[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 17/11/2010 2:14 PM, Micha Berger wrote:

> But where did your Zeide get his peshat from?

I don't know where he got it.  For all I know it may have been his
own sevara.


> Recall the baseline assumption, "leshacheis kol basar asher yeish bo
> ruach chaim" (6:17) Wouldn't any medrash that says the flood was more
> local than the spread of all sorts of fauna actually explicitly say so --
> or at say something that would require you to conclude so?

In a place where there were no people, what purpose could a flood serve?
The idea that the animals sinned too can't be taken literally; animals
have no bechira, so if they corrupted their ways it can only be as a
result of the behaviour of the people around them.  So where there were
no people, surely the animals behaved as they normally would, so why
destroy them?

In the 1656 years between Adam and the flood, did people spread out
over the whole world?  Was there a "dor haflaga" to make them do so?
How big was the whole human race, then?  Did they multiply like rabbits
as they seem to have done in the first few centuries after the flood,
or did they reproduce slowly and remain few, as might be deduced from
how long the named men took to have their first child?


> As for your question, perhaps the Himalayas were already well exposed
> before Harei Ararat. However, the teiva wasn't near the Himalayas at
> the time, and therefore didn't come to rest on them.

This is difficult to work into Rashi's treatment of the dates.  He
certainly seems to assume that these were the highest mountains, the
exposure of whose tips the Torah notes as a milestone.  But then,
Rashi's treatment of the dates isdifficult anyway.


> I also wonder why someone would posit a local flood while still denying
> the age of human habitation of India, China, Tanzania (think Kilimanjaro),
> etc...

It's not a matter of having to confront evidence, it's just not seeing
a need for a truly global flood.


> (In any case, my original point on Areivim was just that it's not a
> typical "Moderate Chareidi" position to posit a local flood; you'll find
> few chareidim of any sort considering the idea.)

I don't know; I've never conducted a survey.  But I gave one counter-
example.  Yes, he may have been an outlier; "data" is not the plural
of "anecdote".  But this is the anecdote I have personal knowledge of,
so to me the idea of a local flood isn't startling.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher