Two Versions of the Great Flood in the Bible
How Two Stories Became One
Two Versions of the Great Flood in the Bible
How Two Stories Became One
This is one of the first stories I remember from Sunday school, and I’ve heard it used plenty of times as a story of God’s wrath mixed with his love for humanity hilariously enough.
Even with that mixed message people in their pews all just nod in agreement, but I guess when you’ve been programmed that you’re a horrible, sinful creature from the time you’re a child you’ll accept whatever form of love you can from you’re almighty angry creator.
Ultimately the story doesn’t make any sense for many reasons, one can question where all that water went after the waters receded, considering for water to cover the tops of all of the mountains on Earth it’d require way more water than exists on this planet, or how billions of species of animals would’ve fit inside a big wooden boat… or how penguins swam from Antarctica to the Middle East… but I digress.
What I want to focus on is the fact that the story in the Old Testament is actually compiled from two different stories, the Yahwist source and the Priestly source, and what evidence remains in the book as evidence of this fact.
What the editors of the Bible did was try to weave these two different versions of the story together into one cohesive narrative, but they seem to have failed to do so.