Great Flood

Cultures around the world record a world-destroying flood in their oral or written histories. Some people believe that these indicate a common event in the history of all people, while others claim that many people would have a flood some time in their history so they are all recalling separate, local, events.

Common themes of the Flood accounts

When different people describe the same event, the details will not always match, especially where the account has been subject to generations of oral transmission. Nevertheless, it is to be expected that the various accounts would share a number of the details.

The best known of the flood accounts are, firstly, the one found in the book of Genesis, and secondly the one found in the Gilgamish Epic. Both are written accounts. The Genesis account is the most detailed of any of the accounts, and the one against which others are usually compared. It has also been studied the most, with a number of terms used in reference to it, including the Flood, Noah's Flood, the Deluge, the Great Flood, and the Noahic flood. The terms pre-diluvian and post-diluvian are used to refer to the times before and after the flood respectively.

A table comparing specific details in a number of different flood accounts can be found here.

Cause

Many of the accounts say that the flood was caused by God or some equivalent being. In Genesis, it was Yahweh. In the Gilgamish Epic, it was the council of the gods . In the Bundaba (Australian aboriginal) flood story, it was Ngowungu, the Great Father. The Greeks recorded it as being Zeus.

Purpose

When the cause of the flood is attributed to a god, the reason is frequently said to be for mankind's wickedness. Genesis adds that "every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time". The Miao account from China says, in verse, "These did not God's will nor returned His affection. / But fought with each other defying the Godhead. / Their leaders shook fists in the face of the Mighty." A Navajo account says that it was because of "their sins of adultery and constant quarreling".

What saved the people

People were generally saved either by floating out the flood, or fleeing to the top of a mountain. In the former case, the vessel took a variety of forms. A Hopi Indian story has them surviving in the hollow stems of giant reeds The Greek story has them surviving in a chest. In Genesis, Noah was instructed by God to build an ark to dimensions and other specifications included in the account.

Who was saved?

The survivors were often a single family. An Australian aboriginal account has Ngadgja, the Supreme One, telling Gajara to take his wife, his sons, and his sons' wives. The Masai account from East Africa has Tumbainot taking his two wives, his six sons, and their wives. A Hawaiian story has Nuu taking his wife and three sons. Noah took his wife, his three sons, and their wives.

Birds sent out

Genesis describes Noah sending out birds to see if there was yet dry land. Initially this was unsuccessful, but a subsequent attempt was successful when a dove didn't return. In the Hopi account also, they unsuccessfully sent out birds to find land. An Australian aboriginal account has a cuckoo not returning because it found land. The Masai account has Tumbainot sending out a dove, which returned because it had no place to rest.

A rainbow

The Masai account has four rainbows signifying that God's wrath was over. A Hawaiian account has the god Kane leaving a rainbow as a perpetual sign of his forgiveness. From an Australian aboriginal story comes this account:

Ngadja, the Supreme Being, put the rainbow in the sky to keep the rain-clouds back. The rainbow lies bent across the sky; he ties up the clouds behind it and the rain does not come. The rainbow keeps the clouds back and protects us so that the rainfall does not rise too high. Our people understand the significance of it. When we see the rainbow we say, ‘There will not be any abnormally heavy rain.’

Genesis says that the rainbow would be a reminder that God would never again destroy the world with a flood.

The Genesis account

Summary

The Genesis account is the most detailed account. In it, God warned Noah that He was going to destroy the world with a flood, because of the wickedness of mankind. Noah was to build an ark and take on it his family and representatives of all air-breathing, land-dwelling creatures. The ark was to be 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits high (approximately 450 feet long, by 75 feet wide, by 45 feet high), have three decks, and rooms.

God brought the animals and birds to Noah, and there were two of the "unclean" animals and seven (or seven pairs) of the "clean".

After Noah and his family and all the creatures were on board, God shut the door of the ark. The flood was brought on by the eruption of subterranean water ("the fountains of the deep were opened"), and rain. The rain lasted nearly six weeks (40 days and nights). The flood waters apparently continued to rise for 150 days, but it was just over a year before the waters had receded enough for the occupants of the ark to leave.

The ark is recorded as having come to rest on the mountains of Ararat, taken by many today to be the existing mountains of that name. God put a rainbow in the clouds, and said that it was to be a reminder that he would never again destroy the world in a flood. (Genesis does not say that this was the first ever rainbow.) He also told Noah that it was now okay to eat meat.

Criticisms

See also criticism in Noah's Ark and Flood Geology.

Critics of the global flood suggest that the flood accounts are unrelated accounts of local floods, or stories influenced by the arrival of missionaries.

However, Nozomi Osanai responds that "...the detailed nature of the widely spread statements has common elements to the Bible. In fact, even people who live far from the sea or in mountainous areas have flood traditions which are similar to the Genesis account."

