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Rain, Rain, Go Away // Abigale Bell

 


The Roman account of the Great Flood is very interesting when compared with the Christian account. We can see similarities in the overall ideas of the story, but, more specifically, in the language. 

Jupiter says on page 6, "...it would take too long to tell what wickedness I found everywhere..." (Ovid, Book I). These words are strikingly similar to those of Moses in Genesis 6. "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil" (Gen. 6:5). Both of these passages illustrate the major problem in every flood story: the totality of human evil. Of course, the only way to fix this problem is to destroy this flawed humanity and start over. 

The method of choice: a flood. Obviously, in both stories the mode of destruction was a flood. On page 8, we read about how "...the sea in unchecked freedom has buried the hills, and fresh waves beat against the mountaintops" (Ovid, Book I). A picture like this is drawn in Genesis where it says, "...all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents form the sky...Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth..." (Gen. 7:11, 19)

A final similarity to note is that in both stories, a few humans survive the purge of life. In the Roman version, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha are floating in a boat and worshipping the gods. In the Chrisitan version, Noah and his family are also floating in a boat and worshipping God. In both cases, the humans are worshipping their God or gods, and fulfilling the purpose of the flood. That purpose was to turn the eyes of the humans back to who they were supposed to be worshipping in the first place. In both cases, it worked. 

Commented on Jamie's and Hailey's posts.

Comments

  1. Micah PowersOctober 22, 2020 at 7:51 AM

    I love your draw on exact scriptural language. You brought a great summary of exactly what makes them true. I know I had mentioned corroborating evidence in class and that is something I really see here. Lee Strobel talked about it in relation to roman documents multiple biblical accounts and personal accounts concerning the validity of the life of Jesus Christ. I see this as a great example of corroborating evidence with the existence of very similar flood stories in completely different cultures.

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