Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Genesis 10:25 states, and I Chronicles 1:19 repeats, “And two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided.” Peleg lived a few centuries after the flood. Little else is known about him.
In what way was the earth divided? Here are three possibilities. Bible commentators mention only the first two.
a. Languages suddenly multiplied at Babel and produced divisions among the people of the world. [See Genesis 11:1–9.]
b. The continents were divided by continental drift, which began in Peleg’s day.
c. As explained by the hydroplate theory, all continents were connected soon after the flood because of greatly lowered sea levels.1 Later, in Peleg’s day, rising sea levels divided the earth by water.
Languages Divided in Peleg’s Day? Scripture says, “the earth was divided.” The Hebrew word for earth, erets, is also translated as “countries,” “land,” or “ground,” so the land was divided, not people or languages. Besides, Peleg probably lived two generations after languages were multiplied at Babel2—and, according to Figure 244 on page 521, 100–339 years after the flood.
Continents Broke and Began Drifting in Peleg’s Day? If this happened, what broke them apart, and what moved them? It takes earth-shaking forces to break and move continents. Those who accept the plate tectonic theory believe that continents have broken frequently—geologically speaking. To stretch a thick slab of rock to the point where it finally breaks, requires, among other things,3 sliding one end of the block horizontally on its foundation against enormous frictional force. [See the Technical Note on page 206.] Simultaneously, an additional force must stretch the slab, like a rubber band, until it breaks. Plate tectonics can’t provide either gigantic force. Therefore, you can safely offer to move a continent (provide one force) if someone will break a continent (provide both forces).
Those who claim that continents broke and moved have not fully considered the forces and energy required. To open up the entire Atlantic in a few thousand years by rock-on-rock sliding would produce indescribable global violence and volcanic activity that left no geological or historical record. Among almost all cultures, ancient and modern, the only global catastrophe with a clear historical record is the flood.
If the continents broke apart, they should fit together better than they do. (Figures 51–53 on pages 119–120, show this.) The public has been misled for decades into believing that the continents fit against each other. Actually, four great map distortions were deliberately made, as Figure 51 on page 119 explains. Continents bordering the Atlantic fit much better next to the base of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The hydroplate theory explains why.
Rising Water Divided Continents in Peleg’s Day? The Bible uses the Hebrew word peleg as a verb three times. Two usages, mentioned above, are translated simply as divided (Genesis 10:25 and I Chronicles 1:19). The third use is a division by water (Job 38:25). In the ten instances where peleg is a common noun, it always involves water. The New American Standard Bible translates it eight times as “streams,” once as “stream,” and once as “channels.” Therefore, peleg probably implies a division by water.
In English, we have the words archipelago (a sea having, or dividing, many islands) and pelagic (relating to or living in the sea). Pelagic sediments or deposits are sediments on the ocean floor. Pelagic frequently refers to life forms found in the sea. Bathypelagic means relating to or living in the deep sea. Also, the prefix pelag means sea.
Dr. Bernard Northrup, a Hebrew professor, has shown that peleg originally meant division by water.4 That meaning is embedded in all three language families of Noah’s offspring, so its meaning probably preceded the multiplication of languages at Babel. Northrup states:
[Peleg, palag, or PLG] often contains within it a reference to water. It is used to refer to a stream of water in Hebrew, Coptic, Ethiopic and in Greek. The root is used to refer to irrigation canals which carried the water throughout the farming land of Mesopotamia. However, an examination of the Greek usage (of the family of Japeth [one of Noah’s three sons]) of the root letters PL and PLG clearly shows that in the majority of the instances this root was used of the ocean. ... It is used to mean: “to form a sea or lake,” “of places that are flooded and under water,” “of crossing the sea,” of “the broad sea” itself, of “being out at sea,” “on the open sea.” It is used of seamen and ships. The noun with the result suffix is used of “an inundation.” I continue: it is used of “a being at sea,” of “a creature of or on the sea,” of “one who walks on the sea,” of “running or sailing on the open sea,” of “a harbor that is formed in the open sea by means of sandbags,” and in many ways of “the open sea itself,” of “going to, into or toward the sea,” of “roving through the sea,” of “being sea-nourished,” of “turning something into the sea,” or “of flooding.” It is quite apparent that every Greek usage here involves the sea in some way.
Therefore, the earth was probably divided by water in Peleg’s day. The hydroplate theory explains how and why.
At the end of the flood, the continental-drift phase and compression event pushed all of today’s major mountain ranges up out of the flood waters and opened up the Atlantic Ocean’s basin which was initially 60-miles deep. Therefore, right after the flood, the waters drained onto what was the floor of the subterranean chamber, so sea level was almost three miles lower than today. This is confirmed by the submarine canyons that have been gouged out almost 3 miles below today’s sea level as well as table-mounts, and coral formations almost one mile below Eniwetok Atoll. (Pages 113–192 provide more details.) Then, those newly formed mountains and the crushed and thickened, sediment-laden continents began sinking into the mantle. As mass was pushed down into the mantle, the mantle had to expand, and the easiest places for the mantle to rise were under the drastically lowered ocean floors. Therefore, sea level rose in compensation, eventually approaching today’s level. That division of the earth’s continents by rising sea level was in the days of Peleg who lived 100–339 years after the flood.
Before all but the last 300 feet of that rise, imagine how many migration paths existed for animals and man to populate today’s continents and islands.5 God’s commands (Genesis 9:1, 11:4–9) for humans and animals to populate the “whole earth” after the flood must have been doable. If, after the flood, sea level was where it is today, repopulating the “whole earth” would have been difficult, if not impossible, for those first receiving God’s command. The wisdom and urgency of God’s command are apparent when we realize that sea level was steadily rising. The “window of opportunity” for global migration was disappearing in Peleg’s day.
From the genealogies listed on page 521, we see that Peleg lived five generations after Noah. Therefore, Peleg, or those who named him, may have been world travelers or explorers who discovered that Earth was being divided by rising water. Certainly, Noah’s early descendants knew how to construct ships, because Noah and his three sons built the Ark. They would have had an explorer’s curiosity when they realized how drastically the flood had changed the earth. Their long lifespans allowed them to pursue that curiosity and accumulate knowledge. This helps explain a remarkably accurate, authentic, and ancient map that shows islands now covered with water and the outlines of Antarctica—as it would look with no ice. [See Figure 243 on page 511.]
The Ice Age would have lowered sea level about 400 feet—almost enough to join all continents. But at the height of the Ice Age, Antarctica and all its coastlines would have been covered with ice. Therefore, the Ice Age cannot explain both the visible coastlines shown on the ancient map and interconnected continents. The flood accounts for both. (The hydroplate theory also shows how the flood produced the Ice Age.)
Conclusion. Strong linguistic and scientific arguments point to an earth being divided by rising water in the days of Peleg and suggest that our ancestors knew, a few centuries after the flood, of rising sea levels that would separate, or had separated, continents.