GAE and the Noahic Flood (for CASEs)

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For my own edification, I went through the OT to find and categorize every instance where kol (“all”) and eretz (“land” or “earth”) are found together.

Many times when kol and eretz are found together, it’s modified by the name of a specific land, such as “all the land of Egypt”. [1] In other places, it is both unmodified and universal (referring to the entire earth), which is disproportionately found in poetic passages, and almost always with reference to God’s universal glory or dominion. [2] Most commonly, however, “all the land” is both unmodified and non-universal, referring to a particular area, typically the land of Israel. [3] Finally, there are also a few unclear instances where it could refer to either the entire earth or a specific land. [4]

I was actually surprised by these findings. I didn’t expect the unmodified instances of kol ha-eretz to be so clearly biased toward non-universality, especially in non-poetic passages. This strongly supports a non-universal or hyperbolic reading of the Noahic Flood pericope. Here was one passage that I found particularly interesting:

So Joshua defeated the whole land [kol ha-eretz], the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings; he left no one remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded. (Josh. 10:40)

This is clearly universal language, parallel to the language of universal destruction used to describe the Noahic Flood, yet later in the very same book – and elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic history – we find out that Joshua was unable to drive out many of the Canaanites! (Josh. 15:63; 16:10; 17:12f; Judg. 1:19; 3:1-4)

[1] Modified: Gen. 2:11, 13; 17:8; 41:19, 29, 41, 43, 44, 46, 54, 55; 45:8, 20, 26; Exod. 5:12; 7:19, 21; 8:16, 17, 24; 9:9, 22, 24, 25; 10:14, 15, 22; 11:6; Josh. 1:4; 10:41; 11:16; 13:4; 24:3; Judg. 11:21; 1 Sam. 13:19; 1 Kgs. 4:10; 15:20; 2 Kgs. 10:33; 15:29; 1 Chron. 13:2; 2 Chron. 11:23; 15:8; 34:7; Jer. 44:26.

[2] Not modified, universal: Gen. 1:26, 29; 18:25; 9:14, 16; 19:5; Exod. 34:10; Num. 14:21; Josh. 3:11, 13; 23:14; 1 Sam. 17:46; 1 Kgs. 2:2; 2 Kgs. 5:15; 2 Chron. 16:9; Psa. 8:1, 9; 19:4; 45:16; 47:2, 7; 57:5, 11; 66:1; 72:19; 83:18; 96:1, 9; 97:5, 9; 98:4; 100:1; 105:7; 108:5; Isa. 6:3; 12:5; 14:26; 25:8; 54:5; Mic. 4:13; Zech. 4:14.

[3] Not modified, not universal: Gen. 13:9, 15; 19:28; 26:3, 4; 41:54, 57; 47:13; Exod. 32:13; Num. 21:26; Deut. 11:3, 25; 19:8; 28:52; 29:2, 23; 34:1, 11; Josh. 2:3, 24; 6:27; 9:24; 10:40; 11:16, 23; 21:43; Judg. 6:37, 39, 40; 1 Sam. 13:3; 30:16; 2 Sam. 15:23; 18:8; 24:8; 1 Kgs. 9:19; 10:24; 2 Kgs. 17:5; 19:11; 1 Chron. 14:17; 22:5; 2 Chron. 8:6; 34:33; Isa. 7:24; 10:23; 13:5; 28:22; 37:11, 18; Jer. 1:18; 4:20, 27; 8:16; 12:11; 15:10; 16:15; 23:3, 8, 15; 25:11; 27:6; 32:37; 50:23; 51:7, 25, 28, 41, 47, 49, 52; Ezek. 22:4; 32:4; 35:14; 36:24; Dan. 9:7; Zech. 13:8; 14:9, 10.

[4] Unclear: Gen. 9:19; 11:1, 4, 8, 9; 1 Chron. 16:14, 23, 30; Job 42:15; Psa. 33:8; 48:2; Isa. 10:14; 14:7; Jer. 40:4; Lam. 2:15; Ezek. 20:6; Dan. 8:5; Hab. 2:20; Zeph. 1:18; 3:8, 19; Zech. 1:11; 4:10; 5:3, 6; 6:5.

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But it’s clear from the Joshua story that it’s a local event, while much of the Noah story makes no sense as a local event. God repents that he created people and wants to kill them all. Every nation descends from Noah. The ravens can find no land anywhere. Further, soon after the Flood, all the people in the world are gathered at Babel.

(Incidentally, Babel is a fine example of explicit folk etymology from the writers of Genesis.)

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Yes, it also does not make any sense to take two (or more) of every kind into the ark, if it’s just a local event. Further, it is not even clear if an ark is necessary at all for a local flood as, in the time it took to build one, it seems likely to be possible to escape the floodplain.

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That is one view----but I read “the father of all who” according to the culture: the idiom means “the first to do X.” Thus, Jabal and Jubal were the first of their professions, or the “the first to become proficient and renowned.” Thus, everybody who lives in tents and raises livestock got their lifestyle from Jabal and those who play music can look to Jubal (as in “owe their craft to.”)

Of course, a closely related idiom is still common in the Middle East today: “the mother of all . . .” During the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein would shoot his mouth off and claim that the U.S. army would be defeated in “the mother of all battles.” That idiom simply means “the greatest of all” and “the one to which all others are compared.”

Maybe. But I think it more likely that nephilim simply meant “fallen ones” or “giants” and thereby applied to various groups down through the centuries. (In our culture, perhaps “Freaks!”) Thus, one should not assume that nephilim always referred to the same group/tribe. Indeed, words like “giant” are common throughout the world today to refer to an individual or an entire tribe if they are larger than the norm. The average African Pygmy is around 4’11" but the neighboring Bantu people are around 5’6". To the Pygmies, Bantus are “giants.” (I think it likely that the term Titan of Greek mythology started out as a neighboring tribe of greater stature. Over time the stories got exaggerated—as retellings are prone to do—and they became “legendary giants.” This also brings to mind the reports of the spies from the Children of Israel who scoped out Canaan. They reported giants in the land who would allegedly view the 12 tribes of Israel as mere grasshoppers.)

By the way, just the history of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament spans hundreds of years. And the pre-Abrahamic texts of Genesis 1-11 are probably based on oral retellings from prior people groups, cultures, and languages a great many centuries before that. So we should be extremely careful about assuming particular words, including proper (?) nouns (as in Nephilim) always referred to the same thing. Indeed, even in a language like English, which has only been around for a relatively few centuries, we would not assume that a word found in Beowulf or Chaucer has the same meaning and refers to the same person/place/thing today.

True. But perhaps the phonemic similarities are merely coincidental (and perhaps based on etymology rather than genealogy) and/or reflect a traditional story. And traditional stories don’t always reflect “literal” historical fact.

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Of course. Because it’s clear that it’s a local event, @misterme987 put it in the “Not modified, not universal” category. If it had been unclear, it would be in the “Unclear” category. The point is that events that are evidently local can still use the same universal-sounding language.

Further, from Joshua 10:40 it would seem like everyone in that region was killed (“left no one remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed”), but other texts in the same book reveal that this is not the case. So it’s a really good example of how universal-sounding language is not necessarily universal.

Yes, it’s an idiom, but keep in mind how Genesis literalizes idioms – it gives idioms an origin story or etiology. So “one flesh” and “bone of my bone” and “flesh of my flesh” are all kinship idioms, but the man and woman are literally made from one living creature cleaved in two. “You are dust” is an idiom for being mortal, but the first human is literally made from the dust of the earth. “You shall eat dust” is an idiom for being abased or humbled, but the serpent is literally cast to the ground (losing either legs or wings) to slither on its belly in the dust.

Given this pattern, when the claims about Jabal and Jubal are made within a genealogy, I do think the text is suggesting they really are the fathers of those people.

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That’s a good point, but I’m more inclined to think that these are the same nephilim based on the author’s statement in Genesis 6:4: “The nephilim were on the land in those days, and also afterward… these were the heroes of old, the men of renown.” To me, it’s clear that this is saying that the group of nephilim that existed before the Flood was also “on the land” after the Flood.

According to the prevailing form of the Documentary Hypothesis, Gen. 4:20-21, 6:4, and Num. 13:33 are all attributed to the same author (the Yahwist). This suggests to me that the author used cosmic/universal language to describe a flood that he knew to be local, as he knew of people groups (such as the nephilim) that existed before and after the Flood. It’s not unprecedented in the ancient world to use cosmic language to describe a local event – see my comment #19 in this topic, plus Joshua 10:40.

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Welcome back, @Marshall. And thanks for making excellent points to keep this thread moving forward. Likewise with @misterme987. You are both expanding upon ideas very much worth exploring when investigating the mysteries of ancient texts.

I’m dealing with multiple deadlines today and won’t be able to reply immediately but hope to catch up later. These are very interesting topics.

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True. Context is informative.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Context again seems relevant. Here, it doesn’t seem credible that the writers of Genesis thought that smiths, etc., constituted an actual lineage. What we get in the genealogies is just a little info about the person. Sometimes it’s undecipherable, as with Peleg.

