Torah and Science: Ancient Wisdom That Predicted Continental Drift and Ocean Secrets

The Torah tells us that there was originally a single continent:
"And God said, ‘Let the waters beneath the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so" (Bereishit 1:9).

Today, we know that Earth is divided into seven continents.

In the Zohar, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai revealed nearly 2,000 years ago the phenomenon of continental drift, which explains hat the earth was once a single landmass that later divided into seven continents: "From one earth which the waters uncovered, seven lands were formed" (Zohar Chadash, Parshat Bereishit, 21a). This was written long before the discovery of the Americas or Australia.

The Torah’s statement that at the beginning there was only one continent is, in fact, a geological truth about the earliest stages of creation. Science discovered this only about 100 years ago, when German geologist Alfred Lothar Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift when he pointed to the remarkable alignment of continental coastlines, like pieces of a puzzle that once fit together. His further research showed matching plant life, animal fossils, and geological structures at the edges of these continents. Subsequent studies confirmed that the continents were once united as a single landmass, exactly as the Torah describes.

Secrets of the Seas

Another striking example of the Torah’s truth is in the kosher laws of fish. The Oral Torah, given together with the Written Torah at Sinai, states that any fish with scales will also have fins, but not every fish with fins necessarily has scales. "Any fish that has scales also has fins, but there are those that have fins and no scales" (Niddah 6:9).

To this day, over 34,000 species of fish have been discovered, and this rule still holds. Not a single fish has ever been found that has scales but no fins.

How could any human being have known this? No one in ancient times had submarines, microscopes, or modern research tools to study the far reaches of the oceans. No person could have examined all species of fish in the depths of the seas. Such knowledge could not be from human observation, and therefore must be from Divine revelation.

Additionally, no person would risk presenting a book as divine, and including a detail that could so easily be disproven, because if even one exception to this rule were ever found, it would expose the Torah as flawed. For thousands of years however, the Torah’s statement has held true without exception, proving that the Torah is undoubtedly from Heaven.