By: Alfred M. Rehwinkel, M.A., B.D., LL.D.

Professor of Theology, Concordia Seminary Saint Louis, Missouri
 

Copyright 1951 by

Concordia Publishing House

Saint Louis, Mo.
 

Sixth, Slightly Revised Printing 1957

Seventh Printing 1960

Eighth Printing 1962
 

PREFACE
 

The material here presented in book form was originally delivered in a series of lectures before District church conventions, pastors' Institutes, Laymen's seminars, teacher's meeting, and in Walther league camps in many parts of the United States and Canada. The audiences which heard these lectures differed greatly in character and education, and hence it was necessary to choose the popular lecture style to find a common ground where all minds could readily meet. The original lectures were revised considerably in preparation for publication, but the popular style has been retained.

Another point to be noted is that these lectures grew over a long period of time and were not originally prepared for publication. It was therefore not always possible, when the revision was made, to indicate at all times the sources that have been consulted, but the reader is referred to a lengthy bibliography at the end of this book. (Not included in this typing for internet use) All books and articles listed there have been helpful, and grateful acknowledgment is hereby made, also for the illustrations in the book.
 

The author has received aid and suggestions from many friends and a variety of sources. He wishes to acknowledge particularly his debt to Dr. George McCready Price, a noted geologist and author of many books on geology and Biblical subjects. Dr. Price is a brilliant champion of Biblical truths, and his searching analysis of the evolutionary theories of modern geology has been very helpful. The author also wishes to acknowledge with deep appreciation the interest shown by, and the encouragement received from, many friends who supplied him with valuable clippings and pictures of newly discovered fossils and other materials from all parts of the United States and Canada. He feels especially indebted to his wife, Bessie, nee Efner, M.D., whose interest, help, and encouragement have been constant.
 

The author's interest in the study of the Flood dates back to his college days, particularly to the time when he was a student of geology in the University of Alberta, under Dr. John Allan, a great teacher and one of Canada's foremost geologists. This interest was further stimulated when later he was called upon to teach a course in physical geography at Concordia College in Edmonton, Alberta. As a whole, this study has been a lifelong labor of love and a source of much genuine pleasure , because it opened up ever greater visions of God's most wonderful and omnipotent majesty manifested in the works of His creative and destructive powers. It is the author's desire to share this pleasure with many others who have not heard these lectures, by making them available in printed form. In offering this book to the reading public of the Church, he finds no better closing words for these introductory remarks than the beautiful prayer of the great Kepler, who prayed: "I thank Thee, my Creator and my Lord, that Thou hast given me this joy in Thy creation, this thrill in the works of Thy hand. I have made known Thy glory to men as far as my limited spirit can grasp Thine infinitude. If I have written something unworthy of Thee, forgive it in grace." 

A. M. Rehwinkel Concordia Seminary, St Louis, Missouri
 
 
 

Contents

Preface .......................................................................NO PAGES IN HTML..................................................... 

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 
 

PART ONE
 

The World Before the Flood
 
 
 

I. The physical World Before the Flood ........................................................................... 

II. The Duration of the First World and its Population ...................................................... 

III. The Civilization of the Antediluvian World ................................................................. 
 

PART TWO
 

The Biblical Account of the Flood
 

IV. Warning of the Coming Flood ................................................................................... 
 

V. Some Problems Concerning the Ark and Its Cargo ...................................................... 
 

VI. Was the Ark Discovered? .......................................................................................... 
 

VII. The Beginning and the Duration of the Flood ............................................................ 
 

VIII. Further Problems Connected with the Flood ................................................................ 
 
 
 

PART THREE
 

Extra - Biblical Evidence for the Flood
 

IX. Flood Traditions Among the Nations of the World ......................................................... 
 

X. The Babylonian Flood Account .................................................................................... 
 

XI. Other Historical Evidence for the Flood ...................................................................... 
 

XII. Geological Evidence for a Universal Flood ................................................................ 
 

XIII. Glacial and Fossil Lakes, Coal Beds, and Oil Deposits .............................................. 
 

XIV. Fossils in Every Part of the World Evidence for a Universal Flood ........................... 
 

XV. The Mammoth and the Flood .................................................................................... 
 

PART FOUR

The World After the Flood
 

XVI. Harmonizing Genesis and Geology. The Geological Timetable .................................. 
 

XVII. Other Difficulties Involving Genesis and Geology ...................................................... 
 

XVII. The Glacial Theory and the Flood ............................................................................... 
 

XIX. The Flood the Most Reasonable Solution for the Glacial Theory Phenomena ............. 
 

XX. The Flood a Prototype of the Final Judgment ............................................................. 
 

NOTES ...................................................................................................................................... 
 
 
 
 
 

INTRODUCTION:
 

Why a book on the Flood in the days of Noah? Why devote time and effort to an event which lies on the very threshold of an indistinct twilight of legend and myth and which is farther removed from the present than all the most ancient peoples and empires known to us from secular history? What benefit could there be in a study so hoary in age and so far removed from the thinking of people in the world today? There are four reasons why this study was made and why the results are here presented in book form.
 

Next to Creation, the Flood of Noah's time is the greatest event in the history of our earth. Nothing comparable with it has happened since nor will happen until the final destruction of this universe in the fire of Judgment Day. The Flood marks the end of a world of transcendent beauty, created by God as a perfect abode for man, and the beginning of a new world, a mere shadowy replica of its original glory. In all recorded history there is no other event except the Fall which has had such a revolutionary effect upon the topography and condition of this earth and which has so profoundly affected human history and every phase of life as it now exists in its manifold forms in the world. No geologist, biologist, or student of history can afford to ignore this great catastrophe.
 

The second reason for this study is the fact that the Flood occupies a most prominent place in our Bible. The sacred writer devotes more space to the history of the Flood than to the story of creation. About one third of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which deal with the first two thousand years of the world's history, are devoted to the Flood. There are repeated references to the Flood in other books of the Old Testament. Jesus and the Apostles refer to it in the New Testament and hold it up as a warning example of God's wrath against sin as well as an example of His saving mercy. What Paul wrote concerning the Old Testament Scripture most certainly applies to this section, namely: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness"(2 Timothy 3:16) . We shall have ample opportunity to learn later that there is indeed much reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness in the Biblical account of the Flood.
 

Every student of the Bible and of geology knows there exists today a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Genesis and geology. This conflict dates back about 125 years and had its origin in the rise of evolutionary geology. Up to that time, theologians and scientists were generally in agreement with the Biblical teachings concerning Creation and the Flood. But that is no longer the case. Today textbooks prescribed for courses in physical geography and geology in American high schools and colleges no longer teach a Biblical creation of the universe in six days of twenty-four hours each by a divine fiat. Some teachers, in fact, take delight in ridiculing the Biblical creation story and rule it out of modern thinking as naive, absurd, or as mere folklore of primitive people. Now and then there are still those who try to harmonize Genesis and the theories of geology by juggling language and extending the six days of creation into six periods of unlimited time, each measured by millions, or possibly billions, of years. Still others preserve an outward reverence for the Bible and speak of Genesis patronizingly as a beautiful but poetical conception of the origin of things.
 

The shock received by the inexperienced young student is therefore overwhelming when he enters the classroom of such teachers and suddenly discovers to his great bewilderment that these men and women of acclaimed learning do not believe the views taught him in his early childhood days; and since the student sits at their feet day after day, it usually does not require a great deal of time until the foundation of his faith begins to crumble as stone upon stone is being removed from it by these unbelieving teachers. Only too often the results are disastrous. The young Christian becomes disturbed, confused, and bewildered. Social pressure and the weight of authority add to his difficulties. First he begins to doubt the infallibility of the Bible in matters of geology, but he will not stop there. Other difficulties arise, and before long skepticism and unbelief have taken the place of his childhood faith, and the saddest of all tragedies has happened. Once more a pious Christian youth has gained a glittering world of pseudo learning but has lost his own immortal soul.
 

To help these students and others like them over this difficult and dangerous period is the chief reason for this study and its publication. A careful study of the Biblical account of the Flood will prove that this fearful world catastrophe offers the most reasonable solution for most or all of the difficulties which confront the student of historical geology and which tend to disturb his faith in the truth and reliability of the Bible.
 

For the encouragement of young Christians who are overawed by the show of great learning of unbelieving professors it ought to be said that there always have been and still are very eminent scientists and men of great learning who retain their faith in the Bible as God's own infallible revelation to man. Everyone knows that men like Kepler, Newton, Faraday, and others of like stature were humble Christians and believers in the Bible. Great geologists of the last century, like Hugh Miller, Pye Smith, Murcheson, Sir William Dawson, and others, remained faithful believers and defenders of the Bible. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was well known for his profound classical scholarship, was a humble and pious man and took the Bible for his guide throughout life and leaned entirely upon its promises for comfort in the hour of death.
 

At a meeting of the British Association of Scientists held in 1865 a manifesto was drawn up and signed by 617 men of science, many of whom were of the highest eminence, in which they declared their belief not only in the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, but also in the harmony of scripture with natural science. A copy of this manifesto was deposited in the Bodleian Library of Oxford. The text of this manifesto is very interesting. It reads as follows:

We, the undersigned students of the Natural Sciences, desire to express our sincere regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into occasions for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures.

We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God as written in the book of Nature, and God's Word written in Holy Scripture to contradict one another, however much they may appear to differ.

We are not forgetful that physical science is not complete, but is only in a condition of progress, and that at present our finite reason enables us only to see as through a glass darkly, and we confidently believe that a time will come when the two records will be seen to agree in every particular.

We cannot but deplore that Natural Science should be looked upon with suspicion by many who do not make a study of it, merely on account of the unadvised manner in which some are placing it in opposition to Holy Writ..
 

We believe that it is the duty of every scientific student to investigate Nature simply for the purpose of elucidating truth, and that if he finds that some of his results appear to be in contradiction to the written Word, or rather to his own interpretation of it, which may be erroneous, he should not presumptiously affirm that his own conclusions must be right, and the statements of Scriptures wrong.

Rather leave the two side by side until it shall please God to allow us to see the manner in which they may be reconciled; and instead of insisting upon the seeming differences between Science and the Scriptures, it would be as well to rest in faith upon the points in which they agree.
 

Great men of science are humble men because they best know the frailties and limitations of finite men. It is the small man, the second-rate scholar and scientist, who struts in arrogant conceit, who parades his learning to impress the uninitiated, who is intolerant and dogmatic in his pronouncements. These are well characterized by Quintilian, a Roman teacher of oratory at the time of Paul, who says: "The less ability man has, the more he tries to sell himself out as those of short stature exalt themselves on tiptoes, and the weak use most threats."
 

The final reason for a study of the Flood is to remind the Christian reader that the Flood was a prototype of the Final Judgment, which will make a sudden and fearful end of the second world. The Lord says: "As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." (Matthew 24:37-39) As the first world perished by water; so this present world shall be destroyed by fire. (2 Peter 3:3 ff) And as this second world emerged from the Flood stripped of its original glory, so shall emerge from the fire of Judgment a new heaven and a new earth cleansed of sin and all evil, of misery, war, and death, and restored to a perfection which shall transcend even its original glory. (2 Peter 3:13 ff.)

A study of the Flood will prove to be extremely fascinating and rich in instruction, both spiritual and secular, for in this awful catastrophe we behold our God in His wonderful and fearful majesty as He deals in His anger and mercy with the children of men. And as we now undertake this study, we must always remain mindful of the fact that we are dealing here with a great miracle of God, though the natural forces already in the universe were employed to bring it about, and miracles, in their very nature, are supernatural acts of God and therefore contrary to the established laws of nature and incapable of explanation and complete understanding by finite man. Hence we must expect that many problems connected with the Flood will remain unsolved mysteries. The general plan of the study aims to develop the following broad outline:

I. The World Before the Flood II. The Biblical Account of the Flood

III. Extra-Biblical Evidence for the Flood IV. The World After the Flood
 

PART ONE
 

The world before the Flood
 

CHAPTER 1
 

The Physical World Before the Flood
 

The recorded information we have concerning the physical condition of the world before the Flood is very meager. The only direct Biblical reference is found in Genesis 1;31, where we read: "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." When God had finished creating, He inspected, as it were, the works of His hand, and He was delighted with the things that He had made and pronounced them very good. What God pronounces good, that is good in the absolute. God had created a perfect abode for man, the crown of His creation. It was perfect and complete in every detail. There were no thorns and thistles in that world. The earth brought forth abundantly of everything that was needful to provide for the wants, comforts, and pleasures of man. There was no need of a struggle for an existence either between man and man or between the beasts and their companions. There were no Saharas, no barren wastes, no bleak and sterile hills, no rigors of the arctic and no disease-breeding heat of the tropics. The most enchanting islands in the subtropical area of the South Seas today are but an imperfect replica of what that world was which received the verdict "very good" from its Creator.
 

