Is Noah's Ark Historically True?
Shameless Popery | 10 March 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwT2gYvCGIE
5:09 Drawing on
partially true tellings actually is going beyond what Pope Pius XII allowed for.
Because he said,
popular ... now a popular telling necessarily tells only part of the truth, because an exhaustive telling would be too bulky for most to read. If Little Red Riding Hood had really happened (to take an extreme and counterfactual example, it's a Kunstmärchen, not a Sage), and exhaustive telling of it would be longer than Lord of the Rings, and even that for too little drama to go with it, so no one would read it.
But telling only part of the truth isn't what is meant by "partially true" since that basically implies "partially false" and that means telling things also that aren't true.
And Pius XII specifically said that Moses was preserved by the Holy Ghost from error in the selection of his (if so) sources.
5:25 "employing the language of Greek mythology" ...
I think the Tartarus is mentioned more than once in Greek works, not just in the Theogony. Greek mythology is not
one story and that one fictional or only partially true. Concepts "of Greek mythology" may be entirely true, even if they reappear in stories that aren't.
And casting down fallen angels is described where in the OT?
Book of Henoch is not exactly universally accepted as canonic. Book of Jubilees (if there's anything there to that point)
isn't canonical.
5:47 Would you mind defining "mythological language"?
You appeal to it as if it were a common sense concept that everyone agrees on.
No, when Justin Martyr says (correct me if it was someone else) that "Hercules was a strong man, not (a) god" he is not stating anything about the language of Hercules stories, he is distinguishing what is true (like killing Nemean lion) from what is false (being engendered by Zeus and received on Olympus after death). Nothing in that is "mythological language" but it's everyday language for true and for false ideas about Hercules. By the way, there actually is a tholos tomb in Tiryns with no corpse (unusually, there is a parallel in Jerusalem) and (also unusually) an altar inside.
I'd say Hercules' disciples (i e fawning admirers) actually stole that body and the High Priests later made a fake parallel between the real Resurrection and a fake mounting to Olympus.
6:52 Eretz, like Latin terra, can be used for both Earth and Land.
In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.
invenerunt campum in terra Senaar
bereshît barâ Elohîm et ha-Shamayim we-et ha-Eretz
weyimseû biqah be-eretz Shinâr
Had to look these two up, for the Hebrew, had no idea that field or plain is biqah. Now, in Genesis 1:1, it clearly means "Earth" and in Genesis 11:2 as clearly it means "Land".
You cannot say from that word that it "actually" means the one and not the other.
There is a huge problem with translating "it covered the whole land" namely, you don't find any land which can be covered in water without this happening to neighbouring lands. You don't find a land surrounded by mountains on each side while all the mountains within it are still very high, but lower than the lowest part of the rim. Valleys don't work that way. Hugh Ross (or someone on his institute) has suggested Shinar / Mesopotamia was this land, but the valley around the two rivers doesn't involve that high mountains ... except in Turkey, too close to the sources for this gigantic flooding to happen.
You are basically requiring a miracle, like when God made walls of water surround a path through the Red Sea, but the other way round, surrounding a non-path, where only the Ark could live.
The other problem is, such a land would need to be the source of post-Flood mankind, not just because of Genesis 10:32, but also because of Flood stories around the world.
So, for these reasons it makes much more sense that the disputed meaning refers to "earth" as in "whole world" or "globe" ...
7:08 Pretty obviously, Abraham and Lot were not given the view Jesus was given when Satan invented TV (or plagiarised it from angels communicating to Daniel or Ezechiel, or to Moses when showed the creation days). They were standing at the Holy Land, and viewing that.
Since "terra" and "eretz" are known to have a double meaning, where Germanic languages would distinguish "Earth/ Erde/Jord" and "Land" (same spelling in all of them), it's useless to give examples of "eretz" meaning "land" in a context to prove it doesn't mean "earth" in the context of the Flood.
8:01 I think your lawyer got the better of your Exegete.
"they are just assuming" sounds great in a court case when defending a client. But on this one, God and the Church Fathers aren't yours.
It may seem a bit wooden to make distinctions like "eretz means land when a specific geography is delimited" and "eretz means earth any other occasion" ... but it's a way to make sense of text, it was used by Renaissance scholars.
We cannot go by what "land" means in German or Swedish without geographic specification, like "country" in English, because "rus" doesn't translate "terra" or "eretz." I'm not sure the Bible even has the concept explicitated in one word. "outside the city" or "on the road" (to Jericho or to Emmaus) are concepts that come to my mind.
So, if you'd like to make an argument for "they are just assuming" I'd challenge you to make a word study in English, with "land" even "country" and "earth" and stipulate it must not mean "countryside" and come up with a land, when there is no geographic delimitation. Use as many texts as you like.
8:37 I would say it means in context "from every nation under heaven,
that had devout Jews" ...
