So far in this series, we’ve seen how the biblical account of the garden of Eden (Gen. 2-3) and the antediluvian world (Gen. 4-6) are corroborated by science and archeology. But what about the story of Noah’s Flood (Gen. 7-9)? According to many creationists, this was a truly global flood that covered all the land on earth and killed every human and land animal except what was on the ark. But this would leave massive geologic evidence that we simply don’t find, nor do we find evidence of such a severe genetic bottleneck in humans or any animals. Even young-earth creationists, who believe that the Flood laid down much of the geologic column, can’t agree on which layers are from the Flood, because there’s evidence of gradual and/or above-land processes in every layer of the column. [1] Is this a contradiction between the Bible and scientific evidence?
Kol ha-Eretz, “all the earth” or “all the land”?
One of the key disagreements about the Flood account is the translation and interpretation of the Hebrew phrase, kol ha-eretz. The Hebrew word eretz is ambiguous in English, as it refers to the land (below) as opposed to the sky (above), and can either describe the land of the entire world or a specific region. Many times when kol (“all”) and eretz are found together, it’s modified by the name of a specific land, such as “all the land of Egypt”. [2] In other places, it is both unmodified and universal (referring to the entire earth), which is disproportionately found in poetic passages, and almost always with reference to God’s universal glory or dominion. [3] Most commonly, however, “all the land” is both unmodified and non-universal, referring to a particular area, typically the land of Israel. [4] Finally, there are also a few unclear instances where it could refer to either the entire earth or a specific land. [5]
The fact that most instances of kol ha-eretz refer to a specific land and not the entire earth strongly supports a non-universal reading of the Flood account. Those who support a universal reading point to several facts that undermine this conclusion.
First, we are not merely told that “all the land” was covered by water, but that “all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered; the waters surged upward fifteen cubits [23 feet] and covered the hills” (Gen. 7:19-20). According to universal-Flood proponents, this implies that the whole earth was covered. However, this implicitly assumes that the story is being told from a God’s-eye view of the entire globe, which makes no sense from an ancient Hebrew perspective, as they didn’t even know that the globe existed! It’s far more likely that the story is being told from Noah’s view. From the view of someone in southern Mesopotamia or a similar low-lying plain, a massive (but non-universal) flood would make it appear that all the land to the horizon (“under the whole heaven”), including the surrounding hills, were covered by water.
Second, if the Flood were non-universal, why didn’t the people and animals flee to an unflooded area? This makes another unsupported assumption – that there was time for anyone to flee if the Flood was non-universal. Jesus emphasizes that this disaster was sudden and totally unexpected, so that there was no time for anyone but Noah to prepare, let alone flee (Matt. 24:37-39).
Third, why did Noah have to build an ark (and not simply flee) if the Flood wasn’t universal? According to the New Testament, the ark prefigures the salvation that comes from Christ, which wouldn’t be as clearly foreshadowed by a mere flight (Matt. 24:36-44; 1 Pet. 3:18-22; 2 Pet. 2:5, 9; 3:5-7). Furthermore, Noah preached to the people around him in a (nevertheless fruitless) attempt to save them, which wouldn’t have been possible if he had fled long before the Flood came (2 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 11:7).
Fourth, how is it that “all flesh” and “everything… in whose nostrils was the breath of life” died, if the Flood wasn’t universal (Gen. 6:13; 7:21-23)? It’s important to note that in each case, the biblical account qualifies “all flesh” with “upon the land… on the face of the land” (6:11-13; 7:21-23). Thus, only the living things on the land that was flooded must have died. [Again, the ancient Hebrews had no concept of a globe from a ‘God’s-eye view,’ so this is all the land that those on the ark could see.] Even then, however, it’s possible that this is hyperbole. Consider the following passage:
Thus Joshua smote all the land [kol ha-eretz], the mountain country and the Negev and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings. He left nothing remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Yahweh God of Israel had commanded. (Josh. 10:40)
Here, we’re told that Joshua utterly destroyed all that breathed in all the land, which is strikingly similar to the language used in the Flood account. Yet even later in the same book, we’re also told that the Israelites were unable to drive out many of the Canaanites, and continued to live with them for hundreds of years (Josh. 15:63; 16:10; 17:12f; Judg. 1:19; 3:1-4). This implies that the Genesis Flood account could also be hyperbolic.
