There was a supercontinent at his time.
Little bit of a reality check: there have been at least two supercontinents in earth history: Pangea and Rodinia. Which did you intend? And you should know that neither of them ever included every single major land mass; there have always been chunks not attached to whichever supercontinent was around at the time. Oh, and the latest of these supercontinents started breaking up around 180 million years ago.
4 Likes
Both of you read by post here Biblical Cosmography -> Primordial Waters = Fluid Dark Matter? and decide if you feel the same way
Here’s a teaser:
btw, it doesn’t really help to add an evolutionary timeline because I’m just going to ignore it.
They determine where the supercontinents were through the magnetic field of the earth from what I understand. I think something really funky happened with the magnetic field and there was ever only one. But that’s about all I determined after looking at it quickly.
Months ago I had found this really cool site that maps out the break up and the fossil layers. PBDB Navigator
I don’t believe that the Bible’s history cannot be trusted. I just don’t think that it is clear on all the details that we’ve been talking about, and these details are secondary to the important points that the passage is trying to teach us. My interpretation of the text is different from yours, but I personally still respect the text of God’s Word as authoritative and infallible (unlike some others who straight out say that the Bible contains mistakes and we should just disregard certain portions).
The Bible itself never claims that it makes clear all of God’s actions in history for us; in fact several times it states the opposite (for example, in the book of Job and Is. 55:8-9), that we can’t fathom all of God’s plans, motivations, or thoughts. What the Bible makes does make clear is God’s plan of salvation for us, and as you admitted yourself, despite our disagreement regarding Genesis I have the same essential understanding of that plan of salvation.
Going back to your question, at the moment I personally don’t know for sure if Noah’s flood was regional or global. What I do observe is that the text does not force us to commit one way or the other, and perhaps the question could be adjudicated based on extrabiblical evidence, if one really wants to. I am not well-trained in geology and the relevant sciences, and it seems to me that the primary teachings of the text are perfectly accomplished (without undermining Scriptural authority and infallibility) with a large regional flood that wiped out all (or almost all) of Adam’s descendants. Thus definitively resolving the matter doesn’t seem to be urgent for me.
I understand the pressure to conform to the world and “compromise” and the reaction to resist it, but be aware that faithful Christians differ on where to draw the line between faithfulness and compromise to the authority of God’s Word. For example, most YECs today are no longer geocentrists, even if historically, there have been several major interpreters (such as the Reformed theologian Wilhelmus à Brakel) who regarded passages like Psalm 104:5 as undermining the burgeoning heliocentrism of the day, similar to how you see Genesis 1 as undermining evolutionary theory and an old earth today. Today, you see people draw the line at an old Earth, others draw the line at human evolution, while I myself currently tend to see the line as the existence of a historical Adam.
The reality is that many faithful Christians have not been and are not YEC, including many famous conservative and influential theologians who have never slid into liberalism. That’s a fact that you can’t push aside. It is important to draw the line of compromise correctly on several issues (such as the Resurrection of Jesus), but being a YEC is simply not one of them.
None of this is explicitly required by the text of Scripture - it is an inference that you have drawn to cohere with other assumptions in your worldview (e.g. a young earth) that you have already committed to. Now, everyone does this - inferring things from Scripture which are not explicitly there based on other things that they have already committed to. That’s basically what systematic theology is. It is not necessarily wrong. I’m just saying that faithful Christians can disagree on the best way to do this that is both faithful to the text of Scripture and to other external considerations (such as God’s general revelation in nature).
Which goes back to our original debate: it seems that by this definition you can get the merism to encompass Venus and other galaxies as well. They exist, do they not? God created them, did He not?
Well, it’s good that you can come out and actually say that. I think it does explain some of your other positions about the scope of Genesis 1-3.
3 Likes
Well, sure. It amuses me to see how you use logic to defend the illogical.
Assuming this is true… how do you expect Noah to cover the entire continent… the bible doesnt teach anything of the sort…
By “evolutionary timeline” you mean anything with an age more than a few thousand years, but that has nothing to do with evolution. It’s very unfortunate that you choose to ignore all of modern science.
Why would you think that? If you’re just going to ignore all the data, there’s no way to determine whether there ever was a supercontinent. Why should you believe anything on that “really cool site” if at any time “something funky” could have happened that invalidates everything we know?
Why, for that matter, do you keep talking about a Big Bang that never actually happened, and the CMB that must mean nothing at all?
5 Likes
What do you mean by the term “evolutionary timeline”? I don’t see anything related to evolution in @John_Harshman’s post.
(Oops. As I kept reading I realized that John basically asked you the same thing, by implication.)
The fact that God’s judgment of the world was universal, not local, is not a secondary fact. It’s essential to the whole point of the story. Peter summed it up in 2 Peter 3 for us nicely. The very same “world” that God destroyed with the Flood will one day be destroyed again with fire.
That’s a very good starting point. If it is infallible and authoritative, then we must regard what God says over and above any of the teachings of men, regardless of how much those men may say they have proved their views.
There certainly is extrabiblical evidence for the Flood, there’s no question about that. Billions of dead things, buried in rocks, laid down by water, all over the earth. 
Evidence for extreme erosional events all over the earth, requiring volumes of water we cannot possibly reproduce today with any known process. Marine fossils on the highest mountains, including Everest. All these things are what we would expect to find given the Flood.
With that said, however, we do not need to resort to these evidences to merely understand what the Bible teaches about the Flood. God was not unclear. Please refer back to the Creation Answers Book chapter 10 that I posted earlier. The text absolutely demands a global reading.
