Do you think Jesus believed the story of Noah's Ark?

[LostInAnomie]

Most thinking people with a decent education know that the story would be impossible. The logistics of it would be impossible, as would finding enough water to cover the entire surface of the Earth. What did the Son of God believe though? He seemed to have a devout belief in the stories of the Old Testament. Do you think he could have believed such nonsense if he had divine wisdom?

[Ian David]

1. I think they believed the world to me a much smaller place back then.

Jesus (if he existed) might have believed that an area slightly larger than The Roman Empire could have been flooded.

However, the Hebrew word for "World" is the same as the word for "Land" or "Country," so it's possible that NOBODY believed the whole WORLD flooded until The King James Translation said "World."

[bfarq]

2. There is no evidence that he wrote ANYTHING during his life.

All of the N.T. documents were written decades after his death, if not centuries. I'm not a Biblical scholar, but I'm not so sure there is much evidence of Jesus paying much attention to what we now call the Old Testament. He was apparently a Jew, but maybe somebody can enlighten us as to how formalized the O.T. was 2010 years ago. It isn't as if there were Gideon Bibles in every hotel room back then. I'm not sure the average person had access to the written word, and most people probably couldn't read it if they did have the document.

Day to day life was governed more by Rabbinical law than by the scripture.

Is there anything in what we now call the New Testament that mentions Jesus lecturing about Noah's Ark? I don't think so. Come to think of it, I'm not sure there is much reference to the O.T. at all in the N.T. The two books are almost diametrically opposed on the most basic concepts of God and His providence.

[Igel]

15. It was pretty much what we have.

There were scrolls that were routinely read. There were scrolls held dear by minorities. The majority view is pretty much the canon that we have in the OT, the Tanakh, the Torah, the prophets (navim, IIRC), and the writings (ketuvim or writings).

When in Acts it says that Moses is read in the synogogues, it's accurate. They'd read through all or nearly all of Tanakh annually. Sort of like the Anglican lectionary, where if you go every Sunday you hear the entire NT. Having it said that Jesus was called up to read a portion is also not implausible. You get graffitti all over the place, lots of things scratched onto potshards. It's not like everybody was illiterate. I doubt the writing had points, though.

As for evidence that Jesus paid much attention to the OT, let's assume that you count the gospel narratives as evidence. (Otherwise you don't have much evidence for Jesus at all.) If you do, then you find it dripping in OT allusions and quotations. As with Dostoevsky and medieval texts, however, you really have to know what's been alluded to fairly well to catch even half of them.

However, my impression is that the citations of OT texts are much thicker when it's polemical to the traditional rulers. When it's directed to the populace as a whole, the citations are less frequent and the allusions a bit laxer. Which makes sense.

[bfarq]

18. Thank you. So back to the OP

It isn't clear to me that Jesus was what we might call a "practicing Jew" today, meaning that he went to synagogue every week and heard the readings of the O.T. There is a remarkable gap in the "story of Jesus" between the virgin birth and adulthood. Perhaps he attended services regularly and learned all about Noah's Arc and the other stories/parables/metaphors. If we go by the accounts of the N.T., it seems most of his adult time was spent preaching a new philosophy that largely departed from the O.T.

Of course, if Jesus was all-knowing, then he wouldn't need to attend any services to know everything that was in the O.T.

But in that case, why was it necessary for an all-knowing being to even HAVE a childhood. And if there were an all-knowing child amongst the people, why wasn't that more newsworthy? On that basis, I have to assume it was "God's way" for Jesus to grow up more or less like any other child and not be particularly remarkable on the all-knowingness scale until he came out in adulthood.

What did he believe? The accounts of Jesus (largely written centuries later as the Catholic church was being created) certainly associate Jesus with a new MORAL CODE that rose above the contemporary level of society. I don't think anybody would dispute that. But can anybody show any evidence of a single case where Jesus demonstrated knowledge of the physical world beyond the level that was known at the time? Was there ever a case where Jesus said something like "Fear not the thunderstorms. They are not caused by evil spirits, but are a simply a discharge of the electricity that can build up in our atmosphere. Oh excuse me, I guess I haven't told you about the atmosphere or electricity yet. Well, come back to the mount next week and we'll discuss gravity."

