Noach and the Flood

*** Possible potential heresy warning ***

Over on his blog, Dovbear asks what an Orthodox Jew is supposed to do with the story of Noah and the flood. He provides several answers, and to be honest, none of them are totally satisfactory.

I would add another difficulty to the story, which is the great similarity of the wording to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the words of James Kugel:

the Bible’s Flood story is nowadays generally held to be a recasting of an ancient Mesopotamian legend – one that even retains some of the original wording (“smelled the pleasing odor” and so forth) of the text from which it was copied

(If you look in his book "How to Read the Bible" he discusses this in greater detail)

In other words, not only is there a lot of evidence that the flood did not actually take place as reported in the Torah, but it also looks as though the 'author' of the Torah copied and pasted from the earlier Epic.

I wonder (and I'n not sure if this is heretical or not) whether Rashi provides us with an answer to solve these issues. In Gittin there is an argument between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish as to how the Torah was given to Moshe Rabbeinu.

א"ר יוחנן משום רבי בנאה תורה מגילה מגילה ניתנה שנא' אז אמרתי הנה באתי במגילת ספר כתוב עלי ר"ש בן לקיש אומר תורה חתומה ניתנה שנאמר לקוח את ספר התורה הזאת

R. Johanan said in the name of R. Bana'ah: The Torah was transmitted in separate scrolls, as it says, Then said I, Lo I am come, in the roll of the book it is written of me. R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The Torah was transmitted entire, as it says, Take this book of the law.

(Tosefot points out, quoting from Rashi's commentary on Chumash, that Reish Lakish also agrees with Rabbi Yochanan's basic premise that the stories were given independently. The argument between them is whether they were given in the order in which they were to be written, or in a different order, and were later compiled into the order in which they appear in the Torah)

תורה חתומה ניתנה. תימה דכתיב (שמות כד) ויקח ספר הברית ויקרא באזני העם ופרש"י בפי' חומש דהיינו מבראשית ועד כאן ונראה לפרש דלא קאמר חתומה ניתנה שלא נכתבה עד לבסוף אלא שעל הסדר נכתבה דיש פרשיות שנאמרו תחילה לפני אותם הכתובים לפניהם ולא נכתבה עד שנאמר לו אותה שכתובה לפניה וכותב זאת אחריה

Rashi there expains Rabbi Yochanan's view:

כתוב עלי. מאז ניתנה התורה הוזכרתי בה ואת שתי בנותיך הנמצאות (בראשית יט) בזכות דוד שעתיד לצאת מרות המואביה ונעמה העמונית אמו של רחבעם כתיב הכא הנמצאות וכתיב התם (תהלים פט) מצאתי דוד עבדי אלמא מגילה איקרי משום דמתחילה נכתבה מגילת בראשית והדר מגילת נח והדר מגילת אברהם והיינו דקאמר במגילת אברהם כתוב עלי:

... First the 'Scroll of Genesis' was written,then the 'Scroll of Noach', then the 'Scroll of Avraham'...

Here is my question - why did Rashi not simply explain (based on his own commentary on chumash cited by Tosefot above) that the entire book of Bereishit and the beginning of Shemot were given to Moshe at once. And the argument between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish is only about the remainder of the Torah - whether it was given at once, or piecemeal.

Rashi specifies that before the Torah was actually written there was something called 'Scroll of Genesis' etc. Is it possible that G-d told Moshe to take existing stories from other the ancient world, and transform them into Torah through editing etc. Everything that happens in the world is ultimately from G-d, so the fact that these stories may have originally been written in other mythologies does not mean that they do not contain an element of G-dly truth.
Perhaps Moshe was told by G-d to take certain ideas from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other works, which teach us ultimate and eternal truths, (and obviously to discard those parts which are not true). This would explain the similarity of wording between the Torah and the Epic.
We know that there were earlier works which the Torah expects us to be familiar with. for example, Bamidbar 21:14 states:

עַל-כֵּן יֵאָמַר בְּסֵפֶר מִלְחֲמֹת ה': אֶת וָהֵב בְּסוּפָה וְאֶת הַנְּחָלִים אַרְנוֹן

wherefore it is said in the book of the Wars of the LORD: Vaheb in Suphah, and the valleys of Arnon

There is also mention of Sefer HaYashar and others.

And if you will grant me that G-d told Moshe to copy and edit earlier texts - is it possible that the key thing from those texts was the ethical/moral message? Perhaps the historicity of the event was irrelevant to G-d and Moshe. Perhaps the fact that people were aware of this myth, and it became part of Torah, was sufficient. Whether it 'actually' happened the way it was written or not may not be the issue that G-d was concerned with.

It seems to me that if someone does not believe that there was a literal (whatever that means) revelation at Sinai they are putting themselves outside the traditional faith of Judaism. But perhaps Rashi in Gittin (and the gemara itself) is alluding to the fact that the earlier parts of the Torah are based on other texts, and only became 'the word of G-d' once G-d told Moshe to put them into the Torah.

What do you think? Is this a valid reading of the gemara/Rashi? Does it help to answer the flood questions? And is it heresy?

Missing vav in Parshat Noach

There seems to be a vav missing from my Chumash in parshat Noach. Can anyone help explain to me where it has gone?

Let me explain what I mean (I am really no expert in these things, so there may be a really obvious answer):

In Bereishit 9:29 the verse (in my chumash) reads:

וִיהִי, כָּל-יְמֵי-נֹחַ, תְּשַׁע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה, וַחֲמִשִּׁים שָׁנָה; וַיָּמֹת.

Which means (according to KJ):

And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.

I looked in my tikkun korim, and it says the same thing.

However, if you look in Onkelos, he writes:

והוו, כל יומי נוח, תשע מאה וחמשין, שנין; ומית.

If my rudimentary grasp of Aramaic grammar is correct, והוו is plural. So the Hebrew should say וַיִּהְיוּ instead of וִיהִי.

If you look in the Leningrad Codex (which I think is the oldest text we have, since the Aleppo Codex is missing most of Chumash) the word is with a vav:


And if you look in the first printed mikra'ot gedolot, printed by Daniel Bomberg in 1525 it also seems to have the vav.


As far as I know, this is the text from which all other chumashim were taken. So how come my chumash today does not have the vav?

Ralbag on Noach

Ralbag (Rabbi Levi ben Gershon) has a very interesting explanation of the Tower of Bavel. He says that they really didn't do anything wrong, except that G-d wanted them to spread around the world, rather than stay in one place. Why did they need to spread over the world?

He writes that if they were all living in one place, then if a natural disaster (e.g. earthquake, hurricane, tsunami) happened, the entire human race would be wiped out. G-d wanted them spread to different locations so that even if one part of the world was destroyed the human race would continue.

This means that even though G-d interacts with the world, and watches what goes on (and is directly involved), He does not wish to intervene in the natural course of events, and when nature dictates that disasters occur, G-d choses not to prevent it - even to save the entire human race! G-d would rather perform the one-time miracle of mixing up the languages and separating the nations, than get involved to save a country from 'Acts of G-d' (which according to Ralbag are really not acts of G-d at all, but acts of nature).

You can read it here on Hebrew Books

Next time someone suggests to you that the latest catastrophe is caused by (pick the sin of your choice)
a) gay pride parade
b) tight clothing
c) listening to Shweky disks
d) anything else any Rabbi doesn't like at any time
point out this Ralbag to them and see how they understand it.

Shavua Tov

17th Sivan - end of Noah's flood

According to the Talmud in Rosh Hashana (11b) based on the verses in Bereishit (and according to the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer) today is the day that the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.

The flood is one of those issues that bible critics love to use as proof that the Torah cannot be true. It is only unfortunate that some 'believers' try and use it as proof that the Torah and Bible are true! I'm not convinced by their evidence.

National Geographic think they have found evidence of the flood. Look at this

Wyatt has found the ark! It proves everything (I'm sure if you look closely you can see the graffiti which says 'Ham is a Meatball'

Oh whoops! No he hasn't!

There is a really good site here which shows all the flaws in believing that the flood happened literally as described - some of his points can be answered easily based on Talmud and Midrashim, some can be answered by the usual 'it was a miracle' answer, but many, if not most, of his points are very valid and require serious thought to deal with.

I was once asked whether we have to believe that the flood actually covered the whole world. Could it not just have covered the 'known world'? (I know that this doesn't really answer most of the issues, because the archaeological record doesn't even support a localised flood, but it does solve some of the problems). I believe that R' Gedaliah Nadel (see previous posting) writes along those lines, that the 'whole world' only meant the known world at that time. There is also a Midrash cited by Tosefot in Zevachim 117a (I think, from memory) which says that the flood didn't happen in the land of Israel. I know it is a long jump, but once you say it didn't actually cover the whole world (and Tosefot there says that 'whole world' is not to be taken literally) then perhaps we can also leave out all the other tricky bits of the world which make the flood difficult to deal with.
I must say, however, that the flood is by no means the most difficult miracle in the Torah to understand, and perhaps it is easier and better just to say 'that is the way G-d did it - don't ask any questions).

I'll leave it to each of you to decide how to deal with it. Just don't base your faith on the flood, and don't lose your faith because of it either!