Noah’s Ark

What am I meant to make of the flood story?

The great flood is one of the few bible stories that everyone (Christian or not) seems to have heard at some point in their life. However I don’t think that the take on the flood story is universal. Some people take it as word for word literal truth, others think of it as a figurative story of a real past event, and others still, just myth or pure fiction. So what is the deal with this story; how plausible is it?

The story of the great flood

The full flood narrative can be found in Genesis 6–8, but I will attempt to paraphrase the story here. The back drop is that people had grown in number and angels (sons of God) found the human daughters beautiful. So these angels interbred with humans and their offspring were giants, the heroes of old, known as Nephilim. People lived until a ripe old age of 1000 or so in these days but God decided that this was too long and decreed that man shall only live to 120 from this point on.

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals…