PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS.
Short Duration of Tradition--No Recollection of
Stone Age--Celts taken for Thunderbolts--Stone Age
in Egypt--Palæolithic Implements--Earliest Egyptian
Traditions--Extinct Animals forgotten--Their Bones attributed
to Giants--Chinese and American Traditions--Traditions
of Origin of Man--Philosophical Myths--Cruder Myths from
Stones, Trees, and Animals--Totems--Recent Events soon
forgotten--Autochthonous Nations--Wide Diffusion of Prehistoric
Myths--The Deluge--Importance of, as Test of Inspiration--More
Definite than Legend of Creation--What the Account of the
Deluge in Genesis really says--Date--Extent--Duration--All
Life destroyed except Pairs preserved in the Ark--Such a
Deluge impossible--Contradicted by Physical Science--By
Geology--By Zoology--By Ethnology--By History--How Deluge
Myths arise--Local Floods--Sea Shells on Mountains--Solar
Myths--Deluge of Hasisadra--Noah's Deluge copied from
it--Revised in a Monotheistic Sense at a comparatively Late
Period--Conclusion--National View of Inspiration.
In passing from the historical period, in which we can appeal to
written records and monuments, into that of palæontology and geology,
where we have to rely on scientific facts and reasons, we have to
traverse an intermediate stage in which legends and traditions still
cast a dim and glimmering twilight. The first point to notice is that
this, like the twilight of tropical evenings, is extremely brief, and
fades almost at once into the darkness of night.
It is singular in how short a time all memory is lost of events
which are not recorded in some form of writing or inscription, and
depend solely on oral tradition. Thus it may be safely affirmed that
no nation which has passed into the metal age retains any distinct
recollection of that of polished stone, and _à fortiori_ none of
the palæolithic period, or of the origins of their own race or of
mankind. The proof of this is found in the fact that the stone axes
and arrow-heads which are found so abundantly in many countries
are everywhere taken for thunderbolts or fairy arrows shot down
from the skies. This belief was well-nigh universal throughout the
world; we find it in all the classical nations, in modern Europe,
in China, Japan, and India. Its antiquity is attested by the fact
that neolithic arrow-heads have been found attached as amulets in
necklaces from Egyptian and Etruscan tombs, and palæolithic celts
in the foundations of Chaldæan temples. In India many of the best
specimens of palæolithic implements were obtained from the gardens
of ryots, where they had been placed on posts, and offerings of
ghee duly made to them. Like so many old superstitions, this still
lingers in popular belief, and the common name for the finely-chipped
arrow-heads which are so plentifully scattered over the soil from
Scotland to Japan, is that of elf-bolts, supposed to have been shot
down from the skies by fairies or spirits.
Until the discoveries of Boucher-de-Perthes were confirmed only half
a century ago, this belief was not only that of simple peasants, but
of the learned men of all countries, and the volumes are innumerable
that have been written to explain how the "cerauni," or stone-celts,
taken to be thunderbolts, were formed in the air during storms. They
are already described by Pliny, and a Chinese Encyclopædia says that
"some of these lightning stones have the shape of a hatchet, others
of a knife, some are made like mallets. They are metals, stones, and
pebbles, which the fire of the thunder has metamorphosed by splitting
them suddenly and uniting inseparably different substances. On some
of them a kind of vitrification is distinctly to be observed."
The Chinese philosopher was evidently acquainted with real meteorites
and with the stone implements which were mistaken for them, and his
account is comparatively sober and rational. But the explanations
of the Christian fathers and mediæval philosophers, and even of
scientific writers down to a very recent period, are vastly more
mystical. A single specimen may suffice which is quoted by Tylor
in his _Early History of Mankind_. Tollius in 1649 figures some
ordinary palæolithic stone axes and hammers, and tells us that
"the naturalists say they are generated in the sky by a fulgurous
exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humour, and are as
it were baked hard by intense heat, and the weapon becomes pointed
by the damp mixed with it flying from the dry part, and leaving the
other end denser, but the exhalations press it so hard that it breaks
out through the cloud and makes thunder and lightning."
But these attempts at scientific explanations were looked upon
with disfavour by theologians, the orthodox belief being that the
"cerauni" were the bolts by which Satan and his angels had been
driven from heaven into the fiery abyss. These speculations, however,
of later ages are of less importance for our present purpose than the
fact that in no single instance can anything like a real historical
tradition be found connecting the stone age with that of metals,
and giving a true account of even the latest forms of neolithic
implements.
This is the more remarkable in the case of Egypt, where historical
records go back so very far, for here, as we have seen in a previous
chapter, the relics of a stone age exist in considerable numbers.
There is every probability, therefore, that Egyptian civilization had
been developed, mainly on the spot, from the rude beginnings of a
palæolithic age, through the incipient civilization of the neolithic,
into the age of metals, and the advanced civilization which preceded
the consolidation of the empire under Menes and the commencement of
history.[6] And yet no tradition, with a pretence to be historical,
goes back farther than with a very dim and nickering light for
a few centuries before Menes, when the Horsheshu, or priests of
Horus, ruled independent cities, and small districts attached to
the temples. There are accounts of some passages of the Todtenbuch
being taken from old hymns written on goatskin in the time of these
Horsheshu, and of historical temples built on plans taken from older
temples and attributed to Thoth; and it seems probable also that the
Sphynx and its temple may date from the same period. But beyond these
few and vague instances, there is nothing to confirm the statement
attributed to Manetho, that, prior to Menes, historical kings had
reigned in Thebes for 1817 years, in Memphis for 1790 years, and in
This for 350 years; before whom came heroes and kings for 5813 years,
heroes for 1255 years, and gods for 13,900 years.
[6] Stone implements were used for common purposes, especially
for sickles to cut heads of corn, down to a comparatively late
period, but as Spurrell observes in Petrie's, _Illahun Kahun and
Gurob_, "these implements do not represent work of the stone age
properly considered." They are not so much survivals of neolithic
forms, as imitations, in the cheaper material of flint, of
metallic forms for rough work and common use. The use of a flint
knife for making the first incision on the corpse in preparing it
for a mummy, is the only fact which looks like a survival from
neolithic into historical times.
The disappearance of all historical recollections of a stone age
is paralleled by the oblivion of the origin of the remains of the
great extinct quaternary animals which were contemporary with man.
Everywhere we find the fossil bones of the elephant and rhinoceros
attributed to monsters and giants, both in the ancient and modern
worlds. St. Augustine denounces infidels who do not believe that
"men's bodies were formerly much greater than now," and quotes, in
proof of the assertion, that he had seen himself "so huge a molar
tooth of a man, that it would cut up into a hundred teeth of ordinary
men,"--doubtless the molar of a fossil elephant. Marcus Scaurus
brought to Rome from Joppa the bones of the monster who was to have
devoured Andromeda. The Chinese Encyclopædia, already referred to,
describes the "Fon-shu, an animal which dwells in the extreme cold
on the coast of the Northern Sea, which resembles a rat in shape,
but is as big as an elephant, and lives in dark caverns, ever
shunning the light. There is got from it an ivory as white as that
of an elephant;" evidently referring to the frozen mammoths found
in Siberia. Similar circumstances gave rise to the same myth in
South America, and the natives told Darwin that the skeletons of the
mastodon on the banks of the Parana were those of a huge burrowing
animal, like the bizchaca or prairie-rat.
Numerous similar instances are given by Tyler in his _Early History
of Mankind_, and among the whole multitude of this class of myths,
there is only one which has the least semblance of being derived
from actual tradition, viz. the bas-relief of the sacrifice of a
human victim by a Mexican priest, who wears a mask of an animal
with a trunk resembling an elephant or mastodon; and certain vague
traditions among some of the Red Indian tribes speak of an animal
with an arm protruding from its shoulder. It is more probable,
however, that these may have been derived from traditions brought
over from Asia like the Mexican Calendar, or be creations of the
fancy, like dragons and griffins, inspired by some idea of an
exaggerated tapir, than that, in this solitary instance, a Mexican
priest should have been actually a contemporary of the mammoth or
mastodon.
If fossil animals have thus given rise everywhere to legends of
giants, fossil shells have played the same part as regards legends
of a deluge. These are in many cases so abundant at high levels
that they could not fail to be observed, and, if observed, to be
attributed to the sea having once covered these levels, and inundated
all the earth except the highest peaks. The tradition of an universal
deluge is however so important that I reserve it for separate
consideration at the end of the present chapter.
If then all memory of a period so comparatively recent as that of the
neolithic stone age and of the latest extinct animals was completely
lost when the first dawn of history commences, it follows as a
matter of course that nothing like an historical tradition survives
anywhere of the immensely longer palæolithic period and of the origin
of man. Man in all ages has asked himself how he came here, and
has indulged in speculations as to his origin. These speculations
have taken a form corresponding very much to the stage of culture
and civilization to which he had attained. They are of almost
infinite variety, but may be classed generally under three heads.
Those nations which had attained a sufficient degree of culture to
personify first causes and the phenomena of Nature as gods, attribute
the creation of the world and of man to some one or more of these
gods; and as they advance further in philosophical reasonings,
embellish the myth with allegories embodying the problems of human
existence. Thus if Bel makes man out of clay, and moulds him with his
own blood; or Jehovah fashions him from dust, and breathes into his
nostrils the breath of life; in each case it is an obvious allegory
to explain the fact that man has a dual nature, animal and spiritual.
So the myth of the Garden of Eden, the Temptation by the Serpent,
the Trees of Knowledge and of Life, and the Fall of Adam, which we
see represented on a Babylonian cylinder as well as in the second
chapter of Genesis, is obviously an allegorical attempt to explain
what remains to this day the perplexing problem of the origin of
evil. These philosophical myths are, however, very various among
different nations. Thus the orthodox belief of 200,000,000 of Hindoos
is that mankind were created in castes, the Brahmins by an emanation
from Brahma's head, the warriors from his chest, the traders and
artisans from his legs, and the sudras or lowest caste from his feet;
obviously an _ex post facto_ myth to account for the institution of
castes, and to stamp it with divine authority.
