Where did the water come from?

by Tas Walker

The Bible tells us that water for the Flood came from under the earth. We read in Genesis 7:11 that ‘all the springs of the great deep burst forth’. Possibly water came from the earth’s mantle. Geologists calculate that the rocks of the earth’s mantle still contain within their mineral structure enough water to fill the oceans ten times over, or more. Geologists also recognize that material has come out of the outer part of the mantle, which they call the ‘depleted mantle’.

The mantle of the earth is over 2800 km thick. The upper mantle is known as the 'depleted mantle' becasue geologists believe material once came out from it onto the surface of the earth. There is still enough water in the mantle to fill the oceans ten times over, or more. Diagram from Wikipedia.

The Bible also tells us in Genesis 7:11 that water came from the sky: ‘the floodgates of the heavens were opened’. This was not normal rain because it continued for 40 days until the ark began to float, and the water kept increasing on the earth for five months until it covered all the high mountains.

How could it rain for so long? We don’t know for sure but creation scientists have many proposals:

• Collapse of a thick water-vapour canopy which surrounded the pre-Flood earth high in the atmosphere. This is unlikely to have provided all the water, but it may explain some of it.
• Jets of water shooting high into the atmosphere from under the earth and falling back as rain.
• Intense cyclones called hypercanes, that developed over warm ocean water, heated by underwater volcanic eruptions.
• Water dumped on the earth by a swarm of comets. Craters on the moon point to an intense solar system bombardment, and some creationists suggest this happened at the time of the Flood
• A combination of these processes.

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