Augustine of Hippo : Then, a little further on in the same book [Genesis], one could just as easily have noticed the verse "Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died." This means that everything that lived on the earth perished in the flood. Thus we find that Holy Scripture is accustomed to use both phrases—"living soul" and "the breath of life"—in regard even to beasts, and in the verse "All things wherein there is the breath of life" the Greek text does not use the word pneuma but pnoē. — City of God 13.24 Augustine of Hippo : IT IS WRITTEN, "THE WATER ROSE ABOVE THE EARTH FOR A HUNDRED AND FIFTY DAYS." — In relation to the phrase: And the waters prevailed on the earth a hundred and fifty days , it is wondered if it grew until that day or if it remained during all those days in the height that it acquired, because other translators seem rather to say the latter. Aquila, for example, says: “reached”; Symmachus: “they excelled”, the waters, is understood. [ — QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 10 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)