Skip to main content

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.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Word Painting in Vesta—Lily Caswell

  Word painting in Weelkes’s As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending is quite interesting. And because that is a really long title, I’m calling it Vesta from now on. Word painting is basically when the melody matches up with the lyrics. So in Vesta, when it says “ascending” and “descending”, there are obviously scales going up and down. The madrigal was written for six voices to sing unaccompanied, so when they start to come together, it matches with the lyrics; so if the lyric says “two by two”, there are only two voices; “three by three” there is another voice added, and so forth. All the parts combine in exclamation before Vesta before it is left “all alone” to the highest soprano. All the way to the end of the piece, word painting continues when shouts of “Long live fair Oriana” with the bass sustaining long notes. Word painting in and of itself is a highly interesting topic because a musician takes the words of a poem or a sonnet and writes a melody line that pertains to cer...
4 comments
Read more

Honor and Gain; Which Do You Seek?

 Pericles.... thanks? I can only imagine that's what the family and friends were thinking after they heard his historic funeral speech honoring the departed. What do I mean? Well, Pericles briefly mentions the men who have fallen at the beginning of his speech, but then goes on to discuss how great Athens is, and how the contributions the city has made to the world are unmatched.. why? I understand that he is also commending the citizens of Athens and empowering them to continue to make their city greater, but I thought this was supposed to be a funeral speech about dead war heroes, not about Athens. Another thing I found interesting is what Pericles said on page five about honor: "For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness" (Thucydides, page 5). Have you ever watched a show or movie, or read a book, about a duel between two men? There is always an unspoken agre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Aristotle Might Not Like Me...Or Jesus//Haylee Lynd

      Aristotle says that the man who does not get angry at the things he should be angry at "is thought unlikely to defend himself; and to endure being insulted and put up with insult to one's friends is slavish" (Aristotle 41). While he states that passivity is preferred to excessive anger, he still gives great criticism to it.  In contrast to Aristotle, the man who Christians believe to be the most just is Jesus who states in Matthew 5:39-40, "...do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." Essentially, arguing that one is not to respond in anger when insulted or hurt, to not defend one's self. Most individual's are unable to achieve this. Our natural instinct is to defend ourselves, especially in physical cases. However, Christians strive to be like Jesus in this way. I would also argue that it is a very admirable wa...
2 comments
Read more