Vedenpaisumus?

...jatkuu

Other logistics problems arise within the text itself:

1. If the Flood were severe enough to reach 17,000 feet in 150 days, it would have had to rise at the rate of over 100 feet per day, almost five feet per hour. Even if such a rapid rise were possible and could be sustained over a five-month period, it would have created currents that would have made survival in the ark unlikely.
2. Those searching for the ark have had to use very sophisticated mountain-climbing equipment to scale the heights of Mount Ararat, and at times have had to abandon the effort. How would Noah and his family and animals such as elephants and hippopotami make the trek down the mountain? And how did they make their way across mountain chains and over deserts to return to their native habitats?
3. What did the carnivores eat until their prey populations were replenished?
4. If the ark ran aground on the still-submerged summit of Mount Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month (8:4) and the tops of the mountains became visible on the first day of the tenth month (8:5), the water receded only 15 feet in 75 days. Yet it would have had to recede 17,000 feet in the next 75 days because by the first day of the first month, the earth was dry (8:13).
5. The dove flew down into a valley to get an olive leaf (only growing in low elevations) in 8:11. How did it manage to fly back up to 17,000 feet to the ark? Doves are not physically equipped to fly at those altitudes.

The main questions, however, concern what is demanded by the language of the text. Four textual issues contribute to the discussion and require investigation: universal scope of the language (7:21–23), covering the mountains (7:19), fifteen cubits above (7:20), and the tops of the mountains becoming visible (8:5). If an interpreter maintains the support of the authority of the text but does not believe in a global flood, how can these four issues be handled?

jatkuu...

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

Other logistics problems arise within the text itself:

1. If the Flood were severe enough to reach 17,000 feet in 150 days, it would have had to rise at the rate of over 100 feet per day, almost five feet per hour. Even if such a rapid rise were possible and could be sustained over a five-month period, it would have created currents that would have made survival in the ark unlikely.
2. Those searching for the ark have had to use very sophisticated mountain-climbing equipment to scale the heights of Mount Ararat, and at times have had to abandon the effort. How would Noah and his family and animals such as elephants and hippopotami make the trek down the mountain? And how did they make their way across mountain chains and over deserts to return to their native habitats?
3. What did the carnivores eat until their prey populations were replenished?
4. If the ark ran aground on the still-submerged summit of Mount Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month (8:4) and the tops of the mountains became visible on the first day of the tenth month (8:5), the water receded only 15 feet in 75 days. Yet it would have had to recede 17,000 feet in the next 75 days because by the first day of the first month, the earth was dry (8:13).
5. The dove flew down into a valley to get an olive leaf (only growing in low elevations) in 8:11. How did it manage to fly back up to 17,000 feet to the ark? Doves are not physically equipped to fly at those altitudes.

The main questions, however, concern what is demanded by the language of the text. Four textual issues contribute to the discussion and require investigation: universal scope of the language (7:21–23), covering the mountains (7:19), fifteen cubits above (7:20), and the tops of the mountains becoming visible (8:5). If an interpreter maintains the support of the authority of the text but does not believe in a global flood, how can these four issues be handled?

jatkuu...

Lue lisää

...jatkuu

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word “all” is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, “This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven.” This verse even uses “under heaven” in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and “all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.” I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that “Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven.” Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word “all” to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of “covering” possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, “You’re covered with water!”

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.
Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders “depth.” The Hebrew text says, “Fifteen cubits from above [milmaʿla] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered.” It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.
The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition ʿal is consistently attached to the one noun with milmaʿla connected to the object that is being located. It can also mean “above” when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, “heavens above”). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as “upward” (Ezek. 1:11, “spread upward”) or “upstream” (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb “rose,” it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land, or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

jatkuu...

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word “all” is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, “This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven.” This verse even uses “under heaven” in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and “all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.” I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that “Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven.” Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word “all” to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of “covering” possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, “You’re covered with water!”

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.
Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders “depth.” The Hebrew text says, “Fifteen cubits from above [milmaʿla] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered.” It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.
The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition ʿal is consistently attached to the one noun with milmaʿla connected to the object that is being located. It can also mean “above” when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, “heavens above”). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as “upward” (Ezek. 1:11, “spread upward”) or “upstream” (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb “rose,” it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land, or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

jatkuu...

Lue lisää

...jatkuu

Most interpreters have inferred that the ark became lodged on the tops of one of these mountains that was still under water and that the mountains did not become visible for ten more weeks. If this were a proper inference, the observation in the text would be a matter of experience, not perception. Noah did not just assume that all the mountains were under water; he was in the mountains and they were under water.

If it were not for 8:3–5, an interpreter can easily claim that the face value of the text does not demand a geographically global flood. All of the other statements are compatible with a flood of the known populated world. Given the apparent clarity of 8:3–5, however, it is difficult to see how the Flood could be less than global if the waters reached a height of 17,000 feet. So how do we reconcile the apparent clarity of the text with the extremely difficult logistics?

We must still consider whether 8:3–5 strikes us the way it does because we are thinking in terms of our understanding of the world. Would this text have meant something different if we could read it with an ancient Near Eastern mindset?

Mesopotamian geographers had no way of knowing that Babylonia and Assyria were part of the Eurasian land-mass that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to Indian oceans. The ancient geographers imagined that the continent they lived on was much smaller. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean marratu is drawn just beyond Assyria, Urartu, and the mountains where the Euphrates rises [the Ararat chain].
In the Mesopotamian worldview the known world was comprised of a single continent fringed with mountains (such as the Zagros mountains in the east and the mountains of Ararat in the north) and ringed by the cosmic sea. The fringe mountains were believed to hold up the heavens and have roots in the netherworld. In the east, the mountain primarily associated with this role is Mount Mašu. Gilgamesh travels there on his way to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Flood, whose ark had arrived at the eastern mountains (Mount Nimush) by the end of the Flood. In the north is Mount Simirriya. Sargon, king of Akkad in the twenty-fourth century B.C. and ruler of the first-known empire in the history of the world, describes this in his eighth campaign to Urartu.
Mount Simirriya, a mighty mountain-peak, which spikes upward like the cutting-edge of a spear, on top of the mountain-range, the dwelling of Belet-Ili, rears its head. Above, its [Mount Simirriya’s] peak leans on the heavens, below, its roots reach into the underworld.

Moreover, Sargon’s Geography has this to say:

Sargon’s empire in The Sargon Geography, excluding the lands across the seas, corresponds to the continent on the World Map. On the map, the northern edge of the continent is occupied by an oval shaped region marked ‘mountain,’ where the Euphrates begins. This region must be the mountains of modern Turkey by the sources of the river. In The Sargon Geography, these mountains form part of the Cedar Mountain. Because there are no lands beyond the Cedar Mountain in the text, it is reasonable to assume that the author of The Sargon Geography believed that a northern arm of the cosmic sea lay beyond the mountains, just as the marratu flows along the northern rim of the continent on the World Map. A tradition of a northern ocean may have been based on the locations of the salt-water Black and Caspian Seas. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean flows beyond the far border of Urartu.

What happens if we try to read the Flood narrative against the background of this sort of worldview? What follows is an illustration (not even a hypothesis) of the sort of option that may be available if we start to think outside the box by trying to understand the culture of the text.

Is it possible that the ancient writers did not count the mountains at the fringes of the world among the “high mountains” that the water covered? Cosmic mountains were places of the gods and would be impervious to floodwaters sent by the gods. In this scenario, the ark drifts to the edge of the known world and rests against the mountains of Ararat (or perhaps on the foothills of Ararat). Noah views this as the edge of the world, just as some before Columbus’s day believed they could reach the edge of the world. There the ark sits while the water recedes and the tops of the mountains in the occupied portion of the continent become visible. This means that when the waters totally dissipate, the ark is at the foot of the Ararat chain. The logic of not including the fringe mountains is that they were believed to support the heavens, and the waters are not seen as encroaching on or encountering the heavens.

jatkuu...

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

Most interpreters have inferred that the ark became lodged on the tops of one of these mountains that was still under water and that the mountains did not become visible for ten more weeks. If this were a proper inference, the observation in the text would be a matter of experience, not perception. Noah did not just assume that all the mountains were under water; he was in the mountains and they were under water.

If it were not for 8:3–5, an interpreter can easily claim that the face value of the text does not demand a geographically global flood. All of the other statements are compatible with a flood of the known populated world. Given the apparent clarity of 8:3–5, however, it is difficult to see how the Flood could be less than global if the waters reached a height of 17,000 feet. So how do we reconcile the apparent clarity of the text with the extremely difficult logistics?

