The Flood – The Back of My Mind

After the Dreams: Corruption in Heaven and Earth

Posted on:

January 21, 2026

Modified on:

January 21, 2026

In Genesis 1:1–5, Day 1 and a number of earlier posts I presented a case for Old Earth Creationism and why I believe that Genesis 1 can only be interpreted as a visionary prophetic revelation, not a literal historical account.

In a follow-up post, Moshe’s Week of Dreams, I presented a hypothesis as to why Genesis 1 reads as it does: My suggestion is that, in a series of six visionary dreams, Moses received revelation of God’s solo role in creation. Not “how I did it”, but “it was I, and I alone, who created everything that is!”

Most recently, in After the Dreams: Day 7 Thru Seth, I did a follow-up expository study on chapters 2 through 4 of Genesis, concentrating on issues that I think are poorly understood—doctrinal fallacy based on traditional assumptions, not on solid Biblical evidence. Some topics discussed:

The origin of angels.
The function of the Garden.
The nature of the Serpent.
Satan as a name vs satan as a function.
Were the animal skins a blood sacrifice?
The closing and fate of the Garden.
Why Cain’s offering was rejected.

I’m going to continue that survey here, covering the rest of pre-Flood Biblical history.

My plan currently is to finish the series with a post on the recovery from the Flood, the Tower of Babel and its consequences, and the identity and life of Nimrod.

Introduction: extrabiblical sources

The entire subject matter that I want to cover in this post and the next, with the exception of the Flood story, are given very limited coverage in the Bible itself. I believe that a better understanding of these topics can be reached using non-Biblical literature from the Second Temple period through the early Rabbinic period, meaning, for my purposes, primarily the 4th century BC through the 4th century AD.

I have heard Christians at Bible Studies say, “If it isn’t in the Bible, then I’m not interested.” I understand that they are speaking from their love of God and their faith in His Word. For most Christians, that is a commendable attitude. I would suggest, though, that these folks don’t understand how pastors, teachers, and Christian authors, as well as entire local churches and denominations, work.

Not everything in the Bible is crystal clear. Every entity I just listed has an official doctrinal stance and a vast body of tradition, hopefully founded on Scripture, but understood with the help of extrabiblical supplementation.

Every lesson taught, every sermon preached, every book written by even the most devout and Bible-oriented human being expresses the viewpoint of that individual, as formed by the Bible but influenced by other factors in his or her personal environment. Nobody agrees fully with anyone else, and nobody gets everything right.

Concerning written influences:

Those ccepted by most teachers

Most Sunday School classes and Bible studies supplement their Bibles with quarterlies, workbooks, topical books and expository works by popular writers, and so on. Some are quite good, others abysmal. Most good sermons are prepared with the help of Bible commentaries and dictionaries, lexicons, theological guides, and multiple translations of the Scripture itself. Sometimes secular encyclopedias, history books, cultural studies and maps are used.

A lot of the material I just listed is very helpful, but none of it is inerrant!

Most of the time, you don’t know where your pastor, teacher, or your favorite blogger is getting supplemental source material.

Those less accepted by Evangelicals

Other information sources may be far less trusted by Evangelical Christians because of sectarian bias or ignorance of their content, but they are often still useful. The sources from this selection that I am most likely to use on occasion fall into several categories:

Rabbinical writings

This category seems to be anathema to many Evangelicals. Not because they revile Jews, necessarily, but because they view Judaism as something that Jesus rendered obsolete and therefore void of any value to Christians. My view is directly opposite. I don’t think that one can fully understand Christianity without also understanding Judaism. I find the Talmuds and other Jewish theological works, both early and modern, to be incredibly useful.

Apocryphal works

I am using that term here in a general sense to include the books known formally as “the Apocrypha“, many of which are considered canonical to some major denominations, plus other Second Temple writings, many of which are termed “Pseudepigraphal” because they purport to be written by someone other than the true author.

I consider these documents in general to be “historical fiction“, containing important seeds of truth. The dialog in these texts is somewhere between exaggerated and completely fanciful. The plot and historical background originate from, I believe, a combination of (a) canonical Scripture, (b) older written history, and (c) verbally transmitted lore. Use them with caution, but don’t ignore them!

Perhaps the best known of such works are the pseudepigraphal book, 1 Enoch, and The Book of Giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls. These two works, in particular, were accepted as truth, at least in part, by many intelligent and educated wise men of the ancient world, including some of the Church Fathers of the Patristic Age. I am using them extensively for this particular post.

Other ANE sources

Additionally, since the earliest cuneiform and hieroglyphic writings in some of the earliest civilizations, the legends of the Ancient Near East (ANE) have been faithfully recorded. Since they write about some of the same events as are found in the Bible and ancient Jewish extrabiblical texts, they provide outside confirmation and often suggest additional clarifying information.

Creation, “angelic” sin, the Nephilim, the Flood, the Tower, and the confusion of tongues are all topics I’m covering in this series that are both Biblical and widely reported in the greater ANE. Neither the Bible nor the legends are copycats; both reflect a common body of ancient memory.

Patristic work

These are the writings of the so-called Patristic Church Fathers in the early centuries after the dispersal of the Biblical apostles and the destruction of the Temple. These works are revered by Catholics, Orthodox denominations, and some Protestants. Certainly, these men contributed in huge ways to early Church theology. Personally, I find myself often taking sides against their theological conclusions, but I do profit from their thoughts and the history contained in their work.

Seth’s line

Genesis 4:25–5:32

This passage is a somewhat lengthy genealogy of Adam, from Seth through Noah. It serves as a toledah separating the Cain and Abel narrative from the corruption story. Even the genealogies of the bible are interesting to me, and I quote this one in full!

Reminder: A toledah (plural toledoth) is a passage in Genesis that (a) announces itself, when translated, as a “genealogy” or some related noun; and (b) serves as a notice that the subject of the text is changing. Think of them as Noah’s chapter headings.

25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.

9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. 10 Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.

12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. 13 Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. 16 Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. 17 Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.

18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. 19 Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.

21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. 22 Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. 26 Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.

28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son 29 and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” 30 Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

32 After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

—Genesis 4:25-5:32 (ESV)

Terminology

Just a few comments here on the terminology for man, mankind, etc. In the quotations below, I have underlined some that I find especially interesting.

The first few chapters of Genesis introduce us to the principal Hebrew words for man and mankind.

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
Genesis 5:1-2 (KJV)

What does it mean by “called their name Adam“? The three words underlined above are all the same Hebrew word, אָדָם, transliterated as “adam“, and pronounced “ah-DAHM”. This is a generic term for “man”, “mankind”, or “human.” Though it is the same word exactly, Strong’s has assigned a separate index number for it when it is used as the personal name of the man in the Garden, Adam. Hebrew has no alphabetic case, but later English translations sometimes use a lower-case “a”, “adam”, for the generic “mankind” usage.

“Adam” comes from a Hebrew root meaning “red.” As does the related word אֲדָמָה (adamah), meaning “earth”, referring not to the planet, but rather to the ground, especially (over 200 times in the Old Testament) to tilled land, productive soil, or Israel’s productive land in particular.

Adam was formed from the dust of the adamah. I take this to mean, specifically, from soil in the fertile but arid ground where God subsequently planted the Garden.

Another term for the “man” concept is used Genesis 3, when Eve is made from Adam’s rib:

23 And Adam (Adam) said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman (ishshah), because she was taken out of Man (ish).
—Genesis 2:23 (KJV)

This time, “man” is אִישׁ (iysh or ish, pronounced eesh). It is a more formal word for a particular man or men, often meaning “husband”, as implied here. It is also used, for example, in Gen 6:4 in reference to “mighty men [הַגִּבֹּרִ֛ים, haggibborim, “the mighty warriors”], which were of old, men [iysh] of renown.”

It makes some kind of linguistic sense that being taken out of “man” makes her “woman”, but how does that work in Hebrew? In Hebrew, “woman” is אִשָּׁה (ishshah, pronounced eesh-SHAH).

Yet another term related to iysh is found here:

[6] And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband (enowsh) with her; and he did eat.
—Genesis 3:6 (KJV)

In this case, the Hebrew is אֱנוֹשׁ (enowsh, pronounced eh-NOHSH), meaning something more like “mortal man.” A bit derogatory. Think of it as, “Uh, just a guy.”

Timeline

**Adam to the Flood, through Seth.** Note that Methuselah died in the year of the Flood, suggesting that he may have died in the Flood. ©Ron Thompson

I prepared the above chart many years ago, from one of the many English translations based on the 11th century AD Masoretic Text of Genesis. The Masoretic Text is a compendium of the earliest extant Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament and Apocrypha that were available prior to discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. English language Bibles from both Christian and Jewish translators are usually based on the Masoretic Text.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, copies penned between roughly the 2nd century BC through the 1st century AD, are more fragmented, but comparisons demonstrate that relatively little corruption has degraded the much later Masoretic source manuscripts.

The chart below shows the principal lines of descent through Adam’s three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth. Note that there were other sons and daughters born at each level of the genealogy (see, for example, Gen 5:4). At least one ancient source suggests that Adam, for example, had 30 sons and 30 daughters, thanks to his long breeding cycle.

