Every quotation in the article, with the route by which its wording and locator were checked. No quotation was established through WebFetch. "Search-inside" means archive.org's fulltext/inside.php on a print-disabled item, read with bin/iapdsearch.py, with the leaf-to-page offset fixed from the item's public _scandata.xml and confirmed against a running head or index entry. "Google Books" means bin/google-books-snippets.sh on a named volume ID, which returns the page number with each snippet.
Walton and Longman, The Lost World of the Flood (2018) -- Google Books L5VRDwAAQBAJ
Re-run in verification pass 1 (2026-09-05); every snippet also carries the page's own running footer ("Proposition 5 41", "Proposition 6 47"), which anchors the printed page independently of Google's page metadata. Proposition 5 (pp. 36-41) is "Genesis Appropriately Presents a Hyperbolic Account of the Flood"; Proposition 6 (from p. 42) is "Genesis Depicts the Flood as a Global Event."
| Page | Quotation |
|---|---|
| 36 | "employing universalistic rhetoric to portray the impact and significance of the flood as a cosmic cataclysm does not mean that the ancient Israelites or the author considered the physical scope or geographical range to be universal" |
| 37 | "hyperbole permeates the account of the flood, beginning with the description of pervasive nonorder" |
| 41 | "The description truly is that of a worldwide flood, not a local flood. Though some modern readers don't see it, the original audience would have understood that such a description is hyperbole." |
| 47 | "the attempts to interpret the biblical text as knowingly describing a local flood remains unconvincing" |
| 49 | "it is our conclusion that Genesis 6-8 describes a worldwide, not a local flood" |
| 71 | "The Mesopotamian accounts consistently indicate that the flood lasted seven days and nights. This is in stark contrast to the biblical account in which the rain lasts forty days and nights, but all the time periods mentioned in the Genesis text add up to one year." |
| 93 | "Genesis 6-9 pertains to a local flood described rhetorically as a worldwide flood to make a theological point." |
Wellhausen, Prolegomena (1885) -- Gutenberg 4732, ch. 8 §I.2
"The flood lasts twelve months and ten days, i.e., exactly a solar year." "Noah having apparently not forgotten, in spite of his anxiety, to heave the lead and to mark the date in his log-book. This prematurely modern measuring and counting cannot be thought by any one to make the narrative more lifelike; it simply destroys the illusion." "As the duration of the flood is advanced from forty days (JE) to a whole year, its area also is immeasurably increased. The Priestly Code states with particular emphasis that it was quite universal, and went over the tops of the highest mountains; indeed it is compelled to take this view by its assumption that the human race was diffused from the first over the whole earth." "the artificial, mathematical marking out of the framework"; "idyllic and naive." All verbatim from the downloaded text.
Ross, Navigating Genesis (2014) -- search-inside navigatinggenesi0000ross, page = leaf − 2
| Page (leaf) | Quotation |
|---|---|
| 145 (147) | "The words 'all,' 'every,' and 'everything,' appear more than 40 times in these three chapters (a few more or a few less, depending on Bible version)." |
| 147 (149) | "some interpreters comment that it's their repetition that matters. I agree." |
| 151 (153) | "Right here in the context we have a clear indication that 'the face of the whole earth' can and does mean a particular less-extensive-than-global region." |
| 153 (155) | "we forget that the ancients had no such images in their minds. The world meant people, the land meant the ground under their feet stretching from horizon to horizon" |
| 154 (156) | "Throughout the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, all references to and depictions of the Genesis flood support this ancient perspective. … a compelling case can be made for seeing the event as worldwide, or universal, with respect to humanity, but less than global with respect to geography." |
| 155 (157) | "The worldwide flood from which God rescued Noah and his family cannot—and need not, for defense of biblical truth—be put forth as a global scenario." (em-dashes rendered -- in the article) |
| 173 (175) | "Given the flood's geographically limited (though worldwide) destruction, a reader may wonder why God did not deal with Noah's situation as He did with Lot's later on—rescue by evacuation." |
Hill, PSCF 54 (2002) -- library PDF, pages from running footers
p. 170 (abstract): "the 'fifteen cubits upward' flood depth mentioned in Gen. 7:20 favors a local rather than a universal flood"; "in the vicinity of Jabel Judi (the 'mountains of Ararat' near Cizre, Turkey) within the northern boundary of the Mesopotamian hydrologic basin." p. 173: "This word can also be translated as 'a range of hills' or 'hill country'"; (p. 174, PDF page 5:) "fifteen cubits above the tops of ziggurat temple mounds ('mountains')"; "only fifteen cubits above the Mesopotamian alluvial plain"; "Or, as suggested by Ramm, does the 'fifteen cubits upward' refer to the draft (draught) of the ark; i.e., how deep its 30 cubit depth (Gen. 6:15) was submerged in the water when the ark was loaded?"
Ham and Hodge, A Flood of Evidence (2016) -- Google Books pJZwDQAAQBAJ
p. 94: "higher ground or over a local mountain range or hills to avoid the floodwaters"; "The wicked people that the Flood was intended to destroy could have escaped God's judgment in the same manner. They could have used small boats or"; "birds on the ark when they could have flown over the hills to safe ground?"; "if representatives of their kinds existed all over the"; "five months of rising and five months of falling in a river valley? Such a flood would merely carve out a deep valley and wash Noah downstream to the ocean!"; "How could the ark have landed in the mountains of Ararat far upstream (and up in the mountains above) of the alleged river valley when all flow is going to take the ark in the opposite direction?"; "The Flood occurred about 1,656 years after creation." p. 95: "confuse their languages and scatter them for disobeying his command in Genesis 1 to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28)? It only took about 100 years or so after the Flood for God to judge mankind for not scattering at Babel."; "God would be a liar, for God promised in Genesis 9:11 never to send a Flood like the one He just did to destroy the earth again. Yet the world has seen many local floods." The full wording of items 1, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 12 in the article's table is taken from Eric's transcription of pp. 94-95 and from the parallel list in the online New Answers Book 1 chapter; those items are paraphrased in the table rather than quoted.
Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood (1961) -- search-inside bwb_S0-ATO-487, page = leaf − 36
p. 2 (leaf 38): "Nearly all commentators agree that the phrase 'fifteen cubits' in 7:20 must therefore refer to the draught of the Ark. In other words, the Ark sank into the water to a depth of fifteen cubits (just one-half of its total height) when fully laden." (OCR reads "draug" and "toa"; corrected from context.)
Barr, letter to Watson, 23 April 1984 -- library transcription
"so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that … (c) Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark." "the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know."
Cassuto, Genesis Part II (1964) -- search-inside commentaryonbook0002unse, page = leaf − 20
p. 43 (leaf 63): "The Deluge lasted forty days (vii 4, 12, 17), that is, until the twenty-seventh day of the third month, and the waters prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days (vii 24). The verb wayyighberu [literally, 'were strong'; E. V. prevailed] does not denote an action but a condition, the meaning being that the waters remained in their might upon the ground during one hundred and fifty days." p. 44 (leaf 64): "Although five lunar months comprise only 147 days, yet the Bible apparently preferred to use a round figure, just as we also speak today, for instance, of ninety days to indicate a period of three months." p. 103 (leaf 123), on 8:4: "The Septuagint reads: on the twenty-seventh day of the month, as above, vii 11. For the reason of this difference, see below, my annotation to v. 14." p. 113 (leaf 133), on 8:14: "if we count both the first and the last day, a year and eleven days after the commencement of the Deluge: a complete solar year of 365 days in all." (Verification pass 1: p. 43 only cross-refers to the 8:14 note for the Septuagint; the article now cites pp. 103 and 113 for it.) p. 94 (leaf 114): "the verse indicates that the depth of this layer reached fifteen cubits, in order to explain why the mountains did not halt the ark. The height of the ark was thirty cubits (vi 15); hence, even if we assume that only half its height floated above the water, it was able to clear the highest mountain peaks."
Augustine, City of God 15.27 -- CCEL (Dods) and Latin Library
Dods: "they who contend that these things never happened, but are only figures setting forth other things, in the first place suppose that there could not be a flood so great that the water should rise fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, because it is said that clouds cannot rise above the top of Mount Olympus." Latin: "tam magnum fieri non potuisse diluuium, ut altissimos montes quindecim cubitis aqua crescendo transcenderet."
Luther, Lenker vol. 2 (1910) -- Gutenberg 27978, cited by chapter and paragraph
Gen 6:13 para. 236: "God gives Noah the revelation that he will make an end of flesh and earth, not in part, but of all flesh and all the earth. Would it not be awful enough to partition the earth into three parts and to threaten destruction to one? But to rage against the whole earth and against all mankind seems to be in conflict with God's government." Gen 7:11-12 para. 54: "A volume of water, therefore, swept over the earth, from the sky as well as from the innermost parts of the earth, until at last the whole earth was covered with water, and the fertile soil, or the entire face of the earth was destroyed by the briny flood. A like instance occurs nowhere in any book." Gen 7:16-24 para. 61: "For forty days the ark stood in some plain. By that time the waters had risen to such an extent that they lifted the ark, which then floated for one hundred and fifty days." Gen 8:4 para. 20: "It is generally believed that they are mountains of Armenia, close by the highest ranges of Asia Minor, the Caucasus and the Taurus. But it appears to me that more likely the highest of all mountains is meant, the Imaus (Himalaya), which divides India. Compared to this range, other mountains are no more than warts. That the ark rested upon the highest mountain is substantiated by the fact that the waters continued to fall for three whole months before such smaller ranges as Lebanon, Taurus, and Caucasus were uncovered."
Calvin, Genesis (1554; King 1847) -- CCEL
On 7:17: "Moses copiously insists upon this fact, in order to show that the whole world was immersed in the waters." "the crimes of men, by which God was induced to destroy the whole world"; "Noah's deliverance from the universal deluge was a figure of baptism." On 8:4: "Concerning the name Ararat, I follow the opinion most received. And I do not see why some should deny it to be Armenian the mountains of which are declared, by ancient authors, almost with one consents to be the highest." (The CCEL text reads "consents", and the article keeps it.)
Young, The Biblical Flood (1995) -- search-inside biblicalfloodcas0000youn, page = leaf − 16
p. 52 (leaf 68): "the son of a Dutch theologian, librarian to the queen of Sweden, and, later in life, a canon in the Church of England"; "There simply was not enough water on earth to have submerged all land"; "pious fooleries." p. 53 (leaf 69): "Thus Voss maintained that the deluge was universal only in the sense that the entire inhabited world was overwhelmed"; "granted the validity of the criticism that there was not enough water on earth to submerge all land to any great depth (he calculated that if all the world's clouds were completely drained, only about a foot and a half of water would fall to the surface), but a localized flood would resolve that problem." p. 55 (leaf 71): "It is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water." p. 80 (leaf 96): "Even though some orthodox scholars such as Voss or Stillingfleet proposed a more restricted flood, the church at large felt little need to adjust its long-held view of a strictly literal universal flood."
Wenham, VT 28 (1978) -- search-inside istudiedinscript0004unse, VT pages from the bracketed markers
p. 337: "appears to be a palistrophe containing 31 items"; "the first item matches the final item, the second item matches the penultimate item, and so on. The second half of the story is thus a mirror image of the first." p. 338: "The turning point of the narrative is found in 8:1 'God remembered Noah.'"; "Noah enters the ark with the animals, and then later they leave it. The waters rise and then fall." p. 339: "partly to keep the literary balance." p. 347: the paragraphs "Whereas the combined account in Genesis 6-9 has seventeen points in common …" and "It is strange that two accounts of the flood so different as J and P …" and "None of these observations is absolutely incompatible …", quoted in full in the article. p. 348: "one epic source which has been reworked by a later priestly editor."
Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (1987) -- library text, running-head pages
p. 157: "Most striking is the way the number of days is inverted after 8:1." p. 183: "Just how deep the water was is indicated by the high mountains' being submerged."; "In fact the mountains were covered by at least 15 cubits (22 feet or 7 meters) of water, allowing the ark to float over them. Apparently the story assumes the ark's draft was half its height of thirty cubits (6:15)."; "Evidently the first forty days of heavy rain (7:12) were followed by 110 days of the waters' triumph." p. 185: "'On the mountains of Ararat' does not mean on a mountain called Ararat, but on the mountains in the area called Ararat. Ararat is the Hebrew term for Urartu, a kingdom north of Assyria (2 Kgs 19:37; Isa 37:38; Jer 51:27) later called Armenia, now part of eastern Turkey, southern Russia, and northwestern Iran."
Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (1987) -- search-inside whowrotebible0000frie, page = leaf − 4
p. 54 (leaf 58): "If you read either source from beginning to end, and then go back and read the other one, you will be able to see for yourself two complete, continuous accounts, each with its own vocabulary and concerns." p. 227 (leaf 231): "The J flood story was about forty days of rain. The P flood story was about a year-long cosmic crisis. The J story had fourteen of the clean animals and two of the unclean. The P story had two of each. The J story had Noah sending out three doves (or one dove three times) at the end. The P story had one raven."
Hess and Tsumura (1994), p. 57 n. 165 -- search-inside, leaf 77
"The recent emphasis on the literary unity of the story by Andersen ('chiasmus'), Wenham ('palistrophe'), Anderson, and Longacre is noteworthy, despite Emerton's dissent."
Tigay (1982), p. 216 -- library OCR
"in the case of the flood story there is no question but that Atrahasis served as the source for Tablet XI of the late version."
Kramer, Expedition 9(4) (1967) -- library HTML
Woolley via Kramer: "it all stopped—there were no more pot-sherds, no ashes, only clean, water-laid mud." Kramer: "an archaeological horizon ranging from about 3200 to 3000 B.C."; "there was hardly a season either in the spring or autumn, when the desert did not, at least for a few days, assume the appearance of a lake" (Mallowan via Kramer); "was inspired by an actual catastrophic but by no means universal disaster that took place, not as Woolley claimed, immediately after the Ubaid period, but some time about 3000 B.C."
Ryan et al. 1997, Aksu et al. 2002, Yanko-Hombach et al. 2007
Ryan (abstract, Semantic Scholar): "at 7,150 yr BP"; "saltwater poured through this spillway to refill the lake and submerge, catastrophically, more than 100,000 km2 of its exposed continental shelf." Aksu (open PDF, p. 4): "a 10–11 k.y. history of low surface-water salinities in the Marmara Sea"; "persistent Black Sea outflow across the Bosphorus Strait"; "a more complex and progressive reconnection over the past 12 k.y." Yanko-Hombach (abstract, Semantic Scholar): "do not provide evidence for any catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea in the Early Holocene"; "reveal no recognizable changes in population dynamics between 14 and 6 ky BP that could be linked to an inundation of large magnitude."
Jubilees (Charles 1913) -- pseudepigrapha.com
5:31-32: "on the seventeenth day in the second month the earth was dry. And on the twenty-seventh thereof he opened the ark"; "five months -one hundred and fifty days"; "Fifteen cubits did the waters rise above all the high mountains." 6:32: "three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year."
Gilgamesh XI -- eBL edition of George
135: "but all the people had turned to clay." 142: "On Mount Nimuš the boat ran aground." 166-167: "O gods, let these be lapis lazuli (beads) around my neck, so that I remember these days and never forget them!"
Scripture
NET Bible via labs.bible.org API: Gen 6:17, 6:19-20, 7:2-4, 7:11-12, 7:17, 7:19-24, 8:1-14, 8:21-22, 9:1, 9:11-15, 11:2, 41:57; Isa 54:9; Deut 2:25; Matt 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27; Heb 11:7; 1 Pet 3:20; 2 Pet 2:5, 3:5-7. Hebrew from morphhb WLC; Greek from MorphGNT SBLGNT.