Friday, January 4, 2013

Mark Shea on Reading Scripture Literally

He responds to a commenter here with his usual wit, wisdom, and erudition.

Just to add one consideration on the whole Noah's Ark thing:  when it comes to the question of a global flood versus a local flood, I've found that if you put yourself in the mindset of Noah, the story makes a whole lot more sense.  Imagine for a moment you're in that day and age.  You're told by God that there's a flood coming and it will wipe out everybody, so gather all the animals two by two and build an ark.  Noah doesn't know the earth is round.  Nor does he know of every species of animal across the earth.  So he gathers all the animals he knows about.

The flood comes.  It wipes out everybody else, as far as Noah's concerned.  You're bobbing about in an ark.  You look out across the waters and see floods from horizon to horizon.  When you tell the story to your grandkids, what are you going to say?  "The Lord drowned the earth in water.  Water covered the whole world."  What's recorded is what someone would have seen in the ages before the Internet, weather satellites, and Greek scientists discovering the world is round.  It sounds rather like an eyewitness account, even if it's not a scientific account.

Anyway--my two cents on a controversy.

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