The Flood Catastrophe has been the worst by far of all the catastrophes since the creation of man. Its intensity was not merely degrees, but MAGNITUDES more intense than the next worst, the Exodus Catastrophe.
In this chapter (like the previous ones on other catastrophes), we shall follow the general established outline. This outline includes (1) the date, the calendaric month and day, (2) the date, by Julian calendar, (3) bolidic or meteoritic intrusions, (4) earthquakes and spin axis shifts, and (5) descriptive cosmic movements.
This chapter is a supplement to an earlier book on the cosmology of the Flood Catastrophe. It cannot be treated as a synopsis of the earlier work. 1
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the SECOND MONTH, the SEVENTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH, the SAME DAY were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
(Genesis 7:11)
Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not;
AND HE WALKETH IN THE CIRCUIT OF HEAVEN.
(Job 22:14)
For enquire, I pray thee,
of the former age [the pre-flood era],
and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers. (Job 8:8)
THE BIBLICAL FLOOD should be considered more as a catastrophic pair than as a single catastrophe. This is because we conclude the following events occurred astronomically and geophysically in a single 150 day period:
A close fly-by of Mercury, between 25,000 and 30,000 miles, an outside pass. This occurred about November 7 of the year of the Deluge.
A fragmentation of an icy satellite, drenching the Earth with a 200 to 250 inch rain (average per square inch) across Earth's 197,000,000 square mile surface.
At least 50% of the ice particles came in as a sudden rain; the balance formed rings around the Earth (like Saturn's rings). The icy particles therein were deflected along geomagnetic field force lines, assumed elliptic orbits, and descended roughly over the geomagnetic polar areas 2 in a vast, deep subzero icy mist. This occurred also over the next 35 or 40 days, and was completed about December 17.
Residual astronomical rain from the ice dump was pretty well over by December 15 or 17, the 40 days and nights being completed as per the Scriptural log.
During the first cycle of interaction, the geographical poles shifted or migrated between 2500 and 3000 miles.
The first cycle, about November 7, caused the uplift of the entire Circum-Pacific cycle of mountains. 3
A second fly-by of Mercury occurred about March 20 or 30, this time slightly closer than the first fly-by. This second fly-by was not accompanied by an icy fragmentation nor a sudden astronomical rain. It was an inside fly-by.
The second cycle, sometime between March 20 and March 30, caused the uplift of the entire Alpine-Himalayan cycle of mountains, including the Armenian Knot where Mount Ararat was uplifted by crustal tides. The floating ark was in this region when the crust under it was uplifted.
During the second cycle, the geographical poles were relocated another 3000 to 3500 miles, the vernal equinox was reset, and the geomagnetic field was again reversed. 4
In Chapter VIII, discussion occurred regarding the ancient calendar. In the ancient Hebrew calendar, the autumnal equinox (September 21) was the New Year Day. Forty-seven days following the autumnal equinox we are told the flood-tides and the sudden intense rain simultaneously enveloped the locale of the ark and the entire globe. We believe that the apprehensive animals which boarded the ark entered about November 7. 5, 6
The works of Josephus, the Talmud, The Book of Jasher and The Book of Jubilees all agree that Noah entered the ark on the forty-seventh day of the old year. We know it began on the autumnal equinox. The Book of Jubilees more specifically relates that Noah entered the ark on the evening of that day.
BY SCRIPTURE (Masoretic Text). We have established that the Sodom-Gomorrah Catastrophe was in 1877 B.C. This was in Abraham's ninety-ninth or one hundredth year. A literal calculation of the chronologies of Genesis 11 7 8 places the ending of the Flood Catastrophe in the year 2268 B.C., and its onset in 2269 B.C.
BY JOSEPHUS. Data from Josephus supports these calculations.
... his son was Terah, who was the father of ABRAHAM, WHO accordingly was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the two hundred and ninety-second year after the Deluge; for Terah begat Abraham in his seventieth year. 9
BY THE BOOK OF JASHER. The date of the cessation of the Flood Catastrophe is also 2268 B.C. according to this work.
... and Arpachshad the son of Shem the son of Noah died in those days, in the forty eighth year of the life of Isaac, and all the days that Arpachshad lived were four hundred and thirty eight years, and he died. 10
And it came to pass in those days, in the hundred and tenth year of the life of Isaac [I], that is in the fiftieth year of the life of Jacob, in that year died Shem the son of Noah; Shem was six hundred years old at his death. 11
BY MODEL. We believe that Mercury, not Mars, interacted with Earth during the Deluge. However, since they both interacted in October or November in various years, they may once have had similar orbits. Indeed, it is a question as to whether Mars and Mercury in the pre-flood era were actually a binary system (like the Earth-Moon system) only on a cometary-type orbit.
The Flood Catastrophe cannot be dated by the Mars model of 108 year cycles. However, earlier Mars upheavals before Babel, if valid, would favor the following dates:
2254 B.C. (three cycles)
2362 B.C. (four cycles)
2470 B.C. (five cycles)
2578 B.C. (six cycles)
In The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, a relatively general dating of 2800 B.C., plus or minus 400 years, was suggested. This would allow for a date between 2400 B.C. and 3200 B.C. Although the dating was general, it did establish the relative recentness of the Deluge. Some have dated it at 5000 B.C., 10,000 B.C. and even more ancient. Such earlier datings assume the chronicles of Genesis 11 either to be mythologies, or to contain large gaps. We reject both of these explanations as accommodations to evolutionary thought. We believe the Deluge occurred SOMETIME IN THE ERA 2268 B.C. TO 2500 B.C. This conclusion of relatively recent dating is in harmony with ancient cyclic astronomical catastrophism. It has been observed that catastrophes occurred in cycles every five or six centuries. The eighth century B.C. experienced two, as did the fifteenth and the twentieth centuries B.C. Within this general pattern, the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth Century B.C. for the Deluge is possible.
BY TRANSIENT DECAY CURVE. If one plots the life spans and dates of the post-flood patriarchs on a graph, the resulting curve illustrates a typical transient decay curve. We believe that changes in the mixes of ozone and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plus a change in the structure of the planetary wind systems (fluxing ozone downward) is at the basis of change in ancient life spans, 12 This curve favors a date in the 24th or 25th century B.C.
EARTHQUAKES. In The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, we suggested Mercury (not Mars) buzzed Earth, and twice in one year. Mercury came within 25,000 miles, perhaps even within 20,000 miles of Earth's core (not Earth's crust, which is 4,000 miles closer still). At such a close distance, Mercury would generate crustal tides of 2,000 feet at 30,000 miles, and 5,000 feet at 25,000 miles. Oceanic tides washing around the planet, rinsing the crust, would be superimposed on such a crustal distortion.
We believe gravitational interaction this intense did occur, and we have evidence to verify it. Figure 43 illustrates the great circle patterns of these two recent zones of mountain uplifting, or crustal deformation. The Circum-Pacific cycle was the first, 13 in November of the year of the Flood; the Alpine-Himalayan Cycle reflects the equator of the Earth facing the second fly-by. 14 “Earthquake” is no word to describe Earth deformation of this magnitude, as entire mountain ranges soared skyward in minutes.
Two great circles of mountain uplifts. The vertical cycle, the Circum-Pacific primary arc, is believed to have occurred during the initial week of the Flood Catastrophe. The horizontal cycle, the Alpine-Himalayan primary arc, is thought to have been uplifted during the fifth month of the Flood Catastrophe, toward the end of the 150 days. The two great circles suggest the fly-by patterns of the passing planet, probably Mercury. This pattern suggests that two-thirds of the orogentic (Mountain uplift) activity in the geologic time column Occurred within one year rather than within 200,000,000 years as is alleged in the uniformitarian mythology. From The Earth as a Planet, p. 153 courtesy of University of Chicago Press.
EARTH-SHAKINGS (SPIN AXIS SHIFTS). An examination of Figure 43 will reveal that the second cycle of mountain uplifts straddles Earth's current equator. This “great circle” rises to about 35° N. latitude in the Himalaya-Ararat sector, and descends to about 20° S. latitude in the Pacific Ocean sector, in the region of the Fiji and Samoa island groups. In a very general way, the Alpine-Himalayan cycle reflects a mid-Flood equator. Similarly, in a very general way, the Circum-Pacific cycle reflects the pre-Flood equator. The geographical poles in the pre-Flood era could easily have been in the middle of the African continent and the Pacific Ocean.
On each of the two fly-bys during the Flood Catastrophe, we estimate a polar relocation occurred of no less than 2500 miles and probably more. Thus there was a pre-Flood polar (and equator) location, a mid-Flood polar (and equator) relocation, and a post-Flood third polar (and equator) relocation. Each relocation was due to one of the fly-bys. The March 20/21 post-Flood vernal equinox was established by the last fly-by of the Deluge on or about this date, since that fly-by twisted or reset Earth's spin axis. The Alpine-Himalayan cycle of mountain uplifts reflects the fly-by pattern, a great circle on the rotating Earth opposite to the fly-by path.
