met with the remark that, at our time of life, Mr. Gladstone and I might be
better occupied than in fighting over the Gadarene pigs. And, if these too
famous swine were the only parties to the suit, I, for my part, should
fully admit the {579} justice of the rebuke. But, under the beneficent rule
of the Court of Chancery, in former times, it was not uncommon that a
quarrel about a few perches of worthless land ended in the ruin of ancient
families and the engulfing of great estates; and I think that our
admonisher failed to observe the analogy--to note the momentous
consequences of the judgment which may be awarded in the present apparently
insignificant action _in re_ the swineherds of Gadara.
The immediate effect of such judgment will be the decision of the question
whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of
the men of the first century as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it as
degrading falsity. The reverend Principal of King's College has delivered
his judgment in perfectly clear and candid terms. Two years since, Dr. Wace
said that he believed the story as it stands; and consequently he holds, as
a part of divine revelation, that the spiritual world comprises devils,
who, under certain circumstances, may enter men and be transferred from
them to four-footed beasts. For the distinguished Anglican divine and
Biblical scholar that is part and parcel of the teachings respecting the
spiritual world which we owe to the founder of Christianity. It is an
inseparable part of that Christian orthodoxy which, if a man rejects, he is
to be considered and called an "infidel." According to the ordinary rules
of interpretation of language, Mr. Gladstone must hold the same view.
If antiquity and universality are valid tests of the truth of any belief,
no doubt this is one of the beliefs {580} so certified. There are no known
savages, nor people sunk in the ignorance of partial civilisation, who do
not hold them. The great majority of Christians have held them and still
hold them. Moreover, the oldest records we possess of the early conceptions
of mankind in Egypt and in Mesopotamia prove that exactly such demonology,
as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the substratum, and, among the
early Accadians, apparently the greater part, of their supposed knowledge
of the spiritual world. M. Lenormant's profoundly interesting work on
Babylonian magic and the magical texts given in the Appendix to Professor
Sayce's _Hibbert Lectures_ leave no doubt on this head. They prove that the
doctrine of possession, and even the particular case of pig
possession,[170] were firmly believed in by the Egyptians and the
Mesopotamians before the tribes of Israel invaded Palestine. And it is
evident that these beliefs, from some time after the exile and probably
much earlier, completely interpenetrated the Jewish mind, and thus became
inseparably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic Gospels.
Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance of the doctrines of the
oldest heathen demonology as part of the fundamental beliefs of
Christianity, there lies the question of the credibility of the Gospels,
and of their claim to act as our instructors, outside that ethical {581}
province in which they appeal to the consciousness of all thoughtful men.
And still, behind this problem, there lies another--how far do these
ancient records give a sure foundation to the prodigious fabric of
Christian dogma which has been built upon them by the continuous labours of
speculative theologians during eighteen centuries?
I submit that there are few questions before the men of the rising
generation on the answer to which the future hangs more fatally than this.
We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the twentieth century shall see
a recrudescence of the superstitions of mediaeval papistry, or whether it
shall witness the severance of the living body of the ethical ideal of
prophetic Israel from the carcase, foul with savage superstitions and
cankered with false philosophy, to which the theologians have bound it,
turns upon their final judgment of the Gadarene tale.
The gravity of the problems ultimately involved in the discussion of the
legend of Gadara will, I hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the
subject, to which I should not have been moved by merely personal
considerations.
With respect to the diluvial invective which overflowed thirty-three pages
of this Review last January, I doubt not that it has a catastrophic
importance in the estimation of its author. I, on the other hand, may be
permitted to regard it as a mere spate; noisy and threatening while it
lasted, but forgotten almost {582} as soon as it was over. Without my help,
it will be judged by every instructed and clear-headed reader; and that is
fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I have cogent reasons for
withholding it.
In an article characterised by the same qualities of thought and diction,
entitled "A Great Lesson," which appeared in this Review for September
1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged the whole body of men of science
interested in the question with having conspired to ignore certain
criticisms of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin and coral reefs; and,
secondly, he asserted that some person unnamed had "actually induced" Mr.
