Q. Are the stories in the Bible all factual, or are they just stories to teach a lesson? Example: Was there an actual flood which covered the earth, or just a section of the earth, or was it a story?
A. Whether biblical accounts are “factual” or “just stories to teach a lesson” depends on what the biblical author (divine and human) intended to write.
If the author meant to provide an authentic report of an actual historical event, then, as people of faith, we accept that record on the basis of scriptural authority, the Church’s testimony (see Catechism §§105-108), and the support of reliable corroborating evidence (or the absence of compelling counterevidence). The same does not apply if the author purposed “just to teach a lesson,” without necessarily believing, or inviting us to believe, that the events really took place. This differentiation implies, of course, some reasonable means of determining whether an author meant to furnish an accurate representation of past events or to register a point in some other way.
The questions surrounding these issues have generated endless discussion across the centuries, and not just in faculty lounge banter. They are the object of serious biblical, theological, and historical reflection, with a great deal of weight hanging on the answers. Did God actually create the cosmos, or are the early chapters of Genesis a cosmological myth invented to explain how everything got here? Did the crucified Jesus actually rise from the dead and ascend into heaven, or are these tales concocted in early Christian imagination? Did the miracles recounted in the Bible actually happen, or are these romanticized bits of folklore fabricated and rehearsed to inspire optimism on a gloomy day? We cannot tackle all the relevant issues here, but let me offer a few guidelines before returning to your specific example about the Noahic Flood.
First, to clarify a matter of definition, ‘story’ should not be mistaken as synonymous with ‘fiction.’ There is no necessary contradiction between the recounting of an actual historical event and the telling of a story about that event. In fact, a narrative recounting of historical events just is a story—the gospel story, for example, or the story of the early Church, or the story of my conversion, or your family’s story.
Second, with respect to authorial (or textual) intent, our surest access to an author’s mind is through his or her actual testimony, or, in some cases, through the substantiating witness of another trusted source. In other words, the best way to determine the aim of a biblical text is by attending to the actual claims and relevant details embedded in the textual rendition, including any corroborating evidence supplied by other biblical texts (e.g., dates, names, places, and events of Old Testament stories recounted and confirmed in Jesus’ and the apostles’ teaching, as in Jesus’ appeal to the flood in Noah’s day as the basis for his warning in Matthew 24:37-39).
Third, and related, the choice of genre (type of literary composition) is an important key to determining the biblical author’s aim. Some events are recounted in straightforward narrative prose with apparent intent to report what actually happened (e.g., Israel’s exodus from Egypt in Exodus 7–15; Luke’s “orderly account” of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection [see Lk 1:1-4]); others are written in poetic and parabolic modes (e.g., the Song of Moses in Exodus 15; Jesus’ parables in the Gospels). The latter need not be “factual” in the same sense as the former (e.g., “At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up” [Exod 15:8] is an instance of poetic flare [!], not a plain report of how God opened a pathway through the Sea).
Fourth, sometimes extrabiblical (outside-the-Bible) evidence corroborates that a biblical event actually happened. This is not always the case, however, at which times we are reminded of British historian Alan Millard’s dictum that the “absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” Just because a biblical event does not appear in the ancient annals of Egypt or Rome does not render it suspect (as if secular and hostile sources were more objective and reliable than spiritual and sympathetic ones). Happily, scientific and archaeological research has done nothing to undermine our confidence in the Bible’s historicity, but a great deal to bolster such confidence.
Finally, it is noteworthy that, in addition to being factual, biblical narratives of the historical variety are (a) partial––they do not purport to tell us everything that happened, only what matters; (b) depictional––they reveal God’s perspective on the meaning of an event (God’s version of reality), not merely the fact that it happened; and (c) artful––they tell us what they tell us in ways that are masterfully, even breathtakingly, crafted. In the words of one author, “reading a biblical story is like observing a polished gem, and the more you examine it from various angles, the more you are captivated by the many facets of its brilliance” (Amit), which, of course, does not mean that it is untrue.
Returning to your threefold question about the Noahic Flood: (a) “Was there an actual flood?” Yes, the deluge is recounted in straightforward historical narrative prose, with lots of corroborating biblical testimony to its reality (Gen 6–9; cf. Matt 24:37-44; Lk 17:26-27; 1 Pet 3:20-22; 2 Pet 3:1-13). (b) Did it “cover the earth, or just a section of the earth?” The biblical details favor a universal cataclysm; but even if biblical interpreters and geologists should disagree on thi\s point, all will concur that decisions about the extent of the Flood do not determine or alter the meaning of the Flood in the biblical record. (c) “Or was it a story?” Yes, that too—a story that is factual, partial, depictional, and artful.
This question was answered by Dr. Vern Steiner, president of the Emmaus Institute for Biblical Studies. For more information, visit www.emmausinstitute.net.
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