ForumGarden

I have great respect for Bible. While embellished and distorted over time, the stories told in the Bible are reflective of thousands of years of oral histories and traditions, all based at least in part of factual events in our past. One such event, the Great Flood, certainly did occur, and while God may or may not have had a part in it, the geological evidence points toward a large inundation. Following I present a small portion of this information for your dissemination in an attempt to spark a good discussion. Feel free to correct any of my information if you find it to be in error, or elaborate upon what I have already written.

As you may or may not be aware, the Earth exists in a constant state of flux - bouncing between glacial periods and nonglacial periods. Currently, we exist in a nonglacial period, though climatic evidence is showing that we are heading toward another ice age. That aside, the last major glacial period is known as the Riss-Wurm (Europe) or Wisconsinan (N. America) period. This was a period of glaciation that lasted from roughly 65 thousand years ago to 7 thousand years ago.

Even within a glacial period the temperature have been shown to flux wildly - with temperatures able to reach nonglacial-period levels. The last ice age saw three major periods of cooling (the Altonian, Woodfordian and Valderan stades) and 2 major periods of warming (the Farmdalian and Two-Creekan interstades). The final cooling period of the last ice age, the Valderan stade, was very short, lasting from 11 thousand years ago to 7 thousand years ago. This was atypical - usually these cooling periods last for 12 thousand years or more. The Valderan period ended with a "relatively" rapid warming phase, with near-modern temperatures being reached roughly 7 thousand years ago.

Glacial periods wreak havoc on world water levels. It is estimated that, during the Wisconsinan ice age, the sea level dropped by 300-400 feet, as a large volume of water was locked into glacial ice. Around 11,000 the ice age reached its maximum - that is to say, the greatest amount of water locked in glacial ice since the period began 65000 years ago.

Given the rapidity of the rise in temperature in the latter half of the Valderan period, a great deal of glacial melting occured very fast, inundating the land with vast amounts of water (to help gain a mental picture of this process, picture the American Great Lakes. An enormous glacier once sat where the Great Lakes are today. When the glacier melted, the water runoff formed the lakes). Certainly such melting created much strife all across the world. As the sea levels rose, coastlines disappeared and whole cities were swallowed by the waters. Such a tragic happening would become part of the oral tradition, as parents told their brood of the troubled times they survived, and those children telling their children, and so on.

Given this evidence, I feel that the Great Flood did exist. What do you think?

I think it happened as well. My friend from Azerbaijan knows the story of the flood but was never exposed to the bible growing up. Their oral tradition says that it formed the Black Sea; and of course Ballard is now thinking so as well, along with two geologists from the US.



Interesting stuff.

The flood as described in the Bible did not happen. The story is a legend. A legend is usually based on some historical event that gets changed and molded as time goes on. The calculations show that an event as described in the Bible is simply impossible as there is not enough water anywhere on or in the earth to create such a havoc as described in the Bible.

Though even as a legend it has some religious meaning to those who passed it on orally for years and eventually wrote it down.

Shalom

Ted :-6

I don't believe the inundation to be as widespread or as deep as depicted in the Bible - but, as I mentioned before, certain areas would have been swallowed by the sea, while other areas would be (at least temporarily) flooded out, swallowing houses and cattle. Keep in mind that most early civilizations were centred on rivers, for purely practical reasons - the technology had not been developed yet to irrigate or pipe water as we do, thus allowing us to live far from rivers.

I lived through the Flood of '93. I've seen the water lapping up towards my door, while just a few miles away all you could see of houses were chimneys sticking up from the floodwater. I can only imagine how terrifying it would be for those people - I can only imaging '93 increased 10 to 100 fold as those glaciers melted.

The Great Flood's existence in history does not mean that it had to actually cover the entire world. It would have covered the world as they knew it. I wonder how they could bring together a belief in a flood that covered the Earth and a belief that the world was flat and you could fall over the edge. Why didn't the water fall off the edge? Maybe God put glass walls up around the Earth and turned it into a giant fishbowl?

Not jst the black sea in the mediterranean there are what appear to be ruins it seems likely that Malta and Sicily were once connected. In India one archeologist using sanskrit texts worked out where one of the legendary ciries might be. Diving offshore they actally did find some ruins that seem to confirm legends of a city that once existed. I'd post the lonk if I could remember it.

O also think people were far more widely travelled than we give them credit for. We tend to forget people in the past were every bit as intelligent as we. Such a flood would destroy civilisation that cluster round coastlines for ease of travel, just like we do.

It is true that these folks were as intellengent as we are generally. However, we must bear in mind that they were living in an ancient culture, with a very limited fund of knowledge and a very limited conceptualization ability based on that lack of knowledge. They accepted the supernatural far more then we do going so far as to blame illness on demon possession etc. They lacked the language that enabled them to discuss the abstract. In many ways they were very limited.

Shalom

Ted :-6