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GEN. VI.-VIII.

MONGST almost all ancient peoples we find a tradition that, when the world was buried in sins, a great flood destroyed it, with the exception of some few persons who escaped. The Chaldees, for example, told of a certain Xisuthros, the tenth and last ruler before the flood, to whom the highest god foretold that the beginning of the judgment would fall upon the fifteenth day of the month Daesius. On this he buried the written archives of ancient times in Sepharvaim,1 the city of the sun, embarked with his relations and friends in a great ship, into which he took every kind of quadruped and of flying and creeping thing, together with the necessary food, and then sailed to Armenia. By letting birds fly out of the vessel he frequently tested the state of the earth. When these birds came back the second time they had mud on their feet, and when they flew out the third time they did not come back at all. Upon this Xisuthros, with his wife and the steersman, left the ship; but, in reward for their piety, they were suddenly carried up to the dwelling of the gods, and Xisuthros was only able to cry out from the air, to those who were left behind, that they must go back to Babylon and restore the books, which he had buried, to mankind; which accordingly they did.

A similar story is found among the Phrygians, who even mention Enoch's preaching and ascension in connection with it. The Syrians, Phoenicians, Persians, and Hindoos, all had stories of a flood, which agreed in some points with those

1 See map 1.

of the Israelites, and differed from them in others. In the same way we find them among the European nations, too. In the Greek story it is Deucalion and Pyrrha who are spared on account of their piety; with the Celts and Germans the persons saved have other names; but everywhere we find some story of the sort. This fact, with others like it, points with the greatest likelihood, to a common fatherland, the cradle of these nations, from which they all came, taking these traditions with them. Perhaps this country was Armenia, in which the Israelite stories, as well as others, place us.

In the legends of which we have so far spoken, we have discovered the work of two writers, the first of whom speaks of the Supreme Being under the name of "God," and gave us the first account of the creation, and the family register of Adam down to Noah, while the second uses the name Yahweh, and gave us the story of paradise and the account of the Cainites. It is natural to ask, therefore, from which of these writers the story of the flood is derived; but it is not easy to answer the question. In the three chapters which contain this story there are two documents mixed up together, and though we can sometimes distinguish the style and the peculiar ideas of the former writers, it is at other times very hard to say whether we have either of the two before us, rather than some third writer. For the most part they quite agree with each other, and consequently the story is not free from repetitions, but here and there the accounts are unmistakably contradictory.

It is not necessary for our purpose to go into the question of the composition of the story any further. As far as it forms a single whole, I will retell it straight through, and then point out a few contradictions.

Here, then, is the story of the deluge or flood:

When men began to multiply upon the earth, their wicked

ness grew greater and greater. Among the other inhabitants of earth, there rose up giants, who had earthly mothers, but whose fathers were divine beings called sons of God; and these giants in their turn became the fathers of others. These were the heroes of the olden time. All the earth became godless. Violence was universal. All flesh-that is, man and beast-grew more and more rude and wild.

Then Yahweh, seeing that there was nothing but evil in mankind, repented that he had made them, and determined to destroy them, and all the beasts as well. Noah alone found favour with him, and he therefore commanded him to make an ark or chest. This vessel, built of resinous timber, and covered outside and in with pitch, was to be three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and thirty high. It was to be divided into three storeys, and sub-divided into chambers, with an opening to let in light and air, and a door. God told him that he must prepare this vessel, because all living things upon the earth were to be destroyed; while he himself, his wife, his three sons-Shem, Ham, and Japhet-and their wives, were to seek refuge in this ark. Moreover, he was to take with him a pair of every kind of animal, a male and a female, besides the necessary food for man and beast.

This warning and the directions that accompanied it were given to Noah seven days before the flood began. He obeyed, and on the seventh day the flood of waters came. It was the six hundredth year of Noah's life, the seventeenth day of the second month. On this day all the flood-gates of the great ocean burst open, and it poured its streams over the earth. At the same time the windows of heaven were opened, and the waters collected above the firmament fell down upon the earth in torrents. Forty days long this deluge of rain went on. Everything that had life perished in the water. In vain did man and beast flee to the mountains. The water rose fifteen cubits above the topmost peak. But

Noah and his family were safe in the ark, and with them all the creatures, quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds, which had come in to them.

A hundred and fifty days had the water covered everything, when God bethought himself once more of Noah and his family. So he caused a strong wind to rise, and the waters began to abate. The fountains of the ocean and the windows of heaven were already closed. Little by little the water flowed away again, and upon the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark settled upon one of the mountain peaks in the land of Ararat, and the peaks themselves became visible once more upon the eleventh day of the tenth month. Forty days later Noah opened the window and let out a raven, that went on flying backwards and forwards until the earth became dry again. After the raven he sent out a dove, to see whether the water had gone away yet; but she could not find a resting place anywhere, for everything was covered with water still, so she came back to the ark and was taken in again. After waiting seven days, Noah let out a dove the second time, and towards evening she came back again with a leaf fresh broken from an olive tree in her beak. So Noah knew that the earth was delivered from the excess of water. After waiting another seven days, he once more let out a dove, but she did not return.

So in the six hundred and first year of his life, on the first day of the first month, when the earth was delivered from the water, Noah took off the covering that was over the ark. On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was quite dry. Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark, with your wife and children and all the animals. Let them spread themselves over the earth and people it once more.' Noah obeyed, and when he had come out of the ark, he made a thank-offering to Yahweh.

Now when Yahweh smelt the odour of the sacrifice, he

thought: "I will never curse the earth again for the sake of men; for they are evil from their youth up. So, why should I ever destroy all living things again? No. Henceforth shall seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, follow each other undisturbed."

Many a brow has been bent over this story before now! Indeed, if we are to suppose that all the stories in the Bible are historically true, we shall find difficulties enough in the representation of this ark, in which all the animals-quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds-were kept alive for about a year; and it is not easy even to imagine a flood rising to fifteen cubits above the highest mountain-tops, even if we suppose (what the writer certainly did not intend) that it only covered that part of the earth which was inhabited at the time. Some people have given themselves an incredible amount of trouble about this story. One scholar has calculated how much space there was in the ark, and how many kinds of animals could be accommodated in it, allowing for a pair of each and the necessary food. An inhabitant of Hoorn, in Holland, actually built a ship in the year 1609, on the model of the ark, and found that a vessel so constructed was capable of bearing a specially heavy freight! No doubt it is a very creditable thing to spend labour and money in convincing ourselves of the truth of our opinions; but those who have tried to support the historical reliability of the story of the flood by these means have lost their labour; for they leave the principal difficulties where they were. How can we believe that Noah collected all these animals and the

food they would require, in seven days? We must suppose that he did so, however, if we follow the account given us, for he was only warned one week beforehand.1 Besides this,

1 Gen. vii. 4, 10.