Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Conclusion - All of what? - Guidelines for Interpreting The Flood
So far, I have laid down the following guidelines for interpreting The Flood in scripture:
Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Part 2 - Evidence for Global Catastrophe - All evidence for global catastrophe (that I have found) was created by the KT impact or the ancient ocean of 4.5 billion years ago. This leaves no evidence for a recent global flood. Therefore, the Bible is documenting a regional flood.
Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Part 3 - Evidence of Mankind - Scripture and mankind appear to agree that Adam was created after mankind subdued the earth. The word for mankind then appears to narrow in on only Adam and his descendants at the beginning of Genesis 5. Therefore, the Bible is documenting a flood that only impacts Adam’s descendants. Therefore, it is a regional flood.
Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Part 4 - Partial Revelation - Scripture often contains partial information about something important. Usually it is to keep people from digging into a problem before it is time, or to keep the unwise from realizing truths reserved for the wise. Therefore, where we see discontinuities or inconsistencies in The Flood account, they indicate partial revelation, either to Moses or through Moses.
Finally, we come to one final guideline I want to discuss, and that is the meaning of overarching words like “all” or “world”. We have already dealt with “mankind” above, and why it does not refer to all of mankind. Let me cite a couple of articles that explain a similar concept for interpretation:
The word for “world” means “the earth”, indicates local region
Read “Why the Flood cannot be Global”. For other articles on The Flood by Morton: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/fld.htm. The basic idea is that the words translated to mean the world also mean a region, or the entire known world, or the entire area that one is talking about. It does not necessarily mean the planet.
The word “all” or “whole” or “entire”
Read http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/all.html. It points out how mountains were visible before the dove saw that there was no place to rest over the whole earth. As you can see, such extreme language is not a reference to absolutely everything.
Therefore:
“All of the people in the world” means, “Everyone known within the known region”. To those around Noah at the time, their region was the world, and all of Adam’s descendants were all the people in it.