While I wouldn't want to speak for Paul, again I will cite Genesis 12:1,
which you say should be rendered earth. "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave
your earth, your people and your father's houshold..."
Secondly, as to the local flood being of Darwinian interpretation, this
shows how little of Christian heritage you know. I would cite Matthew
Poole, 1670
Matthew Poole wrote,
"Peradventure this flood might not be simply universal over the whole
earth, but
only over all the habitable world, where either men or beasts lived;
which was
as much as either the meritorious cause of the flood, men's sins, or
the end of
it, the destruction of all men and beasts, required.. And the or that
whole
heaven may be understood of that which was over all the habitable
parts of it.
And whereas our modern heathens, that miscall themselves Christians,
laugh at
the history of this flood upon this and the like occasions, as if it
were an idle
romance; they may please to note, that their predecessors, the ancient
and
wiser heathens, have divers of them acknowledged the truth of it,
though they
also mixed it with their fables, which was neither strange nor unusual
for them
to do. "
This is from a modern printing of his work:Matthew Poole, A Commentary on
the Holy
Bible, Vol. 1 Genesis-Job, (Hendrickson Publishers) p. 21
Filby adds another:
"The Bible speaks of a Flood that annihilated every living thing -
everything that
had breath - within that area of 'the world known to Noah as the whole
earth -
or land.' If it should be asserted that such a view of the Flood is
merely a
concession to modern geological observations it may be well to point
out that
Matthew Poole in his Synopsis (1670), and Bishop Edward Stillingfleet
in his
Origines Sacra, (1662), both held that the Bible did not necessitate a
belief that
the Flood covered the entire planet. These books were written 180 years
before the real development of modern geology."Frederick A. Filby,The
Flood Reconsidered, (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1970),p. 83-84.
Since DArwin was born in something like 1811 I am sure you will agree that
this was pre-Darwinian. And I am sure that as an honorable man you will
admit that you were wrong that a local flood was a child of the Darwinian
era.