Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Genesis 6 | Date: June 26, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

All right, the last few weeks we’ve looked at the account of the flood. We’ve seen that as the narrative is structured, the center point of it is the statement in chapter six that God remembered Noah. And so it is, in a sense, a story of grace and God preserving humanity. We saw also that it’s a story of judgment and probably the clearest theme of it—and that’s picked up later in the scriptures as well—that the flood account becomes a paradigm even of the final judgment to come. And we saw last time that it’s a story of rescue, and Noah and the ark both become pictures of Christ and the safety that we have in him.

Next Sunday, we’ll look at the Noahic covenant, the sacrifice that Noah offered, and the covenant that God made with Noah and with all of creation. After that, we will look at Noah’s prophecy concerning his three sons. And then we’ll move on to Chapter 10 and the Table of Nations. Today, I want to look one more time back at the account of the flood. And this will be a little bit different. It’s not going to be an intensely interpretive study of the flood account. I hope it will be interesting to some of you anyway. And if not, don’t tell me.

But what I want to do is look at the flood account in light of some contemporary questions. Did it happen? Was it universal? Was the ark big enough? Those kinds of questions that come up when you talk about the flood. We’ll just address some of those contemporary questions and then next time we’ll move on with the narrative of the covenant.

Did It Happen?

The Genesis flood—and many of you may be aware of this—is not the only account of a universal flood. In fact, the ancient world had many, many different accounts of a flood that deluged the entire world. Egypt had it. Sumerians had it. The Mesopotamians had it. As far away as India had it. There are various accounts of the flood from all over the world, virtually everywhere. Egypt had it, and there are different kinds of versions of it as well.

The Mesopotamian accounts are the closest in resemblance to the Genesis account, and there are many copies of those Mesopotamian accounts found. I think we have 16 different accounts of it from the Mesopotamians. They date to the time of Abraham. In fact, the Mesopotamian account is—or the Sumerian kings list is—important for other reasons as well, because you have this list of the kings and then you have the flood. And you have a list of the kings that reigned. And the kings that reigned before the flood in the Sumerian king list reigned for thousands of years each. And the kings after the flood account reigned only for hundreds of years each. Well, you can see, even if the story’s been corrupted, you can see the broad resemblance to Genesis 5 and the age of humanity in those days.

But those accounts of the flood, even though they vary in so many different ways, are so widespread and so pervasive that they do indicate that they, in fact—it’s hard, I think it’s difficult to miss the fact that they’re rooted in some kind of historical event. Easy enough for us to say then, okay, we have the true account of it in Genesis that Moses gives us and these other accounts are reflections of that even though they’ve been corrupted in some various kinds of ways. And in that way they allow, afford some kind of attestation of the historical credibility of the flood—not that you need something outside of the scriptures to verify what the scriptures say, but there that is.

But virtually every—these are so pervasive and so widespread that it’s pretty safe to say that virtually everyone in the ancient world was familiar with the account, some account, of a universal flood that had come on the earth. One of them reads, “the flood that destroyed the inhabited regions as well as all the foreign lands.” Well, these kinds of accounts were common in the ancient world, and the oldest ones that we have date about to the time of Abraham, so that’s roughly 2000 BC. That’s before Moses writing; Moses was writing 1400s BC.

Some of the details in those other accounts are clearly reflective of the Genesis account. You have, of course, the flood. You have the fact that it’s a universal deluge. You have the account of the boat. You have the account of the sending out of the birds. You have even the account of the sacrifice—of course, in those accounts, of sacrifice to the gods. You even have in one of them, I think it’s the Egyptian version, the account of how the evil in the earth gave rise to the flood, probably reflective of what we have in Genesis 6:1–4. But in that account, it’s the gods who are opposing each other and fighting and things like that. And that might even be broadly reflective of the angelic connection that we considered in Genesis chapter 6.

But there are extensive differences. And of course, this has been a ground for critical scholars to say, well, ours is just another corruption of a story, another version. But I think it’s interesting to look at the differences and then look at not only how they differ, but then how Genesis differs in some important ways from them.

