Genesis Bible Commentary: God's Reason for the Flood

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Note:

This is part 6 of a series of 6 articles on the Bible's book of Genesis.

Click here for the series overview.

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by Rod Martin, Jr.

(I recommend you read the series of 6 articles in sequence for the greatest understanding.)

What is Important to God?

Again, the purpose of the Bible seems to be one of awakening the spiritual component of man. Perhaps this is the return of man's viewpoint from a focus on physical instrumentality toward a reliance on spirit-based control.

If, as I suspect, we were each in the Garden (not our physical bodies, mind you), then we are each fallen angels of the most high. And our memories of it all have been shot to smithereens. We inhabit these Homo sapiens bodies with a purpose. And that purpose is one of reawakening the former angels—now "dead" asleep (our true selves or souls).

Okay, now picture your ability to solve complex problems while you sleep. Not easy, is it? In fact, dreams are the only place for contemplation while you sleep, and they are too unsettled for us to develop any solutions to a complex problem. This could well be the description of these sleeping immortals when they are without a body or when they are attached to an animal body. There is insufficient clarity of consciousness to plot their escape from physical entrapment.

These immortals need some form of stable consciousness in order to plan such an escape. Homo sapiens was that instrument of stable consciousness. And civilization was the stable environment which would allow for such pursuits. Hunter-gatherers would have had almost no time for such things.

My hypothesis is that God's plan included the development of Homo sapiens and its intelligent speech toward the development of civilization and the reawakening of His spiritual children.

My hypothesis includes the idea that something threatened that development. This threat was the target of the Flood.

(See, What was Noah's Flood Supposed to Solve).

The Threat

We now have evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis mated. Was this the corruption of flesh which prompted the Flood? Certainly, if Homo neanderthalensis ceased to exist after the Flood, then one could say that humans could never again do that crime, if indeed it was a crime.

I've read that scientists suggest that Homo neanderthalensis had the ability to speak, but that it was inferior to the ability of Homo sapiens. Could the offspring of humans and Neanderthals have been incapable of superior reasoning? Could they have been more prone to violence than to negotiation or even forgiveness? Could they have been incapable of building civilization?

Genesis 6 talks of a threat to "God's way." The Flood removed that threat. All of the violence and wickedness that man has perpetrated since then has been insufficient reason to warrant another Flood. And yet Genesis suggests that a certain kind of wickedness and violence was all the reason God needed for the Flood. It seems clear that the reason for the Flood had been cured.

It is my hypothesis that Homo neanderthalensis were the "daughters of man." The species looked enough like man to be called man, and Neanderthal females were attractive enough to result in mating with humans.

No other reason that I can find makes sense for Noah's Flood. No other reason offers sufficient threat to God's mission for the rescue of His children. Humanity has been cured of the Neanderthal threat to their gene pool. The corruption of flesh has been sufficiently removed.

Could this new Genesis timeline provide some much-needed humility for Christians? Could the answers revealed for Noah's Flood allow believers to realize that there may be more answers which elude them because they have not used humility (what Jesus referred to as meekness)?

Is the new Genesis timeline valid? Is this revelation concerning the purpose of Noah's Flood correct? Perhaps only time and further research and discovery will give us the answers to these questions.

But perhaps a more important idea, here, is that much more humility is needed. What if the secrets to salvation have remained hidden? What if "following Christ" means not only accepting his teachings, but using the humility he recommended to find new answers to questions we need to be asking ourselves? Let the fear of God guide you. Salvation may not be as simple as you think. After all, Jesus compared it to a very narrow path. And too many fundamentalists are looking for an easy path -- one they call biblical literalism.