Noah: All the Animals?
Question
In parshas Noah ,the Torah says ,that Noah brought with him ,every living being. As we know, the story of Noah took place in the middle east, when Noah landed, the Torah says,”every living being on the earth , every creeping thing ,and every bird and ,every thing that moves on the earth, by their families, came out of the ark”.
Based on this premise that they are landing and letting all animals off in the middle east, how are there animals in America, which has thousands of miles of ocean between the middle east? And how are there animals which are only native to certain parts of the world and not the middle east?
Answers
Many years ago I asked a great Torah Scholar your question. He explained that there are Midrashic Texts that state that the world began to “dis-connect” into separate continents only after the flood. Up until then, it was one large land mass. In fact, according to the Midrashim, the whole process did not actually finish until ten generations later at the time of the Generation of the Dispersal.
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