BF2S Forums Great Flood, redux

FEOS wrote:

http://thewordofme.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/old-religious-flood-stories/

Interesting bit of research from this guy. Excerpt from the paper he found:

A series of the largest natural catastrophes in the history of mankind can perhaps be discovered by comparison of recent results in paleoclimatology with traditions of religions. The origin of the biblical myth of the Flood is an ancient enigma that is complicated by similar myths in other beliefs in other parts of the world. An old hypothesis suggested that in the background of these myths there were real floods of cataclysmic size. Attempts to identify these real floods or find any connection between them have as yet been unsuccessful. However, recent paleoclimatic investigations have put this enigma in a new light, as a consequence of which it seems likely that all these floods took place during the last deglaciation period, during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene. The most likely time for the biblical Flood is about 8,250 B.C. (10,200 B.P.), the end of the Younger Dryas cold episode.

Given that the text of the Old Testament should not be taken literally, one of the first questions is: Do verses 7:10-7:12, 7:17-7:24, and 8:2-8:11 of Genesis reflect some real event? Was there any real flood of unprecedented size in the background of the biblical myth of the Flood? Even though one of accepted answers is that indeed there was (Tokarev (ed.) 1982), attempts to identify the geological layers of that flood have been unsuccessful. One possible reason for this may be the incorrect dating of the supposed event.

Seems to indicate there could be a common cause for many of the flood stories. Errors in timing could be attributed to any number of things, most likely the oral traditions and embellishments resulting from that through the ages.

I'm not saying the Great Flood from the Bible happened exactly as written. I am saying there is evidence that serious, cataclysmic floods did occur...and the resulting Great Flood stories from those cultures are strikingly similar in message even after the changes due to oral traditions and whatnot. The problem with linking them all to the same event is the disparate timing associated with the stories...which again, could be attributed to variances arising from the oral traditions.