The meaning of machah

This verb, which occurs in Genesis 6:7, 7:4 and 7:23, says that during the Cataclysm God ‘expunged’ or wiped out every living animal that he had made from the face of the ground. The action was like that of erasing records. As Gordon Wenham observes: ‘Since water was sometimes used for achieving this result (Num 5:23), the very word chosen perhaps hints at how the complete annihilation of mankind will be secured.’ (For references, please go to Links and further reading.)

The meaning of machah affects the question of whether any of the creatures destroyed in the Cataclysm might have remained in the ground as fossils. The first author to suggest that the word excluded the fossilisation of terrestrial animals was Joachim Scheven, and the point was further developed by Steven Robinson. Disturbed by the contention that fossils were not evidence of the Flood, creationists David Fouts and Kurt Wise analysed all 36 occurrences of the word in the Old Testament. They identified five usages: to blot out as from a book, to blot out the name or memory of a people, to blot out sins, to wipe (e.g. a dish or a face) and to blot out in the general sense of destroy. Apart from this last heading (discussed below), the linguistic analysis was uncontroversial, and confirmed that the basic meaning was to wipe, wipe away, or erase.

The commentary accompanying the analysis, however, was significantly more tendentious. The authors’ comments on the five shades of meaning are discussed below:

1. The most common meaning is to blot out as from a book. Fouts and Wise seek to damp down the force of this metaphor by focusing on the efficacy of the erasing action: ‘Although such a blotting process may have been intended to leave no evidence, often evidence did remain of something having been obliterated.’ Traces of chalk may remain when a teacher wipes a blackboard, and traces of pencil lead may remain when someone rubs writing from a piece of paper. However, it remains the case that to all intents and purposes the surface is wiped clean. Machah itself still conveys the sense of something disappearing.
2. Exodus 17:14 and Deuteronomy 25:19 speak of the blotting out of the remembrance of Amalek – in the first instance as part of a promise, in the second as part of a command. Fouts and Wise say that while artifactual evidence of the existence of the Amalekites may be lacking, some evidence of their cities probably remains. Again, this is beside the point: destroying a people’s artefacts (as in I Sam 15:3) is a different thing from blotting out their remembrance. The remembrance of a people could be extinguished without the total obliteration of their possessions, and there is no reason to think that, by the 9th or 8th century BC, anyone could remember the Amalekites (cf. I Chron 4:43). Psalm 9:5-6 gives an indication of just how absolutely God intended the destruction of a nation whose remembrance was to be blotted out:

   Thou hast rebuked the nations, thou hast destroyed the wicked;
       thou hast blotted out their name for ever.
   The enemy have vanished in everlasting ruins;
       their cities thou hast rooted out;
       the very memory of them has perished.

