The Flood Story and Biblical Criticism/0/en

The Flood Story and Biblical Criticism

This topic has not yet undergone editorial review

Overview

At first glance, the story of the Flood appears to contain several doublings and inner contradictions.   Source criticism attempts to address these by positing that the Torah's Flood narrative is the composite work of a later editor who conflated supposed earlier and contradictory versions of the story without reconciling their inconsistencies.  The Flood story is then pointed to as one of the strongest corroborations of the Documentary Hypothesis in general.

This article examines some of the flagrant flaws inherent in the source critical approach to the Flood narrative.  Building on traditional exegesis, it then attempts to show that an understanding of Biblical literary style and structure helps dissolve most of the perceived difficulties, leaving a coherent, consistent, and flowing narrative.

Introduction

The account of the Flood and its aftermath in Bereshit 6–9 abounds with apparent doublings and contradictions, with almost every key element in Chapters 6–7 seemingly related twice. Additionally, there also appear to be internal contradictions regarding the number of animals to be brought into Noah's ark and the nature and length of the Flood. Let us examine these various issues in greater detail:

Apparent Doublings:

• Noach's descendants – Each of 5:32 and 6:10 list Noach's offspring.
• Corruption and verdict – Both in 6:1-8 and then again in 6:9-13 the Torah describes: the corruption of mankind, Hashem's decision to destroy the world, and Noach's righteousness.
• Command to enter the ark – In 6:17-22 we read of Hashem's promise to save Noach and the animals, His command to gather them into the ark, and a general description of Noach's compliance.  7:1-5 appears to repeat all of these same elements.
• Noach's fulfillment – Each of 7:6-9 and 7:10-16 furnish a more detailed account of Noach's fulfillment of the Divine instructions.  Both also mention Noach's age at the beginning of the Flood, the start of the Flood, and the entry of Noach, his family, and the animals into the ark.  Each then concludes with a statement that Noach did as commanded. Within the second section of 7:10-16, there is ostensibly further redundancy, as verses 15 and 16 both speak of the animals coming in pairs.
• Floodwaters:
• Forty days of rain – Both 7:12 and 7:17 speak of a forty day period of rain.
• Waters rising – Both 7:18-20 and 7:24 speak of the waters rising.
• Ark rising – Both 7:17 and 7:18 mention the ark being lifted by the floodwaters.
• Death – The death of all living things is repeatedly discussed in all of 7:21, 22, and 23.

Seeming Contradictions:

• Two vs. seven – 6:19-21 speaks of two animals from each species entering the ark, without differentiating between pure and impure species.  7:2-3, in contrast, recounts Hashem's command to take seven pairs of each pure animal,¹ but only one pair of each impure animal.  7:8-9 similarly distinguishes between pure and impure animals, but mentions only their coming to the ark as pairs.  Finally, 7:15-16 speaks only of pairs and also makes no reference to purity status.
• Entry into the ark – 7:7 and 10 appear to suggest that Noach entered the ark seven days before the Flood started, while 7:13 implies that he did so on the very day that the rain began.
• Water source – 7:11 speaks of the opening of the floodgates both from the depths and the heavens, while 7:12 mentions only rain.
• 40 or 150 days – Two verses (7:12 and 7:17) speak of a forty day period of rain, while two other verses (7:24 and 8:3) describe a 150 day period of rising waters.
• Raven or dove – While 8:7 speaks of Noach sending out a raven to check the status of the floodwaters, 8:8-12 speak of his sending a dove.

Source Critical Approach

Proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis claim to have a simple solution for all of the above difficulties.  In their opinion, the Torah is the work of a redactor (or series of redactors) who conflated different and contradictory accounts of the Flood which originally existed as separate documents.  According to their theory, this editorial process preserved all of these supposed versions of the story, thereby creating a text with irreconcilable contradictions and redundancies.

There are many variations of this theory, and its adherents frequently disagree with one another regarding the details, however much of the basic documentary division is shared. For purposes of the analysis here, we will utilize one of its most popular iterations, that of R. E. Friedman.²  The table below will depict his division of the Flood narrative into its alleged sources.

