The Search for Noah’s Flood

On my wall is a newspaper headline proclaiming, “Noah’s Ark Found in Pennsylvania! Scientist: Old Testament ship is buried in mountainside—and it looks exactly like the Bible says!” Slightly lower on the same page is another headline, “Kitty survives after being sucked into vacuum cleaner!” Now you know where I get most of my news about the Bible, once I finish my Bible Review.

Another headline about the flood has flickered on newspapers and TV in recent years. Two geologists at Columbia University made a splash when they announced that a massive flooding of the Black Sea 7,500 years ago may have been the origin of the biblical Flood legend. Shortly thereafter they published a book called Noah’s Flood about their theory.¹ More recently a team of marine biologists has announced that there was no massive flooding of the Black Sea at that time, based on their study of the sediments in the sea floors of the region. So it seems that the headlines were premature. Noah’s Flood hasn’t been found in the Black Sea.

But let’s imagine that the first guys were right, and that there was a massive flooding of the Black Sea around 5500 B.C.E. What, if anything, does this have to do with Noah’s Flood?