Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

After reading the comments of Niels below, I could not resist the
temptation to play the devil's advocate again.

For a short time many years ago I studied geology. One student who started
many discussions, was a creationist subscribing to the ideas of Whitcomb
and Morris about a 6000 year old earth and that the remnants of the
biblical flood are the sedimentary rocks. Both points are completely
hopeless from a scientific point of view, but there are some data that
illustrate how problematic it is to evaluate the accounts in the Bible by
the help of archaeology or geology. Even to exclude a worldwide flood is
very problematic. In my geology days I sometimes made some investigation
along different paths a long distance from the main-road, so let me give
some data that are compatible with a worldwide flood.

In Norway there are beaches about 125-150 meters above sea level and
similar beaches 125-150 below sea level on the continental shelf. These may
be interpreted as ice age conditioned, but there is a problem that similar
beaches above and below sea level are found in many places around the
globe, also where there has been no ice ages. Other striking data
suggesting a very different sea level in the past are the hundreds of
guyots in the Pacific ocean between 800 and 1000 meter below sea level. The
guyots are conic mountains, some several thousand meters of height. On the
top they are flat with corrals (which cannot live beneath  a depth of 100
meter). In the past vawes leveled the tops of these guyots, and either the
botton of the ocean sank 800-1000 meter, or the sea level rose that much.
Suggesting a rise of sea level are all the canyons in the slopes going down
from the continental shelfs to depths of a 1000 meters or more. They look
exactly like canyons on the continents that are made by rivers, with round
pebbles and everything that a river can make. The only logical
interpretation is that rivers once flooded down the slopes, but this
interpretation is impossible - or is it? There are several other data that
are compatible with a worldwide hydrologic catastrophee as well, but it is
25 years since I read the articles, so I cannot recall the details.

Some other "strage" data that I remember are those indicating that the
surface of the earth is remarkably young (not the rocks and other matter,
but the surface). Take for example the big rivers, they are all just a few
thousand years old! This is very easy to calculate. All you have to do is
to measure the rate of their erosion of the surface (e.g. how much rock is
eroded by the Niagara Falls per year). This can also be put the other way.
If the rivers had existed for 200 million years they would have leveled the
continents and filled the oceans with sediments! But when the ocean bottom
first was explored by ecco-sound in the 1940ies it was a real shock for the
geologists to discover the sparseness and the young age of the sediments on
the bottom of the oceans. Where have all the sediments gone if the rivers
and the oceans had been there for 200 million years? An explanation has
been continental drift, that sediments have been pushed under the
continents at the deep sea troughs, such as are found at the western coast
of South America. However, the supposed rate of continental drift could not
have occomplished much during 200 million years, and the sediments in these
very deep troughs are practically undisturbed with one layer above the
other and no sign of a pushing. So big problems remain.

Let me stress this: I do not defend a young earth, and I do not try to
prove by help of geology that a worldwide flood has occured. I simply want
to demonstrate   how problematic it is to measure the value of the accounts
in Genesis by help of  history, archaeology, or geology. We simply do not
know. We would not expect to find a structure from the past with the sign
"Noah's ark" or the remnants of a river with a sign "Pison river". But
neither can we use negative evidence as a means to show that the Genesis
account is just fiction (e.g. we cannot find the remnant of a worldwide
flood, therefore no such flood has occurred). So again, let us admit that
the principal reasons for the different viewpoints regarding the origin and
meaning of the Genesis accounts and a young or old date of the torah are
differences in metodology and  different assumptions and not necessarily
science versus faith.


Regards

Rolf



Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo





Niels Peter Lemche:
>But does it explain the ubiquity of such stories, all over the world? I
>remember once having read somewhere that even the Indians in the Andes know
>of the flood although they are up to some thousand meters above sea level.
>
>Not that I am absolutely against an explanation like this. It is exactly the
>kind of memory that could be transmitted over a long period by oral
>tradition. And there might be other examples. In Denmark we already in
>primary school learned about changing geological phases, the so-called
>continential period and the Atlantic period. The continential period
>followed after the last ice age, and lifted the country considerable (after
>having been pressed down by the ice), later the pendulum swinged and the
>country rose below the present level, and it is still moving up and  down. I
>also remeber--but that is many years ago I read that--that the North Sea
>which is quite shallow, originated within a rather short period, may be less
>than 200 years, and after the last ic period. But it may of course be
>nonsense and bad information..
>

Rodney K. Duke:
>> >
>> > I had noted in an earlier post that archaeology and geology have failed
>> to
>> > find the proof of Noah's flood that covered the tops of mountains and
>> which
>> > destroyed all humankind except those save on the ark.  I accordingly
>> take
>> > the Humanist perspective that the dialogs between God, the serpent,
>> Adam,
>> > Eve, Noah and Moses are all fantasy, from the mind of the narrator. If
>> the
>> > flood didn't happen as we assured by geologists and archaeologists, then
>> > obviously the bible's dialogs are all fictious and not to be trusted.
>> Why
>> > should I accept the narrator's claims that what I am reading are Moses
>> > words, when I know he has earlier in Genesis fed me false information
>> about
>> > a world encompassing flood ?
>>
>> Last year I heard a geologist, Dr. Walter Pitman, speak who has done
>> extensive research in the area
>> of the Black Sea.  He cited evidence that around 12,500 years ago, the
>> Black Sea became an isolated
>> fresh-water lake due to the return in Europe of a glacial climate.  In
>> 6200 BCE there was another
>> mini Ice Age which resulted in farming villages in Anatolia and along the
>> Fertile Crescent to be
>> abandoned, with many peoples retreating to the rim of the Black Sea.
>> Around 5800 BCE there was
>> change in climate to increased warmth and rains.  By 5600 BCE the Sea of
>> Marmara had risen to the
>> height of the divide between it and the Bosporus Valley.  When it breached
>> that divided, it quickly
>> gouged out a flume through the Bosporus and flooded the basin with
>> incredible and quite memorable
>> violence.  The speaker then noted that it was soon after this time that
>> foreigners with advanced
>> farming technology suddenly reoccupied the deserted farm villages of the
>> Fertile Crescent.  His
>> suggestion was that these events precipitated the ANE flood stories.  Of
>> course this flood would
>> not have been world wide as we know the world, but it would have seemed
>> quite "global" to those
>> whose world was the basin around the Black Sea.  And, of course this flood
>> might not have anything
>> to do with the flood of ANE tradition; however, it does show that there is
>> geological evidence for
>> the genesis of such stories.
>> --
>>