But before reflection had risen to this level, and among the savage
and semi-barbarous people of the present day, we find much more
crude speculations, which, in the main, correspond with the kindred
creeds of Animism and Totemism. When life and magical powers were
attributed to inanimate objects, nothing was more natural than to
suppose that stones and trees might be converted into men and women,
and conversely men and women into trees and stones. Thus we find the
stone theory very widely diffused. Even with a people so far advanced
as the early Greeks, it meets us in the celebrated fable of Deucalion
and Pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing stones behind them, which
turned into men and women; and the same myth, of stones turning into
the first men, meets us at the present day in almost every reliable
myth of creation, brought home by missionaries and anthropologists
from Africa, America, and Polynesia. In some cases trees take the
place of stones, and transformations of men into both are among the
commonest occurrences. From Daphne into a laurel, and Lot's wife
into a pillar of salt, down to the Cornish maidens transformed into
a circle of stones for dancing on Sunday, we find everywhere that
wherever natural objects present any resemblance to the human figure,
such myths sprung up spontaneously in all ages and countries.
Another great school of creation-myths originates in the widespread
institution of the totem. It is a step in advance of the pure
fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to conceive of animals as having
thought and language, and being in fact men under a different form.
From this it is a short step to endowing them with magical attributes
and supernatural powers, adopting them as patrons of tribes and
families, and finally considering them as ancestors. Myths of this
kind are common among the lower races, especially in America, where
many of the tribes considered themselves as descendants of some
great bear or elk, or of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and held
this belief so firmly, that intermarriage among members of the same
totem was considered to be incestuous. The same system prevails
among most races at an equally low or lower stage of civilization,
as in Australia; and there are traces of its having existed among
old civilized nations at remote periods. Thus the animal-worship of
Egypt was probably a survival of the old faith in totems, differing
among different clans, which was so firmly rooted in the popular
traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious
conceptions to it, as the Christian fathers did with so many pagan
superstitions. The division of the twelve tribes of Israel seems also
to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which
Jacob gives them his blessing, identifying Judah with a lion, Dan
with an adder, and so on. And even at the present day, the crest of
the Duke of Sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat
was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the
ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan Chattan.
But in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man,
it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of
being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually
occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the
corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the
universe. They are neither more or less credible than the theories
that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky
a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars
hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden.
Even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal
with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into
the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can
depend on anything prior to written records. Most ancient nations
fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that
they sprang from the soil on which they lived. And this is also the
case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests
recorded are of very recent date. Thus Ancient Egypt believed itself
to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to
native gods. Chaldæa, according to Berosus, was inhabited from time
immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though Oannes brought letters
and arts from the shores of the Persian Gulf, he taught them to a
previously existing population. This is the more remarkable as the
name of Accad and the form of the oldest Accadian hieroglyphics make
it almost certain that they had migrated into Mesopotamia from the
highlands of Kurdistan or of Central Asia. The Athenians also and
other Greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends
of men springing from the stones of Deucalion, and from the dragon's
teeth of Cadmus, all point in the same direction. The great Aryan
races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations
from Asia into Europe, or _vice versâ_, and their languages seem
to denote a common residence during the formation of the different
dialects in those regions of Northern Europe and Southern Russia in
which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. The only
exception to this is in the record in the Zendavesta of successive
migrations from the Pamer or Altai, down the Oxus and Jaxartes into
Bactria, and from thence into Persia. But this is not found in the
original portion of the Zendavesta, and only in later commentaries
on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the
constant warfare between Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Hindoo Vedas contain
no history, and the inference that the Aryans lived in the Punjaub
when the Rig-Veda was composed, and conquered Hindostan later, is
derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point
to that conclusion, rather than from any definite historical record.
Rome again had no tradition of Umbrian pile-dwellers descending from
neolithic Switzerland, expelling Iberians, and being themselves
expelled by Etruscans.
It is singular, considering the almost total absence of genuine
historical traditions, how certain myths and usages have been
universally diffused, and come down to the present day from a very
remote antiquity. The identity of the days of the week, based on a
highly artificial and complicated calculation of Chaldæan astrology,
has been already referred to as a striking instance of the wide
diffusion of astronomical myths in very early times. Many of the
most popular nursery tales also, such as Jack the Giant-killer, Jack
and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella, are found almost in the same form
in the most remote regions and among the most various races, both
civilized and uncivilized, and many of them are obviously derived
from the oldest and simplest forms of solar myths.
I come now to the tradition of a Deluge, which is most important
both on account of its prevalence among a number of different races
and nations, often remote from one another, and because it affords
the most immediate and crucial test of the claim of the Bible to
be taken as a literally true and inspired account, not only of
matters of moral and religious import, but of all the historical and
scientific facts recorded in its pages. The Confession of Faith of an
able and excellent man, the late Mr. Spurgeon, and adopted by fifteen
or twenty other Nonconformist ministers, says--
"We avow our firmest belief in the verbal inspiration of all Holy
Scripture as originally given. To us the Bible does not merely
_contain_ the Word of God, but _is_ the Word of God."
