Noah's Flood - History or Myth? ("Debunking the 7 Myths that Deny Biblical Truth" Series)

Myth number 5 is, the Bible's account of Noah's flood is just myth and was drawn from writings from the ancient Near East. To investigate this claim, we'll look at the global evidence for a worldwide flood, the seaworthiness of the ark, and answer tough questions like how could Noah fit all of the animals on the ark?

Finally, we'll contrast the Bible's account of the flood with the leading flood myth from the ancient Near East, the Epic of Gilgamesh. First, let's take a quick look at the evidence for the worldwide year-long flood of the Bible.

The Bible records that the flood commenced by the fountains of the great deep breaking open that led to the entire globe being covered with water, with the highest hills even submerged by 20 feet. If this happened as described, it would have left some amazing scars on the Earth.

This is exactly what we find with the 40 ,000-mile oceanic rift system that covers the Earth 1 .9 times over, including the massive 10 ,000-mile mid-Atlantic ridge that quite obviously shows how these continents were once joined together and then pushed apart.

Just check out this map with all the ocean water removed. The deep continental shelves become visible and we can see how the continents fit together like puzzle pieces to shape an Earth that used to be mostly a single landmass.

This is especially obvious when looking at the matching jagged edges of lower South America and Africa. We can also see this notch of submerged land off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and how it perfectly fits into a slot north of Spain.

These continents fit together so well because of the catastrophic linear rifting that occurred when the fountains of the great deep were pulled apart. The Hebrew term used for this is ba-ka, which means to cleave, rent, or break and rip open, to make a breach.

This couldn't describe what we see any better. One of the largest tears, the mid-Atlantic ridge, includes perpendicular faults along its entire length, showing the formation of new seafloor that occurred rapidly during the flood, not slowly over millions of years.

The raised and sloped features on each side of the rift also testify to the hot and buoyant rock that still lies beneath it. This is certainly something that happened quickly in the past and then slowed down greatly, as GPS measurements today indicate.

The evolutionary view holds that these continents moved apart slowly over millions of years. If this was true, the large rivers on the continents that straddle each sides of these rifts would have left a connected trail of mud stretching from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

But what we see from the evidence is that they were rapidly split apart, and then the draining and erosion started. Major rivers like the Congo, Mississippi, and Amazon run off the continents and have mud fans with only thousands of years worth of mud deposits, not millions.

Also, there are flat sand bottoms on each side of these continents, showing they were split apart rapidly. They don't have millions of years worth of runoff with extensive mud extending out into the ocean.

These rivers began shaping and eroding only thousands of years ago, not millions. The fossil record that now straddles both sides of this global tear testifies to the rapid nature of this catastrophe, with millions of the same kinds of animals that were once living together now found buried in mud layers on either side.

Global geology joins this testimony with recent analysis of 1800 boreholes from around the world, revealing six megasequences of the flood that indicate its worldwide extent. Billions of fossils buried in the mud around the world, including 13 states of dead dinosaurs mixed with marine life in the middle of America.

What type of flood could do this? Just how much water would it take to bury millions of land creatures under hundreds of feet of mud in this 13-state, 700 ,000-square-mile area? And just how did so many land creatures get buried together with marine life, with 97 of the dinosaurs found disarticulated, and many of the remaining 3 that are found intact discovered in mud layers with their necks arched back, suffocating as they died?

Catastrophic plate tectonics explains the mechanism behind the Genesis Flood, with massive oceanic plates subducting under the land masses generating cycles of tsunamis that brought megatons of sediment onto land, wiping out every living creature in their paths, burying them in the muddy layers we can still see today.

These types of tsunamis still occur, although much less frequently and on a smaller scale. The spreading seafloor subducts, binds under the land masses, and then releases, creating mud-filled tsunamis that carry debris and sea life onto land, sorting them in layers.

This is exactly what we see in dinosaur graveyards today around the world. North America provides some clues to the massive nature of the flood. In fact, even secular geologists refer to what's known as the widespread Late Cretaceous Transgression, which is just technical jargon for worldwide flood.

Studies have revealed that a sea-level rise of 310 meters is required to flood the Cretaceous layers based on their current elevation. However, the maximum thickness of the fossil layers produced by a 310-meter sea-level rise is only about 700 meters.

The challenge is that, in North America, nearly 50 of the Cretaceous layers contain strata thicker than 700 meters, indicating that the continents had to sink and buckle during this global inundation.

This is exactly what the catastrophic nature of the flood would have done. There's just no way that rising sea levels alone can explain the fossil record in North America. Something much more catastrophic that warped and submerged the continents just had to be involved.

The Ark’s Dimensions and Seaworthiness

Next, let's investigate whether the ark was seaworthy. God gave certain dimensions to Noah for building the ark. 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Using the nipper cubit at 20 .4 inches, this works out to a vessel about 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high.

Accounting for a 15 reduction in volume due to the hull curvature, the ark had about 1 .88 million cubic feet of space. The equivalent of 450 semi-trailers of cargo space. Twice as long as a Boeing 747 and stretching over one and a half football fields.

This was a massive ship. But was such a vessel seaworthy? Interestingly, the ark's dimensions were about the same as modern shipping vessels, making a fitting shape for handling ocean swells that are typically spaced out in such a way that ships of this size fare well at sea.

In fact, Dr. Xian-Wan Hong, who holds a PhD in Applied Mechanics from the University of Michigan, conducted a study on the seaworthiness of Noah's Ark at the world-class ship research center, CRISO.

Dr. Hong's team compared 12 different hull designs of various proportions and found that the ark, based on the biblical dimensions, outperformed all others because it carefully balanced the conflicting requirements for stability, resistance to capsizing, passenger stability, or seakeeping, and strength.

The study also confirmed that the ark could handle waves as high as 100 feet without capsizing. Noah was instructed by God to coat the inside and the outside of the ark with pitch, a thick, gooey substance secreted by trees as a means of protection against infection or insect attack.

When heated into a liquid state and applied to ship planking, pitch hardens almost instantly into a protective, waterproof shell. Very similar to how epoxy or fiberglass are used in shipbuilding today, the strong outer shell provided by hardened pitch adds both strength and waterproofing beyond the natural capability of the wood.

These divine shipbuilding instructions given to Noah certainly seem to make realistic sense. Next, let's look at one of the most frequently asked questions about the ark. How could it fit all the animals?

Animal Kinds and the Capacity of the Ark

Skeptics frequently scoff at the idea of packing all the animal species onto the ark, but the solution is found in this very objection. Noah didn't have to load all animal species on the ark, he only had to load the animal kinds.

For example, there are over 300 dog breeds and over 300 horse breeds, and all breeds within these two animal kinds are interfertile, producing offspring representing a mix in between the two parents. The same is true for many other animal groups.

Collapsing these animal trees results in a very feasible number of animal kinds, less than a few thousand, that could board the ark, get off a year later, and then spread around the world and reproduce into the varieties within kinds we see today.

Why the Epic of Gilgamesh Is a Later Flood Myth

Now let's compare the biblical flood to the leading flood myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In 1853, archaeologists found a series of 12 tablets dated to around 650 BC, although parts of the story existed in earlier fragmentary versions.

Because the story had many of the same elements as the Genesis account, skeptics believed that Gilgamesh preceded the biblical account, negating the Genesis account as just a spin-off. Fortunately for Christians, however, there are major clues that point to the biblical account as the accurate one, and Gilgamesh as a later work of fiction that incorporated legendary elements of a flood within a cultural fantasy.

Here are the reasons why. First, we have the feasibility of the Gilgamesh version of the ark, described as a massive, unstable cube that was about 200 feet on each side with six decks that divided it into seven parts.

Along with help from the community and craftsmen, he supposedly built this vessel, which was over three times the size of the biblical ark, in just a week. How would something like this fare during a catastrophic worldwide flood?

It would obviously tumble, killing or maiming its passengers. That's obviously quite different than the biblical ark which had a 7 to 1 length to width ratio, which is very similar to many of today's ocean barges, making a feasible design for staying afloat during the flood.

Scripture provides clues that Noah and helpers likely had between 55 and 75 years to build the ark. The second key for determining which of these flood accounts is the original is the duration of the flood provided by each.

