Must something be situated in time and space to be true? Must one believe that somewhere on Earth there’s an old boat that survived a flood sent by God in order to accept that the biblical story is, well, true? Some say yes. Absolutely yes. And so they search for the ark’s remains… and search and search. Most recently, evangelical Christian explorers from China and Turkey who belong to an organization called Noah’s Ark Ministries International claim to have found the boat’s remains on a Turkish mountain called Ararat. Previous claims haven’t held up to scientific scrutiny, as I note briefly in Bible Babel. It all leaves me feeling a bit melancholic. The people involved in such quests are passionate, determined believers whose confidence in their understanding of the Bible — what and especially how it means — is commendable in its way. But the faith of these good people is based on a way of reading the Bible that excludes the rich possibilities of poetry, metaphor, and the great deep truths that exist in the most powerful fiction. Yes, I said “fiction.” Stories are a timeless human vehicle for expressing what defies the limits of language. Stories make room for God. I write this knowing that many readers will now assume that I dismiss the Bible as a collection of silly fairy tales with no enduring significance. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
