Did Noah's Flood Kill All Humans except his family?

Did Noah's Flood Kill All Humans except his family?

Glenn R. Morton March 25, 2020

Let's be real here.  This story is an embarrassment to liberal Christians and held to dearly by young-earth people, who are also an embarrassment to 'scientifically minded' Christians.  The young-earthers,  I believe correctly,  think the Bible stories are true, or at least true in large part. Proclaiming the Bible to be myth undermines its credibility as a book telling us the true path to salvation. There are two great divides we must cross between these two groups. The first is the extent of the flood. Was it local or was it global.  The second is, was it anthropologically universal, that is, did it kill all humans save Noah's family? 

Let's start with the verses I believe are wrongly translated, or translated with the translator's bias.  The issue revolves around the meaning of 'eretz', My favorite author as a young Christian said:

" According to Young's Analytical Concordance, the Hebrew word is translated Country 140 times, Ground 96 times, and Earth and Land frequently. It is also rendered Field once and by several other words in a very small number of instances. Assuming that Young's list is exhaustive, actual count shows that the word is translated Earth about 677 times and translated Land 1458 times. Moreover, of the 677 occurrences in at least 100 instances the word may be equally if not more appropriately, rendered Land rather than Earth." ~ Arthur C. Custance, The Extent of the Flood, Doorway Papers, 41, (Ottawa: Privately Published, 1958), p. 3

With this in mind let's look at Genesis 6:17

and every thing that is in the earth shall die

The modern mind thinks of planet earth when we see that word, but the Hebrews understood the word to mean land/country, not a ball in space.  While I know the evidence is against the concept that they believed in a flat earth with domed sky, I don't think they thought in our terms when they saw 'eretz'. 

Every other use of the word "earth" in the flood passage could equally be translated as land.  I will say this.  One can't get the extent of the flood from Scripture alone. Land could mean all the land in God's creation which, today, we would say would be a global flood.  But if it is to be translated as land, as I believe, then the flood could be local. And this brings us to the mountain and universality problem.

Young-earthers rightfully note that the flood account does seem to indicate that the flood was anthropologically universal and they would point to the 'high mountains' mentioned in Gen 7:19.  They argue that no local riverine flood could cover high mountains.  And they are correct. Unless one changes the words of the Biblical account, one shouldn't deny reality here--Noah's flood is said to have covered high mountains.  I don't believe in having a make believe Bible of my own making in order to have a flood of any kind just so I can say I have a flood. We have to deal with the reality that the flood covered high mountains..

So how about universality?  There are only two ways one can have an anthropologically universal flood.  First, have a global flood. As a geophysicist, I spent 15 years in my 20s and early 30s struggling to fit what I was seeing in geology into a one year global flood. I will guarantee anyone that the geologic data won't fit that scenario. But, all is not lost for those of us who wish to have a historical Bible. The second way to have an anthropologically universal flood is to have the flood at the start of humanity, when they were in a localized place.  This is the approach I take.

So, our criteria require that we find a local flood capable of covering high mountains, when humans first appear on earth.  I guess we need to define human here.  I define humans as anyone who carries the image of God. That means they have a human-like consciousness. What they look like is of no concern, nor is appearance an indication of whether they lack or have the image. Brain size is not necessarily a requirement to carry the image of God.  My wife had a Downs uncle who had a very small cranium, yet he was fully an image carrier. No, he couldn't do physics, but he did love the Lord.   I know this isn't an objective criterion and is not easily applicable to fossil man, but there are some things that are indicative of Adam and Eve being extremely old. Among others, the evidence can be found  here here

Amazingly there is a flood which is capable of fulfilling all our criteria. It is the Mediterranean infilling which happened 5.3 myr ago. It was a cataclysmic flood.  The Mediterranean had dried out and become largely a desert but with lush areas where rivers flowed into it. Interestingly,one of the suggested origins of the word 'Eden' is the Akkadian word for desert  Rivers like the Nile, the Pison, the Tigris and Euphrates. The basin was as deep as 5 km, When it filled in, the waters covered mountains as high as 5 km. That is 15,000 feet.  If that doesn't qualify as a  tall mountain, then I don't know what would qualify. 

Why do I believe this is Noah's flood?

1. It is the only flood in earth history that matches the Biblical description exactly.

2. Only at this time did the rivers of Eden flow into the same place.  It is amazing to me that the Biblical description of Eden is an exact match for the geography of 5.3 myr ago in the eastern Mediterranean region.. The Tigris and Euphrates, the Gihon which encompasses Cush can only be the Nile, and the Pison which flowed out of Havilah which the Bible places in Arabia, all were in Eden. Their positions are marked on the PBS map below showing the locations I believe they entered the basin in based upon interpretations of 3D seismic data shown in the literature. That a river was at each of these locations is certain. One could of course squabble about the name. They do match what Scripture says about Eden.

Below is an enlargement of this map showing what would be a huge area on the desert floor lushly watered by four different rivers. The area from the lake to the Levant coast is absolutely huge, but, as I said, would have been watered by 4 big rivers  each of whom was mentioned in Scripture. The sediment from these four rivers would have created a land of intersecting deltas and built up a land gently sloping to the brine lake. It would have looked much like southern Louisiana only larger, and as with the Okovango delta in the Kalahari desert, much wildlife would have flourished there (see PBS video at end) or see my list in this Biologos post.

3. It was just at the time when the earliest hominids appeared on earth. The earliest known as of this writing is A. kadabba  dated to 5.6 myr. A flood at this time, when humans are brand new can be anthropologically universal and the theology of the young-earthers can be correct. If all the humans are confined to that basin, then when the flood happened, they all died. One doesn't have to reject Noah's flood as myth if we place the flood in the Mediterranean basin at this time.

4. One couldn't easily walk out of this area so an ark was necessary.  The Mediterranean basin is huge, an equal distance from one end to the other  the same as crossing the USA.  As air is pushed out of the basin, it would have created weird air fronts at the tops of the basin as the evicted air pushed outward away from the basin, and I feel certain it would have rained all around the rim of the basin, again making it difficult for someone to walk to safety.

5. It covered high mountains. This is the only local flood ever proposed that could cover 15,000 foot high mountains. Gravity models of the basin strongly suggest it was that deep or even deeper in parts. Note that in the model below they place the original  Messinian surface, the red line in both models,  at 7 km below sea level. Even after 2 km of salt is deposited, the depth of the basin would be more than 5 km below sea level.

6. Modeling of fluid flow shows that, depending upon how large the breach in the Gibraltar dam was, it would fill in between 8 months and 2 years. 

Interestingly the western part of the basin would partially fill before the eastern Mediterranean even started filling.  It is estimated that the eastern Mediterranean would require about 200 days to fill after the partial filling of the western basin.  This is quite close to the 150 days of water prevailing recorded in the Scripture. 

7. An object floating on the waters could have easily landed in southern Turkey, which the Bible calls the mountains of Ararat!. The Bible does use the plural for mountains, not the singular, so the Bible doesn't say mount Ararat.

8. Finally, I know of no other flooding event in geologic history that can satisfy the above check list. 

There are several interesting short videos of what the infilling of the Mediterranean would look like. Come back  after watching. There is a bit more to say. video 1 This second video also models the Black Sea but it has been proven that the Black Sea was never dry. video 2 .  Below is another fluid flow model showing the velocity of the water.  The top of the scale is near 223 mph (100 meters/second)!

The second video has a much larger influx of water and by day 14 had started filling the eastern Mediterranean.  Smaller openings in another fluid flow simulation says that the western basin would not start filling until day 400, but it would take 200 days to fill the rest of the basin. As noted above this if close to the 150 days of waters prevailing. 

If the Biblical account is from Noah's viewpoint, in this latter modeling, he would not know that the Gibraltar dam had breached for a long time after the catastrophe was certain.  He would enter his boat (not the size of young-earth views), and stayed there until he landed in Turkey.

This flood matches exactly what the Bible says happened. The only impediment to its acceptance is resistance to the idea that Adam is old, resistance to evolution, and belief that the Scriptures are merely myth. I guess the question is, do you want the Bible to be historically true or not? Given the state of our geological knowledge it certainly can be real. For my part, I believe it was real. My faith is in Jesus Christ alone, but my belief that this is real is based upon real scientific data that matches the Bible's description of Eden.

postscript. The PBS video is excellent and will explain much about this event. It is 11 min long but it is a good 11 min.  It can be found here.

