Flood Stories as Social Theodicies

Reflections during a long flight and the flu

Ancient Flood Myths as Sociological Theodicies

Definition: Theodicy is the branch of theology that seeks to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the belief in a benevolent, omnipotent God. Theodicies aiming to provide a rational explain of why a good God permits the presence of tragedy and injustice.

Recommended Reading:

Cat Bohannon, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (Knopf, 2023).

Matt Lynch, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (IVP, 2023).

Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015)

Theodicies

I am not fan of theodicies. Following Martin Luther and Simone Weil, I believe that every effort to rationalize affliction inevitably calls evil good or good evil, precisely because the premises are flawed. I regard Luther and Weil’s Theology of the Cross as an anti-theodicy that sees goodness and affliction intersect in the Passion of the Christ without trying to harmonize real contradictions.

That said, theodicies are ancient. They express humanity’s authentic lament and our wrestle with the Why? of the absurd inside our fragile belief systems. When I regard that deeply human effort through that lens, I have a lot of patience for what’s going on. As I discovered recently, alongside the particular calamities that trigger our theodicies, we can also identify ongoing social crises that a culture has begun to recognize and weaves with the activity or inactivity of the Divine in the narratives we compose.

Flood Stories as Theodicies

Ancient flood myths are a form of theodicy. The collective memory of a world-ending or catastrophic floods are ubiquitous to human cultures across the world. While they very dramatically, they also share themes including creation, judgment, survival, and renewal.
A brief web search turned up far more than I expected:

1. Mesopotamian Flood Myths:

   • Epic of Gilgamesh: Utnapishtim survives a divine flood by building a boat, similar to Noah's Ark.

   • Atra-Hasis: Another Mesopotamian tale where a flood is sent to curb human overpopulation.

2. Jewish Flood Narratives:

   • Noah's Ark: A global flood sent by God, with Noah saving his family and animals in an ark.

   • Enoch: Noah’s flood sent to drown the Nephilim, who are destroying the world.

3. Greek Mythology:

   • Deucalion and Pyrrha: Zeus floods the earth, and Deucalion and Pyrrha survive by building a chest.

4. Hindu Mythology:

   • Manu and the Fish: A fish warns Manu of a great flood, and he builds a boat to save himself and the seeds of life.

5. Chinese Mythology:

   • Great Flood of Gun-Yu: A flood controlled by Yu the Great, who becomes a cultural hero.

6. Native American Flood Myths:

   • Ojibwe: The Great Flood and the creation of Turtle Island.

   • Choctaw: A flood story involving survival on a raft.

7. Mesoamerican Myths:

   • Maya Popol Vuh: A flood sent to destroy the wooden people, an early creation of the gods.

8. Inca Mythology:

   • Unu Pachakuti: A flood sent by the god Viracocha to destroy giants.

9. Norse Mythology:

   • Bergelmir: A flood caused by the blood of Ymir, the primordial giant.

10. African Myths:

    • Mandingo: A flood story involving divine retribution and survival.

11. Pacific Islander Myths:

    • Hawaiian Flood Myth: Nu'u survives a flood in a canoe, guided by the god Kane.

12. Australian Aboriginal Myths:

    • Floods caused by ancestral spirits as acts of creation or punishment.

13. Zoroastrian Mythology:

    • Yima's Vara: A divine flood avoided by building an underground refuge.

I’m particularly interested in reading how some of these stories may function as theodicies and what crises they address. While some flood stories focused on how the gods/God created conditions for human habitation (Ojibwe) or disposed of monsters that threatened human life (Enoch, Unu Pachakuti), I’m pondering those that may begin with the memory of a catastrophe that begged the question of why it happened. The story may then function as an archetype and/or warning for the reader.

An additional note: prior to the Enlightenment (including in the Bible), theodicies did not distinguish between natural disasters and human wickedness since both alike were considered sovereignly ordained acts. Whether it was a plague, a famine, an earthquake, or an invading army, God is typically pictured as the active agent (though Jesus handily refutes that inference in the first paragraph of Luke 13).

