The Global Flood and Latter-day Saint Theology: A Scholarly Response

Addressing the claim that the absence of a literal global flood dismantles LDS truth claims

The ldsdiscussions.com article on the global flood presents a multi-pronged argument: that a literal, worldwide Noachian deluge is scientifically untenable; that Latter-day Saint scripture uniquely requires such an event; and that disproving the flood therefore demolishes multiple foundational LDS truth claims simultaneously. This response examines each claim in turn, drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, LDS academic literature, and careful textual analysis. The argument is more brittle than it appears. Each of its load-bearing premises either overstates the evidence, misreads the relevant scriptures, or conflates the personal theological opinions of individual Church leaders with binding LDS doctrine.

I. The Genre Mistake

The most consequential error in the ldsdiscussions.com analysis is what LDS scholar Ben Spackman calls the "genre mistake" -- treating Genesis 6-9 as if it were a modern journalistic or scientific account, then measuring it against categories of evidence it was never designed to address. The biblical flood narrative belongs to a rich tradition of ancient Near Eastern cosmological literature. The ancient Hebrew word eretz, translated "earth" in the King James Bible, did not denote a spherical planet. Dr. Duane E. Jeffery, BYU biology professor, documents that "it is not at all clear that the ancients had the concept of a spherical planet" and that "the concept of a spherical earth did not appear in Jewish thought until the fourteenth or fifteenth century." When the narrator wrote that the flood covered "all the earth," he was describing the known world within an ancient cosmological framework -- not making a claim about 197 million square miles of planetary surface.

Spackman further argues that Genesis 6-9 describes a cosmological flood -- the deliberate undoing and re-creation of the Israelite cosmos -- rather than a report of physical hydrology. The narrative employs mythopoeic language that conveys theological truth through the literary conventions available to its ancient audience. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought documents that LDS sermons throughout Church history show "far more interest in the story's moral, social, and existential symbolism than in its historical details." The ldsdiscussions.com argument sets up a false binary between a young-earth literalism the Church has never formally required and a wholesale rejection of LDS truth claims.

"Misjudge the genre, and you may skew many of the things you try to do with the text." -- Ben Spackman, LDS Hebrew linguist, Let's Talk About the Flood, 2022

II. Gilgamesh: Literary Borrowing or Shared Historical Memory?

Ldsdiscussions.com cites parallels between Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh as evidence the flood narrative is mythological. A critical chronological problem undermines the literary dependence claim: early Old Babylonian versions of the Gilgamesh Epic (circa 2000-1600 BCE) contain no flood narrative whatsoever. The flood story was incorporated only in later Assyrian versions around 700 BCE. If anything, this timeline makes it impossible for Genesis to be derived from Gilgamesh -- if dependence existed, it would run in the other direction.

Classical scholar Glenn Miller documents that "a direct form of literary influence cannot be asserted, as the distinctive features of the respective narratives are too plentiful to allow such an affirmation." The two accounts differ fundamentally in theology: Genesis attributes the flood to moral judgment against human violence and wickedness; Gilgamesh attributes it to the gods' irritation at human noise. These represent incompatible theological frameworks. Most importantly, flood traditions appear on every inhabited continent with remarkable structural similarities -- divine decision, human warning, vessel construction, animal preservation, and survivor blessing. This global ubiquity, documented across cultures with no plausible vectors of literary transmission, is far more consistent with shared historical memory of an actual catastrophic event than with the propagation of a single literary fiction.

"We are not dealing with a literary dependence or even a tradition dependence as much as we are dealing with two literary perspectives on a single actual event." -- Glenn Miller, Flood Traditions: ANE Comparisons, christian-thinktank.com

The ldsdiscussions.com claim that Genesis "mirrors Gilgamesh so closely that few doubt derivation occurred" overstates scholarly consensus. The consensus is, more precisely, that the accounts are related -- most likely through shared cultural memory of a real catastrophic flood -- while being sufficiently different that direct literary dependence cannot be asserted. Even if Genesis drew on earlier flood traditions, that would demonstrate the historical currency of the flood memory, not its fictional origins.

III. The Church Does Not Require a Global Flood

A central pillar of the ldsdiscussions.com argument is that the LDS Church dogmatically requires belief in a literal, global flood. FAIR Latter-day Saints states unequivocally: "The Church has no official position [on the global flood], and it does not play much of a role in LDS thought or discourse." Church members are not required to believe in a global flood, only that Noah was a real prophet commanded to preserve his family and animals from a flood that covered "his world" -- a phrase entirely consistent with a local or regional event understood through ancient cosmological categories.

