The Genesis flood narrative is a vestige of pre-historic retellings of sea levels rising during the end of the Ice Age
Posted by flopsyplum@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 46 comments
Dependent_Remove_326@reddit
No, a flood is quick. Not a gradual rising of levels over a thousand years or more.
soggybiscuit93@reddit
The story of Noah would've been written down ~10K years after rising sea levels. It's possible that 10K years of retelling an oral story from prehistoric times would've resulted in embellishments with a moralizing prompt.
Dependent_Remove_326@reddit
That's one hell of a reach there bro. Hey my 400th great grand parents use to live down there vs God washed all life away.
soggybiscuit93@reddit
If this is your rebuttal, than maybe my argument wasn't clear.
We know for a fact, through studying Aboriginal people that oral stories can last for over 10,000 years.
We know Genesis was most likely first written during the early Iron Age. There's a clear, distinct writing style difference between Biblical stories that were written down during the Iron age describing contemporary-ish events at the time of writing, and older Biblical stories that would (hypothetically) have taken place during the Bronze Age, much earlier than the writings.
These earlier Bronze Age stories were oral stories prior to them being written down.
So from a historical point of view, one can see strong similarities in these oral stories between various Canaanite peoples, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, etc. and make a reasonable assumption that there was an older, earlier version, lost to time, of these stories prior to the formation of the various settlements and city-states, and that over many, many generations, these oral stories changes according to each respective people's culture.
Dependent_Remove_326@reddit
No my argument is that it took something like 10000 years for the water to rise. Most people are not even going to realize. There are valleys in CA that have dropped a hundred feet or more and the locals didn't even notice.
OtterHostler@reddit
Most of what you can find in the bible is reworkings of older stories. Think of it like a reboot - take a story that everyone knows (like The Italian Job or Ghostbusters), package it in new clothes, and since there's a sucker born every minute you can find enough people to buy it.
soggybiscuit93@reddit
Old Bible stories were oral stories for a very long time prior to them being written. Why assume that they're "copied" from other civilizations? The fact that all of these societies in close proximity have similar stories with slight variants would imply that there existed an even older 'master' story that predates the formation of these societies
ChiefWeedsmoke@reddit
Not a particularly crazy idea. I don't know if it's accurate to the letter but it would definitely track.
NoobOfTheSquareTable@reddit
Think there is a few floods we think are tied to different origins (a flood story isn’t hugely unique) with stuff like the flooding of the Mediterranean being one of them
Batchet@reddit
No, the Bible was actually warning about climate change. That a great flood is coming and we need to take every species we can on a giant ark (space ship). It wasn't Noah that was behind it. They were trying to tell us that the person in charge should be No AH or No Ass Hole.
But the Christians went and fucked it all up
Zolty@reddit
So it goes
3MetricTonsOfSass@reddit
Burning bush? Nope, a holographic display
Talking donkeys? Nope, Simulated Intelligence operated hover bike.
Woman lusting for dicks as long as donkeys? God forbid a gal have futuristic genetically enhanced preferences.
Fireballs feom the sky destroying a town? Nope, just some light orbital bombardment
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honeydewstarlace@reddit
I think the interesting part is how widespread flood stories are across unrelated cultures.
petrified_eel4615@reddit
Not sure if its been mentioned, but check out the Zanclean Flood.
moccasinsfan@reddit
It is more likely a retelling of the Black Sea Flood several thousand years ago.
nicholas818@reddit
It's not just Genesis that has a flood myth: there are other examples (for example, in the Epic of Gilgamesh) that could also be explained by this theory.
djazzie@reddit
There actually was an enormous flood at some point, where the Mediterranean didn’t exist and the Atlantic was blocked by land. Eventually, sea levels rose and overcame that and eroded the blockage, likely causing an enormous flood in the Mediterranean basin.
seppukucoconuts@reddit
Most ancient people lived near the water, or obvious reasons. Sooner or later floods happen. Primitive people would find it easier to blame God or another deity than just say ‘shit happens’. There are lots of flood stories in ancient literature.
earthhominid@reddit
The descriptions across the flood myths of many cultures are very clearly talking about something more than a local river flood. These people may not have had what we think of as advanced technology, but they were anatomically identical to us including in brain capacity and knew their landscape very well.
The prevalence of the mythology almost certainly points to an era in global history that included catastrophic flooding, and an abrupt end of the last ice age is a pretty good guess as to what that was
bpmackow@reddit
Once you're familiar with a concept of a flood, it's not hard to imagine a bigger one. All it takes is a few rounds of retelling and exaggeration to arrive at the story of a global flood.
LSF604@reddit
People's worlds were a lot smaller then. A regional flood might as well have been global from their perspective. Meanwhile the sea rise from the end of the ice age was very slow. Centimeters a year.