 

The Strange Hydrology of Eden

The Strange Hydrology of Eden

Glenn R. Morton 2020

As a geophysicist of 47 years experience all around the world, I view some parts of the Bible differently than theologians who don't know much geology. As a geoscientist, I know that the hydrology described is highly unusual--mists, rivers splitting into four big rivers etc.  I have arrived at a professional conclusion, this kind of hydrology can only exist in a flat bottomed basin. Interestingly, there is a massive, US-sized dry basin right next to where the Nile, Euphrates, Pison and Tigris flowed five and a half million years ago. As you read, enlarge the pictures to see for yourselves what I am saying abou them.

For those who might not have heard that this basin was empty the information can be found here, and those who wonder about the Biblical rivers being together, can find that information here.

Many won't like how far back in time this is.  That is too bad because you will miss seeing things from the Bible match up with modern geologic knowledge.

I place Noah's flood in the dry Mediterranean basin because it is the only cataclysmic flood which matches the Biblical description. It filled up in about a year's time, the basin was up to 5 km deep, meaning any mountain less than 5 km high would be covered by this flood, and the fact that the rivers flow into this area at that time, makes this basin a prime geological candidate for being Noah's flood. 

Mists Galore

As I said, the hydrology described by Scripture only works in a flat bottomed deep basin.  Consider Genesis 2:6:

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

Other than areas with hot geysers, I cannot think of anywhere that is watered by mists rising from the ground.  I once owned a ranch and had a small temporary spring.  Water which landed on the adjacent hill, (about 20-30 feet higher than the spring), would seep through the hill's rocks and bubble up in this low area.  It would last about 2 weeks after a rain.  While it didn't have the energy or pressure to spray into the air, water which drops several thousand feet in rocks very well could have had the pressure to form a mist when they spewed into the deep dry, Mediterranean basin. 

So how did that happen in Eden?  Below is a cross section of the geology of central Israel.  Note the geologic rocks are dipping to the west, towards the Mediterranean Sea.

If we extend those dipping sediments to the continental slope, where the continent meets the ocean basin, it would look like this, you can see where the water would be spewing out.:

This geometry of rocks is certain to yield artesian flow at the continental edge.  The situation would be a bit more complicated than what I have shown, but this simplification shows the basic idea.  Artesian wells occur only in valleys, never on top of the mountain.

Egypt's coast at the time is a bit more complicated but I will go step by step.  One thing to know about me is that I was geophysical manager of the Gulf of Mexico for 10 years for an oil company and the knowledge I learned there  about salt movement will come in handy here.  Below is what the coast of Egypt looks like today.

Everything above the orange Abu Madi formation and the purple salt, has been deposited after the Mediterranean flood.  We will restore the geology to approximately what it was like when the basin was dry.  The first thing is to know where the salt was originally.  As you move NE from the left of the cross section you will see the first set of faults (semi-vertical lines cutting through the rocks).  In this area, the faults are cause by salt movement and those faults show where the salt used to be.  See below:

Now we will remove all the post flood sediment and restore the salt to its original position:

The places I marked the possible artesian locations are channel cuts into the Abu Madi (first 3 from the left) and small thrust faults shown on the cross section in he middle of the section.  Given that the rain falls on Egypt, 5 km higher than this surface was at the time the Mediterranean was a desert, there would have been a lot of pressure to these artesian wells.

I know the Abu Madi formation is capable of artesian flow because it is made of sand and shale. The sands today are filled with natural gas produced by the Egyptian oil industry. a cross section from another place illustrates how faulting could be the source of some artesian flow.

I have shown that it is quite possible for what the Bible says to be true.  Mists would have arisen in this land regardless of whether one accepts this as Eden's location or not. 

The Right Rivers!

The second clue that this dry basin marks Eden comes from the fact that this is the only time in geologic history that the Nile, Euphrates, Pison and Tigris flowed into the same region. See the first map in this post or for more detail see here.  Today, the Euphrates, Tigris and the area drained by the Pison(it no longer exists), empty into the Indian Ocean.  The Nile still empties into the Mediterranean. If The Bible is true about these river, then this is the only time and place where one could make a case for a real Eden.  If this location is rejected, then Eden becomes a fantasy as many of our theologians and atheists, have claimed. 

"Skinner claimed: 'it is obvious that a real locality answering the description of Eden exists and has existed nowhere on the face of the earth...(T)he whole representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic knowledge." John C. Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology,"Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.128-130

All I can say to Skinner is that there was a time when a locality answering the description of Eden existed.  He just didn't have the requisite geological knowledge. 

This event comes at the same time as genetics says the oldest human genes originated. It is the only time genetically we could  have a primal pair of parents.  Isn't that an interesting coincidence? But one will object, only small brained hominids lived at that time.  That is true, but one Homo Sapiens, named Daniel Lyon, lived a full life in New York, having normal intelligence but  the brain size of a two million year old hominid, H. habilis. Daniel Lyon lived a normal life, showing brain size doesn't matter to one who bears the image of God. Furthermore the curses of Eden both involve the brains of Adam and Eve's descendants getting bigger. If they are Neolithic farmers as everyone claims, why curse them with something they already have, namely problems arising from having a big brain?

Rivers Splitting

Another  odd thing about Eden's hydrology concerns the splitting of rivers.  Scripture says (Genesis 2:10):

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads."

Rivers don't split right after the spring that starts them.  The only time rivers split into distributaries is when they are on flat land or at their delta, near sea level.  This hydrology is telling us that Eden was at a delta or on extremely flat land.  The bottom of the Mediterranean desert five and a half million years ago would  satisfy that requirement.  It requires a deep flat basin for this to happen.

Well, if we assume that Eden was near where the four rivers poured into the basin, and the Edenic river was sourced by an artesian well, as described above, then below is what I think Eden looked like in diagrammatical form:

In our world, one river doesn't source four others. So what could this word 'head' mean?  The Hebrew word means 'head', 'chief', or 'principal'.  Its definition says nothing about water, or headwaters.  But some interpret that verse as requiring that this Edenic river be the source of the other rivers.  Now, I had an interesting debate about the word 'heads', but the debate got me thinking and I figured a way to explain this if it does indeed mean headwaters.    Notice that I have one green river flowing out of Eden and its distributaries, empty into the four other rivers.  I am going to suggest that even if you require Eden's rivers to be 'headwaters', a requirement not imposed by the Hebrew but by one's bias, then there is a way to have these rivers as 'heads'.

If our continent had first been settled in Oregon, and people crossed the mountains and found the Missouri river and gave it a new name, let's say, the Toodles river, they would float all the way to Southern Louisiana on the same Toodles river.  They would give names to each of the tributaries they passed and in this scenario, we would consider the headwaters of the Toodles to be in Montana and Wyoming, not in Minnesota.  What I am saying is that what we call a river's headwaters, is an accident of history. It was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1832 who named the source of the Mississippi river. He called the lake which he decided was the headwaters of the Mississippi, Veritas Caput. He could have named any of the thousands of heads as the headwaters of the Mississippi. Below are all the possible headwaters of the Mississippi river

Any one of the above headwaters could have been called the head waters of the Mississippi, in other words, they are all heads of the Mississippi river.

While most people will not like Adam being as far back as I place him and won't accept this theory for that reason alone, I have shown above that the strange hydrology of Eden can only fit a deep basin locale. This, along with the four rivers, the cataclysmic flood lasting about a year, and covering high mountains makes this the only real place in geologic history and geologic time that actually matches the details of both Eden and Noah's flood.  The geology is sound. The question is will you follow where the data leads?

Why wasn't there a Rainbow in Noah's Pre-Flood World?

Why wasn't there a Rainbow in Noah's Pre-Flood World?

Glenn R. Morton March 21, 2020

There are two statements that Biblical scholars don't often connect and liberals dismiss as ridiculous.  I believe the Bible is a record of God's interaction with mankind.  And I believe that it can be scientifically/historically true, but not with the normal approaches taken by Christians. I believe that the events of Genesis 2-9 took place on a land that no longer exists, and that explains why these verses have appeared so troubling. Let's look at the verses.

