The Great Flood in Legend, Science and, History

By Joseph O'Donoghue

"The Great Flood in Legend, Science, and History" investigates the worldwide legends of a catastrophic flood, probably the most well-known being that of Noah. Orthodox science, of course, generally dismisses all such legends, considering such an event entirely impossible, and "explains" all flood legends as the naive exaggerations of ordinary floods into great global epics. The geologist author, to the contrary, here takes an openminded approach to the legend, and treats it seriously for the purposes of this investigation.
At the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century, the Flood was, of course, taken as fact, and a number of scientists proposed a comet as the cause, either by impact or the gravitational effects of a close fly-past. And this explanation was suggested a number of times up to the early nineteenth century.
Through the eighteenth century, and the beginnings of geology proper, the geologists of the time held that the evidence to be seen over much of the northern hemisphere bespoke major flooding, and the term "diluvialism" was coined to describe the doctrine. By the end of the century, it was recognized by many that the evidence indicated a much more powerful flood than that described for Noah, and thus the Great Flood as an agent was abandoned by most geologists.
Diluvialism remained a general belief until Charles Lyell published his books in 1830-33, promoting uniformitarianism, which denied major flooding as ever having occurred. Since Lyell was inspired by the theories of James Hutton, who advocated an infinitely old earth, with change happening too slowly to be observed, the book takes a close look at Hutton's famous Siccar Point site near Edinburgh. Contrary to Hutton's conclusions, this book finds that Siccar Point represents a catastrophic event and not a slow sequence of gradual change.
Leaving geology, the book moves to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and Leonard Woolley's first finding of a heavy layer of sediments at a site called Ur of the Chaldees. This layer he immediately recognized as being due to a major flood, and automatically assumed he had found evidence of Noah's Flood. Similar layers at other sites seemed to confirm Woolley's findings. However, it wasn't long before these layers were dismissed as all due to "ordinary" floods, all at different times.
A study of the recent geology of Mesopotamia and surrounding regions also suggests major flooding, and, surprising as it may be, orthodox geology considers that an invasion by the ocean, accompanied by inordinate rain occurred in many places around the world about 5,000 years ago, quite in keeping with a "legend" of a Great Flood.
Finally, we have a Sumerian cuneiform tablet that appears to show the arrival and close pass of a cosmic body in 3123 BCE. This book, therefore, confirms that the Great Flood did indeed occur, just as the legends say, and was caused by a cosmic visitor in 3123 BCE, the year of the Flood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 10, 2025
• ISBN: 9798317804336

Joseph O'Donoghue

The author graduated from University College Cork, Ireland, in 1986 with a Batchelor's degree in geology, and began his career as a professional geologist working on water resources and environmental geology in both Ireland and the United States. Finding that the work of a geologist did not really appeal to him, he left the field and pursued his interest in the science of geology independently. Driven by a primary interest in the enigma of the Ice Age, the author embarked on a quest to solve what is probably the greatest mystery in geology, undeterred by the many decades of of prior and futile efforts that had preceded his. Growing up near formerly glaciated landscapes in Ireland, and living among them in the Northeastern U.S., he became very familiar with the evidence the Ice Age left behind. Careful observation, an eye for detail, and an open mind enabled the author to achieve insights previously missed or obscured by an excessive adherence to traditional gradualist academic doctrine. His review of the geological sciences extended back to the early years of the science, to a time when catastrophism was the dominant view of earth history. The author's approach to his critical analysis of the Great Flood, the Atlantis legend and the science of geology is based solely on the evidence and underpinned by the laws of physics, and, using much scientific evidence and those same laws of physics, the author seeks to demonstrate that the geological history of this world may very well be quite different to what orthodox academic geology says it is, and lost Atlantis and the Great Flood may indeed lie not in the realm of legend, but very much in the realm of history.

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Cover of The Great Flood in Legend, Science and History by Joseph O'Donoghue

The Legend of Atlantis and The Science of Geology

Volume 3

The Great Flood in Legend, Science and History

Copyright © 2025 Joseph O’Donoghue

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Print ISBN: 979-8-31780-432-9

eBook ISBN: 979-8-31780-433-6

Also by the author:

The Legend of Atlantis

and the Science of Geology

Volume 1

Atlantis and Catastrophe: Myth or Reality?

Volume 2

The Geology of Greece: Uniformity or Catastrophe?

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Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: The Flood Legends of Noah and Mesopotamia

CHAPTER TWO: Geomythology and the Flood (I) Vitaliano

CHAPTER THREE: Geomythology and the Flood (II) Montgomery

CHAPTER FOUR: Geological Explanations for the Flood

CHAPTER FIVE: Noah and the Makah, Local Floods?

CHAPTER SIX: Noah’s Flood in the Age of Enlightenment

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Rise of Diluvialism

CHAPTER EIGHT: Do the Rocks Lie?

CHAPTER NINE: Ice Dams on the Tibetan Plateau

CHAPTER TEN: Ice Age Megafloods in the Pacific Northwest

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Woolley and the Flood

CHAPTER TWELVE: Mesopotamia versus the Mississippi

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Archaeology of Mesopotamia

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Stratigraphy of Mesopotamia

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Straightening Out the Stratigraphy

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Kish

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Jemdet Nasr

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Fara (Shuruppak)

CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Recent Geology of Mesopotamia

CHAPTER TWENTY: The Cause and Date of the Flood

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX I: A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

PREFACE

The Great Flood! Considering how prominently floods have featured in this series so far, and since Noah’s Flood is without doubt one of the best known of the world’s flood legends, it seems only natural, and indeed, quite inevitable, that we extend our discussion of geology (and geomythology) to this long-debated inundation. Like all legends, myths, or folktales pertaining to the natural world, especially those involving catastrophe, the Great Flood is generally considered as little different to any other—merely the wild-eyed exaggeration of the ordinary by the simple mind of the primitive, though perhaps it’s more politely put in this case.

As I tried to show, however, in both volumes 1 and 2, such a dismissive and disparaging attitude is very generally not the best nor the most productive approach to take, neither to the myths themselves nor to the people whose myths they are. In this volume, instead and again, we will take a serious and open-minded approach to these legends of a great flood and see just how easy to dismiss they really are. We will also, again, cast a critical eye on academic explanations for such floods, and, further, we will seriously examine academia’s reports and explanations of any major floods that are accepted as part of official geological history.

We did, briefly, look at the legendary floods of Greece in volume 2, but it was the surface geology and geomorphology of the region we mostly focused on, as well as the organic geology, and we saw that ongoing processes, real or imagined, appear to do little in the present and have achieved less in the past, and only catastrophic agents—mostly major floods—could produce the evidence we examined. And, at this point, after nearly two hundred years of global geological study since Lyell wrote his three books, we’re probably not in any way ignorant of any of the processes that operate in nature, or don’t, or their effects, or lack thereof (see epilogue to volume 1).

As far as legendary great floods are concerned, academic geology essentially denies them any reality, considering them to be mere exaggerations of ordinary rain or snowmelt floods, or perhaps tsunamis, by simpleminded savages. This, of course, goes for Noah’s Flood just as much as for any other flood of legend, and, indeed, Noah’s Flood has been explained by geologists as a mere local river flood, an impact tsunami, and, by Ryan and Pitman (1998), as a sill-overtopping flood through the Bosporus and into a Black Sea depression. About the only thing that hasn’t been suggested is a flood from an ice dam failure.

When it comes to great floods of an historical nature, academic geology essentially divides them into two categories. The first comprises all those types of floods we’re familiar with, which, for the most part, consist of average to extreme versions of ordinary coastal floods, rain and river floods, tsunamis, tidal bores, outburst floods, and so forth, the latter including those relating to volcanism or glacier/moraine-dam failures in mountain valleys.

The other category comprises more unusual, and unseen, catastrophic floods of the past, such as those relating to Ice Age ice-dam-failures at ice sheet margins or marine invasions related to some kind of bolide impact in the ocean, the latter being in the nature of an enormous tsunami. We must also include those sill-overtopping floods of Kenneth Hsü and Ryan & Pitman, they being as unseen as the others in this category.

The floods in the first group are a normal part of today’s natural world, and are quite uncontroversial, given that we can see them happening, while the second are considerably more theoretical. As for that second category, the most popular, or common, are those relating to ice dam failures at the margins of the great ice sheets of the Ice Age. However, we briefly discussed ice dams at (northern) ice sheet margins in volume 2, and I pointed out the one major physical principle that tends to speak against the concept—ice can’t exist south of water.

We’ve met, or at least met mention of, more or less all those types of floods listed above in both categories, along with a number of (theorized) floods on a wholly different scale that I concluded overran Greece in the not-too-distant past. We also met, in volume 1, a flood of a very singular nature that the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest report as having struck the Vancouver area at some point, again, in the not-too-distant past.

The ordinary floods of history, therefore, are the ones we’re all familiar with, and which we witness every year, essentially, be they major river floods or any other kind. In addition to these, we have occasional floods due to more unusual events like volcanic eruptions, glacial outbursts, or those due to an earthquake, usually under the ocean and producing a tsunami.

We discussed such floods in volume 1 in the context of their supposedly being inspiration for various legends, a notion held by many members of academia engaged in geomythological studies. As noted then, and as is simply logical, no one makes up a legend about an everyday, or even occasional, occurrence—the event in question must be very much out of the ordinary and tending toward the unique to qualify as myth-worthy.

As noted, we also have the very out-of-the-ordinary floods of history, which we haven’t witnessed, but which academia claims to have occurred based on the evidence they supposedly left behind. These floods, far greater than any ordinary flood, are primarily due to ice dam failures or impacts in the ocean, or at least those are the orthodox explanations. It is, of course, only relatively recently that the reality of these two types of floods have even been entertained by orthodox geology, and it took decades, in fact, for one geologist to persuade the academics of America of the reality of major Ice Age ice-dam-failure floods.

Orthodox geology also depends rather heavily on one other class of what might be termed flood phenomena. Such phenomena are entirely unwitnessed but are universally assumed to have occurred more or less all over the world, and throughout geological history. These are known as marine transgressions, or inundations and we met them a few times in volume 2, and they are not to be confused with the slow sea level rise after the Ice Age. Such marine transgressions are in an entirely separate class and are far more of a regional nature than global sea level rise.

While implied as slow-acting over long time periods, these inundations were called up to explain marine conglomerates at the shore, marine deposits on land, higher sea levels, coastal erosion, and other instances of large-scale marine action, most of it unquestionably violent, according to the evidence. As we saw, these slow-motion uniformitarian transgressions were proffered as explanations for evidence that clearly implied major and rapid flooding, such as, for instance, at the Acropolis and in the Mesogea basin.

We’ve seen plenty of evidence of the effects of major flooding on Greece—evidence that could not, and cannot, be explained any other way. Those ultra-coarse diamictons, conglomerates, and other sedimentary deposits on Greece, similar as they are to the diluvium of the early geologists, are undeniable evidence of major flooding—and only major flooding. Such flooding was clearly very far out of the ordinary, and we saw the difficulties academic geology had in trying to account for that evidence via uniformitarianism.

When it comes to identifying evidence of major flooding then, such as rounded boulders or basal conglomerates, or massive deposits of coarse sediment, or high terraces, or long-distance transport, thanks to our studies in Greece, we can be confident that we’re in no way ignorant of any of the processes or agents that produce these phenomena.

We are, therefore, presently well-equipped, and prepared, to engage in a study of major flooding of all kinds. Thus, when we see the evidence presented in succeeding chapters, we will, I am sure, have little difficulty in determining whether a major flood was involved.

INTRODUCTION

Like the legend of Atlantis, the legends of a Great Flood have not received much attention from the geological community, and what attention they have attracted has been little different to that of Atlantis—dismissal and disparagement for the most part. Here again, therefore, and to provide some balance, we’re going to take an open-minded approach to these flood legends and conduct the unbiased scientific investigation academia seems reluctant to tackle, despite the recent rise of neocatastrophism and the invention of geomythology.

