152 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



fatal to the inhabitants of the waters as to those of 

 the land. In any case, such universality would 

 demand an enormous supply of water from some 

 extra-terrestrial source. 



2. The Deluge . may have been universal in the 

 sense of being a submersion of the whole of the land, 

 either by subsidence or by elevation of the ocean 

 bed. Such a state of things may have existed in 

 primitive geological ages before our continents were 

 elevated, but we have no scientific evidence of its 

 recurrence at any later time, though large portions of 

 the continents have been again and again submerged. 

 The writers of Genesis i. arid of Psalm civ. seem to 

 have known of no such total submergence since 

 the elevation of the first dry land, and nothing of 

 this kind is expressed or certainly implied in the 

 Deluge story. 



3. The Deluge may have been universal in so 

 far as man, its chief object, and certain animals useful 

 or necessary to him, are concerned. This kind of 

 universality would seem to have been before the 

 mind of the writer when he says that ' Noah only, 

 and they who were with him in the ark, remained 

 alive. 5 1 



4. The Deluge may have been universal in so far 

 is the area and observation and information of the 

 narrator extended. The story is evidently told in 

 the form of a narrative derived from eye-witnesses, 

 and this form seems even to have been chosen or 



1 Genesis vii. 23. 



