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for 150 days (7.24) but it's not actually rain, it's just an undoing of creation and the water from the deep merges from the water in the heavens (8.3), but jk lol actually it DID rain (7.12) and what happened before was silly...so on and so forth. The inconsistencies within the story are abundant. You put down the book of Genesis, look around, and declare: Who wrote this stuff?!
What an apt question! Luckily, biblical scholars, philologists, historiographers, and friends have been tryna figure it out for the past 200 years or so. So? What's up?
Hold on to your tunics, chevre, cause stuff's about to get ~*~*~Academic~*~*~
Well, after painstaking work in all of the fields previously mentioned, it's been determined to a pretty exact degree that three sources, the Priestly (P), Yahwistic* (J), and Elohistic** (E) converged to create the stories we know today. The Flood story is a notable example of this synthesis, mostly between the P and J source. To simply, the P source is mostly concerned with order, divinity, nascent theology, etc etc. Think dudes in robes chilling in front of the 2nd temple talking about which one of their chanachot brought back the dankest sacrifice. The J source concerns itself with mythology and drama. Think dudes running through the wilderness hoping to find wood for the medurah while trying not to get eaten by bears or were-possums. When Genesis was eventually compiled and redacted, these sources, or authorities on the biblical events, were put together in some coherent manner. If anyone's interested, the 7 day creation story is from the P source, and the humans-made-out-of-dust-and-bones version comes from the J source; the 150 day water-palooza is from the P source, and the less wild but equally pitted*** 40 days stuff is from the J version.
OKAY. BUT WHY DOES THIS MATTER/WHO CARES/WHO READ THIS FAR?
Well, all of this matters because it proves that the bible wasn't written by some monolithic sage, but rather was an amalgamation by many many many authors, some of whom even dealt with polytheism (Remember that time Jacob sets up an altar to “the God of the Gods of Israel” (Genesis 33.20)? Awkward.) Breaking down this hierarchical view of the bible's conception is important, as breaking down all hierarchy is, and really humbling. To relate it to our own lives, I like to think about how most of our movement's ideas, structures, campaigns, machanot, relationships, haven't come from one source, but rather from a multitude. Just like Genesis, we're full of contradictions and textures, which is what makes understanding us so confusing yet satisfying. Lets not hide from this truth, but rather embrace it. Remember, the book of Genesis INCLUDES its contradictions when the sages could have simply taken them out—let's not forget that!
*Hence why God is sometimes written as יהוה
** Hence why God is sometimes written as אלוהים
***can you get pitted? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJdF8DJ70Dc
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