Consequently, ANE historians would expect to find similar types of nationalized proclamations in the charters of the kingdom of Israel (later to become the separate kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judah in the south). And such was the case when Israel likewise declared their historic religious beliefs through the presentation of a creation motif and flood motif as religious origins based upon antediluvian and Patriarchal stories each of which retold prior historic events through their own religious experiences with a God by the name of Yahweh (roughly translated as "Lord" in the English, meaning "Almighty God"). To the (pagan) nation-states surrounding Israel Yahweh was largely an unknown Deity (unlike Abraham's earliest experience of Yahweh when visited by the Gentile high priest Melchizedek who affirmed Yahweh as his God and put definition to Abraham's heart who this mediating God of grace was that had called him from Ur of the Chaldees). Consequently, Yahweh was little known or feared by the nations but over time, at Israel's insistence that this God was the one true God of the universe and of mankind, the theology of Yahweh took root and grew as an expanding acknowledgement of Yahweh's presence into other dissimilar cultures as Israel worked up its national charter and heritage based upon Yahwistic belief.
What made Israel's belief in Yahweh unique was their corroborating and personalized experiences through godly men and women as individuals, leaders, prophets, priests; or, by salvific events of the Spirit of God building a growing body of revelatory experiences and event-driven processes proving to be divinely inspirational and illuminating to their recipients. That is, when seeing disaster or blessing they uniquely interpreted each event through a growing religious process and theological understanding of their Maker, Sustainer, Fortress, Healer, and Protector Yahweh. In short, Yahweh was becoming their God and their explanation for all things not God.
Accordingly, one would expect Israel's historical narratives to offer a closer description of Yahweh because this same God's direct, personal involvement in their lives for those intended purposes. However, one may also expect that Israel's ancient accounts of creational origins, the flood narrative, and the progress of mankind's civilizations, would be reflective of their religiously-informed understanding of popular ancient cosmogonies - but with the important difference of reciting God's divine involvement as understood (or re-interpreted by Israel's religious worship) in each of those events. When the Jewish or Christian theologian makes a comparative study between ancient Mesopotamian empires and religions to that of their own Judahistic or Christian religion, we would expect to find a vast difference between the (poly)theistic/anthropocentric Semitic and Greco-Roman beliefs to that of the Jewish and Christian beliefs. Further, we would also expect to find a great degree of similarity between Judaism and Christianity because of their common heritage and natural progression from one another in the transition between the Old to the New Testament eras.
And so yes, we could call the Noahic account a mythological legend in comparative literary terms because of its relatedness to other mythological flood stories in various ANE cultures. We could also call it a myth based upon a similar, but different, prior occurrence in Israel's collective memory. One that had occurred again and again as a devastating natural event around the world. But to help lessen the idea that the bible is nothing more than a compilation of myths, legends, etc, I would prefer the literary term of narrative. A narrative may be true or it may be untrue but its is a story which means something to people. The narrative of America as a Christian nation is an example of a modern day myth. It is and it isn't true. It may have been founded by men and women who were escaping religious oppression from Europe yet other men and women also came to America with less of a religious background and for opportunities other than religious freedom. Nor did America hold long to its religious principles as it did to the indigenous natives what they experienced in Europe. As such, the narrative of America's founding is, and isn't, true (or fully false).
Similarly, by this genre designation of myth we do not not mean by implication that Israel's own historical and biblical accounts of Yahweh's activity within itself, or later in the Church, are mythological per se. We describe these biblical narratives based upon some type of past event as meaningfully important to those who heard, spoke of it, and believed in some sense of it. Theologically, this event process is described as "salvation history" or "heilsgeschicte". It was an event later passed down through the generations which gave people hope and belief that their God was personally invested in their survival.
God's presence in chaos and calamity is what gave His people strength. It showed to those who witnessed God's self-revealing activity and communion in hardship that Yahweh was exactly whom He declared Himself to be, regardless of the occasion. Whether we speak of Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, David, the priest and prophets of the bible, or of Jesus and His disciples; of things spiritual or miraculous; of events filled with divine interaction and circumvention. These redemptive and salvific activities of God are not mythological. In some sense they happened, and happened enough to be testified about by those who survived natural ordeals and human tragedies.
