QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 153 



retained purposely to avoid any question of uni- 

 versality of the first and second kinds referred to 

 above. The same form of narrative is preserved in 

 the Chaldean legend. This fact is not affected by 

 the doctrine held by some of the schools of disin- 

 tegrators, that the narrative is divisible into two 

 documents, respectively 'Jahvistic' and * Elohistic.' 

 I have elsewhere l shown that there is a very different 

 reason for the use of these two name? of God. But 

 if there were two original witnesses whose statements 

 were put together by an editor, this surely does not 

 invalidate their testimony or deprive them of the 

 right to have it understood as they intended. 



It is thus evident that the whole question of 

 ' universality ' is little more than a mere useless logo- 

 machy, having no direct relation to the facts or to the 

 credibility of the narrative. 



There are also in connection with this question of 

 universality certain scientific and historical facts 

 already referred to which we may again summarise 

 here, and which are essential to the understanding of 

 the question. Nothing is more certainly known in 

 geology than that at the close of the later tertiary 

 or pleistocene age the continents of the northern 

 hemisphere stood higher and spread their borders 

 more widely than at present. In this period also 

 they were tenanted by a very grand and varied 

 mammalian fauna, and it is in this continental age of- 

 the later pleistocene or early modern time that we 



1 Modern Science in Bible Lands, chap. iv. 



