Kimball College

The Great Biblical Flood so described in Genesis has long been a subject of fascination of speculation. In the nineteenth century the English archbishop James Ussher established it as having happened in the year 2348 B.C., calculating what was then taken as the age of the earth and working backward through the entire series of biblical '"begats.'" Proof of the flood, which is an element of so many creation myths, began in earnest when archeology started connecting physical evidence with the biblical story. The dream of proving the Bible to be literal truth has proven irresistible, producing both spurious claims and serious scholarship. As bestselling historian Ian Wilson reveals in this fascinating new book, evidence of a catastrophic event has been building steadily, culminating in the work of William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Several years ago Ryan and Pitman posited that around 5600 B.C. there had been an inundation in the Black Sea of such proportions that it turned the freshwater lake into a saltwater lake by connecting it to the Mediterranean. Were that true, they estimated, there would be sign of civilization three hundred feet below the surface of the Black Sea. In September 2000, using his famous underwater equipment, Robert Ballard explored parts of the Black Sea near the Turkish shore and found the remains of wood houses. There had been a flood, and whether it was the result of God's wrath or not, it had destroyed everything around it for hundreds of miles, killing tens of thousands of people.