3. Isaiah 44:22 states that “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist.” Fouts and Wise comment: ‘By analogy, a recently dispersed cloud or mist can at least potentially be evidenced by dampness or dew on the ground or vegetation. Theologically, although provision for sin itself has been made by atonement (a covering over), by forgiveness, by propitiation, by removal, and by blotting out, evidences of that sin usually do persist.’ Once more, the argument misses the point. The question is not whether ‘evidence’ of the transgressions was blotted out, but whether the transgressions themselves were. Although the sin of David’s adultery with Bathsheba was forever recorded in the book of II Samuel, in the judgement book that recorded David’s life the sin was completely blotted out, as a result of repentance on David’s part and forgiveness on God’s.
4. II Kings 21:13 states that God will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria (which had been destroyed by the Assyrians), and will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. Fouts and Wise comment: ‘Evidence for this destruction has been archaeologically verified on numerous occasions.’ But II Kings 21:13 does not say that Jerusalem itself would be obliterated, only, as the next verse makes clear and as was later to happen (II Kings 25:11), that Jerusalem would be wiped clean of its inhabitants. Fouts and Wise have misunderstood the text.
5. Four passages are cited as evidence that machah can be used in the more general sense of destroy: Nehemiah 13:14, Proverbs 6:33, Ezekiel 6:6 and Proverbs 31:3. The contention is not sustainable. Nehemiah 13:14 is in line with uses which refer to the blotting out from a book. Proverbs 6:33 states that the disgrace of the adulterer will not be wiped away – a metaphorical use of machah similar to the concept of blotting out sins from a book of judgment. Ezekiel 6:6 states: ‘Wherever you dwell your cities shall be waste and your high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out.’ Fouts and Wise comment: ‘Though the idolatry itself was blotted out by God, evidence of this former idolatrous worship still exists.’ However, ‘works’, as in English, primarily means deeds or labours (Gen 5:29, 20:9, 44:15 etc), which may or may not result in physical works (cf. Ex 23:24). When the Jews ceased to worship idols after their exile, the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. Finally, Proverbs 31:3b speaks of kings being wiped out as a result of giving their strength to women (31:3a). Fouts and Wise suggest that the sense should be understood from 31:4-5 and take 31:3b as a warning that drunkenness will lead to loss of royal position. But verse 5 does not say that kings will suffer from their being addicted to strong drink, only that their subjects will. Verse 31 is speaking about the effect of consorting with immoral women, which can lead (though the sense is hardly clear) to venereal disease and sterility.

Following their analysis, the authors perform something of a conjuring trick. According to some interpreters (they allege), machah means to obliterate ‘without any evidence remaining’, and this cannot be right, because wherever something is obliterated, evidence of its previous existence or of whatever brought about the obliteration always remains. Proper exegesis, they say, contradicts the interpretation of complete obliteration ‘without a trace’.

Again, ‘evidence’ is not tantamount to ‘trace’. Although a birth certificate may constitute evidence that a body exists, it does not constitute the physical remains of the body. No one has ever suggested that machah meant to obliterate without ‘evidence’ of the destroyed thing or destroying event.

Nor does characterising all terrestrial fossils as mere traces do justice to the quality of the fossil record. Terrestrial animals today rarely turn into fossils; they return to the dust from which they came. By contrast, a well-preserved fossil is the nearest thing in this world to immortality. The amphibians and reptiles from Archer County, Texas, the birds, crocodilians and dragonflies from Solnhofen, the mammals from Messel complete with hair and stomach contents, evoke wonder and delight, not sober reflection on past and future judgement. To suggest, as Fouts and Wise do, that fossils are ‘evidence of His holiness etc’ because they testify of the Flood is to beg the question – whether they are, in fact, remains of animals destroyed in the Flood.

In Genesis 6:7 and 7:4 machah is coupled with the phrase ‘from the face of the ground’ and in Genesis 7:23 with the phrase ‘from the earth’. The nearest grammatical parallels in the Old Testament are therefore passages which include a phrase stating that something was blotted out ‘from’ or ‘out of’ something. These are Exodus 17:14, Deuteronomy 9:14, 25:19 and 29:20 (from under heaven), Judges 21:17 (from Israel), Exodus 32:32f and Psalm 69:28 (out of a book), Nehemiah 4:5 and Jeremiah 18:23 (from God’s sight), and Isaiah 25:8 (from the face). These are also the nearest semantic parallels, where the object of the verb is the thing wiped away, not the thing wiped. (The English language works in the same way: contrast “he wiped her face”, for example, with “he wiped the tears from her face”.) In no case is there the slightest suggestion that we should entertain the idea of traces remaining.

To conclude, the entry for machah in the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Van Dam 1997) summarises the range of meaning as follows:

1. … Erasing from a scroll was normally effected by washing, and this action appears to be a basic meaning of mhh (see Haran, 169). Since wiping off or out implies the complete removal of whatever is in view, mhh is often used with great effect for both Yahweh’s judgement and salvation.
2. In terms of judgement, the vb. is employed to described the complete removal (and thus destruction) of life by the Flood (q., Gen 7:4; ni., 7:23), the complete obliteration of the memory of Amalek (q., Exod 17:14), and the total removal of the name of the wicked generally. …
3. In terms of salvation, mhh is used in the promise of God’s wiping away tears from all faces (q., Isa 25:8) and the assurance that sins have been wiped out (q., Isa 44:22; also, q., 43:25; cf. q., Ps 51:1, 9[3:11]).

