Was Noah's Flood Local? (page 3)

SYN

Farkel: Assuming a square area for the local flood, I agree, 7 million does seem to be a very large figure. sqrt(7,000,000) = ~2500.

This means the area would have to have been about 2500 kilometers on a side, if it was rectangular (which it wasn't!)

I think that this is quite an outrageous figure, but then, I don't know how large Mesopotamia is.

"...the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing" - The Golden Age
[SYN], UADA - Unseen Apostate Directorate of Africa.

cellomould

Yeah, Farkel and Syn,

that is that is rather large for a 'local' flood. For example, the distance from Los Angeles to New York is about 2900 miles.

If I am not mistaken, a flood plain of 2600 miles, give or take, would stretch from the Mediterranean all the way to the Himalayas.

Does this make sense?

Map courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps

cellomould

"In other words, your God is the warden of a prison where the only prisoner is your God." Jose Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

Faithful2Jah

Farkel said >>>>> 7 MILLION square miles? If it was only 4 million square miles, it would be 2 millions miles long and two million miles wide.

man farkel u dum. i know jws don go to colleg but i learnt in grade scuul that squar miles ar width times height not width plus height. maybe you just funnin us. I hopes sew.

JosephAlward

aChristian says that Christians who believe that the Bible teaches that the flood was global look foolish, and that we should believe that God flooded only the “land of Noah.”

Let me list just two of the many problems I have with the notion that the Bible teaches that the flood was local.

1. Why Didn’t the Genesis Writer Tell Us?

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. (Genesis 6:11-13)

If “the earth” that’s corrupt in the passage above is really just “the land of Noah,” then why didn’t the Genesis writer say so? Wouldn’t most readers take the writer’s words at face value, and assume he was referring to “all the people on earth,” and not just all the people on the land of Noah, wherever that is?

God, who is infinitely intelligent, would have known how we would have interpreted his writer’s words, so if God really wanted us to know the Word of God, then God would have directed his Bible writer to tell us that only the “land of Noah” was corrupt, not the rest of the world, and only that land was to be flooded, wouldn’t he--if that's really what he wanted us to know?

2. Just the Heavens Above the Land of Noah?

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens (Genesis 6:17)

All life under the heavens? This is not how one describes a limited region of land, is it? Would not the all-wise God know that we would have assumed that he was talking about the whole earth under the whole heavens? Would this all-knowing God really have expected us to imagine that he was talking about just that patch of the heavens above the land of Noah, especially since he never gave his readers the slightest hint anywhere that he had any kind of limited land area involved?

Furthermore, wouldn’t God want us to know the location of the only land and its people flooded by God out of existence, if the flood was indeed local? Why didn’t he say the region he destroyed was, say, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, if the flood was really local, instead of saying it was somewhere "under the heavens"?

Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"

http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

KJV

I have made a mistake. It was 7 million acres that was the given figure. I don't know what I was thinking. But if Alan reads this he can give the correct answer. It was 7 million something!!

JosephAlward

KJV notes,

I have made a mistake. It was 7 million acres that was the given figure

Assuming this is the size of the flood upon which the flood story was based, then we're talking about a circular area with a radius of about 59 miles.

If this is the flood the local-flood theorists are offering, then the argument I made in a previous post is made even stronger, for a dove could have reached the unflooded area easily, even if dove had been released from the center of the imagined circular flood area.

Thus, once again, I affirm that the Genesis author could not have known that Noah "knew the waters had receded" when the dove returned with the olive tree leaf, because the author would have known that Noah would have no way of knowing whether the dove had plucked the leaf from a tree outside the 59-mile radius area where the flood had not reached, or from a tree on land from which the flood waters had recently receded. The only way the Genesis author would think that Noah "knew" the waters had receded is if the flood in question was global.

Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"

http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

GWEEDO

There was no point taking birds onto the ark in the first place either. There was no need to do that to 'preserve them alive', as the bible says. Ravens and doves are nothing unique. There would have been many outside the radius of the flood, if it was local, that would have survived.

TheOldHippie

I do not have an English Bible here, but in my language, the same word is used in Genesis when stating the whole "Earth / World" was covered, and in Acts, when stating the whole "Earth / World" was reached with the Gospel.
People always are very quick when it comes to the Acts and the preaching, to state that "of course, they here refer to the THEN KNOWN WORLD" and then go on to state that of course, the Gospel had not ben preached in South America or Australia.
What are the arguments for not using the same logic as to the Genesis Flood - that it covered the then known world?

sadiejive

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peacefulpete

If I wished to prove that "Goldy Locks and the Three Bears"was based on fact,I would proceed in a manner similar to this discussion.I can show concclusively that bears exist,little girls do get lost,children can be finnicky eaters,bears will eat porridge,on and on. Yet I doubt I could convince you it really happened,Why not?Is it not your prior knowledge of the world around you that precludes talking hospitable bears?
Similarly whether or not flooding in the ancient past occured and whether acacia wood floats and the mts of ararat exit, this story must be viewed as legend because it also includes fantasy elements.Giants,animal cooperation,spirits,etc.
Honestly if it were not for our JW indoctrination that the Bible is literal history would anyone conclude the Flood story is anything but a moral treatise?

Was Noah's Flood Local?

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