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Genesis Explained

A brief survey of Genesis chapters 1 - 11 (PART 3)

By Richard Gunther

  

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Examples of flood stories:

Ixtlxochitl (Ex-till-zo-chit-ill), the native historian of the Aztecs, says the first world lasted 1716 years before it was destroyed by a flood. This figure is only 60 years different from the 1656 years which the Bible gives us.

The Chinese character for a large ship is a combination of the figure 8 and the symbol for “mouths” or “persons”. The Ark was a large ship, and it carried 8 people.

The Hottentots of South Africa believe they are descended from “Noh”.

The Hawaiians report a flood from which “Nu-u” and his family were saved.

The Greeks still call themselves the “Hellenes” from their legendary ancestor Hellen, son of Deucalion. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha took refuge in a ship loaded with provisions when Zeus decided to destroy the human race by a flood. A Roman poet (5 BC) describes it this way: “Sea and land have no distinctions. All is sea, but a sea without a shore. Here one man seeks a hill-top in his flight . . . another catches fish trapped in the elm-trees top . . . the wolf swims among the sheep, lions and tigers are borne along by the waves . . . most living things are drowned.”

The Aztecs of Mexico have a story which goes: “When Mankind were overwhelmed with the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Coxcox . . . and a woman called Xochiquetzal, who saved themselves in a little bark, and having afterwards got to land upon a mountain called by them Colhuacan, had there a great many children; ,. . . and these children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted to them languages, but differing so much that they could not understand one another.”

Tablets excavated from Iraq recount the myths of ancient Mesopotamia. They speak of a vanished culture in Sumer and of a king called Gilgamesh. He was renowned for his great wisdom and knowledge. Gilgamesh related the story of a world-wide flood. This was told to him by Utnapishtim, a king of pre-flood civilization and a survivor of the catastrophe. The story relates that Ea, lord of the waters and man's guardian, warned Utnapishtim to “tear down your house and build a boat” and to “take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures.” It goes on to say: “Each side of the deck measured 120 cubits, making a square.” There were seven decks in all. The flood itself was frightening and full of fury. Utnapishtim recounted that “the god of the storm turned daylight to darkness when he smashed the land like a cup.
“ Once the tempest had subsided, Utnapishtim “looked at the face of the world and there was silence, all mankind was returned to clay. The surface of the sea stretched flat as a rooftop . . . on every side was the waste of water.” Utnapishtim loosed a dove who returned finding no place of rest, and then a swallow with the same result. Finally a loosed raven did not return. The boat came to ground on a mountain top and Utnapishtim offered a sacrifice.

The North American Indians have several flood stories. One from the Choctaw tribe tells how, long ago, men became so corrupt that the Great Spirit destroyed them in a flood. Only one man was saved – a prophet whose warnings the people disregarded, and whom the Great Spirit then directed to build a raft from sassafras logs. After many weeks, a small bird guided the prophet to an island where the Great Spirit changed the bird into a beautiful woman who became the wife of the prophet. Their children then repopulated the world.

There are also several Australian Aboriginal stories. One tells how, long ago, there was a flood that covered the mountains so that many of the Nurrumbunguttias, or sprit men and women, were drowned. Others, including Pund-jil, were caught by a whirlwind into the sky. When the waters receded, and the mountains appeared again, and the sea went back to its own place, the son and daughter of pund-jil “went back to earth and became the first of the true men and women who live in the world today.”

Early Jesuits scholars were the first Europeans to gain access to the Chinese 'Book of Knowledge', which is a 4,320 volume collection of writings from ancient times. In one of the books its says: “The earth was shaken to its foundations. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon, and stars changed their motions. The earth fell to pieces and the waters in it bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth.”

Another story, in the folklore of the Bahnars, a primitive tribe of Cochin (China) tells of how the rivers swelled “till the waters reached the sky, and all living beings except two, a brother and a sister, who were saved in a huge chest. They took with them into the chest a pair of every sort of animal . . .”

From Egypt comes a story which tells of an ancient creation god, Tem, who “was responsible for the primeval flood, which covered the entire earth and destroyed all of mankind except those in Tem's boat.”

The Incan people of Peru have a flood tradition: “They say that the water rose above the highest mountains in the world, so that all peoples and all created things perished. No living thing escaped, except a man and a woman, who floated in a box on the face of the waters and so were saved.”

The stories of the Teutonic tribes of Scandinavia vivid and describe terrifying events. One such story portrays the chaos of the world when the mighty wolf Fenrir shook himself and “made the whole world tremble. The aged ash tree Yggdrasil (pictured as the axis of the earth) was shaken from its roots to its topmost branches. Mountains crumbled or split from top to bottom . . .” men “were driven from their hearths and the human race was swept from the surface of the earth. The earth itself was beginning to lose its shape. Already the stars were coming adrift from the sky and falling into the gaping void . . . flames spurted from fissures in the rocks; everywhere there was the hissing of steam. All living things, all plant life, were blotted out . . . and now all the rivers, all the seas rose and overflowed. From every side waves lashed against waves. They swelled and boiled and slowly covered all things. The earth sank beneath the sea . . .” Then: “slowly the earth emerged from the waves. Mountains rose anew . . . men also reappeared . . . enclosed in the wood itself of the ash tree Yggdrasil . . . the ancestors of a future race of men had escaped death.”

There are at least 500 legends of a worldwide Flood, and many of them show remarkable similarities, and many sound like a garbled version of Genesis 6-8. One theory is that these people had local flood experiences and made up similar stories to explain them, but that seems too unlikely, given the odds of so many separate groups devising so many similar stories. The most reasonable explanation is that there was one event, which each group recorded in its own way as they moved away from each other.

Funk and Wagnall's 1950 'Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and legend' under the heading 'Deluge or Flood' says: “ . . . a world cataclysm during which the earth was inundated or submerged by water: a concept found in almost every mythology in the world.”

The Ark, its size and capacity.

The stories of Noah and the Flood have always been disbelieved by skeptics, and by many Christians, but the Bible never suggests anywhere that the account is not true. God, who cannot lie, has never tried to deceive or mislead us. We should approach the Bible with confidence and faith.

The size of the Ark. We have already seen that the wood may have been cypress, and that trees before the Flood grew to enormous size. Alexander the Great used cypress to build a fleet, and the cypress doors of St Peter's Cathedral, Rome, have remained undecayed for about a thousand years.

The Ark was a perfectly reasonable shape, not unlike a modern barge, but it was built to float, not sail. The 'Great Britain' designed by Brunel in 1844 had dimensions of 322 ft by 51ft by 32.5 ft, almost exactly the same proportions as the Ark (length ten times the height, six times the width). Brunel had 1000 years of British shipbuilding experience to draw on – the Ark got it right first time.

The Babylonians too had a flood story, but their boat was a cube, 180ft square. This was a very impractical shape for the open sea, but the story shows how myths can grow. It is much easier to remember a story about a cube, than to relate the exact dimensions, as the true historical account in the Bible does. The Bible record was written down, and kept as an exact record, which is why it agrees so well with real shipbuilding methods.

Could Noah have built the Ark? Obvious yes, because he did, but just how he managed it is not explained. It was longer than a football field, and had a displacement tonnage of about 20,000 tons. It was the largest ship ever built until the Eturia, a Cunard liner, in 1884. Noah probably had the help of hired men, or servants (Job 1:3) It is interesting to notice that ancient civilizations after the Flood specialized in building on a colossal scale. For example, the Great Pyramid of Egypt – more than two million enormous blocks of limestone, each weighing about 2-3 tons. Its four sides, each twice as large as a football field, are set to the points of the compass to an accuracy of an eleventh of one degree. Other pyramids about Egypt are also huge, as well as huge temples. In other parts of the world similar pyramids were built after the Flood, and in Britain Stonehenge and other places had rings of stones, some weighing up to 50 tons each. Post-Flood humans were ingenious and intelligent.

The volume of the Ark. The Ark measured 300 x 50 x 30 cubits (Gen.6:15) which is about 140 x 23 x 13 metres, so its volume was 43,500 metres squared. This comes to 1,54 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad trucks, each of which can hold 240 sheep.

If the animals were kept in cages with an average size of 50 x 50 x 30 centimetres (20 x 20 x 12 inches) the Ark could hold 16,000 animals, and they would occupy only 14.4 railroad trucks. (For a detailed study of this, see John Woodmorappe's book 'Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study', or “The Genesis Flood' by Whitcomb and Morris)

It is high time that certain atheistic skeptics showed some intellectual integrity and actually read the Bible, then they would stop making ridiculous comments about whales flopping up the gangplank, or T.Rex running about the deck. Christian publishers also need to read the Bible, because they too propagate silly ideas about the Ark – commonly picturing it as a small boat with clusters of animals on the deck, or elephants and giraffes sticking their heads out through windows! How can children believe the Bible when publisher ridicule it this way?