The location of ‘the deep’ (tehom)

The phrases ‘the deep’ and ‘the great deep’ (tehom rabba) are used interchangeably (Gen 7:11, 8:2). The adjective ‘great’ simply brings out a quality inherent in the noun, i.e. the deep’s immensity.

Ugaritic is an ancient language closely related to Hebrew, and we can obtain some insight into the meaning of tehom by considering the related Ugaritic word thm. As noted by Gerhard Hasel (1974), documented usage in the two languages is similar:

There are a number of Ugaritic texts in which the term thm, “deep” is found parallel to the term ym, “sea.” … In another Ugaritic text one finds the phrase “a source of the rivers [nhrm]” in parallelism with the phrase “the channels of the deeps [thmtm]”. The context of this Ugaritic text indicates that the expression “the source of the rivers” refers to the waters that have their origin primarily from the rains which feed the rivers. The expression “the channels of the deeps” seems to refer to the upwelling of the waters from the earth. Another text from ancient Ugarit speaks of a 7-year drought “without dew, without showers, without the upsurgings of the deeps [thmtm]”. The “showers” are the waters from above, namely rain, and correspondingly “the upsurgings of the deeps” refer to the waters from below (thmth), namely the waters that gush forth from subterranean sources (cf. 2 Samuel 1:21).

Thus the ‘deep ’in Ugaritic, thm, means either oceanic or subterranean waters, depending on context.

The deep was conceived as essentially one body of water, encircling the land and lying underneath it. Today the interpreter perceives a duality, where the present-day oceans and seas are distinct from water within or under the earth, and the rivers are supplied by rain-water. In English an ‘ocean’ signifies a vast expanse of sea-water beyond the land. In Ugaritic, however, and also (as discussed below) in Hebrew, the equivalent word signified waters which lay both around and under the land.

Fouts and Wise claim that in the majority of the 36 occurrences of tehom in the Old Testament the word refers to oceanic depths, distinct from subterranean waters. Much of their case is based on the argument that in certain instances tehom appears either synonymously parallel with, or explanatory of, the term yam (sea). But ‘synonymously parallel with’ is not the same as ‘synonymous’. As pointed out by Tremper Longman,

The emerging consensus is that the parallel line is a more subtle literary device than previously thought. The new paradigm for understanding parallelism is development rather than equivalence. The biblical poet is doing more than saying the same thing twice.

Thus one cannot use instances of parallelism to infer the precise meaning of a word. Identifying what kind of parallelism controls the structure may depend on already knowing what the word in question means, and at best, it will simply enable the range of possible meaning to be narrowed down.

A good example of a kind of parallelism where the second line develops or completes the thought of the first (called synthetic parallelism) is Psalm 106:9, which reads:

At the same time, tehom (deep) is synonymously parallel with yam (sea), because the words denote the same object. However, although tehom and yam are evidently very close in meaning, it does not follow that tehom means yam, or that yam means tehom, or that English ‘sea’ means precisely the same as Hebrew ‘sea’. In Psalm 135:6, which says:

‘deeps’ seems to denote something distinct from ‘seas’ (i.e. something lower), just as ‘heaven’ denotes something distinct from ‘earth’. Likewise in Job 28:14, answering the question where shall wisdom be found:

the places are different, just as in the next verse gold and silver are different.

Fouts and Wise go on to cite Psalms 104:6 and 148:7, Job 41:31, Proverbs 3:20 and 8:27-28 as examples of tehom referring to oceanic waters (English sense), since the immediate context is the waters and seas of creation. This is largely true of Job 41:31. Psalm 104:6, however, refers to the deep before the emergence of dry land, and is therefore not relevant. Psalm 148:7, similar to Psalm 135:6 (above), is also unilluminating.

