Did Noah tell others about the flood or keep it to himself?

It's a common refrain from Christians that Noah spent the entire time the boat was being built preaching to his neighbors. Trying to get them to see the light, but getting nothing but ridicule in return.

Problem: As you've noticed, that ain't part of the story.

In fact, many of the Christian traditions surrounding the Flood story were invented long after the story was written, as could be expected when the story itself only takes up a page and a half in the book.

It is kind of hard to hide that big of a boat!

Every one was warned!

Satan when to God and said "I won, nobody believes in you any more!"

God said "Want to bet!"

Satan replied "I can't loose!"

So God sent the message to every body- "Build an Ark using these dimensions ...."!

Noah was the only one that took notes and started building.

That is why "Noah was accounted righteous in his generation".

Any body else that would have built an Ark would also have received the same recognition.

So God won the bet and Satan was very unhappy.

Read the first book of Enoch.

Noah was described as a preacher of righteousness, 2 Peter 2:5 And he did not refrain from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a flood upon a world of ungodly people.

Noah informed all he could of the coming deluge and what they needed to do, but they took no notice of him and when God closed the door of the ark it was too late, sadly many today ignore or scoff at what the Bible says and soon it will be too late for them to listen, all godly and righteous ones will survive Armageddon and the wicked will be gone for good; no more need for locks, children can play safely, all can enjoy all of God's promises.

There is often a real event behind the legend.

The most probable event behind biblical Flood is the Black Sea Event. Epoch and region are consistent with middle eastern Flood myths.

5500 BC The Black Sea was a freshwater lake 200 m below the level of Mediterranea, protected from it by Bosphorus natural dam. We know from other similar places around lakes, that post-neolithic people tended to develop fishing/farming settlements.

Owning a family house, a fishing boat a few chickens and goats (male and female).

So when "the windows of heaven were opened" (in fact when the Bosphorus breached) the probably inhabited and active region was flooded under 200 m of seawater and became what we know now as the Black Sea.

This is considered the deadliest event since the end of the Ice Age.

Hopefully, at least one farmer/fisherman, let's call him Utnapishtim ("finder of life") managed to embark with his family and livestock.

To answer your question:

It's impossible to tell if someone worried about the earliest signs of dam failure, maybe some small cascades at the beginning, or if Utnapishtim and other sailors organized their rescue, or if Utnapishtim just grabbed wife, kids, a couple of chickens and goats and jumped into the boat

The trauma inevitably stayed in local traditions of neighboring populations.

And as usual with oral traditions, narrators embellished the story every time, the boat became a 150 m Ark, and the family livestock the whole Creation.

The Sumerians eventually invented writing 2500 years later (3000 BC), and probably soon wrote Utnapishtim legend. however, the earliest known Sumerian version of the Flood is in a 2000 BC issue of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

While exiled in Babylon around 600 BC, Hebrews read the Epic of Gilgamesh and copied Flood story into their Genesis Book, not without changing Utnapishtim' name to Noah.

First of all, understanding the story as an allegory is important to understanding why it's even in the Bible in the first place. But no, you are correct, Genesis does not specify that he warned people. It does say he was a preacher, but Jesus seemed to indicate in Matthew that the flood was unexpected, so he either didn't warn them, or was not believed.

In honesty, I think the whole "Noah warned people and they called him crazy" is a case of Mandela effect. I think people mixed the Noah and Jonah stories up. Jonah, another aquatic tale is about someone who warns people and in his case, they listen and obey and are not destroyed. Allegorically, Noah's flood was a baptism of the world, washing away the evil and giving it a fresh start.

One hundred years after the flood, God ordered men to spread across the earth and multiply. INSTEAD they came together to 'make a name for themselves', and Nimrod built a tower to avenge the blood of his ancestors... so that if God ever flooded the world again, he could survive it. Nimrod ignored what God said that He would never flood the world again.

So God saw what they were doing and came down and confused their languages and destroyed the tower (Google Earth 'Tower of Babel' - the foundation of it is still there).

Nimrod married his own mother before he died, and then she convinced everyone that she got pregnant by her dead son's spirit (an evil copy-cat devil-inspired trinitarian anti-gospel). This story was carried throughout the world along with stories of the flood and creation into every culture when God divided the lands (Gen. 10:25) and scattered the animals and peoples throughout the earth (Gen.11:8-9). They took the stories with them.

It was hundreds of years later when men wrote down the words of God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, to give us the Biblical account we have today.

All the rest of the stories in the world are hearsay. Only God's word is truth, unedited.

Oops. Edit: I just read the details of your question. No - there is no place in Genesis that says that Noah warned others; but others in the NT alude to it by reference to the book of Enoch.

Enoch is very... um.... supernatural in origin and not easy to follow. But it is true. The book is included in some African versions of the Bible.

I asked the Lord why He kept it out of mainstream Bibles, and He revealed to me that the focus would stray from His Son to a lot of dispute about that book. In other words, it wasn't vital to the story.

Do you really believe that a 600 year old man can build a 450 foot ark? The story is a myth.

How can we believe that God brought the Flood to punish mankind for his evil sins - if God is a spiritual being, he would never have needed to use a Flood. The Flood is a prime example of how an actual physical event can be disguised by a heavy emphasis on monotheistic symbolism.

The story can be gleaned from ancient texts which pre-date the Bible. These are found in clay tablets from the excavation of Mesopotamia and brings to light the amazingly advanced civilization of Sumer.

From almost every culture around the world there emerge more than five hundred strikingly similar legends of a great Flood. These legends all share a common theme - of mankind being swept away with the exception of one man and his family who survived. The West generally knows the survivor’s name as Noah, but to the Aztecs he was Nene, whilst in the Near East he was Atra-Hasis, Utnapishtim or Ziusudra.

The Atra-Hasis epic clarifies the role of the Biblical “God” as “they” rather than “He”. Furthermore, this account, inscribed in detail on tablets states that “they” did not bring it about deliberately. Instead, it was resolved in the council of the gods that the coming Flood, which the gods were powerless to prevent, should be kept secret from mankind.

The roles of the gods (the Annunaki or Nefilim or “descended from heaven to earth”) in the Mesopotamian Flood stories are Enlil, the Biblical “Lord” to whom mankind has become a nuisance, wishes to see them destroyed. His brother Enki, who was personally involved in the creation of the first Adam , is sympathetic towards man and habitually antagonistic towards Enlil. Despite being pressurized into taking an oath of secrecy, Enki decides to warn one loyal follower and his family of the coming deluge. The chosen man is a priest from the city of Shuruppak (the city of Enki’s sister Ninharsag), whose name in the Akkadian language is Atra-Hasis, meaning “Exceedingly Wise”. It is worth noting that exactly the same meaning is applied to the hero Utnapishtim in the Flood account of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The god Enki, also known as Ea. speaks to Atra-Hasis from behind a reed screen, a detail which is also found in the original Sumerian text, where the hero is named ZI.U.SUD.RA. Detailed instructions are given by Ea for the construction of a submersible ship. The Epic of Gilgamesh provides a dramatic and vivid account of the final preparations, when the hero is told to watch for the departure of the gods themselves.

oral traditions were always passed on.

then people learned to write and read.

learning is fun.

we all have much to learn.

machigainai

It never happened

It's just a story - a myth - a legend.

It never really happened.

I've never even met a Christian who thought that it really happened!

Do try to be realistic.