Thông tin tài liệu
254 BIBLICAL GEOLOGY The Flood: Genesis 6–9 Since, at latest, the middle of the nineteenth century, scholars, both scientific and theological, have rejected as impossible the idea of a flood that inundated all of Earth’s landmasses The flood story has been treated as ancient myth or as a theological metaphor for the return to supposed primeval chaos as a consequence of human sin It can also be regarded as an expansion of local flood stories from the flood plains of great rivers and coastal areas to some sort of universal status But since the work of William Ryan and Walter Pitman, there has been renewed interest in the occurrence of a catastrophic flood At the time of maximum glaciation at the height of the last Ice Age (about 16 000 bce), sea-levels were about 120 m lower than present levels are There was no longer a connection between the Black Sea Basin and the Mediterranean Sea With the first great melting of the Eurasian Ice Sheet (12 500 bce), the Black Sea filled with fresh water, which flowed through the Sakarya Outlet into the Sea of Marmara and down the Dardanelles Outlet into the Aegean Later, with only seasonal flows down the rivers feeding the Black Sea, the level of this body of water fell far below its great melt maximum But the level of the Mediterranean, connected to the waters of the world’s oceans, continued to rise over the next 6000 years while at the same time the former channels from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara filled with rubble, thus creating a dam between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Basin By 6000 bce, the sea-level in the Mediterranean was at least 100 m higher than the surface of the great Black Sea freshwater lake Ryan and Pitman have proposed a single geological event, namely, the breaching of that dam through what is now the Bosphorus Straight, from which followed the sudden and catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea Basin with salt water Ryan and Pitman date the disappearance of freshwater molluscs and the introduction of saltwater molluscs to 5600 bce This happened suddenly, not gradually Their submarine survey work has indicated that the Bosphorus was eroded by immense flows from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea The inclination of the channel towards the Black Sea also accounts for the surface current of relatively fresh water towards the Mediterranean Sea and the lower more saline current directed towards the Black Sea The dating of this geological event to early agricultural times links it to the Noah/ Gilgamesh story There is some controversy in the early twenty-firstcentury geology literature concerning Ryan and Pitman’s hypothesis of a single catastrophic breaching of the Bosphorus At the time of publication, that controversy continues However, Ryan and Pitman’s hypothesis is not based simply on the dating of marine molluscs, but significantly on the erosion profiles of the Bosphorus Channel These profiles reveal the continuation of the erosion channel beyond the escarpment, well below present sea-levels Most flood stories came from areas of flood plains and coastal districts and can be related to the sea-level rises associated with the end of the last Ice Age (10 000 to 12 000 years ago) The Noah legend is significantly different from these in that it is associated with the Anatolian highlands, well away from the coast and well above sea-level The Black Sea had been a saltwater sea, but had become a large freshwater lake Following the last Ice Age, it then shrank to become a lake with a surface about 100 m lower than the present level, but suddenly filled and became salty at about 5600 bce More recent discoveries by Robert Ballard indicate that there were quite sophisticated settlements on the shore of the freshwater lake before the reintroduction of salt water These settlements seem to have been built on well-established agricultural and animal husbandry practices Ryan and Pitman estimate that, after the breach of the Bosphorus, water would have flowed into the Black Sea Basin at about 40 km3 dayÀ1 and that the water level would have risen by about 15 cm dayÀ1 They estimate that the sound of the great inrush could have been heard up to nearly 500 km away The water would have surged down the escarpment accompanied by large volumes of spray and deafening noise According to the Genesis account of the flood (Genesis 6–8), Noah was warned of the impending disaster and was told to make preparations for the preservation of animal and plant stock, which were to be preserved and transported to safety by means of a vessel that Noah was to build The flood is described as coming from the sky and from the deep (Genesis 7:11) Noah had time to make the necessary preparations to save his domestic breeding and seed stock, for it would have taken nearly two years to fill the Black Sea Basin In the flat country on the northern shores of the old freshwater lake, the advance of shoreline would have been about km dayÀ1 The legend could well refer to an actual historical event, because people could have known of the rising water level on the Mediterranean side of the Bosphorus barrier, prior to its rupture It is suggested that those who fled the Black Sea Basin went in all directions, into northern and western Europe, and, significantly, across the Anatolian Plateau (adjacent to the location of the mountains of Ararat), into the Fertile Crescent, where the newcomers introduced their more sophisticated
Ngày đăng: 26/10/2022, 10:36
Xem thêm:
