Posted on 12/21/2012 3:25:31 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events.
In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah.
Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus. Part one airs on Friday, Dec. 21 and part two on Friday, Dec. 28, both starting at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Ballard's track record for finding the impossible is well known. In 1985, using a robotic submersible equipped with remote-controlled cameras, Ballard and his crew hunted down the world's most famous shipwreck, the Titanic.
Now Ballard is using even more advanced robotic technology to travel farther back in time. He is on a marine archeological mission that might support the story of Noah. He said some 12,000 years ago, much of the world was covered in ice.
"Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube," he said. "But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history."
The water from the melting glaciers began to rush toward the world's oceans, Ballard said, causing floods all around the world.
"The questions is, was there a mother of all floods," Ballard said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within a short space:
Gen. 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;...These were seven days of intense light, generated by some major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:Gen. 7:10 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth."
"...Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days..."
Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".
It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. It may not say so directly, but the ages given in Genesis 5 along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:
Gen. 5:25 ->"And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.
<i.e. he lived 969 - 187 = 782 years after Lamech's birth>
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son. And he called his name Noah...
<182 + 600 = 782 also...>
Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; seven days prior to the flood...
Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT.
From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:
...however, Lekah, Gen. 7.4) BR 3.6 (in the week of mourning for Methuselah, God caused the primordial light to shine).... God did not wish Methuselah to die at the same time as the sinners...
The reference is, again, to Gen. 7.4, which reads:
"For yet seven days, and I shall cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights..."
The note that "God did not wish Methusaleh to die at the same time as the sinners" indicates that Methusaleh died at pretty nearly precisely the beginning of the week prior to the flood. The week of "God causing the primordial lights to shine" was the week of intense light before the flood.
What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.
The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc. Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the memory of the seven days prior to the flood.
If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the storyteller (isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the population, and never included in the OT story directly.
Greek and Roman authors, particularly Hesiod and ovid, Chinese authors and others, note that small groups of men and animals survived the flood on high places and on anything which could float for a year. I do not see an essential contradiction between this and the biblical account. Noah's descendants were probably unaware of anybody else surviving and wrote the story that way.
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And I believe the Ballard expedition dates to 1999 and has been explored by National Geographic and PBS.
Ballard is most known for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998.
He also discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 in 2002 and visited Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who saved its crew.
Today, Ballard leads ocean exploration on E/V Nautilus.
http://creation.com/Robert-Ballard-did-not-discover-Noahs-Flood
...Robert Ballard, the famous underwater archaeologist who discovered the sunken Titanic, is in the news again with his claim to have found evidence for Noah’s Flood in the Black Sea. This old claim has been resurrected by Christiane Amanpour in her two-part ABC News special, “Back to the Beginning”.
In 1999, using underwater robotic devices, Robert Ballard explored beneath the waters of the Black Sea for supporting evidence for a theory presented by geologists Ryan and Pitman...
The Biblical flood was global not local and though Ballard has some interesting ideas he’s not describing Noah’s flood.
“Greek and Roman authors, particularly Hesiod and ovid, Chinese authors and others, note that small groups of men and animals survived the flood on high places and on anything which could float for a year. I do not see an essential contradiction between this and the biblical account. Noah’s descendants were probably unaware of anybody else surviving and wrote the story that way.”
Well, if you just view the Old Testament as a collection of stories that the Hebrews wrote down, then it might not be contradictory. However, if the OT is the inspired Word of God, then it certainly is a contradiction. Even if Noah wouldn’t know about other survivors, God would, and the authoritative statements to the contrary would then be lies. So, either there were no other survivors, or the book is not the Word of God.
Also, I don’t think multiple groups of survivors match up with the DNA evidence. The distribution of Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA types matches up a bottleneck of just one lineage of males with three lineages of females, just as we see with Noah’s three sons and their three wives.
bookmark...
“Also, I don’t think multiple groups of survivors match up with the DNA evidence. The distribution of Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA types matches up a bottleneck of just one lineage of males with three lineages of females, just as we see with Noah’s three sons and their three wives.”
I haven’t heard of this theory. Do you have a link?
Gen 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward
BTTT
Exactly right. Christiane Amanpour telling us about Christianity, LOL?
Also, Directv's description for the show says she will visit sites that are sacred to Christianity, Judaism, and ISLAM. No thanks.
The stronger case is for Noah's Flood and other deluge stories describing an asteroid or comet impact 4,800 years ago in the Indian Ocean. Not only have the impact crater and geologic evidence of an associated tsunami been located, but a total solar eclipse at the same time as the flood indicates a precise date of May 10, 2807 B.C.
For further information:
Curiosity got me on that too, so I looked for info and found Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup which indicates that "Y-chromosomal Adam is the name given by researchers to a theoretical male who is the most recent common patrilineal (male-lineage) ancestor of all living humans." There's a chart lower down showing the dispersion.
Thanks, Boogieman - interesting.
If God actively protected the Bible then the NIB wouldn't contain the horrible mistranslation of Isaiah 30:26 which it does. Not that there aren't parts of the Bible which are literally true, most of it is...
There’s quite a difference between saying the Bible is the Word of God to saying it can’t be mistranslated.
“Gen 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward”
That is not necessarily a contradiction, since the Nephilim is not a term that denotes a specific lineage, but rather the type of creature. Therefore, it doesn’t say that the Nephilim who existed after the flood were in any way descended from the Nephilim who existed before the flood. Instead, they could simply have been created by the same process as the other Nephilim were created.
Here’s a creationist’s take on the haplogroups and Mt DNA as viewed from a Biblical perspective:
http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics
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