A genealogy of Adam and Eve. The similarities between the names of some of Cain’s descendants and some of Seth’s suggest to me that there was renewed contact between the families.

I believe that this genealogy is accurate as listed in Genesis, but it is possible that some generations are skipped for one reason or another. In my next article, as part of my discussion of Nimrod, I will provide more context on the flexibility of the Hebrew term translated “begat.” Even theologian John Witcomb, Henry Morris’ coauthor of The Genesis Flood, acknowledged that possibility and mentioned that it could potentially push Ussher’s proposed creation week back in time several thousand years. The wording of the genealogy makes me doubt that but see below for other potential sources of error.

Additionally, as an Old Earth Creationist, I believe that God’s human creations in Genesis 1:26 predated Adam and Eve (see Moshe’s Week of Dreams). When the latter were driven from the Garden, they joined the older races, who had by then spread throughout at least the Eastern Hemisphere. These are the people who Cain thought might kill him, and from whom he obtained a wife.

Intermarriage between Adam’s race and the old races was probably frequent before The Flood, and that would explain why the genome of modern humans, descended from Noah and his wife, still contain traces of even Neanderthal DNA.

Alternate sources

The chart below, from the World Bible Commentary, presents the same information as my chart, but adds columns based on two other important sources, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint (LXX).

Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1–15. WBC 1. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.9. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987.

The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Koine Greek by Jewish scholars living in Alexandria, probably beginning in the early 3rd century BC and completed by 132 BC. The name of the translation derives from traditional belief that there were 70 to 72 translators. The “abbreviation”, LXX, is by convention read like an acronym (“el-ex-ex”), but of course it is actually the Roman numeral 70.

The LXX is an extremely important source because the New Testament writers, including Paul and the Gospel authors, used it almost exclusively when quoting the Tanakh (Old Testament), and because very early copies exist. I don’t often quote from English translations of the LXX (though I do in this article), but I use it extensively for comparative research.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is another widely used early manuscript of the Old Testament. It was written in a Samaritan dialect of Hebrew and Aramaic, using the earlier Proto-Hebrew alphabet. It is dated from as early as the Late Hasmonean or Early Roman period, and as late as the 4th century AD. Most of this document is similar to the Masoretic and LXX, but there are a few important differences where edits were made to justify Samaritan doctrinal variations. I don’t use this at all because I don’t have an English translation. I do have a Hebrew version, but though I can translate Hebrew myself, it is a slow and arduous process at my level of fluency.

It is interesting that the Samaritan numbers show Jared (Yared), Methuselah and Lamek all dying in the year of the flood.

Chronological uncertainties

You will note from the chart above that there are significant differences in the chronologies shown in the various columns. Let’s ask ourselves what the figures in this table tell us about, for example, the accuracy of Archbishop Ussher’s Biblical dating? I am an Old Earth Creationist, but I’m quite willing to put God’s formation of Adam and Eve somewhere around 4004 BC.

Observations:

Most of the entries from the Masoretic (MT) text are multiples of 5 years. This is too many to be coincidental, suggesting that the figures are rounded off to the nearest five years. Three of the entries for age at first son’s birth and two for years of life after first son’s birth are adjusted to nearest five + seven, for reasons that aren’t known.
The entries for the Samaritan columns are the same as MT for five generations, rounding included, then deviate for all the rest except Enoch and Noah. In two instances, the seven-year adjustment is a subtraction. In three of the last four generations, total life span is significantly different from other sources, so we now have to ask which text is flat-out wrong.
The LXX agrees closely with the Samaritan in general. In eight of the first nine generations, it has the age at first son a century later, but in six of those cases the father’s age of death is the same.

Conclusions:

By definition, there was probably only one original “autograph” of Genesis. Every manuscript after that was a hand copy until Gutenberg’s press. Every copy made introduced the possibility of “scribal error.” Fortunately, comparisons between manuscripts of widely varying age have shown very few and minor discrepancies. Not too surprising because there was always a very rigorous review process because of the theological necessity for accuracy.
I would suggest that there is far more likelihood of scribal errors in Biblical numbers than in alphabetical text. The reason is that Hebrew does not have numerals! Like so-called “Roman Numerals,” Hebrew “numerals” are composed of alphabetical characters assigned numeric values. Consequently, working with numbers in a Hebrew document is cumbersome. As much or more so, in fact, than Roman Numerals in Latin text.
Ussher’s calculations were supposedly accurate to year, day and even time of day. Ten generations of round-offs makes a mess of that theory!

Patriarchal longevity

We all know that the life spans of Adam’s descendants were much higher before the flood than after. There was a hyperbolic decline after the flood, rapid at first, then more and more gradual, stabilizing after the Conquest of Canaan.

This graph shows lifespans of the Bible’s patriarchs from Adam through the prophet Eli.

Why? One can only speculate. Most such guesses blame it on decreasing health and increasing pestilence brough on by increasing sin. But the biggest increase in sin came before the flood, and the graph above shows no decrease in that time span. Lamech’s “short” life is an anomaly easily explained by the violence of the age.

The next graph shows the decline from Noah forward:

Lifespans after the flood. A “Least Squares” fit of the data points verifies that ages from that time declined hyperbolically, approaching an asymptote at around 30 years of age. Obviously, the downward trend has reversed somewhat over the last millennia or so due to cultural changes in health and hygiene.

To me, the second graph looks like an equilibrium chart. Here’s another of my totally speculative scenarios:

Some 5.5 billion years after the formation of the planets from the sun’s accretion disk, earth had more or less stabilized. The last globally catastrophic event was the Chicxulub asteroid impact off Yucatan 66 million years ago. That event caused so much climate disruption and destruction to the global ecosystems that 75% of all plant and animal species on earth at the time went extinct. Including most dinosaurs.
With God’s nudging, the adaptive capabilities that He had built into His living creations were able to heal the damage caused by the asteroid impact and push the mammals, including ancient mankind, into a position of supremacy.
God “planted” Adam and Eve in the Garden 6,000+ years ago. Perhaps a bit earlier, depending on translational issues and whether or not generations are skipped in the genealogy for any reason. Clearly (based on the rounded data points), absolute accuracy in the numbers was not attempted by the human authors of the Bible.
Despite the terrible sinfulness that developed over the course of the antediluvian earth, there appears to have been no consequent reduction in human lifespan during the time.
The Flood, discussed below and in previous articles, I believe to have been brought about supernaturally when God caused the vast quantities of water known to be contained in the earth’s mantle transition layer to be flushed out into the oceans through volcanos on the midoceanic ridges.
It is conceivable to me that the unprecedented activity of the submerged volcanoes could have triggered or hastened atmospheric changes that caused lifespans to get shorter and shorter over the succeeding several hundred years.

Alternatively, perhaps around the time of the flood, God simply triggered DNA changes that shortened human lifespans over that time frame.

Note, however, that the extreme longevity recorded for the Biblical patriarchs did not necessarily apply to anyone else during the period! The assumption that all mankind was long-lived has been incorporated into Judeo-Christian tradition without Biblical support.

Corruption

Genesis 6:1–8

[5] The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
—Genesis 6:5 (ESV)

The first Period of Corruption, which I’ll cover here, extends from Cain, presumably from some time before his ill-fated offering and subsequent murder of Abel, until the Great Flood, traditionally, per Ussher, around 2348 BC.

One of many preflood timelines on the web. Most, like this one, are based on Ussher’s dating, with Adam’s creation in 4004 BC.

Why was there so much corruption on earth during that period? Is it just because of paganism and the brutality of prehistoric times? Perhaps, but prehistoric peoples had to work very hard to survive, so how did they find the time and why would they waste that much energy doing unproductive things?

Logic would seem to dictate that life then, for them, would be somewhat like one typically finds in the modern era when isolated pockets of stone age villages are found in undeveloped areas of the world.

I will attempt below to show that the post-Eden world started out more or less like I would have expected, but probably during the lifespan of Jared, conditions changed radically due to a barely imaginable external stimulus that changed the world in ways that still affect us today.

Most of this will be new to most of you.

Second celestial rebellion

[6:1] In time, when men began to multiply on earth, and daughters were born to them, [2] the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. [3] ADONAI said, “My Spirit will not live in human beings forever, for they too are flesh; therefore their life span is to be 120 years.” [4] The N’filim [Nephilim, giants] were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; these were the ancient heroes, men of renown.

[5] ADONAI saw that the people on earth were very wicked, that all the imaginings of their hearts were always of evil only. [6] ADONAI regretted that he had made humankind on the earth; it grieved his heart. [7] ADONAI said, “I will wipe out humankind, whom I have created, from the whole earth; and not only human beings, but animals, creeping things and birds in the air; for I regret that I ever made them.” [8] But Noach [Noah] found grace in the sight of ADONAI.
—Genesis 6:1–8 (CJB)

Although rarely taught or preached, I regard these eight verses as one of the most foundational passages in the Bible, because:

It sets a baseline for human depravity and illustrates the perfidy even of angels.
It furnishes a rationale for why God determined to bring the Great Flood.
It provides a background for understanding the important subject of New Testament demonology.

Both humans and angels were created with freewill, and freewill always opens doors to rebellion!

Verse 8 is usually considered to be part of the Flood story in English translations with inserted headings (like ESV), but the two following verses (9 and 10) are a very brief toledah, so Moses considered the contrast of Noah’s righteousness to the evil of that age to be part of this story, separate from God’s announcement of coming destruction and His call for Noah to build an Ark.

If the Serpent’s actions in the Garden were part of his prideful fall from heaven (Isaiah 14:11–15), then that is the first recorded celestial rebellion.

Genesis 6:1–8 is then the second.

The sons of God

the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
—Genesis 6:2 (ESV)

Generations of scholars have argued over the identity of the sons of God as referenced in this context, despite the fact that elsewhere in scripture the term transparently refers to angelic beings.

Three theories are popular in Common Era (Anno Domine) churches and synagogues:

The most popular since the Patristic Age (specifically, beginning with Augustine of Hippo) is the idea that the “sons of God” were the “Godly line of Seth“, and the ladies in question were the “ungodly line of Cain.”

But Scripture nowhere implies that Seth’s descendants were by nature Godly or Cain’s ungodly, or that such unions were forbidden. And this theory fails to account for the Nephilim (see below).

The second most popular is that the sin was polygamy by evil kings, nobles or aristocrats.

But polygamy was not prohibited, even much later in the Monarchy period, and again, where did the Nephilim come from?

I’ll discuss the least popular but correct view here. Sure, I’m willing to be dogmatic about this!

The question was a hot topic even in the 1st century, and much of the thinking of that era is reflected in 1 Enoch, and The Book of Giants, discussed above. These and other related texts uniformly identify the “sons of God” as angels, and in fact, the term is often unmistakably used for angels in canonical scripture. Angels are classified according to function, and those in Genesis 6 are called “Watchers” in the extrabiblical literature. In the Bible, that term only appears in Daniel 4. That they are indeed angelic beings is given a stamp of authenticity in Jude and 2 Peter where the book of 1 Enoch is quoted.

The angelic rebellion, the giants, the corruption of humans, the Flood, and the confusion of tongues at Babel were events that effected all peoples of the world, not just the Jews. All of these events show up in some form in the writings of many ancient cultures around the world.

The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, famously mentions the Flood. This same tale and other related cuneiform tablets also mention demigods called the Apkallu who are counterparts of the rebellious angels, who corrupt the civilized world and spawn giant offspring. Gilgamesh himself was one of these giants.

As for the Biblical account, the primary source of doubt is that many scholars today question whether an angel even can (a) feel lust for a mortal woman or (b) consummate such lust.

Both of those questions hinge on what you believe about the ontological nature of angels. That’s a tough question, because nothing in the Bible or in any extrabiblical literature that I’m aware of provides a clearcut definition of “angelhood.” Are they corporeal beings, or spirit beings, or both? There is no seminary class on “angelic anatomy and physiology.” My opinion as a student of science is that no corporeal being could survive the rigors of the universe beyond earth without something like a spaceship; however, the following passage seems to be sufficiently clear:

[13] And to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? [from Psalm 110:1]
[14] Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?
—Hebrews 1:13–14 (ESV) emphasis mine

Because I’ve already described angelic beings in detail in Gods and Demons, I’m going to state here simply that I believe that they are disembodied spirits created alongside the Universe to be God’s agents for its administration.

I was taught years ago that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 were angels who had taken possession of human men; but in the article linked here, I wrote, as I now firmly believe,

This unnatural union of Watchers and human women did not require “possession” of human males by the Watchers. The Bible includes a number of examples of angelic beings taking human form and exhibiting human function.

Whenever angels appeared to humans, Biblically, they appeared in human form, probably for the sake of establishing empathy. Whether these were solid human bodies or visual and aural illusions, they usually fooled the human observers.

A few instances are recorded where there was actual physical contact, so I have to think there was indeed a temporary corporeal body. For example, angels ate with Abraham, then with Lot in Sodom; an angel touched Elijah twice as he slept under a broom tree; and an angel struck Paul in prison. And when Jacob wrestled with God, I assume that he was wrestling with a preincarnate Christophany, meaning an appearance of the future messiah, similar in substance to an angel.

So no, I can’t think of any reason to doubt that angels can take on masculine human bodies and mate with fully human women.

Note: In Gen 6:2 where it says the sons of God “took wives for themselves”, most would agree that this is speaking of physically mating, not legally marrying. In any case, the following verse and its parallels is not saying that angels can’t mate, but rather that they have no angelic female counterparts and don’t need to procreate because they don’t die! See,

[35] but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, [36] for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
—Luke 20:35–36 (ESV)

For NT proof that the sons of God are angelic, the passages below are quoting from 1 Enoch, which is explicitly referring to the “sons of God” of Genesis 6.

[6] And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— [7] just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
…
[14] It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, [15] to execute judgment…”
—Jude 6–7; 14–15a (ESV)

[4] For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; [5] if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
—2 Peter 2:4–5 (ESV)

The daughters of men

I don’t see anything abnormal about this group. Human women.

I see no reason to think that Sethite women would have been any less likely than Cainite women to be seduced by the sons of God. Whether the women shared any guilt with the angels is not clear, but certainly the angels in particular were severely punished.

The Nephilim

This is where it gets really interesting. Let’s start by comparing two translations of verse 4.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
—Genesis 6:4 (ESV)

Now the giants were upon the earth in those days; and after that when the sons of God were wont to go in to the daughters of men, they bore children to them, those were the giants of old, the men of renown.
—Genesis 6:4 (LXX-B)

The ESV (English Standard Version) is of course one of the most popular English translations among 21st century Protestants. The second version here is an English translation of the LXX (or Septuagint), which itself is a 2nd century BC translation from Hebrew into Greek.

“Nephilim“, הַנְּפִלִ֞ים, pronounced nə-feel-EEM is a transliteration, not a translation, of the plural form of Hebrew נְפִיל, pronounced nə-FEEL.

The first problem here is that some question whether it’s even the right word. The old Hebrew has no vowels (except in this word, the yod, (י) functions like an English “Y” used as a vowel. A similar word, nophilim, pronounced with an “o” would translate to “fallen ones,” which would fit in either case, but the consensus is that “Nephilim” is the correct word where it occurs in the Hebrew Old Testament. This word represents “a bully, a tyrant, or a giant.”

The LXX translators, who were certainly cultural insiders, rendered it as Greek γίγαντες (gigantes), which you probably need no help to translate to English.

Now the canonical Bible, OT and NT, has nothing else to say about the nature of the Nephilim, aside from the observation that they were הַגִּבֹּרִ֛ים (the gibborim), the warriors, heroes, mighty men, or men of renown.

It’s fairly common “church knowledge”, or tradition, that the Nephilim were offspring of the angel males and human females of Gen 6:2. For confirmation you have to go to extrabiblical literature like 1 Enoch. It would take a lot to convince me that this view is wrong.

What else do we know about them? Apparently, they were, indeed, giants. How big? Well, there is a problem with 1 Enoch. It describes them as 300 cubits (about 450 feet) tall! That’s around 3½ blue whale lengths, or 3½ times the size of Patagotitan mayorum, the largest known dinosaur, head to tail. I think that “flesh and blood” that large would not be able to survive in earth’s gravity.

I have that problem with the supergiants, but we do have some examples of Nephilim size from canonical Scripture. The Philistine, Goliath the Gittite (from Gath) was a later descendent of Anak. The Anakim were related to the Nephilim. The Masoretic text has Goliath at “six cubits and a span”, or 9 feet 9 inches. Josephus says, “four cubits and a span”, or 6 feet 9 inches, but Josephus was very fallible in some of his descriptions.

“David and Goliath”, 18th century painting by Charles Errad.

Og, an Amorite king of Bashan (in the Golan Heights area), was also a Nephilim giant. Scripture describes him as “the last survivor of the giant Rephaites.” The Rephaites were a clan of Nephilim. We know that King Og was a giant, but all we know of his particular size is that his bed was “nine cubits long and four cubits wide”, approximately 13½ feet by 6 feet. That is probably not an accurate gauge of Og’s size, because the bed dimensions are most likely ceremonial. They are exactly the same as the reported dimensions of the ceremonial bed at the top of the Ziggurat of Babylon, built for Baal and his consort.

If you are a hyper literalist, you may be inclined to prefer the 450-foot size because the Israelite spies reported that “we are like grasshoppers to them.” To me, that was an obvious exaggeration, but you have to believe that a conservative hermeneutic allows for exaggerations. Which you know by now that I do!

Consequences

Now, here is a big assumption, that I think is probably true…

Shades of the Nephilim

The Nephilim were big, bad, barbaric warriors, but that was far, far from them at their worst!

We’re delving into the extrabiblical for information now, where the Bible itself is silent. The late Michael Heiser, a scholar of ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East, is my principal source on topics like this. He was very confident of what has been unearthed from Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal literature. The relevant texts are, in some cases, part of church canon for Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant denominations. In other cases, the texts may have at one time been considered inspired but were later excluded.

I need to stress here that I do not in any way consider these texts to be inspired or infallible. I use them only to shed light on peripheral issues that are interesting to me, but that God chose not to address more fully in Scripture.

These sources may then explain much that the Bible doesn’t about this subject. For example:

They explicitly state that the Nephilim were the unnatural offspring of angel/human pairings.
For this to be even possible, one has to believe that the temporary physical body of a corporeal angel was very similar, not only externally, but also in its internal anatomical and physiological makeup, to a human male.
Nevertheless, the giantism, muscularity, and otherworldly fierceness of the children of this union is an indication of partial incompatibility between the genomes of the parents.
Despite their toughness, the Nephilim could die like humans. Remember Goliath.
Like humans, the “shades”, i.e., spirits, of the Nephilim angel/human hybrids were immortal and residing in Sheol after death.
However, unlike human spirits, the half-angel spirits aren’t bound to Sheol. Angels in general are spirit beings created for the purpose of managing the cosmos. As such, angels, “good” and “bad”, have full access, even to Sheol, and can enter or exit at will.
Satan, like most other angels and the Nephilim, can leave Sheol at will, until the eschatological end times. The angels who sinned in Genesis 6, on the other hand, are bound and cannot escape Sheol, according to Peter and Jude.
Most Christians today and for most of the last two millennia have believed that demons are “fallen angels.” Aside from some prophetic references about “worshipping demons”, which might be a reference to the sons of God assigned to the nations at the Babel “scattering”, there is no Biblical evidence of that.

Ancient Hebrew conception of *Sheol*, the Underworld. As its name suggests, this region is assumed to lie beneath the surface of earth, but since it is the realm of spirits, it could be an undetectable phantom world, here or anywhere else either within or beyond the cosmos. This illustration, artist unknown, depicts a desert-like half for the ungodly, and an Eden-like half for the Godly, separated by an impassable chasm. Note that the human figure walking on the left bank would actually be a disembodied spirit.

Demons

According to ancient belief and overwhelming evidence in the Apocrypha, and in the rest of the Ancient Near East, the demons are those very same half breed Nephilim spirits, now free to wander the earth!

They are able to leave Sheol because of their angelic heritage. But because of their human heritage, they want to be embodied. Because, like their angel parent, or perhaps both parents, they are evil, their delight is in causing mischief. A big part of that is “entering” into humans and causing them harm.

Much of Jesus’ healing ministry was clearly healing natural diseases. But often we are told that he “cast out demons.” Some of those may have inflicted their hosts with disease, but some of them evidently caused stress directly.

Post-Flood giants

It is easy to see why OT demons, separated from their physical bodies, could have survived the Great Flood. They were spirits, not confined to the surface of the earth, and immortal, so only God, their creator, could destroy them or bind them in Sheol.

The problem is that there were clearly Nephilim giants in the Near East after the Great Flood. Did they survive the Flood? According to Scripture, only eight people survived the flood—Noah and his family.

Heiser and others provide three possible alternatives to explain their post-flood return:

Heiser doesn’t commit, but his favorite is that angels continued to violate human women after the Flood. He finds possible support for this view in Genesis 6.4. Let’s look again at the two translations presented above:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when[ever] the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
—Genesis 6:4 (ESV) emphasis mine

Now the giants were upon the earth in those days; and after that when[ever] the sons of God were wont to go in to the daughters of men, they bore children to them, those were the giants of old, the men of renown.
—Genesis 6:4 (LXX-B) emphasis mine

Heiser points out that the Hebrew אֲשֶׁר (asher), translated “when” here, has a wide range of meanings and could easily be translated “whenever”, as I have shown in brackets above. He then suggests that “in those days” can only refer back to verse 1:

[6:1] When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,
—Genesis 6:1 (ESV)

That being the case, then verse 4 is apparently saying that, just as in “those days”, the days under discussion when the angles sinned and the Nephilim were born, it would all happen again. Angels will continue to lust after human women and giants will once again be born. Perhaps even after the flood, with the first crop of giants now dead.

Maybe. If so, then have the angels finally learned their lessons? The giants of the Bible have been eradicated, and it would seem that none have been born in millennia.

A second possibility is that the giants themselves mated with humans and one or more of the eight people on the ark had some of their DNA. I somewhat favor this explanation myself because it would explain not only the existence of post-flood giants, but also their eventual disappearance.

One would think that giantism would confer a genetic advantage, but perhaps not, for a number of possible reasons. Some were obviously born over the first centuries, but eventually they were hunted to extinction.

Or perhaps the flood wasn’t universal after all, and some “flesh” outside its boundaries survived. Walton favors a regional flood. My faith wouldn’t be destroyed if he is right, but I’m pretty dogmatic about a global flood.

Timing of the rebellion

The Bible only puts the beginning of the sin of the angels somewhere in the antediluvian (pre-flood) era. Extrabiblical sources say that it started during the lifetime of Jared (roughly halfway between Expulsion and Flood). It no doubt extended up until the flood. As just discussed, if it resumed after the flood, that would explain the Anakim and other tribes of Nephilim giants that existed until the monarchy period in Israel.

A major part of the story in 1 Enoch is that the sinning angels asked Enoch to intercede with God for them when they begin to face punishment. In my view, it seems likely that God “took” Enoch, Jared’s son, precisely to fill that role.

Ships, Boats, Floats and Arks

Edited 1/6/2024

I know, this is far from the most important theological question most of us will face in our lives, but I’ll bet that most of us are at least a little bit interested. What Exactly is an “ark”? Answers in Genesis (AiG), parent ministry of the Ark Encounter theme park, who I frequently agree with and frequently disagree with, says, “Noah’s Ark was a ship; therefore, it likely had features that ships would commonly have.” No, and no…

My purpose here is not to question their motives or their overall theological purity, but rather to point out where my opinions and theirs differ on some textual interpretations and scientific/nautical engineering principles.

Artist’s conception: Noah’s Ark, somewhat as I envision it.

Linguistics

“Ark”

Nowhere does Scripture say the Ark was a ship! All that floats is not a ship. I did a search in several English translations to get a sense of the Biblical usage, concentrating mostly on KJV, NKJV, ESV, NIV and CJB. I found that the Hebrew “Oniy“ or the related “Oniyah” is translated as “ship(s)”, “boat(s)”, “sailing vessel(s)”, or “watercraft” in the Old Testament. The word can also refer to a fleet (of ships), a Navy, or seamen. Another Hebrew term, Tsiy is translated variously as “ships“, “boats” or “vessels (of papyrus reeds)”.

There are three contexts in which the term “ark” occurs in English translations of the OT. When referring to Noah’s Ark and the basket into which Moses was placed to escape Pharaoh’s attack on Israelite children, the Hebrew is “tebah“, which literally means “a box or chest“. When referring to the Ark of the Covenant, the Hebrew is “aron“, meaning “a box, chest or coffin“.

What is the difference in meaning between these words? AiG suggests that tebah is related to the Egyptian word for “coffin”, and comments that being sealed in the Ark would be like “being sealed in a coffin.” Their post says nothing at all about aron.

Ancient Hebrew and Egyptian were both Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is possible, but not proven, that the Hebrew term is a loan-word from their Egyptian sojourn. The Hebrew alphabet, especially in its ancient form, is an “abjad“, meaning that it contains no vowels. “Tebah“, then, as transliterated to English, becomes “t-b-h“. The Middle Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs included a full set of phonetic glyphs. When using only these glyphs for writing, the similar word is transliterated as “t-b-t“, and according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs concordance, which I consider to be better than Strong’s, it does, in fact mean “chest, or coffin”. Nevertheless, the leap to comparing Noah’s Ark to a coffin is a total (and absurd) shot in the dark!

Based on my own survey of Jewish sources, I believe that tebah refers to containers for the “common“, while aron refers to boxes, chests, and cabinets dedicated to sacred objects.

Regarding the latter,

The Ark of the Testimony (Aron HaEdut) was “home” to God’s Sh’kinah, and contained, for a time, a jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. All of those are Jewish sacred objects.
For most of their history, the most sacred object associated with any Jewish synagogue has been their Torah scroll, and the second most sacred has been their Holy ark (aron HaKodesh) in which the scrolls are stored. These arks are cabinets, usually ornate, that stand against the synagogue wall most nearly facing Jerusalem and the Holy Mount (the west wall in Europe and the Americas).
When the Israelites left Egypt with Moses, they took with them, in an aron, the revered body of Joseph:

Genesis 50:26 (CJB)
[26] So Yosef died at the age of 110, and they embalmed him and put him in a coffin [aron] in Egypt.

“Gopher wood”

Some translations render it as “gofer wood” a direct transliteration from the Hebrew) and many as “cypress wood“. The actual meaning is obscure and may refer to a type of tree or a type of wood, for example.

Calling it “cypress wood” is only a guess, but not unreasonable, since cypress is water and rot resistant, pliable and toolable. Even today it is widely used in outdoor furniture and boat construction. Its growth is fairly ubiquitous in northern temperate regions, especially in warm climates that are periodically dry (for seed germination) and swampy (for subsequent growth). In Iraq, trees of any kind are scarce today, but in Noah’s day cypress was probably plentiful in the lower Tigris and Euphrates region.

Brown-Driver-Briggs suggests that “gofer wood” should be translated as “pitch-wood” since the Hebrew gofrith, meaning “brimstone” is from the same Hebrew root. This may still designate cypress, since it could refer to the oily sap that gives that species its water and rot resistance.

“Roof”

There are a number of ways to interpret Genesis 6:16a. I think JPS says it best:

“Hebrew tsohar is another unique word. It is either the “window” of 8:6, or it means “a roof.” Depending on which meaning is adopted, the unclear directive to “terminate it within a cubit of the top” (lit. “from above”) could variously mean that a space of one cubit is to be left between the top of the window and the roof, that the window itself is to be a cubit in height, or that the slanting roof should project one cubit beyond the side of the ark.
— Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis. The JPS Torah Commentary. Accordance electronic edition, version 3.2. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989.

Perhaps it is important that, in addition to “roof” or “window”, tsohar can also, depending on context, mean “midday” or “noon”. I suspect that this is why some translators render verse 16a as, “Make a skylight in the Ark, within a cubit of the top you shall finish it…” (Alter, The Hebrew Bible); or “You are to make an opening for daylight in the ark eighteen inches below its roof.” (Stern, The Complete Jewish Bible“). Emphasis mine in both cases.

Note that the “window” (Hebrew challon) of Gen 8:6 is capable of being closed, presumably by a shutter or shutters.

Because challon is not used in 6:16, and with an eye towards watertightness, I lean towards the interpretation that it is speaking of a roof with 18-inch eaves, providing shelter for some type of opening or openings for both light and ventilation. This may have been the shuttered window(s) of 8:6.

The high winds and torrential rainfall postulated by AiG would be incompatible with any type of open skylight or window. Even the shutters of 8:6 would be difficult to make watertight in ancient times. It took God, Himself to seal the door. The flood “mechanism” I propose in Fountains of the Deep would produce heavy global rains, but without heavy winds associated with hurricanes or other destructive forces caused by large pressure gradients.

Boat vs. Float

Ships, boats and barges, in all their myriads of varieties, generally have one thing in common: they are designed to transport people and/or other objects from one location to another, on or under the water. By “transport”, I mean to actively move them, using some form of energy, be it wind (in a sail), machine, or muscle. The term “ships” generally refers to relatively large vessels designed to withstand the rigors of navigating the open sea or large rivers and lakes. The term “boats” can include “ships” as a subset, but more commonly it refers to relatively smaller watercraft. A “barge” is usually a box-like vessel designed to be pulled or pushed by some external means, including ships, boats, or even oxen or powered vehicles alongside a river or canal.

By contrast, a vessel or platform, or even an air-filled vest, of any kind that is designed, not to navigate under any kind of propulsion, but simply to float on water and go wherever the forces of nature takes it, is called—well—a “float“! Noah’s Ark was not a ship; it was a float. God said, “Build this, get in it with a herd of critters, and let it float you to wherever I send it by means of the forces at my command.” If it was a float and not a ship or boat, then it doesn’t need to have had “features that ships would commonly have.”

Wind and Waves

The design on AiG’s Ark Encounter, in fact the basis of much of their flood theology, depends on an assumption that the Great Flood would have included catastrophic winds, waves and consequent destruction.

However, I think the argument is faulty. I see nothing in scripture to indicate that wind factored into the Genesis Flood in any significant way, so neither wind nor wave would have been an issue. According to Gen 7:11, “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of the sky were opened.” I don’t believe that this event can be compared in any way to a modern storm. I have discussed a likely mechanism for the flood in Fountains of the Deep. In that post I suggest that the vast majority of the flood water was miraculously brought up from earth’s mantle transition layer, primarily through volcanic eruptions in the mid-oceanic ridges. This would have perhaps generated tsunamis on coastlines, but tsunamis cause very little disturbance in deep water, and even on shore, the damage to the coast itself (as opposed to structures and life) tends to be superficial except for erosion of coastal sands. Widespread volcanism generates huge amounts of ash, as well as CO₂and water vapor that would spawn torrential rain but could quell pressure gradients and suppress the worst of the winds.

The only mention of wind in the Flood text is in Gen 8:1b,”God caused a wind [ruach] to pass over the earth, and the water began to go down.” The Hebrew ruach can mean wind, breath, or any of a number of related English terms, but most often in the Bible, it means “spirit“, as in Gen 1:2b, “and the Spirit [Ruach] of God hovered over the surface of the water.” No amount of physical and literal wind could dry up that much water in the time allowed by Scripture; the waters of the deep were miraculously returned to their home in earth’s mantle through the power of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). I suggest that “wind” in Gen 8:1 is more akin to “God’s breath” than to a meteorological phenomenon. For more on God’s use of wind (see God with the Wind).

Architecture

As a Naval Officer back in the day, I put in a lot of both formal and informal time studying subjects related to my job. Not that I could ever build a ship “from the keel up”, but I do have training in naval architecture, both technical and historic. The small “n” in “naval” means both military and civilian watercraft.

AiG has tried to justify their design of a ship-like Ark at Ark Encounter, as opposed to a parallelepiped (rectilinear solid), box-like float of the same overall dimensions, by appealing to model studies in wave pools. I can tell you from personal experience and my knowledge of physics that because of their inertial characteristics, massive ships won’t perform anything like small models in either wind or waves. Not … even … close!

I have been at sea on a minesweeper (off Alaska), a destroyer (off California), a battleship (off California), and, for long periods, an aircraft carrier (in the North and South Atlantic, the North Sea and the Mediterranean). On all but the battleship, I have served on the “bridge” (a ship’s navigational control center) while under way, and experienced “heavy seas” (storm conditions). On the minesweeper and the carrier, I periodically “had the con“, meaning I had command over the vessel’s engines and rudders, as well as the bridge crew, engine and steerage crews, lookouts and other underway personnel. In Navy parlance, a minesweeper is a boat, and designed for operations in littoral, i.e., coastal, waters, though able to transit oceans if necessary. My other “rides” were smallish, large and very large ships, respectively.

My destroyer, the USS O’Brien, DD-725, was about 80% the size of the Ark, so it gives me a good basis for comparison. We definitely felt the waves, but when under power, it was easy to control our direction of advance. If we cut our speed to “all stop“, or “zero turns on the ship’s screw“, we would fairly quickly lose our forward motion (go “dead-in-the-water“), and eventually the forces on the hull would drag us around until we were parallel to the swells (that’s the proper term for deep-water waves). Once so “broached“, there is a tendency for any vessel to roll side to side. This isn’t comfortable, especially on smaller vessels, but sailors are used to it and prepared for it. Even in rough seas, very few ships will capsize from it, though, because buoyancy and inertia limit the magnitude of the roll. A box with the same dimensions as the ship will have less tendency to roll than a ship with a curved hull, given proper weight distribution aboard the two.

Water Wave Physics

Elsewhere in the AiG documentation, they state that waves would have driven the Ark forward. But that could happen only in near-shore surf where wind shear pushes surface water onto the shallows.

In deep waters, waves are propagated in a horizontal direction, but the only water movement is near the surface where molecules simply bob up and down in tight elliptical cycles. It is the bobbing action that moves along the surface, not the water itself.

In the diagram above, the motion of individual water molecules is depicted in red. In deep water, waves “propagate” away from their source (wind or a surface disturbance), but the water itself moves mostly in vertical directions. A solid object like a boat or a bottle will bob upwards on wave crests and downwards on wave troughs. As a crest approaches, the object will tend to move forward in the direction of the advancing wave as it slides down the wavefront, but then it will slide in the opposite direction after the crest passes. Winds above the waves or currents below the waves may push the object, but the waves themselves impart little or no net horizontal movement, either longitudinal or lateral.

As waves encroach into shallow water, on the other hand, the solid seafloor begins to disrupt the elliptical motion of the water molecules at the bottom of their cyclic movement. As a result, the peaks tend to overtake the troughs, and the wave tumbles forward. This causes the constituent water molecules to wash towards the shore at and near the surface, but then to rush back towards the open water near the floor. The return part of this cycle is the dreaded “rip tide.”

Features of the AiG Design

In several blog posts, AiG explains why, from a sea-worthiness perspective, they think that the Ark needed to be a ship-like vessel, rather than a box. They use this diagram to illustrate:

“Noah could have added a fixed ‘sail’ on the upper bow of the Ark so the wind could turn the ship into the rough waves.”

The idea here is that the raised bow fin would act like a weathervane, causing the Ark to pivot and turn end-on to the wind. But, just as a weathervane turns itself so that the “sail” is downwind, the AiG description makes no sense from a mariner’s perspective. Swells propagate in the direction the wind is blowing; that is, a wind blowing towards the east would cause waves that also “move” toward the east. “Into the rough waves” therefore implies that the fin would turn the Ark in such a way that the wind would be blowing bow to stern, but if the fin worked at all, it would cause the bow to turn away from (not “into”) the oncoming waves.

Functionally, the object of either “tuning into” or, the opposite, “following” the waves is to keep the Ark from broaching or turning broadside to the wind and waves. Facing either bow or stern into the waves is very much preferable, but unlike a light model, this fin design would not be workable with a massive ship. It would take a very large force against the fin to overcome the angular momentum of the massive Ark and its contents. Also, enough wind to push on the fin would push even more on the windward hull of the ship, resisting any pivot. A longitudinal sail in the bow of a ship like AiG’s Ark would make steering into the wind very difficult, if it had any effect at all.

“Noah could have added a fixed ‘rudder’ at the lower stern of the Ark to keep the ship turned into the rough waves.”

This is another statement that makes no sense. A fixed rudder, more commonly known as a “skeg“, is an underwater fin or projection that can be used to stabilize the motion of a powered watercraft. There is no reason to suppose that Noah, or God, provided the Ark with a propulsion mechanism, so the most that a skeg would have accomplished was a slight reduction of rocking. It would have no effect at all on the orientation of the Ark with respect to waves, since ocean swells involve no sideways motion beneath the surface (see above).

“A ship’s keel is a structure built along the bottom of the ship’s hull to support the main body of the ship. In some cases, the keel is extended downward to function as a stabilizer for the ship. Noah’s Ark, as described in Genesis 6, may have had a keel since it seems to have been an essential piece for the ship to survive the wind and waves.”

If the Ark was a ship, then given its size, a keel might have been necessary to anchor ribs (the curved side-to-side cross-pieces in the Jesus Boat, below, for example) and strakes (the fore to aft planks forming the hull of the Jesus boat). If the Ark was a box, then no such structure would have been necessary, since structural stability would be adequate using only rails (horizontal members of a frame), stiles (vertical member of a frame) and cross-braces (diagonals to prevent torquing of the frame).

There is no evidence from literature or archaeological findings that keels ever existed before they were invented by the Vikings in the 8th Century AD. Early ships and boats, including those built by the Egyptians and the Phoenician “Sea Peoples” were built by lashing or pegging planking (strakes) to bent or shaped ribs that ran perpendicular to the length of the craft. The 2,000-year-old “Jesus Boat” on display at Kibbutz Ginosar, Israel, was modeled on Phoenician boats from earlier centuries.

Earlier structures positionally related to keels did exist in ancient times. Egyptian vessels, for instance, featured what is now called a “plank-keel.” This was not a true keel, but rather a wide strake (hull plank) at the very bottom of the hull where keels would later be located. The function was primarily to give the boat a stable base while beached.

Another device that appeared frequently in ancient ships (and is still often used) is a “keelson“, which is a structural beam or cleat in the bilge area, but not extending outside the hull. It was used mainly to help support masts in sail-powered boats, but often did add strength to the hull. Neither of these features would function on an Ark. The Roman ship shown below, built prior to the invention of a keel, includes a short keelson spanning two ribs. The rectangular hole in the forward part of this keelson is most likely a mortise, made to hold a tenon at the base of a mast. Mortise and tenon joints (as in, “insert tab A into slot B”) have been used by craftsmen from ancient times to join perpendicular wooden or stone structural members.

“The box-like Ark is not entirely disqualified as a safe option, but sharp edges are more vulnerable to damage during launch and landing.”

Among many avocations, I have been a cabinet maker during my lifetime, and I still have a completely furnished cabinet and general woodworking shop in my basement. My opinion is that square corners (“sharp edges”) are vulnerable to dings and dents but are sturdier and more puncture-proof than a rounded wooden surface.

“Blunt ends would also produce a rougher ride and allow the vessel to be more easily thrown around”

A minor effect. Most ships and small boats have a “sharp” bow for “cutting through” the water, but the vast majority have a “blunt” stern, and many larger ships have “blunt” vertical sides, as well. How much a vessel is “thrown around” is more a function of its mass and how deep it sits in the water (its “draught“). And, of course, a flat bottom is much less prone to broach or roll than a ship’s curved hull.

“While many designs could work, the possibility shown here reflects the high stems which were a hallmark of ancient ships.”

Though I couldn’t find more explanation of what precisely this statement means, I assume it is referencing raised prows and sterns on many ancient ships. In the case of Egyptian vessels, these were carved, stylized papyrus umbels (flat-topped or rounded flower clusters). The Egyptians used the stem of papyrus plants to make sails, cloth, mats, cords, and paper, so these plants were appropriate decorative symbols of the realm. Other civilizations decorated their ships in the same manner with religious totems.

“Noah was 500–600 years old and knew better than to make a simple box that would have had significant issues in a global Flood (e.g., forces on the sharp corners would be too destructive, it could capsize if it is not facing into the wind and waves, and so on).”

This is yet more speculation by a writer with no technical expertise. If Noah had any training in shipbuilding, naval architecture or engineering dynamics, it isn’t mentioned in Scripture, and he sure would not have learned from practical experience. God may have coached him or given him engineering drawings or advanced physics training, but this is also unmentioned.

It is worth mentioning that most large ships today do incorporate a rough box shape, though with rounded corners and keels, because flat bottoms are intrinsically more stable and less prone to grounding, while vertical sides are more efficient for loading capacity. This is true for large military vessels, cargo ships, and even ocean liners. Not to mention…

In any case, Noah built an Ark, not a ship!

And yes, I’m quite willing to be dogmatic about this.

Fountains of the Deep

Posted on:

June 22, 2016

Modified on:

June 12, 2025

In ancient times, the peoples of the Middle East held a deep-seated, superstitious awe for the oceans and other large bodies of water. To them, the deep-water basins were abyssal, bottomless pits, full of monsters and evil spirits or demons. The continents floated on the ocean waters, which were also the common source of springs and subterranean rivers, so these source waters, too, were infested with evil spirits. Take, for example, the river Banias, which today flows from between rock strata down-slope from the famous cave at Caesarea Philippi. In Jesus’ day, the river flowed from the mouth of the cave. The pagans of Decapolis named the cave “The Gates of Hell” and surrounded its exterior with shrines to the god Pan.

The same ancient peoples who feared the deep waters also recognized that they were the source of life, providing fresh drinking water for humans and animals alike, water for the fields, and an abundance of fish, the staple of life for many civilizations.

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The Deep

The Hebrew word most often used in the Bible to refer to this interconnected reservoir of water, either in whole or in part, is tehom, usually translated as “the deep.” Exactly what elements are included in any particular reference to tehom must be inferred from the context or modifiers. In Gen 1:2, most would agree that it referred to an all-encompassing ocean, prior to the formation of dry land surfaces. In Gen 49:25, Jacob is giving his deathbed blessing to Joseph, speaking of “the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep [tehom] that lieth under…” (KJV) I believe that he is, here and in the parallel passage, Deut 33:13, referring to the entire, composite water system lying beneath the canopy of “heaven above.” In Job 28:14, in his discourse on Wisdom, Job defines his own usage of the term by means of the poetic doublet, “The deep says, ‘It isn’t in me,’ and the sea says, ‘It isn’t with me.’” (CJB) In Isaiah 63:13, tehom refers to the Red (or Reed) Sea, opened up for Moses and the Israelites.

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The Fountains & Floodgates

This diagram shows the cosmos as visualized by Moses, and by the people of virtually every culture in the Ancient Near East. Oceans, lakes, springs, and even the waters above the firmament were believed to be interconnected and were often collectively referred to as “the Deep.” Terrestrial waters rose to the surface of the land through fountains. Water falling from the sky was released by spirit beings through floodgates in the dome of the firmament.

Gen 7:11 – “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” (KJV)

Gen 8:2 – “The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;” (KJV)

What, then, are “the fountains of the deep”, or ma’yenot tehom, as mentioned in the Flood story? Ma’yenow (singular) denotes a spring, fountain, or source. Can this be taken literally, like a spring in the desert, or is it poetically descriptive of the fact that water from “the deep” was gushing freely from some aperture or region? When considered in parallel with “the windows of heaven”, wa’rubot (chimneys or windows) ha-shamayim (the heavens, or elsewhere, “firmament”), my own opinion is that the “fountains” and “windows” must both be poetic terms, whereas the water and the flood were most certainly literal!

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Identifying the Fountains of the Deep

Young Earth Creationists often take the view that “the fountains of the great deep” refers to continental springs, geysers, fissures, Artesian wells, and other surface openings that God miraculously ripped open and caused to spout abnormally great volumes of water from natural aquifers deep in the earth’s crust. This rending and subsequent flow, they say, caused cataclysmic changes in the topography, including newly up-thrust mountain ranges, massive erosion, and even the division of large supercontinents into the smaller continents we know today.

A fairly traditional view.

Others take the view that God caused volcanoes to sprout across the continents and spew water and, presumably, lava (since that’s what volcanoes do).

I can’t resist mentioning still another view that I ran across proclaiming, presumably with a straight face, that the unprecedented heavy rain was associated with a drop in barometric pressure so severe that water under the earth’s crust for some unspecified reason “pushed up and out … to come to the surface”, evidently causing the crust to pop like a balloon! Incredible, since the normal barometric pressure at sea level is typically below 15 psi, which is pretty much the same pressure that my own bare feet exert on earth’s crust when I stand on it!

An incredibly naive view.

My view is that the term “fountains of the deep” describes features of the ocean floor. Opening of these “fountains” may have caused some shifting of the tectonic plates and therefore some near-shore damage on the continents, but the main effect was a sudden simple rising of the sea level. I will discuss a probable mechanism below, but first I would like to present some brief arguments against continental “fountains”:

Scripture nowhere states that the flood caused catastrophic changes in Earth’s geology. This isn’t even a long-standing tradition. It is a theory that was proposed in my lifetime, and there is no valid scientific evidence that either the topography or the stratigraphy of the earth was greatly influenced by a single massive flood. The idea that the Genesis Flood accounts for the apparent old age of the earth is simply an assumption made in an effort to explain something that the Bible itself made no effort to explain. It is a defensive theology aimed at those scientists and others who deny scripture. Since it is in no way backed by scripture, it must meet the objections of science and of common observation, and it simply fails to do so. In a separate post, Geology a Flood Cannot Explain, I presented a substantial list of geological phenomena that to my personal knowledge cannot possibly be explained by the Genesis Flood. I also presented my credentials for addressing the various issues discussed.
Crustal aquifers exist, not in caverns, but in porous and permeable rock formations. While sometimes quite large, they are limited in their areal extent and thickness. Many thousands of deep oil and gas wells (including a number that I was involved in drilling and evaluating) and countless geophysical studies have shown no evidence of permeable rock formations in continental crust large enough to contain the enormous volumes of water that would be necessary to cover the highest mountains, even if they were much lower than they are today. And were they? Possibly a bit; the Himalayas, for example, are demonstrably rising even now as a result of plate tectonics and the ongoing collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate. But consider Mt. Ararat: after God closed the windows of heaven and stopped up the fountains of the deep, Ararat, at Over 16,000 feet above the normal sea level, was still under the receding water!
Sufficient quantities of sub-continental water would most certainly have had to come from deep within Earth’s mantle unless they were created by God, on the spot (which I acknowledge to be theologically possible, but not necessary). Any continental aperture of sufficient depth to reach these depths and sufficient width to handle the volume of water necessary would, I think, have to be fairly humongous. Why are there no traces of anything like this?
Continental volcanoes might account for a large volume of deep-sourced water, but I don’t think there is evidence of enough continental volcanism to provide that much.
Finally, I think that Gen 7:11 provides an important clue. This passage states that it was the “fountains of the Great Deep” (tehom rabaah) that God opened to start the rising flood. That terminology in Scripture normally refers only to the abyssal ocean basins, not to continental features.

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Likely Mechanism of the Flood

There are two likely mechanisms, that I can see, that God might have used to bring that much water up from the deep, and then to store it again once He was done with it:

First, he could have simply created it on the spot, flooded the earth with it, and then de-created it again when he was done with it.
It seems to me, though, that His modus operandi as described in scripture is normally to wrap what He has already created in some sort of miracle when He wants to make a major power statement. I think that He “foreknew” what He was going to do and incorporated that plan into His original design.

Every school child since before my day has known that the earth has an upper “crust”, a central “mantle”, and a lower “core”. Geophysicists now believe that the mantle consists primarily of different forms, or “phases” of the mineral Olivine, which is a “magnesium iron silicate.” The simple Olivine of the upper mantle, under the heat and pressure of lower depths is converted to a phase called Perovskite in the lower mantle. Between the two regions is a transition zone consisting of Olivine phases called Wadsleyite and Ringwoodite. Both of these mineral phases can be very heavily hydrated and are now thought to contain as much as 3.5 times as much water as in all the earth’s oceans. Many young-earth creationists, as well as ancient-earth creationists like me, speculate that this is the primary source of the water that God used to flood the earth in Noah’s day.

mantle_water — Schematic cross-section of earth. The oceanic crust, riding on the plastic mantle rock beneath it, is welling up at the “mid-oceanic ridges” and sliding toward the continents at a rate of 1–2 inches a year. At the continental margin, this migrating crust then sinks back below the surface and circulates back to where it started, moving on great convection currents. Even in normal times, prodigious amounts of water are carried along with this cycle.

Most people probably think of the deep regions of the earth as simply dead, stagnant, unmoving rock. In reality, the earth is a dynamic, “living” system from surface to center. We have all been taught about the “water cycle”, where ocean water evaporates, clouds form, rain falls on the continents, and streams and aquifers return the same water back to the oceans. There is also a water cycle involving the mantle transition zone: ocean water is dragged, in prodigious quantities, into the depths of the mantle by the “subduction” of Earth’s oceanic tectonic plates. This water charges the transition zone, and much later is returned to the ocean through the agency of deep-ocean “smokers” (hydrothermal vents) and volcanism along the Mid-Oceanic Ridges; in the Island-Arc and Continental-Arc volcanoes near subduction zones; and in “hot spot” volcanoes like the Hawaiian volcanos and the Yellowstone super-volcano.

It turns out, paradoxically, that water itself is what spawns volcanic activity, because the melting point of rock is drastically lowered in the presence of water. There is, in fact, an intriguing theory that there should be a sheet of molten rock at the upper surface of the transition zone. From my own knowledge of petrology and fluid flow in rock, that makes me think that conditions in such a region could be right, under certain circumstances (like a gentle push from the Hand of God!) for water-laden, low viscosity, basaltic magma to suddenly channel rapidly through this discontinuity into the Mid-Oceanic ridges, causing a subsequent rise in sea level that could be described poetically as the “fountains of the great deep” opening up.

If this superheated and thus buoyant water were to bubble quickly to the ocean surfaces (or be injected directly into the atmosphere), I would expect it to quickly rise through the cooler air near the surface, and to spread out and rapidly cool near the stratosphere, setting off a global rain event. Since no pressure front would be active in forming this rain, I would not expect serious damaging winds such as are postulated by followers of Henry Morris.

Regarding the return of the flood waters to the transition zone: in my view, the text implies a direct miracle.

Gen 8:1 – “God remembered Noach, every living thing and all the livestock with him in the ark; so God caused a wind [ruach] to pass over the earth, and the water began to go down.” (CJB)

The Hebrew ruach can mean “wind” in scripture, but it often is translated as “spirit”. In Genesis 1:2, the Ruach of God hovered over the surface of the water. In 8:1, God caused His Ruach to hover over the face of the water-covered earth! In both cases, the earth was covered with an unbroken expanse of water, and God sent His Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to deal with it! For more on the “wind of God”, see God with the Wind.

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Geology a Flood Cannot Explain

Posted on:

September 2, 2013

Modified on:

October 5, 2024

Examples

In a recent post, The Hijacking of Creationism, I discussed the currently obligatory conservative Christian view of why the earth appears to be billions of years old when traditional interpretations of Genesis 1 say it is only about 6,000 years old. I expressed my misgivings about that explanation, which proposes that all or certainly most of the appearance of age is due to damage to the earth’s crust caused by torrential rains and upheavals associated with the Genesis Flood. I also expressed doubts about the qualifications of Henry Morris, popularizer of the Flood Theory.

I do believe in the historicity of the Genesis Flood itself, but I don’t believe that the best explanation of how God brought this judgement about (see Fountains of the Deep, an earlier post) would have caused the level of devastation that Flood Theory requires.

As recapitulation of my own technical and professional qualifications: I am not a geologist, but I am well-trained in relevant aspects of geology. In a long career as a petroleum engineer, I worked extensively with and/or in place of geologists.

There are several sub-fields of petroleum engineering, and I have worked most of them. For most of my tenure with both large and small companies, both as an employee and as a consultant, I served as a petroleum reservoir engineer. As such I have had to be intimately familiar with all aspects of stratigraphy (rock layering), including rock and fluid properties, strata deposition mechanisms and deformations, fluid saturations and flow mechanisms, and, for diagnostic purposes, subsurface electrical and radioactivity profiles. As a well-site drilling engineer, I have examined rock cores and bit cuttings, electrical logs, pressure and flow tests, and more, from the surface to more than a mile deep. As a production engineer, I have observed how both productive and non-productive rock strata behave under a wide variety of external disturbances. In short, I probably know more about rock layers and how they behave than most geologists in non-petroleum fields.

One way to solve the age problem is to simply say, “What’s the problem? God simply spoke everything into existence exactly the way we would have seen it in 4004 BC!” Now, I don’t doubt for an instant that Almighty God is capable of just such a mighty act but just because He can, does that mean that He did? Observation suggests that He did not. To borrow a phrase from 1 Cor. 14:33, God is not the author of confusion, so why would His creation be so complex and appear so tremendously old, if it is not? Just to fool scientists and throw people off the track? I don’t think so!

