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Grappling with the Chronology of the Genesis Flood
The Flood as described in the Book of Genesis not only shaped the global landscape, it is an event that literally forms our understanding of early biblical history. Now an experienced team of scientists and theologians has written a definitive account of the Genesis Flood with detailed research into the original biblical text and evidences unlocked by modern science and study.
828 pages, Paperback
First published May 20, 2013
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May 8, 2023
AN EXTREMELY DETAILED DISCUSSION OF MANY GENESIS FLOOD ‘DETAILS’
The Preface to this 2014 book explains, “Welcome aboard! You have just embarked on our exploration vessel on our voyage of discovery---the chronology of the Genesis Flood. This book, the first deliverable of our research team, tells this story of discovery so far… The chronology of the Genesis Flood lies within the text, within easy reach. Nevertheless, it has proved to be an elusive quarry… Steve [Austin] asked me [Steven Boyd] to join a new project… FAST (Flood Activated Sedimentation and Tectonics)… The goal of FAST was to investigate the Genesis Flood with the same kind of concerted effort which led to … the RATE project… I decided that I should do some kind of project about the chronology of the Flood… my attention was drawn to the portion of the narrative from Genesis 7:24 to 8:4… there were seven verbs involving processes in between … two … chronological pieces of information… Could 8:1 be at a different time than is conventionally thought? …
“For years I had taught my students that ‘wayyiqtols,’ as well as being the backbone of biblical Hebrew narrative, whenever in sequence represented sequential eventualities… Since the text cannot be compromised, our understanding of the grammar must be mistaken… there is no other alternative. The long-standing concept that sequential wayyiqtols NECESSARILY represent temporally sequential eventualities is wrong. Thus, because it is replete with wayyiqtols… I began to question the conventional understanding of the chronology of the entire Flood narrative. I proposed a project for FAST to examine the chronology…” (Pg. xiii-xiv)
He notes, “the catastrophic plate tectonics model of Steve Austin… explains all that the secular slow-and-gradual plate tectonics model does… Yet it… still needs further refinement, not least by the need to understand … what the Hebrew text describes as ‘the fountains of the great deep’ and ‘the windows of heaven.] … Flood geologists have a handle on the location in the geologic record where the Flood evidence begins… However, it is the pinning down of the location of the Flood/post-Flood boundary that is much debated.” (Pg. 22-23)
They explain, “In their book ‘The Genesis Flood,’ Whitcomb and Morris focused on demonstrating that the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers could be adequately explained by the catastrophic geologic processes operating during the global cataclysmic Genesis Flood… They did not attempt to meticulously align the various strata of the uniformitarian geologic column with the various stages of the Flood as outlined in the Scriptures.” (Pg. 89)
They acknowledge, “There is … clearly a lack of consensus among Flood geologists as to how the geologic record can be directly correlated with the biblical account of the Flood… an exact correlation … has not been attempted. The primary reason would appear to be that Flood geologists have not been provided with sufficient biblical constraints from the Hebrew text upon which they are seeking to base their geologic model of the Flood and their correlations with the physical rock record. In particular, the chronology of the Flood needs to be more clearly understood… Were the fountains of the great deep… shut on Day 150[?] … did the rainfall … last until Day 150[?]… Or did the sources of the Floodwaters shut off after forty days… one hundred-ninety days… or some other time? And what was the duration of the rise and fall of the Floodwaters? … did the water levels fluctuate vertically at any stage during the Flood… And did the waters retreat and advance repeatedly even while they were rising and prevailing?” (Pg. 103)
They assert, “the Pangaea supercontinent was not the pre-Flood supercontinent, but merely a transitory reassembly of plates during the Flood that subsequently split apart during the later phase of the Flood as the Atlantic Ocean and other ocean basins opened up and the preset configuration of continents … [was] produced.” (Pg. 136)
Andrew A. Snelling observes, “it is possible to walk across various regions of the earth and observe that the rock layers and the fossils contained in them generally match what is depicted in the widely accepted geological column… It is true that the complete geologic record is hardly, if at all, found in any one place on the earth’s surface. Usually several or many of the strata in local sequences are missing… but usually over a given region there is a more complete preservation of the record via correlation and integration.” (Pg. 148) He adds, “it must be concluded that the fossils contained in these rock layers are also a valid record of the order that creatures were progressively buried in this region within each successive sedimentary layers.” (Pg. 150)
He continues, “it is totally reasonable to expect that vertebrates would be found fossilized higher in the geologic record than the first invertebrates… we would expect oceanic fish to be buried first, since they live at the lowest elevation… However, in the ocean the fish live in the water column and have greater mobility, unlike the invertebrates that live on the ocean floor and have more restricted mobility… Therefore, we would expect the fish to only be buried and fossilized subsequent to the first marine invertebrates. Of course, fish would have inhabited waters at all different elevations in the pre-Flood world… but their ranking is based on where the first representatives of fish are likely to be buried.” (Pg. 165)