When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens— ⁵ and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground," Gen 2:4-5

There was no rain on the land upon which God was about to place Adam, and this was a time before farming. 

The second verse is Genesis 9:11

"I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

I do not like the translator's choice of 'earth' because 'eretz means 'land', not 'planet earth'.  the land that was destroyed, therefore, could have been an area of earth that no longer exists, but actually did long ago, when man's ancestors first appear in the geologic record.  It was the Mediterranean desert.

But let's look at the other flood theories to see if any of them can explain a land with no rain and no rainbow?  The global flood idea has the entire world flooded.  Because rainbows can be seen anywhere on earth's surface today, including the driest area on earth, the Atacama desert, it is difficult to see how there would be no pre-flood rainbows.  

 Many global flood advocates say the rainbow was just given special significance, but to me that is like God saying to someone today, I make my covenant with you and I will set my grass upon the ground.  It makes no sense because God didn't do anything as part of the covenant. 

The Mesopotamian flood is popular with many Christians who don't believe in the global flood but want a real flood any way.  The problem is, there is rain in Iraq and rainbows in the sky.  So again, one must effectively have God take something that was already there and give it 'significance', but that isn't very satisfying.  Having God give significance to something already there doesn't show his power to keep his part of the bargain.

The answer to this question lies in the idea that Eden existed in the Mediterranean Basin 5.3 myr ago.  The details can be found in the here, but the world was different back then. The Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic ocean and it evaporated to 3 or 4 large lakes. So you will know this large desert is a mainstream idea, see Wiki and Wiki.  The world looked like this:

Click to enlarge. Note that the Taurus mountains are the Mountains of Ararat. The four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:8-14 are found flowing into the same region of this Mediterranean desert and what looked like a nutty geography to many Biblical scholars, like Ryle and Radday:

"For Ryle, 'The account...is irreconcilable with scientific geography.' Radday believed that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-cheek fantastic geography."  John C. Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology," Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.128-130

The above scenario, recognized by modern geology as real, says that those rivers once were together in the same area. Details here.

Would there have been rain in that 5 km deep, empty basin? Not likely.  First, the Mediterranean waters were mostly gone and the brine lakes remaining probably had salt crusts limiting further evaporation (A. Debenedetti, Marine Geology, 49,1982, p. 94.). There is river water pouring into the basin but, even today it is not enough to keep the Med filled with water. It is truly a small amount of water in the grand scheme of things.

Secondly, the Mediterranean is located in the Horse Latitudes.  Of them, it is written:

 "Horse latitudes, subtropical ridges or subtropical highs are the subtropical latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees both north and south where Earth's atmosphere is dominated by the subtropical high, an area of high pressure, which suppresses precipitation and cloud formation, and has variable winds mixed with calm winds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_latitudes

You can see the 30 deg line along the coast of Egypt.

Thirdly, there is a very sharp rain shadow in all directions. The yellow lines on Mediterranean map above are the mountain ranges that cause a rain shadow. 

 From Wiki:

"A rain shadow is a dry area on the leeward side of a mountainous area (away from the wind). The mountains block the passage of rain-producing weather systems and cast a "shadow" of dryness behind them. Wind and moist air are drawn by the prevailing winds towards the top of the mountains, where it condenses and precipitates before it crosses the top. The air, without much moisture left, advances across the mountains creating a drier side called the "rain shadow"."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_shadow

In addition as the air flows down into the basin the relative humidity of that air drops, making rain even less likely. Britannica says of the descending air mass:

"As it descends on the downwind side of the range, it warms again and its relative humidity is further reduced. This reduction in relative humidity not only prevents further rainfall, but also causes the air mass to absorb moisture from other sources, drying the climate on the downwind side. The ultimate result is lush forest on the windward side of a mountain separated by the summit from an arid environment on the downwind side. " https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rain-shadow

As the air descended 5 km down into the Mediterranean basin, the relative humidity would seriously drop, more so than anywhere today on the present earth.  Rain would almost be impossible in such a basin.

 No rain, no rainbow.