Archaeology

Noah’s Ark and Societal Records

One of the strongest evidences for the global Flood that annihilated all the people on Earth except for Noah and his family has been the presence of flood legends in the folklore of people groups from around the world. And the stories are all so similar. Local geography and cultural aspects may be present, but they all seem to be telling the same story.
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Noah’s Ark and Societal Records

Article#: 1496

Evolutionists are once again perplexed.  New DNA research declares that, as a result of harmful and irreversible mutations, each new generation becomes progressively less intelligent and in the not-so-distant future, society as we know it will not function.  As one of their own pored through the data, the conclusion was obvious: Man’s best brain existed 3,500 to 6,000 years ago.  Of course, this fits perfectly with God’s Book of Genesis and its proclamation that man was created with his best mutation-free brain just over 6,000 years ago in one called Adam

Can you imagine that God provides a way of escape from the unavoidable slide into dumb and dumber?  Positive I.Q. reversal begins at a place called born-again where the fear of God grips one’s heart, where that individual repents of one’s sins and surrenders one’s sorry life to Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. 

Psalm 111:10:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom:

Psalm 111:10:

a good understanding have all they that do his commandments:

James 1:5:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

Are you born again?  Are you ready to begin your positive I.Q. reversal?  Today is your day of salvation regardless of the condition you’re in.  Jesus Christ is the Lord of Glory and His grace is sufficient for all your sin.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:12-17:

12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

MAN SAID: These amazing stories found in the Bible are simply stories—fairytales with not one smidgen of rational proof to their credit. 

Now THE RECORD.  GodSaidManSaid has published multiple features concerning one of the greatest and most encompassing of all the miraculous accounts found in the Word of God: Noah and God's destruction of the world by a global flood.  Foundational excerpts from previous GodSaidManSaid features follow.

From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Noah''s Ark (Update II):”

The entire edifice of unbelief requires the absolute rejection of two historical facts that can be and are proven beyond any reasonable doubt.  On GodSaidManSaid, there are presently 721 feature subjects that endorse and prove the inerrancy of the Word of God by multiple third-party sources.  These feature articles are stored on this website in text and streaming audio.  The Bible is proven time after time.  Now let the skeptics prove any anti-Biblical position they hold true.  We await. 

The historic facts rejected by carnaldom, which are foundational to their unbelief, are:

  1. The rejection of the concept of the creation of the earth with its universe, its Adam and Eve, and so on; and
  2. Their casting off of Noah and a devastating global flood. 

Rejecting these historic facts is required in order to house their carnal doctrine of uniformitarianism, which basically states that the present defines the past and that all events in the geologic process happen at a uniform, constant pace.  Since they reject the notion of creation, had they met Adam five seconds after his creation, they would have assumed history when there was none.  They would have looked at the earth and its ecosystem, the sun, the moon, and the planets, assuming history when there was none.  Their uniformity just dissolved. 

Secondly, the absolute atmospheric and global devastation that took place during the flood in the days of Noah would not be considered “uniform geology,” even by the most ardent skeptics.  The billions of years of purported history offered up by the evolutionists are founded on assumptions built upon their doctrine of uniformitarianism.  Their assumption of history and constancy is woefully lacking. 

The following excerpts are from the July 21, 2007 issue of Science News, under the heading, “Birth of an Island: Megaflood severed Europe from Britain:”

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, as an ice age was ending, the spillover from an immense glacial lake in northern Europe sliced through a broad range that for millions of years had connected what is now England to the continent.  The flood that resulted, one of the largest that scientists have ever identified, quickly created a breach that makes Britain the island that it is today.

A sonar survey just south of England reveals a 100-km-long, submerged feature that scientists have dubbed the Northern Paleovalley.  This valley, which contains little if any sediment, is as much as 50 m deep in spots, says Gupta.  Large, flat-topped islands in the valley have streamlined shapes, suggesting that they were carved by massive amounts of water flowing over what had been dry land.  Broad grooves carved into the bedrock, some of them at least 100 m wide and 15 km long, curve to follow the valley’s terrain—a hint that the features were quickly created by a colossal deluge. 

