The Antediluvian-Postdiluvian Dilemma

After the Flood by Alexander Rothaug (1870 – 1946)

Another problem with taking an entirely literal, highly conservative view of Genesis and the Flood story is what I propose as the antediluvian-postdiluvian dilemma. If Noah and his family had floated around on the surface of a “water world” for well over a year and come to rest on the “mountains of Ararat,” it is highly unlikely that rivers called the Tigris and Euphrates in antediluvian antiquity, which flowed from the Garden of Eden, and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of today, are the same rivers. It is highly unlikely that the same flood that first deposited and then eroded away the sandstone of Green River, Wyoming, and the Grand Canyon in a matter of days left the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, or any rivers for that matter, in the same condition as their antediluvian states and locations. It is also highly unlikely that after over a year of floating about, Noah and his family would have landed at almost precisely the same location where their voyage began.

The antediluvian dilemma extends way beyond rivers and canyons to some of the most incredible relics and monuments in the world. Sometime during the Middle Ages, around three thousand years after the alleged date of the Flood, an unidentified pilgrim to Eden (yes, apparently this pilgrim found Eden) returned to England with a left-over piece of clay, which God had trimmed off Adam during his creation. This precious relic was housed in Canterbury Cathedral for many years, and may still be there today.¹ The most important question is, how did that valuable piece of clay make it through the Flood?

Perhaps even more amazing than the left-over clay from Adam’s creation, Adam’s earthly remains also were found in the early Christian era—beyond amazingly, his tomb was found in the Cave of the Patriarchs wherein was buried, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah—all postdiluvian patriarchs and their wives—and there is Adam, the great antediluvian patriarch. Now that is definitely pin-point navigation on Noah’s part—to be able to arrive back at the very site of his departure. It’s also amazing that the cave containing Adam’s remains was preserved through the flood, was located, was purchased by Abraham, and was used as the burial place for the later patriarchs. We know all of this from the writings of the Venerable Bede – who learned about the tomb third hand, but whose eighth century credentials are impeccable. Bede wrote that, “Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks who lived on the Isle of Iona…wrote a book about the Holy Places…The man who dictated the information to him was Arculf, a bishop from Gaul who had visited Jerusalem to see the Holy Places.”²

Bede wrote the words recorded by Adamnan who had written the words of Arculf, who had actually been there, “In a valley one furlong to the east of…Hebron…is a double cave [the term double here apparently refers to the fact that the burials were husband and wife pairs], where the tombs of the patriarchs are enclosed in a square wall with their heads to the north. Each tomb is covered by a single stone slab, cut like those in a church: those of the three patriarchs are white, while that of Adam is of humbler and inferior workmanship, and lies not far from the others at the northern extremity of the wall.”³

In addition to the clay and body of Adam, the actual Garden of Eden has also been discovered. It turns out it’s in Qurna, Iraq near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is enclosed by a small brick wall about three feet tall, encompassing an octagonal space of perhaps eight or ten feet in diameter—a much smaller Garden than most people have imagined. Inside the wall is a dead tree, perhaps the Tree of Life, leaning over at an awkward angle. A sign, balanced atop the wall and leaning against the dead tree announces this place as the, “The Original Garden of Eden.”⁴ It is possible that the tree lost its life in the Flood but it’s not clear how the wall and sign made it through unscathed.

On a somewhat less fantastic note, Newgrange; which is older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt, and is located on a hill overlooking the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland; was built in Neolithic times around 3000-2500 BC (200-700 years before the alleged date of the Flood in 2348 BC). A remarkable phenomenon occurs each year at the winter solstice. As the sun appears over the horizon, sunbeams pass through the windowbox above the doorway and light up the chamber, seventy feet down a narrow passageway, with a dazzling light. I have visited Newgrange, and there is no evidence that the mound or passage was ever covered by a world-wide flood.⁵ If it was built after the flood, where did all the people come from and how did they get there so soon after the flood?

