Noah and the Bible

In the Bible one of the major principles is the man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3. In Noah’s case there was no written word of God. But it is clear from the Mosaic account that the Word of God had been given to Adam. All of which is recorded by Moses, in the book of Genesis, was clearly from God and much of that which makes up the book of Genesis was spoken by God and was recorded in the mind of God and which would have been available to Noah. It is my purpose to express a line of reasoning that would allow the Word of God to be available to Noah and to all of the people of the world before, and after, the flood.

Today we know that the average person in the United States of America is about 5 feet 9 inches tall. The average IQ of people in the United States is 98 with the highest average IQ of 107 in Hong Kong. This would indicate that sin has made massive inroads into the physical functionality of people. In the creation of man God made man “very good” Genesis 1:31. Now the great question is what was man like in the Creation?

In the book of Samuel we find that there was a family of giants out of Gath. II Samuel 21:15-22. The most famous of this family was Goliath of Gath who is recorded as being six cubits and a span. I Samuel 17:4 At 18 inches a cubit Goliath was at least 9 feet tall and perhaps taller for he was six cubits and a span. We do not know how much taller Goliath’s father was but we can assume that the father may have been bigger.

In Deuteronomy we have the description of another giant Og of Bashan. He was one of the remnant peoples of the Rephaim. His bed is given a size in Deuteronomy 3:11 as being 9 cubits in length and 4 cubits in width. At 18 inches per cubit that would make the bed of Og at least 13 feet 6 inches. So Og was a much bigger man than Goliath. This would indicate that the testimony of Israel was somewhat true in that the giants of Canaan were so tall that the Israelites that the Israelites felt like grasshoppers next to them. Numbers 13:31-33.

The two examples above indicate that as time has proceeded the people of the earth have grown smaller. 13 ft to 5ft 9 inches is a steep decline. But if we go backward in time the evidence indicates that in the beginning mankind was significantly taller than today. The reasons for this are multitudinous. First of all when Jesus created man he was perfect. Man was created in a perfect world as well. It would appear that in the beginning that God had made the world with a significantly different atmosphere that was capable of sustaining all manner of life in a much larger form than is now possible. We all have seen skeletons of much larger animals and have been concerned about our safety if those animals had been present now. But if man was significantly larger than now the rate of size comparison would have been different. A 16 to 20 foot man would not have been intimidated by a Tyrannosaurus Rex as we would be intimidated. Mankind today is able to train and subdue even such large animals as an African Elephant, so it would not have been such a great difference of size for a larger man to be able to deal with larger animals.

But going back to the issue of why. When man was created by God, the earth was fresh, no curse from sin, and everything created in a manner to sustain life, with no hint of death at all. There is some suggestions that the earth was surrounded with a water mantel that would protect all life from radiation from the son and would create an environment where the atmosphere was twice the intensity that we experience today. There is also evidence from the Bible that there was no rain before the flood and that everything was watered by a mist in the morning. Genesis 2:6. This would indicate that the earth was like a hot house and the temperature, as well as the atmospheric pressure, as well as the oxygen content, was much higher than it is today and could sustain larger life forms.

Another question that we can not answer explicitly is does larger size equal larger intellect? That concept would be difficult to sustain by the overt Bible information alone but if one were to ask the question of whether Adam was smarter than the average human being today we would most likely say yes for there had been no sin to mar any facet of humanity as Adam came from the hand of God. For me personally I like to think of Adam as about 16 feet tall and having an IQ of about 2000 when created by God. In this assumption I believe that God granted Adam an intellect commensurate with what a child of God would have to understand and interact with God Himself in open communion. If this assumption was true then it would be reasonable to assume that Adam had the ability to have total recall, or have a photographic memory. We have seen people today who have great memories after 6000 years of sin. What must Adam’s memory been like?

All of the above brings us back to the issue of Noah and the Bible. If Adam, and his children, had not deteriorated in their longevity by the time of the flood, is it possible that the cognitive abilities of Adam’s family, including Noah, had no significant cognitive deficits by the time of the flood. If that were the case then every word that proceeded from the mouth of God would have been faithfully maintained by each successive generation all the way down to Noah. In addition, the Bible records the fact that Adam did not die until the time of Enoch. Enoch would have been able to pass on all of Adam and Seth’s sharing with Methuselah and Methuselah with Noah and Shem. This would have included all of the interactions with Adam plus all of the prophetic interactions that Enoch himself had had with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. After the flood this same information would have been passed on from Shem to all of his posterity even down to Abraham and Jacob. Thus every word that proceeded from the mouth of God would have been available and would have been clearly shared with all of the sons of God who were interested in the wondrous stories of the time of Adam and his walk with Jesus in person.

So Noah would have had all of the words of God and would have been able to learn and profit from the discussions with his fathers. When God came to Noah, to pass on the commands that God gave to him, Noah would have had a firm basis of Scripture – the Words of God – to compare against and be ready to respond to the new instructions of God. This information would have been passed on to his children and especially to Shem through whom the lineage of Messiah would have come through.

In conclusion the Word of God was available to Noah and family. This information would be passed on to His children through Shem, and on to the time of Moses. We do not know what information came to Moses from word of mouth but we do know that God Himself communicated enough information to Moses for him to write the first six books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Job. So we should not believe that the people in the time of Noah were deficit of instruction from God for that would be unlike God, to send people out into the world with no instruction. God wanted His instructions to be carried on all through history and would be repeated and amplified through subsequent revelations from Him. So let us remember that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.