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116-448: The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis ) is a Hebrew flood myth . It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's ark . The Book of Genesis was probably composed around the 5th century BCE, although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), including

232-468: A Horse, is very strange". Browne, among the first to question the notion of spontaneous generation , was a medical doctor and amateur scientist making this observation in passing. However, biblical scholars of the time, such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–1680), had also begun to subject the Ark story to rigorous scrutiny as they attempted to harmonize the biblical account with

348-609: A complete story-line, with introductions and conclusions, reasons for the flood, and theologies. Scholars believe that the flood myth originated in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period (c. 1880–1595 BCE) and reached Syro-Palestine in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Extant texts show three distinct versions, the Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra , (the oldest, found in very fragmentary form on

464-460: A deposition directly after suspension in a turbulent flow. In 2020, archaeologists discovered evidence of a tsunami that destroyed middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B coastal settlements in Tel Dor , Israel as it traveled between 3.5 to 1.5 km inland. The tsunami was approximately 16 m high. Recovery in the affected areas was slow but overall, it did not significantly affect the social development of

580-552: A family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah , Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are the Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of

696-535: A future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah ) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on

812-591: A literal interpretation for the Ark story. By the middle of the 18th century only a few natural historians accepted a literal interpretation of the narrative. Book of Genesis Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as the Torah's author . It was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as

928-500: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

1044-598: A mere week to recede in order to provide Noah his stage for God's covenant. It is the Priestly source which adds more fantastic figures of a 150-day flood, which emerged by divine hand from the heavens and earth and took ten months to finally stop. That the Jahwist source's capricious and somewhat simplistic depiction of Yahweh is clearly distinguished from the Priestly source's characteristically majestic, transcendental, and austere virtuous Yahweh. The Priestly flood narrative

1160-617: A number of principles and discoveries of fact in the fields of geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology in an attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features on Earth in accordance with a literal understanding of the Genesis flood narrative) can be traced to " Scriptural geologists ," a heterogeneous group of writers from the early 19th century, most of whom lacked any background in geology and also lacked influence even in religious circles. The geologic views of these writers were ignored by

1276-428: A promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised as

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1392-448: A sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar , as a second wife (to bear a child). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among

1508-509: A single tablet dating from about 1600 BCE, although the story itself is older), and as episodes in two Akkadian language epics, the Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh . The name of the hero, according to the version concerned, was Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Utnapishtim , all of which are variations of each other, and it is just possible that an abbreviation of Utnapishtim/Utna'ishtim as "na'ish"

1624-452: A stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that readers should rely on the gospels as completely historical, but should not take the earlier chapters of Genesis literally. By a variety of independent means, scientists have since determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old . Flood geology (a pseudoscience which contradicts

1740-472: A unique version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Line 1 of the text says "At the start of the time of the disappearance of the moon, at the beginning of the month". This reference to the lunar date giving the specific date the protagonist released the bird is significant as it is the only variant of the flood story giving a specific date and the rest do not attribute specific dates or calendrical details to

1856-560: A wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to

1972-563: A work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes. Notable examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth , legend , and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of

2088-537: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . A great leader mediates each covenant ( Noah , Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name ( Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

2204-410: Is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred. Some Christians have preferred to interpret the narrative as describing a local flood instead of a global event. Still others prefer to interpret the narrative as allegorical rather than historical. The story of the flood occurs in chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Ten generations after

2320-413: Is a reversal and renewal of God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1 God separates the "waters above the earth" from those below so that dry land can appear as a home for living things, but in the flood story the "windows of heaven" and "fountains of the deep" are opened so that the world is returned to the watery chaos of the time before creation. Even the sequence of flood events mimics that of creation,

2436-589: Is also known as a Sidra (or Sedra / s ɛ d r ə / ). The parashah is a section of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, or parashiyot in Hebrew, and the full cycle is read over the course of one Jewish year. The first 12 of the 54 come from the Book of Genesis, and they are: Motif (narrative) A motif ( / m oʊ ˈ t iː f / moh- TEEF )

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2552-522: Is any distinctive feature or idea that recurs across a story ; often, it helps develop other narrative elements such as theme or mood . A narrative motif can be created through the use of imagery , structural components, language , and other elements throughout literature. The flute in Arthur Miller 's play Death of a Salesman is a recurrent sound motif that conveys rural and idyllic notions. Another example from modern American literature

2668-694: Is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts". The original manuscripts are lost, and the text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in

2784-428: Is evidenced in the doublets (i.e., repetitions) contained within the final story. Many of these are contradictory, such as how long the flood lasted (40 days according to Genesis 7:17 , 150 according to 7:24 ), how many animals were to be taken aboard the ark (one pair of each in 6:19 , one pair of the unclean animals and seven pairs of the clean in 7:2 ), and whether Noah released a raven which "went to and fro until

2900-421: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future. God tells

3016-411: Is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories; the first two chapters roughly correspond to these. In the first, Elohim , the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and

3132-482: Is that Genesis was composed around the 5th century BCE, but as the first eleven chapters show little relationship to the rest of the book, some scholars believe that this section (the so-called primeval history ) may have been composed as late as the 3rd century BCE. It is generally agreed that the history draws on two sources, one called the Priestly source , the other non-Priestly or Yahwist , and their interweaving

3248-430: Is that a theme is abstract and a motif is concrete. A theme is usually defined as a message, statement, or idea, while a motif is simply a detail repeated for larger symbolic meaning. In other words, a narrative motif—a detail repeated in a pattern of meaning—can produce a theme; but it can also create other narrative aspects. Nevertheless, the distinction between the two terms remains difficult to pinpoint. For instance,

3364-806: Is the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet . As with the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington, breakthroughs of glacial ice dams are believed to have unleashed massive and sudden torrents of water to form the gorge some time between 600 and 900 AD. Some also relate the climate change phenomena associated with the Piora Oscillation , which triggered the collapse of the Uruk period , with the Biblical flood myth. The current understanding of

3480-399: Is the green light found in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald . Narratives may include multiple motifs of varying types. In Shakespeare 's play Macbeth , he uses a variety of narrative elements to create many different motifs. Imagistic references to blood and water are continually repeated. The phrase "fair is foul, and foul is fair" is echoed at many points in

3596-402: Is the only Priestly text that covers dates with much detail before the Exodus narrative . This is perhaps due to a version of the flood myth that was available at the time. There is a text discovered from Ugarit known as RS 94.2953, consisting of fourteen lines telling a first-person account of how Ea appeared to the story's protagonist and commanded him to use tools to make a window ( aptu ) at

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3712-399: Is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine had reached Canaan as well. After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them

3828-486: The Channeled Scablands in the southeastern areas of the state of Washington have been demonstrated to have been formed by a series of catastrophic floods originating from the collapse of glacial dams of glacial lakes in the region, the last of which has been estimated to have occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago. Another geologic feature believed to have been formed by massive catastrophic flooding

3944-467: The Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are the generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in

4060-478: The Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks

4176-595: The Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before the Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At

4292-586: The Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. Describing

4408-593: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

4524-616: The global distribution of species with the older scenario whereby all life had sprung from a single point of origin on the slopes of Mount Ararat . The obvious answer involved mankind spreading over the continents following the destruction of the Tower of Babel and taking animals along, yet some of the results seemed peculiar. In 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wondered why the natives of North America had taken rattlesnakes with them, but not horses: "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature,

4640-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them. In 1978, David Clines published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

4756-466: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This is interpreted by Christians as the " fall of man " into sin . Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel . Cain works in

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4872-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

4988-461: The 17th day of the second month, Marcheshvan , when "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened", and after 40 days the ark floats (Genesis 7:11–12). The waters rise and then recede, and on the 17th day of the seventh month (or the 27th day in the Greek version) the ark rests on the mountains (Genesis 8:4). The waters continue to fall, the ark is uncovered on

5104-528: The 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, and is opened on the 27th day of his 601st year (Genesis 8:13–14). The period from the beginning of the flood to the landing on the mountain is five months (the second month to the seventh, Genesis 7:11 and 8:4) and 150 days (8:3), making an impossible five months of 30 days each; the number is schematic, and is based on the Babylonian astronomical calendar of 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). This means that

5220-406: The 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of

5336-477: The American science fiction cult classic Blade Runner , director Ridley Scott uses motifs to not only establish a dark and shadowy film noir atmosphere, but also to weave together the thematic complexities of the plot. Throughout the film, the recurring motif of "eyes" is connected to a constantly changing flow of images, and sometimes violent manipulations, in order to call into question our ability, and

5452-466: The Ark in his six hundredth year [of life], and on the 17th day of the second month of that year "the fountains of the Great Deep burst apart and the floodgates of heaven broke open" and rain fell for forty days and forty nights until the highest mountains were covered to a depth of 15 cubits , and all life perished except Noah and those with him in the Ark. After 150 days, "God remembered Noah ... and

