by Dr. Bernard E. Northrup (northrup@brigadoon.com)
This chapter is a revision of that which originally was published after one of my creation conferences by Colonial Hills Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia sometime in the early 1970's. It also has been part of well over a hundred conferences in many states and several countries. For years it was part of my class notes for Genesis 1-11 entitled "In the Beginning," for Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis where I was Director of Graduate Studies. It describes my abrupt awakening to the requirement by the catastrophic contents of the Book of Job that I recognize a post-Noahic flood, thoroughly Biblical, ice "age" catastrophe.
For years believers have wrestled with the problem of science and have wondered how we could ever reconcile the many things which are found in the crust of the earth with that which we read in the Scriptures concerning earth's early events. Many creationists have puzzled over the major areas of disagreement and tentatively have provided approaches to harmonization which they thought might help to explain the apparent contradiction between the Word of God and the work of the Creator. These harmonization models have been helpful in that they provided an avenue of escape from uniformitarian dogmas which have proven to be destructive to the uninstructed faith of many students of the natural sciences. But in every case these models have proven inadequate in that they have ignored major pieces of the puzzle. For example, the gap theory completely ignored the physical evidence of a period of earth's history when an icy catastrophe troubled the entire earth with massive, continuous cloud cover, with torrential rains in the regions nearer the equator and with vast snow falls in regions nearer the northern and southern poles. The Noahic flood model likewise has ignored this evidence of the "ice age" and the massive signs of continental volcanism in Cenozoic deposits which preceded it. These things were impossible to fit into the classical form of the flood model and largely were ignored. In recent years it has become popular to tack these physical evidences onto the conclusion of the Noahic flood in a vague, undefined way which leaves multitudes of unanswered questions.
The model which I propose in this paper is extremely helpful in understanding the genesis of geology and the confirmatory testimony which the careful study of the physical sciences actually gives to the statement of the Scriptures about earth's earlier events. Through this model I have concluded that Genesis and geology both have exactly the same message. Now this does not require adapting Genesis to geology at all, but rather casts the light of the facts of geology upon the text of Genesis so that we can recognize the wider catastrophic nature of the Biblical testimony. Once the researcher eliminates the fallacious assumptions of geological time, assumptions and miscalculations which are so critical to evolutionary historical geology, the two accounts remarkably carry the same message. The fact that the two records which always have played the same tune only becomes recognizable when one plays the geological record at the same speed as the Biblical record! Suddenly every glissando, every crescendo and every andante passage produce sufficient harmony that one can recognize that the two scores came from the same Master.
Many years ago I was speaking at Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Wisconsin concerning creation. During the week I had completed the consideration of earth's earlier events in Genesis, the outpouring of the pre-Adamic flood, the uplift of the great single continent in the third solar day, the Noahic flood and the division of the continents as presented in Genesis 10. I was preparing to speak on the ice age in geology the next day. I was thoroughly convinced that there had been a very Biblical ice age after the Noahic flood for I had followed the courses of several of the glaciers on our own continent and had viewed their great rivers of ice in British Columbia and in Alaska. Since then I have been able to observe these vast rivers of ice in the Andes, in the Alps and in the Himalayas. While meditating about the problem of an ice age within Biblical times, a thought struck me. Surely, if this were true, there should have been a great amount of testimony concerning the ice age available in the Bible, given by those who actually lived during that catastrophic time. Suddenly a flood of secondary revelation began coming to me as the Holy Spirit, the Divine Author, began to point out to me in His Holy Word many places where the ice age actually is mentioned. I had read these many dozens of times, teaching from a theological viewpoint, and utterly had missed the import of these passages concerning the geological disturbances and the climate disturbances which are recorded in His Word! The Lord led me to the Book of Job and showed me that here was a book that had actually been written during the Biblical ice age.
Now the geologist walks hand in hand with the philosophers who need billions of years for their gods, Time and Chance, to produce the present world. As a result he wants to place the ice age in a setting which began more than a million years ago with its influence continuing to retreat even today. For several generations students of all ages from kindergarten through graduate school have been taught inventive fictions about the gradual development of cave men and how man gradually had evolved out from his animal ancestry. Today the doors of public education are as tightly closed against the teaching of any criticism of this approach as are the classrooms of China to a consideration of the Word of God and to the true and living God. The fiction of man's gradual evolution out of animal still finds a gullible market in the carefully designed deceptions of books like Mitchner's "Source" and several, often pornographic, book series attempting to describe the life of man and, for some reason, especially women during the ice age.
I had long been convinced that mankind had lived on earth throughout the icy catastrophe which left its unmistakable scars on earth's final layers. I also was convinced that the period had not lasted for over a million years. What I discovered when I began reading the Bible with open eyes and finally understanding what its human writers were saying, was that mankind indeed had passed through the trial of an icy catastrophe. One writer in particular had recorded a remarkable amount of information about life during that exceedingly violent period in the land of Israel. And I began to recognize that Job was not merely describing the effects of the Biblical ice age in the Levant countries. He includes an amazing amount of information about the violence of that time of great geological activity during the period in which he lived in the land.
It was a period when all of Europe was gripped in a terrible series of ice storms which forced humankind who had migrated into that area from Babel to survive in caves. They lived a meager existence in great competition with the animal life which also was there. Storms raged that seemed to be continual. It is possible that for months in the most intense time of trial man did not even see the sun. He was not able to grow crops. The midden piles at the cave mouths indicate that he survived on what game which he could kill and on the edible wild plants, wild grasses and grains that he could gather. In the land of Israel man was living south of the great ice cap which sheathed much of Europe. Nevertheless he was experiencing great turmoil. The Pleistocene Epoch, the Biblical ice age, was a time when the great Jordan valley was coming into existence. The strata in that area were being ripped apart by the release of tensions which had reshaped the face of the entire earth in rapid continental plate separation. The rifting of the Jordan valley is a historical event that happened in the latter part of the dividing of the continents. In that statement I am not following the chronology of the uniformitarian for I believe that the dividing of the continents was one of the most violent and abrupt of the five great Biblical catastrophes that have troubled the whole earth. Geologists tell us that the great African Rift, of which the Jordan Valley is but a small part, was a fairly "recent" event but they do not mean by "recent" that which I mean. It was during the time when Noahic flood and retreat of flood deposits were being ripped apart by crustal tensions, developing a great horst and graben structure. That is, as the east and west walls of the new valley were being pulled apart and separating from each other, the materials of these also were settling into the great fault which now is a major feature of the Eastern Mediterranean Levant of which Israel and Jordan are a part. It was during the time that this great valley was being formed that the basins which now contain the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea were formed. The latter basin is the lowest place on earth that is not beneath the seas.
I believe that there is very strong evidence that Job lived during that day and makes several references to the development of that great valley. Contrary to the conclusion of many writers that Solomon's men or someone else much later than Job put together the book of Job, I am convinced that Job himself wrote this book. And the remarkable geological and climatological references found in the book makes it almost inescapable that Job actually lived within the scope and beyond the so called Pleistocene Epoch, the Biblical ice age. Indeed, It is highly probable that Job lived in or more likely near the land of Israel in the days when Lake Lisan, the body of water which once connected the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, still existed. I proposed long ago that Job actually lived during the Biblical ice age and that it was he who personally recorded the many very specific geological and climatological details which are embedded in the book which carries his name. It would be impossible for an author, living long after the tumultuous times in which the events of the book of Job took place to describe these factors unless the work of the human author is wholly discounted and the work of the Divine Author is magnified beyond the balance taught in Scripture.
Now we must not believe the error of earlier archaeologists who thought that writing had not been invented at the time in which Job lived when people were just moving out of caves in which they had escaped the icy catastrophe. And by the way, that factor is directly mentioned in the book of Job. The text of the book of Job clearly shows that Job knew how to write. After all, there are several references in the book of Job to writing. Note Job 19:23. "Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book; that they were engraved with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!" The references to metallurgy should also be noted here. Job 13:26 says of God: "For You write bitter things against me . . . ." In Job 31:35 the godly patriarch complains about the imaginary accusations of sin in his life which He supposes God sees. Oh, that one would hear me! Behold, my desire is that the Almighty would answer me, and that my adversary had written a book. Surely I would take it upon my shoulder and bind it as a crown to me."
The book of Job makes many interesting contributions to our understanding of what actually went on in Israel during the Biblical ice age. Job long had endured the imaginary criticisms of his three counselors as recorded in the first three quarters of the book. Finally, in a remarkable way, Job bitterly strikes out in disgust against his three "counselors" and in the process unveils the immediate ancestry of these three men. He gives us insight into the severe trials which mankind, even as far south as the eastern Mediterranean, endured during the ice epoch. He does it in such a way that it strongly suggests that the violent weather consisting of fierce downpours of rain, snow, hail and freezing, which had driven many men into caves for protection during the severe stage of the Biblical ice age now was retreating. He says of his three pompous counselors:
"But now they mock at me, men younger than I, whose fathers I disdained to put with the dogs of my flock. Indeed, what profit is the strength of their hands to me? Their vigor has perished They are gaunt from want and famine fleeing late to the wilderness, desolate and waste. Who pluck mallow by the bushes, and broom tree roots for their food. They were driven out from among men , They shouted at them as at a thief). They had to live in the clefts of the valleys, in caves of the earth and the rocks. Among the bushes they brayed. Under the nettles they nested. They were sons of fools, Yes, sons of vile men; They were scourged from the land. And now I am their byword. They abhor me, they keep far from me; They do not hesitate to spit in my face. Because He has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me, they have cast off restraint before me. At my right hand the rabble arises; they push away my feet, and they raise against me their ways of destruction. They break up my path. They promote my calamity; they have no helper. They come as broad breakers [tidal waves]; under the ruinous storm they roll along. Terrors are turned upon me; they pursue my honor as the wind and my prosperity has passed like a cloud" (Job 30:1-15 NKJV).
A careful examination of this passage will reveal several important hints about the time in which Job and lived and about the violence of the catastrophic period through which they recently had passed.
a. The Timing of the Ice Age with Reference to the Bible
A thoughtful perusal will show the impossibility of holding that the Biblical ice age was part of the Noahic flood. Job and the people of the land were settled in that area. The more fortunate like Job had large herds of cattle. There were so many people that they were divided up into clans. The area where Job lived was called "the land of Uz" (Job 1:1), apparently named after a predecessor who had lived there some time before. And it should be noted that the first mention of the name "Uz" being given to a man in the Bible is not until Genesis 10:23 where Uz is mentioned as a grandson of Shem who would have been born long after Noah's family had left the ark. This assumes that there are no generation gaps in this account. It is interesting to note that it is after the second generation has been born to Japheth, Shem's brother, that the division of the nations at Babel took place. Immediately after enumerating the names of Japheth's second generation this statement is made. "From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, every one according to his language, according to their families, into their nations" (Gen. 10:5).
b. The division in the Fifth Generation after the Noahic flood
How long was a generation in those days? The answer depends upon which textual source one follows. The Hebrew describing the genealogy of Shem in Genesis 11:10-24 provides the concept that a generation at that time lay between 30 and 35 years. The Hebrew chronology announces 101 years between Shem's departure from the ark and the birth of Peleg, ". . . in whose days the earth was divided" (Gen.10:25). The ancient Septuagint Greek translation and the Samaritan (Hebrew) Pentateuch strongly disagree and suggest the possibility that the Hebrew chronology has been abbreviated for some unknown reason. The Septuagint text provides the following table of generations between Shem's departure from the ark and the birth of Peleg.
2 years from Shem's leaving the ark to the birth of Arphaxad
135 years before Arphaxad fathered Kainan
(who is omitted in the Hebrew text but is present in the Septuagint and in Christ's genealogy in Luke 3:36).130 years before Kainan fathered Salah
130 years before Salah fathered Eber
134 years before Eber fathered Peleg
531 years total between leaving the ark and the division of the earth.
c. The implications of the chronology of continental division.
Note that this argument is two edged. It strikes against Patton's proposal that the ice epoch is the catastrophe which triggered the Noahic flood, an anachronism which flies in the face of all of the geological evidence and of the testimony of the book of Job which describes life during that ice epoch. All of the physical evidence in the world demonstrates that the latest catastrophe to trouble the whole world was the Biblical ice epoch. And that evidence unquestionably indicates that the ice epoch followed the separation of the continents and the massive diastrophism of the latter half of the so called "Mesozoic Era" and most of the "Cenozoic Era." And the physical evidence, when thoughtfully examined, leaves the creationist no room to conclude that these periods of the earth's history are part of the Noahic flood. They clearly are post-Noahic flood except in areas like California which rose out of the sea only after the titanic pressures of continental plate movement forced the area up out of the sea.
I have flown alongside enormous glaciers along the west coast of North America and South America from southern Alaska to just south of the equator in Ecuador and Peru. I have crossed the Alps repeatedly and have flown along their southern edge from Portugal to Greece. I have flown into India repeatedly and have explored along the high, crushed foothills of the Himalayas, able to study from a distance the great marine strata that are crushed, uplifted and intruded by giant volcanoes and still support great glaciers. Everywhere these glaciers are deposited upon crushed and folded strata resulting from South America's departure from Africa and Antarctica in violent continental plate separation. The deposits of the Noahic flood on the opposing continents across the Atlantic terminate at the continents' edges. There are absolutely no Noahic flood deposits on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for it was not there when the Noahic flood covered the great single continent implied by Genesis 1:9 and separated in the days of Peleg beginning in Genesis 10:25.
Noahic flood deposits are lifted from hundreds of feet to many thousands of feet in the Andes by the crushing, buckling and intruding forces produced along the leading edge of South America as its leading edge dove into the great Humboldt trench 20,000 feet below the sea along the western edge of the continent. The great glaciers of the world are deposited on the volcanic ejecta and the folded flood strata that was folded well after the Noahic flood. I first recognized a glacial valley in that kind of material at 10,000 feet on the jeep road to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incas. But more often glaciers and their destructive trails and U shaped canyons are found on the great rubble piles of ejecta left by the volcanics which, as a more recent event, intrude their way up through the flood strata out of the hot zones produced by continental plate override. In the Andes the heat appears to have boiled up under the crust of the new continent, South America, as the leading edge dove into the great Humboldt Trench in subduction. The crust reshaping heat of the leading edge of our own great plate produced by its overriding of the Pacific ocean bottom powered the intrusions and uplifts of most of our western mountains. That is true of true throughout the Central Rockies where the continent apparently overrode and settled over a hot plume welling up out of the rheosphere, of the Sierras, the Klamath Mountains, the Cascades, the Northern Rockies and the Canadian Rockies wherever I have examined them.
Mt. Lassen on the north end of the Sierras is a local example that is only 45 miles from my home. It intrudes upward through and utterly ruptures Noahic flood and retreat of flood strata which almost everywhere rim the Great Valley of California. On the east side of this major feature of California these formations butt up against and ride up the uplifted slopes to the point where massive ice age precipitation and ice melt erosion removed them and deposited them many thousands of feet deep in the Great Valley. Only an occasional pendant formation of Noahic flood materials clings to the great intrusive ridge that is littered with extrusive materials from the volcanoes which rose it. A beautiful example of sedimentary deposit which I have identified as a pendant, Noahic flood deposit lies along the northwest shore of Fallen Leaf Lake on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. Another great mass of this material lies near Tioga Pass road as it descends the east side of the Sierras out of Yosemite Valley. East of Mt. Lassen on the west side of the Great Valley the Paleozoic, Noahic flood deposits and the overlying retreat of flood Mesozoic deposits sweep up the eastern edge of the Coast Range, thinning out as they rise. It must be remembered that the coast was far inland near Nevada before the plate movement activity produced the State of California by grinding, intruding and uplifting it out of the sea as a result of post-Noahic flood continental division.
The Coast Range, against which these strata lie in the northern Sacramento Valley, largely consists of an enormous amount of ocean bottom materials which have been crushed, course ground and then swept ashore on the rising, leading edge of the continent without being polished by agitation along a beach. Of course there are also great injections of granite, the reworked material that has been molten by subterranean heat before its injection. There are large layers of chert, the indurated and distorted layers of submarine ash ejecta. There are great sections of blue schists, serpentine and other materials from the depths.
The intrusions found in the Coast Range, and the extrusions in the Sierras and the contiguous Klamath Mountains are more recent than the flood and retreat of flood strata through which they intrude. They are considerably more recent than the great layer of Cenozoic materials which the Biblical ice epoch has stripped from these mountains and deposited in the Great Valley. The northwest end of the Great Valley just southwest of Redding has been a remarkable source of Mesozoic ammonites which died when they were trapped or cooked in that area by the heat release of the molten granites beneath and just to the north of them. Giant clam shells and multitudes of smaller cockle shells can be found in the great ice age erosion canyons which cut through these to the east and north. In many places on the east slopes of Mt. Lassen and its related peaks these have been preserved from erosion by vast mud flows from the volcanoes. These actually reach into the eastern outskirts of Redding.
But everywhere that I have been able to study glaciers and their paths in the world it is obvious that one must recognize a larger chronology which agrees perfectly with the Biblical material. These glaciers leave their trails or even now lie in their U shaped valleys on thousands of volcanoes and folded mountains which are the result of continental plate separation which began in Genesis 10:25. On Mt. Lassen the now empty U shaped path of a glacier provides the parking lot for those hikers who wish to climb to top of the 11,000 ft. volcano which is one of the most recently active volcanoes in the United States. The curious who will climb the western wall of the little glacier's path will recognize the great scratches and scorings produced when the ice dragged boulders over the layers of volcanic ejecta. The path of that glacier down over the volcanic deposits carves a beautiful lake basin, crosses the road and polishes rock as it passes to the west of Bumpas Hell on its way down into the older caldera which has been blown away. No, in the light of the very clear and God given physical evidence, it is impossible to hold that the ice age caused the Noahic flood. That is to put the frosting on the bottom of the cake for the order of deposition clearly recorded in the record of the rocks requires the reverse order.
But the calculation above of the length of time between the flood and the division of the continents also strikes against the position of those creationists who propose that the division of the earth mentioned in Genesis 10:25 refers to the division of the languages at the Tower of Babel. This utterly is contradicted by the placing of the division of the languages as an event at the end of the second generation of Japhethites in Genesis 10:5. After all, it is clear from the above discussion, including Kainan, that the division of Genesis 10:25 occurred at the beginning of the fifth generation of Semites. Furthermore a careful study of the family of Ham will indicate that in that family only two members of the third generation are mentioned by name before the division of languages is spoken in Genesis 10:20. "These were the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands and in their nations." The division after which Peleg was named cannot be the division of languages for they are separated by as much as two generations. And if the chronological material from the Septuagint given above is accurate, and it is confirmed by the quotation of Kainan's (or Cainan's) name from the Septuagint by Luke, then there are approximately 200 years between the Tower of Babel and the division of the landmass above sea level. It is obvious then that the enforced migration from the Tower of Babel, described in Genesis 11:8-9, had been underway for that many years. I will mention before discussing it later that I conclude that Job is Jobab, the thirteenth son of Joktan, the brother of Peleg. That branch of the Semite family had roughly 2 centuries in which to migrate across that territory which now has dried up to become the Arabian desert and settle in close proximity to the territories claimed by the Canaanite branch of the Hamite family. Indeed, these Semites had lived there in the territory that they claimed long enough that the region, apparently north east or south east of the Dead Sea, had come to be known as the land of Uz, the second generation descendant of Shem through his son Aram. And it appears that Jobab or Job, the final son of the sixth generation of Shem through Joktan, also had chosen to settle there among his Aramean neighbors. Yes, the name Aram still survives in the area to the northeast of Israel.
