inquirers to occupy themselves, in any way, with the Noachian Deluge. They
look at you with a smile and a shrug, and say they have more important
matters to attend to than mere antiquarianism. But it was not so in my
youth. At that time, geologists and biologists could hardly follow to the
end any path of inquiry without finding the way blocked by Noah and his
ark, or by the first chapter of Genesis; and it was a serious matter, in
this country at any rate, for a man to be suspected of doubting the literal
truth of the Diluvial or any other Pentateuchal history. The fiftieth
anniversary of the foundation of the Geological Club (in 1824), was, if I
remember rightly, the last occasion on which the late Sir Charles Lyell
spoke to even so small a public as the members of that body. Our veteran
leader lighted up once more; and, referring to the difficulties which beset
his early efforts to create a rational science of geology, spoke, with his
wonted clearness and vigour, of the social ostracism which pursued him
after the publication of the _Principles of Geology_, in 1830, on account
of the obvious tendency of that noble work to discredit the Pentateuchal
accounts of the Creation and the Deluge. If my younger contemporaries find
this hard to believe, I may refer them to a grave book, _On the Doctrine of
the Deluge_, published eight years later, and dedicated by its author to
his father, the then Archbishop of York. The first chapter {515} refers to
the treatment of the "Mosaic Deluge," by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Lyell, in the
following terms:
Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them from arraying
themselves openly against the Scriptural account of it--much less do
they deny its truth--but they are in a great hurry to escape from the
consideration of it, and evidently concur in the opinion of Linnaeus,
that no proofs whatever of the Deluge are to be discovered in the
structure of the earth (p. 1).
And after an attempt to reply to some of Lyell's arguments, which it would
be cruel to reproduce, the writer continues:--
When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is determined, in answer
to those who insist upon its universality, that the Mosaic Deluge must
be considered a preternatural event, far beyond the reach of
philosophical inquiry; not only as to the causes employed to produce
it, but as to the effects most likely to result from it; that
determination wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however much soever
it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet cannot but
produce an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp
and cavil at the evidences of Revelation (pp. 8-9).
The kindly and courteous writer of these curious passages is evidently
unwilling to make the geologists the victims of general opprobrium by
pressing the obvious consequences of their teaching home. One is therefore
pained to think of the feelings with which, if he lived so long as to
become acquainted with the _Dictionary of the Bible_, he must have perused
the article "Noah," written by a dignitary of the Church for that standard
compendium and published in 1863. For the doctrine of the universality of
the Deluge is therein altogether given up; and I {516} permit myself to
hope that a long criticism of the story from the point of view of natural
science, with which, at the request of the learned theologian who wrote it,
I supplied him, may, in some degree, have contributed towards this happy
result.
Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to discover that the
universality of the Deluge has any defender left, at least among those who
have so far mastered the rudiments of natural knowledge as to be able to
appreciate the weight of evidence against it. For example, when I turned to
the _Speaker's Bible_, published under the sanction of high Anglican
authority, I found the following judicial and judicious deliverance, the
skilful wording of which may adorn, but does not hide, the completeness of
the surrender of the old teaching:--
Without pronouncing too hastily on any fair inferences from the words
of Scripture, we may reasonably say that their most natural
interpretation is, that the whole race of man had become grievously
corrupted since the faithful had intermingled with the ungodly; that
the inhabited world was consequently filled with violence, and that God
had decreed to destroy all mankind except one single family; that,
therefore, all that portion of the earth, perhaps as yet a very small
portion, into which mankind had spread was overwhelmed with water. The
ark was ordained to save one faithful family; and lest that family, on
the subsidence of the waters, should find the whole country round them
a desert, a pair of all the beasts of the land, and of the fowls of the
