"We solemnly profess and declare our unfeigned belief in all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as handed down to us by the undivided Church in the original languages. We believe that they are inspired by the Holy Ghost; that they are what they profess to be; that they mean what they say; and that they declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled."
It is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these Confessions of Faith, not only the so-called "higher Biblical Criticism," but all the discoveries of modern science, from Galileo and Newton down to Lyall and Darwin, are simple delusions. There can be no question that if the words of the Old Testament are "literally inspired," and "mean what they say," they oppose an inflexible non possumus to all the most certain discoveries of Astronomy, Geology, Zoology, Biology, Egyptology, Assyriology, and other modern sciences. Now the account of the Deluge in Genesis affords the readiest means of bringing this theory to the test, and proving or disproving it, by the process which Euclid calls the reductio ad absurdum.
Not that other narratives, such as those of the Creation in Genesis, do not contain as startling contradictions, if we keep in mind the assertion of the orthodox thirty-eight, that the inspired words of the Old Testament "mean what they say," i.e. that they mean what they were necessarily taken to mean by contemporaries and long subsequent generations; for instance, that if the inspired writer says days defined by a morning and an evening, he means natural days, and not indefinitely long periods. But this is just what the defenders of orthodoxy always ignore, and all the attempts at reconciling the accounts of Creation in Genesis with the conclusions of science turn on the assumption that the inspired writers do not "mean what they say," but something entirely different. If they say "days," they mean geological periods of which no reader had the remotest conception until the present century. If they say that light was made before the sun, and the earth before the sun, moon, and stars, they really mean, in some unexplained way, to indicate Newton's law of gravity, Laplace's nebular theory, and the discoveries of the spectroscope. By using words therefore in a non-natural sense, and surrounding them with a halo of mystical and misty eloquence, they evade bringing the pleadings to a distinct and definite issue such as the popular mind can at once understand. But in the case of the Deluge no such evasion is possible. The narrative is a specific statement of facts alleged to have occurred at a comparatively recent date, not nearly so remote as the historical records of Egypt and Chaldæa, and which beyond all question must be either true or false. But if false, there is an end of any attempt to consider the whole scientific and historical portions of the Bible as written by Divine inspiration; for the narrative is not one of trivial importance, but of what is really a second creation of all life, including man, from a single or very few pairs miraculously preserved and radiating from a single centre.[7]
Consider then what the narrative of the Deluge really tells us. First, as to date. The Hebrew Bible, from which our own is translated, gives the names of the ten generations from Noah to Abraham, with the precise dates of each birth and death, making the total number of years 297 from the Flood to Abraham. For Abraham, assuming him to be historical, we have a synchronism which fixes the date within narrow limits. He was a contemporary of Chedorlaomer, or Khuder-Lagomar, known to us from Chaldæan inscriptions as one of the last of the Elamite dynasty, who subverted the old dynasty in the year 2280 b.c., and who reigned for 160 years. Abraham's date is, therefore, approximately about 2200 b.c., and that of the Deluge about 2500 b.c. The Septuagint version assigns 700 years more than that of the Hebrew Bible for the interval between Abraham and Noah; but this is only done by increasing the already fabulous age of the patriarchs. Accepting, however, this Septuagint version, though it has been constantly repudiated by the Jews themselves, and by nearly all Christian authorities from St. Jerome down to Archbishop Usher, the date of the Deluge cannot be carried further back than to about 3000 b.c., a date at least 1000, and more probably 2000, years later than that shown by the records and monuments of Egypt and Chaldæa, when great empires, populous cities, and a high degree of civilization already existed in those countries. The statement of the Bible, therefore, is that, at a date not earlier than 2200 b.c., or at the very earliest 3000 b.c., a deluge occurred which "covered all the high hills that were under the whole heaven," and prevailed upon the earth for 150 days before it began to subside; that seven months and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of the mountains were first seen; and that only after twelve months and ten days from the commencement of the flood was the earth sufficiently dried to allow Noah and the inmates of the Ark to leave it.
Naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of Noah and those who were with him in the Ark, consisting of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and creeping things. The statement is absolutely specific: "All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth, and every man." And again: "Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both men and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the Ark." And finally, when the Ark was opened, "God spake unto Noah and said, Go forth of the Ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth."
It is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. It might possibly be taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early races, or semi-civilized tribes. But such an interpretation is impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take it, as a Divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations of man to God. In this view it is a still more signal instance than the fall of Adam, of God's displeasure with sin and its disastrous consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human race, a new distinction between the chosen people of Israel and the accursed Canaanites, based not on Cain's murder of Abel, but on Ham's irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between God and Noah, which continued through Abraham and David, and became the basis of Jewish nationality and of the Christian dispensation. If in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the theory of Divine inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism.
Now, that no such Deluge as that described in Genesis ever took place is as certain as that the earth moves about the sun. Physical science tells us that it never could have occurred; geology, zoology, ethnology, and history all tell us alike that it never did occur. Physical science tells us two things about water: that it cannot be made out of nothing, and that it always finds its level. In order to cover the highest mountains on the earth and remain stationary at that level for months, we must suppose an uniform shell of water of six miles in depth to be added to the existing water of the earth. Even if we take Ararat as the highest mountain covered, the shell must have been three miles in thickness over the whole globe. Where did this water come from, and where did it go to? Rain is simply water raised from the seas by evaporation, and is returned to them by rivers. It does not add a single drop of water to that already existing on the earth and in its atmosphere. The heaviest rains do nothing but swell rivers and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a depth of a few feet, which rapidly subsides. The only escape from this law of nature is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such as a change in the position of the earth's axis of rotation, by which the existing waters of the earth were drained in some latitudes and heaped up in others. But any such local accumulation of water implies a sudden and violent rush to heap it up in forty days, and an equally violent rush to run it down to its old level when the disturbing cause ceased, as it must have done in 150 days. Such a disturbance in recent times is not only inconsistent with all known facts, but with the positive statement of the narrative that the whole earth was covered, and that the Ark floated quietly on the waters, drifting slowly northwards, until it grounded on Ararat. The only other alternative is to suppose a subsidence of the land below the level of the sea. But a subsidence which carried a whole continent 15,000, or even 1500 feet down, followed by an elevation which brought it back to the old level, both accomplished within the space of twelve months, is even more impossible than a cataclysmal deluge of water. Such movements are now, and have been throughout all the geological periods, excessively slow, and certainly not exceeding, at the very outside, a few feet in a century.
And, if physical science shows that no such Deluge as that described in Genesis could have occurred, geology is equally positive that it never did occur. The drift and boulders which cover a great part of Europe and North America are beyond all doubt glacial, and not diluvial. They are strictly limited by the extension of glaciers and ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing from them. The high-level gravels in which human remains are found in conjunction with those of extinct animals, are the result of the erosion of valleys by rivers. They are not marine, they are interstratified with beds of sand and silt, containing often delicate fluviatile shells, which were deposited when the stream ran tranquilly, as the coarser gravels were when it ran with a stronger torrent. And the gravels of adjacent valleys, even when separated by a low water-shed, are not intermixed, but each composed of the débris of its own system of drainage, by which small rivers like the Somme and the Avon have, in the course of ages, scooped out their present valleys to an extent of more than 100 feet in depth and two miles in width. Masses of loose sand, volcanic ashes, and other incoherent materials of tertiary formation remain on the surface, which must have been swept away by anything resembling a diluvial wave. And, above all, Egypt and other flat countries adjoining the sea, such as the deltas of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Mississippi, which must have been submerged by a slight elevation of the sea or subsidence of the land, show by borings, carried in some cases to the depth of 100 feet and upwards, nothing but an accumulation of such tranquil deposits as are now going on, continued for hundreds of centuries, and uninterrupted by anything like a marine or diluvial deposit.
Zoology is even more emphatic than geology in showing the impossibility of accepting the narrative of the Deluge as a true representation of actual events. Whoever wrote it must have had ideas of science as infantile as those of the children who are amused by a toy ark in the nursery. His range of vision could hardly have extended beyond the confines of his own country. And, if a reductio ad absurdum were needed of the fallacies to which reconcilers are driven, it would be afforded by Sir J. Dawson's comparison of the Ark to an American cattle-steamer. Recollect that the date assigned to the Deluge affords no time for the development of new species and races, since every "living substance was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground," except the pairs preserved in the Ark. It is a question, therefore, not of one pair of bears, but of many—polar, grizzly, brown, and all the varieties, down to the pigmy bear of Sumatra. So of cattle: there must have been not only pairs of the wild and domestic species of Europe, but of the gaur of India, the Brahmin bull, the yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many species of buffaloes and bisons. If we take the larger animals only, there must have been several pairs of elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk, deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and innumerable others of the herbivora, to say nothing of lions, tigers, and other carnivora. Let any one calculate the cubic space which such a collection would require for a year's voyage under hatches, and he will see at once the absurdity of supposing that they could have been stowed away in the Ark. And this is only the beginning of the difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all birds, and all creeping things have also to be accommodated, and to live together for a year under conditions of temperature and otherwise which, if suited for some, must inevitably have been fatal for others. How did polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls live in a temperature suited for monkeys and humming-birds?
Then there is the crowning difficulty of the food. Go to the Zoological Gardens, and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of a year's rations for elephants, giraffes, and lions, or multiply by 365 the daily allowance of hay and oats for horses, and of grass of green food for bullocks, and he will soon find that the bulk required for food is far greater than that of the animals. And what did the birds and creeping things feed upon? Were there rats and mice for the owls, gnats for the swallows, worms and butterflies for the thrushes, and generally a supply of insects for the lizards, toads, and other insectivora, whether birds, reptiles, or mammals? And of the humbler forms which live on microscopic animals and on each other, were they also included in the destruction of "every living substance," and was the earth repeopled with them from the single centre of Ararat?