Of course, the story about the flood has many other inconsistencies. It looks like the author of the Biblical story did not know much about the geography, since he did not know about any mountain higher than Ararat. The highest point of that mountainous body, which is situated where the boundaries between Armenia, Turkey, and Iran meet, is 16854 feet (4983 m). Less than two hundred miles (about three hundred kilometers) north of Ararat, the mountain of Elbrus stands 18510 feet (5462 m) high. It is within the Great Caucasus range, which stretches for a few hundred miles, and in which several peaks exceed the height of Ararat. Of course, many mountains (Himalaya, Pamir, and others) are much higher than even those of Caucasus. If Ararat was indeed the first mountain to show above the receding waters, as Genesis tells us, then obviously the flood could be only a local one, covering a limited area rather than enveloping the entire earth as the Bible wants us to believe.
To explain the described inconsistency, defenders of the Bible often maintain that the name Ararat meant some different mountain. Of course, no evidence for such a name change was ever presented. Moreover, all the mountains suggested to possibly be the real Biblical Ararat are even much lower than that majestic white peak hovering above the southern border of Armenia.
There is no doubt that many floods happened in the long history of our planet. Legends about those floods, often exaggerating their scope, were transmitted from generation to generation. The Biblical story is just one of those legends, no better substantiated by any factual evidence than the stories told by other religions.
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