I have always enjoyed Eric Voegelin's concept of differentiation.
Our experience of 'where we are' was originally undifferentiated,
the 'land' or, if you walked for a few days, 'the whole land'.
This primal experience differentiated to 'where we are (land)' and
'where we know of (maps: earth)'. The latter has undergone
further differentiation to local and global, earth and Earth.
I think that Paul is correct (if I read him correctly) in that
we must view what we read in the Bible in regards to the Flood
through the lens of an original undifferentiated (Voegelin calls it
'compact') experience of 'the whole land', which makes the
Flood local from our differentiated perspective.
What fascinates me is how we attempt to re-experience the
story of the Flood through the lens of our differentiated world view.
Vernon Jenkens re-experiences the Flood as global -
from our 'scientific' perspective of earth as Earth.
Glenn Morton focuses on the details (which were written
before the differentiation of the concepts of legend and history)
and comes up with a local - albeit massive - re-experience.
These ways to re-experience the Flood, I have to admit,
call to mind the most vivid imagery.
But, being a scientific nerd-type, the weaknesses of the
experience eventually make the aesthetic 'suspension of disbelief'
impossible. Geology does not support Vernon's global flood.
Glenn does not have a mechanism through which the many details of
the Flood story would have passed through the mega-emmiums.
Where is the key to imaginatively unlock the door between us
and a deeper experience of what would appear on page 2 of today's
newpapers? A flood wipes out a dozen towns and local nut
survives in home built boat.
I think the key may be that those towns happened to be the first
towns, the first cities, in one of the earliest civilizations.
Ray