And Murray Adamthwaite responds regarding the missionary influence, "...that explanation fails since in many cases secular anthropologists gathered the stories before missionaries reached these tribes with the Gospel. In other cases missionaries have related how they indeed told the story of Noah, only to find that the tribal folk already had a similar tale in their own legends."

The Gilgamish Epic account

The council of the gods decided to destroy mankind with a flood, but Utnapishtim was warned by the god who had made man, Ea, to build a boat to take all living being. The length, width, and height were each 120 cubits (about 180 feet). It had seven stories.

The gods got frightened by the flood and retreated to heaven where they cowered and wept. The flood lasted six days and seven nights, and was accompanied by wind and storm. Utnapishtim send out a dove followed by a swallow, but both returned, unable to find land. He then sent a raven, which didn't return.

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati comments on the Gilgamish Epic:

It is common to make legends out of historical events, but not history from legends. ... For instance, in Genesis, God’s judgment is just, he is patient with mankind for 120 years (Genesis 6:3), shows mercy to Noah, and is sovereign. Conversely, the gods in the Gilgamesh Epic are capricious and squabbling, cower at the Flood and are famished without humans to feed them sacrifices. That is, the human writers of the Gilgamesh Epic rewrote the true account, and made their gods in their own image.

Other ancient references

Some ancient Chinese characters have been shown to have a basis in their history of creation and the flood. A character meaning "ship" is made up of three sub-characters, or radicals, which respectively mean "eight", "mouth" (representing "person"), and "vessel", which is a reminder that the vessel that saved Noah and his family had eight human mouths to feed.

The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, who lived in the seventh century B.C., recorded, "I have read intricate tablets inscribed with obscure Sumerian or Akkadian...inscriptions on stone from before the Flood."

Modern explanations

Black Sea theory

In 2000, explorers discovered evidence that humans lived where the Black Sea now is and speculated the sea was created during a great flood . Dr. Robert Ballard expanded on this theory, postulating that the Black Sea was much lower during the Ice Age (including the finding of a beach thousands of feet underwater), and when the walls holding back the Mediterranean Sea at the Bosporus broke, the sea rushed in and drowned the inhabitants; those who survived told the tale orally, and according to Ballard this became the basis for the flood accounts of Genesis and Gilgamesh [1]. This theory is for a local flood, and not the world-wide flood as recorded in Genesis and many other cultural traditions. It also doesn't fit with many other details of the Genesis account.

Flood geology

See main article: Flood geology

Flood geology is the study of the Earth's geology from the point of view that the Genesis account is true and accurate, and that evidence of the Flood can be found in the geology of the Earth.

Until the rise of uniformitarian geology in the early 19th century, most geologists accepted the Noahic deluge as part of geology. But James Hutton proposed in 1795 that geology ought to be based on the processes that we see happening now, thereby automatically ruling the Flood out of consideration. During the 19th century a number of "scriptural geologists" held out against the rising acceptance of Hutton's principles, but they fought a losing battle and interest in flood geology virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

However, in the second half of the 20th century, interest was revived amongst people keen to show that the biblical account was correct, and a small but growing number of geologists are now studying this field again, although the vast majority of geologists still reject the idea of a global flood on Earth.

Flood geologists propose that such a world-wide, year-long flood would have caused massive erosion, sedimentation, and geological movements, and leaving plenty of evidence in the geological record. Many propose that there was a single continent before the flood that broke up during the flood. The idea of tectonic plate movement was proposed by creationary scientist Antonio Snider in 1859, although it was not until several other scientists had proposed similar ideas that the idea was adopted by mainstream scientists in the last few decades of the 20th century.

According to flood geologists, the flood resulted from subterranean water erupting to the surface ("the fountains of the deep were opened"—Genesis 7:xx), combined with 40 days and nights of rain. Although the rain stopped after 40 days, the flood waters continued to rise for 150 days, and lasted just over a year before Noah and the others on the boat were able to leave. During the flood, there was massive tectonic activity, including some land rising up and other land dropping, such that the waters ended up in newly-deepened oceans. All the animals and birds (except those on the ark), and large numbers of sea creatures perished, and many of them were buried so quickly that they became fossils, accounting for the vast majority of fossils existing today.

Flood geology also proposes that the flood waters swept together and buried large mats of vegetation ripped from the surface of the Earth, forming the coal beds that are mined today.

External Links

• Greek Myths: Deucalion and the Flood
• Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 11 (Flood Story)
• Geological evidence from Northwest Creation
• Genesis Files website
• Was the Flood Global? Answers in Genesis article
• Black Sea theory, from Dr. Robert Ballard and National Geographic
• Native American flood story
• Collection of Flood myths