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Because of the similarities w/ the Epic of Gilgamesh and the mention of Mount Ararat, it has been suggested that the Flood affected mainly Mesopotamia. Interestingly, Gilgamesh lived between c. 2900 – 2350 BC, and the biblical Flood is dated 2348 BC.
Note that it is possible to have a global flood that kills everyone without covering the top of every mountain on earth. Even if it covered Ararat, Everest is still over 12000 feet higher, but not visible to Noah. Genesis 7:20 says it covered the mountains by 15 cubits. That's not sufficient to cover mountains in other continents. (Although NIV words it differently)
I will accept the scholarly consensus until they change their views . But your theory has merit.
That's your right. Ask 10 people about this and you get 10 different opinions. But if major civilizations in a world filled with violence were allowed to continue, what was the point of the flood? Why should Noah have to remain stranded on the ark for a year when he could have drifted to Egypt or something.
If, in the Last Glacial Period, ice sheets covered the northern parts of North America, Europe, and Asia, then subsequent flooding in the early Holocene Age did not affect the Middle East as much. This is actually the case:
Holocene - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
My point is that the ice age effect should be (with some geographical and weather variation) centered around the poles, and geologist studies show that North America was severely affected very far south, but Asia almost has no evidence at all until you get close to Europe. This doesn't make sense unless the poles shifted by 30 degrees since the ice age.
In a comet scenario, it would be centered around the impact zone, and that appears to have been somewhere near or in the Hudson Bay in Canada. The ice is around this point, and the flood occurs everywhere else, first by tsunami waves and then from the ice melting over the next 5 months. (And according to Genesis 7:11 tectonic upheavals.)
This is possible, but the Flood will still have to be around 2348 BC, according to the Bible, which means that it has to be local in Mesopotamia as it did not destroy the pyramids of Egypt. The only way around this is your method of reducing Egyptian chronology or suggesting a wide gap in the biblical record between the Flood and Abraham. Remember that when Abraham went to Egypt, it was fully civilized and prosperous. It could not have been established by Mizraim and his wife a mere 3 generations before Abraham.
Abraham was the 10th generation from Noah. Mizraim was the 2nd. According to the Bible, all 10 generations were still alive when Abraham was born. (Due to much longer lifespans which didn't really settle down to today's standards until sometime during the judges period.) If everyone had an average of 6 children (3 male and 3 female), then by Abraham's time there is more than half a million people on the earth. (With 8 children that goes up to 8.4 million) Divide that by the 70 or so civilizations mentioned in Genesis 10 and you have about 7500 people per civilization. (With 8 children it's over 100,000 per civilization)
The king of Egypt is not named, and in my reasoning, Abraham visits during the 1st dynasty, and Joseph during the 5th dynasty. There's no reason to think Egypt wasn't relatively prosperous in the 1st dynasty when compared to every other civilization at that time. And what do you mean by civilized? All we know for sure is that Egypt had a king, and people tended to go to Egypt during famines, because they tended to be better off. That the king would even take notice of Abraham's cohort would indicate that Egypt was not that massive of an empire yet.
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