Part 2: Answering Skeptics on the Great Flood

…continued from Part One

For Part One

Ambrose: How wise also was Noah, who built the whole of the ark!

How just again! For he alone, preserved of all to be the father of the human race, was made a survivor of past generations, and the author of one to come; he was born, too, rather for the world and the universe than for himself.821

Apostolic Constitutions: for Thou art the Creator of men, and the giver of life, and the supplier of want, and the giver of laws, and the rewarder of those that observe them, and the avenger of those that transgress them; who didst bring the great flood upon the world by reason of the multitude of the ungodly, and didst deliver righteous Noah from that flood by an ark, with eight souls, the end of the foregoing generations.822

Arnobius: When was the human race destroyed by a flood? was it not before us? When was the world set on fire, and reduced to coals and ashes? was it not before us?823

Basil: “He separated them from their wives in order that with purity they might escape the flood and that shipwreck of the whole world.824

John Cassian: …and their wickedness increased to such a pitch that the world could only be purified by the flood and deluge.825 Clement of Rome: In the ninth generation are born the giants, so called from of old, not dragon-footed, as the fables of the Greeks relate, but men of immense bodies, whose bones, of enormous size, are still shown in some places for confirmation. But against these the righteous providence of God brought a flood upon the world, that the earth might be purified from their pollution, and every place might be turned into a sea by the destruction of the wicked.826

Cyril of Jerusalem: For consider what happened in the days of Noe. The giants sinned, and much wickedness was then spread over the earth, and because of this the flood was to come upon them: and in the five hundredth year God utters His threatening; but in the six hundredth He brought the flood upon the earth.827

Cyprian: Therefore that deluge which happened under Noah showed forth the figure of the persecution which now lately was poured forth over the whole world.828

Ephraim: And moreover, God made a flood, and washed the earth, and purged her crimes; fire and brimstone again He sent on her, that He might make white her stains. By fire He gave me the Sodomites, and by flood the Giants.829

Gregory the Great: In keeping with the truth of history, what means the fact that at the time of the flood the human race outside the ark dies, but within the ark is preserved unto life.830

Gregory Nanzianzus: And Noah’s glory was that he was pleasing to God; he who was entrusted with the saving of the whole world from the waters, or rather of the Seeds of the world, escaped the Deluge in a small Ark.831

Jerome: If at the deluge Noah was delivered, and the whole world perished, all men were flesh, and therefore were destroyed.832

Julian Africanus: God decreed to destroy the whole race of the living by a flood, having threatened that men should not survive beyond 120 years.833

John Damascene: He separated them from their wives in order that with purity they might escape the flood and that shipwreck of the whole world. After the cessation of the flood, however, He said, Go forth of the ark, thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives.834

Tertullian: But where -- I do not say were Christians, those despisers of your gods--but where were your gods themselves in those days, when the flood poured its destroying waters over all the world.835

Theodoret: “I will destroy man from the face of the earth,” and this he spake of countless multitudes, and when more than two thousand and two hundred years had gone by after Adam, he brought universal destruction on men through the flood.836

Theophilus: All the eight persons, therefore, who were found in the ark were preserved. And Moses showed that the flood lasted forty days and forty nights, torrents pouring from heaven, and from the fountains of the deep breaking up, so that the water overtopped every mountain 15 cubits. And thus the race of all the men that then were, was destroyed, and those only who were protected in the ark were saved; and these, we have already said, were eight. And of the ark, the remains are to this day to be seen in the Arabian mountains. This, then, is in sum the history of the deluge.837

Read more