Re: [asa] Noah's Ark- the debate over floods... and biblical interpretation

I'd recommend getting Alan Hill's paper and working through the math.  there's no substitute for that.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 11:57 am
Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's Ark- the debate over floods... and biblical interpretation

Phil said:

“"The
water would run out too fast."  This is a dead argument.  The
Hills showed using standard hydrology equations (in PSCF) that continual
rainfall in the mountains around the basin can overcome this problem. “

Isn’t the area nicely drained by rivers? How could
those rivers be dammed-up?  They’d have to be dammed-up good to
allow the water level to rise thousands of feet and stay that high for many
months.  So you are suggesting heavy rains for 24 hours non-stop?  I
don’t see how even a river could fail to drain that… and would this
heavy rain be just over the local area or across the whole world?  If it
is raining that much locally, may as well rain that much all over the world
making a global flood as well.

…Bernie

From:
asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of philtill@aol.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009
2:42 PM

To: wmdavid.wallace@gmail.com; asa@calvin.edu

Subject: Re: [asa] Noah's Ark- the20debate over floods...
and biblical interpretation

Arguments against an historical, local flood, and my
responses:

1.  "The water would run out too fast."  This is a dead
argument.  The Hills showed using standard hydrology equations (in PSCF)
that continual rainfall in the mountains around the basin can overcome this
problem.  Also, a wind blowing off the Persian Gulf
could keep the water in place indefinitely.

2.  "Inadequate sediment layer."  But that's only a problem
if you are looking for a basin-wide flood.  There were many riverine
floods, and the account could be talking about one of those, and they did leave
sediment layers commensurate with their scale.  Plus,if a basin-wide flood
was maintained by mountain rainfall (as the Hill's conjectured), then there
would be continual downhill flow and there would not be such a big sediment
layer due to the continual erosion as there would have been had the water been
stagnant for that many months.  Wind would have a similar effect, since on
the surface water would be flowing uphill due to the wind's shear stress and
the waves, and deeper down the water would be continually flowing downhill
under gravity, preventing accumulation of sediments.

3.  "The account is a combination of multiple sources, and so may
have incorporated the memory of more than one flood."  But it also
may have incorporated multiple sources that had been inspired by the same
riverine flood, and so it s
till may be describing a single, historical
event.  Multiple sources is no reason to reject an historical event.

4.  "The account describes a global flood, not a local one, and that
can't be historical."  But the account we have now was not originally
written in the same Hebrew we find it in today, and its language may have been
inflated as a result of the long transmission.  Indeed, cultural pressure
would tend to inflate it.  Famous stories like the Flood have the
propensity to make the language and not just v.v..  If the text came
originally from Mesopotamia from a real flood
dating some 2900 BC, then it was handed down and redacted for thousands of
years.  Even if Moses was one such redactor and inspired, yet he was not
the last redactor, and the text was translated into more modern Hebrew over a
period of some 1200 years since his time before we get to the first extant
manuscript. 

I don't think any of these are the real reason to question if it was an
historical event.  I think the real reason is that we may feel it just
isn't feasible to have occurred; that it's more likely to have been a
fabrication than real.  That is a personal judgement or a literary one,
and IMO not subject to verification or falsification.

Phil

-----Original
Message-----

From: Dave Wallace <wmdavid.wallace@gmail.com>

To: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>

Cc: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>

Se
nt: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 8:59 am

Subject: Re: [asa] Noah's Ark-
the debate over floods... and biblical interpretation

Dick 

As best I recall Glenn raised two issues against a Mesopotamian flood, when we
discussed this a few years ago: 

1. The land slopes into the Persian Gulf, so that water would drain off the
land fairly quickly 

2. The lack of a sedimentation layer that should result from a flood a year
long, especially with all the debris from a civilization, animals, plants
etc. 

Now I would like there to be a historical basis underlying the story in Genesis
and would be willing to grant that God might have performed a miracle to dam up
the waters. Such an act would be part of a sign to the people. However, the
lack of a sedimentation layer seems fatal as having a miracle to prevent
sedimentation would be somewhat like an appearance of age scenario in creation,
in that God would not appear to be trustworthy and that is something I would be
unwilling to posit. Also having a sedimentation layer would appear desirable
from the point of view of providing an indication of the truth of the story
down through the ages. 

Dave W 

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Received on Thu Apr 9 21:09:17 2009