Newgrange is predated by 500-100 years by the tomb passages of Brittany. One in particular, the Gavrinis tomb, located on a small island in the Gulf of Morbihan, is especially remarkable because of its construction, rich interior decorations, and state of preservation, making it one of the major European megalithic art treasures.⁶ Again, to my knowledge, there is no sign of any flooding in the Brittany tomb passages.

The remarkable wall paintings in the Chauvet cave, created 30,000 to 32,000 years ago, also show no evidence of flooding. A flood deep enough to cover the surrounding mountains, would have filled the cave and completely washed away the fragile charcoal and ochre paintings on the walls.⁷ In short, there are hundreds of great antiquarian monuments dating from before 2348 BC, all of which show no signs of flooding.

Jericho, in Palestine, established around 11,000 BC, is considered to be the oldest city in the world. There is no evidence that the city experienced a flood that would have submerged it under hundreds of feet of water, with such force that it could carve the Grand Canyon in Arizona.⁸ 

Matera, Italy, one of the world’s oldest cities, has a history of human habitation dating back to around 7,000 BC or even earlier, making it a contestant for the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city. The city is famous for its ancient cave dwellings, called “Sassi”, carved into limestone cliffs, and incorporated, over some 9,000 years or more, into part of today’s city.⁹  

Architecture historian and ethnographer, Ann Toxey, has said of Matera, “Shaped by encrusted layers of development spanning millennia, the southern Italian city of Matera is the ultimate palimpsest. Known as the Sassi, the majority of the ancient city is composed of thousands of structures carved into a limestone cliff and clinging to its walls. The resultant menagerie of forms possesses a surprising visual uniformity and an ineffable allure.”¹⁰

Here’s a major problem for Young-Earth Creationists: the limestone cliffs at Sassi were supposedly laid down during the Flood, a mere 4000 years ago; yet the caves there were inhabited 5,000 years before the Flood—and have been continuously inhabited ever since. The Pleistocene Calcarenite di Gravina Formation, into which the caves were carved, was laid down around 800,000 to 2.6 million years ago. “The Calcarenite di Gravina is a poorly lithified, heterogeneous bio-lithoclastic Plio-Pleistocene limestone formed in a temperate shallow-water setting.” This was not produced in the mud of a global flood. Then, again during the Pleistocene, when the sediment that would form the calcarenite was still soft, ancient callianassidean decapods (crustaceans such as ghost shrimps and mud shrimps) burrowed into the Calcarenite di Gravina, disrupting the sediment layers and producing fossil casts, called bioturbation structures. Then, over many years, as the calcarenite has weathered on the buildings and in the caves of Matera, the casts have been revealed.¹¹ All of this structure is far too complex for a single flood event, only 4000 years ago to have produced.

References

1.     Jacobs, Alan, In Search of Eden (book review of Scafi, Alessandro, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth), First Things, Feb 2007.

2.     Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731 AD, Penguin Books, London, pp 293 – 297, 1990

3.     Ibid

4.     Jacobs, 2007

5.     Stout, Geraldine, and Stout, Matthew, Newgrange, Cork University Press, 2008

6.     Ibid

7.     Cave of Forgotten Dreams, History Films, Creative Differences Production; written, directed, and narrated by Werner Herzog; Produced by Erik Nelson and Adrienne Ciuffo, 2010

8.     Kiger, Patrick J., 10 of the Oldest Continuously Inhabited Cities in the World, How Stuff Works, 2024; history.howstuffworks.com/world-history/oldest-city-in-world.htm

9.     Toxey, Ann Parmly, Materan Contradictions: Architecture, Preservation and Politics, Routledge, London, 2011

10.  Ibid

11.  Bonomo, Agnese Emanuela, Microfacies analysis and 3D reconstruction of bioturbated sediments in the calcarenite di Gravina formation (southern Italy), Marine and Petroleum Geology, 125:104870, 2021