Anyone looking forward to Hugh Ross’ newest book? “Noah’s Flood Revisited”, available in October.
Looks like Hugh is going to argue for an old earth/regional flood which I would agree with. I am sure there are a few here that will disagree. 
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I haven’t read anything by Ross recently. Does he take the text seriously? If so, it might be worth reading.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a good defense of a localized flood that takes the text seriously. As of now I can’t see it as anything other than describing a complete undoing of creation and an eradication of all humans minus Noah and company. That is not at all consistent with a localized apologetic to me.
Vinnie
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for me the notion of trying to weave the science of a localised flood into the narrative is even worse than a global one.
There are some huge problems with localised:
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water self levels…how such devastation that would wipe out all life within that local area covering all of the surrounding mountains…that cannot work given the well known Darwinian heights of said mountains at that point in time…at well in excess of 15,000feet, they were far too high to be covered by a flood which was contained to just that local area. It would have clearly influenced sea levels a vast distance away from the region…its ridiculous to even contemplate. We have had local floods here in Australia where water levels only go up a handful of metres cover hundreds of square km and most of the mountains around (which are only a couple of thousand feet high) are not even remotely affected or covered. If water even in Australian floods covered mountains in their entirety, the flood waters would in all honestly need to cover the entire Australian continent to achieve such a feet…and this would then flow into surrounding oceans meaning both the Indian and Pacific Oceans would also need to have a couple of thousand feet of water covering them.
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What the above means is that it would require an absolutely immense “localized” flood event to even just cover the Watagan mountains on the mid north coast of NSW Australia
The mountains around Turkey dwarf the Watagan Mountains in Australia.
What the above proves beyond any doubt is that either the flood story in the Bible is a complete fake and that none of it is true or, it must be taken as 100% true and the Darwinian Evolutionary claim is wrong. Given there is no historical scientific evidence from which we may go on, one must rely on uniformitarian claims in order to determine the Darwinian view on this topic. This presents and insurmountable dilemma for the Christain who agrees with Old Earth timelines…essentially the story must be taken as nothing more than a mythical fairytale about morality. Trouble is, that is not the way it is written or what the bible claims it to be and the only option here is to discredit the authenticity of Biblical claims for Creation, the Flood, destruction of Sodom and Gomorah, and Joseph/Moses/Exodus out of Egypt…I mean honestly, how much of the Bible is left to be believed when one wipes out almost the entirety of the Old Testament?
add to the above the problem of Christs rising from the dead…science says a body that has been dead for 24 hours suffers significant cellular death that cannot be reversed, His ascension into heaven against the laws of gravity, ability to survive in a vacuum impossible according to biological science…that means the gospel is bulldust scientifically as well. So there goes the foundation for the New Testament as well…what is left exactly? Nothing. The Christian becomes a naive idiot praying to an mythical entity that belongs to a fairytale.
You are forgetting about the observable facts that clearly demonstrate there was no global flood.
You mean like the parables Jesus taught with?
The trouble is that it does read like a parable or myth. Secondarily, there are mountains and mountains of observable facts that demonstrate no global flood occurred.
So you are left with a very, very big problem. Your interpretation of the Bible is shown to be false by the Creation itself.
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I am not sure how you get here to complete fake. Eyewitnesses make mistakers, textbooks make mistakes, doctors make mistakes. One component of something being in error/wrong/embellished does not indicate all components are the same. This is just not sound reasoning. For me, God speaks through fallen and sinful stories and the flood story from the Christian perspective, which is actually two separate stories intertwined into one, whether it happened mostly as described or not, is certainly one that God has chosen to use to speak to humanity. Whether or not the earth has enough water is of secondary importance to the belief that God considers this story important. I mean, it’s one of the most well known stories in the world.
Belief in the supernatural literally presupposes natural. Its super-natural—as in beyond the ordinary course of things. That presupposes and ordinary course of things. Science doesn’t actually say any of these things are impossible. It says they are not consistent with what we observe in the natural world. That in no way, shape or form excludes God from working miracles. All you are saying is that the resurrection was a true miracle that goes well beyond what we observe as possible given our physics. Absolutely. The resurrection of Jesus was, is and always will be a miraculous event.
If you want to argue every aspect of the flood was a miracle you can. God made new water, God took it back after, God fed the animals, God provided them food afterwards for years, God teleported the penguins (and thousands of other animals) back home. The real problem is not local vs all of earthly creation. The latter is quite obviously the case. but old earth Christians stuck in their “inerrant” mentality have to devise clever ways to make the text consistent with a localized flood because the evidence against a global deluge and the logistical problems it entails are just insuperable in their eyes. For me it is a very ad hoc interpretation. But so is God working miracle after miracle to salvage the flood. But I get why it is done and ad hoc doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.
Old earth creationist…. sigh…
Well… tiny increments. Learning slowly is still learning.
Do you know what the above is?
What i can tell you is that:
It was first discovered in 1882 and translated 7 years later
it is dated at about 900 B.C
was found in what was known as Mesopotamia, and depicts a Babylonian map of the World
and wouldnt you know it, contains and inscription which is an uncanny resemblance to Noahs flood and a Noah like man (Altra Hasis) was stranded on the mountains of Ararat!
Also, this cuneiform is a copy of an earlier one…so the story is clearly older than this little gem of history. The point is not that this is an artifact of the flood itself, it provides an external historical support for the Biblical account.
Another example is the 1936 “Daily News” story from WA in Australia (held in the Australian National Archives) that illustrates an Indigenous story of the same event…i can pull up more of these kinds of supporting evidences…
So your claim there is incorrect…its about time you started actually studying some real history instead of parroting naive and ridiculously stupid statements from others who seemingly know what they are talking about! If you are not interested in recognizing cultural stories such as these as historical, then heaven help all of us because it means our courts are full of eyewitness testimonies helping to convict innocent criminals!
The point is, the Bible is not the only place where we find the story, given that there are other similar examples of a huge flood account, this strongly supports the idea that the Biblical account is true. Now what science clearly demonstrates is that a massive localised flood in that region where the mountains were not visible after the Ark landed (if you like) must have extended out thousands of sq km…because 16,000 foot mountains are easily visible for a vast distance…and if you happen to also be up on one of those peaks…the distance increases significantly. See below:
The above tells us, a localised flood of that capacity in the middle east is a porky. That leaves us with little option especially given the other scientifically unbelievable biblical claims…creation, Sodom and Gomorrah, Christs resurrection, Christs ascension, the death of Ananias and Saphira, and the Second Coming.
It is much more likely that Genesis is a retelling of the Sumerian flood myth. Stories do not make the observable facts go away.
No, it isn’t. No matter how many flood myths you can find, they are still myths. The observable facts still clearly demonstrate there was no recent global flood.
Eye witness testimony is often ignored when it doesn’t agree with the observable forensic evidence. Many people have been freed from jail by forensic evidence after they were convicted in court based on eye witness testimony.
You also haven’t shown that any of these flood myths are the product of eye witness testimony.
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Nope.
Nope. He takes the text literally and tries to argue for a historical reality behind the text. Reasons to Believe does the same with Genesis 1 and 2-3. “Old Earth” is a good halfway house for people leaving YEC, but it ultimately collapses of its own weight.
Yep. All of the language in Genesis indicates the eradication of terrestrial life and all of humanity except Noah & immediate family. Every detail of the text is absurd if taken literally. Noah was 500 when he suddenly had three sons (5:32). Nevermind living to 500 years, I’m confused about Noah’s sex life. Did he and his wife abstain for 475 years, were they infertile and miraculously had babies after hundreds of years of trying, or did Noah wait until he was 500 to get married? Taken at face value (literally), it makes no sense. Then Noah’s son’s and their wives enter the ark when Noah is 600 years old. But there are no grandchildren after, what, 75 years of marriage? And these are the people who repopulate the earth? Gimme a break.
Darwin and evolutionary theory have nothing to say about a global flood. There is no “Darwinian view” on the flood story. It’s geology, hydrology, physics, etc., that disagrees with you, and it isn’t a conspiracy against the Bible.
It’s not an insurmountable obstacle. YEC is a small minority in Christianity. Literally billions of Christians manage to have faith without believing in the literal interpretation of Adam & Eve, a global flood, Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, Abraham’s 120-yr-old wife being attractive to Pharaoh, etc.
If you want to know where “history” begins in the Old Testament, it starts with legends about the ancestors being passed down verbally, and then the invention of Hebrew writing starts about the time of Samuel and the monarchy. That’s the beginning of the “historical” writings.
This is just silliness. The resurrection and ascension are miracles. Science has nothing to say about it. Ability to survive in a vacuum? Huh? Do you think God’s throne is located out there somewhere in space? That’s so weird I don’t have a reply.
Yep
That’s what they claimed when the flood story was first discovered in the 1800s. Verification for Noah’s Flood! Turns out, not so much. Atrahasis and Gilgamesh predate the writing of Genesis by a thousand years or more. Their reason for wiping out humanity was that they’d gotten too numerous and were disturbing the gods’ rest. Genesis takes the ancient myth and turns it on its head. That’s the genius of it, and why it’s endured while Gilgamesh was forgotten until recently.
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in fact science very definately does tell us exactly that…Christs resurrection for example is scientific nonsense, therefore the eyewitness accounts of individuals who apparently met with the risen saviour are fabricated just like the story of Noahs flood (there are multiple witnesses across the ancient world of the same event, two of which ive included in post above):
Biologos should start to recognise the significance of the above information, it is damning for the entire belief they hold on too. It is utterly desctructive to the Bible account and its authenticity when one takes the Uniformatarian Darwinian approach without considering the wider implications. That approach refutes the credibility of the gospel itself.
Again, this is silliness. Noah’s flood, if it happened, happened before the invention of writing, and there would be physical evidence of the event left behind. Christ’s resurrection is a miracle, and the only physical evidence would be the empty tomb. Luke, for one, interviewed witnesses and consulted written sources (Mark?) before writing his gospel. The two aren’t remotely similar. You’re grasping at straws.
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Noah’s Flood is a representation of the Cretaceous period and includes the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages from the Late Jurassic. During the Cretaceous there were high eustatic sea levels, up to 250 meters (or 820 feet) higher than today. Really this was probably the highest ever with no glaciers in the polar regions. This is approximately the same level as the upper northern region of Mesopotamia where there is an average elevation between 200-300 meters above sea level – these would be the “high hills” that were covered by 15 cubits (about 7 meters) . At this same time, North America was divided by the Western Interior Seaway. So this is really a local flood on a global scale.
After the initial 40 days of rain (Gen 7:4), the flood waters are said to have prevailed for 150 days (Gen 7:24) before the Ark came to rest on the foothills of Ararat. The waters would have increased to its highest level somewhere within the 150 days before decreasing again. After the Arc came to rest, Noah then waited another 40 days (Gen 8:6), sent a raven (more on that later) and a dove out and the dove couldn’t find a place for its foot. Noah waits another 7 days (Gen 8:10) and sends the dove out again who found an olive leaf (btw, fruit bearing plants evolved during the Cretaceous period), then sent the dove again in 7 more days (Gen 8:12) before the ground is found to be dry. The ground may have been dry somewhere between when Noah sends the dove out the third time and does not return. Lets say this is mid week or 3 days later. So we have a total of 240 days (40+150+40+7+3) of total flooding.
There are examples like in Ezekiel where a day is symbolic of a year, the day-year principle for judgement periods. So we can view this as 240 years instead of days. Based on 2 Peter 3:8, each day of these 240 years is then 1,000 years so its approx. 88 million years (240 x 365 x 1000). The number 8 in biblical numerics represents new beginnings.
Noah’s name means ‘rest or repose of nature’ and represents our common decent with all Tetrapods about 373 mya. Noah was 600 (or 602) years old when the flood began which brings us to the beginning of the Kimmeridgian age (600 x 365 x 1000 = 219 mya), (373 - 219 = 154 mya) The Flood then lasted for 88 million years which brings its conclusion to 66 mya (154 - 88) where we have a very famous major extinction event (Noah is now 840 (or 842) years old).
The raven that flies back and forth until the waters are dried (not just dry but the ground is parched) represents the shrouded skies after the meteor impact (on the opposite side of the planet).
– raven: (6158. עֹרֵב oreb) raven (from its dusky hue); from arab (6150. עָרַב arab) close, evening, turns to gloom
The Ark is made of ‘gopher’ wood. Hebrews scholars don’t know what gopher wood is but there is some sense that it may mean wood that is processed, like particle board made of wood chips or saw-‘dust’. If we see this as an English word, a ‘gopher’ is well known to be a burrowing animal.
The Ark could represent a burrow built by Noah (tetrapods). The ‘wood’ is the structural support for the Ark and in the case of a burrow, this would be the ground/earth (naturally processed wood/plant matter). Small animals can survive a natural disaster like a ‘flood’ in a burrow. They will dig down and create a sump to collect any water that seeps in so their living quarters can stay dry. When it rains they will plug the opening, represented by the ‘window’ of the Ark.
And according to AI Overview:
burrowing animals frequently share their burrows with other species, a phenomenon that can involve complex ecological relationships like mutualism and commensalism. Burrow builders are often considered “ecosystem engineers” because their activities create habitats that numerous other creatures can utilize for shelter, safety, and resources.
As the flooding increases over millions of years, the burrow(s) move to higher ground with it. Small animals are able to survive these floods (other natural disasters like a meteor impact), but the target of the ‘flood’ which are the ‘giants’ or ‘nephilim’ (the dinosaurs) are doomed.
So the late Juraissic was about 140 million years ago, and the late Cretaceous ended 66 million years ago. That was about the time of the earliest known primate, a shrew-like creature of the genus Purgatorius that survived the asteroid impact that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. And you think Adam, Eve and Noah existed at that time? Ridiculous. Go away.
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Adam represents all life. He was made of the ‘dust’ of the ground about 3.4 bya. (Gen 2:7) The inspiration God gave Moses for how life began was to have him think of the smallest thing he could and that was dust. Today we know it was smaller than that with all the single celled microbes.
God divided Adam in half, forming Eve and brought her back together with him as one (Gen 2:21-24). This is a representation of cell division and multicellularity. First multicellular life was algae, in the ‘garden’ about 1.8 bya.
Upon leaving the garden, God clothed A&E with ‘animal skins’ (Gen 3:21). Here they represent the first metazoans (animals) about 760 mya. God called ‘their name’ Adam (Gen 5:2) for they were one single organism.
Another key figure before we get to Noah is Enoch. Enoch ‘walked with God’ (Gen 5:24) and his name means ‘dedicated, trained or disciplined’. He represents our common decent with all vertebrates which have a ‘backbone’ and a ‘skull’. This is where life really begins to take off during the Cambrian period about 530 mya.
Noah’s name means ‘rest, or repose of nature’ (Gen 5:29). One thing that gives rest to all land animals is that they are not constantly swimming like fish. They can lay on a rock or under it, or burrow in the ground. Noah represents our common decent with all tetrapods about 373 mya.
I go into more details of all the patriarchs starting with this post here:
the problem there is that the scientific evidences do not support your claimms.
Firstly, the historical record we have tells us that the flood was about 2500 B.C (4500 years ago)
Secondly, according to Wikipedia, Science direct, and Ancient Coastal Settlements, in 2500 B.C the ocean levels were lower than they are today by at least 3metres. It claims a gradual rise in the Mediterranean…that seems at odds with hundreds of metres higher.
so if there was a point of higher global water levels, then the timeline must be significantly different between the stories.
you do not appear to be considering the arguments i have presented to you. So let me explain again in simpler terms:
- How do we know of Noahs flood? Moses wrote it in the bible based on likely a combination of Gods revelation to him and the folk law from his ancestors…these stories are also supported by unrelated writings…and that strongly supports the notion that the biblical account is true!
- The difference between the witness for Noahs flood and Christ…we cannot show that any of the apostles, or even new testament writers actually wrote those words. It is generally claimed that someone else wrote the gospels (the entire new testament) on behalf of those who claim to have been eyewitnesses.
- There is no historical support from any government (if you like) records admitting to the story of Christs resurrection…we do not have any witnesses to his 6 week time on earth between the Sunday morning and HIs ascension. Yet apparently over 500 people saw him…where are those 500 peoples writings on the most significant event in world history…a well known man dying publically and then rising from the dead 3 days later…surely there would be a wealth of writings about this from those individuals or Government records…but there are none.
- again, science tells us that any claim a dead body more than 24 hours after death can rise from the dead is impossible…so the story is fabricated scientifically (you cannot claim miracle…because you do not claim miracle for sodom and gomorah, the exodus, creation, or the flood)
My point here is that a scientific approach to teaching/proving creation, the fall, the flood, the ministry of Christ/gospel, and the Second Coming…that is a fools errand. These things are unscientific and therefore impossible from that point of view.
Indeed you are mixing the straight biblical timeline with a scientific timeline. Rock layers of the Cretaceous period are part of your flood layers, correct? Science says that was between 145-66 mya, so you are looking in the wrong place when you look up what science says the ocean levels were like just 4.5 kya (2,500 BC).
The peak of the flood was about 90 mya (about 250 m higher than today), right in the middle of that Cretaceous period ‘K’ according to this chart of sea levels:
That’s an unusual usage of the word ‘witnesses’.
Those accounts are not witnesses. They are retellings.
Noted for future use.
That’s not scientific evidence.
Ocean levels 2500 years ago don’t contradict @graft2vine’s account of ocean levels 100000000 years ago.