The size of the paleovalley’s islands suggests that the floodwaters could have run as much as 20 m deep, says Gupta.  Considering the width of the now-submerged valley, the scouring flow that created it could have carried about 1 million cubic meters every second and raged for months, he adds. 

The purported flood probably rivaled the floods that scoured portions of the northwestern United States at the end of the most recent ice age, says Philip Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge in England. [End of quote]

Please keep in mind that the assumption of uniformitarianism will supply a bottomless pit of erroneous dates. 

According to an article reported in the January 1999 issue of Discover magazine titled, “Forty Days and Forty Nights, More or Less,” a great flood of possibly Noahitic proportion did take place in ancient times.  I’m quoting ¼th of the article:

About 7,500 years ago [they’re off by about 3,000 years], a flood poured ten cubic miles of water a day—130 times more than flows over Niagara Falls—from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea, abruptly turning the formerly freshwater lake into a brackish inland sea. 

The evidence has been slowly accumulating over the past five years.  In 1993, William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory dug up cores of sediment from the bottom of the Black Sea.  The core samples showed that the sea’s outer margins had once been dry land and that it had been two-thirds its present size.  Furthermore, over the entire sea bottom was a thin, uniform layer of sediment that could only have been deposited during a flood.

This past year, even more evidence came to light when researchers collected sediment samples from several new, nearby sites.  “If there had been a flood, there would have been a flood everywhere,” says Ryan, “so we know that we had to find the same features—the same evidence that the Black Sea had been smaller.”  The new samples are consistent with that story. 

In an article in The Smithsonian written by James Trefil, under the heading, “Evidence for a Flood,” he reports on the research of Columbia University geologists Ryan and Pitman.  Trefil reports on the research that claims that antediluvian “ocean levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today” and that “the east coast of the United States was 75 to 150 miles farther out than it is today, and places like Manhattan and Baltimore would have been inland cities.”  Of course, this was a result of God changing the world’s atmospheric structure when He opened the windows of heaven and poured water down for forty days and forty nights.

The core samples taken by Ryan and Pitman from the area of the Black Sea lead them to believe that a flood of Noahitic proportion actually occurred, although they don’t make the complete jump to global.  The following paragraph is from The Smithsonian:

It was this event that Pitman and Ryan believe could be the flood recorded in the Book of Genesis.  The salt water poured through the deepening channel, creating a waterfall 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls (anyone who has ever traveled to the base of the falls on the Maid of the Mist will have a sense of the power involved).  In a single day, enough water came through the channel to cover Manhattan to a depth of at least two times the height of the Word Trade Center, and the roar of cascading water would have been audible at least 100 miles away. [End of quote]

The following information is quoted from the November 2007 issue of Discover magazine under the title, “Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?”  This story reviews discoveries made by environmental archaeologist Bruce Masse of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Masse believes that he has uncovered evidence that a gigantic comet crashed into the Indian Ocean several thousand years ago and nearly wiped out all life on the planet.  What’s more, he thinks that clues about the catastrophe are hiding in plain sight, embedded in the creation stories of cultural groups around the world.

Masse’s epiphany came while poring over Hawaiian oral histories regarding the goddess Pele and wondering what they might reveal about the lava flows that episodically destroy human settlements and create new tracts of land.  He reasoned that even though the stories are often clouded by exaggerations and mystical explanations, many may refer to actual incidents.  He tested his hypothesis by cross-checking carbon-14 ages for the lava flows against dates included in royal Hawaiian genealogies.  The result: Several flows matched up with specific reigns associated with them in the oral histories. Other myths, Masse theorizes, hold similar clues. 

