical attack against Christianity.) But, assuming the argument was sincere, it stands as an example of how Christian apologetics is often more about defending biblical interpretation than about defending what the Bible actually says. Dinosaurs are never mentioned in the Bible. There is no need to argue that Noah ushered onto the ark pairs of animals that did not exist during his lifetime.
Scientific objections to the story of Noah’s Ark also tend to be anachronistic. I don’t mean that the world of Noah’s time was physically different than our time, though in some ways it may have been. What I mean is that the science of Noah’s day was not as advanced as the science of the twenty-first century. The account of Noah’s flood was written in language that people in Noah’s time would have been able to understand.
Before proceeding with scientific concerns about the Flood, though, we should consider whether the story can be understood as some sort of “figure”. The short answer is, not likely. It does not read like an extended metaphor, or a parable, nor can it be read as hyperbole. The language used in Genesis is consistently concrete and literal. The ark’s design is spelled out in some detail. It was to be made out of gopher wood. (There are many theories about the phrase “gopher wood”, but most believe it means milled wood or planks.) It was to be covered with pitch, inside and out. It was to be roughly 450’ long by 75’ wide by 45’ tall. It was to have a roof, a door, a window, and was to have three decks. Noah was to bring his family into the ark, along with pairs of animals (two pairs of unclean animals and seven pairs of clean animals). The rain came on the land for 40 days and 40 nights. The rain began in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day. The mountains were covered with water, more than 22’ over their tops. (Was Noah doing soundings?)
On the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Genesis notes the passing of 150 days. The start and end days are specifically five months apart. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day, Noah removed the cover from the ark. In the second month on the twenty-seventh day, the earth appeared to be dry, so they ventured out of the ark. The details in all this suggest a careful and conscious effort to record history.
The Bible is not the only source that describes a great flood. For example, the Gilgamesh Epic, Eridu Genesis, and Atrahasis are all Mesopotamian compositions that contain striking similarities to the Bible’s Flood story. Some see this as a reason to doubt the Mosaic recording. For the doubters, Moses appropriated a common legend, spiced it up a bit with Hebrew perspective, and slipped it into the book of Genesis. Could be. Or it could be that the event really happened and a number of cultures had their own recollections of it. One interesting question to ask is, if the story of Noah is a legend, why would Moses feel the need to appropriate it? While the story contains a number of valuable lessons, they are lessons repeated in both the Old and New Testaments. Certainly the power of God, his mercy, and his commitment to deliver his people was experienced by Moses and the Israelites in an even more dramatic fashion and in their own time. Moses had no need for this story.
Let’s turn, then, to the sticky scientific problems. Noah and the animals were cooped up in the ark for more than a year. For that to happen Noah would either have had to store an enormous amount of water (and wine) and/or he would have had a pumping system for drawing water from outside the ark. Maybe he used rain barrels and a gutter system. There was certainly plenty of water to be had outside the ark. He would have had to store enormous amounts of food. There would have been a need for at least five times as much food stored, by weight, as there was in animal mass. Half the ark would have been a big silo.
How could Noah put pairs of every sort of animal on the face of the earth in half an ark? There would have been only about 50,000 square feet of space for Noah, his family, and all the animals. Imagine living like that for a year. A bit like serving on a nuclear sub, I suppose. As the food supplies dwindled, the available space would have expanded. This, no doubt, would have been a blessing. On the other hand, it seems the population on the ark grew during the year of isolation. The animals entered in pairs. Genesis, chapter 8, verse 18, says that the people and the animals left the ark “by families”. Of course there would have been young ones over the course of a year. Perhaps the animal population was controlled by eating some of them. The clean animals entered in seven pairs. Maybe they exited with only four pairs.
