What Is the Theology of the Flood?

This is typical rhetoric. We can show it through the ancient near east, we can show it in the biblical text. Great clad cataclysms use universal rhetoric,. Could it be also, and i think we make this point in the book, that the experience of this flood, whatever it was, felt global. It seemed global because they obviously didn't have a full scientific understanding of the size of the earth. And soa it's a local flood described with world wide language to make a theological point. What is the theological point?