DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



279 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 



To the Editor: — My attention has 

 just been called to the inquiries in the 

 August number of the Monthly con- 

 cerning the reply I would make to a 

 number of objections which arise in 

 connection with my theory of the 

 Noachian Deluge. As they are appar- 

 ently made in good faith I will briefly 

 remark upon them, though it would re- 

 quire a volume fully to discuss the 

 points raised. 



1. The question respecting Noah's 

 supposed relation to paleolithic man 

 is answered by saying that it is by no 

 means proved that paleolithic man in 

 Europe and America was not cotera- 

 porary with civilized man in Egypt and 

 Babylonia, whose existence is now 

 thrown back in those countries several 

 thousand years before the Christian 

 era. I do not know that there is any 

 evidence that paleolithic man any- 

 where developed into neolithic man, 

 and so on to a stage of comparative 

 civilization by his own efforts. It 

 seems more likely that he received his 

 new arts by contact with higher races 

 than that he made the inventions of his 

 own accord. Certainly, in America, he 

 did not pass out of the 'stone age,' by 

 himself. 



2. With regard to the age of Noah 

 as given in the Scriptures when his sur- 

 vi\ing children were born it is enough 

 to say that language, like isolated geo- 

 logical facts, has to be interpreted ; and 

 it is a fair question whether Noah, 

 here, is not the name of a dynasty, like 

 Pharaoh, or of a family, like Israel. 

 That is to be determined by a thorough 

 study of the literature involved. Israel 

 is indeed the name of a man, but it is 

 constantly used to designate the whole 

 body of his descendants. In so brief 



an account of a long period of history 

 as we have in the early chapters of 

 Genesis, it would not be strange if 

 much more was compressed into single 

 words than would be done in a fuller 

 history. 



3. In reference to the specific state- 

 ment of facts, it is proper to remark 

 that outside of mathematical and dry 

 scientific treatises, there is little 

 specific statement of facts by anybody. 

 When I read in the papers that the 

 whole town turned out to witness a 

 pageant, I do not expect on inquiry to 

 find that there were no women and 

 children or busy or indifferent men 

 absent, nor do I charge the writer with 

 misrepresenting the facts in making 

 the general statement. But, on the 

 other hand, I take the nature of lan- 

 guage into consideration and interpret 

 it to mean simply that there was a 

 great crowd, which had the appearance 

 of containing everybody in the town. 

 Again, when I read in a scientific trea- 

 tise, as I frequently do, that a fact, or 

 explanation of a fact, is 'generally' 

 admitted, I do not charge the writer 

 with either dishonesty or ignorance if 

 it is found that nine tenths of the peo- 

 ple of the world have heard neither of 

 the fact nor of the explanation, nor 

 yet if it is found that both the alleged 

 fact and its explanation is disbelieved 

 by a considerable portion of the civil- 

 ized world. There are few questions on 

 which there is perfect unanimity of 

 judgment, hence if we use the word 

 'generally' at all, outside of mathe- 

 matics, we must use it in a modified 

 sense and leave the interpretation to 

 the context. 



Applying this well-known principle 

 of interpretation to the case in hand, 

 it is possible to get a pretty definite 



