644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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, under the peculiar obstacles to quiet notation 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 com- 

 monplace 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 ac- 

 quaintance of its originators with the effects of unusually great 

 overflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is utterly devoid of his- 

 torical 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 speculation, but on well- 

 ascertained facts in the departments of literature and of history, 

 tends to exactly the same conclusion. 



For I find this much agreed upon by all biblical scholars of re- 

 pute, 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 strange fashion 

 because, in the estimation of the compilers and editors of the Pen- 

 tateuch, they had equal and independent authority, or not; or 

 whether there is some other way of accounting for it, are questions 

 the answer to which do not affect the fact. If possible, I avoid a 

 'priori arguments. But still, I think it may be urged, without im- 

 prudence, 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 ne- 

 cessarily the mere inclination of the skeptical spirit to question 

 everything, or the willful 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 marvel- 

 ous 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 posses- 