One of the differences in the other accounts is the dimensions of the boat. In Genesis, we have the dimensions of the ark. And I’m not going to get into the details of that. But we’re told by those who know such things that the dimensions of the ark are essentially those of modern shipbuilding. They’re very seaworthy, the ship that was built. That wouldn’t surprise us. God gave Noah the instructions for building the ark. In the Babylonian account, we have, I think it’s an 180-foot square cube. That’s the boat. Wouldn’t be very stable. I don’t think you’d want to ride in that. That’s one interesting difference between the old accounts, the other accounts, and the biblical account.

We also have in the other accounts the account of the sending of the birds. Now in Genesis, the account is very well considered. First of all, Noah sends out the raven, which can endure longer flights. And then he sends out the dove, which is lower flying and it’s more vulnerable and can’t fly as far and all of that. It’s very well considered. In the other accounts, you have a dove being sent out and then a sparrow and then a raven, things like that. And there’s really no real sense to what is being sent out.

You have a lot of differences in details, differences in numbers, the numbers of days, the duration of the time, the numbers of the people involved, things like that, the places involved. Some of the versions you have many different passengers and different crewmen involved in running the ship and things like that. Some of them you have some ingenious and crafty heroes who saved themselves from the flood, things like that.

The most important difference, I suppose, is that in all of those ancient Near Eastern accounts of the flood, it’s set in the atmosphere of polytheism. You have many gods and competing gods, gods competing with one another, and of course all these gods are finite. There’s no god with absolute universal power over all things, and you have these competing deities, and they’re petty, and they’re self-indulgent, and they’re perverse, and they’re fickle, and you can never depend on what they’re going to do; they’re unpredictable. And they’re fighting with one another over various things. And in one of the accounts, I think it’s more than one of the accounts, the gods see the flood coming, and so they commission a man to build the ark to save them, things like that.

In Genesis, all of that stands in contrast to what we have. In Genesis, we have one God overall; He’s in firm control over all of it. In chapter 6, verse 17, He is the one who sends the flood. He doesn’t see it coming and make provisions. He sends the flood. In chapter 6, verse 18, He saves Noah. In chapter 7, verse 16, He shuts Noah in the ark. Chapter 7, verse 23, He destroys all living things. Chapter 8, He causes the flood to recede. And in the Genesis account, just one family is spared, and that’s only because God so provided it. He took the initiative in all of it. And then at the end of it all, in chapter 8, the end of chapter 8, God makes a covenant with Noah and with all of creation, promising that He’ll never do this again.

We’ve talked before about some what we call polemic theology, where Moses will write something that’s clearly echoing in some way some of the ancient Near Eastern religions. Critical scholars like to say this is just another version of that, but I think that clearly the better view of it is to say that Moses is writing with them in mind, but he’s picking out certain points—put it this way, certain points that he emphasizes seem to be for the point of polemics against the ancient Near Eastern religions around him and to show the superiority of the God of heaven, the God of Israel. All right, so those are the ancient accounts. That’s not much to say, but that at least makes you aware of them.

Was the Flood Universal?

Next question, was the flood universal? There have been a lot of alternative suggestions to this. Even within evangelical circles and otherwise conservative circles, some have argued that it was a relatively localized flood. One of the professors that I had at one point argued—a very conservative good man—but he argued that it was an anthropologically universal flood, but not necessarily a global flood. Great guy, a wonderful man. I wouldn’t fault him for anything, but I just can’t see that.

And what I want to do now is, if you’ll have Genesis open in front of you, I want you to see some of the details that help us answer this question. Was the flood universal? Let’s go with the account itself and see what it says.

In chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, God announces his intentions, and notice what he says. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his hearts was only evil continually, and the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.'” So here God says up front that his purpose in sending the flood is to eliminate mankind—of course, except for Noah and his family—but to eliminate all of mankind, to eliminate all the animals, except those spared on the ark, to eliminate all the bugs, creeping things, and all the birds of the air. So everything on the globe, every living thing, it says, was destroyed or would be destroyed.

