by
Damien F. Mackey
Above (for full story, see http://bribiebaptist.com/) is a picture of a ‘Noah’s Ark’ that a sincere Dutch Creationist, Johan Huibers, has lovingly built in order to recreate the exact design of the original Ark of the Book of Genesis. This most captivating tale, Genesis 6-9, which we take to be true history, and not mere myth or fable – {and which has its echo in the folklore of practically every nation and people on earth, thereby verifying both the story’s actuality and the common origins of humanity} - has nonetheless been interpreted in quite divergent ways, even by those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible.
Some secular scientists, too, would admit that there had once been a great ‘Flood’ that gave rise to the later legends, particularly in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), in which region some commentators tend entirely to confine the ‘Flood’.
Mesopotamia is also believed by many to have been ‘the cradle of civilisation’. After the Flood, we are told, men migrated ‘to the land of Shinar’ (or Sumer) (Genesis 11:2), which is basically southern Mesopotamia.
Afterwards, thanks to the Babel incident, humankind was scattered over the whole world (11:8).
I find it fascinating that Ian Wilson, renowned Turin Shroud expert, has discerned likenesses between the finest early aboriginal art (‘the Bradshaws’) in the Kimberley region of NW Australia and aspects of the early Mesopotamian culture, known as ‘Ubaid.
And that linguist Charles J. Ball had, in his book Chinese and Sumerian (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), painstakingly connected hundreds of Chinese words to the ancient Sumerian language of Mesopotamia, thought to be humanity’s original language.
Similarly, but now pertaining to Egypt, a bit removed from Mesopotamia, another scholar, Charles William Johnson, has identified Egyptian words in the Nahuatl language (the one spoken by Juan Diego of Our Lady of Guadalupé fame), after removing the letter ‘l’ from the Nahuatl words. Now, ancient Egyptian did not have this letter ‘l’ in its alphabet.
I just throw in these examples to demonstrate that - against the evolutionary view of origins - mankind actually connects, from antiquity to the Far East, to indigenous living a Stone Age existence, even to the New World of the Americas.
Now to a consideration of the main Flood models.
The Genesis account of the Flood is brief and to the point. So why then, one might wonder, are some Flood models so different the one from the other?
At the extremes, we find these two versions:
(i) the model favoured by Creationists, that would have the Flood so gigantic and global as to have erased absolutely all prior trace of civilisation. And, by contrast,
(ii) the localised model, confined to Mesopotamia only, based on archaeo-geological evidence of a large flood in the region of ancient Ur. This last is often espoused by those who do not see any need to regard the Genesis Flood as having overwhelmed all of humanity, save Noah and his family. Australian earth scientist Professor Ian Plimer, for instance, can accept this dimension of flood, and he has posited a corresponding ark vessel for it (in Telling Lies for God, Random House, Australia, 1994).
I would reject both of these models (i) and (ii) as being - as I see it -unbiblical. For one there is, I would suggest, a biblical pre-Flood (antediluvian) world based on Genesis 2:10-14 that is still traceable, albeit dimly perhaps, even after the Flood (post diluvian) – and even to this very day.
And there is also an apparently Cain-ite (pertaining to Adam’s son, Cain) archaeology in southern Mesopotamia (Sumer) that pre-existed the Ur flood, which latter I take to be part evidence, only (hence my rejection of model (ii)) for the great Noachic Flood, which affected the whole Genesis 2:10-14 world.
Now Wal Johnson, appreciating the significance of this archaeological evidence, but also believing with the Creationists that the biblical Flood ought to have been global, had, in his quite unique model, (iii), argued for both scenarios at the same time. This, while well-intentioned, is realistically impossible - and so no wonder that scientists lose patience with such illogical, supposedly Bible supporting, arguments!
