“Behold, I will bring the waters of a great flood upon the
earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life under heaven. All
things that are in the earth shall be consumed.” (Gen 6:17)
The story of Noah’s flood is a story that has captured our
attentions for centuries. The latest
group to be captivated by the epic story listened to Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo,
executive director of the Institute
of Catholic Culture,
give an insightful explanation of Noah and the great flood.
“Few stories have fired the imagination of believers like
the deluge of Genesis.” The story of the
Great Flood spans generations and cultures.
This story can be found in mythologies of modern and ancient cultures
around the globe. With the great flood
universally recognized in every culture, one asks the questions: “Did the flood
actually take place, or is it a myth, a legend of the ancient Middle
East?” and “Can we rely on the Genesis account of Noah’s
flood?”
Eighteenth century philosophy, specifically the
philosophical idea of positivism, gave rise to the doubt concerning the
veracity of the biblical narrative of the Great Flood. Positivism states that true and genuine knowledge
take place only through the empirical sciences.
As a result of positivism, history became the “study of records in an
attempt to gain an objective, non- interpreted version of what really
happened.” History is no longer the relating of what happened in a past
event. Rather, it is the listing of
individual facts that are discernable through scientific examination.
When considering biblical stories through the lens of modern
scholarship (post 18th century), an obvious problem arises:
skepticism. Many biblical scholars would
not believe anything in scripture unless there was extra-biblical evidence for
it. Scholars became less concerned with
discovering God’s revelation than scientifically testing the texts. One notable biblical scholar, Julius Wellhausen,
developed a theory called the Documentary Hypothesis, or JEDP theory.
With the JEDP theory, Wellhausen claimed that the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch was historically unreliable, and that the
Pentateuch came from four different sources.
He also claimed that the Pentateuch is a patchwork of different Middle
Eastern legends. Needless to say,
Wellhausen denied the Pentateuch was divinely inspired.
Deacon Sabatino went on to describe the JEDP theory in more
depth. The four sources of the Pentateuch,
according this theory, are Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteuronomist (D), and
Priestly (P). Each of these four sources
was written at different times - the different styles of the text are evident
in Scripture, according to the JEDP theory.
But the main problem with this theory is that “either the final editor
was too stupid to notice repetitions and apparent contradictions, or he was so
careless that he did not care enough to rectify the errors. Either way, we are presented with a most
unusual writer; a man who takes the greatest care to make each sentence read as
a continuous thread and yet so careless not to notice the problems he has
created.”
Unfortunately, this JEDP theory became the dominant theory
in biblical scholarship in the 19th and 20th
centuries. Is the skepticism
justified? The closeness of the Genesis
story with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the 300 or so other flood stories only
bolster our belief in the Biblical truths.
Deacon Sabatino exhorted his listeners to be attentive to the unity of
the whole text and to foster a hermeneutic of continuity and trust, rather than
a hermeneutic of suspicion. In the words
of Christ Himself concerning the great flood, “And as in the days of Noah, so
shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For, as in the days before the
flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till
that day in which Noah entered into the ark: And they knew not till the flood came and took
them all away: so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be. (Mt 24:37-39)
By: James Blankenship
