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I've always wondered if there wasn't more to the Flood story that meets the eye. There are just too many mysteries surrounding it. For example: We know from Scripture that a wicked and quasi-human race called the Nephilim (a term meaning something very much like "space giants") dominated the civilization that preceded the Flood, resulting in a civilization that was evil beyond any other the world has seen. (The bloodthirsty and psychotic Harappan and Aztec civilizations come to mind here.) Could it be that this civilization was far more technologically advanced that anyone knows today? Such a civilization could have developed cloning, mind-control technologies, who knows what!

Our own society is infected with the notion of using technology to create what H.G. Wells called "men like gods"; it could be that these evil ancients did the same -- only they got further along. Perhaps they ended up creating some technological blasphemy that was so hideous that the Lord rightly decided to rid the Universe of them.

I realize that this is all pure speculation, but perhaps the destruction of this ancient technological civilization is the source of the Atlantis myth.

Another mystery is the Ark itself. We know from Scripture its exact dimensions. We also know that Noah took aboard a breeding populaton of every land-dwelling and flying animal on Earth prior to the Flood. Obviously, no handmade wooden boat could carry such a huge menagerie, plus food, fodder, and space for their wastes; how, then, did these creatures survive?

Maybe because the Ark wasn't an actual boat. Maybe it was something else -- something bigger on the inside than on the outside. Or maybe the animals didn't physically come along -- but their DNA did, in the form of some sort of data.

And then there's the Flood itself. "The gates of Heaven were opened", Scripture says; "The fountains of the deep were broken up". It is worth noting that Biblical scholars are far from being in agreement on what precisely that description means. Could it be that the flood is a metaphor for some other form of judgment?

Whatever the Flood was, it was much more than an ordinary rainstorm -- and the Ark much more than a big wooden boat. The details of the Flood story seem fantastic, like the stuff of legend, but the tale itself is told in a literalistic, matter-iof-fact way, like history. Perhaps the reason for that is that the Flod story is a description of something that people of Biblical times literally could not imagine. Maybe the "flood" was some kind of cosmic disaster, described in terms that the people of ancient Mesopotamia could grasp. We don't know.

I'm no Biblical scholar. Eevery bit of the above speculation is worth precisely what you paid for it: zero. The important thing about the Flood -- however it happened -- is the spiritual lesson behind it.

Still, every time I see a rainbow, I wonder...

We know from Scripture that a wicked and quasi-human race called the Nephilim (a term meaning something very much like "space giants") dominated the civilization that preceded the Flood...

"Space giants" from a culture that had no concept of outer space? That sounds to me like some New Age silliness, or "re-interpretation" if I was being nice.

The KJV translates it "giants" and describes them as "mighty men of old". Apparently the offspring of demon-possessed men, killed in the flood. I have seen Jewish speculation that the mythology of the Greek and Roman gods were distortedly based on them, but this is not part of the Jewish religion, nor am I convinced by this. Such speculation is merely a data point.

The "Greek and Roman gods" hypothesis, if I may so dignify it, is not irrelevant. Ovid attributes the flood to Jupiter having a snit, nothing about Divine justice. It's worth reading Metamorphoses just as part of a general cultural education. The creation story is much like the Bible as well, except that creation is attributed to an unknown god. After creation and the flood, it is not even slightly similar to the Bible, but it is as much part of our cultural heritage if not of religious truth or morality.