Part 6 (1/2)

We have in the closing part of the Bible story of the antediluvian age even an intimation of the deterioration of climate and means of subsistence towards the end of the period. Lamech, we are told, named his son Noah--rest or comfort--in the hope that by his means he should be comforted, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse provoked by the sons of man he may have recognised as fulfilled in the gradual deterioration of the climate toward the close of the palanthropic age. There are here surely some curious coincidences which might be followed farther, did s.p.a.ce permit.

We now come to the close of the whole in the Deluge; and as this has been made in our own time the subject of much discussion, and as it contains within itself the whole kernel of the subject, it merits a separate treatment.

CHAPTER IX

THE DELUGE OF NOAH

To the older men of this generation, who have followed the changes of scientific and historical opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is, has pa.s.sed through a variety of phases like the changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an instructive ill.u.s.tration of the modifications of belief in other, and some of them to us more important, matters, whether of history or of religion, which have presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may be variously viewed in the future.

As children we listened with awe and wonder to the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and received a deep and abiding impression of the enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later, though the idea that all the fossil remains imbedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge had pa.s.sed away from the minds of the better informed, we read with interest the wonderful revelations of the bone-caves described by Buckland, and felt that the antediluvian age had become a scientific reality. But later still all this seemed to pa.s.s away like a dream. Under the guidance of Lyell we learned that even the caves and gravels must be of greater age than the historical Deluge, and that the remains of men and animals contained in them must have belonged to far-off aeons, antedating perhaps even the Biblical creation of man, while the historical Deluge, if it ever occurred, must have been an affair so small and local that it had left no traces on the rocks of the earth. At the same time Biblical critics were busy with the narrative itself, showing that it could be decomposed into different doc.u.ments, that it bore traces of a very recent origin, that it was unhistorical, and to be relegated to the same category with the fairy-tales of our infancy. Again, however, the kaleidoscope turns, and the later researches of geology into the physical and human history of the more recent deposits of the earth's crust, the discoveries of ancient a.s.syrian or Chaldean records of the Deluge, and the comparison of these with the ancient history of other nations, rehabilitate the old story; and as we study the new facts respecting the so-called palaeolithic and neolithic men, the clay tablets recovered from the libraries of Nineveh by George Smith, the calculations of Prestwich and others respecting the recency of the glacial period, and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we find ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to it all along, even when the current of opinion tended strongly to turn us away.

In ill.u.s.tration of the present aspects of the question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant's _Beginnings of History_, another from a recent work of my own.

'We are,' says Lenormant, 'in a position to affirm that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black race, and a tradition every-*where so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmogonic myth possesses this character of universality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget it. This cataclysm took place near the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the separation of the families from whom the princ.i.p.al races were to descend, for it would be altogether contrary to probability and to the laws of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly similar in character could have been reproduced at so many different points on the globe as would enable one to explain these universal traditions, or that these traditions should always have a.s.sumed an identical form, combined with circ.u.mstances which need not necessarily have suggested themselves to the mind in such a connection.'[37]

[37] _Les Origines de l'Histoire._ Brown's translation.

On the geological side, the following may be accepted as a summary of facts:[38]

[38] _Modern Science in Bible Lands_, 1888, pp. 244, 245, 251, 252.

'If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the mammoth age or of the palaeolithic or palaeocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity. They colonised the continents immediately after the elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, or in what has been called the ”continental” period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we now have. We have some measures of the date of this great continental elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the Falls of Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting power as equal to one foot per annum. He calculated the beginning of the process, which dates from the post-glacial elevation, to be about thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other indications of similar bearing are found both in Europe and America, and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations based on the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time.

'If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with the oldest men known to geological and archaeological science, the parallelism is somewhat marked in physical characteristics and habits of life, and also in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance from Europe and Western Asia, along with several of the large mammalia which were their contemporaries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as historical, and if a similar great break interrupts the geological history of man, separating extinct races from those which still survive, why may we not correlate the two? If the Deluge was misused in the early history of geology, by employing it to account for changes which took place long before the advent of man, this should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, with reference to the early human period. It is evident that if this correlation be accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as to the antiquity of man. In that case the modern gravels and silts, spread over the plateaus between the river valleys, will be accounted for, not by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character.

Further, since the historical Deluge must have been of very limited duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing the remains of palaeocosmic men from those of later date would in like manner be accounted for, not by the slow processes imagined by extreme uniformitarians, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.'[39]

[39] See also Howorth, _The Mammoth and the Flood_, and papers by Professor Prestwich in _Journal Geol. Society_ and _Trans. Royal Society_ and by Andrews, Winch.e.l.l, and others in America.

