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Noah's Flood was Probably Local, according to theBible itself

Excerpt from The Smith&Smith Scripture Commentaries, available withoutany cost, for download, at...

http://sites.google.com/site/freecommentary

Authors' note: After discovering this for ourselves, then after several years ofletting this proposal sink in we personally have not looked back, but simplyaccept that a local Flood as the correct Biblical scenario.The scientific credibility of the Bible and questions over creationism and theFlood have been major and needless stumbling blocks for seekers of the truth --so it is a breath of fresh air to point out clearly where the Bible has beenmisconstrued as a global treatise.The Bible has always been a Middle-Eastern book, but the English translatorshave always been outsiders, hoping to include 'all the other nations', in what

never mentioned them directly.

The Flood was not necessarily global

~ Take this translation:

Gen 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all thehigh mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered.

The phrase, 'under the whole heaven', is used as dogmaticproofby Creation

Scientists that the flood was a worldwide event. It is one ofonly two phrasesregarded as good evidence by those who support the global flood theory.This phrase 'under the whole heaven' is used elsewhere to refer to alocal event, so it is insufficient 'proof' for this belief.

E.g: 'Under the whole heaven' is used to refer to the people in the land of Canaanand to the people east of the Jordan only. The following Deuteronomy passage --about the invasion of Canaan -- should be read in conjunction with Joshua:

Deu 2:25 This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of theeupon the peoples that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the

report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee. 26 And Isent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth unto Sihon king ofHeshbon with words of peace, saying,... 34 And we took all his cities at thattime, and utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the littleones; we left none remaining:

Jos 2:9 and she said unto the men, I know that Jehovah hath given you theland, and that the fear of you is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of

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the lan d melt away before you .

..It is quite unrealistic to imagine that the natives in Papua New Guinea forinstance, were in dread of the Israelites going into the land of Canaan.

E.g. 'every nation under heaven'... ..refers to 'from Media to Rome':

Act 2:5-11 Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, fromevery nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound was heard, themultitude came together, and were confounded, because that every manheard them speaking in his own language. 7 And they were all amazed andmarvelled, saying, Behold, are not all these that speak Galilaeans? 8 And howhear we, every man in our own language wherein we were born? 9 Parthiansand Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea andCappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, 10 in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt andthe parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews andproselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabians, we hear them speaking in our tonguesthe mighty works of God.

E.g. all creation under heaven... Paul uses this phrase to refer to the Romanempire where he spread the gospel :

Col 1:23 if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast, and notmoved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard, which was preachedin all creation under heaven; whereof I Paul was made a minister.

~ from the face of the ground...The other phrase indicating a world-wide Flood occurs in:

Gen_6:7 ..And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have created fromthe face of the ground;

'The face of the ground' can carry the meaning of 'alive' 'in the land of the living'.I.e. 'I will destroy the life I created.' But note that the Hebrew'erets'(=land, oftenof Israel) can actually mean 'ground', so the meaning may be 'I will destroy thoseliving in the Israel area from being living beings'. Though some may argue thatthe words of Gen 6:7 can only be speaking of aworld-wide event, we find thewording 'The face of the ground' in the prophets Ezekiel and Zephaniah referringto Israel only, talking of the destruction ofIsrael alone:

Eze 38:18 And it shall come to pass in that day, when Gog shall come againstthe land of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah, that my wrath shall come up intomy nostrils. 19 For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken,Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land ofIsrael; 20 sothat the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the heavens, and the beasts of thefield, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men thatare upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the

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mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and everywall shall fall to the ground.

Zep 1:2-4 I will utterly consume all things from offthe face of the ground,saith Jehovah. 3 I will consume man and beast; I will consume the birds of

the heavens, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with thewicked; and I will cut off man from offthe face of the ground, saithJehovah. 4 And I will stretch out my hand upon Judah, and upon all theinhabitants ofJerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from thisplace, andthe name of the Chemarim with the priests;

..and in Hosea:

Hos 4:1 Hear the word of Jehovah, ye children ofIsrael; for Jehovah hath acontroversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, norgoodness, nor knowledge of God in the land... 3 Therefore shall the landmourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts ofthe field and the birds of the heavens; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall betaken away.

You can see, from the way the Bible itself uses the words, thatthe apparentlyglobal terminology is not sufficient evidence for a world-wide Flood.

~ A local flood, destroying all men in the Middle-East-only, solves the bio-geographical problem of animals becoming specific to distinct places on theearth, only 4,500 years ago, after the Flood.

If the Flood were in the Middle Eastern area only, all the animals throughout

the globe could have stayed in their places during the Flood (except for theanimals in the Middle East, which were taken on to the ark).This allows for the uniqueness of a species to a particular locality to continueundisturbed. The unlikely scenarios of kangaroos hopping over to Noahbefore the Flood to get on the ark, and of them later establishing themselvesin Australia only only after the Flood, are avoided.

~ The Flood could possibly have been caused by a geologic crustal depressionoccurring. The Dead Sea, which is still lower than sea level, is a possible location,and it is part of a major and unstable rift valley. The narrow Straits of Gibraltarmay have been closed, so that the Flood might have occurred in the

Mediterranean basin only.

~ We are not told that the descendants of Noah moved out of the Middle East tillthe Tower of Babel dispersal, well after the Flood. Then we are told specificallyabout the scattering of the nations:

Gen 11:9 Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because Jehovah didthere confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did Jehovah

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scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth [i.e. actually the MiddleEast, as described in chapter 10].

~ The Bible throughout talks of Middle Eastern countries specifically. No place isspecifically named beyond Spain (west), India (east), Ethiopia (south) and

countries such as Meshech, and Gomer around Armenia (north).

I can find no place where 'earth' refers definitively to the whole globe, but manymany places where it is definitively referring either to Israel or to acountry or region in the Middle East. The list of verses in evidence for thisis many times longer than this article! and I refer you to the separate topic in theSmith&Smith Bible Commentary.

~ Finally let's not forget that the ark grounded itselfin the Middle East-- onMount Ararat (in Turkey):

Gen 8:4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day ofthe month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

~ In addition, beyond the Bible, we must consider the influence ofthe Book ofEnoch. It majored on Noah's Flood, yet presents a quite different version of thewhole Flood story. The Book's wording is also global rather than local,throughout, in describing the end of the world. Such an approach is necessarilyanti-Semitic, anti-Bible, depriving Zion of its central place in all prophecy, andhistory. Anti-prophecy at Israel's expense, is an influence running very deep inthis issue. The sort of people who are dogmatic about how pre-history must havebeen, are also likely to be anti-Semitic, and to accept the ideas of the Book ofEnoch about that period (Nephilim; giants; fallen angels). It is therefore

necessary to note that 1Enoch 13 mentions Lebanon, Hermon and Dan as intactbefore the Flood. This derails the argument of massive geological upheaval foranyone who trusts 1Enoch.

Excerpt from The Smith&Smith Scripture Commentaries, available withoutany cost, for download, at...http://sites.google.com/site/freecommentary