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Chapter 4

Explaining Away the Flood

Christians who feel that they must re-interpret the biblical record of creation in order to allow for the 5 billion years of geological ages demanded by evolutionary geologists (not to mention the 15 billion years of cosmic history postulated by secular astrophysicists) cannot stop there. They must also do something about the Genesis Flood.

Since a worldwide cataclysmic deluge such as is described in the Bible would have destroyed all the evidences of the geological ages, it must somehow be explained away, either as a localized flood that devastated only a small region, or as a global “tranquil” flood that did not do anything of consequence, just oozing up over the mountains, then oozing down again, tranquilly. The great sedimentary rock beds of the earth, with their fossil graveyards, comprise the essential evidence for the geological ages, and they must somehow be left intact if the geological ages (and evolution!) are to be preserved. Therefore, the biblical record of the Flood must be vastly downgraded.

The fact is, however, that the Bible, God’s inspired and inerrant Word, records a global, world-destroying hydraulic cataclysm in the days of Noah. It will allow no other legitimate interpretation, as we shall now see.

The Local Flood Theory

The great Flood of Genesis 6–9 is of critical importance to the true understanding of earth history. It has been seen that sound biblical exegesis will not permit placing the geological ages either before or during the six days of creation. Neither can the six days of creation be interpreted as non-historical or allegorical. The only other alternative is to reject the standard system of geological ages altogether!

This is, of course, a drastic suggestion — orthodox geologists indeed reject it out of hand. However, there is no other alternative. If the Bible is the Word of God — and it is — and if Jesus Christ is the infallible and omniscient Creator — and He is — then it must be firmly believed that the world and all things in it were created in six natural days, and that the long geological ages of evolutionary history never really took place at all.

This position forces one to find another explanation of the great sedimentary rock beds of the earth’s crust, as well as the fossil record contained in them. All of the geological strata and formations, the great coal and oil deposits, the volcanic and glacial beds, the mountain ranges and geosynclines, and all the multitudinous phenomena of historical geology, interpreted for over a hundred years in terms of uniformity and evolution, must be re-evaluated in terms of the biblical framework of history. Furthermore, its integral association with the fossil record indicates that the whole geological column must have been formed after the fall of man. Fossils clearly speak of death, and the Scriptures teach plainly that, “by man came death” (1 Cor. 15:21).

The only possible explanation for the geological column and fossil record, consistent with Scripture, must therefore be sought in terms of the biblical deluge. And this tremendous worldwide cataclysm does provide a satisfactory framework within which to reinterpret these data.

If the Flood was really of the magnitude and intensity that the Bible indicates, then the entire case for evolution collapses. Evolution depends entirely on the fossil record as interpreted in terms of vast geological ages. If these did not take place, evolution is impossible.

It is not surprising, therefore, that orthodox geologists strongly oppose the idea of a worldwide flood. In view of this intense and almost unanimous opposition, many evangelical Christians insist that Genesis be reinterpreted in terms of a local flood. It is actually very common, as could be expected, to find the local-flood view combined with either the day-age theory or the gap theory. Since both of the latter theories seek to salvage the geological ages, and since a worldwide flood would eliminate the entire basis for them, it is obvious that the concept of a global deluge is incompatible with either theory.

It is not easy in the academic world to maintain a so-called “flood theory of geology.” There are, no doubt, certain geological problems with such a position, but a far more real problem is the “flood” of scholarly wrath and ridicule that descends upon those who hold it — and that is no theory! The Genesis Flood, along with the record of recent creation which it supports, is the real crux of the conflict between the evolutionist and creationist cosmologies, and evolutionists invariably concentrate their strongest attacks at this point. Likewise, this is where Christians should also marshall their strongest and most vigorous campaign. Sad to say, their strategy until recent years has almost completely ignored this crucial issue.

If the system of flood geology can be established on a sound scientific basis, and be effectively promoted and publicized, then the entire evolutionary cosmology, at least in its present neo-Darwinian form, will collapse. This, in turn, would mean that nearly every anti-Christian system and movement (communism, racism, humanism, libertinism, behaviorism, and all the rest) would be deprived of their pseudo-intellectual foundation.

These are the stakes involved, and it is no wonder that evolutionists have so opposed the historical fact of the global cataclysm known as the Genesis Flood.

It almost seems frivolous to try to show that the Bible teaches a worldwide flood. This fact is so obvious in the mere reading of Genesis 6–9 that one who does not see it there will hardly be influenced by other reasoning. For the record, however, a few of the many irrefutable formal arguments are summarized below.

1. The Height and Duration of the Flood

The scriptural record says that the Flood covered the tops of the highest mountains (Gen. 7:19–20) and that this situation prevailed until ten months (Gen. 8:5) after the Flood began. If the mountains were the same elevation then as now, as the local-flood theory would imply, the waters were at least 17,000 feet high (Mount Ararat, on which the ark rested, reaches this altitude) for a period of at least nine months. To require such a condition to be a “local” flood imposes impossible hydraulic demands on the water involved. One has to assume a sort of egg-shaped flood three miles high!

2. The Need for an Ark

The requirement for Noah to build a gigantic barge to “keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth” (Gen. 7:3) was unnecessary, to say the least, if it were to be only a local flood. The ark had a carrying capacity at least equal to that of 522 standard railroad stock cars, as can be quickly calculated from its recorded dimensions (Gen. 6:15). This is more than twice as large as necessary to accommodate two of every species of known land animal that ever lived. If the Flood were only a local or regional flood, it would be folly to spend 120 years to prepare an ark large enough to carry animals from the whole world. Its size was absurdly out of proportion for a mere regional fauna. Moreover, the latter animals (as well as humans) could easily have escaped a local flood by the obvious expedient of migrating to higher ground elsewhere.

3. Destruction of the Earth

The biblical description of the unique and overwhelming physical aspects of the Flood precludes a mini-flood. God said, in fact, He was going to destroy the earth (Gen. 6:13). The 40-day downpour (the “windows” of heaven were literally “floodgates”), the simultaneous cleavage of the vast “fountains of the great deep” (Gen. 7:11), the absence of rain before the Flood (Gen. 2:5), the establishment of the rainbow after the Flood (Gen. 9:13), and the fact that the waters “overturned the earth” (Job 12:15) all are understandable only in terms of a unique worldwide cataclysm.

4. God’s Unbroken Promise

God’s unequivocal promise never again to send the Flood (Gen. 9:11) has been broken repeatedly if the Noachian flood were only a local flood. Therefore, the local-flood theory not only repudiates the plain meaning of the biblical record of the Flood, but even charges God with breaking His promises!

5. Testimony of Christ and the Apostles

The Lord Jesus Christ himself, as well as Peter (2 Pet. 2:5; 3:6) and the author of Hebrews, probably Paul (Heb. 11:7), confirmed that the Flood at least destroyed all mankind. Christ said, “the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). The modern system of geology and archaeology, which the local-flood theory tries to accommodate, certainly includes a worldwide distribution of mankind long before any possible biblical date for the Flood. A flood that was anthropologically universal would certainly have to be geographically universal.

These and many other reasons that could be listed clearly prove that the biblical record teaches a worldwide flood. One could, in fact, prove this directly, merely by the experiment of a slow, thoughtful reading of Genesis 6–9, while trying to understand each verse as a description of a “local” flood. It will soon be realized what distortion of the plain sense of the inspired text this requires.1

The Tranquil Flood Theory

Strangely and almost unbelievably, there have been a few competent geologists (Charles Lyell in the last century, J. L. Kulp, Davis Young,2 and others in the current generation) who have gone on record as believing in a worldwide tranquil cataclysm! At least they acknowledge the compelling witness of Scripture to a global Noahic flood, but then they abandon physical reality by imagining that such a flood may have been mild and gentle, geologically impotent, leaving no physical evidence that it ever happened.

