Saturday, May 25, 2024

Numbers 13:33 Does Not Necessarily Teach a Local Flood

  

Positive evidence that a local flood is in view might also be adduced from Num 13:33, where the Anakim are said by Israelite spies to be descended from the Nephilim, a race sired by illicit unions prior to the flood, a belief that contradicts the universal destruction wrought by the flood. But it is plausible that the pentateuchal author regards the spies’ report as exaggeration inspired by cowardice (“we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them”). Despite a poetic text like Amos 2:9-10, there is no account of Joshua’s having encountered giants in his conquest of the tribes of Canaan (Josh 11:21). The report of the spies does show that belief in descendants of the antediluvian race might exist in Israel, despite the flood story, though such belief is consistent with the spies’ not being particularly acute. John Day hypothesizes that a redactor, conscious of the fact that the Nephilim were still around later, added the phrase “and also afterward” to Gen 6:4 (Day, From Creation to Babel, 86). But that would be to introduce a contradiction into the flood story rather than resolve a problem. And it would seem strange that an especially wicked race of people should be thought to have been spared God’s judgement. (William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021], 125-26)