Proverbs 3:20 is decidedly contrary to Fouts and Wise’s interpretation. Along with 3:19 it reads:

Here the parallelism is both synonymous and antithetic: wisdom being similar to understanding, earth contrasting with heavens. There is also synthetic parallelism, inasmuch as the breaking forth of the deeps picks up the idea of founding the earth, and the clouds dropping down dew picks up the idea of establishing the heavens. The deeps refer to sources of water that spring out of valleys and hills (Deut 8:7, Seely 1987), watering the earth from below just as the dew waters the earth from above. Proverbs 8:27-28 has a similar structure (Robinson 1998).

It is therefore incorrect to conclude that tehom most often refers to oceanic depths distinct from subterranean depths. Moreover in some passages tehom unquestionably does seem to refer to underground sources of water – see Genesis 49:25, Deuteronomy 8:7 and 33:13, Psalms 42:7 and 78:15, Ezekiel 31:4 and 31:15, and Amos 7:4.

Psalm 24:2 categorically states that the earth was founded upon the seas and established upon the rivers – ‘seas’ as in Genesis 1:10, ‘rivers’ as in Genesis 2:10, 13 and 14. Fouts and Wise claim that the verse may mean simply that the land is at a higher elevation than the sea, and advance the same interpretation for Psalm 136:6, which says that God spread the earth upon the waters: he spread the earth so that it was at a higher elevation than the waters. The implicit contention is that this must be the meaning, however vacuous, because the present earth is known not to be founded upon the seas. As Paul Seely remarks, this is to base interpretation on the conceptions of modern science rather than historical and grammatical exegesis. The primary meaning of the preposition al is ‘upon’ and translated thus by all the major English translations. All other occurrences of the verb yasad (‘found’ or ‘set’) with al require the same sense (Ps 104:5, Cant 5:15, Amos 9:6).

Fouts and Wise cite Mitchell Dahood to validate the suggestion that ‘seas’ in Psalm 24:2 refers to oceans and ‘rivers’, nahar, to ‘ocean currents’. However, the authors have missed the point, for the ‘ocean currents’ here run under, not around, the land. Dahood (1966) says that the earth is pictured as resting on pillars sunk into the subterranean ocean, and repeats the point (1970) in his gloss on Psalm 136:6 – ‘the earth was thought to rest upon the subterranean abyss of waters’. The remark by Peter Craigie is also apposite:

Dahood translates “ocean currents,” with reference to Ugaritic (Psalms I, 151). But Ugaritic does not clearly support such a translation, and elsewhere Dahood has recognised the more appropriate translation of Ugaritic nhr, namely “river,” or perhaps “river current”.

In yoking seas and rivers together the verse nullifies the modern distinction between salt and fresh water bodies. In the Hebrew mind the seas of Genesis 1:10 were both around and under the land; the rivers which nourished trees were the surface continuations of subterranean rivers (Ezek 31:4,15). A similar association between seas and subterranean abyss (= tehom, and translated as ‘abyss’ in the Septuagint) carries over into the New Testament (Rev 11:7, 13:1).

We may therefore agree with Hasel that

There is no hint anywhere in the biblical flood narrative that the flood comes by means of the ocean. On the contrary, the flood is said to come by torrential rains and violent outbursts of subterranean waters. Contextually the waters of which the ‘flood’ (mabbul) consisted is made up of ‘rain’ (7:12) and ‘the fountains of the deep’ (7:11; 8:2), the subterranean waters.

The ‘fountains’ (mayan, pl. mayenot) of the deep

The Cataclysm, in Genesis, begins with the eruption of all the mayenot, springs or ‘fountains’, of the subterranean deep. Many creationists assume that these must have been primarily oceanic springs and that the Flood was caused by an excess of sea water as these springs erupted. However, mayan denotes a terrestrial spring. In an attempt to validate their preferred geological model Fouts and Wise identify two instances (out of a total of twenty three) where this normal meaning might be called into question: Proverbs 8:24 and Job 38:16.

