Animals of the Flood

21And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit[1] of life, all that was on the dry land, died. 23So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. 24And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.--------------------------------------------------------------------Now this passage describes the destruction of all life on the Earth. According to this passage, all life on Earth that wasn't in Ark was destroyed.Creationists claim that plants, fish, whales, insects, all survived the flood. How do they reconcile the passage that everything not on the Ark was destroyed??

Hi Cloud Strife-
They would probably say that it was an imaginary flood or that it didn't last as long as the Bible claims it did.LOLBlessings,
Jessie

an imaginary flood eh....? Well, if that was what they would probably say, then we'd all be in agreement about that!! HA! WE'RE RIGHT!

Hi cloudstrife. Welcome to EvCForum.To answer your question, most creationists focus on the verse where it says about "all the life on the dry land" or words to that effect. IOW, sea life wasn't effected. Of course, as was discussed on one or two other occasions on the forum, this begs the question inre amphibians (marine or dry land organisms?), semi-aquatic mammals, etc. Naturally, this is only the most minor part of the problem creationists have with the whole scenario. Salinity-intolerant aquatic species, salinity-dependent aquatics, turbidity-intolerant aquatics, highly host-specific insect species, etc etc. Not to mention how everything survived in the post-flud holocaust - after all, what happened to all those dead, rotting carcasses? - literally tens of billions of dead organisms from Cambrian Hallucinogenia to gigantosaurs to modern mice would have provided a nice welcome to the wayward mariners, IMO. Or the minor matter of where all the water went, how to explain current biogeography from a go-point in the Middle East, how to explain the utter lack of a flood deposit correlated world-wide, etc. Life gets really complicated really fast for the Flud Believers (tm).

Thanks for the welcome!Well, the verse doesn't necessarily say dry land. It says all flesh that moveth upon the earth. Then it also says "22All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit[1] of life, all that was on the dry land, died."It clearly makes a distinction between those two. Everything that had the breath of life, and all that was on dry land, died. Then it also says that none but who were on the ark survived.I'm very aware of the other problems concerning the flood, and they are being discussed...so I thought I'd post something relatively new as my first topic, and see where that went. Unfortuneatly, no creationist has posted yet...

I think it's simply that modern biblical literalists aren't taking into consideration the fact that a bunch of desert-dwelling Bronze Age nomadic sheep herders are unlikely to be familiar with things like seals, whales, the Ambystomatidae, etc etc. The only turtles, for example, that they would know about were land-dwelling. And I doubt that they would consider insects to "have the breath of life" in the first place. IOW, the destruction they talk about was probably intended to be limited to the few dozen species our pastoralists were familiar with. Since we can assume our nomads were not stupid in their context, and they were undoubtedly quite familiar with the critters that co-existed with them at the time, that interpretation would make sense in light of the requirement for "two of every kind" on the Ark. You probably COULD put a few dozen species on a large boat - using the 40 days/40 nights and year-long flood to be simply an exaggeration that translates as "a really long time to be wet" (remember, these are desert-dwellers: a freak rain that lasted even a few days would be something to remember). Couple that with familiarity with flash flooding, borrowed legends from previous cultures, etc, and you have the Hebrew Flood that provides a nice moral lesson about why you shouldn't tick off the gods (and why you should obey the priests).The thing I never understood is why the literalists want to insist this obvious tribal myth must be absolutely true. It doesn't really add anything in particular to the Jesus story or help the messiah claim in any way (which is, as I understand it from reading this forum, the principle reason for having the OT in there in the first place), and could actually be cut out of the Bible completely IMO without doing any harm to Christianity. Insisting on the Truth (tm) of such an obvious fairy tale, completely refuted by simple observation, does more harm than good, after all. It doesn't help the Believers, and is in the end counterproductive if insisted on. Ah well, I never claimed to understand the mentality of a True Believer (tm).

Dear Quetzal,You are a bit radical for this story.Noah's story could have been real before successive alterations and distortions. I have found some details here:Vente de Maillot de Foot Pas Cher 2022 2023And especially this:Noah loaded into the barge every living animal that he had. He did not load any animals he did not have. In the Epic of Gilgamesh XI, line 83 reads: "All the living beings I had, I loaded."No kangoroo, axolotl or others concerned.Denesha

Yeah, I think that's what I said (although not in so many words - the Gilgamesh quote said it much more succinctly). I agree with you.

And how many similar stories were cut out when the bible was assembled in 300 AD (+/-) and what makes this story special in relation to them?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Z'actly.

Somewhere on this site we were given the explanation that only those animals with nostrils were wiped out. That means that insects etc didn't need to go onto the ark because they were safe (must have floated). Gave me the best laugh I've had in ages!

21And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit[1] of life, all that was on the dry land, died. 23So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. 24And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.It seems its talking about the creatures that moved on the earth, not the creatures that moved upon the trees, or upon the waters,etc...All the creatures on the ark perished on the earth because they were creatures that moved on the earth, not upon the trees or on the waters, etc...P.S. Just look at Australia, isolated from the rest of the world, no native hoof creatures, as they would of been creatures that moved on the earth, they were unable to migrate from Turkey after the flood, however all the creatures in Australia, either moved upon the trees, or upon the waters, like the kangaroo, is an excellent swimmer, large claw's, some small species of the kangaroo are tree dwellers, the platapus is often seen snoozing on piles of branches floating in the middle of a river, the kola bear, moves upon the trees, feeds on leaves, etc...It might well be that Australia, lack of hoofed creatures supports that all creatures that moved on the earth perished and all living substances perished on the earth that didn't float or move upon the waters, your verse says all living substances perished on the surface of the earth, which we all know is confirmed by the fossil record, all creatures that perished in the flood settled and was buried in the world wide biblical deluge, but this is saying all living substances perished on the earth's surface, If your a breathing creature and your on the surface of the earth, you quite simply drowned, if you moved upon the trees, you could of floated up, so the creatures that were able to move upon the trees, were not moving upon the surface of the earth, they were moving on trees floating up above the surface of the earth, etc...

See Abby? Look at whatever's post right above. Didn't I tell you in that other thread that they'd simply "interpret" the passage to exclude whole kingdoms of critters? Voila: there's my proof.

to whatever:In the words of Dr. Evil, "how about no!". What part of "all whose nostrils had the breathe of the spirit of life, and all those who were upon dry land, died" and "only those that were in the Ark survived" don't you understand?? It doesn't say anythign that could swim survived, if it did, then I'm sure humans wouldn't have died, because they can sure as hell swim as well as kangaroos. Or why weren't they chillin with the platypus in the trees?? You know why, because they were dead! Everything was dead!! It says so right here in the bible that anything that wasn't in the ark, was dead! Anything that breathed, was dead!It's amazing that birds (who can fly by the way) would perish in a massive flood, yet according to you, those kangaroos who can swim better than Jesus for more than 150 days, and those sloths and platypus who can live in trees, would not die. Does this really make sense??[This message has been edited by cloud_strife, 04-01-2004]

Humans are excellent swimmers and they could have climbed up into trees. Why weren't they saved?