How could Noah's Ark flood story describe a 'World' wide flood when the word World as we define it today didn't exist?

You say it could not have been, yet you have absolutely no way of proving your particular assertion. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible, divinely inspired, written Word of God. Perhaps you think the creator of the heavens and the earth did not know the specific details of his creation. That would be very unlikely!

Lack of definition has no bearing what so ever on whether something exists or not.

Consider this. At the time of the flood, the "known world" was smaller in size from what we now know it to be. And, if you study the record of the Noah's flood in Genesis 6 through 8, you will not read of a "World-Wide" flood, but of rain that fell on, and flooded the earth (ground, not Earth). Later, it is in Genesis 10:25 that we find evidence of Continental Drift, and the single land-mass of earth was separated, no doubt by the enormous hydraulic pressure caused by the excess water of the flood. And on all of the now separated continents, there is geological evidence of a single, ancient flood, affirming that the flood happened prior to the division of Earth's original land mass. And on those continents, all the ancient peoples of them share a history, or folklore, about the ancient flood.

The real event that is probably behind Gilgamesh/Noah Flood (the Black Sea event) happened circa 5500 BC.

It affected a vast area which is now 200 m under the Black Sea surface and destroyed an unknown but probably big number of the earliest post-neolithic settlements.

The region around the former freshwater lake was even more favorable for farming than the Fertile Crescent.

The "known world" as seen from Near-East was by then limited to Middle-East extended to Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia.

Silk and spice roads were not yet active, and so the proto-civilizations from Far-East remained unknown to the authors of the Flood account.

Europe was still in its Paleolithic era.

So the Black Sea disaster flooded a significant part of the newly civilized world.

It had been such a trauma that many oral traditions told the Flood story.

It's a known phenomenon that generation after generation, oral traditions tend to exaggerate the story.

2000 years later, when after inventing writing, a Sumerian wrote the Epics of Gilgamesh, the "significant part of the civilized world" had become "global".

Later, when exiled in Babylon, Hebrews just copied the Gilgamesh Flood in Genesis and gave it a significance of God punishment.

I have a problem believing that a 600 year old man can build a 450 foot ark in the first place.

The events recorded in the Holy Bible were written by ones inspired by God, Timothy 3:16, 17; 2 Peter 1:20, 21. While mere humans can't see everything, God can, in addition there is much evidence showing a global flood took place, I personally believe the Bible account, as Jesus said of his Fathers word: "Sanctify them by means of the truth, your word is truth." I believe both God and Christ.

The "Bible" is a collection of myths, legends, fables, and even stories plagiarized from older myth cycles such as Horus, Mithras, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is the collected mythology of a collective of desert dwelling tribes from 2000 years ago.

Case in point: Noah and the Flood. No such Flood occurred. If it had all life on Earth would have perished that could not reach Asia Minor. That means all the species indigenous to Australia or the Americas would have died and those continents would have been pretty much scoured clean. Australia's highest mountain is about 7000 feet tall - a Flood able to submerge Ararat would have had to have been 18000 feet deep. Even if all the ice at the poles melted, all the ice in all glaciers, and all subterranean water was on the surface it would only raise the ocean level by 300 - 900 feet, nowhere enough to even reach the foothills of Ararat.

The species indigenous to Australia, such as kangaroos and koalas, evolved there and nowhere else. If the animal population had repopulated from Ararat outwards, there would be kangaroos and koalas in Asia Minor, both archeologically and as a living population. In no case could these species have swam across the ocean to reach Asia Minor in the first place. Australia would have been left barren.

The Ark, as described in the "Bible" was roughly 1/3rd the size of the modern Queen Mary II. That ship can only hold 4500 passengers. The Ark would have had a capacity of about 1500 people. If it held 2 specimens of every species, it would have had to have held over 12 million animals. The insects alone would have sunk the vessel and overflowed it.

There was no cultural terminus line. If all the people in the world died on the same day in the Flood, their cultures would have ceased - all their art, construction, historical records, etc. would have all ceased. This didn't happen. Instead we find a continuous line of recorded history and art down through the ages. There has NEVER been a cultural terminus line. Had all the people in the world EXCEPT for Noah and his family all died, the world would have been repopulated by THEIR descendants, and we would all trace back genetically to a "bottleneck" where all genetic inheritance comes from a small group. This didn't happen.

Apparent fossils found in mountain strata were laid down when those mountains were once part of the seafloor as their tectonic plates have slowly moved the seafloor up through tectonic subduction over billions of years. One side of the plate is pushed under another, and as it slips under it pulls the continent with it. On the other side of the plate the seafloor rises as the crust cracks and lava creates the new edge of the tectonic plate. Over billions of years this creates a treadmill effect, and land that was once on the seafloor becomes dry land and may be lifted up into mountain ranges along fault lines. Animal specimens laid down in the mud of the seafloor fossilize and become part of the rock strata.

The story of the Flood comes from Gilgamesh, written 1000 years before Genesis was written down, and the original story is that of a localized river flood on in the Tigris / Euphrates river valley, and a farmer that transports grain and livestock upon the river being caught in the flooding, possibly caused by a tsunami.

The Flood did not happen. That IS proven scientifically and geologically. The story is plagiarized from Gilgamesh - and when a book claims that a fable is factually true, we call that lying. And if the Bible lies about just ONE thing then it is not the "Word of God".

I understand BUT, many do not.........quite normal.......

1) How could Noah's Ark flood story describe a 'World' wide flood when the word World as we define it today didn't exist?

It COULD do so by description.

That's like asking, "How did any ancient author ever refer to stars in writing for all the centuries that the word 'star' as we define it today did not exist?" Trust me: in ancient times there was no word that meant "any of the large, self-luminous, heavenly bodies".

2) What was the ancient word for 'World' and what was the definition for it.

You are confusing

- What was "the World"

and

- What was the ancient understanding of "the World"

The ancient understanding of the World varied from culture to culture.

For some examples:

http://www.enricophil.it/tales/South_America/Scrip...

Those (erroneous) understandings of "the World" never stopped the World from actually being what it was and is.

With regard to the Biblical Deluge story in particular

we don't have to concern ourselves with ancient meanings of "the World"

since no term meaning "the World" is used in that story.

Instead we see repeated use of the term "the earth"

and I point out that at that ancient time there was no concept "earth = planet - i.e. the planet Earth".

So: "earth" is always being used in one of the other standard senses of the word (see: any English dictionary).

If that is the point you were trying to make, I can only say that it was not well-presented.

FOR EXAMPLE:

You wrote

- You cannot have a word for something you do not know exists.

But what if I have this word "earth" that refers to any "dry land" (as opposed to sky and to bodies of water).

If I do have a word that means that, then it doesn't matter that I don't personally know every inch of land, I still have a word whose meaning **includes** every inch of land.

The (known) world. The 'known' world was obviously much smaller in the time of Genesis.