The occurrence in Proverbs is so identified on the grounds that the succeeding verses seem to refer to Day 2 of Creation Week, well before the appearance of land and the gathering of the waters into one place on Day 3. The text reads:

Apart from the verse in question (8:24), the passage seems to be chiefly about what God did on Day 3. Although establishing the heavens and making firm the skies best fits with Day 2, when God made the firmament, the remainder is about the work of separating out the land from the seas, forming the land and making it habitable. Note the parallelism controlling the nouns within and between the verses:

deep	fountains abounding with water
mountains	hills
earth	dust
heavens	skies
circle on the face of the deep	springs of the deep
sea	waters

In every case not involving fountains (mayenot) or springs (ayenot) the pairs are near synonyms, with each second noun or noun-phrase denoting a part or aspect of the first. Accordingly, the natural reading is to suppose that the other pairs also involve near synonyms. The ‘fountains abounding with water’ are part of the ‘deep’ and the ‘springs of the deep’ are a part or aspect of the terrestrial circle (i.e. continent, as in Isa 40:22) which was inscribed on the surface of the deep; the fountains/springs were features of the land, fed by the deep beneath the land. Bryan Beyer likewise refers the springs in Proverbs 8:28 to subterranean waters. In short, Proverbs 8:24 cannot be cited to justify interpreting the springs of the deep in Genesis 7:11 as oceanic springs.

Job 38:16 also gives little support for supposing that oceanic springs could be signified. Along with its context the verse reads:

The word for ‘springs’ here is nibke and does not occur elsewhere in the Bible. Nonetheless, the phrase ‘nibke of the sea’ clearly evokes the ‘springs of the deep’ of Proverbs 8:28 and ‘fountains of the deep’ of Genesis 7:11, and thus is likely to be synonymous. The clue to their location occurs in the immediately following verses, which speak of the gates of Sheol within or beneath the earth and then refer to the expanse of the earth itself. The entire chapter comprises a series of thematically homogeneous stanzas:

Verses	Subject matter
1-3	Intervention by God
4-7	Structure of the earth (dry land)
8-11	Enclosure of the sea
12-15	Succession of day and night
16-18	Places underneath the earth
19-21	Places of light and darkness
22-24	Snow, hail, lightning(?) and wind
25-28	Rain and thunder
29-30	Ice and frost
31-33	Constellations
34-38	Clouds
39-40	The lions
41	The raven

Since vv. 17-18 refer to the depths of the earth, it is obvious that v. 16 in the same stanza also refers to the depths of the earth. Every determinable use of the related terms mayan and ayin accords with this understanding. So do verses elsewhere which associate the underworld with water (Job 26:5f, Ps 69:15, 88:6, Ezek 31:15).

Genesis 2:6 describes the earth as it was originally created, with the word ed referring to water which rose up to the surface (Tsumura 1989). A suffusing moisture went up from the earth (eres) to water the entire face of the ground (adamah). Deuteronomy 8:7 and Psalm 78:15 indicate that the source of the moisture was the deep. The deep was the source of Eden’s rivers (cf. Ezek 31:4,15), and in this sense the primeval earth was established upon the rivers (Ps 24:2). In the only place where the phrase ‘fountains of the deep’ appears outside Genesis, namely Proverbs 8:28 (although ayin is the word used for ‘fountain’), the context indicates that they were an essential feature of the original creation, along with mountains, hills and fields. The earth was underlain by ‘storehouses’ of waters (Ps 33:7) in order that it might be irrigated by these ‘deeps’ (Prov 3:20) and blessed by them (Gen 49:25, Deut 33:13). There is no evidence that ‘the fountains of the deep’ signified springs under the oceans.

Similarly, in the Mesopotamian epic Atra-hasis (Lambert & Millard 1969), which contains the oldest written account of the Flood, the high god Enlil commands, some time before he sends waters to engulf the earth:

Cut off supplies for the peoples,
Let there be a scarcity of plant-life to satisfy their hunger.
Adad [the rain god] should withhold his rain,
And below, the flood should not come up from the abyss.

And so it came to pass.

Above […
Below, the flood did not [rise] from the abyss.
The womb of the earth did not bear,
Vegetation did not sprout. [..]

The pairing of rain from above and plant-watering moisture from below was in fact a commonplace in the Ancient Near East (Weinfeld 1978).

It is important not to bring uniformitarian assumptions to biblical statements about how the Earth was originally constituted. Today neither the subterranean deep nor the fountains of the deep exist as such (though there are still massive amounts of water within the Earth’s interior). The ‘deep’ consists only of seas and oceans, which lie beyond the land, and the land is watered by rain, not springs fed from primordial subterranean reservoirs. We live on a different Earth.

When Genesis 7:11 refers to the eruption of all the fountains of the deep, the picture is of ‘water gushing forth uncontrollably from wells and springs which draw from a great subterranean ocean’ (Wenham 1987). Geologically, this is a much more credible picture. Had the deep in question been under the sea, the two bodies of water above and beneath the sea floor would have simply intermingled, with little net change in sea level.

The earth that was destroyed

Finally, a few words on the range of the Hebrew word eres (‘earth’). It has three primary meanings: first, the whole planet, distinct from the heavens, as (for example) in Genesis 1:1, Job 26:7, Psalm 135:6f, 148:7, Haggai 2:6b; second, the dry land distinct from the seas, as in Genesis 1:10, Job 38:18, Psalm 24:1f, Proverbs 3:19, Isaiah 44:24; and third, a land or country, as in Genesis 2:11, 4:16, and 10:11.21 When God calls the dry land ‘earth’ in Genesis 1:10, the word has a different sense from the sense in Genesis 1:1.

The Bible does not explicitly say whether the dry land consisted, as now, of more than one continent. Genesis 1:10 and Proverbs 8:27 imply a single landmass, and it would certainly have been easier for Noah if he had not had to cross seas or oceans to collect examples of every kind of animal. The dry land emerged at Creation on the same day as the waters were gathered ‘into one place’, a phrase difficult to reconcile with present geography. Wenham suggests that the dry land enclosed seas geographically within it. However, this does not explain why ‘seas’ is plural when ‘place’ is singular. Although one may argue that there is no significance in the plural on the grounds that ‘sea’ and ‘seas’ are interchangeable (e.g. Jer 15:8 and 33.22),22 singular and plural are demonstrably interchangeable only when the plural is used poetically – just as either singular and plural can be used in poetic contexts in English. Furthermore, in other passages the seas seem to be visualised as geographically enclosing the land (Prov 8:27, Isa 40:22).

For these reasons it makes better sense to understand the waters being gathered from within the earth rather than from around it. Job 38:8 speaks about the sea bursting forth from the womb, as if from the earth’s interior, just as the firmament was formed by a vertical separation. With the gathering of the waters into one place on Day 3 the ocean floors were formed, as well as the dry land. The earth came into being ‘out of water and through water’ (II Pet 3:5). The seas were gathered ‘as in a jar’ (Ps 33:7). Before that point there were no seas, only waters – formless, undifferentiated and uncontained.

The six days of Creation climaxed with the creation of man, the one creature to be made in the image of the Creator. To him dominion was given over every creature that inhabited the earth and dominion over the earth itself. Thus when wickedness had spread so far that all flesh had become corrupt, God determined to destroy not only man but everything which had been polluted through him, including the earth (Gen 6:11-13). He did away with polluter and polluted alike: the dry land and every creature that moved on the dry land together. Through the same waters out of which the earth had been made ‘the then world, having been deluged with water, perished.’ (II Pet 3:6) We live now on a different earth from that which was destroyed.

