Chapter 8
Starts off this way:
1 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. [Gen 8:1 ESV] He remembered them before the curse. He made provision for them in the darkest most evil time the world has ever seen, he protected them from that evil, and he "floated" them out of the results of that evil. And then he established them after that evil was destroyed.
After 10 months, the mountaintops could be seen again. By then the ark was at rest in the mountains of Ararat. Does not say The Mount of Ararat, just somewhere in the neighborhood. vs 5 indicates that though the ark was at rest on a mountain, it must have been one of the highest around because the "tops of the mountains" - I would read this as the tops of the majority of the surrounding mountains - didn't show up until 2 1/2 months after.
2025 - In the tenth month the mountains could be seen, but by whom? All living things with eyes were on that ark. For Moses to write this, it had to be inspired. It could not even have been passed down person to person from Noah, because...well it could, if Noah opened the window and looked out every day and this was when he was first able to see the mountaintops again. I'm going with this. Not that God revealed the day mountains would have been visible had anyone been alive and outside to see them, but the day first spotted land again from the window of the ark.
2025 - But what about this:
4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
5 And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. [Gen 8:4-5 ESV].
So the ark rested in the seventh month, but the mountains were not seen until 2 1/2 months after the ark was on dry ground? How does that work? Not even mentioned in the MSB notes. Only way this works is if the ark rested up on the highest mountain of the Caucasus, and out the window, in the only direction he could see, it was another 2 1/2 months or so until other mountains could be seen. Seems kind of a stretch here. Surely there is a better way to explain it?
Raven sent out first. It did not return. Lots of things to eat probably...Or is there another point being made about ravens vs doves? Perhaps the raven staying out meant that there was still a lot of decay and such out there, and it was not a good time to go out. After the raven, a dove, a second, and the third does not come back. The doves were looking for seeds. That's what they eat, seeds not flesh. That is what Noah expected to sustain his family when they left the ark, and that is what all the animals had eaten before the flood.
This verse:
13 In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. [Gen 8:13 ESV] 601 years...after what? Vs 7:11 says they went into the ark in the 600th year of Noah's life. So that is the most likely reference.
They leave the ark only after God tells them to leave. They could see that the ground was dry around them, but still they waited. We should also. Even when everything looks fine to move on, we should wait for God's leading.
These verses:
18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. 19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark. [Gen 8:18-19 ESV]
So everything that is, no matter where it is, originated at a specific geologic place - the door of Noah's ark. All peoples, and all species, originated from there and spread over the earth from that time. Fossils that disagree with that, that don't fit in with that, are pre-flood creatures who were buried and fossilized during the flood. If they have no post-flood counterparts, then they didn't fit with the new ecosystem that came after the flood, or they grew to different specifications. I can easily see "adaptation" in this scenario, but there is no reason to read evolution of different species into it. And remember also that what lives in the water - salt and fresh - was not wiped out. Those creatures can be traced back all the way to creation. Land animals can, but they have to go through that choke point at the door of the ark.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. [Gen 8:20 ESV] Noah took some of EVERY clean animal as a sacrifice. This must have taken a while. There was probably driftwood everywhere, too.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."
Genesis 8:22 ESV
Things have continued without catastrophe or upheaval since then, but the flood changed everything that came before it. This is the boundary beyond which Uniformitarianism does not apply.