Reading with blinders on

In light of the recognition of academic arithmetic in the ancient world and the practice noted in iconography to supersize that which is important, we suggest that in the dimensions of the vessels in the various [flood] accounts, more than hyperbole is going on. That is, we are not suggesting the boat was actually only half the stated size and they doubled it to aggrandize the size of the vessel. The dimensions are not relative to the actual size. Alternatively, the dimensions can be viewed as devised with a rhetorical effect in mind. Neither jibes by skeptics about the impossibility of the vessels nor the apologetic defenses of practicality and realism are to the point. Both groups are reading the text through their modern filters and thereby expect to conform to how such information would be conveyed in our current—day cultural river.—Lost World of the Flood, 76–77