13. When the atmosphere is cool or cold, the raindrops congeal, and we have snow or hail.
14. There are regions on the earth where it never rains, probably never rained. The rainless region of Asia is of vast extent. It includes part of Tibet, the great desert of Gobi, and part of Mongolia—a space estimated to comprise about 2,000,000 square miles. There are other rainless regions on the face of the earth’s surface. There is a great diversity in the yearly amount of rainfall; the highest is about 60 inches, the lowest 21 and less.
15. There is no great difference between the polar and equatorial diameter of the earth, the average number of miles being about 8,000.
Taking the above facts in consideration—the conformation of the earth’s surface, the elevation above the sea level, table-lands or plateaus, and mountains, the fixed quantity of water upon the surface of the earth, the influence of heat and cold, the condition of the atmosphere, etc., a general deluge must be rigidly excluded.
Supposing it rained forty days and forty nights, how many inches of rainfall could we possibly get? We can know to an inch the quantity of rain that would fall. The water would certainly roll down the hills and mountains, fill up the lakes and rivers, overflow the banks, and rise in the lowlands to a certain hight.
The deluge, Noah’s deluge, was a local affair, if it ever occurred. Granting such a flood did take place, it never extended beyond that portion of Asia, Chaldea. Supposing that the rivers Tigris and Euphrates may have overflowed and caused a flood say of fifty feet rise above the level of the sea (which is impossible, because the surplus waters would flow into the seas and oceans), how insignificant is the rise of fifty feet even in comparison with table-lands 10,000 feet above the sea-level, and mountains 20 to 30,000 feet above the sea-level.
As to the extent of the rainstorm that caused this deluge, I do not suppose that the clouds held in the atmosphere extended over 500, or say 1,000, square miles over the region where the rain fell.
As to collecting the animals for the ark from all over the globe, that is just as ridiculous as the deluge itself.
It is to be presumed that the person or persons who wrote the first seven chapters of the Bible had not the slightest idea of the geographical condition of the earth’s surface. It was not known. They thought that their locality embraced the whole earth. Even in Columbus’s time they had no idea of the extent of this earth. The seas that they probably had some knowledge of may have been the Gulf of Persia, the Red sea, the Mediterranean or Arabian sea, probably the Caspian. That was about the extent. They had means neither of land travel nor of navigation.
Verse 20: “Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail, and the mountains were covered.”