credit: Douglas Simmonds/British Museum; Cuneiform tablet containing an ark story

There are flood stories in addition to that found in the Bible from Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures such as Babylon, Sumer, and Assyria. The Sumerian account is in a text known as the “Eridu Genesis,” which combines a creation story and a flood account. The Babylonian account, known as the Epic of Atrahasis, also combines a creation story and a flood account. A better-known Babylonian version of the flood in the Gilgamesh Epic casts Gilgamesh, a mid-third millennium BC king, as the flood hero. The storyline in all three tells a similar tale.

The above description, and much of what follows, was taken from The Lost World of the Genesis Flood by Tremper Longman and John Walton. In Part 1 of this article we looked at how Longman and Walton suggested the literary use of hyperbole in the Genesis flood account helps suggest why geological science does not support the biblical story of a global flood. Here we look at the similarities and differences of Biblical and ANE flood stories, as well as scientific evidence of a flood that possibly spawned them.

Because of their displeasure with humanity, the gods (at least some of the gods) decide to bring a flood to destroy them. In each case, an individual was saved from the impending destruction through a warning and given instructions to build an ark. The ark’s shape differs in each account. There is a round one in the Epic of Atrahasis (more on this later), a cubical ark in the Gilgamesh Epic, and the oblong ark of Noah. “While the shape of the arks in the various stories differs, remarkably the floor space of the arks is nearly identical.” Ken Ham seems to have taken some creative license by building his Ark Encounter to a slightly larger scale and with more modern looking contours than described here.

After building the ark, the flood hero and others (family and in some cases even more people) as well as animals enter the ark. The flood waters rise and finally ebb to the point that the ark comes to rest. The Gilgamesh Epic and the biblical account note the ark settles on a mountain (Nimush [Nisir] and Ararat, respectively). In these two versions we also hear that Uta-napishti and Noah let out three birds to determine whether the waters had receded to the point that they could disembark. After stepping off the ark, the flood heroes offer a sacrifice to (the) god(s). . . .The flood is understood across all accounts to be motivated by encroaching disorder, and sending the flood represents a strategy to restore order. Though all descriptions are general, each literary reflection provides its own perspective on what constituted the disorder. . . .While the similarities are striking, so are the differences. Indeed, there are so many differences in detail that we won’t mention them all, but they include things like the length and duration of the flood, the size and shape of the ark, the number and identity of people that go on the ark, the name of the flood heroes, and the order of the birds sent out to determine whether the waters of the flood had yet receded.

There has been an interesting and recent discovery with regard to the Babylonian flood account. A cuneiform tablet about the size of a cell phone was brought to the attention of Dr. Irving Finkel, Deputy Keeper of Middle East at the British Museum. He is one a handful of experts capable of sight-reading cuneiform. As soon as he saw the tablet he knew it was an account of the Babylonian flood. The front side of the tablet contains a detailed description of the construction of the Babylonian ark, which was a round vessel with a diameter of about 230 feet and 20-foot-high walls. An intriguing detail provided on this tablet was that “the animals enter two-by-two.” Given the detailed description on how Atrahasis was to construct his ark, Finkel resolved to see if he could replicate the process. You can read about his discovery and then watch a forty minute video, “The Real Noah’s Ark,” of his quest on The History Blog: “Noah’s round ark takes to the water.”

The assumptions by Finkel in the video about the biblical text and their dates won’t fit with conservative Christian scholarship. He believed the Epic of Atrahasis was based on an actual flood and that the biblical flood narrative was added to Scripture after the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity in 537 BC. However, The Lost World of the Flood noted excavations at Megiddo unearthed a fragment of the Gilgamesh Epic dating from the time of the Judges (1400 BC to 1050 BC) at the end of the second millennium.

Finkel disregarded the possibility the cuneiform tablet used hyperbole to describe the dimensions of the ark in his attempt to “prove” it could have been seaworthy. His single-mindedness reminded me of Ken Ham wanting to “prove” the truth of the biblical dimensions of Noah’s ark by building the Ark Encounter. Longman and Walton commented that like the biblical ark and the other Mesopotamian arks “this vessel [the round ark of Atrahasis] is inherently not seaworthy.” If you watch the video notice how you can see the bilge pump working to keep the leaking ark afloat at the end of the documentary.

Longman and Walton had a discussion of the difficulty for moderns to understand what an ancient communicator meant because we do not think the same way the communicator did and because elements referred to in the text or story may be foreign to us. Although they were discussing the ancient human communicators of Scripture, what they said has relevance for what seems to have been Finkel’s error with the cuneiform tablet. They said: “A prophet and his audience share a history, a culture, a language, and the experiences of their contemporaneous lives.” If we are to understand Scripture (or any ancient document) rightly, we have to start by putting aside our own cognitive environment or cultural river, “with all our modern issues and perspectives, to understand the cultural river of the ancient intermediaries.”

We can begin to understand the claims of the text as an ancient document by first paying close attention to what the text says and doesn’t say. It is too easy to make intrusive assumptions based on our own culture, cognitive environment, traditions or questions (i.e., our cultural river). It takes a degree of discipline as readers who are outsiders not to assume our modern perspectives and impose them on the text, but often we do not know we are doing it because our own context is so intrinsic to our thinking and the ancient world is an unknown.

In their attempts to replicate the arks described in their respective texts, both Ken Ham and Irving Finkel failed to recognize the use of hyperbole by the ancient authors in their description of their “arks” and the circumstances of the flood. Yet the parallels between ANE flood stories and Genesis 6-8 suggest a common previous event. Could there have been a devastating flood where many people died that generated both the biblical and the ANE flood stories?

Longman and Walton believe there was a real event behind the flood story just as there was an actual conquest behind the report of Joshua’s campaigns in Joshua 1-12. “We cannot be sure, but we have evidence of more than one flood that would be potential candidates for the inspiration of the story.” They identified one possibility described by William Ryan and Walter Pitman in Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History. Ryan and Pitman believe that around 5600 BC a flood from the Mediterranean burst through the Bosporus, pouring saltwater into what had been a freshwater lake four hundred feet below the breached dam in the Bosporus Strait. The modern Black Sea was the result.

Ryan and Pitman suggest that those who survived this flood remembered it as they immigrated to new locations, thus inspiring flood stories that we are aware of among later cultures, including the Babylonian and biblical accounts. We add that each would have taken specific shape according to the cultural and particularly religious beliefs that they had.Ryan and Pitman’s thesis is intriguing. Before they encountered this evidence, they doubted that the biblical flood had any reference to a real historical event. Rather, it was pure myth. Now they believe a real event stands behind the flood story.

The above graphic, found in Noah’s Flood, captures the thesis of Ryan and Pitman. The rising floodwaters flowing through the Bosporus Strait from the Mediterranean Sea (seen at the southwestern corner of the Black Sea) forced the diverse people groups settled around the original fresh water lake to migrate to safer areas. The people groups to the south embedded their experience into the flood stories of the ANE cultures that arose from them.  Longman and Walton said: “the literary-theological interpretation of the event is inspired, not the event itself.”

Still, Longman and Walton hesitate to say this particular flood generated the biblical flood story. “We do not believe we can reconstruct the historical event from the biblical account.” Whatever the precise historical event, the story was told from generation to generation and eventually included in the Pentateuch as the story of Noah and the flood.

We don’t think it’s possible to date the event, locate the event, or reconstruct the event in our own terms. That is not a problem because the event itself, with which everyone in the Near East is familiar, is not what is inspired. What is inspired and thus the vehicle of God’s revelation is the literary-theological explanation that is given by the biblical author. . . .The similarities in the telling of the flood story between the Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh tablet 11, and the biblical account may be explained not necessarily by literary borrowing but by the fact that this story has been passed down from generation to generation by those who float in the same cultural river.

Noah’s Ark by Simon de Myle (1570); in the public domain from Wikimedia Commons

Even a casual reader of the Biblical account of the Flood in Genesis 6-8 will see the text describes a worldwide, not a local flood. The problem is there is no scientific evidence to support a worldwide flood. Some people believe this means the science must be wrong if the Bible says there was a worldwide flood. Young earth creationists point to the so-called scientific evidence of flood geology for a global flood, but it just doesn’t “hold water.” So do you have to choose between the Bible and science with regard to the Flood?

In their book, The Lost World of the Flood, Tremper Longman and John Walton noted how some scholars, feeling the persuasive power of the lack of any geological evidence for a worldwide flood, want to argue the biblical text describes a local flood. They said the local flood interpretation was “a noble attempt” to make sense of the lack of scientific evidence for a global flood while it held fast to the Bible. “In spite of its good intentions and proper motivations, the attempt to interpret the biblical text as knowingly describing a local flood remains unconvincing.”  Longman and Walton believe while the rhetoric of the flood narrative is intentionally universal, “it is actually the impact and significance that is universal rather than the range and scope” of the flood itself. In other words, “Genesis 6-9 pertains to a local flood described rhetorically as a worldwide flood to make a theological point.”

