Ancient religion amounted to attempts to communicate directly with the spiritual realm using prophecy, oracles, idolatry, divination, electrical gadgetry such as the ark of the covenant (primitive leyden bottle/capacitor) and similar means. The words "prophecy" and "prophet" permeate the books of the OT after genesis; it is remarkable that Genesis contains only the one vague reference to Abraham as "God's prophet" and even that is after the flood; the words "prophecy" and "prophet" do not occur elsewhere in Genesis.
As I view it, this means that before the flood, there was no need for any such extreme methods to communicate with the spirit realm; such communication was direct and natural. My own views on that sort of thing as well as on the question of the non-evolution of human language reside on bearfabrique
The spirit world is now strongly separated from our own physical realm. My own view towards theology says that the spirit realm is a totally different reality from ours, similar to the world of dreams, and that while God probably is omnipotent within his own realm, he has very limited powers within our own physical realm and that the arguments which atheists and evolutionists use regarding the question of why an all-powerful, loving God would allow evil and harm in the world are thus null and void.
My own belief is that genteic engineering and re-engineering were common things on this planet before the flood and that things like disease organisms, mosquitos, ticks etc. are clearly not the work of an all powerful, loving God. You didn't need God to create new life forms in that age. Conversely, whatever it was which WAS creating new life forms in that age of the world, has at least temporarily been shut down and turned off in our own age.
I do not see this notion of genetic engineering having been an antediluvian industry or passtime of some sort as prejudicial to religion; in fact, nobody should have an easy time believing that an all-poewrful God would have to go through 70 or more kinds of horses before arriving at the four or five kinds he wanted.
Likewise, the bible reads as if at least one of the calamities which separates our own age from past ages, the flood at the time of Noah, was a punishment visited upon the world by God for man's sins whereas a careful reading of the source material for the bible (Midrashim) along with other ancient works, indicates that those kinds of events and, in general, all major harm in this world, are things which occur in the physical realm and over which God, in his spiritual realm, has little if any control over.
It is a dogma of establishment science that the tale of the biblical flood is a fairytale or, at most, an aggrandized tale of some local or regional flood. That, however, does not jibe with the facts of the historical record. The flood turns out to hae been part and parcel of some larger, solar-system-wide calamity.
In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within a short space:
Gen. 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;...These were seven days of intense light, generated by some major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:Gen. 7:10 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth."
"...Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days..."
Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".
It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. It may not say so directly, but the ages given in Genesis 5 along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:
Gen. 5:25 ->"And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.
<i.e. he lived 969 - 187 = 782 years after Lamech's birth>
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son. And he called his name Noah...
<182 + 600 = 782 also...>
Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; actually seven days prior to the flood...
Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT. Midrashim amounts to the full body of rabbinical literature, and often can flesh out the laconic stories of the OT.
From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:
...however, Lekah, Gen. 7.4) BR 3.6 (in the week of mourning for Methuselah, God caused the primordial light to shine).... God did not wish Methuselah to die at the same time as the sinners...
The reference is, again, to Gen. 7.4, which reads:
"For yet seven days, and I shall cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights..."
The week of "God causing the primordial lights to shine" was the week of intense light before the flood.
What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.
The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc. Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the memory of the seven days prior to the flood.
If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the storyteller (isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the population, and never included in the OT story directly.
I believe that the Talmud mentions that the origins of the pagan holiday which formed that basis of saturnalia came from Adam. In the first winter, he saw that the days began getting smaller and smaller, colder and colder, and grew afraid. Once the days grew larger again, he saw that it was a normal phenomenom and instituted a holdiay accordingly. Chanukah is to celebrate the victory over the Greeks; and has 8 days.
Ari