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Was Noah's Flood



                                                     Universal?






                                   There is no other account in the Bible that has caused as much contro-
                                   versy and debate as that of Noah's Flood. While secular scholars and
                                   many theologians consider the Genesis account to be myth and without
                                   historical merit, there are others who accept the narrative as literal and
                                   believe the highest mountains on earth were submerged by the Flood.
                                   But what the Bible really says is far different to what most people have
                                   understood. This article shows that passages in the Genesis account of
                                   the Flood have been grossly mistranslated and that literal truths about
                                   this primordial event in the earth's history have been covered up. With
                                   this new understanding the Flood of Noah can be easily understood.


                                                            John D. Keyser


                       For thousands of years, legends of a great flood endured in the oral traditions of people around the
                       world. Not only is the flood story found in the Bible -- it is an integral part of Middle Eastern
                       myths such as the epic of Gilgamesh. Since the onslaught of German rationalism and Darwin's the-
                       ory of evolution, few now believe such a catastrophic deluge actually occurred. But recently, two
                       distinguished geophysicists have discovered an event that changed history -- a sensational flood no
                       more than 7,600 years ago (by their reckoning) in what is today the Black Sea.


                              Ancient clay tablets recovered from the ruins of Biblical Nineveh more than a century ago
                       revealed a much older version of the same flood legend. Then, in 1929, unmistakable evidence of
                       the Flood appeared in the excavations at Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia. Archaeologist Sir
                       Charles Woolley and his crew were digging at the depth of about forty feet. They found, under lay-
                       ers of rubbish, the tombs of King Mes-kalam-dug and Queen Shub-ad, who ruled sometime toward
                       the end of the 4th millennium BC. Under their tombs they found more rubbish, clay tablets, pottery
                       and implements. As the sixth season of digging at Tell al-Muqayyar was drawing to a close, Wool-
                       ley urged his native diggers once more on to the hill of "the graves of the kings." He wanted to be
                       sure whether the ground under the deepest royal graves had fresh discoveries in store for the next
                       season's excavations.


                              As the exploratory shaft went deeper and deeper, new strata with fragments of jars, pots
                       and bowls kept appearing. Woolley noticed that the pottery remained surprisingly unchanged -- as
                       if the Sumerian civilization had undergone no radical changes for centuries. After several days of
                       digging, the shaft appeared to come to a ground level where traces of any kind of settlement
                       abruptly ceased. Thinking he had come to the very beginning of civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates
                       valley, he carefully prodded the ground on the floor of the shaft. With surprised amazement he


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