About the great flood

[49]

I believe God's word, I simply question the interpretation given by man's traditions.

"
As to the cogency of the proof from tradition for the geographical universality of the Flood, it must be remembered that very few of the Fathers touched upon this question ex professo. Among those who do so there are some who restrict the Deluge to certain parts of the earth's surface without incurring the blame of offending against tradition.

• The earthly paradise, e.g., was exempted by many, irrespective of its location on the top of a high mountain or elsewhere;
• the same must be said of the place in which Mathusala must have lived during the Flood according to the Septuagint reading;
• St. Augustine knows of writers who exempted the mountain Olympus from the Flood, though he himself does not agree with them;
• Pseudo-Justin hesitatingly rejects the opinion of those who restrict the Flood to the parts of the earth actually inhabited by men;
• Cajetan revived the opinion that the Flood did not cover Olympus and other high mountains, believing that Genesis spoke only of the mountains under the aerial heaven;
• Tostatus sees a figure of speech in the expression of the Bible which implies the universality of the Flood; at any rate, he exempts the earthly Paradise from the Deluge, since Henoch had to be saved.

If the Fathers had considered the universality of the Flood as part of the body of ecclesiastical tradition, or of the deposit of faith, they would have defended it more vigorously. It is true that the Congregation of the Index condemned Vossius's treatise "De Septuaginta Interpretibus" in which he defended, among other doctrines, the view that the Flood covered only the inhabited part of the earth; but theologians of great weight maintained that the work was condemned on account of its Protestant author, and not on account of its doctrine.
(c) There are also certain scientific considerations which oppose the view that the Flood was geographically universal. Not that science opposes any difficulty insuperable to the power of God; but it draws attention to a number of most extraordinary, if not miraculous phenomena involved in the admission of a geographically universal Deluge.

• First, no such geological traces can be found as ought to have been left by a universal Deluge; for the catastrophe connected with the beginning of the ice-age, or the geological deluge, must not be connected with the Biblical.
• Secondly, the amount of water required by a universal Deluge, as described in the Bible, cannot be accounted for by the data furnished in the Biblical account. If the surface of the earth, in round numbers, amounts to 510,000,000 square kilometres, and if the elevation of the highest mountains reaches about 9000 metres, the water required by the Biblical Flood, if it be universal, amounts to about 4,600,000,000 cubic kilometres. Now, a forty days' rain, ten times more copious than the most violent rainfall known to us, will raise the level of the sea only about 800 metres; since the height to be attained is about 9000 metres, there is still a gap to be filled by unknown sources amounting to a height of more than 8000 metres, in order to raise the water to the level of the greatest mountains.
• Thirdly, if the Biblical Deluge was geographically universal, the sea water and the fresh water would mix to such an extent that neither the marine animals nor the fresh-water animals could have lived in the mixture without a miracle.
• Fourthly, there are serious difficulties connected with the animals in the ark, if the Flood was geographically universal: How were they brought to Noah from the remote regions of the earth in which they lived? How could eight persons take care of such an array of beasts? Where did they obtain the food necessary for all the animals? How could the arctic animals live with those of the torrid zone for a whole year and under the same roof?

No Catholic commentator will repudiate an explanation merely for fear of having to admit a miracle; but no Catholic has a right to admit Biblical miracles which are not well attested either by Scripture or tradition. What is more, there are traces in the Biblical Flood story which favour a limited extent of the catastrophe: Noah could have known the geographical universality of the Deluge only by revelation; still the Biblical account appears to have been written by an eye-witness. If the Flood had been universal, the water would have had to fall from the height of the mountains in India to the level of those in Armenia on which the ark rested, i.e. about 11,500 feet, within the space of a few days. The fact that the dove is said to have found "the waters . . . upon the whole earth", and that Noah "saw that the face of the earth was dried", leaves the impression that the inspired writer uses the word "earth" in the restricted sense of "land". Attention has been drawn also to the "bough of an olive tree, with green leaves" carried by the dove in her mouth on her second return to the ark.The Deluge must have been anthropologically universal, i.e. it must have destroyed the whole human race
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https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04702a.htm

I believe God's word, I simply question the interpretation given by man's traditions.

Point taken.
I've just always believed 2 Timothy 3:16, and my beliefs will not change.
God bless.

 

[TheLearner]

A[edit]

• Arabia[1]
• Armenia[2] (in the King James Version), or the "Land of Ararat"[3] (in other translations)
• Province of Asia[4] (modern Turkey)
• Assyria[5]

B[edit]

• Syria[34] (Also refereed to as Aram[35])

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nations_mentioned_in_the_Bible

 

[TheLearner]

A more up to date list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_names_for_biblical_place_names
https://www.bible-history.com/old-testament/nations.html

https://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/african-countries-in-the-bible-let-the-maps-speak/
https://www.openbible.info/geo/atlas/a

Land moves too slow to be where it is today.

2 inches per year is extremely generous for California. 6 years equals one Foot. 60 Years equals 10 feet. 600 years equals 100 feet. 6,000 years equals 1,000 feet.

"
Hill; Mount; Mountain
1. Names:
(1) The commonest word is har (also harar, and herer), which is rendered "hill," "mount" or "mountain." It occurs several hundreds of times. In a number of places the Revised Version (British and American) changes "hill" to "mountain," e.g. Ge 7:19, mountains covered by flood;

"
https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/H/hill-mount-mountain.html

 

[TheLearner]

Chapter 7. The world preserved for the sake of Christians. Man's responsibility
Wherefore God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and men shall cease to exist, because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature. Since, if it were not so, it would not have been possible for you to do these things, and to be impelled by evil spirits; but the fire of judgment would descend and utterly dissolve all things, even as formerly the flood left no one but him only with his family who is by us called Noah, and by you Deucalion, from whom again such vast numbers have sprung, some of them evil and others good

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0127.htm

A local flood has the same effect of noah and his family surviving.

