Eden and the Flood: A Historical Reading of Genesis 2-3 and 6-9

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Usually they took 2 days, one for research one to write and a couple of hours to format. I then put them on my blog and immediately copied them over here. The only one I didn’t write from scratch was the one I posted to day and it was from an old web page and took 3 hours to format for this forum.
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I didn’t mean to shut down everything here. Anyone want to gripe about the science in the above post?

This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

What science?

I had asked for this thread to be reopened because I too may have been caught not believing the details of the Bible. I am going to present a minor alternative to the geography of Eden presented in the original post. In this post I am going to ask the reader to consider at least whether or not there was special information in this passage. While I won’t claim it, I do find it odd that the description provided can be used to describe a situation which hasn’t existed for at least 5 million years. To do so and to refresh everyone’s minds I am going to go over again the four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2.

Anyone who has watched my work over the years, knows I believe that god has been dealing with mankind since we were early hominids. On my blog and here, I have posted articles explaining in detail why the only time humanity could have had an original pair of parents was 5.5 myr ago and why intelligence is not related to brain size, etc. Most people want to still with a Neolithic Adam but the scientific evidence doesn’t support that. The oldest human genes are 5.5 myr old. Hominids appear on earth 5.5 myr ago. The Zanclean flood that matches exactly the description of Noah’s flood happened, 5.5 myr ago. But let’s look at the rivers.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. The Holy Bible: King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Ge 2:10–14). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Let’s look at the rivers in backward order. It is generally believed that the Euphrates (Parath) is the Euphrates River, and Parath is translated 19 times as Euphrates in the Bible. It seems the identification of this river is true. So Eden involves the Euphrates.

The penultimate river is the Hiddekal and that is identified as the Tigris river. It seems certain to be correct because in Daniel 10:4 Daniel speaks of the Hiddekal river–and Danny boy is in Babylon. So, Eden involves the Tigris river.

I want to point out some things before we go on to the Pishon river. 5.5 million years ago, the Mediterranean sea was a dry desert. The northward movement of Africa had cut this Tethys ocean remnant off from the rest of the world’s oceans and in about 4000 years, all the water evaporated producing one very large desert except for the areas where rivers flowed into the basin. The Nile cut a 4500 m deep canyon into the African Granite just below Cairo. The Rhone River of France cut another deep incision into the European continent as it sped on its way to the bottom of the desert. Canyons were also cut into the Levant, but little was known of them, at least by me, due to the paucity of geological data.

Secondly, the Dead Sea Rift was not fully developed yet and the geology, topology and geography was all a bit different back then. Rivers don’t stay in one place forever, well at least most rivers don’t. So expect that 5.5 million years ago things to be different.

If you look at the Euphrates river today, you can see something very odd, It gets within 60 miles of the Mediterranean coast and then takes a right turn (few rivers in the world take such tight corners). Five and a half million yeas ago, it spilled into the Mediterranean desert and there is three dimensional seismic data to prove that.

The middle channel marked at the top of the seismic is a big river channel and it is emanating from the part of Lebanon where the Euphrates would have hit, had it continued to the Mediterranean coast today.

I don’t have seismic where the Tigris likely went so I can’t quite tie this up in a bow. It is a smaller river so it’s ancient channel would have been smaller as well. For all I know the southern channel on this 3d seismic slice might be it.

The Gihon is also hard to miss its identification with modern names. It encompasses Cush. Well, the Nile river splits into the Blue and White Nile. These two branches can be said to encompass ancient Ethiopia, which was a little less well defined than the modern country of Ethiopia.

That leaves us the Pison river which is said to compass the land of Havilah. And this is what I didn’t believe when years ago I laid out my views of Eden and the flood. At that time, very little geologic and seismic data was available offshore Israel and Lebanon. Within the past 10-15 years, major gas discoveries have been found on the Mediterranean sea floor, and such discoveries bring all the seismic contractors and consulting money’s to such an area and the geologic data rolls in. And last night it finally rolled onto my desk top.

In my previous views, I had held that possibly Havilah was a duplicated name, like Aberdeen, SD or Aberdeen, Maryland, or the true grey lady, and my home for 3 years, Aberdeen, Scotland which city has 22 shades of grey–grey roads, grey stone and grey sky!. But in reading the New Bible Dictionary I was reminded of what a couple of verses say about Havilah.

An area mentioned in the phrase ‘from Havilah to Shur’; inhabited by the Ishmaelites (Gn. 25:18) and Amalekites (1 Sa. 15:7). It probably lay therefore in the area of Sinai and NW Arabia.
Mitchell, T. C. (1996). Havilah. In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible dictionary (3rd ed., p. 446). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Maybe I should have believed that Havilah meant Arabia. Last night after re-researching this area for the umpteenth time over the years, I found this from a 2019 conference abstract. Arabia was drained towards the Mediterranean at this time. That would mean, So was the Sinai:

"Additional valleys of similar dimensions and characteristics to the marine extension of Afiq Canyon occur elsewhere along the continental slope of the entire Levant, suggesting that several rivers of the fluvial system of the Levant, which drained northwestern Arabia to the Mediterranean Sea during the Oligo-Miocene, still prevailed in the Messinian. The Afiq Canyon and its offshore apron as well as equivalents such as the Nahr Menashe fluvial system off Lebanon, imply that the geography of the Levant during late Miocene differed from the present. The Levant Rift could not have been a continuous tectonic depression as it is in the present, but rather a sufficiently disconnected series of grabens that allowed large rivers to still flow in between. The presence of the Afiq apron of substantial volume and with a thickness approaching 200 m along its apex confirms active fluvial systems feeding their bedloads into the Mediterranean as recent as 5 million years ago. ""View PDF
Yossi Mart and William B.F. Ryan, “The Offshore Afiq Canyon and its Messinian Evaporites, and Yafo Sand Apron are Indicators of Young Fluvial Systems Unimpeded by the Levant Rift”

So, I spent some time looking for a picture of this Afiq canyon and found a map of it from another conference:

Below is an enlargement of the map in the above slide. It is fuzzy but you can see where Afiq is.

Because of this new information I would now map Eden’s geography like this, or at least this is an alternative view:

In the opening post I went into the mists arising from the land (an absolute must in this sunken Mediterranean world), and other reasons to believe its geology. I do think it odd that these verses describe a situation which hasn’t existed for millions of years. Such knowledge could not have been handed down by word of mouth that long. Shoot, in my family word that my Morton ancestors were quakers didn’t make it more than 4 generations from the immigrant. This knowledge would have had to have been divinely inspired, if indeed it is knowledge. But one thing I do know, 5.5 myr ago, the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile and Pison emptied into the Mediterranean and drained the areas described by Scripture. that is geologic fact!

I will point out a curious verse in Genesis 6 whose implications are not appreciated by either YEC or OE Mesopotamian flood advocate. Gen 6:13 says:

I will destroy them with the earth. The Holy Bible: King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Ge 6:13). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

The word for earth is eretz. It is translated by YECs as planet earth–well the earth was not destroyed, it was rearranged by their flood. It is translated land by OE christians, but again, Mesopotamia was not destroyed by their Mesopotamian flood, it too was re-arranged. When the Mediterranean re-filled 5.5 my years ago, it took a year or so for it to re-fill, the rain would come from moist air being uplifted and pushed out of the basin,the waters would have literally covered what previously had been high mountains, and finally, the ‘land’ was literally destroyed. It is land no more.

Well, Martin, I am doing what I believe God wants me to do. If mocking me is what you believe your post-modern Jesus wants you to do, then do it.

From 2 years ago on the Dawkins foundation I finally found your position:

Dear Marge. I fully embrace evolution, after forty years of being moved from fundamentalism through ID and theistic evolution, and the entire physicalist narrative (well I want to, I really do…) BUT I find myself unable not to believe God as revealed in Jesus as seen through postmodern eyes, with incidental support from William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument. What am I to do?!” https://www.richarddawkins.net/2015/09/evolution-will-change-how-you-see-the-world/

It is sad how they took after you for the mere mention of a belief in Jesus from even the most innocuous form of religious belief. One guy told you to give up the “verbosity of postmodernist linguistic gobble-de-gook!” That wasn’t very nice of him to say that.—Now its your turn to take after me or are you just in doubt mode like I was for about 15 years??

Please continue doing to me what they did to you. It will make you feel better and I can take it.

Thanks gbob, I never went back, must do. I’ve dropped WLC now of course. Didn’t Jesus mock and use every rhetorical trick in the book including stark racism?

As I see it, he only did that to the self-righteous Pharisees. He didn’t do it to the sadducees, at least I can’t recall any off the top of my head, so here is a chance to prove me wrong on something.