Narratives as Faith Events
The richly filled socio-theological stories of Yahweh's communion with Israel and her people were believed to be narratively true accounts insofar as Israel interpreted them within her religious charters and everyday beliefs. But not mythological literary accounts that had no historical import and connections to God's self-revelation to the nation Israel, or to the faith of the Church grounded upon God's sacrificial atonement through His Son. Pointedly, Israel and the Church developed an informed religious epistemology looking at world events and understanding them in spiritually connective terms much as we would do today through our own Christian outlook and epistemologies. Or how a religious Muslim or Hindu believer would be so informed by their own faith's stories when trying to describe or understand world event.
The trick in ancient archaeology is to pull apart the religious idea from the actual historical event. That is, if there was a flood then what kind of flood was it? And how did it affect the lives of the ancient people and villages who described it in their religious beliefs? Though it may not have been as global as it was believed it didn't make it any less true as a catastrophe which brought death and suffering in its wake.
Accordingly, a forensic anthropologist delving into the ancient world's past history would consider her or his subject matter with a bit more skepticism when researching out the details of the actual event believed by religious people in their day. As is the case with the Jewish creation and flood motifs of the ancient Jewish scriptures. Perhaps the event we thought we read of in the bible isn't exactly as it played out back then yet it doesn't decrease the terror it held for those experiencing it. Even so, I would prefer to think of events in the bible not as myth but as narrative stories bearing a theme, or motif, within them communicating a faith assurance of God's holy presence in the lives of those in peril or distress even as we would do today when calling out to God for help. God is no less true then, or now, based upon the grandness or not of the imperiling destruction. We know this God who describes Himself as Yahweh is present with us and doing all that He can to save us from disaster if it is possible. Whether spiritual or physical God loves and cares for all who call upon His name.
As respecting a religiously-informed epistemology, we may then say that to imply that the Noahic flood was as mythic as Jesus' redemption and resurrection would be inaccurate. In fact, like Noah's Ark (and Israel's Ark of the Tabernacle), we would be betraying Yahweh's own narrative revelation to mankind's testimony of these events by saying otherwise. The Noahic flood occurred in some sense, most likely not as a global event but as a disturbing large catastrophe remembered by Israel's ancient founders in oral tradition. So too with Jesus' atoning death at Calvary. Unlike the physical geologic records of the earth which tell of its many stories of yesteryear, Jesus' death is a bit more complicated to scientifically examine. The church speaks of Jesus' death as an atoning event. Of His resurrection as payment for our sins; as justification and worthiness of our presence before God; and of our future hope to be with God at death. You cannot prove this. It just is.
In summary, God provided His only Son Jesus as mankind's own Ark of salvation from physical and spiritual death and destruction by His resurrection. And in the spirit of the Noahic account, for those refusing God's vessel of provision in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, than certain destruction may be comprehended as sealed and certain. But for those penitents willing to obey God and allowing His spiritual Ark of salvation release into their lives... than whatever the flood waters to come in this life - and yes, we're speaking metaphorically now - for the Christian believer s/he will be delivered unto the everlasting tributaries of God's holy refuges borne unto safety and life eternal. Jesus, then, is mankind's watery Ark and Sanctifying Agent of Mediation (our great High Priest) before the God of Israel who indwells the Holy-of-Holies which is now the Temple of the heavens. Even as God will, in His own Kingdom-to-come, bring upon this Earth its renewal and redemption. How this will be we do not know. Only believe. And this is the Christian expectation, and Christian hope, of things to come. Even so, we believe as a religious body of believers that this is Yahweh's personal promise to be and become humanity's eternal refuge, safety, and hope, against the foreboding shores of sin-and-spiritual-death awashed in the hopeless of wickedness and everlasting destruction. That Yahweh will be our Ark of Salvation in this world as in the next. This is what binds the Christian believer to Israel's religious past in belief, tradition, and epistemology.
Comparing Ancient Interpretations
As was said, in another sense we may allow the term "myth" to be used of the Noahic account when juxtapositioned alongside other ancient Near Eastern religions in a comparative religious study... but by this we mean that these early accounts of human history found in the Bible simply utilize mythological story form as a way to create a very real portrayal of accounts from a theological perspective within an ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context. God did create and provide, protect and save, and disbursed humanity to the four corners of the world. Science tells us how this occurred through evolutionary fossil records, genetic studies, and comparative ancient legends within anthropological and archaeological discoveries. However, the Bible tells to us the meaning of these discoveries (as afore stated in the paragraph above) regardless of the correctness of the narrative event as depicted by the ancient scribe and oracle. One man's "myth" is another man's "understanding."
