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NOAH'S FLOOD WAS NOT WORLD WIDE
Bertrand L. Comparet
Among the many mistaken and
unscriptural notions, commonly taught in nearly all churches, is the idea that
the flood mentioned in the Bible, covered all the earth. It states everybody on
earth was drowned excepting Noah and his family, who escaped death by being in
the ark. Many churches have firmly insisted the Bible says this, when there is
ample proof the flood was not worldwide. With this teaching the churches
have destroyed the faith of multitudes of people. They have made atheists or
agnostics out of hundreds of thousands of people who might have become active
Christians, if they had only been taught the truth about the Bible.
Part of this mistaken idea about the
flood is due to the many mistranslations found in the commonly used King James
Bible. Part of it appears plainly to be false, if you carefully read even the
King James Bible. Let's have a look at it.
In Genesis chapter 6, we read
that Yahweh found the people so corrupt He regretted He had ever created them,
so He decided to wipe them out by a flood. He warned righteous Noah of the
coming flood and told Noah to build a great boat, or ark, in which he and his
family might find safety and where they might preserve a few of each kind of the
animals from that area. Genesis chapter 7 tells how Noah received the
final warning the time was now at hand and he should move into the ark. Then it
says, according to the King James Bible:
"And it came to pass after seven
days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 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. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark
went upon the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and
all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits
upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh
died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beast and of
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth and every man. And the waters
prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. And Yahweh remembers Noah
and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and
Yahweh made a wind to pass over the earth and the water assuaged. And the waters
returned from off the earth continually and after the end of the hundred and
fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested, in the seventh month, on
the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters
decreased continually until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first
day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen."
First lets
see what the translators have done to what Moses originally wrote.
Remember the King James Bible says that the rain was upon the earth and
the waters increased greatly upon the earth and all flesh died that moved upon
the earth. Definitely not! Remember that in Genesis 4:14, when Yahweh has
driven Cain away in punishment for his murder of Abel, the King James Bible
quotes Cain as saying, "Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the
face of the earth." So what did Cain do, climb into his rocket ship and
take off for outer space? Of course not!! He was not driven from the face of the
earth, and he never said so, only the translators said so.
The word Cain used was ad-aw-maw,
meaning the ground. Yahweh had told him that his farming would no longer be
successful, so Cain said, "Thou hast driven me off of the ground." You
have probably noticed that Cain's descendants today are not farmers, they run
pawnshops and other money lending institutions.
When we come to Genesis chapter 7
where it is talking about the flood, wherever it says the flood covered the
earth, the Hebrew word used in the original writing by Moses was eh-rats,
meaning the land. The flood did cover the particular land where it occurred.
It was a local flood, which covered one particular region or land, not the whole
earth.
Notice that it specifies,
"Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were
covered." In ancient times two different lengths of the cubit were in use.
The sacred cubit of 25 inches and the common cubit of 20-5/8th
inches. Therefore, the waters rose above the tops of the mountains it is
speaking of either 25 feet 9 inches or 31 feet 3 inches according to
which cubit you use. If this meant that all the mountains on earth were covered,
the waters would have to cover Mount Everest, which is nearly six miles high.
Therefore, all the earth would be covered by water six miles deep. In that case,
where could it have run off to when the flood subsided? No, I don't mean that
the Bible was that badly mistaken, only the translators made this mistake. The
translators took the Hebrew word eh-rets, which means that land and
mistranslated it to mean the whole world. A little later, we shall look over the
evidence, which proves where that land was.
If six miles of water covered the
whole earth, then all nations must have been completely exterminated. However
Babylonian, Egyptian and Chinese history runs right through this period without
a break. The Bible gives the date of the flood as commencing in 2345 B.C. and
ending in 2344 B.C. In lower Sumer, later called Chaldea, which occupied the
same Plains of Shinar to which Noah's family journeyed after the flood, the city
of Ur of the Chaldees was the leading city from about 2400 B.C. until about 2285
B.C. Any flood does not break its history in this period. Farther to the north,
Babylon was rising to power from about 2400 B.C. on and reached a great height
of civilization under the famous King Hammurabi, who lived at the same time as
the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, about 2250 B.C. There is no break in this history
due to a flood. In Egypt, the eleventh dynasty began to reign about 2375 B.C.
over a great and powerful nation. The eleventh dynasty ruled to about 2212 B.C.,
and was followed by the twelfth dynasty, which ruled to about 2000 B.C. There
was no break in the eleventh dynasty at the time of Noah's flood, 2345 B.C. The
nation continued to be large and powerful throughout this period.
Accurate history of China begins
nearly 3000 B.C. The Shu King historic record of China shows that King Yao came
to the throne in 2356 B.C., 11 years before the start of Noah's flood, and ruled
China for many years after the flood. During the reign of Yao, the Shu King
reports that the Hwang Ho River, which drains the mountains and a great basin in
Sinkiang province, had excessive floods for three generations. Here again, there
was no break in history. The Chinese nation was not wiped out. Its own records
show it continued in existence right through the period of Noah's flood.
Therefore, the Bible is correct in
stating the flood covered only eh-rets that land. The translators are wrong when
they change the meaning of what Moses really wrote in Genesis chapter 7,
and say the flood covered all the earth.
This leaves us ready to inquire where
the flood did occur. For this, we will have to start with Adam and Eve and trace
where they and their descendants went. They started out in the Garden of Eden. Genesis
2:10-14 tells us that a river went out of Eden and this river divided into
four streams. It names these four rivers. Pison and Gihon, neither of which can
be identified among the rivers existing today. Hiddekel, which is the ancient
name of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates rise in
what is today extreme southeastern Turkey, a little north of modern Iraq. Making
some allowances for the fact that many rivers have changed their courses
considerably in the passing of several thousand years, this still placed the
Garden of Eden at the northern end of ancient Akkad.
When Adam and Eve were driven out of
the garden of Eden, Genesis 3:24 tells us Yahweh placed cherubim with a
flaming sword at the east side of the garden of Eden, to keep Adam and
Eve from returning and having access to the tree of life. If this guard was to
accomplish anything, it must have been placed between Adam and the Garden of
Eden. So we see that Adam and Eve were driven out to the east. From Eden, Adam's
course would naturally have led him across northern Iran, around the southern
end of the Caspian Sea, into what was formerly called Chinese Turkistan and
today is known as Sinkiang province in the extreme west of China.
In the southern part of Sinkiang there
is a great basin, rimmed by high mountains on all sides, with an outlet on the
eastern end of it, through the mountains where the headwaters of the Hwang-Ho
river, the Yellow river rises. This basin is nearly all deserts today, but it
bears evidence of a fertile and heavily inhabited past. Explorers have found
ruins of ancient cities, uncovered by the drifting sands of the desert. Also the
known geological structure shows, in ancient times at least, beneath this desert
lay enormous underground natural reservoirs, caverns filled with water. It is
the same geological structure, which furnishes artesian well water
in many parts of the world today.
These underground reservoirs were
covered by waterproof layers of rock, which kept the waters beneath from
overflowing out on the land surface above them. In this mountain rimmed basin,
then a fertile and well-populated land, Adam and Eve, or at least their
descendants of a few generations later, settled.
You, who study these lessons, already
know that Adam was not the first man. He was only the first man of the present
white race. Adam and Eve found this land to which they had come already
populated by an Asiatic people, among whom they had to live. Through the
following generations, the inevitable happened. Wherever there is integration,
intermarriages and mongrelization of the races follows. If Yahweh had no
purposes in mind, which could not be properly served by the Asiatic and Negro
races, there would have been no reason for Him to create Adam. Neither could the
purposes which Adam and his descendants were intended to serve be fulfilled by a
mongrelized race. The consequences of this mongrelization are described in Genesis
6:5. "And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually." We find the word there mistranslated earth is the Hebrew word
eh-rats, which only means the land, that particular land. There is a reason for
using this Hebrew word. This was the place where integration and mongrelization
had taken place, with its degenerative effects as compared to the qualities
possessed by each race separately.
We find confirmation of this in the
reason why Yahweh spared Noah. In Genesis 6:9, the King James Bible tells
us Noah was perfect in his generations, a meaningless phrase. When anything in
the King James Bible fails to make good sense, it is a sign that you should go
behind the mistranslation and see what the words were in the original Hebrew or
Greek. The word here translated generations was the Hebrew word to-lad-aw, which
means ancestry. Noah was perfect in his ancestry, a pure bred, not a mongrel.
Noah and his family were the last
remaining pureblooded Adamites in the world. Therefore, Yahweh needed to save
them to carry out the purposes He had planned for the Adamic people. The
mongrelized people among whom Noah and his family lived must be removed, or they
would be a trap which would eventually lead to the complete end of the pure
blooded Adamites.
Have we had any other evidence to
support our view that this was the region where Adam and Eve and their
descendants settled? Yes. Remember that Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden to
the eastward. Later, when Cain murdered Abel, and as a punishment was banished
from the land where Adam and Eve lived, Genesis 4:16 tells us, "Cain
went out from the presence of Yahweh and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east
of Eden." The Hebrew word nod means wandering. In the upper Tigris and
Euphrates valleys, north of Eden, these rivers were running swiftly downhill
from their mountain sources. Therefore, they cut deep channels in the ground.
Even today we can find the traces of the ancient diversion dams, built by the
ancients, to raise the water level up close to the surface of the ground. Then
they would not have to pump it so high to get it into their irrigation canals.
Farther to the south, in the lower
Tigris and Euphrates valleys where the slope was no longer steep, the
accumulation of silt picked up by the rivers where they ran swiftly, was now
settling to the bottom of the river beds, constantly raising the level. Every
high water season, the rivers overflowed their banks and flooded the valleys.
This is exactly the same as we have in our own Mississippi valley. These annual
floods washed away the people's houses and sent them fleeing to higher ground.
Therefore it was correctly called the land of Nod, the land of wandering. Here
Cain settled, and taught the people to build high dikes along the river banks,
just as we have done along the banks of the Mississippi river. This enabled them
to stop the annual floods, so they could now build permanent cities of good
houses, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys, the land then called by its
own inhabitants Sumer, and later called Chaldea.
In a very few places the Bible calls
it the Plain of Shinar. Cain went back westward from where Adam and Eve lived.
It was thus that Cain started his great empire. Yes, Cain is a well-known
historical character, found not only in the Bible. However, he is known in
history under another name. Cain established an empire, which extended from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and even took in some of the larger
islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Some day I will tell you about Cain and his
empire but that is another story.
Another bit of evidence is found in Genesis
11:2, which tells us that after the flood, Noah's descendants journeyed from
the east, until they came to the land of Shinar. Therefore, they must have
come from some place east of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. The only place
where such a flood as the Bible describes could have occurred, eastward from the
Tigris and Euphrates valleys, is this mountain basin in Sinkiang, which I have
been talking about.
More evidence is found in the high
water mark found in many places along the mountains, which rim this basin,
showing at one time this basin was a lake, extending to this well marked
shoreline. The mountains which rim this valley were not fully covered, for many
of them range from 16,000 to 25,000 feet in height and one even rises over
28,000 feet. But, within the basin are several smaller mountains, which could be
fully covered by a flood held within the higher rim of the valley. This basin,
through which flows the Tarim River and which is sometimes known as the Tarim
Basin in southern Sinkiang, is identified as the site of Noah's flood.
In the King James Bible Genesis
7:11-12 reads, "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. The rain was
upon the earth forty days and forty nights." A more careful translation
makes it clear what really happened. In Moffatt's Modern English translation we
read, "The fountains of the great abyss burst, and the
sluices of heaven were opened". Smith and Goodspeed's American translation
says, "The fountains of the great abyss were all broken open, and
the windows of the heavens were opened". A great earthquake broke up this
waterproof layer of rock over the immense, water filled abyss or cavern beneath
this Tarim Basin, causing the floor of the valley to settle and allowed the
enormous underground reservoir to overflow and submerge the valley floor.
The great earthquake in the Himalaya
Mountains several years ago produced similar effects in some places. Of course,
the 40 days of torrential rains added to the flood. This filled the valley high
enough to submerge the mountains, which were inside the valley, exactly as Genesis
7:19-20 says. Don't be misled by the mistranslation, "All the high
hills that were under the whole heaven were covered". The
word-mistranslated heaven is the Hebrew word shaw-meh, meaning the sky. Since
this Tarim Basin is somewhat more than 350 miles wide by more than 650 miles
long, all the sky visible from anywhere near the center of this valley would
cover only this valley and therefore only those lower mountains which were
within the valley itself. What about Genesis 8:4 reading, "And the
ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the
mountains of Ararat"?
