ericmurphy

The problem with this argument, of course, is that it kills Dave's argument with respect to the reliability of written records. If the story of the single most important event in human history—the global, slate-wiping flood—gets so corrupted over less than 5,000 years as to be virtually unrecognizable, what does that say about the reliability of written records in general? Why should the biblical account of the flood be any less corrupted than, e.g., the Sumerian, or Inuit, record?

Calvin's Catarrh

Just to clarify my presuppositions, I am OEC that believes in local universal (killing all humans) flood.

When I first started investigating flood myths, I really didn't see anything special in terms of an apologetic... until I discovered that there is a dearth of other types of catastrophe myths. Its pretty much just floods, most every indigenous culture in the world has some of catastrophic flood myth that often involves the near extinction of humanity, but there are few if any fire myths, earthquake myths, etc.

It so universal that if I were an atheist, I would believe that prior to humanity spreading out from a small geographic location that there was a severe flood that killed a big enough percentage of the population to become permanently engrained in every descending human culture. I would see the biblical flood account as one of the myriad manifestations of this.

As to the challenges regarding oral tradition, I believe that we are probably 25K-30K years removed from the flood. I don't believe that any oral traditions were necessarily acurately preserved from Noah to Moses. Its possible that Moses had sources writings from the time of Abraham, and even possible that there were oral traditions from the time of Abraham that Moses used as sources. Its pretty clear that under any condition early genesis is not an eyewitness account.

However, from a Christian perspective, Christ (who is God) relays that genesis is indeed reliable and divinely inspired by God. This, coupled with the fact that despite serious inquiry, I have not unconvered anything in genesis that cannot be true, leads me to conclude that it is true, although I do not know any of the inputs that went into its formation.

llanitedave

Every early agricultural civilization depended on the reliable supply of flowing water for crops. There are also some drought legends in the bible and elsewhere, but flood legends are the most dramatic, and most likely to be repeated. Every riverine culture is going to experience dramatic and catastrophic flooding some time during its early history. It would be amazing to me if there were not a plethora of flood legends.

Sauron

1. How many cultures did you investigate before you concluded that such a dearth existed?

2. Early humans had one thing in common: they always live near water. Not near fire, not near volcanoes, not near faultlines. Some of them lived near these things, of course. But ALL of them had to be close to water of some kind to survive.

A regional flood has been proposed to explain this, perhaps around Turkey and the Black Sea.

Others have tried to place it in Mesopotamia. However, Glenn Morton has made a persuasive argument that Mesopotamia couldn't have such a flood, since it's basically a flat surface all the way from upper Iraq down to the Arabian Gulf (like a cookie sheet). Without any kind of elevation to act as a 'bowl', there wouldn't be any significant flood.

Morton's alternative explanation isn't very convincing, in my opinion. He believes that the flood is a story of a sudden infilling of a dry Mediterranean basin, almost 500,000 years ago. I've also read that he believes it was 5 million years ago. Oral history preserved for 5 million or even for half a million years? No thanks.

OK.

I think you'll find quite a few items in genesis that are historically not correct. So I'm not sure what you mean by "despite serious inquiry, I have not unconvered anything in genesis that cannot be true".

Jayjay

There are some supposedly indegenious flood stories that have such remarkable similarities to the biblical version that it cannot be a coincidence. But the apologist mistake is assuming outright that the similarities must be because they're both based on the same event, instead of looking at who wrote down the story in the first place? It was Christian missionaries. It's not far fetched to assume that when the first missionaries made contact with natives, the first things from the bible they'd push would be the stories that the natives could relate to. The flood story is a powerful, universal myth that's easy for nearly everybody to comprehend, so it gets passed around. Then, when the original missionary is long gone, another one shows up (maybe not even in the same village or tribe), and the natives tell "yeah, we know that story: the flood and the guy and the boat and the animals and shit". The missionary is amazed that savages whom he assumes have never been in contact with Christendom know the flood story almost word for word, so obviously, he pesters the natives about it and writes it down. The indegenious stories don't get written down because the missionaries could care less about the ramblings of godless pagans and their dung beetle gods.

premjan

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/manu.html
All the flood stories are not identical to the Christian one.

Nialler

It's not enough, either, that there be some similarities between flood stories; they must all correspond meaningfully, and there must be a flood story in every single culture for the idea to have any basis in reality.

As we know, there are cutures which survived through the timeframe and have no flood myth.

Case closed.

Paul2

There also must be an identifiable sedimentary layer found globally. There isn't. Case closed.

Calvin's Catarrh

Those are some strong assertions about the nature of oral tradition. If you could present some evidence that oral traditions are never lost, and that over 30K years it is impossible, or even unlikely for an oral history undergo significant change, you would be more likely to persuade me that my argumentation is of little, or even opposite apologetic value.

Instead, your "end-of-discussion" attitude, coupled with the fact that it is commonly held that oral traditions are not perfectly preserved, suggests that you might be either extremely frustrated with the discussion, or perhaps irrationally afraid of more careful and thouightful evaluation.

Calvin's Catarrh

I'm not sure if you were responding to me, but I reject the notion of a global flood. Scripture directly states that the planet has not been completely covered with water since the formation of land masses as described in Genesis. I think some people are confused by the translation of "whole earth" or "whole land" as described in Genesis, without recognizing that the Hebrew idiom is used by Moses in many other places when it is more clearly referrencing a small region. While the flood universally killed humans, Scripture makes it clear in mutliple places that they had disobediantly refused to spread out and populate the earth, so a local flood would accomplish this.

Flood geology and the recent Christian trend of Young Earth Creationism, was started due to the SDA prophetess E.G. White's visions of a 7 24-hour day creation week (precipitating the restoration of the sabath as the day of worship), followed by a global flood that created an artificial geologic history. White devotee George McReady Price then dedicated his life to spreading this unbiblcal view in the early part of the 20h century, where it was devoured by rabidly anti-intellectual American Christians hoping for an explanation of the fossil record, while obstinately refusing to worship God with their minds.