The Ark probably carried compressed, concentrated or dried food. Perhaps Noah fed the animals on grain? The volume of food required would have taken up about 15% of the Ark's total volume. Drinking water would have taken up only 9.4% of the space – if Noah needed to store water. It is possible he collected rainwater for most f the voyage. As for the cleaning of cages, it is likely that the floors were slatted or sloped. Perhaps Noah and his family used natural composting methods – vermicomposting – to remove waste? Perhaps he layered the manure and built up a thick bedding using hay or dried grass? Another possibility is that many of the animals simply went into hibernation for the time, waking now and then for a meal and then sleeping until the door opened.

Could the Ark have taken two of every air-breathing creature? The answer is yes, assuming that the original animals were not hybrids, for example it would not be practical to take on board every variety of dog, but just one pair of 'original' dogs would be enough, from which all the different expressions of the dog genes have come. Taken this way we may start by including just the animals which we know of today: mammals 3,500, birds 8,600, reptiles and amphibians 5,500, a total of 17,600 – basic kinds only. If we guess that all present-day animals represent only half the original stock, we have a total of 35,600 animals in the Ark. The average size was about as big as a sheep, so the Ark could have held 125,280 sheep, which is more than three times the capacity needed.

What about the dinosaurs? Skeptics love to throw this one in, thinking that Noah had to cope with full grown dinosaurs on the Ark. The answer is simple – probably only very young ones were allowed in. Baby crocodiles for example, are only the size of a man's hand. Even the largest dinosaurs were probably only the size of large lizards when they were born. Many fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found, and some newly-hatched dinosaurs. Even the T.Rex had to begin as a small, harmless little creature, and he would have been no problem housing and keeping on the Ark.

Noah did not have to go and catch any animals. The Bible says God brought them to him. God did the selecting, and it is sad when movies and books portray Noah chasing them about, or leading them with ropes up the gangplank.

How many types of animal did Noah need to take, and was the Ark large enough? The relevant verses are Gen.6:19,20 and 7:2,3. In the original Hebrew the word for “beast” and “cattle” (behemah) is the same, and refers to land or vertebrate animals in general. The word for “creeping things” (remes) has a number of different meanings in Scripture, but here it probably refers to reptiles. Noah did not need to take sea creatures because they would not necessarily be threatened by a flood. However, turbulent water would cause massive carnage, as seen in the fossil record, and many oceanic species probably did become extinct because of the Flood.

However, if God in His wisdom had decided not to preserve some ocean species, this was none of Noah's business. Noah did not need to take plants either – many would have survived on floating mats of vegetation. Many insects and invertebrates were small enough to have survived on these mats as well. The Flood wiped out all land animals that breathed through nostrils, except those on the Ark (Gen.7:22) Insects do not breathe through nostrils, but through tubes called spiracles, which reach to the sides of their bodies.

There is some dispute over what God means by the “clean animals”(Gen.7:2,3) The vast majority of animals are not clean, according to the Mosaic Law, but the Law had not yet been given. The logical approach is to apply the Law, and allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. Perhaps God had already verbally given some rules about what to eat and what not to eat, and it was not until Moses that these rules were written down?

Storage of food. God told Noah to take with him every sort of food t and store it, for himself and for the animals. We know from the story of Joseph (Gen. 41-42) that the ancient Egyptians had learned how to store grain for at least seven years, and probably grain was the main food for most of the animals in the Ark. However, the Egyptians also knew how to preserve meat – in the World Books Encyclopedia, in an article on 'Food Preservation' there is a picture of a 3000 year old wall painting, which shows fowl being dried and stored in salt-filled jars. The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “The art of drying meat and maize has been known for centuries by the American Indians. Dried fish is a traditional food all over Asia. Japan has long been known for its dried rice, China for its dried eggs.” (It is also interesting to note that some Egyptian granaries held enough grain to make about 700,000 loaves.) once again we have to accept that people who lived before the Flood were very intelligent, and quite up to date with many aspects of science.

Large ships of antiquity.

Each generation produces a fresh crop of skeptics who are legends in their own minds. Some have said “the building of the Ark was impossible, because wooden ships over a certain size cannot be built.” We should not be surprised to find such self-proclaimed experts. The apostle Peter warned us that such people would come along (2Pet.3:3) Noah's Ark has never failed to be the target of skeptics, and the “wooden ship”criticism is a favourite – only when ships were made of steel, they say, has man been able to build ships as large as Noah's. But these 'experts' only display their ignorance of history.

In the writings of Pliny the Elder (Ad 23-79) is a list of ships, giving the inventor/s and the size. The time span covered by Pliny is from about the seventh century BC to about 300 BC. It is easy to see rapid progress in ship design in just these few years:

Double-banked galley invented by the Erythraeans,

Trireme (three banks) invented by Aminocles of Corinth,

Quadrireme (four banks) invented by the Carthaginians,

Galleys with six banks of oars, invented by the Syracusans,

Up to ten banks invented by Alexander the Great,

Up to twelve banks invented by Ptolemy Soter

Up to fifteen banks invented by Demetrius, son of Antigonus,

Up to thirty banks invented by Ptolemy Phildelphus,

Up to forty banks invented by Ptolemy Philopater.

Each advance in the number of banks of rowers represents an advance in technology, and greater size in wooden ships. We should not think of the tiny warships in the movie 'Ben Hur', which had about fifty men each – this was the best Hollywood's budget could afford. The sort of ship you might have seen in Rome's heyday had forty tiers of oars – that's forty levels of rowers. (there has been some dispute over whether these were two banks of 20 each side, or perhaps the oar openings were arranged diagonally and not stacked vertically, but the fact is these were huge ships made of wood.)

We also have a description of a naval battle in the Aegean Sea in 280 BC, recorded in Usher: “When Antigonus, surnamed Gonatas, the son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, heard how Seleucus was murdered, he made an expedition into Macedonia. He planned to get there before Ceraunus could, with his army and naval forces. However, Ceraunus had all Lysimachus' fleet in readiness, and set out and met him in good battle formation at sea. In his navy, ships were sent from Heraclea in Pontus, some of six, some of five tiers of oars. These kinds of ships were called “Aphracta”. The largest ship of all had eight tiers of oars and was called the 'Leonifera'. She was admired by all for her large size and exquisite construction. In her were a hundred oars per tier, so that on each side there were eight hundred rowers which made 1600 in all. On the upper deck or hatches there were 1200 fighting men who were under two special commanders. When the battle began, Ceraunus won and Antigonus was forced to flee with all his navy. In this fight, the ships from Heraclea performed the best and among the Leontifera did the best of all . . .”

We are not given the dimensions of this ship, however the oarsmen on each side would have needed about a metre of space each – about the same as airline seats. For 100 rowers per tier, and allowing for bow and stern, we have a ship 120-150 metres long. The Ark was about 140 metres long.

Plutarch describes the fleet which Demetrius built around 294 BC These were the largest ships built at that time. Although Plutarch does not give dimensions, he writes: “Up until this time, no man had seen a ship of 15 or 16 banks of oars . . . however, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size.”

Athenaeus gives us a detailed description of a very large warship, built by Ptolemy Philopater (about 244-205 BC) It was 130 metres long, 18 metres wide, and 22 metres high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the waterline was 24 metres. It had four steering oars 14 metres long. The oars on the uppermost tier were 18 metres long. The oars were counterbalanced with lead to make them easier to handle. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 undergirders 275 metres long, and the whole ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and sails. It had 4000 rowers and 2,850 men in arms for a total of 7,250 men. This ship, though impressive, was rather impractical, and might have been used to strike fear into an enemy. It had a crew which was about twice as large as a modern aircraft carrier.

Athenaeus also described several other very large ships, one of which had a catapult designed by Archimedes which could hurl a 55 kg stone over 180 metres.

Genesis chapter Seven.

Noah and his family went into the completed Ark. All the animals were in, all the food prepared. The door stood open. No clouds had formed, no rain had fallen – in fact “rain” was not a word Noah knew about, which is why God spoke of a “flood of waters” instead.

We may imagine that because the whole land surface of the world was in one place, word had spread, in the one language everyone spoke, about Noah, and perhaps his ship had become a great eye-sore and monument to stupidity to most people. Not far from the Ark was the garden of Eden, presumably still guarded by the cherubim and the flaming sword. In another direction was the civilization founded by Cain. The sky was probably clear and blue, the climate still mild and warm. A gentle breeze came each afternoon, and a mist rose every morning. In all directions one might see huge trees, an enormous range of living things, dinosaurs wandering about munching on grass and trees, the bellowing of other animals, and birdsong. The world's population, though well dressed and healthy, was morally corrupt. The sacrificial area, where Noah and his family continued to offer animals had a little smoke lingering over it, the sun slowly passed over, and another day merged into the “lesser light” of night. For seven peaceful days the same thing happened, and then the door on the Ark shut. That must have been a significant moment in the world's history. Once shut it would not open again until God allowed it.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Genesis 7:11 (Notice the accuracy, and the historical details)

The Bible contains very few adjectives. This moment, when the Flood began, was utterly awe-inspiring and fantastic. It was like a thunderstorm 10 worse than the worst thunderstorm ever seen, suddenly breaking. The ground heaved, the ocean boiled up through the earth, and from the sky millions of tons of water fell, crashing down, thundering, roaring, shaking everything with its weight. An average thunder cloud storm weighs about 100,000 tons, but this was not a rain storm, this was a dumping of an ocean.

The remainder of Genesis 7 is a description, point by point of the Flood, giving each important stage in its progress. The starting day is given (17th day of second month) and what happened. Compare this with the verse in 8:14 – “in the second month on the 27th day was the earth dried.” The different stages in the Flood are listed as:

Fountains of deep and windows of heaven opened.

Forty days of “rain” - Ark lifted up.

Waters “prevailed exceedingly”

All the “high hills” covered

Waters prevailed 150 days – windows and fountains closed.

God caused a strong wind to blow the waters off the land.

Waters “returned from off the Earth” (8:3)

150 days later the waters were abated – the flow off the land ceased.

“Waters decreased continually” until the tenth month.

Tops of mountains seen on first day of tenth month

Forty days later Noah opened a window in the Ark

Seven days later Noah let a dove go – it returned with a leaf

Seven days later Noah let the dove go again – it did not return

On the first day of the first month Noah removed the covering of the Ark

On the 27th day of the second month the Flood was declared finished.

The Ark came to rest on the “mountains of Ararat” Gen. 8:4

 Æararat: this name is of foreign origin. Strongs says that it means Armenia. Because the King James was translated in the 16th century, there was no mountain available on which to place the Ark, so the Hebrew was translated into 'Ararat' It is quite possible that the Ark is not on the actual mountain known today as 'Ararat', but lies elsewhere – if it still remains. Perhaps the people who emerged from it dismantled it because it would have constituted a good supply of ready-cut wood. At the time the new population emerged, there were no large trees available to build with – the world was stripped clean. Everywhere there would have been seedlings sprouting, and grasses greening the soils, but little else.

David C. Watson's note on “Ararat”: “The word “Ararat” may have come from two Hebrew words, 'yar-yaradh = mount of descent. Two thousand years ago the Armenians used to call it by its Greek name: Apobaterion = Place of Descent in, and Josephus (AD 80) wrote that remains of the Ark could still be seen there in his day. A strong local tradition persists that this was indeed the place where Noah landed. “A Persian legend refers to Ararat as the Cradle of the human race; the Persian name for it is Koh – i -oh, meaning 'Noah's Mountain' “(Encyclopedia Britannica) The nearest modern town is Nakichevan, which is Armenian for 'the first place of descent'.

The sky would have been different - its colour had changed, and the sun and moon would have been brighter and much clearer. Noah may have been surprised at the heat from the sun, and wondered at the sight of clouds. Perhaps also the moon was now pock-marked and damaged, along with other planets, which all seem to have been degraded somehow? It does not seem likely to me that God would create a planet which appears to have been ravaged by a rock-storm. In different places the smoke from volcanoes might have drifted across the sky, and there may have been many earthquakes as the Earth settled. Instead of a gentle climate, there was now wind, and rain. The warm oceans , with their high evaporation rate because of their warmth probably created steady, regular downpours, which fell as snow in the higher regions. Incidentally, the conditions were perfect at that time for an Ice Age, whereas today most people think that a cold Earth will produce one. The fact is, only a warm ocean can produce snowfall of sufficient quantities to form ice sheets.

Genesis chapter Eight.

On the first day of the first month, when Noah was 601 years old, he removed the covering of the Ark - another important date in Man's history. On this day the first man looked at the 'new heavens and the new Earth'. It was only on the 27th day of the second month that God declared the Flood over. I would not be surprised if all the dates given in Genesis are part of a great plan of dates, which God has built into His Word, with other important events occurring on these same days.

God told Noah to go out, with his family and all the animals, and repopulate the planet. Out came the reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals, and began to breed. Soon there were offspring, and as they reproduced they migrated, further and further from the Ark.

The original shape of the Earth's land had been just one large mass, but now it was stretched out over the surface of the planet, as continents, joined by land bridges. Gradually the animals spread across these narrow strips of land and filled the empty lands further and further south with their progeny. As this happened, the Earth's climate gradually changed again, and the snow kept falling. Soon it was forming glaciers, and coming down the newly-formed mountains, which had been pushed up at the termination of the Flood. As the animals moved, they changed, because the environment placed different pressures on them. The wide range of genetic options available within all the animals came into operation. Where the land was cooler, the genes which gave better protection – more hair or feather – allowed the adapted offspring to survive, while maladapted offspring died out. Where the conditions were easier, different genes were lost, and animals degenerated – it is possible that kiwis and other now flightless birds, had wings, but lack of predators meant that wings were not such an asset, so gradually they adapted to life without wings. The proof for this is in the fossil record. There are many living relatives of now dead fossils which show degeneration. Just one example is the chiton:

CHITON COUNTDOWN reported in Nature, vol. 429, p288, 20 May 2004. “Chitons are a type of mollusk with a shell made up of eight plates, surrounded by narrow spicules projecting outwards in a radial pattern. According to Michael Vendrasco, from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, "the fossil evidence suggest that the chiton skeleton has changed little since the first appearance of the class in the Late Cambrian period (about 50 million years before present)." Vendrasco and colleagues have found a fossil chiton with 17 plate shell. Their discovery has helped identify some previously discovered fossils that looked like chitons but could not be identified because the plates in their shells had become separated after they died. The newly discovered fossil had all its shell plates and spicules in place and could be identified as a chiton.

Overlooking the silly evolutionary assumptions about the age of the fossils, what this means is chitons were originally more varied and complex than they are today. Their basic body structure has not changed but their shells have become simpler. This is change, but it is not evolution. The only change has been a decrease in complexity. This fits Genesis, which tells us living creatures were created to multiply after their kind but have degenerated because the world has gone downhill due to man's sin and God's judgement.

It was during the Flood that it seems most likely that 'continental drift' took place. I have seen how, just by using a cushion of air, a very heavy object can be moved. A pump supplies the air, which comes out under the object (a fridge, or crate, or large, heavy box) and as long as the air continues to be caught under the object by some sort of restrictive mat, a child can move the weight about. God may have used the upwelling water rising from under the land to form a sort of cushion to move the continents about on. This would mean they would have to move at great speed, but nothing is impossible to God. At that time the Earth's landmass was not the same as today, with its mountain ranges and deep valleys, it was all quite low, with rolling hills. The Ark floated “15 cubits above” the earth at one point in the Flood (Gen. 7:20). All that sort of landscape came to an end after the Flood. The rapid movement of the land as it split and parted would also account for the fact that the coastlines match, and the types of rock in many of those coastlines also matches – which indicates that they were once joined. Anyone who glances at a world map can see the jig-saw like pattern formed by the landmasses – its just the speed at which they reached this position that is the point of difference. Evolutionists say millions of years, creationists say less than a year.

What sort of speeds would be required? It is roughly 4000 miles from the east coast of South America to the west coast of Africa – two coastlines which were once joined. Travelling at only 1 mile per hour it would take 166 days for these two coastlines to reach their present positions. We are told that “the waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days” (Gen.7:24) that is sufficient time for the land, creeping along at a very slow pace, could have moved to where it is now. This might also account for the fact that in some places the land didn't stop easily, by carried on moving and with its tremendous inertia kept going until two colliding masses pushed a pile of rock upwards – forming mountain ranges. This is why we find fossils so high up, and it also accounts for the fact that a common shape for the sedimentary layers is folding. This folded pattern is another clue to the landmass movement during the Flood.

It is impossible to bend hard, dry rock, and even if we wet the rock, or leave it to soak for a few weeks, it will not bend without cracking and splitting. One of the most interesting bits of evidence for the Flood is the curved, looped and bent shapes in the rock, which MUST have occurred while the rock was still soft and plastic. The newly-formed sediments were relatively horizontal until God shifted the land, and where it collided the soft layers were bent, then they dried out. This is the only way such formations could have formed. If they were bent while dry they would have shattered.

The Earth's tilt.

The great astronomer Edmund Halley (1690) was the first to suggest that one immediate cause of the Flood may have been the earth tipping from perpendicular to the 23.5 degree tilt which it now has. There is no evidence that I know of that a tilt “caused” the Flood, or even that there was no tilt before the Flood . . .but the idea is interesting. Here is certainly enough water on the planet to drown it completely now, should God decide to do so – if the surface was flattened out the oceans would cover everything to a depth of 9000 feet. The “fountains of the deep” may refer to water fountains as well as lava fountains. This would account for such lava formations as the Deccan Plateau, India, where the lava is two miles deep.

During the Flood the water stripped the land and in the turbidity the enormous quantities of materials were sorted and dropped. This eventually formed the so-called “geological column” which evolutionists like to refer to as a record of evolution. In the layers of sediment, now hardened into rock, are the remains of billions of living things, now fossilized, yet out of all these preserved specimens not one undisputed transitional form has ever been found. We say “undisputed” because when the odd 'transitional form' does appear, it usually sits all by itself in the end, without another form to connect it to any other species. For example archaeopteryx, claimed by evolutionists to be a reptile/bird but now seen to be just another bird with some odd features.

In Scotland the 'Old Red Sandstone' rocks from Cromarty to Orkney – about 100 miles – abound in fossils of fish that died a violent death. As Hugh Miller wrote about them: “The figures are contorted, contracted, curved; the tail is bent around to the head; the spines stick out, the fins are spread to the full . . . some terrible catastrophe came so suddenly that its victims were fixed in their attitude of terror and surprise.”

Besides the jumbled fossil beds, several huge dinosaur graveyards have been found, in different parts of the world. The official American handbook on “The Dinosaur Quarry” Utah states that more than 300 of the creatures were evidentially “drowned” in the area.

Dr, Broome, a South African palaeontologist estimates that in the karoo formation, which is 200,000 square miles of rock, there are skeletons of 800,000 MILLION animals, mostly amphibians and reptiles.

Fossils are found all over the world, but fossils are not being formed today. Fossils speak of sudden death, sudden burial, sudden pressure – all features of a massive flood. The same can be said of coal, which is the preserved remains of wood, leaves and bark. In order to produce some of the enormous coal mines of the world, vast amounts of vegetation – millions of trees – had to be swept together and buried before decomposition could recycle the wood into new trees. Only a Flood could have produced the enormous deposits of wood which we now mine, and uses (ironically) to keep our present world warm and powered.

The Ice Age.

In Montreal the fossilized remains of a whale were found quite a distance above sea level (along with many other fossils of land and sea creatures – a common occurrence around the world. But how did the whale come to be on land? It could not have walked there, and it certainly didn't swim – unless there was sea where there is now land. The uniformitarian view, which says that everything happens very slowly, without catastrophe, has a theory that says “a long time ago gradual snowfall, over thousands of years, covered Montreal and the continent it is a part of, until a layer of ice a mile or more thick (!) pressed down on the land and pushed it under the sea. A whale swam to the spot, whereupon the ice melted and the land rose again, very slowly. Somehow the whale covered itself in sediment and preserved itself” . . . and they say creationism takes faith!

There are so many flaws in the uniformitarian story it reads more like a joke than serious science. For starters, in order to preserve a whale, it needs to be covered quickly, before natural decomposition destroys it. This can be said for all other fossils. Secondly, the sheer volume of ice necessary to press a continent down is unbelievable, and thirdly, there is no known mechanism to produce the snowfall sufficient to push a continent down. The fact that the whale fossil is just part of a vast area of other fossils, which are jumbled and smashed together within sedimentary deposits tells us that the whale was only one of millions of creatures which were suddenly buried. No local flood could have produced the enormous number and volume of fossils of which the whale was just one small part.

The idea of an ice age, or several ice ages, was proposed by Louis Agassiz. When Louis Agassiz went hiking in the Swiss mountains in the 1800's, he noticed that as the glaciers moved down the mountain valleys, the stones and rocks carried within the ice scratched the underlying bedrock leaving score marks parallel to the direction of ice flow. Following his emigration to America in 1856 Agassiz, by that time famous as a professor and popularizer of natural history, saw in his travels flat beds of rock with similar scratch marks that usually ran in a north-south direction. He suggested that glaciers had at one time pushed their way down from the north and then retreated, leaving not only the score marks as evidence for their once having been in the area, but also many erratic boulders and stones scattered about at random – left behind by the retreating ice.

The idea of an ice age was accepted cautiously at first and then with enthusiasm, as it provided a mechanism for much of what Lyell had difficulty in otherwise explaining, such as the extinction of so many animals that had by then been discovered as fossils. However, Agassiz saw the ice age as something catastrophic, whereas Lyell accepted it in the usual manner, as a gradual global change of the Earth's climate. He believed heavier snowfalls each season around the earth's poles built up the assumed thickness of ice.

One proposed mechanism for the ice age was that extra volcanic activity had produced a dust cloud in the upper atmosphere that had reduced the sunlight reaching the earth, but no one was sure what caused the extra volcanic activity. The doctrine of gradually increasing snowfall was gradually accepted, and is still believed today. Moreover, not one, but at least four ice ages were eventually proposed, which have now dwindled to roughly one today. To fit the theory there had to be enough weight to push the land under the sea, in order to collect living things which would become fossils.

To lay people the idea of a slowly forming ice age seems reasonable, first because it is set in the remote past where many things become possible, and because there is a lot of ice at the poles, and if scientists say there has been an ice age they are probably right, because science is seen as a reliable source of truth. Yet there are some things which just don't fit the theories of modern science - so-called).

First there is the problem of how all the moisture got into the atmosphere in order to fall as snow. The engine which drives moisture into the sky is HEAT. The volcano dust theory does not work because that would tend to cut off the source of radiant heat, and reduce rather than promote evaporation.

Second, there is evidence that the Earth's polar regions were at one time much warmer than they are today. During his Antarctic expedition in 1907-9 Shackelton found seven seams of coal, each between 3 and 7 feet thick. Also, preserved remains of warm-water coral have been found within the Arctic Circle.

The creationist point of view has been well expressed by Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Oard. There is strong evidence that, following the Flood, for a time ice and snow covered much of Canada and northern USA, northwestern Eurasia, Greenland and Antarctica. Evolutionists believe there were many ice ages but it is more likely they were advance/retreat cycles within a single Ice Age.

Evolutionists find the cause of the Ice Age a mystery. Obviously the climate would need to be colder, but global cooling by itself is not enough, because there would be less evaporation, so less snow. How is it possible to have a cold climate and more evaporation? The creationist and meteorologist Michael Oard proposed that the Ice Age (possibly referred to in Job 37:10 and 38:22) was an aftermath of the Great Flood. At that time “all the fountains of the deep” broke up, much hot water and lava would have poured directly into the oceans.

An interesting sidelight to this is a comment in the Readers Digest Great World Atlas, p145: “One of the most intriguing, unsolved mysteries of the sea is the origin of the flat-topped islands beneath the surface of the Pacific. So far about 1000 have been charted, all over 3000 feet high; geologists expect to have found another 10,000 by the time the ocean has been completely surveyed. The islands are encrusted with coral, proving that at one time they must have been at or near the surface, though today many are more than a mile beneath it. Some scientists believe a violent volcanic upheaval shook the Pacific floor, scattering the sea bed with lava and throwing up the islands, which later sank under their own weight.”

This would have warmed the oceans, increasing evaporation. At the same time, much volcanic ash in the air after the Flood would have blocked out much sunlight, cooling the land . . . and the ice sheets would have built up quickly. (There was never enough ice to press the continents down under the sea! The fossils were already there, but Lyell did not like this idea because it required a sudden worldwide flood disaster.

The ice build up would have lasted several centuries, but eventually the seas cooled, so evaporation decreased, therefore the snow supply also decreased, and as the ash settled out of the atmosphere it allowed sunlight through, so the ice sheets began to melt. Sometimes the ice melt could have produced sudden flash floods, as natural dams broke, for example the Channeled Scablands, in Montana.

In areas worst affected by the Ice Age natural selection would have eliminated creatures lacking genes for survival in the cold. It would favour creatures with existing genes for long fur for insulation; and small ears, tails and trunks (to prevent heat loss from large surface areas) This is not evolution of course, because it generates no new genetic information. Looking specifically at elephants, it is possible that Noah preserved the lives of just two 'basic' elephants (or proboscideans), but very soon after the Flood there could have been mammoths, stegodon, mastodons, and African and Asian varieties.