Several years ago, before the advent of smartphones, I set out to make the 22-minute drive from my home to Belton, Missouri, where I was taking a semester of Theology at a Bible College. The topic of the day was to be Creation, and I knew that my professor was a proponent of Flood Theory. On the way I decided to pull out my microcassette recorder and list as many geological phenomena as I could think of, before I got there, that I know cannot be explained by the flood. I’ve since lost the list, but I recall most of what was on it. Here are some of the key items (in no particular order), with my reasoning added:

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Fine clastics

“Clastics” are the small, sometimes microscopic, rock fragments formed by “weathering” of larger fragments or massive rock formations. “Erosion” is the process by which clastics are subsequently moved from place to place and deposited in broad areas by the force of moving water, wind, glaciation, volcanic action, or simple gravity. When these clastic “sediments” become fused together over long periods of time by heat, pressure or chemical action, they become the sedimentary rock strata that we see today. My focus here is on the fragments themselves, not the strata.

Weathering of solid, non-sedimentary rocks like granite is generally not due primarily to frictional erosive flow in stream beds as most people think, but rather is caused by expansion/contraction cycles. Perhaps the most important of such processes, often called “frost wedging“, occurs when water enters small cracks and pores in the rock, freezes, expands, and wedges the openings larger. Over many alternate cycles of freezing and thawing, the two sides of the wedged rock can completely separate. Plant growth in these opening can accelerate the wedging. Another very common process that weathers rock is “exfoliation“, which occurs as the surface of a rock heats and cools more rapidly than the interior, causing layers near the surface to flake off.

The so-called “Split Rock of Horeb” is an archaeological fraud, but it illustrates both frost wedging and exfoliation. The large split and the rocks at its base are examples of wedging, and both the Split Rock itself and the foreground rocks show extensive exfoliation. From Google Earth.

Eventually, weathered rock fragments can become small enough to be transported by erosion. As they tumble along, they will be further broken up as they knock into other fragments, a process called “saltation“. Roiling water from the Genesis Flood could have redistributed loose fragments—soil, dirt, pebbles, and even larger rock—and further broken and shaped some of these fragments, but it could not, in a span of only 40 days, have caused any significant erosion of solid rock, even if heavily laden with abrasive silt. Nor could the Flood account for the rounding and blunting that we typically see in sand grains and many other clastics. The Flood, as cataclysmic as it was, simply did not last long enough or provide the temperature swings or friction surfaces needed to account for the clastic structure we see.

Can I prove this? No, but it is my professional opinion, and Scripture has nothing to say on the process. Scientific studies could be done to prove the feasibility (or not!), but I haven’t seen any such research. The relevant discipline to conduct such studies is called “rock mechanics“, and in fact rock mechanics was the focus of my own master’s thesis.

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Homogeneity and sharp boundaries

Sedimentary rock strata sometimes extend laterally for long distances—often hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles which, strangely, Flood Theory enthusiasts seem to regard as proof of their point. In general, the strata tend to be mostly homogeneous, with few random impurities indicating uneven mixing with other rock types during deposition. Furthermore, the boundaries between layers tend to be crisp and well-defined. A sandstone, for example, does not normally grade into a shale or a limestone.

These characteristics are the opposite of what one would expect of sediments transported by a violent flood. During the rain, and afterwards as the water receded, any large or dense rocks transported would quickly have sunk to the bottom, followed by smaller and less dense rocks, and finally silt. The final result would be a single, deep, turbidity layer, grading from heavy, dense rock at the bottom, to lighter clastics at the top. Sorting would be by size and weight, not by rock type.

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Limestone strata

Limestone is formed from the skeletal material of sea life. A critter dies and sinks to the bottom. Its soft tissues decay, and what remains calcifies. Over time, enough of this material accumulates to form beds that fuse into massive rock strata. In a Flood scenario, we should expect to see calcified remains more or less distributed throughout the single, thick stratum discussed above. Of course, we do see some distribution of calcified fossil remains in all rock types, but additionally we see massive continuous beds of relatively pure limestone interbedded with sandstones and shales and other rock types. I simply don’t see how this can be accounted for without repeated flooding over long intervals of time. Almighty God could have simply spoken it into being in this configuration, or He could have directed the Flood waters and upheavals in such a way as to “stack it” to His own specifications, but why? Only to fool us into discounting our own senses? If I could see anything in Scripture to make me think this way, I would accept it. But I simply don’t!

Let’s say that the cataclysmic geologic activity associated with such a flood caused mountains to cyclically rise and recede in a very short time span and caused rock and debris to wash into the low areas, burying forests and animal life forms. If the up-thrust rock was composed differently from place to place, couldn’t this alternating rise and fall account for the rock strata that we observe? No! Such a violent scenario would cause mixing of the materials, not sorting and stratification, particularly since most of the rock strata are composed of very fine-grained clastics that are themselves a product of weathering and subsequent erosion over long periods of time.

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Reversed sequences

Geologists have mapped the “normal sequence” of rock strata—the so-called “geologic column“—at many locations throughout the world. At any particular location, it is not at all uncommon to find that various members of the normal column are missing, since stratum thicknesses vary naturally from place to place, all the way down to zero; but the overall sequence is nevertheless still normally recognizable. It is also not terribly uncommon to find regions where the sequence is exactly reversed; in other words where we find the apparent age of the rocks decreasing with depth. This is evident, for example, in some of the rocks exposed by the Grand Canyon. Genesis Flood theorists are fond of chuckling at the irony they see in this. “Haha, geologists, the joke’s on you! Not only is the sequence wrong, but it is exactly opposite from what you expected!” In reality, this is easy to explain. Tectonic forces cause deformation and bending of entire sequences of strata. In nature we find them tilted to all angles, including completely flipped over. This is the same thing that happens when you use your fingers to push the left and right edges of a newspaper towards each other. The difference is that solid rock is more or less rigid, unlike newsprint. Such deformations over the course of days or even years or decades would cause the rock to crumble and the strata to disintegrate. Over geologic time, however, “solid” rock tends to undergo “plastic” deformation. In geologic (not meteorological) time, it can flow like a viscous fluid—in fact, exactly like a glacier.

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Discontinuities and crossbedding

An unconformity in the region of the Chimborazo volcano, Ecuador. The lower strata were deposited horizontally, uplifted to the right, and then after a period of erosion, the upper strata were laid horizontally across the exposed edge. Subsequent uplifting was to the left. From GeologyIn.com.

A related effect that we frequently see over geologic time is that strata get “tilted” to some angle by those same tectonic forces, then the tilting action stops and weathering/erosion cuts horizontally across exposed edges of the strata. Flowing water initially brings debris down from the highlands and cuts river channels in those transported debris fields, but then over time there is a levelling effect, forming the broad, flat plains between mountain ranges and the coastal peneplains. Still later, deposition may form new strata in horizontal beds lying across the eroded edges of the older rock. The interface between the canted strata and the horizontal strata is called a “discontinuity” or “unconformity“. “Crossbedding” usually refers to unconformities in aeolian sands (see below).

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Aeolian deposits

Crossbedded aeolian sand deposits at Antelope Canyon, near Page, Arizona. From imgix.net.

Not all rock strata are deposited by water. Sometimes wind blowing over long periods of time can deposit clastic materials and form rock strata. These “aeolian” deposits have a very distinctive structure that is readily recognizable to geologists. Fossilized desert sand dunes are a subset of this group. I see no possible way that the Genesis Flood could account for these.

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Glaciation

Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite National Park. Water spilling from a hanging valley into the glacial valley that cut across it.

Still other features are formed only by glaciers flowing slowly and plastically downhill. Flowing water cuts V-shaped valleys. Glaciers scoop out large and obvious U-shaped valleys, like using a giant spade. “Hanging valleys” are formed when one glacier melts away, leaving behind its characteristic U-shaped valley, and many thousands of years later a new glacier flows by at an angle to the first.

As glaciers flow, the debris that they scoop out of the canyons strings out to the side like snowbanks formed by plows after a storm. The debris itself is called “till” and it is tumbled and polished into a form that is easily recognizable. The so-called Split Rock of Horeb, in the first figure above, is a “glacial erratic” (a large, out of context rock pushed ahead of a glacier) sitting on a till deposited by a glacier during the last ice age, in what is now northwest Saudi Arabia. The ridges of till that I have described are called “lateral moraines.” The Genesis Flood could not in any way account for the effects of glaciation. Glacial ice, like rock strata, would crumble if it were deformed and forced to try and flow over a short time span.

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Evaporites

Salt, gypsum and a number of other deposits are laid down as a result of evaporation over long periods of time. Water simply cannot hold enough of these materials to form, in a short time span, the deep beds of such “evaporites” often found.

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Conclusions

I don’t think that God set out to destroy or remake the entire planet with the Flood! His purpose was to show fallen mankind after the Flood that He would not tolerate their evil ways forever. He saved Noah and his family. He saved animal species that could not swim. He did not destroy plant species or swimming animals, because they could survive the limited time span of the Flood. There was no reason to break up land masses, nor was there a mechanism for doing so, because “the fountains of the deep“, I believe, were the volcanic vents along the mid-oceanic ridges, and the rains were spawned by out-venting from those. So, far from being smashed by raging torrents and mudslides, the wicked were destroyed by rising waters, like in a huge bathtub. Similarly, the waters receded by means of suction into tectonic plate subduction zones, on a smaller scale, a proven and well-understood process.

Another important question not answered by the Flood Theory is, how would the Flood account for the apparent (and in my opinion, demonstrable) 13.7-billion-year age of the universe?

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