This brings us to the contrary, but, as it appears to me, much less formidable objection—bearing in mind that the tradition of the Deluge is common to Mexico, India, China, the islands of the Pacific, &c. &c.—viz. that the tradition came to Greece from Asia.
This is Mr Kenrick’s objection[193] (vide Preface to Grote’s “History of Greece,” 2d ed.) The most direct, and, as it appears to me, sufficient answer, seems to be that it was necessarily so; since, ex hypothesi, the population itself came to Greece from Asia. Mr Kenrick says, “It is doubtful whether the tradition of Deucalion’s flood is older than the time when the intercourse with Greece began to be frequent,” i.e. about the fifth century B.C. (p. 31.) But as the Septuagint, according to Mr Kenrick himself, could not have influenced Greece till the third century, this tradition can only have been the primeval tradition. Mr Kenrick is a fair opponent, and I must do him the justice to add that he repudiates the Voltairean suggestion that this tradition originated in a Hebrew invention. If then the inhabitants of Greece, who came originally from Asia, had not the tradition, or had it imperfectly, when they arrived, it can only have been because they had lost it; but as admittedly they recovered it at a later period, the presumption, even on this showing, is, at least for those who can realise how difficult it would be to make a pure fiction, as distinguished from a corrupt tradition, run current, more especially among different nationalities and during a lengthened period,—that when circumstances brought them again into contact with Asia, they added fresh incidents, only because they found the tradition fresher there than among themselves. Voila tout! for Mr Kenrick’s whole argument depends entirely upon this—that “as we reach the time when the Greeks enjoyed more extensive and leisurely communication with Asia, through the conquests of Alexander ... we find new circumstances introduced into the story which assimilates it more closely to the Asiatic tradition.”
It has been allowed (vide supra) that the tradition of Deucalion is as old as the fifth century B.C., and, not to speak of the deluge of Ogyges, connected with what was earliest in Grecian history, the following passage from Kenrick seems to me in evidence of long antecedent traditions among the Greeks themselves, which they must have brought with them originally from Asia.[194]
Mr Kenrick says (p. 31):—
“The account of Deucalion, given by Apollodorus (i. 7, 2), bears evident marks of being compounded of two fables originally distinct, in one of which, and probably the older, the descent of the Hellenes was traced through Deucalion to Prometheus and Pandora, without mention of a deluge. In the other, the destruction of the brazen race by a flood, the re-peopling the earth by the casting of stones, is related in the common way. That these two narratives cannot originally have belonged to the same myths is evident from their incongruity; for as mankind were created by Prometheus, the father of Deucalion, there was no time for them to have passed through those stages of degeneracy by which they reached the depravity of the brazen age.”
Here are evidently two early traditions, ostensibly Greek, distinct, it is true, yet perfectly compatible. The one the tradition of Grecian descent through Noah to Adam and Eve, the other the tradition of the Deluge. But after what we have already seen (vide supra, pp. [157], [158]) of reduplications and inversions, can a serious argument be based upon the expression that Deucalion (Noah) was the son of Prometheus (Adam)?[195] Is it not a most natural and inevitable façon-de-parler to connect the descendant directly and immediately with his remote ancestor, e.g. “Fils de St Louis—fils de Louis Capet—montez au ciel!”
I do not of course attempt, within this narrow compass, to grasp Mr Kenrick’s entire view. I am merely dealing with the special argument; but it is curious to note how the line of reasoning adopted by Mr Kenrick, whilst it sustains the Greek traditions, as traditions (though not Greek), unconsciously neutralises the arguments which would dispose of the testimonies derived from them, by saying that they were not traditions of a general, but of a local and a partial deluge.
These latter arguments appear to have had weight with one against whom I hardly venture to run counter, Frederick Schlegel (“Phil. of Hist.” p. 79)—“The irruption of the Black Sea into the Thracian Bosphorus is regarded by very competent judges in such matters as an event perfectly historical, or at least, from its proximity to the historical times, as not comparatively of so primitive a date.” Compare with passage from Mr Kenrick.[196] Schlegel adds:—“All these great physical changes are not necessarily and exclusively to be ascribed to the last general Deluge. The presumed irruption of the Mediterranean into the ocean, as well as many other mere partial revolutions in the earth and sea, may have occurred much later, and quite apart from this great event” (p. 79). But it may also have occurred much earlier, as is clear from the following passage from Schlegel, to which I wish to direct the attention of geologists, and in which Schlegel speaks according to the original insight of his own mind, and not in deference to the opinions of others:—
“These words (‘the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,’ Gen. x.), which announce the presage of a new morn of Creation, not only represent a darker and wilder state of the globe, but very clearly show the element of water to be still in predominant force. Even the division of the elements, of the waters above the firmament, and of the waters below it, on the second day of creation, the permanent limitation of the sea for the formation and visible appearance of the dry land, necessarily imply a mighty revolution in the earth, and afford additional proof that the Mosaic history speaks not only of one but of many catastrophes of nature, a circumstance that has not been near enough attended to in the geological interpretation and illustration of the Bible.”—Schlegel, p. 82.
The point that is material to this discussion is to decide whether or not those disruptions in Thrace are historical and subsequent to the Deluge. Now, here Mr Kenrick’s main theory, that “speculation is the source of tradition,” comes in with fatal effect to dispose of the arguments I am combating, and yet in no way at this point militates against the view I am urging, that these supposed inundations were localisations of the tradition of the general Deluge which the Pelasgi brought with them from Asia.