SPECIAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE
In studying the literature relating to the Deluge, we are constantly met
by questions as to its so-called 'universality.' Was it a local or
universal Deluge and if universal in what sense so? This is a point in
which neglect or ignorance of the necessary physical conditions has led
to the strangest misconceptions.
It is obvious that there are four senses in which a catastrophe like the
Deluge of Noah may be affirmed or denied to have been universal.
1. It may have been universal in the sense of being a deep stratum of
water covering the whole globe, both land and sea. Such universality
could not have been in the mind of the writer, and probably has been
claimed knowingly by no writer in modern times. Halley in the last
century understood the conditions of such universality, though he seems
to have supposed that the impact of a comet might supply the necessary
water. Owen has directed attention to the fact that such a deluge might
be as fatal to the inhabitants of the waters as to those of the land.
In any case, such universality would demand an enormous supply of water
from some extra-terrestrial source.
2. The Deluge may have been universal in the sense of being a submersion
of the whole of the land, either by subsidence or by elevation of the
ocean bed. Such a state of things may have existed in primitive
geological ages before our continents were elevated, but we have no
scientific evidence of its recurrence at any later time, though large
portions of the continents have been again and again submerged. The
writers of Genesis i. and of Psalm civ. seem to have known of no such
total submergence since the elevation of the first dry land, and nothing
of this kind is expressed or certainly implied in the Deluge story.
3. The Deluge may have been universal in so far as man, its chief
object, and certain animals useful or necessary to him, are concerned.
This kind of universality would seem to have been before the mind of the
writer when he says that 'Noah only, and they who were with him in the
ark, remained alive.'[55]
[55] Genesis vii. 23.
4. The Deluge may have been universal in so far as the area and
observation and information of the narrator extended. The story is
evidently told in the form of a narrative derived from eye-witnesses,
and this form seems even to have been chosen or retained purposely to
avoid any question of universality of the first and second kinds
referred to above. The same form of narrative is preserved in the
Chaldean legend. This fact is not affected by the doctrine held by some
of the schools of disintegrators, that the narrative is divisible into
two documents, respectively 'Jahvistic' and 'Elohistic.' I have
elsewhere[56] shown that there is a very different reason for the use of
these two names of God. But if there were two original witnesses whose
statements were put together by an editor, this surely does not
invalidate their testimony or deprive them of the right to have it
understood as they intended.
[56] _Modern Science in Bible Lands_, chap. iv.
It is thus evident that the whole question of 'universality' is little
more than a mere useless logomachy, having no direct relation to the
facts or to the credibility of the narrative.
There are also in connection with this question of universality certain
scientific and historical facts already referred to which we may again
summarise here, and which are essential to the understanding of the
question. Nothing is more certainly known in geology than that at the
close of the later tertiary or pleistocene age the continents of the
northern hemisphere stood higher and spread their borders more widely
than at present. In this period also they were tenanted by a very grand
and varied mammalian fauna, and it is in this continental age of the
later pleistocene or early modern time that we find the first
unequivocal evidence of man as existing on various parts of the
continents. At the close of this period occurred changes, whether sudden
or gradual we do not know, though they could not have occupied a very
long time, which led to the extinction of the earliest races of men and
many contemporaneous animals. That these changes were in part, at least,
of the nature of submergence we learn from the fact that our present
continents are more sunken or less elevated out of the water, and also
from the deposit of superficial gravels and other _detritus_ more recent
than the pleistocene over their surfaces. We are thus shut up by
geological facts to the belief in a Deluge geologically modern and
practically universal.
One other objection to the Deluge narrative perhaps deserves a word of
comment--that urged against the statement of the gradual disappearance
of the waters. The extraordinary difficulty is raised respecting this,
that the water must have rushed seaward in a furious torrent. The
objection is based apparently on the idea that the foundation for the
original narrative was a river inundation in the Mesopotamian plain.
This cannot be admitted; but if it were, the objection would not apply.
River inundations, whether of the Nile or Euphrates, subside inch by
inch, not after the manner of mountain torrents. Thus this objection is
another instance of difficulties gratuitously imported into the history.
In point of fact the narrator represents the Deluge as prevailing for a
whole year, which would be impossible in the case of a river inundation.
He attributes it in part, at least, to the 'great deep'--that is, the
ocean; and he represents the ark as drifting inland or toward the north.
Such conditions can be satisfied only by the supposition of a subsidence
of the land similar in kind, at least, to the great post-glacial flood
of geology. Partial subsidences of this kind, local but very extreme,
have occurred even in later times, as, for instance, in the Runn of
Cutch, the delta of the Mississippi, and the delta of the Nile; and if
the objectors are determined to make the Deluge of Noah very local and
more recent than the post-glacial flood, it would be more rational to
refer to subsidences like those just mentioned, and of which they will
find examples in Lyell's _Principles_ and other geological books. It is,
however, decidedly more probable that Noah's Flood is identical with
that which destroyed the men of the mammoth age, the palæocosmic or
'palæolithic' men;[57] and in that case the recession of the waters
would probably be gradual, but intermittent, 'going and returning,' as
our ancient narrator has it; but there need not have been any violent
_débâcle_.