While neocatastrophists generally accept the possibility of major floods, without being very specific as to their nature or cause, they generally shy away from the notion of a global extent, and thus have not addressed Noah’s. The geomythologists, on the other hand, typically explain the Flood in their usual fashion—dismissal as just a local flood in conjunction with the usual simple minds of the impressionable locals, compounded with their wild-eyed exaggeration round the campfire, and ever-more-inaccurate repetition down the centuries.

Since Noah’s Flood is nothing if not a geomyth, or indeed, one of the world’s most well-known of such myths, we will review Dorothy Vitaliano’s treatment of it in her book Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins, in which she devotes chapter 7, The Deluge, to it. This chapter is quite a lengthy one, and Vitaliano discusses all manner of floods in it, both real and legendary. As an investigator, she casts her net broadly and covers the general subject of floods and flood legends fairly thoroughly, if quite conventionally.

In her contribution to the conference on geomythology in 2004, Vitaliano also brought up Ryan & Pitman’s hypothesis of a Black Sea flood as possibly being the inspiration for the Noah’s Flood legend (Vitaliano, 2007). While she hailed the theory as all very scientific, it’s difficult to see how this concept could be confused with Noah’s Flood, considering the almost total lack of agreement between the two, they not having anything in common, except water.

However, the Black Sea Flood hypothesis was well-received by many in the academic community, as well as among the public, at least initially. Much of its popularity appears to me to have been based on its novelty, with the overly dramatic picture painted of a deluge bursting through the Bosporus and cascading down into the Black Sea depression. Most commentaries tend to focus on the latter, while it wasn’t really seen as a serious explanation for the Great Flood of Noah, for rather obvious reasons—the lack of any correspondence being the main one. Plus, the rather pathetic fill rate of a few inches per day quickly negated any pseudo-drama generated—that is, if a Black Sea depression even existed in the first place, a notion I reject.

By now, the hypothesis is generally denied any validity at all, let alone as an explanation for Noah’s Flood, but Ryan & Pitman’s book did prompt a few others to investigate the question of great floods, Noah’s being but one. In general, however, great flood myths are much like the Atlantis legend—few geologists will touch them in a serious way.

Professor David R. Montgomery teaches geomorphology at the University of Washington in Seattle, which is just down the road from the Juan de Fuca Strait, and not far away from the Cascades of the Columbia. He is one of the few geologists, apart from Ryan and Pitman, who has tackled the Noah’s Flood issue, at least according to himself. He details his effort in a book he published in 2012, titled The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood.

In fact, in his first chapter, Montgomery admits that it was Ryan & Pitman’s book that sparked his curiosity. He claims that: Many Christians were intrigued by scientific support for the Bible story. And they might well have been, until they read the back cover of the book and discovered that it bore no relation whatever to the Bible story.

As to how Montgomery thought this hypothesis was scientific support for Noah’s Flood is quite beyond me, given that the Bible doesn’t mention sea level rise after the Ice Age, or the Black Sea, or anything else in Ryan & Pitman’s book, and further—and especially—it is evidence, not mere hypothesis, that constitutes scientific support. And in any case, the slow trickle these authors postulate could hardly be confused with a bona fide great flood, and especially one that was attended by inordinate rainfall.

Nevertheless, Montgomery thought their idea made sense and was geologically plausible, and wondered whether they had solved the puzzle of Noah’s Flood. The short answer is no, they obviously hadn’t, whether their theory had any merit at all, at any time. And it’s not like Montgomery didn’t know the Noah’s Flood story, since he tells us he attended Sunday school, where Genesis is usually the first lesson taught.

In addition to the forementioned, there is one other proposed explanation for Noah’s Flood, and this comes from Bruce Masse (Abbott et al., 2007), whom we met in the book Myth and Geology in volume 1. This idea suggests that an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean, 800 miles (1,300 km) ESE of Madagascar, might have produced a mega-tsunami that invaded the Persian Gulf and flooded in over Mesopotamia, and which impact would also have produced the specified heavy rains, from the condensation of the vaporized water.

These four sources, therefore, constitute the totality of orthodox geology’s modern-day efforts at explaining the Great Flood. Vitaliano and Montgomery suggest exaggeration of a mere local flood; Abbott et al. suggest a tsunami, and we know Ryan & Pitman’s idea. There are also certain other geologists who have written about the Flood, but not in any directed effort at explaining it. Rather, they discuss the Flood in a tangential way, focusing on its place in history or science, or some such angle, while most who mention it simply dismiss the concept.

Apart from the four named, who are the only academic geologists, which is to say secular geologists, who have addressed Noah’s Flood any time recently, there are many books written by non-secular geologists. Many of these writers are, of course, the usual suspects—Creationists, Flood Geologists, and so on. And, surprising as it may seem, many again are also academically qualified geologists, including to PhD level. As can well be imagined, there exists a vast library devoted to all aspects of Noah’s Flood, and easily competing with Atlantis in terms of quantity, if not surpassing it, which wouldn’t surprise me.

Quite unsurprisingly, many of these books are written from a religious perspective, or, to be more accurate about it, different religious and scientific perspectives—from the mentioned Creationist to Flood geologist to Intelligent Designer, and on to orthodox Christian of one kind or another, as well as from both Muslim and Jewish perspectives.

As well as legendary great floods, whether relating to Atlantis, Noah’s, or any other, there is also the subject of the theoretical great floods of orthodox science, typically considered as due to ice-dam failures. These outburst floods, completely accepted as part of geological history, of course, are of a far greater magnitude than any river flood or tsunami, or anything else, and are almost always introduced, no doubt as a juxtapose, during discussions of great floods of legend.

This seems to be done primarily to show that orthodox geology, despite its conservative nature, is certainly broad-minded enough to entertain the concept of major floods, and legendary floods such as Noah’s are not being dismissed because of some anti-religious bias but for sound scientific reasons. Acknowledgement of these great floods of history, of course, also emphasizes the geologist’s qualifications and ability to recognize the evidence of said floods.

Hence, the orthodox geologist is the expert on floods, and, if a great flood ever occurred, then the geologist would, of course, be the first to recognize the evidence for it. Or so we’re all given to believe, despite the fact, mentioned in the preface, that it required over four decades of effort on the part of one man, and a bona fide PhD academic at that, to persuade the geologists of America to recognize evidence for massive flooding—of the very obvious kind.

Such floods of science, due to the aforementioned ice dam failures, are seen nowadays as obvious after decades of denial. In the same category are the similar moraine-, earth-, rock-, dam failures. Apart from all these natural-dam failures, floods of a strictly limited nature can also result from tsunamis due to earthquake, volcanism, or (theoretical) bolide impact in the ocean. In which case, we’ll have to examine these floods of orthodox science, along with those of legend, just to make sure we can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

We begin, logically enough, by examining the Flood legends of Noah and Mesopotamia, focusing on those elements pertaining to the Flood only. We’ll then turn to the explanations of the geologists to see how academia deals with it. The obvious next step is to compare the flood legends of Mesopotamia with the flood of the Makah and Klallam, which the geomythologists somehow neglected, despite the prompting from J. G. Swan. We did, of course, see the obvious similarities between them, and we’ll discuss various aspects of both legends.

Being done with legendary floods, we then go to Europe and begin at the beginning of the natural sciences, in the 17th century, and the first efforts at interpreting the rocks. Given that these studies were carried out under the presumption of the Flood as fact, we’ll briefly examine the approach taken to the legend, or story, of Noah’s Flood by these early scientists.

That Noah’s Flood became a topic of scientific discussion at this time simply reflects the rise of science and learning, in general, in the 17th century, following Galileo, Kepler, etc., and involving Newton, Leibnitz, Hooke, and many others. The first efforts at explaining the Flood scientifically were made during this time, especially in the second half of the 17th century, and, even though they all have their flaws, they were still thoughtful attempts at rational explanations, while keeping on the right side of the ecclesiastical authorities. This, in essence, is the beginning of that early school of geology, later known as Diluvialism, among whose famous champions were William Buckland and G. B. Greenough, whom we’ve met.

Considering the still-powerful position of the Church, it was a general requirement in the 17th century, and for long after, that (in Britain at least) any university professor had to be a member of the clergy. Hence, it’s no surprise that Noah’s Flood was a topic of discussion and debate, and, of course, plenty of speculation, some of which was informed. In fact, serious and scientifically thoughtful efforts at an explanation were made at this time by a number of respected authorities in mathematics and astronomy, including Edmond Halley, Robert Hooke, and William Whiston, just to name a few of the better-known English ones.