We must still consider whether 8:3–5 strikes us the way it does because we are thinking in terms of our understanding of the world. Would this text have meant something different if we could read it with an ancient Near Eastern mindset?

Mesopotamian geographers had no way of knowing that Babylonia and Assyria were part of the Eurasian land-mass that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to Indian oceans. The ancient geographers imagined that the continent they lived on was much smaller. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean marratu is drawn just beyond Assyria, Urartu, and the mountains where the Euphrates rises [the Ararat chain].
In the Mesopotamian worldview the known world was comprised of a single continent fringed with mountains (such as the Zagros mountains in the east and the mountains of Ararat in the north) and ringed by the cosmic sea. The fringe mountains were believed to hold up the heavens and have roots in the netherworld. In the east, the mountain primarily associated with this role is Mount Mašu. Gilgamesh travels there on his way to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Flood, whose ark had arrived at the eastern mountains (Mount Nimush) by the end of the Flood. In the north is Mount Simirriya. Sargon, king of Akkad in the twenty-fourth century B.C. and ruler of the first-known empire in the history of the world, describes this in his eighth campaign to Urartu.
Mount Simirriya, a mighty mountain-peak, which spikes upward like the cutting-edge of a spear, on top of the mountain-range, the dwelling of Belet-Ili, rears its head. Above, its [Mount Simirriya’s] peak leans on the heavens, below, its roots reach into the underworld.

Moreover, Sargon’s Geography has this to say:

Sargon’s empire in The Sargon Geography, excluding the lands across the seas, corresponds to the continent on the World Map. On the map, the northern edge of the continent is occupied by an oval shaped region marked ‘mountain,’ where the Euphrates begins. This region must be the mountains of modern Turkey by the sources of the river. In The Sargon Geography, these mountains form part of the Cedar Mountain. Because there are no lands beyond the Cedar Mountain in the text, it is reasonable to assume that the author of The Sargon Geography believed that a northern arm of the cosmic sea lay beyond the mountains, just as the marratu flows along the northern rim of the continent on the World Map. A tradition of a northern ocean may have been based on the locations of the salt-water Black and Caspian Seas. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean flows beyond the far border of Urartu.

What happens if we try to read the Flood narrative against the background of this sort of worldview? What follows is an illustration (not even a hypothesis) of the sort of option that may be available if we start to think outside the box by trying to understand the culture of the text.

Is it possible that the ancient writers did not count the mountains at the fringes of the world among the “high mountains” that the water covered? Cosmic mountains were places of the gods and would be impervious to floodwaters sent by the gods. In this scenario, the ark drifts to the edge of the known world and rests against the mountains of Ararat (or perhaps on the foothills of Ararat). Noah views this as the edge of the world, just as some before Columbus’s day believed they could reach the edge of the world. There the ark sits while the water recedes and the tops of the mountains in the occupied portion of the continent become visible. This means that when the waters totally dissipate, the ark is at the foot of the Ararat chain. The logic of not including the fringe mountains is that they were believed to support the heavens, and the waters are not seen as encroaching on or encountering the heavens.

jatkuu...

Lue lisää

...jatkuu

This way of thinking yields a flood of the then-known world (with boundaries as described, for instance, in the Sargon Geography and in the list of Noah’s descendants in Gen. 10); it covered all the elevated places that were within eyesight of the occupants of the ark. Though this would be a geographically limited flood, it could still be anthropologically universal if people had not yet spread beyond this region. One of the advantages of seeking out views such as this is that they allow us to affirm the truth of the text without getting tied up in complicated logistical and scientific discussions.
Any solution must take the text seriously, yet be willing to see the text in ways that the original author and audience may have seen it. It likewise needs to take logistical problems seriously. It is a weak interpretation that has to invent all sorts of miracles that the text says nothing about in order to compensate for the logistical problems. While there is no view that I am yet comfortable with, I am committed to the text first (handled with hermeneutical propriety). Though the issue may have to remain for the time being unresolved, we must remember that this in no way leaves the passage a mystery. All agree on the theological teaching and significance of the passage, regardless of the extent of the Flood.
Before we leave the issue of the extent of the flood, we need to look at what the New Testament tells us and at what hydrology theorists say about the history of flooding in the region.
New Testament. The New Testament refers to the Flood a few times in passing but does not offer any unequivocal statements about its extent. In Luke 17:27 Christ describes the indifferent routine of the people of Noah’s times, yet the Flood came and destroyed them all. To this he likens the day when the Son of Man is revealed. The point is that people were unprepared for the disaster that was to strike. Likewise 2 Peter 2:5 indicates that God did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, referring to people, not land. Finally, 2 Peter 3:5–6 declares that “the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.” These passages speak respectively about being prepared, about God’s willingness and ability to rescue the righteous, and about God’s ability to bring destructive judgment. Little can be inferred from them about the extent of the Flood.

jatkuu...

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

This way of thinking yields a flood of the then-known world (with boundaries as described, for instance, in the Sargon Geography and in the list of Noah’s descendants in Gen. 10); it covered all the elevated places that were within eyesight of the occupants of the ark. Though this would be a geographically limited flood, it could still be anthropologically universal if people had not yet spread beyond this region. One of the advantages of seeking out views such as this is that they allow us to affirm the truth of the text without getting tied up in complicated logistical and scientific discussions.
Any solution must take the text seriously, yet be willing to see the text in ways that the original author and audience may have seen it. It likewise needs to take logistical problems seriously. It is a weak interpretation that has to invent all sorts of miracles that the text says nothing about in order to compensate for the logistical problems. While there is no view that I am yet comfortable with, I am committed to the text first (handled with hermeneutical propriety). Though the issue may have to remain for the time being unresolved, we must remember that this in no way leaves the passage a mystery. All agree on the theological teaching and significance of the passage, regardless of the extent of the Flood.
Before we leave the issue of the extent of the flood, we need to look at what the New Testament tells us and at what hydrology theorists say about the history of flooding in the region.
New Testament. The New Testament refers to the Flood a few times in passing but does not offer any unequivocal statements about its extent. In Luke 17:27 Christ describes the indifferent routine of the people of Noah’s times, yet the Flood came and destroyed them all. To this he likens the day when the Son of Man is revealed. The point is that people were unprepared for the disaster that was to strike. Likewise 2 Peter 2:5 indicates that God did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, referring to people, not land. Finally, 2 Peter 3:5–6 declares that “the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.” These passages speak respectively about being prepared, about God’s willingness and ability to rescue the righteous, and about God’s ability to bring destructive judgment. Little can be inferred from them about the extent of the Flood.

jatkuu...

Lue lisää

...jatkuu

Oceanography theories. Scientists have identified a number of different occasions during which massive flooding in the Near East occurred. These include a flooding of the Mediterranean and one of the Black Sea. In a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. The water was dammed up at Gibraltar. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than three thousand feet deep and fifteen miles wide filling the Mediterranean basin in less than nine months.

As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basin. The air would pick up the moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour into the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. Adiabatic cooling is the cooling that occurs in a rising body of air which cools at 10º C per kilometer. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upwards simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential! The modern world has never seen such a convection cell. Forty days of rain is easy to account for.
If the reader finds it difficult to put the Flood 5.5 million years ago, the Black Sea theory may be more palatable. In the mid-1990s geologists and oceanographers began investigating a huge, catastrophic flood in the region of the Black Sea. Their findings indicate that in about 5500 B.C. there was a sudden rise in water level in the Mediterranean, which brought a thunderous waterfall through the Bosporous and into the Black Sea. Over the course of a year it flooded out 60,000 square miles of land and raised the water level of the Black Sea approximately five hundred feet. Prior to this time the Black Sea was a fresh water sea (as the fossils at the original beach level indicate). As the salt water poured in from the Mediterranean, “the sea’s surface must have risen a foot a day for perhaps 100 days at the height of the flood. For that to occur, torrents of water must have poured through the Bosporous into the Black Sea at a rate some 400 times that of Niagara Falls.”

Both of these theories fit into the “regional” category. They are examples of theories that attempt to identify some geologically known natural catastrophe with the biblical Flood instead of trying to come up with possible scientific explanations of how a global flood could have theoretically occurred. I have not yet seen any such theories that are persuasive and still find it difficult to assign a date to the Flood based on the biblical information.