Even on the basis of uniformitarian considerations (the relatively small local floods of the present are often tremendously destructive, leaving great gullies and thick deposits of sediment), it should be obvious that a global kataklusmos, such as the Bible describes, with its torrents of water from the skies, erupting reservoirs from the depths, universal destruction, violent tidal actions, great winds, rising mountains, and sinking basins, and other non-tranquil phenomena must surely have accomplished far more geological disruption than a great number of local floods could ever do.

How it is that the usual slow, uniform processes of nature could leave permanent records in the form of great sedimentary strata and fossil graveyards all over the world and through all the ages, while a uniquely powerful worldwide hydrodynamic convulsion — which destroyed all living land animals and the earth itself — would leave no discernible effects whatever, poses a unique geological conundrum. The idea of a worldwide, year-long “tranquil” flood is hydrologically and geophysically absurd, about like a tranquil worldwide explosion!

Gaps in Human Chronology

A somewhat different objection to the Flood comes from archaeology instead of geology, and has to do with the date of the Flood.

The dating methods used by archaeologists and anthropologists for dating ancient human sites and cultures (e.g., radiocarbon, pottery dating) yield a chronology far longer than the Bible seems to allow for the post-Flood era. The histories of Egypt, Sumeria, and other ancient nations, as well as the more equivocal cultures of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon settlements, have all certainly taken place after the Flood and after the dispersion from Babel, if the Bible record is true. Yet the Bible, at least as we have it in the King James Version, does not seem to allow enough time for all these developments.

Accordingly, Christian scholars have suggested ways of accommodating Genesis to archaeology, as well as to geology. These attempts also, however, like the accommodationist schemes already discussed, actually raise more problems than they solve.

The genealogical lists in Genesis 5 give the age of each man in the line from Adam to Abraham at the birth of the son who is next in the line. When these are added, they give a total of 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood. A similar list for the postdiluvian patriarchs in Genesis 11 gives 368 years from the Flood until Abraham migrated into Canaan. Abraham’s time is well within the period of recorded history. Although a number of detailed chronological questions for the post-Abrahamic period are not settled, there is general agreement that Abraham’s migration occurred no earlier than 2000 B.C.

Therefore, the date of the creation, as obtained by simple addition of the figures given in the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, was about 2,024 years prior to Abraham’s journey from Haran to Canaan, or around 4000 B.C. The date of the Flood on this basis is around 2350 B.C.

Dates such as these are considered by modern anthropologists to be preposterous! These scholars believe man to have been on the earth for at least a million years. The Flood is rejected altogether, except perhaps as an old tradition of a Euphrates flood occurring sometime around 3000 B.C.

The sharp disagreement of the Genesis chronologies of human pre-history with these speculations of evolutionary anthropology and archaeology is a matter of serious concern. This problem has led to various theories about imaginary “pre-Adamite” men, and has been one of the main reasons why so many modern theologians have relegated Genesis 1–11 to the status of mythology, rejecting its historical content altogether.

1. Accuracy of Transmission

For those who take these Genesis chapters historically, there are three possible approaches to consider. First, it may be that the numbers in Genesis 5 and 11 have been corrupted by faulty transmission. The Masoretic text, on which the figures cited above are based, differs from the Septuagint and Samaritan texts. The Samaritan text would add 301 years and the Septuagint 1,466 years to the period calculated above from the creation to Abraham.

This would extend man’s creation back to only about 5500 B.C. at most, and this is only a drop in the bucket compared to the million-year demands of evolutionary chronology.