As the sciences progressed during the 18th century, the subject of Noah’s Flood was a significant factor in the development of geology, quite understandably, especially as serious and detailed studies of the natural world were being undertaken at this time. Much attention was paid to fossils, particularly the exceedingly numerous seashells, which were generally assumed to have been deposited by Noah’s Flood, and seashells on mountains were, in fact, taken by many as evidence that the Flood had covered the mountains. By the end of the 18th century, however, serious doubts on this score had arisen.

As we discussed in volume 1, the more the natural world was studied, the more the evidence was interpreted as representing catastrophic action in the past, and Noah’s Flood was initially seen as the explanation—but only initially—by most geologists. As we also discussed a number of times, in terms of explaining all of the evidence, Noah’s Flood had been abandoned by many geologists long before Lyell ever wrote his books. However, that notwithstanding, such charges continue to be made, even today, even when it is obvious that the flood being referred to is distinctly not the tranquil rise of the waters of Noah’s Flood.

The story of Noah is not the only legend of a great flood from the region of West Asia (Middle East). Berossus, in his Babyloniaca (History of Babylonia, 280 BCE), gives a flood story that closely parallels the biblical one, assembled from surviving fragments in various works by Polyhistor, Apollodoros, and Josephus, as well as some others.

While the Babyloniaca itself has not survived, the extracts quoted by others provide a fairly complete flood narrative as compared to the various Mesopotamian flood legends. The first copy of another flood story, contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh, was found at Nineveh in the mid-19th century by Hormuzd Rassam, an Assyriologist working with Henry Layard, a man who spent years exploring and excavating in Mesopotamia.

However, it wasn’t until twenty years later that the world became aware of the Epic of Gilgamesh, via translations of the cuneiform tablets on which it was written. The first such translation was carried out by George Smith of the British Museum, and he revealed his findings, to great acclaim, in a lecture he gave in 1872. Naturally, an immediate comparison with the Noah’s Flood story was made, amid great excitement, especially among the public, but not so much among the uniformitarians, who had just declared victory over the catastrophists. More translations of cuneiform tablets led to the discovery of other versions of the legend, differing only in detail.

We then focus strictly on science and begin our investigations of the early geologists of the 18th century and the rise of diluvialism (whereby much of the evidence was considered as due to great floods), until the Ice Age theory caused its abandonment. We then turn to the great floods of modern academic geology. These, as noted, are débâcles due to ice dam failures, usually at the edge of an ice sheet or in a mountain valley, as well as comprising other types of natural dam failures.

From there, our investigation moves to the scene of the action, and we pick up the story with archaeological explorations in Mesopotamia. We start, almost needless to say, with Leonard Woolley and his discovery of what he took to be evidence of a major flood in the valley, which he dated to about 3000 BCE, or 5,000 years ago. Since we’ve met this date quite a few times already, and in connection with floods and alluvium, we may be predisposed to consider that some such incident might indeed have occurred in Mesopotamia at about this time.

This naturally leads us into the usual debate about the whole notion of a local flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. We’ll begin by simply examining the nature of the normal, regular floods that those rivers experience in the present day, and we’ll compare them with the typical floods of some other rivers. It is, of course, very easy to invoke a local flood as a so-called explanation, but it’s another matter entirely to justify it, which is generally why little effort is made by anyone to so justify it.

Following the practices exhibited in the previous two volumes, the remainder of the book consists of a scientific investigation of the Flood legends through the geology and archaeology of Mesopotamia and near-adjacent surrounding regions. The geology should tell us whether a great flood occurred, while the archaeology should confirm the result and provide us with an estimated date, if such a flood did, in fact, occur. And if we do find evidence that suggests major flooding, and considering how far south Mesopotamia is, under no circumstance can we invoke a deluge of ice to explain that evidence.