Finally, even though there might be ambiguous biblical support for a universal Flood, there is also clear biblical support for a non-universal Flood. Psalm 104 is a poetic account of creation, which states that when God created the oceans, he “set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth” (104:9). This implies that the waters of the Flood couldn’t have covered the whole earth. Furthermore, a few verses indicate that some non-Noahic lines of descent may have survived the Flood (Gen. 4:20f; Num. 13:33). Finally, though it isn’t as conclusive, is the fact that Peter qualifies the extent of the Flood by describing it as “the world of that time” and “the world of the ungodly” (2 Pet 2:5; 3:6).
A (truly) universal Flood?
Keeping all this in mind, there are nonetheless some indications that the author of the Flood account saw the Noahic Flood as truly universal, which is to say, cosmic in extent. It was seen as the complete undoing (and then re-doing) of the original creation as described in Genesis 1. Consider the following comparison of Genesis 1 with Genesis 7-8:
- A wind moves over the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2); a wind passes over the waters (Gen. 8:1)
- God separates day from night (Gen. 1:3-5); day and night cease, and are re-created by God after the Flood (Gen. 8:22)
- God separates the waters below from the waters above (Gen. 1:6-8); waters below and waters above are mixed and then re-separated (Gen. 7:11; 8:2)
- God causes dry land to appear from below the waters, creates plants (Gen. 1:9-13); water covers land and plants die, then land appears and plants re-grow (Gen. 7:10; 8:3, 5, 11)
- God sets heavenly bodies to define seasons and days (Gen. 1:14-19); seasons and days cease and are re-created by God after the Flood (Gen. 8:22)
- God creates birds to fly above the earth (Gen. 1:20-23); all birds on the land die in the Flood, then birds are released to fly above the earth (Gen. 7:21-23; 8:6-12)
- God creates land animals with the breath of life (Gen. 1:24-25); everything with the breath of life in it on the land dies and then is repopulated (Gen. 7:21-23; 8:17, 19)
- God creates humans to populate the earth and gives them food (Gen. 1:26-31); all humans on the land die and then are repopulated, and God gives them food (Gen. 7:21-23; 8:16-18; 9:1-4)
- God rests on the seventh day (Gen. 2:1-3); God smells the “restful odor” of Noah’s sacrifice after the Flood (Gen. 8:20f)
The re-creation in Gen. 8-9 even appears to happen in the same overall order as the Genesis 1 creation. This suggests that, to the biblical author, the Flood was truly cosmic, undoing the functional order that God had created.
But does the fact that the Flood was cosmic mean that it was global? Surprisingly, it doesn’t. The destructive power of floods in the ancient world (and the modern world!) meant that cosmic language could be used to describe even local floods. For example, one of the year-names of Ibbi-Sin (a king of Ur in the early 2nd millennium BC) refers to a flood that “obliterated the bounds of heaven and earth.” Yet “no traces of this particular flood were found, presumably because the inevitable mud and sand had been cleared away afterwards.” [6] This shows that it wasn’t unprecedented in the ancient world to use cosmic language to describe a flood – even one so small that it left no trace in the archeological record.
As argued above, there are indications that the author of the Flood account knew that it wasn’t universal. Gen. 4:20-21 suggests that there were descendants of Cain (through the line of Jabal and Jubal) who still lived at the time that the account was written. [7] Furthermore, Gen. 6:4 and Numbers 13:33, which is attributed to the same author as the Flood account, imply that some of the nephilim survived the Flood. [8] Therefore, even though the author believed the Flood was theologically cosmic in that it overturned God’s functional order, which helps explain the universalistic language, he also knew that it was physically local.
Identifying Noah’s Flood
Although the flood of Noah wasn’t a worldwide flood, it still must have been a very, very large flood. After all, God promised never to send a flood that would cause that much devastation to the land again (Gen. 8:21). Such a large deluge should have left at least some evidence. As it happens, there is evidence of a massive flood in the ancient Near East during the time frame suggested by the biblical account! According to Mohammed El Bastawesy, a specialist in hydrology and geomorphology, there is significant evidence that a huge paleolake which existed in modern-day Saudi Arabia breached its boundaries ~8500 years ago (~6500 BC), causing extensive flooding. [9]
Figure 1. From Fig. 7 of [9]. The extent of the flood path as a paleolake breached the Tuwaiq escarpment in modern-day Saudi Arabia, approx. 6500 BC.
Lorence Collins, a Christian geologist, argues that this deluge would have extended into the Mesopotamian basin as it drained into the Persian Gulf, as far north as the hill country of Urartu, making it a prime contender for Noah’s Flood. [10] Even if Collins’ estimate is exaggerated, this is by far the largest flood in the ancient Near East within the time frame required by the biblical account. Furthermore, while “Ararat” in the biblical account may indeed refer to Urartu in northern Mesopotamia as traditionally believed, it could also refer to Aratta, the land in Sumerian mythology which lay beyond the mountains of modern-day southern Iran. A local flood in Arabia and the Mesopotamian basin would have drained into the Persian Gulf, making the mountains of southern Iran the most likely location for the resting place of Noah’s boat.
