In the first place, the terms employed are not to be judged of by the state of knowledge in the nineteenth century, but by its state among the people to whom this revelation was first addressed. When the earth was spoken of to that people, (the ancient Jews,) they could not have understood it to embrace a much wider region than that inhabited by man, because they could not have had any idea of what lay beyond those limits. And so of the phrase heaven; it must have been coëxtensive with the inhabited earth only. And when it was said that all animals would die by the deluge, they could not have supposed the declaration to embrace creatures far beyond the dwellings of men, because they knew nothing of such regions. Why, then, may we not attach the same limited meaning to these declarations? Why should we suppose that the Holy Spirit used terms, adapted, indeed, to the astronomy and geography of the nineteenth century, but conveying only a false idea to those to whom they were addressed?
In the second place, in all ages and nations, and especially among ancient ones, “universal terms are often used to signify only a very large amount in number or quantity.”—Dr. Smith, Scrip. and Geol. p. 212, 4th ed.—The Hebrew כל, (kol,) the πας, and the English all, are alike employed in this manner, to signify many. There are some very striking cases of this sort in the Bible. Thus in Genesis it is said that all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn, because the famine was sore in all lands. This certainly could apply only to the well-known countries around Egypt; for transportation would have been impossible to the remotest parts of the habitable globe. In the account of the plagues that came upon Egypt, it is said that the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field; but, in a few days afterwards, it is said of the locusts that they did eat every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left. This day, said God to the Israelites, while yet in their journeyings, will I begin to put the fear of thee and the dread of thee upon the face of the nations under all the heavens. But it is obvious that only the nations contiguous to the Israelites, chiefly the Canaanites, are here meant. In the New Testament, it is said that, at the time of the pentecost, there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Yet, in the enumeration, which follows this passage, of the different places from which those Jews had come, we find only a region extending from Italy to Persia, and from Egypt to the Black Sea. It could have been a district of only about that size which Paul meant, when he said to the Colossians that the gospel was preached to every creature which is under heaven. In the First Book of Kings, it is said that all the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom;—a passage which requires as much limitation as the others above quoted. A similar mode of expression is employed by Christ, when he says of the queen of Sheba that she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; for her residence, being probably on the Arabian Gulf, could not have been more than twelve or fourteen hundred miles from Jerusalem. A like figurative mode of speech is employed in the description of Peter’s vision, in which he saw a great sheet let down to the earth, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. Who will suppose, since it is wholly unnecessary for the object, which was to convince Peter that the Mosaic distinction into clean and unclean beasts was abolished, that he here had a vision of all the species of terrestrial vertebral animals on the globe?
It would be easy to multiply similar passages. In many of them we should find that the phrase all the earth signifies the land of Palestine; in a few, the Chaldean empire; and in one, that of Alexander of Macedon.
Now, so similar is the phraseology of the passages just quoted to that descriptive of the deluge, so universal are the terms, while we are sure that their meaning must be limited, that we are abundantly justified in considering the deluge as limited, if other parts of the Bible, or the facts of natural history, require such a limitation. Indeed, so obviously analogous are the passages quoted to the Mosaic account of the deluge, that distinguished writers have regarded the deluge as limited, long before geology existed, or natural history had learned the manner in which organic life is distributed on the globe; nay, at a period when naturalists, with Linnæus at their head, supposed animals and plants to have proceeded from one centre:—an opinion that seemed to sustain the notion of the universality of the flood. The inference, then, that it was limited, must have been made chiefly on exegetical grounds.
“I cannot see,” says Bishop Stillingfleet, more than a century ago, “any urgent necessity from the Scripture to assert that the flood did spread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the ark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the Scriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind; but from thence follows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole earth was peopled before the flood, which I despair of ever seeing proved.”—Origines Sacræ, B. III. chap. 4, p. 337, ed. 1709.
