What's your opinion about the Great Flood according to the Bible?

It showcases the murderous nature of the abrahamic demon god.
It also never happened and was shamelessly plagiarised from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Floods, tsunamis and other water disasters happen all through history and are often dramatic large-scale events. Is it a stretch that ancient people would think that these normal earth events were supernatural or that the gods are angry?

Tsunami.

I don’t believe it happened because:
1) There is not enough water in the atmosphere to cover the earth.
3) You’d need a pretty big ark to house two of every animal plus food for 150 days.
3) How can animals sustain themselves on a planet without sufficient life after the water killed most of it off? (I’m sure the olive trees would have perished as well).
4) Incest.

Impossible to say it better than @ARE_you_kidding_me! Since the dawn of recorded history things feared, hated or misunderstood have been called miracles of God or works of the Devil or cancellations of a TV series.

Like everything else in the bible, entirely fabricated or greatly exaggerated.

There are stories of a great flood in many religious and mythological traditions. I don’t know that the Bible’s account is fact, but there seems to be general corroboration.

There appears to be some evidence that there was some large water event a couple of thousand years ago. I can’t give you a specific citation without doing some research, but apparently there is geological evidence of such an event.

The biblical description, such as it is, is totally spin (for theological purposes) about what was an environmental event.

The way I see it, the natural phenomenon was, in fact, co-opted by the religionists for their own purposes.

We’re reliving the tale and all the scientists warn us and all the vested interests ignore the signs.

Funny enough it seem primarily the Christians that haven’t learned from the bible that some warnings shouldn’t be taken too lightly. We will face consequences for our actions, hether we ignore the signs or not…

I agree with @elbanditoroso . Flood or tidal wave, possibly an ark but not one with “two of every creature.” That is an insane proposition.

A charming story, but the Epic of Gilgamesh predated it by centuries. Chances are good there was localized flood which to ancient minds seemed like the end of the world as they knew it, but not enough to cover the world. Then there’s the matter of two animals of every kind – there’s no way that could have taken place – that ark would have had to have been a couple of miles in width and length because there were a number of now-extinct species that would have been along for the ride. Had they been scientifically advanced, they could have taken DNA samples and then brought the animals back, but there’s no evidence they knew what DNA was and I seriously doubt if they had the help of ancient astronauts to help them repopulate the world with animal life. The early Hebrews were great storytellers – but even then, they couldn’t be original, they had to copy an earlier story. But hey, if people want to believe it, let them – we all need a little fairy tale or two in our lives.

It may be a “folk memory” much embellished by the passage of time. I think refers to the receding of the ice age. The Arabian (or Persian) Gulf, which is relevant to the Noah story, before the ice melted was a valley in which the River Euphrates flowed. Probably a paradise for the hunter-gatherer people of the time (the origin of the Garden of Eden?). Just think how traumatic this must have been for them when it began to fill up with water. Without no explanation other than the anger of their gods.

@basstrom188 Were they hunter-gatherers? I thought they lived in river valleys, where flood stories would have been an obvious go-to for allegory and myth.

It wasn’t about water at all. Flood had the supporting role. It was a parable wise elders told as historical fact to point out the importance of wise existence with nature. If this all powerful God saw fit to save two of each species, even the little critters, and the ugly critters, he would expect humans to treat these critters the same way, to not cause the extinction of any creature, no matter how extreme things might seem for a while.

The parable was that God told Noah & he believed when everyone said he was crazy. Faith against all naysayers.

There have been several opportunities for catastrophic flooding within the period of time that man has walked the earth. Both the latest refill of the Mediterranean basin and the flooding of the Black sea basin may have occurred so rapidly that the result for anyone witnessing it would be a horrifying flood suitable for legends. Now a flood covering the entirety of the earth is quite another matter, And of course the ark is beyond speculation.

If there had been a flood, and the waters had risen over Mt. Rushmore, the resulting atmospheric pressure would be such that Noah and family’s blood would boil at ambient temperature and their bodies would explode.