Very recently some Creationists have, as we have noted before, started to bend to the view that pre-Flood (antediluvian) civilisation is in fact discernible even after the Flood. See our:http://genesisflood-amaic.blogspot.com/
The different Flood scenarios (i) & (ii) have their correspondingly different Ark sizes, too, varying from the sort of massive model as pictured on p. 17 above, representing (i), to the more Kon Tiki type of reed boat, representing model (ii). In (i), the biblical data is interpreted at face value, or using ‘western logic’, as literally ‘all the mountains of all the earth’ (as we would say it), being submerged. Proponents of this model, either ignorant of, or disinterested in, an antediluvian archaeology (best exemplified in Mesopotamia), do not seem properly to account for the fact that Genesis 6-9 was written (toledôt) by Noah (6:9) and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth (10:1), who were most ancient people, and who had neither a global familiarity with the earth, nor had the technological expertise to build a boat the size of the one built by the Dutch Creationist: a feat not possible until the late C19th AD, and even then, apparently, not effectively seaworthy.
Admittedly - and as is apparent from the fact that the Dutchman has created such an Ark using a biblical blueprint - the figures given in Genesis would seem to add up to a ship of such a size. But what do we know of antediluvian measurements? Do we need to take ratio into account? Raul Lopez has argued, for instance, that the massively inflated Sumerian figures (hundreds of thousands of years) for the ages of the antediluvian kings of the region are compatible with the biblical ages of the Patriarchs if it is realised that the Sumerian version was using a sexagesimal system (“The antediluvian patriarchs and the Sumerian king list”, CEN Tech J. 1230: 343-357, 1998):
... The Sumerian King List records the lengths of reigns of the kings of Sumer. The initial section deals with kings before the Flood and is significantly different from the rest. When the kingdom durations of the antediluvian section are expressed in an early sexagesimal numerical system, all durations except two are expressed as multiples of 602. A simple tally of the ciphers used yields six l0x602 signs, six 602 signs and six 60 signs.
The lives of the biblical patriarchs, however, have a precision of one year. If Adam and Noah are not included (as in the King List), and the lives of the patriarchs are similarly rounded to two digits, the sum of the lives has 103signs, six 102 signs and six 10 signs. In addition, if the number representing the sum of the ages was wrongly assumed as having been written in the sexagesimal system, the two totals become numerically equivalent.
It is suggested that the Sumerian scribe that composed the original antediluvian list had available a document (possibly a clay tablet) containing numerical information on the ages of eight of the patriarchs similar to that of the Genesis record and that he mistakenly interpreted it as being written in the sexagesimal system.
That the two documents are numerically related is strong evidence for the historicity of the book of Genesis. The fact that the Sumerian account shows up as a numerically rounded, incomplete version of the Genesis description, lacking the latter's moral and spiritual depth, is a strong argument for the accuracy, superiority, and primacy of the biblical record. In addition, the parallels between the Sumerian and biblical antediluvian data open up the possibility of establishing chronological correlations between the rest of the Kings List and the book of Genesis.
[End of quote]
In similar fashion as I see it, in relation to the size of the Ark, modern commentators may be superimposing their own mathematical matrix upon the ancient text, thereby arriving at impossibly inflated figures, thus making of Noah and his sons technological supermen of their actually ‘primitive’ (in the sense of most ancient) age. All of a sudden, the Genesis ‘Ark’ becomes capacious enough to have included the largest and most exotic of known creatures, even dinosaurs in the more extreme (though seemingly quite mainstream) Creationist cases.
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, by contrast, told that: “The largest animals, white elephants [?] and camels, went in [to the Ark] first” (“Noe [Noah] and his Posterity”). What! No giraffes, woolly mammoths, hippos, or Tasmanian Devils?
The Flood model that I favour (iv), sits between the global version (i) and the purely Mesopotamian one (ii); though closer to the latter in geographical extent. It is based on Genesis 2:10-14, the antediluvian world of man as described in the Bible, enframed by the four rivers, extending approximately from Iraq to Ethiopia (Kush). It is a far more vast world than the one that merely covers Mesopotamia alone, but it is by no means global. It extends throughout what I believe to have been the region inhabited by man from Adam unto the Flood, before the topography, geography and hydrology of the world was changed dramatically. And it is the world that is perhaps best shown archaeologically by the pre-Flood civilisation, from bedrock to the Flood as identified at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1929. This model can address the following series of questions thrown up against global Floodists (e.g. by Professor Plimer, op. cit., pp. 74, 105):
“If there was indeed a ‘Great Flood’, then …:
- how come we still have ravens, if one of the pair was sent off by Noah and never returned?
