National Geographic Makes False Assumptions About Noah’s Flood

In National Geographic’s Lost Treasures of the Bible episode two, archaeologists dig into potential evidence for the Genesis flood. But was their investigation thorough and unbiased?

Genesis 6–9 describes the worldwide judgment of the flood of Noah’s day. The Bible tells us that the fountains of the great deep burst forth and it rained 40 days and 40 nights covering the whole globe with water (Genesis 7:12). All living things God had made were destroyed except for Noah, his family, and the animals that were brought aboard the ark.

National Geographic treats the first five books of the Bible—including Genesis—as later writings. Because of this, earlier sources outside of the biblical account are treated as superior and more reliable. They also believe these five books were compiled by several authors—a hypothesis that undermines Scripture’s authority.

In this episode, National Geographic opened the program with a summary of the biblical account but quickly turned their attention from the Bible and the details it recorded and focused instead on the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian kings list, and Eridu Genesis as primary sources of information.

National Geographic assumes that the biblical account of the flood was derived from earlier myths. Since National Geographic holds to a naturalistic worldview that rejects the supernatural, they seek to fit the archaeological and geological evidence into their own framework. They assume that the flood of Noah was not global because these ancient texts describe vessels that would not withstand a flood of that proportion. However, the biblical account is very clear and precise in its wording that the floodwaters covered the whole earth, and not a living creature was left that was outside the ark.

According to the secular timeline, the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia existed before the biblical date of the flood. Genesis 10–11 document the origin of all civilizations as they spread from the area of Mesopotamia after the flood and the tower of Babel event. We would therefore look to the fossil record that lies all over the globe as our evidence for a global flood before the establishment of major civilizations. However, because of their greatly inflated dates for the geological layers, as well as ancient sources and sites, National Geographic does not look in the right places or time for the evidence of Noah’s flood.

The book of Genesis is foundational to our understanding of the world and its origins. Genesis provides us the answer to “why” the world is the way it is today. If you reject the historicity of the supernatural, biblical creation account, then the rest of Scripture is undermined.

The authorship of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is attributed to Moses who wrote the events following the Exodus event. National Geographic does not agree with this understanding of authorship. Instead, they claim multiple, later authors had a hand in writing down these accounts. This theory of how the Pentateuch is written, though unnamed by National Geographic, is known as the Documentary Hypothesis. This hypothesis undermines the authority of God’s Word and directly contradicts what other biblical authors believed about the authorship of the Pentateuch. Joshua, who took over leading the people after the death of Moses, wrote that Moses had indeed written down the Book of the Law of Moses: “Just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, ‘an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.’ And they offered on it burnt offerings to the LORD and sacrificed peace offerings.” (Joshua 8:31)

Within the field of archaeology, I am surprised that there are still archaeologists who believe that Moses couldn’t have written down the Book of the Law after he led the Israelites out of Egypt. Numerous writing systems existed at the time the Exodus occurred, and Moses was educated and brought up in the household of Pharoah. Why would it be unreasonable for him to write down what the Holy Spirit inspired him to write and share with the Israelites? It is not far-fetched; in fact, there is evidence of alphabetic script that very well could have been used by Moses and the Israelites. The Bible is God’s precious Word, and it sheds light on the truth of the origins of the world, why there is suffering and death, and God’s plan.

This episode is a prime example of how our presuppositions determine where we look for our data as well as our understanding of the data. National Geographic stopped short of completing the investigation of Noah’s great flood and dismissed the biblical account as being a later adaptation of ancient Near Eastern myths.

[TBC: for the full article and footnotes, see:

https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/national-geographic-false-assumptions-flood/ .]