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The biblical Flood: A case study of the Church's response to extrabiblical evidence
Using the biblical flood as an example, Young contends that the church has not always handled evidence well in grappling with scientific matters and issues a call to biblical scholars to interpret the Genesis text more rigorously in light of current scientific knowledge. Young has done a thorough search of theological literature to show how the biblical flood has been viewed by Christians throughout the history of the Church. He also gives a good analysis of extra-biblical evidence, such as archaeology, geology, historical writings, and biogeography. Current opposition to this evidence is similar to the resistance to Galileo's non-geocentric model of the world. Young shows how such evidence has been previously used to explain the Bible.
340 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1995
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December 4, 2016
The full title is, The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence. The subtitle is the subject of the book. Young takes us on a journey from what the early Hebrew and Christians thought about the Flood narrative in Genesis 6-9 and any discussion related to extrabiblical evidence, through the middle ages, covers the beginnings of modern science, and then spends some time in the 19th and 20th centuries. He recounts how various authors have attempted to deal with such issues as the number of animals on the Ark, this became especially problematic after the discovery of the Americas and the substantial increase in the number of known species.
The author shows that although the idea of a global flood was generally held through most of church history, by the early to mid-19th century almost everyone of significance had abandoned it due to the increasing evidence against it from the sciences of geology and biogeography. The few that continued to hold onto it mostly ignored the sciences and extrabiblical evidence.
It was in the early 20th century through the efforts of Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price that flood geology began to make a comeback and that mostly due to misrepresentation of the scientific evidence. Influenced by Price and his writings Henry Morris and John Whitcomb teamed up and produced "The Genesis Flood." This book brought flood geology into the evangelical mainstream and originated the modern young earth creationist movement.
Young concludes his work with an epilogue expounding on the following seven observations.
1. Throughout church history a majority of biblical commentators across the theological spectrum incorporated relevant extrabiblical information into their interpretations of the deluge account.
2. Some commentators have avoided addressing extrabiblical information in their discussions of the deluge.
3. Some Christians who have interacted with extrabiblical data have responded in contrasting ways.
4. Commentators seeking to defend traditional ideas of the flood have been far too eager to appeal to miracles.
5. While implicitly acknowledging the importance of extrabiblical information to biblical interpretation, biblical scholars have frequently employed inaccurate or obsolete information.
6. Because of new extrabiblical evidence, new interpretations of Scripture have challenged older views that had been established for a very long period of church history.
7. The church is too often overly cautious and reactionary in handling extrabiblical information and desperately needs to develop an attitude and a hermeneutic that eagerly embrace the discoveries that are made in God's world.
The book ends with one appendix on the history of "arkeology" that is, the search for Noah's Ark. He shows that none of the expeditions have turned up anything.
This is a great book with the understanding that the author is an evangelical Christian and his primary audience is fellow evangelical Christians. There is much information that is helpful in understanding what various people have had to say about the Flood and the various evidences for or against it.
I would love to see this book reissued with maybe a chapter or two updating some discussion and some of the works that have been published since its publication and the author's response to some of the criticism from the young earth creationist community.
All in all, I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in the topic.
The author shows that although the idea of a global flood was generally held through most of church history, by the early to mid-19th century almost everyone of significance had abandoned it due to the increasing evidence against it from the sciences of geology and biogeography. The few that continued to hold onto it mostly ignored the sciences and extrabiblical evidence.
It was in the early 20th century through the efforts of Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price that flood geology began to make a comeback and that mostly due to misrepresentation of the scientific evidence. Influenced by Price and his writings Henry Morris and John Whitcomb teamed up and produced "The Genesis Flood." This book brought flood geology into the evangelical mainstream and originated the modern young earth creationist movement.
Young concludes his work with an epilogue expounding on the following seven observations.
1. Throughout church history a majority of biblical commentators across the theological spectrum incorporated relevant extrabiblical information into their interpretations of the deluge account.
2. Some commentators have avoided addressing extrabiblical information in their discussions of the deluge.
3. Some Christians who have interacted with extrabiblical data have responded in contrasting ways.
4. Commentators seeking to defend traditional ideas of the flood have been far too eager to appeal to miracles.
5. While implicitly acknowledging the importance of extrabiblical information to biblical interpretation, biblical scholars have frequently employed inaccurate or obsolete information.
6. Because of new extrabiblical evidence, new interpretations of Scripture have challenged older views that had been established for a very long period of church history.
7. The church is too often overly cautious and reactionary in handling extrabiblical information and desperately needs to develop an attitude and a hermeneutic that eagerly embrace the discoveries that are made in God's world.
The book ends with one appendix on the history of "arkeology" that is, the search for Noah's Ark. He shows that none of the expeditions have turned up anything.
This is a great book with the understanding that the author is an evangelical Christian and his primary audience is fellow evangelical Christians. There is much information that is helpful in understanding what various people have had to say about the Flood and the various evidences for or against it.
I would love to see this book reissued with maybe a chapter or two updating some discussion and some of the works that have been published since its publication and the author's response to some of the criticism from the young earth creationist community.
All in all, I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in the topic.
February 11, 2025
THE GEOLOGIST LOOKS AT HISTORICAL AND OTHER EVIDENCE ABOUT THE FLOOD
At the time this book was published in 1995, Davis Young was a professor of Geology at Calvin College; he has a BSE, MS, and PhD degrees in geology. (His father, Edward J. Young, was also a very respected Reformed Old Testament scholar.)
He wrote in the Preface, “As a professor of geology at a self-consciously Christian college, I have frequently been asked by various churches, Christian colleges, and theological seminaries to speak about the relationship of geology to Scripture and Christian faith… Quite often… I encounter those who are disappointed and distressed at what I say… to their chagrin, they are confronted by my claims that there is abundant evidence for an extremely old earth and that there is no geological evidence to confirm the idea of a universal deluge… I ask them to rethink their interpretations of the biblical text in light of geological findings… Some people are eager to set me straight. I must not allow science to dictate my understanding of the Bible, they say… I am told that Genesis should control my scientific theorizing, not the other way around.” (Pg. ix-x)
He continues, “The repeated expression[s] of this sort… has caused me to go back … to look closely at the Reformed theological tradition to which I belong. Has Reformed theology formally expressed such hostility to the use of extrabiblical information in interpreting the Bible?... Reformed Christians firmly believe that all our religious knowledge ought to come from the Bible alone… Yet this view of the Bible does not rule out the use of extrabiblical information, for Reformed theology has also stressed the value and importance of God’s general revelation of himself through his creation.” (Pg. x-xi)
He adds, “Because I am a geologist and because the great flood has played a pivotal role in several centuries of geological theorizing, I selected the interpretation of the Genesis flood narrative as a case study… I have attempted to sketch the broad outlines of the history of thought in the Christian world regarding the deluge narrative in the light of the extrabiblical data, but I want to stress that I am by profession a geologist, not a historian.” (Pg. xii)
He observes in the first chapter, “It is ironic that Christians today who strenuously object to allowing scientific data to influence our interpretation of the Bible are frequently unaware of the extent to which their own views have been molded by influences of this sort external to the text. Throughout church history, Christian commentators, theologians, and scholars have been profoundly affected by various influences from sources outside the Bible in their attempts to interpret the biblical flood text. This book traces the story of how the Christian church through its best scholarship has constantly attempted to understand the history and meaning of the Genesis flood in the light of diverse sources of extrabiblical knowledge.” (Pg. 2-3)
He recounts, “The abundance of reports of remains of the ark doubtless reassured early Christians of the historical validity of the Old Testament story. Modern searchers attracted by these same reports have mostly focused on a peak by the name of Mount Ararat, the Turkish volcano Agri Dagh. This is not the same Ararat referred to in early Christian tradition, however. Modern hunters of the ark appear to be looking in different places than the early Christians did.” (Pg. 22)
He explains, “The most pressing challenge to a literal reading of the flood account… was raised by the discovery of countless new species of plants and animals in the New World that were totally unknown in Europe, Aria, and Africa… the number of exotic new additions exploded when the explorers reached the Americas and the Pacific… The discovery of all these new animals inevitably intensified the questions concerning the capacity of Noah’s ark that had earlier captured Augustine’s attention. Could the ark possibly have contained all these previously unknown animals? And how could species found only in the New World have traveled to the ark before the flood or returned after the waters subsided? Moreover, what would account for the fact that these species returned to their New World habitats … after the flood, without leaving any descendants behind in the Old World?... Faced with questions such as these, the scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries could no longer satisfactorily propound the simpler apologetics that had proved adequate for early Christian theologians.” (Pg. 37-38)
He reports that, “Given all the difficulties associated with explanations involving animal migrations from all over the globe, [Abraham] van der Myl [1563-1637] endorsed the idea of a limited deluge. He did not think it likely that the descendants of Noah would have transported lions, tigers, bears, dragons, and serpents to distant lands. He also recognized the problem associated with the fact that hundreds of American creatures were unknown in Europe, Asia. or Africa. He regarded America as a primordial world that contained all the plants, birds, and animals originally created by God, whereas Europe, Africa, and eastern Asia contained only a remnant of the original creation because the deluge had affected only that part of the world. In the end, van der Myl urged that the Genesis account not be taken literally: when it says that all living beings were destroyed, he held that it really means ALMOST all living things.” (Pg. 61)
He says of chemist and mineralogist Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) that he “rejected previous explanations of a universal deluge. He asserted that the deluge originated in the ocean south of the equator and rushed to the northern hemisphere. It was forceful enough, he said, to carry the carcasses of animals such as elephants from the southern countries and marine species from southern seas … where their remains can now be found in surficial deposits… Kirwan maintained that only animals that were most necessary for the use of man were present on the ark. Since the ‘ravenous animals’ would have posed a threat to the immediate survivors of the deluge, Kirwan proposed that carnivores were probably created after the flood and after the ‘graminivorous’ animals had greatly multiplied. He likewise attributed the animals of America and of the torrid and frigid zones to a subsequent creation.” (Pg. 93-94)
He notes, “By 1850 numerous … extinct land animals had also been described… Those who insisted that all species of all land animals had been preserved on the ark now had to include among them not only lions and bears but also mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, pterodactyls, megalosaurs, iguanodons, hylaeosaurs, and a host of other extinct mammals. The prospect of an ark with pairs of forty-foot long monsters aboard stretched the limits of credulity.” (Pg. 123-124)
He recounts that Hugh Miller (1802-1856) “Laid out biogeographical evidence in more detail than anyone else had before. The migration of wild animals to the ark would have involved "a miracle nowhere recorded,’ he maintained, and the burden of proof for such a miracle lay on those who asserted a universal deluge… Getting all the animals to the ark posed staggering difficulties, and getting them all back after the flood posed equally staggering difficulties. How would the insects have returned, for instance? As wingless grubs? Miller warned his opponents that ‘the expedient of having recourse to supposititous miracle in order to get over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the nature of argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it.” (Pg. 149-150)
Anglican bishop John William Colenso (1814-1883) thought “that geology offered no evidence of a universal deluge. But Colenso was not inclined to endorse the idea of a partial deluge either. He doubted that Noah could have handled the needs of even a population of local animals for a year on the water. There would not have been sufficient air and light on the ark to sustain the health of the passengers. Filth and disease would have astounded. Could local worms have crawled onto the ark? And couldn’t local birds simply have flown out of the area? Colenso argued that the language of Scripture couldn’t be more emphatic in implying a universal flood. As far as he was concerned, science was in obvious conflict with the biblical text.” (Pg. 157-158)
He notes, “Various commentators doubted that life could have survived submergence for a year… including fish exposed to water that was suddenly too salty or not salty enough… Coral reefs would have been destroyed by the pressure of the rising water, and freshwater fish and terrestrial plants would also have perished.” (Pg. 199) He adds, “William Farrand, pointing out that marine fossils never accompanied the frozen mammoths, cogently argued that if a world-wide flood had been responsible for the mammoth carcasses, then oceanic fossils would be found associated with mammoths somewhere.” (Pg. 230) Furthermore, “these species [snakes, shrews, moles] are incapable of covering huge distances overland. [They] are slow movers that also have specific habitat and food requirements.” (Pg. 231)
He concludes, “We need to find an interpretation of the text that does not commit us to a globe-covering catastrophe. Surely the text itself provides clues to a better understanding. Doesn’t the fact that the text suggests that Mesopotamian geography was not rearranged by the flood nor the topsoil displaced suggest that it was not a globally catastrophic event? Given the frequency with which the Bible uses universal language to describe local events of great significance…. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the flood account uses hyperbolic language to describe an event that devastated or disrupted Mesopotamian civilization… the whole world of the Semites? I do not consider it a violation of the text to suppose that the biblical flood account uses a major Mesopotamian event in order to make vital theological points concerning human depravity, faith, and obedience and divine judgment, grace, and mercy. The church serves no good end by clinging to failed interpretations of the Bible and refusing to explore new directions.” (Pg. 312)
This book will be of great interest to Christians studying the Flood, the Ark, and related topics.
At the time this book was published in 1995, Davis Young was a professor of Geology at Calvin College; he has a BSE, MS, and PhD degrees in geology. (His father, Edward J. Young, was also a very respected Reformed Old Testament scholar.)
He wrote in the Preface, “As a professor of geology at a self-consciously Christian college, I have frequently been asked by various churches, Christian colleges, and theological seminaries to speak about the relationship of geology to Scripture and Christian faith… Quite often… I encounter those who are disappointed and distressed at what I say… to their chagrin, they are confronted by my claims that there is abundant evidence for an extremely old earth and that there is no geological evidence to confirm the idea of a universal deluge… I ask them to rethink their interpretations of the biblical text in light of geological findings… Some people are eager to set me straight. I must not allow science to dictate my understanding of the Bible, they say… I am told that Genesis should control my scientific theorizing, not the other way around.” (Pg. ix-x)
He continues, “The repeated expression[s] of this sort… has caused me to go back … to look closely at the Reformed theological tradition to which I belong. Has Reformed theology formally expressed such hostility to the use of extrabiblical information in interpreting the Bible?... Reformed Christians firmly believe that all our religious knowledge ought to come from the Bible alone… Yet this view of the Bible does not rule out the use of extrabiblical information, for Reformed theology has also stressed the value and importance of God’s general revelation of himself through his creation.” (Pg. x-xi)
He adds, “Because I am a geologist and because the great flood has played a pivotal role in several centuries of geological theorizing, I selected the interpretation of the Genesis flood narrative as a case study… I have attempted to sketch the broad outlines of the history of thought in the Christian world regarding the deluge narrative in the light of the extrabiblical data, but I want to stress that I am by profession a geologist, not a historian.” (Pg. xii)
He observes in the first chapter, “It is ironic that Christians today who strenuously object to allowing scientific data to influence our interpretation of the Bible are frequently unaware of the extent to which their own views have been molded by influences of this sort external to the text. Throughout church history, Christian commentators, theologians, and scholars have been profoundly affected by various influences from sources outside the Bible in their attempts to interpret the biblical flood text. This book traces the story of how the Christian church through its best scholarship has constantly attempted to understand the history and meaning of the Genesis flood in the light of diverse sources of extrabiblical knowledge.” (Pg. 2-3)