Hence, the term "myth" should not be used skeptically of God's biblical narrative or revelation in the modern scientific sense of something incredibly "magical or unrealistic." But in the ancient literary sense of narrative genre and figurative writing. That is, a biblical myth is both an unscientific way of describing an embellished event and a literary genre of that same description that held meaning for its beholder. I say embellished because more often than not a story will grow with its legend - especially in ages of oral interpretation and not written record. However, when we do use this literary category of biblical myth it must be carefully laid out, and not hastily proclaimed, as an implied reflection upon all of Scripture. Nor of the Jewish/Christian faith specifically. For the believer, the God of the Bible is anything but a myth. Nor is our faith a fabled legend without historical interpretation that makes for a good literary story with moral extrapolations similar to the plethora of Greek and Roman tragedies with their many surmised meanings. Whether those stories were known by the ancients, or beheld by more recent civilizations, each people group carried their own legends that held meaning for their nation-state.
For the Jewish or Christian believer we believe and do assent that our receipt of Yahweh is the more correct one. The more gracious and healing one not filled with continuing doctrines of hatred and vengence, violence and perjury - though both the histories of sinful Israel and the historic church would betray themselves in these regards to human rights and freedoms. Still, man being imperfect and limited in divine apprehension, would strive to portray the God he believes. And thus is the need of the societal prophet and preacher. Someone who comes along to re-describe the God of Israel in reflective terms of grace and love. Healing and redemption. Forgiveness and hope. Peace and goodwill. Lofty ideals seldom seen in practice by God's followers and body politic. But ideals indeed requiring spiritual practice and perseverance.
Hence, the Christian belief is based upon Yahweh's very real, intra-historical, interworkings with OT/NT figures and events - with secular ideologies, misguided beliefs, and errant religious practices. So that in all areas a godliness may occur and a God-ward consciousness become living and present. And so, in another sense, just as the mythological/pagan beliefs of ancient cultures guided the actions and attitudes of ancient peoples, so too did Israel and the Church have a Yahwistic culture that guided theirs. But with the important distinction that Yahweh is a real, spiritual Being, unlike the ancient pantheons of gods with their many mystical beliefs, practices, and superstitions (here is beheld the idea of the evolution of religion as religion continues to evolve from rudimentary form to a sophisticated one of equality and justice).
To the one who indiscriminately says that this argument is no different than that of any other ancient or contemporary belief systems, then yes, that may be true. But to the Jewish and Christian believer it is one describing for them the Living Creator God of the universe through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. At university I met many professors and their minion students who were less than complementary towards the Jewish-Christian faith. To them we believed in a living myth that was magical and delusional. However, I understood my task as one of spreading the Gospel of Christ to the spiritually blind and deaf. While God's mission or task was one of converting unto salvation. Together, in a divine-human cooperative, we spread the message... but it is the Holy Spirit's task to convict towards repentance and conversion that the Christian faith becomes enlivened and made real in the heart and mind of the disbelieving agnostic or atheist. But such adamant disbelief or casual proclamations does not disprove God. It cannot. It can only blind the one refusing to believe. Our fellowship is of a different sort. Of a different nature than the religions of the world. It is one of personal redemption and repentance which sets it quite apart from other competing philosophies and religions. And even today we see it evolving through the many ideas formed in philosophy, psychology, science, politics, and earth care. It is a religion first and foremost of redemption and repentance. Of questioning ourselves, acts, ideas, and words, against the larger ideas of renewal, recreation, reclamation, rebirth, and resurrection. An evolving religion that cannot be content until all the world acts with one will within the evolving global structure of Yahweh's provide of self-sacrifice and redemption.
Genesis 1-11 & the Book of Job are Old
Another observation I wish to make is that when we come to Genesis it must be realized that chapters 1-11 are very ancient in their origins. They are in essence very old, oral legends that have been later written down by succeeding civilizations that had possession of alphabets and a means of written communication. This is true also of the book of Job which is yet another very old book of the bible telling of a man who suffered at the hands of God and the devil. Both the early Genesis accounts and that of Job occurred long years before Abraham. And were rehearsed generationally through oral transmission, and later written down, many longs years later after Abraham (by Jewish storytellers, historians, and scribes perhaps beginning as far back as in Israel's many distant years spent in Egypt, and then continuing through their formative Wilderness travels into the early days of their tribal federations).
