All the particulars of the Biblical narrative here recited are only to be explained by the volcanic and muddy eruption which preceded the formation of mount Ararat. The waters which produced the inundation of these countries proceeded from a volcanic eruption accompanied by enormous volumes of vapour, which in due course became condensed and descended on the earth, inundating the extensive plains which now stretch away from the foot of Ararat. The expression, “the earth,” or “all the earth” as it is translated in the Vulgate, which might be implied to mean the entire globe, is explained by Marcel de Serres, in a learned book entitled “La Cosmogonie de Moïse,” and other philologists, as being an inaccurate translation. He has proved that the Hebrew word haarets, incorrectly translated “all the earth,” is often used in the sense of region or country, and that, in this instance, Moses used it to express only the part of the globe which was then peopled, and not its entire surface. In the same manner “the mountains” (rendered “all the mountains” in the Vulgate), only implies all the mountains known to Moses. Similarly, M. Glaire, in the “Christomathie Hébraïque,” which he has placed at the end of his Grammar, quotes the passage in this sense: “The waters were so prodigiously increased, that the highest mountains of the vast horizon were covered by them;” thus restricting the mountains covered by the inundation to those bounded by the horizon.
Nothing occurs, therefore, in the description given by Moses, to hinder us from seeing in the Asiatic deluge a means made use of by God to chastise and punish the human race, then in the infancy of its existence, and which had strayed from the path which he had marked out for it. It seems to establish the countries lying at the foot of the Caucasus as the cradle of the human race; and it seems to establish also the upheaval of a chain of mountains, preceded by an eruption of volcanic mud, which drowned vast territories entirely composed, in these regions, of plains of great extent. Of this deluge many races besides the Jews have preserved a tradition. Moses dates it from 1,500 to 1,800 years before the epoch in which he wrote. Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Alexander, speaks of a universal deluge, the date of which he places immediately before the reign of Belus, the father of Ninus.
The Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindus, supposed to have been composed about the same time as Genesis, that is, about 3,300 years ago, make out that the deluge occurred 1,500 years before their time. The Guebers speak of the same event as having occurred about the same date.
XXXIII.—The Asiatic Deluge.
Confucius, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and lawgiver, born towards the year 551 before Christ, begins his history of China by speaking of the Emperor named Jas, whom he represents as making the waters flow back, which, being raised to the heavens, washed the feet of the highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and inundated the plains. Thus the Biblical deluge ([Plate XXXIII.]) is confirmed in many respects; but it was local, like all phenomena of the kind, and was the result of the upheaval of the mountains of western Asia.
A deluge, quite of modern date, conveys a tolerably exact idea of this kind of phenomena. We recall the circumstances the better to comprehend the true nature of the ravages the deluge inflicted upon some Asiatic countries in the Quaternary period. At six days’ journey from the city of Mexico there existed, in 1759, a fertile and well-cultivated district, where grew abundance of rice, maize, and bananas. In the month of June frightful earthquakes shook the ground, and were continued unceasingly for two whole months. On the night of the 28th September the earth was violently convulsed, and a region of many leagues in extent was slowly raised until it attained a height of about 500 feet over a surface of many square leagues. The earth undulated like the waves of the sea in a tempest; thousands of small hills alternately rose and fell, and, finally, an immense gulf opened, from which smoke, fire, red-hot stones and ashes were violently discharged, and darted to prodigious heights. Six mountains emerged from this gaping gulf; among which the volcanic mountain Jorullo rises 2,890 feet above the ancient plain, to the height of 4,265 feet above the sea.