5^ THE NO A CHI AN FLOOD. 



father, men speaking languages mutually unintelligible, 

 holding creeds mutually abhorrent, with strange diver- 

 sities in dress, manners and government, and some pre- 

 vented by national custom from even eating at the same 

 table with guests of another neighbouring and kindred 

 tribe. In vain should we search through history for any 

 actual parallel, for any instance of developments so ex- 

 traordinary, and estrangements so complete, occurring 

 within a space of only 500 years. If all the nations 

 spoken of as contemporary with Abraham were only 500 

 years distant from the Flood, as the Book of Genesis 

 shows them to have been, we may be certain that they 

 could trace back their lineage, independently of Noah 

 and his family, far beyond the era of the Deluge. The 

 monumental evidence of Egyptian chronology carries us 

 back to a Pharaoh reigning some three or four hundred 

 years before that date 1 . The Book of Genesis introduces 

 us to another Pharaoh reigning some 400 years after it. 

 Are we to set aside the monumental evidence, and make 

 this later Pharaoh a descendant of Noah, reigning as a 

 powerful monarch, while Abraham, the rightful heir of 

 a patriarchal monarchy over all the earth, was nothing 

 but a wandering shepherd ? Religion, morals, civiliza- 

 tion, as far as we know anything about them in those 

 ages, whether we regard their advancement in some 

 quarters or their decay in others, all protest against 

 having their progress cramped into those four or five 

 hundred years. They protest against being ascribed 

 with all their conspicuous diversities to the offspring of 

 1 ' Genesis of the Earth and of Man,' pp. 113, 114. 