- from where did the dove get the branch if the whole earth was overlayed by miles of sediment?”
- Could an ark be built to accommodate all the organisms?
- Did Noah really have the mathematical skills to solve the differential equations necessary to understand the bending moment, torque and shear stress associated with the roll, pitch, yaw and slamming expected in the turbulent globe-enveloping flood?
- What shipboard problems would exist on an ark of this size?
- How did the organisms travel from the beached ark to their current locations?”
Plimer will also, despite his off-handed treatment of the polystrate fossils, employ many scientific arguments (especially geological); for example, if the Flood were ‘global’, then [ibid., p. 75]:
- every oil well, every coal mine, every drill hole in sedimentary rocks and every cliff profile would show a gradation from basal conglomerate to sand to uppermost siltstones, mudstones and claystones. … [but they don’t, Plimer maintains].
- in the record of rocks, we see evidence that some sedimentary rocks (and fossils therein) are formed in freshwater environments whereas other sedimentary rocks are formed in saline marine water. This presents a slight insuperable problem as the fictitious flood fluids were either fresh or saline but unquestionably could not be both”.
Added to this is the fact that the Genesis 2:10-14 riverine system world actually sits upon six miles of sedimentary rock, considered by Creationists, however, to have been the result of the biblical Flood. Carol A. Hill well explains this in her challenging article, “The Garden of Eden: A Modern Landscape” (Science in Christian Perspective):www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3_00Hill.html
…. This interpretation of the Garden of Eden as existing on a modern landscape presents a major conflict between what the Bible says and what flood geologists say. …. The reason is this: there are six miles of sedimentary rock beneath the Garden of Eden/Persian Gulf. How could Eden, which existed in pre-flood times, be located over six miles of sedimentary rock supposedly deposited during Noah's flood?
What flood geologists are implying is that the Garden of Eden existed on a Precambrian crystalline basement and then Noah's flood came and covered up the Garden of Eden with six miles of sedimentary rock. But this is not what the Bible says. It says that Eden was located where the four rivers confluenced on a modern landscape. It says that the Garden of Eden was located on top of six miles of sedimentary rock, and thus this sedimentary rock must have existed in pre-flood times. …
[End of quote]
Admittedly my model (iv) does have its own inherent problems. These might be exposed by such probing questions as the following from the Creationist partnership of K. Ham, J. Sarfati and C. Wieland (The Answers Book :Expanded and Updated), Tribune Press, Brisbane, 2002, pp. 138-141):
“If the Flood were local, why …
- did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped ….
- was the Ark big enough to hold all the different kinds of land vertebrate animals to reproduce those kinds …?
- did God send the animals to the Ark to escape death? There would have been other animals to reproduce those kinds ….
- would birds have been sent on board? These could simply have winged across to far-distant higher ground….
- people who did not happen to be living in the vicinity would not have been affected by it. They would have escaped God’s judgment on sin. ….
- How could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 metres) above the mountains (Gen. 7:20)?
- God would have repeatedly broken His promise never to send such a Flood again. There have been huge ‘local’ floods in recent times ….”
Yes, massive floods have occurred recently in Queensland (Australia) and in the US, for instance. But these did not leave alive only one human family, as in the case of Noah. I have endeavoured to answer all of these Creationist queries in my article: “Just How ‘Global’ Was The Great Genesis Flood (Genesis 6-9)?”, at our site: http://genesisflood-amaic.blogspot.com/
Once again, it may be a case of Creationists applying a modern mentality, in this case geographical, to an ancient world. Or what St. Peter calls “The world that then was” (2 Peter 3:6).
One possibly important aspect that I had not previously considered in my article was the ancient notion that the world was encircled by “Ocean” (Okeanos), possibly the so-called ‘Tethys Sea’ for which, apparently, there is scientific evidence. This may better explain (but in addition to some of my own arguments) why Noah did not just do the obvious (in the case of a non-global Flood model) - just save himself all the trouble of having to build the Ark and ‘walk to the other side of the mountains’.