air were preserved along with them, and along with them went forth to
replenish the now desolated continent. The words of Scripture
(confirmed as they are by universal tradition) appear at least to mean
as much as this. They do not necessarily mean more.[148]
{517}
In the third edition of Kitto's _Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature_ (1876),
the article "Deluge," written by my friend, the present distinguished head
of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, extinguishes the universality
doctrine as thoroughly as might be expected from its authorship; and, since
the writer of the article "Noah" refers his readers to that entitled
"Deluge," it is to be supposed, notwithstanding his generally orthodox
tone, that he does not dissent from its conclusions. Again, the writers in
Herzog's _Real-Encyclopaedie_ (Bd. X. 1882) and in Riehm's _Handwoerterbuch_
(1884)--both works with a conservative leaning--are on the same side; and
Diestel,[149] in his full discussion of the subject, remorselessly rejects
the universality doctrine. Even that staunch opponent of scientific
rationalism--may I say rationality--Zoeckler,[150] flinches from a distinct
defence of the thesis, any opposition to which, well within my
recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere "infidelity." All
that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zoeckler is able to do, is to pronounce a
faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation,
which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred
at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle
of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it
secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the
Deluge, would leave the details of his {518} account as irreconcilable with
the truths of elementary physical science as ever. Thus I may be permitted
to spare myself and my readers the weariness of a recapitulation of the
overwhelming arguments against the universality of the Deluge, which they
will now find for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be
wished, by Anglican and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and conservative
tendencies have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet many fully admit (and,
indeed, nothing can be plainer) that the Pentateuchal narrator means to
convey that, as a matter of fact, the whole earth known to him was
inundated; nor is it less obvious that, unless all mankind, with the
exception of Noah and his family, were actually destroyed, the references
to the Flood in the New Testament are unintelligible.
But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that no
universal Deluge ever took place has produced a change of front in the army
of apologetic writers. They have imagined that the substitution of the
adjective "partial" for "universal," will save the credit of the
Pentateuch, and permit them, after all, without too many blushes, to
declare that the progress of modern science only strengthens the authority
of Moses. Nowhere have I found the case of the advocates of this method of
escaping from the difficulties of the actual position better put than in
the lecture of Professor Diestel to which I have referred. After frankly
admitting that the old doctrine of universality involves physical
impossibilities, he continues:-- {519}
All these difficulties fall away as soon as we give up the universality
of the Deluge, and imagine a _partial_ flooding of the earth, say in
western Asia. But have we a right to do so? The narrative speaks of
"the whole earth." But what is the meaning of this expression? Surely
not the whole surface of the earth according to the ideas of _modern_
geographers, but, at most, according to the conceptions of the Biblical
author. This very simple conclusion, however, is never drawn by too
many readers of the Bible. But one need only cast one's eyes over the
tenth chapter of Genesis in order to become acquainted with the
geographical horizon of the Jews. In the north it was bounded by the
Black Sea and the mountains of Armenia; extended towards the east very
little beyond the Tigris; hardly reached the apex of the Persian Gulf;
passed, then, through the middle of Arabia and the Red Sea; went
southward through Abyssinia, and then turned westward by the frontiers
of Egypt, and inclosed the easternmost islands of the Mediterranean (p.
11).
The justice of this observation must be admitted, no less than the further
remark that, in still earlier times, the pastoral Hebrews very probably had
yet more restricted notions of what constituted the "whole earth."
Moreover, I, for one, fully agree with Professor Diestel that the motive,
or generative incident, of the whole story is to be sought in the
occasionally excessive and desolating floods of the Euphrates and the
Tigris.