It is true, after God had spoken these words, sin came into the world and with sin the blight and the curse of sin. And the curse which God had pronounced became effective at once, but its consequences were not immediately apparent to their fullest extent.
 

It was here as it was with men. God had aid: "The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," and when man ate, death was upon him and in him, but man did not die immediately. That body created unto immortality defied death for nearly a thousand years. He lived as though he would never die. And as with men, so it was with the rest of creation. Though the blight of sin was upon it, its original glory did not depart at once, and the "groaning and travailing in pain" of which Paul speaks (Romans 8:22) was not yet as audible as it is now.
 

Even after sin and death had come into this world, it was still a world vastly superior to the world which now is. It was, as Luther says, "a veritable paradise compared with the world that followed."
 

In the first place, it was a world with more "living space" for the human race than the present world offers. The world of Adam and his immediate descendants contained proportionately more habitable land than the world of today. There were no enormous waste areas, such as the great deserts of Africa, Asia, America, and Australia. Nor were the land masses separated by such vast expanses of ocean water, which today constitute about seven tenths of the earth' surface.
 

The earth's surface is approximately 197,000,000 square miles. Of this 139,000,000 square miles of the world today is sea, leaving 58,000,000 square miles of land, or only a little more than one fourth of the globe which is not covered with water. But not even all of this one fourth of the earth's surface is suitable for human habitation. The regions of the earth which are capable of supporting an average population by virtue of fertility of land, the abundance of natural resources, and favorable climate are distinctly limited. Large areas are closed to extensive human habitation because of climatic and other conditions.
 

The greatest hindrance to extensive settlement in the world since the Flood are the vast desert and mountain belts which completely divide the great continents into fertile and wasteland areas. Beginning with the Sahara, the latter areas continue through the deserts of Arabia and Iran to the enormous barren plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia, ending finally with the mountain wilderness of Lower Siberia. In North America a mountain belt extending from Alaska down through the entire length of the continent to the southern most peak is likewise sparsely settled and offers living space only to comparatively few.
 

To these forbidding sections of our earth today must also be added the northern tundras of Canada and Siberia and the ice covered continents of Greenland and Antarctica, the Australian desert, which comprises over half of that continent, and the lofty mountain regions of northern India and western South America.
 

All told, the regions of the world unsuitable for human habitation comprise about 40 percent of its land surface. To this must be added the tropical forest lands as found in the valleys of the Amazon, the Congo, and on the equatorial islands of southeastern Asia. These regions add up to another 10 per cent or more. The actual land areas therefore suitable for habitation comprise less than one half of the land surfaces of the earth.
 

But this is not all. The earth after the Flood was not only reduced considerably in land area, but even in this shrunken earth the fertility of the soil and the natural resources necessary for human progress are no unequally distributed, so that the people in some areas live in plenty while others eke out a miserable existence, thus giving rise to jealousies, rivalries, and bloody wars between the nations. But the world before the Flood was not so.
 

The general contour of the antediluvian Europe was not the same as that of modern Europe. The great Sir William Dawson describes the Europe of a previous world as compared with the present as follows: "In Europe the British Isles were connected with the mainland, and Ireland was united with England. The Rhine flowed northward to the Orkneys through a wide plain, probably wooded and swarming with great quadrupeds, now extinct or strange to Europe. The Thames and the Humber were tributaries of the Rhine. The land of France and Spain extended out to the one hundredth fathom line. The shallower parts of the Mediterranean were dry land, and that sea was divided into two parts by a land connecting Italy with Africa. Possibly, a portion of the shallower areas of the Atlantic were so elevated to connect Europe and America more closely than at present."
 

Fossils of plants and man-made implements found in the Sahara show that this great African desert was at one time covered with luxuriant vegetation and was inhabited by man. Similar remains have been found in the Gobi Desert of China and in the great desert areas of northwestern India.
 

Australia and Tasmania constituted one continent, while the north and south islands of New Zealand together formed one unbroken body of land.
 

The Arctic and the Antarctic regions of the two poles and Greenland were not always covered with mountains of ice and snow, but were habitable for both animals and man. Wallace speaks of a "rich warm temperate flora once covering what are now the icy wastes of Greenland and Spitzbergen." The broken-up character of the coast of Ireland and Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland with the extensive bank of the Azores, all point to a certain amount of recent sinking land on the outskirts of this area of great depression.
 

The flora and fauna found in the northern part of South America and in the southern part of the United States indicate that there was another land bridge between these two continents besides the present narrow neck of Central America. This other link connected the two continents from Florida southward by way of the islands of the Caribbean.
 

The sea at Bering Strait is so shallow that we may safely conclude that the continents of Asia and America were once connected, while the shallow Okhotsk, Jampan, and Yellow seas indicate a large extension of lowlands of eastern Asia.
 

The eastern coast of North America extended much farther eastward into the Atlantic, possibly connecting with Europe in the north and by way of the mythical continent called Atlantis in the south.
 

The ancients had a legend concerning a vanished continent in the Atlantic Ocean which, according to tradition, had existed somewhere in the great sea west of the "pillars of Hercules." It was the dwelling place of the gods and a great race of people, but was suddenly and mysteriously swallowed by the ocean as a result of an earthquake. Plato tells us that Solon was the first of the Greeks to hear of this mysterious island-continent and its wonders while visiting in Egypt, where the wise men of Sais told him of its existence. Solon intended to write its history but found that he was too far advanced in years to undertake such a task. Two hundred years later, Plato decided to do what Solon had left undone. Plato's history of Atlantis is found in the unfinished dialog known as Critias. Soundings in the Atlantic Ocean between southern Europe and America have revealed the possibility of the existence of a prehistoric continent in that area which served as a bridge between Europe, Africa, and America.
 

Today great mountain ranges divide the continents and smaller land masses into clearly defined climatic and biological zones. Think of the Rocky Mountains in North America, the Andes in South America, or the Himalayas in Asia, and the tremendous effect these rocky walls have had on the climate in the respective continents where they are found. But this was not always so. The mountain ranges in the world of Adam were not the same high, forbidding walls as found in the world of today, but were much lower, covered with vegetation, and did not seriously interfere with the climatic conditions as do the mountains of today. The English scientist Alfred Wallace, speaking about a world that has disappeared, writes: "The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rocky Mountains, and even the Himalayas were all in early Miocene times many thousands feet lower than they are now.This is proved by the fact of Eocene and Miocene marine deposits of great thickness, which must have been formed in rather deep water, being found elevated from ten to sixteen thousand feet above the sea level. As an example, we may mention the Dent du Midi in Switzerland, where marine shells of early Miocene or late Eocene type are found at an elevation of 10,940 feet; and as this mountain must have suffered enormous denudation, these figures can only represent a portion of the rise of the land, most of which occurred during the Miocene period."
 

Nor is it mere speculation to speak of the first world as a "veritable paradise." For though there are but meager written records concerning this first world, there is another kind of record which God has preserved for us in His wisdom. This record is reliable and true and is written in large and legible letters in the very foundation rocks of our present world. The record I refer to are the fossil remains that have been found in great abundance in every part of the globe. These fossils may be called the mummified remains of an extinct world. Fossils do not lie. Just as the pyramids of Egypt and the monuments of Greece and Rome are an evidence of the greatness of the civilization that produced them, so these fossils speak an eloquent language of the glories of a world which has passed away. These fossils have been preserved by God for a purpose. They are, as it were, the inscription on a tombstone erected to that magnificent world and at the same time a warning to the world which was to follow. The fossils have stimulated the imagination of men ever since the early Greeks. The early church fathers were familiar with them. Tertullian mentions them and gives a fairly correct interpretation of them. Luther also knew of them and understood their meaning. Others since then have had very fantastic ideas about them, but to us their language is clear. A more detailed discussion of these fossils will follow in a later chapter. Here I merely wish to refer to them as evidence and conclusive proof that the physical condition of the world of Noah, the climate, animals, and plant life, was vastly different from that of our world today.
 

With respect to climate, the fossils show that there was a uniformly mild climate in high and in low altitudes of both the northern and the southern hemisphere. That is, there was a perfectly uniform, non-zonal, mild, and springlike climate in every part of the globe. This does not mean that the climate was of necessity the same in all parts of the earth. There were differences, but not the present extremes. Sir Henry H. Howorth, a noted geologist and competent interpreter of these fossils, says: "The flora and fauna are virtually the only thermometer with which we can test the climate of any past period. Other evidence is always sophisticate by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is due to other causes. But the biological evidence is unmistakable; cold-blooded reptiles cannot live in icy water; semitropical plants, or plants whose habitat is the temperate zone, cannot ripen their seeds and sow themselves under arctic conditions."
 

Or another outstanding authority, Prof. Alfred R. Wallace, says: "There is but one climate known to the ancient fossil world as revealed by the plants and animals entombed in the rocks, and the climate was a mantle of springlike loveliness which seems to have prevailed continuously over the whole globe. Just how the world could have thus been warmed all over may be a matter of conjecture; that it was so warmed effectively and continuously is a matter of fact."
 

F. H. Knowlton, in speaking about the climate which prevailed in the region of Yellowstone National Park during the so-called Tertiary period, writes: "A final word may be added regarding the probable climate of the region during the lifetime of these fossil forests. It is obvious that the present flora of the Yellowstone National Park has comparatively little relation to the Tertiary flora and cannot be considered a descendant of it. It is also clear that climatic conditions must have greatly changed since Tertiary times. The Tertiary flora appears to have come from the south, but the present flora is evidently of a more northern origin. The climate during the Tertiary times as indicated by the vegetation was temperate or warm. Temperate, not unlike that of Virginia or the Carolinas of the present time, and the presence of numerous species of figs, a supposed breadfruit tree, cinnamons, and other southern plants indicates that it may have been almost subtropical. However, the conditions that were favorable to this seemingly subtropical growth may have been different from the conditions now necessary for the growth of similar vegetation.... It is certain, however, that the conditions were very different from those now prevailing in this part."
 

Or Prof. Georg McCready Price writes: "It would be quite useless to go through the whole fossiliferous series in order, for there is not a single system which does not have coral limestone or other evidence of a mild climate way up north, most systems having such rock in the lands which skirt the very pole itself. The limestone and coal beds of the carboniferous period are the nearest known rocks to the North Pole. They crop out all around the polar basis; and from the dip of these beds, they must underlie the polar sea itself. But it is needless to go through the systems one after another for they are 'uniformly testify that a warm climate has in former times prevailed over the whole globe.' "
 

It is difficult for us today even to imagine a world as just described, a world in which there was neither arctic nor antarctic and no steaming jungles of the Equator. We know that our present climatic zones and seasons are the results of the changing relations of the earth to the sun, the source of the heat that warms our globe. It is, therefore, quite natural to ask at this point: How could these laws of nature have functioned in that world so as to produce conditions so different from those prevailing today, and what caused the change?

Picture #2

That our earth at one time in its history enjoyed a uniformly mild climate in all of its parts is a fact which can be demonstrated, as we have seen, and that a change came suddenly, in fact, very suddenly, and probably at a time of a universal flood, seems to be established beyond a doubt from the frozen mammoths found fully preserved in the flesh in the frozen tundras of northern Siberia, of which we shall hear more later. But what caused the change is not definitely known. All we can do is guess at an answer and project possible theories as to the most reasonable solution for these difficulties.

Three theories have been suggested. The first is that the earth has tilted 23½ degrees at the time of the Flood, bringing about a change in the relation of the earth to the sun and thus creating the climatic zones as they now exist.
If the earth's axis were perpendicular to the plane of itsorbit, the sunlight would always extend from pose to pole, and days and nights would always be of equal length, that is, twelve hours each, and every portion of the earth's surface in the same latitude would continually receive the same amount of heat and light. In that case there would be no change of season, as is shown in the two diagram above left.

Picture #3
But the axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It inclines at about 23.5 degrees. In figures A and B are shown the two portions of the earth in its orbit. (On left) In figure A the north pole on December 21 is turned away from the sun, and consequently the sun's rays fall short of it by 23.5 degrees. At the same time they shine upon the South Pole as shown in figure B by a like amount. By June 21 the condition is completely reversed, and the rays of the sun reach the North Pole, while they fall short of the south Pole.

The tilted position of the earth therefore accounts for the arctic and antarctic regions of the two poles and for the seasons of the year. According to this theory the tilting of the axis of the earth to the amount of 23.5 degrees occurred at the time of the Flood, thereby causing a change in the climate and creating the present climatic zones, but also bringing about those violent cosmic revolutions on the earth which affected the entire universe and which resulted in the Flood.
 

According to a second theory the uniform climate of the first world was brought about by the warm ocean waters which surrounded the antediluvian continents. It is believed that the land and water segments were more equally distributed so that no portions of the existing continents were as far removed from the ocean as they are now. It is quite conceivable that a universal ocean of warm water could very well cause a uniformly mild climate in every part of the globe, but that alone could not account for the luxuriant vegetation which flourished during this period in the ancient polar regions, if the antediluvian poles like today were shrouded in darkness for six months of each year. 
 