[57] _Modern Science in Bible Lands_, chaps. iii. and iv.
It is also to be noted that a submergence of the land and consequent
deluge may be cataclysmic or tranquil, according to local circumstances,
and that it may have been locally sudden, while for the whole world it
was gradual and of longer duration. Such differences must belong to all
great submergences, which may in one place produce great disturbance and
very coarse deposits, in another may be quiet and deposit the finest
silt. Even the flood of a river or the action of a tide admits of
variations of this kind. In narrow channels the great tides of the Bay
of Fundy rush as torrents; in wide bays they creep in imperceptibly.
The traditions and Biblical history of the Deluge not only furnish
important material for connecting the geological ages with the period of
human history, and for enabling us to realise the fact that early man
was a witness of some of the later physical and vital vicissitudes that
have passed over the earth, but may be correlated with other ancient
traditions which seem at first sight to have no immediate relation to
it.
As an example, I may refer to the well-known Egyptian fable of Atlantis,
which may be a reminiscence of early man in the second continental
period, and which we may, perhaps, even connect with the Mexican
tradition of civilisation reaching America from the East.[58]
[58] It is, perhaps, only an accident that _Atl_ is the Mexican word for
water.
Plato has handed down to us a circumstantial tradition, derived from
Egypt, of a great Atlantic continent west of Europe, once thickly
peopled, and the seat of an empire that was dominant over the
Mediterranean regions. This continent, or island, was called Atlantis,
and it had been submerged with all its people in prehistoric times. This
tradition may have reference to certain geological facts of the early
modern period already referred to. If the Egyptian tradition really
extended back to the antediluvian period, we can readily understand
their belief in the continent of Atlantis. We have already ascertained
the great extension in that period of the land of Western Europe, and
there may have been outlying insular tracts in the Atlantic now quite
unknown to us. These lands may well have sustained nations of the
gigantic Cro-magnon race, 'men of renown,' who, when their westward
progress was stayed by the ocean, and they were checked in the north by
the increasing cold, may have turned their arms against the dwellers on
the Mediterranean coasts, perhaps in the age immediately preceding the
Deluge. We know little as yet of the history of those Horshesu, or
children of Horus, who are said to have preceded the historic period in
Egypt. There must have been Egyptian literature about these people, and
should this be recovered we shall probably learn more of Atlantis. In
the meantime we may, at least, bring the tradition of that perished
continent into harmony with geology and history. I may add that we need
not consider the above view as at variance with that of those
archæologists who, like the late Sir D. Wilson,[59] suppose the
tradition of Atlantis to have been founded on vague intimations of the
existence of America, since any such intimations which reached the
civilised nations of Southern Europe or Africa would naturally be
considered as an indication that some part of the lost Atlantis still
continued to exist.
[59] _The Lost Atlantis_, 1892.
In still another direction does the deluge story connect itself with
physical probabilities. If we examine the Atlantic map representing the
soundings of the Challenger expedition, we shall find evidence not only
of that extension of land in temperate Western Europe which may have
originated the story of Atlantis, but other dispositions of land,
especially in the extreme north and south, which may have influenced
antediluvian climate. We have reason to believe that in the second
continental period, that of palæocosmic man, Baffin's Bay may have been
greatly narrowed and Behring's Straits entirely closed, while large
tracts of land existed around Iceland and west of Norway. There would
thus be almost continuous land connection around the north pole,
permitting easy extension of man and of hardy animals. There would also
be much less access of ice to the North Atlantic.
At the same time in another region there was probably a land connection
from Florida to South America by the Bahamas, and the equatorial current
may have been more powerfully deflected northward than now. The effect
would be to produce around the North Atlantic, and especially on the
eastern side, a golden age of genial climate, fitted to early man, but
destined as time went on and geographical changes proceeded, preparatory
to the great diluvial subsidence, to fade away into the cool and damp
climate of the later post-glacial or antediluvian period. This again
would lead to migrations, wars, and fierce struggles for existence among
the human populations--a time of anarchy and violence preceding the
final catastrophe.
Much collateral evidence in substantiation of these probabilities can be
collected from the distribution of marine life[60] and the changes of
level, even on the American coast. They conjure up before us strange
visions of the prehistoric past, and of the vicissitudes of which man
himself has been witness, and of which, whether through memory and
tradition or the revelation of God, he has continued to retain some
written records which, long dim and uncertain, are now beginning to be
put into relation with physical facts ascertained by modern scientific
observation.