Let us, provisionally, accept the theory of a partial deluge, and try to
form a clear mental picture of the occurrence. Let us suppose that, for
forty days and forty nights, such a vast quantity of water was poured upon
the ground that the whole surface of Mesopotamia was covered by water to a
depth certainly greater, probably much greater, than fifteen cubits, or
{520} twenty feet (Gen. vii. 20). The inundation prevails upon the earth
for one hundred and fifty days; and then the flood gradually decreases,
until, on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark, which had
previously floated on its surface, grounds upon the "mountains of
Ararat"[151] (Gen. viii. 34). Then, as Diestel has acutely pointed out
(_Sintflut_, p. 13), we are to imagine the further subsidence of the flood
to take place so gradually that it was not until nearly two months and
a-half after this time (that is to say, on the first day of the tenth
month) that the "tops of the mountains" became visible. Hence it follows
that, if the ark drew even as much as twenty feet of water, the level of
the inundation fell very slowly--at a rate of only a few inches a
day--until the top of the mountain on which it rested became visible. This
is an amount of movement which, if it took place in the sea, would be
overlooked by ordinary people on the shore. But the Mesopotamian plain
slopes gently, from an elevation of 500 or 600 feet at its northern end, to
the sea, at its southern end, with hardly so much as a notable ridge to
break its uniform flatness, for 300 to 400 miles. These being the
conditions of the case, the following inquiry naturally presents itself:
not, be it observed, as a recondite problem, generated by modern
speculation, but as a plain suggestion flowing out of that very ordinary
and archaic piece of knowledge that water cannot be piled up {521} in a
heap, like sand; or that it seeks the lowest level. When, after 150 days,
"the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and
the rain from heaven was restrained" (Gen. viii. 2), what prevented the
mass of water, several, possibly very many, fathoms deep, which covered,
say, the present site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward in a furious
torrent; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not only the "tops of the
mountains," but the whole plain, save any minor depressions, bare? How
could its subsidence, by any possibility, be an affair of weeks and months?
And if this difficulty is not enough, let any one try to imagine how a mass
of water several, perhaps very many, fathoms deep, could be accumulated on
a flat surface of land rising well above the sea, and separated from it by
no sort of barrier. Most people know Lord's Cricket-ground. Would it not be
an absurd contradiction to our common knowledge of the properties of water
to imagine that, if all the mains of all the waterworks of London were
turned on to it, they could maintain a heap of water twenty feet deep over
its level surface? Is it not obvious that the water, whatever momentary
accumulation might take place at first, would not stop there, but that it
would dash, like a mighty mill-race, southwards down the gentle slope which
ends in the Thames? And is it not further obvious, that whatever depth of
water might be maintained over the cricket-ground so long as all the mains
poured on to it, anything which floated there would be speedily whirled
away by the current, like a cork in a gutter when the rain pours? {522} But
if this is so, then it is no less certain that Noah's deeply laden,
sailless, oarless, and rudderless craft, if by good fortune it escaped
capsizing in whirlpools, or having its bottom knocked into holes by snags
(like those which prove fatal even to well-built steamers on the
Mississippi in our day), would have speedily found itself a good way down
the Persian Gulf, and not long after in the Indian Ocean, somewhere between
Arabia and Hindostan. Even if, eventually, the ark might have gone ashore,
with other jetsam and flotsam, on the coasts of Arabia, or of Hindostan, or
of the Maldives, or of Madagascar, its return to the "mountains of Ararat"
would have been a miracle more stupendous than all the rest.
Thus, the last state of the would-be reconcilers of the story of the Deluge
with fact is worse than the first. All that they have done is to transfer
the contradictions to established truth from the region of science proper
to that of common information and common sense. For, really, the assertion
that the surface of a body of deep water, to which no addition was made,
and which there was nothing to stop from running into the sea, sank at the
rate of only a few inches or even feet a day, simply outrages the most
ordinary and familiar teachings of every man's daily experience. A child
may see the folly of it.
In addition, I may remark that the necessary assumption of the "partial
Deluge" hypothesis (if it is confined to Mesopotamia) that the Hebrew
writer must have meant low hills when he said "high mountains," is quite
untenable. On the eastern side of the {523} Mesopotamian plain, the snowy
peaks of the frontier ranges of Persia are visible from Bagdad,[152] and
even the most ignorant herdsmen in the neighbourhood of "Ur of the
Chaldees," near its western limit, could hardly have been unacquainted with
the comparatively elevated plateau of the Syrian desert which lay close at
hand. But, surely, we must suppose the Biblical writer to be acquainted
with the highlands of Palestine and with the masses of the Sinaitic
peninsula, which soar more than 8000 feet above the sea, if he knew of no
higher elevations; and, if so, he could not well have meant to refer to
mere hillocks when he said that "all the high mountains which were under
the whole heaven were covered" (Genesis vii. 19). Even the hill-country of
Galilee reaches an elevation of 4000 feet; and a flood which covered it
could by no possibility have been other than universal in its superficial
extent. Water really cannot be got to stand at, say, 4000 feet above the
sea-level over Palestine, without covering the rest of the globe to the
same height. Even if, in the course of Noah's six hundredth year, some
prodigious convulsion had sunk the whole region inclosed within "the
horizon of the geographical knowledge" of the Israelites by that much, and
another had pushed it up again, just in time to catch the ark upon the
"mountains of Ararat," matters are not much mended. I am afraid to think of
what would have become of a vessel so little seaworthy as the ark and of
its very numerous passengers, {524} under the peculiar obstacles to quiet
flotation which such rapid movements of depression and upheaval would have
generated.
Thus, in view, not, I repeat, of the recondite speculations of infidel
philosophers, but in the face of the plainest and most commonplace of
ascertained physical facts, the story of the Noachian Deluge has no more
claim to credit than has that of Deucalion; and whether it was, or was not,
suggested by the familiar acquaintance of its originators with the effects
of unusually great overflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is utterly
devoid of historical truth.
That is, in my judgment, the necessary result of the application of
criticism, based upon assured physical knowledge, to the story of the
Deluge. And it is satisfactory that the criticism which is based, not upon
literary and historical speculations, but upon well-ascertained facts in
the departments of literature and history, tends to exactly the same
conclusion.
For I find this much agreed upon by all Biblical scholars of repute, that
the story of the Deluge in Genesis is separable into at least two sets of
statements; and that, when the statements thus separated are recombined in
their proper order, each set furnishes an account of the event, coherent
and complete within itself, but in some respects discordant with that
afforded by the other set. This fact, as I understand, is not disputed.
Whether one of these is the work of an Elohist, and the other of a Jehovist
narrator; whether the two have been pieced together in this {525} strange
fashion because, in the estimation of the compilers and editors of the
Pentateuch, they had equal and independent authority, or not; or whether
there is some other way of accounting for it--are questions the answers to
which do not affect the fact. If possible I avoid _a priori_ arguments. But
still, I think it may be urged, without imprudence, that a narrative having
this structure is hardly such as might be expected from a writer possessed
of full and infallibly accurate knowledge. Once more, it would seem that it
is not necessarily the mere inclination of the sceptical spirit to question
everything, or the wilful blindness of infidels, which prompts grave doubts
as to the value of a narrative thus curiously unlike the ordinary run of
veracious histories.
But the voice of archaeological and historical criticism still has to be
heard; and it gives forth no uncertain sound. The marvellous recovery of
the records of an antiquity, far superior to any that can be ascribed to
the Pentateuch, which has been effected by the decipherers of cuneiform
characters, has put us in possession of a series, once more, not of
speculations, but of facts, which have a most remarkable bearing upon the
question of the trustworthiness of the narrative of the Flood. It is
established, that for centuries before the asserted migration of Terah from
Ur of the Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox interpreters of the
Pentateuch, took place after the year 2000 B.C.) Lower Mesopotamia was the
seat of a civilisation in which art and science and literature had attained
a development formerly unsuspected, or, {526} if there were faint reports
of it, treated as fabulous. And it is also no matter of speculation, but a
fact, that the libraries of these people contain versions of a long epic
poem, one of the twelve books of which tells a story of a deluge, which, in
a number of its leading features, corresponds with the story attributed to
Berosus, no less than with the story given in Genesis, with curious
exactness. Thus, the correctness of Canon Rawlinson's conclusion, cited
above, that the story of Berosus was neither drawn from the Hebrew record,
nor is the foundation of it, can hardly be questioned. It is highly
probable, if not certain, that Berosus relied upon one of the versions (for
there seem to have been several) of the old Babylonian epos, extant in his
time; and, if that is a reasonable conclusion, why is it unreasonable to
believe that the two stories, which the Hebrew compiler has put together in
such an inartistic fashion, were ultimately derived from the same source? I
say ultimately, because it does not at all follow that the two versions,
possibly trimmed by the Jehovistic writer on the one hand, and by the
Elohistic on the other, to suit Hebrew requirements, may not have been
current among the Israelites for ages. And they may have acquired great
authority before they were combined in the Pentateuch.
Looking at the convergence of all these lines of evidence to the one
conclusion--that the story of the Flood in Genesis is merely a Bowdlerised
version of one of the oldest pieces of purely fictitious literature extant;
that whether this is, or is not, its origin, the {527} events asserted in
it to have taken place assuredly never did take place; further, that, in
point of fact, the story, in the plain and logically necessary sense of its
words, has long since been given up by orthodox and conservative
commentators of the Established Church--I can but admire the courage and
clear foresight of the Anglican divine who tells us that we must be
prepared to choose between the trustworthiness of scientific method and the
trustworthiness of that which the Church declares to be Divine authority.
For, to my mind, this declaration of war to the knife against secular
science, even in its most elementary form; this rejection without a
moment's hesitation of any and all evidence which conflicts with
theological dogma--is the only position which is logically reconcilable
with the axioms of orthodoxy. If the Gospels truly report that which an
incarnation of the God of Truth communicated to the world, then it surely
is absurd to attend to any other evidence touching matters about which he
made any clear statement, or the truth of which is distinctly implied by
his words. If the exact historical truth of the Gospels is an axiom of
Christianity, it is as just and right for a Christian to say, Let us "close
our ears against suggestions" of scientific critics, as it is for the man
of science to refuse to waste his time upon circle-squarers and flat-earth
fanatics.
It is commonly reported that the manifesto by which the Canon of St. Paul's
proclaims that he nails the colours of the straitest Biblical infallibility
to the mast of the ship ecclesiastical, was put forth as a {528}
counterblast to _Lux Mundi_; and that the passages which I have more
particularly quoted are directed against the essay on "The Holy Spirit and
Inspiration" in that collection of treatises by Anglican divines of high
standing, who must assuredly be acquitted of conscious "infidel"
proclivities. I fancy that rumour must, for once, be right, for it is
impossible to imagine a more direct and diametrical contradiction than that
between the passages from the sermon cited above and those which follow:--
What is questioned is that our Lord's words foreclose certain critical
positions as to the character of Old Testament literature. For example,
does His use of Jonah's resurrection as a _type_ of His own, depend in
any real degree upon whether it is historical fact or allegory?... Once
more, our Lord uses the time before the Flood, to illustrate the
carelessness of men before His own coming.... In referring to the Flood
He certainly suggests that He is treating it as typical, for He
introduces circumstances--"eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage"--which have no counterpart in the original narrative (p.
358-9).
While insisting on the flow of inspiration through the whole of the Old
Testament, the essayist does not admit its universality. Here, also, the
new apologetic demands a partial flood:
But does the inspiration of the recorder guarantee the exact historical
truth of what he records? And, in matter of fact, can the record, with
due regard to legitimate historical criticism, be pronounced true? Now,
to the latter of these two questions (and they are quite distinct
questions) we may reply that there is nothing to prevent our believing,
as our faith strongly disposes us to believe, that the record from
Abraham downward is, in substance, in the strict sense historical (p.
351).
It would appear, therefore, that there is nothing {529} to prevent our
believing that the record, from Abraham upward, consists of stories in the
strict sense unhistorical, and that the pre-Abrahamic narratives are mere
moral and religious "types" and parables.