If everything died on earth during Noah’s flood then where did the leaf come from that the bird brought back to the ark?
It came from land. That was the point, it showed Noah That the waters were receding. The Flood didn’t cause every plant and leaf to dissolve…
Given your hypothetical (“everything died in the flood”), it must have been floating on the surface of the water and the bird scooped it up.
Nevermind, this is in General Questions. I don’t want to be struck down by The Hand of Mod.
I question the premise that everything died.
As someone pointed out somewhere online, the Ark landed on a mountain, which must have been one of the last spots to be submerged and first to dry off. So plants on it may not have been underwater for all that long.
As the same site pointed out, plants in New Orleans survived a week or two under sea water. I’d be willing to bet that this holds for many flooded areas.
IANABotanist, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that some (or even a lot of) plants might have been OK. Nature is pretty resilient.
(BTW, googling this introduced me to more wacky creationist sites in two seconds than I’ve seen in my entire lifetime until now. So that was… um, interesting. The internet sure is one strange place.)
Since as far as I know the Bible is silent on this, the answer must depend on speculation. Let’s move this to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Here’s the passage in question:
The premise of verse 11 is that the bird must have plucked the leaf from a living tree.
Since the biblical account is a myth, it doesn’t need to make scientific sense. My guess is that the idea was that the tree had survived being submerged and sent out leaves again when it was exposed by the receding waters. The fact that olive trees couldn’t survive a lengthy immersion in salt water is irrelevant (except for biblical literalists).
Of course, since Noah only took land animals into the ark, it’s obvious that not everything died in the flood. Plants survived, either because they were able to survive as mature plants under water, or as seeds. Likewise aquatic animals were not taken into the ark and survived without Noah’s help (ignoring the fact that freshwater fish couldn’t survive in salt water or vice versa).
Now that we’re in Great Debates, the dove (symbol of the holy spirit) found the promise of new life following the flood and brought it back to Noah, as a more physical representation of the rainbow as God’s promise to not drown everybody again.
Well, everything on earth WOULD have died, had the biblical account actually happened, but since it’s just a myth it doesn’t need to be scientific to be a good story.
Also, I don’t believe in the Bible that it’s ever stated that everything died (obviously not the stuff on the Ark, for instance). You have to understand that the folks who wrote the Bible account (well…the folks who wrote the original story and the folks who wrote the Bible account borrowed it from, I suppose :p) had a rather tenuous understanding of what the world was, how many animals and plants lived in the world, what the actual ramifications of a world wide flood would be, and how plants and animals would or could survive in such an event, etc etc. Today we can see how impossible all of this would be, but they didn’t have a clue, except observations about local floods they had seen or were told to them. To them, it was perfectly fine that there could be enough rain to flood the world as rapidly as happened in their account, that some birds and plants would survive (and all the fish and such would be perfectly fine during all of this, since Noah didn’t have any on the Ark), and that said bird could find said branch and bring it back as a sign that thar be land again!
Perhaps interestingly (although probably not), the Epic of Gilgamesh (spoilers ahead for a very old Sumerian epic poem), which has a proto-version of the flood story in it, also features an underwater plant that confers eternal life.
So, underwater plants (or, well, plant) surviving fine while submerged attested in at least that particular universe.
FWIW. Which is probably not much. 
One explanation I’ve read is that in those days plants were not thought of as living things the way animals are living things, they were thought of as something that just naturally grows out of the earth in the right conditions.
Of course, I should think that in any culture that has or knows of agriculture, everyone knows that plants don’t grow without seeds. But, seeds do not appear to be living things.
This argument conclusively proves there is no God.
And the leaf could represent Holy Joy, depending on what kind of leaf it was. puffpuff*cough** 
As any sensible person knows, the entire world did not suffer a Great Flood, and the Noah Ark’s tale is just a myth. But not an entirely baseless myth. We read The Epic of Gilgamesh in college, and the flood tale there is an obvious inspiration for the biblical myth. There must have been a big regional flood disaster that would have seemed to local residents like the whole world was flooded.
I’m not up on the research, but I recall decades ago reading the flood myth could have been inspired by the break that allowed the Atlantic Ocean in to form the Mediterranean Sea. Dunno if that’s been discounted.
FInally.
Next issue…
You are probably thinking of the Black Sea. It’s a theory (or, perhaps a hypothesis at this point), and could be true. The Med though was formed long before hairless hominids invaded the area (like 5 million years or so before :p)
I’m sure it was the Mediterranean I read about, because I have a distinct memory of thinking of all that water flowing in between Spain and Africa. But I could have been reading a misreporting.
Both events happened. TheZanclean flood filled the Mediterranean via the Straits of Gibraltar.
The Black Sea Deluge was more recent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
Thanks. I’m sure it was the Mediterranean Sea’s formation that I read about as the basis for the biblical flood, but obviously that could not have been. I think the writer just got his seas mixed up.
I’ve also heard speculation about a natural dam giving way at the Straits of Aden, and the valley of the Red Sea flooding catastrophically. I’ve no idea if there is any serious evidence in favor of this notion.
(Okay, it came from a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, so that’s three strikes against right there.)