The sixteenth and seventeenth century discoveries and exploration of peoples
in the Americas and the reports of their traditions led some thinkers to
question the universal extent of the flood as well as the idea of Adam as the
progenitor of all mankind.
Walter Ralegh (died in 1618) in his The History of the World (Bk 1, chap 7)
mentions that some in his day questioned the universality of the Flood, but
he held to it.
Isaac de La Peyrere argued in 1655 that God only wanted to destroy the Jews
who had intermarried with the Gentiles, not the peoples of the Americas or
China, and hence the Flood was limited to Palestine. (His knowledge of the
peoples in the New World also led him to advocate Pre-Adamitism.)
Isaac Voss in 1661 "doubted that there had been a universal deluge on the
grounds that it would have involved too many miracles to accomplish it.
There simply was not enough water on earth to have submerged all the land…"
(Young, p. 52)
Bishop Edward Stillingfleet in 1697 argued similarly.
Both Voss and Stillingfleet argued that all human beings were destroyed by
the Flood, but that at the time of the Flood all human beings lived in the
Near East.
The relevant bibliography is:
Isaac de, La Peyrere,1594-1676, Prae-Adamitae. English Title: Men before
Adam, or, A discourse upon the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth verses of
the fifth chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, by which
are prov'd that the first men were created before Adam. (Imprint: London:
[s.n.], 1656) Source: University Microfilms International, 300 N.
Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106 microform
Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrere (Leiden: Brill, 1987)
Isaac Vossius, De Vera Aetate Mundi, 2nd ed. (the Hague, 1661)
Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, 2nd ed. (London, 1709), pt. 1:
pp 337-339. (1st ed., 1697)
Eighteenth century advocates of a local flood include:
Robert Clayton, A Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament
in answer to the objections of the late Lord Bolingbroke (Dublin, 1752, 1754)
Patrick Cockburn, An Enquiry into the Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic
Deluge (London, 1750) pp. 10-20, 198-9, 339-344, 348-355, etc.
Paul S.