Other Options for A Local Flood

 The Christ-Centered Model for Early Genesis posits that Adam's biblical role was not to be the first man, except in the sense that Christ is the second man. He is a figure of Christ, not the father of humanity. He was formed to bring Messiah. Thus, there were other people in the world when Adam was formed, even as Christ came into a world full of people. 

In such a case, the flood need not be global in extent to have global consequences, ending the line of Messiah would doom the entire planet, even if that line existed only in a small geographic region in the ancient Near East. I call this a "local flood with global consequences" and the language used in the text allows for this view. It was still a flood that threatened to bring the entire world to ruin by cutting off the line of Messiah and thus cutting us off from God. 

In the book, I speculated about the timing and location of the flood. The text has more give in the date than Bishop Ussher's methods would indicate, but not a great deal more. Perhaps we look a few thousand years further back than his numbers, but not much further. As for the location of such a flood, I have proposed we look to eastern Anatolia, perhaps the Araxes River Valley and nearby. But I don't think the text demands this location at all. It is a speculative matter. Perhaps it was a bit further east, in the Kura River Valley or beneath the Lesser Caucus Mountain. Less likely but still possible in my view is that they were further west and north, for example in the Ezurum Plain near Pasinler. 

I am basing these locations on the idea that the Garden of Eden was near the source for the Tigress and Euphrates Rivers, not their mouths. That and also that their movement appears to have been "east". After the flood it says they journeyed "from the east" to reach a plain in the land of Shinar. Based on that, you would think that the flood and the landing point of the ark were east of Mesopotamia. But some have said that this verse is only saying they journeyed "in the east". I don't buy that, but if that is true then perhaps the area of the line of Adam was in the area later inhabited by the Hurrians, circled in black below. Notice that the land in this region forms, with a couple of exceptions, a fairly effective "bowl" in which flood waters could accumulate. There are a couple of wide valleys that would argue against this, but suppose those valleys had been made wide by run-off from the great flood? 

I would add that the eastern-most portion of this choice is in the area of "Mount Judi" where many say that the Ark landed. The text of Genesis says only that it landed on "the mountianS of Ararat". This is a broad region from the old land of Uratu that includes both today's Mt. Ararat and Mount Judi. If the clans of Noah went down the Tigress to find the plains, known in antiquity as "the River of the East" then I suppose one could even keep some sense of a journey "from the east" to reach the land of Shinar. It would just mean from the river which defined the eastern boundary of that land.  

The diagram below also shows circled in black part of the more southernly reach of where I think the flood was, which is just my best guess right now. This is in the Lake Urmia basin area. 

Now many of my brothers and sisters are convinced of a southern location for Eden. One where the mouths of the Tigress and Euphrates are, and not their source. If that is so, it would be unlikely that the ark of Noah would drift north and wind up on "the Mountains of Ararat" as the region drains south. There was a land named "Arratta" that was probably to the east somewhere in the southern part of Iran, and if that is what is meant then I suppose a southern Eden is reasonable. I have drawn an arrow pointing to the direction of this unlikely location of the local flood of Noah. 

Click on picture to get a larger view 

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