Re: [asa] Noah's local flood?

We've debated with Glenn on this topic on this list.  Glenn argues that a flood could not have stayed in Mesopotamia so long.  On the other hand, Alan Hill has studied it using a standard hydrology model and the math says the water could easily have stayed that long.  http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF6-06Hill.pdf

I don't think Alan's assumptions are necessarily the best, but his analysis is interesting and Glenn hasn't adequately argued against it, IMO.

Glenn also says the expected sediments are missing.  However floods will both deposit and remove sediments and so the sedimentary record is not expected to be simplistic, and Carol Hill claims the deposits we do see are adequate for the kind of flood described in the Bible. 
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF6-06Hill2.pdf

I don't remember the details of Glenn's response to this.  I have some background in my own research into the physics of sediment transport (it's actually my main area of research, but in a different application) and it seemed to me at the time that Glenn was selecting his assumptions just so they would disallow the flood.  Therefore, I didn't think Glenn's arguments were successful in dispoving a mesopotamian flood.

In my opinion, the best approach is to say that the flood was rather localized around the river in only southern mesopotamia and that the terminology used in the Bible may appear hyperbolic to us, but considering the psychological affect and societal effect of the flood at the time it was reasonable language for them to speak that way.  Thus, Glenn has been arguing against a much larger flood than it actually was.  We know in fact there were a number of historical floods in southern mesopotamia and one of them could have been Noah's flood.  I think this is probably the correct view.  I think we need to look for a historical flood that is quite a bit more modest than we've assumed till now.  So Carol and Alan Hill's view may be trying to justify a flood that was bigger than it actually was.

Integral with the above perspective is the idea that Noah may have washed out to the Persian gulf during the flood and this would explain the long duration.  The wind sent by God may have pushed him back to land.  On the eastern side of the gulf lie the Zagros mountains, which were part of historical Uraratu, which was known in Moses' day.  Moses or other writers after the flood would naturally have referred to the kingdom Uraratu in describing the region.

I'm not sure about the short duration that Dick mentions below.  The argument from parallel accounts is strong because it is unlikely the popular versions would have reduced the duration of the event.  If anything the duration would have been exagerrated.  Possibly the biblical version used numbers symbolically rather than literally, or possibly the popular versions did for some historical reasons we'll never know distort the length of the flood.  There are also a host of "funny" things about the numbers in the earlier part of the OT, all of which indicate that the older number systems (before base-10 came into use by the time of David) were mistranslated.  There is strong evidence that all these numbers were edited by the time of the OT canon's settlement (prior to 176 BC) and so it is hard to know what the numbers originally said.  I don't know if that may have affected the numbers very much in Noah's account, but it may be interesting to examine.

Basically, I think Glenn is taking an unfortunate all-or-nothing approach to the flood.  It's pretty obvious the flood account is parallel to the other Mesopotamian accounts and therefore describes the same event, and if we just chill out a bit, recognize the differences in language between then and now (and how things described as cataclysmic then may not be seen as so cataclysmic today) then it's not too hard to imagine the flood being real and in Mesopotamia and the account being meaningful and even fitting within a nuanced inerrantist view of the scripture.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
To: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:28 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's local flood?

All the parallel ANE flood accounts describe a week long event.  Only Genesis records the flood as a year long saga.  The eleventh table of Gilgamesh mentions punting holes in the boat and punting up and down the canals was a typical means of moving boats along in those days, still is in fact.  Did Noah endure two rainy seasons and punt up the Tigris during an intermediate period?  Don’t know, that’s my best guess.

Yours faithfully,

Dick Fischer, author, lecturer

Historical Genesis from Adam to Abraham

www.historicalgenesis.com

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Dehler, Bernie
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:56 PM
Cc: AmericanScientificAffiliation
Subject: [asa] Noah's local flood?

I was thinking more about the local flood hypothesis.  There needs to be a geographical bowl structure to keep the water in.  I don't think it is there.  Look at this article (Dick Fischer is mentioned in it):

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/physmeso.htm

Excerpt:

There are two ways for the ark to be lifted the requisite elevation. First, the water can do it. Boats in locks are raised in this fashion. But in order for this to work, the Mesopotamian region must have been covered by (1982 M (6500 feet of water.). In this case the entire Mesopotamian civilization would be destroyed. This did not happen.

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Received on Thu Jun 26 07:16:49 2008