by jimwalton » Mon Mar 01, 2021 2:22 pm
My perspective is that it was a huge regional flood. It's obviously impossible to know, but since other ancient Near Eastern cultures share stories about the same cataclysm, it sounds as if it affected the Mesopotamian/Sumerian region. Here are a few theories I have collected through the years. I'm not claim these are Noah's Flood, but just the kind of thing it might have been.
- Recent climate changes make it likely that the time will come when heavy rains will last for days and maybe even weeks. The heavy rains of Genesis are not so exceptional (BAR, Nov/Dec 2007 p. 74).
- 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. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than 3000 feet deep and 15 miles wide, filling the Mediterranean Basin in less than 9 months. The Straight of Gibraltar, which was once a solid dam holding back the Atlantic Ocean, was broken, and the ocean water inundated the entire continental region. “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 basic. The air would pick up moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour in to the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. 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 upward simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential.”
- The geology of the Black Sea suggests a flooding that occurred when the then-small lake in the center of the Sea rapidly became a large sea. This happened when waters from the Mediterranean found a pathway to the much lower Black Sea area. This change in the lake has been known since the 1920s. Since then, it has become clear that the flooding occurred about 7500 years ago (5500 BC) and that about 60,000 square miles (more than 100,000 square km) of the coastal areas of the lake became part of the sea in a relatively short time. Human settlements were destroyed. (BAR, Nov/Dec 2007 p. 74). A flood “burst through Bosporus in 5600 BC so violently [that it] cleaved Europe from Anatolia.” The flood was so overpowering that it turned a freshwater lake into what is now the Black Sea. Many who lived on the shores of that non-longer existent freshwater lake and in the general vicinity either were killed or displaced from their homes (Longman and Walton, pp. 147-148). NOTE: To ME, this one COULD HAVE BEEN Noah's flood.
- Recent disclosures concerning the geological background of Lower Mesopotamia claim that not very long ago, as geological ages are reckoned, waters from the Persian Gulf submerged a large coastland area, owing probably to a sudden rise in the sea level. If that rise was precipitated by extraordinary undersea eruption, the same phenomenon could also have brought on extremely heavy rains, the whole leaving an indelible impression on the survivors. (Speiser, Genesis, the Anchor Bible, Vol. 1 p. 56)
- Geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the Black Sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about 7,000 years ago. Such an event would have triggered sudden, massive flooding across a wide area, which would have served as the basis for all the flood accounts in the region.
> if you think the Ark of Noah actually existed, is the Bible description about it correct?
To me the biblical description is "correct," but hyperbole—exaggerated for effect, as happens in other biblical stories (Gn. 41.57). The boat was not that big, it was just the regional animals, it covered HIS whole world but not THE whole world.
My perspective is that it was a huge regional flood. It's obviously impossible to know, but since other ancient Near Eastern cultures share stories about the same cataclysm, it sounds as if it affected the Mesopotamian/Sumerian region. Here are a few theories I have collected through the years. I'm not claim these are Noah's Flood, but just the kind of thing it might have been.
[list][*] Recent climate changes make it likely that the time will come when heavy rains will last for days and maybe even weeks. The heavy rains of Genesis are not so exceptional (BAR, Nov/Dec 2007 p. 74).
[*] 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. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than 3000 feet deep and 15 miles wide, filling the Mediterranean Basin in less than 9 months. The Straight of Gibraltar, which was once a solid dam holding back the Atlantic Ocean, was broken, and the ocean water inundated the entire continental region. “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 basic. The air would pick up moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour in to the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. 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 upward simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential.”
[*] The geology of the Black Sea suggests a flooding that occurred when the then-small lake in the center of the Sea rapidly became a large sea. This happened when waters from the Mediterranean found a pathway to the much lower Black Sea area. This change in the lake has been known since the 1920s. Since then, it has become clear that the flooding occurred about 7500 years ago (5500 BC) and that about 60,000 square miles (more than 100,000 square km) of the coastal areas of the lake became part of the sea in a relatively short time. Human settlements were destroyed. (BAR, Nov/Dec 2007 p. 74). A flood “burst through Bosporus in 5600 BC so violently [that it] cleaved Europe from Anatolia.” The flood was so overpowering that it turned a freshwater lake into what is now the Black Sea. Many who lived on the shores of that non-longer existent freshwater lake and in the general vicinity either were killed or displaced from their homes (Longman and Walton, pp. 147-148). NOTE: To ME, this one COULD HAVE BEEN Noah's flood.
[*] Recent disclosures concerning the geological background of Lower Mesopotamia claim that not very long ago, as geological ages are reckoned, waters from the Persian Gulf submerged a large coastland area, owing probably to a sudden rise in the sea level. If that rise was precipitated by extraordinary undersea eruption, the same phenomenon could also have brought on extremely heavy rains, the whole leaving an indelible impression on the survivors. (Speiser, Genesis, the Anchor Bible, Vol. 1 p. 56)
[*] Geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the Black Sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about 7,000 years ago. Such an event would have triggered sudden, massive flooding across a wide area, which would have served as the basis for all the flood accounts in the region.[/list]
> if you think the Ark of Noah actually existed, is the Bible description about it correct?
To me the biblical description is "correct," but hyperbole—exaggerated for effect, as happens in other biblical stories (Gn. 41.57). The boat was not that big, it was just the regional animals, it covered HIS whole world but not THE whole world.