Following this example, thirty-eight clergymen of the Church of
England have put forward a similar Declaration. They say--
"We solemnly profess and declare our unfeigned belief in all the
Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as handed down
to us by the undivided Church in the original languages. We believe
that they are inspired by the Holy Ghost; that they are what they
profess to be; that they mean what they say; and that they declare
incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both
of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter
fulfilled."
It is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these Confessions
of Faith, not only the so-called "higher Biblical Criticism," but
all the discoveries of modern science, from Galileo and Newton down
to Lyall and Darwin, are simple delusions. There can be no question
that if the words of the Old Testament are "literally inspired," and
"mean what they say," they oppose an inflexible _non possumus_ to all
the most certain discoveries of Astronomy, Geology, Zoology, Biology,
Egyptology, Assyriology, and other modern sciences. Now the account
of the Deluge in Genesis affords the readiest means of bringing this
theory to the test, and proving or disproving it, by the process
which Euclid calls the _reductio ad absurdum_.
Not that other narratives, such as those of the Creation in Genesis,
do not contain as startling contradictions, if we keep in mind the
assertion of the orthodox thirty-eight, that the inspired words
of the Old Testament "mean what they say," _i.e._ that they mean
what they were necessarily taken to mean by contemporaries and long
subsequent generations; for instance, that if the inspired writer
says days defined by a morning and an evening, he means natural
days, and not indefinitely long periods. But this is just what
the defenders of orthodoxy always ignore, and all the attempts at
reconciling the accounts of Creation in Genesis with the conclusions
of science turn on the assumption that the inspired writers do
_not_ "mean what they say," but something entirely different. If
they say "days," they mean geological periods of which no reader
had the remotest conception until the present century. If they
say that light was made before the sun, and the earth before the
sun, moon, and stars, they really mean, in some unexplained way,
to indicate Newton's law of gravity, Laplace's nebular theory, and
the discoveries of the spectroscope. By using words therefore in a
non-natural sense, and surrounding them with a halo of mystical and
misty eloquence, they evade bringing the pleadings to a distinct and
definite issue such as the popular mind can at once understand. But
in the case of the Deluge no such evasion is possible. The narrative
is a specific statement of facts alleged to have occurred at a
comparatively recent date, not nearly so remote as the historical
records of Egypt and Chaldæa, and which beyond all question must be
either true or false. But if false, there is an end of any attempt to
consider the whole scientific and historical portions of the Bible
as written by Divine inspiration; for the narrative is not one of
trivial importance, but of what is really a second creation of all
life, including man, from a single or very few pairs miraculously
preserved and radiating from a single centre.[7]
[7] The following arguments so closely resemble those of
Professor Huxley in a recent Article in the _Nineteenth Century_,
that it may be well to state that they were written before I
had seen that article. I insert them not as attempting to vie
with the greatest living master of English prose, but as showing
that the same conclusions inevitably force themselves on all who
understand the first rudiments of Modern Science.
Consider then what the narrative of the Deluge really tells
us. First, as to date. The Hebrew Bible, from which our own is
translated, gives the names of the ten generations from Noah to
Abraham, with the precise dates of each birth and death, making the
total number of years 297 from the Flood to Abraham. For Abraham,
assuming him to be historical, we have a synchronism which fixes the
date within narrow limits. He was a contemporary of Chedorlaomer,
or Khuder-Lagomar, known to us from Chaldæan inscriptions as one of
the last of the Elamite dynasty, who subverted the old dynasty in
the year 2280 B.C., and who reigned for 160 years. Abraham's date
is, therefore, approximately about 2200 B.C., and that of the Deluge
about 2500 B.C. The Septuagint version assigns 700 years more than
that of the Hebrew Bible for the interval between Abraham and Noah;
but this is only done by increasing the already fabulous age of
the patriarchs. Accepting, however, this Septuagint version, though
it has been constantly repudiated by the Jews themselves, and by
nearly all Christian authorities from St. Jerome down to Archbishop
Usher, the date of the Deluge cannot be carried further back than
to about 3000 B.C., a date at least 1000, and more probably 2000,
years later than that shown by the records and monuments of Egypt
and Chaldæa, when great empires, populous cities, and a high degree
of civilization already existed in those countries. The statement of
the Bible, therefore, is that, at a date not earlier than 2200 B.C.,
or at the very earliest 3000 B.C., a deluge occurred which "covered
all the high hills that were under the whole heaven," and prevailed
upon the earth for 150 days before it began to subside; that seven
months and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of the mountains were
first seen; and that only after twelve months and ten days from the
commencement of the flood was the earth sufficiently dried to allow
Noah and the inmates of the Ark to leave it.
Naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of Noah and
those who were with him in the Ark, consisting of his wife, his three
sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts,
fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven
pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean
beasts and creeping things. The statement is absolutely specific:
"All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of
cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth
upon earth, and every man." And again: "Every living substance was
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both men and
cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they
were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they
that were with him in the Ark." And finally, when the Ark was opened,
"God spake unto Noah and said, Go forth of the Ark, thou and thy
wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee
every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and
of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth,
that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and
multiply upon the earth."
