Bill asked
<< If Gen 6-9 is taken as a VCR account, you are right. It cannot be
harmonized
>with a local flood---or a global flood either. Both camps have to
>ignore/bend Scripture and scientific data to make their theory fit.
What does the global flood camp have to ignorebend? >>
For one thing that a global earth is outside the purview of the biblical
writer and has to be read into the account from modern science. In a paper I
am working on, this argument is as follows:
The biblical account is clearly not describing a merely local riverine flood.
But, this does not automatically mean the Bible must be referring to a
global flood. In fact, the Bible is quite clear that it is not referring to
a global flood. Advocates of a global flood are reading modern science into
the biblical account just as much as advocates of a local riverine flood, and
they are just as clearly setting the biblical text aside.
No one prior to the fifth century BC believed that the earth was a globe, and
the OT nowhere gives even implicit evidence that God had revealed this fact
to the Hebrews. The OT throughout reflects the ancient Near Eastern
understanding of the earth as a flat circular disc floating on an ocean which
surrounded it. This earth-disc and surrounding ocean are surmounted by a
rock-solid hemispherical dome, the sky. It meets the outer edge of the
surrounding sea at the horizon. The universe is thus closed and there is no
room for another continent. The Americas and Australia are clearly excluded.
It is the limited earth of this closed universe which is "the whole earth"
flooded at the time of the Noahic deluge. A modern global earth cannot be
fitted into the account.
This will seem odd to a modern Westerner, but proto-scientific peoples
believe the solid dome of the sky closes off their universe. Thus, such
things as migrating birds, the sun, and missionaries are thought by these
peoples to enter their universe from outside, through a gap in the solid
dome…coming in as it were from a different world.
For documentation see my pervious papers: Paul H. Seely, "The Geographical
Meaning of 'earth' and 'seas' in Gen 1:10," Westminster Theol J. 59 (1997)
231-55
Paul H. Seely, "The Firmament and the Water above, Part I: The Meaning of
raqia' in Gen 1:6-8," WTJ 53 (1991) 227-240; "The Firmament and the Water
above, Part II: The Meaning of 'The Water above the Firmament" in Gen 1:6-8,"
WTJ 54 (1992) 31-46
The Lord's best,
Paul
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