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The Young Earth Lecture 8: The Age of the Earth (3)

Noah’s Flood

In our last two lectures we considered a number of scientific issues, which suggest that the earth is comparatively young in contrast to the ancient earth required by evolutionary theory. We shall now in this third lecture on the subject of the age of the earth, seek to arrive at its approximate age. of as a real historical event has an important association with this, and so we first look at the reasons why the flood should be considered not as myth but as an important part of real history.

The Flood of Noah

The Biblical Account

Almost every culture on earth includes an ancient flood story. Details vary, but the basic plot is the same: a powerful deluge kills all but a fortunate few. The version most familiar to many of us in lands with a Christian tradition is the biblical account of Noah and his ark in Genesis Chapters 6-9. Gen. 6:5 tells us, “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” – and so the Lord decided to destroy all of creation. Only Noah, “who found favour (grace) in the eyes of the Lord” (6:8), was saved along with his family and the animals aboard the ark. They survived to repopulate the planet.

The Genesis account says that when the ark was completed, and the animals and the food for all was brought in, Noah and his family entered the ark. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rail fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, , and , together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark” (Gen. 7:11-13). The Bible account emphasises the fact that besides “all the springs of the great deep” opening up, the rain fell for forty days and nights, so that the flood covered even the highest mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet, and all creatures on earth died. Only Noah and those with him on the ark were left alive. No loving creature outside of the ark survived because “the waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days” (7:24). Eventually, after about 220 days, the ark came to rest on the . The waters receded for another forty days until the mountaintops emerged. Then Noah sent out a raven and later a dove. On its second flight the dove returned with an olive twig in its beak. Noah now knew that the waters had subsided. He waited seven days more and sent the dove again; this time it did not return. Then his family and all the animals left the ark, and Noah made a sacrifice to God. God resolved that he would never again curse the ground because of man, and never again would He destroy all life on it in this manner. He placed a rainbow in the clouds as a mark of His promise, saying, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the ever lasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth” (9:16).

Geological Evidence

The story of Noah and the great flood is one that so permeates our western culture that generations of geologists, right up to the present day, have devoted their lives to looking for evidence of a prehistoric worldwide flood, as well as creation and young-earth doctrines. But it was not until the 1990’s that a small group of geologists gathered clues pointing to an actual ancient flood in the Middle East, which they say happened about 7,500 years. Sediment core-samples, which the scientists took from the bottom of the Black Sea, revealed sections of once-dry sun-baked land. Could the flood have happened in the 6th Century B.C.? We shall think more about the date of the flood later in this lecture.

Taken on a worldwide scale the flood could be regarded as the main mechanism for laying down much of the earth’s strata, as they now exist, and also the fossil record. That is why it is important to establish that the flood was a real historical event. A worldwide mountain-covering deluge would have deposited most of the world’s fossil- bearing rock. While there may have been some localised post-flood disasters, as some claim, the sedimentary deposits on a continental scale can only have been deposited by the flood because of its huge global effect. This argument is so persuasive that it is not too much to say that a modern creation-revival has taken place to some extent, led by both scientists and laymen. At the same time, many Christians who are re-adopting the creation model are still attached to old-earth ideas and the belief that the flood was local and not global. This is an aspect of the flood, which must wait for the next lecture.

At least we can say that there has been a growing interest in understanding rock formation in relation to the flood and, to some degree, after the flood. A debate has begun between a number of geologists who reject billions of years for the earths history, but who take different positions concerning where the flood ends in the rock strata. This is a question about whether the flood was local or global.

A Worldwide event

The Bible teaches without any doubt that the flood was a worldwide event. Gen. 7:17-24 makes that clear.Verses 18 & 19 could not make it clearer: “The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered”. The little word “all” with regard to the mountains being covered really does mean “all”, especially when taken with the phrase, “under the entire heavens”; and this is borne out by the fossil evidence around the whole world. That the whole human race perished apart from eight people, who formed the nucleus for the re-population of the earth, is suggested by extensive genetic testing, which shows that all humanity is very closely related and is one race.

