[165-2] Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, Bd. ii., s. 107.
[166-1] Th. Nöldeke, Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, Bd. iii., s. 131.
[166-2] See a note of Prof. Spiegel to Yaçna, 29, of the Khordah-Avesta.
[167-1] Ἡ υγρα φυσις αρχη και γενεσις παντων.
Plutarch, De Iside.
According to the Koran and the Jewish Rabbis, the throne of God rested on the primeval waters from which the earth was produced. See a note in Rodwell’s translation of the Koran, Sura. xi.
[167-2] I have discussed some of these myths in the seventh chapter of the Myths of the New World.
[168-1] How it troubled the early Christians who dared not adopt the refuge of the Epochs of Nature, may be seen in the Confessions of St. Augustine, Lib. XI, cap. 10, et seq. He quotes the reply of one pushed by the inquiry, what God was doing before creation: “He was making a hell for inquisitive busy-bodies.” Alta spectantibus gehennas parabat.
[170-1] Many interesting references to the Oriental flood-myth may be found in Cory’s Ancient Fragments. See also, Dr. Fr. Windischmann, Die Ursagen der Arischen Völker, pp. 4-10. It is probable that in very ancient Semitic tradition Adam was represented as the survivor of a flood anterior to that of Noah. Maimonides relates that the Sabians believed the world to be eternal, and called Adam “the Prophet of the Moon,” which symbolized, as we know from other sources, the deity of water. Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, More Nevochim, cap. iv. In early Christian symbolism Christ was called “the true Noah”; the dove accompanied him also, and as through Noah came “salvation by wood and water,” so through Christ came “salvation by spirit and water.” (See St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures, Lect. xvii., cap. 10). The fish (ιχθυς) was the symbol of Christ as well as of Oannes. As the second coming of Christ was to be the destruction of the world, how plainly appear the germs of the myth of the Epochs of Nature in the Judæo-Christian mind!
[171-1] Besides the expressions in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the later prophets, the doctrine is distinctly announced in one of the most sublime of the Psalms (xc), one attributed to “Moses the Man of God.”
[172-1] Malachi, ch. iv., v. 2.