The article quotes statements from Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, and others asserting a global flood. These statements are real. But the article conflates personal theological opinions -- even those of apostles speaking outside their prophetic capacity -- with binding Church doctrine. When President David O. McKay was asked about Joseph Fielding Smith's view that the continents separated in Peleg's day, McKay replied explicitly that this was "not Church doctrine." The Church's official Gospel Topics resources make no claim about the flood's geographic extent.

BYU Religious Studies Center scholars Paul Hoskisson and Stephen Smoot have published a careful examination of the "baptism of the earth" theology, arguing the metaphor served to affirm God's sovereignty and moral cleansing -- purposes entirely served by a flood catastrophic and universal within its narrator's known world, regardless of absolute geographic extent. LDS Apostle John A. Widtsoe recognized that "the narrators of the flood story were not eyewitnesses to the events and, hence, that the details of the story may not be reliable as history" -- a significant acknowledgment from an Apostle that historical precision in the flood narrative cannot be assumed.

IV. The Book of Mormon Does Not Require a Global Flood

The ldsdiscussions.com article argues that several Book of Mormon passages require a literal, global flood. Careful textual scrutiny reveals this claim is significantly overstated.

Ether 13:2-3. The text states "after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands." As Ben Spackman notes, this passage "certainly doesn't prove a worldwide flood in recent history." Moroni is reporting inherited tradition about events he did not witness. As FAIR documents, "the Book of Mormon peoples themselves didn't experience the flood. Neither Moroni nor Ether would have known from personal experience that the waters receded from the face of the New World. They believed that this is what happened, but that's not the same as claiming to be witnesses to the event." The passage reflects theological conviction that the promised land was divinely prepared -- not a scientific deposition about global hydrology.

Alma 10:22 and 3 Nephi 22:9. These passages reference Noah as a historical person and the flood as a real event -- positions entirely consistent with a catastrophic regional flood. They make no assertion about the absolute global extent of the water. Spackman's analysis concludes: "Neither Alma 10:22 nor Ether 13:2 prove a worldwide flood in recent history."

The Jaredites and the Tower of Babel. The article argues that the Jaredite narrative requires a literal Tower of Babel, and that since mainstream scholarship considers Babel an etiological myth, the entire Jaredite record collapses. Etiological narratives regularly encode historical memory. The tradition of a great tower associated with linguistic dispersal likely preserves collective memory of an actual historical period of administrative centralization and fragmentation. The collapse of the Uruk expansion (circa 3100-2900 BCE) saw the retrenchment of a dominant Mesopotamian urban culture that had achieved remarkable geographic spread -- a plausible historical anchor for the Babel tradition. The presence of mythopoeic framing does not preclude historical content, any more than the presence of parable in the New Testament negates the historicity of Jesus. The ldsdiscussions.com argument assumes that if any element of the Babel narrative is mythological, everything associated with it must be fictional. This is a non sequitur: ancient narratives routinely blend archetype and history.

V. The Book of Abraham: Egypt Under Water

Ldsdiscussions.com cites Abraham 1:23-24, which states that Egypt was "discovered" by Egyptus "when it was under water," as proof that the Book of Abraham requires a global flood submerging the Nile Delta. The text says the land was under water at the time of discovery -- it does not specify the cause or extent of that flooding. Lower Egypt is geologically a delta formed by Nile deposition and sea-level fluctuation. Sea level during the early Holocene was markedly higher than today, and significant portions of the Nile Delta were indeed submerged or marshy during the period corresponding to early post-flood settlement. The statement is entirely consistent with a localized flood event, post-glacial sea level variability, or the natural flooding cycles of the Nile Delta environment. The passage does not say "the entire earth was flooded"; it says this particular land was under water at a particular time. Conflating one with the other is an interpretive leap the text does not require.

VI. Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the Geographical Argument

Ldsdiscussions.com presents a geographical argument: Joseph Smith taught that Adam and Eve lived at Adam-ondi-Ahman in Missouri, therefore Noah must have built the ark in Missouri, therefore a global flood is required to transport Noah to the Old World. This argument has serious problems at multiple levels.

First, Joseph Smith identified Adam-ondi-Ahman as the place where Adam "gathered his posterity" before his death at age 930 -- not necessarily the original Garden of Eden. Adam's descendants could have migrated extensively during nine centuries of pre-flood civilization. The gap between Adam's creation and Noah's flood spans over 1,600 years by the Genesis genealogy -- ample time for the human population to establish itself across the Old World. Second, D&C 116 concerns a future eschatological gathering, not a precise claim about the original geography of the Garden of Eden. BYU Religious Studies Center scholars have published careful analysis of this revelation's context confirming it does not require Noah to have built the ark in Missouri. Third, even granting the strongest version of the argument, this constitutes one prophet's personal cosmological reconstruction, not a binding doctrinal requirement. President McKay was explicit that such geographical-geological claims by Church leaders do not constitute official Church doctrine.

