Two Columbia University Geologists, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, in Noah’s Flood (Simon & Schuster), have postulated that in an ancient warming period, glaciers retreated, and melted water from the European glaciers existing at the time began to flow north into the North Sea, depriving the Black Sea of its main source of replenishment. Parts of what is oceanic today in that region became dry land, but as the Mediterranean Ocean overflowed, it poured water back into the Black Sea basin. Apparently, the phenomenon of ocean basins flooding catastrophically during periods of rising sea levels was not unique to this particular event. There seems to be some factual basis, then, for concluding that the offspring of Abraham and Sarah, including Methuselah and his grandchildren like Moses may have encountered something like the great flood reported in this text.

In any case, the story of a catastrophic flood is not just recounted in ancient Hebraic literature. There are other, perhaps older accounts in literature of the Ancient Near East about catastrophic floods. Comparing the biblical version with these other accounts provides insights into the meaning of the biblical text for us today. Both a 22nd-century BC Sumerian Myth on the Flood in Mesopotamia as well as the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh of a century later, report on great floods from which gods delivered heroic figures. But unlike the biblical account, there is no report of God promising to preserve God’s creation in the future (9:8-17). True enough, in the Gilgamesh epic, an ancestor of the main character, Utnapishtim, does relate to Gilgamesh in how he had followed instructions of the gods to build an ark to save mankind and been rewarded with eternal life (xi.2-7). But the account makes clear that Utnapishtim’s experience with the flood is unique, that Gilgamesh cannot hope to find immortality in that path.

The biblical account by contrast (likely the weaving together of the ancient Eastern oral tradition with the Priestly tradition) has God offering deliverance and hope, not just to Noah but to us all. Martin Luther claimed that this a story about God’s compassion, in which God delights “like a mother who is caressing and petting her child…” (Luther’s Works, Vol.2, p.145). The reformer’s description of the meaning of the rainbow which our loving God now uses as an emblem of God’s promise never to destroy the earth and all creatures (9:12-17) is also profound. He claims that the mixture of colors in the rainbow reminds us that its inner color is like water, but its outer rim is the color of fire, indicating that wrath has limits (Ibid., p.149). When we consider our text, when we see rainbows, we are reminded that “whatever misfortunes there are, of which this life surely has countless numbers…—all this will be turned into salvation and joy if you are in the ark, that is, if you … lay hold of the promises made in Christ…” (Ibid., p.155)