The rhetorical device used in the Flood narrative is hyperbole, conscious exaggeration for the sake of effect. In How to Read the Bible as Literature, Leland Ryken said hyperbole does not intend to be factual. It actually suggests a lack of literal truth in what it says. For example, Genesis 41:57 says that “all the earth” came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph because the famine was so great. Deuteronomy 10:22 said while only seventy Israelites went down to Egypt, “the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

Ryken added that hyperbole expresses emotional truth. “Hyperbole is the voice of conviction.” People use hyperbole in everyday discourse when they feel strongly about something—“No one believes that!” In the Gospel of Matthew after finishing with the rich young man, Jesus said the rich only enter the kingdom of heaven with great difficulty. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Longman and Walton noted how the Bible also describes historical events besides the Flood narrative hyperbolically to make a theological point. They pointed to the conquest of the Promised Land in Joshua 1-12. “If we read Joshua 1-12 as a straightforward, dispassionate report of the wars in Joshua, we would have to conclude that all of Canaan was taken by the Israelites and not a single Canaanite survived.” Yet Joshua 13:1-6 is a description of all the lands that remained to be conquered when he was “old and advanced in years.” A rough estimate would place at most only fifty percent of Canaan in Israelite hands at that time. Judges 1 confirms the Israelites still had more of Canaan to conquer, as the Israelites “did not drive them out completely.”

We believe that rather than trying to woodenly harmonize the two accounts, we should recognize that the author of Joshua emphasized accounts of victories and omitted setbacks and defeats in order to celebrate the beginning of the Abrahamic promise of land. . . . The conquest narratives, thus, are interested in the success of the conquest since they showed God was fulfilling his promise made in Genesis 12:1-3.

Beginning with Genesis 6:5-8, the account of the flood uses hyperbole to describe the pervasive chaos and wickedness of humanity—every intention of the thoughts of the human heart was only continual evil. The Lord was sorry he made humans and intended to return all of creation to chaos or non-order by blotting out humanity and all other creatures, “for I am sorry that I have made them.” Yet Noah found favor in his sight.

Only the most literally minded would take this language to mean that everyone on earth had only evil motives for every act. However, the hyperbole certainly expresses well the fact that evil had reached an unprecedented level and that God was going to act to restore order.

Even the ark’s dimensions are hyperbolic. Genesis 6:15 described the ark as about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Ancient ships that could navigate in the Mediterranean depicted in ancient Egyptian art from around 2500 BC were no longer than 180 feet in length. “It is hard to imagine ancient readers taking this description as if it referred to an actual boat. There would have been nothing like it or even close in the ancient world.”

Indeed, it is probably easier for a modern audience to misunderstand the text and take it as if it is describing an actual boat. Certainly that is the case with Ken Ham, a leading young-earth creationist. In July of 2016 Ken Ham opened the Ark Encounter, a “life-sized” replica of the ark that people can go on. Ham’s stated purpose is to show that a literal ark of these dimensions can be built and can house all the animals necessary to survive the flood.

Mid-eighteenth century wooden boats reached lengths of 327 to 329 feet. But they were “built with iron bolts and steel supports” which were not available to Noah. And they were notoriously unstable in the water. “Let’s remember that the ark as described in the Bible, if taken as precise measurements of an actual boat, is larger than any wooden boat built not just in antiquity but at any time, including today.”

An ancient reader would have recognized the description of the flood itself as hyperbolic language. The fountains of the great deep burst; and the windows of the heavens were opened (Genesis 7:11). This reflects an ancient cosmology of a flat earth with subterranean waters (the fountains of the great deep) and more waters above the firmament released by opening the windows of heaven. See “Why Is The Sky Blue?” for more on this cosmology and its presence in the Babylonian creation myth.

As the waters flowed from deep within the earth and from the sky, “they lifted the ark high above the earth” (Gen 7:17). Even the “high mountains” were covered (Gen 7:19), and not just covered but with water rising to more than fifteen cubits (twenty-three feet) above the mountains. The description truly is that of a worldwide flood, not a local flood. Though modern readers don’t see it, the original audience would have understood that such a description is hyperbole.

Longman and Walton believe the biblical authors sometimes used hyperbole to make important theological points. And they used it in a way they expected their readers to recognize, not only with the Genesis flood narrative. Recall the last verse of the Gospel of John, once again clearly using hyperbole: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

The presence of hyperbole in Scripture is also not contradictory to a belief in the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy. They pointed out where this is substantiated in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article 13:

WE AFFIRM the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.WE DENY that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Seeing hyperbole in Genesis 6-8 does not take us back to the forced choice referred to in the opening paragraph, with hyperbole neutralizing the Biblical text in order to have it agree with science. Describing a real event in hyperbolic language doesn’t make it a myth. As Longman and Walton said: “There is a real event behind the story just as there was an actual conquest behind the hyperbolic presentation of Joshua’s conquest.” The parallels between Ancient Near East flood stories and Genesis 6-8 suggest a common previous event—a devastating flood that killed many people. “Stories about the flood were passed down orally for generations from those who descended from the time the flood actually occurred.” The similarities and differences between the Biblical and ANE flood stories, as well as tantalizing scientific evidence of a possible flood that spawned them will be discussed in Part 2.