>>17887685 (OP)I'd say it's an allegory for the several mass extinctions that have happened in Earth's history, but there's no way the ancient Israelites could have know about that (unless God told them), so that's probably not true
It's clearly ripped off from Sumerian flood myths, which were probably inspired by an actual historical flood, but one that only covered parts of Mesopotamia, not the whole world
There's truth in the Bible, but this isn't part of it, it's just a story, there's no way a rainstorm that lasted only 40 days could cover the entire Earth in water, Earth is a closed system anyway and the sea level, on average, never rises or falls, there's no way to put two of every species on a boat of any size and doing that would create such a huge genetic bottleneck that all the animals would probably die out from inherited diseases