Gilgamesh via Bohannon

The earliest Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh may be dated as early as 2100 BCE, prior to the composition of Genesis. In that account, Enlil (the chief god) leads the decision to flood the earth. Why? Because the gods (most of them) are irritated by the growing clamor and chaos caused by humanity. The rising din is disruptive—by eliminating humankind in a great flood, peace will be restored. Humanity is saved when Ea (or Enki), god of wisdom, secretly warns Utnapishtim and instructs him to build a boat. Utnapishtim survives the flood, so the human race is preserved.

Previously, I had not given any thought to the meaning of the gods’ aggravation or why our noise assaulted to their ears. But I’ve been captivated by Cat Bohannon’s must-read book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.

Bohannon posits that flood myths such as Atra-Hasis and Gilgamesh were composed to address a human crisis: the problem of explosive population growth in the cities. The gods were annoyed because the people were ‘noisy’ ... but why noisy? Because of the rapid expansion of big cities, due in great part, she believes, to practices such as urban wet nursing (and her argument is biologically solid).

Thus, the social foundations for those flood myths (meaning, how they tried to explain the 'why?' of a big flood theologically) was a response to overpopulation. In hindsight, they believed that when the big floods came, the gods’ agenda was to depopulate. In other words, an actual sociological crisis was projected into a divine response to address the problem with a flood. It’s an early form of theodicy. OR was the flood a metaphor for the people themselves… a human deluge overflowing the banks of the city!

In either case, the story can function as a theodicy (justifying the gods) at two levels:
(1) The gods are not simply capricious. Their judgments may be destructive, but their acts aren’t simply arbitrary. When bad things happen, if the gods are involved, they are addressing an actual problem (not necessarily sin) relative to human activity.

And (2) at least one of the gods was even sympathetic and humane. In polytheistic religions, the various gods represent aspects or attributes of the Most High God or council of gods.

Genesis via Lynch

By way of both comparison and contrast, Matt Lynch’s, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (2023) describes how the Genesis flood story also addresses a sociological crisis—a different one: the problem of human violence. As Lynch reads, Genesis 6, he hears echoes of Genesis 1, where we read that “God saw that [what he created] was good”—and specifically, good for people to inhabit.

But in Genesis 6:11, we read, “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Lynch helpfully notices the same Hebrew phrasing from Genesis 1 here, but now reversed. “God saw that the earth was RUINED.” That is, the earth was ruined for human habitation—rendered uninhabitable by human violence such that human extinction would be inevitable. “God saw how corrupt [destined to perish] the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways” (6:12), leading to a ruined creation that would ultimately be uninhabitable and bring about our extinction.

So, in meaning-making a big flood in their oral history or cultural memory, the Jews set their story over against Gilgamesh, by reading Yahweh’s flood not as mitigating overpopulation through human extinction, but rather, restoring an inhabitable world to preserve humankind from extinction. It is a re-Creation story, a reset, a fresh start. By the way, I assign Matt’s book in my spring “Peace & Violence in the Old Testament” online course at SSU.ca, where he and Pete Enns each join as a guest lecturer. Yes, I’m recruiting.

Theodicies as Social Commentary

What the stories have in common is a flood, an act of divine compassion, and a hero who saves the race by building an ark. And to my point, both are theodicies that seek to somehow rationalize a divinely sanctioned apocalyptic flood. But my question is how the stories also function as social commentaries. Gilgamesh deals with cities flooded with or because of extreme overcrowding; Genesis is critiquing with human violence toward one another and its environmental impact.

In the Genesis account, one message is that unlike the Gilgamesh gods, despite the destructive power of the flood, God’s heart is to restore. That’s the theological message. But the story also sends an ongoing ethical message: human violence is so self-destructive that unchecked, it will lead to our extinction. God has provided a way of escape, of salvation—an ark into which all are still being welcomed.

Noah’s ark thus becomes a spiritual archetypes for both Jews and Christians, and a metaphor for readers today. It’s not that God is the agent of divine genocide, nor that God ‘sends’ climate-related disasters as punishment upon humanity. But then what? Historically, a Christian reading was that when the flood comes (e.g., politically, socially, ideologically, etc.), there is an invitation via repentance (admitting we can’t save ourselves) to enter ‘the ark of salvation’ (don’t read that narrowly) to endure whatever comes together as a human family (a every human and every creature with us) that knows God is ultimately the life-giver and not the death-dealer.