Whatever post-flood disasters may have taken place during the course of the earth’s history; we must keep the Genesis flood central in our thinking. Clearly Genesis 6-9 is there to show to mankind that in a very major way, God judged the world in its entirety. The flood covered the whole earth.

One of the arguments used by those who oppose a global flood is that there would not have been enough water to cover all the world’s mountains. But we read in Gen 7:11 that the sources of the water were twofold, “the springs of the great deep” and “the floodgates of the heavens”. What were “the springs of the great deep”? In Isa. 51:10 the phrase “the great deep” refers to the oceans, as it does in Amos 7:4. In a number of other places in the Bible “the deep” also is a reference to the oceans. So, “the springs of the great deep” were probably oceanic, or at least were subterranean sources of water. In the context of the flood account, the phrase could mean both.

It is interesting that there are many volcanic rocks interspersed between the fossil layers in the rock record – layers that must have been deposited during Noah’s flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great deep involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water bursting up through the ground. It is a fact that up to 70% or more of what comes out of volcanoes is water, often in the form of steam.

It is possible that a plate tectonics model for the flood, as proposed by some, is correct. The onset of the flood may have been initiated by the ocean floor rapidly lifting up. This would have spilled the seawater onto the land and cased massive flooding – perhaps what is aptly described as the breaking up of the “springs of the great deep.”

In addition to “the springs of the great deep” Gen. 7:11 speaks of “the floodgates of the heavens” opening up. Some interpreters relate this to a possible water vapour enveloping the whole of the newly created earth, as might be suggested by God dividing the waters that were on the earth from the waters that he placed above the earth when he made the “expanse” or firmament (Gen. 1:7). Many have concluded from this verse that the “expanse” was the earth’s atmosphere. If so, the waters above the atmosphere could be envisaged as a canopy, creating a primeval greenhouse effect, causing a pleasant sub tropical-to-temperate climate all around the globe. The discovery of coal seams in Antarctica containing vegetation that is not now found growing at the poles, but which obviously grew under warmer conditions, has been taken as evidence, which supports the theory of a pre-flood water vapour covering the entire planet.

But there is a major objection to the water-canopy theory. It is said that even the best canopy model gives an intolerably high temperature at the surface of the earth. Many creation scientists are now either abandoning the water-canopy model, or no longer see any need for such a concept to explain the amount of water needed to cover all the earth’s mountains. Instead, the catastrophic plate-tectonics model for the flood, and the volcanic activity associated with the breaking up of the pre-flood ocean floor, would, it is thought, have created an immense wall-like geyser of superheated steam from the ocean, causing intense global rain. But whatever model is correct the scriptural statement about the floodgates of the heavens opening is a fitting description of global torrential rain.

The Historicity of Noah’s Flood

Worldwide Testimony to an Ancient Flood

One indication that Noah’s flood really happened is the fact that stories about a disastrous flood abound throughout the world. There are examples of such traditions from practically every society: from the ancient Greeks to the continent of India; from Persia to the oral accounts of North American Indians; from Scandinavia to the countries of the Celts; and so on. The earliest of the Middle Eastern versions can be dated a long way. The main character in these stories is told to build a boat, which after the flood comes to ground on a mountain. Some of these versions of a great deluge have a number of similarities with the Bible flood, and so there is no reason why we should doubt that they were originally derived from the account which Moses possessed and which he incorporated into the . The different details of the alternative stories would have arisen through the influence of various heathen cultures. The 3rd / 4th Century Christian historian Eusebius retells the pagan version of Berossus, a 3rd Century B.C. high priest of the temple of Marduk in Babylon. The interesting thing is that after recounting this version of the flood Eusebius adds a personal observation about Noah’s flood. He mentions that the ark could still be seen in his day in “the Corcyraean Mountains of Armenia; and the people scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic (an antidote to poison) and amulet.”

Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat, of course, is a real place. The mountain has been part of Turkey since 1923. Before then it was reckoned to belong to Armenia. It is a snow-capped, dormant volcano with twin peaks located at the northeast corner of Turkey, near the border with Iran. Its tallest peak, which is the tallest in Turkey, stands at 16,583 feet. We can discount other locations, which have been suggested over the years, such as Iran and Ethiopia.

As we might expect, the known location where the ark came to rest has inspired a number of people to try to find it. Various attempts seem to have been made from ancient times onwards but nothing definite came to light. In more modern times it was not until the 19th Century that the region was settled enough, and westerners welcome enough, for explorations to begin. In 1829, when Ararat was in Armenia, Dr. Friedrich Parrott wanted to climb the mountain but reported that the Armenians, who believed the ark was there, would not let anyone go up to see it. Their concern was that the ark should be left undisturbed so as to preserve it. In 1876 James Bryce, an historian, statesman, diplomat, explorer, and Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, climbed above the tree line and found a slab of hand-hewn timber, four feet long and five inches thick, which he rightly or wrongly identified as being from the ark. In 1883 members of another expedition reported that Turkish commissioners investigating avalanches had seen the ark. Activity fell off in the 20th Century because in the period of the Cold War, following World War Two, Ararat was on the highly sensitive Turkish/Soviet border. A former astronaut, James Irwin, led two expeditions to Ararat in the 1980s, was kidnapped once, and like others found no definite evidence of the ark. “I’ve done all I possibly can,” he said, “but the Ark continues to elude us.”

But photographs have been taken of an ‘object’ which has come to be known as the “Ararat anomaly”. (An anomaly is something that is irregular.) In 1949 the US Defence Intelligence Agency took pictures of what looked like an object in the snowfields at the summit of the mountain, though some say it is simply mountain shadows or a geological feature. The so-called anomaly is located on the northwest corner of the Western Plateau of Mount Ararat at about 15,500 feet (4,724 metres), some 2.2 kilometres west of the summit. The ‘object’ is on the edge of what appears from the photographs to be a steep downward slope. The US Air Force were naturally interested in the area because the Ararat mountain sits on the Turkish/Soviet border – an area of military interest.

The Ararat anomaly has yet to be explored. An expedition, which was to have been mounted to the summit in July 2004, was called off when permission was refused by the Turkish authorities, because the area is within a restricted military zone. Many members of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths, however, believe that the anomaly is indeed Noah’s ark.

An expedition was mounted earlier this year by some who favour Iran as being the place where the ark landed. They claimed to have discovered an object 13,000 feet above sea level, which had the appearance of blackened petrified wooden beams, and was “about the size of a small aircraft carrier” (400ft long). However, no convincing proofs have been made public, and it is better to stay with the Bible statement that the ark came to a halt on Mount Ararat.

The Construction of the Ark and its Seaworthiness

Gen 6:14 states that Noah was to build the Ark of “cypress wood”, according to the NIV, although a footnote says that the meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain. The Hebrew word, gopher, is otherwise not known in the Bible or in the Hebrew language. The Jewish Encyclopaedia believes it was most likely a translation of the Babylonian gushure is erini, meaning, “cedar-beams”, or else the Hebrew gopher may be related to the Assyrian word giparu, meaning “reed”. The Greek Septuagint translated it as xylon tetragonon, “squared timber”. The Latin Vulgate rendered it as lignis levigatis, or “smoother (possibly “planed”) wood”. Older English translations tend to favour “cypress”, although the usual word for “cypress” in Biblical Hebrew is erez. Some scholars favour pine or cedar. Recent suggestions have included such ideas as a lamination process, or a now-lost type of tree, or a mistaken transcription of the word kopher, which is the Hebrew word for “pitch”. Kopher is the word used for “pitch” in the command to Noah in this same verse, Gen. 6:14, to coat the ark “with pitch inside and out”. But pitch means pitch, and in this verse the Hebrew phrase atsei gopher (literally “woods of gopher”) is used for the building of the ark. It is not likely that the two words became confused. We just have to accept that we no longer know precisely which type of wood was meant.

As to the ark’s dimensions, in Gen. 6 the Ark is described as 300 cubits long, the cubit being a unit of measurement from elbow to outstretched fingertip. Many different cubits were in use in the ancient world, but all were essentially, similar, and so the ark was approximately 75 feet wide and 450 feet (137 metres) in length. This is considerably longer than the largest wooden vessels ever built in later historical times. It is thought that the 15th Century Chinese admiral Zheng-He may have used junks 400 feet (122m) long. The American schooner Wyoming, launched in 1909, was the largest documented wooden-hulled cargo ship ever built, measuring 350 feet (107m). It needed iron cross bracing to counter warping, and a steam pump was installed to handle a serious leak problem.

Such observations have led many to suppose that the dimensions of the ark would have rendered it incapable of staying afloat, but we do not know what strengthening measures Noah used to make the Ark seaworthy. Some think he may have employed a space-frame construction – a lightweight rigid structure using interlocking struts. Space frames are often used today to accomplish long spans with a few supports. They derive their strength from the strength of the triangular frame.

We should note with regard to the to the Ark’s seaworthiness that it was not designed to sail but only to float. Since this was its only purpose it was in all probability more or less flat-bottomed and shaped overall like an elongated box. The popular image of the Ark as being boat-shaped with a sloping roof like a house (to say nothing of the nursery image of a giraffe sticking out of the top!) is pure fiction.

The Capacity of the Ark and its Logistics

It has been calculated that the Ark would have had a gross volume of about 1.5 million cubic feet. Its displacement (the amount of water under the hull to keep it afloat) was a little less than half that of the Titanic, at about 22,000 tonnes, and a total floor space of around 100,000 square feet.

The question about whether the ark could have carried two specimens of the various animal species, including those now extinct, plus seven, or seven pairs, in the case of clean animals, plus food and fresh water, has been a matter of much debate. While some say that the ark could have held all known species, a more common position today is that the ark contained “kinds” rather than species – for instance, a male and female of the cat “kind” rather than representatives of every type of tiger, lion, leopard, etc. Many of the animals may have been young and therefore small in size. Young specimens would have been necessary in the case of the dinosaurs, if they were still in existence and had not been hunted to extinction in the pre-flood world.

A lot of other practical questions have been raised about life on board the ark during the flood. Would the eight humans (Noah, his three sons, and their respective wives) have been able to cope with the daunting task of caring for all the animals? What about the special dietary needs of some of the more exotic animals? Would seeds have survived still with the ability to germinate? What would the animals have eaten immediately after leaving the ark? And etc.! Varying answers are given to all these and many other questions. Conservative scholars do not see any insurmountable problems. The Genealogies in Genesis Chapters 5 & 11

We come now to the complicated problem of trying to assign a date to the creation and to the flood. Most Christians will have wondered at some time or another when Adam was first created and when Noah’s flood occurred. At first sight it may seem easy to find out by simply adding up the age of each person in the lists given in Genesis Chapters 5 & 11, which outline the earth’s history from Adam to Abraham. Unfortunately it is not that simple, because the genealogies given are probably not a continuous listing of fathers and the year and name of the first direct son. The son mentioned may not always be the first son but perhaps a favoured son. Besides which it may well have been the custom in some families to have the same name for many generations, signifying perhaps not an individual, but a clan.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that there are three main Bible versions of the genealogies and they do not always agree with each other over the ages of some persons. The three versions are the Hebrew Masoretic (Traditional) Text, the Greek Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Masoretic Text is the oldest and the traditional form of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures; the Septuagint is the Greek Old Testament, which dates from the 3rd to the 1st Centuries B.C; and the Samaritan version was that used by the Samaritan community in Palestine, which is related to the Masoretic Text but is regarded as less reliable.

More or less accurate dates can be determined from the time of Abraham going in the direction of Moses, and by the time we get to king David they are accurate to within a year or two, and so on down to the time of Jesus. But in attempting to calculate dates going the other way, from Abraham back to Noah, and then back to Adam, we find ourselves entering a more remote period of history. Having said that many conservative (evangelical) Bible scholars confidently fix dates before the time of Abraham all the way back to Adam.

Some conservative scholars prefer the genealogies for Genesis 5 & 11 as they are found in the Septuagint. They argue that mathematically speaking, the ages of the patriarchs at the birth of their chosen son reveal a far more consistent pattern in the Septuagint than in the Masoretic Text. Whether they are right in saying that is open to question. It may be simply that they prefer the figures in the Septuagint because they push the dates for the creation and the flood further back than the Masoretic does, as least as that Text stands. Basing their calculations on the Septuagint figures they say the flood occurred 1232 years before Abraham, in 3537 B.C., and the Creation 2256 years earlier in 5793 B.C., plus or minus a few years. But they give Abraham’s date as about 2305 B.C., which most scholars would regard as too early by at least 300 years. That is not to say that a 6th Century B.C. date for the creation is impossible, and certainly a 4th century date for the flood is feasible as it just about allows for the antiquity of the Sumerian civilisation. This is better than bishop Ussher’s dates, based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis genealogies in the Masoretic Text. Ussher’s date for the flood is far too late in history, at 2349 B.C., since the Sumerians flourished before that time and they were not destroyed in the flood. That also means that Ussher’s date for the Creation at 4004 B.C. is also too late.

Actually some of the early church fathers favoured a 6th Century date for the Creation, which is close to that of those who base their calculations on the Septuagint genealogies. Theophilus of Antioch (A.D. 115-181). For example, gave a date of 5529 B.C. Hippolytus (ca.170-230 A.D.) suggested 5500 B.C., albeit on some doubtful grounds, while Julius Africanus (who died in 240 A.D.) put it at 5537 B.C.

Some have argued that the Egyptian dynasties must be taken into account when considering a date for the creation. It is thought that the first dynasty began some 500 years after the Tower of Babel incident in Gen. 11. According to the short chronology of the Masoretic Text, Noah’s flood occurred ca. 2305 B.C., so those holding that chronology have to argue against the foundation date for the Egyptian Dynasties at ca. 3100 B.C.; also the fact that flood traditions existed even in pre-Dynastic Egypt. There is in addition the matter previously mentioned of the Sumerians.

These problems are easily resolved on the basis of the Septuagint chronology, where the flood occurs at ca. 3537 B.C., with Babel around 3300 B.C., and the creation at 5793 B.C. but that in itself is not a good enough reason for adopting the Septuagint dates. Many scholars quite rightly prefer the genealogies of the Masoretic Text. This is because the Hebrew Bible gives us the original text. We do not, however, have to accept the Hebrew figures as they stand, since probably the genealogies are schematised. Actually that applies to the Septuagint and Samaritan versions as well. We may take this line because the most famous Bible genealogy of all is schematised: the genealogy of Jesus in Mt. 1. That genealogy gives three periods of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus (Mt. 1:17), whereas a comparison with the Old Testament shows that some names have been let out. This was done probably to make it easier to memorise the genealogy, and that is likely to be the case with the Genesis genealogies. They probably represent a far longer period of history, even in the Masoretic Text, than appears to be the case as they stand.

All that we can say, as a final word, is that since the date for the creation and the flood differ from one scholar to the next, we should not be too insistent on preferring one set of dates to another. For the creation of Adam, for instance, different scholars have given us dates of 4,004 B.C., 5,490 B.C., 10,842 B.C., 12,028 B.C. and even 14,000 B.C., just as a few examples. And the dates proposed for the flood also vary: 2,348 B.C., 3,228 B.C., 4,819 B.C. and 5,799 B.C., again, as a few examples. It is not safe to prefer one set of dates to another. The important thing is that we know that the age of the earth is not likely to be much older than 10,000 years, if that old, in marked contrast to the billions of years set out by evolutionists.

Though we cannot pinpoint the exact dates for the creation and the flood, we can say with confidence that they were actual historical events, which happened in the comparatively recent past. We may also say that because evolutionists are conditioned by their naturalistic interpretation of world geology and the fossil record, they are in no position to judge conservative scholarship and the findings of Creation Science. Both rest on radically different premises and therefore will never agree. But there are those, many of them Christians, who have attempted to bring the two together. And so we need to look at the popular compromise of the two worldviews, known as Theistic Evolution, in our next lecture. Adelaide College, 3 Nineyard Street, Saltcoats, Ayrshire, KA21 5HS. +44(0)1294 463911 www.comebacktogod.org / www.adelaidecollege.com