If you consider me a Pharisee, have at me. I can take it. I will still argue my position.

BTW, I was good friends with Wil Provine, if you know who he was. He never mocked my position, he just disagreed with it.

And the racism? You’re not above a few rhetorical devices yourself gbob. Including mockery of course. Sauce. Goose. Gander. Deflection. Etc, etc.

You can’t possibly be proven wrong in your own terms, according to your epistemology gbob. I’m sure you’re perfectly consistent within it. Who isn’t? I certainly am.

Not so, I can be disproven. Find observational evidence for the multiverse. Find hominids much further back in time than 6 myr ago. Show that the infilling of the Mediterranean took 100 years, current evidence doesn’t suggest that but maybe other data could be found. That is three things off the top of my head.

Now, if you want to psychoanalyze me, take it to another thread. This was on Eden and the Flood. Show me where I am wrong in what I have presented but take the personal stuff outa here, please

Edited to add. start a thread on “The faults of Glenn Morton” I will back you with the moderators.

@gbob a question for you. There are massive salt deposits at the bottom of the Mediterranean correct? And the rivers that emptied into the Mediterranean would then flow through these deposits. Wouldn’t that render the water that reached Eden in your theory too salty to be considered fresh?

I was also under the impression that the rivers that flowed into the Mediterranean basically evaporated like it does in the Dead Sea.

Aye gbob, the multiverse isn’t falsifiable, but that doesn’t knock it from its perfectly sound rational position.

[I’m intrigued why you haven’t reacted to my twice pointing out Jesus’ overt, blatant racism?]

The environment varied from time to time. The event extend from 5.9 myr to 5.6 myr (salt deposition), after that until 5.3 myr or so, the Med was completely cut off from the ocean. Details below.

YEs there are big salt deposits but they were deposited earlier in the descisscation perion while ocean water still flowed in. To deposit that much salt , there must be a constant supply of sea water with none of the brine leaving the basin. Today, the Med still evaporates more than the rivers input and the bottom waters of the Mediterranean are saltier. they exit the strait of Gibraltar in a counterflow that hugs the bottom of the strait. So, fresh ocean water flows along the surface into the med and salty water flows out of the med along the bottom of the strait.

But if the bottom of the strait where higher, it would block off this counter flow and the waters would become salty and eventually salty enough for salt deposition. Since I have to go to chemo in a few minutes it is easier for me to copy a bit from Wiki:

The Messinian Salinity Crisis ( MSC ), also referred to as the Messinian Event , and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.[2][3]

Sediment samples from below the deep seafloor of the Mediterranean Sea, which include evaporite minerals, soils, and fossil plants, show that the precursor of the Strait of Gibraltar closed tight about 5.96 million years ago, sealing the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. This resulted in a period of partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea, the first of several such periods during the late Miocene.[4] After the strait closed for the last time around 5.6 Ma, the region’s generally dry climate at the time dried the Mediterranean basin out nearly completely within a thousand years. This massive desiccation left a deep dry basin, reaching 3 to 5 km (1.9 to 3.1 mi) deep below normal sea level, with a few hypersaline pockets similar to today’s Dead Sea. Then, around 5.5 Ma, less dry climatic conditions resulted in the basin receiving more freshwater from rivers, progressively filling and diluting the hypersaline lakes into larger pockets of brackish water (much like today’s Caspian Sea). The Messinian Salinity Crisis ended with the Strait of Gibraltar finally reopening 5.33 Ma, when the Atlantic rapidly filled up the Mediterranean basin in what is known as the Zanclean flood Messinian salinity crisis - Wikipedia

After 5.6 myr, rivers started covering the salt with sediment and much life lived down there.

