The surprising contemporary relevance of the Noah flood story

There have been two major responses to the problem that I am aware of. The first is to persist in taking the story literally. This is the approach of those who describe themselves as creationists. The strength of this approach is its consistency. Creationists will often argue, with some warrant, that Christians who are not creationists are inconsistent – they take some parts of the Bible literally, for example, its condemnation of homosexual behaviour, but aren't willing to give other bits the same respectful and believing treatment. Creationists are admirably consistent. The difficulty with their approach is that it runs in the face of mounting (in fact mounted) scientific evidence against a literalistic reading of the Biblical text.

The second response, which one is more likely to encounter among evangelicals, including Sydney evangelical Anglicans, is to suggest that Genesis 6-9 describes a localized flood. There are two insurmountable problems with this suggestion. The first is that it completely misreads the Noah story. To suggest the flood was localized entirely misses the point of the narrative, which is that God 'regretted having created human beings on the earth' (6:6), and would have entirely obliterated all life had it not been for his gracious sparing of Noah (6:6-8). It also seriously underestimates the size of the flood, which is said to top the 'all the high mountains under the entire heavens' to a depth of at least seven metres, (7:12, 20). That is no localized flood. Geologists have found evidence of large floods in Mesopotamia, in Ur, Uruk, Nineveh and Kish, for example, where flood deposits have been dated back to the fourth and early third millennium BCE. However, and significantly, other cities of the region show no such evidence.

A number of things are interesting and relevant for our purposes about this second suggestion. The first is that the only or major reason it has been suggested is because of accumulating scientific evidence. Most of the early geologists were Christian, many of them clergymen. They were the ones who first realized the flood could not have been universal – hence the more modest suggestion of a localized flood. Though I don't think the suggestion works, it is significant that scientific advances have occasioned a re-reading of the Biblical text. It was under pressure from scientific discoveries that an alternative reading of the story gained widespread credence.

What was interesting to me as I began to think through the implications of these observations was the realization that the story of Noah's gigantic flood would have seemed entirely credible in the ancient world, and even up until the last three or four hundred years. Those who first told and then wrote down Noah's story are likely to have believed in a flat earth, above which was a firmament, above which were store houses of water able to be released in the form of rain. They would also have believed that the earth rested on water, and was surrounded by water.

This understanding makes highly credible the possibility of a universal flood. That the waters above and below and around the earth could flood the earth to a depth greater than the earth's highest mountains would have seemed very possible. That the earth's entire population of humans and animals could be wiped out by such a flood, that an ark could be built to house the world's animals, and that these animals were within walking distance of the ark would have been plausible. The story is credible given ancient assumptions. However, we no longer share those assumptions. We have had to re-think the Noah story.

We also need to re-think issues of gender and sexuality that are currently on the political and social agenda. For me, the realisation that we could, in fact must, take full account of contemporary knowledge in understanding and appropriating Biblical texts was liberating.

With respect to the issue of gender roles, I began to wonder whether just as the Biblical writers had cosmological assumptions we no longer accept as true, they were also assuming a patriarchal understanding of male/female relationships no longer appropriate to 21^st century life. Supporting this was the observation that within the Bible itself there is significant development. Starting at the beginning of the Bible, it is possible to plot a gradual, but real and sometimes radical dismantling of patriarchal assumptions as the Biblical story unfolds. It is likely that patriarchal assumptionsdo underlie the account of the creation of Adam and Eve and their subsequent fall.Those assumptions were ubiquitous within the Jewish culture that spawned that account. They are evident, and in some cases disturbingly evident, in the law codes of the Old Testament. Jewish law gave to men exclusive right to divorce their wives (Deuteronomy 24:1-4); a wife was considered the property of her husband, with few or no property rights herself (Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 21:16-17, Numbers 27:5-8); virginity and fidelity requirements were more deliberately and ruthlessly applied to women than to men (Numbers 5:11-31); women were considered of comparable status and ability to children (Numbers 30:1-16; Isaiah 3:12).

Patriarchy comes under significant attack in the ministry of Jesus, or at least earlier expressions of it do. Women are given the right to divorce their husbands (Mark 10:12). Jesus treats women with great respect, and readily accepts them as his disciples. He significantly elevates their status and role. Jesus' example is followed by his apostles, including Paul. Paul may not have gone all the way towards dismantling patriarchy. However, one could argue that the trajectory established by Jesus and honoured by Paul was of such a nature that patriarchy, like slavery, can reasonably be set aside, especially in a world where women have come to show themselves capable of holding their own at all levels of human endeavour.

Another subject I felt I needed to rethink was homosexuality. Not only would this be another important step on the way to developing an intellectually satisfying hermeneutic, an enterprise I had been engrossed with from the time I taught at Moore College, it was also an issue which, at the time (the early 2000s), was beginning to encounter me as I worked as an Anglican priest in the inner-city suburbs of Redfern, Alexandria, Beaconsfield and Zetland. South Sydney Municipal Council houses a higher than average percentage of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GBLT) residents. I was meeting, getting to know, and becoming friends with people whose sexual orientation was different to mine. I recognized I had prejudices, many created during my earlier nurturing in North American fundamentalism and Australian evangelical Anglicanism.

I wanted to have my prejudices challenged and, if necessary, overturned. I was heartened by changes I had noted within Sydney Anglican circles. There had been, in the past, an almost universal tendency to claim that homosexuality itself was sinful, regardless of behaviour. To be homosexual was to be sinful. That stance had already begun to be challenged when I first went to Moore College as an undergraduate. It has certainly been challenged since then, with many now recognising that homosexual orientation is simply that, an orientation, a possibly hard-wired tendency to be erotically aroused by people of the same gender. This understanding did not result from a careful reading or re-reading of the relevant Biblical texts. It came about under pressure from advancing scientific understanding. It also came about because of a new willingness by many to listen to homosexual people who were now bolder in telling their stories.

A year or two into my time at South Sydney Parish, I initiated, with the help of John McIntyre and good friend, Vic Branson, a pub discussion group called Quest. We ran it at the Parkview Hotel in Alexandria, a nearby suburb. One of the people we asked to speak at Quest was Rev. Dr Canon Stuart Barton Babbage. He had recently written his memoirs, Memoirs of a Loose Canon. In a long and distinguished career, Canon Barton Babbage had been Principal of Ridley College (in Melbourne), Dean of St Andrews Cathedral (Sydney), Dean of St Paul's Cathedral (Melbourne) and Dean of the Australian College of Theology. What stuck longest in my memory from that night was Dr Babbage sharing with us the impact on him and his thinking of discovering that his son was gay. I can't remember his exact words, but they were something along these lines: 'This experience forced me to re-think my theology and to re-assess the adequacy of earlier understandings.'

Experiences like that, along with advancing scientific understanding, is forcing and/or encouraging many others (myself included) to re-think this issue. There is no good theological or hermeneutical reason not to, not that I am aware of.