He admits, “the fossil record leaves us with many unanswered questions… some of these might be elucidated by ongoing original research… light could well be shed on them from an ongoing study of the Hebrew text of the Flood account. Critical to this is determining when the Floodwaters peaked and whether the text indicates at what point all animals … perished. Additionally… the nuances of some of the Hebrew verbs describing the action of the Floodwaters would help us … to explain the fluctuating water levels responsible for deposition of the megasequences across the continents and the successive burial of different ecosystems as the Flood progressed.” (Pg. 181)
They state, “We were moved to challenge the accepted idea that wayyiqtols indicates progression because---among other things---the inclusive sequence of nine wayyiqtols from Genesis 7:24 to 8:4 is problematic… If wayyiqtols marks progression, it would seem that the eventualities they represent would take up much more time between 7:24 and 8:4 than is available… Understanding the one hundred fifty days as following the forty days of rain… exacerbates the problem. We were left with only one cogent possibility: these wayyiqtols do not represent a temporal sequence… How does this affect our understanding of the geology, geophysics and paleontology connected with the Flood?” (Pg. 742)
They summarize, "The current consensus is that the record of the Flood’s beginning, when ‘the fountains of the great deep’ were broken up and ‘the windows of heaven’ were opened… can be seen in some uppermost Precambrian strata… and at the widespread erosional unconformity marking the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary in the geologic ‘column.’ This erosional unconformity was produced by the catastrophic transgression of the ocean (Flood) waters as the relative sea level dramatically rose to flood the land surfaces, depositing a megasequence of rock layers with entombed creatures… The relative sea level then seems to have fluctuated, so that the Floodwaters retreated then advanced several times, progressively depositing further megasequences of fossil-bearing sediment layers… Debate continues over the location of the Flood/post-Flood boundary… All are agreed that the only Ice Age (the ‘Pleistocene’) was post-Flood… The need now is for the chronology of the Flood to be more clearly understood from the Hebrew text of the Genesis Flood account… there is much Hebraists can contribute to further our understanding…” (Pg. 746-747)
If one is seeking a straightforward linear analysis/discussion of the Genesis Flood chronology, this book will not provide it. (It wastes time with the silly attempt to portray their research as a ‘ship voyage; it also gets MASSIVELY involved with grammatical details that probably fly right past most readers.) But if one seeks such a detailed discussion, this book may be “must reading.”
The Preface to this 2014 book explains, “Welcome aboard! You have just embarked on our exploration vessel on our voyage of discovery---the chronology of the Genesis Flood. This book, the first deliverable of our research team, tells this story of discovery so far… The chronology of the Genesis Flood lies within the text, within easy reach. Nevertheless, it has proved to be an elusive quarry… Steve [Austin] asked me [Steven Boyd] to join a new project… FAST (Flood Activated Sedimentation and Tectonics)… The goal of FAST was to investigate the Genesis Flood with the same kind of concerted effort which led to … the RATE project… I decided that I should do some kind of project about the chronology of the Flood… my attention was drawn to the portion of the narrative from Genesis 7:24 to 8:4… there were seven verbs involving processes in between … two … chronological pieces of information… Could 8:1 be at a different time than is conventionally thought? …
“For years I had taught my students that ‘wayyiqtols,’ as well as being the backbone of biblical Hebrew narrative, whenever in sequence represented sequential eventualities… Since the text cannot be compromised, our understanding of the grammar must be mistaken… there is no other alternative. The long-standing concept that sequential wayyiqtols NECESSARILY represent temporally sequential eventualities is wrong. Thus, because it is replete with wayyiqtols… I began to question the conventional understanding of the chronology of the entire Flood narrative. I proposed a project for FAST to examine the chronology…” (Pg. xiii-xiv)
He notes, “the catastrophic plate tectonics model of Steve Austin… explains all that the secular slow-and-gradual plate tectonics model does… Yet it… still needs further refinement, not least by the need to understand … what the Hebrew text describes as ‘the fountains of the great deep’ and ‘the windows of heaven.] … Flood geologists have a handle on the location in the geologic record where the Flood evidence begins… However, it is the pinning down of the location of the Flood/post-Flood boundary that is much debated.” (Pg. 22-23)
They explain, “In their book ‘The Genesis Flood,’ Whitcomb and Morris focused on demonstrating that the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers could be adequately explained by the catastrophic geologic processes operating during the global cataclysmic Genesis Flood… They did not attempt to meticulously align the various strata of the uniformitarian geologic column with the various stages of the Flood as outlined in the Scriptures.” (Pg. 89)