Fifty thousand square feet is, essentially, 20 large houses connected together. Noah and his children might have gone days without seeing each other. Even so, could all the animals of the earth actually fit into this space? I think, from what we know of the vast number of animal species, we have to say the answer is, “No”. Or maybe it’s a question of science vs. language again. When God tells Noah to bring two of every “sort” of animal, that seems to leave a lot of wiggle room with respect to meaning. Is “rodent” a sort of animal? If so, it’s a sort that is made up of 1500 of what we call “species”. I would guess rodents would have made their way onto the ark without Noah’s help…or permission. What would the word “species” have meant to Noah?
Another example of scientific development is found in the text. The record notes that 150 days passed in the ark before it came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. This number is confirmed in the text when it also notes that the rain began on the seventeenth day of the second month, and then the ark came to rest on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. The problem is that months are not actually 30 days—they are roughly 30.4 days. (Months are odd. Some are 30 days, some 31. There’s even one that can’t make up its mind whether it’s 28 or 29.) This doesn’t mean Noah provided false information. Rather, Noah represented the calendar as he understood it. He used the best science of his day to express the passage of time. Has the precision of measuring the calendar changed over the centuries? Of course it has, (even though most of us don’t know why the months are named what they’re named, or why they have their variant assigned lengths, or why the calendar needs occasional adjustments). Noah would not have been checking his iPhone for date and time confirmations.
Okay, but isn’t God supposed to be omniscient? If he is really the timeless God, isn’t he able to provide timeless information that would convey accurately to the 21st century? However much we have advanced scientifically since Noah, it is also clear that we have not reached the end of scientific learning. Are we 90% of the way to understanding the physical universe? Are we 1% there? How could we know? Precise scientific revelations by God to Noah might be as inscrutable to us today as they would have been to Noah four or five thousand years ago. What would the words, “polar bear” or “bison” or “potato” have meant to Noah? What would the phrase “cell phone” have meant to me fifty years ago? I knew of Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, but at that point it was a kind of joke. There is language to come that we are currently clueless about. Some reality is so unknown to us that clear words about it would be gibberish in our ears.
All of the Bible was recorded by humans. Those people lived in different times, locations, cultures, wrote in various literary styles, and in several different languages. Languages are dynamic. Ideas build on each other, just as science builds on itself. Biblical books were written initially for the benefit of the people who lived when they were written. We believe those revelations travel well and are relevant to the present, but we mislead ourselves when we fail to take into account cultural differences and assumptions, as well as developments in human understanding.
When we read in Genesis 6.17, “I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die”, the statement certainly reads as an absolute reference to the earth. But what if this statement and the other similar statements in the Flood account are references to “the whole earth” as Noah would have known it? Isn’t it likely that Noah’s whole earth hardly reached beyond Mesopotamia? (Do you, reader, know the area Mesopotamia designates?) Maybe there weren’t people beyond Mesopotamia…but if there were, does it really matter? How would the significance of the Flood change if it took place in a major region of the world rather than the whole world? Does this difference threaten the veracity of the Bible? I think not, as long as we recognize that the statements are true from Noah’s perspective. Noah recorded the event. He recorded what he experienced. He saw his society obliterated. God spoke to Noah in terms he could understand.
Reading the passage in this way allows us to resolve a number of problems, such as the unlikely travels (to the New World, bringing back bison, polar bears, and potatoes, for example). My point is not to suggest that God is incapable of miracles. Far from it. Christianity stands or falls on miracles, particularly the resurrection of Jesus. God controls the physical world. In what ways he can manipulate it or is willing to manipulate it, he has not revealed to us. I suspect our brains will never have the capacity to fully understand creation, in any case. If God wanted to Star-Trek-transport Noah and the animals, and wanted to shrink them for a time to let them fit in the ark, don’t expect me to deny it. The thing is, no such special manipulation is suggested in the Flood story. The Flood doesn’t present as a miracle. It is simply a much greater flood than witnessed anywhere in history. If there are floods there has to be a biggest one.