Matthew Poole, well known for his valuable and extensive commentaries on the Bible, thus expresses himself: “It is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water. Where was the need of overwhelming those regions in which there were no human beings? It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is, indeed, not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects of the punishment inflicted upon men alone applied to places in which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with water, still the deluge would be universal, because the extirpation took effect upon all the part of the globe which was inhabited. If we take this ground, the difficulties which some have raised about the deluge fall away as inapplicable, and mere cavils; and irreligious persons have no reason left them for doubting the truth of the Holy Scriptures.”—Synopsis on Gen. vii. 19.
Poole wrote nearly two centuries ago. In more recent times, we find authorities equally eminent for learning and candor adopting the same views. “Interpreters,” says Dathe, “do not agree whether the deluge inundated the whole earth, or only those regions then inhabited. I adopt the latter opinion. The phrase all does not prove the inundation to have been universal. It appears that in many places כל (kol) is to be understood as limited to the thing or place spoken of. Hence all the animals said to have been introduced into the ark were only those of the region inundated. So, also, only those mountains are to be understood, which were surmounted by the waters.”—Pentateuchus a Dathio, p. 63.
But no modern writer has treated this subject with so much candor and ability—and the same may be said of his whole work on the “Relation of the Holy Scriptures to some Parts of Geological Science”—as Dr. John Pye Smith. We can say of him, what we can say of very few men, that he is accurately acquainted with all the branches of the subject. Eminent as a theologian and a philologist, and fully possessed of all the facts in geology and natural history, he gives us his opinion, not as a young man, fond of novelties, but in the full maturity of judgment and of years. “From these instances,” says he, “of the scriptural idiom in the application of phraseology similar to that in the narrative concerning the flood, I humbly think that those terms do not oblige us to understand a literal universality; so that we are exonerated from some otherwise insuperable difficulties in natural history and geology. If so much of the earth was overflowed as was occupied by the human race, both the physical and the moral ends of that awful visitation were answered.”—Scrip. and Geol. p. 214, 4th ed.
“Let us now take the seat of the antediluvian population,” continues Dr. Smith, “to have been in Western Asia, in which a large district, even at the present day, lies considerably below the level of the sea. It must not be forgotten that six weeks of continued rain would not give an amount of water forty times that which fell on the first, or a subsequent day, for evaporation would be continually carrying up the water to be condensed, and to fall again; so that the same mass of water would return many times. If, then, in addition to the tremendous rain, we suppose an elevation of the bed of the Persian and Indian Seas, or a subsidence of the inhabited land towards the south, we shall have sufficient cause in the hands of almighty justice for submerging the district, covering its hills, and destroying all living beings within its limits, except those whom divine mercy preserved in the ark. The drawing off of the waters would be effected by a return of the bed of the sea to a lower level, or by the elevation of some tracts of land, which would leave channels and slopes for the larger part of the water to flow back into the Indian Ocean, while the lower part remained a great lake, or an inland sea, the Caspian.”—p. 217.
It is a circumstance favoring the above suggestions of Dr. Smith, that there is a tract of country ten degrees of latitude in breadth, embracing most of Asia Minor, ancient Armenia and Georgia, and part of Persia, extending at least as far east as the Caspian Sea, and probably much farther, in which volcanic agency has been in operation at a comparatively recent period. I am not aware that we have evidence of any eruption of lava in those regions, within historic times, except, perhaps, some mud volcanoes in the Caucasian range. The Katekekaumene, or Burnt District, of Asia Minor, and Mount Ararat, probably experienced eruptions at a date somewhat earlier, though at a comparatively recent date. Yet important changes of level may have been the result of volcanic agency in Central Asia, as recently as the Noachian deluge, without leaving any traces which would be obvious, without more careful observation than has yet been made in those regions. Especially might a subsidence of the surface have taken place, and not have left any striking evidence of its occurrence. Still more difficult would it now be to discover the marks of vertical movements in the bed of the Indian Ocean at the time of the deluge.