10:01 The global interpretation, apart from involving less difficulty about walls of water (that isn't frozen to ice) actually also removes difficulty about the viability of the Ark.
It's safer to be on the Pacific than in the Bay of Biscay, in bad weather. There is a physical reason for that. Let's first deal with the waves that are created by the wind flowing on the water.
The waters in the wave are actually moving in a kind of circle. The thing about it is, the centre cannot physically be lower than the sea bottom. This makes the circle smaller and the waves more abrupt the shallower the water is.
Now to rogue waves or giant waves. They are created by a kind of resonance within the waters, and given the bigness of them in the Pacific, such resonances are also less likely to be abrupt and dramatic events that threaten ships. Check Thor Heyderdahl and Kitín Muñoz who have crossed large portions of the Pacific in rafts.
Check the schooner Wyoming that broke up in the shallow waters of Nantucket Bay.
Check why the North Sea is dangerous, like the Baltic.
It also makes little to no sense to assume that Noah stayed and waited for the Ark to be lifted on waters for 120 years, just so as to preach, if he could have avoided the Flood by a journey to another "land" (whereever that would have been).
It also makes little to no sense to say the three sons only spread over the region where the Flood had happened. It would seem to be physically impossible to get a Flood reaching from Ethiopia to Armenia when it was just regional.
Again, if you want the time for the Flood to match (up to c. 1000 years before Abraham was born), there is no good option for a purely local flooding, unless you want one in just Mesopotamia, which would not explain why Noah's sons came to inhabit Egypt (Mitzraim) and Ethiopia (Kush). And that one would certainly have been too shallow for the Ark.
10:43 You are mixing apples and oranges.
At an Easter Sermon, if the priest wants to mention Flood or Exodus (both of which are readings of the Easter Vigil), he should definitely take a cue from St. Paul.
But, if you want to discuss the extent of the Flood or logistics of the camp of the Israelites in the desert in some other, less solemn, context, you are obviously free to do so.
That Biblical history is meant for spiritual instruction is not under dispute. The dispute is rather whether this means, we are "missing the point" if we read it as history and explore it as history.
"Don't force your reading on someone else"
As a writer, I am enjoying the attention of loads of readers who are either voluntary (or if drafted, they were so by someone else, so it's not my fault). 36 784 last Saturday, not sure yet if that's a non-recurrent exception.
I am not an Inquisitor. I am not an actual active cult leader and if someone is trying to treat my blogs as instructions for a cult, they are doing so behind my back and over my head. The best way to avoid it is not to stop writing, nor to stop being a writer who's not an actual preacher, with blog posts that are not laws or sermon, but for Catholics to start treating me as what I'm doing or trying my best to do.
13:17 Who's making it a fight?
1) Atheists and Communists have taken issue and campaigned to get people out of Christianity by pretending the Biblical account taken literally (and with the Flood, universally) is impossible. Fundies, including Catholic ones (even if Karl Keating didn't know any of us in San Diego when he started Catholic answers) have responded. Oh, yes, there is evidence for the Flood, you can spell it Permian, Cambrian or Jurassic, but it's there.
2) For those who argue that we are taking the wrong approach, let me remind you that the "right" approach became very popular among Russian Orthodox of the Patriarcate of Moscow in the 1970's, and it was controlled then, as now by Kirill, by KGB men. They are shouting to the four winds (and shutting the ears to all responses) that our tactic will ruin Christianity. Their tactic will at least ruin the study of Creation Science and Flood Geology, which would have preserved quite a lot from apostasy.
So, I've tried to keep it a civil discussion, and get treated as if picking a fight, and I'm always presumed to be "spared a humiliation" I alone would not have foreseen, when people on the other side, above a certain social level, as dismissable as I, refuse to answer it. I'm "spared" readers who admit to reading me and would therefore increase the chances of my texts hitting the printing press and making me an income. Of those 36 784,
lots chose 4 to 6 AM (French time) to view me, as if decided to let no one know they were doing so.
13:28 No, we don't risk it.
City of God, book 15, chapter 27 tells us:
Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all, or that, whether it be so or no, there is here no prophecy of the church. For what right-minded man will contend that books so religiously preserved during thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be considered when we read them? For, not to mention other instances, if the number of the animals entailed the construction of an ark of great size, where was the necessity of sending into it two unclean and seven clean animals of each species, when both could have been preserved in equal numbers? Or could not God, who ordered them to be preserved in order to replenish the race, restore them in the same way He had created them?
But they who contend that these things never happened, but are only figures setting forth other things, in the first place suppose that there could not be a flood so great that the water should rise fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, because it is said that clouds cannot rise above the top of Mount Olympus, because it reaches the sky where there is none of that thicker atmosphere in which winds, clouds, and rains have their origin. They do not reflect that the densest element of all, earth, can exist there; or perhaps they deny that the top of the mountain is earth. Why, then, do these measurers and weighers of the elements contend that earth can be raised to those aerial altitudes, and that water cannot, while they admit that water is lighter, and more likely to ascend than earth? What reason do they adduce why earth, the heavier and lower element, has for so many ages scaled to the tranquil ether, while water, the lighter, and more likely to ascend, is not suffered to do the same even for a brief space of time?