Festivefire@reddit
When you live in a heavily spiritual culture, "God/the Gods are fickle" and "shit happens" mean the same thing.
BenjaminHamnett@reddit
People use superstitions today to justify their demands and try to flex arbitrary control on suckers
My favorite:
You warn someone about the take they’re about to step on… *steps on rake*
Bloody faced: you made it happen by saying it
🤦♂️
Anything to protect ego and boss people over random crazy sht
Smilingtiki@reddit
The plague (black death) was blamed on incest from the catholic church. In the 80s aids were blamed on the lgbt culture and also labeled as God's wrath from Christians. We are not as different from primitive ancient people as we would like to believe.
Ok_Ruin4016@reddit
We're not very different from ancient people at all, but I wouldn't consider the 14th century to be very primitive or ancient.
Smilingtiki@reddit
That was not my intention to say they were.
PersusjCP@reddit
There are stories in the Pacific Northwest of North America which talk about the glaciers receding and even the missoula floods \~12KYA
reheateddiarrhea@reddit
I've read about Native American oral histories from Washington and Oregon regarding the Missoula flood, SUPER fascinating. It's hard to believe that oral history could persist for that long, but there's evidence of extensive oral history timelines all over the world.
MidnightPale3220@reddit
I read that oral memory has been way much much better until writing was invented, and then of course took the next hit when literacy became widespread.
PersusjCP@reddit
There's even some debate around if an Aboriginal story about Budj Bim in Australia is 37,000 years old, which is truly astounding. Plausible since some groups have been in the same place for like 50KYA which is insane.
reheateddiarrhea@reddit
Yes! The Aboriginal "Dreamtime" stories are pretty amazing.
D15c0untMD@reddit
There is already theorizing that many great flood myths trace either back to oral traditions of either warning of floods that often were traumatic events to early human settlements, or actually go back to a single cataclysmic event, the black sea deluge, where, if it at all happened, large amounts of water from the Mediterranean sea flooded into the black sea lake over 5000 BCE. It has been proposed as an oral history basis for the noah myth. Bit wobbly basis though
BitOBear@reddit
No. Not necessary. Every place where rain and water happens has had floods. And wherever there's been floods there have been stories of particularly bad floods.
Shamino79@reddit
Opposite of crazy.
Within the holocene we have had 140m of sea level rises. We are a species that likes to hang out where rivers meet the sea so there is freshwater and plenty of fish. We may not have noticed it as a species until more permanent structures were being built.
And it’s not just gentle sea level rise. The Black Sea and Persian gulf filled up. The Sumerian legends talk about emerging from the sea as they point south to the now filled gulf.
ManikArcanik@reddit
Totally reasonable considering the concentration of preserved history for early foraging/agricultural societal hubs would tend to form around coastal and freshwater hotspots. But that scenario would be gradual worldwide. Tectonic and volcanic events are probably more likely to agree with a catastrophic event locally.
Waspinator_haz_plans@reddit
Pretty sure that's actually a legit theory already, so you might not be too far off.
stranger_to_you67@reddit
I mean......unlikely but possible. Floods were frequent and catastrophic in the middle east back in the day. Every person alive probably lost family members to a flood that they could personally remember. So it would not be abnormal at all to make up a story about your imaginary friend getting pissed off at all the people who (coincidentally) you don't like, and deciding to drown them in a flood.
NathanArizona@reddit
Genesis and a lot of other non biblical writings and oral history
Other_Information_16@reddit
I think this is probably why every old civilization have a flood myth. Considering most people live close to water. The end of ice age meant most people got flooded out.
Kadjai@reddit
It is known
CornFedIABoy@reddit
I don’t think it’s a “known”, just a “all indications point this way” thing. Given that the event would have happened prior to the general uptake of written language and no preserved record of it exists it will never truly be “known”.
zoppaTheDim@reddit
So basically your crazy idea is used in about ten different History channel “documentaries.”
Wurm42@reddit
Not a crazy idea!
Many Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures have very old flood stories.
The idea that those oral traditions are based on some real world event is 100% mainstream academic thinking.
Mind you, the current consensus is that the event that sparked those flood stories is more recent tham the end of the last ice age.
The current frontrunners are:
The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, ~5600 BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis?wprov=sfla1
The Minoan Eruption (Thera) ~1600 BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption?wprov=sfla1
But there are academics who think the flood stories are older, and go back to the era of the Holocene Glacial Retreat, probably between 13,000 and 10,000 BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat?wprov=sfla1
IndieCurtis@reddit
Yea.
And not just the Genesis flood story, and not just that particular instance of sea levels rising. Almost every continent on the planet has ancient cultures with flood myths.