John Murray to delay the publication of his views on that subject "for two
years."
It was easy for me and for others to prove that the first statement was not
only, to use the Duke of Argyll's favourite expression, "contrary to fact,"
but that it was without any foundation whatever. The second statement
rested on the Duke of Argyll's personal authority. All I could do was to
demand the production of the evidence for it. Up to the present time, so
far as I know, that evidence has not made its appearance; nor has there
been any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous charge.
Under these circumstances, most people will understand why the Duke of
Argyll may feel quite secure of having the battle all to himself, whenever
it pleases him to attack me.
* * * * *
{583}
XVI
HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE
Some thousands of years ago, there was a city in Mesopotamia called
Surippak. One night a strange dream came to a dweller therein, whose name,
if rightly reported, was Hasisadra. The dream foretold the speedy coming of
a great flood; and it warned Hasisadra to lose no time in building a ship,
in which, when notice was given, he, his family and friends, with their
domestic animals and a collection of the wild creatures and seed of plants
of the land, might take refuge and be rescued from destruction. Hasisadra
awoke, and at once acted upon the warning. A strong decked ship was built,
and her sides were paid, inside and out, with the mineral pitch, or
bitumen, with which the country abounded; the vessel's seaworthiness was
tested, the cargo was stowed away, and a trusty pilot or steersman
appointed.
The promised signal arrived. Wife and friends embarked; Hasisadra,
following, prudently "shut the door," or, as we should say, put on the
hatches; and Nes-Hea, the pilot, was left alone on deck to do {584} his
best for the ship. Thereupon a hurricane began to rage; rain fell in
torrents; the subterranean waters burst forth; a deluge swept over the
land, and the wind lashed it into waves sky high; heaven and earth became
mingled in chaotic gloom. For six days and seven nights the gale raged, but
the good ship held out until, on the seventh day, the storm lulled.
Hasisadra ventured on deck; and, seeing nothing but a waste of waters
strewed with floating corpses and wreck, wept over the destruction of his
land and people. Far away, the mountains of Nizir were visible; the ship
was steered for them and ran aground upon the higher land. Yet another
seven days passed by. On the seventh, Hasisadra sent forth a dove, which
found no resting place and returned; then he liberated a swallow, which
also came back; finally, a raven was let loose, and that sagacious bird,
when it found that the water had abated, came near the ship, but refused to
return to it. Upon this, Hasisadra liberated the rest of the wild animals,
which immediately dispersed in all directions, while he, with his family
and friends, ascending a mountain hard by, offered sacrifices upon its
summit to the gods.
The story thus given in summary abstract, told in an ancient Semitic
dialect, is inscribed in cuneiform characters upon a tablet of burnt clay.
Many thousands of such tablets, collected by Assurbanipal, King of Assyria
in the middle of the seventh century B.C., were stored in the library of
his palace at {585} Nineveh; and, though in a sadly broken and mutilated
condition, they have yielded a marvellous amount of information to the
patient and sagacious labour which modern scholars have bestowed upon them.
Among the multitude of documents of various kinds, this narrative of
Hasisadra's adventure has been found in a tolerably complete state. But
Assyriologists agree that it is only a copy of a much more ancient work;
and there are weighty reasons for believing that the story of Hasisadra's
flood was well known in Mesopotamia before the year 2000 B.C.
No doubt, then, we are in presence of a narrative which has all the
authority which antiquity can confer; and it is proper to deal respectfully
with it, even though it is quite as proper, and indeed necessary, to act no
less respectfully towards ourselves; and, before professing to put implicit
faith in it, to inquire what claim it has to be regarded as a serious
account of an historical event.
It is of no use to appeal to contemporary history, although the annals of
Babylonia, no less than those of Egypt, go much further back than 2000 B.C.
