Gweedo,
You wrote: I think a more apt description would maybe be: the whole world as Noah knew it. Of which I find hard to believe didn't include knowledge of some high mountains. I mean, the guy eventually made it to ararat...to Northern Iraq somewhere ... it's pretty hilly terrain up there.
Concerning this issue and others COJ posted the following information a while back:
The "Ararat" of the Bible was not a mountain, but originally a geographical area, which later, in the Assyrian period, was consolidated into a kingdom (2 Kings 19:37; Isa. 37:38; Jer. 51:27). The later kingdom lay north and northeast of Mesopotamia with its center around the seas of Van and Urmia. In cuneiform inscriptions the form of the name is "Urartu". Gen. 8:4 states that the Ark "came to rest on the mountains (or ’hills’) of Ararat." The plural, "mountains, hills," should be noted. It is only in later Christian tradition that the mountain of Agri Dag in northeastern Turkey came to be called "Ararat" and was identified as the site of the landing.
The Targums and the early Syriac translation render Ararat as "Korduene" (Karduchia), and this is also where Berossus locates the site of landing, according to Josephus (Ant. I.3.6). Korduene seems to refer to the area occupied by the Kurds, Kurdistan, or the former Armenia. The Latin versions, in fact, render Ararat as "Armenia". This roughtly corresponds to the earlier kingdom of Urartu, which was destroyed late in the 7th century BC, after which the name disappears. An excellent recent work on the Urartu/Ararat kingdom is URARTU—DAS REICH AM ARARAT, by Ralf-Bernhard Wartke (Mainz am Rhein, 1993).
Archaeological findings show that the southern border of the kingdom of Urartu extended down to the area of Nineveh (close to present-day Mosul) and the Zab rivers. (It is quite possible that the earlier geographical area called Urartu was larger and extended further south and southeast.) Vast areas of the southern kingdom of Urartu was only between 300 and 200 meters above sea level.
But at the time of the Flood these areas may have been much lower, as the mountain building movements of Iraq and southwestern Persia have been going on since that time. Drs. G. M. Lees and N. L. Falcon point out: "This mountain system has developed out of a broader zone of depression or geosyncline, by a relative approach between central Persia and the stable massif of Arabia which compressed the mobile strip between and formed a series of giant earth waves or fold mountains. The time of the maximum tangential movement was in the late Pliocene but THE ELEVATION OF THE MOUNTAIN BELT AS A WHOLE, AS DISTINCT FROM FOLD MOVEMENTS, CONTINUED INTO RECENT TIME AND IS IN FACT STILL ACTIVE." ("The Geographical History of the Mesopotamian Plains," The Geographical Journal, Vol. CXVIII, 1952, p. 27. My emphasis.)
With respect to the Hebrew plural noun ’harim’, which clearly can mean both "mountains" and "hills", J.H. insists that it is "typically bad exegesis to argue that ... it is possible to translate the expression ’high hills’." His statement implies that "high hills" is an impossible translation. If it is, why did the translators, not only of King James version, but also the modern translators of the New King James Version translate "high hills" at Gen. 7:19? Bullinger’s The Companion Bible, too, translates "high hills". And Ferrar Fenton’s The Five Books of Moses, has "all the hills and mountains". I do not think any of these translators chose the word "hills" because they believed the Flood was local, so that their choice of word was due to "bad exegesis". And contrary to J.H. (and myself, of course), they had a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew language. The only reasonable conclusion to draw, therefore, is that "high hills" is a fully possible and legitimate rendering. And it would be especially appropriate if the Flood story, as is commonly believed, originated in Mesopotamia, where the only mountains the inhabitants could see were hills.
I have checked just a couple of dozens translations. I’m sure there are more examples that could be added by a Bible collector.
That an enormous Flood drowned at least the southern plains of Mesopotamia and swept away the pre-Sumerian Ubaid civilization in the area seems now to have been clearly established by recent geological and geomorphological research in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf area, as I pointed out in an earlier post (September 25, 1999).
It seems obvious to me that this disastrous catastrophe was the historical background of the Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions. It would be foolish just to ignore this evidence or wave it aside. How far northward this "giant flood" reached is still an open question. An enormous sea wave from the Persian Gulf could reach a very long way northwards along the plain, even up to the mountainous districts of northern Iraq. It should be remembered that most of the Mesopotamian plains below that area are very low. The whole delta lowland south of Baghdad, for example, is extremely flat and rises only a few meters from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad 600 kilometers north of the Gulf, so that Baghdad is still less than 10 (ten) meters above sea level! Therefore, to categorically reject the possibility that a local inundation of the Mesopotamian plains about 5,000 years ago could have reached the areas of southern Urartu, would be a sign of ignorance, stubborn dogmatism, and blind faith.
Marine shells, marine terraces, and other evidence show that the waters that drowned the cities of the Ubaid civilization was caused by a massive movement of the sea from the Gulf. This finding agrees with the statement at Gen. 7:11 that the waters of the Flood had two sources: (1) "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and (2) the windows of heaven were opened." The "great deep" (Hebr. ’tehom rabba’) is used in the Bible especially of the sea (e.g., Isa. 51:10; 63:3; Jonah 2:4). The inundation from the Persian Gulf explains why the ark of Noah (= the Sumerian Ziusudra, who is stated to have lived in the city of Shuruppak in southern Mesopotamia) was brought northwards. If the Flood had been caused only by rains from above and inundations of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, the ark would have been brought southwards to the Gulf.
Anyway, there was indeed a Flood. I believe it was local and limited to Mesopotamia, as is also indicated by the Sumerian Flood tradition, in which it is stated that the Flood covered "The Land", sum. ’kalam’. ’Kalam’ was the name the Sumerians used of their own country, which roughly covered the area from the Gulf up to present Baghdad, before it in the later Akkadian period was divided into Sumer and Akkad. The Biblical and Mesopotamian Flood traditions are closely related, although it cannot be shown that the Biblical story was derived from the others, or vice versa. They clearly originate in a common source or event. That’s why it seems likely to me that the Biblical tradition, like the Mesopotamian traditions, speaks of a local catastrophe. As we have pointed out earlier, the Biblical word for "earth", ’erets’, usually was used in the sense of "land", and more rarely in the sense of "earth" (= the globe). It seems probable, therefore, that it referred to the "land" of Mesopotamia, like the Sumerian word ’kalam’. The context should always decide whether ’erets’ means "land" or "earth". And if the Scriptural context is not enough for deciding the matter, the historical context in which the story originated may be our best guide.
