While over at FPR discussing the vagaries of the Flood, I made a comment which LXXLuthor very gently pointed out was a threadjack. It occurred to me that my comment had some NOMish possibilities, so I brought it over here to discuss.
Symbolic or literal? The earth is full of students and scholars who debate the historicity of the Biblical stories. Often to the detriment of the underlying principle beneath, such scriptorians cast their nets for any scientific tidbit or authoritative statement that will back up their assumptions. Two Biblical accounts which are especially susceptible to such wresting are the Creation story in Genesis and the record of Noah and the Flood.
In construing the Flood narration, some believers advocate an extreme literalist approach. Noah was a real person, they say, who built an actual boat, the exact dimensions of which we know. There was a worldwide Flood which covered the entire earth, including the highest moutaintops. Others religionists prefer a different approach. Scientific evidence is incompatible with a worldwide Flood, they point out. Perhaps there was a regional deluge, on a smaller scale, but covering the world as Noah knew it. This approach also presupposes a real figure–Noah, or perhaps Gilgamesh or Utnapishtim or Ziusudra. Legends of this event were incorporated into the Bible by its writers. Julie M. Smith has posted a Sunday School lesson which succinctly explains these two proposals along with good reasons and poor reasons for subscribing to a literal Flood or a localized Flood. (190 fun comments by advocates of both sides follow!) A third method of interpreting the Flood is as an allegory. The story of a great Deluge and an ancient prophet is an allegory–a story written as a poetic means of illustrating an abstract or spiritual meaning. We should not be expected to believe this event actually happened.
I have noted that proponents of each of these views can make their case with equal vehemence, but a more interesting direction for New Order Mormons may be to consider each theory in its own right and what principles we can learn from each. This method might even be a productive way to approach the scriptures in arenas where there are conversation between conservative, liberal and non-believing participants.
For example, if the flood story is an allegory, appropriated from Mesopotamian myth, why was it used by Biblical authors? What poetic elements are used? How do they advance the objectives of the author(s)?
Perhaps the flood was a localized event based on the flooding of the Tigris/Euphrates River Valley, What lessons did the small group of people who survived learn from the event? How did they see themselves in the larger picture of world history? What ties did they have to the story to cause them to adopt it as their chronicle of national origin? How does their story apply to us as a “chosen people?”
Lastly, consider Noah’s story as a literal worldwide catastrophe. Why would God find it necessary to cleanse the entire earth and start over? What were his purposes in doing so? What made him promise not to do it again?
Perhaps others may think of more thought-provoking questions, I’m just throwing out a few simple ones to illustrate the possibilities in using this approach. I’m not sure that Sunday School teachers would be comfortable teaching the scriptures in this manner. But perhaps if class members were open to thinking this way, we could claim more of a role in “the most dreaded Sunday meeting.”
I’ll through out a possible answer to the literal flood questions.
“Why would God find it necessary to cleanse the entire earth and start over? What were his purposes in doing so?”
I remember hearing once that since the earth was going to be the Celestial kingdom, it needed to get baptised and received the Holy Ghost as well. Hence the flood being the baptism (by immersion, since the entire earth was covered). And then the burning at the Second Coming would be the baptism by fire.
I want to think more about the allegory. Maybe it has to do with a rebirth, thinking about the rainy/flood seasons in that part of the world.
I love the Joseph Campbell quote that says, “Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.”
In other words, when people insist on treating stories in sacred texts as literal, historical fact, they actually end up robbing those stories of much of their real power and meaning.
IMO, the story of Noah’s ark has a lot more to teach us (and makes a whole heckuva lot more sense) as a myth than it does as a literal account of an actual event.
Square Peg, I agree, but the point of my post is that it works both ways. Some would feel that when we insist on interpreting scripture as myth and refuse to consider what a literal interpretation might mean, we are also robbing the stories of their real power and meaning.
My question is, can we suspend our disbelief long enough to consider the stories as if they were literal? And then, in turn, as if they were figurative? Is this even possible? Is it useful?
Consider Kaycei’s thought process above. Do you think her being open to a consideration of the literal meaning of the passage helped her to ponder the symbolic meaning more completely?
BIV-
great post!
One could obviously extended the model of being open to to both ways of looking at things, to the Mormon Church in Gerneral, to Christianity, or even God.
I think which ever way one might look at it, it is important to consider that one might be wrong. Find value in both view points, because value is there.
