XXII. THE DELUGE-continued. ACCORDING to the narrative in Holy Scripture, the Deluge was an event brought about by God for the destruction of all men then existing; and was in so far, therefore, analogous to the catastrophe by which, at a later time, Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed. But this does not exclude the possibility of God's having employed natural means in order to carry out this sentence of destruction. Although, according to the expressions of ancient theologians, the Will of God was the primary cause of the Deluge, this does not prevent our recognising the secondary causes which may have produced it. In comparing the Biblical records with the results of scientific research, it is important for us to have some knowledge of these secondary causes. I shall, therefore, to-day inquire whether the Bible itself, or whether natural science, enables us to ascertain in what manner the inundation of the earth was brought about. It is clear that we cannot expect any completely satisfactory solution of this question from the Bible. It is only concerned with the Flood considered as a divine judgment, not as a physical event. It is the task of natural science, not of Biblical history, to consider the Flood from the latter point of view. Moses was not, therefore, called upon to describe the causes of the Flood, so far as to satisfy the man of science. He consequently confines himself to the simple statement: "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and nights." And similarly, when he is describing the going down of the Flood, he says, "The fountains of the deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained." 2 1 It is clear from this narrative that one cause of the Flood was the rain. It is specially mentioned at the end of both passages, and it is previously alluded to in the figurative and picturesque expression: "The floodgates of heaven." According to the popular belief and expression of the Hebrews, the rain comes from stores. of water which are above the firmament. Moses alludes to this belief in the Hexameron. He there says that God divided the mass of waters, which in the beginning covered the earth, into the waters above and below the firmament; and made the Rakiah, the firmament, in order to separate these two masses of waters. According to this view, then, the rain is produced by partially removing this dividing barrier, so that, as it were, its floodgates are opened. But this expression itself points to rain pouring down in great floods.* Heavy continuous rain such as this could by itself produce a considerable flood. Only consider the effects of heavy rain accompanying a thunderstorm which we experienced in this country some years 2 Gen. viii. 2. 1 Gen. vii. 11, 12. 3 In Mal. iii. 10 the expression is used for a beneficial, plentiful rain. ago, on the day before Whitsunday. An eye-witness describes the effect of such rain as this in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg -it must have been on the same day in these words: "It rained uninterruptedly from three o'clock in the morning till mid-day. At six o'clock, the small brooks which flow into the Rhine valley, from the valleys of the Odenwald, and which generally can hardly turn a mill-wheel, rose to great streams which carried everything away with them with irresistible force. Most of the bridges and many houses fell in, rocks weighing from twelve to fifteen hundredweight were carried down a long distance, oak trees thirty or forty feet high, and two or three feet in diameter, were torn up, and carried away for miles; the most solid vaults, which had resisted all inundations with impunity for years, fell in; full barrels, weighing from twelve to twenty hundredweight, floated like light wood on the whirling stream, and in many places rubbish, sand, and shingle were deposited to a depth of four or five feet." And this was the effect of rain which only lasted eight hours, while the rain in Noah's time lasted for weeks. 2 It is true that men of science say that a general atmospheric precipitation, occurring simultaneously over the whole earth, would be impossible under the present atmospheric conditions. But, first, the account in Genesis does not oblige us to assume that the rain took place at the same time over all the earth. If, as I have tried to show is probable, it is a fact that in the narrative of Genesis we have the narrative of 1 Keerl, Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 504. Noah and his family, this rain need at first only have taken place where the ark was. Further, and this is the main point, we may unhesitatingly admit that according to the present atmospheric conditions such tremendous and continuous rain as Genesis describes is not possible, that under the present conditions the atmosphere cannot contain such a mass of water as is said to have precipitated itself in rain at that time. But if this can in reality be proved, it would only show that such rain was impossible in the time of Noah if it is established beyond doubt that just the same atmospheric conditions existed then as now. But we cannot admit this to be the fact. We may assume I will endeavour to justify the hypothesis later-that the atmospheric conditions of the Antediluvian age were so constituted as to make such rain as is implied in Genesis possible. The present atmospheric conditions might, then, extend back to the time just after the Flood, and other conditions may have existed before the Flood. The Flood may thus have been the time at which a great change took place in the atmospheric conditions, and this change itself might have been connected with, and caused by, the Flood. It is true that Genesis says nothing of such a change, but it was not within its province to describe and explain the Flood as a physical event; the outward facts and their consequences are the only things which concern it. But this change in the atmospheric conditions, which for the present I bring forward only as a hypothesis, may be alluded to in Genesis. God declares after the Flood, that this event should not take place again; and that the succession of the seasons should undergo no interruption. May we not, perhaps, see in this an intimation that the atmospheric conditions were now so constituted that, as men of science say, the natural conditions for such a catastrophe were henceforth wanting. The rainbow is proclaimed to be the sign of the divine promise: "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth." "And the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh."" 3 I do not assert that these words oblige us to assume that the rainbow appeared now for the first time. But this idea is, at any rate, the most likely. We should then gather from this statement in Genesis, not exactly that it did not rain in the Antediluvian age,' but that that counter-action of air, water, and light in the atmosphere, which causes the rainbow, could not take place then; that in this respect, therefore, the physical laws and conditions then existing were different from the present. The fact that to this day, in the tropics, the rain is never fine enough to allow of the formation of a perfect 1 Gen. ix. 13. 2 Gen. ix. 15. 3 Cornelius a Lapide and others, writing on this passage, assume that the rainbow had appeared before as a natural phenomenon, and was only new as the sign of a covenant. 4 Moigno (see above, p. 420, note) assumes this on p. 35. He is wrong in his further opinion that, according to the narrative in Genesis, the alternation of seasons did not take place before the Deluge. The fact that there is no mention of the seasons in the Mosaic account of the Antediluvian age proves nothing, for Moses had no reason for mentioning them. When God says (Gen. viii. 22), "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease," this does not mean, as Moigno thinks, that the regular alternation of the seasons, etc., shall begin now, after the Deluge, but that it shall not again be disturbed by such an event as the Flood. |