In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day, all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Genesis 7:11-12
SERIES: SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE
TITLE: Comet and Deluge
SIZE: 1.60m x 1.25m (63in x 49in)
Design for a tapestry
According to historical accounts, “Late in the autumn of 1680 the people of Manhattan were overcome with terror at a sight in the heavens such as has seldom greeted human eyes.” That terrible sight was a comet so bright that it could be seen in day and nighttime.
Astronomer Edmund Halley suggested that the comet of 1680 swings by the Earth every 75 years. Working backward, calculations conducted by the mathematician William Whiston noted that one such cosmic encounter occurred in 2342 B.C., which, at the time, was believed to be the date of the great Deluge. He declared that this comet had passed close to Earth thousands of years ago—so close, in fact, that the comet had doused our world with water from its tail and exerted enough gravitational force to pull forth oceans from beneath our planet’s crust.
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