VII. The Book of Moses: Anachronism or Ancient Resonance?

Ldsdiscussions.com objects that Moses 8:23-24 introduces anachronistic references to baptism "in the name of Jesus Christ" into Noah's preaching. This argument turns on a contestable assumption about what constitutes anachronism in inspired scripture.

The Book of Moses is presented as revealed restoration of content the Lord said was "had among the children of men" but "taken from the book" in subsequent transmission (Moses 1:41). The Latter-day Saint theological framework explicitly allows for prophetic revelation that restores lost content. The conviction that Noah knew and taught about Jesus Christ is entirely consistent with LDS theology in which Christ's atonement is eternally efficacious and was known to pre-meridian prophets (2 Nephi 25:26; Mosiah 3:13). What ldsdiscussions.com calls anachronism, Latter-day Saint theology calls the Eternal Gospel -- the consistent message delivered to all dispensations.

Interpreter Foundation scholars have pointed to significant parallels between Joseph Smith's revelatory expansions of Moses and ancient pseudepigraphal texts like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs -- texts unavailable to Joseph Smith in 1830 -- suggesting his restorations drew on genuine ancient traditions rather than 19th-century invention alone. Richard Bushman's use of the term "pseudepigrapha" is more nuanced than ldsdiscussions.com acknowledges: Bushman has argued that pseudepigraphal composition in the ancient world was a recognized literary form for preserving authentic traditions, and applying the label does not automatically imply fraud. Bushman himself remains a committed Latter-day Saint who regards Joseph Smith as a genuine prophet.

VIII. What the Science Actually Shows

Ldsdiscussions.com cites ice cores, tree ring records, sea floor sediment, and the continuity of ancient civilizations as evidence against a global flood. These are valid objections against a young-earth, global-inundation reading of Genesis -- precisely the reading LDS scholarship does not require. Against a local or regional flood interpretation, they are irrelevant.

The science is entirely consistent with catastrophic regional floods in the ancient Near East. The Black Sea deluge hypothesis (Ryan and Pitman, 1998) proposes that approximately 7,600 years ago, rising Mediterranean waters catastrophically breached the Bosporus Strait, inundating a large freshwater lake basin and flooding an area to depths exceeding 100 meters -- catastrophic for any agricultural communities in the basin. This is one plausible geological candidate for the historical kernel of the flood narrative. The continuity of Egyptian, Sumerian, and Minoan civilizations that ldsdiscussions.com cites actually argues for a local rather than global flood: precisely because those civilizations survived, the flood was evidently not global -- consistent with the LDS scholarly position that the flood was severe and universal within its narrator's known world without being planetarily comprehensive.

The article's physical objections to the ark -- structural limits of a 450-foot wooden vessel, animal logistics, predation -- are objections to wooden literalism, not to LDS theology as it actually stands. The Church does not issue engineering specifications for Noah's ark. These objections would be relevant if the Church required acceptance of every logistical detail of the Genesis narrative as scientific fact; it does not.

IX. Conclusion: The Argument Is More Brittle Than It Appears

The ldsdiscussions.com argument depends on a chain of maximalist claims: that the Church requires a global flood; that the scriptures unambiguously teach a global flood; that this flood is scientifically impossible; and therefore that the Church's truth claims fail. Each link in this chain, when examined carefully, is weaker than advertised.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no official doctrinal requirement for belief in a global flood. Its scriptures, read with attention to genre, ancient cosmology, and Hebrew semantics, do not unambiguously require a global flood. The flood narrative's historical core is entirely compatible with well-documented catastrophic regional flooding events in the ancient Near East. The theological message -- divine judgment against wickedness, covenant relationship between God and humanity, preservation of a righteous remnant -- does not depend on the water covering every mountain on the planet.

"Much of the evidence from the Genesis text and from sermons of Church leaders is either silent or ambiguous on the factual issues surrounding the flood. Although many Latter-day Saints have adopted the traditional view of a universal flood, they have a variety of views on the historical core of the story." -- Duane E. Jeffery, Noah's Flood: Modern Scholarship and Mormon Traditions, Sunstone

For honest seekers, the important questions are not whether every detail of a Bronze Age narrative can be verified by modern geology. The important questions are whether God is real, whether He speaks to prophets, whether Jesus Christ atoned for human sin, and whether the Restoration brought genuine divine authority to the earth. None of these questions are settled by the global extent of Noah's flood. The Latter-day Saint engagement with the flood narrative is rich, scholarly, and ongoing -- and it requires neither the abandonment of faith nor the embrace of anti-scientific literalism.

Those who approach these questions with intellectual seriousness will find that Latter-day Saint scholarship has engaged them far more deeply than ldsdiscussions.com acknowledges.