The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the more disturbing of the well known stories in the Bible. The idea of a deity that would wipe out all but eight humans in order to knock back (but not eliminate) evil in the world… It’s a disturbing story on so many levels. James McGrath takes a look at the question “can Noah’s Ark be Savaged?“ He says
The best way to make sense of the story is to show how it, like all the Biblical literature, reflects the development of human thinking about God that has led us to where we are today, rather than as static proclamations of things one ought to believe about God.
People tend to focus on the “good” part of the story – the promise not to do it again, the covenant with Noah. But that requires you to set aside the depiction of God as an abusive parent, an Andrea Yates, as James suggests.
(You should also read his previous post “God’s Wife“.)
Filed under: Religion
Good question! The way i see it is that story really does not have as much god in it as the bible presents it as. there are story’s about a flood all over the world. i think that in order to explain this natural phenomenon he people who witnessed it said it was gods doing to wash away all the evil in the world.
I do NOT beilive that god would do this. So as the centurys and melenia went on before this story was writen down by word it was changed little by little into what it is today.
my 2 cents
Glad you put these links up! I loved those posts.
One of my absolute favorite books is God: a Biography, by Jack Miles. It looks at the Bible as a piece of literature with God as the main character – usually he’s just a constant, a part of the environment. This book traces his development as a character. It’s available used for $0.06 on Amazon right now too!
Did you notice that you changed the title of my post to “Can Noah’s Ark Be Savaged?”?
Oh, you mean that wasn’t what you meant to say?