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I have researching and writing on the date of the Flood for some time now.

First, I wrote of scientific evidence of a meteor strike that would have caused a “great flood” in the middle east around 2800.  Being so close to a total eclipse that was on May 10, 2807 BC, it suggested a possible date that the flood might have occurred close to:

• Scientific evidence for the flood being in 2807 BC: Dating the Flood… May 10, 2807 B.C.?

I later presented historical evidence for that time-frame.  It would seem that the flood myths of Sumer, Egypt, and India all date to around 2800 BC, just before experiencing quantum leaps in their culture (BTW, this would jive with scripture’s recording of man’s audacity to build a tower up to heaven… but I’ll cover that another time):

• Historical evidence for the flood being in 2807 BC: Dating the Flood… when Science Meets History

Next, I reconciled the time-lines in the Bible, showing how starting with the scientific date of 2807 BC, and ending with the Secular dating of Solomon’s temple of 997BC, the Bible precisely accounts for the time span in between… no more, no less:

• Secular and Biblical sources confirm each other, and therefore 2807 BC: Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Conclusion) - Yes, it does!

However, in this final post, I feel I left things hanging a little, as I closed with my observation of Genesis 7:11-12…

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. ¹² And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

Notice the date? “the seventeenth day of the second month”.  Here is what I wrote of that…

If this date is meant to be interpreted against the Jewish Calendar, and we assume the New Year starts properly in the month of Nissan, and that the civil date of the flood was 2807, as we have previously confirmed, then the 17th day of the second month (Iyar) would fall on May 1 of that year, 9 days before the total solar eclipse that history records for that year (it was the eclipse that we used to guess at May 10 in the post above).

First of all, when I say “meant to be interpreted”, I don’t mean to suggest Noah was aware of the Jewish Calendar, but that somehow the date got passed down from Noah and was accurately recorded by Moses, and reflected in when Jewish Calendar begins.  I realize that the “New Year” is actually around September, but the Jewish Calendar does not begin at the “New Year”.  Funny, huh?  But, it doesn’t.  It begins in the Spring.  So, if we interpret “second month” relative to the calendar itself, and not the “New Year” celebration of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, then that date falls on May 1, 2807 BC.

Here is where it gets interesting.

The Sumerian Flood myth does not record 40 days and nights of rain… only 7.  That seems rather odd, because the dating of the Sumerian Flood historically lines up with my dating of the Biblical Flood.  I did not have this in mind when I started out on this quest, but was delighted to realize it later on.  It therefore makes sense that both Biblical and Sumerian accounts would line up, presumably the Sumerian deriving from the Biblical… but why only 7 days?

First of all, I believe the Biblical account is based entirely on what Noah did and what Noah saw.  While Noah was in the mountains of Urartu, in the Ark, over Lake Van, I believe he in fact experienced 40 days and nights of rain.  He had no basis for thinking it would be otherwise outside those mountains.  Sumer on the other hand might not have experienced that much rain.  Assuming the rains began outside Urartu simultaneous with Noah’s observations, then I suspect Sumerians observed the total eclipse of May 10 of that year.  Suppose they did. That implies the rains ended and the clouds parted before May 10… perhaps May 9.

Now, in the Bible, a “yom” is a day marked by sequential sundowns.  This means that the “seventeenth day of the second month” started at sundown May 1, and ended at sundown May 2.  Assuming Noah was loading animals in the daylight when the rains began, it is therefore most likely that the rain started on May 2.  After all, the scripture 40 days and nights… not 40 nights and days.  The Sumerian tale also says “days and nights”, not “nights and days”.  This suggests the rains lasted for a duration of 7 24-hour periods… approximately.  It suggests, they ended outside Urartu sometime before day-break on May 9, 2807 BC.  The total eclipse was then observed on May 10.  With Noah’s record of when the rains started, and the Sumerian’s record of when it ended, their “myth” was written to say 7 days and nights.

The cool thing here is that, contrary to the typical response that competing myths cast aspersions on the Biblical account, the evidence actually reconciles them!

I tell ya, I don’t know why the evidence lines up so well.  I’m not making it up. The only possibility I can think of is that it’s true.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 at 11:25 am and is filed under The Science, The Flood, The History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.