As to the region where the deluge occurred--on the northern edge ascend
the Persian mountains; on the east the steep and lofty parallel chains
of the Indo-Persian boundary mountains, and on the south the plateau
for a thousand miles along the Persian gulf and Arabian sea is bounded
by the wild terraced regions of Beloochistan and Faristan. The second
division includes the mountainous regions of Armenia, Koordistan, and
Azerbijan. Here the table-land is compressed about half its general
width. From this plateau, of which a part is mentioned in scripture
as the "mountains of Ararat," rises the volcanic cone commonly styled
Mount Ararat, to the hight of 17,212 feet above the sea level.
The highlands of Syria rise gradually from the neighboring desert to
the hight of 10,000 feet in Libanus and Antilibanus, and slope steeply
in terraces down to the narrow coastlands of Phoenicia and Palestine.
Of the Syrian and Arabian lowlands, the south is hot and arid, with
almost no oasis; but the north is watered by the Tigris and Euphrates.
Near this isolated corner of Asia, in the neighborhood of the Persian
gulf and the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, where the deluge is supposed
to have occurred, in the lowlands of that region, Chaldea, immense
chains of mountains run in several directions, with highlands 10,000
feet above the level of the sea.
Verse 4: "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the
earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that
I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth."
This deluge is supposed to have taken place about 2348 B.C. Hale
puts it at 3154 B.C. The sons of God came upon earth and married the
daughters of men about 2948 B.C.; about this date ought to be nearer
the flood. Noah was 600 years old when he floated in his ark.
We will consider, first, a general deluge.
A deluge over the whole earth is an impossibility.
1. We have to take in consideration the inequality of the earth's
surface--lowlands, highlands, hills and mountains, plateaus, etc.
As to mountains: Asia possesses no less than sixty or seventy
mountains, the highest being some 29,000 feet above the sea's
level--the Himalaya, Everest.
Africa boasts of some thirty or forty mountains, the Kenia and
Killamandja being 20,000 feet above the level of the sea, the other
mountains grading downward in hight.
Europe is adorned with some seventy or eighty mountains, Mount Blanc
being the highest, others ranging downwards.
South America boasts of some forty or more mountains, the Tupengater
being the highest, 22,450 feet above the level of the sea.
North America counts some seventy or more mountains, Mt. Elias being
17,900 above the level of the sea.
We have plateaus and table-lands ranging from 10,000 feet above the
level of the sea downward to near the sea's level.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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