1. Return of Earth and Life (8)The tragedy of the flood was reversed when "Elohim remembered Noah" (8:1). God had a wind blow over the earth so that the waters would begin to recede, similar to God's wind blowing over the deeps in Genesis 1:2. Eventually the ark came to rest on one of the peaks of the Ararat mountain range, called Urartu in Mesopotamian sources. Noah first sent a raven out the window of the boat and then a dove three times to see if there was any dry land. The first time the dove returned with nothing, then it came back with an olive twig in its beak, and finally it did not return. Knowing that the ground was dry, Noah, his family, and the survivors of the animal kingdom disembarked. The list of creatures that left the ark (8:17-19) mirrors that in the Priestly creation story. Text of the flood account by sources. The story of the flood can be separated into its two versions for easy comparison. It is a superb case study of a story in double tradition. Read the two versions separately, being attentive to the differences as well as the similarities, then study the combined account.
The Yahwist tells us that Noah immediately built an altar to Yahweh and presented sacrifices from every ritually clean animal and bird as an offering to Yahweh (8:20-22). God accepted his sacrifice, indicating that now deity and humanity were reconciled. Yahweh vowed never again to curse the ground or destroy all life as punishment, knowing now that evil is ingrained in humanity. The short poetic conclusion to the divine musing signals a blessed return to order:
Table 1.F Yahwist version of the flood account
Table 1.G Priestly version of the flood account
Table 1.H Combined Yahwist-Priestly version of the flood
Table 1.I Vocabulary of the Yahwist and Priestly versions
Table 1.J Chronology of the flood
Table 1.K Palistrophic structure of the flood narrative according to the new literary analysis of Wenham (1978)
Source Analysis. With creation, the Priestly and Yahwist versions were separate. With the flood, the Priestly rendition is artfully woven into the earlier Yahwist version. But the vocabulary of each is so distinctive that, for the most part, the two sources can be easily distinguished. Read separately, we would notice the following contrasts. The Yahwist version tells nothing of the building of the ark, though perhaps it was eliminated in favor of the Priestly description. In the Yahwist version the flood waters are the result of a torrential downpour lasting forty days, later receding in seven-day periods. In the Priestly version the flood is supernatural, inundating the earth from above the firmament (the windows of heaven) and from below the surface of the ground (the sources of the great deep). It prevails for 150 days, and takes 220 days to finally disappear.
In the Yahwist version the animals are gathered in sevens for the clean and only by twos for the unclean. The excess clean animals were presumably the ones used for Noah's sacrifice after leaving the ark. Only clean animals would be accepted by YHWH. The Priestly writer is content with one pair of each species of animal, and Noah does not offer a sacrifice, presumably because the proper rules for sacrifice have not yet been established. Proper sacrifices could only be offered beginning with the time of Moses.
Newer literary analysts have sought to move beyond classical source analysis in demonstrating the literary wholeness of the flood narrative. Some have discerned a comprehensive literary symmetry that is evidence of unitary composition (see Wenham 1978). Nonetheless, the fact that the final text shows symmetry does not disallow that the final compiler may have used a variety of separate sources.
As long as earth lasts,
sowing and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will not end. (8:22)
Noah's Ark. The traditional identification of Mount Ararat is 17,000 foot high Agri Dagi, northwest of Lake Van in Turkey. Various expeditions have claimed to recover remains of Noah's ark, but none of the reports have been substantiated. See Bailey (1989).