One point that comes up in many of the discussions about the Flood is that Mt. Ararat is 16,854’ tall. A lot of water would be required to cover a mountain that tall. However, the text does not say, “Mt. Ararat.” it says the mountains of Ararat or, to put it another way, “the mountain region of Ararat”. It’s possible Noah was floating around in a valley in the region of Ararat. It’s understandable that people would like the reference to be Mt. Ararat specifically, since that makes the flood story more dramatic. But the story is dramatic enough without embellishment.
One commentator argued that the word Mount is “Har” in Hebrew which is a hill, not a mountain. She also noted that when the dove returned to the ark, she (the dove) carried an olive branch. Olive trees hate humidity, which is why it’s always recommended to plant them in south-facing positions in ground with good drainage. In order to protect olive trees from frost, they should be planted at no more than 2600’ above sea level, on a hill or at the base of a mountain. Doves fly, obviously, and they can range 7 miles in a day, though they normally travel only 2 miles. A roundtrip from the top of Mt. Ararat to olive tree level and back would be about 5.4 miles, assuming the dove flew “as the crow flies”. It seems that doves do fly as high as 6,000 feet, but ascending to almost 17,000’ feet might not be possible for a dove. Frankly, such a height would have been challenging breathing for all the ark passengers. All this suggests a lower landing place for the ark.
The idea that the Ark landed atop Mt. Ararat did not become popular until the 11th century A.D. There are other contestants for the landing place of Noah’s ark. Mt. Judi, or Mt. Cudi, for example is just over 7000’ and is on the edge of the Ararat Mountain region. In 1953 a German geologist, Dr. Friedrich Bender, discovered bits of wood and asphalt on Judi’s summit, about 3’ below the surface. Carbon dating traced the fragments back 6500 years.
All this may feel like a grasping at straws. To a degree, that’s true. It’s hard to collect a lot of physical evidence about a wooden boat from 5000 years ago. My fundamental argument, though, is that a historical explanation is possible.
I would also like to point out that this sort of tentative, place-holding perspective is routine in human thinking. Consider, for example, that science believes the universe was formed via the “Big Bang”. The precision involved in the theory demands Design. Thus, science makes a strong argument for the existence of God and undermines the likelihood of a purely materialistic universe. And, yet, scientists generally don’t concede this obvious truth. Or take the amazing way the earth has been formed within the universe to allow for the existence of life. The odds are so small as to make our existence impossible. “Science” answers this problem by assuming billions of galaxies that cannot be seen. This is not science, of course; it is a probability solution based on a faith in scientific materialism. Or consider the problem of organic material coming from inorganic material. Science has no answer. In fact, science is much more baffled about this today than it was 100 years ago or 50 years ago. It doesn’t take a lot of scratching around to see that today’s science is fundamentally a faith.
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.” We should all take a step back from time to time to consider that reality is stranger than fiction. It is a fact that I once did not exist. It is a fact that today I do. It is a fact that one day I will die and then I will either exist or not exist. I say these are facts, admitting that there are some people who have their doubts about them. In any case, for me these facts are as strange as any animal-filled boat and flood. We should have trouble believing in logical contradictions. I don’t really understand why people struggle to believe in strange possibilities. Our existence is stranger than anything I can imagine.
One reason I suppose people doubt the Flood story is that it contains so many elements that seem aimed at children. Even Christians don’t seem to take the Flood story seriously. Noah doesn’t often make his way into adult sermons. Children love all those animals marching along in pairs. There’s a big boat. Then there’s that adorable white dove with an olive branch in its beak. And the rainbow. This is great material for coloring books, toys, and stuffed animal collections. But having kid appeal is no reason for adult skepticism. Jesus said we must become like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe that means we need to be innocent. Maybe that means we need to trust him like little children trust their parents. Maybe that means we need to see past the World’s fog, misdirection, and doublespeak, and fix on simple truths. That’s what kid stories do.
Speaking of the rainbow, in the story of the Flood, God puts the rainbow in the sky for the first time. Scientifically, this, too is a puzzle. The rainbow comes from the prism effect. The sun passes through water droplets in a process called “refraction”. White light, which is made up of various wavelengths, is split by passing through the medium of water, giving off the array of separated colors. (I don’t really understand this; I just put my faith in science on this point.) The first question is: why did the phenomenon of rainbows first appear after the Flood? How could they not have appeared previously?
Or maybe, again, we are simply creating a problem not in the text. Genesis 9.13,16 says, “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth…and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” The text doesn’t say this is the first time the rainbow has appeared in the sky. What it does say is that God assigned a meaning to it. The meaning is that God has promised to never bring a natural, cataclysmic destruction to the world as long as it continues to exist. It is a promise of peace. I consider this promise the best explanation for why the human race has not obliterated itself using nuclear bombs. We have had the capacity to do so for nearly 80 years. Perhaps we will blow ourselves up yet, but when that happens, Jesus will appear. The end will be a new beginning.
It’s not difficult to see why the sexual nihilist movement has adopted the rainbow (flag) as its symbol. The array of colors, separate but together, is a pleasing way to represent the affirmation of differences. The irony is that the flood came upon the earth because of God’s anger at the wickedness of the human race. God has clearly defined human sexuality as a gift that contributes to marriage and the nuclear family. So while God proclaims peace through the rainbow, sexual nihilism is a proclamation of war against God and against humanity. Sexual nihilism disconnects sex from the initiation of life, and it encourages the termination of life. The current employment of rainbow symbolism is nearly the opposite of the beneficial meaning God assigned to it.
What is the story of Noah’s Ark about, after all? Most of the lessons I’ve heard focus on the need for faith. Noah trusted God. This is certainly a key biblical concept. Adam and Eve got us all into trouble because they didn’t trust God. Salvation in the New Testament is based fundamentally on belief, or trust, in God. Noah’s story reminds us that trusting God is sometimes difficult. It also reminds us that trusting God when things get rough is the most important time to do so. Noah built a boat on dry land, designed to carry many animals and food supplies. His reason for doing so? An impending flood.
From time-to-time in history we read about cultish groups that abandon their houses to go sit together on some remote mountain, convinced by their charismatic leader that Jesus is coming back on day W of X month of the year Y, in location Z. The “divine revelation” has made it clear he has a particular soft spot for people who gather there to meet him first. We think these people are crazy. History has shown time and again that they were crazy or, in most cases, strangely lacking in reasoned skepticism. Doing something crazy in the name of God is no proof of faith in God. In many cases it is zeal without knowledge. It is self-deception combined with wishful thinking. If you’re going to do something crazy in the name of God you had better be certain it’s God who wants you to do it. What Noah was doing was crazy. Except that when the flood came his craziness was revealed as prophetic insight.
God does ask his people to do things the world sees as crazy, though. He tells us not to cheat on our taxes, which is to say, to be honest, even when we’re pretty sure we can get away with being dishonest. He tells us to love our miserable neighbors (and the nice ones, too). He tells us to be thankful at all times, to not worry about whether our needs will be supplied. He tells us to live faithfully with our spouses, to care for our children, to care for the household of faith, and to care for all in need, to the extent we are able. He tells us it’s a good thing to live sacrificially. He tells us that greatness resides in the one who serves, and that those who strive for “the top” will find themselves with nothing. Following Jesus is often unpopular, inconvenient, difficult, and even dangerous. This is when and where we demonstrate our faith. We say God is good and all-powerful. He may let us go through great difficulties, but he will never abandon us. He may let the wicked slay us, but he will raise us up again to a much better life in a much better place into a much better society. It sometimes seems crazy to follow him but, for the Christian, Noah’s faithfulness provides an example of fearless faithfulness. It shows how we are part of a greater story that includes conflict and struggle, but that ends happily.
