Farkel, Alan does an excellent job of debunking the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses ( and many Christian "fundamentalists" ) who understand the Bible to say that our planet was completely covered with water during the flood of Noah's day. I highly recommend his essays on this subject matter. I think they alone are sufficient to prove that JWs, or any other religious organization which promotes the idea that the flood of Noah's day was a global flood, do not teach "the truth." The problem is that you tell us that Alan's essays prove that "the Biblical flood could have never been possible." They don't. They only prove that the JW/fundamentalist understanding of the Biblical flood cannot possibly be a correct understanding. I think it is only fair for you to point out that many Christians and Jews understand the flood described in Genesis to have been a very large flood, but one which was confined to the land of Noah.
That the Bible itself does not tell us that a global flood occurred in Noah's day can be seen from a careful examination of the text. To begin with we do well to keep in mind that the word widely translated as "earth" in the flood narrative, giving the impression that our entire planet was flooded, is often translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as "land," as in "the land of Canaan." ( In acknowledging this fact, the translators of The New American Standard Bible chose to translate the same Hebrew word as both "land" and "earth" throughout the flood narrative.) That being the case, it seems likely to many Bible readers that the flood account in Genesis recounted the story of the whole "land" of Noah being flooded rather than the whole "earth" being flooded.
But doesn't the Bible's story of the flood say that all the high "mountains" were covered with water? And if that was true, since water seeks its own level, wouldn't that mean the whole earth had to have been flooded? For an answer to such questions we again have to look at the ancient Hebrew language. The ancient Hebrew word which has been widely translated as "mountains" in the flood narrative is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament simply as "hills." You see, the ancient Hebrews had only one word to describe what may have been either a small mound of earth or a Himalayan peak. That being the case, the flood narrative can certainly be understood as telling us that "all the high hills in the land of Noah were covered with water to a depth of about twenty feet." (see Gen. 7:20, 21)
But what about the unmistakably "universal" language used in the account? Doesn't the Bible tell us that God destroyed "all life under the heavens" (Gen. 6:17) during the flood? Yes, it does. But it also tells us that "all nations under heaven" lived in fear because of Joshua's conquest of Canaan. (Deut. 2:25) We are also told that during a famine that occurred at the time of Joseph, "The people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph." (Gen. 41:57) And it tells us that at the time of Paul the good news of Jesus Christ had been "proclaimed to every creature under heaven." (Col. 1:23) Are we to believe such statements included the nations of people which then lived in North America, South America, China and Australia? Of course not. We must remember that the world of the Bible writers was a much smaller world than our world today. Their part of the earth was then for them "the whole world."
But why would God have had Noah construct such a large ark if it was intended to carry only Noah, his family, and a collection of animals from his own land? Maybe Noah was instructed to build an ark big enough to hold every person in the land that was about to be flooded. An ark with room enough for all those who might repent but didn't. The Bible tells us that Noah was "a preacher of righteousness." (2 Peter 2:5) We know that "God does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance." How could Noah be telling a land full of people to repent and get on the ark if that ark had no room for them? God's plan of salvation today has room for everyone on earth, does it not? Should we believe that God's plan of salvation in Noah's day did not?
Another question that is sometimes asked to those of us who believe that the Bible does not teach that Noah's flood was a global flood is, "If the flood was confined to the land of Noah, why would God not have simply told Noah to take his family and pairs of animals and flee to higher ground?" Many who believe that the flood of Noah's day, as described in Genesis, was confined to the land of Noah say that the answer to this question can be found in 1 Peter 3:20,21. There we are told that Noah and his family, "were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism." So, they say that by choosing to save the lives of Noah and his family as they passed through the waters of the flood, God was symbolically pointing to a time when his people (Christians) would find salvation as they passed through the waters of baptism. Also by having Noah remain in his land right by the ark right up until the flood began allowed all those to whom Noah had preached the opportunity to repent and find salvation all the way up until the time Noah closed the door of the ark.
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Carl Olof Jonsson, the author of The Gentile Times Reconsidered, who also understands the "biblical flood" to have been be a large local flood, wrote the following to me a few years back.
Hi Mike,
As most modern Bible dictionaries point out, the "Ararat" of the Bible was not a mountain, but originally a geographical area, which later, in the Assyrian period, was consolidated into a kingdom (2 Kings 19:37; Isa. 37:38; Jer. 51:27). The later kingdom lay north and northeast of Mesopotamia with its center around the seas of Van and Urmia. In cuneiform inscriptions the form of the name is "Urartu". Gen. 8:4 states that the Ark "came to rest on the mountains (or ’hills’) of Ararat." The plural, "mountains, hills," should be noted. It is only in later Christian tradition that the mountain of Agri Dag in northeastern Turkey came to be called "Ararat" and was identified as the site of the landing.
The Targums and the early Syriac translation render Ararat as "Korduene" (Karduchia), and this is also where Berossus locates the site of landing, according to Josephus (Ant. I.3.6). Korduene seems to refer to the area occupied by the Kurds, Kurdistan, or the former Armenia. The Latin versions, in fact, render Ararat as "Armenia". This roughtly corresponds to the earlier kingdom of Urartu, which was destroyed late in the 7th century BC, after which the name disappears. An excellent recent work on the Urartu/Ararat kingdom is URARTU—DAS REICH AM ARARAT, by Ralf-Bernhard Wartke (Mainz am Rhein, 1993).
Archaeological findings show that the southern border of the kingdom of Urartu extended down to the area of Nineveh (close to present-day Mosul) and the Zab rivers. (It is quite possible that the earlier geographical area called Urartu was larger and extended further south and southeast.) Vast areas of the southern kingdom of Urartu was only between 300 and 200 meters above sea level. The Hamrin range that you mention, which is further south, reaches to about 500 meters.
But at the time of the Flood these areas may have been much lower, as the mountain building movements of Iraq and southwestern Persia have been going on since that time. Drs. G. M. Lees and N. L. Falcon point out: "This mountain system has developed out of a broader zone of depression or geosyncline, by a relative approach between central Persia and the stable massif of Arabia which compressed the mobile strip between and formed a series of giant earth waves or fold mountains. The time of the maximum tangential movement was in the late Pliocene but THE ELEVATION OF THE MOUNTAIN BELT AS A WHOLE, AS DISTINCT FROM FOLD MOVEMENTS, CONTINUED INTO RECENT TIME AND IS IN FACT STILL ACTIVE." ("The Geographical History of the Mesopotamian Plains," The Geographical Journal, Vol. CXVIII, 1952, p. 27. My emphasis.)
With respect to the Hebrew plural noun ’harim’, which clearly can mean both "mountains" and "hills", J.H. insists that it is "typically bad exegesis to argue that ... it is possible to translate the expression ’high hills’." His statement implies that "high hills" is an impossible translation. If it is, why did the translators, not only of King James version, but also the modern translators of the New King James Version translate "high hills" at Gen. 7:19? Bullinger’s The Companion Bible, too, translates "high hills". And Ferrar Fenton’s The Five Books of Moses, has "all the hills and mountains". I do not think any of these translators chose the word "hills" because they believed the Flood was local, so that their choice of word was due to "bad exegesis". And contrary to J.H. (and myself, of course), they had a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew language. The only reasonable conclusion to draw, therefore, is that "high hills" is a fully possible and legitimate rendering. And it would be especially appropriate if the Flood story, as is commonly believed, originated in Mesopotamia, where the only mountains the inhabitants could see were hills.
I have checked just a couple of dozens translations. I’m sure there are more examples that could be added by a Bible collector.
That an enormous Flood, dated by geologists to approximately 3,500 BC, drowned at least the southern plains of Mesopotamia and swept away the pre-Sumerian Ubaid civilization in the area seems now to have been clearly established by recent geological and geomorphological research in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf area, as I pointed out in an earlier post (September 25, 1999). There I referred to and quoted from the summary of the evidence presented by Theresa Howard-Carter in the article, "The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun," published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 33, 1981, pp. 210-223.
It seems obvious to me that this disastrous catastrophe was the historical background of the Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions. It would be foolish just to ignore this evidence or wave it aside. How far northward this "giant flood" reached is still an open question. An enormous sea wave from the Persian Gulf could reach a very long way northwards along the plain, even up to the mountainous districts of northern Iraq. It should be remembered that most of the Mesopotamian plains below that area are very low. The whole delta lowland south of Baghdad, for example, is extremely flat and rises only a few meters from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad 600 kilometers north of the Gulf, so that Baghdad is still less than 10 (ten) meters above sea level! Therefore, to categorically reject the possibility that a local inundation of the Mesopotamian plains about 5,000 years ago could have reached the areas of southern Urartu, would be a sign of ignorance, stubborn dogmatism, and blind faith.
Marine shells, marine terraces, and other evidence show that the waters that drowned the cities of the Ubaid civilization was caused by a massive movement of the sea from the Gulf. This finding agrees with the statement at Gen. 7:11 that the waters of the Flood had two sources: (1) "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and (2) the windows of heaven were opened." The "great deep" (Hebr. ’tehom rabba’) is used in the Bible especially of the sea (e.g., Isa. 51:10; 63:3; Jonah 2:4). The inundation from the Persian Gulf explains why the ark of Noah was brought northwards. If the Flood had been caused only by rains from above and inundations of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, the ark would have been brought southwards to the Gulf.
AF [Alan Feurerbacher], who in our previous discussion of this subject was careful not to be dogmatic, points out that, for a local flood to last more than a few hours or days there has to be an enclosed region that includes the entire Tigris-Euphrates region. This is an important argument.
The fact is that Iraq is often described as a "trough". The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12 (1969), for example, explains: "Iraq consists of a lowland trough lying between asymmetrical and very different upland massifs to the east, north and west, and continuing southeastward as the Persian gulf." (Page 527) Similarly, Dr. Susan Pollock says in her recent work, Ancient Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 1999): "Mesopotamia is, geologically speaking, a trough created as the Arabian shield has pushed up against the Asiatic landmass, raising the Zagros Mountains and depressing the land to the southwest of them. Within this trench, the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers and their tributaries have laid down enormous quantities of alluvial sediments, forming the Lower Mesopotamian Plain (also known as the alluvial Mesopotamian plain). Today the Lower Mesopotamian Plain stretches some 700 kilometers, from approximately the latitude of Ramadi and Baquba in the northwest to the Gulf, which has flooded its southeastern end." (Page 29)
As we don’t know exactly what caused the massive movement of the sea to inundate the Mesopotamian plain, there may have been circumstances involved unknown to us today that prevented the water from turning back too quickly to the sea again. These matters are still debated, and much research remains to be done.
Anyway, there was indeed a Flood. I believe it was local and limited to Mesopotamia, as is also indicated by the Sumerian Flood tradition, in which it is stated that the Flood covered "The Land", sum. ’kalam’. ’Kalam’ was the name the Sumerians used of their own country, which roughly covered the area from the Gulf up to present Baghdad, before it in the later Akkadian period was divided into Sumer and Akkad. The Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions are closely related, although it cannot be shown that the Biblical story was derived from the others, or vice versa. They clearly originate in a common source or event. That’s why it seems likely to me that the Biblical tradition, like the Mesopotamian traditions, speaks of a local catastrophe. As we have pointed out earlier, the Biblical word for "earth", ’erets’, usually was used in the sense of "land", and more rarely in the sense of "earth" (= the globe). It seems probable, therefore, that it referred to the "land" of Mesopotamia, like the Sumerian word ’kalam’. The context should always decide whether ’erets’ means "land" or "earth". And if the Scriptural context is not enough for deciding the matter, the historical context in which the story originated may be our best guide.
Carl
