Great Flood

The Flood, by Michaelangelo, detail from the Sistine Chapel, 1509.

The Great Flood, or Deluge, is the event recorded in Genesis, chapters 6 through 9; this event, as indicated by the stories which have survived in many cultures and traditions, was the last great event shared by mankind.

Biblical flood story

Genesis describes the condition of mankind in the years following the expulstion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden:

• And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5)

God had repented of His creation, and decided to destroy it; only Noah was righteous before Him, and God decided Noah and his family was to be spared the destruction of the world by a flood. Noah was told to build an ark, place onboard pairs of animals, and ride out the waters. The ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat, where Noah made a sacrifice to God, who accepted it and swore never to destroy the earth with a flood again, giving the rainbow as a sign of His covenant.

Evidence

Many people, including some Christians do not believe that the Great Flood had taken place, and have raised many objections:

• a lack of geological evidence for a global flood [ref>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html]A Critique of Rapid Post Flood Speciation by Reasons to Believe an Old Earth Creationist ministry]. What is ignored in this statement is the fact that approximately 75% of the earth's land area is sedimentary rock (water-laid), as well as evidence from the fossil record showing animals which have died violently, as in a cataclysm, and buried so rapidly that normal biological agents could not completely dispose of the carcasses, as is done under normal observation.
• A lack of room for all the animals, usually on the basis of the biblical reference to kinds being the same as species (and there are about 1,250,000 identified animal species on Earth ). Supporters of the account reject that kinds is to be equated with species, so use a much lower number.
• The inability of the eight humans on board to care for all the creatures on board.
• The difficulty some animals would have getting to or from the ark, especially those adapted to a specific habitat, such as the sloth, which can only travel hanging on the branches of trees, and animals that live on islands and could not swim to those islands after the flood.

Young Earth Creationists have written a number of responses to such criticisms, such as John Woodmorappe's Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study which argues that kinds is not to be equated with species, and that there would therefore be a much smaller number of creatures on the ark, and that there are ways that the humans on board could have cared for all the creatures on board. Creationary geologists have also pointed out that much of the Earth's geology is sedimentary (water-laid) rocks, as one would expect from a global flood.

Babylonian flood story

Excavations in the ancient city of Ninevah in 1853 unearthed 12 clay tablets detailing the story of a mythical king of Uruk named Gilgamesh, and written between 2750-2500 B.C. [1] Tablet 11 of this Epic of Gilgamesh had the hero learn the secret of immortality by going to the island of Utnapishtim, where he discovers that Utnapishtim is also the builder of the ark which carried man and animals on the seas of the flood.

Six days and seven nights came the wind and flood,the storm flattening the land.When the seventh day arrived, the storm was pounding,the flood was a war--struggling with itself like a woman writhing (in labor).The sea calmed, fell still, the whirlwind (and) flood stopped up.I looked around all day long--quiet had set in and all the human beings had turned to clay! [2]

The tablet has remarkable similarites to the Biblical account, such as the collection of animals; the violence of the Flood; the landing on a mountain (Mt Nimush); and the sending forth of a dove. However, differences abound: the ark is cube-shaped; such a vessel actually being built would have been tossed and spun around severely in the waves. Utnapishtim refers to the gods being frightened by the Flood, and retreated, ascending to the heaven of Anu. The gods were cowering like dogs, crouching by the outer wall; a sacrifice by Utnapishtim after he left the ark collected the gods like flies over a (sheep) sacrifice [3]. This is in sharp contrast to the God of the Bible, who is in total control.

References

• Holy Bible, King James Version, as published by Kirkbride Bible Co. Indianapolis, IN (1982)
• Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966)

External Links

• http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab11.htm Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 11 (Flood Story)