Many stories in the Bible can seem a little far-fetched. Stories like that of Noah and the Flood can have wildly different interpretations, depending on how one affirms the truth of the Bible. According to the story, God saw that humanity was incredibly corrupt and decided to wipe them out and start over. He told Noah, the only remaining good man, to build an ark and take his family and a pair of every kind of animal onto it to keep them safe from the flood, which later covered the earth. A fundamentalist view takes this story very literally, assuming a global flood. Other interpretations range from skeptical myth explanations to conservative regional floods. So what really happened? 

Because the Church has no official teaching on the matter, I will not share which side I agree with. Instead, I will attempt to show the extent to which Scriptural evidence can be used before investigating science and history. First, it is important to know how the Church interprets scripture. The Church “accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author” (CCC 105). The Catechism also tells us that “In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words” (CCC 109). It is possible to affirm a truth without using literal facts. If I say that my friend has a “heart of gold”, I am affirming that she is a charitable person, not that she has a metal heart. The Hebrew authors did not follow modern linguistic or historical standards; descriptive imagery or symbolic numbers were often used instead of literal fact. This doesn’t mean that the stories weren’t historical; only that the author was not affirming a modern historical account. Faulty translations or misunderstanding can also confuse Biblical interpretation. It is important to “take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current” (CCC 110). In other words, one must place the story into the correct context before one attempts to analyze it.

 The Church gives us four different ways of analyzing Scripture: the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. A complete study of each one of these senses is beyond the scope of this post, but because “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal” (CCC 116), by analyzing the literal sense of the Flood story, we can begin to determine what God, through the human author, is affirming to us.

The literal sense is “the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis [careful analytical study], following the rules of sound interpretation” (CCC 116, def. of exegesis added). When analyzing Scripture, it is important to start with the literal sense, because if we don’t understand what the text is saying literally, we may misinterpret what it means spiritually. This sense does not mean what we think the text is saying, but rather what the author intended to confer. While we don’t know exactly who wrote the Flood story, the most reasonable first interpretation is that the writer received oral tradition from an eyewitness of the Flood. According to the eyewitness, “The waters…rose high above the earth…The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep” (Genesis 7:20 RSVCE). According to details about the curvature of the earth and the relative sizes and distances of mountains in Mesopotamia, which can be found here, it is highly unlikely that the eyewitness could have seen any mountains in the distance. Regardless of the true extent of the flood, if all he saw was water, he would naturally come to the conclusion that the flood had covered all the earth. It is possible that he could have measured the depth of the water at a location he suspected the mountains to be; it is also possible that the number is based on a visual estimate rather than an accurate measurement. In addition, the Hebrew word “eretz”, translated here as “earth”, can also be translated as “land”, which neither supports or denies the interpretation of a global flood. 

Because of the ambiguity of scientific details regarding the flood, it is impossible to resolve the debate using Scripture alone. The Church continues to encourage scientific investigation, for “methodical research…provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God” (CCC 159). Members of the Church are free to hold different opinions on this topic, so long as their opinions are backed up by reasonable evidence and do not conflict with the faith, and they are willing to submit to the decision of the Magisterium if it formally pronounces an answer. 

For more information on this topic, check out Genesis 6-8, CCC 105-133, Dei Verbum, and Humani Generis. I am praying for you all, and I hope you have a blessed week!