They acknowledge, “There is … clearly a lack of consensus among Flood geologists as to how the geologic record can be directly correlated with the biblical account of the Flood… an exact correlation … has not been attempted. The primary reason would appear to be that Flood geologists have not been provided with sufficient biblical constraints from the Hebrew text upon which they are seeking to base their geologic model of the Flood and their correlations with the physical rock record. In particular, the chronology of the Flood needs to be more clearly understood… Were the fountains of the great deep… shut on Day 150[?] … did the rainfall … last until Day 150[?]… Or did the sources of the Floodwaters shut off after forty days… one hundred-ninety days… or some other time? And what was the duration of the rise and fall of the Floodwaters? … did the water levels fluctuate vertically at any stage during the Flood… And did the waters retreat and advance repeatedly even while they were rising and prevailing?” (Pg. 103)
They assert, “the Pangaea supercontinent was not the pre-Flood supercontinent, but merely a transitory reassembly of plates during the Flood that subsequently split apart during the later phase of the Flood as the Atlantic Ocean and other ocean basins opened up and the preset configuration of continents … [was] produced.” (Pg. 136)
Andrew A. Snelling observes, “it is possible to walk across various regions of the earth and observe that the rock layers and the fossils contained in them generally match what is depicted in the widely accepted geological column… It is true that the complete geologic record is hardly, if at all, found in any one place on the earth’s surface. Usually several or many of the strata in local sequences are missing… but usually over a given region there is a more complete preservation of the record via correlation and integration.” (Pg. 148) He adds, “it must be concluded that the fossils contained in these rock layers are also a valid record of the order that creatures were progressively buried in this region within each successive sedimentary layers.” (Pg. 150)
He continues, “it is totally reasonable to expect that vertebrates would be found fossilized higher in the geologic record than the first invertebrates… we would expect oceanic fish to be buried first, since they live at the lowest elevation… However, in the ocean the fish live in the water column and have greater mobility, unlike the invertebrates that live on the ocean floor and have more restricted mobility… Therefore, we would expect the fish to only be buried and fossilized subsequent to the first marine invertebrates. Of course, fish would have inhabited waters at all different elevations in the pre-Flood world… but their ranking is based on where the first representatives of fish are likely to be buried.” (Pg. 165)
He admits, “the fossil record leaves us with many unanswered questions… some of these might be elucidated by ongoing original research… light could well be shed on them from an ongoing study of the Hebrew text of the Flood account. Critical to this is determining when the Floodwaters peaked and whether the text indicates at what point all animals … perished. Additionally… the nuances of some of the Hebrew verbs describing the action of the Floodwaters would help us … to explain the fluctuating water levels responsible for deposition of the megasequences across the continents and the successive burial of different ecosystems as the Flood progressed.” (Pg. 181)
They state, “We were moved to challenge the accepted idea that wayyiqtols indicates progression because---among other things---the inclusive sequence of nine wayyiqtols from Genesis 7:24 to 8:4 is problematic… If wayyiqtols marks progression, it would seem that the eventualities they represent would take up much more time between 7:24 and 8:4 than is available… Understanding the one hundred fifty days as following the forty days of rain… exacerbates the problem. We were left with only one cogent possibility: these wayyiqtols do not represent a temporal sequence… How does this affect our understanding of the geology, geophysics and paleontology connected with the Flood?” (Pg. 742)
They summarize, "The current consensus is that the record of the Flood’s beginning, when ‘the fountains of the great deep’ were broken up and ‘the windows of heaven’ were opened… can be seen in some uppermost Precambrian strata… and at the widespread erosional unconformity marking the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary in the geologic ‘column.’ This erosional unconformity was produced by the catastrophic transgression of the ocean (Flood) waters as the relative sea level dramatically rose to flood the land surfaces, depositing a megasequence of rock layers with entombed creatures… The relative sea level then seems to have fluctuated, so that the Floodwaters retreated then advanced several times, progressively depositing further megasequences of fossil-bearing sediment layers… Debate continues over the location of the Flood/post-Flood boundary… All are agreed that the only Ice Age (the ‘Pleistocene’) was post-Flood… The need now is for the chronology of the Flood to be more clearly understood from the Hebrew text of the Genesis Flood account… there is much Hebraists can contribute to further our understanding…” (Pg. 746-747)
If one is seeking a straightforward linear analysis/discussion of the Genesis Flood chronology, this book will not provide it. (It wastes time with the silly attempt to portray their research as a ‘ship voyage; it also gets MASSIVELY involved with grammatical details that probably fly right past most readers.) But if one seeks such a detailed discussion, this book may be “must reading.”