Chapter 6, verse 13: God said to Noah, “I’ve determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” Another expression, “all flesh,” may well mean all humanity, or it could mean all of the animal world as well. It’s hard to determine exactly, but that expression is used with regard to humanity. Verse 17: “Behold, I’ll bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.” Now that’s explicitly broader. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

Jump down to chapter seven, verse four: “For in seven days I’ll send rain on the earth, 40 days and 40 nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” Back in chapter six, verses 18 to 20, this emphasizes the need for the ark, both for men and animals. So in order to preserve mankind, an ark was needed, and in order to preserve the animals alive, an ark was needed. “I’ll establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, your sons’ wives with you—and of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, of the birds according to their kinds, of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind. Two of every sort shall come to you and keep them alive.”

Back again to chapter 7, verse 19, we have a description of the extent of the flood in broad terms. “The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters.” Certainly leaves the impression that you have a global deluge, and the ark is floating on top of it. Chapter 7, verse 20, I think reemphasizes that, and with the depth of the flood, “the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heavens were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep.” So all of them, all of the mountains, all the high mountains under the whole heavens were covered. And it’s covered 15 cubits deep.

Now, why is that significant? At least 15 cubits or 22 feet above the highest mountain. How would that be important? Well, in chapter 6, verse 15, the height of the ark is 30 cubits, roughly 44 feet. So the draft in the hull of the boat would be at least half that, 15 cubits. And so you get the sense here of Noah thinking, “Well, we’re not scraping bottom. It must be at least 15 cubits over the highest mountain.” That’s the sense of, I think, what’s going on. The point of it, then, is that this is a universal flood. Because of gravity, water is going to seek its own level and still be at least 15 cubits above the highest mountain.

Chapter 7, verses 21 to 23, we have noted for us the extent of death that actually happened. “All flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind, everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark.” Again, I think the sense of a universal flood is pretty obvious.

Chapter 7, verse 11, and some other verses here, we’ll see the duration of the flood indicates the same. Look at 7:24: “The waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.” So you get the picture here of just surging currents for 150 days. And the flood reached its maximum depth in 40 days. And then for another 110 days, you’ve got these waters surging over the earth, producing who knows what kind of geological tracks behind them. Chapter 7, verse 11: the flood began in the second month, the 17th day of Noah’s 600th year. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of heaven were open.”

Then chapter 8, verse 4: the ark floated over the mountains for five months. “In the seventh month, the seventeenth day, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” Chapter 8, verse 5: water receded for two and a half months before the tops of the mountains could be seen. Waters continued to abate until the 10th month. And the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountain were seen. Verses 6 and 7 of chapter 8, you’ve got 40 days yet before he sent out the raven. Chapter 8, verse 8, now you have another seven days: he sent out the dove. Verse 10: he sends out, after another seven days, he sent out the dove the second time. Verse 12: after another seven days, he sent out the dove a third time. And verse 14 then, the earth is finally dry in the second month and the 27th day.

So it’s over a year, 371 days. We have this flood deluging the globe. I mentioned last time Whitcomb and Morris’s book, The Genesis Flood, which is sort of a landmark book on the subject. I think an interesting statement here, he says, “One’s imagination is indeed staggered at the thought of a flood as gigantic as to overwhelm the high mountains of the earth within a period of six weeks, and then to continue prevailing over those mountains for an additional 16 weeks, during which time the sole survivors of the human race drifted on the face of the shoreless ocean. But if the biblical concept of a deluge covering the tops of the mountains for 16 consecutive weeks is hard to reconcile with a local flood theory, what are we to say of the fact that an additional 31 weeks were required for the waters to subside sufficiently for Noah to disembark safely on the mountains of Ararat?” I think that’s a good observation. I think it well answers the question.

Verse 19: “Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.” So you have the statement here that all kinds of present non-marine animals came from the ark. All of them previously were destroyed except for them. Chapter 8, verse 21, God said that he would never do this again. We’ll talk about that more next time, which is a fascinating statement in verse 21. But for here, the important thing to note is that God said he’ll never do this again. And if the flood was only a local flood, then that promise has not been kept. What God did, he said he’ll never do again. So the universal flood, I think, is indicated there as well.

Chapter 9, verse 11, God makes the same promise again. And then chapter 9, verse 19, all the peoples of the earth that we have today have come from Noah’s three sons. That’s the point of chapter 10 that we’ll look at in a couple of weeks. Chapter 10, verse 32: “These are the clans of the sons of Noah. According to their genealogies and their nations, and from these the nations spread on the earth after the flood.”

