The Genesis flood narrative (chapters of the Book of Genesis) is a Hebrew flood myth. It tells of God's decision to destroy creation, saving only Noah and the people and animals who went with him into an ark built on God's instructions.
Scholars generally believe it was adapted from older Mesopotamian flood traditions, especially the Epic of Gilgamesh, which originated in the early 2nd millennium BCE and later spread to the Levant. The Book of Genesis was probably composed around the 5th century BCE; some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters ), including the flood narrative, may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BCE. It draws on two sources, called the Priestly source and the non-Priestly or Yahwist, and many of its details are contradictory.
A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology, archeology, paleontology, and the global distribution of species.
A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred. Some Christians have preferred to interpret the narrative as describing a local flood instead of a global event, particularly in regards to the Black Sea and Persian Gulf, both of which were considerably lower in prehistoric times. Still others prefer to interpret the narrative as allegorical rather than historical.
Summary
The story of the flood occurs in chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Ten generations after the creation of Adam, God saw that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, and that every intention of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually, so he decided to destroy what he had created. But God found one righteous man, Noah, and to him he confided his intention: "I am about to bring on the Flood ... to eliminate everywhere all flesh in which there is the breath of life ... ." So God instructed him to build an ark (in Hebrew, a chest or box), and Noah entered the Ark in his six hundredth year [of life], and on the 17th day of the second month of that year "the fountains of the Great Deep burst apart and the floodgates of heaven broke open" and rain fell for forty days and forty nights until the highest mountains were covered to a depth of 15 cubits, and all life perished except Noah and those with him in the Ark. After 150 days, "God remembered Noah ... and the waters subsided" until the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, and on the 27th day of the second month of Noah's six hundred and first year the earth was dry. Then Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice, and God made a covenant with Noah that man would be allowed to eat every living thing but not its blood, and that God would never again destroy all life by a flood.
Composition
The consensus of modern scholars is that although Genesis was composed around the 5th century BCE, it was influenced by texts and traditions that are far older. As the first 11 chapters show little relationship to the rest of the book, some scholars believe that this section may have been composed as late as the 3rd century BCE.
It is generally agreed that the history draws on two sources, one called the Priestly source, the other non-Priestly or Yahwist, and their interweaving is evidenced in the doublets (i.e., repetitions) contained within the final story. Many of these are contradictory, such as how long the flood lasted (40 days according to , 150 according to ), how many animals were to be taken aboard the ark (one pair of each in , one pair of the unclean animals and seven pairs of the clean in ), and whether Noah released a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up" or a dove which on the third occasion "did not return to him again", or possibly both. But despite these disagreements on details, the story forms a unified whole (some scholars see in it a "chiasm", a literary structure in which the first item matches the last, the second the second-last, and so on), and many efforts have been made to explain this unity, including attempts to identify which of the two sources was earlier and therefore influenced the other. David M. Carr views the existence of specific contradictions and thematic differences between the doublets, as implying they were written separately.
Some scholars have questioned whether the story is actually based on two different sources, noting that some of the doublets (such as the dove and raven) are not actually contradictory and in fact appear as linked motifs in other biblical and non-biblical sources, that the method of doublets is inconsistently applied in that the alleged sources themselves contain doublets, and that the theory assumes a redactor who combined the sources inconsistently (in some cases extensively editing together the text and in some cases faithfully preserving contradictory versions) for unclear reasons. Similarly, the complete Genesis flood story matches the parallel Gilgamesh flood story in a way which neither of the proposed biblical sources does.Gary A. Rendsburg, The biblical flood story in the light of the Gilgameš flood account, p.116
Jean-Louise Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, believes that the account of the flood as it exists is a cantata "sung" by two or more voices, being polyphonic. For him, readings that attempt to eliminate these voices diminish textual analysis, but also the intended message.
Sources The following table compares the proposed Yahwist and Priestly sources. Each provides a complete story-line, with introductions and conclusions, reasons for the flood, and theologies. VersesYahwist (or non-Priestly)Priestly6:5–8Introduction: humanity's wickedness, God regrets creating, announces decision to destroy; Noah's righteousness.6:9–22Introduction: Noah's righteousness, humanity's wickedness, God's decision to destroy; Ark described, Covenant described, 1 pair of all animals, Noah does as God commands. 7:1–57 pairs of clean animals, 1 pair unclean; 7 days to gather animals; Noah does as God commands.7:6Noah's age: 600 years7:7–10Noah enters Ark with animals after 7 days7:11Year 600, month 2, day 17: firmament breaks, waters fall from above and rise from below.7:12Rains 40 days and 40 nights.7:13–16aNoah and family and animals enter Ark on same day as flood begins.7:16b–17Waters rise for 40 days, the Ark begins to float. 7:18–21Waters rise, all creatures destroyed.7:22–23All creatures destroyed.7:24–8:5Flood lasts 150 days; God remembers Noah, fountains and floodgates closed, waters recede; Month 7 day 17, Ark grounds on mountains of Ararat.8:6–12After 7 days Noah opens window, sends out raven, dove, dove, 7 days between flights8:13–19Year 601, month 1, day 1: Noah opens cover; ground begins to dry;Month 2, day 27, dry land appears, Noah and family and animals exit, animals begin to multiply8:20–22Noah builds altar, sacrifices clean animals, God smells sweet aroma, promises not to destroy again.9:1–17Noah and family told to multiply, given animals to eat; Covenant established, rainbow as sign, God promises not to flood again.
Comparative mythology
Scholars believe that the flood myth originated in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period ( BCE) and reached the Syro-Palestine in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Extant texts show three distinct versions, the Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra, (the oldest, found in very fragmentary form on a single tablet dating from about 1600 BCE, although the story itself is older), and as episodes in two Akkadian language epics, the Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The name of the hero, according to the version concerned, was Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Utnapishtim, all of which are variations of each other, and it is possible that an abbreviation of Utnapishtim/Utna'ishtim as "na'ish" was pronounced "Noah" in the Palestine.
Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from BCE.
Flood chronology
Numbers in the Bible often have symbolic or idiomatic meaning, and the 40 days and nights for which rain fell on the Earth indicate a complete cycle. The flood begins on the 17th day of the second month, Marcheshvan, in the 600th year of Noah's life,Based on the Old Aramaic translation of Genesis 7:11, which reads (translated): "In the six-hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, being the month of Marcheshvan, insofar that up until that time, the months were not being counted except from Tishri, seeing that it is the start of the Year [as one gives reckoning] to the perfection of the universe, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day, all the flood waters of the great deep burst forth." Source: (First printed in 1903, Based on British Museum add. 27031). when "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened", and after 40 days the ark floats (). The waters rise and then recede, and on the 17th day of the seventh month (or the 27th day in the Greek version) the ark rests on the mountains (Genesis 8:4). The waters continue to fall, the ark is uncovered on the 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, and is opened on the 27th day of his 601st year ().
The period from the beginning of the flood to the landing on the mountain is five months (the second month to the seventh, and ) and 150 days (), making an impossible five months of 30 days each; the number is schematic, and is based on the Babylonian astronomical calendar of 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). This means that the flood lasts 36 weeks according to the flood calendar, in which an extra day is added to every third month. The number of weeks is symbolically significant, representing the biblical cypher for destruction (the number 6, expressed as 6x6=36), while the number 7 (the number of days in a week) represents the persistence of creation during this time of destruction.
Scholars have long puzzled over the significance of the flood lasting one year and 11 days (day 17 of year 600 to day 27 of year 601); one solution is that the basic calendar is a lunar one of 354 days, to which 11 days have been added to match a solar year of 365 days.
The "original" Jahwist narrative of the Great Deluge was modest: a week of ostensibly non-celestial rain is followed by a 40-day flood which takes a mere week to recede in order to provide Noah his stage for God's covenant. It is the Priestly source which adds more fantastic figures of a 150-day flood, which emerged by divine hand from the heavens and earth and took ten months to finally stop. The Jahwist source's capricious and somewhat simplistic depiction of Yahweh is clearly distinguished from the Priestly source's characteristically majestic, transcendental, and austere virtuous Yahweh.