According to this division, there were two stories of the Flood, the "J" version which recounted the tale of a storm which lasted for forty days and the "P" version which describes a deluge which endured for almost a year.  By dividing the Biblical text into disparate sources, documentary critics attempts to account for the existence of the following repetitions and inconsistencies:

Redundancies

• Noach's descendants – One mention (5:32) is attributed to the Redactor, while the other (6:10) is attributed to source P.
• Corruption of mankind and decision to destroy – The first discussion of these issues (6:1-8) is attributed to "J", while the second (6:9 ff) is attributed to "P."
• Command to enter – The theory splits the two commands of Hashem regarding entry into the ark, attributing one (6:17-22) to "P" and the other (7:1-5) to "J".
• Noach's compliance – Noach enters the ark only once according to each source, as 7:7 is attributed to "J" and 7:13 to "P".
• Waters rising – The repeated mentions of the waters rising are split between the two sources, with some attributed to "J" (7:18-20) and another to "P" (7:24).
• Death – The redundancy regarding the death of all living creatures is reduced as the mentions are divided between "P" (7:21) and "J" (7:22-23).

Inconsistencies

• Two vs. seven – The "P" document is presented as preserving a tradition in which only two of every species was saved (6:19-21, 7:8-9. 7:15-16), while the "J" document differentiates between pure and impure species (7:2-3).
• Day of entry – It is only according to "J" that Noach entered the ark seven days prior to the rain (7:7,10).  According to the "P" source, he did so on the very day that the Flood began (7:13).
• Source and length of the Flood – Each source reflects a different position regarding the source and length of the Flood.  While "J" speaks of rain (7:4, 12), "P" speaks of overflowing springs (7:11).  In "J" the rain lasts 40 days (7:4,12, and 17), while in "P" the waters rise over 150 days (7:24, 8:3).
• Dove or raven – It is only the "J" source which speaks of Noach's sending out a dove.  The "P" document, in contrast, has Noach sending a raven.

Weaknesses of the Source Critical Approach

Note:  The analysis in this section relates solely to the textual problems inherent in the application of the Documentary Hypothesis to the Flood narrative.  It does not relate to the issue of theological incompatibility of source criticism with Divine authorship of the Torah, and it also does not address the broader methodological weaknesses of the Documentary Hypothesis in general.  IY"H, these will be discussed in separate pages on this site.

Redundancies Remain

Despite the division into distinct sources, several redundancies remain in each putative document, significantly weakening the argument that doublings are the product of source conflation. Several examples follow:

• Noach's fulfillment – In the "P" document, there remain multiple mentions of Noach's fulfillment of Hashem's command.  First, 6:22 mentions Noach's compliance in general terms: "וַיַּעַשׂ נֹחַ כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים".  Then, both 7:8-9 and 7:14-16 describe the specifics of that fulfillment, detailing twice how the animals entered the ark. Each of these again end with the fact that Noach did as commanded: "כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה אֱלֹהִים אֶת נֹחַ" / "כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים."‎³
• Forty days – The "J" source retains the redundancy regarding the forty day period of rain, mentioning this fact in both 7:12 and 7:17.  When the "J"  source is viewed in isolation, these statements are just half a verse apart, making the doubling even more confounding.
• Rising waters and ark – The repetition regarding the rising waters is also not solved by the division into distinct sources.  The "J" document mentions the fact multiple times in 7:18-20.  Similarly, it notes that the waters lifted the ark twice in this same section (7:17-18).
• Earth dries – The "P" source also preserves a dual mention of the drying of the land, in both 8:13 and 14.⁴

Incoherent Sources and Inconsistent Editing

The Documentary Hypothesis not only fails to eliminate all of the redundancies it was created to solve, but it also introduces new difficulties along the way. The division of the Biblical text into distinct sources creates gaps in each of these accounts, as certain facts are missing from one or another of the supposed documents. As a result, the reconstructed texts often become incoherent. For example:⁵

• In the "J" source, the building of the ark is never discussed, and the ark appears out of nowhere in 7:1, when Hashem commands Noach to enter it.
• In the "P" source, the mention of both pure and impure animals in 7:8 is extraneous.  Since this source maintains that two of each type of animal, regardless of purity, entered the ark, why differentiate between pure and impure at all?
• The theory's splicing of 6:16 means that the phrase "וַיִּסְגֹּר ה' בַּעֲדוֹ" in the isolated "J" source is missing its antecedent.  Since it no longer follows Noach's entry into the ark, this phrase becomes an incomprehensible non-sequitur.
• In "P", Noach's sending of the raven similarly becomes difficult to understand and simply hangs in the narrative since it is not accompanied by a checking of the land.
• In "J", too, Noach's sending of a dove to check the land "after forty days" does not make sense.  Since this source does not record a gradual lessening of waters, it reads as if immediately after the rain stopped, Noach assumed that the dove might find dry land, a strange and unrealistic notion.⁶
• In other cases, the ordering of the story is illogical.  Thus, "J" presents Hashem shutting the door to the ark only after describing how it rained for forty days.

To account for these problems, adherents of the theory must postulate that parts of each document were not preserved by the supposed Editor when he conflated his sources to create the Biblical text. This, however, means that the Editor would have been very inconsistent in his use of sources, sometimes creating unnecessary redundancies by preserving both versions of a story, while at other times preserving only one account.  Such capricious editorial practice seems farfetched.

Exaggerated Contradictions

Oftentimes the Hypothesis overstates the difficulties it finds in the Biblical text, suggesting that something is inconsistent, when there is no need for such a claim. Thus, in our story, four of the five supposed discrepancies listed above are not really contradictory:

• Water source – The description of heavenly windows and deep fountains pouring forth water can easily coexist with the account of rainfall, as there is no reason that Hashem could not have flooded the world through both means.⁷
• 40 and 150 days – Consequently, there is also no contradiction between the 40 and 150 day periods.  While the former describes the duration of the rainfall, the latter speaks of the length of the flooding from the waters below.
• Noach's entry – Though Noach's entry into the ark in 7:7 is followed by the statement that the flood began "at the end of the seven days" this need not imply that Noach entered the ark at the beginning of the week.  The verses just as easily allow for him to have entered immediately before the rain began on the seventh day itself, exactly as 7:13 says explicitly.
• Raven and dove – Finally, the sending of the raven and dove not only do not contradict each other, but directly flow from one to another.  Only because the raven went to and fro, did Noach need to send a different bird to check the water's status.⁸

The only seeming inconsistency which remains to be addressed relates to the number of animals taken into the ark (two versus seven). This will be explored and resolved below.

Unitary Literary Solution

 

 

Bereshit and Noach

 

Long Term vs. Immediate Commands

 

Two versus "two by two"

 

כלל ופרט and Festive Conclusion

 

 

¹ Though Noach is told to take seven pairs of birds, their purity status is not mentioned in the text.

² R. E. Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed (New York, 2003): 42-47.

³ For extended discussion, see Joshua Berman, Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism, (New York, 2017): 236-268, who mentions these and some of the other redundancies listed below as part of his arguments against the validity of the Documentary Hypothesis.

⁴ See Robert Klapper's article, "Who Wrote the Torah", where he brings other similar examples in which the "P" source repeats itself in the same or consecutive verses.  These include:

• The two halves of Bereshit 6:9 both speak of Noach's righteousness.
• There is double mention of the world's corruption in 6:11 and 6:12.
• Both 6:19 and 6:20 speak of the animals coming in pairs.
• Chapter 9:1-17 contain multiple mention of almost every detail in that unit, including Hashem's promise of fruitfulness (9:1,7), His keeping of His covenant (9:9-10,11,17), the rainbow as sign (9:13,14,16,17), and Hashem's remembering His covenant (9:15,16).

⁵ See also J. Berman and R. Klapper (both cited above), who each discuss some of the examples below.

⁶ In the full Biblical account, the larger context of the verse suggests that the forty days does not relate to the period of rain, but a distinct forty day period later on.

⁷ See J. Berman (cited above), who points out that the combining of the motifs of rain and deep springs is found elsewhere as well, both in Tanakh (see Mishlei 3:20), and in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet 11).

⁸ See J. Berman (cited above), who additionally notes that in the flood legend preserved in the Gilgamesh Epic, the protagonist also sends out different species of birds: a dove, a swallow and a raven. Thus, existence of multiple birds in one story need not be viewed as a contradiction.