No, I don't think so. If he had any knowledge of earthly process beyond what was widely known at the time, he didn't share it, or at least the Catholics didn't write it down that way when they set about formalizing and marketing Christianity 3 or 4 centuries later. Most people aren't aware that NONE of the N.T. was written contemporaneously. The vast majority of it was first written decades or centuries later and then edited, debated, reedited, and re-debated until it all fit the marketing plan. There's a good chronicle of all this after-the-fact story-telling at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity

So on that basis. I'd say it is likely:

a) Jesus heard the story of Noah and his boat; and

b) believed it literally, just like everybody else at the time.

[Crunchy Frog]

3. I don't think you can really apply a western post enlightenment worldview

to a person living in 1st century Palestine. I don't think that the question even has any meaning.

[LostInAnomie]

4. We're not just talking about your Average Joe, 1st Century Palestinian though.

We are talking about the co-equal of God. Someone with the knowledge to see the flaw in the story. Of course, he should have also known that Satan couldn't have been showing him all the kingdoms in the world from the top of a mountain either.

[Crunchy Frog]

9. Well, if you're thinking in terms of him being the incarnation of God.

I think of him as just some dude in 1st century Palestine with some admirable teachings.

Of course, if you're a fundy and believe in his divinity, then you probably also believe in Noah's Ark. If you're a non-fundy Christian and believe in his divinity, then you would probably make allowances for the cultural mileiu in which he was operating, and the fact that he wasn't addressing post-enlightenment westerners.

To be fair on Jesus, I don't think there's any mention of the Noah's Ark story in any of the words attributed to him in the Gospels.

[hollowdweller]

5. Hard To Say

I think your question somewhat depends on how one would think about Jesus' divinity.

Was he like God capable of anything?? Or was he divine but in human form (ie subject to all the weaknesses of people)??

Then you come to the Noah story. I think there's some evidence that suggests there was a great flood in Mesopotamia and it's mentioned by a lot of ancient cultures. I think I heard even the Native Americans have a flood story so that shows they carried that one from Mesopotamia where they used to live. So that was in the lore of most ancient people so if he had a godlike consciouss then you'd say he couldn't have, but if he was of his time he probably did.

So I think that how the person views the divinity of Jesus would have a bearing on how you'd answer that question.

[Crunchy Frog]

10. The Native American people did not ever live in Mesopotamia.

I would be curious to hear where you got that one.

I know that many cultures have legends about a Great Flood, and it's probably because human population centers tend to form alongside rivers and other large bodies of water that are vulnerable to periodic flooding. Any regional flooding would have been percieved at the time to be a universal flood, since people's worldview didn't really extend beyond their immediate area in those days.

[xchrom]

6. Was Jesus a literalist? Nt

[Ozymanithrax]

7. Well, education at the time would consist of studying Torah, writing Hebrew/Aramaic...

and maybe some basic math.

Torah would have been the largest part of the education of a middle class Jewish male born and living between 5 B.C.E. and 60 C.E. Unless he went to a Greek School, which is not indicated in anything I've heard, he probably did believe in the story of Noah, assuming that Jesus actually existed at all. (The Greeks would have given him a little more science and their own mythic underpinnings to the universe.)

Bu at a time before modern geological science, most people would have viewed myth as history. Modern ideas of "education" do to no apply to ancient peoples.

[Lint Head]

8. They also believed the Sun revolved around a flat earth.

How many times in the Bible does a miracle cause an amputated arm, leg or head grow back?

Why did Jesus only pick certain people to heal? Why did he not cure everyone with a sickness?

He surely had the power. He was the Son of God.

The answer I always hear from folks when I say these things is that these are mysteries, God had a reason and it was in His plan. I think this is a standard cop-out reply.

[struggle4progress]

17. ... with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from

from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat ... No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat ... http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/russell/FlatEarth.html

[MineralMan]

11. Jesus, as depicted in the New Testament, did not exist,

so your question is unanswerable. Jesus was not even the man's name, whoever he was. The New Testament, as we know it, is a complete fabrication, written decades, if not centuries after this man died.

Your question cannot be answered.

