Difficulties in the Noah Story – A great article at TheTorah.com is A Textual Study of Noah’s Flood. The following lists were extracted from there. Below those paragraphs are the verses viewed as J and those viewed as P side-by-side, providing internally consistent texts to show how they form a continuous story.
The Noah account contains both doublets—identical or similar actions that are narrated twice—as well as contradictions.
Doublets:
- God notes that humans are wicked twice (6:5, 6:12).[2]
- God tells Noah of his decision to wipe out all life from earth twice (6:13, 7:4).
- God tells Noah to gather a pair of each animal species to put on the ark twice (6:19, 7:2).
- The story records that Noah fulfills God’s command twice (6:22, 7:5).
- Noah and his family get on the ark twice (7:7, 7:13).
- The flood starts twice (7:6, 7:10).
- The animals get on the ark twice (7:8-9, 7:14).
- The flood waters lift the ark twice (7:17, 7:18).
- All the humans and animals on earth die/are wiped out twice (7:21-22, 7:23).
- Noah sends out a raven to look for dry land (8:7). Then he sends out a dove to do the same (8:8-12).
- Noah’s three sons are introduced twice (6:10, 9:18).[3]
The text also contains a number of terminological doublets, i.e. two distinct phrases describing the same thing.
- God is sometimes called YHWH (י-הוה) and sometimes God (א-לוהים).
- Sometimes God destroys (שחת) the earth (ארץ), and sometimes God wipes them off (מחה) the surface of the ground (פני האדמה).
- The surface of the ground (פני האדמה) dries (חרב), and the earth (ארץ) dries (יבש).
Contradictions:
- Is Noah supposed to bring one pair of each kind of animal (6:20) or is he supposed to bring seven pairs of clean animals plus birds and only one pair of unclean animals (7:2-3)?
- Do the flood waters come from God allowing the waters of the depths and the heavens to overflow the earth (7:11, 8:2) or does it come from excessive rain only (7:4, 12, 8:2)?
- Does the flood last for forty days and nights (7:4, 12, 17) or does it last for 150 days (7:24)?
- Does God have a pact with Noah from the beginning never to destroy the world again (6:18, 9:11), or is it the sweet smelling sacrifice that brings about this decision (9:21)?
Conclusion to the overall article
After seeing how the doublets and contradictions may be resolved by positing two earlier, internally consistent texts, it is difficult to read the text as we now have as a consistent unity. Source criticism was not invented to find earlier texts, but to explain why the Torah text that we now have is problematic. A different –ism, Redaction Criticism, explains how and why the redactor (or editor or compiler) combined the texts in this particular way, and how the composite, redacted text might be read. Using these two tools, we may catch a glimpse of two ancient Noah stories and the way they were combined millennia ago to create the complex story we all know.
Citation – Staff Editors, “A Textual Study of Noah’s Flood” TheTorah.com (2014). https://thetorah.com/article/a-textual-study-of-noahs-flood
Side-by-side Comparison
The link is to a page where the J story is on the left and P on the right. Surprisingly, the J version is more concerned with sacrifice (Etz Hayim says that a “clean animal” means clean for sacrifice rather than kosher)
https://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cflood.htm
If the link does not work, then look for a PDF of the comparison in the Genesis directory in Dropbox.
At the BAS Library
Noah and the Genesis Flood – That page contains summaries of the four articles below. PDFs of the articles are in the Christianity/BAS directory in Dropbox.
- “What the Babylonian Flood Stories Can and Cannot Teach Us About the Genesis Flood” By Tikva Frymer-Kensky
- “Was Noah’s Ark a Sewn Boat?” by Ralph K. Pedersen
- “The Search for Noah’s Flood” by Ronald S. Hendel ***
- Closing Paragraph: Many cultures have flood stories, and it is no coincidence that many cultures suffer from local floods. It is more compelling to connect these phenomena than to appeal to the melting of the Ice Age glaciers or a hypothetical flooding of the Black Sea. Stories happen. Even stories enshrined in the Bible. The best stories, of course, are a vehicle for profound insights into our relation to the world, each other, and God (or, for the Old Babylonians among us, the gods). The biblical story of Noah’s Flood is an exemplary and immortal narrative in this respect. Even if it didn’t happen, it’s a true story.
- “Biblical Views: Noah, Enoch and the Flood: The Bible Meets Hollywood” by Ronald S. Hendel