We may proceed to inquire as to whether the position which we have now reached is likely to be permanent, or may represent merely one s.h.i.+fting phase of opinion. For this purpose we may formulate these conclusions in a few general statements, merely referring to the evidence on which they are based, as any complete discussion of this would necessarily be impossible within the limits of this work. We may first summarise the present position of the matter as indicated by historical and scientific research, altogether independently of the Bible.[40]

[40] See articles by the author in _The Contemporary Review_, December 1889, and in _The Magazine of Christian Literature_, October 1890.

1. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge tablets has again directed attention to the statements of Berosus respecting the Babylonian tradition of a great flood, and these statements are found to be borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets. There is thus a twofold testimony as to the occurrence of a deluge in that Babylonian plain which the Old Testament history represents as the earliest seat of antediluvian man. As Lenormant has well shown, the tradition exists in the ancient literature of India, Persia, Phnicia, Phrygia, and Greece, and can be recognised in the traditions of Northern and Western Europe and of America, while the Egyptians had a similar account of the destruction of men, but apparently not by water, though their idea of a submerged continent of Atlantis probably had reference to the antediluvian world. Thus we find this story widely spread over the earth, and possessed by members of all the leading divisions of mankind.

This does not necessarily prove the universality of the Deluge, though every distinct people naturally refers it to its own country. It shows, however, the existence of some very early common source of the tradition, and the variations are not more than were to have been expected in the different of transmission.

2. Parallel with this historical evidence lies the result of geological and archaeological research, which has revealed to us the remains and works of prehistoric men, racially distinct from those of modern times, and who inhabited the earth at a period when its animal population was to a great extent distinct from that at present existing, and when its physical condition was also in many respects different. Thus in Europe and Asia, and to some extent also in America, we have evidence that the present races of men were preceded by others which have pa.s.sed away, and this at the same time with many important species of land animals, once the contemporaries of man, but now known only as fossils. These ancient men are those called by geologists later pleistocene, or post-glacial, or the men of the cave and gravel deposits, or of the age of the mammoth, and who have been designated by archaeologists palaeolithic men, or, more properly, palaeocosmic men, since the character of their stone implements is only one not very important feature of their history, and implements of the palaeolithic type have been used in all periods, and indeed are still used in some places.

3. The prevalence among geologists of an exaggerated and unreasonable uniformitarianism, which refused to allow sufficient prominence to sudden cataclysms arising from the slow acc.u.mulation of natural forces, and which was a natural reaction from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has caused the idea to be generally entertained that the age of palaeocosmic men was of vast duration, and pa.s.sed only by slow gradations and a gradual transition into the new conditions of the modern period. This view long was, and still is, an obstacle to any rational correlation of the geological and traditional history of man.

Recently, however, new views have been forced on geologists, and have led many of the most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that the palanthropic period is much nearer to us than we had imagined. The arguments for this I have referred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate them, here. A few leading points may, however, be noted. One of these is the small amount of physical or organic change which has occurred since the close of the palanthropic period. Another is the more rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in the modern period than had previously been supposed. Another is the striking fact that a large number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously with the palaeocosmic men, and this by some sudden catastrophe.[41] It has also been shown by Pictet and Dawkins that all the extant mammals of Europe already existed in the post-glacial age, but along with many others now altogether or locally extinct. Thus there seems to have been the removal over the whole northern hemisphere of a number of the largest mammals, while a selected number survived and no additions were made. Again, while at one time it was supposed that the remains of palaeocosmic man and his contemporaries were confined to caverns and river alluvia, it is now known that they occur also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in beds of gravel and silt which must have been deposited there under conditions of submergence and somewhat active current drift, perhaps in some cases aided by floating ice.[42] Lastly, while, as must naturally be the case, in some places the remains of ancient and more modern men are mixed, or seem to pa.s.s into each other, in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon caves and in the superficial deposits, there is a distinct separation, implying an interval accompanied by physical change between the time of the earlier and later men.

[41] Howorth, _The Mammoth and the Flood_.

[42] Prestwich on deposits at Ightham, Kent, _Journal Geological Society_, May 1889.

Such considerations as these, the force of which is most strongly felt by those best acquainted with the methods of investigation employed by geologists and archaeologists, are forcing us to conclude: (1) That there are indicated in the latest geological formations two distinct human periods, an earlier and a later, characterised by differences of faunae and of physical conditions, as well as by distinct races of men. (2) That these two periods are separated by a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature of submergence, or by a series of changes locally sudden and generally not long-continued. (3) That it is not improbable that this greatest of all revolutions in human affairs may be the same that has so impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to form the basis of all the traditions and historical accounts of the Deluge.

This being the state of the case, it becomes expedient to review our ideas of the ancient Hebrew records, from which our early, and perhaps crude, impressions of this event were derived, and to ascertain how much of our notions of the Deluge of Genesis may be fairly deduced from the record itself, and how much may be due to more or less correct interpretations, or to our own fancy. In connection with this we may also be able to obtain some guidance as to the value to be attached to the Hebrew doc.u.ment as a veritable and primitive record of the great catastrophe.