I have some questions about the "Local Flood" of Noah

Conversation
,
194

It sounds to me like we are in agreement on some parameters. That makes it much easier to have a potentially helpful discourse.

You might care to read this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025322716302961?via%3Dihub

also found here: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0025322716302961?token=87B95DBD9FD6B14B18DD45EF7585A62AA4751DFF121FF625DAD7942E59F620AA2AB0EDDA4886EB8A770D9980E61360F5

This article presents a possible non-bubble-of-water scenario. I have not analyzed this in enough detail to form a strong opinion on whether the conditions described in the article satisfy all the requirement of the Noah story, but it looks worth investigating.

To sum up, 9300 calendar years BP fast inundation of land at least 120 meters (~400 feet) below sea level occurred. It was abrupt taking less than 40 years (in the article as few a 8) which means the deeper part of the Black Sea basin would fill for a few years and then the waters would come spilling across the shallow slope of the shelf (prime agricultural land) in much less time. Within that context, the rains comes, adding additional water and flooding. If you study the bathymetry of the Black Sea basin you will find some areas with a large shallow (1:1000 slope) shelf to the north east up to 120 miles wide. That’s possibly enough area to flood out a group of people as far as can be seen and as far as their entire settled area. The water-borne ark could drift west for up to 730 miles without ever coming in sight of land before running aground in the foot hills of the Armenian mountains in Georgia or Turkey. These foothills run right down to the present edge of the Black Sea and even into it. After running the ark aground, the story indicates that the waters then receded some amount leaving it stranded on dry ground.

For any YEC’s that have a problem with the 9300 BP date you can pick whatever date you want.

Note that this 9300 BP Initial Marine Infill date is distinct from much smaller flooding events that occur later. The original Black Sea deluge hypothesis [Black Sea deluge hypothesis - Wikipedia] was based on flooding events around 7550 BP (described in 1997) and 8400 BP (described in 2003) that turned out to be much smaller. This article (2017) details a much earlier and more dramatic flood event and represents newer information on the topic.

Think about it.

1 Like
195

It isn’t. A large basin, whether the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, or some other, could sustain some features of the flood but not others. You are currently addressing the idea of the great depth of the flood; sure, that works. But in order to do so you need to ignore the other feature of the flood: it receded. Also, Noah didn’t land on the shore of a basin. He landed on top of a mountain in an area that gradually became dry land. Nor does floating around the Black Sea basin get you to anything other than a beach, not the top of a mountain.

I did. There is no fit, regardless of date. Once again, you are cherry-picking and force-fitting.

1 Like
196

Well, that’s progress. Got past the ridiculous water bubble you suggested and the silly Mr. Magoo Noah you suggested.

I did mention that but did not spell it out for you. Here is one way that could work with the Black Sea-Lake basin. Water pours in from the Mediterranean through the Straight filling up at least 120 meters of water as previously cited. But there is also a deluge of rain water and possibly other sources such as meltwater that flow into the basin via other channels. This eventually over-fills the basin. The ark floats on the over-filled basin until it comes to rest. The over-filled basin drains the excess back into the Mediterranean leaving the ark high and dry.

Of course not. The influx of water created a new higher water line which then recedes. The story cites a wind. Combination of wind and tide can also strand a vessel high and dry. Tide heights would decrease as excess water drained back into the Mediterranean. The ark remains on dry ground.

Sure it does. Remember, the old beach is far under water now. So of course it does not land on a beach. The new water level is over previously submerged land that was former foot hills. Take a look at Black Sea bathymetry.

Remember the word “har” is used in the plural and means “a mountain or range of hills, hill (country) or mountain”. You continue to cherry pick from among the possible definitions of the word “har”, choosing the meaning mountain without justifying your choice.

The best translation in my opinion is hill country because of the use of the plural and you have done nothing to demonstrate otherwise.

197

Yes, but only at the expense of equally disqualifying difficulties.

Sorry, but that’s back to the original problem of a big water bubble. The Dardanelles are not sufficiently constricted or the surroundings sufficiently high to support a thousand feet of additional flooding. It also requires a seriously miraculous amount of rain, which has other problematic consequences.

The ark has to remain, if you recall, on the top of the highest mountain visible from that mountain. Your epicycles lead nowhere.

There is no “old beach” in this scenario. It’s the current beach we’re talking about.

Doesn’t work, since the foothills are lower than the surrounding terrain.

No, I pick the meaning consistent with the details of the story. Again, recall that the ark comes to rest in top of the highest peak in the area, since it takes quite a while before any other land is visible.

It doesn’t matter if the reference is to “the hill country of Ararat”; the specific topography of the site itself is well described, and doesn’t fit any foothills or seashore or whatever you want to introduce. Whether the mountain on which the ark rests is a big one or not so big, it still has to be taller than any surrounding terrain. If this were foothills, there should be bigger mountains in sight. Again, there is no real phenomenon that could fit the flood story. At best you can fit a few pieces while leaving others unworkable. Each of your scenarios fails in a different way, but they all fail.

1 Like
198

Random thought:

Africa is the birthplace of all modern humans. This means that creation myths found in all human cultures today most likely had their roots in Africa. Not surprisingly, tales of global and local floods appear frequently in these stories.

For example, Obatala, a Yoruba deity first created poorly formed humans (which could explain the fossils that appear human-like in the hominin fossil record), because he was drunk. On realizing what he had done after sobering up, he destroyed this poorly formed humans (explaining why other hominids had gone extinct) and crafted homo sapiens. There was also a flood in the Yoruba myth, but not everyone died, some people climbed to the highest hills and begged the god Eshu for help. That god begged another god, Orunmila who eventually stopped the flood, allowing humans to repopulate Africa again. This flood may have been the bottleneck event that dipped the ancestral effective population size of our human ancestors to about 10,000 (since not everyone died).

IMO, this is way more accurate than the Jewish creation myths in genesis. Maybe an “African Swamidass” would take this up and revive African creationism, since it fits even better with modern science.

3 Likes
199

Here’s @William_Rogers trying to make his point based on different possible translations of Hebrew terms, when noted biblical scholar @PDPrice comes along and refutes Will effortlessly by quoting the original English.

2 Likes
200

More importantly, he’s shifting the focus from individual words to surrounding context, by which we might better understand the immediate meaning. Perhaps that would be better done by reference to the Hebrew, but nobody is doing that. Instead the Hebrew scholars are quibbling about the context-free semantic spaces of individuals words. On balance, Price’s approach is better. How much sense would this make: “And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the low hills under the whole heaven were covered”?

1 Like
201

“And the waters prevailed so mightily on the land that all the highest hills under the whole sky were covered.”

Considering that the ancients might not have had any kind of global perspective at all (see that thread about the Babylonian World Map), I can see this describing a local flood.

202

Wouldn’t that depend on how high the “highest hills” were? How much altitude are you willing to give them?

203

However high the highest hills in sight are, it would seem.

204

This claim (a local flood with hyperbolic or localized descriptive language) has been thoroughly de-constructed many times over. Nothing about it makes any sense, and it exists only as a post-hoc rescuing device in the face of anti-biblical geology (in other words, a compromise view). Virtually nobody (perhaps no serious theologian at all?) held this view prior to modern times. Strange, huh?

205

Please stop weaseling. Could those highest hills be as low as 20 feet above a plain? Could “the hills of Ararat” be little mounds? How low is a credible height for the hills described in the story? Or are you unwilling to take a stand on that?

206

I’m not trying to weasel. I’ve been told Mesopotamia (or at least some areas of it) is pretty flat; I don’t know in numbers what that means for the height of the highest hills in the region, or even if Mesopotamia is the setting of the flood story. I’m just saying it is possible that the “highest mountains” of the story are not all that tall in absolute terms.

It is also possible that they are tall enough that no flood could credibly cover them - if the “mountains of Ararat” correspond to the region that we could associate with that name in the present day, then the “highest mountains” of the story are indeed mountains. At that point there are a couple options:

  1. Historical global flood, with necessary ad-hoc miracles to remove evidence of it
  2. Historical regional flood, but “covered” intended hyperbolically or as “concealed from view” (e.g. by rain and thick clouds) instead of “submerged”
  3. Flood narrative intended non-historical

I’m comfortable with 2).

207

In addition, scenario 2 (without hyperbole) :grin:

Quran Surah 11:40
[And so it went on] till, when Our judgment came to pass, and waters gushed forth in torrents over the face of the earth,62 We said [unto Noah]: "Place on board of this [ark] one pair of each [kind of animal] of either sex,63 as well as thy family - except those on whom [Our] sentence has already been passed64 - and all [others] who have attained to faith!65- for, only a few [of Noah’s people] shared his faith.

62. Lit., “the face of the earth boiled over” (fara 't-tannur). This phrase has been subject to several conflicting interpretations, some of which are based on no more than Talmudic legends (Manar XII, 75 f.). The most convincing explanation is that given - among others - by Tabari, Baghawi and Ibn Kathir on the authority of Ibn Abbas and Ikrimah: “At-tannur [lit., “oven”] denotes the face of the earth.” Razi, too, mentions that “the Arabs call the face of the earth tannur”, while the Qamus gives as one of the meanings of tannur “any place from which water gushes forth”. The verb fara-which literally means “it boiled over”-describes the raging torrents of water which “turned the earth into springs” (Ibn Kathir; see also 54:12). This “gushing forth of water over the face of the earth” seems to point to the inundation of the huge valley now covered by the Mediterranean Sea (see surah 7, note 47) - an inundation which, augmented by continuous, torrential rains (cf. 54:11), rapidly spread over the land-mass of present-day Syria and northern `Iraq and grew into the immense deluge described in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and also referred to in the myths of ancient Greece (e.g., in the story of Deukalion and Pyrrhea), as well as in Sumerian and Babylonian legends.

Quran Surah 11:44
And the word was spoken: “O earth, swallow up thy waters! And, O sky, cease [thy rain]!” And the waters sank into the earth, and the will [of God] was done, and the ark came to rest on Mount Judi.66 And the word was spoken: “Away with these evildoing folk!”

In addition, where the flood water comes from, it could be: from inside the earth (water reserves in the inner layer of the earth) and very heavy rainstorms. The source of water from inside the earth that boils (such as the theory of volcanic hydrous plume) is possible, how much force is needed to raise this water to the surface from the water sources that are in this earth God’s business.

Now the water drying mechanism is the same. The very heavy rainstorm stopped and the water was absorbed again by the earth, the layer of the earth that could accommodate it. How much strength is needed, this is also God’s business.

So for that both problems above there are possible solutions.

:grin:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43103-y

1 Like
208

So you are unable to quantify “not all that tall” even within very broad limits?

Let’s add 4. Flood narrative mistaken, my favored option. Now in fact there is no evidence even of a regional flood; there are only quite local floods, affecting one or two Mesopotamian cities, while leaving others only a few miles away intact. Your comfort level may not be relevant.

209

I don’t really have an opinion about the flood narrative, but started thinking…what if the “regional” flood never did subside fully, then we would have ancient cities underwater.

210

There are better explanations for underwater cities. In the case of Pavlopetri, it seems to have been subsidence of the coast following an earthquake. And the Flood of Noah did subside fully, according to the story. Have you read it?

211

I have read it, but don’t consider it as literal as the conversations here lean. I am more on the side of a non-literal interpretation, similar to the A&E story providing truth in regard to mans sin nature and God’s righteousness displayed in holy and justified punitive wrath.

But I don’t find where it says the flood fully subsided, I find the language ambiguous, open to many interpretations:

Genesis 8:13-14 - 13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. 14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.

A literal interpretation of this would mean there was no more water, completely barren and waterless earth, which is obviously not true. Nothing would survive without water, so it must be figurative or localized (the earth was dried for several miles around Noah). I would lean more to a localized flood, with the earth being dried in the usual areas, as geography permitted. Possible that some flood waters remained, even exist as current bodies of water with ancient civilizations submerged, buried in silt and lost forever.

The bible’s ambiguity in regard to the flood (and Eden for that matter) I believe is purposeful. The lessons are in mans sin nature and pursuit of righteousness, not in the specifics of the natural world that surrounds us.

1 Like
212

If you don’t take it literally, there’s no reason to interpret it as a local flood. In that case, it’s a parable. But I don’t see the ambiguity; the clear import is that everything is back to normal.

213

@PDPrice, forgive me for adding to the off-topic reply. I’m still new here; and I’m willing to bet there’s another thread somewhere that’s better for this discussion. But for now, this one was worth a quick response.

@ProfBravus, there is indeed evidence for the Flood. Abundant evidence. As a bible-believing Christian who highly values science, I’ve spent a number of years researching this topic (and age of the Universe/Earth in general). My conclusion: the young-earth model is better. Although it does have its scientific challenges, it certainly has fewer than the alternative. And I value science and scripture too much to accept any other model.