December 15, 2014
Book Review - Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood
Perhaps my favorite topics to study are the worldview issues developed in the first few chapters of Genesis. I typically devour every new book I can find that deals with Creation, the Fall, Noah’s Flood, and the Tower of Babel and more found in the first chapters of Genesis.
When I discovered that a new book was to be released examining the chronology of Noah’s Flood in detail, I got pretty excited. Specifically, this new book looks closely at the grammatical construct of the Hebrew text to determine the chronology of the Flood.
Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood is not an easy book to read. I studied New Testament Greek for several years while in Bible college, but only had a smattering of studies in Old Testament Hebrew, so for me to follow the lines of thought in this volume was a challenge. In order to grasp the meaning of what the authors were communicating, I often had to go back and read again several parts, or grab a Bible and examine the text in detail, in English, to help me understand just what was being conveyed.
However, that is not a negative critique of this book. I was fascinated by what I learned about the timeline of the Genesis Flood. I was captivated with the examination of the geology and geography studied to determine just when the Flood started, when it peaked, when it started to decline, and when it was finished.
And even though I found the geology and geography interesting, I was even more intrigued by the very structure of the Hebrew grammar and how much it contributes to our understanding of the Genesis Flood.
When the text itself is examined, in the original language, in detail, it reveals much about the chronology of the Flood and reveals much, much more than we glean from our English translations.
Never before has such an examination been undertaken, and the results help explain the world we live in with much more clarity.
I found Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood to be very informative. If you choose to read this book, be forewarned: your reading and comprehension skills will be challenged. This is no bedside devotional book, but a thoroughly researched scholarly work, and it will take some serious concentration to understand it, especially if you have little to no background in biblical Hebrew.
However, the knowledge you gain will be well worth the effort. Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood is a landmark study, one that comes along once in a generation. You need to have this resource on your shelf.
I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and dig into this incredible resource.
Perhaps my favorite topics to study are the worldview issues developed in the first few chapters of Genesis. I typically devour every new book I can find that deals with Creation, the Fall, Noah’s Flood, and the Tower of Babel and more found in the first chapters of Genesis.
When I discovered that a new book was to be released examining the chronology of Noah’s Flood in detail, I got pretty excited. Specifically, this new book looks closely at the grammatical construct of the Hebrew text to determine the chronology of the Flood.
Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood is not an easy book to read. I studied New Testament Greek for several years while in Bible college, but only had a smattering of studies in Old Testament Hebrew, so for me to follow the lines of thought in this volume was a challenge. In order to grasp the meaning of what the authors were communicating, I often had to go back and read again several parts, or grab a Bible and examine the text in detail, in English, to help me understand just what was being conveyed.
However, that is not a negative critique of this book. I was fascinated by what I learned about the timeline of the Genesis Flood. I was captivated with the examination of the geology and geography studied to determine just when the Flood started, when it peaked, when it started to decline, and when it was finished.
And even though I found the geology and geography interesting, I was even more intrigued by the very structure of the Hebrew grammar and how much it contributes to our understanding of the Genesis Flood.
When the text itself is examined, in the original language, in detail, it reveals much about the chronology of the Flood and reveals much, much more than we glean from our English translations.