* curtseys *

Thank you.

@SEEK queen of random odd facts, nice.

It could have been one big ass Tsunami that covered all the continents, just not all at once. I don’t think a wooden boat would have made it through that though, not in the recent geologic record either.

Back in the day of the flood the people recording such things, or telling these stories, thought the whole world was the middle east. They had no concept of how large the world was or what was on the other side of the ocean. They may have felt the world flooded, but it could have just been 100 miles of coastline and then the story began.

It doesn’t surprise me that such stories are dissed these days, regardless of any supporting evidence. There are people today who say the holocaust never happened, even though it was only 70 years ago, and was remarkably well documented.

My opinion? It was a little over the top wasn’t it!

Wow, @filmfann.

We do have a parallel legend of Matsya (fish) avatar.

The deluge flooded the earth, and… quite a similar story.

Though we do not have any evidence to support, but a common plot or story in different religions (or different parts of the world) makes me feel that it probably happened.

@filmfann
Like the Chinese that were completely unaffected by that alleged “global flood”.
But credit where credit is due. Good call on comparing the flood to the Holocaust.
Because the flood, if it happened, was a holocaust, and its perpetrator by several orders of magnitude worse than Hitler.

It’s a matter of perspective:

If our God kills (hundreds of) millions of them, they (His ‘victims’) must have deserved that.

If Samson kills himself and hundreds of people in the name of our God, he’s a hero.
One could also regard him as the first documented suicide terrorist.
That is the way we see the guys that do the same, nowadays, in the name of their God.

I watched a documentary recently that talked about this “great flood” story that is referenced in several historical tales and religious books (including the bible). The documentary seemed to pin point it to one location that was a basin and became flooded by lake/river outside of the basin.

I have no idea how fabricated the documentary was, but it certainly seems more believable than the entire world flooding.

It is crude fantasy copied from a Sumerian myth that is better-written. There are many scientific impossibilities in it, e.g. there is only 29% enough water to submerge the tallest mountains as Genesis claims occurred; such a flood would have killed salt water plants and animals; Genesis does not account for plant life; an all-wood boat would collapse in the seas, etc.! Anyone who believes it is literally true is quite gullible.

It’s true @BiZhen I personally think the Bible should be taken with a pinch of salt…
Well said @Seek!

Babylonian mythology story long before adopted by Nomadic Semitic tribes.

@non_omnis_moriar

How is that possibly another story, when the Sematic tribes stem from Noah’s son Sem?

Clearly they were talking about the same story, which makes far more sense, since it is their own ancestor involved.

Myths evolve

The story itself is not the truth, but a myth, happening in various cultures and mythologies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

Considering there is so many myths about the flood, and that all of them are either very similar, or almost identical in terms of the plot, one may assume that long ago, some big catastrophe may have happened, creating a myth that started spreading and passing on to other cultures. That’s how it got into the Bible.

As for the myth in the Bible, I think that God was not evil or demonic there. He created the world, and that world was being ruined with human greed and evil. I think God was disappointed and fed up with his beloved creation being ruined. He gave people will to choose between right and wrong, and they chose wrong. i tend to see it as “I’m so sick of this sh#t. We need a restart here” and decided to destroy life and create a new start. I think the Bible god is more of disappointed and fed up, rather than evil or violent, like, for example, Bel was in Sumerian myth. He simply wanted to wipe people out, without saving anyone, because they were too loud. (??? And no one point a finger at him…)

In short: it’s a myth. It may have been created from some devastating flood, but definitely not the world wide flood, and there was certainly not any actual Noah. I think the myth is interesting, it shows the nature of God. Like I said, I don’t see him as actually evil (he did decide to save the ones who deserved it, and made a promise to never do it again. I never saw the bible God as evil, he punished people a lot, but they kind of deserved it. He never was like: “Huh, I’m bored, how about killing people!”)