Deluge
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Deluge. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a water, or inundation; specifically, the general overflowing of general inundation or flood in the time of Noah . Three schools of thought or opinion exist with respect to the deluge. (1) The common one that it was universal not merely as regards the human race, but with respect to the world, every part of which, the highest peak Himalayas not peak of the excepted, was submerged. (2) That while drowning all mankind except the eight persons in the ark, it was partial, being limited to central Asia. The ordinary mind will consider ths view abs absurd, and say that the water standing high in Central Asia would run over the world, becoming shallower as it went; but the geologist knows that in such a vast flood what appears to the eye the rising of the waters sinking of the land. If the land subsided is really the in central Asia, cracks Caspian, the Persian Gulf, etc., a deluge extending to the would be produced, while a like upheaval of the land would bring it to a termination. ( 3) Bishop Colenso considers the deluge unhistorical. The deluge predicted by scribed in Gen. vi. vii. viii.; dated by Noah is de- Usher and the English Bible 2348 B. C. Traditions of such an event are found among many races. The old view that the fossils by the geologists were deposited during collected the Noachian deluge is now held only by the unenlightened. nodon gracilis), a small quadruped in-
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the great flood that prevailed in the days of Noah. The wickedness of man; the piety of Noah; the building of the ark; the breaking up of the fountains of the ark; the breaking up of the fountains of the deep, and the opening of the windows of heaven; the rain of forty days and forty nights; the preservation of beast and fowl and creeping thing; the prevalence of water on the face of the earth; the resting of the ark on Mount Ararat; and the sending forth of the raven and the dove, are told in chapters vi, vii, and viii of Genesis. A former opinion, that the deluge of Noah was universal, has given way to the view that it was local. Similar traditions are preserved by many peoples. The most notable is that of the Chaldeans, a people akin to the Hebrews. It was found inscribed in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, and was made known in 1872. The Chaldean deluge reached its height in seven days. The ark rested on a mountain in eastern Kurdistan; the Noah-like hero of the Chaldean flood sent forth a raven, a swallow, and a dove.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 still laid out three live options "with respect to the deluge" ">universal, local, or unhistorical">and dated Noah's flood to Ussher's 2348 B.C.; Aiton's in 1910 reported that the once-standard universal reading had "given way to the view that it was local." Mainstream scholarship has since moved further still: Genesis 6-8 is generally read as a Hebrew reworking of older Mesopotamian flood stories, and radiometric dating and the geological record leave no room for a worldwide inundation at any date. The Chaldean tablet "made known in 1872" (George Smith's Gilgamesh find) is now only one of several such texts, joined by the Akkadian Atrahasis epic and a Sumerian version, all older than Genesis. Leonard Woolley's excavation at Ur in the late 1920s turned up a thick silt layer he announced as the Flood; it is now understood as one of several local river floods.
Written for this edition, 2026.