>Giraldo: I do believe the flood was caused by a supernatural intervention
>of God and I'm not looking to science to support this view. Never has
>never will.
>
>That's very smart especially since there is no evidence of such a
>worldwide catastrophic flood.
Pim,
I finally decided to respond to this. While you are correct that there is
no evidence supporting the concept of a global flood, this does not rule out
the existence of an existence of an event which matches the Biblical
description. It is just local in nature.
I have suggested that the flood be identified with the filling of the
Mediterranean basin 5.5 million years ago which occurred just prior to the
first appearance in the fossil record of hominids. The earliest hominid is
found in Lothagam, Kenya in strata dated to 5.5 million years ago. Hominids
were on the earth and could have observed the in filling of the
mediterranean basin.
How does this fit the Biblical account?
1. the basin would have been circa 3-5 km deep with mountains like Malta
towering that high above the basin floor
2. the infilling waters would have supplied moisture to the upwardly moving
air mass which was leaving the basin. As air rises, it cools and the
moisture condense causing rain.
3.The Biblcal terms which are translated earth are better translated "land"
or "country"
Gleason Archer wrote:
"In explanation of this assertion (that the flood was not necessarily
universal) it needs to be pointed out that the Hebrew 'eres,
translated consistently as 'earth' in our English Bibles, is also the
word for 'land' (e.g. the land of Israel, the land of Egypt). There
is another term, tebel, which means the whole expanse of the earth,
or the earth as a whole. Nowhere does tebel occur in this account,
but only 'eres, in all the statements which sound quite universal in
the English Bible (e.g., Gen. 7:4, 10,17,18,19). Thus, Genesis 6:17c
can be rendered: 'Everything that is in the land shall die'--that is,
in whatever geographical region is involved in the context and
situations."~Gleason Archer, A Survey of the Old Testoment
Introduction, p. 210, cited by Dick Fischer, The Origins Solution,
(Lima, Ohio: Fairway Press, 1996), p. 259
4. This view allows the conservative Christian to have what they want, which
is a historical Bible, but does not require them to reject all science.
for further info see:
A. T. Chamberlain, "A Chronological Framework for Human
Origins," World Archaeology, 23:2, 1991, p. 140
Kenneth J. Hsu, "The Miocene
Desiccation of the Mediterranean and its Climatical and
Zoogeographical Implications", Die Naturwissenschaften, 61, April
4, 1974, p. 140.
Kenneth J. Hsu, The Mediterranean was a Desert,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 112.
Kenneth J. Hsu, "When the Mediterranean Dried Up", Scientific
American, December, 1972, p. 27.
Glenn Morton Foundation,Fall and Flood, (Dallas: DMD Publishing co. 1995)
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm