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40 days across the whole planet. Noah's family, the animals, and the ark would have been obliterated by rain like sheets of concrete. Nothing would have survived the rain, let alone the flood. Apart from all this, the rain has to come from somewhere. You can't have this much evaporation and condensation in a short period.

As another example of the untrustworthiness of the Old Testament, let's look at the prophecies. Many prophecies made in the Old Testament are allegedly confirmed in the New Testament. But let's pick one of the trickier, harder-to-refute ones, complete with time scale rather than just a vague statement. It would be easy to say the Old Testament predicted the birth of Jesus and this came true in the New Testament, even though it was written best part of a century after the event, and there's no corroborative evidence, or any firm date as to when it happened, only a range of dates that generally extend from 8 BCE to 2 BCE.

So let's try something more difficult. Many of the prophecies relate to a resurgence of the Jews and of Israel. I'll work through the one that seemingly prophesies the exact day of Israel's re-establishment on 14 May 1948. We can get this from Ezekiel 4:3-6 and Leviticus 26:18, 26:21, 26:24, and 26:28, which refer to a set period of punishment of the Jews. The sevenfold punishment of the Jews for not returning to their homeland started in 536 BCE, 70 years after an initial punishment of 430 years. Thus, multiplying 360 by 7 equals 2,520 years. According to the Bible, the year length used at that time was 360 days, so adjusting for this, we purportedly arrive at 2,484 years exactly (sometimes it's given as 2,485 years) between the first day of the Babylonian month of Nissan and the Gregorian 14 May 1948. Incidentally, 2,484 solar years equals 907,281 days if you assume a solar year is 365.25 days. Using the more accurate 365.2424 day solar year gives 907,262 days. Multiplying 2,520 years by 360 gives 907,200. So for a start, the timing is out by 2-3 months. That's still close. But wait a minute.

The biblical year of 360 days is also mentioned by Africanus, Isaac Newton, Robert Anderson and others. They're not wrong. Most years were indeed 360 days in length in those days. However, just as we add a leap day every fourth year to stay in line with the solar year, most ancient civilizations added a 13th month every few years, or they added a few days at year's end. Thus these calendars were lunisolar. The calendars tended to be

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