Let’s set aside the fact that it’s completely implausible to suggest that a local flood in one part of the Earth could have killed all living humans only 4500 years ago. God made it clear that the point of the Flood was to wipe out ALL life in which there was the breath of life. “I have determined to make an end of all flesh… everything that is on the earth shall die.” It is for this reason God instructed Noah, “…of all flesh, you shall take two of every sort into the ark.” Obviously, why was this instructed? To preserve all these kinds of animals from extinction. Why would God have needed to do this if this were only a local flood? He wouldn’t. Why would God need to instruct Noah to bring birds, who could easily fly away to safety? He wouldn’t. In fact, since God brought the animals to Noah, he could have simply brought them away from the local flood instead.
Obfuscation response: “God instructed Noah to build the Ark because it foreshadowed Christ, therefore it didn’t need to be practical”. This is wrong for a number of reasons. First, the text clearly indicates it was a practical measure, not just a symbolic one. Second, if this were only a symbol, it would have been misleading for God to instruct Noah to put animals on the ark. If the only purpose of the ark was to prefigure Christ, then animals should not have been there! Animals are not morally responsible before God, and Christ is not a kinsman-redeemer to animals. The “ark” of Christ is for human beings only. Animals were aboard for purely practical, not symbolic, reasons.
If evolution is true, then there was no historical Adam in any meaningful sense. The historical Adam of the Bible was created by God supernaturally, in a perfect world without death or suffering. Then this Adam caused death and suffering to enter this world by bringing on the Curse.
You need to draw the line where Peter does in 2 Peter 3. Creation, (global) Flood and Christ.
God’s “general revelation in Nature” is that He exists, and he created, and he destroyed the world in a Flood. That’s what Peter says (that one must willingly overlook these things to deny them). Just because scientists claiming to be wise say that natural evidence says things that contradict Scripture does not make it true, and it does not make it part of God’s revelation.
The merism “heavens and earth” is used in Genesis 1 regarding God’s creation of everything (including the wider cosmos) in 6 days. It is not used in regards to the Flood for obvious reasons: the Flood did not destroy the heavens. It did, however, destroy the earth.
Key phrase here: “remain flooded”. The Flood in the Bible subsided and did not remain, as some of our other friends here have already pointed out to you.
Biblically, there are only really two contenders for where the Ark came to rest: the traditional region in Armenia, or the Zagros Mountains. Personally, I would put my money on the latter.
No. The Greek text in 2 Peter 3 uses two different words for what was destroyed in the flood versus what will be destroyed in the future judgment by fire. Let’s look at the key passage:
6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
Verse 6 says the world (KOSMOS) was deluged and destroyed by the waters in that past judgment.
Verse 7 says the heavens and the earth (GE) will be destroyed by fire in the future judgment.
KOSMOS refers to the world of people and their “world system”.
GE refers to the world as a physical structure. In the phrase “heavens and earth [GE]”, it is an idiom in Greek based on the Hebrew idiom one finds in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” which is often defined as “everything” or “the universe.”
When Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”, it referred to the KOSMOS (the people) who God loved. Not to the continents and rocks. If the intended meaning was that God loved the physical structure of the earth, the word GE would appear in the text instead. Now apply that same understanding to 2 Peter 3:6.
For remembering these distinctions you can use the mnemonic aid of two English words which are based upon these two Greek words: KOSMOS explains cosmopolitan (“containing or including people from many different countries around the world”) versus GE explains geology (“the study of the rocks which compose the earth”) Both Greek words refer to “worlds”, but one is the world of people and the other is the physical world.
Thus, if you re-read 2 Peter 3 in Greek—or even read it in multiple English Bible translations which contrast world and earth in an effort to explicitly contrast the flood’s devastation of the KOSMOS (the world of people) versus the GE (the physical everything of continents, rocks, and even the entire universe)—you will be struck by the differences in extent of the two judgments described.
Yes, 2 Peter 3 is my favorite Bible passage for contrasting the differing scopes and purposes of the Noahic flood versus the future judgment by fire. Please don’t scoff at this distinction. Nobody should be a scoffer, right?
3 Likes
You are adopting a usage of “kosmos” here that is not at all indicated by context.
The meaning of the koine Greek term “Kosmos” can indeed be universal in scope, and can even be used to refer to the whole universe. Since Peter is referring back to the clearly universal events described in Genesis 6, we are not warranted to adopt a limited-scope definition of Kosmos in this passage.
I love your circular reasoning! You simply assumed “universal” in every passage without any regard for context.
3 Likes
What is the non-circular reasoning you’re using here in 2 Peter 3 to indicate that “kosmos” can only mean a limited, “human world”-only sense here, rather than the whole literal world? I’ve seen you refer to a completely different passage in a different context, but what’s the relevance? What does Jesus loving the whole world in John 3:16 have to do with this passage exactly?
Did you even bother to read my entire post? Did you read the Strong’s concordance entries or just copy-and-paste?
You continue to dodge the contrasting words and descriptions in 2 Peter 3.
I did read your post. You seem to be arguing that since Jesus used kosmos in John 3:16 to mean the world of people, Peter can only be using it in that same limited sense here in 2 Peter 3. Why?
Explain to us the contrasting words and descriptions in 2 Peter 3.
2 Likes
I don’t believe they are contrasting, I believe they are comparing. The universal judgment of the Flood is being compared to the universal judgment in fire. Peter doesn’t seem to be implying any difference in scope [as it regards the Earth] there, just a difference in means. The difference in scope is that the Flood only destroyed the whole Earth; the Fire will destroy both the heavens and the earth!
Have you considered a future in politics?
2 Likes