All that can be said is, that the former are hardly consistent with the
supposition that any catastrophe, competent to destroy all the population,
has befallen the land since civilisation began, and that the latter are
notoriously silent about deluges. In such a case as this, however, the
silence of history does not leave the inquirer wholly at fault. Natural
science has something to say when the phenomena of nature {586} are in
question. Natural science may be able to show, from the nature of the
country, either that such an event as that described in the story is
impossible, or at any rate highly improbable; or, on the other hand, that
it is consonant with probability. In the former case, the narrative must be
suspected or rejected; in the latter, no such summary verdict can be given:
on the contrary, it must be admitted that the story may be true. And then,
if certain strangely prevalent canons of criticism are accepted, and if the
evidence that an event might have happened is to be accepted as proof that
it did happen, Assyriologists will be at liberty to congratulate one
another on the "confirmation by modern science" of the authority of their
ancient books.
It will be interesting, therefore, to inquire how far the physical
structure and the other conditions of the region in which Surippak was
situated are compatible with such a flood as is described in the Assyrian
record.
The scene of Hasisadra's adventure is laid in the broad valley, six or
seven hundred miles long, and hardly anywhere less than a hundred miles in
width, which is traversed by the lower courses of the rivers Euphrates and
Tigris, and which is commonly known as the "Euphrates valley." Rising, at
the one end, into a hill country, which gradually passes into the Alpine
heights of Armenia; and, at the other, dipping beneath the shallow waters
of the head of the Persian Gulf, which continues in the same direction,
from north-west to south-east, for some eight hundred {587} miles farther,
the floor of the valley presents a gradual slope, from eight hundred feet
above the sea level to the depths of the southern end of the Persian Gulf.
The boundary between sea and land, formed by the extremest mudflats of the
delta of the two rivers, is but vaguely defined; and, year by year, it
advances seaward. On the north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of
Persia rise abruptly to great heights; on the south-western side, a more
gradual ascent leads to a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad
in the south, where it is occupied by the deserts of Arabia and of Southern
Syria, narrows, northwards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is
continued by the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antilebanon, and the Taurus,
into the highlands of Armenia.
The wide and gently inclined plain, thus inclosed between the gulf and the
highlands, on each side and at its upper extremity, is distinguishable into
two regions of very different character, one of which lies north, and the
other south of the parallel of Hit, on the Euphrates. Except in the
immediate vicinity of the river, the northern division is stony and
scantily covered with vegetation, except in spring. Over the southern
division, on the contrary, spreads a deep alluvial soil, in which even a
pebble is rare; and which, though, under the existing misrule, mainly a
waste of marsh and wilderness, needs only intelligent attention to become,
as it was of old, the granary of western Asia. Except in the extreme south,
the rainfall is small and the air dry. The heat in summer is intense, while
bitterly cold northern blasts {588} sweep the plain in winter. Whirlwinds
are not uncommon; and, in the intervals of the periodical inundations, the
fine, dry, powdery soil is swept, even by moderate breezes, into stifling
clouds, or rather fogs, of dust. Low inequalities, elevations here and
depressions there, diversify the surface of the alluvial region. The latter
are occupied by enormous marshes, while the former support the permanent
dwellings of the present scanty and miserable population.
In antiquity, so long as the canalisation of the country was properly
carried out, the fertility of the alluvial plain enabled great and
prosperous nations to have their home in the Euphrates valley. Its abundant
clay furnished the materials for the masses of sun-dried and burnt bricks,
the remains of which, in the shape of huge artificial mounds, still testify
to both the magnitude and the industry of the population, thousands of
years ago. Good cement is plentiful, while the bitumen, which wells from
the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not only answers the same purpose, but is
used to this day, as it was in Hasisadra's time, to pay the inside and the
outside of boats.
In the broad lower course of the Euphrates, the stream rarely acquires a
velocity of more than three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris attains
double that rate in times of flood. The water of both great rivers is
mainly derived from the northern and eastern highlands in Armenia and in
Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in early autumn and in January.
{589} But when the snows accumulated in the upper basins of the great
rivers, during the winter, melt under the hot sunshine of spring, they
rapidly rise,[171] and at length overflow their banks, covering the
alluvial plain with a vast inland sea, interrupted only by the higher
ridges and hummocks which form islands in a seemingly boundless expanse of
water.
In the occurrence of these annual inundations lies one of several
resemblances between the valley of the Euphrates and that of the Nile. But
there are important differences. The time of the annual flood is reversed,
the Nile being highest in autumn and winter, and lowest in spring and early
summer. The periodical overflows of the Nile, regulated by the great lake
basins in the south, are usually punctual in arrival, gradual in growth,
and beneficial in operation. No lakes are interposed between the mountain
torrents of the upper basis of the Tigris and the Euphrates and their lower
courses. Hence, heavy rain, or an unusually rapid thaw in the uplands,
gives rise to the sudden irruption of a vast volume of water which not even
the rapid Tigris, still less its more sluggish companion, can carry off in
time to prevent violent and dangerous overflows. Without an elaborate
system of canalisation, providing an escape for such sudden excesses of the
supply of water, the annual floods of the Euphrates, and especially of the
{590} Tigris, must always be attended with risk, and often prove harmful.
There are other peculiarities of the Euphrates valley which may
occasionally tend to exacerbate the evils attendant on the inundations. It
is very subject to seismic disturbances; and the ordinary consequences of a
sharp earthquake shock might be seriously complicated by its effect on a
broad sheet of water. Moreover, the Indian Ocean lies within the region of
typhoons; and if, at the height of an inundation, a hurricane from the
south-east swept up the Persian Gulf, driving its shallow waters upon the
delta and damming back the outflow, perhaps for hundreds of miles
up-stream, a diluvial catastrophe, fairly up to the mark of Hasisadra's,
might easily result.[172]
Thus there seems to be no valid reason for rejecting Hasisadra's story on
physical grounds. I do not gather from the narrative that the "mountains of
Nizir" were supposed to be submerged, but merely that they came into view
above the distant horizon of the waters, as the vessel drove in that
direction. Certainly the ship is not supposed to ground on any of their
higher summits, for Hasisadra has to ascend a peak in order to offer his
sacrifice. The country of Nizir lay on the north-eastern side of the
Euphrates {591} valley, about the courses of the two rivers Zab, which
enter the Tigris where it traverses the plain of Assyria some eight or nine
hundred feet above the sea; and, so far as I can judge from maps[173] and
other sources of information, it is possible, under the circumstances
supposed, that such a ship as Hasisadra's might drive before a southerly
gale, over a continuously flooded country, until it grounded on some of the
low hills between which both the lower and the upper Zab enter upon the
Assyrian plain.
The tablet which contains the story under consideration is the eleventh of
a series of twelve. Each of these answers to a month, and to the
corresponding sign of the Zodiac. The Assyrian year began with the spring
equinox; consequently, the eleventh month, called "the rainy," answers to
our January-February, and to the sign which corresponds with our Aquarius.
The aquatic adventure of Hasisadra, therefore, is not inappropriately
placed. It is curious, however, that the season thus indirectly assigned to
the flood is not that of the present highest level of the rivers. It is too
late for the winter rise and too early for the spring floods.
I think it must be admitted that, so far, the physical cross-examination to
which Hasisadra has been subjected does not break down his story. On the
contrary, he proves to have kept it in all essential respects[174] within
the bounds of probability or {592} possibility. However, we have not yet
done with him. For the conditions which obtained in the Euphrates valley,
four or five thousand years ago, may have differed to such an extent from
those which now exist that we should be able to convict him of having made
up his tale. But here again everything is in favour of his credibility.
