Chapter 12
Noah’s Flood—what about all
that water?
• Where did all the water come from for the Flood?
• Was there a water vapour canopy?
• How was Mt Everest covered with water?
• Where did the water go after the Flood?
• How could this have happened?
I
N telling us about the globe-covering Flood in the days of Noah,
the Bible gives us information about where the waters came from
and where they went. The sources of the water are given in Genesis
7:11 as “the fountains of the great deep” and the “windows of heaven”.
The fountains of the great deep
“The fountains of the great deep” are mentioned before “the windows
of heaven”, indicating either relative importance or the order of events.
What are “the fountains of the great deep”? This phrase is used only
in Genesis 7:11. “Fountains of the deep” is used in Genesis 8:2, where
it clearly refers to the same thing, and Proverbs 8:28, where the precise
meaning is not clear. “The great deep” is used three other times: Isaiah
51:10, where it clearly refers to the ocean, Amos 7:4, where God’s fire
of judgment is said to dry up the great deep, probably the oceans, and
Psalm 36:6 where it is used metaphorically of the depth of God’s justice/
judgment. “The deep” is used more often, and usually refers to the oceans
(e.g. Gen. 1:2, Job 38:30, 41:32, Psalm 42:7, 104:6, Isa. 51:10, 63:13,
Eze. 26:19, Jonah. 2:3), but sometimes to subterranean sources of water
(Eze. 31:4,15). The Hebrew word (mayan) translated ‘fountains’ means
‘fountain, spring, well’ (Strong’s Concordance).
~ 169 ~
170 ~ Chapter 12
So, “the fountains of the great deep” are probably oceanic or possibly
subterranean sources of water. In the context of the Flood account, it
could mean both.
If the fountains of the great deep were the major source of the waters,
then they must have been a huge source of water. Some have suggested
that when God made the dry land appear from under the waters on the
third day of creation, some of the water that covered the earth became
trapped underneath and within the dry land.1
Genesis 7:11 says that on the day the Flood began, there was a
‘breaking up’ of the fountains, which implies a release of the water,
possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor. The
waters that had been held back burst forth with catastrophic consequences.
There are many volcanic rocks interspersed between the fossil layers
in the rock record—layers that were obviously deposited during Noah’s
Flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great deep
involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water
bursting up through the ground. It is interesting that up to 70% or more of
what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam.
A lot of volcanic activity would be expected with such a cataclysm as the Flood.
1. Evidence is mounting that there is still a huge amount of water stored deep in the earth in
the crystal lattices of minerals, which is possible because of the immense pressure. See
Bergeron, L., Deep waters, New Scientist 155(2097):22–26, 1997: “You have oceans and
oceans of water stored in the transition zone. It’s sopping wet.”
Noah’s Flood—what about all that water? ~ 171
In their catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood (see Chapter
11), Austin et al.2 have proposed that at the onset of the Flood, the ocean
floor rapidly lifted up to 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) due to an increase in
temperature as horizontal movement of the tectonic plates accelerated.
This would spill the seawater onto the land and cause massive flooding—
perhaps what is aptly described as the breaking up of “the fountains of
the great deep”.
The windows of heaven
The other source of the waters for Noah’s Flood was “the windows
of heaven”. Genesis 7:12 says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights
continuously.
Genesis 2:5 tells us that there was no rain before man was created.
Some have suggested that there was no rainfall anywhere on Earth until
the time of the Flood. However, the Bible does not actually say this.3
Some have argued that God’s use of the rainbow as the sign of His
covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:12–17) suggests that there were no rainbows,
and therefore no clouds or rain, before the Flood. However, if rainbows
(and clouds) existed before the Flood, this would not be the only time
God used an existing thing as a special ‘new’ sign of a covenant (e.g.
bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper).
It is difficult to envisage a pre-Flood water cycle without clouds
and rain, as the sun’s heat, even in that era, must have evaporated
large volumes of surface waters which would have to have eventually
condensed back into liquid water. And droplets of liquid water form
clouds from which we get rain.
The Bible uses ‘windows of heaven’ twice in reference to the Flood
(Gen. 7:11, 8:2). The term is used four times elsewhere in the Old
Testament: in 2 Kings 7:2,19, Isaiah 24:18 and Malachi 3:10. In all
cases, it refers to God intervening in an extraordinary way to pour out
blessings or judgment on his people. ‘Windows of heaven’ is not a term
applied to ordinary events. Clearly, in Genesis the expression suggests
the extraordinary nature of the rainfall attending the Flood. The rain was
extraordinary; like nothing anyone had seen before.
2. Austin, S.A., Baumgardner, J.R., Humphreys, D.R., Snelling, A.A., Vardiman, L. and Wise,
K.P., Catastrophic plate tectonics: A global Flood model of Earth history, Proc. 3rd ICC,
pp. 609–621, 1994.
3. Some have claimed that because the people scoffed at Noah’s warnings of a coming flood,
they must not have seen rain yet. But people today have seen lots of rain and floods, and
many still scoff at the global Flood. Gen. 2:5 says there was no rain yet upon the earth,
but whether or not it rained after that in the pre-Flood world is not stated.
172 ~ Chapter 12
What about ‘the waters above’?
We are told in Genesis 1:6–8 that on the second day of creation God
divided the waters that were on the earth from the waters that He
placed above the earth when He made a “firmament” (Hebrew raqiya,
meaning ‘expanse’) between those waters.4 Many have concluded that
this “expanse” was the atmosphere, because God placed the birds in the
expanse, suggesting that the expanse included the atmosphere where the
birds fly. This would put these waters above the atmosphere.
However, Gen. 1:20, speaking of the creation of the birds, says
(literally), “let birds fly above the ground across the face of the expanse
of the heavens.” 5 This at least allows that ‘the expanse’ may include the
space beyond the atmosphere.
Dr Russell Humphreys6 has argued that since Genesis 1:17 tells us
that God put the sun, moon and stars also “in the expanse of the heaven”
then the expanse must at least include interstellar space, and thus the
waters above the expanse of Genesis 1:7 would be beyond the stars at
the edge of the universe.7
However, prepositions (in, under, above, etc.) are somewhat flexible
4. In trying to disparage the Bible, some skeptics claim that raqiya describes a solid dome
and that the ancient Hebrews believed in a flat Earth with a slotted dome over it. Such
ideas are not in the Bible or in the Hebrew understanding of raqiya. See Holding, J.P., Is
the raqîya‘ (‘firmament’) a solid dome? Equivocal language in the cosmology of Genesis 1
and the Old Testament: a response to Paul H. Seely, Journal of Creation 13(2):44–51, 1999;
creation.com/raqiya.
5. Leupold, H.C., Exposition of Genesis, Volume 1, Baker Book House, US, p. 78, 1942.
6. Humphreys, D.R., A biblical basis for creationist cosmology, Proc. 3rd ICC, pp. 255–266,
1994.
7. This could help explain the background microwave radiation seen in the Universe. See
Chapter 5 and Humphreys, 1994.
Noah’s Flood—what about all that water? ~ 173
in Hebrew, as well as English. A submarine can be spoken of as both
under the sea and in the sea. Likewise, the waters could be above the
expanse and in the expanse, so we should perhaps be careful not to draw
too much from these expressions.
So what were these “waters above’? Some have said that they are
simply the clouds. Others thought of them as a ‘water vapour canopy’,
implying a blanket of water vapour surrounding the Earth.
A water vapour canopy?
Dr Joseph Dillow did much research into the idea of a blanket of water
vapour surrounding the earth before the Flood.8 In a modification of the
canopy theory, Dr Larry Vardiman9 suggested that much of the “waters
above” could have been stored in small ice particles distributed in
equatorial rings around Earth similar to those around Saturn.
The Genesis 7:11 reference to the windows of heaven being opened
has been interpreted as the collapse of such a water vapour canopy, which
somehow became unstable and fell as rain. Volcanic eruptions associated
with the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep could have thrown
dust into the water vapour canopy, causing the water vapour to nucleate
on the dust particles and make rain.
Some have suggested that the vapour canopy caused a greenhouse
effect before the Flood with a pleasant subtropical-to-temperate climate
all around the globe, even at the poles where today there is ice. This would
have caused the growth of lush vegetation on the land all around the
globe. The discovery of coal seams in Antarctica containing vegetation
that is not now found growing at the poles, but which obviously grew
under warmer conditions, was taken as support for these ideas.10
A vapour canopy would also affect the global wind systems. Also, the
mountains were almost certainly not as high before the Flood as they are
today (see later). In today’s world, the major winds and high mountain
ranges are a very important part of the water cycle that brings rain to the
continents. Before the Flood, however, these factors would have caused
the weather systems to be different.
