[2] The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
[3] And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
[4] And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
[5] And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
[6] And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
[7] And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
[8] Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
[9] But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
[10] And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
[11] And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
[12] And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.
[13] And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.
[14] And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.
[15] And God spake unto Noah, saying,
[16] Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.
[17] Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
[18] And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him:
[19] Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
[20] And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
[21] And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
[22] While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
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The first few verses of this chapter make it clear that the author believed the Earth to be flat. It talks about a wind blowing the water off the edge of the Earth--that's a flat Earth.
Seven months after the rain stopped, the ark gets stuck on the mountains. This is terribly inconvenient, since the water certainly would not have been still, and the boat would have been torn to shreds because of the waves. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that the ark came to rest on already-exposed mountains. I suppose.
But wait! The next few verses talk about how it took three additional months for the tops of the mountains to show. The ship would have been shredded. No doubt. The moon didn't go away. There is no way the water would have been still. This story already has so many holes, it's about as believable as the Santa Clause myth, but this part of the story just flies in the face of common sense.
I'm sure there was some significance to the dove finding the olive leaf instead of the raven, but it's really not relevant to whether or not the Bible is accurate (it should be obvious by now that a literal interpretation is most certainly not accurate). What is relevant is the notion that after ten months under water, an olive leaf is available for a dove to pluck off of the tree. Leaves take six months to decompose under normal conditions. An interesting experiment would be to submerge an olive tree and see how long it takes to die and decompose.
Noah, his family, and all of the animals leave the ark, and somehow, every species migrates to every part of the world from there. Noah makes burnt offerings of representatives of species that have been decimated by the flood. Seems a bit irresponsible, but the smell of it pleases God so much, he decides that even though man is wicked from an early age (allegedly), he will not destroy every living creature ever again. So...killing every person except the righteous Noah didn't get rid of evil in human beings, making the flood completely futile and stupid. Why save Noah and his family if evil lived on in his descendants?
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