who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
The entire human population was once reduced to eight people, and all living humans descend from them.
Biology
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The cited passage
What current science says
If all 8 billion humans today descended from just 8 people a few thousand years ago, our genetic diversity would be vanishingly small — far less than what we actually observe. Human populations carry thousands of distinct HLA immune system alleles alone, which could not have arisen from 8 people in a few thousand years (mutation rates are far too slow). Population genetics consistently shows the human species maintained an effective breeding population of at least 10,000 individuals throughout our history. Additionally, isolated populations like Aboriginal Australians show continuous genetic lineages going back 50,000+ years with no flood bottleneck. The genetics simply don't fit an 8-person restart.
What the text says
This comes from 1 Peter 3:20, which states 'eight souls were saved by water' — asserting that a global flood killed every human on Earth except one family of eight, making all subsequent humanity descendants of this single-family bottleneck.
Three honest ways to read this passage
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As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
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As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
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As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.