Floodology (An original contemplation) A response to https://steemit.com/religion/@gavvet/tough-questions-on-science-and-the-bible-understanding-how-the-bible-was-written
I always had an irritatingly acute interest in Biblical Flood. It feels like an ulcer on the body of my fairytale memory. Believing or disbelieving here is beside the point. I feel that every a narrative deserves to exist if it doesn’t meet an internal contradiction. This story, though…
Anyhow, I am glad that there are people who could, hopefully, give me (forget scientific) a reasonable explanation of this …floodology.
Let’s start with animals.7 Genesis 7 Verses 2 and 3
Ok, that 7 pairs of clean those with split hooves: cow, sheep, goat, deer, and gazelle, etc. This includes 100 species of the deer family, 170 of bovid family and let's say another 30 species of others. Altogether 300 animals x 7x2 = 4200 animals. Then birds which is around 10,000 x 7 x 2 = 140,000 animals.
Now nonclean animals are all the rest of herbivores like Elephant, Rhino, Giraffe, Horse, Hippo, etc. Then carnivores like tigers, lions, leopards, hyena, wolfs, etc. and omnivore animals like bear and pig. Of course, all these animals have subspecies.
Elephants
Tigers
And so on…
Seven sub-specials of a lion, four subspecies of leopard, three subspecies of a jaguar, and six subspecies of a puma. The list goes on and on…
Which lucky couple won the tickets to Noah ark? Or did Noah accommodate all the subspecies? He must have. Or else where would they come from? Five thousand years is too short of a time for evolving subspecies.
Accommodating animals on Ark
Some animals are more peaceful like maybe rabbits, squirrels and some antelopes so Noah could probably get away with putting several of them together in the same cage. Yet, most animals are very territorial. Try to put 2 male lions say Asian and Barbary in the same cage.
One of them for sure wouldn’t make it through the trip. So, as a rule, you’d need a separate partition for every couple of animals.
All together we have around 6 million species of land animals. With subspecies, it would be at least 10 times more. But many of them are tiny: flies, beetles, scorpions. So instead of multiplying this number by ten let’s divide it in half. This should filter out by size. Then, if we allocate 1 cubic foot for each animal we would need 3 million cubic feet. Woops. That’s more than a volume of the entire ark was.
The Ark dimensions were specified in Genesis 6:15
Cubit - an ancient measure of length, approximately equal to the length of a forearm. It was typically about 18 inches or 44 cm, though there was a long cubit of about 21 inches or 52 cm.
Thus 300 cubits x 50cubits x 30 cubits or 6,300 in x 1,050 x 630 in or 525 ft x 87.5ft x 52.5 ft the total space = 2,411,718.75 cubic feet
Not very accommodating, indeed. And what about the food storage: grains and seeds for birds, hay for herbivores and meat for carnivores?
Food storage
Average tiger, for example, eats 25lb of meat per day. We have 6 males and six females, which makes it 12x25=300lb per day. Just to recall, animals were on the Ark for 376 days. In order to feed the tigers, Noah had to have 300lb * 376 days = 112,800 lb of meat. A bull weighs 2,400 lb. Thus, in order to feed only tigers, Arc had to have 47 bulls. Make it 50 because some weight is carried in bones.
What about seven sub-specials of a lion, four subspecies of leopard, three subspecies of a jaguar, and six subspecies of puma? That’s (7+4+3+6)x2=40 animals Let’s say each eats 15lb per day in average. That’s 40x15*376 = 225,600 days Now divide of 2,400 = 94 bulls. There are, of course, tons of other smaller carnivores: cats, dogs, mustelids, and other small carnivorous. We are looking at a huge herd of a thousand heads.
Each such animal consumes around 30lb of dry food per day. So we are looking at 30x1000x376=11,280,000lb of hay just to support the food stock for canines.
How about all other large herbivores? Two subspecies of elephants, five of rhinos, five of hippopotamus and then all those endless deer and, antelopes, buffalos.
That’s dry food. How about fresh water? How much would this huge herd drink? Where would Noah keep that much water?
Finally, who would kills the animals, chop them into pieces and distribute the food between caged animals? Would it be Noah himself or he will delegate the chore to his sons and their wives? Because considering the number of animals requiring food and drink they would have to devote to it their entire day and iit won't be enough.
I can only imagine what a health-hazard this work was. All these animals produced enough fecal matter to stick up the entire forest let alone a ship. I used to work in a microbiological lab with white mice and let me tell you they were able to stink up the place, despite periodic cleaning. Ark hasn’t been cleaned for over a year!
The arrival of animals to the Ark
Then let’s talk about animal arrival to the Ark. I have no questions about local Mesopotamia fauna. While Noah was building the Ark for over seventy years they had the time to roam around and somehow get to the Ark.
