(Based on Genesis 5-10. Read more there.)
"What's
that pretty bow up there in the sky?" someone once asks. We know a rainbow is light being broken
up into colours we can see, but long ago people watch & wonder at the
beauty but don’t understand how it comes about. Well, one day, it begins to
rain. And it keeps on raining. There is rain, rain, & still more rain. Until it becomes a great flood. There's water all over the
earth. Many people can't find higher ground to escape to & drown. The
ancient story-teller tells us it rains for 'forty days & forty nights', a
term they often use to mean 'quite some time’. Weeks, months, maybe, the way we
tell time. Many peoples throughout the whole world have stories about a great
flood. Some think this may mean the human race has somehow stored such an
ancient & wide-spread flooding in its 'corporate memory', a bit like a computer
saves work in its 'memory'. None of this uncertainty stops the Great Flood from
being a Great Story! But don't take it too literally, will you!
In the days
the story comes from, people believe the earth is flat like a plate, covered by
a great dome preventing water up above the sky from breaking through - except
when it rains! Seas & rivers cause an uneasiness
that all that water underneath the earth might one day threaten them by
overflowing & engulfing the solid land they live on. This old story tries to
explain how this great flood comes into being by putting a ‘God-spin’ on it
& blames it on people behaving badly. (Remember, we’re hearing these tales
from the point of view of the ancestors of the Hebrew people.) By now, People
Behaving Badly have become widespread. More so than in some of our earlier stories. Evil is no
longer just a personal matter between Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, &
their like.
Rot has
been setting in among the whole of society. There is violence everywhere. So
much so that people can think of YHWH God
being fed up with Bad Goings-On & deciding to
teach human beings a lesson by wiping out everybody & everything He’s
created & starting all over again. But do bear in mind that later the N.T.
makes it clear that idea doesn't sit at all well with the God Jesus embodies,
though in very early times it seems a perfectly reasonable explanation to
camp-fire questions like, "Why do floods happen?”, “How does God deal with
evil?”, & not forgetting, “What's that pretty bow doing up there in the sky?”
On a more positive note, the storyteller goes on to explain how God saves one
symbolic family so life can start all over again after the flood. A man called
Noah lives a good life and pleases God. So God warns Noah to build a rough
boat, a raft, actually (despite the inflated dimensions that go with the
story). This craft comes to be known as the 'Ark'.
Supposedly big enough for Noah to take his family & representatives of the
animal kingdom on board so they can ride out the flood & begin life again.
(Read the story carefully & we find there's another version of the story,
with different arithmetic, embedded in the one we probably know better! We’ll
often find stories being interwoven or combined like this - & not always
harmonised - as we explore the Scriptures further.) And that's another story: Rainbow Skies
Question: Does the story of Noah raise any issues relevant to today's climate change debate?
No comments:
Post a Comment