The Eight of the Ark

Following along on some of the recent "Arkeology" discussions, I recently
corresponded with a reasonably well-known OT scholar from an Evangelical
seminary who holds a "local" view of the flood. I asked him for some
references where Evangelical OT scholars discuss the possibility that the
flood was local anthropologically as well as geographically. I was
surprised that he said he didn't know of any. Citing 2 Peter 2:5, he said
the NT confirms that the only eight members of the human race survived the
flood. This seems odd to me, since this person would say that 2 Peter 3:6
and its context don't require that the flood was geographically global. If
that's so, I'm not sure why scholars applying the same
literal-historical-grammatical hermeneutic to both passages should be
dogmatic about 2 Peter 2:5, which could be read along with the more limited
understanding of "cosmos" in 2 Peter 3:6 to mean that of the people affected
by the flood, only eight were saved. Moreover, unless the Biblical flood
was tens of thousands of years ago, the extra-Biblical evidence pretty
clearly shows that it couldn't have wiped out every human being alive on the
face of the earth (even if "human being" has a very limited meaning). I
have to believe that many ASA members with Evangelical convictions, and
probably many who teach at Evangelical institutions which adhere to some
form of "inerrancy," think along these lines.

So anyway: does anyone here know of papers, commentaries, etc. from an
Evangelical perspective that discuss this particular question? Please note
that I'm not looking right now for a debate on the meaning or merits of
"inerrancy."
Received on Fri Mar 24 13:27:36 2006