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T. G. FINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON VERSIONS 



instructive address. He has shown us very clearly that the literary 

 analysis, to which the story of the Flood in Genesis has been 

 subjected, is untenable, and with that analysis a good many other 

 things go as well. It is well for us to weigh the fact that the copy 

 of the Tablet, discovered by George Smith, is dated in the 7th 

 century B.C., i.e., before one if not both of the sections "J." and "P." 

 are supposed to have come into existence, although the substance of 

 them appears in Genesis and in almost the same order of succession. 



Mr. Langdon, of Oxford, is so obsessed by this fanciful analysis 

 that he tries to correlate " P." with a Nippur version, and " J." with 

 an Eridu version, but in the fragment of a fourth tablet mentioned 

 in Dr. Pinches' paper, to which he called our attention in 1911, 

 " the bird of the heavens," which is supposed to belong to " J.,' 

 appears among other elements supposed to belong to "P." It is 

 impossible for the critics to square with their theories the innumerable 

 facts which are against them. Indeed they do not try. 



May I differ from Professor Sayce on one point 1 I do not think 

 the Genesis account contains any local colouring. The olive is not 

 peculiar to Palestine, and Mount Ararat, where the ark is said to 

 have rested, is a long way from Palestine. With regard to the 

 sending out of the dove, it is said that, before the invention of the 

 mariner's compass, seamen were accustomed to take doves or pigeons 

 with them, and when they did not know in which direction the land 

 lay to let them fly, and mark the direction of their flight. If no 

 land was near they would return to the ship. 



Rev. J. J. B. Coles remarked : How superior in dignity and 

 solemnity of language and in accuracy of statement are the 

 Biblical accounts of the Creation and of the great catastrophe of the 

 Flood — to all the records of the Chaldeans and the tablets of the 

 Gilgames-series ! The inspired collator and writer of the early 

 chapters of Genesis corrected and removed the accretions and 

 mythical perversions of earlier records. George Stanley Faber, in 

 his Origin of Pagan Idolatry, shows that Paganism was derived from 

 the history of the Flood, and that the myths and legends of an- 

 tiquity were perversions and corruptions of patriarchal revelations. 



Professor Langhorne Orchard expressed his agreement with 

 Mr. Tuckwell's remark concerning the olive tree. They were all 

 deeply indebted to Dr Pinches and Professor Sayce for their 

 addresses this afternoon. But there was one point on which he 