The Gilgamesh flood lasted a mere six days, whereas the Genesis flood lasted 371 days. Both accounts claim the flood was worldwide, but how could water cover Earth in just six days? A floating 200 by 200 foot cube and six days for worldwide inundation certainly stretch credulity.

The next consideration is the reasons for the flood given by each of the two accounts. In the Genesis account, God's judgment is just. He was patient with utterly wicked mankind for 120 years before sending the flood and showed mercy to the last righteous family.

In the Gilgamesh account, the flood was ordered by multiple self-centered squabbling gods that were starving without humans to feed them sacrifices. These two are quite different. Finally, there are several other parts of the Gilgamesh account that are obviously mythical, such as Gilgamesh being two-thirds divine and one-third mortal.

After oppressing his people, Gilgamesh and others called upon the gods and the sky god Anu creates a wild man named Enkidu to fight Gilgamesh. The battle is a draw, and they become friends. Gilgamesh apparently also encounters talking monsters and a scorpion man in his journeys.

Many myths are based on historical accounts, but they get embellished over time, becoming more and more mythical as the story is repeated over generations. This is exactly what we see with flood myths like Gilgamesh.

They take the original historical account, the biblical flood, and grow it into a mythical, interesting story over time. For example, the earlier version of the Gilgamesh flood account clearly identifies the flood as a local river flood, with the dead bodies of humans filling the river like dragonflies, and moving to the edge of the boat like a raft, and moving to the riverbank like a raft.

Centuries later, this gets exaggerated into a global, worldwide flood, where humans killed in the flood fill the sea like a spawn of fish. Both accounts have a god or gods that are sending judgment, describe a worldwide inundation, have an arc built to specific dimensions that are loaded with surviving humans and animals, and land just a few hundred miles apart from each other after using birds as a test to find dry land.

Myths often grow from being historical to being more mythical, but they almost never develop in the reverse, becoming more truthful and accurate over time. While these accounts mirror each other in so many ways, which account is the original, historical one?

The feasible one, of course. While both accounts describe plenty of divine intervention, only the biblical arc's size, shape, function, build time, and flood duration make sense. Let's see what Dr. Randall Price, distinguished research professor and curator at Liberty Biblical Museum, has to say about this topic.

What extra biblical text would you say substantiate the flood account in Genesis 6 -9? Well, let's work our way backwards. We can start with all the church fathers. Every one of them mentioned the flood, and it's always a global flood.

There's no example in any of them of a local flood. And then, as we move back to a first century writer like Flavius Josephus, who wrote for the Romans, he's writing a history of the Jewish people, primarily to impress the Romans because they defeated the Jewish people.

It makes them look greater if they defeated a great people. But he's going into the details, and he talks about that in this place where the ark landed, they call it Armenia, they say that there are people who show relics of the ark.

There's at least four different accounts of Josephus where he says people chip off pieces of the bitumen and make amulets of it, or people are shown these things who are curious to see them, or that all the history of the barbarians, he says, he talks about Egyptian and Chaldean and Greek, all of these have similar accounts of the flood, and he said this was the same as the legislator Moses, he talks about, who wrote.

Now, we go back in time, and these are those barbarian accounts. We have Sumerian accounts, the Eridu, Genesis, we have the Enuma Elish, we have Atrahasis, we have the Gilgamesh epic, we now have the Simmons' cuneiform tablet, or the ark tablet, and we have the Sumerian king list.

All of these mention the flood and have various details. Some talk about, all of them talk about, the God's punishing man, and one man being chosen to bring either himself or his family, or alternately, and certainly in every case, all the animals onto a vessel to survive this flood, this punishment.

And then, afterward, we have various details. He sent out a dove or a raven, which is likely mentioned in the biblical text, or he, almost all of them, when he gets off the ark, offers a sacrifice to please the gods.

Well, this is not only in the same chronological order as you have in the Bible, but it's the same unique events and details that are in the Bible. Now, all these predate the Bible, and you could accuse the Bible of copying from them, but as we mentioned earlier, the problem is the Bible comes across more simple, more historical, more believable, while these are complex myths, and they differ among themselves in those details.

But where they all agree is a similar core history that must have been passed on after the flood, and as civilization spread out, and generations begin to go their own way, they develop their own myths, which keep that core common history, but add to it in their own direction.

