I. Biblical Account (Gen 6:1–9:19)
God saw that human wickedness had spread, and He repented of having made man.The sons of God, that is, the descendants of Seth, so called because they were created by God and bound to Him by a special bond of love (Gen 4:26–5:32; cf. Ex 4:24; Deut 14:1, etc.), seduced by the beauty of the “daughters of men,” belonging to the lineage of Cain, were led astray by sensuality: “they are flesh.” In His indignation, God resolved: “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth: and with man also the beasts” (Gen 6:7), granting them, however, 120 years to repent. Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, for himself and his family; God commanded him to build an ark capable of containing, besides the eight persons of his family, representatives of all animals with all that was necessary for life. Of the clean animals, seven pairs entered, because their flesh was to be offered in sacrifice (ibid., 6:20) and also eaten; of the unclean, one pair. The covenant (ibid., 6:18) of God with Noah consisted in the promise to save him and his from destruction in order to establish with them a new, faithful, and holy humanity.
With unyielding faith, Noah preached repentance, announcing the imminent punishment. For many years he worked at building the ark under the mocking eyes of the wicked, who continued to revel (Mt 24:37–39). After the allotted time for repentance had passed in vain, by God’s command he entered the ark with his family and brought the animals inside. “Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month: on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
FLOOD – God establishes the covenant with Noah after the flood (Gen 9:8–17). Miniature from the Ottonian period contained in cod. Vat. gr. 746, f. 57v (12th century) – Vatican Library.
The waters rose fifteen cubits above the highest mountains (about 7.50 m), and thus every being that was on the face of the earth was annihilated; both man and beast... disappeared from the earth: only Noah and those with him in the ark remained (Gen 7:23). For forty days and forty nights the rains and the surging waters struck the earth; the waters increased and then remained stationary for 110 days; then they began to recede (ibid., 8:3); after another 175 days they had completely withdrawn (ibid., 8:13), and at the end of 57 more days the earth, dried out, was habitable again (ibid., 8:16); it was the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the sixtieth year of Noah. To assure himself, Noah had sent out a raven from the ark, which went to and fro until the waters had dried up (ibid., 8:7; the Clementine Vulgate erroneously reads: non revertitur), and then three times a dove, which the first time returned immediately, finding no place to set its foot; the second time bringing back a plucked olive leaf; the third time it did not return.
The time had come to leave the ark: God gave the order (ibid., 8:15 ff.). Noah set foot again on the desolate earth, which had become a graveyard of so many creatures. To give thanks to the Lord, he built an altar to Yahweh and, taking of every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered them as a burnt offering. In return, God dispelled the anguish of men at the thought of another flood: “I will never again curse the ground.” The very frailty of man moved God to mercy, after the flood had revealed His omnipotence, holiness, and justice. God blessed Noah and his sons: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”; He restored to man dominion over the animals and added the prohibition against eating “flesh with its blood,” the vehicle of life (Lev 17:14). God made the shedding of blood a sacrificial rite, while opposing the shedding of human blood. As a guarantee of the covenant, He established, as a sign of His greatness and love, the rainbow.
II. HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ACCOUNT
Modern criticism attributes the story of the flood to a redactor who would have drawn from two conflicting sources: J and P (v. PENTATEUCH); the contradictions would be found especially in the numbers. But rather than true contradictions, these are modes of expression that complement each other: it is generally said that the animals must enter in pairs (Gen 6:19), and then their number is specified (ibid., 7:2); the entry into the ark cannot be said to be narrated twice merely because 7:13 resumes 7:7; 7:12 speaks of the increase of waters for forty days, and 7:24 says that “they prevailed on the earth for 150 days.” There is no solid reason to suppose two distinct sources. If a comparison is made with the Babylonian account of Gilgamesh, the same elements are encountered that critics use to establish the sources J and P. Nor has the redactor—if there was one—seen a contradiction between the various data he assembled, just as he did not see one in the supposed partial sources.The flood is recalled in the Old and New Testaments: Wis 10:4; 16:6 ff.; Sir 16:7; 44:17–19; Is 54:9; Mt 24:37–39; Lk 17:26 ff.; 1 Pt 3:20 ff.; 2 Pt 2:5; Heb 11:7. These passages affirm the historicity not only of the event but also of the circumstances narrated by Jesus. This terrifying punishment inflicted by God on sinful humanity, compared by Jesus to the final judgment (Mt 24:37–39), was an act of divine omnipotence, which employed natural causes: waters from the depths of the sea and violent downpours (Gen 7:11 ff.). It was once believed that geology confirmed the account, and a century ago marine shells and sands, cave bones, and erratic boulders were cited as proof of the universality of the biblical flood. Equally mistaken was the identification of the biblical flood with the geological flood of the Quaternary period. While the biblical flood lasted just over a year, the geological one required a very long time and did not occur simultaneously across the entire earth. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out a priori that the biblical flood may have points of contact with some phenomena of the Ice Age. The sandy layer discovered by C. L. Woolley at Ur of the Chaldees during the excavations of 1927–20 cannot, it seems, be considered a remnant of the universal inundation of Mesopotamia (the Babylonian flood).
III. UNIVERSALITY OF THE FLOOD
The biblical account describes a “universal” flood. What kind of universality does it intend?1. Absolute geographical universality was the common opinion among the Fathers and ancient doctors; but today it is abandoned. The progress of science has made it possible to observe that the species of mammals alone number 7,000 living and 4,500 fossil; physics cannot find an explanation for all the water that would have been necessary to cover, indeed to exceed by about 7.50 m or 15 cubits, the highest mountains. If Scripture speaks of the inundation of the “earth” (Gen 6:7, 10; 7:4, 18–19; 8:9), it does not necessarily follow that this implies geographical universality, because “it is the idiom of Holy Scripture” (as St. Jerome observes in In Is. 13:5: PL 24, 450) “to signify by ‘all the earth’ the whole province about which the discourse is made.” Examining Gen 41:54 ff.; Deut 2:25; 2 Chr 20:29; Acts 2:5, one will readily admit that it is a matter of relative geographical universality. And thus “all the highest mountains” (Gen 7:19) are all the mountains of that region known to the author.
2. Relative anthropological universality. Once relative geographical universality is admitted, for the same reasons one accepts relative anthropological universality, advocated by A. L. Motais, A. Scholz, A. Schöpfer, J. Schuster-B. Holzammer, or considered a legitimate interpretation by F. Hummelauer, Schanz, H. Zschokke-G. Döller, H. Lestrée, P. Heinisch, etc. But while an inundation of the whole earth is never explicitly mentioned, instead we have: “The end of all flesh is come before me...” (Gen 6:13–17 and cf. 6:6 ff.).
3. The anthropological universality of the Flood therefore appears more probable. Jesus affirms that in the deluge all perished (Mt. 24:39; Lc. 17:27), and this is the teaching of the Epistles of Peter:
Flood — God establishes the covenant with Noah after the deluge (Gen. 9:8-17). Miniature from the Octateuch contained in cod. Vat. gr. 746, f. 47r (12th century) — Vatican Library.
at the time of Noah (II Pt. 2:5; 3:6): “few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water” (I Pt. 3:20). The Fathers of the Church present this anthropological universality not as a dogma of faith, nor as a merely private opinion, but as connected with the faith of the Church, since they see in it a prefiguration of the doctrine of faith: “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus” (cf. St. Fulgentius, De remissione peccatorum, I, 20; St. Jerome, Adv. Iovinianum, I, 17; St. Cyprian, De unitate Ecclesiae, 6). The “sensus Ecclesiae” stands for this universality (cf. the Catechism of the Council of Trent, I, 10, 19). Ethnology provides confirmation. Traditions of a flood that destroyed mankind number sixty, of which forty are independent of the Babylonian-Hebrew form. If a universal cataclysm is admitted, it is easily explained that the “primitive tradition” passed to the various peoples and with them migrated to different parts of the world.
