This response from Douglas McKelvy on our article "How Long Was Noah's Flood?" is presented to you below without alteration.  He provided a lot of research on the topic.  We do not intend to comment further on the duration of Noah's Flood other than to say that this issue shows the problems with different versions of the Bible.  Which one do you believe?  It seems that the older version would be more accurate because they haven't been through as many translations, but that is up to you to decide.  We thank Douglas for his efforts on this subject.

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Okay, armed with your notes I went back to the Genesis flood narrative to see what could be sorted out. There are several things I noticed this time through, though it required some of the tedious sort of research that I don’t usually willingly indulge in. :)

My first observation based on your notes was that you’re using the king james version of the bible, which in and of itself might muddle meaning sometimes because the nuances of a lot of words and phrases have changed significantly since the 1600’s. The bible I initially read the passage from was a new international version. Reading a more recent translation seemed to immediately clear up some, though not all, of the ambiguity. To wrestle with the more problematic parts I looked up some of the original Hebrew words and compared them to both the king james and the NIV translations.

Here’s what I gleaned:

Genesis 7:11
It is two months and seventeen days into Noah’s 600th year of life. On that day the rain begins to fall, and some sort of subterranean water source also seems to be released. (“all the springs of the great deep burst forth.” NIV, “were all the fountains of the great deep broken up.” KJV)

Genesis 7:12
“And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.” NIV “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” KJV

These initial forty days are the span of time during which rain fell, the subterranean water sources flowed upward, and the water level continued to increase. The meaning of 7:12 seems clear enough: Rain fell for forty days.

Genesis 7:17
“And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.” KJV “For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water.” NIV

The word translated “flood” in verse seventeen though, has an interesting and telling nuance of meaning in the original Hebrew text. It has the connotation of water flowing, being brought forth, not of water merely standing. The NIV translation “the flood kept coming” seems to be closer to the original intent of the author. He’s saying that for forty days the water sources from above and below continued flowing so that the water on the earth became increasingly deeper. This is an important distinction, as we’ll see in verse 24.

Genesis 7:24
“And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days” (KJV) “The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.” (NIV)

The word here that is translated “prevailed upon” in the KJV and “flooded” in the NIV is a completely different word from the one that is translated “flood” in verse 17. This new word has the connotation of  “exceeding, being great, being mighty, being stronger than, etc.” In choosing this word, the author seems to be saying “In the struggle for supremacy between the waters and the earth, the water was completely dominant for months even after the rains stopped. There was no land in sight.”

So you have forty days of rain, geysers, and rising flood levels before the “flow” stops. But when the water sources are finally quieted, you’re still left with all this water completely dominating the earth. Based on the differences of meaning of the words in the original text, there no longer seems to be contradiction between the forty days in verse seventeen, and the 150 days in verse 24.

Verses 1 and 2 of chapter 8 backtrack momentarily from the summary statement at the end of chapter 7 (The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days) in order to fill in a bit more information about what happened during those 150 days; God remembered Noah, and sent a wind that blew across the water and began to reduce the water level--which verse 20 of chapter 7 in the NIV tells us had peaked at 20 feet higher than the mountaintops.

Genesis 8:3
“And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.” KJV
“The waters receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred andfifty days the water had gone down,” NIV

The word translated “abated” in the KJV does not at all mean disappeared. It means “decreased” or “made lower.” So what the author of Genesis is saying here is simply that by the end of the 150 days, the water level had gone down quite a bit. This seems to eliminate any perceived contradiction between this verse and those that came before it.

Genesis 8:4
“And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ar’-a-rat.” KJV
“and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” NIV

You’ll see that what the KJV translates as two sentences in verses three and four, the NIV translates as one continual thought: After 150 days the water had gone down and the ark came to rest on the mountains. This is probably a little more correct, because the author seems to be intending to connect those two thoughts. It is because the water level has been falling that the ark, on the 150th day, finally comes to rest on a mountain top. Remember that, according to the text, the water level had at one point been twenty feet higher than the mountain tops. Given that premise, it makes sense that the waters would have to abate significantly before the boat would come to rest against one of the peaks. So for months the water level has been slowly receding, and now, at 150 days, the boat finally bumps up against a still-submerged mountain like a Mississippi riverboat stranding on a submerged sandbar or a sailing vessel running aground on an unseen reef.

Genesis 8:5
“And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.”  KJV
“The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.” NIV

This now makes sense. The water level was twenty feet higher than the peaks. It slowly recedes to the point that the ark--based on water displacement by the vessel--runs aground on a peak that is as yet still submerged. There the ark sits as the water level continues to slowly fall. By the 224th day (You said 253rd, but I think you might have calculated wrong there as you started from ten months thirty days rather than ten months one day.) the mountaintops in the area have at last become visible.

Genesis 8:6
“And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:” KJV “After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark...” NIV

This is clearly part of the same narrative sequence the author has been laying out progressively. There is nothing in the text to indicate that he is returning to the forty days of initial rain and rising water levels. We have just read about the span of days between the ark running aground and the tops of the mountains becoming visible. Forty days after that day, which is cataloged with such meticulous specificity, the author tells us that Noah sent out the raven and the dove. So this would probably be day 264. Seven days after that (day 271) he sends the dove out again and it returns with the olive branch. Seven days later (day 278) the dove is sent out and does not return.

Genesis 8:8 and part of 8:9
“Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground...and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth...” KJV
“Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But...there was water over all the surface of the earth.” NIV

Noah is still holed up in the boat at the top of the mountain. He doesn’t know how far the water level has gone down so he sends out the birds as a test. The word translated “abated” or “receded” in this verse is an entirely different word from the word that was translated “abated” in chapter 8 verse 3. That word meant to decrease or make lower. This word means to make light or make small. So, as in 8:3, Noah had known for some time that the water level was decreasing. Now he’s wondering if the amount of water that remains is finally small enough that they can come out of the boat and start their lives again.

In fact, the word “face” or “surface” in both verses is the same Hebrew word, meaning in both cases “the visible side or surface of a thing.” So he’s wondering basically, can you see any ground yet? There is a distinction between the word translated “earth” and the word translated “ground” here, but I couldn’t get a handle on why the author made that distinction or even what the distinction really is in the original language. One seemed to allow more specificity as in “soil” while the other allowed more generality as in “world,” but both could encompass most things in between such as “earth,” “land,” “country,” etc. All of that to say that there is probably something a bit more specific being communicated here than we’re able to discern in these translations.

Genesis 8:11
“...so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” KJV “...Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.” NIV

The word here translated “abated” or “receded” is the same word we found in 8:8. So here, the dove has returned with an olive branch. This new growth of plant life indicates to Noah that the waters on  the surface of the ground have indeed been “made small.” There is some land down there that is no longer covered by water. Note that neither the context nor the word choice indicates that all of the water was entirely gone.

Genesis 8:13
“And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.” KJV
“By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.” NIV

This is the 314th day. Now, at last, the waters are no longer standing on the face, on the “visible side or surface” of the ground.

Genesis 8:14
“And in the second month, on the seventh and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.” KJV
“By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.” NIV

So here we are, 370 days or so into the ordeal, and the flood waters are at last fully gone. The word in 8:14 here that is translated “dried” or “completely dry” is an entirely different word from the one translated “dry” or “dried up” in verse 13, just one verse before. This new word is something altogether different that actually means primarily, “to be ashamed,” but is here used idiomatically to mean “utterly dried up, totally and completely,” as in “by this day the floodwaters had completely failed and were no more in the soil.” Note this added distinction: The previous verse was specifically referring to the visible surface of the ground and this verse conspicuously leaves that phrase out. We all know that after a heavy rain the standing water recedes into the ground so that it’s no longer visible on the surface, but if you step on the wrong patch you’ll find it’s still soggy and oozy underneath because the water level is just below the surface. That was the case in verse 13. Here in fourteen the author is making a clear distinction to tell us that now the water hadn’t just receded below the visible surface of the ground, but that the soil, even if you dug down a ways, was finally dry--an important and noteworthy point for agrarians restarting from
scratch.

After my further study and ponderings, I would have to respectfully take contention with the scenario you hypothesized in your summary which was as follows:

40 days, length of flood - Verse 7:17
47 days, dove discovers land - Verses 8:10-11
150 days, waters were abated - Verse 8:3
253 days, to see tops of mountains - Verse 8:5
314 days, waters dried up - Verse 8:13
370 days, earth dried - Verse 8:14

And then your verbalization of the story:

“The flood lasted for 40 days until the dove discovers land on the 47th day. But then, it wasn’t until 150 days that all the waters were abated. Then on the 150th day, the ark mysteriously came to rest on Mt. Ararat instead of a lower altitude. It was a miracle that the ark landed on the mountain because all the waters were abated already. For some reason, nobody could see the tops of the mountains until the 253rd day because of the water, even though it was long gone and the ark had landed. Finally, at 314 days the water was all dried up, but the earth wasn’t dry until 370 days. It’s another miracle that the earth wasn’t dry until 56 days after the water was all dried up.”

Based on my reading in the NIV and further study of some of the original words, it seems pretty clear to me that the author’s intention was to communicate a story that went like this:

The rain, subterranean water flows, and rising water levels lasted for forty days, after which point the earth was covered with standing water to a depth of  about 20 feet over the mountain tops. At some point after the forty days of rain, God sent a wind to begin to dry the water up. The water level then gradually receded until, on the 150th day, it was low enough that the ark ran aground on the peak of a still-submerged mountain. (And, incidentally, the text doesn’t say specifically that it was Mt. Ararat, it says it was on the mountains of Ararat. The word is plural and refers to a range rather than a single mountain.) The water level continued to abate, so that by the 224th day, a number of mountain peaks were at last visible. After that, the water level continued its same, gradual decrease for another forty days, at which point Noah sends out the raven and the dove. Seven days later he sends the dove out again and it returns with the olive branch, so Noah knows that the water no longer completely covers the ground. By the 314th day, there was no longer even any water standing on the surface of the ground, and by the 370th day, or so, the soil itself, even below the surface, was completely dried out and returned to a normal state.

This would put the dates as follows:

40 days, length of rain and rising water level - Verse 7:17 41-149 days, water dominating all land, but gradually receding - Verses 8:1-3
150 days, waters have abated enough that the ark runs aground on a submerged peak - Verse 8:4
224 days, tops of mountains are visible- Verse 8:5
264 days, Noah sends out dove - Verse 8:6
271 days, dove finds land - Verse 8:10-11
278 days, dove doesn’t return - Verse 8:12
314 days, there is no more standing water covering the ground’s surface - Verse 8:13
370 days, the ground is utterly and completely dry, finally having returned to a pre-flood state - Verse 8:14

Note that for your interpretation of the sequence of events you have to wrest verses 6-12 of chapter eight from their position in the chronological narrative, and place them before verse 24 of chapter seven. I see no evidence to indicate that this was the author’s intent. The contextual, logical, and etymological evidences all seem to argue that it should fall chronologically in the narrative just where it does. I don’t see any justification for reordering the chronological narrative at that point. Especially when to do so renders an otherwise coherent passage nonsensical.

I think in reading any text, an ethical and scholarly approach demands that one read with real intention to understand what the author intended to communicate. Whether I like or agree with it is a secondary matter to be dealt with afterward. In this case, given the presuppositions of the framework within which the entire story rests, the narrative does seem to hold together chronologically, and is actually strengthened by the meticulous and progressive recording of noteworthy date markers. It has coherent, internal consistency in that regard. To admit that, of course, is not the same as saying one believes that the text is historical fact.

--Douglas