you wrote
<< I think we are getting our lines crossed a little here! With respect to
my final sentence I was using 'global' in the sense of the Flood being
'all-embracing' - having earlier suggested that it mattered little
whether Moses understood the world to be sphere or flat disc.>>
Are you saying you believe that the Flood covered only the earth as described
in the Bible, or the earth as we know it today from modern science? I do
not agree that it makes little difference whether you believe the Flood
covered the world as a flat disc or as a sphere. If a Christian accepts Gen
6-9 as "VCR history" all of which was revealed by God rather than divinely
accommodated to the views of the times, that Christian is logically bound to
believe that the earth was a flat disc floating on an ocean, a concept
contradictory to the view of the earth as a sphere. And, there are other
implications because the Flood is described as literally due not only to the
ocean below rushing up through the springs of the earth, but to the ocean
above the solid sky pouring down, thus obligating those Christians who
believe the account consists completely of divinely revealed details to
believe the sky is rock-solid and that there was an ocean above it, an ocean
which existed long after the Flood (Gen 8:2; Psalm 148:4) and is presumably
there to this day. In other words, if a Christian accepts Gen 6-9 as divinely
revealed "VCR history," such a Christian has no right to change the account
by bringing in modern scientific conceptions of the earth and the sky.
<<Regarding the Gn.6-9 meaning of 'eretz', it is interesting that in all
the Bible translations I have examined it is rendered 'earth' - not
'land', as Glenn so trenchantly demands. Do you agree with him that a
straight reading of these chapters - unhampered by all preconceived
notions - leads one naturally to the view that the Deluge was 'local'?
Wouldn't you rather agree with me that that the now widespread belief
that the event was 'local' is largely, if not entirely, of darwinian
parentage? I venture to suggest that the possibility of such an
interpretation would hardly have been contemplated by a Christian before
the Nineteenth Century.>>
I believe that the Bible is describing a Flood which covered the entire earth
as it was understood at that time, namely as a flat disc stretching from
modern Italy to Afghanistan and from northern Europe to the Gulf of Aden, as
described in Gen 10. This limited earth was the entire earth. Thus the Flood
was not "local" in the usual sense of that word, but it was not a global
flood either, that is, it does not cover the entire planet. At the same time
I disavow drawing the conclusion that if the Flood in the Bible is described
as covering this much of the earth, then it must have covered the entire
planet. For in order to draw this conclusion, you must bring in modern
science; and if you bring in modern science as a valid source of knowledge,
then you have no logical right to deny the validity of the findings of modern
science that there was no Flood c. 2500 to 5000 BC which covered the entire
planet and which can explain the geological column.
There is no historical evidence to my knowledge before c. 1650 that anyone
thought that Noah's Flood only covered a small part of the earth, that is,
say only Mesopotamia. There is at least one book, however, and as I recall
two which proposed a local Flood c. 1650; and therefore, being two centuries
before Darwin, certainly not influenced by his thinking. I have not read
these books, but I suspect this theory arose due to the discovery of the "New
World."
I suggest that the original Flood story was about an "earth" not much bigger
than Mesopotamia (Cf the Mesopotamian tablet called Mappa Mundi), by the time
of the final editing of Gen 6-9, the entire earth was thought to be as large
as we see delineated in Gen 10. As time went on, with the discovery of the
Far East, the Flood was envisioned by believers as covering an even larger
"earth" and that finally with the discovery of the New World, it became
difficult for educated people to go on believing the flood had covered all
those peoples as well, albeit the Church in general held to a global flood
even after 1650, indeed, as you say, into the 19th century. But, then again
the Church in general held to a belief in the sky as rock-solid until the
seventeenth century.
Paul S.