The Bible doesn't do it that way. It's not a perception. They're saying, this is the way it happened, in an orderly event. And they don't do like this. They give you clear genealogies. They give you historical time frames.

They give you dimensions and structures that are quite literal, and actually work. So when you look at some of the weird proportions and things of some of these ancient Easter accounts, the ark is a square box that couldn't float.

It's a round type of basket that might have done this. They all have the idea of a boat, but they're too far from the information, whereas the biblical account gives you exact dimensions of something that is hydrodynamically stable, that will fit what it claims.

It's just not, it's no comparison when it comes to those things.

Jesus’ Teaching About the Days of Noah

Jesus taught about a real flood, and compared it to what the end times will be like. Jesus warned, but of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Because Jesus stood firmly on the historicity of the flood, and likened it to end times, the two go hand in hand. If the Genesis flood never happened, we have no foundation for believing in the rest of what Jesus said, including his second coming.

At least for Christians, Matthew alone should destroy the flood as myth idea. Looking back through history, there are actually hundreds of flood accounts, and the similarity between these accounts and the Genesis flood are uncanny.

Most of them seem to draw from the same common themes, judgment from God, a family chosen to preserve humanity, and loading animals. The early Chinese certainly seemed to have Genesis and the flood in mind when they invented written language.

Together with the Jews, Chinese is one of the earliest and the oldest enduring civilizations. It has 4 ,500 years of unbroken history. Every Chinese word not only expresses a meaning, it captures a history.

Every character tells a story. And that the Chinese people were the descendants of the Tower of Babel. They were the descendants of Noah. Surely they want to record all these global cataclysmic events.

So I'm going to show you that all these global events were documented in Chinese history. Now notice.

Watch, everybody.

God took clay to. He breathed with his mouth on two people. One is a man. Out of his sight came forth a woman and put them in a garden. That's how you got the word garden. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So God stopped them. Prohibited them. Now, to forbid in Chinese is this word jing. Now, how do you write the word jing?

Now, look.

God gave them. God put them in a garden.

You have trees.

He gave them a revelation. God gave them revelation about the tree. Don't you eat it. If you eat it, you will die. Why were there two trees?

Why were there two trees?

Because there was a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of good and evil. Genesis chapter 3 verse 1 now. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

Now,.

What is the word tempter in Chinese? The person who gives temptation.

Is this word.

Look.

Now, how do you write the word more? One guy came to man.

He came to man. That son.

Secretly.

This is the word.

Si means secret.

So this word gui means devil. Where did he come? He came among the trees. Undercover. He came as a tempter.

So,.

He tried to seduce Eve.

Eve, eat the fruit.

Eve, the Bible said, lusted after the fruit,.

Got greedy for it.

How do you write the word.

To lust? Notice, it's again those three over a woman. All the story of creation was recorded in their writings. Now we come to the flood in Genesis chapter 7. So Nomer with his sons, his wife, and his son's wife swam into the ark because of the waters of the flood.

What is the Chinese word.

For a big boat?

Chuan.

How do you write chuan?

Look, look.

How do you write chuan?

Look.

A zhou, a boat.

With eight people.

You say, why eight people in the boat?

Because chapter 7 and verse 7 says, Noah and his wife,.

Two people,.

Three sons, that makes it five, and three daughter-in-laws, that's eight. The first time boat was used, eight people were inside.

Where did the Chinese picture concepts come from? Why do these figures match Genesis history so clearly? Isn't it also interesting that all human history disappears about the same time as the biblical flood?

Even secular school textbooks admit this. This is exactly what we would expect with civilization starting again after the flood. In summary, the Bible clearly lays out a flood account.

That,.

While miraculous, fits into history with much more believability than the mythical accounts. The ark is the only vessel in the ancient flood accounts that could have actually survived the flood. It was seaworthy and watertight, fit dimensions of many similar ships today, and could certainly hold the thousands of animal kinds necessary to blossom into the variety of animal life we see today.

The obvious scars around the world also coincide well with the Bible's account, matching both the mega-sequences in the geologic record and the massive worldwide fossil record, consisting of billions upon billions of animals buried in the muddy catastrophe that killed them.

Looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs? Download the Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.