Which of these statements best describes your view of the biblical flood

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

I've always interpreted flood myths (or stories, if you prefer not to call them myths) as local events that are replicated across cultures. The earliest flood story (correct me if I'm wrong) is Utnapishtim's flood from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I actually wrote an essay last semester that partly dealt with flood stories. In Mesopotamian cultures and their neighbors' cultures, flood stories are very prevalent. There is the story in Gilgamesh, as well as the story in Genesis, and I believe there are also stories from Iran and Ugarit detailing how the god(s) sent a flood to punish humanity.


Notably, we have never uncovered a devastating flood story from Egypt. Now, this could be chalked up to "most of Egyptian history is lost to us." While that's true, it would also have to apply to the rest of the ancient Middle East, where we do have copies of flood stories. I think it's safe to say that the Egyptians never had a flood story of their own.


As I explain with much more evidence in my essay, this is explained by the nature of floods in Mesopotamia vs. Egypt. The Rivers Tigris and Euphrates are known to have flooded irregularly, causing much pain to the inhabitants of the fertile crescent. Naturally, these people could not explain why the rivers hurt them in such a way, and without science they turned to their mythology to show them why things happened.

Alternatively, Egyptians had the Nile River. This river has been predictable for thousands of years, and once the people learned how to manage that, they never had a devastating flood hit their river valley. Therefore, they never had to explain why the floods hurt them, since that situation never came up.


Anyway, that's a long-winded explanation for why I voted "The flood was local." These stories are products of the societies that wrote them (obvious), and the peoples who were hit by floods (Mesopotamians) needed a way to explain what was happening. The others (Egyptians) simply didn't.

[Lincoln Republican]

I go with option 2.

[HillGoose]

The "flood story" is present in many cultures because of several localized floods at the end of the last Ice Age.

[Pennsylvania Deplorable]

Archaeological evidence shows that the Black Sea flooded (specifically it became a Sea, having before been a lake about half its current size). The magnitude of this event must have seemed global and apocalyptic to the people int he region. Consequently, flood stories appear in the literature of many peoples from that era, including the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh.