The Flood - Where did it rain?
According to Genesis 7…Â
 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth.
I find it amazing how many theories exist on where the flood took place. For Christians who believe in a local flood, there appear to be numerous possibilities.
The primary roadblock to figuring out where the flood took place has to do with where the ark landed. According to Genesis 8:4, the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat. Most people take that to mean Mount Ararat. However, that mountain was named later, after Genesis was written. The mountains of Ararat actually refers to the mountains of Urartu, which are further south.
View this map here: http://www.genesisfiles.com/Images/UrartuSearch.jpg. Notice that Mount Ararat is in the North Eastern corner of the mountains of Ararat (which are delimited by a yellow outline.
Now view this map: http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q224/voyager907/BibOrig/MidEast80.png. Notice all of the large bodies of water outside of the mountains of Ararat. Nearly every one of them has been proposed by someone as the location of the flood.
Because people generally start with the ark and work backwards, or they start with a body of water and work backwards, it is really difficult to rule out which excellent piece of research can be discarded and which should be taken seriously. For that reason, I am going to take a slightly different approach. I am starting with the question: where did it rain?
The reason for asking this question is because some of these bodies of water are self-contained. Of them, some are salt-based, and others are fresh. For example, the Caspian Sea is fresh. The website http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/ararat.html suggests that because the Caspian Sea and others are fresh, and have no outlet, then they may be fairly recent.Â
“The Caspian, the Sea of Aral and Lake Balkash have no outlet, but their waters are still comparatively fresh. Therefore, they must be of recent origin.”
The reason for saying they are recent is because there was an ice age around 15K years ago, but the melting of the ice would not provide enough fresh water to form bodies that high and that large. We need a different source, like a river that feeds into it, or rain.
According to wikipedia, the Caspian Sea started out as part of the Paratethys Sea about 5.5 million years ago, when the Paratethys’ levels dropped. The Caspian Sea, Black Sea, and Sea of Aral are all that remain now. Interestingly, that is about the time when Glenn Morton hypothesizes the flood took place at the Mediterranean. Here is a map of the Paratethys area, superimposed over modern day water bodies. It shows a heavy influence on the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caspian Sea. If you look to the left of the of the Caspian, at its bottom, you can just barely see Lake Van, which is at the center of the Mountains of Ararat. It would seem that the entire range was at one time within the Paratethys before it dropped.
What makes this interesting for a more recent local flood, is that the Caspian has only 1/3 the salinity of modern oceans. The Black Sea has a little more than 1/2 the salinity of modern oceans. However, their relative salinity levels are rather constant. Does this suggest a possible event or period in the past when a freshwater bias was achieved? Possibly. In contrast, the Mediterranean today has a higher salinity than the Atlantic.
Based on the straightforward mechanisms generally attributed to these bodies of water — evaporation, precipitation, melting ice from ice ages, inlets and outlets — I can see explanations why these bodies maintain their current salinity. I also see where the Mediterranean achieved its higher salinity. However, it is not clear how the Black Sea and Caspian achieved their lower salinity. Now, I will admit this is beyond my area of expertise. All I can do is try and read other people’s writings. However, if I am right, then there may be something actually requires explanation, and if that explanation is the same for both seas (and other fresh water bodies within their locale, such as Lake Van), then the explanation could be rains from the Flood.
To bound the rains, we might be able to look toward the Dead Sea, which an incredibly high salinity due to its inlet from the Jordan River, combined with evaporation. Could this suggest a bounds for the rains? At this point, I think I am reaching. However, I will leave my shaky analysis intact for the reader to consider the following suggestion: when the flood occurred, the rains most likely covered an area at least as large as the Mountains of Ararat. If it covered enough area to include the Caspian and Black Seas, then it would help explain their freshwater bias that current conditions help preserve. However, the important point is that imagining rains that completely saturate the Mountains of Ararat and their surrounding areas may help provide a perspective for interpreting the scriptures.
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Other helpful information:
http://www.genesisfiles.com/Urartu.htm shows a great map of the Mountains of Ararat (i.e., Urartu). Shows also Mount Cudi, and links also to maps showing relative elevations of the region. This map here http://www.genesisfiles.com/Images/Uraratu.jpg shows Lake Van at an elevation of 978-1670ft, and surrounded by mountains ranging in height from 2363-3055ft.