The book ends with an overview of certain evidence from the greater region of Asia and other parts of the world that appears to attest to major flooding. This evidence comes to us from a scriptural geologist (and colonel of the Royal Artillery) reporting on the work of a number of secular geologists of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries.

While the secular geologists in question here did not necessarily believe in Noah’s Flood, and their work makes no mention of it, they certainly didn’t accept Lyell’s uniformitarianism, as that same work makes plain. They also make perfectly plain their interpretation of the evidence they gathered on their travels, and, contrary to Lyell’s assertion in volume 1, their work shows little sign of any probable ignorance on their part of any geological agents, or their effects.

The individuals involved here are some of the people we’re going to meet a few more times in this series, and are often referred to as die-hard catastrophists, which they certainly were, and they’re not forgotten—and they’re not alone.

Chapter References

Abbott, D. H. et al., 2007, Burckle Abyssal Crater: Did this Impact Produce a Global Flood? Columbia Academic Commons, Columbia University Libraries.

Berossus, 280 BCE, Babyloniaca (History of Babylonia).

Montgomery, D. R., 2012, The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood, W. W. Norton & Company, New York / London.

Ryan, W. & Pitman, W., 1998, Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History, Simon & Schuster, New York.

Smith, George, 1876, Epic of Gilgamesh, In: The Chaldean Account of Genesis, Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Vitaliano, D., 1973, Legends Of The Earth: Their Geologic Origins, Indiana University Press, Bloomington/London.

———, 2007, Geomythology: Geological Origins of Myths and Legends, In: Myth and Geology, eds.: Piccardi, L. & Masse, W. B., Geol. Soc. Lon. Spec. Publs., 273, pp 1-7.

CHAPTER ONE:

The Flood Legends of Noah and Mesopotamia

It has long been assumed that the story of Noah’s Flood is derived from various flood legends prevalent in Mesopotamia in those far-off times, and I would be inclined to agree, with some reservation. Such legends were likely well known in the general region, given that numerous copies of cuneiform tablets bearing a flood story have been found. We are also aware, of course, that the Hebrews were in exile in Babylon for over fifty years (597–538 BCE), and presumably had access to the libraries, where they would likely have come across various flood stories, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and in a much more complete form.

However, 597 BCE is a rather late date compared to the actual age of the various flood legends of Mesopotamia, if not of the Bible, and many copies—and fragments of copies—of the Epic of Gilgamesh and many other stories have been found throughout the region, including at Megiddo in northern Israel (Adamthwaite, 2014). It is, therefore, very possible, and indeed quite presumable, that the story was well known outside of Mesopotamia long before the Babylonian exile. Indeed, since Mesopotamia was the original home of Abraham, who hailed from the city of Ur of the Chaldees, it would seem quite possible, and likely, that he brought the story with him when he wandered over to Palestine at a much earlier time.

The Flood story, as told in Genesis, hardly needs much description at this point, and one of the significant things about it is that two versions are included, known as J and P. The J stands for the Yahwist (Jehovist) version, while the P represents the Priestly. Both feature a warning from God to Noah, along with a list of instructions of what he has to do. Thereupon, Noah builds an ark and awaits the Flood. At the appointed hour, he loads the ark with animals and his family, and then the rains begin and the Flood arrives, which floats the ark away.

One problematic, and much discussed, element of the Noah story is the Flood supposedly covering the mountains, which is a major difficulty from the point of view of a water supply. There is, of course, no possible way to provide enough water on the earth’s surface to submerge anything but low-lying areas, and then only temporarily, regardless of how long the rain, or flood, lasted. While this has long been a standard argument against the Flood, it suggests to me that an interpretation quite different to ordinary rain is required. This also means that much more serious consideration should be given to the phrase the fountains of the great deep burst forth, the only other possible source of the required water.

In the Yahwist version, the Flood lasted for forty days, while in the Priestly, it lasted for one hundred and fifty, at which point God made a wind to blow over the earth and the waters receded, shortly after which everyone disembarked. While the Flood lasted a considerable length of time in both versions, it’s not clear if the rain did. And, given that birds don’t like to fly in the rain, one presumes that when Noah released the raven and doves it wasn’t raining.

