Flood Sequence: From Rains to Disembarkment

"In Genesis, Chapter 7, the Flood initiates with the bursting of the fountains of the great deep on day 1 with the Floodwaters progressively rising until they reached the Ark on day 40 (Johnson and Clarey, 2021). 

--The first 40 days of the Flood were largely responsible for the

sedimentary deposition of marine ecosystems and involved the initial mega sequences of the Sauk (Cambrian, Lower Ordovician), Tippecanoe (Mid-Upper Ordovician, Silurian), and Kaskaskia (Devonian, Mississippian, and Pennsylvanian). 

--At about day 40, we not only get the floating of the Ark, but the initial burial of tropical coastal land ecosystems which initiate the global sedimentation of progressively higher and more inland environments in the Absaroka and Zuni Mega sequences (Clarey, 2020a). 

--Continental separation of the pre-Flood Pangea mega continent begins to accelerate about the middle of the Absaroka Mega sequence (beginning of Triassic) and then continues through the Zuni (late-Jurassic and Cretaceous) (Clarey, 2020a). 

--The Flood peaks at the end of Genesis 7 with the high-water mark being about day 150 where all the highest hills were covered with at least 15 cubits of water (about 22.5–30 feet) represented by the top of the Zuni Mega sequence corresponding to just above the top of the Cretaceous System (Johnson and Clarey, 2021)....., it should be noted that one of the most critical parts of the global Flood occurs during Genesis 8:1–12 (Tomkins, 2023). 

This would be called the receding phase in which huge amounts of Floodwater runoff occurred globally off the newly separated continents. This action was facilitated by the rapid uplift of mountain ranges such as those which occurred during the formation of the Rocky Mountains in North America and the Andes in South America. 

*In fact, the receding phase of the global Flood is so important, that the most recent stratigraphic analysis of six continents indicates that 32.5% of the total global volume of the fossil-bearing geological column (Phanerozoic) is composed of Flood runoff deposits known as the Tejas Mega sequence (Clarey and Werner, 2023). 

--It is noteworthy that the final receding phase of the Flood being represented in Tertiary rocks... The Genesis Flood, in which they

state: “In general, the record of the entire Tertiary [including Neogene] and early Quaternary…can be reasonably interpreted as preserving the record of the last phases of the Flood, including both the final deposits and geomorphic phenomena related to the [orogenic] rising of the lands and sinking of the [oceanic] basins that terminated the inundation.” The receding final phase of the Flood not only has strong significance for explaining the vast amount of sediments in the Tejas, but it also affects the critical paradigm of where the end of the Flood exists in the rock record.
--One such proposition is the unpublished claim by early Flood/post-Flood (K-Pg) boundary advocates that much of the post-Flood Middle East remained flooded and impassible to human dispersal (and presumably most animals too) for about 200 years after the Ark landed. 

--The basic idea is that Noah, his family, and the Ark-borne animals remained in the mountains of Ararat for about 200 years while the waters continued to drain from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. Then, presumably, once the region dried out enough to allow travel, Noah and his sons and their descendants traveled from the east to the Plain of Shinar and built Babel. 

In 2008 Barrick speculates (p. 275), “In essence, the Flood itself had ended when the surface of the ground was free of water on the 315th day. However, that does not mean that the waters had receded to pre-Flood levels. The water level may have remained significantly elevated for decades or even centuries.” 

Q: But does the Hebrew text of the Genesis 8 narrative which covers this subject support the contention that after the Ark landed, the Middle East was still too wet to travel or does it indicate that it was dry enough to disperse according to God’s commandment given directly to Noah in Genesis 8:15–17?: 

“Then God spoke to Noah, saying, ‘Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.’” 

While the clear directive given by God to Noah would seem evidence enough to answer this question......Like Genesis 1 and many other parts of the Old Testament, Genesis 8:13–22 is Hebrew narrative giving historical truth, not poetry or mytho-history (Johnson, 2011; Drake, 2020; Tomkins, 2021b). 

*This fact is distinctly defined by the Hebrew grammar where the majority of the verbal forms occur in what is known as a waw-

consecutive in which the verb is prefixed by the letter waw and the verb itself is in the imperfect tense. This waw + imperfect tense grammatical construct effectively changes the normal imperfect tense (uncompleted action) into a perfect tense (completed action), hence the less-used term waw-conversive. 

While some Old Testament scholars question the regularity of this verbal rule, Pratico and Van Pelt (2019, p. 181) state, “Though the terminology ‘past tense narrative sequence’ is not commonly used, the term is descriptive of how the Imperfect with Waw Consecutive functions in narrative.” 

Thus, these verbal forms consecutively and repeatedly describe completed historical events in the obvious historical narrative of Genesis.

Genesis 8:13 “And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.”

Genesis 8:14 “And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.” 

At this point, Noah, his family, and the Ark’s creatures have been inside the Ark for a little over a year at 371 days, and another 57 days have passed since Noah removed the covering from off the Ark and actually observed the dryness of the face of the ground. 

Noah is still being extremely cautious and awaiting the command of God to leave the Ark. 

And quite significantly, the earth is now fully dry enough for disembarking the Ark and its living contents disbursing throughout the Earth.

--In all likelihood, these 57 additional days of waiting on the Ark had a definite practical purpose. 

--It allowed vegetation time to germinate and grow on the previously dried-out surface. Rain after the Flood would have probably displaced the saltier Floodwater deeper into the subsurface and out of the topsoil layers—allowing plants to grow and mature quickly after the Flood. This new growth provided food for the disembarked animals to feed on as they exited." 

ICR/CRS