How can you believe in Noah's flood?

Q: "How can you believe in Noah's flood?"

our A: What if Noah's flood was local flooding? Many people who believe the Bible to be God's Word, without error, also see the Bible presenting this as a flood of a certain region, rather than the entire earth. What's their reasoning?

The book of Genesis was written in the Hebrew language. As is noted in another article on this site (see: Did God Create the Universe in Six Days?), the Hebrew language uses fewer words than English, and one word often carries multiple meanings. "Earth," (which is "erets" in Hebrew) can refer to the earth, land, country or ground. In English translations of the Bible, the word "earth" or "all the earth" is used in the flood account. But the Hebrew words that were used could just as accurately be translated "land" or "all the land."

Here then are the facts presented in Genesis, chapters seven and eight. Noah, his family, and a sample pairing of every air-breathing animal (possibly from the region), entered the ark, after warning the people around them of this impending flood. It says that God caused the springs under the ground to open up and caused rain to fall for 40 days and 40 nights.

Genesis also says that so much water covered the earth (or, the ground, the land, the region), that mountains (or that could be translated "hills") were covered up to fifteen cubits deep, which is 20 feet deep.

Chapter eight goes on to say that this massive flood took 150 days (five months) for the water to begin to recede. And, it says that another two and a half months after that, the ark came to rest in the mountain range of Ararat. It does not say on Mt. Ararat, which is 17,000 ft high.

Two months after the ark found ground, Noah began to test to what degree the water was receding. He sent out a raven, then a dove a couple of times. After a time, Noah conducted a third test, sending out another dove. On this occasion, the dove returned with an olive leaf. Noah waited longer, and when he let the dove out and the dove finally did not return, Noah opened the ark. Genesis says that the "earth" was dry, which of course could also be translated "land" or "ground." Given the lakes and oceans on earth, this is another example where "earth" could not be referring to the entire planet.

There are countless books written about Noah and the ark, with controversy over where this region might be, what era of time, and whether or not the flood covered the entire earth or a certain region. There are many heated debates on this topic. The purpose of EveryStudent.com is not to enter this controversy, but to raise the very valid possibility that the flood was enormous, but localized. Not only does archeology and geology support such a conclusion, but this conclusion is found in the Bible text itself as a very viable option.

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