This week we come to more of the flood narrative, and I am resisting the temptation to spend a lot of time on showing how the historical narrative of the flood is a credible and reliable account. That, however, does not mean that it is not important to maintain that we have a credible and reliable biblical history. If the narratives of Scripture are not historically accurate, then there is no reality to the message they convey and their relationship to God's big redemptive thread. Biblical historical reliability is crucially important.
The flood narrative starts with the account of the dimensions of the ark and the animals that were taken on board. Genesis 6:14-16 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. 16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.
By normal seafaring standards, the dimensions of the ark are like the type of ship built to cross oceans today. The dimensions of the ark hold up to scientific scrutiny. Also holding up to scientific scrutiny is the biblical description of the animals that entered (vs. 19-21) - two of every kind of air breathing land animal. In modern taxonomy, the kind or family classification is likely the level of classification being mentioned in the bible. It is classified by the ability to interbreed within a kind (eg. the dog kind, the cat kind). The rich variability in the genome within each kind on the ark is then made visible as animals breed and spread and isolate to bring out command characteristics in animal populations of species that we see today. At the kind/family classification level, the ark had more than enough room for the breeding pairs that entered.
For such a worldwide historical event to occur, we would also expect to find accounts/legends/mythologies of the flood in people groups around the world. If we all came from Noah, we would expect to hear a historical memory of it, and we do. Flood legends are found all around the world and in ancient history. They have varying degrees of comparability and distinction to the biblical account. One distinction is that the biblical account alone has all the hallmarks of scientific credibility.
Some people have suggested that the bible is a derivation of ancient near-eastern mythology. Because they believe that the ancient mythologies were written before the time of Moses writing Genesis, Moses must have borrowed from those writings. One of the answers to this (apart from Scripture being inspired by God), is the fact that the bible stands alone in scientific and archeological scrutiny. On top of that, the bible is unique in the way it stands out among the ancient mythologies. If all the flood legends come from a shared, common human experience in one point of time, we would expect that the earliest found records would have the most accurate account.
H. V. Hilprecht from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909 (Hilprecht was part of the University’s Babylonian expeditions and excavations) uncovered the earliest fragment of the flood epic from an ancient source. After carefully uncovering and translating each cuneiform character, Hilprecht made the following statement: “In its preserved portion, it showed a much greater resemblance to the Biblical Deluge Story than any other fragment yet published.” (1)
In other words, the earlier the flood legend found in world history, the closer it is to the type of accuracy shown in the biblical account. This is also seen in the table of flood legends compared to the biblical account below.
As we go through the big message of Genesis 6 (God's salvation through judgment), we can be assured that it is no mythology. It is a real history and centered in that history is the gospel of our hope.
(1) H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (1910), 35)