Biblically, the great flood of Noah was about 6,000 years ago. Yes, timelines are debatable but that is roughly what is generally accepted going through the genealogy linage of those mentioned in the bible. Debatable again, the Australian Aboriginal history predates that timeline by 4,000 years and they were definitely not wiped out by the great flood. Yes, you can debate the timelines even though these numbers are widely accepted by various means but if you accept the numbers then how can the great flood be explained whilst leaving the bibles integrity of truth intact?
Even though the great flood wasn’t necessarily written by Noah himself, exactly the same as a 10,000-year Aboriginal history, the stories are passed from generation to generation by word of mouth until it is documented in some form of written format or in the case of Aboriginals, cave drawings dating back to almost 30,000 years ago. (Yes, these timelines are debatable, but evidence suggests that Aboriginal history predates Noah by a long shot)
Enough of 30,000 years ago, we now focus of 5,000 to 7,000 years ago on the life of Noah himself. Back then, for most people, the area you were born in was the area you died in, not so many seasoned travellers back in those days. A well-seasoned traveller back then would be any individual who rode his donkey for 3 days in any given direction. By the maths, a donkey walking at 8 kilometres per hour (A fast donkey) for 15 hours a day gets you 360km from home. Yes, some would have travelled further but most would never travel that far in their entire life.
Now let’s say a wild fire ravaged the landscape and you barely survived but your family lived through it, you look around and as far as the eye can see is all burnt, you scour the country in every direction looking for the livestock you once owned and all you find is charred remains. How would you recount this story to your grandchildren that never seen such an event? Everything was on fire; your whole world was burnt to the ground. You didn’t know the world was a sphere, you knew what you had seen and to you everything, your whole world was on fire. Your language could not encompass that which you didn’t know, you spoke from your perspective and to you, your whole world burnt to the ground.
So you see where this is going, the spoken word of what you know and understand can be vastly different to interpretation many years later. So Noah’s world was flooded, in reality it could have been a small town of no significance and the entire population including surrounding towns drowned, or God himself stilled the moon above them and truly did create a flood of biblical proportions. (If you understand that the tides don’t actually rise and fall but rather the sun and moon attract a bulge of water and the land masses move through these bulges as the earth rotates, look into it)
So, is it a parable, was it an event? I know God won’t lie though we may not understand what we are being told, we cannot substantiate nor can we deny, we all need to find our own answers and I truly hope I can help you to find yours.
Some random math, Mount Everest is a little over 8,800 metres, divide that by the 40 days and 40 nights, you would need 222 metres of rainfall per day, that’s 9.25 metres per hour which equals about 154mm of rain per minute. The highest ever recorded is about 30mm per minute. So, rainfall about 5 times heavier than the current record, could be possible maybe. But is there enough water on the entire earth for that? No!
Some more random math or coincidences,
666 The number of the beast and the highest heaven for the chosen 144,000 mentioned in Revelation (that some religions like to think is set aside for them but sadly its also written it’s for the 1st seed, I interpret that as from the time before Jesus and its quite clear it says all males and all virgins) must be viewed as complete opposite numbers surely. A roulette wheel, numbers from 0 to 36, add the numbers from0 to 36 and you get 666 or using the number 36, write 6 thrice, 666.
144 is 12 squared (12×12) while the larger 144,000 is 12x12x10x10x10.
36 is also a product of 12 by 3 times, 12 being the common number being the 12 tribes of Isreal.
Just some random math, maybe interesting, maybe not.
Another one that might be interesting, how fast would you need to go to get that special effect used in “Star Trek” when they go “warp factor 9 meaning 9 times the speed of light where you see them just streaking past stars.
By the math, let’s say on average, about 5 light years between stars. So, 5 times the speed of light and you would pass 1 star per year, not so graphic for Star Trek, we want to pass a star every 10 seconds.
So, 5 times the speed of light is 1 star per year, multiply that by days in the year and now you have 1 star per day. We are up to 1,825 times the speed of light. Multiply that by 24 hours in a day and you get 1 star per hour. 43,800 times the speed of light. Multiply by 60 minutes in the hour and you have 2,628,000 times the speed of light. Then finally multiply that by 1/6th of a minute to get 1 star going past every 10 seconds, 15,768,000 times the speed of light.
I hear the scientific out there screaming at me “But you’re not taking into account time dilation” to which I reply that we are the observers, and to the observer, that is how fast you would need to go to effectively travel within our galaxy let alone other galaxies which are much further apart. So, God designed us so that he placed us here and this is where we will stay in our own solar system.
