EARL Y HISTOR Y lo? 



covery of the similar though not identical Chaldean 

 creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting 

 side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean 

 tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed 

 from still older documents from which they are alleged 

 to have been copied. But they and the Genesis 

 narrative are independent of each other. Neither can 

 have been copied from the other. Thus there must 

 have been a still more ancient common source of the 

 narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged, 1 the greater 

 simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew 

 document entitle it to the palm of the higher anti- 

 quity. 



With reference to the antediluvian age and the 

 Deluge, while the Bible is here only in accord with 

 almost universal tradition, and this in reference to an 

 event which if it occurred at all must have fixed itself 

 in the memory of the survivors, it is in remarkable 

 accordance with very ancient Chaldean writings 

 commemorative of the same event. Some principal 

 points of this accordance are the following. The 

 Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods, 

 or some of them, against an evil race of men was the 

 cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal 

 character, so far as the sphere of observation extended. 

 It represents the survivors as saved in a ship or ark. 

 It represents Hasisadra, its Noah, as sending out 

 birds to ascertain the subsidence of the waters. In 



1 Modern Science in Bible Lands. 



