Entry of The Animals into Noah’s Ark, Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1613

Margaret Manning, another new friend from the RZIM conference at Wheaton this past week, wrote this very helpful paragraph on the narrative on which I’ll be preaching on Sunday morning (Genesis 6:5-8:22).

The ancient world features several parallels to the Biblical account of the Flood

“Ancient myths and legends that bear some resemblance to biblical history add to the credibility of the biblical witness, and do not diminish it. For example, many cultures have some sort of flood narrative. Does this mean that the story of Noah’s Ark is just another myth? No, it does not. Rather, ancient cultures all had within their “cultural memory” a recollection of a massive flood. Details of this flood were passed down through oral history, and later written down for posterity. Oral tradition was the primary means by which stories were transmitted in the ancient world, a practice continued by the Jews well into the first century, when Jesus would have lived. Oral tradition, based on memory, was a highly reliable (since memorization was the main means of learning and transmitting information in the ancient world) means of preserving historic events. The abundance of flood narratives found in various cultures is an illustration of the credibility and reliability of the flood story.”