Before beginning, I’ll explain what a retcon is for those who don’t know. It’s short for “retroactive continuity” and occurs when a later work offers an explanation or change in continuity for a previous one. An example of this would be the Klingons from Star Trek. In The Original Series, Klingons were depicted by actors with darkened face-paint to show they were “alien” due to the show’s limited budget. Once said budget increased with later movies and shows, the Klingons now had forehead ridges across all appearances. Various explanations were proposed by fans and a episode of Deep Space Nine even poked fun at the question. Eventually, Star Trek: Enterprise revealed that a mutated virus infected the Klingons in the 22nd Century, resulting in the species losing their forehead ridges for over a century.
On to the religious stuff. Recently, I asked the same user who inspired my OP about Hindus where Noah got the sufficient amount of meat needed for the carnivorous animals on board the Ark. According to Kruger National Park’s website, lions need 5 to 7 kilograms of meat each day. (That’s 11 to 15 pounds for us Americans.) The user’s response was this: “Fed them with manna… Duh”
To say I was surprised is pretty obvious. There are two main problems with this. First, let’s use the lion. Lions are known as obligate carnivores. In simple terms, their diet consists only of meat and nothing else. If manna was plant based, then the lions and other obligate carnivores aboard the Ark would be in serious trouble. The second and more glaring issue is the fact that manna is not mentioned in Genesis at all. According to Bible Gateway, the first time manna comes up in the Bible is in Exodus 16. Yet this user is claiming that God gave Noah manna in order to feed the carnivorous, and possibly other, species on the Ark during the Flood.
What do you think of this retcon? Could God have used manna long before he gave it to the Israelites? Or is there an elephant sized hole in the user’s claim?
Fossil
Article URL : https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=manna&version=NRSVUE