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That makes it sound as if nephilim is more of a job title than a clan. Like Newton claiming he stood on the shoulders of giants.

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I’m not sure why not. In their culture, that was knowledge typically passed down from father to son. Instead, I would say it shows that they did not fixate on genetic transfer when it came to describing lineages. Recognizing that they had a broader conception of descent helps us not read their genealogies anachronistically.

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So you’re saying that biblical genealogy might pass from teacher to student rather than parent to child?

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The context indicates that nephilim is a genealogical term, describing the children of the “sons of God” and “daughters of man,” whatever that means.

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But it doesn’t make them a people or a lineage. They might be thought of as demigods, like the majority of the heroes of Greek myth.

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I corresponded with the author of one of the articles I cited in the OP, Alan Dickin, and he suggested that Ararat may be a garbled transliteration of Aratta, the mountainous land some place in western Iran that’s mentioned in Sumerian literature. This would be consistent with either the Arabian flood or a southern Mesopotamian one. Thoughts?

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Consider this: flood and other disaster myths are found in many places in the world. Flood myths are found in places that are often flooded. In other places, other common sorts of disasters are featured. The flood of Noah doesn’t have to represent a particular real event. It’s just the sort of disaster that happened a lot in the southern part of the Tigris-Euphrates area, just as floods happen a lot in other parts of the world that have flood myths. See this, for example:

Is there any reason to search for a specific historical basis for this, any more than for the floods of Deucalion or Manu? And where is Noah, if we suppose that the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh is the same one?

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There seems to be an unsupported assumption here, that the other flood myths aren’t also accounts (albeit garbled) of historical flooding events. AFAIK there have been convincing attempts to identify most of these floods with historical ones.

For example, the Deucalion flood has been associated with the Thera disaster, and the Chinese flood myth has been associated with a 1920 BC deluge.

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How are the identifications of these two example myths with the suggested historic events “convincing”?

The “Thera disaster” was an eruption, which caused damage from volcanic debris and earthquakes (not mentioned in the myth), as well as tsunamis, but would not have caused “rivers [that] ran in torrents”[1] mentioned in the myth.

Likewise, the “1920 BC deluge” was an “outburst flood” caused by a natural dam breaking. It therefore would have been a very short-lived event quite unlike the two-generation-long Great Flood of Chinese myth.

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With regard to the Thera disaster, the Tempest Stele of Ahmose I reports that this disaster caused widespread storms and rain, leading to flooding. This is consistent with the Thera eruption being a historical event behind the Deucalion myth. (I’m not claiming that every detail of the Deucalion myth is correct, but that there may have been a single event around which further material was accreted, leading to the myth.)

As for the Chinese flood myth, the authors of the paper which connects this to the ~1920 BC flood state,

Widespread destruction of levees and deposition of tributary mouth bars may have destabilized the main river channel, leading to repeated flooding until a new river channel was established. Extensive flooding on the lower Yellow River plain would have had a great effect on societies there… The ~1920 BCE flood shares the main characteristics of the Great Flood described in ancient texts. Apart from its huge peak discharge, the secondary flooding on the lower plains may have been long-lasting, just as the Great Flood remained uncontrolled for 22 years until it was managed by dredging (rather than by blocking breaches in natural levees).

However, the point isn’t that every flood myth has a historical event behind it, but that widespread flood myths don’t mean that individual flood myths aren’t based on a historical event, which is what @John_Harshman seems to be claiming. It’s not fruitless to think that the Noah myth might be based on a historical flood, especially considering that the Atrahasis and Ziusudra myths appear to describe the same flood.

Plus, as a Christian, I have a certain commitment to the biblical text that I don’t have to other flood myths. I understand that this seems like a double standard, and I’m open to the idea that Noah’s flood wasn’t historical, but because of my religious commitments I think it’s worthwhile to examine the historical record for Noah’s flood.

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Argh.

We all know that the Bible is God’s word, and if God intended the Bible to say “Aratta” then the Bible would have said “Aratta”. But it doesn’t, so it isn’t. Got it.

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I’m not sure what you mean? No transliteration from another language into Hebrew will be perfect. I don’t know if “Aratta” to “Ararat” is plausible, which is why I’m hoping @AllenWitmerMiller can weigh in on this later, but it fits what he said earlier about “Ararat” being a transliteration from a much earlier language (Sumerian or Akkadian).

Edit: For what it’s worth, “Urartu” to “Ararat” would also be an imperfect transliteration.