Even on the basis of uniformitarian considerations (the relatively small local floods of the present are often tremendously destructive, leaving great gullies and thick deposits of sediment), it should be obvious that a global kataklusmos, such as the Bible describes, with its torrents of water from the skies, erupting reservoirs from the depths, universal destruction, violent tidal actions, great winds, rising mountains, and sinking basins, and other non-tranquil phenomena must surely have accomplished far more geological disruption than a great number of local floods could ever do.
How it is that the usual slow, uniform processes of nature could leave permanent records in the form of great sedimentary strata and fossil graveyards all over the world and through all the ages, while a uniquely powerful worldwide hydrodynamic convulsion — which destroyed all living land animals and the earth itself — would leave no discernible effects whatever, poses a unique geological conundrum. The idea of a worldwide, year-long “tranquil” flood is hydrologically and geophysically absurd, about like a tranquil worldwide explosion!
Gaps in Human Chronology
A somewhat different objection to the Flood comes from archaeology instead of geology, and has to do with the date of the Flood.
The dating methods used by archaeologists and anthropologists for dating ancient human sites and cultures (e.g., radiocarbon, pottery dating) yield a chronology far longer than the Bible seems to allow for the post-Flood era. The histories of Egypt, Sumeria, and other ancient nations, as well as the more equivocal cultures of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon settlements, have all certainly taken place after the Flood and after the dispersion from Babel, if the Bible record is true. Yet the Bible, at least as we have it in the King James Version, does not seem to allow enough time for all these developments.
Accordingly, Christian scholars have suggested ways of accommodating Genesis to archaeology, as well as to geology. These attempts also, however, like the accommodationist schemes already discussed, actually raise more problems than they solve.
The genealogical lists in Genesis 5 give the age of each man in the line from Adam to Abraham at the birth of the son who is next in the line. When these are added, they give a total of 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood. A similar list for the postdiluvian patriarchs in Genesis 11 gives 368 years from the Flood until Abraham migrated into Canaan. Abraham’s time is well within the period of recorded history. Although a number of detailed chronological questions for the post-Abrahamic period are not settled, there is general agreement that Abraham’s migration occurred no earlier than 2000 B.C.
Therefore, the date of the creation, as obtained by simple addition of the figures given in the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, was about 2,024 years prior to Abraham’s journey from Haran to Canaan, or around 4000 B.C. The date of the Flood on this basis is around 2350 B.C.
Dates such as these are considered by modern anthropologists to be preposterous! These scholars believe man to have been on the earth for at least a million years. The Flood is rejected altogether, except perhaps as an old tradition of a Euphrates flood occurring sometime around 3000 B.C.
The sharp disagreement of the Genesis chronologies of human pre-history with these speculations of evolutionary anthropology and archaeology is a matter of serious concern. This problem has led to various theories about imaginary “pre-Adamite” men, and has been one of the main reasons why so many modern theologians have relegated Genesis 1–11 to the status of mythology, rejecting its historical content altogether.
1. Accuracy of Transmission
For those who take these Genesis chapters historically, there are three possible approaches to consider. First, it may be that the numbers in Genesis 5 and 11 have been corrupted by faulty transmission. The Masoretic text, on which the figures cited above are based, differs from the Septuagint and Samaritan texts. The Samaritan text would add 301 years and the Septuagint 1,466 years to the period calculated above from the creation to Abraham.
This would extend man’s creation back to only about 5500 B.C. at most, and this is only a drop in the bucket compared to the million-year demands of evolutionary chronology.
2. Genealogical Gaps
A second approach is to assume that there are certain gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, with the term “begat” implying ancestry, rather than immediate parental relationship. At least one such gap is specifically suggested by the genealogy in Luke 3, which inserts the name Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah. This name is actually found in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 5, with an additional increment of 130 years. Also a gap is perhaps implied at the time of Peleg (Gen. 10:25 and 11:18). The life spans of Peleg’s ancestors were as follows: Shem, 602; Arphaxad, 438; Salah, 433; and Eber, 464. Peleg himself lived only 239 years. His immediate descendants were Reu, 239; Serug, 230; Nahor, 148; and Terah, 275. There is thus a sharp decline in longevity between the time of Eber and Peleg, and this may well be because an unknown number of intervening generations have been omitted. On the other hand, it was in the days of Peleg that the earth “was divided,” and this division, whatever it was, may itself have suddenly decreased man’s longevity.
This “genealogical-gap theory” is biblically permissible if kept within reasonable bounds. There are several other instances in Scripture where similar gaps can be found (e.g., Matt. 1). Therefore, the Flood may possibly be dated considerably earlier than the previously calculated 2350 B.C., and the creation considerably earlier than 4000 B.C. If such gaps are allowed, however, there seems no exact way of determining these dates from biblical considerations alone.
In any case, this device still does not correlate the biblical chronology with the standard evolutionary chronology of human history. There are 20 names in the patriarchal list from Adam to Abraham, with the total time indicated as about 2,000 years. To correlate this with the evolutionists’ chronology of approximately 1,000,000 years of human history requires an average “gap” between each adjacent pair of names in the genealogical lists of almost 50,000 years! This is obviously absurd, and makes Genesis 5 and 11 look ridiculous. One would have to read Genesis 5:6, for example, in some such fashion as this: “Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat (a son whose remote descendant, 50,000 years in the future, would be) Enos.” The same flexibility would have to be assumed for all other links in the chain.
Actually only 15 possible gaps exist, since the connection of Seth to Adam, Noah to Lamech and to Shem, Shem to Arphaxad, and Terah to Abraham, are spelled out in such a way as to preclude the possibility of intervening generations in those cases. Furthermore, Jude 14 agrees with Genesis 5 that Enoch was the “seventh from Adam,” so this eliminates five more possible gaps. Thus, the average gap really has to be 100,000 years! Since all known and recorded human history extends back only about 4,000 years, the average gap in every case must be about 25 times longer in duration than all known history!
Preservation of the patriarchal names and ages and historical events by any kind of tradition over such long ages is a patent impossibility. They could have been given only by direct dictation to Moses from God if meaningful and accurate information of this kind were to be conveyed for inscripturation in God’s Word. That being so, there is no reason that the names of Cainan, Mahalaleel, Serug, et al, were included in the list at all. No other information is given concerning them, and the 20,000 or so names that were presumably omitted from the lists would have been just as vital in transmitting the patriarchal seed as these.
Lamech, the father of Noah, was still keenly aware of the terms of God’s Edenic curse (Gen. 5:29), which would be highly unlikely if the curse has been pronounced half a million years before his time. And Job, who lived in the early centuries after the Flood and long before the Book of Genesis had been compiled by Moses, was well aware of Adam and the events of patriarchal history, as we have already seen.