Moreover, as I understand it, the Noahic account of Genesis was edited and redacted from at least two different transmission sources... one from a 10th century Yahwistic literary source and the other from a 7th century Priestly source. This can be seen in the small differences found within the account in Genesis 6-9. What caused this? For one, the OT books were written and collected through several centuries of Israel and Judah's disobedience to God's directives and counsel, and into their separate exiles. Consequently the bible stories that we are familiar with today imperfectly evolved because of societal/spiritual disruptions from generation to generation which then streamed off into separate, but similar, biblical stories so as to create these separate, collected, accounts. As further example of imperfect transmission and spiritual disruptions in Israel's history recall the lost book of the Torah that when found caused King Josiah to weep (2 Kings 22.10-11)? Imagine the lost Mosaic traditions and cultural observations that came with the finding and knowledge of that book? So that at the last, Ezra, around c. 586, made a final compilation of the Scriptures that found the Pharisees and Sadducees still arguing over their interpretations of God's word as understood 600 years later even as they would with Jesus' bold insights and authoritative interpretations. It is surely a degree of wonderment that the Christian and Jewish religions have been preserved at all when laid at the hands of humanities wandering, tepid heart and troubling, disjointed paths.
Suggested Theological Themes
From this I can allow a "mythic" understanding of the Scriptures in Israel's earliest accounts of ancient human history (the Creation of the world, the Flood, the rise of human civilizations from the story of Babel). Its ancient tribal narratives helped re-conceptualize and re-orient past mythological narratives based on earlier composite ancient cosmogonies. But not any type of ancient cosmogony, be it Akkadian, Assyrian, or Babylonian, but a Hebraic view, spiritually informed by God's directing Spirit upon the hearts and minds of Abraham's progeny that understood this old world to be created by the very word of Yahweh Himself. With expressed intentions, deliberations, purpose, and planning, both spiritual and physical. Each follower fully realizing the outcome and the necessity of God's intimate involvement with His creation's renewal through redemption and re-purposing ultimately through His Son and by every living believer who would come in contact with this re-creative story. A story where man lived in harmony with creation and with himself. A story where communion with God has been re-initiated through the Son of God who died at Calvary and rose to rule and reign at God's right hand. A rule that would restore all things back to the Garden of Eden. Back to when sin did not reign. Where death did not separate man from God, from each other, from nature nor himself (we call this the four alienations of sin and death). A remarkable story of recreation perhaps more remarkable than the making of this old universe itself.
A redemptive story which is every bit as true to modern, contemporary man today as it was to ancient, primitive cultures then. That spoke of a God who created. A creation that would serve both as the Creator-God's temple and as a sanctuary to those things created. A meeting place between the spiritual and the physical. Between the immortal and the mortal. The eternal and the temporary. Where fellowship may occur and life is birthed. Where fulfillment is found in whatever activity undertaken by man and was blessed by the God of the universe. Where sin and death are held accountable. Where truth, justice, love become the foundation stones for human community and society. A story that was as relevant then as it is today however its story form. However its literary vehicle of dissemination. This then is the Genesis account of creation, of the flood, of the rise of human societies through disbursement by earth event, be it by water, ice, cold or heat. Or by human event of murder, wars, peaceable culture, ideology or religion.
After Genesis 1-11, after the story of Job, we are taken to historical events that are much closer to Israel's historical experience... in fact, from Genesis 12 onwards we are taken directly to Israel's formation as a spiritually developing community of believers bound together by their beliefs in the God of the Bible today. Hence, their traditions may have been imperfectly passed along but those traditions were much nearer to their national conscience and recollection than were the much earlier proto-historical occurrences collected in Genesis 1-11 and Job. That were recapsulized into Israel's national history and spiritual understanding of their provisional religious charters. So that whether there was a literal man named Noah or not, or a wooden Ark of proportionate dimensions bearing animals two-by-two is not our ultimate concern. No, our concern lies with the fact of the story itself and what God intended by it when giving it to Israel as their national inheritance in spiritual terms of trusting reliance upon Him as their Father God Creator. For simplistically sake they called this man Noah and understood God to have honored Noah's desire to be faithful to God come hell or highwater. Which he did. And by which his family was saved. And through whose agency was saved the ancient belief of this Creator later to be described and known as Yahweh by other God-fearers. Though not a Hebrew (since Abraham had not been borne yet) Noah was a God-fearer. And by historical import we see the nation Israel's salvation again and again at the hands of God - whether in the man Israel's story, or his son Joesph; or of the Israelites from Egypt itself; or from the harsh desert spaces of their Wilderness journey; or time-and-again in their tribal federations under Judges and Prophets; or within their monarchies until the time of the Church arising from the ashes of what was left of the nation-state Israel. In all, through all, by all was God ever there to guide and protect His covenanted remnant of believers through the fires and trials of life. This then is the story of Noah and the ark and its relevancy for today.