Those interested in studying this further should consult Dillow’s and
Vardiman’s works.
8. Dillow, J.C., The Waters Above, Moody Press, US, 1981.
9. Vardiman, L., The sky has fallen, Proc. 1st ICC 1:113–119, 1986.
10. Movement of tectonic plates could also explain the polar occurrence of such warm-climate
plant remains (see Chapter 11).
174 ~ Chapter 12
A major problem with the canopy theory
Vardiman recognized a major difficulty with the canopy theory.11 The
best canopy model still gives an intolerably high temperature at the
surface of the earth.
Rush and Vardiman have attempted a solution,12 but found that they
had to drastically reduce the amount of water vapour in the canopy from
a rain equivalent of 12 m (40 ft) to only 0.5 m (20 in.). Further modelling
suggested that a maximum of 2 m of water could be held in such a canopy,
even if all relevant factors were adjusted to the best possible values to
maximize the amount of water stored.13 Such a reduced canopy would
not significantly contributed to the 40 days and nights of rain at the
beginning of the Flood.
Most creationist scientists have now either abandoned the water
vapour canopy model14 or no longer see any need for such a concept,
particularly as other reasonable mechanisms could have supplied the
rain.15 For example, in the catastrophic plate tectonics model for the
Flood (see Chapter 11),16 volcanic activity associated with the breaking
up of the pre-Flood ocean floor would have created a linear geyser (like
a wall) of superheated steam from the ocean, causing intense global rain.
Nevertheless, whatever the source or mechanism, the scriptural
statement about the windows of heaven opening is an apt description of
global torrential rain.
A vapour canopy holding more than two metres (7 feet)
of rain would cause Earth’s surface to be intolerably
hot, so a vapour canopy could not have been a
significant source of the floodwaters.
11. Vardiman, pp. 116, 119, 1986.
12. Rush, D.E. and Vardiman, L., Pre-Flood vapor canopy radiative temperature profiles, Proc.
2nd ICC 2:231–245, 1990.
13. Vardiman, L. and Bousselot, K., Sensitivity studies on vapor canopy temperature profiles,
Proc. 4th ICC, pp. 607–618, 1998.
14. Psalm 148:4 seems to speak against the canopy theory. Written after the Flood, this refers
to “waters above the heavens” still existing, so this cannot mean a vapour canopy that
collapsed at the Flood. Calvin, Leupold and Keil and Delitzsch all wrote of “the waters
above” as merely being the clouds.
15. Of course we may never arrive at a correct understanding of exactly how the Flood occurred,
but that does not change the fact that it did occur.
16. Austin et al., Proc. 3rd ICC, pp. 609–621, 1994.
Noah’s Flood—what about all that water? ~ 175
Where did the waters go?
The whole earth was covered with the Flood waters (see Chapter 10,
Was the Flood global?), and the world that then existed was destroyed
by the very waters out of which the land had originally emerged at God’s
command (Gen. 1:9, 2 Pet. 3:5–6). But where did those waters go after
the Flood?
There are a number of Scripture passages that identify the Flood
waters with the present-day seas (Amos 9:6 and Job 38:8–11, note
‘waves’). If the waters are still here, why are the highest mountains not
still covered with water, as they were in Noah’s day? Psalm 104 might
suggest an answer. After the waters covered the mountains (verse 6), God
rebuked them and they fled (verse 7); the mountains rose, the valleys
sank down (verse 8) and God set a boundary so that they would never
again cover the earth (verse 9).17 They are the same waters!
Isaiah gives this same statement that the waters of Noah would never
again cover the earth (Isa. 54:9). Clearly, what the Bible is telling us is
that God altered the earth’s topography. New continental land-masses
bearing new mountain chains of folded rock strata were uplifted from
below the globe-encircling waters that had eroded and levelled the pre-
Flood topography, while large deep ocean basins were formed to receive
and accommodate the floodwaters that then drained off the emerging
continents.
That is why the oceans are so deep, and why there are folded mountain
ranges. Indeed, if the entire earth’s surface were levelled by smoothing
out the topography of not only the land surface but also the rock surface
on the ocean floor, the waters of the ocean would cover Earth’s surface
to a depth of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles). We need to remember that about
70% of Earth’s surface is still covered by water.
Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s
2 . 7 k m Flood are in today’s ocean basins.
ter dee
wa p
Without mountains or sea basins,
water would cover the whole
EARTH earth to a depth of 2.7 km, or 1.7
miles (not to scale).
17. The most natural translation of Psalm 104:8a is “The mountains rose up; the valleys sank
down.” However, some commentators think that this refers to Creation Week events.
176 ~ Chapter 12
A mechanism?
The catastrophic plate tectonics model (Chapter 11) gives a mechanism
for the deepening of the oceans and the rising of mountains at the end
of the Flood.
As the new ocean floors cooled, they would have become denser and
sunk, allowing water to flow off the continents. Movement of the water
off the continents and into the oceans would have weighed down the
ocean floor and lightened the continents, resulting in the further sinking
of the ocean floor, as well as upward movement of the continents.18 The
deepening of the ocean basins and the rising of the continents would
have resulted in more water running off the land.
The collision of the tectonic plates would have pushed up mountain
ranges also, especially towards the end of the Flood.
Could the water have covered
Mount Everest?
Mt Everest is almost 9 km (5½ miles) high. Could the Flood have covered
“all the high mountains under the whole heaven”?
How high were the mountains before the Flood? We don’t know;
we can’t tell by looking at today’s mountains because they were formed
only towards the end of, and after, the Flood by collision of the tectonic
plates and the associated upthrusting. In support of this, the layers that
form the uppermost parts of Mt Everest are themselves composed of
fossil-bearing, water-deposited layers.19
This uplift of the new continental land-masses from under the
floodwaters would have meant that, as the mountains rose and the valleys
sank, the waters would have rapidly drained off the newly emerging land
surfaces. The collapse of natural dams holding back the floodwaters
on the land would also have caused catastrophic flooding. Such rapid
movement of large volumes of water would have caused extensive erosion
and shaped the basic features of today’s Earth surface.
Thus it is not hard to envisage the rapid carving of the landscape
features that we see on Earth today, including places such as the Grand
Canyon of the USA. The present shape of Uluru (Ayers Rock), a sandstone
monolith in central Australia, is the result of erosion, following tilting
and uplift, of previously horizontal beds of water-laid sand. The feldspar-
18. The geological principle involved is isostasy, where the plates are ‘floating’ on the mantle.
The ocean basins are composed of denser rock than the continents, so the ocean basins sit
lower in the mantle than the less dense continents with their mountains.
19. Gansser, A., Geology of the Himalayas, Wiley Intersciences, UK, p. 289, 1964.
Noah’s Flood—what about all that water? ~ 177
rich sand that makes up Uluru
must have been deposited very
quickly and recently. Long-
distance transport of the sand
would have caused the grains to
be rounded and sorted, whereas
they are jagged and unsorted.
If they had sat accumulating
slowly in a lake bed drying in
Even the high mountains of today have fossils of
the sun over eons of time, which sea creatures near their peaks.
is the story told in the geological
display at the park centre, the feldspar would have weathered into clay.
Likewise, if Uluru had sat in the once-humid area of central Australia
for millions of years, it would have weathered to clay.20 Similarly, the
nearby Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) are composed of an unsorted mixture of
large boulders, sand, and mud, indicating that the material must have
been transported and deposited very rapidly.
Receding floodwaters eroded the land, creating river valleys. This
explains why rivers are often so much smaller than the valleys they flow
in today—they did not carve the valleys. The water flow that carved out
the river valleys must have been far greater than the volume of water
we see flowing in the rivers today. This is consistent with voluminous
floodwaters draining off the emerging land surfaces at the close of
Noah’s Flood, and flowing into the rapidly sinking, newly prepared, Photo by Carol Drew
Kata Tjuta in central Australia is composed of material which must have been deposited
very quickly from fast-flowing water.
20. Snelling, A.A., Uluru and Kata Tjuta: Testimony to the Flood, Creation 20(2):36–40, 1998;
creation.com/uluru.
178 ~ Chapter 12
deep ocean basins.21
Our understanding of how the Flood could have occurred is
continually developing. Ideas come and go, but the fact of the Flood
remains. Genesis clearly testifies to it, Jesus and the Apostles confirmed
it, and there is abundant global geological evidence for a global watery
cataclysm.
21. Oard, M., Flood by Design, Master Books, US, 2008. See also Geology Q&A; creation.
com/geology#catastrophe.