One Sunday afternoon in 1972 an amateur fossil collector dug into a hillside outcrop of gypsum-bearing rock in the Tarano Valley in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. He peered at the inside face of the thinly laminated anhydrite rock that had just split apart with the blow of his hammer and saw a specimen of an ancient eel the outlines of its entire body and fins splendidly preserved. The fossilization in this rock was exceptional because the environment at the time the sediment was laid down had been a briny lagoon whose tranquil bottom waters were devoid of oxygen. No scavengers had been able to tolerate such conditions.
"When the quarried slab was delivered to Carlo Sturani, an articulate and energetic professor of paleontology at the Institute of Geology of the University of Turin, he knew imediately that it was equivalent in age to the Gessoso Solfifera of Sicily and the anhydrite and salt recently discovered by the Globmar Challenger. He visited the cliff to undertake a detailed investigation of a succession of fossil-rich rocks. Along with more eels he found foraminifera, corals, echinoderms, conch, herring, small flounder, dragonflies, leaves, acorns, land turtles, freshwater reeds, and roots of trees still in place. In a three-hundred-foot cliff Sturani could observe a moderately deep former sea that had dried out and become a tidal flat with algae and mud cracks. Then it became a shallow lagoon so concentrated by evaporation that its brine precipitated massive banks of selenite from which the first eel had been discovered. After a while the lagoon turned into a brackish lake, sometimes filled with freshwater. Then the lake withered into a peat bog as the region progressed from marshland to a sequoia forest. Abruptly, in the span of a tenth of an inch of rock, it was once again an open deep sea situated far from land. The transformation from sea to land and back to sea had taken less than half a million years. Except for those privileged to have been on the Glomar Challenger, no one else had ever expected that a major sea such as the Mediterranean could have evaporated so rapidly and refilled so quickly.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 89-90

Hippos lived along the Nile system

“And apparently, hippopotami made their way from the Nile to Cyprus. The migratory traffic might have been more frequent if the wanderers had not had to travel across a desert 2,000 to 3,000 meters below sea level.” ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, The Mediterranean was a Desert, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 177"

Hippos eat grass, which means the Nile delta area, where I put Eden, had to have a lush grass growing around it. It would have looked like the Okavango delta in the Kalahari Desert. The only source of water is the delta and it is a very lush place full of life.

A later article describes the conditions as 'hellish" but if that were true, there would not be grass for the hippos. Elephants eat fruit bark and grasses. The pygmy size might be due to there not being enough of this stuff to sustain the massive animals, but pygmyism occurs often on islands or other places where large animals are selected against.

“On the island of Cyprus, investigators from University College in London excavated the skeletons of elephants and hippopotamuses from graveyards 5.5 million years old. These mammals were not the usual multiton behemoths of East Africa. They were pygmies that you could have picked up and carried around in your arms as pets. Apparently they had wandered down a distributary channel of the Nile and deep into the empty desert basin to inhabit lakeside swamps and neighboring savanna. In the novel ecological setting on the floor of the broiling hot eastern Mediterranean, the elephants and hippopotamuses had evolved through natural selection to a dwarf form that could cope with the hellish conditions. Their skeletons had been fossilized in the deposits of the riverbeds. Later the ongoing collision of the African and Asian continents had uplifted the buried northern rim of a lake, long turned into sedimentary rock and thrust it into the landscape that would one day become the Pentadaktylos mountain range of northern Cyprus.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 89

Some of these dwarf elephants and hippos may have survived the flood, but they were widespread across the region:

Fossil elephants have been found on Cyprus, Sardinia and a number of Greek islands including Crete, Rhodos, Naxos and Karpathos (de Vos et al., 2007; van der Geer et al., 2010). The tiniest of them all was Elephas falconeri from Sicily, standing a little over 1 meter tall. Crete, Cyprus, Malta, and Sicily each also had their own species of hippopotamus, the smallest of which is Phanourios minor from Cyprus.Sun, sea and dwarf hippos: the Med is a surprising palaeontological paradise | Fossils | The Guardian

The island fauna must be a survivor from the flood. More later I gotta go

You haven’t ‘pointed it out.’

Actually there appears to be two layers of evaporites. The lower is marine and the upper is from continential runoff. The only way to get salt from the rivers is if it is trapped in a basin and then evaporates.

From " Origin and age of the Mediterranean Messinian evaporites: implications from Sr isotopes"

There are two layers, Bill, The final desciccation took place and no more salt was deposited. It was at that time that the salt was covered with sediment so that when the flood happened, the salt didn’t dissolve.

In what follows, I encourage you to read to the end. there is an amazing fossil there that I don’t fully know what to think about, but it fits my view.

I spent my chemo time tooling around in the paleontological literature for the Messinian in the Mediterranean. I found three articles rather quickly which outlined a large fauna living on the floor of the desiccated Mediterranean. This areas have since been lifted above sea level by the slow movement of Africa into Europe. This article:

Simone Colombero, Chiara Angelone, Edmondo Bonelli, Giorgio Carnevale, Oreste Cavallo, Massimo Delfino, Piero Giuntelli, Paul Mazza, Giulio Pavia, Marco Pavia, and Giovanni Repetto, The upper Messinian assemblages of fossil vertebrate remains of Verduno (NW Italy): Another brick for a latest Miocene bridge across the Mediterranean” N. Jb. Geol. Paläont. Abh. 272/3 (2014), 287–324 Article Stuttgart, June 2014

examined the Verduno section of Italy. While they used species, genus etc for animal identification, I spent some time translating them into normal animal names. They found

African primates.