Another version of this same theory holds that warm ocean currents were so distributed that every portion of the existing land masses was touched and warmed by them., similar to the conditions of those parts of the world today that are affected by the Gulf Stream and the Japan Current.
 

Everyone is familiar with this strange phenomenon of ocean currents, that is, those remarkable rivers of warm water flowing in a sea of cold water and keeping a definite and permanent course for thousands of miles. The Gulf Stream, which derives its name from the Gulf of Mexico, where it seems to originate, is the best known and the most remarkable of these ocean currents. It is a stream much larger than either the Mississippi or the Amazon. It is fifty miles wide at the Strait of Florida and has an average depth of about 1,500 feet. This stream is more than 4,000 miles long, its rate of flow varying from about three to five miles an hour. The temperature of its water is warmer than the ocean at the Equator, but cools slightly as it travels northward. This Gulf Stream, with the prevailing westerly winds, is responsible for the mild climate of England and northwestern Europe and affects the climate even as far north as Spitzbergen. In southern England, which lies in about the same latitude as Edmonton, Alberta, the winters are very mild, with very little ice and snow, so that vegetables like cabbage can be left in the gardens all winter, while the mercury in Edmonton at the same time might dip to fifty and occasionally even to sixty degrees below zero.
 

If similar currents touched all of the antediluvian continents and affected them as the Gulf Stream affects northwestern Europe and the Japan Current Alaska and British Columbia today, then it is quite conceivable that this might well account for a uniformly mild climate throughout the ancient world. But this, too, would not offer a satisfactory explanation for the rich vegetation in the polar regions.
 

The third theory attempting to explain the antediluvian climate is the so-called canopy theory. According to this theory the earth was originally surrounded by a canopy of vapor which intercepted the direct rays of the sun. The heat which penetrated the canopy was diffused so equally over all the zones of latitude that the subtropical climate prevailed even in the high latitude. This canopy served to bring about conditions similar to those in a hothouse with a temperature of about 72F. The chemical rays of the sun, especially those most active in the aging of living things and those that bringabout decay and fermentation, were intercepted by the canopy, and as a result, men and animals lived to great ages.

Picture #4

Storms and rain were unknown in the world of Adam, and hence the rainbow was first seen on the day that Noah left the ark. Extremes of cold and heat were not possible. In the Flood all this changed. The canopy collapsed and was the chief source of the floodwaters. The immediate effect of the removal of the canopy was a radical climatic change. Now the seasons became sharply divided, and there was from now on "a seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter (Gen. 8:22)

These are the three theories that have been proposed to offer a possible solution for the wonderful climatic conditions that prevailed in the world before the Flood. It is impossible, of course, to know which if any, of these theories correctly describes the conditions. The most reasonable view would seem to be to assume that all three, or at least the first two, might have applied, that is, to assume that the earth was tilted at the time of the flood out of its original position, thus changing the relation of th earth to the sun and creating the two polar regions, and that the temperature of the first world had been equalized by the warm ocean water or warm ocean currents. But something might even be said in favor of the canopy theory. At any rate Gen. 2:5 and Gen. 9:13 become more meaningful within the framework of this theory.

Picture #5

With such favorable climatic conditions prevailing everywhere, it requires no great flights of the imagination to perceive that the flora and the fauna of that world would be in harmony with their physical surroundings, and therefore far superior to the flora and fauna of the world today. And so it was, for this, too, is borne out by the records in the rocks. Beginning with the animals, we find that the fossils reveal:
 

1) a greater distribution of the various genera and species in all parts of the earth;

2) a far greater variety of genera and species than have existed in the world since then; and 

3) a distinct deterioration of the animals which have survived when compared with their antediluvian ancestors.

Picture #6

It is not within the scope of this study to treat and of these questions in great detail. A few examples must suffice. Everybody today has read about or seen the pictures of the dragon like prehistoric reptiles known as the Sauria. Their fossils are found in every continent, sometimes in great numbers. The dinosaurs of the Red Deer Valley in Alberta must have lived and died there by the thousands, so thickly are their skeletons scattered over the adjoining region known as the "Bad Lands." Some writers on the subject hold that they must have been as numerous as the hardy buffalo of a generation ago, but with much more variety and form of species. In point of size they ranged from the size of a small dog to monsters of over eighty feet in length. In point of diversity they represent almost a world of their own. In Alberta alone twenty-six different species have been identified. There were those that lived on land, others in water, and still others in the air.

The sea that in ages past covered the regions which now constitute our own western Kansas was the headquarters of a species known as Monassaurs, and thousands of specimens have been taken from the chalk bluffs of this State, some of them in such a fine state of preservation that we are not only well acquainted with their internal structure, but with their outward appearance as well. Another species of marine reptile found in Kansas measured nearly fifty feet in length. Of the flying reptiles, one has been found with a head a yard long and with a stretch of wings of over twenty feet. Another of these prediluvian monsters was a reptile which modern paleontologists have very fittingly called Tyrannosaurus, that is, the tyrant lizard, for he was absolutely the most formidable creature that stalked the earth. A monster when standing erect, he measured eighteen feet high, with claws like an eagle's, and provided with double-edged, daggerlike teeth, two and three inches long, set in a mouth with a yard-wide gap. Brontosaurus was probably the largest of them all, in fact, we know, the largest creature that ever walked on this earth. A specimen of this prehistoric giant is found in the American Museum in New York and measures sixty-six feet, eight inches in length, and it is estimated that, when living, this animal must have weighed at least thirty-eight tons. One even larger than the New York specimen was reported found in South America, which was said to have measured 150 feet in Length. Similar discoveries have been made in Russia, in different parts of the United States, Africa, and elsewhere. Only the whale in the world today compares in size with these ancient land animals.

Picture #7                                                                                  Picture #8
 
 

Associated with these reptiles here in America and Europe were other animals, now either extinct or found only in tropical climate, such as the elephant, lion, tiger, tapir, the camel, and others. In the frozen north of Siberia and Alaska the mammoth once roamed in immense herds, while walruses, rhinoceroses, and similar animals had their habitat within the present territory of the United States.
 

"The bird kingdom, to, was far greater than now. Bones of a bird have been found which indicate that this species must have stood at least ten feet high, or two feet higher than the largest ostrich."
 

Fossil snail shells have been found measuring nearly a foot in diameter; other shells related to the pearly nautilus measured over a yard across; and straight-shelled cephalopods with shells more than a foot in diameter and fifteen feet long have been discovered.
 

Everyone is familiar with the modern lobster; when a specimen is found to measure a foot or more in size it is regarded as an exceptional curiosity. But fossil crustaceans belonging to that family have been known to measure at least six feet in size. The same is true of the insects. Some of the ancient locusts have a spread of wing of more than seven inches, while some of the dragon flies had bodies nearly a foot and a half long and wings spreading over two feet from tip to tip. Monstrous amphibians belonging to the frog family were discovered, measuring six and even ten feet with heads twenty inches long.
 

In 1921 the fossil remains of a prehistoric bat were found near Entwistle, Alberta, which, when living, must have had the size of an average sheep, with a head like a crocodile and with a spread of wings measuring fifteen feet. The greatest zoological gardens with their animals gathered from all the continents are poor affairs as compared with the native dwellers that once inhabited our North American continent. And what is true of North America is true of every other continent.
 

Professor Wallace is, therefore, quite right when he says:"It is quite clear, therefore, that we live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest and fiercest and strangest forms have disappeared."
 

What is true of the animals also applies to the plant kingdom of that strange world. Here, too the rocks reveal wonders upon wonders. Not only was there a greater variety of plants, but the species still in existence were much larger and more widely distributed over the face of the earth; and there was an abundance and luxuriance of plant life in every part of the earth of which we today no longer are able to form an adequate conception. A few examples must suffice: Trees such as the oak, beech, myrtle, laurel, walnut, palms, banana trees, magnolias, breadfruit, grape vines, sequoias like those of modern California, and others like them were not only found in the western states as Wyoming, montana, and western Canada, but also in Alaska, Greenland, and up to the very polar regions The abundance and the great varieties of plant life found in Arctic Siberia have even suggested to some that the Garden of Eden might have been in that region.
 

An irrefutable proof for the unparalleled luxuriance of plant life in that prehistoric world are the great coal beds found in every continent of the earth today. The recent Byrd Antarctic Expedition discovered a whole mountain of coal at the south Pole. These coal beds were God's wonderful way of preserving for future generations the magnificent trees and the plants which covered the face of the earth as this had come forth from the hands of the Creator. It has been estimated that it requires from ten to fourteen feet of vegetable matter to produce a seam of coal one foot in thickness. There are seams of coal ranging from forty to fifty feet in thickness. In a strip mine in Wyoming a seam measuring from sixty to ninety feet in thickness has been discovered. This means that a solid mass of vegetation, trees, and other plants from five hundred to a thousand feet in thickness was required to make possible the creation of coal seams of such magnitude.
 

What a marvelous world this must have been! Our imagination is inadequate to reconstruct for ourselves a picture of the world which God had given as a possession to Adam and his descendants.
 

May this suffice on the subject of the physical world before the Flood. Much more could be said. What has been said is sufficient to show that the world of Adam, Methuselah, of Enoch and Noah, was a wondrous world. A world rich in plant and animal life. A world which yielded food of every kind for man and beast without any great effort on the part of either, a world which could therefore support a population many times greater than our present population. A world which was made delightful by a uniform climate of springlike loveliness like that of Paradise itself. In short, the whole world was a garden of God, or as Luther said, "a veritable paradise," compared with the world which followed. This was the golden age in the history of the earth. It was a creation of God's love, created for the enjoyment of him who was created in His own image and made to rule over it and possess it. And yet this world was destroyed by the Flood. God Himself destroyed it. In Jonah 4:10-11 we read: "Then said the Lord, Thou has had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And would not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand person that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?" And Jeremiah laments over the desolated city of Jerusalem: "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me?" (Lam. 1:12)
 

And on entering Jerusalem and beholding the city and its future destruction, Jesus wept because she had not known what belonged to her peace. God grieved over Nineveh, He lamented and wept over Jerusalem, but what were Jerusalem and Nineveh in all their glory compared with that world which perished in the Flood! 

Our God is a God of love, of tender mercies and Longsuffering to them that fear and love Him and do according to His commandments; but He is a terrible Judge to those that reject His mercy. If He spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down into hell, and if He spared not this magnificent world of His original creation, how will the ungodly and the wicked of today escape His wrath when the Day of Judgment shall dawn upon this second world?
 
 

CHAPTER II

The Duration of the First World and Its Population

The story of the Flood is told in Chapters Six to Nine in the first book of the Bible. The story of the fall of man is found in Chapter three. Between these two events are only two chapters, and both of these are largely devoted to genealogical tables. In our school Bible histories and Sunday school literature the account of the fall of man is usually followed by the story of Cain and Abel, and that again by the story of the Flood. As a result, children as well as adults are often found to have formed an erroneous conception concerning the duration of the first world. We usually think of that period as having been much shorter than it really was. It must be remembered, however, that the duration of the first world covered a long period of time, a period much longer than any kingdom or empire in ancient or modern times had ever flourished. We have an exact chronology of this age in Genesis 5, and that chronology is confirmed by the genealogical table found in Chronicles 1 and Luke 3. According to this chronology the Flood occurred in the year 1656 after Creation. 

But to say that the first world stood for 1,656 years does not mean a great deal unless we try to visualize the length of this period by translating it into our own time. If we turn back the pages of modern history to the number of 1,656 years, we shall find ourselves in the midst of Roman history, about the time when Diocletian was ruler of that great empire and when the Roman amphitheaters and arenas were still re-echoing with the mad shouts of the spectators witnessing the gruesome slaughter of persecuted Christians. Much of the ancient, all of the medieval, and all of modern history has occurred since that time.
Such events as the Barbarian invasion, the fall of Rome, the rise of the Papacy, the establishment of the European nations, the founding and spreading of Mohammedanism, the discovery of America and Australia, the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, and countless wars, the invention of gunpowder, of the printing press, the steam engine and electricity, and a thousand other events which have influenced the course of history and made this modern world, have happened in the last 1,656 years. A new world, distinct from the ancient world, developed since then, and a population which numbered at most a few hundred million has grown to the enormous number of over two billion. Sixteen hundred and fifty-six years is a long time in human history. It was a long time in the first world. It was long enough for the human race to increase and expand and take possession of the earth as God had commanded. 

The common view is that the population before the Flood was quite small and that its geographical distribution was limited to a comparatively small area. Or, as one learned author says: "It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is indeed not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits of Syria and Mesopotamia."