The question then arises whether ‘earth’ here means the whole earth or only its surface. The following considerations suggest that its entire thickness is signified as well as its entire surface:

1. Where eres means dry land distinct from seas, it generally denotes the whole land (see examples above). This is particularly clear where there is an explicit contrast with seas or heavens: just as one does not here conceive of the seas or the heavens in two dimensions, so one does not think merely of the earth’s surface.
2. Genesis 6:13 and 9:11 refer to the destruction of the earth, not (as in Gen 6:7 and 7:23) of the ‘face of the earth’, or the ‘face of the ground’. Similarly, while the force of the Hebrew word (shachath) can vary from ‘mar’ or ‘corrupt’ to ‘destroy utterly’, depending on context, the use of the same word in 6:17 and 9:15, where it is equivalent to machah (‘blot out’), suggests that complete destruction is intended.
3. The mention of the great deep from which the surface springs were supplied induces one to think of the earth three-dimensionally. The explosive release of its waters suggests that they destroyed the earth from the bottom up, shattering its entire fabric.
4. Since the present ocean crust is geologically young (the oldest sections date back no further than the Jurassic), it is clear that the original ocean floor no longer exists. Indeed, in view of the extensive plate-tectonic movements which seem to have occurred before the Jurassic, the ocean crust may have been replaced more than once. If this is true of the entire thickness of the ocean crust, it becomes inconsistent to suppose that the Cataclysm destroyed only the earth’s surface, when the earth was the express object of destruction.
5. There are biblical grounds for associating the opening of the windows of heaven with bombardment by comets or asteroids, on the analogy of what is prophesied for the days before both the heavens and the earth are renewed (Isa 24:18f, 65:17, Haggai 2:6, Rev 6:12-14). The Moon testifies to extremely intense bombardment at the beginning of geological history. The corresponding period on Earth has no rock record, presumably because whatever land existed at that time was destroyed.
6. Had the Cataclysm merely scoured the surface of the earth, with the offscourings resettling on originally created basement, many of the animals caught up in the sediment-laden waters would surely have been fossilised. Many fossils are in fact the result of catastrophic region-wide flooding. Genesis, however, says that all animals were blotted out. Only the destruction of the entire earth could have blotted them out and prevented fossilisation.

Implications for geological Flood models

If the analysis presented in this article is correct, there are at least three consequences which bear on diluvialist geology:

• The pre-Flood earth was inundated through the eruption of vast reservoirs of water under the earth, not through marine waters.
• All terrestrial life was totally erased, so that the fossil remains of such life, found in rocks continuously from the Middle Palaeozoic onwards, must belong to a period after the Flood.
• If the pre-Flood earth was totally destroyed, the boundary marking the onset of the Flood must lie beneath the present crust, and Creation Week rocks no longer exist.

In all these respects the Flood model promoted by the Institute for Creation Research (Austin et al. 1994) conflicts with the biblical record. (1) It postulates that the Flood began with the floor of the oceans breaking up and water spilling onto the land in a marine transgression. (2) It supposes that the rocks of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic, which include fossils of terrestrial animals, were formed during the Flood. And (3) it identifies a large part, if not most, of the geological record as either originally created rock or sediments deposited in the period between the Creation and the Flood.

It also conflicts with a vast array of non-biblical evidence, such as stromatolites (multi-layered bacterial mats), buried in-situ roots, buried in-situ forests, organically formed carbonates, in-situ reefs and encrusted hardgrounds, fossils of tracks, burrows, nests, eggs and faeces left by living animals – none of which are compatible with the idea a global flood going on at the time.

It is perhaps no coincidence that in failing to satisfy the biblical evidence, conventional diluvialist geology likewise fails to satisfy the geological and palaeontological evidence. The judgement which came upon the world in the days of Noah was a more violent and earth-shattering cataclysm than has hitherto been recognised. The ‘Flood’ – the 40-day Cataclysm – was not an erosional event, and fossils are not the remnants of pre-Flood life buried in eroded sediments. The earth was totally destroyed. The earth we live on today is new land, generated primarily by volcanic action after the Cataclysm, and its fossils are the record of life recovering from that catastrophe, in a world that continued to be unstable for many thousands of years.

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