So the Earth was flooded? Where did all the water come from and where did it go?

Answer 1

LOL
Good question. I've asked this a few times myself. You won't get one single rational answer.
Why? Because the story of the flood is just that; a story. It's taken, almost verbatim, from the story of Gilgamesh.

Answer 2

For the Earth to be fully flooded, atmospheric pressure after the flood would go off the charts if it went into the air. We would all be dead now from the pressure. If it went into the Earth, it would literally dissolve the continents. We could not be communicating with one another, there would be no land at all. What isn't appreciated is how much volume would be in adding five to six miles of water on top of the existing surface. Either as a solid or a liquid, if the planet held that much water, we could not be.

Logically, there never was a flood, at least not the Noah flood. The bible is just repeating tribal stories that are fanciful at best.

Answer 3

For the imbeciles saying "from the sky" read a science book. An unbelievably tiny percentage of water on the earth is in the atmosphere at any one time. Almost all of it is within the seas (98%). Of the remaining 2% fresh water, 69% is in the ice caps, 30% is groundwater, 0.3% is surface water (lakes etc), 0.9% is in permafrost and 0.04% is in the atmosphere. That's 0.04% OF 2% - so 0.08% of water on Earth is in the atmosphere. Barely anything.

The Earth is a closed system as far as water is concerned. The 326 million trillion gallons we've got is all we're ever going to get. There simply isn't enough water on the earth to raise sea levels more than a few tens of metres - hardly enough to wipe out all life on the planet - and certainly not enough to cover the earth for the 3 miles ABOVE SEA LEVEL (seas are pretty deep themselves) necesary to cover all land - i.e. mount everest.

The atmosphere simply couldn't hold that amount of water for it to fall as rain, nor could the land - water can only go so far down before it becomes steam (which is how geysers work) - and there can only be so much before the land becomes quicksand.

Answer 4

The actual "biblical flood" occurred when sections of the Mediterranean Sea broke through to the Black Sea (a natural occurrence) and caused flooding in the nearby areas. The massive migration southward is the probable cause for the Noah story in the bible.

The entire earth was not flooded.

Answer 5

There are various views on this.
One is that all the water was subesequently absorbed by aquifiers or locked up in the ice caps.

Personally my view is that it was not global, but local. Humans were living in a small area at the time. Given the size of the Ark and the amount of water actually available on earth, this makes much more sense to me (although it might as well have been the whole world as far as humanity was concerned)

Answer 6

look closer
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And the downpour upon the earth went on for forty days and forty nights.

Where did it go? You know, science lays claim to a "great ice age" for much of the geological "evidence" that is just as easily evidence of a "great flood". The narrow mindset that only massive "glaciers" moved rock and earth, are entirely omissive of the fact that water in large amounts also move rock and earth. While they readily acknowledge that much of the earth was once under an "ocean" they refuse to admit it is evidence of the "deluge".
My guess as to where the water went?
The weight of this water pushed earth down to form the deep oceans, and at the same time, pushed land mass upwards to form the great mountain ranges.

Answer 7

if your talking about a very long time ago. the earths polar icecaps, were very big at that time. not like the ones today these ice caps were huge and as the earth got hotter the ice caps melted and the water flooded earth. the earth changed and formed into the world we live in today and the water vaporized and shifted into the oceans and seas.

Answer 8

If you believe the bible, rain had never fallen on the earth, there were no real bodies of water, water just came from the earth, but appearantly, something in the atmosphere changed and this water evaporated into the sky, then fell all at once... Exaclty how is debated.

Answer 9

It came from Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Some was pumped back into the lake, and some seeped into the ground.

Answer 10

I just want to point out that the sky doesn't hold that much water, and neither does groundwater. If all the vapor in the sky condensed and fell, it would NOT amount to very much.