 

[TheLearner]

Of the fact that they were justly punished, who sinned before the flood.

And so then we see that from the beginning God created everything perfect, nor would there have been need for anything to have been added to His original arrangement — as if it were shortsighted and imperfect — if everything had continued in that state and condition in which it had been created by Him. And therefore in the case of those who sinned before the law and even before the flood we see that God visited them with a righteous judgment, because they deserved to be punished without any excuse, for having transgressed the law of nature; nor should we fall into the blasphemous slanders of those who are ignorant of this reason, and so depreciate the God of the Old Testament, and run down our faith, and say with a sneer: Why then did it please your God to will to promulgate the law after so many thousand years, while He suffered such long ages to pass without any law? But if He afterwards discovered something better, then it appears that at the beginning of the world His wisdom was inferior and poorer, and that afterwards as if taught by experience He began to provide for something better, and to amend and improve His original arrangements. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350808.htm

 

[TheLearner]

Therefore the wife of Cham exclaimed, addressing herself to Noah: Oh, sir, the word of God has come good: that which God foretold has come to pass; execute, therefore, that which the Lord commanded. And when Noah heard the words of the wife of Chain, he said to her: Is then the flood already come? The wife of Cham said to him: You have said it. God, however, suddenly charged Noah, saying: Destroy not the wife of Cham; for from your mouth is the beginning of destruction — you first said, The flood has come. At the voice of Noah the flood came, and suddenly the water destroyed that bread. And the floodgates of heaven were opened, and the rains broke upon the earth. And that same voice, in truth, which had said of old, Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, gave permission to the fountain of waters and the floods of the seas to break forth of their own accord, and brought out the waters. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0502.htm

 

[TheLearner]

Chapter 33. Profane History Gives No Account of These Matters.
Who, then, of those called sages, and poets, and historians, could tell us truly of these things, themselves being much later born, and introducing a multitude of gods, who were born so many years after the cities, and are more modern than kings, and nations, and wars? For they should have made mention of all events, even those which happened before the flood; both of the creation of the world and the formation of man, and the whole succession of events. The Egyptian or Chaldæan prophets, and the other writers, should have been able accurately to tell, if at least they spoke by a divine and pure spirit, and spoke truth in all that was uttered by them; and they should have announced not only things past or present, but also those that were to come upon the world. And therefore it is proved that all others have been in error;

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02042.htm

Hold on this text says Egypt existed before the flood and we know from the Exodus, Egypt existed after the flood.

Go figure. what is wrong with this picture?

 

[TheLearner]

For what is sung about her having sprung from the head of Jupiter belongs to the region of poetry and fable, and not to that of history and real fact. And historical writers are not agreed when Ogyges flourished, in whose time also a great flood occurred — not that greatest one from which no man escaped except those who could get into the ark, for neither Greek nor Latin history knew of it, yet a greater flood than that which happened afterward in Deucalion's time. For Varro begins the book I have already mentioned at this date, and does not propose to himself, as the starting-point from which he may arrive at Roman affairs, anything more ancient than the flood of Ogyges, that is, which happened in the time of Ogyges. Now our writers of chronicles — first Eusebius, and afterwards Jerome, who entirely follow some earlier historians in this opinion — relate that the flood of Ogyges happened more than three hundred years after, during the reign of Phoroneus, the second king of Argos. But whenever he may have lived, Minerva was already worshipped as a goddess when Cecrops reigned in Athens, in whose reign the city itself is reported to have been rebuilt or founded.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm

This text has me puzzled, what sense do you all make of it?

 

[TheLearner]

For, for this cause even He fasted, not as needing it Himself, but to instruct us. Thus, since our sins before the font were brought in by serving the belly: much as if any one who had made a sick man whole were to forbid his doing those things, from which the distemper arose; so we see here likewise that He Himself after the font brought in fasting. For indeed both Adam by the incontinence of the belly was cast out of paradise; and the flood in Noah's time, this produced; and this brought down the thunders on Sodom. For although there was also a charge of whoredom, nevertheless from this grew the root of each of those punishments; which Ezekiel also signified when he said, But this was the iniquity of Sodom, that she waxed wanton in pride and in fullness of bread, and in abundance of luxury. Ezekiel 16:49 Thus the Jews also perpetrated the greatest wickedness, being driven upon transgression by their drunkenness and delicacy. Isaiah 5:11-12

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200113.htm

 

[TheLearner]

For, for this cause even He fasted, not as needing it Himself, but to instruct us. Thus, since our sins before the font were brought in by serving the belly: much as if any one who had made a sick man whole were to forbid his doing those things, from which the distemper arose; so we see here likewise that He Himself after the font brought in fasting. For indeed both Adam by the incontinence of the belly was cast out of paradise; and the flood in Noah's time, this produced; and this brought down the thunders on Sodom. For although there was also a charge of whoredom, nevertheless from this grew the root of each of those punishments; which Ezekiel also signified when he said, But this was the iniquity of Sodom, that she waxed wanton in pride and in fullness of bread, and in abundance of luxury. Ezekiel 16:49 Thus the Jews also perpetrated the greatest wickedness, being driven upon transgression by their drunkenness and delicacy. Isaiah 5:11-12

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200113.htm

 

[TheLearner]

God’s word... “. All the kingdoms of the world...” nothing is impossible with God..

It was not God showing all the world, it was Satan. As a creature it is impossible to show the part of the world that is out of sight.