But let’s say an African Lion, Indian elephant, Siberian tiger or Polar bear. Why would they be wandering thousands of miles from their native habitat? Surely, God could compel walruses, seals, and penguins to swim oceans and then crawl through deserts to the Ark. But what about all the marsupials in Australia? Could kangaroos just hop their way through the Indian Ocean while astringes flew?
Wouldn’t it be easier for God just to flick his fingers and zero out the population, rather than go through all these troubles?
The chronology
Let’s me first establish how high water have risen because this will become an essential consideration later on.
Verse 20 gives us something countable - 15 cubits. This means that water rose 21x15=315 inches or 26.5 feet Definitely enough to cover some local hills in Mesopotamia. However, as far as “high hills that were under the whole heaven” … that’s doubtable.
Mont Blanc = (13,123 ft) Pico d'Aneto (11,168 ft) Mount Ararat (16,854 ft)
Definitely higher than 26.5 feet.
Let's proceed now to find out how long did rain was falling…
Genesis 7 verse 24
The Bible also confirms it in verse 3 of the Genesis 8
Verses 4 and 5 of the Genesis 8
The Bible also confirms it in verse 3 of the Genesis 8
That is 151 day.
This is supported by Genesis 7 Verse 11
From 2/17/ to 7/17/ it is 150 or 151 days. Close enough.
Also, the distance between Noah's original place in Mesopotamia and Mount Ararat is about 400 miles. The Ark should have moved just a bit over 400/151 = 2.6 miles a day. Sounds reasonable.
Genesis 8 Verse 5
That is 252 days from the beginning of the Flood, between 2/17/ and 10/10/
Notice, the Mount Ararat wasn’t among those mountains that came out from the water on the 252nd day. The Biblical author refers to the same mountains that were covered initially by 15 cubits of water. Otherwise, how could the Ark be resting on it on the 151st day when the water only started to abate?
So far so good.
But then… check out the narrative in the verses 6 through 11 of the Genesis 8
What we see is that on the 47th day after the beginning of the flood, the dove landed somewhere. If it weren’t the dry land, then, at the very least, it was an olive tree that was partially out of the water. This totally contradicts the conclusion inferred from Genesis 8 Verse 5 that I quoted earlier.
The land (top of hills) showed up not earlier than 252 since the beginning of the flood. At the very least it was after 151 days when the water started to abate.
Yep, confusing...
I have one guess, though. It is far-fetched, but I will share it with you. Let’s look at Genesis 7 Verse 19
Maybe by “haven” the Bible writer implied some place in Iraq where Adam and Eve were incubated. If this place was elevated over 15 cubits above the sea level, that would make things right. Then, what Bible write actually suggest, is that the rain covered only the mountains which elevation was below 15 cubits. Thus, the dove and the raven that Noah sent from the Ark could actually land on some mountain or a relatively high hill before the water started to subside.
All the help to clarify the dilemma would be greatly appreciated.
All Bible quotes are taken from King James Bible
When we "moderns" see the word earth we usually associate it with the entire globe. However the word earth had many meanings anciently.
Here is a sample from an online dictionary
http://www.bible-history.com/faussets/E/Earth/
If the flood is not global most of these difficulties are resolved and there is geological evidence of catastrophic widespread flooding in areas in and around Mesopotamia anciently
This makes a lot of sense and, indeed, resolves the contradictions. If water was trapped in Mesopotamia and even if it was a Mediterranean basin and was trapped by The Alps, the Pyrenees, high African coastal line, and the Caucasus Mountains. This would make 26.5 feet water rise and the fauna sample limited to the local varieties much more feasible.
It also makes sense in terms of reasoning for the artificial origin of Flood if to assume that the Garden of Eden was a laboratory, where aliens of a powerful extraterrestrial civilization genetically modified humans, implanting in them a desire of Gold mining.
Once they saw that population sample was contaminated manifested disobedience and not doing directly what they were supposed to, the decision was made to wipe them out and leave only one that displayed an obvious obedience. I can even imagine that the Ark request was given not only to Noah but to several ancient people. It just happened that Noah was the only one who actually went alone with that request.
That also explains the cruelty of the whole act. It’s hard to imagine the almighty God messing up like this. It makes much more sense that the genetic experiment went the wrong way and the aliens had to supplicate to flooding mechanism. For one thing, they looked at humans almost like on animals without any compassion and having no remorse. On another hand, unlike almighty God, they weren’t all that powerful and could only utilize the built-in natural mechanisms.
And, by the way, the idea of cosmic spores and alien origin of life on Earth, does not at all contradict the idea of God. Suppose, life came to Earth from other planets. However, it had to start somewhere at some time by some super intelligence.