When Did Noah's Flood Happen? | The Institute for Creation Research

When Did Noah's Flood Happen?

Unlike all other religious texts, the Bible supplies hundreds of time stamps for key events. They let us test the Bible against itself and the history recorded outside the Bible. However, not all the Bible’s timed events add up easily since ancient authors used different counting practices at different times. For example, they may have begun counting the years of a king’s reign while that king’s father was still on the throne. Recent success in calculating a precise biblical timeline back to Abraham suggests that dating Bible events can reach back even further than that.

Unlike all other religious texts, the Bible supplies hundreds of time stamps for key events. Tweet: Unlike all other religious texts, the Bible supplies hundreds of time stamps for key events.

When Did Noah's Flood Happen? http://www.icr.org/article/10459/

@icrscience @icrbthomas

It took scholars a long time to solve enough time riddles so they could determine Abram’s birth at 2166 B.C.1 What took them so long? Too many assumed Scripture got various details wrong. That led to confusion. But a few hoped thorough study might reveal that the Bible has a coherent chronology—a timeline that keeps perfect harmony with every time-related verse. They finally worked out the Bible’s exact timeline back to Abraham.

Scholars next wanted to merge the Bible’s chronology with today’s calendar system. To do this, they needed to find a firmly dated biblical event. Babylon’s terrible takedown of Jerusalem marked the end of Judah’s kings. This one event ties the timelines together. Different scholars separately deduced summer 587 B.C. for the fall of Jerusalem.2 Stone inscriptions of kings’ reigns on monuments like the Babylonian Chronicles exactly fit that date.

Bible scholar Andrew Steinmann’s book From Abraham to Paul gives the dates in this chart, among many others.3 B.C. dates count backward from year 1, so larger numbers signal older events.

Cautious scholars are still working to settle a few final time tangles, but their success so far suggests that the Bible’s verifiable time stamps reach back even further than Abraham.4 The lifespans in Genesis 11 span from Abram back to the Flood. When we add the years listed in Genesis 11 to Abram’s birth year 2166 B.C., we get about 2472 B.C. for the Flood year. Add the 1,656 years from Genesis 5 to that and we get nearly 4128 B.C. for Earth’s birthday, based on the Masoretic text of the Old Testament.

Serious scholars are now closer than ever to using just the Bible to pinpoint ages of ancient events like the Flood. Tweet: Serious scholars are now closer than ever to using just the Bible to pinpoint ages of ancient events like the Flood.

When Did Noah's Flood Happen? http://www.icr.org/article/10459/

@icrscience @icrbthomas

We qualify these dates with words like “about” because of small unknowns. For example, we don’t know whether or not the Genesis 11 begetting years include time in the womb.5 But uncertainties keep shrinking. Confidence grows in the Bible’s time stamps. Serious scholars are now closer than ever to using just the Bible to pinpoint ages of ancient events like the Flood.6

References

  1. Young, R. C. 2008. Evidence for Inerrancy from an Unexpected Source: OT Chronology. Bible and Spade. 21 (2): 54-64.
  2. Young, R. C. 2004. When Did Jerusalem Fall? Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 47 (1): 21-38.
  3. Steinmann, A. E. 2011. From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.
  4. One of these time tangles involves Abraham. Some conservative scholars add 60 years to Terah’s age when Abraham and his brothers were born. See Thomas, B. 2017. Two date range options for Noah’s Flood. Journal of Creation. 31 (1): 120-127. However, Thomas Ice and James Johnson showed a coherent chronology without these 60 years. See Ice, T. D. and J. J. S. Johnson. 2002. Using Scriptural Data to Calculate a Range-Qualified Chronology from Adam to Abraham. Presented at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society at The Criswell College in Dallas, Texas, on March 1, 2002, available on ICR.org.
  5. Adding gestation months plus birthday months for each generation adds no more than 16 years to the ~2472 B.C. date of the Flood. See Johnson, J. J. S. 2008. How Young Is the Earth? Applying Simple Math to Data in Genesis. Acts & Facts. 37 (10): 4.
  6. The Flood at ~2472 B.C. + 2018 A.D. = ~4,500 years ago.

* Brian Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his M.S. in biotechnology from Stephen F. Austin State University.

Cite this article: Brian Thomas, Ph.D. 2018. When Did Noah's Flood Happen?. Acts & Facts. 47 (3).

The Latest
ACTS & FACTS
Creation Kids: Crystals!
by Michael Stamp and Susan Windsor* You're never too young to be a creation scientist and explore our Creator's world. Kids, discover...

APOLOGETICS
Playing Chess with Little Furry Critters
God’s multifarious and marvelous designs for basic creature needs are so innovatively clever and providentially purposeful that Christ’s...

ACTS & FACTS
Credit Only Our Creator
History was my favorite subject as a young kid. But it always puzzled me when my teachers said, “We study history so that we don’t repeat...

ACTS & FACTS
Genomic Tandem Repeats: Where Repetition Is Purposely Adaptive
Tandem repeats (TRs) are short sequences of DNA repeated over and over again like the DNA letter sequence TACTACTAC, which is a repetition of TAC three...

ACTS & FACTS
Dinosaur National Monument: Fossil Graveyard of the Flood
Straddling the border of Utah and Colorado, Dinosaur National Monument (DNM) is one of the richest exposures of dinosaur fossils in the world.1...

ACTS & FACTS
The Transforming Influence of Genesis: Worker Dignity and Safety
When Pharisees questioned the Lord Jesus about marriage, He answered by quoting Genesis 1:27: “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made...

NEWS
Giant ''Meg'' Shark: Longer and Leaner?
Fossil remains of the giant shark Otodus megalodon have been found in Miocene1 and Pliocene2 rock layers, which ICR scientists...

CREATION.LIVE PODCAST
Searching for Truth Across the Globe | Creation.Live Podcast:...
How can we bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of creation to others outside our small spheres of influence?   Host...

NEWS
Marine Mammals: Designed for Deep Diving
While you’re reading this, hold your breath. What is now happening is your blood is delivering the last of oxygenated blood cells to your tissues...

CREATION PODCAST
Humanity's Demise at the Hands of Genetic Entropy | The Creation...
Welcome to the fourth episode in a series called “The Failures of Old Earth Creationism.” Many Christians attempt to fit old earth...