Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part One

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

We all tend to love a good disaster story. In films, we have “Atlantis, the Lost Continent”, “The Towering Inferno”; The Poseidon Adventure”; “Earthquake”; “Deep Impact”; “On the Beach”, “Swarm”, “Twister”, “When Worlds Collide”, etc. not to mention more alien invasion films than you can care to mention, far less remember. Surely films about nasty extraterrestrials are an order of magnitude greater than your fingers and toes put together, and when you toss in those nasties that Mother Nature can summon up, well it’s just pure gloom and doom all around. There’s no escape! 

It’s even better when a gloom and doom scenario is based on a real disaster – Pompeii (79), the San Francisco earthquake (1906); the floundering of RMS Titanic (1912), the Hindenburg crash (1937), the SS Andrea Doria sinking (1956), the Asian tsunami (2004), Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy (1974), the Black Plague, and literally thousands of other disasters, from plane crashes and train wrecks, to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, explosions; you name it – if it causes death and destruction it’s front-page and evening TV news.

Biblical disasters hold special pride of place (there’s even several documentary DVDs devoted to the theme) but first I’d better define what I mean by disaster. If an ant gets hit by a lump of hail, or even several humans wiped out in a car accident, well that’s a disaster for the ant or the humans, but not really a disaster in the larger context of what we think of as a real disaster (so Jonah and the ‘Whale’ isn’t a real disaster come survival against all the odds story). A bona-fide disaster has to inflict major damage and/or loss of life on a reasonably high percentage of the geographical area impacted upon. That ‘geographical area’ could of course be a ship or a plane carrying a relatively large numbers of passengers and crew down to their gloom and doom.  

Now there are disasters contained within the texts of the standard Bible. Some, especially the story of the flood (Genesis), have parallels in many other mythologies. Most are one-offs. I will make no absolute claims for the truth and accuracy, reality or non-reality, of these tall tales; apart from the observation that there are no non-Biblical bona-fide historical references or archaeological confirmations for the lot of them. Instead, they are just to be taken as  ‘riveting’ or as ‘captivating’ as much as the various real and imaginary disaster happenings part and parcel of our modern society that hold the attention of the reading and/or viewing audience.

*We Are Sailing on Noah’s Ark (Genesis)

Fortunately, Captain Noah doesn’t run into any icebergs on his maiden voyage. Disaster lurks elsewhere, and its Noah and crew who get to enact the great escape of all great escapes and survive. Survive what of course is that burst water main that floods everything for a rather long period of time, which is bad news for those 99.999% not on board with Noah as cork or foam-filled life jackets haven’t been invented yet. It is sink or swim time, and those without either life jackets or the timber deck of the Ark to stroll upon end up sinking.

If 99.999% of the world’s human (and non-human) population drowns because of this unprecedented and singular event (that 40 day and night global rainstorm and resulting flood), well that’s got to meet the dictionary definition of a disaster. There’s no evidence for it of course, and an event of this magnitude on a global scale isn’t physically possible in any event, but small-scale floods that can get embellished and blown out of all proportion in the telling and retellings, well that’s a different kettle of fish. But that’s hardly going to put a major dent in the human (and animal) population. Still, if you’re a fan of disaster flicks, this Biblical downpour (or water main burst) has appeal and will float your boat as it were, and no doubt it had appeal to disaster fans way back then. But all up, I suspect this was a minor event that got hyped up out of all proportion from its actual reality (if any). 

*Then there’s Sin City: Sodom & Gomorrah, the Las Vegas of the Era (Genesis)

Genesis 19: 24: Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown! This almost reads as if God was doing a preseason exhibition demonstration as a warm-up to Pompeii!

So what was the reason for this massive exercise in smiting? What exactly pissed the Almighty off? Apparently, among other wickedness, all sorts of unnatural acts (close encounters between the same sex) were enacted.

One question therefore immediately arises, if God was so against unnatural acts, how come He didn’t smite ancient Greece, ruled by those – shock, horror – ‘other gods’? That’s strike one alone. Homosexuality was socially acceptable in Greek society (strike two), not only between consulting adults but between adults and minors as well (strike three). Well maybe God was more than just a tad worried about being thrashed by Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and being outnumbered by the Olympians, thought discretion was the better part of valour. 

Maybe God should now smite down the United States and other Christian countries that have given equal rights to their gay communities. Well see that hasn’t happened (much to the disappointment of Christian Fundamentalists) which either tells you something about the reality of God or of God’s alleged wrath against unnatural acts – or maybe God’s too scared to take on the might of the USA, et al. least He get nuked in return.  

In any event, archaeologists and other ancient historians and Biblical scholars haven’t yet been able to turn the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah into a patch of physical real estate despite apparently knowing where to look (the Dead Sea region). Still, if a disaster via geological forces (i.e. – Pompeii) is your bag; Sodom & Gomorrah fits the fire and brimstone bill. If of course you get away from an Act of God to a Deliberate Act of God (as the Bible says it was), then there’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan) or Dresden (Germany) as parallels (though whether or not Acts of War qualify as disasters is another issue, but in that context I’ll rule out the Battle of Jericho as a Biblical disaster).       

To be continued…