They say, too, that the area of that ark could not contain so many kinds of animals of both sexes, two of the unclean and seven of the clean. But they seem to me to reckon only one area of 300 cubits long and 50 broad, and not to remember that there was another similar in the story above, and yet another as large in the story above that again; and that there was consequently an area of 900 cubits by 150. And if we accept what Origen has with some appropriateness suggested, that Moses the man of God, being, as it is written, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Acts 7:22 who delighted in geometry, may have meant geometrical cubits, of which they say that one is equal to six of our cubits, then who does not see what a capacity these dimensions give to the ark? For as to their objection that an ark of such size could not be built, it is a very silly calumny; for they are aware that huge cities have been built, and they should remember that the ark was an hundred years in building. Or, perhaps, though stone can adhere to stone when cemented with nothing but lime, so that a wall of several miles may be constructed, yet plank cannot be riveted to plank by mortices, bolts, nails, and pitch-glue, so as to construct an ark which was not made with curved ribs but straight timbers, which was not to be launched by its builders, but to be lifted by the natural pressure of the water when it reached it, and which was to be preserved from shipwreck as it floated about rather by divine oversight than by human skill.
As to another customary inquiry of the scrupulous about the very minute creatures, not only such as mice and lizards, but also locusts, beetles, flies, fleas, and so forth, whether there were not in the ark a larger number of them than was determined by God in His command, those persons who are moved by this difficulty are to be reminded that the words every creeping thing of the earth only indicate that it was not needful to preserve in the ark the animals that can live in the water, whether the fishes that live submerged in it, or the sea-birds that swim on its surface. Then, when it is said male and female, no doubt reference is made to the repairing of the races, and consequently there was no need for those creatures being in the ark which are born without the union of the sexes from inanimate things, or from their corruption; or if they were in the ark, they might be there as they commonly are in houses, not in any determinate numbers; or if it was necessary that there should be a definite number of all those animals that cannot naturally live in the water, that so the most sacred mystery which was being enacted might be bodied forth and perfectly figured in actual realities, still this was not the care of Noah or his sons, but of God. For Noah did not catch the animals and put them into the ark, but gave them entrance as they came seeking it. For this is the force of the words, They shall come unto you, Genesis 6:19-20 — not, that is to say, by man's effort, but by God's will. But certainly we are not required to believe that those which have no sex also came; for it is expressly and definitely said, They shall be male and female. For there are some animals which are born out of corruption, but yet afterwards they themselves copulate and produce offspring, as flies; but others, which have no sex, like bees. Then, as to those animals which have sex, but without ability to propagate their kind, like mules and she-mules, it is probable that they were not in the ark, but that it was counted sufficient to preserve their parents, to wit, the horse and the ass; and this applies to all hybrids. Yet, if it was necessary for the completeness of the mystery, they were there; for even this species has male and female.
Another question is commonly raised regarding the food of the carnivorous animals — whether, without transgressing the command which fixed the number to be preserved, there were necessarily others included in the ark for their sustenance; or, as is more probable, there might be some food which was not flesh, and which yet suited all. For we know how many animals whose food is flesh eat also vegetable products and fruits, especially figs and chestnuts. What wonder is it, therefore, if that wise and just man was instructed by God what would suit each, so that without flesh he prepared and stored provision fit for every species? And what is there which hunger would not make animals eat? Or what could not be made sweet and wholesome by God, who, with a divine facility, might have enabled them to do without food at all, had it not been requisite to the completeness of so great a mystery that they should be fed? But none but a contentious man can suppose that there was no prefiguring of the church in so manifold and circumstantial a detail. For the nations have already so filled the church, and are comprehended in the framework of its unity, the clean and unclean together, until the appointed end, that this one very manifest fulfillment leaves no doubt how we should interpret even those others which are somewhat more obscure, and which cannot so readily be discerned. And since this is so, if not even the most audacious will presume to assert that these things were written without a purpose, or that though the events really happened they mean nothing, or that they did not really happen, but are only allegory, or that at all events they are far from having any figurative reference to the church; if it has been made out that, on the other hand, we must rather believe that there was a wise purpose in their being committed to memory and to writing, and that they did happen, and have a significance, and that this significance has a prophetic reference to the church, then this book, having served this purpose, may now be closed, that we may go on to trace in the history subsequent to the deluge the courses of the two cities — the earthly, that lives according to men, and the heavenly, that lives according to God.
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What are Creation Scientists and Flood Geologists doing other than updating the precise questions and updating the precise answers that St. Austin gave?
