Division of the Continents After Noah (9 December, 2014, 17 Kislev, 5775)
Contents:
1. Peleg and Division
2. Division of the Continents
3. Pangea, Extracts from Wikipedia.
4. The Zohar and Pangea
5. Some Speculation. A New Explanation for the Deluge?
===============================
===============================
In Genesis we are told about the Tower of Babel where the languages of mankind were divided from each other.
Genesis 11:
9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
In the same chapter we hear of the birth of Peleg.
Genesis 11:
16 When Eber had lived for thirty-four years, he became the father of Peleg...
The name Peleg in Hebrew connotes Division.
Previously Peleg had already been recalled amongst the Descendants of Shem.
Genesis 10:
25 To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg,* for in his days the earth was divided....
cf.
1-Chronicles 1:
19 To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided), and the name of his brother Joktan.
===============================
===============================
2. Division of the Earth
The Division of the earth mentioned here apparently means the confounding of the languages at the Tower of Babel [Babylon] as shown above (Genesis 11:9).
A modern idea (attributed to "Creationists"?) suggests that the separation of the Continental Masses also occurred in the time of Peleg and was therefore associated with him.
Scientists say this took place 100s of millions of years ago but obviously they are mistaken.
The idea is that they may be right about what happened but wrong about when.
===============================
===============================
3. Pangea, Extracts from Wikipedia.
Pangaea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extracts:
Pangaea .. was a supercontinent ...forming about 300 million years ago[2] and beginning to rift around 200 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configurations.[3] The single global ocean which surrounded Pangaea is accordingly named Panthalassa.
The name Pangaea is derived from Ancient Greek, pan ( ) meaning "entire," and Gaia ( ) meaning "Earth." The name was coined during a 1927 symposium discussing Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. In his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), first published in 1915, he postulated that all the continents had at one time formed a single supercontinent which he called the "Urkontinent", before later breaking up and drifting to their present locations.
The distribution of fossils across the continents is one line of evidence pointing to the existence of Pangaea.
Fossil evidence for Pangaea includes the presence of similar and identical species on continents that are now great distances apart. .. similarly, the freshwater reptile Mesosaurus has only been found in localized regions of the coasts of Brazil and West Africa.[9]
Additional evidence for Pangaea is found in the geology of adjacent continents, including matching geological trends between the eastern coast of South America and the western coast of Africa.
Paleomagnetic study of apparent polar wandering paths also support the theory of a super-continent. Geologists can determine the movement of continental plates by examining the orientation of magnetic minerals in rocks; when rocks are formed, they take on the magnetic properties of the Earth and indicate in which direction the poles lie relative to the rock. ..
The continuity of mountain chains also provide evidence for Pangea. One example of this is the Appalachian Mountains chain which extends from the northeastern United States to the Caledonides of Ireland, Britain, Greenland, and Scandinavia.[12]
...The break-up of Pangaea continues today in the Red Sea Rift and East African Rift.
Peleg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peleg
"And the Earth was divided"
A theory current in some modern creationist schools of thought interprets this verse to suggest that Peleg lived at the time the continent of Pangaea split into modern continents,[4] although some other creationist geologists contend that such an event had happened during the Flood, five generations before Peleg.[5] Although creation.com, a creationist website, argues against this contention.[6]
===============================
===============================
4. The Zohar and Pangea
The Zohar is a book of Biblical Exegesis, Jewish legends and mystical traditions. It first appeared in public in the 1200s CE in Spain. There are disputes concerning its antiquity but it obviously contains material dating from ancient times.
The Zohar Chadash 12:1 on
Genesis 1:
9 And God said, 'Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so.
# It was taught, one actual land came out of [or released] the waters and from this came the seven continents.. #[Hebrew: # Tana. Erets echad mamash hotsiau ha-mayim, immenah hithavu shiva artsot #
We found a few websites that speak of this matter but they were all in Hebrew. If anyone comes across one in English please let us know,
The WebSite
http://daat-emet.com/?page_id=92
identifies the seven continents as Europe, Asia, South America, North America, Africa, Antarctica, Greenland.
Other sites that discuss the issue (in Hebrew) with additional sources include:
http://www.fxp.co.il/showthread.php?t=6880731
http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/hebrewbooks_org_50483_29.pdf
http://www.hidabroot.org/he/article/628
http://www.fxp.co.il/showthread.php?t=6387509
Below is an animation of the Pangea process.
Pangea animation 03.gif
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A5:Pangea_animation_03.gif
===============================
===============================
5. Some Speculation. A New Explanation for the Deluge?
Somewhere there may be a source linking Pangea with Peleg.
Concerning the Deluge Scripture says:
Genesis 7:
11 In the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
We see above that the Flood was brought about by rain from above and the release of underground reservoirs of water.
The Zohar above may be understood to say that the seven continents were formed when the earth released its waters.
Supposing that when the earth was created it consisted of one land mass, one continental shell covering a great mass of water, like a gigantic bublle filled with liquid.
When the water was released it caused the flood. It was not only just rain causing the water level to rise but also water that was already present near the surface bursting through cracks and covering the mountains before subsiding. Over most of the earth today we find a little top soil and then a little deeper a thin layer of rock. Under the rock are softer, often poreous, substances like sand or chalk. Tectonic forces, over time, may have pushed the softer material into a vacuum left when the water was forced out.
Before then, the implosion of the land-shell following the release of water may have caused it to break up into different sections.
All this could have taken several generations. The immediate cause for Pangea may have occurred in the era of Noah but its effects on the earth breaking in pieces may have only been realized in the time of Peleg? Sounds fanciful? More than Darwin? I do not think so!cf.
https://hevratpinto.org/parsha/5773/467_chayei_sarah.html
Dr. Hadassah Melamed in her book "The Secret of the Flood, the Bermuda Triangle and the Migration of the Continents." It is based on a statement of the Sages in the Gemara concerning Noah’s generation and the flood that inundated the entire world: “Because they perverted their ways, the Holy One, blessed be He, changed the works of Creation and made the constellation of Pleiades rise at daybreak and took two stars from Pleiades and brought a flood upon the world” (Rosh Hashanah 11b).
According to the scientific view cited in Dr. Melamed’s research, “These two stars impacted areas near the equator. The first star, ‘Discord’ [with a diameter of 150 km], superficially hit the west of the primordial super-continent [Pangaea], and caused it to fracture into huge plates, splitting it from the earth’s crust to a depth of five kilometers. Within 24 hours, these plates drifted to the positions where they remained as the continents that we know today. This magnetic star, mostly made of iron and nickel, lies in the Bermuda Triangle and, it seems, is responsible for the magnetic distortions and mysterious phenomena that have occurred there.”