Recently, the famed Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard claimed he has evidence supporting the biblical flood account in Genesis. According to reports, Ballard and his team uncovered an “ancient shoreline buried within the depths of the Black Sea” revealing “15,000 square kilometers of land hit hard by raging waters inevitably going under” (Titanic Hunter, 2012).
What I find even more fascinating than Ballard’s findings is the need in many people’s minds for this biblical story to be true. Quickly scan the comments of the many articles describing Ballard’s find, and you will read statements like this:
“How exciting to have the resources to explore something like the Biblical flood and the ark Noah built according to God’s instructions. For a 100% true Bible believer like myself, this is just further evidence that what is found in the Scriptures actually happened.”
Disregard the fact that numerous ancient cultures depict some sort of flood narrative, and scientists have long suspected a large surge in the Black Sea, Ballard’s findings immediately call to mind the biblical story of eight people floating above the roaring waters in a hand constructed ark. And the great need for this scene to be true.
As a student of the Talmud, I am no stranger to fantastical stories. Just the other day I translated Sanhedrin 109a-109b, a long satirical piece mocking the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I encountered this gem of a text:
“A certain maiden gave some bread to a poor man secretly. On the matter becoming known, they (the men of Sodom) smeared her with honey and placed her on the roof of the wall, and the bees came and consumed her.”
Now I don’t read this account and assume the rabbis are recounting a historical episode about the people of Sodom, where mutant bees have the ability to consume human flesh. Rather, I understand the rabbinic authors are critiquing Sodom for the treatment of the poor and needy in their midst through the use of a provocative story. And so I’m left wondering, “What about the biblical canon is so magical that the stories within the biblical texts must be treated differently than I would treat the Talmud?”
I ask this question, not in an attempt to extinguish someone’s faith in the Bible or be the cruel child on the playground who insists “Santa isn’t real,” but because I think we miss something vitally important about the biblical text if we so adamantly insist each and every story must be historically and literally true. For one, the biblical authors were not historians, and probably never intended their works to be read as such. And further, just like the talmudic passage above, many stories in the Bible served a specific narrative purpose — a purpose I would argue that is more important than whether the account is historical.
I think the general response to Ballard’s discovery, either in exultation that the “Bible is correct” or disdain that a scientist would give voice to a fable, nudges at a nerve in many people’s approach to the biblical text. As George Bernard Shaw writes, “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”