Walton, John H. (2001). Genesis (pp. 321–330). NIV Application Commentary. Zondervan.

lainaus päättyy

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

Oceanography theories. Scientists have identified a number of different occasions during which massive flooding in the Near East occurred. These include a flooding of the Mediterranean and one of the Black Sea. In a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. The water was dammed up at Gibraltar. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than three thousand feet deep and fifteen miles wide filling the Mediterranean basin in less than nine months.

As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basin. The air would pick up the moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour into the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. Adiabatic cooling is the cooling that occurs in a rising body of air which cools at 10º C per kilometer. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upwards simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential! The modern world has never seen such a convection cell. Forty days of rain is easy to account for.
If the reader finds it difficult to put the Flood 5.5 million years ago, the Black Sea theory may be more palatable. In the mid-1990s geologists and oceanographers began investigating a huge, catastrophic flood in the region of the Black Sea. Their findings indicate that in about 5500 B.C. there was a sudden rise in water level in the Mediterranean, which brought a thunderous waterfall through the Bosporous and into the Black Sea. Over the course of a year it flooded out 60,000 square miles of land and raised the water level of the Black Sea approximately five hundred feet. Prior to this time the Black Sea was a fresh water sea (as the fossils at the original beach level indicate). As the salt water poured in from the Mediterranean, “the sea’s surface must have risen a foot a day for perhaps 100 days at the height of the flood. For that to occur, torrents of water must have poured through the Bosporous into the Black Sea at a rate some 400 times that of Niagara Falls.”

Both of these theories fit into the “regional” category. They are examples of theories that attempt to identify some geologically known natural catastrophe with the biblical Flood instead of trying to come up with possible scientific explanations of how a global flood could have theoretically occurred. I have not yet seen any such theories that are persuasive and still find it difficult to assign a date to the Flood based on the biblical information.

Walton, John H. (2001). Genesis (pp. 321–330). NIV Application Commentary. Zondervan.

lainaus päättyy

Lue lisää

Jotta semmosia Lähi-idän paimentolaisheimon satuja ja tarinoita.
Pitäiskös tämän sivuston nimeksi vaihtaa suomi24?

jmmikkonen kirjoitti:

...jatkuu

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word “all” is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, “This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven.” This verse even uses “under heaven” in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and “all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.” I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that “Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven.” Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word “all” to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of “covering” possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, “You’re covered with water!”

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.
Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders “depth.” The Hebrew text says, “Fifteen cubits from above [milmaʿla] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered.” It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.
The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition ʿal is consistently attached to the one noun with milmaʿla connected to the object that is being located. It can also mean “above” when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, “heavens above”). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as “upward” (Ezek. 1:11, “spread upward”) or “upstream” (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb “rose,” it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land, or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

jatkuu...

Lue lisää

Kyl tää varmaan on joku Mikkonen, ei tää ainakaan ole se sama transu-ukko! Jos ei osaa noin hyvin muuttunna leikkii?

Anonyymi kirjoitti:

Jotta semmosia Lähi-idän paimentolaisheimon satuja ja tarinoita.
Pitäiskös tämän sivuston nimeksi vaihtaa suomi24?

"1. Gobaali
2. Sen ajan ihmisten maailman kattava
3. Alueellinen
4. Paikallinen"

Raamatun teksti on kyllä varsin selvästi tuon globaalin tulvan takana;
kaikki korkeat vuoret kaiken taivaan alla peittyivät, jopa vuorenhuippuja peittävän veden syvyyskin 15 kyynärää on mainittu.
Samoin, että kaikki ihmiset ja eläimet hukkuivat.

1Ms7:17Silloin tuli vedenpaisumus maan päälle, tuli neljänäkymmenenä päivänä; ja vedet paisuivat ja nostivat arkin, niin että se kohosi korkealle maasta.
18Ja vedet saivat vallan ja paisuivat suuresti maan päällä, ja arkki ajelehti veden pinnalla. 19Ja vedet nousivat nousemistaan maan päällä, niin että kaikki korkeat vuoret kaiken taivaan alla peittyivät.
20Viisitoista kyynärää vesi nousi vuorten yli, niin että ne peittyivät.
21Silloin hukkui kaikki liha, joka maan päällä liikkui: linnut, karjaeläimet, metsäeläimet ja kaikki pikkueläimet, joita maassa vilisi, sekä kaikki ihmiset.
22Kaikki, joiden sieramissa oli elämän hengen henkäys, kaikki, jotka elivät kuivalla maalla, kuolivat.

