Arguments Against Global Genesis Flood

Amaic

Certain Lines of Argument Against a ‘Global’ Flood

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… there sometimes occurs the ironical – even humorous – situation whereby agnostic scientists will occasionally call for a more enlightened exegetical approach to Genesis than do the upholders of the biblical tradition; whereas the latter will at times arrive at a more accurate interpretation of the scientific data than do their scientific opponents.

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Whilst a superficial reading of the Flood narratives of Genesis 6-9 might seem to suggest, according at least to a modern mentality, that the Genesis Flood encompassed the entire globe, covering even the world’s highest mountains, such a ‘total’ view I now urge is to impose upon the ancient Genesis texts (not to mention upon poor old Noah and his family) an unrealistic burden that they are quite incapable of supporting. This last is an exegesis that scriptural scholars well versed in ancient practices warn must be avoided. Ironically, it is even an exegetical method against which the agnostic/sceptic Ian Plimer advises (e.g. Telling Lies for God, pp. 73f.). In fact there sometimes occurs the ironical – even humorous – situation whereby agnostic scientists will occasionally call for a more enlightened exegetical approach to Genesis than do the upholders of the biblical tradition; whereas the latter will at times arrive at a more accurate interpretation of the scientific data than do their scientific opponents.   

‘Tabula Rasa’ Effect

According to the most extreme ‘global’ Flood view, held even by some useful revisionist scholars – like Drs. D. Courville, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, V. II, 1971 [pp. 153f.] and J. Osgood, see below – the Genesis Flood was so immense and powerful that it must completely have swept away all features of the antediluvian world, so that no trace whatever of that primeval world would remain today. It was, they argue, a total tabula rasa effect, wiping the slate clean. Proponents of this view consider it to be a complete waste of time now to go searching for the ancient site of Paradise, for instance; though this is exactly what I did in my recent Internet article, “The Location of Paradise” (www.catholicintl/catholicissues/paradise.htm) – and hence I would maintain against the proponents of tabula rasa that the concept of a Flood that removed all previous contours is un-biblical.

If I am right in this last assertion, then it would be highly ironical that that well-known advocate of the sola scriptura principle, Martin Luther, “maintained that the original location of the garden of Eden, though known to Adam and his descendants, was obliterated by the devastating effects of Noah’s flood”. (D. Hochner, Noah’s Flood, www.angelfire.com/ca/DeafPreterist/Noah.html).

Moreover, this tabula rasa approach turns out to be rather disastrous in terms of:

(i) a necessary revision of the Stone Ages, and

(ii) archaeologically identifying some major early post-Flood events, all related, such as the era of Nimrod, the Tower of Babel incident and the consequent Dispersion (the last, a mass movement of people away from Mesopotamia, eminently lending itself to archaeological identification.

Dr. John Osgood of Creation Ex Nihilo (now AIG), who has cleverly synthesised Palestinian stratigraphy and pentateuchal history/& the Book of Joshua (notably in regard to the eras of Abram and the Conquest), and who has bravely attempted even a stratigraphical revision of the so-called Stone Ages (Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic), has nonetheless, in my view, made it completely impossible to bring this latter valiant effort of his to any worthwhile fruition owing to his tabula rasa ‘global’ Flood preconception. I give here Dr. Osgood’s point of departure for his revision of the Stone Ages, and I am going to argue that he has immediately taken a wrong and fateful step with his major assumption (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”, EN Tech. J., Vol. 2, 1986, p. 90):

In order to arrive at a terminus for the so-called stone age against the biblical narrative a number of new details must be taken into consideration. Firstly, there should be the fact that the biblical chronology inserts a catastrophic world-wide flood of momentous proportions that was so devastating that it is unlikely that any artifacts of the world before that flood would be likely to be found on the surface of the earth today. … Therefore, the assumption must be made that all the surface artifacts of civilization with which the archaeologist deals must relate to mankind’s history after the great Flood of Noah which has been dated by this writer to be circ. 2,300 B.C.

Thus Osgood will try to squeeze the entire Stone Ages (estimated at over 2 million years) into the approximately half millennium between the end of the Flood (his c. 2300 B.C.) and the early days of Abram in Palestine (dated by Osgood to c. 1870 BC). And he will synthesize the latter (c. 1870 BC) with Palestine’s (specifically En-Gedi’s) Chalcolithic so-called Stone Age era (“The Times of Abraham”, EN Tech. J., Vol. 2, 1986, pp. 79-82).

[I fully accept, at least, Osgood’s compelling Abram/En-gedi-Chalcolithic/(Ghassul IV) synchronization, and I also agree with D. Rohl’s view  (The Lost Testament, Century 2002, Ch. 6) that Abram was contemporaneous with the mighty Ur III dynasty in Mesopotamia. See my Internet article: www.specialtyinterests.net/old_kingdom.html#a The implication here is that a highly advanced civilization in one place, the Mesopotamian city  of Ur, can co-exist with a Stone Age scenario, Palestinian En-gedi, not geographically all too far away. Osgood has also argued for Jericho Neolithic to have been contemporaneous with the above-mentioned Ghassul-Chalcolithic phase, “… Stone Age”, p. 95]. 

As I wrote above I am all for shortening conventional time spans. But, whilst I believe that Dr. Osgood was quite correct in his proposing the need for a drastic time reduction for the Stone Ages, I think he nevertheless needed to credit these Stone Ages with yet a further 1656 years – that being the usually accepted time span from Adam to the Flood (see e.g. P. Mauro’s The Wonders of Bible Chronology, Reiner, 1965, Ch. III).

Thus the revised ages model outlined below for the antediluvian-postdiluvian sequence, interrupted by the Great Flood, will allow – differently from Osgood’s – for there to be an entire archaeology/palaeontology (that is, including the Stone Ages) even for the millennium and a half long antediluvian era: 

• the terminus post quem of the Stone Age (i.e. the beginnings of the Palaeolithic age above bedrock) is to be dated back about 1656 years before the Flood (see above) -  1656 years being the full duration of the antediluvian age – to the beginning of man;
• likewise the eventual cultural evolution (beyond Palaeolithic) from Mesolithic to Neolithic must not be confined entirely to post-diluvian times, as Osgood had thought, but must be recognized as having its origins at least in antediluvian times, primarily with Cain, likely the first city builder (Genesis 4:17) – hence Neolithic? – and with Cain’s descendants, all in southern Mesopotamia, who became more and more ‘civilized’, technologically speaking (Chalcolithic),

• all this ‘progress’ culminating in the vibrant Chalcolithic mid-late Ubaid period (still antediluvian), at Eridu, Uruk and Ur in southern Mesopotamia, that absorbed the Hassuna, Samarra and Halaf cultures in the north, and beyond Iraq – this archaeological phase perhaps corresponding with the likes of the highly ‘civilized’, polygamous Lamech and his sons before the Flood (Neolithic/Chalcolithic?).
• That this period of flourishing civilization, confined approximately to the area of the Fertile Crescent, was then interrupted by the Great Flood.
• But that, soon afterwards, Mesopotamian civilization in particular (cf. Genesis 11:2) was resumed, most notably, according to Rohl (op. cit., Ch. 5), by the Ham-ites such as the adventurous Cush; but especially by Nimrod, the empire builder (ibid., Ch. 4); Nimrod’s phase representing the imperial Uruk I and Jemdet Nasr archaeological civilizations in southern Mesopotamia (c. 3000-2900 BC, conventional dating).
• That finally, after Babel, there occurred the Dispersion primarily westwards, shown archaeologically most especially by the Jemdet Nasr expansion (c. 2900 BC, conventional dating), leading to the Early Bronze Age/Early Dynastic phase.

[Obviously it will require a future series of articles to deal adequately with these points of palaeontology/archaeology].

Courville, convincingly for mine, identified the relatively brief Jemdet Nasr transitional phase (last bullet point above), leading to the Early Bronze Era/Early Dynastic phase, with the post-Babel Dispersion – somewhat miraculously though, given his dubious starting point that the Flood had completely separated Palaeolithic man from Mesolithic man, between whom “not a single link has been found” (op. cit., cf. pp. 144f. & 153). Less fortuitous, I believe, was Osgood, who, having the Stone Ages commencing not much before the time I estimate that the postdiluvian Nimrod would already have started his expansion, consequently had to move the Jemdet Nasr phase down the time line by many centuries (thus away from the actual Dispersion era), and was thus forced to look for evidence of the postdiluvian Dispersion in a period that is in fact reasonably early antediluvian. Osgood may also consequently have confused an antediluvian Cain-ite dominance from southern Mesopotamia (Ubaid), over the northern Mesopotamian cultures, with the northward progression of Nimrod, postdiluvian.

No ‘Tabula Rasa’ Effect

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If my argument in “The Location of Paradise” – and also the view of others … – is correct, that the four antediluvian rivers were still active and discernible in Moses’ day, then this premise in fact yields a scientific ‘king-hit’ to ‘Creationist’ Flood science, so-called!

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But there are other biblical-minded writers who, as I noted in “The Location of Paradise”, consider that Genesis 2 does indeed preserve a definite geographico-hydrological link between the pre- and post- Flood worlds. We saw that the four rivers referred to in the antediluvian Adamic toledôt are actually named by the postdiluvian Moses as real rivers, running alongside (or around) real geographical locations. Moreover, Moses uses the very same 3^rd person masculine singular Hebrew pronoun hu (comprising the Hebrew letters, he waw aleph), meaning ‘he’ or ‘himself’ (itself), in every one of the four cases, thereby directly connecting Adam’s four rivers with four known rivers of Moses’ time.

Now, this hu is again the exact same Hebrew pronoun that editor Moses would use in his geographical modification of Abra[ha]m’s history, where, in that famous case of Genesis 14:3 he advises his people that the site that was in Abram’s day “the Valley of Siddim” had now become the Dead Sea. Thus Moses: “Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea)”; the Heb. pronoun hu here being translated quite appropriately into English as, “that is”. But even though the Bible seems to be interpreting itself for us here, I have found that ‘Creationists’, whilst willingly accepting the view that Moses was, in the case of Genesis 14:3, pointing to the very same geographical region that was intended in the Abra[ha]mic history (though now with considerable topographical alteration), will strenuously deny any geographical connection whatsoever in Genesis 2 between the pre-Flood hydrography and that later connected there by editor Moses with the pronoun hu.

Now the Answers In Genesis [AIG] (some of whose editorial staff at least I know to be keen on the Wiseman toledôt theory in regard to Mosaïc editing of the Genesis texts) co-authors (Ham et. al.) also have argued against any sort of geographical connection before and after the Genesis Flood, in their section: “Answers to objections to a global Flood” (op. cit., p. 144, “Objection 2: The post-Flood geography is the same as the pre-Flood”). Here is how these co-authors tackle the tricky (in their context) matter of the Tigris and Euphrates:

Someone may ask, ‘Then why do we have a Tigris and Euphrates today?’ Answer: the same reason there is a Liverpool and Newcastle in Australia; and London, Oxford and Cambridge in North America, although they were originally place names in England. Features in the post-Flood world were given names familiar to those which survived the Flood.

This, I find though, to be a typically modern ‘surface’ reading of an ancient text, without coming to grips in any way with the realities of the ancient document; with, for instance (a) the fact that commentators consider the elaboration of the four rivers to be an editorial addition to the original text, (b) coupled with the use of the Hebrew pronoun hu, specifically linking the pre- and post-Flood rivers, as it indeed links geographical locations between the Abra[ha]mic history and the era of Moses.

Nor can the AIG co-authors so easily dismiss the two other rivers, Pishon and Gihon, by simply stating (ibid.): “The Pishon is not mentioned post-Flood and Gihon is used of the locality of a spring near Jerusalem in the times of Kings David, Solomon and Hezekiah”. For I referred to Sirach’s testimony, in “The Location of Paradise”, that the Pishon and Gihon were, with the Tigris and Euphrates, still (in the C2nd BC) abundant, active rivers. So again I would emphasise the point (and this is pitched mostly at those who tend to operate according to the principle, sola scriptura), that to hold to a view of no geographical link whatsoever between the pre- and post- Flood worlds is to be un-biblical.

[A geographical note: This case of the 4 rivers and their associated lands, referred to in Genesis 2, seems to be the only occasion in Adam’s toledôt where editor Moses has obliged us with his geographical indicators connected by the Hebrew pronoun hu. There does not appear to have been any such editorial intervention for instance for the purpose of later specifying the location of “the land of Nod” (Genesis 4:16), where the fratricide Cain settled after his becoming a fugitive; its general location “east of Eden” probably being a verse already embedded in the pre-Mosaïc original. That leaves us with the necessary task later of having to identify “the land of Nod” on a modern map in order then to build up an accurate archaeological picture of the whereabouts of the Cain-ite pre-Flood ‘civilization’. Hopefully my previous article, “The Location of Paradise”, will greatly limit global options here, by at least serving to show just from where exactly Cain’s “Nod” was, if I may put it like this, “east of”]. 

According to my view, we must discard the notion of tabula rasa in regard to the Flood. Dr. David Livingston is somewhat more realistic here I presume than Drs. Courville and Osgood, and the AIG group, in his statement that: “Pentateuchal geography is very interesting in that pre-Flood geographic and geologic features must have been altered to some degree by the great Flood” (“Historical Geography of the Pentateuch”, www.ancientdays.net/histgeopenta.htm). Yes, indeed, “to some degree” as Livingston has well written, and thus apparently not to the extent as to be unidentifiable. Pentateuchal geography moreover, Livingston further notes, is entirely different from modern geography: “The ancients did not have a notion of massive seas and continents as we do today”.

A Geological Blow to the ‘Global’ Flood Model?

If my argument in “The Location of Paradise” is correct, that the four antediluvian rivers were still active and discernible in Moses’ day (and indeed even much later than that) – [and I noted therein that this view was shared by others, and I must now also add to this list Carol A. Hill and her, “The Garden of Eden: A Modern Landscape” (Science in Christian Perspective): www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3_00Hill.html] – then this premise in fact yields a scientific ‘king-hit’ to ‘Creationist’ Flood science, so-called! Why? I shall let Carol Hill tell why [though, note, I do not share her reliance upon the conventional dating, e.g. of the Ubaid period, nor her views of:

(i) the location of the ancient Paradise in Mesopotamia, nor

(ii) the location of the land of Cush in western Iran.

However:

(iii) Hill and others (see e.g. S. Caesar’s “Lost River of Eden Discovered By Satellite”, www.creationism.org/index.htm) may actually have come up with a better (recently satellite detected) identification for the ancient river “Pishon” (now a dried up fossil river) than the one proposed by Professor Yahuda that I have followed in “The Location of Paradise”.

Hill writes (op. cit.):

Implications for Flood Geology

So far in this paper, I have argued that the Bible locates the Garden of Eden at the confluence of the four rivers of ancient Mesopotamia [sic]. The Bible correctly identifies the Pishon River as draining the land of Havilah (Arabia), from whence came gold, bdellium, and onyx stone. The Bible also correctly identifies the Euphrates and Tigris, both of which are modern rivers which drain approximately the same area of Mesopotamia as they did in ancient times.

The Gihon, while not positively identified, is probably the Karun (and/or Karkheh), which “encompasses” (winds around) the whole land of Cush (western Iran) [sic]. Thus, the Bible locates the Garden of Eden as somewhere near where the head of the Persian Gulf may have existed some 6000 years ago– that is, on a modern landscape similar to that which exists in southern Iraq today.

Six Miles of Sedimentary Rock Below Eden

This interpretation of the Garden of Eden as existing on a modern landscape presents a major conflict between what the Bible says and what flood geologists say.⁶⁷ The reason is this: there are six miles of sedimentary rock beneath the Garden of Eden/ Persian Gulf. How could Eden, which existed in pre-flood times, be located over six miles of sedimentary rock supposedly deposited during Noah’s flood? What flood geologists are implying is that the Garden of Eden existed on a Precambrian crystalline basement and then Noah’s flood came and covered up the Garden of Eden with six miles of sedimentary rock. But this is not what the Bible says. It says that Eden was located where the four rivers confluenced on a modern landscape. It says that the Garden of Eden was located on top of six miles of sedimentary rock, and thus this sedimentary rock must have existed in pre-flood times.

[The Bible] says that the Garden of Eden was located on top of six miles of sedimentary rock, and thus this sedimentary rock must have existed in pre-flood times.

The fact that six miles of sedimentary rock exist beneath the Persian Gulf area is well known by geologists, since this area has been extensively drilled for oil, down to the Precambrian basement. The fact that the Persian Gulf is located in an area of oil recovery is equally as evident to the layperson who, in 1991, witnessed on television the numerous oil fires set off in Kuwait during the Gulf War. The six miles of sedimentary rock below the Garden of Eden area include Tertiary, Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, and Paleozoic rock up to a depth of about 32,000 feet before the Precambrian basement is encountered.⁶⁸….

