From: gordon brown (gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2003 - 18:12:58 EST
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Vernon Jenkins wrote:
> "Why should one insist on a geographically global Flood when it is not
> demanded by Scripture, and it presents problems whose alleged solutions
> appear to conflict with other statements in Scripture? For example, why
> didn't the Flood float the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets?"
>
> Gordon,
>
> Has it not occurred to you that there may have been no ice sheets in Noah's
> day? Global weather patterns might have changed dramatically following the
> Flood - as suggested indeed by Gen.5 and 6, which we have already discussed.
> Do you have any other biblical examples which present problems for those
> believing the Flood to have been global?
If there were no ice sheets in Noah's day, then the Flood must have
occurred at least hundreds of thousands of years ago. That is how many
annual layers there are in these sheets. I know that you don't place the
Flood that far back.
Genesis 8:21,22 seems to suggest that the climate after the Flood was
similar to what it was before the Flood.
> In my view, the Lord's reference to the Flood (eg Mt.24:38-39) should have
> settled the matter long ago in favour of its universality. This hasn't
> happened, but our recent exchanges have exposed a big problem for those
> Christians who insist otherwise: the first divine covenant (in which the
> rainbow was given as a sign of God's promise never again to destroy all
> flesh by the waters of a flood) has to be sacrificed and the character of
> God impugned!
I have responded to this previously on this list. The point of comparison
that Jesus made between his second coming and the judgment in the time of
Noah was its unexpectedness, not the extent of the Flood. This point is
even clearer in the fuller account in Luke 17:26-29. Note the similar
wording in what it says about Lot. Surely the fire and brimstone that
rained down on Sodom did not occur over the entire planet. We must
restrict our comparison to the particular point being made.
> Gordon, this is surely your position unless and until you begin to see that
> the Mabbul must have been global, and agree that Noah, his family and
> menagerie were the only survivors - and hence ancestors to all who have
> lived since; remember also, this is what the Lord himself has used as an
> illustration when speaking of his second coming.
>
> Vernon
I would also like to point out that in all your discussion you make no
distinction between a geographically global Flood and an anthropologically
global one. I think a better (although not absolutely conclusive)
scriptural case can be made for the latter, but that would probably move
it way back in time.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
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