Hyaenictitherium (also of African affinity)

toads

frog two types

Turtles

Lizards, 2 types

Monitor lizars, iguana type lizards, worm lizards

thread snakes and colubrine snakes

legless Amphisbaemia called worm lizards

Pheasant like birds (Galliforme

Accipitridae birds (birds with strongly hooked bills

Owls,

Gomphotheriidae–ancient elephant

small giraffes

Huge giraffes

small antelope (bovidae)

Gazelle

possible camel

Eucyon monticiensis: similar in size to a Jackal

lynx-like cat

Sabre tooth cat

rabbit or pika

5 species or mouse

2 species of dormouse

Here are a couple of pictures of two of the animals found in Italy

Sardinian_pika

The western Med at that time looked like this:

At another Italian outcrop they found civet like or gennet like animals.

:

“They pointed out strong affinities between the Baccinello V3 fossil, Viverra n. sp. “A” from Sahabi, Libya (Howell, 1987) and Viverrinae sp. indet from Lothagam, Kenya (Werdelin, 2003), thus erecting the species Viverra howelli. This species is characterized by a relatively small size and a lower carnassial with a short talonid. ” Raffaele SARDELLA,“Remarks on the Messinian carnivores (Mammalia) of Italy” Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana, 47 (2), 2008, 195-202. Modena, 11 luglio 2008, p. 196

http://paleoitalia.org/media/u/archives/195_Sardella.pdf

**

“ The following hyaenid taxa have been collected from Italian Messinian localities: Plioviverrops faventinus Torre, 1989 (Brisighella; Fig. 2), Plioviverrops orbignyi (=Ictitherium orbignyi) (Gaudry & Lartet, 1856) (Gravitelli), Hyaenictitherium hyaenoides (Zdansky, 1924) (=Ictitherium hipparionum) (Gravitelli), Hyaenictitherium sp. (Verduno), Lycyaena chaeretis (Gaudry, 1861) (=Thalassyctis (Lycyaena) ex gr. chaeretis-macrostoma) (Brisighella), Hyaenidae indet. (coprolites) from Baccinello V3.” Raffaele SARDELLA,“Remarks on the Messinian carnivores (Mammalia) of Italy” Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana, 47 (2), 2008, 195-202. Modena, 11 luglio 2008, p. 197

**

Mustellidae “ The Mustelidae are a family of carnivorous mammals, including weasels, badgers, otters, ferrets, martens, minks, and wolverines, among others. ”

“At Brisighella Rook et al. (1991) referred a mandibular branch with teeth to Mellivora beinfieldi,” Raffaele SARDELLA,“Remarks on the Messinian carnivores (Mammalia) of Italy” Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana, 47 (2), 2008, 195-202. Modena, 11 luglio 2008, p. 199

**

“Sabertoothed cats have been recorded in the Baccinello V3 horizon faunas (Rook et al., 1991) and Gravitelli (Seguenza, 1902, 1907). The occurrence of Metailurus major in the late Messinian of Italy is testified by two mandibles with teeth having the typical size and morphological characters of this species, widespread in the Eurasian Late Miocene deposits.” Raffaele SARDELLA,“Remarks on the Messinian carnivores (Mammalia) of Italy” Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana, 47 (2), 2008, 195-202. Modena, 11 luglio 2008, p. 199

In the eastern Med, Greek strata of Messinian age show these species living on that dry land M10 is the top of the Messinian. I will let yall look up the species or genus to see what the common name is, but there are lots of creatures listed.

Kastellios , 1 , 2 , 3
MN 10
(Steininger et al. 1 9 9 6 ) Cricetulodon c f . sabadellensis, Dorcatherim s p ., Hipparion s p., Muscardinus s p ., P rogonomys woelferi, P. cathalai, Spermophilinus c f . b re d a i (De Bruijn & Zachariasse 1979).

