For Archaeologists,Geologists, Volcanologists

[Splendour]

Is anyone in SMP knowledgable about archaeology...I am wondering if anyone is familiar with the History channel's movie on Moses and the 10 Plagues..It had an incredible explanation by volcanologists explaining how the 7 plagues might have occurred from volcanoes...I am also interested on any information you might have on the Biblical Great Flood...I did just come across a new article in The Science Daily entitled: Marine Team Finds Surprising Evidence Supporting A Great Biblical Flood...Like to hear any opinions from volcanologists, geologists or archaeologists about what they think these studies indicate...

[Silent A]

I'm a hydrologist, so I'll speak of the flood.

First, what exactly do you have in mind when you think of a "biblical great flood"? Can any large flood in the Middle East circa 4000 BCE qualify? Does it have to be something much bigger than all the floods that have occurred in recorded history? Or, is it something pretty close to a literal interpretation of Genesis, a worldwide flood total produced by about 40 days of rain?

If it's the first or second, it should be obvious that we'd find evidence of some kind of qualifying flood.

If it's the latter you have some serious problems. First, there simply isn't enough water on Earth to drown the entire planet in several thousand metres of water (remember, mountains were supposedly completely covered). Second, the rate of rainfall required is at least 3 metres/hour (based on 3000 metres of rain over 40 days). Only once has this kind of rainfall rate been observed: In 1970 it rained at a rate of about 2m/hour in Guadeloupe. However, this intensity only lasted about one minute. This kind of intensity would have produced massive erosion scars in every locale across the surface of the Earth. The evidence would be so obvious that no one could deny that such an event once took place. However, such scars are relatively rare - everyone doesn't have a Grand Canyon in their back yard.

So we have a problem: any truly "Biblical" flood would have left a lot more evidence, but if we look for a biggest-ever-flood we're left with a relatively mundane event that is hardly miraculous - and impossible to tie directly to the Noah story.

[Splendour]

Well what I came across was this Silent A:

Prof. Beer was part of the team on board "Mediterranean Explorer" that recently headed to the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey, the site where historians believe the great biblical flood occurred. EcoOcean and an international team believe they have found evidence to substantiate what is written in the Bible.

Says Weil, "We found that indeed a flood happened around that time. From core samples, we see that a flood broke through the natural barrier separating the Mediterranean Sea and the freshwater Black Sea, bringing with it seashells that only grow in a marine environment. There was no doubt that it was a fast flood -- one that covered an expanse four times the size of Israel. It might not have been Noah, as it is written in the Bible, but we believe people in that region had to build boats in order to save their animals from drowning. We think that the ones who survived were fishermen -- they already had the boats."

They also mentioned this:

Next week the team will sail out to take underwater footage for evidence of an ancient tsunami thought to have destroyed the port city Caesarea generations ago. They will also be looking for deep-sea sea grasses, algae and sponges that had been observed earlier by researchers but were never properly investigated. "This is very interesting," says Weil, "because sea grasses are normally not found at these depths. Maybe one day one of these organisms can provide us with a new drug."

The source and date of the article as follows:

Source: Tel Aviv University
Date: September 10, 2007


Somewheres in this article it says these are some of the world's best scientists in some kind of floating marine research lab...

[Silent A]

I was wondering if this is what you were getting at. I'm familiar with this idea but I find any link with Noah is weak (to put it very mildly).

First, there is considerable debate about whether it ever happened. Second, and more importantly, there is no reason, other than wishful fancy, to believe that this is the Noah flood. Given the 4000 year gap between this event and the writing of Genesis, it's hard to argue with any confidence that it even represents the kernel of truth that begot the Noah myth.

[Splendour]

Well actually I had read in an old book a few years back that there is a myth that is prevalent throughout the world that in almost every country/culture that people claim to have descended from some kind of "Garden of Eden-like" paradise...The book said this account can be found in every continent and in all kinds of cultures...It was an incredibly widespread story that was virtually universal for all cultures regardless of ethnicity...Of course a great flood would have decimated a lot of the physical evidence and links to trace back evidence on this...But we do have them currently exploring the claim that they found Noah's ark on Mount Ararat in Armenia...

[Silent A]

OK, but there's no evidence of a great flood capable of drowning Mt. Ararat (and if one ever happened there should be plenty). Ararat, which is in Turkey, is 5400 m high (2400 feet higher than the highest Rocky Mountain). Do you have any idea how much water would be required? You can't have a regional flood with this much water, it has to be global. That Black Sea thing is a doddle next to a Noahic flood.

Besides, no one has ever produced one piece of evidence that the ark is still, or ever has been, on Mt. Ararat.

I can't comment on the ubiquity of an Eden myth, but I strongly suspect that lots of cultures don't have one. But even if it's true (that almost every culture has an "Eden-like" myth), it could just mean that people like to think that a perfect world existed in the past, and so we might be able to return there in the future. It doesn't imply that such a place ever existed.

[Siegmund]

Depends a little bit which version of the myths you're trying to explain.

One common view these days is that the Genesis Flood is a re-telling of the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's a long time ago that I read a translation of Gilgamesh, but as I recall, it spoke of a big flood that covered all the world previously known to Gilgamesh, and he came up ashore in an unfamiliar land... which seemed completely consistent with the Tigris and Euphrates flooding the same year, and submerging the entire region between them, submerging the entire homeland of a culture but not the whole world, and Gilgamesh washing up ashore at the mouth of the river or somewhere a short distance down the shore of the Persian Gulf.

If you're willing to accept the notion that the flood waters receded and left him perched on a knob of land faraway from his homeland -- which later came to be associated with a knob of land far away from someone else's homeland, which could be seen on the horizon -- you don't really need any additional evidence to accept a big-but-not-global flood as the origin of the story.

Sudden floodings of either the Black or the Mediterranean seas are possibilities but less likely ones - and ones more likely to be lost to prehistory, rather than recent enough to be passed on by oral tradition and then written down.

As for the plagues, it's true that a Mediterranean volcano could cause poisoning of water, darkening of sky, 'hailstones mixed with fire' to fall over a fairly wide region... it is more of a stretch to make all of that happen IN Egypt, but not anywhere else, in the specific range of years when Moses was around. Yes, Santorini was around 1550 BC - also proposed as the explanation of Atlantis - but there, the geologic evidence is well preserved, and doesn't extend all the way to Egypt.

[Zeno]

Short Info on Santorini

-Zeno

[rubberloon]

Nearly every culture has mythical flood stories. My guess is it is a folk memory of the end of the last ice age say 11,000 to 9,000 BC when the seas rose between 400 and 600 feet (120 to 180 meters). But anyone living near a river will get flooded every so often. So it might be memories of a local event.

[PantsOnFire]

I'm a professional engineer and amateur philosopher and poker player not a magma man or a bone bro.

However, I do have a conceptual problem. When things were written thousands of years ago, and the men of the time described "worldwide" events like floods, I think to myself, do those people have a proper concept of what "worldwide" encompasses? In other words, what were the boundaries of "worldwide" to them?

How often did "as far as the eye can see" be translated to "worldwide"?