Shalom, I was fascinated by the article written a few months ago (in Yated) about proofs of the Mabbul from the bedrock etc. I was wondering if in Eretz Yisrael the ground looks the same, because in Gemara Zevachim there is a machlokes if the water flooded Eretz Yisrael as well or not. I was also wondering if this article as well as other similar articles are printed in any of your books.
Thank you,
M.B.
RESPONSE:
Thanks for reaching out.
The article is planned to be included, iy”H, in Awaken Your Emunah Volume 3, which I’m currently working on. The first two volumes are available through Judaica Press.
What I can tell you is that the geological features in Eretz Yisrael tell us a lot. Thousands of feet of marine sedimentary rock cover most of the country. The Judean Hills, including the mountains around Yerushalayim, consist of hundreds of feet of limestone packed with marine fossils. The Makhtesh Ramon crater in the Negev exposes thousands of feet of layered rock with mass fossil deposits, including a dramatic “Ammonite Wall” that looks very much like evidence of catastrophic burial or tectonic movement. Even Har Hermon, the highest point in the country, is composed of limestone containing marine fossils.
So the geological evidence is basically there. How it fits with the machlokes in Zevachim is something I have to research more. There’s a middle position — that rain did not fall directly on Eretz Yisrael and the trees there weren’t destroyed, but the floodwaters from elsewhere necessarily overflowed into it, since there are no physical barriers separating Eretz Yisrael from the rest of the world. So the waters came, but without the same violent action from above and below that produced the worldwide destruction elsewhere. It’s a subject I’d like to study more deeply.
It could make a worthwhile article on its own, actually. Thank you for planting the seed.
Kol tuv,
Yaakov Astor
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