There are about 50 known woolly mammoth carcasses, only about six of which are complete, but an estimated 50,000 tusks have been found. Man hunted mammoths extensively, as cave paintings show, and there were fierce predators, like the sabre-toothed tiger. Some have claimed that the well-preserved frozen mammoths must have been snap-frozen to about -90 C but this is probably not so, because most frozen mammoths show signs of scavenging and decay. Many years in the ice has caused the flesh to dry out, resulting in a mummy. Some frozen mammoths had partially digested stomach contents, but this doesn't prove snap-freezing. A mammoth was found in mid-western USA where the ground was not even frozen. It is possible that the undigested materials in the mammoth's stomach is caused by the fact that the elephant's stomach is a storage bag, with only a little breakdown of the vegetation by enzymes. Most digestion takes place in the cecum and large intestine with the help of microbes fermenting the food.

How did the mammoth's die? An evolutionary view is that they died by drowning following asphyxiation in mud, or under caved in river banks, or collapsed gully walls. Oard, a creationist is willing to concede that some may have died from flooding caused by ice melt. Mammoths are always found in frozen 'muck', near the surface, and in the mid and high latitudes, mostly in river valleys. Most mammoths are not encased in ice.

The zoological Museum in St.Petersburg, Russia, hold some remarkable complete mammoth carcasses from Siberia. Another carcass was found in Taymyr recently, but no useful DNA was extracted from it – as the 'New Scientist' said “Forget about cloning mammoths. The DNA of this mammoth is so fragmented that the longest sequence has only 100 base pairs.” There are some stories about Mammoths seen in the Eastern Ural mountains and Vladivostok in Russia, as recently as 1918 but these are unverifiable. There is photographic proof that some genes for characteristic mammoth features have survived, in some Nepalese elephants – the high, domed head for example.

A mammoth found in 1901, on the banks of the Beresovka River in northeastern Siberia, sixty miles inside the Arctic Circle was analyzed. In its stomach were found the remains of more than fifty varieties of herbs, grasses and mosses, some of which only grow in temperate climates. The buttercup seeds that were found will grow only when the temperature is well above 40 deg F. This shows that at the time of death, the climate in the polar area was warm possibly even sub-tropical. The change from warm to cold must have been rapid – but not instant – in order to trap and kill so many creatures.

In the northern wastes of northern Siberia and Alaska there are vast graveyards consisting of the carcasses and bones of many different kinds of animal - wolves, bears, elephants, rhinoceroses and the woolly mammoths with their tusks. Since Roman times ivory 'mining' has been a steady and lucrative trade. The Chinese, renowned for their ivory carving, use mammoth tusks from Siberia – it is estimated that northern Siberia has provided more than half the world's ivory for such items as billiard balls and piano keys.

The creationist view makes sense of the many facts which are a jumble of mysteries to evolutionists. Briefly, the creationist view says: immediately after the Great Flood the animals from the ark began to spread outwards to all quarters, making it to the lands around the Arctic circle and beyond, then the snows began to fall. Millions of creatures, thriving in the lush, green world, were caught and frozen before they could migrate further south. Many extinctions occurred. Man also hunted and killed many creatures, including most of the dinosaurs. The Ice Age began, and as the ice sheets grew and expanded south, they 'pushed' the human populations ahead of them, forcing them to populate the further reaches of the land masses. Clever, intelligent people set up various civilizations and adapted to the changing environment, some built huge cities, others were more nomadic, some built boats and explored the seas, others remain in tents. From these initial migrations we have the many different cultures of the world.

As soon as Noah emerged from the Ark, he took the animals he had reserved for sacrifice, and offered them up to God. The second age of Man began with a blood sacrifice, just as the first age did. The altar Noah built is the first one mentioned in the Bible. It meant that the animal offered was elevated from the ground – just as Jesus was “lifted up” on the cross. (John 8:28) When Noah made the offering “the Lord smelled a sweet savour” - God does not have a nose to smell with, so this is an expression which means that God acknowledged, with delight, the right attitude displayed by Noah.

God made a covenant with Noah at this point, promising to never destroy the Earth with a Flood ever again. On its simplest level this must have been a great consolation, because the sight of heavy, dark storm clouds and lightning were probably a frightening sight to people fresh from a similar sight not long before that. But the reason why God promised not to destroy the Earth again is rather sad - “for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.” (8:21) God knew that destroying the Earth would not change the heart of Man, and if He destroyed Man a thousand times, the survivors would be just the same every time. This is why the Gospel, and the “new birth” are the only and best way of changing sinful Man – instead of requiring of Man obedience in Man's own strength, God can now live inside a believer and impart that strength from within. “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Luke 24:49

The location of the Ark after the Flood was very strategic.

The Ark could have come to rest anywhere, on any area of land, but it stopped specifically on “the mountains (plural) of Ararat.” On a map this places the location of the Ark in a position very central to all the major land masses, but not directly at the north pole. This allowed for a land bridge through what is now the Bering Strait to allow the movement of land creatures through to North America while the polar cap began to grow. It was also within easy reach of all the oceans. It was east of the Black sea, west of the Caspian Sea, and to the south were the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, to the southeast was the Persian Gulf, to the southwest was the Mediterranean Sea, and further south the Red Sea. Viewed from above, it is possible to count five spokes of land going outwards from the region. If one uses a string on a globe, and places one end at the south tips of the continents and up to the north pole then down to the lowest edge of a land mass on the other side the lines come very close to the region of Ararat, which places Ararat at the hub. It was from this region that God intended the people to radiate outwards and southwards. It was the most convenient place to begin these migrations from.

The beginning of seasons. This may indicate that the Earth was now tilted, because it is the tilt which causes the seasons. There were no seasons before the Flood, as well as no rain, but now the protective shield of water was gone, and the land masses were shifted, causing all sorts of new currents in the water and air. Along with the seasons there are other factors involved. Mountain ranges, new to the planet, now pushed air upwards, and new situations occurred in which snow, wind, tornados, hurricanes and other meteorological effects were produced. The environment was hostile, and all life had to take measures to survive. There were also many landlocked areas of sea-water (which caused local disturbances in the weather), such as the Caspian Sea, which is still drying up today, and Lake Van, which is 5900 feet above sea level, and Lake Urmia 4300 ft above sea level. The huge Gobi Desert in Central Asia has lakes which are “only a small fraction of the size they once were” (Encyclopedia Brittanica) In America the Great Salt Lake and its nearby desert tell the same story, so does Lake Titicaca in the Andes at 12,500 feet above sea level and covering more than 300 square miles. The whole world was drying out – yet at the end of the Flood it was quite green – for example, here is a description of Egypt, which is now dry and sandy: “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as you come unto Zoar.” Genesis 13:10

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Gen.8:22

“earth” - erets – the planet Earth.

“seedtime” - zerae – fruiting, planting, sowing

“harvest” - qatsiyr – severing, cropping, reaping

“cold” - qor – chilling

“heat” - chom – to be hot

“summer' – qayits – dry season

“winter” - choreph – the crop gathered

There is drought, flood, famine, and stress on the environment somewhere every day, yet through it all the cycle of seeding and harvest goes on, and the weather cycles repeat themselves endlessly (See Ecclesiastes 1) God's great bounty is clearly seen in the way one seed can produce many seeds, and one fruit stone can produce a tree which, in its life time can yield hundreds of tons of fruit. Britain, for example, has about half its land area in agriculture, yet from that half comes about 30 million tons of wheat, barley, oats, beet, potatoes, hay and so on, and the land supports some 13 million cattle and 30 million sheep. The total weight of all this food is millions of tons per year, yet the land remains year after year, producing just as much each year.

Genesis chapter Nine.

God told Noah and the animals to come out of the Ark – Noah waited patiently for God to call him out. Noah did not make the decision himself – as we should wait on God for His leading and not 'run ahead' of Him. The life in the Ark was told to “replenish” or fill the Earth, and it did this, by a succession of migratory waves, moving outwards from the place of origin. Sea levels began to drop as snow fell and ice formed in the poles, but after the Ice Age sea levels went up again, at times isolating and cutting off life, which then adapted to the isolation, producing varieties of the parent stock. Darwin's finches are a good case in point – these are one kind of finch, but they have, through time, developed different beaks, as the environment has 'selected out' certain genes. All the finches can interbreed, which shows they are one species, but the variety within the species has misled some people into thinking the finches are evolving into different species – whereas the truth is they demonstrate God's goodness, in giving living things the ability to adapt to a changing environment.

Humans and Animals

God told Noah, and through him all humans, that there is a specific difference between them and animals. Some religions forbid the killing or eating of any creature, because they believe all living things have souls, and that humans can be 're-born' as animals, but the Bible makes such a clear distinction between humans and animals there is no room for such silly beliefs. Animals have an instinctive fear of Man, which has helped to preserve their lives – if animals did not shy away from humans, some humans would exploit this and destroy everything in their path. God has given animals a 'fighting chance' at least. “Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” (Gen.8:3) This food law was modified in the time of Moses, where God made many exceptions (Lev.7:22-27 – eat no blood or fat, Lev.11:1-47 – certain animals not to be eaten, and certain unhygienic practices to be avoided)

Having allowed Man to eat meat, God then laid down the law for murder. Man, said God, was made in God's image, so any person or creature which kills Man must in turn be put to death. Once again the principle of Man's ascendancy over all other creatures is asserted – Man is not equal to the animals, and human life must be valued far above all animal life.

The Rainbow.

Genesis 9:9. God indicates to Noah that the rainbow is a sign that the Earth will never again be destroyed with a Flood. This was an “everlasting covenant” made between God and Man and the Earth. The rainbow also indicates how much the world had changed. Rainbows are caused by sunlight passing through drops of water, which act as prisms, splitting the light into its seven colours. Before the Flood there was no rain, so no rainbows. As a sign of God's promise, the rainbow would hardly be relevant if there was rain before the Flood. The rainbow is also evidence that the Flood was world-wide, because if it had been a local flood, only the people around Ararat would have found it comforting – other countries would not see it as anything out of the ordinary. The rainbow is universal, therefore the promise must be universal too.

The rainbow also reminds us of Jesus: “And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” Revelation 4:3

“And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” Revelation 10:1

Science has not yet discovered all the wonders of light. Just the seven colours which humans can see is a remarkable area for study, but there are many other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum which hold endless mysteries. For example just what is light? What is electromagnetism? How does light travel so fast? Quantum physics is beginning to discover a whole new area of mysterious properties related to light, and there will be many more discoveries, as yet unnamed.

The Flood and the ages of Trees.

In the White Mountains of California, just north of Death Valley, is possibly the oldest living organism, a Bristlecone Pine tree, called 'Methuselah', because of its age. This has been estimated at 4,723 years, from counting the growth rings. This tree would have been over 2000 years old when Jesus was living in Nazareth.

'Methuselah' age is close to the Biblical age of the Flood, which occurred about 4500 years ago. Logically, there should be no trees alive on Earth today which are older than the flood, because God's judgement destroyed all air-breathing land vertebrates, and the evidence is seen in the massive layers of sedimentary rock which cover the Earth's surface – the Flood would have ensured that no trees remained alive at that time – so no tree growing today could have started growing until after the Flood.

It is normally assumed that for each year of growth one growth ring will appear, but in a moist, warm year a second ring can be added. Research has actually shown this with the Bristlecone seedlings. By supplementing the 'normal' winter day with a heat lamp, extra rings were grown. Evolutionists have tried to find evidence for trees older than the Biblical dates, and so it should not surprise us to hear of some claims that a Bristlecone was dated at 9000 years. The fact is, this date was derived from pieces of dead trees, and fossil fragments, plus some living trees. The bottom line is, when living trees are tested, they never yield an age of 9000 years.

 

Some other living trees have been claimed to be older than 10,000 years, but none of these claims were made based on counting the growth rings. For example the Huon Pine, a native conifer of Tasmania, in 1995 came into international headlines. It was claimed that there were Huon pines as old as 30,000 to 40,000 years, but these dates were not based on counting the growth rings, but on the number of trees in the stand. All the trees were genetically identical, which meant they came from one original tree, and an estimate was made based on the assumed ages of each generation of tree descended from the original tree. No Huon Pine has ever been dated as more than 3,500 years, based on actual growth rings, and never will be, because the first Huon Pines began to grow after the Flood.

Another assumption which people often make is to think that because a tree is very big, it must therefore be very old. For example, trees like the 'General Sherman', which can be found in California's Sequoia National Park. It is 83.8 metres high (275 ft.) and 31 metres in circumference (102 ft.) Its total bulk is more than ten times that of a Blue Whale. General Sherman was originally thought to be more than 6000 years old, but this has been revised back to 2,150 years. Mr. Nate Stephenson of the US Geological Survey said: “The new Sherman tree age estimate could still be off by centuries.” He also said: “Most of the largest sequoias are really just middle-aged, but they're still growing like teenagers. Each years (the Sherman) adds enough wood to make a tree one foot (30 centimetres) in diameter and more than 100 feet (30 metres) tall. The relative youth of the largest trees comes as something of a surprise.”

Old trees and the evolutionist's dilemma. The fact is, there are very 'ancient' trees in the world today, many of them thousands of years old. These trees are so healthy and strong they could easily continue to grow for several more thousands of years, yet there are none which are older than about 4,000 years. Why is this? Surely, if trees can really grow for say 10,000 years, where are these very old trees? The evidence points to a time somewhere in the past when all the oldest trees in the world must have started growing. Because there are no trees older than 4,500 years, these trees must have started growing at about the same time, a time which coincides with the end of the Flood.

“And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Genesis 9:18,19

“Noah” means 'rest',

“Shem” means 'renown' or 'honour',

“Ham” means 'swarthy, dark coloured', or 'hot',

“Japheth” means 'the extender' or 'fair'.

Ham's crime against his father. Genesis 9:20-27

Soon after Noah left the ark he began to grow grapes, or literally the Hebrew means he became “a man of the ground”, usually translated “husbandman”, and soon the seasons turned and the grapes were ready to tread down. Wine was produced and Noah became drunk. His son Ham is called “the father of Canaan” and it was Ham who committed some unspecified crime on his father, which caused Noah to prophetically curse Ham. Just what Ham did is a mystery. All we are told is he “saw the nakedness of his father”, and when Shem and Japheth were told – by ham himself, they “covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not the nakedness of their father.” A little more is given: “Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.” but again we are not told exactly what happened.

The expression “uncover the nakedness” occurs many times in Leviticus. It means to have sexual relations with. At the top of the list in Leviticus is the whole principle in one verse: “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 18:6) There are more laws on the same theme in Lev.20. The same thought is carried through the O.T. And is applied in the spiritual sense – spiritual adultery, true with false, intermingling of true worship with false – and Habakkuk says: “Woe unto him that gives his neighbour drink, that puts thy bottle to him, and makes him drunken also, that you may look on their nakedness!” Habakkuk 2:15

Noah's words are prophetic. He cursed Ham, but in Ham he also cursed Ham's descendants and foretold that they would be servants to the other two brothers and their descendants. Shem would become great and wealthy, Japheth would dwell in Shem's domain, and Ham would be their servant and slave (“servant of servants”)

Notice how different the Bible story is to the assumed history of the world, fabricated by evolutionists. The first industry on Earth after the Flood was viticulture (grape-growing) – not thousands of years of hunter-gatherer existence. Noah settled close to his vines and built a farm. He was an intelligent man with great wisdom, not some primitive wanderer, scrounging for food wherever he travelled, and he was definitely not a cave-man. But there is more in the Bible about grapes which totally contradicts Man's assumptions. Jesus said “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark.” Matthew 24:38 Note that before the Flood the art of growing grapes and fermenting wine was already well known. (Perhaps Noah took some cuttings and kept them safe during his time in the Ark?)

Ham and the slave trade. About 200-300 years ago the Slave Trade was at its height in the British Empire and the United States. Some Christians, such as William Wilberforce and John Newton tried to stop it, but other Christians argued that it was God's will that the African races should be slaves because they are descended from Ham. This was a bad argument because Noah did not curse Ham, but only his youngest son Canaan – see Genesis 10:6.

When we read a bit further on in Genesis chapter 10 we see that the descendants of Ham were Canaanites (15-20), who lived in Palestine hundreds of years later. Some of these children of Ham built Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities which were destroyed in Lot's day – these were people renowned for their sexual impurity – just like their father Ham. Those who remained were not much better. They became the tribes (Amorites, etc) whom Joshua and the Israelites (Shem's descendants) conquered and made into servants and slaves. Moses warned Israel about the evil customs of the surrounding nations (i.e. Deut.12:31) and modern archaeologists have confirmed that the sexual excesses were quite revolting. Those who survived Israel's sword became “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” (Joshua 9:23)

Another branch of the Canaanite tribes descended from Ham were known as the Phoenicians, who built fine ships, and were probably the best sailors in the world. They founded the great city of Carthage, which produced many fine soldiers like Hannibal. The Carthaginians worshipped Baal and sacrificed babies to him when things went wrong. For this hideous cruelty God punished Carthage by bringing in the armies of Rome. They captured the city in 146 BC and thousands of Carthaginians were taken prisoner and made intoslaves – the Phoenicians never rose to power again.

Noah lived after the flood 350 years, and died at the age of 950.

Genesis chapter Ten.