5568-519: The Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship ) into the God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner , as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them

5684-533: The English theologian and natural scientist William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiæ Diluvianæ (relics of the flood) "Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge". His views were supported by others at the time, including the influential geologist Adam Sedgwick , but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that the evidence suggested only local floods. Louis Agassiz subsequently explained such deposits as

5800-534: The Genesis flood as a type to Christian baptism . In the 3rd century Gnostic codex now referred to as the Hypostasis of the Archons , it is the corrupt rulers ( Archons ) who decide to flood the world in order to dispose of most of mankind. However, Noah is spared and told to build an ark. But when his wife Norea wants to board the ark, Noah attempts to not let her, thus she uses her divine power to blow on

5916-491: The Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

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6032-626: The Pentateuch: J, D, and P. The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis. More recent thinking is that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. The almost complete absence of all

6148-598: The Persians of the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and

6264-578: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant Reformation , rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from

6380-628: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

6496-592: The ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into

6612-474: The ark, causing it to be consumed by fire. Noah later builds the ark a second time. When the Archons try to seize Norea, she calls out to God for help, then the angel Eleleth appears and scares away the Archons, revealing to Norea that she is a divine child of the great spirit . A different view is found in the Secret Book of John ; instead of an ark, Noah hides in a bright cloud. Mandaeism teaches that

6728-413: The articulation of Dr. Ian Malcolm 's dialogue. Any number of narrative elements with symbolic significance can be classified as motifs—whether they are images, spoken or written phrases, structural or stylistic devices , or other elements like sound, physical movement, or visual components in dramatic narratives. While it may appear interchangeable with the related concept, theme , a general rule

6844-402: The book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide the book into the following sections: It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on

6960-485: The characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in the 3rd century BC. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that

7076-528: The covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις , meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , 'In [the] beginning'. Genesis was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes

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7192-464: The creation of Adam , God saw that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, and he decided to destroy what he had created. But God found one righteous man, Noah , and to him he confided his intention: "I am about to bring on the Flood ... to eliminate everywhere all flesh in which there is the breath of life ... ." So God instructed him to build an ark (in Hebrew, a chest or box), and Noah entered

7308-483: The deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish the relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of

7424-537: The designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and the two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. According to the documentary hypothesis, J

7540-471: The earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in the Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from

7656-539: The end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with the sources later combined by various editors. Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on

7772-483: The entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over a long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within

7888-418: The flood first covering the earth to the highest mountains, then destroying, in order, birds, cattle, beasts, "swarming creatures", and finally mankind. (This parallels the Babylonian flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh , where at the end of rain "all of mankind had returned to clay," the substance of which they had been made.) The Ark itself is likewise a microcosm of Solomon's Temple . In Jewish folklore ,

8004-523: The flood is a picture of salvation in Christ —the Ark was planned by God and there is only one way of salvation through the door of the Ark, akin to one way of salvation through Christ. Additionally, some scholars commenting on the teaching of the apostle Peter ( 1 Peter 3:18–22 ), connect the Ark with the resurrection of Christ; the waters burying the old world but raising Noah to a new life. Christian scholars also highlight that 1 Peter 3:18–22 demonstrates

8120-401: The flood lasts 36 weeks according to the flood calendar, in which an extra day is added to every third month. The number of weeks is symbolically significant, representing the biblical cypher for destruction (the number 6, expressed as 6x6=36), while the number 7 (the number of days in a week) represents the persistence of creation during this time of destruction. Scholars have long puzzled over

8236-468: The flood narrative may be based are accepted as possible within an overall uniformitarian framework. In relation to geological forces, uniformitarianism explains the formation of the Earth's features by means of mostly slow-acting forces seen in operation today. By the 17th century, believers in the Genesis account faced the issue of reconciling the exploration of the New World and increased awareness of

8352-481: The flood narrative, may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BCE. It draws on two sources, called the Priestly source and the non-Priestly or Yahwist , and although many of its details are contradictory, the story forms a unified whole. A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology , archeology , paleontology , and the global distribution of species . A branch of creationism known as flood geology

8468-404: The flood of Noah was the last of three events where the world's population was reduced to a single family. Thirty generations after Adam, most of the population was killed by pestilence and war, leaving only Ram and his wife Rud. Twenty-five generations later, most of the population was killed by fire, leaving only Shurbai and his wife Sharhabeil . Fifteen generations later, most of the population

8584-415: The garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to the promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth,

