What
We’re Up Against
September
3, 2020
On September 3,
2020, a link appeared on msn.com to a story at mydailymagazine.com/could-these-be-the-remains-
of/. That story has the headline “Could the Remains of Noah’s Ark Be Found on a
Mountain in Turkey?” The story tells of various efforts that people have made over
the years to prove that the story of Noah’s ark as told in Genesis really
happened by finding the remains of the ark. People from one of those expeditions
claim to have found an ancient timber in a cave on Mount Ararat, where Noah’s
ark supposedly came to rest, that they carbon dated to 4,800 BCE. I have known for
years that people have been looking for and even claiming to have found Noah’s
ark on Mount Ararat. Some people approach the search for Noah’s ark as a
supposedly scientific quest. The quest isn’t scientific however because it
begins with an a priori assumption or a couple of them, which science at least
in theory doesn’t do. Still, people keep looking. Many of them are convinced
that if the Bible says the ark existed and that it came to rest on Mount Ararat
then that’s what happened and there should be physical evidence of it on that
mountain all these millennia later. The article to which the msn.com link
connected at least doesn’t make that assumption, but it doesn’t outright reject
it either.
Here’s the thing
that so few people seem to realize. No one is ever going to find Noah’s ark
because you can’t find what never existed. There never was a Noah’s ark. Ever. Period.
The issue people searching for Noah’s ark raise is not whether they are ever
going to find it. They won’t. The issue is why so many people take the Bible as
a factually accurate historical account of things that actually happened when
that isn’t what the Bible is at all. The story of Noah’s ark in Genesis isn’t
history, it’s myth. That doesn’t mean there is no truth in it. It does mean
that there isn’t necessarily any factual truth in it. There is no reason
whatsoever to believe that the story ever happened.
So if it never
happened why is the story in the Bible? There are a couple of reasons. As the
story that prompted this post says, ancient cultures throughout the Middle East
and indeed around the world have stories of catastrophic floods which only a
small number of people and animals survive in some kind of boat. In the Middle
East these stories apparently originated a very long time ago in Mesopotamia.
They spread throughout the region. The people of ancient Israel knew such a
story. No doubt their storytellers told and retold it countless times over the
centuries. The story of the flood, Noah, and the ark was part of their culture,
so it isn’t surprising that it was included in their sacred scripture.
Also, the story
as told in Genesis is a myth in the sense that it is a human story that says
something about God and how God relates to creation.[1]
In the Noah story human sin has become so bad that God just can’t stand it anymore.
Genesis says that “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was
filled with violence.” Genesis 6:9b NRSV. God gives Noah directions about how
to build a big boat called an ark and two contradictory sets of instructions
about what animals to put in it. See Genesis 6:19-21 and 7:2-3. Noah does what
God told him to do. God floods the whole earth. All of the people and animals
save those in the ark drown. The water recedes. The ark comes aground “on the mountains
of Ararat.” Genesis 8:4[2]
The world gets repopulated from the people and animals on the ark.
How is this story
one about God and God’s relationship to creation? It says that human corruption
in general and violence in particular hurt and anger God. They hurt and anger
God so much that God can even intend to put an end to all life on earth. This
is story not history. That it is in the Bible doesn’t at all prove that it
happened the way the Bible says it did. The point of the story isn’t that it
happened. The point is what the story says about how human sin hurts and angers
God. The tale is a cautionary one. It tells us not to behave in ways that hurt
and anger God. In particular it tells us not to be violent. That’s why the
story matters. It matters not at all that the story never really happened.
Yet almost no one
in our culture understands this story or any other biblical story that way. The
article I referred to says this about people of faith:
The tale of Noah and the Ark (sic) and the flood is
considered by religious individuals as a literal description of real events, with
no need for collaborating scientific evidence. Th faith in an almighty God
supports the event of a flood without needing a scientific rationale.”
Well, I’m a religious individual,
and I don’t believe that at all. Yet that statement tells us people of
enlightened faith just what we’re up against. The assumption out there in the
world is that if you’re religious you’re a biblical literalist. If you’re a
religious person you believe that
everything the Bible describes as having happened really happened. This
mistaken understanding of proper religion is perpetuated and reinforced by the
vocal religious people among us who say the same thing. Christianity has pretty
much presented itself to the world as exclusively literalist and unthinking.
Far too few people today know that it needn’t be.
That’ what we’re
up against. Most people today think Christians are unthinking literalists who
never question what the Bible is or says or anything else about the faith. Many
of us inside the more progressive churches know better, but we’ve done a lousy
job of telling the world about our better way of understanding the faith. The
literalist understanding of Christianity that I have elsewhere called Biblicism
is killing Christianity. If we’re going to save our great faith we have to do a
much better job than we’ve done so far of telling people that there is a better
Christian way.
[1]
That’s the technical meaning of myth. A myth is this sense is not a story that
people believe to be true that isn’t true.
[2]
Note: Mountains plural not mountain singular. All those people looking for the
ark on Mount Ararat mostly overlook that detail.
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