Jesus comments on this in Luke chapter 17, verse 26: “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, marrying, being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking and buying and selling and planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” Well, the force of the argument is that there’s no escape. This flood came and no one survived except for Noah and his family. Just as in Noah’s day, you can imagine people saying, “Oh, we should have listened to Noah,” and they bang on the door trying to get in too late. Jesus says that’s what it’ll be like in the day when he comes.

One more reference to this in the New Testament: 2 Peter 3, verse 6. “The world that then was perished in the flood.” That’s Peter’s statement. “The world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. By the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” So it seems pretty clear here, he’s making a clear statement that that world, that heavens and earth, was destroyed, and this new world that exists now is being reserved for judgment in the final day. And it seems obvious that he’s speaking in terms of a universal judgment in universal flood.

I don’t think we’re left with any uncertainty after reading all of those details. I don’t think the options are very many. The flood was universal in extent. It’s explained in universal terms. The depth, the duration of the flood indicate a global flood. The very need for the ark indicates a global flood. If it were just a localized flood of some kind, there would be no need for the ark. You could just relocate Noah and his family. The size of the ark indicates it. God’s covenant, God’s promise that he won’t do this again indicates a universal flood. I think that answer is pretty clear. If you’d like to see that worked out in detail, again, get Whitcomb and Morris’s book. They’ve done it better than anyone else.

All right, another question. Yes. Is it possible that not every mountain in the world was covered up completely? Yes, they have. And humans can’t live above a certain height anyway, so they wouldn’t have been fit. Right. Yeah, Whitcomb and Morris have—and I don’t have all the stats in front of me—but they’re arguing for it to cover the highest mountain. And it says that the highest mountain is covered. For that to work out with gravity taking water to its natural depth, if it’s already up there, it’s going to be a global flood. And they’ve got the stats on that, and they’ve got it worked out.

Yeah, Clark. Yeah, there’s been conjecture on that as well. And it is just that; it’s conjecture. We just don’t know. Many have argued—it’s called flood geology—what did the flood do to the earth? And it could have bulged up mountains, certainly carved out valleys. Rivers that were then might not be now; that not only overflowed the rivers, but it might have just wiped them out and ended up with currents elsewhere. We just don’t know. But that is one of the guesses that’s been made.

Was the Ark Big Enough?

Another question that comes up: was the ark big enough? And some critics have actually kind of mocked this. Can you imagine all of the animals in the world fitting on one boat? Well, they’ve worked this out as well, and many have done this. Again, I think the easiest place is Whitcomb and Morris’s book. But we’re given the measurements of the ark: so many cubits. Now a cubit is anywhere from—it’s pretty well agreed—anywhere from 17 1/2 inches to 20 inches. We’ll take 17 1/2 just to be on the safe side that we’re not over-guessing.

But given that then, the ark was 437 1/2 feet long, almost 73 feet wide, almost 44 feet high, and it had three decks according to chapter 6, verse 16. When you add all of that together, you have a total deck area of 95,700 square feet. You have a volume of 1.5 million cubic feet. You have a gross tonnage of 13,900 tons. There have been various calculations with this. Bottom line of it all, there’s ample room for all of that was described in Genesis to fit on the ark. Whitcomb and Morris have conjectured further that God imposed a hibernation on them so they didn’t have to store that much food and they didn’t have to deal with waste removal and things like that. I’m not buying that. Maybe that’s possible, but that’s not how I read the Genesis account. But at any rate, the dimensions that were given to the ark—not only is the boat seaworthy, but it is plenty big with plenty of deck area to hold all of the animals that are described in the Genesis account, with room to spare.

What Are Moses’ Sources of Information?

Another question comes up. What are Moses’ sources of information on all of this? Moses’ sources of information in Genesis has long been, for a couple hundred years now—well 150 or more years—a point of attack on the veracity of the scriptures by critical scholars. You’ve probably heard of the J, E, D, and P, the various supposed sources of Genesis and the Pentateuch. I’m not going to get into all that. That has been thoroughly discredited for a long time now, even though the critics still like to hang on to it and you still see it in some of the commentaries. And the results of those critical theories with the dates and the origins of various books of the Old Testament are affected by it with the Levitical priestly literature coming much later than what we think in Moses’ time. And it lingers on, but the theory itself has been thoroughly discredited.

