Northern Kentucky's Evening Interdenominational Community Bible Study Photos for Lesson 5, Gen 6-7 Click Here for Lesson 5 Presentation Text Click Here to return to GENESIS Home Page

These scale replicas of Noah's ark based on the bible description (above and below) attempt to give a size perspective, in comparison with animals (above), a 4-story building (below right), and models to the same scale of a railroad car and a model Columbus' ship Pinta (below left). The ark's volume was 1,518,000 cubic ft: about 569 railroad cars, a train five and one-half miles long.

Left: The Flood Tablet from the Gilgamesh Epic in the Library of Nineveh (British Museum). This epic from a non-biblical source includes a flood story with similarities to the biblical account.

The traditional belief is that Noah's flood was worldwide -- but the Hebrew allows for a local flood throughout the known world (ie, the world inhabited by man). There have been several theories about a localized flood . . . one of the most interesting was put forth in 1996 by Columbia University geologists Ryan and Pitman. They have accumulated strong geological evidence that around 5600 BC, as a "mini ice age" was coming to an end, heavy rain and melting ice caused the Mediterranean to crash through what is now the Bosporous Strait into what is now the Black Sea. They point to archaeological evidence that a drought in the known world due to the ice age caused everyone to cluster around a freshwater lake (below left), now at the bottom of the Black Sea. Rushing water from the Mediterranean into the lake (below right) may have been Noah's Flood.

The result of the freshwater lake enlarged into the Black Sea is shown (below left). The unusual layers and current patterns in the Black Sea and Bosporous (below right) provide strong evidence for the Ryan Pitman theory -- whether or not it was Noah's flood.