Masse’s biggest idea is that some 5,000 years ago, a 3-mile-wide ball of rock and ice swung around the sun and smashed into the ocean off the coast of Madagascar.  The ensuing cataclysm sent a series of 600-foot-high tsunamis crashing against the world’s coastlines and injected plumes of superheated water vapor and aerosol particulates into the atmosphere.  Within hours, the infusion of heat and moisture blasted its way into jet streams and spawned superhurricanes that pummeled the other side of the planet.  For about a week, material ejected into the atmosphere plunged the world into darkness.  All told, up to 80 percent of the world’s population may have perished, making it the single most lethal event in history.  [End of quote]

Masse is getting close, but he is still short of the correct assessment.

The great destruction cited by Masse is said to have happened at the end of the Permian period, where it is estimated that 70% of land species and 95% of ocean species were destroyed.  They keep tripping over the truth but refuse to acknowledge the obvious. [End of quotes]

From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Noah’s Ark—Fact or Fiction (Updated):”

Many ancient non-Jewish and non-Christian civilizations have passed down accounts of the flood.  One of the world’s oldest, the Miao or Miautso of China, passed down this story from generation to generation:

So it poured forty days in sheets and torrents.
Then fifty-five days of misting and drizzle.
The waters surmounted the mountains and ranges.
An earth with no earth upon which to take refuge!
A world with no foothold where one might subsist!
The people were baffled, impotent and ruined,
Despairing, horror-stricken, diminished and finished.
But the Patriarch Nuah was righteous.
The Matriarch Gaw Bo-Lu-en upright.
Built a boat very wide.
Made a ship very vast.
Their household entire got aboard and were floated,
The family complete rode the deluge in safety.
The animals with him were female and male.
The birds went along and were mated in pairs.
When the time was fulfilled, God commanded the waters.
The day had arrived, the floodwaters receded.
Then Nuah liberated a dove from their refuge,
Sent a bird to go forth and bring again tidings.
The flood has gone down into lake and to ocean;
The mud was confined to the pools and hollows.
There was land once again where man might reside;
There was a place in the earth now to rear habitations.
Buffalo then were brought, an obligation to God,
Fatter cattle became sacrifice to the Mighty.
The Divine One then gave them His blessing;
Their God then bestowed His good graces.

The following two paragraphs are from the December 2000-February 2001 issue of Creation under the heading, “Uncanny Coherence to Noah’s Account.”  The excerpt reads:

There are at least 500 legends of a worldwide deluge.  Many of these show remarkable similarities, with many aspects similar to the details about Noah’s Flood in the Bible. 

We are left with a few options.  Perhaps all of these peoples of these remote civilizations had different flood experiences that, by chance, had all these features in common, on which they based their stories.  However, the more reasonable alternative is that these legends all find their root in the same one global Flood experience that Genesis records.

The following information is from an article titled, “Time, Life, and History in the Light of 25,000 Radiocarbon Dates:”

When carbon-14 data is “correctly” calibrated, and 25,000 radiocarbon dates are graphed, the results show evidence of a great peak of death about 4,000 years ago.

Consider these geological facts that certify the Bible’s account of Noah’s ark:

  1. All the mountains of the world have been underwater at some time or times in the past, as indicated by sedimentary rocks and marine fossils near their summits. 
  2. Most of the earth’s crust consists of sedimentary rocks which are formed almost entirely underwater.
  3. All sedimentary formations appear to have been formed rapidly—even catastrophically. [End of quotes]

From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Eye Witness Account:”

Approximately 500 non-Biblical, societal accounts of an event similar to Noah’s Ark have been passed down through the generations.  Proofs of the global deluge arise with such regularity that it’s a wonder the skeptics can still show their faces.  Later in this feature, we will recite the latest on Noah. 

The societal accounts of the flood were passed down through the generations with the first accounts coming from the eight people who were on the ark.  As the generations passed, the story began to morph. 