But apart from that, we still want to know where did Moses get his information for all of these things. And one fascinating article I came across some time ago—it was written in 1906 in a theological journal called Bibliotheca Sacra by a guy named S.E. Bishop. I don’t know who he is. That’s all I have: S.E. Bishop. They didn’t give authors’ information in the journals in those days. But he makes a speculation, and he does admit that it’s impossible to prove, but he speculates that Moses is using Noah’s logbook, or a copy of it, for his source of information here.

By the way, this Moses’ sources of information is an interesting question elsewhere, like in the patriarchs and where we get some of the details that we have there. Did some of them keep records as well? It’s a fascinating question. But here he speculates that he had Noah’s logbook. There’s an objection to that, by the way, and that is that writing—so far as we know—writing did not come into existence until about 3500 BC, and the flood would have been some time before that. That’s a little questionable as well because, one, we don’t know that we have all that information to determine that it started in 3500 BC. And two, we also know that formal writing is one thing, but keeping statistics and business accounts and logs and things like that—there were methods of doing that before there was writing. So the date of writing and the origin of writing really doesn’t answer the question at all.

But what Bishop does is he notes some specific details provided in the narrative that seem to reflect a firsthand contemporary account of what was going on in the days of the flood. So if you’d like to look, chapter 7, verse 17: “The flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them by 15 cubits deep.”

Well, it has the feel of a firsthand account. He’s not telling the story so much as he is recounting specifics, not all of which are really necessary to the narrative. So verse 17, “the waters increased and bore up on the ark.” So we have here a statement that the boat’s floating. The boat’s floating. Well, who would record such a detail? Of course the boat floated. But if you can imagine yourself as Noah or one of his sons or one of the wives, “Whoa, the boat’s floating.” It has the ring of a contemporary account. Why else would that be included? It seems like a firsthand account. It’s a significant event if you are keeping a log of what’s happening. It’s no doubt a significant thing if you’re on the boat to note, “Okay, here we go. It’s floating.”

And then verse 18, “the waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth.” So the flood is now taking on formidable dimensions. It’s overwhelming. It has the ring of a firsthand account. Verse 18, again, “the ark floated on the face of the waters.” So the ark is now not just floating; it’s drifting. It’s in active motion. Doubtless a frightening sensation; if you’re the one on the boat, it would be put in the logbook. Verse 19, “all the high mountains under the whole heavens were covered.” So now you have the whole earth, it says, underwater, no land anywhere to be seen. And no matter how high the mountains, none of them are visible either. Again, that sounds like a firsthand account. You’re on the boat, you’re watching, and you see that mountain peak, and then you don’t see that mountain peak. And you make notes. Here’s what’s happening.

Verse 20, “the waters prevailed above the mountains covering them 15 cubits deep.” How did Moses know that? Well, we’ve already talked about that, how Noah himself would think that’s important, but how would Noah know that? Except that this seems like an odd detail to include unless you’re on the boat making that note. The draft of the boat has cleared the mountains. Well, anyway, that’s Bishop’s argument on that. It’s difficult to imagine, I think—I think he’s onto something. Difficult to imagine how some of those details are preserved if they were not firsthand account. “We’re floating. We’re drifting. Oh, we don’t even scrape the mountains. It must be at least that deep.” All of that is just like a logbook would record it. It’s not like something like you would expect oral history to repeat and be remembered. So anyway, his sources of information.

The Historicity of the Flood

Quickly now, the historicity of the flood. Did it actually happen? Well, there are a couple of different answers to this. One, Genesis says it did. And that’s got to be enough. The New Testament says it did. Jesus said it did. So that’s enough for us.

But if you want to look at some of the corroboration of it, you can look back at some of the details that we’ve looked at and see that this narrative has the sense of realism about it with the dimensions, the meticulous detail, the dates that are kept, the number of days—the number of days to this, and then the number of days to that, and the number of days to this, and the number of days to the other. All of this meticulous detail that’s kept. It is reflective of a firsthand account, and it’s all very straightforward, has the sense of realism, of real history.

