Oddities of the Flood Legend

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Background
In the previous post, I discussed the impetus for The Flood of Noah.

God has Noah build the Ark, a boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high, and gather up pairs of animals into the Ark to repopulate Earth after The Flood. God Floods the Earth for about a year, wiping out all land creatures, including man, and all birds.

Christians often site the fact that the majority of cultures have a legend of a great flood as evidence for historical proof. At one time, a part of the Ark was thought to have been discovered on a mountain, but this ended up to be a big hoax.

Oddities of the Flood Legend
Humans need fresh water to survive. As such, any self-sustaining community had to locate itself near a fresh water source. Humans learned long ago that the same water that sustained life could easily end it. If there was too little, the drought would claim lives as crops and people died of thirst. If there was too much, the flood would wash away belongings, houses, livestock, and drown loved ones.

Most legends have a basis in fact, it's true. With nearly every community of mankind depending on and living near fresh water to survive, it is no surprise that legends would spring up about floods. Also, we would expect several variations on those flood legends due to the imagination of the local populous. This is exactly the case. Anyone claiming that many cultures having a flood legend would be proof of The Flood obviously hasn't thought very hard about why that may be true.

Moving on to The Flood at hand, there are several oddities about The Flood legend, such as why would God want to kill the animals (Genesis 6:17), and why would God tell Noah to collect pairs of every animal (Genesis 6:19-20), only to tell him seven days before The Flood that he instead needed seven pairs of all the “clean” animals (Genesis 7:1-4). I'm not going to discuss them all here, but I will hit some of the highlights.

Many miracles in the Bible strike me as an odd mix between the natural and the supernatural. The Flood is a prime example. God's objective was to kill all of mankind, except Noah and his family, and kill off all the animals except the ones on the Ark. He chooses to do so with a natural event of unnatural proportion, and it takes a year to do it. Why wouldn't God just instantaneously kill them all and disintegrate them to dust? Such an act would have been even more miraculous, as nothing natural could have possibly done that. The Flood was not to test Noah's heart, as he already had favorable status. To me, such natural miracles suggest that the origin of the legend is a natural event which has been woven into a story about divine power.

The next couple oddities come as Noah disembarks from the Ark in Genesis 8:20-21:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done." NIV

Why is the smell of burnt flesh a “pleasing aroma” to God? This is something repeated over and over again in the Old Testament. Modern Christians debate about whether or not a fiery Hell is the destination of unsaved sinners. If it is, God is going to be incredibly pleased with the aroma from all those sinners roasting! Maybe that's why only few will enter at the straight gate of salvation...

In these verses, we get a rare glimpse at the heart of God. What does it say? Even though all of mankind's inclinations are evil from childhood on into adulthood, He will not curse the ground again or destroy all living creatures. Those with standard-Christian-issue rose-colored glasses will say that this shows God's great mercy. Under honest scrutiny, the message of mercy is not the only thing revealed. Paraphrasing the full meaning; “Mankind is a failed experiment that has resulted in only evil creatures. I want to just wipe them all off the Earth, but I will not do this.” So, yes, it does show mercy, but not due to some pleasure God takes in man, or out of some great love God has for man.

Closing this legend out, in Genesis 9:8-16 God makes a covenant with Noah that specifically He will never again destroy all life with a flood, and He makes rainbows as a reminder for Him of the covenant. We'll forget that God would need a reminder at this time to tackle a bigger issue. The issue is that God's covenant essentially means nothing! Why? Because, as I hinted earlier, an omnipotent God could wipe out mankind in any number of ways, not just a flood. Not only that, this covenant hasn't stopped God from killing hundreds of thousands with floods through the centuries. So this covenant is worthless, except for the rainbows. Those are nice. :-)

Repentant God, Part 1

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Background
One of God's many reported attributes is that He is completely omniscient. He knows the past, present, and future perfectly. God is supposedly in the unique position of knowing the exact consequences of His possible actions before He even takes the action, thereby allowing Him to make the best possible decisions.

Today's study is in Genesis 6. Previously, Adam and Eve have been kicked out from the Garden of Eden, and their offspring have been multiplying on the Earth. There is no record that God has tried to steer mankind down the path of righteousness since expulsion from Eden.

Repentant God, Part 1
Like a patient that undergoes the pain of a hip replacement surgery and subsequent therapy in order to walk with ease, God knows all of the discomfort He will have to endure to achieve His ultimate goal. In fact, an omniscient God would be in a better position than the patient, as He would know the exact detail of the pain He would experience by His decision before His decision is brought into fruition. Plus, such a God would know exactly the extent of the result and reward for enduring that pain. With such perfect knowledge, such a God has no excuse for mistakes and repentance of His own actions. Yet this is not what we find in the Bible, as we see in Genesis 6:5-8:

The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. NIV

Because mankind had ultimately ended up thinking “only evil all the time”, God felt sorry that He ever made man. In other words, God repented making man. He changed His mind that the whole mankind project was a good idea. But if God knew the outcome of the project in advance, then why would and how could He repent? Everything was going exactly according to His Plan. If it was not part of His Plan, then He would not have decided to have mankind in the first place. Thus we see a failure of omniscience.

God's solution to the problem of evil in mankind was not remedial in nature. He did not say “These people are sheep without a shepherd. I will send them guides to the path of righteousness.” He did not decide that He needed a new strategy to encourage the love of God and doing what is right. Instead, God wanted to end the mankind project altogether, saying that He will wipe mankind from the face of the Earth. This solution shows another failure of omniscience; a failure to know that the present pain is worth the future reward according the the original Plan.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. In other words, as God was about to wipe mankind off the Earth, He realized that there was one righteous man. So God made an exception. As the legend goes, God tells Noah to make an Ark and through doing so the animal kingdom is preserved and mankind again repopulates the Earth.

What is important to note is that God was not even omniscient about Noah. This is revealed in the language that God used, or rather did not use. God did not say “I will wipe mankind from the face of the Earth except for my servant Noah and his family.” God did not say “I have painfully endured the evil of mankind until the time of my beloved servant Noah, and now I am happy that I can start mankind over with a man of great faith.” Instead, we read God intended to end the mankind project, and would have done so if not for finding Noah. So we see a third failure of omniscience about Noah and the ultimate Plan.

So when you tuck your kids in at night, be sure to tell them that, at least at one time, God thought mankind was a mistake, and he would have snuffed us all out if not for Noah and a lack of His omniscience.