The biblical description of Noah’s ark can also be used to provide an approximate earliest possible date for the Flood, as it says that bitumen was used to build the raft. The first use of bitumen as a waterproofing and building material in the ancient Near East is dated to ~7200-6800 BC. [11] Furthermore, according to the account of Cain’s descendants, the pre-Flood man Jabal was the ancestor of nomadic pastoralists (“those who live in tents and raise livestock”), and the rise of nomadic pastoralism in the Near East has been dated to the seventh millennium BC. [12] Finally, based on the level of Y-chromosome diversity, it has been found that there was a period of severe warfare resulting in the death of many bloodlines, which peaked around ~8,300 years ago (~6,300 BC) in the Near East. [13] As discussed in the last post, this is reminiscent of the biblical description of extreme violence in the pre-Flood world (Gen. 6:11). All of this points to a mid-7th millennium BC date for Noah’s Flood, perfectly matching the Arabian deluge that happened ~6,500 BC!
Noah’s Ark
Noah’s flood may be convincingly identified with the Arabian deluge of ~6500 BC, but what about Noah’s ark? The dimensions given in the biblical account (300 x 50 x 30 cubits = 450 x 75 x 45 feet) are far too large to describe a seaworthy wooden vessel. The largest wooden boat ever built, the Wyoming, was 450 x 50 x 30 feet, requiring pumps to stay afloat, and eventually sank due to the stress on its hull. If Noah’s boat were a wooden vessel, the dimensions in the biblical account would be physically impossible. This leaves two possibilities: either Noah’s ship wasn’t a wooden vessel, or the dimensions given in the biblical account are hyperbolic (or both).
An important clue as to the structure of Noah’s vessel can be found in other ancient Near Eastern flood myths. According to the Sumerian and Babylonian flood myths (the Epics of Atrahasis and Gilgamesh, respectively), the flood hero was instructed to dismantle his house (a reed hut) and use it to build a boat. The Ark Tablet states that the boat was 120 by 120 cubits (14,400 cu^2), which is nearly the same surface area as the biblical dimensions (15,000 cu^2). These descriptions, along with the biblical description of the ark, are entirely consistent with that of a mudhif (reed hut) atop a giant reed raft. [14] Unlike a wooden boat of massive dimensions, this would have been seaworthy, and is compatible with the level of technological development at the time of the Flood.
As for the animals on the ark, analysis of rock carvings from Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia, near the origin point of the Arabian deluge, shows that only 16 animal species were represented. [15] This suggests that there were few animal species recognized by humans in this area at the time, so it wouldn’t have been necessary to take thousands, let alone millions, of animals on the ark as some skeptics have claimed.
Conclusion
We’ve already seen how the biblical account of the garden of Eden (Gen. 2-3) and the pre-Flood world (Gen. 4-6) is completely consistent with and supported by modern science. As it turns out, this is also true of the account of Noah’s Flood. Contrary to what young-earth creationists believe and argue, the Flood wasn’t a worldwide event but a local one, although it had theologically cosmic implications to the author of the account. In fact, several people groups survived the Flood according to the biblical record (Gen. 4:20-22; 6:4; Num. 13:33). Based on the known dates of the rise of nomadic pastoralism (Gen. 4:20), the first use of bitumen (Gen. 6:12), and a period of extreme warfare in the ancient Near East (Gen. 6:11), we can pinpoint the date of the Flood to the mid-7th millennium BC. As it happens, there was in fact an extreme flood at this time (~6,500 BC), larger than any that have occurred in the area since! Therefore, just as in its earlier portions, the biblical primeval history and modern science once again support each other.
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[1] Phil Senter, “The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology,” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 31, no. 3 (2011): 3-16.
[2] Modified: Gen. 2:11, 13; 17:8; 41:19, 29, 41, 43, 44, 46, 54, 55; 45:8, 20, 26; Exod. 5:12; 7:19, 21; 8:16, 17, 24; 9:9, 22, 24, 25; 10:14, 15, 22; 11:6; Josh. 1:4; 10:41; 11:16; 13:4; 24:3; Judg. 11:21; 1 Sam. 13:19; 1 Kgs. 4:10; 15:20; 2 Kgs. 10:33; 15:29; 1 Chron. 13:2; 2 Chron. 11:23; 15:8; 34:7; Jer. 44:26.
