Deluge. The Genesis flood narrative is a flood myth found in the Tanakh.
The story tells of God's decision to return the Earth to its pre-creation state of watery chaos and then remake it in a reversal of creation. The narrative has very strong similarities to parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh which predates the Book of Genesis.
A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology and paleontology. A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred.
The flood is part of what scholars call the primeval history, the first 11 chapters of Genesis. These chapters, fable-like and legendary, form a preface to the patriarchal narratives which follow, but show little relationship to them.
For example, the names of its characters and its geography, Adam and Eve, the Land of Nod, and so on, are symbolic rather than real, and much of the narratives consist of lists of firsts: the first murder, the first wine, the first empire-builder. Few of the people, places and events depicted in the book are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. This has led scholars to suppose that the primeval history forms a late composition attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction. At one extreme are those who see it as a product of the Hellenistic period, in which case it cannot be earlier than the first
The story tells of God's decision to return the Earth to its pre-creation state of watery chaos and then remake it in a reversal of creation. The narrative has very strong similarities to parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh which predates the Book of Genesis.
A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology and paleontology. A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred.
The flood is part of what scholars call the primeval history, the first 11 chapters of Genesis. These chapters, fable-like and legendary, form a preface to the patriarchal narratives which follow, but show little relationship to them.
For example, the names of its characters and its geography, Adam and Eve, the Land of Nod, and so on, are symbolic rather than real, and much of the narratives consist of lists of firsts: the first murder, the first wine, the first empire-builder. Few of the people, places and events depicted in the book are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. This has led scholars to suppose that the primeval history forms a late composition attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction. At one extreme are those who see it as a product of the Hellenistic period, in which case it cannot be earlier than the first
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