Is Noah’s Flood a Hoax?

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.  God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.  So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people . . . I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it . . . Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth . . . The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.” (Genesis 6:11-13, 17a, 7:6, 24).

 One of the great stories of the Bible is Noah’s Ark, or the Great Flood.  It is a tale of judgment, faith, obedience, salvation and hope.  The passage is found in Genesis 6-9.  Almost everyone has heard the story, even those who really aren’t that familiar with the Bible.  It’s such a great story, and it draws us to it.

But it is the story of Noah and the Flood real?  There are some that insist it is mythology; that it didn’t really happen.  It’s included in the Bible, they say, to teach a universal truth about the elements mentioned in the previous chapter.

Not too long ago, I got into a discussion with a self-proclaimed atheist about God.  He brought to my attention the ancient story of Gilgamesh and his flood, which is much older than the biblical text.  The implication was that Moses or someone simply copied someone else’s story because it was a good one to use.

I make it a practice not to argue about the existence or not of God.  There is no way to empirically prove one way or the other that God does or does not exist.  The reality of God ultimately is a faith-based statement, regardless of whether we believe in Him or not.  Because I refuse to argue, I didn’t address the flood issue.

But it got me to thinking.

I knew of Gilgamesh, but I also knew that other ancient writings—what we call mythologies in other cultures—also had Great Flood stories.  In my younger nerdy days (as opposed to my current nerdy days), I had an interest in mythology arising from The Iliad by Homer, the story of the Trojan War.  From the Greeks and Romans, I moved on to the Nordic tales.  I also had an interest in Meso-American tribes, and found a book of their myths, one of which was about a Great Flood.

The List of Flood Sagas

A quick Google of the topic of great floods in ancient myths yields over 20 tales, from all over the world, from Oceania west to the Americas.  A brief glance at many of the stories leads to a theme common to many of them.

In many of the flood stories from mythology, a god becomes angry at the evil of mankind and sends a flood.  A few people (usually two, but not always) are warned of the impending flood and they survive the flood either by riding it out in a vessel of some kind or climbing a high mountain.  After the flood recedes, the surviving man and woman begin to repopulate the world.

So many of the stories are close enough that one has to wonder if there may be something to the old myths and legends.  Maybe Noah’s flood is true.

Let’s look at this from another angle.  Suppose a person named Herman is sitting on a park bench having a perfectly nice day.  He’s reading, watching people, just having a quiet time in the park.  Herman is an intelligent person, able to reason and come to conclusions.

As Herman is sitting on his bench, two people walk by.  He can’t help but overhear their conversation.  They are talking about seeing a unicorn in the park.  Herman looks around and sees no unicorn.  He knows unicorns don’t exist, so he dismisses their conversation.

Except it happens again.  A different couple, coming from the same direction, talking about the unicorn they have seen in the park.  And a third couple does the same.  Then a fourth.  And a fifth, and so on until Herman has overheard 20 different couples talking about the unicorn they have seen in the park.

Herman knows there is no such thing as a unicorn.  They are part of mythology.  They do not exist.  Yet, there are 40 people within the recent past who have allegedly seen a unicorn in this very park.  Could there be some truth to the different stories?  It’s clear from Herman’s observation of the different couples that they have nothing in common, and their conversations seem genuine.

There are two things Herman can do.  He can dismiss the report of a unicorn in the park as mass hallucination or that there is a unicorn in the park.  There may be one or two other options, but Herman decides to explore.  He gets up from his park bench and begins to walk in the general direction from which the couples have come.  He walks for a short period of time, when suddenly he comes upon what appears to be a unicorn.

Herman is startled, but skeptical.  He gets closer and soon discovers that the animal seen does have a strong appearance to a unicorn, but in fact it is merely a horse made to look like a unicorn.

Now, the question is:  Did the couples see a unicorn or not?  The answer is yes and no.  No, they did not see a unicorn because unicorns do not exist.  But yes, they did, because they saw an animal that they accepted as a unicorn even though they knew it really wasn’t a real one.

The same can be asked, then, if so many cultures from all over the world are familiar with a tale of a massive flood, doesn’t it stand to reason that there is probably something behind it?  So many of the flood stories have the same narrative:  God regretted the evil people had and were doing, decided to punish humanity, but wanted to preserve His creation, so he set apart one righteous family, placed them in a secure place (boat, high mountain) and proceeded with the flood.

With so many witnesses from so diverse a population, I submit that the flood did occur.  Was it universal in nature, or was it a local catastrophe?  That’s another question that I think is open to interpretation.

Universal or Regional?

The Bible indicates the flood was universal in nature, destroying all life except of those in the ark.  But, how realistic is that?  Two animals of all kinds, four couples and additional animals that were edible, all in a relatively small ark.  The food required for all the animals would have taken up an enormous amount of space, as well.

However, with God, all things are possible (cf. Luke 18:27).  It is possible that God did round up every creature on earth; it is possible He then placed everyone in a state of suspended animation, greatly retarding the need for nourishment.  The Bible says the flood waters lasted 150 days (Genesis 7:24).  Assuming that does not include the days of rain, then we are looking at 150-190 days inside the ark.  But, considering Genesis 7:11, the flood began on the seventh day of the second month, and the earth was completely dry on the 27^th day of the second month, so that would be one year and 20 days before everyone and everything came out of the ark.

All of this doesn’t answer the question about universal or regional.  Up until recently, I would have been a firm believer of a regional flood, but then Harvey came and poured 51 inches of rain on the Texas coast in just under a week’s time.  The flood in Genesis is created by 40 days of rain plus “all the springs of the great deep burst forth” (Genesis 7:11).  Assuming that the earth was experiencing a greenhouse effect of cloud cover—if the entire earth was covered with a layer of clouds—and if those clouds poured down rain all over the world as Harvey did over Houston and other parts of the Texas coast, then it is quite conceivable that the world could have been flooded.  Realize part of the precipitation would have been in the form of snow over higher elevations, it is still possible that the flood could have been universal in nature.

But, it could also have been regional in nature.  Let’s suppose Noah lived in a land situated between Italy and Africa—we now know that area to be the Mediterranean Sea.  But suppose at the time of Noah that the area was a relatively dry land, the Atlantic Ocean being held back by a natural barrier between the Pillars of Hercules.  Once Noah and his family are sealed within the ark, the rains would have begun and the barrier separating the Atlantic and the basin could have collapsed.  Water flooding in to the area would have created a type of flooding that could easily have sent the ark toward Ararat in the Turkey/Armenia area.  Such a regional flood would have seemed universal to Noah, and would allow for the existence of animals and still other people in other parts of the world.

And yet, the Bible indicates a universal flood, destroying all living creatures outside the ark (excluding sea creatures, of course).  Imagining a flood so great that it covers even the Himalayas with 20 feet of water (Genesis 7:20) is staggering; seeing it dry up in a year’s time is also staggering.  But neither of these possibilities is out of the realm of what God can do.

So, was the flood universal or regional?  I can see it both ways.  Certainly, for Noah and his family, it was a universal event—their world was devastated, and they were tasked with the duty to repopulate their world.  (For those who would suggest such a thing is absurd on the universal scale, I remind you of “Lucy,” the first relatively modern human whose remains were found in Africa.  I would remind you that science teaches modern people first migrated from Africa and now cover the world.  If we are willing to accept science’s version of events, why not Noah and his family as well?)

Whether the flood was regional or universal in nature, we do know that the Bible is clear that the flood was a form of judgment instigated by God, and that the redemption of humanity in the form of Noah and his family is also by the hand of God.  The Bible states that God sealed the ark (Genesis 7:16), letting us know that God is the Protector, and that God unsealed the ark when it was safe (Genesis 8:15), letting us know that God is the Provider and Savior of the world.  The rainbow is a reminder to us that God will not destroy the world in such a way ever again.  The rainbow is our reminder of God’s promises and His benevolence.  The rainbow is our symbol of hope and assurance.

Conclusion

There is no definitive proof that the story of Noah’s ark and the flood really happened.  There are many accounts across many cultures that a great flood did occur, so the likelihood is that a devastating flood did occur sometime in the prehistoric past.  Whether the flood was regional or universal is open to interpretation.  There are good Bible scholars that see Noah’s ark (and most of Genesis 1-11) as allegorical.  As is the case with almost everything in the Bible, we have to rely on faith.

As for me, I believe Noah’s ark is a true story.  I can’t answer all the questions that arise from it, and I can’t even determine if it was universal or regional in nature.  Did every living land creature actually wind up on the ark?  This alone leads me to the regional theory, but I can see the universal flood as well.

The one thing I am certain of is that a flood did occur, and that God was the acting force behind it all.  It was His plan, His selection of Noah and his family, and that God provided for Noah and the others in the ark in a way only God could.  It’s all right there in the Bible.  And I believe the Bible.

© 2017 Glynn Beaty