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What does the Bible mean by fountains of the great deep? There is nothing today which is known by the phrase fountains of the great deep.

Lets see if we can decipher what the writer of Genesis is trying to convey to us. (This is a condensed version of an article published in CRSQ)

First we need to discover what is the great deep. Throughout the Bible, deep almost always means seas or oceans. When great is put with deep, the combination referes to all the waters on the globe. So, the great deep is all the oceans and seas around the world.

Fountains of the worlds oceans. That still does not sound familiar.

What is it that usually comes to mind when we think of fountains? Isn't it jets of water squirting from beautifully carved statuary standing in a refreshing pond in some city square? Somehow that just does not seem to fit fountains of the great deep.

And too, in the Bible, the fountains get broken up. How can we break up jets of water? How would that cause a flood? Perhaps we need to see if there is any other meaning for fountains.

In fact, there is. Remember the pond we mentioned above? That, too, is a fountain, even if there were no statuary or jets of water in it. The fountain is actually the container or basin which holds the water.

Do you know why a fountain pen is called a fountain pen? It isn't because it squirts jets of ink, but rather that there is a fount, or reservoir, for ink contained within the pen.

In the Bible, the Hebrew word that is translated into fountain in Genesis 7 (ma' yan) is also used in context with an interesting locality near Jerusalem. Of all the springs, wells, cisterns and fountains mentioned in the Bible, the spring fed reservoirs at Nephtoah are unique. While other Hebrew words are also translated as springs, wells and fountains, none of them are associated with reservoirs. Thus, it is very likely that the ma'yan fountain means reservoir, container or basin.

The reservoirs of the great deep.

Now this is beginning to make more sense. The reservoirs which hold the global oceans are the basin depressions on the crust of the earth. Here is something that can be broken up. Asteroid impacts could be strong enough to fracture the crust and resulting earthquakes would generate tsunami activity flooding nearby continental masses.

Sounds like a flood catastrophe to me.

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This page constructed and upgraded by Allen Roy, 08/31/2002