And yet, even in our age, 1,656 years is sufficient for the human race to grow to an enormous population. To this must be added that conditions then were much more favorable for propagation than in the present world. Original man was endowed with far greater vitality of body and mind than now. This can be inferred from the great age to which he lived. And from this it would also necessarily follow that the antediluvians were far more prolific than man is in his present state. Add to this the climatic conditions, the fact that food supplies were far more plentiful and accessible for all, that a world of virgin soil and unlimited riches beckoned man to take possession, and you have the most ideal conditions for the rapid growth of population. 

In modern times the world has witnessed a phenomenal growth in population. During the century between 1830 and 1930 the population of the world doubled in number, that is, it increased by about 850 million within one century. Students of population ascribe this extraordinary growth to the application of steam, to transportation and industry, and to the opening up of new virgin territory in America, Australia, Africa and elsewhere. Or, in other words, the fact that new facilities were created by which the necessities of life could be provided in greater abundance and with more ease had as a result this unparalleled increase in population. 

But as already stated, conditions in the antediluvian world were far more favorable than they ever can be in the world of today, and hence it is not unreasonable to assume that the population grew more rapidly than is possible today. 

Just what the population of the world of Noah might have been is, of course entirely a matter of conjecture. But even a most conservative speculation will reveal extremely interesting possibilities. 

Our life now lasts three score years and ten, and only by virtue of strength, fourscore years, as Moses says. Only during about thirty or thirty-five years of this period, man, or more specifically, woman, is capable of reproduction. And yet in spite of this limited period of life and still more limited period of reproduction, families of eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, or even more are not uncommon, at least, were not uncommon a generation or more ago. They are still quite common among the French-Canadians in Quebec, the Mexicans in our southwestern border States, and among the hill folk of our Southern mountains regions. Even families of fifteen or sixteen occur occasionally. Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen, and John Wesley was one in a family on nineteen children. Recently I met a man on Mount Petit Jean, Arkansas, who was at that time eighty-seven years old. He had twelve children, sixty-one grandchildren, seventy-four great-grand children, and five great-great-grandchildren, making a total of 172 descendants in the lifetime of one man, and that today in Arkansas under conditions which are far from representing antediluvian abundance. In Clarinda, Iowa, I had the privilege of speaking to a mother of twenty living children. She was at the time (1944) still quite youthful in appearance, very active in the community, and a member of the local church choir.

The Idaho Daily State of September 28, 1946, reported that Mrs. Mary Jones, a Negro sixty-five years old, gave birth to her twenty-seventh child, a baby girl, at the University Hospital of Columbus, Ohio. Twenty-one of her children are living. Her husband is sixty years old.
 

Now, if man with a vitality much lower, and his age limit reduced to a mere fraction of that of the Antediluvian, can reproduce his kind to the extent of ten to fourteen and more to one family, it is certainly reasonable to assume that the human race in the primeval world was capable of reproducing, and did reproduce, at a much higher rate than is possible today. If the period of reproduction in the life of a woman is nearly equal to one half of her total possible age today, it is again reasonable to assume that the same was true of the antediluvian mother. From Genesis 5 we know that men lived to an age of eight or nine hundred years and more in the first world. This would mean that the reproduction period continued over a period of at least from four hundred to five hundred years. And that this is not an unwarranted or an absurd conclusion can be established from the same fifth chapter, for in verse fifteen we read of Mahalaleel that he begat a son at the age of sixty-five, and in verse twenty-one, Enoch begat Methuselah at the age of sixty-five, and, again, in verse thirty-two we read that Noah was five hundred years old when he begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Here is a period of more than four hundred years during which the generation of that age was able to beget children. And, again, because of the greater antediluvian vitality and vigor, and because of the abundance of food supplies, infant mortality must have been much lower than in any succeeding age of human history. Tradition also has it that families of that age were very large. In Josephus we find such a tradition according to which Adam had fifty-six children, thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters. The history of Cain also presupposes a population quite numerous, for he says to God: "everyone that findeth me shall slay me." Cain would not have spoken that way if the whole human race at that time had consisted of the members of a modern family. And again we read that Cain went into the land of Nod and there built a city. A family consisting of a dozen or more children would not build a city for itself.

On the basis of what has been said, it would not be unreasonable to assume that an average family in that age might have consisted of at least eighteen to twenty living and marriageable children. All will agree that on the basis of what has been said, this is a very conservative estimate. According to Genesis 5 there were ten generations from Adam to Noah. Taking these figures as a basis for a calculation, we obtain the following results:

First generation ...................................................... 2

Second generation .................................................. 18

Third generation ..................................................... 162

Fourth generation ................................................... 1,458

Fifth generation ...................................................... 13.122

Sixth generation ..................................................... 118,098

Seventh generation ..................................................1,062,882

Eighth generation .................................................... 9,565,938

Ninth generation ..................................................... 86,093,442

Tenth generation ..................................................... 774,840,979
 

To this number must be added all surviving previous generations, which would probably number an additional hundred million. According to this calculation, the population at the time of the Flood would have been nearly nine hundred million, or about equal to the population of the world just a hundred years ago. If we assume that the average family numbered 20 children, and retain the ten generations of Genesis 5, we get the following figures:
 

First generation ............................................................. 2

Second generation ......................................................... 20

Third generation ............................................................ 200

Fourth generation ........................................................... 2000

Fifth generation .............................................................. 20,000

Sixth generation ............................................................. 200,00

Seventh generation ......................................................... 2,000,000

Eighth generation ........................................................... 20,000,000

Ninth generation ............................................................. 200,000,000

Tenth generation ............................................................. 2,000,000,000
 

If we were to try another approach to the problem and assume that the ten generations of Genesis 5 did not apply to the entire human race, but only to the descendants of Seth, and that the average age of that generation was not the same as that of the ten patriarchs, and that, instead of ten, there were at least fifteen generations between Adam and Noah, while the average family numbered only ten children, we obtain the following results:
 

First generation ................................................................ 2

Second generation ............................................................ 10

Third generation ............................................................... 50

Fourth generation ............................................................. 250

Fifth generation ................................................................ 1,250

Sixth generation ................................................................ 6,250

Seventh generation ............................................................ 31,250

Eighth generation .............................................................. 151,250

Ninth generation ............................................................... 756,250

Tenth generation ............................................................... 3,781,250

Eleventh generation .......................................................... 18,906,250

Twelfth generation ........................................................... 94,531,250

Thirteen generation ........................................................... 472,656,250

Fourteenth generation ....................................................... 2,368,281,250

Fifteenth generation .......................................................... 11,841,406,250
 

All this is, of course, pure speculation, for no one can know with any degree of certainty what the population of that world might have been, but I believe that these figures are not fantastic, but quite conservative. It is reasonable to assume that the population was at least equal to the population of the world today. There was sufficient time for such an increase in population, and the physical conditions conductive to population growth were most favorable. Dr. E.A. Ross of the university of Michigan, and authority on population, estimates that if the population of the world increases at its present rate, it will treble in the next century, which would mean that by the year 2023 the world population would be about 5,000,000,000. Dr. Ross also makes the interesting observation that if the human race had started at about the time when Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome, and since then had multiplied at the present rate, the population today would be 1,700,000,000. Or in other words, according to this estimate, a period about equal in length to the antediluvian age would be sufficient to increase the human race to a number of 1,700,000,000 provided the race had increased as rapidly as it did during the last century. For reason already stated it is reasonable to assume that the growth of population in the world of Adam and Noah was greater than that of the last century, and Drs. Guy Irving Burch and Elmer Pendell, both experts in the field of population, state in their recent book, Human breeding and survival, that between 1900 and 1940 the population of the earth increased by 563,000,000, and during the ten years immediately preceding World War 2, by 200,000,000. They claim that if India's death rate could be lowered to the level of that of the United States, India with her present birth rate could fill five earths as full as ours, in a single century. China could do the same, and it would not take the U.S.S.R. much longer. The assumed estimate of the antediluvian population must therefore be regarded as extremely conservative.
 

But if the population had grown into numbers such as indicated, it would be reasonable to assume that man had scattered far beyond the immediate vicinity of the Garden of Eden and had taken possession of the greater part of the face of the earth as God had commanded him. That the latter actually was the case would seem to follow from the fact God destroyed the whole earth and all the beasts and creeping things therein. God destroyed the earth because of the wickedness of man. He would hardly have destroyed the whole earth with all its creatures had this wickedness been confined to a small area, say, of the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys, as has been suggested. God punished the wickedness of Nineveh and destroyed that great city, but not all of Asia. He punished the apostasy of Israel, but because of their unbelief he did not destroy the whole Roman Empire. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
 

The question now arises: What do the rocks reveal concerning the possible spread of the human race? Have we the same evidence here as we have in the case of plants and animals? Strange to say, on this question the rocks are astonishingly silent. There is only very meager fossil evidence concerning the geographical distribution of the human race in the antediluvian world, and in many cases the interpretation of the available evidence is questioned by competent authorities. However, we are not left altogether in the dark. There is some fairly reliable evidence gathered in nearly every part of the earth, and as time goes on, further remains of antediluvian man and his civilization no doubt will be found.
 

Prof. Hugo Obermaier of the University of Madrid has accumulated a great deal of material on man's early existence in this world. He found that of the European countries, France has the greatest number of human fossils. But fossil human remains are by no means limited to France or Europe alone. Of the material that he has gathered, I shall select only a few examples.
 

Obermaier reports the discovery of a cave in France where human remains were found together with the bones of the cave bear, the cave hyena, the cave lion, the leopard, the great deer, the mammoth, the wolf, the woolly rhinoceros, and the reindeer. That is, man is found with the remains of animals which are now either extinct or never had their habitat in those parts of the world during historic times.
 

According to the same author, a human skull was found in 1865 near Colmar in Alsace in a deposit of loess, 2½ meters below the surface and associated with the woolly mammoth, the bison, and other prehistoric animals.
 

In 1914 a complete human skeleton was found near Strassburg in a deposit intermixed with pebbles and also associated with the remains of a prehistoric mammoth.
 

In Belgium, near Namur, human remains were found associated with the remains of the mammoth, the wooly rhinoceros, the giant deer, the reindeer, and other animals.
 

In 1857 human remains were found in Devonshire, England again with the same prehistoric animal remains already enumerated.
 

The Rock of Gibraltar has yielded up human remains together with the remains of a flora and fauna quite different from that found in that region today.
 

In 1914 human fossils were found in a quarry near Weimar, Germany, at a depth of 11.9 meters below the surface. Associated with these human remains were found wood ashes, flint implements, the remains of the rhinoceros and the cave bear. And two years later, in the same vicinity, the skeletal remains of a child were discovered together with the fossils of a rhinoceros, a cave bear, and other prehistoric animals.
 

In Honan, China, human remains were found in a deep loess deposit with the remains of the wild boar, the bison, and the mammoth.
 

A very important discovery was made in northern Rhodesia, Africa, in 1921, while men were working in the mine known as the "Bone Cave." Here were found a great number of fossilized and partly fossilized remains, including the elephant, lion, rhinoceros, antelope, and the bones of many smaller animals and birds. Amidst this strange accumulation of animal bones was also found an almost complete human skull with other human bones.
 

In the year 1700 Duke Erhardt Ludwig of Wuerttemberg caused some excavations to be made at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, where a human skull was found with remains of animals, among which were the mammoth, the bear, and the hyena.

In 1833 M. M. Schmerling published a treatise on the ossiferous fossils discovered in the province of Liege, Belgium. The author shows that human remains were found here together with those of the rhinoceros, the hyena, and the cave bear. In one cave the remains of three individuals were found, the skull of a young person being imbedded by the side of a mammoth tooth. Flint knives, polished, needle-shaped bones, with holes pierced through them, were found in the same deposit together with a rhinoceros. In 1860 Sir Charles Lyell revisited the caves near Liege and confirmed the previous reports.
 

Between 1840 and 1846 Boucher de Perthes discovered in the so-called quaternary gravels in the valley of the Somme at Abbeville a large number of flint implements whose origin was ascribed by the noted Professor Prestwich and Mr. John Evans as dating from a period when the mammoth and his companions were still living in that region.

Picture #9
While visiting America, Sir Charles Lyell examined the human remains found near Natchez on the Mississippi. Here human fossils were found on the base of the loess cliff with the remains of the mastodon, the bones of a horse, the remains of an elephant, a rhinoceros, and other animals now extinct or found only in a tropical climate.
 

In 1874 Professor Anghey found a large paleolithic arrow, or spearhead, below 20 feet of loess deposit a few miles southwest of Omaha, and associated with these manmade implements were found the vertebrae of an elephant. Other arrowheads were found fifteen feet below in a loess deposit in the valley of the republican River in Nebraska.
 
 

Human remains and man-made implements were also found together with prehistoric animals in Pennsylvania and New Mexico and elsewhere. In South America similar remains were found in Brazil and other countries.
 