Consequently, we must pointedly discriminate (i) that the early proto-mythologies found within Genesis showed a remarkable comparative relatedness to their contextual literary cousins (which themselves were much older than Israel's accounts) as pertaining to religious mythologies of creational origins, natural floods and destruction, and the normative events of population drift and movement. As well as (ii) due to the historical fact that the stories found in Genesis 1-11 were written much later (c. 1800-586 BC) to the other ANE stories held by much older proto-literary civilizations (say, pre-8000 BC in oral form per creational accounts; and, 2800-2500 BC for the flood account of the Tigris-Euphrates flood event). Otherwise, it would be better to speak of the Creation of the world (Gen 1-3) and of the Noahic flood (known as the second Creation, or Rebirth, of the World), from a (ANE) Judeo-Christian understanding that is not mythic - though perhaps not "literal" either as used in today's evangelical cultures proclaiming literal interpretations. But one that was very real (and very "literal") to the ANE cultures then, both in substance and occurrence, as beheld and understood by the people within their ANE cultures of that day. Stories that were very old. That were passed along by very old civilizations. That were divinely informative about God even as they were spiritually formative both then and now for today's modern and postmodern civilizations. That are true but scribed from within ancient world-and-life views of cosmogonies telling of creational origins and apprehended knowledge of regional disasters and beneficial blessings. Stories that were trying to comprehend God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth. That were asking even then, the meaning of life when confronted by natural catastrophic disasters and of the subsequent beneficial blessings experienced by survivors protected from such destruction. This much we can suppose and even allow as it has been illustrated again and again even within our contemporary cultures (as example, consider Western Kentucky's tornadoes of March 2012 which found tragic stories of survivors searching for life's meaning when having survived through the horrific winds of destructive tornadoes and malevolent storms).
As example, when we think of the Creation account we might think of it in spiritual terms using Israel's familiar Temple-based institution as a paradigm for thinking of God communing with mankind in terms of sanctuary and worship rather than get lost in a "literalness of explanation" or in a science-based evolutionary discussion. Or when we speak of "the Flood" we might see it as God's way of protecting the believer through the various Arks He places in our lives beginning with the Ark of the Covenant and then, by extrapolation, the Ark of God's spoken Word and decrees, of assurances and warnings; the Ark of the Holy Spirit or even that of Christ Himself; the Ark of the fellowship of God's people (as obedient communities found within Israel, or that of the Church); the Ark of marriage; the Ark of God's justice and ethical laws that are fair and equally applied; the Ark of Salvation; the Ark of the Kingdom of God.
Consequently, my own version of the "creation account" might utilize an evolutionary understanding. Or my own "Flood theory" may perceive Noah's flood as a large regional disaster and largely rewritten to convey the spiritual presence of God. But separate from these differences the believer and theologian each seek to understand those ancient accounts as early descriptors of the kind of God we worship and believe. In the quantum physics articles I've recently written God has been shown to be in the land of science. In the human pathos articles communicated in this web blog we find God's presence in our daily lives and routines. In the songs and devotional pieces submitted herein we sing of an impassioned God and His great goodness to this world of sin and woe, tears and valleys. The Scriptures tell us of God. They are not a science book. But they do accurately tell us of God and His Loving Sovereignty. God is no myth. Nor is the spiritual account of His people Israel and the Church an unreal, mythic faith. No. God is a great God... and He is our Great God who has revealed Himself to mankind over eons of human history to tell us of His love and salvation, presence and intentions for our lives and for this old world.
R.E. Slater
July 2, 2012
*rev. March 21, 2014, typos & grammatical errors
**July 15, 2020 - This article was updated respecting its topic but not to its descriptions of God's sovereignty as an open and relational process theology. This would be done many years later as my faith became more informed.
***For more helpful information on God's names and who He is go to a past post entitled The Names of God in Scripture. I think you will find this quite helpful.