2. Genealogical Gaps

A second approach is to assume that there are certain gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, with the term “begat” implying ancestry, rather than immediate parental relationship. At least one such gap is specifically suggested by the genealogy in Luke 3, which inserts the name Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah. This name is actually found in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 5, with an additional increment of 130 years. Also a gap is perhaps implied at the time of Peleg (Gen. 10:25 and 11:18). The life spans of Peleg’s ancestors were as follows: Shem, 602; Arphaxad, 438; Salah, 433; and Eber, 464. Peleg himself lived only 239 years. His immediate descendants were Reu, 239; Serug, 230; Nahor, 148; and Terah, 275. There is thus a sharp decline in longevity between the time of Eber and Peleg, and this may well be because an unknown number of intervening generations have been omitted. On the other hand, it was in the days of Peleg that the earth “was divided,” and this division, whatever it was, may itself have suddenly decreased man’s longevity.

This “genealogical-gap theory” is biblically permissible if kept within reasonable bounds. There are several other instances in Scripture where similar gaps can be found (e.g., Matt. 1). Therefore, the Flood may possibly be dated considerably earlier than the previously calculated 2350 B.C., and the creation considerably earlier than 4000 B.C. If such gaps are allowed, however, there seems no exact way of determining these dates from biblical considerations alone.

In any case, this device still does not correlate the biblical chronology with the standard evolutionary chronology of human history. There are 20 names in the patriarchal list from Adam to Abraham, with the total time indicated as about 2,000 years. To correlate this with the evolutionists’ chronology of approximately 1,000,000 years of human history requires an average “gap” between each adjacent pair of names in the genealogical lists of almost 50,000 years! This is obviously absurd, and makes Genesis 5 and 11 look ridiculous. One would have to read Genesis 5:6, for example, in some such fashion as this: “Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat (a son whose remote descendant, 50,000 years in the future, would be) Enos.” The same flexibility would have to be assumed for all other links in the chain.

Actually only 15 possible gaps exist, since the connection of Seth to Adam, Noah to Lamech and to Shem, Shem to Arphaxad, and Terah to Abraham, are spelled out in such a way as to preclude the possibility of intervening generations in those cases. Furthermore, Jude 14 agrees with Genesis 5 that Enoch was the “seventh from Adam,” so this eliminates five more possible gaps. Thus, the average gap really has to be 100,000 years! Since all known and recorded human history extends back only about 4,000 years, the average gap in every case must be about 25 times longer in duration than all known history!

Preservation of the patriarchal names and ages and historical events by any kind of tradition over such long ages is a patent impossibility. They could have been given only by direct dictation to Moses from God if meaningful and accurate information of this kind were to be conveyed for inscripturation in God’s Word. That being so, there is no reason that the names of Cainan, Mahalaleel, Serug, et al, were included in the list at all. No other information is given concerning them, and the 20,000 or so names that were presumably omitted from the lists would have been just as vital in transmitting the patriarchal seed as these.

Lamech, the father of Noah, was still keenly aware of the terms of God’s Edenic curse (Gen. 5:29), which would be highly unlikely if the curse has been pronounced half a million years before his time. And Job, who lived in the early centuries after the Flood and long before the Book of Genesis had been compiled by Moses, was well aware of Adam and the events of patriarchal history, as we have already seen.

Furthermore, it is significant that the same genealogical lists of Genesis 5 and 11 are repeated in 1 Chronicles 1:1–4, 24–27 and Luke 3:34–38, with no indication that either the ancient Jewish historians or the early Christians had any inkling that these lists were so fantastically fragmentary.

It must be concluded, therefore, that the biblical record cannot be harmonized at all with the standard evolutionary reconstruction of human history as promoted by modern anthropologists and archaeologists. In the absence of actual proof to the contrary, the dates of creation and the Flood are quite reasonably placed in terms of the past several thousand years.

1 See The Genesis Flood, by J. C. Whitcomb and H. M. Morris (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Co., 1961), p. 1–115, for an extensive treatment of these biblical evidences. Henry M. Morris also has a listing of 100 reasons for believing in the worldwide flood in The Genesis Record, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1976) p. 683–686.

2 Young, who originally accepted a worldwide, cataclysmic flood as described in the Bible, later taught a worldwide tranquil flood and still later began advocating a local flood. His confidence in biblical authority (except as corrected by “science”) has likewise declined in recent years.