Alan, I am very glad you started this thread.
I must get a copy of that March 1, 2002 Watchtower!
Isaac Newton Vail, the originator of the "Earth's Annular
Ring" or "Cloud Canopy" idea for the Great Flood is also
credited as the first to come up with the "anthropological"
argument for a worldwide flood.
Vail goes into the myths of various cultures in his book,
"The Earth's Annular System" (1912) and "The Misread Record"
(1921).
Here is what is written on the first page of "The Misread Record"
"Being an Explanation of the Annular Theory of the
Formation of the Earth, with Special Reference to the Flood
and the Legends and Folk Lore of Ancient Races."
The Watchtower used to endorse fully Vail's idea. There were
references to Vailian rings and cloud canopies in "The Photodrama
of Creation" (1914), the "Creation" book (1927), and in "The Truth Shall Make you Free" (1943). There is indication that Vail's
ideas are also in the "Paradise Lost" book (1958) although Vail
is not mentioned by name in that book.
Rutherford wrote in the "Creation" book that "It seems to have
been the plan of Jehovah God to begin the increase of light upon
his great work for the benefit of man about the year 1874 A.D.
It was in that yearthat Isaac N. Vail first published a pamphlet entitled 'The Earth's Annular System'." [page 29]
Vail's ideas were never accepted by mainstream astronomers or
geologists, mainly because the ideas violated basic physics!
In all of the drawings of the cloud canopy depicted in Vail's
books, the canopy is shown to be revolving around the axis of
the earth, much like a cylinder rotating about an axis.
Planetary gases orbiting about a gravitational body would not
behave like that, but would rather spread out and form a flat
disk like ring, such as we see in the rings orbiting the planet Saturn.
I think Vail must have known he had problems with the physics
involved. This is why he spent more pages in his books talking
about old legends and myths than about the mechanics of orbiting
rings.
The Watchtower has not mentioned Vail in any books or magazines
for decades, but is still showing the influence of Vail's thinking
by continuing with the "myths and legends" Flood argument.
--VM44
