One hypothesis is that the Flood occurred in the Mediterranean basin, which was at one time a desert. If this is the location that Noah was living when he built the Ark, he would indeed need to bring the animals on board because the flood would cover tens of thousands of miles of land. Even if he disembarked at higher altitudes near the periphery of the area they'd still have to walk for days or weeks before reaching an area that hadn't been destroyed.
Besides the aforementioned biblical difficulties with this hypothesis, there are several logical or common sense problems with it. For one thing, it begs the question: If the flood was indeed global then it would have completely resurfaced the world through the erosion, transportation and deposition of abundant quantities of earth, therefore we do not know what the preflood topography was like anywhere in the world including the “
Mediterranean basin.”
Also, there is no good reason to suppose that the Mediterranean basin was arid some 5000 years ago. In fact it should rather be assumed that the region would have been well watered and productive since it was so heavily peopled and we know from studies of palaeontology and archaeology that the ancient world was more tropical and lush than our present world. This is as it should be given that the Lord created the earth to be inhabited and had pronounced it very good.
If this is the location that Noah was living when he built the Ark . . .
If??? If indeed. The Bible doesn’t say where Noah lived at the time of the flood. He may have lived in the region around modern day Israel or he may have lived in the region now called Nigeria, or Germany, or Antarctica.
By the way, in the Mediterranean basin location there are mountains several thousands of feet high, like the mountains of Ararat where the Ark came to rest, uh, how do you get a year long flood which covers grown up mountains but
stays within a coastal locality like the Mediterranean basin?
. . . he would indeed need to bring the animals on board because the flood would cover tens of thousands of miles of land.
Why is that? God stated that one of his purposes in taking animals on the Ark was to “keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.” We don’t really believe that creeping things, beasts of the earth, and birds of the air had not spread beyond the Mediterranean basin, do we? So, since it is safe to assume that these creatures did live in the lands beyond the middle east, it wouldn’t really matter if all the animals in the locality died off because most of the world would still be inhabited by the same kinds of animals.
Petrel also said:
“I don't think the idea is that he didn't exist, just that the flood was local and didn't require cramming every single animal species in the world on board, just those in the area.”
The implication of this statement is that if the flood were global then Noah would be required to
cram “every single animal species in the world” into the ark. Not so! The text indicates that God wanted representatives of the various
kinds of animals which he had made in the beginning (e.g.: bear kind, dog kind, rodent kind, sauropod kind, cat kind, elephant kind, bovine kind, etc.). A kind is a broader grouping of organisms than a species. A kind is likely equivalent to the
genus or
family level of modern biological classification. This by itself would greatly reduce the number of organisms on the ark. But when you also consider that God specified that the kinds of organisms he wanted on the ark were
land animals which breathed through nostrils the number of creatures becomes even fewer. The myriad varieties of sea creatures and insects, for example, were not required on the ark. Creation researchers, after much study, have proposed that approximately 16,000 specially selected individual animals would have been needed on the ark. Please see:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/answersbook/arksize13.asp for more information.
