If Noah's flood was a legend why should anyone trust Jesus?

Ben Masada

New member
If you can't believe the flood and the mountains (literally) of evidence for it, you've likely no chance of believing that a man could return from the dead.

No, my friend! Absolutely not the same. There in nothing in the Scriptures clearly stating that the Flood did not happen. Now, as bodily resurrection is concerned, the Tanach is more than clear that, once dead, no one can ever return from the grave. (II Sam. 12:23; 14:14; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9 and many more)
 

Interplanner

Well-known member
No, my friend! Absolutely not the same. There in nothing in the Scriptures clearly stating that the Flood did not happen. Now, as bodily resurrection is concerned, the Tanach is more than clear that, once dead, no one can ever return from the grave. (II Sam. 12:23; 14:14; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9 and many more)


Except Job 19:5.
 

Sonnet

New member
They shouldn't. Christ took the account literally. If the account is false, He was wrong and nothing else He said needs be trusted.

Seems to make sense

Those like JD and GCT know this. The main reason they're here is because they love sin. Everything they do is an excuse to validate that love.

?
 

Sonnet

New member
Simple, Jesus was misremembered by Jewish authors of the gospels who naturally saw Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. In recalling his life they saught to legitimize Jesus (to their Jewish brothers) by forcing Jesus into as much of the Torah as they could. But this failed to bring the Jews and only confused subsequent generation of followers.

How can you be sure that they misremembered what Jesus said about Noah?

The Babylonion Hebrew redactors of the older narratives saught to trace their arrogant bloodlines all the way back to Adam whom they wrongly presumed was the first man. Being unable to do so they incorporated a widely known, local flood legend as part of their genealogical accounts. So they drown the whole world in its own wickedness.

?

You may gasp and wonder how they could do that to scripture? Well, it wasn't "scripture" at the time, it was a pseudo-biographical story written for the child like mind of Bronze Age sheep herders. They made NO claim of writing Gods word. It was only after the return that traditions grew up around the greatly exaggerated, patriotic, nationalist accounts of the Jews past became tradition and subsequently "scripture".

?

Jesus knew the Hebrew history contained many exaggerations and errors.

How do you know that?
 

Sonnet

New member
Noah and his sons built the ark. Not every kind of creature needed to be on the ark. Animal stalls would not need to be cleaned every day. Evidence of the ark has been found. Check Internet.

Right - I didn't say that Noah and the flood is a legend.
 

Sonnet

New member
Those Christian preachers just point out that Jesus spoke in parables, and Noah's flood is just a parable from the Bible that Jesus uses for teaching purposes.

Every Christian that believes in a young earth (6,000 to 10,000 years old) believes that God created the heaven and the earth.

Any Christian that believes in an old earth (billions and billions of years old) has a hard time justifying their belief in God.

Nothing in Genesis 6ff would lead us to think it is a parable. Jesus does not identify it as a parable.
 

Sonnet

New member
If believing in Jesus means one has to believe in supernatural feats, then one's belief is pretty weak and baseless to begin with. But if believing in Jesus means believing in the promise that God's love and forgiveness, acting in us and through us to each other, will heal us and save us from ourselves; then all any of us really needs to do is to try the idea on, and live with it for a while, and we will see for ourselves whether it's true or not. No magical, supernatural feats are needed. Nor is our believing in them, required.

Acts 2:22
“Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know."

These miracles were to demonstration that Jesus was more than just a man wouldn't you say?

Human beings have every right to test a man's claims have they not? Jesus included.

John 11 (at the raising of Lazarus)
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
 

Sonnet

New member
The Flood of Noah was not a legend but it was reported in the Torah according to the understanding of the time. I mean, to Noah and his family it seemed to have been over the whole earth aka worldly wide but, if we think of it from the logical point of view, it was local in my logical opinion, though I could still be wrong.

The text according to Matthew in the NT was not Jesus' and Matthew the Apostle of Jesus did not write that gospel. It was written by a Hellenist former disciple of Paul's which was later attributed to Matthew to enhance the credibility of the Church. (Mat. 9:9) So, Jesus had nothing to do with the Church, the text or the NT.

Proof?
 

Sonnet

New member
So if a geologist/biologist/physicist/geneticist/etc. examines the data and concludes that there was no global flood ~4,500 years ago, they would therefore be justified in concluding that Christianity is a false religion?

If they are right, then yes. Who could trust a word Jesus said?
 

Interplanner

Well-known member
Nothing in Genesis 6ff would lead us to think it is a parable. Jesus does not identify it as a parable.



I spent this fall in pretty consistent study of the flood, vertical plate tectonics, geo-mythology, and the literary question of whether basic world myths came together in the Bible or descended from it. The Genesis flood is in a sense easier to demonstrate than creation is. Part of that is chronological; as you investigate residue evidence, you come to indicators of the flood before you do creation, although you might say creation is the evidence that is hidden in plain sight, right?

There is simply no question at all that there has been a massive deluge, but please scrap all 'sunday school' imagery before you look into it. It is only about rain in a very secondary sense. It has much more to do with vertical tectonics, and even the atheist Ager in NEW CATASTROPHISM says that our surface is much more convulsed than most people are willing to admit.

Please notice something the next time you look at Monument Valley near the 4 Corners of the US: what you are seeing is the remnant of material AFTER massive flooding and slurry. How, hydrologically, do you move material like that? And since some of it is from New England, what speeds must you reach to get hundreds of feet layers from New England to the SW as slurry? Just that snapshot should help you realize how much and how enormous the event was. It is matched by the 'Centralia' theory in Australia: the entire center is now believed to be a rapid sediment deposit that had so much force that it 'bent' Ayers Rock into its J shape, the bottom of which is the outcrop we see today.

You could also check my short novel, DELUGE OF SUSPICIONS.
 

Sonnet

New member
No, my friend! Absolutely not the same. There in nothing in the Scriptures clearly stating that the Flood did not happen. Now, as bodily resurrection is concerned, the Tanach is more than clear that, once dead, no one can ever return from the grave. (II Sam. 12:23; 14:14; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9 and many more)

But scripture claims, quite clearly, that Jesus was more than just a man.
 

PureX

Well-known member
These miracles were to demonstration that Jesus was more than just a man wouldn't you say?
What do I care if Jesus was "more then a man"? When I am not.
Human beings have every right to test a man's claims have they not? Jesus included.
Yes, but those claims have to be testable. And feats of divine magic are not testable. While the effect of divine love and forgiveness, kindness and generosity, acting within us, and through us to others, IS testable.

That was my point.
 

Sonnet

New member
What do I care if Jesus was "more then a man"? When I am not.

Because you identify yourself as a Christian?

Yes, but those claims have to be testable. And feats of divine magic are not testable. While the effect of divine love and forgiveness, kindness and generosity, acting within us, and through us to others, IS testable.

That was my point.

But surely we can be sceptical about even those things you describe?
 

PureX

Well-known member
Because you identify yourself as a Christian?
I am a Christian because I believe in the promise of Christ: that God's love and forgiveness acting in us and through us to each other will heal us and save us from ourselves. I don't need to believe in supernatural feats, or even that Jesus was "more then a man" to believe in this promise. Neither does anyone else.
But surely we can be sceptical about even those things you describe?
Sure, but all we have to do is try living this way, and the truth of these promises will either manifest, or they won't.

I find that they do.
 

Ben Masada

New member
But scripture claims, quite clearly, that Jesus was more than just a man.

I know, the NT. What did you expect? Why don't you try the Scriptures Jesus always referred to as the Word of God aka the Tanach? The NT Jesus never even dreamed it would ever rise.
 
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