Glen,
I've read your articles on Noah's flood. You maintain that the flood could
not have occurred in Mesopotamia for several reasons. Among other things, you
say that the entire region is not now covered with flood sediments, which it
would be if it was entirely covered with water just a few thousand years ago.
You say that places such as Ur in southern Mesopotamia have been continually
inhabited since 4,000 BC, long before Bible chronology indicates Noah's flood
occurred. You say that the laws of physics (water runs downhill and does so
quickly) would not have permitted Mesopotamia to remain under water for
anywhere near as long as Genesis tells us Noah's land was flooded. And you
say that Genesis tells us that Noah's ark came to rest on a mountain in
Ararat (Turkey), which would mean that if Noah's flood was a Mesopotamian
flood all of what is now Iraq must have been flooded.
However, I do not see the problems you refer to as being insurmountable for
those who believe Noah's flood was a Mesopotamian flood.
For the land of Noah could have been located far to the southeast of Ur, in
what is now Kuwait. Since the Bible lists the primary water source of the
flood as "the waters of the deep bursting forth" (Gen. 7:11), we can
understand that Noah's flood was largely the result of an inundation of the
Persian Gulf. If the elevation of Noah's land was temporarily lowered
slightly (possibly due to a large Meteor impact or series of such impacts) it
would then have remained flooded until the land regained its original
elevation. In the meantime, such an inundation would have pushed the ark to
the northwest, but not nearly as far as Ur. As Noah's land then began to
regain elevation and the flood waters began to drain into the Persian Gulf
the ark would have come to rest on a hill (the same Hebrew word as
"mountain") while the rest of the flood waters continued to drain into the
Persian Gulf, from which they mostly came. This understanding only requires
for Bible readers to understand that the regional name "Ararat" at the time
of Noah referred to a much larger geographical area than it did later on, and
that it probably then referred to the entire area immediately to the north of
the land of Noah. (The name "Ararat" was derived from the name of a region in
northern Iraq which in Assyrian times was called "Urartu" and "Uruatri." This
region, like the similarly named city of "Ur" from which its name may have
been derived, would have been north of the land of Noah but not nearly as far
north as the area which, according to this understanding, later became known
as "Urartu," "Uruatri" and finally as "Ararat.")
Mike
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