Dr. G. F. Wright writes that at Lansing, Kansas, near Leavenworth, a human skeleton was found buried at the foot of a deposit of loess, providing that man was in the valley of the Missouri River before this great loess deposit was laid down.

In 1931 A. M. Brooking of Hastings (Nebraska) Museum excavated a large mammoth near Angus, Nebraska, and found under the left scapula a large fluted arrow, proving that man was a contemporary of the mammoth in the territory now a part of the State of Nebraska.

In 1932 another man-made projectile was found together with the fossil remains of a mammoth near Derit, a small town in Weld County, Colorado.

Still further proof of the contemporaneity of man and the mammoth in North America was furnished in 1938, when Dr. Cyrus N. Roy and Dr. Kirk Byron found man-made implements with the remains of mammoth bones about thirty miles southwest of Abilene, Texas. Other artifacts were found in a gravel put between Clovis and Portales, New Mexico, together with the remains of a mammoth, a bison, and a horse. Similar evidence has been found in western Canada as far north as Ponoka, Alberta, and east as far as Regina, Saskatchewan.
 

In a bed of course gravel near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, known as the Scottsbluff Bison Quarry, arrowheads, knives, and scrapers were found, associated with the remains of an extinct bison and fossil skulls. Today this is a very dry country and not suitable for farming unless the land can be irrigated. These fossils were found at a great depth. Similar remains were found near Grand Island, Nebraska.
 

One of the most important discoveries of human remains of great antiquity was made in the Sandra Cave in the Las Huertas Canyon, New Mexico. In this cave were found a variety of man-made implements together with the fossil remains of such animals as the horse, the camel, the bison, the mammoth, the ground sloth, and the wolf.
 

It is interesting to note that the geological evidence found in the strata indicates that the layers underlying the fossiliferous deposits were laid down in water. This is all the more significant since the entire region is extremely arid.

One of the most valuable discoveries of ancient human remains is the so-called Calaveras skull found in 1886 in Bald Hill, Calaveras County, California. This skull was found in a shaft of a mine one hundred and thirty feet below the surface in a layer of gravel overlaid by several beds of lava and gravel.
 

In 1915 Dr. E. H. Sellards found the remains of a man near Vero, Florida, in a stratum which had been laid down by water. In the same vicinity but somewhat removed were found specimens of an extinct fauna, including the mammoth. Similar remains were found near Melbourne, Florida.
 

In 1929 a human skull was found at Bishop's Cap Peak, New Mexico, by Roscoe Conkling. This skull was found twelve feet below the surface, and at a depth of twenty-one feet a second human skull was found, associated with the bones of the horse, the cave bear, the camel, and the sloth. The strata in which these remains were found show clear evidences of water action.
 

In 1926 a mammoth skull and below it some artifacts and the bones of a bison and a horse were found twelve miles northwest of Douglas in southwestern Arizona. A careful survey of the surrounding territory yielded further evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in these parts of North America. Among the remains found were grinding stones associated with the bones of the horse, the bison, the pronghorn antelope, and extinct species of the wolf, the coyote, and the mammoth.
 

In 1930 Dr. Mark Harrington found some human remains together with the fossils of a now extinct ground sloth and of an extinct camel in the gypsum cave sixteen miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada.
 

In 1935 J. C. Mckinley discovered a human skull and other bones on the banks of the Cimarron River a little more than thirteen feet below the surface. In 1931 highway workers at Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, uncovered an almost complete human skeleton at a depth of ten feet in so-called glacial silt. The experts agreed that the geological evidence points to a great antiquity fo these remains.
 

In 1933 William K. Jensen discovered a human skeleton in association with artifacts of recognized antiquity at Browns valley, Travers County, Minnesota. Again the geological evidence shows that the gravel ridge had been formed by the action of water.
 

In 1929 the University of Pennsylvania conducted an extensive excavation at the ancient site of Ur in the lower Euphrates Valley, under the direction of Professor Woolley. After digging through the remains of several cities that had existed successively on the same site, Professor Woolley finally came to a thick deposit of blue clay, and digging through it, he discovered another city representing an older and more magnificent civilization than those above this level. Dr. Woolley classified this lower city as being antediluvian in origin. Other scholars have examined his findings and have confirmed his interpretation.
 

Bassett Digby, F. R. G. S., has accumulated a great deal of material on this subject. He writes: "We have two kinds of convincing evidence of man's existence with the mammoths. The first is, numerous discoveries of intermingled bones of man and the mammoth in caves and subterranean deposits, sometimes with the implements, ornaments, and weapons, carved from mammoth ivory of fine quality. The second is the remarkable series of engravings on bones, ivory, and the roofs and wallsof caves that have been found during the last sixty years in Spain, the south of France, and Belgium."
 

This author enumerates a great number of such discoveries. In the cave of Spica on the Jurassic Mountains in northern Moravia, bones of the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the charred remains of several campfires, flint implements, and parts of human jawbones, and human teeth were found. In Croatia, fragments of a dozen human skulls were found mixed up with the bones of the woolly rhinoceros and the mammoth. In another place in Moravia, near Prerov, mammoth bones were found not only below and on the same level as the bones of men, but also above them. More than 25,000 flint implements and hundreds of objects, many of them highly artistic, of reindeer horns, mammoth ivory and bones have been brought to light along with several human skulls and bones. Besides this, a sepulchral chamber containing fourteen complete human skeletons and parts of six others was discovered. Around the neck of one of these skeletons, that of a child, was a necklace of fourteen small mammoth ivory beads. Mammoth bones and flint implements were found near Villendorf, lower Austria. A human skeleton, over which lay a mammoth tusk and the shoulder blade of a mammoth, and near by some woolly rhinoceros ribs were found at Brunn, the chief town of Moravia. Similar discoveries were made in Parts of Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, and elsewhere.
 

There is also a possibility that much of what historians have ascribed to Sumerian civilization in the Babylonian Valley and elsewhere really belongs to the antediluvian period.
 

Sir William Dawson in speaking about the early appearance of man on this earth has this to say: "In the meantime we may consider it as established beyond cavil that man was already in Europe immediately after the glacial period and was contemporary with the species of animals, many of them large and formidable, which at that time occupied the land. He must have entered upon the possession of a world more ample and richer in resources than that which remains to us." Likewise F. A.. Lucus of the American Museum of Natural History writes: "That man was a contemporary of the mammoth in southern Europe is fairly certain, and not only are the remains of the mammoth and man's flint weapons found together, but in a few instances some primeval lancer carved on slate, ivory, or reindeer antlers, sketchy outlines of the beast."
 

This may suffice to show that there is some evidence in the form of human remains which seems to indicate a fairly wide distribution of the antediluvian race, and that it is not unreasonable to assume that man had taken possession of a very large part of the earth as it then existed. But it must also be admitted that the interpretation of some of this evidence is very uncertain and has been disputed by competent judges. Clear and unmistakable fossil remains preserved in the rocks, such as we have in such great abundance of plant and animal life, are still comparatively few. It may be said, however, that the earth has been barely scratched and that only at a few isolated places have careful excavations been undertaken, and future discoveries may bring further evidence to light. It is also quite possible that the areas which were most densely populated are now submerged below the sea or buried by thousands of feet of debris. Sodom and Gomorrah were not only destroyed by fire and brimstone, but the very sites on which they stood are buried below the briny water of the Salt sea, so that no human eye shall ever again behold the cursed ground on which this wicked race once trod. And so it might be with many of the chief population centers of the world that perished in the Flood. For the present at least, it would seem that it was God's deliberate plan, not only to destroy, but utterly to wipe out the memory of that ungodly race of men on account of which this terrible destruction was brought upon this wonderful world which he had made.
 

CHAPTER III
 

The Civilization of the Antediluvian World
 

To complete our picture of the world before the Flood, we must add a word about the condition of man and the civilization as it existed in the world. By civilization we mean the general level of enlightenment and progress of the human race, including the social, moral, and religious conditions of that time.
 

In a textbook for ancient history which has ben widely used in the high schools of the United States and Canada, the author introduces the subject of the first men on earth as follows: "The first men were more helpless than the lowest savages in the world today. They had neither fire nor light, no tools or weapons except their hands, and chance clubs or stones. We do not know a great deal about the earliest steps upward, towards civilization, but they must have been very slow. The first marked gain was the discovery by some savage that he could chip off flakes from a flint stone by striking it with other stones to give it a sharp edge, or keen point, and a convenient shape for the hand to grasp. This invention lifted man into the first stone age, in Europe the stone age began at least 100 thousand years ago."
 

H. G. Wells in hisOutline of History, a book which has had the tremendous distribution of nearly three million copies in English and other languages, describes the early history of man in similar words but with much greater detail. He writes of the savage ancestor of the human trade with the vividness and the assurance of an American newspaper reporter. He speaks as though he had actually seen that race and had observed its gradual emergence from the state of savagery to its modern form of civilization.
 

The same views are found in other textbooks used in our American high schools, colleges, and universities. But willfully these textbook writers and their disciples remain ignorant, as Peter says. The Bible has proved itself to be a reliable and an accurate record of the most ancient historical events. In fact, for many large areas of ancient history the Bible is the only record we have. Archaeology, excavation, and honest historical research have proved the Bible to be an absolutely reliable source book. And yet, when writing these textbooks, modern historians disregard this source material entirely and treat it as though it were non-existent. But this is unscientific, unscholarly, and nothing less than intellectual dishonesty. That branches of the human race have lived in caves, no one will doubt; that large sections of the human family degenerated to the level of savagery cannot be questioned; but to conclude from this that the entire human race has sprung from a race of cave dwellers or has evolved from a race of savages or of beings even lower than a savage, is drawing an unwarranted conclusion.
 

The account which the Bible gives us of the early history of man is quite different from that of these "historical" and "scientific' textbooks. Man begins as a perfect being, created in the image of God and endowed with the most wonderful intellect and gift of human language. In Gen. 2:20 we read that Adam gave names to all the cattle, the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. This is mentioned only incidentally, a it were, but this brief incidental remark provides sufficient evidence to show that the first man was endowed with a keen intellect. It presupposes not only a remarkable insight into the nature of the creatures which were brought before him and which he saw for the first time, but also in proof for his outstanding vocabulary, which enabled him to describe or name with fitting designations the things which God had made. There are few, if any, scientists living today who could recognize and name with such supreme ease all living creatures now found in the world. If there be such, they have acquired this knowledge afer years and years of intensive study.
 

To say, however, that man had his beginning as a being created in the image of God and endowed with a superior intellect does not mean that man was supplied with all the material equipment we commonly connect with the term civilization. God gave him this earth as his abode and commanded him to occupy it and subdue it. This meant that he was to work out for himself a civilization in keeping with his position as lord and ruler of all that God had made. Hence Adam started his career by inventing the most rudimentary implements and tools. We may assume that he knew the use of fire from the beginning. With that and an untarnished intellect, he had all that was necessary to subdue the world and take possession of it.
 

When sin came into the world, the human intellect suffered as did the rest of his faculties. But even after sin had come into the world, men remained superior beings, and the first race was decidedly a superior one.
 

In Gen. 4:17 we read that Cain built a city after the name of his own son Enoch. Savages to not build cities. But the most interesting record of the civilization of this age we find in the verses that follow in the same chapter. We read:"And Adah bare Jabal; he was the father of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." And further on we read: "And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zilla: Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech. Hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt."
 

Here we have condensed in a few verses an interesting Kulturbild. We are told of those that dwelt in cities and those that followed the free and wild life of the nomad and the cattleman. We are informed that musical instruments of the string and the wind variety had been invented and that there were those who were able to play them. Tubalcain was an inventor and a master craftsman in brass and iron and a teacher of all such as work in these metals. This does not only presuppose the mining of these minerals, but a knowledge of smelting and purifying them and of molding and shaping them into all manner of useful tools, implements, and weapons. In the words which Lamech addresses to his wives we have the opening line of a poem or a song which he composed to glorify his own murderous deeds. Gen. 2:11-12 we find a reference to fine gold and precious stones in the Garden of Eden. Savages and cavemen have no use for, nor appreciation of, gold and precious stones. Somewhat later Noah is commanded to build an ark of dimensions which would be considered a large building or boat today. This again presupposes a considerable knowledge of mathematics, the possession and use of tools, and an advanced understanding of the art of building.
 

In other words, we have here at the very beginning of the human race various types of farming, industries, arts, and inventions, music and poetry, or those higher things of life which are only found in an advanced stage of civilization. The inventions of Jubal and Tubalcain were basic and must be counted among the greatest inventions of all time.
 

