I think I want to put one thing out here about my view of the Flood. It has received at least this serious treatment by John Walton in his NIV Application Commentary for Genesis. No, I don’t think he liked my idea back in 2001 when he published, but I just checked by buying a copy on Logos and the passage is still there:
"Oceanography theories. Scientists have identified a number of different occasions during which massive flooding in the Near East occurred. These include a flooding of the Mediterranean and one of the Black Sea. In a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. The water was dammed up at Gibraltar. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than three thousand feet deep and fifteen miles wide filling the Mediterranean basin in less than nine months.
" As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basin. The air would pick up the moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour into the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. Adiabatic cooling is the cooling that occurs in a rising body of air which cools at 10º C per kilometer. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upwards simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential! The modern world has never seen such a convection cell. Forty days of rain is easy to account for."*
If the reader finds it difficult to put the Flood 5.5 million years ago, the Black Sea theory may be more palatable. In the mid-1990s geologists and oceanographers began investigating a huge, catastrophic flood in the region of the Black Sea. Their findings indicate that in about 5500 B.C. there was a sudden rise in water level in the Mediterranean, which brought a thunderous waterfall through the Bosporous and into the Black Sea." Walton, J. H. (2001). Genesis (p. 330). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan."* In Walton, J. H. (2001). Genesis (pp. 329–330). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. page 329-330
Except now, my flood is still standing up to the test of time while the Black Sea flood he offers as consolation prize for my theory, has been disproven by new data. It has been shown that a delta was forming from water flowing OUT of the Black Sea towards into the Mediterranean at the time the Black Sea flood was supposed to have taken place. That means, the Black Sea was full of water at that time. It wasn’t a good match to Noah’s account anyway as there are no high mountains to cover and filling as gradually as Ryan and Pitman suggest, it would more than likely have been called the Great March as that basin would only have filled at maybe a foot a day–which one could easily outrun. The Black Sea was never dry at the time when Ryan and Pitman say it was.
“And south of the Bosporus, they found a delta built by outflowing waters 10,000 years ago, when Ryan’s scenario would have the Black Sea totally cut off.”" Richard A. Kerr, “Support Is Drying Up for Noah’s Flood Filling the Black Sea” Science, Aug 17, 2007, p. 886
So, while I don’t think Walton liked my idea, at least he did give me some credit by mentioning it–something few others have bothered to do. Mine and Ryan and Pitman’s Black Sea floods are the only two ‘oceanographic’ flood theories he offers. I do thank Walton for mentioning mine.
My book is quoted on page 323 of Walton’s book.