It is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any
reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. It might possibly be
taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition
of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early
races, or semi-civilized tribes. But such an interpretation is
impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take
it, as a Divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in
one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations
of man to God. In this view it is a still more signal instance than
the fall of Adam, of God's displeasure with sin and its disastrous
consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and
rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human
race, a new distinction between the chosen people of Israel and the
accursed Canaanites, based not on Cain's murder of Abel, but on Ham's
irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between
God and Noah, which continued through Abraham and David, and became
the basis of Jewish nationality and of the Christian dispensation. If
in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the theory of Divine
inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it
must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism.
Now, that no such Deluge as that described in Genesis ever took place
is as certain as that the earth moves about the sun. Physical science
tells us that it never _could_ have occurred; geology, zoology,
ethnology, and history all tell us alike that it never _did_ occur.
Physical science tells us two things about water: that it cannot be
made out of nothing, and that it always finds its level. In order to
cover the highest mountains on the earth and remain stationary at
that level for months, we must suppose an uniform shell of water of
six miles in depth to be added to the existing water of the earth.
Even if we take Ararat as the highest mountain covered, the shell
must have been three miles in thickness over the whole globe. Where
did this water come from, and where did it go to? Rain is simply
water raised from the seas by evaporation, and is returned to them
by rivers. It does not add a single drop of water to that already
existing on the earth and in its atmosphere. The heaviest rains do
nothing but swell rivers and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a
depth of a few feet, which rapidly subsides. The only escape from
this law of nature is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such as a
change in the position of the earth's axis of rotation, by which
the existing waters of the earth were drained in some latitudes and
heaped up in others. But any such local accumulation of water implies
a sudden and violent rush to heap it up in forty days, and an equally
violent rush to run it down to its old level when the disturbing
cause ceased, as it must have done in 150 days. Such a disturbance
in recent times is not only inconsistent with all known facts, but
with the positive statement of the narrative that the whole earth was
covered, and that the Ark floated quietly on the waters, drifting
slowly northwards, until it grounded on Ararat. The only other
alternative is to suppose a subsidence of the land below the level
of the sea. But a subsidence which carried a whole continent 15,000,
or even 1500 feet down, followed by an elevation which brought it
back to the old level, both accomplished within the space of twelve
months, is even more impossible than a cataclysmal deluge of water.
Such movements are now, and have been throughout all the geological
periods, excessively slow, and certainly not exceeding, at the very
outside, a few feet in a century.
And, if physical science shows that no such Deluge as that described
in Genesis could have occurred, geology is equally positive that it
never did occur. The drift and boulders which cover a great part
of Europe and North America are beyond all doubt glacial, and not
diluvial. They are strictly limited by the extension of glaciers and
ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing from them. The high-level
gravels in which human remains are found in conjunction with those
of extinct animals, are the result of the erosion of valleys by
rivers. They are not marine, they are interstratified with beds of
sand and silt, containing often delicate fluviatile shells, which
were deposited when the stream ran tranquilly, as the coarser gravels
were when it ran with a stronger torrent. And the gravels of adjacent
valleys, even when separated by a low water-shed, are not intermixed,
but each composed of the _débris_ of its own system of drainage, by
which small rivers like the Somme and the Avon have, in the course
of ages, scooped out their present valleys to an extent of more than
100 feet in depth and two miles in width. Masses of loose sand,
volcanic ashes, and other incoherent materials of tertiary formation
remain on the surface, which must have been swept away by anything
resembling a diluvial wave. And, above all, Egypt and other flat
countries adjoining the sea, such as the deltas of the Euphrates,
the Ganges, and the Mississippi, which must have been submerged by
a slight elevation of the sea or subsidence of the land, show by
borings, carried in some cases to the depth of 100 feet and upwards,
nothing but an accumulation of such tranquil deposits as are now
going on, continued for hundreds of centuries, and uninterrupted by
anything like a marine or diluvial deposit.
Zoology is even more emphatic than geology in showing the
impossibility of accepting the narrative of the Deluge as a true
representation of actual events. Whoever wrote it must have had ideas
of science as infantile as those of the children who are amused by
a toy ark in the nursery. His range of vision could hardly have
extended beyond the confines of his own country. And, if a _reductio
ad absurdum_ were needed of the fallacies to which reconcilers are
driven, it would be afforded by Sir J. Dawson's comparison of the
Ark to an American cattle-steamer. Recollect that the date assigned
to the Deluge affords no time for the development of new species and
races, since every "living substance was destroyed that was upon the
face of the ground," except the pairs preserved in the Ark. It is a
question, therefore, not of one pair of bears, but of many--polar,
grizzly, brown, and all the varieties, down to the pigmy bear of
Sumatra. So of cattle: there must have been not only pairs of the
wild and domestic species of Europe, but of the gaur of India, the
Brahmin bull, the yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many species of
buffaloes and bisons. If we take the larger animals only, there
must have been several pairs of elephants, rhinoceroses, camels,
horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk, deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and
innumerable others of the herbivora, to say nothing of lions, tigers,
and other carnivora. Let any one calculate the cubic space which such
a collection would require for a year's voyage under hatches, and
he will see at once the absurdity of supposing that they could have
been stowed away in the Ark. And this is only the beginning of the
difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all birds, and all creeping
things have also to be accommodated, and to live together for a
year under conditions of temperature and otherwise which, if suited
for some, must inevitably have been fatal for others. How did polar
bears, lemmings, and snowy owls live in a temperature suited for
monkeys and humming-birds?
Then there is the crowning difficulty of the food. Go to the
Zoological Gardens, and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of a
year's rations for elephants, giraffes, and lions, or multiply by
365 the daily allowance of hay and oats for horses, and of grass of
green food for bullocks, and he will soon find that the bulk required
for food is far greater than that of the animals. And what did the
birds and creeping things feed upon? Were there rats and mice for the
owls, gnats for the swallows, worms and butterflies for the thrushes,
and generally a supply of insects for the lizards, toads, and other
insectivora, whether birds, reptiles, or mammals? And of the humbler
forms which live on microscopic animals and on each other, were they
also included in the destruction of "every living substance," and was
the earth repeopled with them from the single centre of Ararat?
Here also zoology has a decisive word to say. The earth could not
have been repeopled, within any recent geological time, from any
single centre, for in point of fact it is divided into distinct
zoological provinces. The fauna of Australia, for instance, is
totally different from that of Europe, Asia, and America. How did the
kangaroo get there, if he is descended from a pair preserved in the
Ark? Did he perchance jump at one bound from Ararat to the Antipodes?
Ethnology again takes up a limited branch of the same subject, but
one which is more immediately interesting to us--that of the variety
of human races. The narrative of Genesis states positively that
"every man in whose nostrils was the breath of life" was destroyed
by the Flood, except those who were saved in the Ark, and that "the
whole earth was overspread" of the three sons of Noah--Shem, Ham,
and Japheth. That is, it asserts distinctly that all the varieties
of the human race have descended from one common ancestor, Noah,
who lived not more than 5000 years ago. Consider the vast variety
and diversity of human races existing now, and in some of the most
typical instances shown by Egyptian and Chaldæan monuments to have
existed before Noah was born--the black and woolly-haired Negroes,
the yellow Mongolians, the Australians, the Negritos, the Hottentots,
the pygmies of Stanley's African forest, the Esquimaux, the American
Red Indians, and an immense number of others, differing fundamentally
from one another in colour, stature, language, and almost every
trait, physical and moral. To suppose these to have all descended
from a single pair, Noah and his wife, and to have "spread over the
whole earth" from Ararat, since 3000 years B.C., is simply absurd. No
man of good faith can honestly say that he believes it to be true;
and, if not true, what becomes of inspiration?
If anything were wanting to complete the demonstration, it would be
furnished by history. We have perfectly authentic historical records,
confirmed by monuments, extending in Egypt to a date certainly 2000
years older than that assigned for Noah's Deluge; and similar records
in Chaldæa probably going back as far.
In none of these is there any mention of an universal deluge as
an historical event actually occurring within the period of time
embraced by those records. The only reference to such a deluge is
contained in one chapter of a Chaldæan epic poem based on a solar
myth, and placed in an immense and fabulous antiquity. In Egypt the
case is, if possible, even stronger, for here the configuration
of the Nile valley is such that anything approaching an universal
deluge must have destroyed all traces of civilization, and buried
the country thousands of feet under a deep ocean. Even a very great
local inundation must have spread devastation far and wide and been
a memorable event in all subsequent annals. When remarkable natural
events, such as earthquakes, did occur, they are mentioned in the
annals of the reigning king, but no mention is made of any deluge.
On the contrary, all the records and monuments confirm the statement
made by the priests of Heliopolis to Herodotus when they showed
him the statues of the 360 successive high priests who had all been
"mortal men, sons of mortal men," that during this long period there
had been no change in the average duration of human life, and no
departure from the ordinary course of nature.
When this historical evidence is added to that of geology, which
shows that nothing resembling a deluge could have occurred in the
valleys of the Nile or Euphrates without leaving unmistakable traces
of its passage which are totally absent, the demonstration seems as
conclusive as that of any of the propositions of Euclid.
It remains to consider how so many traditions of a deluge should
be found among so many different races often so widely separated.
There are three ways in which deluge-myths must have been inevitably
originated.
1. From tradition of destructive local floods.
2. From the presence of marine shells on what is now dry land.
3. From the diffusion of solar myths like that of Izdubar.
There can be no doubt that destructive local floods must have
frequently occurred in ancient and prehistoric times as they do at
the present day. Such an inundation as that of the Yang-tse-Kiang,
which only the other year was said to have destroyed half a million
of people, or the hurricane wave which swept over the Sunderbunds,
must have left an impression which, among isolated and illiterate
people, might readily take the form of an universal deluge. And
such catastrophes must have been specially frequent in the early
post-glacial period, when the ice-dams, which converted many valleys
into lakes, were melting.
But I am inclined to doubt whether the tradition of such local
floods was ever preserved long enough to account for deluge-myths.