We must beware, however, not to assume that the civilization and culture of the antediluvian was on the same high level in every part of the inhabited earth. In that respect, conditions no doubt were then as they are now. Individuals or groups who separated themselves too far from the parent stock, or became completely isolated from the rest of the race over a long period of time, or for other reasons, declined and degenerated. There were savages and barbarous cave dwellers and nomads then as in the world of today. But the race also reached high peaks of civilization and accomplishments, comparable to that of the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. It is, of course, very difficult to say just what the world was like in Noah's lifetime. In addition to the very brief reference in the Bible, there are two other possible clues which may give us an answer to that question. The one must be sought in the stage which civilization had attained in the earliest dawn of its postdiluvian nations; the other in the results of modern excavations on the sites of ancient civilizations.
 

It is one of the most remarkable facts of history that the oldest civilizations of the present world known to us, such as the ones found in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, in Crete, in Asia Minor and southern Greece, have peculiar similarities both as to the stages of their development and as to their colossal designs. And all of them are separated by only a comparatively short period of time from the age of Noah and the antediluvian world. Judging from the civilization we find there, Noah must have lived amidst a race enjoying many of the highest results of social and political maturity. In the remotest period of which records survive, we find Egypt exhibiting a degree of civilization that is inexplicable, except on the theory that she had received most of the secrets as a priceless heritage from the world that had perished in the Flood. The magnificent pyramids illustrate the triumphs of architectural science; for their masonry is still unrivaled, their finish still commands admiration, and their proportion and structure reveal an advanced knowledge of geometry and mathematics. Sculpture and statuary had reached a perfection, whether in wood, alabaster, or the hardest granite, which later ages never surpassed in Egypt. The art of picture writing had been perfected. The king's court exhibited all the state and circumstances of well-defined precedence and form. The army, the civil service, and the hierarchy were minutely organized, and society had already divided itself into separate classes, from the wealthy lord to the humble workman and slave. The glass blower, the gold worker, the potter, the tailor, the baker, the butler, the barber, the waiting maids, and the nurse were part of an establishment of the nobility and the priests. The acrobat, the dancer, the harpist, and the singer ministered to the public pleasure, and games of chance and skill were already common.
 

The records of Babylon and of the countries of the Aegean lead to the same conclusion. On Crete a palace dating back to the earliest postdiluvian period has been unearthed spreading over nearly four acres of ground with splendid halls, corridors, living rooms, throne rooms, and treasure rooms and with many frescoes depicting the brilliant life of the lords and ladies of the court. Especially amazing are the bathrooms with a drainage system superior to anything in Europe until the 19^th century. The pipes could be flushed, and a mantrap permitted inspection repair.
 

Clay tablets found with writing show that the art of writing was advanced even beyond that of Egypt. In the remains of Mycenae in southern Greece we find the colossal paired with artistic beauty, reminding one of the builders of the pyramids and the tower of babel.
 

The Code of Hammurabi, discovered by a French explorer in 1992 in Susa, dates back to the time of Abraham. This is the oldest known code of laws in the world, and it shows that the people for whom it was made were already far advanced in civilization. It guarded against bribery of judges and witnesses in court, against careless medical practice, and against ignorant or dishonest building contractors, as well as against the oppression of widows and orphans. Property rights, deeds, wills, marriage settlements, and legal contracts were carefully safeguarded. A similar advanced civilization is found in China and India dating back to about the same period when these early civilizations flourished.
 

There is but one explanation for this rapid progress among the nations following the flood, and that is that they continued where the generation of Noah left off. They transplanted the civilization of the old world to the new, just as the early Europeans immigrant brought with him the culture and civilization of his homeland to America to give it a fresh start in this new and virgin land.
 

These conclusions are confirmed by the recent excavation on the site of Biblical Ur in the lower Euphrates Valley, the ancient home of Abraham. In 1922 the university of Pennsylvania and the British Museum agreed to undertake a joint excavation expedition on the ancient site of Ur in Chaldea. Mr. Leonard Woolley was placed in charge of the undertaking. The results surpassed all expectations. As Schliemann found a series of cities, one superimposed upon the other, at the old site of Homer's Troy, so Woolley discovered at the ancient city of Ur the remains of several cities and civilizations, each built on the remains of the one preceding it. And one of the most surprising and by far the most magnificent discoveries was beneath the remains of what appeared to be the first, or foundation, city. Far down below its foundations he found that deep pits had been sunk and subsequently filled with different materials, and at the bottom of these pits he found the tombs of great chiefs, kings, and queens, by the side of whose burial chambers lay the bones of maid servants, harpists, men at arms, and charioteers. He also found ornaments of gold and lapis lazuli and other remains of exquisite art. One of the skeletons, believed to be that of a queen, had on its head a beautiful helmet or headpiece made of gold.
 

Mr. Wooley, the director of the expedition, gives a very interesting account of these discoveries in his book, Ur of the Chaldees. A few selections from his description will help to make more real the picture of that interesting age.
 

He writes: "At the very end of the season, 1926-27, two important discoveries were made. At the bottom of an earth shaft, amongst masses of copper weapons, there was found the famous gold dagger of Ur, a wonderful weapon whose blade was of gold, its hilt of lapis lazuli decorated with gold studs, and its sheath of gold beautifully worked with an open-work pattern derived from platted grass; with it was another object scarcely less remarkable, a cone-shaped reticule of gold ornamented with a spiral pattern and containing a set of little toilet instruments, tweezers, lancet, and pencil, also of gold. Nothing like these things had ever before come from the soil of Mesopotamia; they revealed an art hitherto unsuspected, and they gave promise of future discoveries outstripping all our hopes... At the end, on the remains of a wooden bier, lay the body of the queen, a gold cup near her hand; the upper part of the body was entirely hidden by a mass of beads of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, and chalcedony, long strings of which, hanging from a collar, had formed a cloak reaching to the waist and bordered below with a broad band of tubular beads of lapis, carnelian, and gold; against the right arm were three long gold pins with lapis heads and three amulets in the form of fish, two of gold and one of lapis, and a fourth in the form of two (sic) seated gazelles, also of gold."
 

On another page Mr. Woolley gives a detailed description of the helmet worn by the king, whose remains they found in that grave. He writes: "It was a helmet of beaten gold made to fit low over the head with cheekpieces to protect the face, and it was in the form of a wig, the locks of hair hammered up in relief, the individual hairs shown by delicate, engraved lines. Parted down the middle, the hair covers the head in flat, wavy tresses and is bound with a twisted fillet; behind it is tied into a little chignon, and below the fillet hangs in rows of formal curls about the ears, which are rendered in high relief and are pierced so as not to interfere with the hearing; similar curls on the cheekpieces to represent whiskers; round the edge of the metal are small holes for the laces which secured inside it a padded cap, of which some traces yet remained."
 

"As an example of goldsmith's work this is the most beautiful thing we have found in the cemetery, finer than the gold daggers or the heads of bulls, and if there were nothing else by which the art of these ancient Sumerians could be judged, we should still, on the strength of it alone, accord them high rank in the roll of civilized races." On the basis of these discoveries Woolley evaluates the civilization of the age represented by these remains as follows: "The contents of the tombs illustrate a very highly developed state of society of an urban type, a society in which the architect was familiar with all the basic principles of construction known to us today. The artist, capable at times of a most vivid realism, followed for the most part standards and conventions whose excellence had been approved by many generations working before him; the craftsman in metal possessed a knowledge of metallurgy and a technical skill which few ancient peoples ever rivaled; the merchant carried on a far-flung trade and recorded his transactions in writing; the army was well organized and victorious; agriculture prospered, and great wealth gave scope to luxury." Woolley himself interpreted his discoveries as representing a most ancient civilization.
 

It is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that man before the Flood had not only multiplied and become a great people, but had also taken possession of the earth and had reached a high stage of civilization and culture. He had achieved great things. It was the golden age in the history of man, of which the various mythologies of later ages are but a faint and indistinct echo.

Picture #10               and                       #11                                                    Picture #12  and 13

But there is another side to this picture. For parallel with these great material and cultural achievements, there runs a steady course of moral decay and spiritual degeneracy. Polygamy began early in the generation of Cain. Murder and violence increased. Lamech killed a young man and boasted of it in a song and poetry to his wives.
 

In the genealogies of Genesis 4 and 5 is traced the development of the human race through two fundamentally different lines, headed by Cain and Seth respectively. The one line is called the children of God and the other the children of men. The characteristic traits of these two brothers were passed on to their descendants. The Cainites were wicked and worldly like their father. The Sethites represented the Church of God on earth during this period, through whom the hope of the promised Saviour was kept alive. But as time went on and men began to multiply, these two streams gradually approached each other, and lines of demarcation which had separated them were gradually wiped away. The children of God were influenced by their ungodly neighbors and became like them. This spiritual change first manifested itself when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and took them wives of all which they chose. These words indicate that they were no longer being guided by the spirit of God, but gave way to unrestrained freedom, or license. The result was that the children of God became like the children of men, carnal and worldly. They were no longer restrained by the will of God, but were governed by the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the world. This intermarriage with the ungodly, followed by a general moral decay and corruption, resulted in evil growing rampant and gradually destroying all that was good in the world. The line of Seth was completely merged with that of Cain, and with the exception of Noah and his family, and a few of the surviving patriarchs, there was now but one generation left on the face of the earth, namely, that of the ungodly. The moral and social conditions of this age are further descried in these words: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that the imagination and the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually... The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth."

There were giants, says the sacred writer. Luther translates this word with tyrants. Giants is the translation of the Hebrew word nephilim, which means "those who fall upon others, brigands, thugs, tyrants." Luther says: "Sie werden recht genannt nephilim, darum dass sie ueberfallen und unterdruecken die unter sie getan sind."
 

These nephilim were famous and renowned in the world. They were great in the affairs of the world, great chiefs who made themselves great names by deeds of war, filling the earth with violence. They were not only godless in their family relations and unrestrained in their carnal lusts, but also violent and lawless in their actions toward their fellow men. There was no fear of God and no respect for His Law. Note how he words corrupt or corrupted, violence, wickedness, and flesh are repeated over and over. Note also that God complains that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Their thoughts were bent only upon doing evil, and as man thinketh, so he is. The generation before the Flood was not a pagan or idolatrous race. Mr. Wooley, in describing the prehistoric graves which he discovered at Ur, makes this interesting observation: "In no single grave has there been any figure of a god, any symbol or ornament that strikes one as being of a religious nature."
 

Idolatry apparently was a later development and is first mentioned after the Flood. The people were proud, lawless, and utterly unconcerned about God and His will. They were progressive and great in the things of this world, but materialistic and carnal in their philosophy of life. In short, man in that age resembled the civilized nations in the world today. Jesus, in describing the age of Noah, says of them: "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark." In short, they were concerned only about the things of the world. Their philosophy of life was a "this world" philosophy.
 

The wickedness of the world was so great that God resolved to destroy the world which He had made. For He said: "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." Only Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, for he was a just man and perfect in his generation. And Noah walked with God.
 

This is a picture of the world before the Flood. The physical world was great and beautiful beyond our present conception. The race of man then living had increased to great numbers and had taken possession of the earth. It was a superior race in matters of this world, progressive, cultured, and enterprising; but arrogant, godless, and wicked. And because of their wickedness God wiped them away and blotted out their memory and with them even destroyed the earth and everything that was therein.

PART II
 

The Biblical Account of the Flood
 

CHAPTER IV
 

Warning of the Coming Flood
 

The Biblical account of the Flood is found in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of genesis. The language of this extraordinary narrative is simple and direct. There is no appearance of legend or poetry, nothing fanciful or extravagant as in the case of the Flood traditions of other nations. It is a masterpiece in descriptive narrative, gripping and dramatic in style.

We are told that man had become altogether wicked and "that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Up to a certain period in that early history of the human race the children of God had kept themselves separate from the children of men; but, as men began to multiply, the line of demarcation gradually vanished. Cordial relations came to exist. The godly intermarried with the ungodly. The result was that the godly were absorbed by the ungodly. Only one class remained. God warned them. He gave them 120 years time for repentance, but to no avail. The downward course once entered upon was continued, and it "repented the Lord that He had made man." The language used here is an expression of the figure of speech called anthropomorphism, by which the thoughts and acts of God are described in language that would be appropriate to men in like circumstances. "And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." Less severe measures would not meet the case. It was necessary to wipe out this wicked generation to save the human race from total annihilation and to make possible the fulfillment of the promise concerning the Seed of the woman. To perpetuate the race, Noah and his family were chosen. We are told that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." He is called a just man and perfect in his generation, and, like Enoch, he walked with God. Noah testified against the wickedness and corruption of his age, for Peter, in his Second Epistle, calls him a "preacher of righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5). But neither God's warning nor Noah's preaching was of any avail, and so God commanded Noah to build an ark for himself and his family and for a place of refuge for every species of animals. God had resolved to bring a flood upon the earth to destroy it. The Hebrew word "mabbul," translated "flood," is used only for the waters of Noah; and it is used only here and in Ps. 29:10. Noah was to build him an ark, or a vessel, to escape the Flood. The word "ark" seems to be derived from the Egyptian language and signifies "chest" or something to float. The word occurs only twice in the Bible, here for the ark of Noah and again in Ex. 2:3-5 for the ark of bulrushes in which the infant Moses was saved from the cruel decree of Pharaoh.
The ark was built of gopher wood and caulked with pitch within and without. The word "gopher" as used here is merely a transliteration of the Hebrew word. Its exact meaning is not known. Luther translates it with "Tannenholz." Other scholars are of the opinion that the cypress is meant, because cypress wood was used very extensively for shipbuilding in ancient times and also because this species of wood is found in great abundance in the Two-River Valley, where the ark may have been built.
 

