ler, 1795), says:
"Interpreters do not agree whether the deluge inundated the whole earth
or only the 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 _kol_ is to be understood as limited to the
thing or place spoken of. Hence all the animals introduced into the ark
were only those of the region inundated."

But the most literal rendering of the language of Moses does not
necessitate our belief that when he says that the waters covered the
whole earth, _arets_, he meant the whole globe. The common Bible meaning
of this word is land, country, or region, as the perpetually recurring
phrases, the land, _arets_, of Havilah, the land of Nod, the land of
Ethiopia, the land of Goshen, the land of Egypt, the land of Canaan,
which occurs three hundred and ninety times, may convince every reader
beyond the possibility of mistake. How now, from this word being used by
Moses, could this learned bishop conclude that he necessarily meant to
describe the globe? Moses says, "The waters prevailed upon and covered
the whole country." The bishop translates, "covered the whole globe;"
evidently in order to make Moses commit a blunder.

But reference is made to the expression, "All the high hills under the
whole heavens were covered;" which the bishop will have it meant all the
mountains under the moon.

But the popular use of the word "heavens," in Moses' day, had as little
reference to universal space, as the word earth, or land, had to the
whole globe. It meant simply the visible heavens over any place; and its
extent was defined by the extent of the earth those visible heavens
covered. Thus Moses himself defines it, Deuteronomy iv. 32: "Ask from
the one side of heaven unto the other." Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thy
heaven over thee shall be as brass." Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day I
will begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the
whole heaven." And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds of
heaven," "the fowls of heaven," refer to the optical heavens. Such is
the meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him,
as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Moses
copies Noah's log-book.

The geologist adds his testimony to the existing evidences of the recent
submergence of a large region of Persia and Turkey around the Caspian
Sea, and its subsequent elevation. But