The story of Noah in the Bible is similar to other flood stories common among the people in the Middle East. I will bring rain down on the earth for forty days and forty nights. Some who are obsessed about the actual historicity of events reported in the Bible seek for evidence of such a flood. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, however, were not concerned with history as such. Rather, they were seeking to understand the presence and action of God in the world. The authors (for Genesis is a mass up of several texts) used the stories people were familiar with as the grist for their theological reflection. We also should reflect on our reality to see where God can be found nowadays.