IV. IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS
The belief in a deluge, which occurred at more or less remote times and would have destroyed humanity, is common to many extinct and living peoples. Besides among the Hebrews, it is found, for example, among the Babylonians, the Greeks (myth of Ogyges and myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha); among a very large number of indigenous American populations, from the extreme north of the continent (Eskimos) to the extreme south (Yaghan and Ona of Tierra del Fuego), and both among peoples of very low culture, such as the two just mentioned, and among peoples of superior civilization, such as the Maya of Yucatán and the ancient Peruvians; among populations of Australia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Indonesia; in India, in China, among the Andamanese, in Northern Asia. In the African continent, however, flood narratives are not very widespread: the Masai, the Tim of Togo, the Konso of southern Ethiopia, some peoples of the Gold Coast, and a few others believe in them.F. H. Woods, connecting the various elements found in the different flood narratives, has established a general outline of the myth itself to which, with the necessary variations, almost all the particular forms found among individual peoples can be traced. It is as follows:
a) one or more deities are angry with the antediluvians; b) usually for a specific reason; c) they therefore determine to destroy humanity with a flood, d) while saving one or more men. e) The chosen ones, following divine advice, build a boat or ark, or avail themselves of another means of salvation. f) They take with them a specimen of the animals necessary for the preservation of the species, seeds, and provisions. g) Soon after, h) because of rain or another cause, i) the flood comes. j) When it ceases, k) the survivors disembark on some mountain or island, l) and sometimes offer a sacrifice. m) The future descendants of men (and often of animals) reproduce in a miraculous way. n) He who was saved from the flood, or one of the most worthy among them, is taken to heaven.
As has already been noted, the narrative does not appear among any people in the typological form described above, but varies more or less markedly. For example, sometimes the cause of the flood is not the wrath of the deity against men, but simply the wickedness of a superior hostile being. In some versions, moreover, the episode recurs of an animal (often a bird) that, from the ark or from the summit of the mountain where the survivors are sheltered, is sent to explore whether the waters have receded.
Worthy of note is the fact that some episodes of the myth, having a very particular character, are found among peoples distant in space and time. Such is the belief that, to restore the human race after the flood, the saved progenitors performed the act of throwing something behind their backs (e.g., stones, as in the Greek legend of Deucalion and Pyrrha and in that of the Macusi of the Orinoco [Amazonia]).
An interesting problem concerns the process of the formation of the myth and its diffusion. In this regard, various hypotheses have been formulated. One might think of a common memory of a universal flood, but historians of religions have not dwelt on this hypothesis. Or one might seek the psychological reason for its formation in a possible influence of the biblical narrative or in the memory of local floods more or less notable, or in the tendency to give a pseudoscientific explanation to natural phenomena. Since it has been observed that flood legends are found more often in riverine and coastal regions, which are exposed to inundations, some scholars admit the possibility that catastrophes of this kind may have appeared to the consciousness of local populations as a world catastrophe, in turn connected in various ways with the destiny of the world and humanity.
To better evaluate the meaning of flood narratives in relation to their origin, it is worth noting that this cataclysm is often considered a means—like others, such as fire, earthquake, famine—employed by the Supreme Being to punish humanity. R. Pettazzoni, in examining the characteristics of the celestial being in the beliefs of primitive peoples, highlights that among its attributes is that of being the dispenser of excessive and torrential rains—and thus of floods and inundations—which it would unleash to punish men for evil deeds. D. G. Brinton then argues that, since the flood is often inserted into a complex of beliefs about periodic destructions of the universe, in many peoples’ conceptions the expectation of the end of the world (millennium) would be the natural complement of this myth.
For the flood narratives of some peoples, it seems possible to speak of direct Christian influences, whether through the teachings of missionaries or through the narratives of merchants who reached certain areas even before the missionaries themselves (e.g., in the countries of the Gold Coast in Africa). The myths of the Masai (Mount Kenya [Africa]) indeed reveal Christian influence due either to the work of missionaries or to contacts with Christian (Coptic) Galla or with Somali Muslims, or even with the Falasha Jews of Abyssinia.
The problem of the diffusion of the flood narrative has recently been studied by Pia Laviosa Zambotti, who has framed the question in relation to that of the diffusion of agricultural civilization in the world, to which she has devoted particular attention.