The impact of this catastrophic cosmology is that the philosophy of uniformitarianism, accepted in almost all geology departments, is in extreme error. Hundreds of textbooks on orogeny (to say nothing of glaciology or stratigraphy) need rewriting. Most students of geological science, being Darwinists, Lyellians and Huttonians, have been looking downward for 150 years; it is time they, too, recognize the ancient wars in the heavens, and their significance. Then the deformed (and reformed) crust of the Earth, or Mars, or even the Moon, will take on an exciting, understandable reality. 15
In the post-Flood fire and brimstone catastrophes, blizzards of iron dust, meteors and bolides were repeatedly Earth's experience. During the Flood Catastrophe, there were no iron, nickel or silica (rock) meteors, but there was a fragmentation of an icy satellite. This fragmentation provided, simultaneously, the water for the sudden astronomical rain and frozen deep sub-zero icy mists forming the glacial age. The astronomical rain was the water-ice which made direct entry into Earth's atmosphere (as in the Apollo missions when the module's face becomes so warm on re-entry). One of the authors has estimated the icy body was at least 430 miles in diameter and has estimated that at least half of the ice entered Earth's atmosphere as rain and the balance as ice. 16
The balance of the icy particles interacted with the radiation belts, the solar radiation, and received charges of electricity while in orbit around the Earth. In about a six week period these particles settled down upon Earth, through the vortices of the radiation belts, amid massive volcanic action on Earth. One interesting reflection is that the ice pack in Antarctica today is in places 10,500 feet deep, half below sea level. In drilling and assaying the ice, it has been found that the deeper the core is taken, the greater the admixture of volcanic ash below sea level. This is what the catastrophic theory would predict!
There are no described planetary movements in the Genesis account of the Flood, although an intense, sudden rain is discussed together with a heaving of the oceans (“the fountains of the deep”). The rain, we have already determined, was of astronomical origin, coming from the fragmentation of an icy body between 400 and 500 miles in diameter.
There is a brief cosmological description in The Book of Jasher:
And on that day, the Lord caused the whole earth to shake, and the sun darkened, and the foundations of the world raged, and the whole earth was moved violently, and the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared, and all the fountains in the earth were broken up, such as was not known to the inhabitants before... 17
Milman, in his work The History of the Jews, indicates planet worship dates to the earliest post-Flood times in Chaldea, and also indicates at least one irregular orbit was a matter of much contemplation:
To this country the first rudiments of astronomy are generally ascribed, and here the earliest form of idolatry, the worship of the host of heaven, planet worship, began to spread. 18
There is some shadowy flood cosmology in the Talmud:
The flood was produced by a union of the male waters, which are above the firmament, [the astronomical rain into the pre-Flood canopy] and the female waters issuing from the earth [the oceanic tides]. The upper waters rushed through the space left when God removed TWO STARS out of the constellation Pleiades. Afterward, to put a stop to the flood, God had to transfer TWO STARS from the constellation of the Bear to the constellation of the Pleiades. That is why the Bear runs after the Pleiades. She wants her two children back, but they will be restored to her only in the future world. There were other changes among the celestial spheres during the year of the flood. 19
There is no cosmological description associated with the flood account in Josephus, but there is an immediate post-flood record of Noah's concern about the possibility of another deluge 20 and several quotations recognizing the post-Flood interest in astronomy and astrology.
In Chapter X (the discussion of the Tower of Babel Catastrophe) our discussion was incomplete without a brief mention of an earlier catastrophe “the earth was divided in the days of Peleg.” It was suggested that a Peleg catastrophe antedated the Babel event by 108 or 216 years, and may have been the first big post-Flood cataclysm.
Was the Noachian Flood the first catastrophe, even as it was the worst? Both the Scriptures and the works of Josephus are unclear on this issue, leading some to suppose it was the first of the ancient catastrophes. However, The Book of Jasher and the Talmud are not silent on this matter.
And the Lord caused the waters of the river Gihon [presumably an ocean or sea in the pre-Flood era as the word for river and sea is the same] to overwhelm them, and he destroyed and consumed them, and he destroyed the third part of the earth... 21
The generation of Enosh were thus the first idol worshippers, and the punishment for their folly was not delayed long. God caused the sea to transgress its bounds, and a portion of the earth was flooded. This was the time also when the mountains became rocks... 22
This shadowy suggestion of a catastrophe is one involving tidal waves only, but not an associated astronomical rain as we saw in the Deluge. In association with this, we quote the apocryphal Book of Enoch:
All the luminaries are agitated with great fear; and all the earth is spared, while it trembles, and suffers anxiety. 23
There are several reasons to conclude that there was a catastrophic era before the creation of Adam. Crustal scars (mountain cycles of crustal deformation) 24 not attributable to the Deluge are one reason. Strata not attributable to the Deluge are a second reason, 25 There are hints in the book of Genesis (Chapter 1), the book of Proverbs (Chapter 8) and the book of Job (Chapter 38) that ancients viewed catastrophic conditions as preceding the creation of man.
Thus we conclude there was at least one catastrophe of significant proportions after Adam, but before Noah, and at least one catastrophe (perhaps more) preceding the creation of man.
Uniformitarianism is the doctrine that “the present is the key to the past.” It was assumed by Kant, codified by Hutton, popularized by Lyell and Darwin. This doctrine has become the underlying doctrine of history for communism, humanism and socialism.
The Long Day of Joshua, a gyroscopic spin axis precession amid incoming bolides and meteorites, is an event which illustrates the issue. Kant, the blooming humanist, said the “Long Day” was “impossible” because of his narrow frame of reference, involving a lack of catastrophic probability. We say this event was a historic fact a global upset and a fearful reality. And more important, it was just one of six or seven similar upheavals. Furthermore, such could recur were another intruding planet of appropriate size and nearness to buzz the Earth-Moon system, or Venus, or the Mars-Deimos-Phobos system.
Catastrophism is the doctrine that the Earth has experienced sudden, overwhelming physical events in the past. Catastrophism is the doctrine of ancient historians. It is the Biblical doctrine, and it is the scientific doctrine.
The existence of an intelligent Creator,
a personal God, can, in my mind, almost
be proved from chemistry.
– Thomas A. Edison.
Observe creation mercifully hidden
either in an imaginary Eden,
or buried in some absent-minded spasm
of a self-generated protoplasm.
– Humbert Wolfe.
Donald W. Patten, The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Co., 1966. ↩︎
Technically, the ice particles descended in the two vortices of the radiation belts, which most assume to be over the magnetic poles but in fact are not. The vortex of the radiation belts in the Northern Hemisphere is currently over Northern Greenland, and this coincides with the center of the ice dump in the Northern Hemisphere. ↩︎
In a few hours of fly-by time, as much “work” was accomplished deforming and reforming Earth's crust as evolutionists allow for 200,000,000 years. Both fly-bys include “mesozoic” and “cenozoic” time in Lyell's geological time column which he “created” a priori. With Mercury at 30,000 miles, crustal tides of about 2,000 feet would have been generated. Mercury may have passed as close as 25,000 miles, or even 20,000 miles. ↩︎
Noah remained in the ark another 210 days before disembarking. It is possible he feared a third cycle and his fears subsided only after a full year had lapsed from the first cycle. ↩︎
R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Vol, II, “The Book of Jubilees,” Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 21. “And he entered in the sixth (year) thereof, in the second month, on the new moon of the second month, till the sixteenth; and he entered, and all that he brought to him, into the ark, and the Lord closed it from without on the seventeenth evening.” [The sixth year is of the twenty-seventh jubilee of years, the “jubilee of years” being a dating system in ancient Hebrew literature unique to this work.] ↩︎
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter III, section 3, pp. 83-84. “This calamity happened in the six hundredth year of Noah's government, [age] in the second month, called by the Macedonians Dius, but by the Hebrews Marhesven (sic)...” ↩︎
The Julian Calendar supposedly dates from the year of the birth of Christ, but was miscalculated by 4 years so that technically, Christ was born in 4 “B.C.” The Julian Calendar is in contrast to the historic Jewish dating of “A.M.,” anno mundi, with the traditional, estimated year of creation being year 1 in that system. ↩︎
Calculations from the Flood: Arphaxad's birth 2 years after the Flood; Salah's birth 35 years later; Eber's 30; Peleg's 34; Reu's 30; Serug's 32; Nahor's 30; Terah's 29; Abraham's 70. Abraham's age at the Sodom-Gomorrah event, 99 years. The date of the end of the Flood Catastrophe is 2268 B.C., that is, 1877 plus 99 plus 292. ↩︎
Flavius Josephus, op. cit., Book I, Chapter VI, section 5, p. 93. Josephus' accounts, however, are self-contradictory. He seems to draw from the Masoretic texts on some occasions and the Septuagint on others. ↩︎
The Book of Jasher, New York: Mordecai M. Noah & Alexander S. Gould, 1840, 25: 28, p. 74. (2266 B.C. minus 438 is 1828 B.C. 1828 B.C. plus 48 [Isaac's 48th Year] is 1876 B.C. Isaac was born in the year after the Sodom-Gomorrah event of 1877 B.C. Arphaxad was born in the second year after the Deluge, thus placing the Deluge at 2268 B.C.) ↩︎
The Book of Jasher, 28:24, p. 80. Shem was 98 years old the year of the Deluge. The Book of Jasher is clear that Abraham was schooled in the home of Noah and Shem, and later, Isaac was schooled at least briefly in the home of Eber. Many of the post-flood generations overlapped and many began to die out in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries B.C. This suggests an explosion of population and civilization. Other references citing similar dating occur but are not given here for the sake of brevity. ↩︎
For further discussion see Chapter IX, pp. 194 ff. in The Biblical Flood and The lce Epoch, and “The Greenhouse Effect” in Symposium on Creation II. ↩︎
The first cycle includes the Andes, the Sierras, the Cascades, the Rockies, the Aleutians, the Brooks Range, the Japanese arc, the Ryukyu arc, the Marianas trench, and so forth. ↩︎
The second cycle includes the Owen-Stanley range of New Guinea, the Himalayas, the Tien Shans, the Kun Luns (all in India and Tibet), the Elburz Mountains (including the Armenian Knot and Mount Ararat), the Caucasus, the Alps, the Atlas Mountains and so forth. Trenches of course parallel ranges, both above and below sea level. See Chapter V of The Biblical Flood and The Ice Epoch for further details. ↩︎
Each of these cycles spans about 75% of a complete great circle. Thus the uniformitarian view that all mountain ranges are local in scope is erroneous. The uniformitarian view that uplifts arise from forces within the Earth's interior is 180° off in finding the direction of the cause. ↩︎
Loren Steinhauer, “Out of Whose Womb Came the Ice?” Symposium on Creation IV, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972. (Patten's original estimate of 10% is thus modified to approximately 50%. ↩︎
The Book of Jasher, 6: 11, p. 13. ↩︎
Henry Hart Milman, The History of the Jews, New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1883, p. 51, (Millman identifies the orbiting wanderer, wonder of the ancients, as Venus, whereas we propose it must have been the planet Mars. ↩︎
Louis Ginzberg, op cit., Vol. I, p. 162. What, if anything, could this discussion of two stars transferred in the heavens at the time of the Flood mean? Is it a hazy, shadowy recollection? If founded on observation, it could indicate that both Mars and Mercury threatened Earth during the Flood catastrophe. This then could lead one to wonder whether Mars and Mercury could have been a binary system like the Earth-Moon system, only in a comet-type of orbit.
Secondly, it could lead one to wonder whether this two luminary transfer could be a hazy recollection of the two planetary fly-bys during this massively catastrophic year. Of further interest is the calendaric dating of the flood catastrophe. Its first cycle began the first week of November, not unlike the later Mars catastrophes which occurred the last week of October. The second cycle of the Flood catastrophe occurred during the third or fourth week of March, again not unlike the later March catastrophes. Much continuing research on this great catastrophe is badly needed. ↩︎
Flavius Josephus, op. cit., Book I, Chapter III, section 7, p. 86. ↩︎
The Book of Jasher, 2:6, p. 4. This is recorded as being in the days of Enosh, midway between the time of Adam and the time of Noah. ↩︎
Louis Ginzberg, op cit., Vol. I, p. 123. ↩︎
The Book of Enoch, 102:3. ↩︎
The Herzian-Calendonian cycle, for instance. ↩︎
Paleozoic strata particularly, as mesozoic and cenozoic strata appear to be Deluge strata. ↩︎
"The Long Day of Joshua and
Six Other Catastrophes" by Patten,
Hatch & Steinhauer
- is ©1973 by Pacific Meridian Pub. Co.
https://www.creationism.org/patten/PattenLDOJ/
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