Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Contess]

Hello, I've seen your comments about interpretation on Noah's Ark from the Bible, they are pretty good, I just have a few questions: when it refers "all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered", does it mean (as you interpret the flood was local) that all the regional mountains were covered? Also how much did the Flood extend, how deep it was? Do you think the Ark is historical? If yes, how would it have looked like?

[jimwalton]

When Gn. 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of "covering" possibilities.

• A people so vast they cover the land (Num. 22.11)
• Weeds covering the land (Prov. 24.31)
• clothing covering someone (1 Ki. 1.1)
• something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (2 Chr. 5.8 – the cherubim over the ark; clouds in the sky, Ps. 147.8)

And what about being covered with water?

• Job 38.34; Jer. 46.8; Mal. 2.13: in these verses “covered” is figurative!
• If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.
• See also Ex. 1.7, where the Israelites “filled” the land (a different Hebrew word, but the same concept). It speaks of their great number, not literally meaning that they filled the country.

Fifteen cubits above.

In 7:20, the Hebrew text says, “15 cubits from above [milme’la] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered.” It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose 15 cubits higher than the mountains. It can mean “above”; it can mean “upward” or “upstream”. If this were the case in Genesis, it would suggest that the water reached 15 cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible (8.5).

This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: they’ve been obscured by the horizon, and this represents the sighting of land, or they have been obscured by being submerged under the water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the 17th day of the 7th month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until 2½ months later, the first day of the 10th month.

[Contess]

Good answers, but still, how much did the Flood extend, like, did it extend through the whole Mesopotamia or something? Also if you think the Ark of Noah actually existed, is the Bible description about it correct?

With this interpretation, something might have caused the Flood too, probably heavy rain for days caused some rivers and lakes to excessively overflow and extend around the whole land.

[jimwalton]

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.

[Contess]

So, from what I read, you depict the flood like this right? https://imgur.com/a/sySG5Uf, also, I have to mention things are on unrealistic size, it's just a quuck drawing.

Also, I actually think how much the flood extended is something like this: https://imgur.com/a/Dv8o1Pn (before the flood is on top, extending of the flood is on bottom), and again, just a quick drawing, but this is how I think it extended.

[jimwalton]

Yeah, I guess. I hate to commit myself to quickly drawn sketches, but yeah, that's sort-a kind-a the idea.