But this sword apparently is three edged for the argument also makes it obvious that it is impossible to consider the division of the continents and the Biblical ice epoch to be part of the closing events of the Noahic flood. That view presented by Barker simply makes hash out of the physical and Biblical evidence. Job was in the Levant area of the Eastern Mediterranean, in a land settled at least a century previously by near relatives, observing and describing the catastrophic plate movement of the land and the resulting tsunamis in the sea which are mentioned several times unless he lived there during the Biblical ice age. But he was there describing the effects of the cooling temperatures of the "Cenozoic (recent life) Era" This phenomenon, readily identified by the oxygen content of successive layers of Cenozoic shell life, can only be attributed to the phenomenal obscuring of the atmosphere which resulted from thousands of volcanic vents around the world at the same time during post Noahic flood continental movement. Job was there near Israel describing the climax of that worldwide temperature drop which resulted in the Biblical ice epoch in regions farther away from the equator and resulted in catastrophic rains which are referred to in the book of Job. To ignore the massive geological evidence which contradicts this position and to ignore the Biblical evidence while insisting that these events are an integral part of the conclusion of the Noahic flood utterly obscures the actual event series which followed the Noahic flood. In my critique of this fallacious position years ago, I focused primarily on the inability of the view to handle the many unanswered problems of harmonizing the rock record with the Biblical record. So often such harmonization models are born somewhere beneath a hat brim without ever being taken to the field to see if the physical evidence can be correlated or without an analytical study of the contribution of the original text of Scriptures to determine what the text really contributes.
But to return to the statement of Job 30:1-15 (above), a second hint concerning the nature of the period in which Job lived will be found in the fact that Job's counselors clearly are identified as the sons of people who had lived in caves in a time of extreme hardship.
Mankind in that area survived by tooth and toenail, living from the meat that he could kill, often not able to cook that well because wood was not easily available. Because of the absence of the sun's beneficial contribution and lack of well rounded diets which as a result lacked many vitamins, man was affected physically. His frame often was tortured by rickets and debilitating arthritis because of the cold caves in which he lived. Deprived of proper food, his spine and skull were deformed, leaving him stooped with distortions of the skull.
Of course fossil records of these deformities provided fuel for imaginative archaeologists who saw in our ancestors evolutionary evidences which they graphically portray and mistakenly interpret. They miss the significance of the clear evidence of the interbreeding of the strains of modern man and Neanderthal man in the cave life of the northern Levant area and the evidence that this rapidly resulted in modern skeletons in their offspring. They ignore the fact that the archaeology of these caves records the fact that perfectly modern man and physically degraded Neanderthal man moved into these caves together. They not only cohabiting them but interbreed. With the better diets available farther south away from the grip of the ice catastrophe, rapidly eliminating the physical problems suffered by man farther north. Here they were able to gather wild grains in an area where the ice age precipitation was predominately violent rainfall. The evidence of this promptly became the basis for describing a stone age scene where man now had evolved into a grain gathering stage before he finally got the idea of growing his own grain. Hand in hand with this fallacy went the "stone age" scenario of man's evolutionary development. A fascinating collection of photographs of stone age stone and bone tools and excavation sites, accompanied by the normal evolutionary patter of presuppositions, may be found in Clark's "The Stone Age Hunters" This approach to man's history of course ignored the clear testimony of Genesis 4:22 that man within less than 10 generations after creation was producing tools, not of stone but of brass and even iron. It says this of a man born in the 8th generation of mankind that is recorded in Genesis. "And Zillah, she also bore Tubal-cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron: and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah." Elements in the following verses suggest to me that Naamah, his sister, was the first rape victim.
How the Genesis statement about early generations of mankind working metal upsets the scheme of man's evolutionary development through a stone age, a brass or bronze age and finally an iron age! I have seen beautiful bronze work in Israel which is dated by the archaeologists themselves as having been made far before the so called "bronze age." I think that it is inescapable that man fully understood and extensively used iron technology until the Noahic flood. I am convinced that, when the Noahic ark finally positively is identified, its fasteners will be made of iron. One reported ark location beneath the surface below Mt. Ararat seems to have metal located at regular intervals that fall within the ark's dimensions. I suggest that the long migration of Noah and his extended family to the Plains of Shinar made it necessary to develop the temporary expedient of stone tool technology on the long journey. And then descendants of that group of travelers from Ararat, when they fled from the Tower of Babel, reverted to stone tool technology on the long journeys across the dividing continents from Babel. I hold that they remembered enough of that stone tool technology which temporarily had been used by their ancestors so that almost identical stone techniques and tools were carried world wide where they still continue to be used in a few remote places. For example, I have a stone flake knife which I bought from a Navajo boy who had brought it from a remote cave in Echo Cliffs in Arizona. It was in association with other pre-Columbian artifacts. Its form is exactly like two such knives that I found lying on the surface in the hills east of Beersheba in Israel where some hunter had dropped them after preparing the game that he had killed. The digging tools and hand axes that I saw in the African Rift in Kenya are remarkably like those found in England and in eastern United States. Excellent pictures of these will be found in Clark. Their common form strongly suggests a common ancestry of the techniques which produced these tools from widely separated areas. They are very similar to so called "pebble culture" implements from Locality I at Choukoutien, China near Peking and like the first illustration of stone implements from "the Australian Early Stone Age."
I consider the book of Job to be the oldest book of the Bible, written no more than 700 years after the Noahic flood and within 200 years after the abrupt and very violent division of the continents in Peleg's day. According to uniformitarian archaeologists that would have been long before man moved from using stone tools to the use of metallurgy. And yet the book mentions bronze four times. "Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh bronze?" (Job 6:12). "He will flee from the iron weapon; A bronze bow will pierce him through" (Job 20:24)." "God speaks to Job of the great land creature, behemoth. Using a series of metaphors He says: His bones are the beams of bronze, His ribs like bars of iron" (Job 40:18). Then God describes the great sea creature Leviathan which probably was the great sea crocodile which is found fossilized in places around the Mediterranean Sea. "Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; Nor does spear, dart or Javelin. He regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood" (Job 41:26-27). Three times in these four quotations reference also is made to iron. There actually are five references to iron in the book. The other two references are to an iron pen and to its source. "Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead forever" (Job 19:24). Job 28:2 refers directly to the mining of iron and copper. "Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore." Elihu, while rebuking Job, asks him: "Are you able with Him [God] to spread out like metal the expanse [of the atmospheric heavens] with clouds?" (Job 37:18). (The word rachia, "to spread out thin, to spread by beating," is used several times of beating metal out into a thin plate. See Exodus 39:3; Jeremiah 10:9. It is used in Genesis 1:6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17 and 20 of the expanse of the atmospheric heavens below the canopy). Job speaks of gold in Job 23:10. "Because He knows the way with me. When He has tested me, I will come forth as gold." He speaks of silver in 27:16. He values wisdom in this way.
"It cannot be purchased for gold nor can silver be weighed for its price. It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire. Neither gold nor crystal can equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or quartz, for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it nor can it be valued in pure gold" (28:15-19). "Though he [the hypocrite] heaps up silver like dust and piles up clothing like clay, he may pile it up, but the just will wear it and the innocent will divide the silver."
Again he mentions gold in Job 31:24. If I have made gold my hope, or said to fine gold, 'you are my confidence . . . .'" When Job had reached the end of his adversity and was restored, his family and friends all comforted him and "Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold" (Job 42:11). He in his grief wishes that he might have died at birth and ". . . then I had been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver" (Job 3:13b-15). It should be obvious that Job and those people of the time when he passed through the trials of the Biblical ice age were well acquainted with metal technologies.
In the lands of Israel and Jordan man was living south of the area where great ice fingers continued to cover the highlands of Europe and Asia Minor for decades. It was a time when the great Jordan Valley was being ripped apart by a great crustal tension rift which extended ultimately to the north to Mount Ararat in the land which we now call Turkey. Its southern extension passed beneath the Red Sea, through Ethiopia, Kenya 6,000 miles to the south of Ararat to the southeast coast of Africa in Tanzania. This rifting of the Jordan Valley is a historical event which, according to geologists, happened during Pleistocene (most recent) times as one of the late scenarios of the division of the continents. Geologists tell us that this rifting of the "African Rift" was a fairly "recent" event. During this event the valley was formed where the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea now lie. I have examined the physical evidences that indicate that at one time these two bodies of water were actually joined as a result of the torrential downpours produced in the Eastern Mediterranean lands by the icy catastrophe. That larger lake is called "Lake Lisan" after the "tongue" of land which once extended far out into the Dead Sea from its eastern shore. There are evidences that have suggested to me that at one time Lake Lisan may actually have been an arm of the Red Sea for a brief time. There are many evidences that man lived in that valley as the ice age declined and as that great lake gradually retreated to its present configuration as two lakes. I am of the opinion that Beth Shean was founded by the Philistines when they could travel by ship either from the Red Sea or through the valley of Megiddo before that area finished its uplift stage. And I think that it is highly likely that Jericho may have been founded at the edge of the retreating waters which soon became the Dead Sea. The description of the Jordan Valley given in Genesis 13:10 describes a scene where those retreating waters had left a landscape far different from that found north of the Dead Sea except where it is irrigated today. It says:
"And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar."
d. Elements to consider in Genesis 10:25
Now we have been discussing Genesis 10:25, the first place in the Scriptures mentioning continental division. The verse reads: "And unto Eber two sons were born. The name of the one was Peleg [to divide by water] for in his days the landmass was divided by water" (BEN). There are three elements in my translation which require explanation.
1. In the final phrase I have understood 'ERETZ to have the same meaning that it does in Genesis 1:10 where God gives the name 'ERETZ to the YABBASHAH, the great single continent which heaved up out of the sea at His command on the third solar day. Now 'ERETZ, meaning the whole planet earth, is found in Genesis 1:1. But like the word "heavens," the word "earth" is redefined later in the text. It is obvious that it is not physical planet earth which is divided in Genesis 10:25.
2. And since the root PLG several times has something to do with water, rivers and such, it is only logical to conclude that it is the exposed landmass which is divided by water. Fuerst points out that the Arabic falaj and the Ethiopic plg both mean "river," a usage found in Psalm 1:3 in the plural. The intensive active form of this verb is found in Job 38:25 which asks these questions: "Who utterly split apart a water channel for an overwhelming flood of waters or made a way for the lightening of the thunder?" (BEN). God's question is best answered by God who did that which is described by the verse. What does it mean? In the light of the Pleistocene (i.e. Biblical ice age) rifting of the Jordan/African Rift valley, there could conceivably be reference to that event, an event which Job possibly could have witnessed. But the verse speaks of a water channel which is filled with a great flood of waters. Now if my suggestion that at one time the Red Sea had a narrow bay which reached even to the north of the present Sea of Galilee, this might be possible. I have suggested that the Phoenicians who were in the land at least by Abraham's time could have been able to sail their ships in through this waterway to found the great city of Beth Shean not far to the south of the Sea of Galilee today. But I think that it is highly unlikely that Job 38:25 has reference to that event. Part of the scenario of Pleistocene times is the opening of the enormous, deep rift valley to the west of the Levant coastline to become the Mediterranean Sea. That huge rift was produced when something extremely catastrophic caused enormous ground waves in the entire crust of the earth. It produced a crack that extends 42,000 miles around the crust of the earth. That great fault passes between Africa and Europe through the Mediterranean Sea. From my limited examinations of the north coast of the Mediterranean and its mountains and the great folded Alps which rim that Sea on the north I conclude that something dreadfully violent broke the great single continent apart between these two continents, then caused them to slam against each other only to drift apart to their present positions. The Atlas Mountains of northern Africa and the Alps are the crushed contact points of these two landmasses which now are separate continents.
3. The name Peleg is based on a Hebrew verb. It is one of several verbs which are based upon the biradical consonantal combination PL. All of these verbs have something to do with division. Adding the third consonant after this biradical combination of consonants differentiates the shade of meaning carried by each of the PL verbs. When the added consonant is an Aleph, the first consonant in the Hebrew alphabet, the basic meaning is "to split, divide, separate" and "to select" or "to distinguish" with meanings that merge on the sense "extraordinary. When the third consonant is G producing the verb PLG, there is a remarkable emphasis upon water. According to Fuerst, basically the verb PLG means "to cleave, to divide, to separate." The basic meaning is the same in Arabic.
Now Greek is a Japhethetic language. And yet I have found 18 different nouns in classical Greek from upwards of 3,000 years ago with the same consonantal pattern PLG. Remarkably every usage has something crucial to do with the sea. Two of these words still crop up in English the expression "pelagic depths" and in the word "archipelago." The root is modified to PLK with the result that division by an ax becomes the dominant meaning. The English noun "Pelican" derives from this pattern, describing a bird which spots a fish from several yards above the sea which instantly plunges and splits the sea to catch its prey. I have discussed the remarkably parallel Greek roots and their relation to the several Hebrew roots which also are built upon the biradical root PL in a technical paper having to do with abrupt continental rifting in Genesis 10:25.
We found that a Semitic lad, born during the "utter division of the landmass by water," was named PELEG to commemorate that remarkable event. As I have pointed out, the English translations of this verse do not carry the same freight of meaning found in the original Hebrew text. I long have concluded that the Book of Job actually is the oldest book of the Bible as far as its date of writing and the time of its activities is concerned. While Genesis discusses far earlier events in earth's history, I say that Job was written more than 25 centuries before Moses wrote the Book of Beginnings. I personally am convinced that Job lived not less than six generations after the Noahic flood. Indeed, I feel that Job actually is mentioned in Genesis 10. One day long ago in my careful study of that passage I stumbled into the awareness that Genesis 10:29 mentions an interesting nephew of Peleg, the thirteenth son of Peleg's brother, Joktan. That nephew's name was YOBAB, transliterated Jobab in English translations. Now Hebrew writers centuries ago tried to identify Job with a YOBAB found in Genesis 36, a descendant of Esau. But in a comparison of the climate clues found there in Genesis 36 with those found in the book of Job, little similarity is found. Indeed there are names found in the book of Job which also are found elsewhere in Genesis 36, but one also should observe a similar overlapping of names when comparing name in the book of Job with the Semitic names of Genesis 10. I have concluded that place names, such as the land of Uz, carry over to Genesis 36 because Esau and his descendants continued to live in the very area where Job and the other descendants of Joktan and other Semitic relatives of JOBAB had settled long before. A study of the identification of present names of cities and places in Israel, preserved for centuries by the Arab peoples while Israel was away from the land, will indicate that place names (and indeed personal names) continue to be used even today in a local area where Semitic people continue to live. I therefore have concluded that the similarities of names in the book of Job to these chapters of Genesis should recognize an identity with Genesis 10 and that their continued use in Genesis 36 was no more than that.
I already have discussed the linguistic basis for comparing Job with YOBAB in the Hebrew texts of Job and Genesis as linguistic variations carried by different family branches within the larger Semitic group. Indeed, the form "Jobab" probably represents the name as found in one of the several languages of the Semitic family found in this area while "Job" or 'IYOB represents the name in another related dialect. Indeed, there is considerable linguistic evidence in the Hebrew text of the book of Job which might possibly suggest that the present text actually is an adaptation or even a translation from another dialect or language that is nearer to Arabic than to Biblical Hebrew. I long have considered the possibility that the journeys of Moses in the region northeast of Egypt while herding sheep for 40 years may have been the means of the survival of this magnificent piece of ancient literature. I certainly would be thrilled if a fragment of Job in another Semitic dialect were to be found! If my postulate that Job is a translation has any validity, then the Book of Job is the oldest example of Bible translation. And it also would be an accurate conclusion that Job actually is the nephew of the man who was named Peleg, so named because the earth literally began its abrupt division of its continental plates at the start of his days on earth at least two centuries after the Tower of Babel forced mankind to begin to populate the entire landmass.
Job's reference to people setting a sea watch almost certainly has reference to the danger of tsunami, earth movement generated tidal waves. "Am I a sea or a tanniyn, [probably a marauding, marine, meat eating reptile] that you set a guard over me?" (Job 7:12). The reference to the sea creature which would be kept under close watch when its presence threatened coastal peoples also is suggestive of a time when such creatures still existed. Since two large, unknown creatures are described in chapters 40 and 41, this interpretation seems likely. It should be remembered that Saint George, so revered by the Greek Orthodox, gained his notoriety by killing such a creature on the beach near present day Haifa.
Note that if my conclusions concerning the early date of Job are correct, the earth must have at an early time in history experienced major celestial disturbance like that which happened when the sun stood still in Joshua's day. He describes a fierce storm in Job 9:17. "For He crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath but fills me with bitterness." Again Job speaks of the might of God, apparently describing the power He displays when He collapses a building or perhaps a cave, preventing a man from escaping. Surely He speaks of God's power displayed in a great tidal wave in verse 15. If the Mediterranean Sea were still expanding as it apparently was during Pleistocene or Biblical ice epoch times, then the tsunami tidal waves retreating far out beyond the normal shoreline and then returning violently would have been the order of the day in Israel.
"Behold, He proceeds to break down and it will not come to be rebuilt. He proceeds to shut up over a man but there is no opening [it]. Behold, He proceeds to withhold the waters and they become dry. Then He proceeds to send them forth and they destroy the earth" (Job 12:14-15 BEN).
I have no doubt that Job is likening the way that his three counselors have pummeled him with their fiercely accusing words to the tsunami, that is, earth movement generated tidal waves which are found elsewhere in the book. He says of them: "They break up my path; they further my calamity, They have no helper. They come as broad breakers; Under the ruinous storm they roll along. Terrors are turned upon me. . ." (Job 30:13-15a). In Job 26:10-12 Job uses language which strongly suggests God's mighty power over the sea, even to the agitation of the ocean.
"He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness. (11) The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke. (12) He disturbs the sea with His power and by His understanding He breaks up the storm."
He then speaks of another powerful, earth reshaping force in Job 28:10. "He cuts out channels in the rocks and His eye sees every precious thing. He dams up the streams from trickling; What is hidden He brings forth to light." There are numerous places in Israel, particularly along the rugged edges of the Jordan Rift Valley, where powerful flows from the massive downpours have carved deep, juvenile canyons that have suffered little maturation in the minimal rainfall which the area now receives. The reference to God's damming up streams is well illustrated by the fact that the Jordan River has been dammed by a great landslide produced by God not long in the past and probably in Joshua's time (Jos. 3:14-17).
Job describes the way that the power of mighty rainfall and rushing waters appear to have prevented any successful agriculture in His day. "The waters wear away the stones. Its torrents wash away the dust of the earth and thus You cause the destruction of a man's hope" (Job 14:19 BEN).
The book of Job has much to say about the remarkable climactic conditions in the land when the book of Job took place. One needs to remember that in much of Israel and Jordan the average winter temperature is about 50 degrees. What would it have been like to have lived here on earth? The fascinating fact is that Job is quite instructive on that point.
But let us consider further the subject of the antiquity of the Book of Job before considering the catastrophic evidences in that book. This book, more than any other book apart from Genesis, gives us information about creation, about Cain and Adam, about angelic sin (which I believe also is mentioned in Genesis 6), about the judgment of the Noahic flood and similar events that happened even before the Noahic flood! But Job clearly writes as one who lived shortly after that great judgment. In this short chapter I will only be able to summarize the evidence for the antiquity of the book of Job for the roots of this information reach deeply into the text and into the language used by the author.
