Let's Continue, What Flood?

What Flood? · Let's Continue, What Flood?

Items 2 and 3, the one being preliminary to the other:

2. What "The Whole World" Meant to Ancient Readers:

The Hebrew word translated as "earth" or "world" in Genesis is 'eretz. It does not mean an astronomical globe; it means "land," "region," or "territory"—the same word used for the "land ('eretz) of Canaan."

The Old Testament frequently uses "all the earth" (kol ha'aretz) to describe regional horizons rather than planetary geography:

• Genesis 41:57 states that "all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain" during a famine—referring to the surrounding Middle East, not Australia or the Americas.
  
  
• 1 Kings 10:24 notes that "all the earth sought the presence of Solomon" to describe regional trade partners and rulers.

When Genesis says the flood covered "all the land," it means it submerged the entire known, inhabited world of that ancient civilization.

There are two places in Genesis 1 where "eretz" is used. Both are translated "terra" (in appropriate case form, so, I think, both times "terram") in the Vulgate and "earth" in Douay Rheims.

In the beginning God created heaven, and earth
[Genesis 1:1]

And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good
[Genesis 1:10]

In both of these senses, prior to Genesis 41 or 3 Kings 10, it's wider than regional.

Michael Spaulding would have a better argument if the regional significations were all there was.

And "ancient readers" isn't totally the ultimate go to for a text referring to events outside the time when it was written.

For the Exodus, we'd like to know what a certain term meant in Pharaonic Egypt or nearby deserts or Canaan. For the Gospel, we'd like to know what it meant in 1st C. Judea, Samaria or Galilee, sometimes 1st C Roman world or 1st C Jewish world (for instance, we know Jesus was a homeschooler, since public education didn't exist in the Holy Land outside Jerusalem, which is not where he grew up.* Or leaving John 7 for Matthew 6, the Pagans can't have meant Buddhists, there wasn't a community in the Roman Empire of those.

But if John refers to the gematria of the Antichrist in Apocalypse or Moses to the whole earth in pre-Flood terms, we can't go to their contemporary hearers. A First Century Christian couldn't know of ASCII, he had to imagine John meant either Greek or Hebrew gematria, or perhaps number values of Latin letters. A 16th C. BC Israelite couldn't have known much geographic details of the pre-Flood world, whichever it was.

Here the reader has to rely on his total knowledge. Not what was naturally known to normal readers of Genesis or Apocalypse.

Again, there is a quiproquo here, a mixup.

"What "The Whole World" Meant to Ancient Readers"
"the entire known, inhabited world of that ancient civilization."

These terms are not synonyms. A Sumerian from Lagash wouldn't have known Bahrein, but would have included Dilmun in the world.**

St. John's readers wouldn't have known Alaska, Cape Horn, Tasmania or North East Siberia (near Kamtchatka), but St. John said there were four corners. I've just passed by a place where a globe didn't show the North Pole's ice sheets, just where land ended and sea began. Ellesmere Island doesn't appear to be a fifth corner.

3. The Real Historical Event: The Persian Gulf Floods:

Geology and paleoclimatology provide a concrete historical anchor for a regional, world-ending flood.

During the last Ice Age, lowered sea levels exposed a +35,000 sq. mi. fertile river valley in what is now the Persian Gulf—the Persian Gulf Oasis. Fed by four major river systems, it was an ideal cradle for early human settlement and matches the Biblical description of where Eden was with the four major river systems.

As the Ice Age ended, two events combined to submerge this basin 6,000 to 10,000 years ago:

1. Massive Monsoon Rains: Intensified Indian Ocean monsoons drove heavy rains deep into Arabia and surrounding mountains, causing catastrophic river flooding.
2. Rising Sea Levels: Melting glaciers caused ocean levels to rise rapidly, breaching the Strait of Hormuz and permanently filling the valley.

To the communities living in the basin, their entire known land ('eretz) was completely submerged. Survivors fleeing north carried an indelible memory of a world-ending disaster. This trauma became the core of ancient flood traditions—preserved in Mesopotamian accounts like the Epic of Gilgamesh and recorded in Genesis to convey a theological message about judgment and divine covenant.

I'm relieved he didn't rehash a "2900 BC" flood of lower Mesopotamia.*** However, the problems are partly very similar. And damning.

• The overall story ark is incompatible with the Biblical Flood, since it involves more than one (set of) survivor(s). Since it doesn't involve in the actual floodings any divine judgement, since the 6000 BC world's Persian Gulf landscape wasn't obviously the most wicked place in 4000 BC, since the survivors would have met people who hadn't been flooded, and would very probably have known about them beforehand. The theological story is only an afterthought to a misunderstood and distorted memory.
  
  
• This is basically necessary for this setting, since a period of flooding ranging from 10 000 to 6000 BP (8000 to 4000 BP, roughly speaking 2556 to 2015 BC, birth of Peleg to birth of Abraham) is too slow to be one major disaster wiping out all men except select survivors;
  
  
• and since, as said, the geography of the region doesn't allow for the flooded people to have been ignorant of Green Arabia and a society forming there from 7000 to 3000 BC°
  
  
• not to mention that the region apparently didn't have very high hills
  
  
• and that the Ark described in the Bible would have worked in a world wide Flood, but not in those floodings. The SS Wyoming, of similar length, floundered in the Nantucket Bay, which has an average depth of 9 meters, but not in the Atlantic, which is far deeper. This is due to the shape of waves in deep vs shallow water. Now, the Persian Gulf is closer to Nantucket Bay:
  
  

  The waters are very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 metres (295 feet) and an average depth of 50 metres (164 feet).
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf

  
  
  Exactly the type of Flood that SS Wyoming did refute for the Biblical Ark.

What Michael Spaulding falls back on in debates with others under his status is water problem and heat problem.

I have dealt with these elsewhere.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John of Autun, Bishop and Confessor
29 October 2026

Augustoduni sancti Joannis, Episcopi et Confessoris.

Notes:

* Some guy who wanted to tell Christian children who hate going to school "Jesus did it too" fibbed, implicitly putting Yeshua ben Gamla in the First Century BC rather than the First Century AD:

Continuing the Tirade of Genetically Modified Sceptic, but Discission, Not Video Comment

My discussion about Jack Wellman is in the second half of the article. After quoting him, I quote "My Jewish Learning" ...

** Dilmun is now usually identified with Bahrein, if I recall rightly.

*** Already dealt with that one in 2017: Damien Mackey & The Flood

° Carbon dated, see:

Chapter 3 - The Formation of Arabian Society: 7000–3000 BC
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014 | Peter Magee
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/archaeology-of-prehistoric-arabia/formation-of-arabian-society-70003000-bc/61E0BE7AACAEED00488FCB4F5087D22C

The carbon dates reduce to 2442 to 1759 BC:

2442 BC

(Shem has died, Reu will be born)

57.683 pmC, dated as 6990 BC

1779 BC

(Ishmael has died)

85.963 pmC, dated as 3029 BC

1759 BC

(Isaac will die)

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt