God decided to flood the entire world, and start over with humanity. God told one man to build a boat of specific dimensions, and load animals of every kind on the boat, along with his family. The rain began, flooding the world. When the rain stopped, the man sent out a dove, which came back (after finding no dry land). Later, he sent out a sparrow, which also came back. Finally, he sent out a raven, which never came back, so he knew dry land was close. When he landed on dry land, the man offered a sacrifice to God.

There are Christians who have held up Genesis 1 as literal history. Some have demanded that we believe the historicity of Genesis 1, even suggesting that if we don’t accept Genesis 1 as historically accurate, then we can’t believe the rest of the Bible. Some have tried to identify the date of creation (around 6000 years ago), and have staunchly defended the “day” in the text as an actual 24-hour day. And to do this, many in the church have had to forget, discount, or ridicule the science of evolution.

Many people are familiar with Jonah and the whale. Jonah was a prophet, called to preach to the Assyrians. He didn’t really want to do that, so he got on a boat going the other way. He was thrown overboard in a storm, swallowed by a whale, and spit out on land three days later. Having learned his lesson, he went to the capital of Assyria and successfully preached to the Assyrians.

Some people have thought that this is an origin story describing how the diversity of languages came to be. However, this does not appear to be the case. There were already many languages (see Genesis 10:5; 10:20; 10:31).