It is amazing to see just how far back in Biblical history the book of Job reaches. For example, Job 15:7 mentions the first two men who ever lived. "Are you the first man that was born....?" Now that would be Cain ( and not Adam as most will respond). "...Or were you made before the hills?" This of course refers to Adam. Now all of the world's really great mountains were formed by continental movement after the Noahic flood. What to these words mean? Eliphaz speaks these words to Job as an insult for Job was maintaining that he was righteous even though he had come into a terrible time of trial. Eliphaz in this passage is accusing Job of sin and is making rather harsh statements about him. But do note that his words here certainly imply that Eliphaz recognized that Adam indeed had been made before the hills! Job 26 also mentions the creation. In verses 7-13 several verses contribute to our knowledge of the way that God stretched out the north over the empty place and bound up the waters in His thick cloud. I conclude that the latter statement is an allusion to the canopy of water vapor which existed above the atmosphere before the Noahic flood. A comparable passage would be Genesis 1:2-9. The expression, "compassed the waters with bounds," in verse 10 would refer to the act of establishing sea level in the third solar day of creation. Verses 11 and 13 appear to refer to His activity of arranging the heavens on the fourth day when "By His Spirit He has garnished the heavens; His hand has formed the crooked serpent."
There are many passages in Job that refer to the events of Genesis. Indeed, there are elements in the book that indicate that Job lived very near to the beginning of his own period which was quite uniquely different from earlier days. In Job 8:8-10 Bildad calls Job a hypocrite and tells him that he would discover many valuable things if he would inquire of the former age. "Prepare yourself to search their fathers: (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow)." In contrast to the long lives that had been lived before the Noahic flood ( which days are recorded in Genesis 5), Bildad says: "Our days on earth are but a shadow." These people recognized that the lifespan of man no longer averaged over 900 years. Men were living much shorter lives in their own day. Contrasted with the former age, which was over and being forgotten, the lives which Job's contemporaries were living was as if of yesterday. One easily can detect that Job was living near the beginning of a new period of history. That prediluvian period of longevity was a thing of the past. Now I believe that there is strong evidence in the Samaritan Hebrew text and in the ancient Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament that approximately 550 years after the flood the division of the continents occurred. I will explain in a later section the evidence that Job lived after that division of the continents. Therefore I have concluded that Job was living well within a thousand years after the Noahic flood. No wonder Bildad spoke as he did about that past era of man's history! But on the other hand, surely he must have known that it was man's unrestrained bent toward sin which brought the great judgment which ended that era!
But let us return to our theme. Why should one call the book of Job an ice-age book and say that this actually is a document right out out of the Pleistocene ice epoch? Well, let us turn to more of the evidence for there certainly is evidence in the book which very strongly indicates that very conclusion. the book of Job is filled with diastrophism, a fifty cent word which simply includes such events such things as mountain building and great earth movements. Catastrophic events are found as early as Job 1:16 where fire falls from heaven destroying all of Job's servants and sheep. Seven thousand sheep were destroyed in one fire-fall from heaven!
Now that who have studied history know about places like Pompeii and Martinique where fire has indeed fallen and has destroyed large populations of people. Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash and only in this century has been excavated. Mount Pelee on the island of Martinique in the West Indies blew up in 1902. Twenty-six thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre instantly were killed by a hot cloud of fiery gasses five miles from the volcano. Two people escaped, one of whom was a man in a dungeon. At the same time, La Soufriere on St. Vincent, 90 miles away, blew up and killed 2,000 people.
Now of course the event found here in Job was supernaturally produced by our old adversary, but it is strongly probable that natural phenomena were used in that Biblical catastrophe which attacked God's righteous man, Job. Furthermore, evidences of catastrophic volcanic explosions are much in evidence in the north, east and south of Palestine. To the north and east there are large lava flows. In the south east in the area where I believe Job lived there are jagged, sharply fragmented volcanic rocks scattered over an area covering many, many square miles. These rocks are distributed so closely that they make camel travel impossible wherever they are found. These appear to have fallen from the heavens during Pleistocene times when the Jordan Valley was rifted and the land was mightily troubled by the influence of the ice age. This is the period which I identify with the events of the book of Job. These scattered rock showers have been a problem for the geologists.
The moving of mountains is prominent in the book of Job. In Job 9:5-7 Job himself testifies concerning God's wisdom and might. He says in verse 4: "He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength...." In verse 5 he speaks of God "Who removes mountains, and they know not: which overturns them in his anger. Which shakes the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." There probably is another reference to the destructions of earthquakes in Job 15:28 where Eliphaz speaks again of the destiny of the wicked. "He dwells in desolate cities, in houses which no one inhabits, which are destined to become ruins." We are forced to acknowledge that circumstances were extremely difficult during the centuries when Job was in the land! But listen to this astonishing statement which largely is ignored by readers. "Who commands the sun and it does not rise..." (Job 9:7). Now most creationists accept the statement of the book of Joshua concerning the day when Joshua commanded the sun and the moon to stand still. God responded to his request so that Israel might win her battle over the many city kingdoms which were warring against that nation. It appears to me from Job's statement that he also knew of a day earlier in history when the sun had stood still! The circumstances are not revealed but Job clearly makes allusion to a very catastrophic moment in Levantine history.
Chapter 14 mentions mountain movement in the same fashion. Verse 18 says: "And surely the mountain falling comes to nothing and the rock is removed out of its place." ;Palestine indeed was a catastrophic place during Pleistocene times because of the rifting of the Jordan Valley. At that time continental movement tore apart a great crack in the earth that stretches nearly 6,000 miles long. That of course is but a small crack when compared with the gigantic 42,000 mile long crack which nearly girdles the earth two times. It runs beneath the sea and was caused by continental plate movement. Now the African/Jordan rift valley system has its beginning on its northern end at Mount Ararat in central Turkey. Its southern end runs into the western boundary of the Indian Ocean after dissecting Eastern Africa from north to south. Can you imagine what it must have been like to have lived in the land of Israel at the time when all of this plate movement and rifting of the crust of the earth was occurring?
But let us return at that point to the chronological context when I am suggesting that Job lived in the days of continental division. This is based upon repeated references in the book to crustal upheaval, overturning, volcanism, rifting, violent erosion, tidal waves and even cave dwellers. Here is a sampling of these references. The scientist/empiricist Eliphaz speaks of the judgment of the wicked. "Remember . . . I have seen that they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same. By the blast of God they perish and by the breath of His nostrils they are consumed" (Job 4:7-9). That he refers to a natural catastrophe is strongly suggested by his statement later in Job 4:18-19.
"He puts no trust in his servants and charges His angels with error. How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust who are crushed before a moth? They are broken in pieces from morning till evening."
If Eliphaz is speaking of houses which collapse and kill their inhabitants, then this verse is one of several which speak of earthquake and diastrophism. Job's Also worthy of note is Job 12:22 which appears to be a reference to this very rift valley. God is described in this passage as "...discovering deep things out of darkness, bring out to light the shadow of death." Now this expression, "the shadow of death," or "valley of the shadow of death" repeatedly is associated with a deep, dark valley in the Scriptures. The newly forming Jordan Rift would have been a fearful place to the troubled inhabitants of the land. In Job 28 the process of crustal rifting certainly appears to be mentioned. Job in verse 5 describes both the earth's surface and that which lies below it. "As for the earth, out of it cometh bread...." He appears to refer to the growth processes which produce the grains from which bread is made. "...And under it is turned up as it were fire." How did Job know that? If my identification of Job's period with events leading up to and including the Pleistocene epoch is accurate, Job easily could have observed molten rock flowing from volcanic vents in many places in Israel. In verses 6-11 there is further, very amazing discussion of that which is below the crust of the earth. "The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it has dust of gold. There is a path which no fowl knows, and which the vulture's eye has not seen. He puts forth his hand upon the rock; he overturns the mountains by the roots. He cuts out rivers among the rocks...." How catastrophic! "...The thing that is hid he brings forth to light" (vv. 6-11).
Further reference to earthquakes appear to be found here in Job 26:11. He recognizes something of the phenomenon of the fierce heat released by the extensive volcanoes that are found all around and in several places in Israel. "Out of the earth bread comes forth but underneath it it is transformed like fire" (Job 28:5 BEN). Job describes God's part in diastrophism in Job 28:9. "He puts His hand on the flint; He overturns the mountains at the roots." Again Job probably alludes to the effects of an earthquake as he describes the degradation of a mountain in chapter 14:18. "And surely the mountain which is falling crumbles away and a rock is removed from its place" (BEN).
Now when one considers the physical evidence for continental division (which apparently only a surprisingly few creationists do), there should be little question that the continents have indeed divided. The geological evidence is absolutely overwhelming. It has backed up to the wall every geologist who had refused to believe the radical, uniformity disturbing theory. Geologists today are staggered by the astounding evidence indicating that the continents were ripped apart at some time in the past. But what was that event like? And what happened after and as a result of that event? That latter subject is actually our matter at hand. But for the moment it is necessary to discuss the results of that division of the continents as they are found in the world and then in the Bible.
When the continents divided and moved to their present locations, this caused great volcanoes to erupt to relieve the enormous heat of friction generated by the movement of the continental plates over the weakened, inner crust of the earth which is called rheosphere. This upwelling heat also caused great bulging uplifts, pressure ridges, folds and even overthrusts to occur. For example, these lie all up our west coast in the Sierras, Klamath Mountains and Cascades. They are found throughout the Central and Northern Rockies and on to the north in the Canadian Rockies. In these Canadian Rockies there are hundreds of great volcanoes. Their trail of peaks that once belched fire red molten rock, steam and ashes extends on through Alaska and out into the Behring Straits. Not a few of these are still alive and smoldering. These fire formed, slumbering giants stand at great heights along the ragged ridge of the Andes in South America, testifying to the might of the eruptions which belched forth when continental movement still was a major force modifying crustal plate configuration. At one time the world had a living ring of fire with multitudes of places where volcanoes of all sizes were extruding enormous quantities of steam, volcanic ash, pumice, lava and muds.
