CHAPTER V.
THE FLOOD.
1. The Scripture statement of the occasion of the Flood is very brief. It is made plain, however, that the wickedness of men was so great that “the earth was filled with violence and corrupt before God.”
2. Noah was commanded to prepare an ark for his own safety and that of his family; and he was also directed to provide for the preservation of a large number of “fowls, cattle, and creeping things.”
3. Between the time of the announcement of the divine intention to destroy “man whom he had created” and the occurrence of the Flood God gave a warning era of 120 years, at the close of which the Flood began. “The waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days.” After this time they were abated, and gradually retired till the earth was dry, and Noah and his family left the ark in which he had remained twelve months and ten days, or from the six hundred and first year, second month, and seventeenth day to the six hundred and second year, second month, and twenty-seventh day of Noah’s life.
4. An interesting fact may here be stated. A few years ago there were discovered by excavations at the ancient site of Nineveh, on the Tigris, the palace of Assur-bani-pal, in which had been stored some 10,000 tablets of a library gathered by this kingB. C. 968. These tablets were shipped to the British Museum, of which George Smith, the Assyriologist, was librarian, and a large number of them translated. Among these tablets was found a record of the Deluge, which was read by Mr. Smith in December, 1872, before the Society of Biblical Archæology in London.
5. The record states that the tradition recorded is copied from a more ancient account which was in existence in the times of a king of the city of Accad (Gen. 10) many years after the time of Nimrod, who founded it. The remains of this city have been recently discovered forty-three miles north-northwest from Babylon.
The name of the king of Accad was Sargon I., whose date appears from the monuments to have been about 3800 B. C. This Chaldæan history of the Deluge is so similar to that of the Scriptures as to leave no doubt that both record the same fact.
6. The simple narration as it occurs in Genesis is so free from the irrelevant and unnecessary additions of the Chaldæan account as to show that the Biblical account is a record of true history. As the Chaldæan account is dated long before Abram left Chaldæa, and hence long before the birth of Moses, it could never have been derived from Scripture, and proves that a tradition of such an event as that of the Flood must have existed very early in the history of the race.