The Meeting-Place of Geology and History Part 7

The inmates of the ark now felt that it was moving on the waters, a new and dread sensation which must have deeply impressed their minds, and they soon became aware that the ark not merely floated, but 'went,' or made progress in some definite direction. Remark the simple yet significant notes--'The ark was lift up from the earth,' and 'the ark went upon the face of the waters.' The direction of driftage is not stated, but it is a fair inference, from the probable place of departure in Chaldea and that of final grounding of the ark, that it was northward or inland, which would indicate that the chief supply of water was from the Indian Ocean, and that it was flowing inward toward the great sunken plain of interior Asia, which, however, the ark did not reach, but grounded in the hilly region known to the Hebrews as Ararat, to the Chaldeans as Nisr. A curious statement is made here (Elohist) as to the depth of the water being fifteen cubits. Even in a flat country so small a depth would not cover the rising grounds; but this is obviously not the meaning of the narrator, but something much more sensible and practical. It is not unlikely that the measure stated was the water-draught of the loaded ark, and that as the voyagers felt it rise and fall on the waves, they may have experienced some anxiety lest it should strike and go to pieces. It was no small part of the providential arrangement in their case that in the track of the ark everything was submerged more than fifteen cubits before they reached it. Hence this note, which is at the same time one of the criteria of the simple veracity of the history. The only other remark in this part of the narrative relates to the entire submergence of the whole country within sight, and the consequent destruction of animal life; and here the enumeration covers all land animals, and the terms used are thus more general than those applied to the animals preserved in the ark. The Deluge culminated, in so far as our narrator observed, in one hundred and fifty days.

His next experience is of a gale of wind, accompanied or followed by cessation of the rain and of the inflow of the oceanic waters.[50] The waters then decreased, not regularly, but by an intermittent process, 'going and returning'; but whether this was a tidal phenomenon or of the nature of earthquake waves we have no information. At length the ark grounded, apparently on high ground or in thick weather, for no land was visible; but at length, after two months, neighbouring hill-tops were seen.

[50] Genesis viii. 1, 2: 'And Elohim made a wind to pa.s.s over the earth, and the waters abated,' &c.

The incident of sending out birds to test the recession of the waters deserves notice, because of its apparently trivial nature, because it appears with variations in the Chaldean account, and because it has been treated in a remarkably unscientific manner by some critics. It indicates the uncertainty which would arise in the mind of the patriarch because of the fluctuating decrease of the waters, and possibly also a misty condition of the air preventing a distinct view of distant objects. The birds selected for the purpose were singularly appropriate.

The raven is by habit a wanderer, and remarkable for power of flight and clearness of distant vision. So long, therefore, as it made the ark its headquarters, 'going and returning'[51] from its search for food, it might be inferred that no habitable land was accessible. The dove, sent out immediately after the raven,[52] is of a different habit. It could not act as a scavenger of the waters and go and return, but could leave only if it found land covered with vegetation. As a domesticated bird also, it would naturally come back to be taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth at intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf when it found tree tops above the water, and remaining away when it found food and shelter. The Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow--a perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into the ark at all, would from its habits of life be incapable of affording any information. This addition is a mark of interpolation in the Chaldean version, and proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached by popular superst.i.tion to the swallow, or from the familiar habits of the bird suggesting to some later editor its appropriateness.

Singularly enough, the usually judicious Schrader, probably from deficient knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate all this, and after a long discussion prefers the Babylonian legend for reasons of a most unscientific character, actually condemning the perfectly natural and clear Biblical story as artificial and due to a recent emendation. He says: 'When the story pa.s.sed over to the Hebrews, the name of the swallow has disappeared,' and 'it is only from the Babylonian narrative that the selection of the different birds becomes clear.' This little disquisition of Schrader is, indeed, one of the most amusing instances of that inversion of sound criticism which results when unscientific commentators tamper with the plain statements of truthful and observant witnesses.

[51] Margin of Authorised Version; less fully, 'to and fro' in the text.

[52] There is no reason to suppose, as some have done, a hiatus here in the narrative.

The uncertainty indicated by the mission of the birds seems to have continued from the first day of the tenth to the first day of the first month, when Noah at length ventured to remove the covering of the ark and inspect the condition of the surrounding country, now abandoned by the waters, but not thoroughly dried for some time longer. Still, so timid was the patriarch that he did not dare without a special command to leave his place of safety. I am aware that if the two alleged doc.u.ments are arbitrarily separated it is possible to see here some apparent contradiction in dates; but this is not necessary if we leave them in their original relation.[53]

[53] See Green, _Hebraica, l. c._

It will be observed that a narrative such as that summarised above bears unmistakably stamped upon it the characteristics of the testimony of an eye-witness. By whomsoever reduced to writing and finally edited, it must, if genuine, have come down nearly in its present form from the time of the catastrophe which it relates. It follows that the narrator leaves no place for the current questions as to the universality of the Deluge. It was universal so far as his experience extended, but that is all. He is not responsible for what occurred beyond the limits of his observation and beyond the fact that man, so far as known to him, perished. If, therefore, as some have held,[54] Balaam in his prophecy refers to Cainite populations as extant in his time, or if Moses declines to trace to any of the postdiluvian patriarchs the Rephaim, Emim, Zuzim and other prehistoric peoples of Palestine, we may infer, without any contradiction of our narrative, that there were surviving antediluvians other than the Noachidae, whatever improbability may attach to this on other grounds, and more especially from the now ascertained extension of the post-glacial submergence over nearly all parts of the northern hemisphere.