8700-410: The growing body of natural historical knowledge. The resulting hypotheses provided an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and indirectly spurred the emergence of biogeography in the 18th century. Natural historians began to draw connections between climates and the animals and plants adapted to them. One influential theory held that the biblical Ararat

8816-533: The marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all the males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of

8932-405: The middle of the 20th century, despite debates between Protestant Christian scientists, Flood geology maintained traction amongst evangelical Christian circles. Historian Ronald Numbers argues that an ideological connection by evangelical Christians wanting to challenge aspects of the scientific consensus that they believe contradict their interpretation of religious texts was first established by

9048-468: The narrator's own, to accurately perceive and understand reality. Narrative motifs can be ironic. For example, in Michael Crichton 's Jurassic Park novel, control is a recurring motif via chapter title and topic of discussion; it's an ironic motif that is instantiated in the constant creation of the unknown and the belief that it can be controlled and contained. The irony is explained through

9164-559: The notions of covenant, law, and forgiveness. The Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1–2) deals with God's creation and God's repentance is the rationale behind the flood narrative, and in the Priestly source (which runs through all of Genesis and into the other four books of the Torah) these two verbs, "create" and "forgive", are reserved exclusively for divine actions. Intertextuality is the way biblical stories refer to and reflect one another. Such echoes are seldom coincidental—for instance,

9280-409: The patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

9396-558: The play, a combination that mixes the concepts of good and evil . The play also features the central motif of the washing of hands , one that combines both verbal images and the movement of the actors. In a narrative, a motif establishes a pattern of ideas that may serve different conceptual purposes in different works. Kurt Vonnegut , for example, in his non-linear narratives such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle makes frequent use of motif to connect different moments that might seem otherwise separated by time and space. In

9512-590: The prehistoric cataclysmic flooding from the Altai Mountains is that several glacial lake outburst floods from the Altai Mountains caused massive flooding along the Katun River (in the present-day Altai Republic ) some time between 12000 BC and 9000 BC, as demonstrated by the fact that much of the gravel deposited along the Katun valley lacks a stratigraphic structure, instead showing characteristics of

9628-473: The present day) either among humans or other animal species; however, if the flood narrative is derived from a more localized event and describes a founder effect among one population of humans, certain explanations such as the events described by the Black Sea deluge hypothesis may elaborate on the historicity of the flood narrative. Localized catastrophic floodings have left traces in the geological record:

9744-467: The publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then, a number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for

9860-412: The publication of the 1961 book, The Genesis Flood . Most scientific fields, particularly those contradicted by flood geology, rely on Charles Lyell 's established principle of uniformitarianism , which for much of their history was seen to contrast with the catastrophism inherent in flood geology. However, with the discovery of evidence for some catastrophic events, events similar to those on which

9976-635: The rain, humanity's sensual desires made them hot and inflamed to immoral excesses. The Genesis flood narrative is included in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible (see Books of the Bible ). Jesus and the apostles additionally taught on the Genesis flood narrative in New Testament writing ( Matthew 24:37–39 , Luke 17:26–27 , 1 Peter 3:20 , 2 Peter 2:5 , 2 Peter 3:6 , Hebrews 11:7 ). Some Christian biblical scholars suggest that

10092-406: The rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile. Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes

10208-422: The results of glaciation . In 1862, William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin ) calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion focused not on the viability of this theory of deep time , but on the derivation of a more precise figure for the age of the Earth. Lux Mundi , an 1889 volume of theological essays which marks

10324-421: The righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into a pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to

10440-610: The scientific community of their time. Flood geology was largely ignored in the 19th century, but was revived in the 20th century by the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price , who was inspired by the visions of Ellen G. White . As Price's career progressed, he gained attention outside of Seventh-day Adventist groups, and by 1929 he was a popular scientific author among Christian fundamentalists , though those who were not Seventh-day Adventists rejected his young Earth theories. Through

10556-460: The significance of the flood lasting one year and eleven days (day 17 of year 600 to day 27 of year 601); one solution is that the basic calendar is a lunar one of 354 days, to which eleven days have been added to match a solar year of 365 days. The "original", Jahwist narrative of the Great Deluge was modest; a week of ostensibly non-celestial rain is followed by a forty-day flood which takes

10672-435: The sins in the antediluvian world included blasphemy, occult practices and preventing new traders from making profit. Children also had the ability to talk and walk immediately after birth and battle with demons. When the flood commenced, God caused each raindrop to pass through Gehenna before it fell on earth for forty days so that it could scald the skin of sinners. It was a punishment that befitted their crime because like

