Did the ancient Pangaea continent break up as a result of the flood?

This is actually an interesting question in that it allows us to consider what the geological history of our planet confirms and then wildly speculate about things that we can presume fit the geologic model.

The proposal of a massive supercontinent in the distant past of earth’s history is credited to German geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener. He presented his theory in January 1912 and named the ancient landmass Pangaea. His theory grew out of expeditions to Denmark and Greenland, during which Wegener analyzed various rock types and fossils commonly found in each area. His studies led him to conclude that at one time in the past Denmark and Greenland had been connected as a part of what he termed Urkontinent – The Primal Continent.

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By 1915 he had fully documented his theory with additional field study and published his research in a book called, The Origin of Continents and Oceans. His position presented a time in the planet’s distant past wherein all continents were part of a unified landmass and all oceans were a part of a singular body of water. Ten years later his work was published in English for the first time and was addressed by The American Association of Petroleum Geologist at a conference specifically organized to refute Wegener’s proposals as ludicrous. The proposals gained traction in the 1950’s, however, and are commonly accepted as factually accurate geologists today.

Keep in mind, these theories are less than 100 years old and are still being debated on some levels. What initiated the breakup of Wegener’s supercontinent has never really been addressed. The working theory is that both the development of and consequential breakup of Pangaea is and was the result of Plate Tectonics; in essence, there was no singular catastrophic event that broke up Pangaea and started the proverbial ball rolling. The geography of the planet is now divided into a number of individual continental plates; we refer to the edges, where the plates connect, as fault lines . The concept is that these plates move slowly over time and that these movements along the fault lines are what push the continents about on the surface of the planet. Estimates of exactly when Pangaea was fully intact range from 180 million years ago to 252 million years ago. Pay no attention to the 72 million year discrepancy. There’s nothing to see here. Move along, citizen…

To answer the question of whether or not the flood initiated the breakup of Pangaea, we must first accept Pangaea as our model. It kind of fits the Genesis model, which describes the waters being gathered together into one place so that dry land could emerge. But then, it kind of doesn’t fit that model either, because the water is referred to as seas (plural, as in a distinction from one massive body of water into multiples). In Genesis we encounter three separate words that are used to refer to the waters. The first two greet the reader in verse 2 and appear to be interchangeable: “Darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

In verse 6, the waters are divided from the waters. The word waters is used 3 times in this verse and all three times it is the same Hebrew word. In verse 10 we’re introduced to a third word, which is translated as seas. “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters (same word as in verse 6) called He Seas…” (the 3rd word). Should we get caught up in trying to sort all of this out as a matter of exactness? Probably not. The thing that appears to be worth noticing, however, is that water is always referred to in the plural sense. Perhaps I’m being a bit nitpicky.

There is another ancient-planet-of-yesteryear model that puts forward the idea of Pangaea a little differently. It was proposed by Australian Geologist, Samuel Warren Carey and German Geologist, Ott Christoph Hilgenberg. They worked independently, not knowing anything of the other’s research, but came to the same opinion: at one time in earth’s past all of the continents were connected, but the planet was perhaps as much as 50% smaller and there were no massive bodies of water, only smaller ones (seas) and massive rivers that connected throughout the planet. The majority of the water that we see on the surface today flowed throughout the crust of the earth.

This theory is known as The Expanding Earth and it actually does fit the Genesis description quite nicely. Granted, the limb we’re resting on may feel incredibly thin, but we’re not pulling this from Joe Bob’s YouTube Channel; we’re looking at actual geological studies done by highly regarded men in their field.

So, did the flood initiate the breakup of Pangaea? No… I think it initiated the breakup of the entire planet… a much smaller planet, that has been slowly expanding ever since.

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