All experience shows that the memory of historical events fades
away with surprising rapidity when it is not preserved by written
records. If, as Xenophon records, all memory of the great city of
Nineveh had disappeared in 200 years after its destruction, how can
it be expected that oral tradition shall preserve a recollection of
prehistoric local floods magnified into universal deluges?
And when the deluge-myths of different nations are examined closely,
it generally appears that they have had an origin rather in solar
myths or cosmogonical speculations, than in actual facts. For
instance, the tradition of a deluge in Mexico has often been referred
to as a confirmation of the Noachian flood. But when looked into, it
appears that this Mexican deluge was only a part of their mythical
cosmogony which told of four successive destructions and renovations
of the world by the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The
first period being closed by earthquakes, the second by hurricanes,
the third by volcanoes, it did not require any local tradition to
ensure the fourth being closed by a flood.
Again, deluge-myths must have inevitably arisen from the presence
of marine shells, fossil and recent, in many localities where they
were too numerous to escape notice. If palæolithic stone implements
and bones of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of thunderbolts
and giants, sea-shells on mountain-tops must have given rise to
speculations as to deluges. At the very beginning of history,
Egyptian and Chaldæan astronomers were sufficiently advanced in
science to wish to account for such phenomena, and to argue that
where sea-shells were found the sea must once have been. Many of the
deluge-myths of antiquity, such as that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, look
very much as if this had been their origin. They are too different
from the Chaldæan and Biblical Deluge, as for instance in repeopling
the world by stones, to have been copied from the same original, and
they fit in with the very general belief of ancient nations that they
were autochthonous.
In a majority of cases, however, I believe it will be found that
deluge-myths have originated from some transmission, more or less
distorted, of the very ancient Chaldæan astronomical myths of the
passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. This is clearly
the case in the Hindoo mythology, where the fish-god Ea-han, or
Oannes, is introduced as a divine fish who swims up to the Ark and
guides it to a place of refuge.
The legend in Genesis is much closer to the original myth, and
in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of Hasisadra in
the Chaldæan epic, discovered by Mr. George Smith among the clay
tablets in the British Museum. This poem was obviously based on an
astronomical myth. It was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's
passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. The adventures of
Izdubar, like those of Heracles, have obvious reference to these
signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to
the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the
incensed Nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from
the nether world.
The Deluge is introduced as an episode told to Izdubar during his
descent to the lower regions by his ancestor Hasisadra, one of the
God-kings, who are said to have reigned for periods of tens of
thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. It has every appearance
of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy
sign of Aquarius, just as the contests of Izdubar and Heracles with
Leo, Taurus, Draco, Sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through
other zodiacal constellations. It forms the eleventh chapter of the
Epic of Izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the Chaldæan
year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods.
Now, this deluge of Hasisadra, as related by Berosus, and still
more distinctly by Smith's Izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely
with that of Noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from
the other. All the principal incidents and the order of events are
the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding
no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that
they must have been taken from the same written record. Even the
name Noah is that of Nouah, the Semitic translation of the Accadian
god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark
or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in
the west to its rising in the east. The chief difference is the
same as in the Chaldæan and Biblical cosmogonies of the creation of
the universe--viz. that the former is Polytheistic, and the latter
Monotheistic. Where the former talks of Bel, Ea, and Istar, the
latter attributes everything to Jehovah or Elohim. Thus the warning
to Hasisadra is given in a dream sent by Ea, who is a sort of
Chaldæan Prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from
the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, Bel;
while in Genesis it is "Elohim said unto Noah." In Genesis the altar
is built to the Lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice,
while in the Chaldæan legend the altar is built to the seven gods,
who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about
it."
The Chaldæan narrative is more prolix, more realistic, and, on the
whole, more scientific. That is, it mitigates some of the more
obvious impossibilities of the Noachian narrative. Instead of an
ark, there is a ship with a steersman, which was certainly more
likely to survive the perils of a long voyage on the stormy waters
of an universal ocean. The duration of the Deluge and of the voyage
is shortened from a year to a little more than a month; more human
beings are saved, as Hasisadra takes on board not his own family
only, but several of his friends and relations; and the difficulty of
repeopling the earth from a single centre is diminished by throwing
the date of the Deluge back to an immense and mythical antiquity.
On the other hand, the moral and religious significance of the
legend is accentuated in the Hebrew narrative. It is no longer the
capricious anger of an offended Bel which decrees the destruction of
mankind, but the righteous indignation of the one Supreme God against
sin, tempered by justice and mercy towards the upright man who was
"perfect in his generations."
If we had to decide on internal evidence only, there could be
little doubt that the Hebrew narrative is of much later date than
the Chaldæan. It is, in fact, very much what might be expected from
a revised edition of it, made at the date which is assigned by
all competent critics for the first collection of the legends and
traditions of the Hebrew people into a sacred book--viz. at or about
the date when the first mention is made of such a book as being
discovered in the Temple in the reign of Josiah. Kuenen, Wellhausen,
and other leading authorities place the date of the Elohistic and
Jehovistic narratives, which include the Creation and Deluge, even
later; and, if not compiled during or after the Babylonian Captivity,
they were certainly revised, and have come down to us in their
present form after that event. Even the most orthodox critics, such
as Dillman and Canon Driver, admit that they were written in the
golden age of Hebrew literature, and in the spirit of the later
prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and do not think it possible
to assign to them an earlier date than 800 or 900 B.C., while many
parts may be much later.
