STILL WORKING MY WAY through maps for the Casual English Bible atlas of Genesis, I spent much of yesterday trying to illustrate the Flood story as it’s reported in Genesis 7.
It’s unbelievable, as far as some Christians are concerned. They simply don’t read the story literally, as accurate history. They think of it as part of the ancient culture of storytelling, back before Netflix started streaming all the movies you’d never want to see.
As the Bible story goes, the flood topped every mountain on earth, and then some. A giraffe standing on top of the tallest mountain would have needed a two-foot stepladder to catch a breath. An adult giraffe stands up to 20 feet tall. The water rose “22 feet [7 meters] above the highest mountain peak” (Genesis 7:20 Casual English Bible).
Many Christians say they take the story as genuine history, in spite of the fact that geologists tell us there’s not that much water in the vicinity of the planet.
Who knows, maybe God borrowed the water from Mars. If not, many argue, he’s the Creator. He can create whatever he wants.
For many Christians, perhaps most, that’s enough to get them past this story that sounds to many like a whopper.
If you don’t mind telling me, what’s your take on the Flood story?
Fact? Legend? A parable-like story to teach the power of God and the danger of sin?
More maps ahead.
Genesis has 50 chapters. There’s a constant temptation to rush. The trick is to remember that whatever I’m working on at the moment is the most important thing for me to be doing. So I’d better take the time to do it right.
That said, this map is beta. Not yet carefully proofed.
But it will be.
Blog subscribers who win books this week
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Winners now get to choose from a stack of titles, including my most recent: A Visual Walk Through Genesis .
Note to the two winners: send me an email and I’ll give you the full list of books from which you can choose.
The deal’s good for a month, or for as long as I have giveaway books available.
Many Bible scholars believe in a localized flood (fertile crescent) — that’s another alternative.
Thanks, Wayne. I should’ve mentioned that. A lot of Christians believe that theory. But the one statement by the Genesis writer, talking about the flood going over the highest mountains, seems to argue against the theory.
God didn’t borrow water from anywhere. God clearly tells us in Genesis 7:11 that the fountains of the great deep burst forth. That means there was, and probably still is, more water under the crust than there is on top of the crust. And I believe our oceans today are here as a direct result of the receding flood waters.
Hello, Mr. Willingham. Among the Christian scholars I have known and read, I don’t think most would agree with you. I think many take the story more symbolically than literally. Those who do think of the flood story as real history tend to think of it as localized around the birthplace of civilization…the Fertile Crescent with the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. I think there’s room for a lot of “I don’t know” when it comes to extreme stories in the Bible, in books anonymously written. There are often different ways to understand the stories, and we probably shouldn’t presume that the way we’ve always heard them explained is the only way to interpret them. The Flood story is a good example of that.
I take it as fact, if the Bible is the inspired Word of God then it has to be fact. And who’s to say the Earth wasn’t half the size it is to day and God made it bigger to hold all the water.
Absolutely. The flood severely damaged the Earth. AND it severely damaged our atmosphere. The Earth today is nowhere near how it was when God originally created it, about 6,000 years ago. Before about 4,400 years ago, when God flooded the world, people were living hundreds of years. That’s because our atmosphere before the Flood was about 10 miles thick. Today, it’s 60 miles thick. That expansion of our atmosphere, caused by the flood, lowered our atmospheric pressure AND thinned out our oxygen content. Well I could keep going on and on and on with this. I’ll stop for now. Thank you for reading.
The earth is much older than 6,000 years. Ice cores driven into glaciers show the different seasons of snow compilation. The cores reveal hundreds of thousands of annual layers of snow. Some folks might prefer the Bible to science, but both come from God. We should respect both. I think when we do, we have a better chance of getting to the truth of the matter.