Part Three: Answering Skeptics on the Great Flood

Get the Book!

Water Covering the Mountains

Objection: It was 74 days after the ark rested that ‘the tops of mountains were seen.’ We believe these were some mountains right around the spot where the ark came to rest. If the writer meant all the mountains in the world, he should have said the tops of the mountains were seen and after this the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. This is self-evident, for there are mountains all over the world that are higher than any in that land that was anciently known as Ararat.”

Response: Genesis 7:19-20 says the following:

“And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.”

Regardless of whether one translates the Hebrew word har as “hill” or “mountain,” the facts remains: (a) all of them were covered by 15 cubits of water, and (b) it includes all of them that were “under the whole heaven.” Unless one is prepared to say that only hills and no actual mountains existed in Noah’s day, one is required to acknowledge that all the hills and all the mountains were covered under the heavens, and that the highest elevation on earth was covered by 15 cubits (at least 23 feet of water). The phrase “under heaven” must include any elevation that is above ground. Moreover, the Hebrew says “the high mountains”, showing that of all the earth’s mountains, even the high mountains were covered.

This conclusion is further solidified by the fact that when the text later refers to a particular “mountain,” it has in view a structure the size of Mount Ararat (Gn 8:4), which is much higher than a typical hill. The huge size of Ararat is precisely why the narrative bothers to mention the name of the mountain, that is, so that the reader will have a topological and demographical reference point to judge the severity of the Flood. If the ark had come to rest on a hill instead of a mountain, there would be little reason to argue the case for a universal flood. Logically, if the water only went as high as hills, the ark could not end up on a mountain. As it stands, Mount Ararat may be the largest single-mass mountain in the world, since it rises to 17,000 feet from the plains surrounding it at 2,000-3,000. Obviously, no one in recorded history has every registered a “hill” that is 17,000 feet high.

As for the argument: “If the writer meant all the mountains in the world, he should have said the tops of the mountains were seen and after this the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. This is self-evident, for there are mountains all over the world that are higher than any in that land that was anciently known as Ararat,” this only begs the question, for who is doing the looking and what is their scope? Let’s say for the sake of argument that, in Gn 7:19 when the narrator says, “all the mountains which were under all the heavens,” his perspective is both global and local. We can posit this dual perspective because, scientifically speaking, if the mountains in the Middle East were all covered with water, we would also know that the mountains elsewhere on the globe must be covered with water, due to the physics of how water flows, in addition to the fact that we find the same results of a general cataclysm all over the world, e.g., the geologic column. Hence, we can then say that in Genesis 8, the view is local, which is why the local mountain Ararat is mentioned. Thus, it can now be said that Genesis 8 is only referring to the tops of the mountains in the local vicinity. This is supported by the fact that it is Noah who is said to look out from the ark and see the water abated (Genesis 8:13). Here’s the possible scenario: The bottom of the ark (which was at least 45 feet lower than the top of the ark) would have come to rest on Ararat while Ararat was still covered with water. In other words, we can say that, because the ark was heavy, about one half of the ark is submerged in water with its bottom resting on Ararat, while the other half is above the water, but with the whole of Ararat itself still covered with water. Hence, there was still about 23 feet of water to be removed from the earth before the ark did not have any water around its structure. The 23 feet of water was removed in the next three months, which is the reason Gn 8:5 says that the tops of the mountains could be seen in the tenth month, which was three months after the ark first anchored itself on Ararat.

Read more