But the question is not one of internal evidence only, but of the
positive fact that, even if these chapters of Genesis were written
by Moses, or about 1350 B.C., and even accepting the Septuagint
addition of 700 years to the already mythical duration of the
lives of the patriarchs, the date of the Biblical Deluge cannot be
carried back beyond 3100 or 3200 B.C., while a practically identical
account of the same event is given, as a legendary episode of
fabulous antiquity, in an epic poem, based on a solar myth, which
was certainly reduced to writing many centuries before the earliest
possible date of the Scriptural Deluge. It is absolutely certain
also that the Egyptian records and traditions, which extend in an
uninterrupted succession of dynasties and kings for at least 2000
years before this alleged universal Deluge, know nothing whatever of
such an event; and, on the contrary, assume an unvarying continuance
of the ordinary laws of Nature.
I have dwelt at such length on the Deluge because it affords a
crucial test of the dogma of Divine inspiration for the whole of
the Bible. The account of the Creation may be obscured by forced
interpretations and misty eloquence; but there can be no mistake
as to the specific and precise statements respecting the second
creation of man and of animal life. Either they are true or untrue;
and the issue is one upon which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary
intelligence and information can arrive at a conclusive verdict.
If there never was an universal Deluge within historical times; if
the highest mountains were never covered; if all life was never
destroyed, except the contents of the Ark; if the whole animal
creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived
together for twelve months cooped up in it; and if the earth was
not repeopled with all the varieties of the human race, and all the
orders, genera, and species of animal life, from a single centre at
Ararat, then the Bible is not inspired as regards its scientific and
historical statements. This, however, in no way affects the question
of the inspiration of the religious and moral portions of the Bible.
I have sometimes thought how, if I were an advocate stating the case
for the inspiration of the Bible, I should be inclined to put it.
I should start with Bishop Temple's definition of the First Cause,
a personal God, with faculties like ours, but so transcendentally
greater that he had no occasion to be perpetually patching and
mending his work, but did everything by an original impress, which
included all subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in the primitive
ovum includes the whole evolution and subsequent life of the chicken,
mammal, or man. I should go on to say that the Bible has clearly
been an important factor in this evolution of the human race; that
it consists of two portions--one of moral and religious import, the
other of scientific statements and theories, relating to such matters
of purely human reason as astronomy, geology, literary criticism,
and ancient history; and that these two parts are essentially
different. It is quite conceivable that, on the hypothesis of a
Divine Creator, one step in the majestic evolution from the original
impress should have been that men of genius and devout nature should
write books containing juster notions of man's relations to his Maker
than prevailed in the polytheisms of early civilizations, and thus
gradually educating a peculiar people who accepted these writings
as sacred, and preparing the ground for a still higher and purer
religion. But it is not conceivable that this, which may be called
inspiration, of the religious and moral teaching, should have been
extended to closing the record of all human discovery and progress,
by teaching, as it were by rote, all that subsequent generations
have, after long and painful effort, found out for themselves.
In point of fact, the Bible does not teach such truths, for in the
domain of science it is full of the most obvious errors, and teaches
nothing but what were the primitive myths, legends, and traditions
of the early races. It is to be observed also that, on the theory
of "original impress," those errors are just as much a part of the
evolution of the Divine idea as the moral and religious truths.
Those who insist that all of the Bible must be inspired or none,
remind me of the king who said that, if God had only consulted him
in his scheme of creation, he could have saved him from a good many
mistakes. It is not difficult to understand how, even if we assume
the theory of inspiration, or of original impress, for the religious
portion of the Bible, the other or scientific portion should have
been purposely left open to all the errors and contradictions of the
human intellect in its early strivings to arrive at some sort of
conception of the origin of things, and of the laws of the universe.
And also that a collection of narratives of different dates and
doubtful authorship should bear on the face of them evidence of the
writers sharing in the errors and prejudices, and generally adopting
points of view of successive generations of contemporaries.
Assuming this theory, I can only say for myself that the removal of
the wet blanket of literal inspiration makes me turn to the Bible
with increased interest. It is a most valuable record of the ways of
thinking, and of the early conceptions of religion and science in the
ancient world, and a most instructive chapter in the history of the
evolution of the human mind from lower to higher things. Above all,
it is a record of the preparation of the soil, in a peculiar race,
for Christianity, which has been and is such an important factor in
the history of the foremost races and highest civilizations. With
all the errors and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties which
have attached themselves to it, but which in the light of science
and free thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it cannot be denied
that the European, and especially our English-speaking races, stand
on a higher platform than if Gibbon's suggestion had been realized,
the Arabs had been victorious at Tours, and Moslem Ulemas had been
expounding the Koran at the University of Oxford.