69 
agency, they supposed that a current of air (avtgog) might not 
be the agent here signified. 
“ And the waters returned from off the earth continually ; 
and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were 
abated, and the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seven- 
teenth day of the month on the mountains of Ararat. And 
the waters decreased continually until the tenth month ; in the 
tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of 
the mountains seen” (viii. 3 — 5). According to this account, 
on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, that is, five 
months, or one hundred and fifty days, after Noah entered the 
ark, the waters had so far abated as to allow the ark to rest on 
the mountains of Ararat. Since the ark was 30 cubits in 
height, this might have happened at no long interval after the 
maximum height of “fifteen cubits upward” had been attained, 
and before the tops of Ararat and of other mountains were 
visible. “ The tops of the mountains/’ it is said, “were seen 
on the first day of the tenth mouth,” that is, seventy-four days 
after the resting of the ark on Ararat. 
The remainder of the statements (viii. 6 — 14) recount that at 
the end of forty days, reckoned apparently from the time the 
tops of the mountains were seen, Noah opened the door of the 
ark, and sent out at intervals, first a raven, and then a dove 
three times, and that at the second return the dove had “ in her 
mouth an olive-leaf plucked off.” These circumstances are all 
consistent with the supposition that the subsidence of the 
waters was effected in a very gradual manner. The interval 
from the entrance into the ark to the time at which the earth’s 
surface was sufficiently dry to allow of Noah, his family, and 
the animals to go out of it, appears from the dates given in the 
narrative to have been three hundred and seventy days. 
The destruction of the lives of men and animals by the 
Deluge is recorded in these terms: — “And all flesh died that 
moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, 
and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and 
every man : all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all 
that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was 
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, 
and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven ; 
and they were destroyed from the earth : and Noah only re- 
mained alive, and they that were with him in the ark ” (vii. 21- 
23). In the Septuagint. both in this passage and in vii. 4, the 
Greek for “every living substance” is 7rdv to avdtjTriga, every 
thing that rises up. The context shows that only substance 
endued with animal life is signified. 