[DeSwiss]

12. Ding!!! Ding!!! Ding!!! Ding!!! Ding!!! Ding!!! If he ever exsited at all.

- You win the Kupie Doll!!!!

[MineralMan]

13. I will be happy to accept the original of that. Thanks very much.

[DeSwiss]

14. You and me both!

- It'd be in better shape than my retirement fund is now......

[struggle4progress]

16. What is the point of the question? I mean: what would you actually learn from an answer?

[Laura902]

19. I believe that he is just as

imaginary as noah's ark, but thats just me

[sakabatou]

20. It's possible that Jesus believed in the flood story as literal

[RagAss]

21. Did Mother Goose believe in Santa?

[moobu2]

22. This is a view of the universe

as the people who wrote the old testament saw it.



They imagined that there were windows in the firmament that god could open and close, and that's where all the water came from in the flood story.

Genesis 7. and the windows of heaven were opened.
Genesis 8. the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

Did Jesus know about the flood story and believe it? yeah, as much as any fictional character could know anything I guess.

[Sal316]

23. Not in a literal sense, no.

In that time, and in that culture, scripture wasn't to be taken literally, as it is often today. They understood there were two sides to the coin, mythos and logos, which together made scripture musterion.

Literalism, and along the same token fundamentalism, is primarily an attribute of western Christianity that began to blossom, partially, because of the scientific revolution in the 16th Century and the Enlightenment.

For thousands of years, faith was something you thought about, you discussed… the oral tradition was a crucial part of trying to comprehend the divine. Scientists for years believed that observing the natural world was catching a glimpse of the divine.

Then along came the printing press, and thus began man’s drive for absolute certainty.

Certainty in science…..and certainty in faith (dogma).

This forever split faith and reason, creating the two headed monster we know today.

[moobu2]

25. Or else it was the best science they had at the time.

[DeSwiss]

24. Do you think Jesus believed the story of Noah's Ark?

Well in answer to this question, one must first start from a point which accepts the bible as being a source of truth. And, which of course it isn't true. In fact, it is not in the least bit true. But once we exclude for this, then at least one can evaluate the idea of what Jesus may or may not have believed, based upon what the bible says he did believe. And according to the bible, we find that not only did Jesus accept the idea that a man could live for three days and nights inside the belly of a whale (Matthew 12:38-40), but that he did indeed believe the "Noe story" to be true:

Matthew 24:35-39 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

But what I have always found to be much more important than the Noe story, is why Yahweh thought that flooding and killing-off all of his creations was necessary at all. Most people never connect the dots and preachers almost never talk about this either, but the flood story started off with devils (called The Sons of god - AKA: The Nephilim) coming down to earth and raping the lovely womenfolk. And what's worse, after they impregnated these fine wenches, they bore GIANTS!!! So this isn't so much a "pissed-off-deity-starting-all-over-again" story, as much as it is a "devils-coming-down-to-earth-and-making-babies-into-giants" story. That's what REALLY pissed off old Yahweh!!!

Them same devils that he created, and that rioted and caused a civil war in heaven, saw god's lovely little lasses and got an immediate boner. And so they made a series of Heaven-to-Earth Booty Calls and the result was GIANTS! And they weren't just any ol' run-of-the-mill giants, oh no!!! They were killer giants! Dirty, nasty, stinky, disgusting, and sinning killer giants. Like Goliath, only worse. Giants who roamed the land having sex and stealing people's shit. Giants who laughed and had fun and pissed-off Yahweh because he didn't say they could have fun. Because you see, laughing is no where described in the creation. No. Where. So what the fuck was so funny? Obviously they had to go.

Genesis: 5:28-32 And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died. And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Genesis: 6:1-13 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

- So the whole point of the flood was not so much about punishing people for being disobedient to god. No it was a GIANT EXTERMINATION PROJECT. I suppose we should be thankful Yahweh was organic and used water to drown us all like rats, rather than using a lot of pesticides......

[Evoman]

26. Jesus thought he was god. So yeah, he'd probably believe all that crazy shit.

People who tell people they are god are either schizo or hucksters. And jesus didn't really seem hucksterish.

Provided that he existed, of course.