I’ve always found it strange that the account of the Flood in Genesis is so specific about the fact that it started on the seventeenth day of the second month. I just watched Graham’s series on Netflix and I was intrigued by the impact hypothesis. I looked it up and the peak time for the Beta Taurid meteor showers this past year was November 11-12. November 11 just so happens to be the 17th day of Cheshvan, the second month according to the Hebrew civil calendar. Perhaps there’s a genuine memory of a specific time when the earth collided with fragments of Encke?
I looked in the Talmud and apparently there was a debate among the early rabbis over whether the “second month” referred to Cheshvan or Iyyar (the second month in the Hebrew ecclesiastical calendar, which is in the spring and which seems to have been the preferred timing of the Flood for ancient gentile sages/scholars according to the Talmud). What’s interesting is that both sides suggest that the Flood is connected with the “removal” of two stars from the Pleiades (Kimah). If comet fragments appeared to be coming from Taurus maybe it looked like stars being removed from the Pleiades? (Incidentally, if the “second month” were Iyyar instead of Cheshvan, that timing would coincide with the earth crossing the meteor stream for Halley’s Comet.)
Anyways, just thought I’d share.
P.S. according to one of the rabbis in the Talmud the world will be destroyed when a comet passes through Orion (Berakhot 58b). Something to watch out for!
I looked in the Talmud and apparently there was a debate among the early rabbis over whether the “second month” referred to Cheshvan or Iyyar (the second month in the Hebrew ecclesiastical calendar, which is in the spring and which seems to have been the preferred timing of the Flood for ancient gentile sages/scholars according to the Talmud). What’s interesting is that both sides suggest that the Flood is connected with the “removal” of two stars from the Pleiades (Kimah). If comet fragments appeared to be coming from Taurus maybe it looked like stars being removed from the Pleiades? (Incidentally, if the “second month” were Iyyar instead of Cheshvan, that timing would coincide with the earth crossing the meteor stream for Halley’s Comet.)
Anyways, just thought I’d share.
P.S. according to one of the rabbis in the Talmud the world will be destroyed when a comet passes through Orion (Berakhot 58b). Something to watch out for!