CHAPTER XVI.—ABSURDITIES IN THE ARK AND FLOOD STORY.
If there were no other errors or absurdities in the Bible, our faith in it would diminish at every step in the investigation of the ark and flood story as related in the sixth chapter of Genesis. The avowed purpose of the flood, the means employed, and their failure to accomplish the end desired, are all at war with our reason and our moral sense.
1. The first question that naturally arises in considering this story is, Why should so many millions of innocent beings—men, women, children, animals; birds, &c.—perish as a penalty for the sins of a few thousand people?
2. The reason given for this wholesale destruction was the wickedness and moral depravity of the human race. But is it true that the whole human race was in that state at that period? According to Manetho and Herodotus, Egypt was in a state of high civilization and moral culture at the time; and, according to Dr. Hulde, China was also far advanced in the arts of civilization and in morality. Col. Dow and other writers represent India as being in a similar condition. There could, therefore, be no justice in drowning all these nations in order to punish a few thousand rambling Jews: it was too much like "burning the barn to destroy the rats."
3. An enlightened moralist of the present day would decide that it was a species of injustice to destroy all the land animals, and let the fishes and aquatic animals live. It looks like partiality.
4. But God, having discovered that he made a signal failure in the work of creation, acknowledged that it "grieved him at his heart," and that he "repented" having undertaken it. However, he issued a proclamation, stating that "the end of all flesh is come: every thing that is in the earth shall die."
5. "I, even I, do bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh" (Gen. xi. 6). The language seems to imply that somebody else had undertaken, or was about to undertake, the business.
6. But "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," and was placed at the head of this grand scheme; being, as was assumed, although a drunkard, the most righteous man that could be found.
7. The Lord instructed him to build an ark five hundred and fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and fifty-five feet high,—about the size of an eastern warehouse. Think of putting into this two of every species of animal, and seven of every species of clean beast, and fowls of the air!—there being one hundred and fifty thousand or, as some make it, five hundred thousand species of animal, one hundred and twelve thousand kinds of bird, and fifty thousand species of insect.