The results of this volcanism in the atmosphere were phenomenal. It changed the atmosphere completely for an extended time. To show what volcanism can accomplish in the atmosphere, consider Krakatoa, a volcanic mountain which blew up in the 1800's in the far western Pacific basin. This single explosion filled the high atmosphere with ash and pumice. This actually filtered out sunlight so effectively that it dropped earth's surface temperatures as much as two degrees for nearly two years. In the northeastern states this was called the year of no summer. Chickens are reported to have gone to bed at 4:00 p.m. in Kansas because darkness fell so much earlier than normal. One Volcano! Can you imagine what it was like when the continents were dividing rapidly in Biblical times? It is reported that when the valley of 10,000 smokes exploded in 1912, solar energy entering the atmosphere was temporarily reduced by 20 %! Imagine the effect when multiplying that volcanic explosion by one thousand times! Or by 10,000 times!
I have examined the Jordan Rift over much of its length in Israel, Lebanon and Turkey. It is very plain that the valley actually was torn apart. Level layers of strata still lie level in many places on the west side where they were sheared off, literally torn apart from the same strata which continue on the east side of the great valley, sometimes miles away. This great crack in the earth was formed in the crust when God literally overturned mountains, split apart the crust of the earth, and caused great volcanic action in places. Far down to the southeast of Beersheba there is a great depression called Machtesh Ramon that is very close to the rift valley. It apparently is a sunken graben resulting from settling following the opening of the Jordan Rift. In its bottom there are small volcanic pits from which volcanic ash has spewed onto the graben floor. On the northwest end of the Sea of Galilee lies the ruins of Capernaum. There is an excellent collection of olive presses and grain mills which have been carved out of basaltic lava from the large flows north of Galilee which date from the later part of that period.
Job responds to Bildad's sharp accusations that Job did not really know much about God and His swift judgment by referring to the might of God.
"He is wise in heart and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against Him and has prospered? He removes the mountains and they do not know when He overturns them in His anger. He shakes the earth out of its place and its pillars tremble. He commands the sun, and it does not rise. He seals off the stars; He alone spreads out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea." (Job 9:4-8).
Can you imagine trying to live in a land that was being being rifted apart? Imagine trying to keep a roof over your head! That trial happens to be mentioned in Job 4:19-21. Eliphaz, one of Job's critics, was reporting on a message that had been given to him by a spirit being, an event which had scared Eliphaz dreadfully. According to him the spirit had said: "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" (Job had begun to wonder if that were not the case)!
"Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth? They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it."
The abrupt destruction of houses and their occupants is alluded to elsewhere. In Job 15:28 there is a reference to those who dwell in desolate cities, in houses which no man inhabited, which were ready to become heaps. Throughout southern Israel there are very old remains of homes. Some of these have been ruined by armies that have come and gone throughout the land. But in the desert area there are many places where there are little piles of stones which are the ruins left when man was struggling to live in little hovels during this catastrophic time, trying to survive. These are identified by archaeologists as "stone age" dwellings. I believe that they are the sad record of man's desperate attempt to survive in the geologically troubled times in which Job lived, the Pleistocene Epoch.
One important aspect of earth movement for which one should search in Job is for continental movement. It is remarkable that God Himself directly mentions the division of the land mass for an overflowing of waters! Early in Job 38 He already has discussed the creation of the earth when He laid its foundations (vvs. 4-7). He reports that the angels were present as observers. He mentions the preAdamic flood, the canopy and the establishment of sea level as discussed in Genesis 1:8 and following. But in Job 38:25 God mentions the post flood division of the continents to show His greatness to Job. He asked Job "Who had utterly divided a watercourse for the overflowing waters." The single word which is translated "utterly divided a watercourse" is the translation of a word found in Genesis 10:25, PELEG. This is an intensive verb form which speaks of utterly splitting apart the land for the overflowing of waters. This is exactly what did happen in continental division. This word is further discussed in a chapter which largely is devoted to the linguistic evidence for continental division.
Now there are numerous so-called legends among man's ancient records which describe what it was like to live during the time when the continents were dividing. For example, Plato describes it in "Critias" and "Timaeus," two of his shorter works. I interpret these two works as the remnants of traditions that were much older than Solon and Plato, traditions which give insight into the events of continental division. If we would listen to man's ancient records, we would have near eye-witness accounts concerning what it was like here on earth when man was migrating from the tower of Babel under the duress of great plate movements which eventually isolated many of the peoples which came to populate them. These near-eyewitness accounts also would provide us much forgotten material about what happened when the Biblical ice age arrived and what caused it.
In the book of Job there also is literary evidence which indicates that the sea near the scene of the book was greatly disturbed. When the reader of the book becomes aware of its remarkable statements about the sea, it opens the door of his understanding concerning life in the land which became Israel during the centuries when the continents were dividing. Job was a desert dweller judging from the pastoral scenes which clearly are described in the book. In spite of this fact, the book repeatedly mentions the sea! Now it is open to question whether the book is referring to the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea or to a body of water which lay much closer to southern Transjordanian territories where Job appears to have lived. There was such a body of water in Israel where only the remnants of that body can be found today. I have examined the Jordan Rift several times in visits to that area. I have been forced by the evidence there to recognize that the scientists are correct when they say that a giant lake filled all of the Jordan Valley during Pleistocene times. This was not merely an enlarged Dead Sea, which easily is recognized by the many fossil beaches that lie above present lake level. It was a sea that filled both the Sea of Galilee to the north and the Dead Sea, joining them in a great lake that left beaches hundreds of feet above the present level of the Jordan River which joins them. Even today one may find the terraces and beaches which were left by that great body of water. These beaches are a testimony to the violence of the climate of that time.
On to the north in northern Turkey, in present day Russia and across Europe the land was gripped in a fierce winter that may have lasted for several generations. Along the borders of the Mediterranean at lower altitudes phenomenal rainfalls were carving great erosion channels. It was very cold in the Levantine countries along the eastern Mediterranean. In this area the land rises from 3,000 to 9,000 feet in some of the great compression ridges which parallel the coast. Here there was much snow, but it apparently rained much more than it snowed in the area of present Israel. The erosion from this rainfall and snow melt sliced canyons in the steep slopes. It carved caves as the water worked its way through the soft limestones of the area. To these caves man turned for housing just as he did in Europe during the "ice age." Some of the great chronological misapprehensions concerning "the stone age," "the Chalcolithic age," the bronze age" and "the iron age" are derived from the application of evolutionary dogma to the physical record of man's trials during the climatological catastrophe which is recorded in the book of Job.
In Job 6:3, Job mentions the sand of the sea. In Job 7:12 he asks his critical counselors: "Am I a sea, or a whale that you set a watch over me?" Now these critics of Job were sitting around him and staring at him for days on end, trying to convince Job that he was a great sinner. This was so that they might be able to explain why he had been judged so severely. Now the Hebrew word translated "whale" here is the same word used in Genesis 1:21: "...God created great TANANEEM...." It also is the word used by the Psalmist in Psalm 148:7. Here and elsewhere in the Bible it has been translated "dragons." The word actually refers to all great marine creatures. I am confident that the meaning of the word extends beyond "whales" to include such creatures as the many types of dinosaurs which also are creations of God. Apart from the strictly marine varieties, these would have been created on the fifth day of creation.
Job's complaint is strange, isn't it? Why does he say: "Am I a sea, or a great sea monster, that you set a watch over me?" The answer lies in the troubled times of Job's day. It is obvious from chapters 40-41 that, contrary to evolutionary beliefs, some kinds of dinosaurs were still a problem to man. The recent discovery of a rotting Pleisosaur in the nets of a Japanese dredge trawler near New Zealand indicates that at least one kind of marine, dragon-like creature has survived even into modern times. If one desired to know more about human contacts with the great reptiles, as mentioned here in Job, then he should research man's many parallel "legends" of his contacts with the "dragons." One might even find relevant material in the Levantine story of St. George and the dragon and the battle which took place not far from the present city of Haifa in northern Israel. He might also find stimulating research material in the Psalmist's description in Psalm 73 of the way that God cast great marine creatures up to become food for those people who lived in the wilderness.
Indeed Job appears in Job 7:12 to make reference to another marine factor which obviously troubled inhabitants along the sea coast. For some reason those people who lived along the coast of the sea "set a watch" over it. The reason for that action to which this desert dweller refers could only be because the Mediterranean Sea and smaller bodies of water in the area were greatly agitated at that time. I have concluded that it would have been easy for Lake Lisan which lay in the Jordan Rift to have been connected with the Red Sea to the south for some time. If crustal spreading movement were still continuing while these waters were deep in that rift valley, they would have been agitated dangerously for those living near its shores. But the Mediterranean Sea also has suffered similar disturbance. That sea was almost continually dashing back and forth during the spreading of the great rift valley which is the Mediterranean Sea basin. That disturbance carved massive beaches late in geological "time," probably even into the life of Abraham. The giant beaches left by the tsunami or crustal movement generated tidal waves may be traced well above sea level in the wide, shoreline plains left by the oscillating waters in softer materials. The power of the waves is recorded in the steep, rocky cliffs which originally were at sea level where great waves pounded. These are particularly visible along the coast in the bluffs along Northern Israel, Lebanon, Turkey in Greece and somewhat inland in Egypt. I have seen them from the air along the coast of Tunisia.
It is difficult for us to imagine the violence of the sea's disturbance in such an humanly inconceivable violent crustal movement as would eventually produce the Atlantic Ocean. Plato reports through Critias the story which Solon brought from his exile in North Africa. In it is described a time when the great landmass which was called "Atlantis" disappeared from the sight of those in the Old World, apparently sinking into the sea within a single year. The sea is described as being so filled with pumice, foamed volcanic rock which floats, that ships were not able to explore what had happened for some time. I am convinced that, for the most part, these works of Critias and Timaeus contain memory fragments which describe the violence of the division of the continents in historical times.
Evidently Job lived along the shoreline of his day. He describes what it was like to live in the eastern Mediterranean coastline lands when tidal waves were roaring ashore, generated by great crustal movement. "...He breaks down, and it cannot be built again: he shuts up a man, and there can be no opening. He withholds the waters and they dry up; also he sends them out and they overturn the earth!" This describes exactly what happens when a tidal wave approaches the coast. First of all the waters along the coast begin to retreat. In Crescent City, California, the citizens had been forewarned about the soon arrival of a tidal wave which had been generated by the Alaskan earthquake which struck Anchorage so severely. They "set a watch over the sea!" They did this because they knew that, when the waters began to retreat and the beach receded far out onto the ocean bottom, they were in immediate danger. The great waves were preparing to recoil and come racing in to crash against the continent. That is exactly what did happen. The shoreline moved seaward. Fishing boats that were anchored far out where the fishermen thought they would be out of danger were seen sitting upon the shallow sea floor. The last rescue workers who feverishly were trying to empty stores along the shore now raced for high ground. The tidal wave then came roaring through the lower streets of Crescent City and did terrible damage. However, because men wisely has "set a watch over the sea," practically no human lives were lost.
Surely this catastrophic phenomenon is being described by Job. "...He withholds the waters and they dry up: also he sends them out and they overturn the earth." I do not think that men in Job's day fully understood what tidal waves were. They simply are waves which have bee set in motion by movement of the crust of the earth beneath the sea. In Alaska there is a small bay where abrupt movement in a fault beneath the surface of the bay produced a jet of water which knocked down trees for over 800 feet up the mountainside above the bay. One fishing vessel in the bay was completely destroyed. Another rode the tidal wave which swept up over the great trees on the bar which protected the bay. That vessel rolled upside down as it passed over the trees and, amazingly enough, survived when it was dumped in the ocean outside of the bay. Job may further mention tidal waves in Job 14:11. "As the waters fail from the sea and the flood decays and dries up, so man lies down...." This seems to be an illusion to coastal waters failing and retreating before a tidal wave attacks the shoreline. It is apparent from Job 7:12 that men learned how to protect themselves from tidal waves by setting a watch over the sea.
Eliphaz also refers to the trying times in which the main characters of the book of Job lived. In effect he says to Job: "Just because it is continually dark and very cloudy, do you think that God will not be able to see through the clouds and see your sins?" (Job 22:11-13). He also makes reference to over flooding waters. "Therefore snares are round about you and sudden fear troubles you; Or darkness, that you can not see; and abundance of waters cover you" (v. 11). That gives us some idea of what it was like in Job's day! "And you say, how does God know? Can he judge through the thick cloud?" It is obvious that the earth had an unnatural cloud cover in those trying days!
If I am correct in my conclusions, the whole world had great quantities of pumice and steam filling its atmosphere. As a result of the earth's changed albedo or increased reflectivity because of the great cloud cover, the sun's rays began to bounce off without penetrating to the earth's surface to warm the atmosphere. Temperatures began to drop swiftly under that cloud layer until it began to rain heavily from the enormous load of humidity which was pouring from the thousands of steaming volcanoes. It began to snow at higher elevations and at higher latitudes. The atmosphere was receiving a constant supply of steam which was roaring out of the thousands of active volcanoes. These were relieving the incalculable heat generated by continental movement which was venting through broken and weak sections of the moving continental plates. This almost limitless supply of atmospheric moisture continued to reduce surface temperatures until the seas in the polar regions dropped below the freezing point. It also provided a constant source for torrential rainfall where that was possible and snows which built up be to hundreds and even thousands of feet in many areas. Are you surprised that your ancestors did not spend much time recording the unbelievable experience in which they struggled for very survival? Yet the caves of the world contain the archaeological record of those descendants of Adam, some of them your own ancestors, as they faced almost insurmountable odds in that battle for survival.
Eliphaz further accuses Job in the book of Job of believing that: "Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he does not see...." He reminds Job of the certainty of judgment by referring to an event still fresh in mankind's collective memories when he says: "Have you not marked the old way in which wicked men have walked? They were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflowed with a flood." Now this may be a reference back to the Noahic flood, or it simply may be a reference to the destructive forces of the great tidal waves which were going and coming. Indeed, the Hebrew word for a flood here could even refer to a river flood, so the reference is not certain to us. Elsewhere Job does refer to tidal waves in a dramatic simile as he describes his three "friends" (perhaps better described as his "critics"). He speaks of these younger men who were around him saying: They "mar my path; they set forward my calamity.... They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me" (Job 30:13-15). Surely Job is likening the criticism levied against him by these men to a tidal wave!
I have followed the great, elevated beaches left by catastrophic waves like those mentioned in this great poetic book out of the Biblical ice age from Mersin, Turkey on that land's warm, south facing coast, the cotton belt of Turkey. All of the way along the coast to the east and then to the south into Egypt the sea shore displays the remnants of the great Pleistocene beach where giant waves once pounded continually. That entire area has been uplifted today so that this beach lies well above sea level. The harsh pounding of the waves has ground the rocky shore materials so finely that much of that area, which reaches up to the Shephelah in Israel, is rich, finely broken farming soil.
But let us turn to the evidences in the book of Job which point to severe climate problems. We have just scanned the words of Eliphaz in Job 22:11-14 which described the dense clouds which covered the land of Palestine everywhere at that time. There are many references to rain in the book of Job. Job 28:10-11 is one of many references to tempests and storms that could snatch up people and actually carry them away. Such violent storms would have been common near the great ice sheets and mountain glaciers which dominated much of Europe and the highlands of Asia Minor during the ice age. Years ago I had a friend who lived in New Zealand for a time. This is not far north of the Antarctic where there is a giant ice cap today. As a result, weather in the mountains of New Zealand can be very tumultuous. My friend and his son were camping in the mountains on one vacation. They almost were completely washed away by a violent rainstorm, losing everything and barely surviving in the torrential rains. Now a close reading of the book of Job will certainly suggest similar circumstances. Famine, crop failure and violent floods are common themes in this remarkable book of the desert!
But perhaps one of the most interesting things pointing to an ice age environment for the book of Job is the fact that there were cave men in his day. They actually are clearly mentioned in the book in such a way that it helps us to see that cave men are a part of the Biblical story. Our children constantly are harassed with the idea that man evolved through the cave man stages to his present glorious height of evolutionary development. But Job gives us a very good idea of what actually happened. In those days when the division of the continents and the consequent ice age were occurring, Job 30 reveals that the ancestors of Job's three friends all had been cave men! Job has reviewed in chapter 29 the way that God had blessed his life when he had been wealthy. In his misery of poverty and suffering he says: "But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock" (Job 30:1-2). That sounds rather nasty for him to say of his three critics, but Job explains: "For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time..." (that is in the generation immediately before their present). He continues describing the fathers of his three friends "who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their food." Imagine! They were cutting up anything that they could find for food, even roots and bushes! Adding to their starvation was the agony of being rejected and homeless. They were forced "...to dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth..." (v. 6 ). Why? Because these men of the generation before Job simply couldn't keep a roof over their heads, couldn't cultivate grain and couldn't find food for their families. Job describes in 15:18-19 the impossible farming conditions when the rain would wash their crops right out of the ground.
Today the archaeologist studies the evidence found in the garbage dumps of their caves and he wrongly concludes that man had evolved through the old stone age down to the present. all that he is actually seeing is the fact that man turned from a tool technology of iron and brass to develop a more expedient stone tool culture for their dire circumstances. He made them poorly at first, then better as he learned to use flint as a temporary substitute for metal tools. His improvement in making stone tools and later returning to the metal technology known since Genesis 4 is misinterpreted by the archaeologist as evidence of evolution! In reality, man couldn't keep the fires going effectively and couldn't mine the metals in order to make the tools first invented by the descendants of Cain (Gen. 4:22). Metals such as iron, lead, brass, silver, and gold repeatedly are mentioned in the book of Job. (Note 2:24-29; 6:12; 19:24; 20:24-25; 41:1,7; 42:11 and others).
But during the post-flood ice age, they began to use stone because it was so easily obtained and worked. By striking a couple of rocks together they could make a knife. When finished, they threw it away. When one needed another tool, he readily made another. One day I was exploring a little hillside on the road leading from Beersheba toward Ashdod on the coast of Israel. While others of my tour group were planting trees in the wilderness, as I mentioned earlier I picked up two very nice little flint knives. They are remarkably similar to another Pre-Columbian knife that I obtained from Echo Cliffs east of the Grand Canyon. Normally, similar patterns of development of stone technology developed in diverse areas. Nevertheless, occasionally a brilliant contributor among a people took the stone technology to heights never achieved by other peoples.
Never overlook the evidence that Job lived in a time of intense cold. God Himself in a conversation with Job refers to the day when the sea actually froze over (Job 38:30). "The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen." the Hebrew word translated "deep" here has reference to the sea. It is the same word found in Genesis 1:2 and in numerous other passages, almost always referring to the deep ocean. Which sea is this? We cannot tell. The Omniscient one could be referring to the polar regions. I have seen the sea frozen over for more than 100 miles out to the east of Greenland in the month of May. Or He could have been referring to a large local body of water like Lake Lisan which I have described as lying in the Jordan Rift. In any case, the sea could have frozen over only one time in history and that was during the Pleistocene, Biblical ice age! It was not about one million years ago but about 5,000 years ago.
When this fact is recognized, the impact of the many references to snow, ice, freezing, hail and storm in the book of Job become significant. Job speaks of violent storms. "And suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you" (1:19). Job describes this catastrophe which may overtake a wicked man.
"Terrors overtake him like a flood; A tempest steals him away in the night. The east wind carries him away and he is gone. It sweeps him out of his place. It hurls against him and does not spare; He flees desperately from its power" (27:20-22).
Rain is a remarkably common topic for a desert dweller in a land where rainfall today in some areas averages between one-half and four inches a year. Snow, ice and freezing will be observed frequently in a careful reading of the book. Compare 6:15-18; 37:6-11 and 38:26-30. Even in God's reference to the now apparently extinct creature called leviathan (41:1-34) and another called behemoth (40:15-24), the book appears to be pointing to its own antiquity and to the remarkable period in which Job lived. It is my untested opinion that the Hebrew plural noun behemoth may be referring to the giant hornless rhinoceros "Baluchitherium," fossils of which have been found in the near East where Job lived. It apparently became extinct through the climatic and human pressures of the Biblical ice age. The creature stood tall enough that a man easily (but unwisely) could have walked under its abdomen.
Leviathan very likely was one of the giant marine reptiles which had survived the Noahic flood as a creature well adapted to the sea. Skeletons of these giant, crocodiles have been found several places in Africa. I saw the 6 foot long skull of one in Niamey, Niger. Imagine how long he must have been! I estimated that this particular croc was over 30 feet long. Once again, it probably was the climate changes as the Biblical the ice age closed brought its extinction in the swift and very difficult movement of the several centuries of catastrophism which followed the Noahic flood. My observations of the huge Niger River bed left by the Biblical ice age flow of violent rain storms out of west central Africa agreed with the conclusions of scientists who hold that during the ice age the central part of the continent of Africa received enormous rainfall while the southern part actually was glaciated. The country of Chad largely is a giant lake bed. Lake Chad is but a frail remnant of the enormous lake basin which left its huge beaches in an area which now lies on the edge of the Sahara Desert. I have flown over this area in different directions repeatedly in my translation consultation work on four Tchadian languages with Bibles International.
In Kenya there also are beaches from the giant lakes which the enormous Biblical ice age precipitation produced in the African rift. Lake Naivasha, which I have examined, is today a large lake in the Rift Valley. As I remember, it lies about 600 feet below the giant beaches of the lake which covered many square miles in the day when Job lived near the same great rift valley where it passes between Israel and Jordan. In one location on great beach on the eastern side of the fossil lake there are many stone tools which have been fashioned by man migrating southward from the catastrophic, linguistic event which we call Babel. When I examined the walls of a more juvenile creek which sliced through the layers of the ancient beach, it became obvious to me that migrating man, who knew the technology of fashioning metal tools according to Genesis 4, was forced to turn to a stone tool technology under the long progression of events following the departure of the Noahic family from Mt. Ararat. Here on the beach of ancient Lake Naivasha and on the banks of another lake not many miles to the south migrating man paused where there was a good supply of volcanic rock which was well adapted to tool making. Man's art, left on rock walls and in the caves of the southern African Rift, plainly show that the climate of the area was vastly different than it is today. Post-Noahic flood man, migrating through the area, pictured many different kinds of animals which could not possibly live in the arid area today. At the gulch on the eastern shore of ancient Naivasha there are stone tools still protruding from the sides of the nearly vertical walls. I concluded that the tools and the tool making site were buried by a fierce flash flood which swept down from the eastern rim of the rift valley.
Much later, after the lake had retreated toward its present size, another flash flood from the same source produced a small but violent stream which now exposed the buried tools. At the lake bed to the south, where Leakey discovered about 1,000 man made stone digging tools and a few bolo stones, evidences of an entirely different scenario are preserved. Here migrating man camped by the lake and exploited a good source of volcanic rock for making digging tools. A veritable factory was in progress for there are digging tools in several stages of manufacture. I do not think that it is inappropriate to imagine a store by the Rift Valley migration route where travelers could barter for nicely shaped digging tools that were 6 to 9 inches long. After all, the migrants needed these to dig roots and chop the meat of an occasional kill as they continued traveling south. There actually is the shattered skeleton of a large animal near the tool factory. It showed evidences of having been chopped apart by tools like those which still lie in abundance at the place where they were manufactured. At this site it was a fierce volcanic ash eruption from one of the Rift Valley's many volcanoes which drove man out of the area and buried the factory by the migration highway from Babel out of business. The lake by the tool site and the surrounding area was covered by many feet of volcanic ash which largely has been removed by erosion from the greatly reduced precipitation of the area in the centuries which followed. It is fascinating to walk among the many hundreds of tools which still lie where they were dropped as migrating man, fleeing from the linguistic catastrophe at Babel, now was forced to flee from a local geological catastrophe.
A geological sidelight also may be seen along the ancient beach line of old Lake Naivasha. There is an enormous diatom deposit on the eastern shoreline. To me that indicated that the ancient lake, enormously enriched by the silicas of volcanic ash explosions, enabled this microscopic creature which collects silica for its beautiful shell, was able to produce its own explosive multiplication, literally filling the lake with the beautiful little creations whose skeletons now form a deposit that I remember as over 200 feet thick. A similar phenomenon lies northeast of Burney, California on the southeastern end of the Klamath Mountains where these begin to merge into the Sierras. Ice age lakes in that area, enormously enriched with silica by the explosions of Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen and hundreds of other volcanic vents that were exploding in the area, now contain beautiful white diatomite beds testifying of the violence of the day in which they lived, the somewhat extended day in which the west coast of the United States was being crunched up out of the eastern Pacific floor. In this area where I live we have great limestone beds, now often inclined eastward at 45 and more degrees. They appear to me to have been disturbed, uplifted and tilted when the great calcium beds of the stabilization period of mid-Noahic flood times were forced upward out of the sea because of abrupt plate movement pressures. And I conclude that the formation was only partially indurated when this movement began.
But it also appears that continuing movement, perhaps over several centuries, produced massive fractures roughly parallel to the present coast and then lesser fractures perpendicular to these. This limestone was deposited in the sea at least several centuries before the division of the continents produced their uplift, distortion and fracturing. And it probably was in the few centuries that followed that the ash falls in the inland lakes produced the remarkable diatom bloom evidenced there by the diatomite beds. And a similar scenario is indicated to me by the event series recorded in the great African Rift valley in Kenya, Israel/Jordan Syria and Turkey were I also have examined it. Man was in that rift valley while it still was fiercely active volcanically and while the pluvial violence of near equatorial regions was still very strong. That was not at the close of or even a part of the Noahic flood catastrophe. This is evidence of two more crucial, earth shaping catastrophes which followed the Noahic flood and must be recognized by creationists as distinct events.
Very few visitors who travel to Israel and Jordan recognize the evidences left by the powerful, Biblical ice age precipitation in the days of Job. They drive across ancient beaches in the edges of the great, 6,000 mile African Rift Valley as it passes through Bible lands. They drive along the shores of the remnant lakes which still lie in that valley without recognizing that the Biblical ice age could not possibly be part of the Noahic flood. Here too there is evidence that man had migrated to this area while the fierce rainfall and snowfall described in the Book of Job still was falling. But a careful examination of the Jordan Rift, as it is called in Biblical lands, will show that these shoreline beaches actually connect the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The beaches record the fact that ancient Lake Lisan, as it is called by geologists, was a major factor in those days of man's migration from the Tower of Babel. I have no doubt that much of the lake was still there in the days of Job for the Biblical evidence strongly suggests that the Biblical ice age was well into retreat by Job's day. Remember that Job's three counselors, Eliphaz the Temanite, Zophar the Naamathite and Bildad the Shuhite, were the sons of people who lived in caves and dug roots for food according to Job 30:1-15.
The book of Job perfectly fits into the retreat stages of the great, ice catastrophe which followed the Noahic flood and the five generations which lie between the flood and the division of the continents. It was the tensions of this very abrupt, post-Noahic flood division of the continents which ultimately produced the great African Rift valley which stretches from Tanzania to Mt. Ararat in Turkey. The fact that man was migrating southward from the Tower of Babel through the volcanically warmed Rift Valley during the violent rainfall of that area during the Biblical ice age should alert the creationist to the fact that it is impossible to make the division of the continents and the Biblical ice age a part of the close of the Noahic flood. The fact that Job and his counselors continually refer to the continuing atmospheric and geological violence of the period in which Job lived demonstrates that the division of the continents and the directly resulting Biblical ice age follow the Noahic flood by not less than 6 or more centuries. Suddenly my own conclusion that that righteous man Job actually began his life in the 6th generation after the Noahic flood fits the evidence remarkably well. My proposal that Job actually is Jobab, the 13th son of Joktan who was the brother of Peleg appears to have much evidence in its favor. The fact that every child named in the several generations following Peleg's birth is given a name which could have catastrophic overtones also appears to give supporting evidence.
A final piece of evidence which helps us to locate Job in Genesis history is the final statement of the book. Job lived to see the fourth generation of his offspring after his great trial (Job 42:16-17). This suggests that the length of the generation now was decreasing rapidly because of the removal of the pre-flood canopy. This great shield of water vapor above the atmosphere had protected prediluvian man from the high energy radiation which now steadily enters our atmosphere. It made possible the great generations which averaged over 900 years as described in Genesis 5.
The book of Job is a fantastic book. It is accurate in all that it says about earth's history. If we will use this book, we an understand so much better what happened in early Biblical history. Furthermore, an appreciation of the remarkable statements made in this book about events in the retreat of the Biblical ice age will do much to expose the chronological errors of those who look at the physical record of earth's history through the lenses provided by evolutionary occultists.
Copyright ©1996 by Bernard E. Northrup, ThD. This file may be copied in its entirety, but it is distributed on the understanding that it will not be used for commercial purposes.
Dr. Bernard E. Northrup, ThD (northrup@brigadoon.com)
861 Redwood Blvd.
Redding, California 96003
September 9, 1996.