He recounts, “The abundance of reports of remains of the ark doubtless reassured early Christians of the historical validity of the Old Testament story. Modern searchers attracted by these same reports have mostly focused on a peak by the name of Mount Ararat, the Turkish volcano Agri Dagh. This is not the same Ararat referred to in early Christian tradition, however. Modern hunters of the ark appear to be looking in different places than the early Christians did.” (Pg. 22)
He explains, “The most pressing challenge to a literal reading of the flood account… was raised by the discovery of countless new species of plants and animals in the New World that were totally unknown in Europe, Aria, and Africa… the number of exotic new additions exploded when the explorers reached the Americas and the Pacific… The discovery of all these new animals inevitably intensified the questions concerning the capacity of Noah’s ark that had earlier captured Augustine’s attention. Could the ark possibly have contained all these previously unknown animals? And how could species found only in the New World have traveled to the ark before the flood or returned after the waters subsided? Moreover, what would account for the fact that these species returned to their New World habitats … after the flood, without leaving any descendants behind in the Old World?... Faced with questions such as these, the scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries could no longer satisfactorily propound the simpler apologetics that had proved adequate for early Christian theologians.” (Pg. 37-38)
He reports that, “Given all the difficulties associated with explanations involving animal migrations from all over the globe, [Abraham] van der Myl [1563-1637] endorsed the idea of a limited deluge. He did not think it likely that the descendants of Noah would have transported lions, tigers, bears, dragons, and serpents to distant lands. He also recognized the problem associated with the fact that hundreds of American creatures were unknown in Europe, Asia. or Africa. He regarded America as a primordial world that contained all the plants, birds, and animals originally created by God, whereas Europe, Africa, and eastern Asia contained only a remnant of the original creation because the deluge had affected only that part of the world. In the end, van der Myl urged that the Genesis account not be taken literally: when it says that all living beings were destroyed, he held that it really means ALMOST all living things.” (Pg. 61)
He says of chemist and mineralogist Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) that he “rejected previous explanations of a universal deluge. He asserted that the deluge originated in the ocean south of the equator and rushed to the northern hemisphere. It was forceful enough, he said, to carry the carcasses of animals such as elephants from the southern countries and marine species from southern seas … where their remains can now be found in surficial deposits… Kirwan maintained that only animals that were most necessary for the use of man were present on the ark. Since the ‘ravenous animals’ would have posed a threat to the immediate survivors of the deluge, Kirwan proposed that carnivores were probably created after the flood and after the ‘graminivorous’ animals had greatly multiplied. He likewise attributed the animals of America and of the torrid and frigid zones to a subsequent creation.” (Pg. 93-94)
He notes, “By 1850 numerous … extinct land animals had also been described… Those who insisted that all species of all land animals had been preserved on the ark now had to include among them not only lions and bears but also mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, pterodactyls, megalosaurs, iguanodons, hylaeosaurs, and a host of other extinct mammals. The prospect of an ark with pairs of forty-foot long monsters aboard stretched the limits of credulity.” (Pg. 123-124)
He recounts that Hugh Miller (1802-1856) “Laid out biogeographical evidence in more detail than anyone else had before. The migration of wild animals to the ark would have involved "a miracle nowhere recorded,’ he maintained, and the burden of proof for such a miracle lay on those who asserted a universal deluge… Getting all the animals to the ark posed staggering difficulties, and getting them all back after the flood posed equally staggering difficulties. How would the insects have returned, for instance? As wingless grubs? Miller warned his opponents that ‘the expedient of having recourse to supposititous miracle in order to get over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the nature of argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it.” (Pg. 149-150)
Anglican bishop John William Colenso (1814-1883) thought “that geology offered no evidence of a universal deluge. But Colenso was not inclined to endorse the idea of a partial deluge either. He doubted that Noah could have handled the needs of even a population of local animals for a year on the water. There would not have been sufficient air and light on the ark to sustain the health of the passengers. Filth and disease would have astounded. Could local worms have crawled onto the ark? And couldn’t local birds simply have flown out of the area? Colenso argued that the language of Scripture couldn’t be more emphatic in implying a universal flood. As far as he was concerned, science was in obvious conflict with the biblical text.” (Pg. 157-158)
He notes, “Various commentators doubted that life could have survived submergence for a year… including fish exposed to water that was suddenly too salty or not salty enough… Coral reefs would have been destroyed by the pressure of the rising water, and freshwater fish and terrestrial plants would also have perished.” (Pg. 199) He adds, “William Farrand, pointing out that marine fossils never accompanied the frozen mammoths, cogently argued that if a world-wide flood had been responsible for the mammoth carcasses, then oceanic fossils would be found associated with mammoths somewhere.” (Pg. 230) Furthermore, “these species [snakes, shrews, moles] are incapable of covering huge distances overland. [They] are slow movers that also have specific habitat and food requirements.” (Pg. 231)
He concludes, “We need to find an interpretation of the text that does not commit us to a globe-covering catastrophe. Surely the text itself provides clues to a better understanding. Doesn’t the fact that the text suggests that Mesopotamian geography was not rearranged by the flood nor the topsoil displaced suggest that it was not a globally catastrophic event? Given the frequency with which the Bible uses universal language to describe local events of great significance…. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the flood account uses hyperbolic language to describe an event that devastated or disrupted Mesopotamian civilization… the whole world of the Semites? I do not consider it a violation of the text to suppose that the biblical flood account uses a major Mesopotamian event in order to make vital theological points concerning human depravity, faith, and obedience and divine judgment, grace, and mercy. The church serves no good end by clinging to failed interpretations of the Bible and refusing to explore new directions.” (Pg. 312)
This book will be of great interest to Christians studying the Flood, the Ark, and related topics.
January 16, 2026
I grew up in a Christian home in the midst of what Young describes as the age when conservative Christians distanced themselves from intellectual academia due to the rise of liberal critical theology. I was flooded with the apologetics of the likes of the Christian Science Research Center, Ken Ham, and Answers in Genesis. When I studied geology at the Colorado School of Mines, I found myself having to compartmentalize my studies apart from my faith and understanding of Genesis 1-11 because I did not see how they could harmonize. I simply had faith in God’s Word as true and authoritative and believed that God had created the world and universe with the appearance of ancient age and processes. I had never heard of scientists like Young or Ross or Lennox or theologians like Ramm who upheld both the infallibility of Scripture and truth in nature as God’s natural revelation. I was simply told (and believed) that anyone who believed in an old earth and the fossil record were liberals who undermined the divine inspiration, truth, and authority of Scripture.
This past year I have been introduced to faithful believers like Young and have been devouring their books along with Scripture. It has been such a freeing, intellectual, and exhilarating endeavor! It has expanded my awe of God and His handiwork and humbled me and my understanding of who He is and how He works. It has also freed me to enjoy and appreciate science in ways I never have been able to because I was bound by ideas that we must interpret Genesis 1-11 “literally,” as we would read and understand it in our 20th and 21st century literary context.
This book has made me want to study more geology, anthropology, paleontology, and archaeology with this new lens. I know and trust that God’s world will always align with His Word.
This past year I have been introduced to faithful believers like Young and have been devouring their books along with Scripture. It has been such a freeing, intellectual, and exhilarating endeavor! It has expanded my awe of God and His handiwork and humbled me and my understanding of who He is and how He works. It has also freed me to enjoy and appreciate science in ways I never have been able to because I was bound by ideas that we must interpret Genesis 1-11 “literally,” as we would read and understand it in our 20th and 21st century literary context.
This book has made me want to study more geology, anthropology, paleontology, and archaeology with this new lens. I know and trust that God’s world will always align with His Word.
January 2, 2013
Very intriguing and thought provoking. Well researched.
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