> How about for Genesis 6 and 7 that there was a global catastrophic flood
> that wiped out much of the world a few thousand years ago? Does the Bible
> state this in unambiguous terms? (Did Jesus reference its literalness?
> Did Peter predict its denial in the last days?
> Art
> http://chadwicka.swau.edu
Arthur,
It sounds as if you want people to say `yes' to these questions. If you
had only said Flood without all those modifiers, I would have said `yes'
too, but I don't agree when you include the modifiers.
Was the Flood global? I don't know of any scripture that says it wasn't,
but on the other hand, I don't believe that it says it was, either. The
idea that it was global seems to come from reading the word 'erets as
`earth'. This word is translated, for example in the KJV, as `land' in 62%
of its occurrences and not infrequently refers to a single nation, and so
that ought to be considered as a possible meaning in the Flood account.
Was it a few thousand years ago? Maybe so, but it would be safer to say AT
LEAST a few thousand years ago. We don't know how many generations may
have been skipped in the genealogy from Noah to Abraham. Comparisons of
genealogies with each other and with other Biblical data show that it was
quite normal for them to skip a number of generations.
How destructive was the Flood? The Bible says quite a bit about
air-breathing land animals perishing, but what justifies claiming that it
goes much beyond this? It also mentions a tree that survived the Flood as
well as geographical features from before the Flood that remain to this
day.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80301-0395