10788-468: The southern Levant. Whilst the tsunami is not identified with the Biblical flood, it is believed to contribute to the flood myths found in numerous cultures. The development of scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the biblical flood narrative by undermining the biblical chronology , which placed the Creation and the flood no more than a few thousand years back in history. In 1823

10904-423: The subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding the entire book. The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after. The ancestral history

11020-473: The surah Nūḥ . Academic scholars and researchers consider the story in its present form to be exaggerated and/or implausible. The story of the Deluge describes either a severe genetic bottleneck event or the origins of a founder effect among the descendants of the survivors, in that the survivors are related. There is no evidence of such a severe genetic bottleneck at that period of time (~7000 years before

11136-482: The text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers), was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used

11252-446: The theory assumes a redactor who combined the sources inconsistently (in some cases extensively editing together the text and in some cases faithfully preserving contradictory versions) for unclear reasons. Similarly, the complete Genesis flood story matches the parallel Gilgamesh flood story in a way which neither of the proposed biblical sources does. The following table compares the proposed Yahwist and Priestly sources. Each provides

11368-486: The top of the construction he was building, and how he implemented this directive and released a bird. Antoine Cavigneaux 's translation of this text made him propose that this fragment belongs to a Mesopotamian flood myth , perhaps Atrahasis or Tablet IX of Gilgamesh , which has a version found in Ugarit (RS 22.421) that contains a first person account of the flood. If this suggestion is correct, then RS 94.2953 represents

11484-480: The twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after the pharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He

11600-455: The two sources was earlier and therefore influenced the other. Some scholars have even questioned whether the story is actually based on two different sources, noting that some of the doublets (such as the dove and raven) are not actually contradictory and in fact appear as linked motifs in other biblical and non-biblical sources, that the method of doublets is inconsistently applied in that the alleged sources themselves contain doublets, and that

11716-454: The various stages of the flood. Both RS 94.2953 and Genesis 8 are about the flood protagonist releasing a bird on a specific calendrical date in order to find land in the midst of the flood. The primeval history is first and foremost about the world God made, its origins, inhabitants, purposes, challenges, and failures. It asks why the world which God has made is so imperfect and of the meaning of human violence and evil, and its solutions involve

11832-503: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

11948-414: The waters subsided" until the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, and on the 27th day of the second month of Noah's six hundred and first year the earth was dry. Then Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice, and God made a covenant with Noah that man would be allowed to eat every living thing but not its blood, and that God would never again destroy all life by a flood. The consensus of modern scholars

12064-422: The waters were dried up" or a dove which on the third occasion "did not return to him again," or possibly both. But despite this disagreement on details the story forms a unified whole (some scholars see in it a " chiasm ", a literary structure in which the first item matches the last, the second the second-last, and so on), and many efforts have been made to explain this unity, including attempts to identify which of

12180-532: The wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) for

12296-465: The wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However, the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is an example of

12412-570: The word used for ark is the same used for the basket in which Moses is saved, implying a symmetry between the stories of two divinely chosen saviours in a world threatened by water and chaos. The most significant such echo is a reversal of the Genesis creation narrative ; the division between the "waters above" and the "waters below" the earth is removed, the dry land is flooded, most life is destroyed, and only Noah and those with him survive to obey God's command to "be fruitful and multiply." The flood

12528-474: The work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of the variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology." Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place

12644-515: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

12760-493: The world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends a great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy

12876-434: The world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram, a man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . There, God makes

12992-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive

13108-589: Was killed by flood, leaving only Noah and Shem, in addition to the latter's wife Nuraitha . Noah and his family are saved because they were able to build an ark or kawila (or kauila , a Mandaic term; it is cognate with Syriac kēʾwilā , which is attested in the Peshitta New Testament, such as Matthew 24 :38 and Luke 17 :27). The story of Noah and the Great Flood is related in the Qur'an in

13224-541: Was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . Based on these dates, Genesis and

13340-470: Was pronounced "Noah" in Palestine. Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c. 1300–1000 BCE. Numbers in the Bible often have symbolic or idiomatic meaning, and the 40 days and nights for which rain fell on the Earth indicates a complete cycle. The flood begins on

13456-444: Was striped with varying climatic zones, and as climate changed, the associated animals moved as well, eventually spreading to repopulate the globe. There was also the problem of an ever-expanding number of known species : for Kircher and earlier natural historians, there was little problem finding room for all known animal species in the Ark. Less than a century later, discoveries of new species made it increasingly difficult to justify

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