[54] Motais, _Deluge Biblique_.

Let it also be noticed that beyond the prophetic intimation to Noah, and the one expression, Jahveh 'shut him in,' which may refer merely to providential care, there is, as already remarked, nothing miraculous, in the popular sense of that term; and that mythical elements, such as those introduced into the Babylonian narrative, are altogether absent.

The story relates to plain matters of fact, which, if they happened at all, any one might observe, and for the proof of which any ordinary testimony would be sufficient. It may be profitable, however, to revert here to the probable relation of this narrative to the geological facts already adverted to, and also its bearing on the mythical and polytheistic additions which we find in the Deluge stories of heathen nations.

Regarding the Biblical Deluge as a record of a submergence of a vast region of Eur-Asia and Northern Africa, at least, while no similar catastrophe has been recorded subsequently, it is unquestionable that submergences equally important have occurred again and again in the geological history of our continents, and have been equally destructive of animal life. It is true that most of these are believed to have been of more slow and gradual character than that recorded in Genesis, but in the case of many of them this is a very uncertain inference from the a.n.a.logy of modern changes; and it is certain that the post-glacial submergence, which closed the era of palaeocosmic man and his companion animals, must have been one of the most transient on record. On the other hand, we need not limit the entire duration of the Noachic submergence to the single year whose record has been preserved to us.

Local subsidence may have been in progress throughout the later antediluvian age, and the experience of the narrator in Genesis may have related only to its culmination in the central district of human residence. Finally, if man was really a witness of this last great continental submergence, we cannot be too thankful that there were so intelligent witnesses to preserve the record of the event for our information.

It is needless, then, to enter into further details, though these are sufficient to fill volumes if desired, in proof of the remarkable convergence of history and geological discovery on the great Flood, which now const.i.tutes one of the most remarkable ill.u.s.trations of the points of contact of science proceeding on its own methods of investigation and Divine revelation, preserving the records of ancient events otherwise lost or buried under accretions of myth and fancy. I have already endeavoured to show that the earliest race of palaeocosmic men, that of Canstadt, very fairly corresponds with what may have been the characteristics of the ruder tribes of Cainites, and that if we regard the Truchere skull as representing the Sethite people, we may suppose the Cro-magnon race to represent the giants, or Nephelim, who sprung from the union of the two pure types. I have also referred to the possibility that the Truchere race, so little known to us as yet, may have been a prot-Iberian people, possessing even before the Flood domestic animals, agriculture, and some of the arts of life, corresponding to what we find in the earliest postdiluvian nations. This is, indeed, implied in the fact that the postdiluvian nations present themselves to us at once with a somewhat advanced condition of the arts, especially in Chaldea and in Egypt. Such possibilities may serve to suggest to speculative archaeologists that they cannot safely a.s.sume that all antediluvian or palaeolithic tribes were barbarous or semi-brutal, or that there was a continuous development of humanity without any diluvial catastrophe. It is also somewhat rash to carry back the chronology of Egyptians and Babylonians to times when, as we know on physical evidence, the Valley of the Nile was an arm of the sea, and the plain of the Euphrates an extension of the Persian Gulf. It is fortunate for the Bible that such a.s.sumptions are not required by its history.

CHAPTER X

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 doc.u.ments, respectively 'Jahvistic' and 'Elohistic.' I have elsewhere[56] shown that there is a very different reason for the use of these two names of G.o.d. 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 palaeocosmic or 'palaeolithic' 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 _debacle_.

[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 circ.u.mstances, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 archaeologists 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 palaeocosmic 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 G.o.d, 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 superst.i.tions of the Old World. The six great G.o.ds 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 t.i.tans of the old mythologies representing the giants before the Flood.

Perhaps, however, no ill.u.s.tration 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 wors.h.i.+ppeth.'

The Chaldean deluge tablets for the first time introduce her to us as an antediluvian G.o.ddess, 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 G.o.ddess p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.ds 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-G.o.ddess, 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 wors.h.i.+p to her children. Her representative in Genesis, the first mother, Isha, or Eve, is no G.o.ddess, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d Tammuz, the Adonis[61] of the Greeks, and whose wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, and more especially the G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 'Adonai,' my Lord.