The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

I think this theory forwarded the possibility that the earth was covered by a floating layer of water. Genesis 1:7-8 I think was used to postulate this theory. It then went on to explain how a greenhouse affect could have caused an environment where dinosaurs could have thrived.

Sometime later, I read somewhere that this theory was opposed and eventually shelved.

Wondering if anyone here knows what the latest thoughts are on this, please.

God bless.

I know that Immanuel Velikovsky, in his 1950 publication of Worlds in Collision, posited the theory that the earth was originally surrounded by a cloud canopy which blocked most of the sun's UV rays, explaining why the antediluvian generations of man lived so much longer than those which followed. In addition to his scientific arguments, Velikovsky cited a number of anecdotal traditions in his first book, which led most scientists to dismiss everything he wrote there. He followed up with Earth in Upheaval in 1955, wherein he made the same scientific arguments but left out the anecdotal/anthropological stuff. I can't say where the scientific community is on this now, but my understanding is that they gradually took Velikovsky's theories much more seriously than they initially did.

_________________
"The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him." (John 14:21)

Forum Code of Conduct
The Bible NETWork Doctrinal Statement
The NET Bible Study Environment
Pastors Pro-Life Resource Center
Biblical Eldership

The version of canopy theory in which the earth was surrounded by enough water to drown the globe to the height of Everest (or Ararat) was discredited by calculations which showed that there would have been darkness underneath it like that of the deep oceans, and that the pressure resulting from it at the earth's surface would have been enough to squash every living thing flat.

I've never met anyone who takes Velikovsky particularly seriously, btw — this quote from Wikipedia (Immanuel Velikovsky) sums up much of the reaction on the astronomical side:

The Bible says:

Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. (Genesis 1:6-8 )

The claim is made that this "expanse" or "firmament" (KJV) is a description of the canopy. The theory seems to hold up in the description of the Genesis flood:
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. (Genesis 7:11:).

Another biblical problem with the water canopy theory is what the Bible said happened to the waters of the flood. According to Genesis, the water receded (which is impossible if it came from a vapor canopy) or is it ??

The theory however is also seen on other planets in the form
of other similar canopy type situations. To view this we would need
some answers we do not have, like how thick was it, how deep was it.
Other planets has mists and vapors that may have been a solid before.
Our own clouds are basically water chemically altered slightly .
Imagine taking all the clouds of the Earth today and sucking every drop of water from them and putting it in a container? That Container would be huge 1000's miles wide and long.
So is the leap of a canopy that far from possibility? There is evidence of a possibility. Therefore we should aknowledge that it could be so?


Pastor Paul

_________________
I just want to see the light.
I also do not want to lose my site.
Rooted In God, Fruitful for Life.

No.

According to the Genesis account, the flood resulted not only from "the floodgates of heaven" being opened, but also from "the fountains of the great deep" bursting open. So it is not necessary or consistent with Scripture to attribute all of the great flood to water held in a cloud canopy.

_________________
"The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him." (John 14:21)

Forum Code of Conduct
The Bible NETWork Doctrinal Statement
The NET Bible Study Environment
Pastors Pro-Life Resource Center
Biblical Eldership

The Bible said it so . .

IMO The objection that so much water would be impossible to see thru and no place to go won't hold water(pardon the pun). Nothing in the scripture says how much water there was in the expanse above. The floods came from below and from above. could have been just a thick cloud, could have been more.

also the process sets the light coming to be in advance of the luminaries being visible. Perhaps a gradual clearing up of the expanse? then too the fact that no rain had yet occurred but a mist appeared at one point---hmm? all in Gen1

Still studying.

To elaborate slightly, the mass of water in the atmosphere at the moment is estimated at 1.27 × 10¹⁶ kg. Condensed into the liquid state, that would take up 1.27 × 10¹³ m³, which would form a cube roughly 23,300m on each side — that's 23.3 km × 23.3 km × 23.3 km, or 14.6 miles × 14.6 miles × 14.6 miles. If you wanted that water in a block 1,000 miles long by 1,000 miles wide, it would be a shade under 5m thick — call it 16' 3".

That surface area of the earth is about 5.1 × 10⁸ km². 1.27 × 10¹³ m³ of water, which is 1.27 × 10⁴ km³, would form a layer of liquid 2.5cm deep when spread that far, or almost exactly one inch, and if it all ran off into the oceans, it would raise sea level by about 1⅓".

The sort of plausibilty argument you're putting forward, Paul, is shown to be deceptive when confronted with facts and a few simple sums. I appreciate that you mean well, but Christians in general make as much of an ass of themselves with this sort of thing as I would if (on the basis of sublime English ignorance) I started commenting about baseball.

And taking account of the more recent posts, if the water for a global flood didn't come from this supposed canopy, where under the earth's surface is there for it all to have come from?

I'd prefer, myself, to argue the case for a Mesopotamian regional Noah's Flood first of all from the text of scripture itself (as you say, the Bible said it, so...), but these calculations make a jolly good supporting act.

