Hi Phil, you wrote:
If the Bible says all the high mountains were covered to some depth,
let's not assume these "high mountains" had to be more than shallow
rolling hills near the populated areas. The point the Bible is making
is simply that **nobody** affected by the flood survived it. Since
nobody in the cities of southern mesopotamia would have had time to run
far away to a truly high mountain by our western reckoning, imposing
that view onto the meaning of "high mountains" would be gratuitous to
the purpose of the text.
Also, there is no way it could have been a universal flood. DNA tells
us that. So there is no reason to assume the cities in northern
mesopotamia were affected by the flood. The extent of the flood is
constrained only by the ark going to the mountains of ararat, not by
anything else we see in the text.
The Hebrew har, can mean "mountain," "hill" or "hill country." In
Genesis 7:19,20, the same word is in both verses. Noah's flood covered
the "hills" in the first verse, whereas the "mountains" were covered in
the second verse.
In Deuteronomy 1:7, har is used twice, and again it is translated both
ways; first as the "mount" of the Amorites, but as "hills" in the middle
of the phrase, "in the plain, in the hills and in the vale." The Hebrew
word is again translated "hills" in the phrase, "land of hills and
valleys" (Deut. 11:11).
In Joshua 9:1 and 10:40, the "hills" and valleys, and "hills" and vale,
could have been rendered "mountains" due to the ambiguity of the Hebrew
word, but it was not. Har appears three times in I Kings, and has been
translated as "hills" all three times. In Isaiah, har is hills both
times. In Psalms 68, 80, 95, 97, 98, 104, and 121, har appears nine
times, and is rendered "hills" every time.
Let's eyeball the text for a moment: "And the ark rested in the seventh
month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of
Ararat" (Gen. 8:4). If you like a literal approach to Genesis (And who
here doesn't take it literally?), an ark cannot land on "mountains," it
could conceivably land on hills. So Ararat, or "Urartu" in Sumerian, is
the area, and somewhere in the foothills fits the Hebrew text just fine.
The change in elevation from Baghdad to Mosul on the Tigris is 618 feet
going from an elevation of 112 feet to 730 feet. And the distance is
roughly 300 miles! This would be entirely negotiable by punting aided
by the push of a south wind, or maybe a good stiff wind alone could do
the work.
Why we get into these difficulties is due simply to errant translation.
The Bible translators, in the service of King James in the early 1600's,
already thought the Genesis flood was global at the outset. They fell
into the trap of allowing their foregone conclusions about the "global
deluge" to drive the translation. The KJV translators were not guided
solely by Hebrew verbiage and syntax, but also by presumptive bias.
The June issue of PSCF will contain 22 pages on the 2900 BC Mesopotamian
flood. If anybody doesn't like the location or the time frame you will
have a lot more to argue against.
Dick Fischer
~Dick Fischer~ Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
<http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Sat Mar 4 11:35:58 2006
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