It’s quite possible he just didn’t know that could happen. I doubt he understood very much about displacement and other physics. We’re talking about someone who didn’t think the Antipodes was inhabited.
As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants. They fail to notice that, even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form, it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, or that any conjectured dry land there should be inhabited by men. For Scripture, which confirms the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches not falsehood; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man.
That is the only sentence in your post I can agree with.
The reason for it representing a global flood is not because the scribe thinks there was one… though he may well have thought so. But if he thought so, I believe it is because he thought there was some validity to the Sumerian and Babylonian histories.
I think the main reason the flood story is included is the same reason that the story of Samson is included: to co-opt a local pagan story and make it part of the Hebrew narrative.
There are many saints in the catalog of Catholic saints that are intentional co-optings of pagan gods or demi-gods… The local priest might believe his saint to be “the real deal”… but somewhere in the Vatican archive there is a copy of the narrative with the Pope’s initials on it somewhere.
Needless to say, @Eddie, I don’t expect you to be anywhere near as skeptical as I am. I am quite sure you think Samson was an historical person - - magic hair and everything.
Now, as for whether or not you are “endorsing the historical reality of a global flood”, are you able to go on record with this statement:
“There have been many regional floods in the ANE before and during
the Biblical timeline. Any or all of them could have inspired the story of
a significant flood. I reject the idea that there was a flood associated
with Noah that would have reached, let alone inundate, the Nile Valley
of Egypt!”
But, somehow I don’t think you will be able to bring yourself to concurring with the sentence above. Come on, Eddie… it’s just a short little sentence about a sure
thing. Just say “NO” to a Global Flood!
I have to agree with John Harshman here. Augustine says that the highest mountains were covered (City of God, XV.27). From that and other statements, we know that he regarded the Flood to be not merely local, but global. That doesn’t make him right, but that’s what he thought. And as far as I know, he was in the majority up until very recent times.
There was a natural precedent for how some of the most visionary of the ancients viewed the world as they saw it.
Those who studied nature could see that bubbles of air formed under water… brilliant bubbles of air … and perhaps even now and then, there might have been a creature, a water flea, something in one of those bubbles.
To see the sky as a divsion of waters, with an air pocket in between is a strong implication of how the earth could be inundated very easily at the global level.
So nature would not have been the argument against a global flood. The argument against the global flood comes much later… long after the argument against a firmament also prevails!