[60] See _The Ice Age in Canada_, by the author. Montreal: 1893.
We have already seen how the Deluge story and the fate of the
antediluvians have interwoven themselves with the myths and
superstitions of the Old World. The six great gods of the Egyptian
pantheon represent the creative days, and the 'Sons of Horus' the
antediluvians. So we have the ten patriarchs or kings of the old
Chaldeans corresponding to those of Genesis, and the heaven-defying
Titans of the old mythologies representing the giants before the Flood.
Perhaps, however, no illustration of this is more patent or more
touching than that well-known one of Ishtar, the Astarte of the Syrians,
the Artemis of the Greeks, and who has been identified with the chief
female divinity of many other ancient nations, even with that Diana whom
'all Asia and the inhabited world worshippeth.'
The Chaldean deluge tablets for the first time introduce her to us as an
antediluvian goddess, and inform us that she is the deified mother of
men, the same with the Biblical Isha, or Eve. In the crisis of the
Deluge we are told, 'Ishtar spoke like a little child, the great goddess
pronounced her discourse. Behold how mankind has returned to clay. I am
_the mother who brought forth men_, and like the fishes they fill the
sea. The gods because of the angels of the abyss are weeping with me.'
Ishtar is thus the mother of men, herself deified and gone into the
heavens, but even there mourning over her hapless children. She may be a
star-goddess, or the moon may be her emblem; but for all that she
appears in this old legend as a deified human mother, with a mother's
heart yearning over the progeny that had sprung from her womb, and had
been nourished in her breast. It was this, more than her crescent or
starry diadem, that commended her worship to her children. Her
representative in Genesis, the first mother, Isha, or Eve, is no
goddess, but a woman. Yet is she the emblem of life and the mother of a
promised Redeemer of humanity, who is to undo the results of sin and to
restore the Paradise of God bruising the head of the great serpent who,
in the Chaldean as in the Hebrew story, represents the power of evil.
Ishtar has been represented as the bride of the god Tammuz, the
Adonis[61] of the Greeks, and whose worship was one of the idolatries
that led the women of Israel astray, 'weeping for Tammuz';[62] but it
now appears that, according to the oldest doctrine, she is his
mother,[63] and he was a 'keeper of sheep,' dwelling in Eden, or Idinu,
and murdered by his brother Adar, who is also a god, and more especially
the god of war. In short, the story of Ishtar, Tammuz, and Adar, the
parent of so many myths, is merely the familiar one of Cain and Abel.
Hence the belief that the murder of Tammuz was connected with the
Deluge, and hence the annual lamentation of the women for Tammuz when
the spring inundations swelled and reddened the waters of the streams--a
rite possibly even antediluvian, and commemorative of the mourning of
the first mother for her slain son, to rescue whom it was fabled that
she even descended into Hades.
[61] From the Semitic title 'Adonai,' my Lord.
[62] Ezekiel viii. 14.
[63] Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_.
Oppert regards the legend of Tammuz and Ishtar as a solar myth, and
supposes that the story of Cain and Abel was based on it. But a family
history of crime and sorrow is a much more real and probable thing as a
basis for tradition than a solar myth, and naturalists at least will be
disposed to invert the theory, and to believe that the simple Bible
story was the foundation of all the varied cults and superstitions that
clustered round Ishtar and Tammuz, as well as personages like Osiris and
Isis, who seem to have been later avatars, or revivals of the same tale.
It would be easy to show that the deluge story has intimate connections
with other ancient myths and superstitions, as well as with the results
of modern archæology and geology. But were this all, our inquiry,
however interesting and curious, would have little practical value. It
has two important bearings on the present time. Christianity bases
itself, its founder Himself being witness, on the early chapters of
Genesis, as history and prophecy, and the treatment which these ancient
and inspired records have met with in modern times at the hands of
destructive criticism is doing its worst in aid of the anti-*Christian
tendencies of our time. To remove the doubts that have been cast on
these old records is therefore a clear gain to the highest interests of
humanity, and if theology and philology are unable to secure this
benefit, natural science may well step forward to lend its aid. Another
connection with present interests depends on the fact that, while
superstitions akin to that which deified the mother of the promised
seed, and introduced the world-wide cults of Astarte and Aphrodite,
still reign over great masses of men, absolute materialism and desperate
struggle for existence among men and nations are growing and extending
themselves as never before since the antediluvian times, and are
provoking a like signal and direful vengeance. In the midst of all
this, Christians look forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ to
destroy the powers of evil and to inaugurate a better time; and it was
He who said, 'As it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it
be in the days of the Son of Man.' Let us remember the old story of the
flood of Noah lest those days come on us unawares.