Most of my blogs follow more of a teaching, informing style, this one is from my own thoughts and imagination with no teaching intended. I stand and look through the window of the world and spirituality as someone who is curious and some things are very interesting while others are disturbing.

The more I learn, the less I know and the more questions I have.

I have learned that asking questions can be as revealing as hearing the answers to those questions.

In my short life, I was born into a family that believed a certain path of Christianity, from there the future for me held that over time I would experience two more flavors of Christianity. It was due to the collapse of the Christian denomination that I was raised in that caused my spiritual rug to become yanked out from under me, causing me to become a spiritual orphan so to speak.

This situation caused me to become a seeker, not just one to sit in a pew and be told what to believe anymore.

This would lead me to study Judaism and for a time I investigated conversion, from there I learned about the seven rules for all mankind given by the Creator. I learned that six of these rules was given to Adam and passed down orally to Noah and after the Flood a seventh was added by the Creator. Then the Creator had Moses write down those events for us in His Torah (instructions).  It is by these rules I have chosen to live by, they are not a religion but a set of rule given to us by the Creator to live with Him and fellow mankind.

Most of my studies over the 10+ years has been from the Ashkenazi Jews (Jews from Europe). But here lately I have been exploring some teaching of Sephardic Jews (middle eastern Jews) and some of them are of the rational Torah thought.

Over the years I have experienced several paradigm shifts in my own thoughts, beliefs and knowledge about the Creator and His Torah (instructions).

Here recently I have been learning about how much of the Torah was given in a tribal culture and how understanding some parts of it and its original language comes from a tribal culture. Then there are the several places within Jewish teachings that tell us that the Flood was regional and not worldwide. At first I wanted to reject this idea even if there seems to archeological evidence for it.

As I gave the idea of a regional flood more thought with what I already know, my own rationality makes this issue seem to make more sense to me. Let me explain.

Again this is my own thoughts, so I am not trying to teach anyone anything, only to share my thoughts on this subject.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we have several example of groups of people whose sins are told to us to have reached heaven. In the study of these events we find that the sins that called for their destruction are robbery and injustice – sins or the mistreatment of fellow mankind. For example, Nineveh was warned of destruction, the cities of Sodom was destroyed and the land of Cannon – all of these have commentary from the Sages of Israel as have sins like those of the Flood of Noah.

How does this point to a reginal flood over a worldwide one?

In all these events the actions of man against man had become so bad that they were either about to be wiped out or were because of it.. But all of mankind was not affected by the event planed for a specific region or city. Even today we have cities and nations that has people in them whether they be common or in leadership that are corrupt but within the people as a whole there seems to be enough kindness that holds back a judgement to the whole.

A regional flood follows the other Torah events of destruction because of corruption. When the flood is considered along with other events like it, it makes more sense than a global event. Not all of mankind is judged to experience a destruction just because of the actions of another people in another land. It appears to me that judgement has always been regional and specific toward a group that has become bad.

Its like a physical example that came to mind. When it comes to cheese we just remove the molded part but we do not throw the whole thing away, or as said, we do not throw the baby out with the bath water.

As I have said these are my own thoughts on the subject. There are way more educated persons on the subject that someone can be learned from. I just wanted to share my thoughts while they were fresh on my mind.

The main purpose for this blog is to encourage thinking on your own and not to set back and be told what to think or believe.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we are never told to believe in the Creator out of blind faith, we are instructed to seek for Him and In Proverbs we are to seek Him like a hidden treasure. So its time to get dirty and start digging.

The more I learn, the less I know and the more questions I have.

Terry W. Hayes – ben Noach
7/2018

P.S. Before some start blasting this blog, just remember that it was only and expression of my thoughts on a subject not to display or preach to any kind of definitive proofs of any kind.

Photo Credit: Photo by Anthony Tori on Unsplash