[3] Not modified, universal: Gen. 1:26, 29; 18:25; 9:14, 16; 19:5; Exod. 34:10; Num. 14:21; Josh. 3:11, 13; 23:14; 1 Sam. 17:46; 1 Kgs. 2:2; 2 Kgs. 5:15; 2 Chron. 16:9; Psa. 8:1, 9; 19:4; 45:16; 47:2, 7; 57:5, 11; 66:1; 72:19; 83:18; 96:1, 9; 97:5, 9; 98:4; 100:1; 105:7; 108:5; Isa. 6:3; 12:5; 14:26; 25:8; 54:5; Mic. 4:13; Zech. 4:14.
[4] Not modified, not universal: Gen. 13:9, 15; 19:28; 26:3, 4; 41:54, 57; 47:13; Exod. 32:13; Num. 21:26; Deut. 11:3, 25; 19:8; 28:52; 29:2, 23; 34:1, 11; Josh. 2:3, 24; 6:27; 9:24; 10:40; 11:16, 23; 21:43; Judg. 6:37, 39, 40; 1 Sam. 13:3; 30:16; 2 Sam. 15:23; 18:8; 24:8; 1 Kgs. 9:19; 10:24; 2 Kgs. 17:5; 19:11; 1 Chron. 14:17; 22:5; 2 Chron. 8:6; 34:33; Isa. 7:24; 10:23; 13:5; 28:22; 37:11, 18; Jer. 1:18; 4:20, 27; 8:16; 12:11; 15:10; 16:15; 23:3, 8, 15; 25:11; 27:6; 32:37; 50:23; 51:7, 25, 28, 41, 47, 49, 52; Ezek. 22:4; 32:4; 35:14; 36:24; Dan. 9:7; Zech. 13:8; 14:9, 10.
[5] Unclear: Gen. 9:19; 11:1, 4, 8, 9; 1 Chron. 16:14, 23, 30; Job 42:15; Psa. 33:8; 48:2; Isa. 10:14; 14:7; Jer. 40:4; Lam. 2:15; Ezek. 20:6; Dan. 8:5; Hab. 2:20; Zeph. 1:18; 3:8, 19; Zech. 1:11; 4:10; 5:3, 6; 6:5.
[6] M. E. L. Mallowan, “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered,” Iraq 26, no. 2 (1964): 66.
[7] Jabal, a descendant of Cain, is said to be the “father of those who live in tents and raise livestock,” while his brother Jubal is said to be the “father of all who play the kinnor [string instrument] and ugab [wind instrument].” This implies that the author believed Jabal and Jubal’s lines were still alive in his day.
[8] The nephilim are said to be the children of the “sons of God” and “daughters of men,” yet according to the ancient Jewish tradition which was carried over into the New Testament, these “sons of God” were imprisoned (2 Pet. 2:4f; Jude 6), so the post-Flood nephilim can’t be the result of new mating between angels and humans. Furthermore, Gen. 6:4 explicitly says that the same group of nephilim were “in the land” both “in those days, and also afterward.”
[9] Mohammed El Bastawesy, “The geomorphological and hydrogeological evidences for a Holocene deluge in Arabia,” Arabian Journal of Geosciences 8 (2015): 2577-2586; this corresponds to a period of an intensely wet climate in the Near East which has not yet been repeated, see Alan Dickin, “New Historical and Geological Constraints on the Date of Noah’s Flood,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70, no. 3 (2018): 181-183.
[10] Lorence G. Collins, A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot Be 6,000 Years Old (Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing Co., 2021), 86-7.
[11] Michael W. Gregg et al., “Bitumen in Neolithic Iran: Biomolecular and Isotopic Evidence,” in Archaeological Chemistry, ed. M. D. Glascock, R. J. Speakman, and R. S. Popelka-Filcoff (Washington DC: American Chemical Society, 2007), 137-151.
[12] Benjamin S. Arbuckle and Emily L. Hammer, “The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Archaeological Research 27 (2019): 391-449.
[13] Monika Karmin et al., “A recent bottleneck of Y chromosome diversity coincides with a global change in culture,” Genome Research 25, no. 4 (2015): 459-466; see Supplemental Table S4 for the date of the most extreme bottleneck in the Near East (8.3 kya).
[14] Alan Dickin, “The Design of Noah’s Ark and Its Significance for Biblical Faith,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 74, no. 2 (2022): 97-104.
[15] Maria Guagnin et al., “Rock art imagery as a proxy for Holocene environmental change: A view from Shuwaymis, NW Saudi Arabia,” The Holocene 26, no. 11 (2016): 1822-1834.
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