BiV,
Yeah, sorry, I guess my previous comment didn’t really address the main point of your post. That’s what I get for trying to dash off comments after 5:00 on a Friday afternoon after a very long day. Maybe someday I’ll learn…
Anyway, I agree that there is value in considering stories like the story of Noah’s ark from the different perspectives you mentioned. I also agree that looking at stories like Noah’s ark from literal, allegorical, and other points of view would be interesting and educational for both orthodox and less orthodox members in a gospel doctrine class setting. I really like the idea of asking both orthodox members (who see the flood as literal) and more liberal members (who don’t) to leave their comfort zones a bit, suspend disbelief for a few minutes, and consider other interpretations. As Russell says, there’s always value in doing that.
Of course, whether or not something like that would ever fly in my really conservative Utah County Ward is another question. It would be fun to try it, though.
Bored in Vernal,
I’m not scholastic enough to have thought this through carefully, but I get stuck even trying to understand what a “literal story” means. I think of “story” as an extraordinarily highly selective set of assertions, linked by a subjective perception.
(If this is a derail, please feel free to delete.)
For example: Noah’s Ark’s story.
1. Person named Noah…
2. …gets divine instruction…
3. …to build ark…
4. …to save all animal life…
5. …and humanity…
6. …from God’s otherwise rather imprecise wrath…
7. …in the form of a flood…
8. …of the entire world…
9. …and Noah does so…
10. …it begins to rain…
11. …and it rains for forty days and forty nights…
etc.
What links these facts? Only the time-confined cause-and-event story that we invent from them. Without a mind to create meaning out of the set of “facts,” there is no meaning — just a set of unverifiable facts. As soon as meaning exists — as soon as we find a cause and an effect — the meaning exists solely in a mind that has fabricated a “something.”
I don’t want to overstate the variability. The potential of this text, like most, is confined in very significant regards. No matter how I arrange those facts, I haven’t figured out a way to turn them into a story about political corruption, or about the development of the transistor.
But in the context of religious narrative, the potential meanings to be derived, whether we label them literal or figurative or symbolic or mythic, are all stories created by minds, whether they recognize their own absolute involvement in the process or not.
What links statements 2, 6 and 11 (which specifically address the “acts” of “god”)? Enormous amounts of story-telling and story-thinking about God. Does the literalness or figurativeness of the story change if we understand the communication Noah receives to have been not from God, per se, but from a divine messenger? In LDS thinking, the usual response would be “no.” But what about from the perspective of the Greek story of Prometheus? What should we understand about the imprecision of God’s action? God can’t actually destroy only the wicked, but rather has to come up with this elaborate contrivance to save the likes of Noah and the animals? This question doesn’t come up much because of all the stories we’ve already told ourselves (assumptions) about the way God works. Why not understand the Noah story as an extraordinarily effort to evade God’s intended destruction of all life, God’s plan being foiled only by the Ulysseys-like craftiness and diligence of Noah?
Aside from a few diligent (but badly misguided, IMO) fundamentalist archaeologists looking under rocks on Mt. Ararat, no one has any tangible, physical world reason to believe the Noah story as literal or figurative, to the extent that those labels are useful. The only reason is a subjective one — does the story conform to other stories I prefer, or does it conflict with other stories I prefer?
If that last statement is right, then I’m not convinced that there is such a thing as a “literal” reading of the Noah story. All readings are subjective, all readings (except for the completely incoherent — which dismantles the notion of story altogether) are informed by other preferences/beliefs/assumptions, and all readings are so heavily dependent on those other beliefs that all readings are symbolic, if at no other level, then at least at the level of “my version of the story is right, and yours is not.” The story, and its literalness, becomes a way to distinguish between and to separate two minds.
(Sorry — no idea whether this email is useful, or coherent, for that matter.)
The Italians have a useful expression for this sort of thing: “Se non e vero, e ben trovato,” which means, roughly,: “Whether it is literally true or not, it’s still true”.
The recent popularity of the song “Samson” by Regina Spektor led me to look at a number of biblical stories in a different light. Both the words and melody of the song are hauntingly beutiful, and hearing it, had never considered the story, or many others as potentially allegorical. It’s been quite a paradigm shift to read the stories with the approach of a potential parable, focusing on what I would expect to be the intended approach, not focusing on the events, but on the motivations and doctrine beyond.