Genocide for Kids

The story of Noah’s Ark is a popular one for children, perhaps because there’s a boat full of animals and kids like animals. In illustrations for children’s bibles and Sunday School lessons, the animals featured on the Ark will invariably be large mammals you would find at the zoo like elephants, giraffes, lions and tigers. God’s decision to wipe out all life on earth due to humanity’s sinfulness is presented matter-of-factly but the descriptions of the actual exterminations are left out. After the rain starts and the Ark door is closed, the story jumps ahead to the rain stopping, the release of birds and the rainbow.

What exactly are we trying to teach our children when we instruct them in the story of the Flood? A survey of some Sunday School lessons informs me that the themes are obedience and salvation. Noah was obedient to God when all his contemporaries were not and, as a result, God saved him and the animals. As a parent of a small child, I can understand why parents would want to teach the value of obedience to pre-schoolers. Small children don’t have much empathy for the “bad people” who literally missed the boat, if they even thought about it. Only adults wonder if all the people on earth before the Flood – even the infants and children – could really have been so evil that drowning them was God’s only option.

“The World is Destroyed by Water” (1866) by Gustave Doré

Or, as a friend of mine placed the question in an article in his blog: 

How does the whole Flood thing lead anyone to think that Yahweh of the Old Testament is worthy of worship? It's more the action of a genocidal maniac, in my opinion -- killing everyone and everything, infants and children included, because of some perceived wickedness that couldn't be fixed any other way. 

It’s a valid question. Flooding the entire world to kill all human and animal life does seem to be a rather drastic solution. We can take some solace in the fact – based on geological evidence and implausibilities in the biblical text – that a worldwide flood never actually happened. That gets God off the hook for genocide, but doesn’t answer my friend’s question: Why would anyone worship a deity who would destroy all life on earth in a great flood?

The most chilling scene in “Noah” (2014) is in this homage to Doré where a remnant of humanity clings to the rock right before a massive wave wipes them out. Their screams and cries can be heard in the ark far off in the distance.

If the flood story in Genesis was unique to Judaism out of all the religions in the world, that would be one thing, but flood stories can be found all over the world, in many different cultures. Besides the Genesis story of Noah, other well-known flood stories in the ANE are the Sumerian account of Ziusudra, the Gilgamesh flood myth, and the Atrahasis epic. The Atrahasis epic (1700 BCE) is similar to the Genesis primeval history (Gen 1-11) in that it combines a creation story along with a flood story. These flood myths were popular and translated into many languages, so it is almost guaranteed that the biblical writers knew of these tales and adapted them to suit the Yahwistic cult.

In the Atrahasis epic, humans were created to do menial jobs that the junior gods refused to do. With no set limit to their lifespans, the human race multiplied to the point where their noise interrupted the sleep of the senior gods. After unsuccessful attempts to control the population, they eventually decided to wipe out the human race with a great flood. One of the gods, Enki (or Ea), disagreed with this decision and, although sworn to secrecy, managed to instruct Atrahasis to build a boat before the flood arrives in seven days. After a fierce storm of 7 days and nights, the boat landed and Atrahasis offers sacrifice to the gods. The god Enlil, who had ordered the flood, is angered at Enki for foiling his plan and put limits on the human capacity to reproduce by creating infertility, infant mortality, and death.

There is conflict in the non-biblical flood myths between the council of senior gods who make the decision to destroy humanity and the renegade god who disagreed with the edict and worked against it. Enlil is the “bad god” and Enki, who sought to preserve life, is the “good god” who is worthy of worship. In the context of the Yahwistic cult, there is only one deity, so the biblical writer has to present both the decision to destroy the world with a flood and the decision to save representatives of the human race and the animal kingdom as those of YHWH. 

In the non-biblical flood myths, the decision to destroy the world is made for capricious or frivolous reasons. The biblical author alters this by providing the setting of worldwide evil, violence and corruption as moral justification for YHWH’s decision to obliterate life on earth and start over. At the end of the flood story, YHWH accepts the fact that humans are inclined towards evil and wiping them out is no longer a possible solution. The guarantee of the rhythm of seasons for as long as the earth endures is a sign of the new stability of nature in a recreated world.

Given the popularity of the Mesopotamian flood myths, the ancient biblical authors had to show how YHWH was different than the Sumerian or Babylonian gods. Ignoring the flood was not an option; the author had to provide a counter-narrative just as he did with the creation story. YHWH destroys, but he also saves at the same time; he is in control of every aspect of the flood event. If you worship the YHWH who saves, you are also worshipping the YHWH who destroys. 

That’s what happens when you take a myth meant to promote one deity over another and adapt it for a religion that worships only one deity. Later on, the devil would become the one who destroys, but when the Genesis Flood myth was written, the idea of the devil didn’t yet exist. That is a story for another time.

P, R and J Sandwich

The familiar Christmas story is taken from the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. The magi, the slaughter of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt all come from Matthew. The census, birth in a stable, and shepherds all come from Luke. These individual elements from the two distinct infancy narratives fit well together in the traditional nativity story and it would be hard to identify them if we didn’t have the original narratives in Matthew and Luke.

We have a similar situation with the flood story in Genesis 6-9. Here we have elements from two different narratives – one from J and one from P – that were woven together by a redactor (“R” for short; redactor being another name for editor). Bible scholars can ascribe the verses to J or P based on the use of the divine name, themes, vocabulary or narrative style. Unlike the creation stories and genealogies where R left the J and P narratives stand on their own, in the flood narrative R used P as the main storyline and supplemented it with J at appropriate points. Sometimes R alternates several verses between J and P, but at other times he interweaves his source material. 

For example, R provides parallel accounts for the decision to destroy humanity. J’s account is in 6:5-8 and P’s version is in vv. 11-12. J emphasizes that YHWH is sorry that he had made humans. P repeatedly uses the word “corrupt” to emphasize his point: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.” 

“Building Noah’s Ark” by Franzosischer Meister (“The French Master”), 1675

These passages are followed by instructions for the building of the ark (vv. 13-22) taken from the P account. Similar instructions must have existed in J’s account, but R left them out. P delights in specifications for the length and width and height of the ark, along with the number of floors, window and door. The familiar command to bring aboard the ark “two of each kind” of bird, animal, and creeping thing recalls the similar enumeration of animals in P’s creation story in Genesis 1.

R returns to J’s narrative with the commission to enter the Ark in 7:1-5. Noah is instructed to bring a pair of unclean animals, but seven pairs of clean animals. “Clean” and “unclean” refers to whether the animals in questions are considered suitable for sacrifice. You would expect that the Priestly writer would be more concerned about ritually “clean” vs. “unclean” animals, but for P those categories did not exist until Moses was given the Law on Sinai. J’s rationale for having Noah bring aboard seven pairs of clean animals is to allow for their use in a sacrifice to YHWH after the flood (8:20-21).

With the description of the coming of the flood in 7:6-24, R repeatedly switches back and forth between P and J, sometimes in the middle of the same sentence. Here is what J’s portion of this passage would look like:

And Noah went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood and YHWH shut him in. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. Everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.

In J’s account, YHWH personally seals Noah and his family into the ark. The flood is brought about by rain for forty days and nights. The reference to blotting out all creatures “in whose nostrils was the breath of life” recalls how YHWH breathed life into the earth creature in J’s creation account (Gen 2:7).

P’s narrative in the remainder of 7:6-24 illustrates his style of providing exact dates (“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month”) and numbers (“fifteen cubits deep”). P’s flood is not just a very long rain, but a return to the chaos prior to creation as windows in the firmament are opened to allow the upper waters to pour down and the lower waters below the earth are allowed to erupt. Unlike J’s forty days, P’s flood lasted for 150 days and took an equivalent amount of time for the waters to recede. The earth was dry (that is, the flood over) on the first day of the first month (8:13). Just as Gen 1 provided the context for the Sabbath observance, the flood story provides the context for the New Year’s festival because God is creating the world anew.

The ark soon came to rest on “the mountains of Ararat” (“Ararat” is a region, not a specific mountain). In the J account (8:6-12) Noah experiments with birds to discern when it is safe to exit the ark, but in the P account (8:15-19) God simply tells Noah when it is time to disembark. This is followed by J’s report of Noah’s thanksgiving sacrifice and YHWH’s promise not to again destroy the earth (20-22). The parallel passage from P narrates God’s renewed blessing of Noah (9:1-7) and his covenant to never again destroy the earth with a flood (8-17).

Sandwich structure of the flood narrative

In this article I focused on the separate J and P traditions so you could see the distinctiveness of each. But we also have to look at the complete text as it came down to us from R. There is artistry here. R did not simply grab bits and pieces from each tradition and insert them willy-nilly, but chose them to fit a chiastic pattern (or “sandwich” structure) with “God remembered Noah” at the center. It is not that God had forgotten about Noah; “remember” in this context means refers to God’s mercy towards one in danger of death (see Gen 19:29). It is the pivotal moment of the story because from here on, God’s attention is on reversing the destructive actions of the flood.

The flood story itself is pivotal in that it separates the primeval events “before the flood” from historical events “after the flood.” The world following the flood is the world in which we live.