Similarly, we see in Noah an example of how faithfulness is often about disciplined work with little to show. How long did he work on that ark? It had to have been years of planning and design, gathering materials, and slow building. What a nasty, long job it must have been covering the inside and outside of the ark with pitch. He had to gather up animals. He must have had his own little zoo before he ever led them into the ark. (Maybe that was his financing plan. Exotic zoo and tours of the ark under construction? I’d pay to see that.)
The Bible doesn’t say how long it took Noah to build the ark but his three named sons were born after he was 500 years old, and he was 600 when the flood came, so some think it took as long as 100 years. My guess is it moved along much faster than that, for the one reason that wooden boats typically last only 25 years or so. It’s also fair to imagine Noah had more help than his immediate family, with all that was going on. He likely was a man of means. At any rate, the project probably went on for years, all the while seeming like a really stupid idea. But Noah kept the project going. This is a lesson on the value of perseverance. Putting in a half-hearted effort resulting in a half-finished ark would not have been sufficient. I suspect there is more urgency to our lives than is apparent to most of us. Our tasks are not usually as specifically defined for us as was Noah’s, but we know what God has put into our hands. We should not be living with an apathetic sense of our own purposes. Our lives, too, can end up as means used by God to save a few. They are certainly intended to be blessings.
There’s a quote I like that I will add here. I’m not sure of its origin, though it’s safe to say it came after April 14, 1912: “The ark was built by amateurs, while the Titanic was built by professionals.”
But the point of the flood itself is still elusive. It’s clear that God was angry about wickedness on the earth. The flood was to have cleared away the wickedness, like a fire clears a forest. But the cleansing didn’t really happen, did it. Surely the most wicked were eliminated. But five verses after God blessed Noah with the sign of the rainbow, we read the odd account of Ham witnessing Noah’s nakedness. What’s the big deal? Two things, I suspect. One is that nakedness is associated with the guilt of sin against God. Adam and Eve covered their nakedness immediately after eating the forbidden fruit. Nakedness is associated with shame, at least when there is something to be ashamed about. Maybe we’re ashamed of the way we look. Maybe it’s harder to hide our thoughts when we’re naked. Maybe being naked makes us afraid, or vulnerable. If we, as “enlightened” people of the 21st century think this is silly, then go ahead, get naked and walk around town. The police will apprehend you quickly, I’m sure. But, imagining the police as otherwise occupied, the reactions of others would certainly be “interesting” and possibly dangerous.
Noah was ashamed of his nakedness, and he likely felt remorse because his nakedness was a carelessness associated with being drunk. Ham, instead of being discrete or helpful, gossiped to his brothers. These don’t seem like earth-shattering failures to us. Maybe they weren’t then, either, but Noah reacted with fierce anger. He cursed Ham’s progeny. Perhaps Noah’s reaction was the greatest sin out of the whole affair. The point is, sin was not overcome by the Flood. Solzhenitsyn observed that, “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”
So it becomes clear that a solution that eliminates all the worst actors from the earth does not work. Take away the bad actors and what you are left with is more bad actors. I suspect we all dream of eliminating our enemies from time to time. Maybe our hatreds are political. Maybe they are sociological. Perhaps they are religious. Perhaps they are racial. Whatever our hates, the story of Noah’s Ark tells us that any effort to wipe out our enemies will not work. Even if we could eliminate all those we hate, we would soon find a new category of intolerable people. This brings to mind the saying: “The common denominator in all your failed relationships is you”.
Thus humans have this seemingly intractable problem: God hates wickedness and we are incapable of ridding ourselves of it. The story of Noah describes the problem and then hints at the solution through the ark, through the dove, and through the rainbow. God, by his grace, must provide the way. And, so, the story nudges us to the Gospel of the New Testament. How can wicked humans be made tolerable to God? (And, as some have argued correctly, I believe), how can God be made tolerable to humans?: “You must be born again”. We need a full body and spirit makeover. This is what Jesus promises to those who trust him.