The names of the different tribes and descendants of Noah's three sons is given. There are so many different interpretations of who these tribal names represent, and which nations came from them, that it is probably impossible to have a definitive statement, but one thing is clear: all the people in the world come from one family. There is no room for pride. No race can boast of its superiority – Hitler was wrong about the so-called “Aryan race”, the Japanese were not descended from the sun, and no culture can claim to be any better than any other, because all humans are, on average, exactly the same. Another point is that all people can intermarry. This proves that all humans are of the same genetic stock. The myth about 'blacks' being inferior to 'whites' is destroyed by intermarriage.

On the other hand, the human race is divided into three clearly defined types – Caucasoid (mostly Europeans), Mongoloid (Chinese, Japanese, etc) and Negroid (mostly Africans). The Hutchinson Encyclopedia says: “Race is a term sometimes applied to a physically distinctive group of people, on the basis of their differences from other groups in skin colour, head shape, hair type, and physique. . . . scientific studies have produced no proof of definite genetic racial divisions. Many anthropologists today, therefore, completely reject the concept of race, and social scientists tend to prefer the term ethnic group.” It would be risky to say exactly which branch of the human race goes back to which son of Noah, but the fact remains that there are three divisions.

Nimrod. (Gen.10:8-11)

Nimrod was a descendant of Cush, (a descendant of Ham). He is called “a mighty hunter before the Lord” which is not a compliment because he was a hunter of men. He was the founder of Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh. From him came the founding of four other cities: Asshur, Nineveh, Rehoboth and Calah. Hislop's book 'The Two Babylons', has this comment: “Ninus, the most ancient of Assyrian kings mentioned in history, performed great actions. Being naturally of a warlike disposition, and ambitious of glory that results from valour, he armed a considerable number of young men that were brave and vigorous like himself, trained them up in laborious exercises and hardships, and by that means accustomed them to bear the fatigues of war, and to face dangers with intrepidity.” This is a quote from a text written by Trogus Pompeius, vol.2 p615.

Nimrod is said to have been “a mighty one” -  gibbor: powerful; by implication, warrior, tyrant, champion, chief, giant, man, mighty (man, one), strong (man), valiant man.

“These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.” Last verse of chapter 10. This verse is linked to the first verse in the next chapter.

Genesis chapter Eleven.

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” Genesis 11:1 (This verse seems to be repeated the same thing, but it probably means “one pronunciation and one language”)

At this time in history, everyone spoke the same language. This has nothing to do with a language evolving, and becoming more complex. The fact that humans speak a language is yet another piece of evidence which points to creation. Since Darwin wrote “The Descent of Man” about 100 years ago, scientists have been searching for evidence to show that our modern languages are related to the grunts and screeches made by chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys. No such link has been found. This is because language does not evolve, in the sense that it does not start as a primitive number of sounds and gradually become more complex. Simply put, the only way a human can learn a language is from another human who already speaks one. This means language must have started already fully functioning right from the start, otherwise no baby would be able to learn a language as it grew up.

For about fifty years after Darwin, many scientists were very bold with their theories as to how language evolved, but as time went on more research was done in what was assumed to be 'primitive' languages, and the theories were gradually dropped. Modern writers usually avoid the subject, or confess they know very little about it, or they repeat the same old assumptions which still have no direct evidence to support them. For example Professor W.W Fletcher's book “Modern Man Looks at Evolution” (1974) He mentions the word “speech” only once, on page 139, and avoids discussing it. He writes: “Perhaps we shall never know when speech began.” and “It is too early yet to make useful speculations about what such an early language might have been like” and “It is not clear how the capacity for creative speech arose . . .” yet he still insists “It is reasonable to suppose that this power (of speech) did not appear fully formed, but evolved gradually like any other physical trait.” How blind is the faith of evolutionists!

 

In the 1950s and 60s experiments were made to see whether translation from one language to another could be done by machine. The experiment was abandoned when it was discovered that, in order to contain all the information required, the computer would have to be fantastically large – yet a bi-lingual person has no difficulty in storing all this information inside on little head, and many people can store more than two.

The Hutchinson Encyclopedia says: “Natural human language has a neurological basis centered on the left hemisphere of the brain . . .” “Linguists estimate there may be 4000 to 5000 distinct languages in the world. The number is uncertain because it is not always easy to establish whether a speech form is a distinct language or a dialect of another language . . .”

The Tower of Babel

The people of the new world decided to build a tower, which, they said, “whose top may reach unto heaven”. Here we have the record of a massive, highly complex building project involving the entire human race. Thousands of workers were employed and as the whole project involved the focus of many very intelligent people, it was sure to be a success. But were they trying to literally “reach the heavens”? No. The Hebrew means “a tower whose top is into heaven”. This is exactly what the Mesopotamian ziggurat temple towers were for. The top compartment represented heaven. The inner walls, in all probability, were decorated with blue glazed tile, the sun, moon and the five known planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) lined up along the plane of the zodiac. In the centre of the room would be their 'god', seated upon a throne. Nebuchadnezzar later rebuilt such a tower in Babylon, which the Sumerians had called “E-Temen-an-ki” which means “the building of the foundation-platform of heaven and earth”. The pyramids of Egypt and, much later, the great Mayan temples of Central America, reflected the design of the original Tower of Babel.

Bullinger notes: “and its top with the heavens” i.e. With the Zodiac depicted on it, as in the ancient temples of Dendera and Esne, in Egypt.

As John Whitcomb says: “This was not an innocent, scientifically naïve, primitive effort to reach the highest heaven. It was, instead, a brilliant but blasphemous effort to dismiss forever the God who had commanded Noah and his three sons after the Flood to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth” (Gen. 9:1) Instead of honouring His name they said “Let us build ourselves a city . . . and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” (Gen. 11:4) This is where Nimrod comes in, as the leader of this rebellion.

“Let us go down . . . And the Lord came down to see . . .” Gen. 11:5

These words do not signify that God moved from one level of space to anther, but that He condescended to observe Man. The “us” refers to the Trinity, because God is ONE, yet God is also THREE – a mystery to our finite minds, but nevertheless taught in the Word, so we must take it by faith, even though we cannot fully comprehend it. A demonstration of how God “came down” is seen in the incarnation, and the life of Jesus. He was “made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death” (Heb.2:9)

The entire enterprise reeked with human pride and arrogance. Satan almost succeeded in completely dominating mankind again, as he had done at the fall of Adam and Eve, and as he had done before the Flood. God knew that if Mankind followed the course it had chosen, the consequences would be unspeakably evil. God speaks describes it this way : “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” By this God signified how dreadful the future looked, if Man was left to run wild.

The majestic, glorious, magnificent, sovereign and triune God of the universe views the rising tower, while the Earth itself moves through the limitless reaches of the universe, and on this tiny speck of dirt, this sub-atomic particle of matter, an organism called man presumes to shakes its tiny, tiny fist at Him. God pronounces judgement, but He does so in mercy and love.

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” Genesis 11:7

“Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:9

balal: a primitive root; to overflow; by implication to mix; mingle.

The response of God was full of Grace. He could have wiped the people out, but He had great long-term plans, and He was determined to see them through, in spite of Man's reluctance to be agreeable. Perhaps a parallel could be made with the InterNet today - it serves a vast audience of English-speaking people. From its inception it provided a conduit, or channel for demonic perversions, filth and obscenity, which has poured out and polluted the minds of millions If God intervened and caused the 300 million users of the InterNet to suddenly have a different language, Satan's activity would be stopped in its tracks, and it would be years before a similar network was in action again.

Evolutionary thinking says that languages began very simple and gradually developed into more and more complicated forms, but the opposite is usually the case. The oldest written languages are in fact the most difficult and the most complicated. For example, ancient Chinese is harder than modern Chinese, ancient Greek is harder than modern Greek. One of the most difficult of all languages is Sanskrit, which goes back to 1500 BC. Each verb has about 500 parts. Chinese writing goes back to 2000 BC and has 6000 characters, or letters – compare this with a mere 26 in English.

Languages spoken by 'primitive' people are often more complex than those spoken by 'civilized' people, i.e. The Eskimos use 63 forms of the present tense, and their 'simple' nouns have 252 inflections (changed endings of words, i.e he-him, she-her, they-them) In English we have no inflection of nouns, only of pronouns. Some Bantu languages have 20 classes of noun, and every adjective must agree with the noun it modifies. Nowhere in the world is there any group of humans that do not have a fully-developed, highly complex, and accurately-descriptive language – even if they happen to also use stone tools.

There are about 50 distinct language families in the world, which seem to bear no relation to each other. Some of them have subdivided into scores of other languages, for example French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish all go back to Latin. Others, like the Basque language which is spoken only in the Pyrenees, appear to have no 'ancestor' and no 'descendants'. A book by George Steiner, 'After Babel' concludes that all attempts to reconstruct the original language, from which all other languages derived, have completely failed – and yet anthropologists agree that all humans belong to ONE race. How is it that, if we all derive from the same stock, we speak so many different and unique in their own way, languages? Shouldn't all languages have some basic common set of vocabulary?

Another interesting point is that all humans can learn any one else's language. Despite the many strange and fascinating sounds some languages include, the human brain is so wired it can learn any set of sounds, tones, clicks or hisses. This despite the enormous complexity of any given language – a medium size dictionary contains about 75,000 words. Each word is not just a sound but also has a meaning, or several meanings, and an educated person has no difficulty in combining these words at the rate of about 120 per minute. There are billions and billions of possible combinations for each of the 75,000 words, yet two people can carry on a relaxed conversation with hundreds of words without seeming to think about it.

Peleg.

“And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. Genesis 10:25

A descendant of Shem named Peleg, whose name can mean 'earthquake' and comes from a root meaning 'stream, or river' was alive when God judged the people of Babel. Bullinger notes that the word “divided” means “divided for an inheritance”.

Peleg was alive four generations after Noah. Some people have suggested that “for in his days was the earth divided” refers to the division of the continents, but this could not have been the case because the resulting geological violence would have cause a second global catastrophe – like the Flood all over again. Any continental separation had to have happened during the Flood. The traditional interpretation, which seems more reasonable, relates this verse to the division of people/nations at the Tower of Babel event in Genesis 11. The Hebrew word for “earth” is erets, which is a word with several meanings. Just as we say today “the land of Israel” we can mean the people, the nation or the actual land. According to Bible chronology deduced by Archbishop Ussher, the Flood occurred in 2349 to 2348 BC, and Peleg was born in 2247 BC, about a hundred years later.

Secular writings support this date. In the year 331 BC, after Alexander the Great had defeated Darius at Gaugmela near Arbela, he journeyed to Babylon. Here he received 1903 years worth of astronomical observations from the Chaldeans, which they claimed dated back to the founding of Babylon. If this was so, then that would place the founding of Babylon in 2234 BC, or about 13 years after the birth of Peleg. This was recorded in the sixth book of 'De Caelo' (= About the Heavens), by Simplicius,   Latin writer in the 6th century BC.

The Byzantine chronicler Constantinus Manasses, who died in 1187 AD, wrote that the Egyptian state lasted 1663 years. If this number is correct, then counting backward from the time that Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt in 526 BC, we arrive at 2188 BC for the founding of Egypt, about 60 years after the birth of Peleg. About this time Mizraim, the son of Ham, led his colony into Egypt. This is why the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim and sometimes it is also called 'the land of Ham'.

According to the 4th century bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea, Egialeus, king of the Greek city of Sicyon, west of Corinth in Peloponnesesus, began his reign in 2089 BC, 1313 years before the first Olympiad in 776 BC. If Eusebius is correct, then this king started to reign about 160 years after the birth of Peleg.

Note that Babylon, Egypt and Greece each spoke a different language. These ancient historians have unwittingly confirmed the extreme accuracy of the Biblical genealogies. The Tower of Babel would have had to occur before the founding of these other kingdoms. Babel, being in the same region “eastwards of the Tower” would have been one of the earliest kingdoms Of the other kingdoms, the ones most distant from the Tower would have been slightly later in their founding. This is exactly what the ancient historians have described. First came Babylon, then Egypt, then Greece. This also tells us something of human nature too. Humans are basically lazy, so they would have tended to move only as far as they needed to  live in peace, however, population pressure, military force, or the desire to search for 'greener pastures' would have induced them to move further and further.

Although secular historians ignore the Bible account of Babel and the Flood, they assume civilizations started in the Middle East, likely near Babylon, and spread out slowly from there. However, because of their built-in assumptions, they use a much earlier time frame. It would not do for secular experts to confirm the Bible.

An interesting piece of information comes from Manetho, who recorded the history of Egypt in the third century BC. He wrote that the Tower of Babel occurred five years after the birth of Peleg. If this was so, then this would confirm that the migrations recorded in Genesis 10 occurred over a period of time, for the upcoming leaders of these national groups would have been very young children when the confusion of languages occurred. Unfortunately Manetho accepted many of the fairy tales of Egypt when he constructed his chronology of Egypt, however he still linked the Babel incident with Peleg's birth.

Some postFlood ages are given, following the line of Shem:

Shem 600

Arphaxad 438

Salah 433

Eber 464

Peleg 239

Reu 269

Serug 280

Nahor 148

Terah begat his three boys when he was 70, and died, apparently, when he was 275. This means he could have been 180 years old before he went to live in Haran, and probably stayed there about 25 years. (See Acts 7:1-5)

The remainder of chapter 11 takes us from Serug, to Nahor, who begat Terah, who begat Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran begat Lot. Abram, the youngest of the three boys, grew up and married Sarai, while Nahor married Milcah. Haran died, then Terah took Abram and Lot, left the city of Ur, and headed for Canaan, but they came to a place called Haran, where Terah died. As you can see, the age limit was dropping from the average of about 900, and has continued to drop.

Recent excavations have unearthed quite a lot about Ur. As Bullinger says “It was a city of great pretensions; recent excavations show luxury and attainments.”

From this point on follows a more detailed history of Abram and Sarai, their travels, and their offspring, through Isaac and Jacob. The story ends with the blessings on the tribes of Jacob, now named Israel. As always everything in the bible is rooted in history, so the two are inseparable. Unlike most other religious books, the Bible bases everything it teaches within the framework of real-time history, and if we cannot trust one we cannot trust the other.

CONCLUSIONS

The Bible is true and accurate, whether secular reconstructions of history agree with it or not. No amount of secular opinion can alter God's Word. We should always start with the Bible as our base of truth, and then see how it compares with secular research, not try to fit secular reasonings into the Bible account.

The Bible and chronology. There are three errors common in Biblical chronology. First the 'low' view, which ignores the chronological data completely, and assumes it is not accurate. Second the 'short' view, which shortens Bible dates to fit with secular dates, and Third the 'long' view, which lengthens Bible dates to fit with secular dates. The best view is to accept the dates as they stand and wait for secular dates to catch up

Merrill F. Unger was wrong when he gave his dates to Egypt and Babylon. In his book 'Archaeology and the ld testament' (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1954) on page 84 he states that Egypt dates back to about 5000 BC. On page 97 he states that Susa near Babylon dates back to about 4000 BC. The Bible says the Flood occurred in 2349 BC, so those two civilizations must have been treading water a long time! Unger is a well-respected and conservative Bible scholar, yet he contradicts the Bible. This shows us how careful we must be not to be seduced by the unbelieving, secular scholars.

On the positive side, Babel was God's roadblock to Satan. It was a wonderful solution to the problem of centralized evil government. On the negative side, the fact that the world has many languages has been a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. However, about 3000 years later God provided a way through, in the form of the Roman Empire, which had facilitated the widespread use of Greek. When the Church was born, on the Day of Pentecost, the Gospel was able to reach millions of people in a relatively short time (Col.1:23). But the Gospel was not confined to Greek. Jesus commanded Christians to “make disciples of ALL nations” (Mat.28:19) Just ten days after His Ascension, a great linguistic miracle happened: There were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And . . . they were each one hearing (the Apostles) speak in their own language” (Acts 2:5-6) Not just Greek, but over a dozen other languages are listed (v. 9-11) In the days of the Apostles thousands of people from many lands were united for many months “continuing with one mind . . . and continually devoting themselves to the Apostle's doctrine.” (Acts 2:42-46) In Revelation 7:9,10 we have a picture of all the nations speaking with one language to praise God. The curse of Babel, the division (peleg) of peoples, the separation of nations, and the confusion of tongues, will be over for ever. God's wisdom and love will have taken over and the damage caused by sin will be finished.

REFERENCES

The notes and quotes for this study were gathered from a very wide range of books. First I would like to acknowledge the Creation magazines, and their excellent writers.

I also acknowledge the following:

Bullinger's 'Companion Bible' which sometimes has very useful comments, but is not always correct, so great caution must be exercised.

Hutchinsons Encyclopedia, Third Edition.

'The Two Babylons' by Alexander Hislop, Fourth Edition.

Readers Digest Great World Atlas

Philip's Atlas of the World, in Ass. with the Nat. Geog. Soc.

'Myths and Miracles' by David C. Watson

The 'New Scientist' magazine, although evolution based and secular, still provides many good snippets of truth.

Strong's Analytical Concordance, for word derivations and root meanings, in Hebrew and Greek.

John Mackay, for his excellent creationist comments and observations.

Various books on dinosaurs and secular books and magazines, on topics such as sedimentary rock formation, coal and oil deposition, folding of rock strata and so on.

'In the Minds of Men' by Ian T. Taylor

Friends who have supplied the odd helpful comment or question.

 

 

 Continued - Part Three

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