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11 years ago
Well, on a similar line of thought, the parting of the Red Sea is more likely a scenario that sees the fleeing Jews choosing a path through a swamp-like area that would impede the speed of the pursuing army, especially if this army used horse-drawn chariots and soldiers with heavy equipment. And back to your original question - Of course there is no record of a massive flood of this nature to date in the archaeological records. I think most of the Bible is just a compilation of parables that were included in the book by the wealthy and powerful of that time period. There are hundreds of Gospels that did not make it into the Bible. For example, the Book of Jubilee, where the author describes the fact that Adam and Eve had nine sons and daughters. The author goes on to describe in detail which sons and daughters married, and how many children they had together. However, this detailed explanation of the beginning of human kind is based on incest. The real power brokers of the Bible at that period of time had the wisdom to remove this embarrassing confirmation of incest, and settle for reader's imagination as to the beginnings of human kind. Good night and good luck.
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11 years ago
There is evidence that the area currently called the black Sea was a low lying inhabited region some thousands of years ago. Rising sea levels brought about by a global warming episode could have led to the erosion of the land that allowed the Mediterranean to flow into the black sea in a giant flood. Possibly the Noah and other flood tales in the region date from that early disaster. The tales would have had to last for millenia in an oral state, but it was a good story, so why not.
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11 years ago
Remember that all records of the flood were written from the perspective of the author. Hence, when an ancient Jew writes about a cataclysmic flood, he may be writing about an event that flooded his known world. The important thing to remember when reading ancient texts, such as the Bible, is that they are written to communicate a specific message. The Bible was not written to be a science text, rather it was written to communicate the Hebrew understanding of God and God's relationship with the Jews. Anything more is added by the reader.
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11 years ago
Yes, most people do not realise that the ice age ended just about 11,500 years ago. Civilisation started soon after - Jericho dates back 9500 years and some town in Turkey dates back 11,000 years.
People back then had no concept of the size of the Earth. Their immediate location was the world to them. It is very conceivable that melting ice caps and the subsequent rainy periods, flooded completely a valley in which Noah lived.
Maybe he was smart enough to have seen the water rising and taking a few measurements over time, was able to calculate when his valley would flood. That gave him time to build a boat to save the breeding pairs of his stock.
Other families in the neighborhood would have intepreted his advanced knowledge as God-given, and after the event, the story just got exaggerated to the extent that the whole world flooded and Noah saved a pair of ALL the animals, both concepts being absolutely impossible.
Geologically, there is definitely no evidence of a global flood, though there would have been local floods all over - thus giving rise to flood stories from different parts of the world.
And of course, we now know that there are thousands of species of land animals, in different regions of the world, and it is ridiculous to think Noah could have nipped all over the world picking up pairs of animals in the Sahara desert, the plains of Africa, the Amazon jungle, etc, etc.
But try to explain that to a creationist.
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11 years ago
There is absolutely no evidence for a global flood. The Antarctic ice cap alone disproves it. Ice in the Antarctic is up to 4km thick and it has been deposited by precipitation over hundreds of thousands of years. There is no sign of a flood in the ice cores that have been taken in many parts of the ice cap.
Dating the ice cores is rather like tree-ring dating. Each annual deposit leaves a layer and these layers can be counted. We know that these layers are annual bcause some layers are marked by deposits from known volcanic eruptions. The date of the eruption of Vesuvius when it buried Pompeii, for instance, is known and that occurs in the ice cores exactly where you would expect it.
The last partial melting of ice caps and the consequent sea level rise was about 8000 -10000 years ago. The sea levels rose to where they are today.
There never has been a global flood and such an event as described in Genesis is impossible.
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