Indeed, he may claim very powerful support, for it does not lie in the
mouths of those who accept the authority of the Pentateuch to deny that the
Euphrates valley was what it is, even six thousand years back. According to
the book of Genesis, Phrat and Hiddekel--the Euphrates and the Tigris--are
coeval with Paradise. An edition of the Scriptures, recently published
under high authority, with an elaborate apparatus of "Helps" for the use of
students--and therefore, as I am bound to suppose, purged of all statements
that could by any possibility mislead the young--assigns the year B.C. 4004
as the date of Adam's too brief residence in that locality.
But I am far from depending on this authority for the age of the
Mesopotamian plain. On the contrary, I venture to rely, with much more
confidence, on another kind of evidence, which tends to show that the age
of the great rivers must be carried back to a date earlier than that at
which our ingenuous youth is instructed that the earth came into existence.
For, the alluvial deposit having been brought down by the rivers, they must
needs be older than the plain it {593} forms, as navvies must needs
antecede the embankment painfully built up by the contents of their
wheelbarrows. For thousands of years, heat and cold, rain, snow, and frost,
the scrubbing of glaciers, and the scouring of torrents laden with sand and
gravel, have been wearing down the rocks of the upper basins of the rivers,
over an area of many thousand square miles; and these materials, ground to
fine powder in the course of their long journey, have slowly subsided, as
the water which carried them spread out and lost its velocity in the sea.
It is because this process is still going on that the shore of the delta
constantly encroaches on the head of the gulf[175] into which the two
rivers are constantly throwing the waste of Armenia and of Kurdistan.
Hence, as might be expected, fluviatile and marine shells are common in the
alluvial deposit; and Loftus found strata, containing subfossil marine
shells of species now living, in the Persian Gulf, at Warka, two hundred
miles in a straight line from the shore of the delta.[176] It follows that,
if a trustworthy estimate of the average rate of growth of the alluvial can
be formed, the lowest limit (by no means the highest limit) of age of the
rivers can be determined. All such estimates are beset {594} with sources
of error of very various kinds; and the best of them can only be regarded
as approximations to the truth. But I think it will be quite safe to assume
a maximum rate of growth of four miles in a century for the lower half of
the alluvial plain.
Now, the cycle of narratives of which Hasisadra's adventure forms a part
contains allusions not only to Surippak, the exact position of which is
doubtful, but to other cities, such as Erech. The vast ruins at the present
village of Warka have been carefully explored and determined to be all that
remains of that once great and flourishing city, "Erech the lofty."
Supposing that the two hundred miles of alluvial country, which separates
them from the head of the Persian Gulf at present, have been deposited at
the very high rate of four miles in a century, it will follow that 4000
years ago, or about the year 2100 B.C., the city of Erech still lay forty
miles inland. Indeed, the city might have been built a thousand years
earlier. Moreover, there is plenty of independent archaeological and other
evidence that in the whole thousand years, 2000 to 3000 B.C., the alluvial
plain was inhabited by a numerous people, among whom industry, art, and
literature had attained a very considerable development. And it can be
shown that the physical conditions and the climate of the Euphrates valley,
at that time, must have been extremely similar to what they are now.
Thus, once more, we reach the conclusion that, as a question of physical
probability, there is no ground for objecting to the reality of Hasisadra's
adventure. {595} It would be unreasonable to doubt that such a flood might
have happened, and that such a person might have escaped in the way
described, any time during the last 5000 years. And if the postulate of
loose thinkers in search of scientific "confirmations" of questionable
narratives--proof that an event may have happened is evidence that it did
happen--is to be accepted, surely Hasisadra's story is "confirmed by modern
scientific investigation" beyond all cavil. However, it may be well to
pause before adopting this conclusion, because the original story, of which
I have set forth only the broad outlines, contains a great many statements
which rest upon just the same foundation as those cited, and yet are hardly
likely to meet with general acceptance. The account of the circumstances
which led up to the flood, of those under which Hasisadra's adventure was
made known to his descendant, of certain remarkable incidents before and
after the flood, are inseparably bound up with the details already given.
And I am unable to discover any justification for arbitrarily picking out
some of these and dubbing them historical verities, while rejecting the
rest as legendary fictions. They stand or fall together.