It had not occurred to me to think of Gen 8:5 as implying they were still submerged but visible. Still, giving it some consideration I see some problems with it.
Mountains as we all know tend to vary in height both in the parts of the mountains and different mountains. Water on the other hand tends to be much more uniform and is pretty much the same height excepting for tidal forces and waves in a given broad area.
It seems reasonably likely for them to sail close enough to the tallest mountain top in the area that happened to be close to the surface that they could see the peak.
It seems less reasonable to expect they sailed close to several that were close but none of them breaking surface.
And it seems not even plausible that they sailed over the highest peaks in the world, namely Mt Everest way to the East on the border of Nepal or Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
So upon reflection this interpretation seems to have problems being sensible.
The only way to save this interpretation it seems to me is to suppose Noah (or the author of this part of Genesis) was given a special revelation from God that the highest mountains in the world were indeed visible even though Noah and the ark was nowhere near them so Noah would not be able to see them himself.
Looking up The Masoretic Hebrew for Gen 8:5 I see that the word for visible is רָאָה which is Strong's h7200. English translations either use "became visible" (such as NIV) or "was seen" (such as ESV). The Strong's definition for the word suggest to me that they meant was visible such that it could be seen (disclaimer I am no Hebrew scholar, although there is one at my church I think I will ask when I get the chance).
Link to Strong's for this word
I am afraid it seems very much more reasonable to interpret that Noah could see some mountains. And even if this meant the ones he saw were still underwater certainly taller mountains in other parts of the world were not.
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Patience, padawan, patience.
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