The two other most-obvious versions of the Noah’s Flood story are in the Quran, Sura 11 and 71 (Livius.org, 2020, translations by M. H. Shakir), and begin with a warning to Nuh from Allah. Nuh then built an ark as he was directed and loaded it with his family and animals. While similar to the biblical story, one interesting difference is that in the Quran (Sura 11.40), it says, in this translation, that the water came forth from the valley (Livius.org, 2020) which is distinct from the rain and the fountains of the great deep in the Bible. Another distinct difference is that in the Bible, it says the waves overtopped the mountains, while in the Quran (Sura 11.42) it says that the ark moved . . . amid waves like mountains . . . which sounds more reasonable.

In either case, the flood stories are considered to have derived from the much older flood legends of Mesopotamia, as mentioned above. Mesopotamia, as we know, is the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and is today mostly comprised of the country of Iraq, as well as parts of Syria, Iran, Türkiye, and Kuwait. As a matter of information, the southern part of this region, near the Persian Gulf, is the Sumeria of ancient times, while the origin of the Sumerians is apparently unknown. Various places have been suggested, but all that is considered known is that people arrived in Sumer about 7,000 years ago, though from the east is often suggested.

Apart from Noah’s, probably the most famous version of the flood story comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the hero in this case is Utnapishtim, and, while Utnapishtim is an Akkadian name, its Sumerian equivalent is Ziusudra. Ziusudra was the last king of Shuruppak, a city originally on the Euphrates in what is now south-central Iraq. It is now known as Tell Fara. Ziusudra was also the last king of Sumer before the flood and was the protagonist of the flood story related in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this version, the warning of the flood came from Enki (later called Ea) who had overheard the other gods planning to destroy humanity.

I’m here using the name Utnapishtim for Ziusudra, as it is used in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the story relates that upon receiving the warning, Utnapishtim tore down his house and built a boat. Then came the flood, which lasted for seven days, and Utnapishtim and his companions remained in the boat for a further seven days, on Mount Nimush, where it came to rest. Everyone then disembarked, and Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the gods, whereupon Enlil, the chief god, was furious to find that someone had survived.

He quickly got over his anger, however, to the point of making Utnapishtim and his wife immortal. And it is Gilgamesh’s search for Utnapishtim, and the possibility of his also achieving immortality, that constitutes most of that epic.

There are two other versions of what is clearly the same flood story, both from the same part of the world; one is the Babylonian Epic of Atra-Hasis (Livius.org, 2019), and this is considered the fullest account, and the other is the Xisuthrus story, from Berossus’ History of Babylonia [Babyloniaca] (Livius.org, 2020). Since the name Xisuthrus is almost phonetically identical to Ziusudra, we can clearly take them to be the same person.

According to Berossus, in this version, the warning to Xisuthrus came from Cronus, and again, the flood was of short duration. In the Epic of Atra-Hasis, the warning came from the god Enki. Cronus, as we know from Hesiod’s Theogony, was the leader of the Titans, but he was also associated with the planet Saturn by the Romans.

We saw from the Quran that the flood was not just the gentle rise of the waters, as in the Bible story, due mainly to enormous amounts of rain. Rain is also mentioned in the Quran, but in a secondary way to the water coming out of the valley (Livius.org, 2020). Considering that the flood legends derive from the valley of the Tigris-Euphrates, I’d be inclined to assume that this is the valley in question. Also, the mention of waves like mountains suggests that a violent windstorm attended the events, but the context suggests it did not initiate them.

However, there is some question regarding the phrase the waters came out of the valley in Sura 11.40, in that other translations, such as Miller (2012), writing in the Apologetics Press, has it that the oven gushed forth water. George Sale, in his translation of the Koran (Sale, 1734, cited in Filby, 1970), states that the word for oven can also be translated as a place for springing water, which is to say a spring or other water source. The use of the term for oven and spring, therefore, suggests that the floodwaters were warm, as in the Makah legend.

In the Talmud (Zevachim 113b), the rabbis say that the people died due to the heat that accompanied the floodwaters and, again (Sanhedrin 108b), it says that because they sinned, they were punished with the boiling heat of the floodwaters (Miller, 2012). No mention is made of heat or hot water in