Add to that also, if you’d like more corroborating ideas, that is that—as I mentioned at the outset—the flood stories are universal. The majority of the nations had them, had stories of the flood, even if they were corrupted in many of the details, it does together reflect some kind of the fact that it’s rooted in history in some way. And then the Sumerian kings list that I mentioned, corroborating not only the flood, but also the ages of humanity before and after the flood like we have in Genesis.

And then there’s a whole area of study in dealing with the historicity of the flood, a whole area of study in that and flood geology. And I started to look into this and I thought, “This just is not my field and I really don’t want to get into all this and spend all the time finding all of the details of it and then giving it to you in boring detail.” But it is an important study that they have done. Some of it’s conjecture: what did the flood do to the earth when it came? If you have that much water for that long, and all of these surging depths, is it bulging up mountains and hills? Is it carving out valleys? Is it destroying rivers, creating new ones? What all is happening with all of that?

And then you look at the strata of the earth. Many will argue that this does not necessarily—at least in many of the cases—does not necessarily indicate eons of time, but layers of flood silt that have been laid down. And that’s why they will argue the strata of the rock and the arguments that are used for the age of the earth and so from that, they’ll argue that those stratas are not consistent all over the earth. That fact would be consistent with flood geology, various kinds of surging in different places. The fact that we find fossils of fish on top of mountains today—things like that is all part of this study. Again, I think Whitcomb and Morris have done the most study on this and have articulated it in detail. And bottom line is to show that there is geological evidence of flood catastrophe everywhere all over the globe.

All right, enough for that. The time, the date of the flood, when did it happen? And my time is about up, so just quickly here. Young Earth creationists want to put the flood at about 4000 BC. It’s possible. The problem with that is that we have Abraham at 2166 BC in his birth date. We can work that out through dead reckoning; I mentioned that some weeks ago. But his birth date is 2166, and we already have at that point, 2166 BC, a plethora of nations and a distribution of nations and cultures around the ancient world. Under 2,000 years to create all of that is stretching it. It’s difficult to imagine that happening. So many young Earth creationists are willing to push the date of the flood back to 4500 BC, maybe a little more. Hard to tell it by that.

It is a difficult question for archaeology. Back in the ’80s, I studied under a biblical archaeologist. His specialty was Egyptology. He’s one of these guys who could read hieroglyphics. He would go to the tours of the pyramids, and they’ve got hieroglyphics written, and he’s one who can read that stuff. And the tour guide will be saying, “Well, what it says is this, and this, and this.” And he’s snickering up his sleeve. “That’s not what it says.” He’s one of those guys. But his specialization was 18th Dynasty Egypt, or something like that. Anyway, he’s BA, MA, PhD from University of Minnesota, which has a legendary Department of Ancient History and Archaeology. All of that he has, and he’s put all that background into biblical studies. And I studied under him for a couple of years and learned so much.

When he addressed this subject of the date of the flood, he made an important point that when you get into that discussion, it’s largely conjecture because we don’t know if the flood destroyed all evidence of previous cultures. If it did, then all of the evidence you dig up is going to be reflective of the flood and later. If it did not—well, then you go back a ways, but how do you know the difference? And how do you tell? And it’s impossible to determine that. And so determining the date of the flood through archaeology becomes very difficult.

By 3500 BC, we already have the Egyptian nation and cultures, which gives us sort of an outside date for the flood, because these are one of the sons of Noah who gave rise to the Egyptian cultures. We have that in Genesis chapter 10. We have evidence of other cultures, the Hassuna culture, the Halaf culture. And then we do have some cultures that the archaeologists have uncovered that actually are beneath a silt, a layer of flood silt, and say, “Okay, here we have a previous existing culture, something before the flood.” The question there is, is that reflective of Noah’s flood or another flood? So you still don’t know.

So bottom line, date of the flood: I don’t know. And nobody else does. Many may say they do, but they don’t. It involves too much conjecture. If I had to take a guess, I’d probably say something like 5000 BC, but like I said, I don’t know. All right, I think that’s enough of the contemporary questions. And next time we’ll get back to the biblical account of the covenant. Any questions on any of this before we close?