414- The Rev. John Kenrick on the alleged 



I would also observe, that I have never in my life seen an 

 anticlinal line of any extent which followed a direction mathe- 

 matically straight. Those which have fallen under my own ob- 

 servation, on the contrary, have been always more or less 

 sinuous, although having on the whole a prevailing tendency 

 in one direction for considerable distances; and when we 

 speak of the general bearing of such lines, we intend, as I con- 

 ceive, to express only this general and average tendency, on 

 either side of which the partial flexures, however, often de- 

 viate 20°, or more. 



LXVI. On the alleged Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 

 By the Rev. John Kenrick, M.A.* 



TT is a very generally received opinion that the same event, 

 *- the destruction of the human race by a flood, which is re- 

 corded* with so much minuteness of detail in the Book of 

 Genesis, has been preserved in more vague traditions among 

 all the principal nations of the earth, and especially among 

 the Greeks. Not to mention a crowd of writers by whom 

 this question has been treated in connexion with the evi- 

 dences of Revelation, the sanction given to the opinion by 

 Cuvier is sufficient to show that it belongs to science as well 

 as to religion. Some of his readers may have thought his 

 arguments less conclusive upon this subject than upon those 

 which lay more immediately within his province, but the ma- 

 jority no doubt have considered his authority decisive. 



I propose to arrange chronologically the testimonies of 

 Greek authors to the existence of such traditions of a De- 

 luge: without this we can arrive at no certain conclusion. 

 The coincidences which we may find between Pagan fables 

 and the narratives of Scripture in the second or third century 

 after the Christian aera, can never warrant our inferring their 

 existence a thousand years before it. I confine the inquiry 

 to the Greeks, because the chronology of literature among 

 other ancient nations is very uncertain, and modern accounts 

 of the traditions of barbarous tribes come to us generally 

 through channels not free from suspicion. Cuvier has given 

 such a chronological view (Discours sur les Revolutions du 

 Globe, Edit. 1826, pp. 83 — 87); but as his enumeration is not 

 complete, and the inference which he draws seems the opposite 

 to that to which his authorities point, it is the more necessary 

 to reexamine them. 



It is important to fix accurately what it is that we are to 



* Communicated by the Author. 