Sometimes failure to translate
can be as misleading as mistranslation. Most people understand this to mean
Mount Ararat in Armenia, some 1,600 miles west of the Tarim Basin. This is not
what the Bible says. First of all, note it reads mountains of Ararat
Mountains being in the plural, while Mount Ararat in Armenia is only a single
peak. However, Mount Ararat in Armenia was known until comparatively recent
times as Mount Massis. Nobody had ever heard of it being called Mount Ararat in
Bible times. Furthermore, the Hebrew word ararat means only the tops of the
hills. Therefore, correctly translated, Genesis 8:4 only says the ark
came to rest upon the top of the high hills, some of the lower mountains which
were within the valley.
A recent newspaper report mentions an
expedition, equipped with the latest electronic equipment, which is going to
Mount Ararat in Armenia to find the ark. The expedition will melt the ice, which
covers what they think is the ark, by coating it with black powdered carbon.
They won't find the ark because it isn't there. Several expeditions have gone to
Mount Ararat to find the ark. Some of them got within sight of a mass on the
side of the mountain, which, from that particular point of view, looked to be
shaped somewhat, like a ship. That point has been very carefully inspected from
the air by airplanes flying over it very closely. It has proven to be nothing
but a ledge of rock, which does give a silhouette, shaped like a ship, when seen
from the right direction. I need not mention the many places, such as the Grand
Canyon etc., where similar ship rocks can be seen and none of them are Noah's
Ark.
When we carefully examine the whole
affair, and correct the mistranslations, we find that there is no conflict
between what the Bible really says and either science or history. In
fact, there never is any such conflict; it is only the preachers who find
themselves contradicted by either science or history. This is only because they
either won't take the trouble to find out what the Bible really says, or they
have made the mistranslation a supposedly sacred church doctrine and now they
are stuck with it. Don't let any church shake your faith in the Bible. The Bible
is always right, even if the preachers are often wrong.
Let's remember another thing, the
Chinese historical records. The Shu-King records that during the reign of King
Yao, at a time beginning about the date of Noah's flood, the Hwang Ho River
carried excessive floods for three generations. Drainage out of the Tarim Basin
to the eastward would have been carried off in the Hwang Ho River and would
account for this.
Now we come to another false doctrine
taught in many churches. Since nobody survived in all the earth except Noah and
his family, everybody now living is a descendant of Noah and related by blood,
no matter what race they belong to. We have already learned the flood did not
cover the whole earth, but only one valley about 350 by 650 miles in size. The
flood did not interrupt Chinese history although they do report purely local
floods in the Hwang Ho valley where the waters were draining off. We have seen
that the flood does not interrupt Egyptian history, so the continent of Africa
was not touched by it and the Negro race continued unaffected by it.
It would be absurd to think Noah and
his wife, both of them being white, could have one white child, one Negro child,
and one Chinese child. Remember in Genesis 1:11-25, when Yahweh created
the world and its inhabitants and made the laws governing their reproduction. He
did not make it absurd chaos, with whales giving birth to cattle and fish
hatching out of birds' eggs. His law, several times repeated for emphasis, is
always that each creature must bring forth strictly after its own kind.
The churches that teach this false
doctrine of everybody being descended from Noah, never got it from the Bible,
that is in any true translation of the Bible. As Moses wrote it in the Hebrew
language, under divine inspiration, the Bible correctly tells that Noah's
descendants went out into a world already populated by people who had lived
right through the time of the flood and were still going strong.
Ferrar Fenton's Modern English
Translation gives this correctly. In Genesis 10:1-5 we read about the
descendants of Noah's son Japheth, "From these they spread themselves over
the sea coasts of the countries of the nations, each with their language amongst
the Gentile tribes." Genesis 10:20 tells of the descendants of
Noah's son Ham, "These were the sons of Ham, in their tribes and languages,
in the regions of the heathen". Genesis 10:31 completes it:
"These are the sons of Shem, by their tribes and by their languages, in
their countries among the heathen." So never let anybody tell you the Bible consists of the fables of a primitive people. It is perfectly consistent with all true science and all true history. It is the history of our race, the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Teutonic white race. |