You're missing the point about the darkness beneath the purported canopy, as well, lowjoy. If there was enough water up there to form an appreciable part of the sort of global flood a lot of people talk about, then there would have to have been an awful lot of darkness up until Noah was an old man... which doesn't really square with plants growing, and all that.

_________________
The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.

The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society also claim the the singular name of God is "Jehovah". Any truthful translator knows that this is a combination of two names/title.

Ahhh....please forgive my non topical ramblings. Perhaps fodder for discussion on another thread.

Blessings,
Randy

We do have that publication but not in a digital format so here is a quote from 'Insight on the Scriptures" also by Watchtower B&T Society. In includes additional quotes so I hope I am not guilty of breaking some law.

The Floodwaters. It has been said that if all the moisture in the atmosphere were suddenly released as rain it would not amount to even a couple of inches if spread over the earth’s surface. So from what source was this vast deluge of Noah’s day? According to the Genesis account, God said to Noah: “Here I [Jehovah] am bringing the deluge [or, “heavenly ocean”; Heb., mab·bul′] of waters upon the earth.” (Ge 6:17, ftn) Describing what happened, the next chapter says: “All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” (Ge 7:11) So overwhelming was the Deluge that “all the tall mountains that were under the whole heavens came to be covered.”—Ge 7:19.
Where did this “heavenly ocean” come from? The Genesis account of creation tells how on the second “day” Jehovah made an expanse about the earth, and this expanse (called “Heaven”) formed a division between the waters below it, that is, the oceans, and the waters above it. (Ge 1:6-8) The waters suspended above the expanse evidently remained there from the second “day” of creation until the Flood. This is what the apostle Peter was talking about when he recounted that there “were heavens from of old and an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water by the word of God.” Those “heavens” and the waters above and beneath them were the means that God’s word called into operation, and “by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water.” (2Pe 3:5, 6) Various explanations have been offered as to how the water was held aloft until the Flood and as to the processes that resulted in its falling. But these are only speculative. The Bible says simply that God made the expanse with waters above it and that he brought the Deluge. His almighty power could easily accomplish it.
Since, as the Genesis account says, “all the tall mountains” were covered with water, where is all that water now? Evidently it is right here on the earth. It is believed that there was a time when the oceans were smaller and the continents were larger than they are now, as is evidenced by river channels extending far out under the oceans. It should also be noted that scientists have stated that mountains in the past were much lower than at present, and some mountains have even been pushed up from under the seas. As to the present situation, it is said that “there is ten times as much water by volume in the ocean as there is land above sea level. Dump all this land evenly into the sea, and water would cover the entire earth, one and one-half miles deep.” (National Geographic, January 1945, p. 105) So, after the floodwaters fell, but before the raising of mountains and the lowering of seabeds and before the buildup of polar ice caps, there was more than enough water to cover “all the tall mountains,” as the inspired record says.—Ge 7:19.
Effect on the Earth. With the Deluge great changes came, for example, the life span of humans dropped very rapidly. Some have suggested that prior to the Flood the waters above the expanse shielded out some of the harmful radiation and that, with the waters gone, cosmic radiation genetically harmful to man increased. However, the Bible is silent on the matter. Incidentally, any change in radiation would have altered the rate of formation of radioactive carbon-14 to such an extent as to invalidate all radiocarbon dates prior to the Flood.
With the sudden opening of the ‘springs of the watery deep’ and “the floodgates of the heavens,” untold billions of tons of water deluged the earth. (Ge 7:11) This may have caused tremendous changes in earth’s surface. The earth’s crust is relatively thin (estimated at between 30 km [20 mi] and 160 km [100 mi] thick), stretched over a rather plastic mass thousands of kilometers in diameter. Hence, under the added weight of the water, there was likely a great shifting in the crust. In time new mountains evidently were thrust upward, old mountains rose to new heights, shallow sea basins were deepened, and new shorelines were established, with the result that now about 70 percent of the surface is covered with water. This shifting in the earth’s crust may account for many geologic phenomena, such as the raising of old coastlines to new heights. It has been estimated by some that water pressures alone were equal to “2 tons per square inch,” sufficient to fossilize fauna and flora quickly.—See The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, by D. Patten, 1966, p. 62.

I know I'm guilty of introducing the idea to this thread in the first place, but there are other ones in which the globality or regionality of Noah's Flood has been discussed in its own right, e.g. most recently The Flood. I'll simply say here that if one follows the translation options that lead to a regional flood reading of Gen. 6-9, there's no need to hypothesise a completely different earth to the one we know (which is what all the theorising about canopies and the springs of the deep amounts to). That language can instead be seen as a colourful way of describing the ordinary features of the planet, albeit (in the Noah story) ones engaged in wholly extraordinary actions.

I think that this therory is corect because not only did the "cloud" protect against sunlight it probably did something to the quality of air. this might be a reason people lived so long before the flood.I think the uv rays play a significant role in life expectancy. uv rays are very harmfull.

_________________
The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.