Noah's Ark and other Bible Mythologies
Why we should not expect the Bible to be something it's not
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A number of years ago I was out of state on the campus of a rather large church in the midwest. As one of several guest speakers at an event, I was busy when busy, but otherwise not busy at all. A friend had overseen the construction project for the campus and I was interested in checking it out, so a staff member agreed to give me the grand tour.
I can be a bit snarky sometimes. I’m working on that.
When we got to the children’s ministry wing, a truly impressive space, my tour guide began pointing out the vibrant and colorful artwork on every wall in the theme of Noah’s Ark. Cute little animals marching two-by-two. A boat. Releasing a dove. Rainbows. You get the idea. Before considering the impact of my words, I blurted out:
“Ah. Nothing quite like introducing our babies to the story where God kills everyone.”
The look of horror on her face startled me. To her, it was just a cute Bible Story for kids. I should have been more diplomatic. Seriously. But the entire incident illustrates an important point about scripture. She, and most Christians, tend to view the Bible through a certain set of lenses that show us only what we’ve been trained to see.
We have been trained to assume historical and scientific accuracy.
We have been trained to look past the ugly stuff.
We have been trained to screen out content that does not fit within our particular theological and interpretive framework.
We have been trained to expect the various authors of the Bible to speak with one voice and always agree with each other.
We have been trained to look to apologetics to fix it in instances where the above lenses fails to work.
Scientific and Historical Accuracy
Ancient flood stories abound, so the Noah’s Ark story in Genesis is in good company. The Epic of Gilgamesh includes a similar story. The Greeks, Nordic peoples, Aztecs, Chinese, and many many other ancient cultures have flood stories as part of their mythologies. When I travelled to Guatemala, I learned that the Mayan people also have such a story. These stories are sometimes similar to Noah’s Ark but often differ wildly and in interesting ways.
With just a little scrutiny, it is quite obvious that the event did not happen as described in Genesis. There isn’t enough water to cover the whole earth up to the highest mountain peaks. There were other civilizations in existence at the time this was supposed to have happened that continued in existence before, during, and after the events described. How did the kangaroos and koala bears get to the ark and then back to Australia without leaving a trace along the way? If God is anything at all like Jesus, why would he solve his creator regrets by killing everyone? And, given that this didn’t fix anything and humans remained violent and self-serving after the flood, what was the point exactly?
In our own recent history, hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and TV Evangelists practically raced to their television studios to declare it an act of God’s judgment. Such catastrophes happen from time to time and it is not a new thing to attribute them to the wrath of God. Such a myth was common in the ancient near east and it is no surprise that it was included in the Biblical narrative.
Did giants exist as the offspring of divine beings and human women as described in Genesis 6? Was there really a tower that could have (if not prevented by God) reached the heavens? Did the universe begin to exist about 6,000 years ago? Was there a garden with trees that produced knowledge and life? Talking snakes?
Were Adam and Eve the first and only humans at one point? If so, when Cain killed his brother one generation later, where did all the people come from that God had to protect Cain from?
The Ugly Stuff
The person I mentioned above was very familiar with the Noah’s Ark story, but thought of it only as a cute story about boats and animals and pretty rainbows. When I pointed out the obvious aspects of the narrative that involve divine violence and global human death and the theological issues raised by a God who regrets his past decisions, she was genuinely shocked. It’s an ugly story, but she had been trained to read past that and miss it entirely.
Recently, I was speaking with a close friend who has believed, read, studied, and taught the Bible for years. When I mentioned the passages where God commanded genocide, sexual slavery, and other distasteful things, they looked at me like I was crazy. I opened up the Bible and read the verses and it was like they had never noticed them before. We’ve been trained to read with blinders on.
Screening Out Stuff
As a good Wesleyan/Armenian most of my life, I spent years reading the Bible, but I somehow missed all those passages about sovereign election. My Calvinist friends seem to read Bibles that don’t even mention freedom, choice, or human responsibility. Both of those groups expect God to torture the mass of unbelieving humanity forever in the lake of fire. When I show them the MANY passages that promise ultimate reconciliation and universal salvation, it’s like they’ve never even noticed those verses before. Christian Nationalists somehow read right past the idea that God’s kingdom is within us and not of this world. Rapture predictors apparently have Bibles that don’t tell us that no one knows the day or the hour. I’m amazed they have Bibles that teach the rapture at all, as it’s not in there. Complementarians fail to notice that the first evangelists were women. We all do it. We all read the Bible through lenses that make the Bible tell us what we already know because we’ve already been taught what it says.
Assuming Agreement
When most of the people I grew up in church with spoke about Biblical inspiration, it was like they pictured some kind of automatic writing process where God spoke and the authors blindly took dictation. God said it and they wrote it down. Instead of a collection of multiple books by a wide variety of very human authors across wide spans of time and cultures and perspectives, we have a single book called “The Bible” — written by God. From this perspective, it’s understandable to expect scripture to be univocal, coherent in every aspect, and without contradiction. But the God who became fully human does not bypass humanity in his self revelation. The God who wrestled with Jacob also wrestled with every writer of scripture, and their resulting limp reveal itself in their words. The Bible is full of contradictions and to expect anything else is to fail to understand what the Bible is. Scripture is not the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible points us to Jesus, sometimes obviously and overtly, sometimes in more hidden ways, and sometimes in how the writers clearly understood God in less-than-Christlike ways, pointing all of us to the need for Jesus.
Apologetics
I like apologetics (the reasoned defense of the faith) and it has its place. But. And this is a big butt. The mental bending and twisting and distorting and speculating that is far too often necessary to explain all the difficulties that result from reading the Bible with the above lenses is a giant waste of intellectual energy. We too easily circle the wagons to protect us from challenges that the Bible is designed to bring! In so many cases, the only reason the Bible needs defending is because we have attacked it with our wrong expectations regarding what it is and how it should work. It doesn’t work that way. At some point, our biased lenses fail and, rather than adjust our prescription, we look to apologists to argue us right back into the biases we’ve been brainwashed to hold.
Instead of apologetics, we might benefit from some good old fashioned repentance, adjusting our way of thinking to align with reality.
Noah’s ark is not history. It’s a myth. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It just true in deeper ways than a record of facts could ever be. It’s true that humanity is violent. It’s true that we far too often assume catastrophe is the result of God’s anger. It’s true that God isn’t as impassible as theists claim. It’s true that the things we think are solutions to problems rarely solve anything in the long term.
And, there was probably a big flood in the ancient near east that destroyed a lot of lives and some smart guy and his family survived with as many of their animals as they could fit on the boat. And there probably was a rainbow. Maybe. But that’s hardly the point.
A lot of my presuppositions have been blowing up in the past several years. One of them is in how to read the Bible.