A story of a Great Catastrophic Flood is common to many of the Ancient Civilizations of the Near East. Scientists and archaeologists also agree that there was indeed a great flood thousands of years ago that destroyed the area from which these stories emerged. However, outside of conservative Christian interpretations, few continue to believe that such a flood was global in the sense that we understand the globe today.
How great was the great flood? Was it literally global, or regional, but universally destructive to the understanding of the ancient people? Does it matter to the text of scripture?
Genesis 7:19-20
They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.
ALL - Deuteronomy 2:25, Genesis 41:7 and elsewhere refer to all nations, though clearly refer to only a few. Therefore, the word ALL does not necessarily need to mean every single one, though it would probably include all the major mountains in common understanding. It is entirely possible that the words only intend to describe a regional impact.
COVERED – Numbers 22:11, 1 Kings 1:1, 2 Chronicles 5:8, Psalm 147:8 all refer to coverings that do not necessarily require a total submersion or covering. Job 38:34, Jeremiah 46:8, and Malachi 2:13 are all examples of the description of being covered in water being a drenching rather than a submersion.
MOUNTAINS – As in the Creation story, the people of the Ancient Near East believed that the earth was covered in a solid dome supported by the furthest mountains. These mountains did not necessarily need to be included in the Ancient’s understanding of all of the mountains. They would have had names, but could have been seen as a different sort of structure than the mountains in front or around them.
Genesis 8:3-4
The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
The highest mountains on the ridges of Ararat were seen by geographers at the time as being the edge of heaven, the end of the world. They would not have necessarily been considered as the world's highest peaks, but as peaks beyond the edge of the world. Therefore, Noah and the readers of this epic would probably have considered the highest peaks of the mountains of Ararat ON EARTH to be the foothills of Ararat. If the flood reached this depth, it could still be universally catastrophic to all humanity and animals of the region. If humanity had not yet spread from this region, this would be enough.
Also, this satisfies the difficulties of how Noah would get every animal onto the ark, since he would only need to bring animals of his region. This satisfies the difficulty of how different unique species exist throughout regions of the world.
Archaeologists have recently discovered evidence of a flood that occurred in the Ancient Near East around 5600 BCE. The Mediterranean Sea overflowed a sill in the Bosporous Strait, and spilled massive volumes of water into the much lower Black Sea. The water poured into the valley at a rate over 200 times that of the Niagara Falls (43 cubic kilometres a day), and continued for less than, but possibly as many as 100 days. Over 155 000 kilometres of land was flooded in days, without any time to prepare or evacuate.
We do not know if this was the flood that is described in Genesis. However, a flood of this magnitude would have easily destroyed all of the known life in all of the known earth at the time of Noah. For us to understand the truth of the story of Noah, a global flood as we understand the earth today is not necessary. If all of the known world is destroyed, it is enough to reveal God’s action in this narrative.
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