Pitch for the Ark

If the above were not evidence enough, there is another Bible passage which confirms a pre-flood Mesopotamian world on a modern landscape. The Bible records that Noah used pitch in construction of the ark: “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch” (Gen. 6:14). Pitch is a thick, tarry, oil product composed of a mixture of hydrocarbons of variable color, hardness, and volatility. Bitumen mixed with two or three parts of mineral and/or vegetable matter makes asphalt or pitch, a crude but versatile adhesive. Bitumen is a natural petroleum product derived from kerogen. It can be encountered by oil drillers in the subsurface, or it can move up cracks and faults and make its way naturally to the surface in the form of bitumen seepages.

Many bitumen seeps exist in the Middle East.⁶⁹ Bitumen was used extensively by the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia for every type of adhesive-construction need, including the waterproofing of boats and mortar for buildings (e.g., “slime” for mortar; Gen. 11:3). The center of bitumen production in Mesopotamia was (and still is) at Hit, located along the Euphrates River …. The Hit bitumen occurs in “lakes” where lines of hot springs are welling up along deep faults.⁷⁰ This water is sometimes accompanied by so much gas that the latter will burn. In the water, “snakes” of asphalt collect together, and the Iraqis consolidate them into lumps. It is likely that bitumen was collected in this same manner in ancient times, because similar lumps of asphalt have been found at Ur in levels dating from about 3000 B.C.⁷¹ Sir Leonard Woolley’s famous expedition to Ur found a lump of bitumen just above his “flood layer” which had an imprint of a reed basket on it. Even today, bitumen is packaged into reed baskets and floated down the Euphrates in boats. The bitumen from Hit has been utilized by the people of southern Mesopotamia for thousands of years, as recorded at numerous archaeological sites. The earliest evidence of bitumen use is at al’Ubaid (5000-4000 B.C.) [sic], where reed matting plastered with a mixture of earth and bitumen was found during the excavations of Woolley.⁷³

Later in the Ubaid Period … bitumen-covered headdresses of clay figurine goddesses were made at Ur. However, while some bitumen has been found at very early sites such as these, the bitumen industry …had its beginnings between 3500-3000 B.C.^{74 …} The essential point of the above discussion on bitumen now becomes evident. How could Noah have obtained bitumen from sedimentary rock for building his ark, if (as claimed by flood geologists) no sedimentary rock existed on earth? One cannot have it both ways. ….

[End of quote].

[Hit in Mesopotamia was not the only source of bitumen in the Fertile Crescent. Another notable place, for instance, was the “Valley of Siddim”, which was, according to Genesis 14:10 “full of bitumen pits”; these pits becoming death traps for “some” of the fleeing army of Sodom and Gomorrah upon their defeat by the Mesopotamian coalition of four kings. For an historical identification of these Mesopotamian kings, see my article:

www.specialtyinterests.net/old_kingdom.html#a

Rohl (op. cit., Ch. 6) has independently arrived at largely the same identifications for the four kings. One will find in his discussion some other valuable information, as well, including why Genesis 14:4,5 seems to place the Elamite, Chedorlaomer at the head of the coalition, whereas the revised historical reconstruction clearly reveals the Elamite to have been subservient to the powerful Sumerian king, Amraphel (= Amar-Sin of the Ur III dynasty)].

Carol Hill’s argument above, and its scientific conclusions, would of course be music to the ears of a Professor Plimer. But I believe that it is indeed also hard scientific (geological) fact, and at the same time perfectly in accord with the geography of Genesis.

Were the worldwide layers of sediment all to be regarded as an effect of the Great Flood, causing wicked humans to have perished on so vast a scale, then why don’t the oil geologists, when drilling down miles into this sediment, encounter masses of human bones? AIG’s Ham et. al. (op. cit., p. 32) have rightly claimed that evolution is contrary to the Scriptures, because it would mean that “the garden were sitting on a fossil record of dead things millions of years old” (contrary to Romans 8:19-22) – and they illustrate this with a marvellous cartoon of the Garden and Adam and Eve atop a huge pile of bones (p. 33) – but how do they account for the lack of human bones in the deep sedimentary layers? And why aren’t human fossils found contemporaneously with the fossils of dinosaurs? Plimer has tossed up this very issue in his “Footprints to Fantasy” (op. cit., p. 226f.). Ham et. al., (op. cit., p. 179f.) have, for their part, devoted an entire chapter (Ch. 15) towards settling this awkward matter. But my response to the title of their Chapter 15: “Where are all the human fossils?”, must be: Well, where are they?  

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Two important Conclusions to be drawn from Carol Hill’s article:

· Both the Genesis geography and modern geology conspire to make nonsense of the ‘Creationist’ model of the Flood.

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