We should not gloss over what the Flood implies for those who do not trust him. There is a strong correlation between trusting God and holiness. There is a strong correlation between not trusting God and wickedness. It is possible to be, by normal human standards, a fine, upstanding, caring human being while having no interest in God. And there are Christians who are obnoxious, disagreeable and, seemingly, selfish. (There are posers, for that matter, and it’s important to be self-aware on this point.) So, what is the difference? This is a question worthy of an entirely different essay because there are so many facets to it, but I will suggest a couple things here. The Christian is not necessarily a better person. The Christian is conscious of his failings, weaknesses, sins, and undeservedness of heaven. The Christian knows he cannot be good enough and cannot save himself. The Christian recognizes and embraces his utter dependence on God for all things in this life and the next. The Christian recognizes Jesus as Lord of all. Goodness cannot be defined by individual humans. Rather, humans are to seek to understand goodness as defined by Jesus and to live according to his guidance. Christians continue to struggle with their own selfishness but they strive to conform to the selflessness commanded by God. They are committed to loving God first, then to loving others, even as they love themselves.
This is a digression. But the point of the digression is that those who are not Christians are left off the Ark. Salvation is offered to all, but salvation is not given to those who will not receive it. You must get on the boat. Those who do not get on the boat perish. Here’s the Big Test question: Should you get on the boat or not? Here is the answer to the test: Get on.
The lessons of Noah’s Ark are of great value to us, and I have tried to show that the event presents itself in the Bible as historical. But, for argument’s sake, let us ask, “Are the lessons of the story invalidated if it is a kind of biblical parable? Before answering that, let’s take a peek into the New Testament to see whether those writers had something relevant to say.
The writer of the book of Hebrews spends some time describing characters from the Old Testament, pointing out how they lived their lives by faith, trusting in God. Included in the list are such well-known characters as Abel, Abraham, Jacob, Sarah, Moses, David, Samuel…and Noah. All these persons, as well as a number I have not named, are understood by Jewish and Christian people to be historical characters. He says this of Noah: By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. – Hebrews 11.7. It is apparent the writer to the Hebrews considered Noah to be a historical figure.
The Apostle, Peter, refers to Noah at least three times in his New Testament writings. In the following passage Peter likens the Flood to Christian baptism. God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. – 1 Peter 3.20-22. Peter’s metaphoric connection could have depended on a biblical story of Noah, but Peter’s language suggests that he understood Noah to be a historical person.
Dr. Luke, one of the foremost historians of the first century, wrote the books of Luke and Acts. In the book of Luke, within his genealogy of Jesus, Luke writes: …the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. – Luke 3.36-38. It’s interesting that the Gospel with the greatest tendency to include historical minutia, includes Noah in the genealogy of Jesus. It seems that Luke considered Noah to be a historical character.
Finally, we have this quote from Matthew 24.37-39: As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. The speaker in this case is Jesus. It could be argued that Jesus was using the story of Noah as a metaphorical reference. It could be he was trying to explain his second coming through a well known story. But, again, the text presents itself as a historical comparison. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” Jesus is explaining an event he says will take place in real time for real people. The use of a moral tale in this case would weaken what he is saying about a crucial event for humanity that is to take place in the future.
I’m not certain the story of Noah and the Flood must be a historical event, but the biblical accounts consistently seem to present it as such. Christians do not scoff at science. If at all possible, it’s best if we can avoid having debates with science about the claims of Christianity. Most of the conflicts are not between science and Christianity. Most of the conflicts arise not from what the Bible says but through how people interpret it. It’s so easy to read between the lines and then dig in the heels. But science is equally to blame, often assuming absolute understanding about matters that cannot be understood absolutely.
The lessons of Noah and the Flood are of great value. They, perhaps, are not destroyed if the story of Noah is not looked on as a historical event. But, on the other hand, to see the story as myth is typically a means of undermining its value and of undermining the actual demands it places upon us. Understanding it as a historical event is, therefore, the perspective I recommend for us until the Lord himself provides a better explanation.
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