Anonyymi kirjoitti:

"1. Gobaali
2. Sen ajan ihmisten maailman kattava
3. Alueellinen
4. Paikallinen"

Raamatun teksti on kyllä varsin selvästi tuon globaalin tulvan takana;
kaikki korkeat vuoret kaiken taivaan alla peittyivät, jopa vuorenhuippuja peittävän veden syvyyskin 15 kyynärää on mainittu.
Samoin, että kaikki ihmiset ja eläimet hukkuivat.

1Ms7:17Silloin tuli vedenpaisumus maan päälle, tuli neljänäkymmenenä päivänä; ja vedet paisuivat ja nostivat arkin, niin että se kohosi korkealle maasta.
18Ja vedet saivat vallan ja paisuivat suuresti maan päällä, ja arkki ajelehti veden pinnalla. 19Ja vedet nousivat nousemistaan maan päällä, niin että kaikki korkeat vuoret kaiken taivaan alla peittyivät.
20Viisitoista kyynärää vesi nousi vuorten yli, niin että ne peittyivät.
21Silloin hukkui kaikki liha, joka maan päällä liikkui: linnut, karjaeläimet, metsäeläimet ja kaikki pikkueläimet, joita maassa vilisi, sekä kaikki ihmiset.
22Kaikki, joiden sieramissa oli elämän hengen henkäys, kaikki, jotka elivät kuivalla maalla, kuolivat.

Lue lisää

Siinähän sitä oli taas satua kerrakseen.

Kaatopaikkanaan myös raamatunlauseita kopioivat pitävät tätä palstaa.

Faaraon hovi ei sitten hukkunutkaan vai lähtikö nooasta faarao ja entä arabia punainen meri Abraham on kotoisin arabiasta kaldeasta. Lähtikö Noa ulos Egyptissä vai Ararat vuorella kuitenkin jossain arabian Egyptissä. Faaraoilla olisi ton mukaan Noa esivanhempi koska Aatamin porukka hukkui paitsi Noa. Toisaalta Adamin kautta tuli kirouksia. Mutta käynti jordanilla auttaa.

Anonyymi kirjoitti:

Faaraon hovi ei sitten hukkunutkaan vai lähtikö nooasta faarao ja entä arabia punainen meri Abraham on kotoisin arabiasta kaldeasta. Lähtikö Noa ulos Egyptissä vai Ararat vuorella kuitenkin jossain arabian Egyptissä. Faaraoilla olisi ton mukaan Noa esivanhempi koska Aatamin porukka hukkui paitsi Noa. Toisaalta Adamin kautta tuli kirouksia. Mutta käynti jordanilla auttaa.

Lue lisää

"Faaraoilla olisi ton mukaan Noa esivanhempi koska Aatamin porukka hukkui paitsi Noa. "

Raamatusta löytyy varsin tarkka kuvaus siitä,
miten eri kansat ovat polveutuneet Nooan pojista.
Lue 1Moos10-

Anonyymi kirjoitti:

Faaraon hovi ei sitten hukkunutkaan vai lähtikö nooasta faarao ja entä arabia punainen meri Abraham on kotoisin arabiasta kaldeasta. Lähtikö Noa ulos Egyptissä vai Ararat vuorella kuitenkin jossain arabian Egyptissä. Faaraoilla olisi ton mukaan Noa esivanhempi koska Aatamin porukka hukkui paitsi Noa. Toisaalta Adamin kautta tuli kirouksia. Mutta käynti jordanilla auttaa.

Lue lisää

"Faaraon hovi ei sitten hukkunutkaan vai lähtikö nooasta faarao"

Nooan kolmesta pojasta polveutuvat kaikki kansat - egyptiläiset Haamista.

1Ms10

Dinosaurukset kuten T.rex oli myös Nooakin arkissa, koska Raamatussa lukee, että hän otti kaikki eläimet, joten ne oli siellä. Maailmahan on 5783 vuotta vanha Raamatun mukaan, joten dinosauraukset luotiin vuonna 0.