Ravinde la Pluie
MN10
(Steininger et al. 1996) A d c rocuta eximia, Bohlinia attica, C h o e rolophodon pentelicus, Cremohipparion macedonicum, Decennatherium macedoniae, Graecopithecus fre y b e rgi, Hippotherium pri migenium, Mesembriacerus melentisi, Palaeotragus coelophrys, P.roueni, Plioviverrops orbignyi, Progonomys catalai, P rostrepsiceros vallesiensis, Protictitherium gaillardi, Samotragus praecursor ( Koufos1989, De Bonis et al. 1988, NOW 1 9 9 5 , Bernor et al. 1996a) .

Ravin de Zouaves 1
MN10 (NOW1995)
Adcrocuta eximia, Choerolophodon pentelicus, Cremohipparion macedonicum, Helladotherium duvernoyi, Ictitherium s p ., Mesembriacerus melentisi, Ouzocerus graci lis, Samotragus praecursor (Koufos 1989, Bernor et al. 1996a )

And I have said that the eastern end of the Med was Eden. I have also said that God has dealt with us for a long long time, at least 5.5 my years. I don’t believe that the image of God must be in H. sapiens only. I do beleive that God implanted the image to Adam and Even who were small brained hominids. I also believe that the curse on both Adam and Eve are effects of an enlarged head. that means Adam and Eve DIDN’T have enlarged brains. They were small brained hominids.

Because of the above, I would point out that there is a controversial report, of human footprints on Crete in the Messinian strata. The idea is controversial because it challenges current ideas. Even the authors don’t know what to think of this anomaly. I don’t know what to think of this anaomaly, but it does fit my scenario, not the normal scenario.

Title: Possible Hominin Footprints from the Late Miocene c. 5.7 Ma) of Crete?" Possible hominin footprints from the late Miocene (c. 5.7 Ma) of Crete? - ScienceDirect

Bill, I saw an article yesterday saying that Medieterranean salt water poured into the dead sea rift at one point.

Ah, this isn’t that article but it says the same thing: During the second stage, which began at about
3±6Ma, the basin was invaded by the Mediterranean Sea, forming an elongated seawater arm (called Sedom Lagoon) which has evaporated, resulting in the deposition of the 2±3-km-thick Sedom Formation evaporites (unit Qse). H. Gvirtzman and E. Stanislavsk, Palaeohydrology of hydrocarbon maturation, migration and accumulation in the Dead Sea Rift, Basin Research (2000) 12, 79±93
, p. 80 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554.7048&rep=rep1&type=pdf

There are also other sources of salt being considered.

Various theories have been put forward regarding the salination mechanism in the Jordan-Dead Sea Rift Valley and its branching valleys. None of these have suggested current subsurface seawater penetration to the internally drained Judea Group aquifer, as a part of the system. The hydrogeological configuration is a combination of a low water table and a rather low groundwater divide, resulting in a shallow sea-fresh water interface. In most of the area the interface is expected to be situated above the base of the aquifer. As a result current seawater intrusion is possible across the ground water divide through the Yizre’el and Beersheva valleys which dissect Israel and connect the Mediterranean and the Jordan-Dead Sea Rift Valley. The model suggested herein is in accordance with, or cannot be rejected on the basis of the chemistry and isotope composition of the saline waters. In the highly flushed aquifers of the internal valleys, brackish water with marine affinity suggests current infiltration of seawater. This mechanism is additional to other sources, such as deep-seated highly-concentrated brines and entrapped fossil seawater, all of which are diluted by the flow of cyclic freshwaters.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022169479901355

Joel Duff did a piece on this back in 2017

A quote from there:

How do you fit the earlier evidence for bipedal hominins with your idea?

And here is an Biologos article

I know, I think Joel got part of the idea from me. We were on the ASA list together and my article on this was published in 1997. The article was rejected by PSCF in 1995 but a guy decided to set up a debate between me and Dick Fisher on the flood. We debated on the old ASA list. I think it was May 1996 The journal editor was on that list also. I kept pointing out physics problems with Dick’s Mesopotamian flood, and pointing out how my view didn’t have those problems. And after the debate, I sent Jack Haas a note saying that they would publish flood views that violated both geology and physics, but wouldn’t publish one that matched geology and didn’t violate physics. He replied “send me the paper again”. This time it was published a year and a half later. I have always been appreciative of Jack’s guts in publishing my paper.

Joel didn’t push the Eden view that I have, but I see no other way to make the Bible historical than this scenario. Someone much smarter than I might be able to come up with a better view, but so far no one seems to be trying, which leaves us with accommodation or YEC, and that is truly sad.