Some academics, secular and theological, assert that the first five books of the Bible were hand-me-down, flawed accounts of the world’s history—and not to be taken literally.  That assertion is directly opposite of the truth.  It’s true that Moses penned the first five books of the Bible, but he was not the author.  Exodus 24:4:

And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, …

These words were not hand-me-downs, but an eye-witness, hands-on account from the Creator Himself, who had “made heaven and earth, the seas and all that in them is,” (Exodus 20:11) who has perfect recall. 

The following excerpt is found in the January 24, 2014 AP news release titled, “British Museum: Prototype for Noah’s Ark was round.” 

A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia—modern-day Iraq—reveals striking new details about the roots of the Old Testament tale of Noah.  It tells a similar story, complete with detailed instructions for building a giant, round vessel known as a coracle—as well as the key instruction that animals should enter “two by two.”  [End of quote]

If you would like an exact, eye-witness account of Noah’s flood, turn to Genesis, chapters six through nine, in your Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible. 

Adam and Eve answered the standard questions asked by their children and their children’s children, such as, “Where did we and all of creation come from?  Why are we here?  What is our eternal destiny,” and so on. 

Moses was instructed by God to write the words he was being given very clearly.  GodSaidManSaid has spent considerable time confirming the absolute inerrancy of these Biblical accounts via archaeology, paleontology, geology, microbiology, ancient history, and more.  God’s critics often challenge the originality of the laws written by Moses, citing the Babylonians’ 282 laws inscribed on a stone pillar attributed to their King Hammurabi.  Skeptics are obviously not aware that a host of the commandments and sacrifices were commanded by God and observed by the righteous long before Moses—actually, observed right from the very beginning.  Examples would be the Sabbath day, the blood sacrifice, “thou shalt not kill,” capital punishment, dietary laws, and more.  All of mankind knew of these things, but Moses wrote it very clearly, as well as new directives given by God.  The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is a hands-on, eye-witness record from the Creator Himself.   [End of quotes]

Answers magazine published a feature titled “Sand Pillars—Breaking Through Millions of Years” in their October/December 2014 issue.  One short paragraph follows:

Geologists agree that water has deposited extensive layers of mud, sand, and silt across all of the earth’s continents.  Grand Canyon, for example, has over 4,000 feet (1219 m) of such water-deposited layers exposed in its walls.  [End of quote]

John D. Morris, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Creation Research, authored the feature article, “Traditions of a Global Flood” in the November 2014 issue of Acts and Facts.  Several paragraphs follow:

One of the strongest evidences for the global Flood that annihilated all the people on Earth except for Noah and his family has been the presence of flood legends in the folklore of people groups from around the world.  And the stories are all so similar.  Local geography and cultural aspects may be present, but they all seem to be telling the same story.

Over the years, I have collected more than 200 of these stories, originally reported by various missionaries, anthropologists, and ethnologists.  While the differences are not always trivial, the common essence of the stories is instructive as compiled below. 

  1. Was there a favored family?  88%
  2. Were they forwarned? 66%
  3. Was the flood due to the wickedness of man? 66%
  4. Was the catastrophe only a flood? 95%
  5. Was the flood global? 95%
  6. Was survival due to a boat? 70%
  7. Were animals also saved? 67%
  8. Did animals play any part? 73%
  9. Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
  10. Was the geography local? 82%
  11. Were birds sent out? 35%
  12. Was the rainbow mentioned? 7%
  13. Did survivors offer a sacrifice? 13%
  14. Were specifically eight persons saved? 9%

God’s Word is true and righteous altogether—a place to build a life that will last forever. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:12-17:

12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

MAN SAID: These amazing stories found in the Bible are simply stories—fairytales with not one smidgen of rational proof to their credit. 

Now you have THE RECORD. 

 

 

 

References

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Eye Witness Account

GodSaidManSaid, “Noah’s Ark—Fact or Fiction (Updated)

GodSaidManSaid, “Noah''s Ark (Update II)

Hoesch, B., “Sand Pillars—Breaking Through Millions of Years,” Answers, October/December 2014

Morris, J., “Traditions of a Global Flood,” Acts and Facts, November 2014

 

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