Never before has such an examination been undertaken, and the results help explain the world we live in with much more clarity.
I found Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood to be very informative. If you choose to read this book, be forewarned: your reading and comprehension skills will be challenged. This is no bedside devotional book, but a thoroughly researched scholarly work, and it will take some serious concentration to understand it, especially if you have little to no background in biblical Hebrew.
However, the knowledge you gain will be well worth the effort. Grappling With The Chronology Of The Genesis Flood is a landmark study, one that comes along once in a generation. You need to have this resource on your shelf.
I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and dig into this incredible resource.
September 21, 2014
This book is not light reading, but is a treasure for understanding the Old Testament
Geologists like Andrew Snelling want to piece together a coherent picture of the flood processes we find throughout the geological record. Up to now we’ve only made reasonable guesses on how what we see ties in with the Bible. There are several obvious clues about the timing of events during the Flood year, but things are still confusing to those of us reading translations without the benefit of understanding the Biblical Hebrew and its literary style.
This book and its two future sequels have taken on the task of “sailing through these treacherous waters” and charting a course to a clear understanding.
Reading the book gave me the feeling of sitting in on a series of lectures given by college professors to professors in other disciplines. You need quite a bit of brain power, but, with some college-level English vocabulary, anyone could comprehend their thinking.
A single, fascinating chapter is devoted to an overview of Flood geologists’ thinking up to this point, but the rest of the book is primarily focused on linguistics (along with logic and the nature of time). Lay people are given a list of the most important sections to turn to, which is good since several topics were so esoteric I skipped them: nothing was being communicated to my non-linguistics-major brain.
In other chapters I found concepts brought into clear focus that will serve my reading of the Bible as a whole. The structure of Hebrew thought is carefully delineated and many examples are given so the reader gets a good feel for what is being discussed.
Much space is spent examining thinking on a key verb form to determine whether it requires events to follow one another in time or not. The ways we can determine where minor as well as major divisions in the account occur are covered thoroughly. Even an opening study determining which ancient copy of the text is the most reliable is included.
Nothing important to the question at hand is assumed just because some authority has claimed it to be the case. Sometimes this made me feel like they were beating dead horses, but it’s a scholarly book and they wanted to be sure every point was thoroughly researched and carefully presented.
I think they accomplished their goal and eagerly anticipate their conclusions on the specifics of the account we are given in Genesis 6-9.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Master Books in exchange for my review. They didn’t tell me anything about what to write. All opinions are my own.
Geologists like Andrew Snelling want to piece together a coherent picture of the flood processes we find throughout the geological record. Up to now we’ve only made reasonable guesses on how what we see ties in with the Bible. There are several obvious clues about the timing of events during the Flood year, but things are still confusing to those of us reading translations without the benefit of understanding the Biblical Hebrew and its literary style.
This book and its two future sequels have taken on the task of “sailing through these treacherous waters” and charting a course to a clear understanding.
Reading the book gave me the feeling of sitting in on a series of lectures given by college professors to professors in other disciplines. You need quite a bit of brain power, but, with some college-level English vocabulary, anyone could comprehend their thinking.
A single, fascinating chapter is devoted to an overview of Flood geologists’ thinking up to this point, but the rest of the book is primarily focused on linguistics (along with logic and the nature of time). Lay people are given a list of the most important sections to turn to, which is good since several topics were so esoteric I skipped them: nothing was being communicated to my non-linguistics-major brain.
In other chapters I found concepts brought into clear focus that will serve my reading of the Bible as a whole. The structure of Hebrew thought is carefully delineated and many examples are given so the reader gets a good feel for what is being discussed.
Much space is spent examining thinking on a key verb form to determine whether it requires events to follow one another in time or not. The ways we can determine where minor as well as major divisions in the account occur are covered thoroughly. Even an opening study determining which ancient copy of the text is the most reliable is included.
Nothing important to the question at hand is assumed just because some authority has claimed it to be the case. Sometimes this made me feel like they were beating dead horses, but it’s a scholarly book and they wanted to be sure every point was thoroughly researched and carefully presented.
I think they accomplished their goal and eagerly anticipate their conclusions on the specifics of the account we are given in Genesis 6-9.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Master Books in exchange for my review. They didn’t tell me anything about what to write. All opinions are my own.
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