Other specifications for the ark were: "Rooms (cabins or cells) shalt thou make in the ark. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits; the breadth of it 50 cubits; and the height of it 30 cubits; a window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." (Gen. 6:14-16).
 

The dimensions of the ark are given in cubits. The cubit was a common unit of measurements in ancient times among the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Hebrews. At least two kinds of cubits were known, the common cubit and a cubit which was a handbreadth longer than the common cubit. It is generally supposed that the cubit was the distance from the point of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Translated into our own standard of measurements, the common cubit is estimated at about 18 inches. But Petrie, a noted Egyptologist, is of the opinion that it measured 22½ inches. Whether or not Noah's cubit was comparable to any of the cubits now known to us, no one is able to determine. It is not unreasonable, however, to assume that, in keeping with nature about him, man before the Flood was more fully developed and was of a larger stature than now and the length from his elbow to the tip of his finger was even longer than the suggested 22½ inches. Two feet may be more nearly correct. However, it is obviously impossible to determine with any degree of certainty the exact size of Noah's ark. But accepting the lower figures and placing the cubit at eighteen inches and then again at twenty-four inches, we get the following results: According to the lower standard, the ark would have measured 450 feet in length, seventy-five feet in width, and forty-five feet in height. According to the higher figure, the length would have been six hundred feet; the width, one hundred feet; the height, sixty feet. For the sake of comparison, we may note that the well known battleship Oregon, 348 feet long and sixty-nine feet wide, was built in the same proportions as to length and width as the ark. The famous Titanic was 825 feet long and ninety-three feet wide, with a displacement of 46,000 tons. The ships of the maritime nations of the world never approached the dimensions of the ark until about a half century ago. The ships of the ancient Phoenicians and Romans or the ships of the seafaring nations of the Middle Ages were mere toys when compared with the ark. Marine experts have estimated that since the ark was built with a flat bottom and there was no waste space on the bow or stern, it being square on both ends and straight up on its side, it would have had a displacement of about 43,000 tons, according to the lower figures a displacement near equal to that of the ill-fated Titanic.
 

According to Leonard W. King, the ark had its antetype in a kind of boat still used on the Lower Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Of this vessel, Mr. King writes as follows: "A Kuffah, fhe familiar pitched coracle of Bagdad, would provide an admirable model for the gigantic vessel in which Ut Napishtim rode out the Deluge. Without stem or stern, quite round like a shield - so Herodotus described the kuffah of his day; so , to, is it represented on the Assyrian slabs from Nineveh, where we see it employed for the transport of heavy building material; its form and structure, indeed, suggests a prehistoric origin. The kuffah is one of those examples of perfect adjustment to conditions of use which cannot be improved. Anyone who has traveled in one of these crafts will agree that their storage capacity is immense, for their circular form and curved sides allow for every inch of space to be utilized. It is almost impossible to upset them, and their only disadvantage is lack of speed. For their guidance, all that is required is a steersman with a paddle, as is indicated in the Epic. It is true that the larger Kuffah of today tends to increase in diameter as compared to weight, but this detail might well be ignored in picturing the vessels of Ut Napishtim... The use of pitch and bitumen for smearing the vessel inside and out, though unusual even in Mesopotamian shipbuilding, is precisely the method employed in the kuffah's construction."
 

A further specification for the ark was: "A window shalt thou make unto the ark and in a cubit shalt thou finish it" (Gen. 6:16).The question is: "What was meant by this window and were was it placed?" Luther says the Hebrew word translated window literally means "the light of noonday." The new American translation renders it: "You are to make a roof for the ark, finishing it off at the top to the width of a cubit." Delitzsch says the Hebrew word means "double light," or "midday." The passage can signify only that a hole or opening for light and air was to be constructed so as to reach within a cubit of the edge of the roof. A window only a cubit square could not possibly be intended, for the Hebrew wore signifies generally a space for light, or space by which light could be admitted into the ark and in which the window, or lattice for opening and shutting, could be fixed. Dr. Stoeckhardt took a similar view and understood it to mean an opening of some kind to be left all around the top of the ark, a cubit below the roof. The exact meaning is therefore not absolutely certain. So much, however, is clear that Noah was to provide some kind of an opening in the ark to admit the necessary light and make provision for ventilation.
 

Father Kircher, in his book Arca Noe, published in 1675, presents an interesting description of the ark. He divides it into small compartments for the various species, provides for a drinking place on each floor. The land animals he placed on the first floor, the food he stored on the second floor, and the birds and Noah's family were placed on the third floor. He greatly reduces the number of species of animals and maintains that besides the window mentioned in Genesis there were small openings all over the ark through which the air entered and that the ventilation system was similar to that of the large ocean liner of today with its windows and portholes. The book is in the New York Public Library.
 

The three stories of the ark were to be subdivided into cabins or cells. This would also imply that these cabins were arranged according to some definite plan, possibly in rows on each side of the ark. With a passageway through the middle, or vice versa. And also that these cabins were to be placed in tiers, one above the other, for we know that the ark was at least 45 feet high, taking the smaller standard for our measurement. This would leave approximately 15 feet for each story, subtracting from this only the amount of space needed for the floors. We can, therefore, safely assume that this space was used in the most profitable way and that the cabins took up the entire space between the floor and the ceiling to make possible the placing of the larger and the smaller animals in a manner that would ensure the most economical use of space within the ark.
 

"Thus did noah," continues the sacred writers; "according to all that God had commanded him, so did he"(Gen. 6:22):. Like Enoch, Abraham, and other great saints, he believed the impossible because God had spoken it. It was a fearful and unheard-of thing which God had threatened to bring upon this earth. No one believed it, and no one considered it possible. The great masses of people, that is, the majorities of his age, were against him. The "wisdom" of that world as represented by the great men of thought and of action did not believe it. The experience of the past was against him. It seemed so utterly unreasonable that God should destroy the earth upon which He had lavished such magnificent kindness and which He had so recently made. Nor were there any outward or visible indications that this overwhelming calamity was approaching. But "by faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith" (Heb. 11:7).We can well imagine that Noah suffered insult and derision from the scoffing curiosity of those who watched him build his ark. On the other hand, we can well imagine that Noah hired workmen, carpenters, and ship builders from among his ungodly neighbors to assist him in the building of his ark. For the heavy timbers required in the construction of a ship of such formidable dimensions make it well-nigh impossible that the building was done by Noah and his sons alone. But just as these men assisted Noah and his sons in the building of the ark which was to save the human race from total destruction, yet themselves perished in the Flood, so there are today men and women assisting in the building of the Christian Church, either by their own labors or by their contribution of talents and gifts, and yet themselves are lost, because they do not accept with all their heart the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. "The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing" (1 Peter 3:20).
 

But His waiting was without avail. The generations of Noah went on "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came and took them all away" (Matt. 24:38-39; Luke 17:27).
 

When the ark had been completed and the period of grace had expired, Noah received instructions to enter the ark with his own household and with the animals which were to be kept alive. At the beginning of the 600^th year of Noah's life the ark was finished, and on the tenth day of the second month of that year he entered the ark. This raises the question what was the first month? If, as some hold, the first month corresponded to the end of our month of September and the beginning of October, it would mean that the Flood began, according to our reckoning, about November of the 600^th year of Noah, or the 1,656th year of the world. And with Noah went into the ark his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, eight souls altogether. They took two of every kind of animal, but of the clean animals they took seven, which, according to Luther and other interpreters, means three pairs to continue the species and one male for the purpose of sacrifice. The distinction between clean and unclean beasts evidently did not originate with Moses, but dates back to the very beginning of the practice of worshiping God through the sacrifice of animals. Whether God Himself made this distinction, or whether, as Delitzsch thinks, it arose from a certain innate feeling of the human mind which detects types of sin and corruption in many animals and instinctively recoils from them, cannot be known.
 

Noah also took with him the necessary food for his family and for all the animals that were with him in the ark, as God had commanded him.
 

The embarkation was completed within a week. What a grand and impressive sight it must have been to see this conglomeration of animals gathering about Noah! Here were the great and the small, the fierce and the timid, the lion and the lamb, obediently entering the ark and taking their places in the compartments prepared for them by Noah. The last to enter were Noah and his family; and God Himself, as we are told, shut and sealed the door behind them. By closing the door Himself, God indicated that the time of grace for the rest of the world had come to an end. There was a finality about this act of God. The door closed to save those that were within and to seal the doom of those that remained without. The end of the world was at hand.
 

CHAPTER V

Some problems Concerning the Ark and Its Cargo
 

The Biblical account of the Deluge is a sane and sober narrative having all the characteristics of an eyewitness report, but his does not mean that every detail of this great world catastrophe is described or explained to the complete satisfaction of the modern reader. It would be folly to make such a claim. It must be admitted that there are a great many difficulties in the Biblical account of the Flood for which we are able to find only a partial solution or no solution at all. But his does not in any way militate against the trustworthiness of this record or against the historicity of the Flood itself.
 

The Egyptian pyramids have survived these many thousands of years as a magnificent monument to the greatness of the race. that built them. We know something about these builders and also something about the arts and skill they had developed But there remain innumerable questions for which we have no satisfactory answer. How, for example, was it possible for a people at the very dawn of human history to erect monuments of such colossal dimensions and construct them with blocks of stone so huge that today we could move them only with the aid of steam and electrical Power and the most gigantic machinery yet devised by man! How were these massive rocks transported to the place where these pyramids were built! How were the stones cut and polished with such precision? How was it possible for those ancient engineers to raise these enormous blocks of stone to heights which have not been reached by the building arts until very recent times? And so we could continue to raise questions and find no answer altogether adequate or satisfactory. Many arguments could be advanced to show that no race of men could have built these pyramids at a time when man is supposed to have been just emerging from savagery. And yet there they are, and there they have been these four thousand years, and all the arguments of the skeptics will not remove them.
 

Furthermore, we must remember that the Biblical account of the Flood is extremely brief, when considering the magnitude of the catastrophe it describes.
 

On February 10, 1942, the luxury liner Normandie in some mysterious way caught fire in New York harbor and was all but completely wrecked. The report of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, describing the disaster, consisted of 141 lines of standard newspaper-column length. And though the report, written by an expert reporter, was graphic and quite complete in its description of what happened, it left many important questions unanswered. The Biblical account of the Flood, beginning with the covenant God made with Noah and ending with the sacrifice of thanksgiving at the end of the Flood, consists of 210 lines of about the same length as the standard newspaper-column lines. But the report on the Flood proper, that is, the section which deals with the actual event of the Flood, from the day that Noah entered the ark until his disembarking a little more than a year later, consists of 140 lines or is about the same length as the Post-Dispatch report on the Normandie disaster. Here the report dealt with a disaster of only one ship, the loss of one human life, and a period of time dealing in hours only. 
 

The Biblical report deals with a world disaster, the wiping out of the entire human race except Noah and his family, the destruction of animals and the plants in every part of the earth and involving forces of nature on a scale unparalleled in all the history of the earth. If 140 lines of newspaper report were not sufficient to clear up all the problems arising out of the Normandie disaster, but required further extensive congressional investigation, how then can we expect that 140 lines or 210 lines, or 2,000 lines for that matter, would be sufficient to tell all that we should like to know about this world disaster. The sacred writer evidently had no intention of describing in detail all that happened when that first world came to an end. To do that would have required a book larger than the whole Bible itself. We must expect, therefore, to find many questions that we can answer only by guessing.
 

One of the questions which has given rise to doubt and serious skepticism in the minds of many is the question concerning the ark. Was the ark large enough to serve the purpose for which Noah was to build it; that is, would it serve as a shelter for Noah and his family and for representatives of all the animals not able to live in water and, in addition, have room for a sufficient quantity of food to keep them alive for the duration of the Flood? Without a doubt this is one of the greatest difficulties connected with the Flood, and one need not wonder that because of it skeptics have denied the possibility or at least have denied the universality, of the Flood.
 

According to the Brockhaus Encyclopedia, the number of living species of animals is estimated at 500,000. Other estimates range from one to three million. That all these were in the ark, not as single individuals, but in pairs, or even in groups of seven; that, in addition, a sufficient quantity of food was stored to keep this immense cargo of living creatures alive for more than one year, seems utterly incredible and a physical impossibility.
 

To find a solution for this problem, we must first answer tow other questions. (1) What was the capacity of the ark? (2) How many species of animals are there, and how many of these had to be taken into the ark to preserve their kind?
 

Concerning the first question, Charles A. Totten, professor of Military Science and Tactics at Yale University, writes as follows: "The dimensions of the ark are given in the Bible as 300 cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. It had three decks. Regarding the cubit as eighteen inches, the floor space on one deck would be 33,750 square feet. On the three decks of the ark there was then a total of 101,250 square feet of deck space. But since it was likely that the small and medium-sized animals were put in cages, in tiers, one above the other, not only the floor space, but the cubic space must be considered. The cubic capacity of the ark, at 18 inches as the measure of cubit, was for each deck 500,000 cubic feet, or 1,500,000 cubic feet for the three decks.
 

"However, as we have seen, it is not at all certain that the cubit of the ark was eighteen inches. There was never any definite length of the cubit in ancient days. Different cubits existed. Most common was the cubit of the elbow, that is , the distance from the elbow to the finger tip. There was also the cubit of the arm pit or the distance of the whole arm. Naturally these lengths vary with the size of the person measured. The cubit also varied from country to country. Ancient Egypt had two lengths for it at different times. One was the length of a new-born child; the other was the length of king at a certain age. We may say that a cubit of 20.7 inches was about the standard measure of the Egyptian and also of the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Babylonian Empires. Moses was directed to work according to a pattern shown him. The so-called 'great cubit' of Ezekiel revealed to him by God was an ordinary cubit plus a hand's breadth, or about two feet.
 

"Supposing this to have been the length of the cubit, the ark was then 600 feet long and 100 feet wide and sixty feet high, having a capacity of 3,600,000 cubic feet. An ordinary cattle car on the railroad carries of cattle, from eighteen to twenty head, or of hog from sixty to eighty head; or of sheep, from eighty to one hundred head. One thousand of such cars, duly proportioned, could be stored away in Noah's ark. Such was the capacity of Noah's ark, a ship whose dimensions have , from general misunderstanding of their true significance, have persistently ridiculed as unequal for the task. Certainly there was room in such a craft for one hundred menageries larger than Barnum, the great America showman, ever saw in his wildest reveries, and room to spare for food."
 

It must also be remembered that the large species of animals are comparatively few, even including those that are now extinct. It has been estimated that land mammalia above the size of sheep at the present time number about 290; those from the sheep to the rats, 757; and those smaller than the rats, 1,359. The average size is about that of a cat, a pair of which would require less than two square feet of space.
 

The second question concerns the problem of species. How many species were in the ark? The answer to that question depends upon how one regards the term species.Dr. Price writes: "And with the new light which we have received regarding the subject of species partly through experiments with changes in environments during the embryonic stage, and partly through crossing under the methods taught by Mendel, we now know that the old specific and generic distinctions were marked off on altogether too narrow lines. It is perfectly evident that both animals and plants have varied much more in a natural way than used to be though possible, and hence two or more comparatively different forms may very well be supposed to be of common descent. From this, it further follows that the problems of accounting for the modern diversity of animals as the survivors of the universal deluge has been greatly simplified, for the more variation we admit as possible, the easier it is to account for the present fauna and flora since fewer original forms would be required to begin the present stock."
 

And Mr. M. C. Edwards says: "Of course, all the once created species were not there (in the ark), but certain representatives species found in that part of the globe were there with potentialities that were almost infinite. Take the classic case that Darwin quotes - the pigeon. He found that if the almost endless varieties of pigeons were allowed to breed together, they went back to the rock pigeon; therefore, if there were seven rock pigeons in the ark, there were thousands of varieties potentially preserved. The same may be said about others, e.g., the dog."
 

The term species may be defined as a group of individuals of animals or plants which breed together freely and reproduce fertile offspring. It is known that species of the same genus are occasionally interfertile and, therefore, might have required only one pair to represent them in the ark. The same applies, for instance, to the cat genus with its many species (lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, etc.), to the numerous varieties and breeds of the dog family, etc. All horses, whether Shetland ponies, racers, or heavy draft horses, form one species and may have descended from a common ancestor. Likewise, a single pair of cattle may have represented the entire bovine family. Not every variety of this large group need to have been in the ark. A representative was sufficient to supply the great number of varieties of forms found on the earth day.
 

That this kind of argumentation is not unreasonable nor impossible can also be shown from the example of the human race. The entire human race as now existing in the world has descended from Noah and his three sons. Yet we know that mankind is now divided into a great variety of distinct colors and races. We speak of the Caucasian race, the Mongolian race, the Ethiopian race, the red and the brown race. All have come from the same stock, Noah, and yet what a difference in size, color, build, and general appearance. When this change came or what caused the change has remained an anthropological mystery.
 

Concerning the difficult question of species Dr. Milton A. Petty of the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Maryland, writes: "The base unit in this natural system of classifying plants and animals is the species. Now this species is not fixed and invariable group as mortal man knows them, but a species is a group of living, or once living, beings delineated by scientific description. They are therefore subject to more or less delineation by man if its status quo is not suitable. A species to a biologist is just a pigeon-hole for a group of beings that may still be a heterogeneous mixture of types. A species is then a concept in the eye of the scientist. Just what a species is in the eyes of the Creator we do not know. We do not know the division lines of 'after their kind.' "
 

"Grasses bring forth grass seed, and when we hear that some plant-breeder has successfully crossed two different species or even two different genera, do not fret...remember that these so described species and genera were delineated by man, not by God. These grasses still bring forth see after their kind. The species of beings that we know are not altogether first. Environment may play a role so great as to make a single type in fifteen different habitats appear to be as many different types. Infinite variations may be obtained by the hybridization of two types. I have seen several thousands of types that originated from two beginning types. The ability of protoplasm to mold itself to difficult surroundings is absolutely essential to its continued existence."
 

We must also note that after the Flood, God again repeated the blessing which He had pronounced upon Adam and the first world. Concerning the animals He said: "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 in the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth" (Gen. 8:17).God's blessings are always effective. It was a creative blessing and implied that the world should again be filled with a great variety of each species able to survive and live in the new world emerging from the universal Flood.

The other problem to be noted here is the gathering of the animals by Noah and their entrance and sojourn in the ark. With regard to the entrance of the animals into the ark, it should be noticed that our text definitely states that they came two and two and that they came male and female of all flesh. In the expression "They came" it is clearly indicated that the animals collected about Noah and entered the ark on their own accord, that is, without any special effort on the part of Noah. The animals came by instinct, but God had planted in them this special instinct for this occasion. Just as, in the beginning, God had brought the animals to Adam that he should name them, so He now brought them to Noah that he might keep them in the ark for a replenishing of the earth after the Flood.

It has been objected that it would be impossible to conceive of an assemblage of all the living creatures of the different regions of the earth in any one spot. The unique fauna of Australia certainly could have neither reached the ark, nor regained their home after leaving it; for they are separated from the nearest continuous land by vast breadths of ocean. The polar bear surely could not survive a journey from his native icebergs to the sultry plains of Mesopotamia; nor could the animals of South America have reached these except by traveling the whole length of North America and after miraculously crossing the Bering Strait, having pressed westward across the whole breadth of Asia. That even a deer should accomplish such a pedestrian feat is inconceivable, but how could a sloth accomplish it, a creature which lives in trees, never, if possible, descending to the ground, and able to advance on only by the slowest and most painful motions? Or how could tropical creatures find supplies of food in passing through such a variety of climates and over vast spaces of hideous deserts?

Picture l# 14

Here is another problem which cannot be solved to the entire satisfaction of human reason and experience, but it must be remembered what was stated at the beginning, namely, that since Creation the Deluge is the most stupendous miracle in the history of our planet and that the miraculous element appears in all the phases of its history. And yet some of these difficulties will vanish when we bear in mind that the climatic conditions of the world before the Flood were quite different than now. There were no arctics and no deserts in that world, no high mountains barriers to separate one region from another, and this uniform climate also made possible a more uniform distribution of animals over the entire face of the earth. It is therefore not at all necessary to assume that the lumbering polar bear was called from his arctic habitat to the sultry plains of Mesopotamia to keep him and his generation form total annihilation, nor was it necessary to transport the animal denizens from Australia or South America to the valley of the Two Rivers to keep alive seed of their kind. There is every reason to believe that all of these animals were distributed over the face of the earth and therefore were found in the regions near or adjacent to the place where the ark was built.
 

Then, again, there is the question of species, to which reference was made before. The animals of the postdiluvian world found a changed world with respect to both climate and food supplies; but as these animals multiplied and spread to reoccupy the earth, they adapted themselves to the changed conditions, and differences developed which did not exist before. The animals which could not make this adaptation perished and disappeared entirely, as, for example, the many varieties of prehistoric reptiles and many others.
 

But even granting that the distribution of animals of the first world might have been according to biological zones, similar to what it is now, even then it would not necessarily follow that these animals could not have found their way into the ark. It must be recalled that God gave the world 120 years time for repentance, which means that the Flood was a long time in preparation, and the instinct which God implanted in the animals by which they were brought to Noah might have been operative for many generations. That is to say, the migration of those animals which God had intended to save might have extended over several generations of animals. Large migrations of certain species of animals over great distances have occurred since. Why could it not have taken place then? And, again, the distribution of land masses and their relation to one another was not necessarily the same as it is now, as was pointed out before. There is good evidence to show that large bodies of land which once existed have disappeared in the ocean and that other bodies of land were separated from the parent body by the inroads of the sea.
 

There still remain other problems concerning the ark and the animals in the ark, such as the food supply necessary to feed for a whole year all that were in the ark; the care of the animals. How was it possible for eight people to feed and to provide drink and other care for all the different animals that were with them in the ark; the cleaning of the ark; the natural increase of the animals in the ark; and other similar questions. Various suggestions have been offered as a possible solution. An English writer advances the theory that Noah was in possession of some mysterious oil of which a drop was sufficient to satisfy the hunger and the thirst of man and animals for a whole day at a time, that is, a sort of antediluvian vitamin tablet. But this seems rather fantastic. Others have suggested that the animals hibernated during the greater part of the time while they were in the ark. This would solve many or all the problems mentioned, but it, too, implies a miraculous interference with the mode of life of most of the animals. But if we are willing to accept the possibility of the miraculous, some such solution is at least conceivable. The Flood as a whole was a stupendous, miraculous interference with the laws governing the entire universe; a temporary suspension of the laws governing the routine and habits of a select group of animals for one year is but an insignificant detail in comparison. The Biblical account of the Flood is so brief, and our knowledge of the world before the Flood, and particularly of the ark, is so limited that here, as elsewhere, many questions must remain unanswered.
 

Another problem that might be mentioned is the preservation of plant life during this great world catastrophe.
 

The question may well be raised, if the Flood was of such long duration and caused such tremendous changes on the face of the earth, how was it possible for plant life to survive? No positive or completely satisfactory answer can be given to that question. We know that Noah took all kinds of foods into the ark for his own family and for the animals that were with him, and this would imply seeds of the various plants known to him. But it is not likely that the plant life of the earth was preserved in that manner. It is true that the Flood was a world revolution which caused tremendous changes on the surface of the earth, but it is not unreasonable to assume that in God's providence some areas of the earth remained relatively undisturbed and there plant life in some form or another survived, and from there it gradually spread over the rest of the earth in the decades and centuries that followed, adapting itself to the changed conditions of the new world. It was not God's purpose to annihilate His creation completely but to punish the first world because of its godlessness. In His wisdom He found ways and means to preserve the animals in the ark and the plant life in some other miraculous manner, about which no further details are revealed in the Bible.
 
 
 

CHAPTER VI
 

Was the Ark Discovered
 

During the year 1942, readers of church papers, magazines, and the public press were aroused by a detailed report of an alleged discovery of the remains of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat. This most remarkable discovery was said to have been made by Mr. Vladimar Roskivitsky, a converted Russian aviator, who since then severed his connection with the godless Bolshevicks, came to America, and was selling Bibles when these articles first appeared. Because of the great interest these articles aroused and the wide discussion they caused, it is thought well to include here in this discussion of Noah's ark an account of this supposed discovery. The following is a verbatim account of this event as told by Mr. Roskivitsky and as reprinted in the Banner of the Reformed Church, dated November 27, 1942:
 

"It was in the days just before the Russian revolution that this story really begins. A group of us Russians aviators were stationed at a lonely temporary outpost about twenty-five miles northwest of Mount Ararat. The day was dry and terribly hot, as August days so often are in this semi-desert land.
 

Even the lizards were flattened out under the shady sides of rocks or twigs, their mouths open and tongues lashing out as if each panting breath would be their last. Only occasionally would a tiny wisp of air rattle the parched vegetation and stir up a choking cloudlet of dust.
 

"Far up on the side of the mountain we could see a thundershower, while still farther up we could see the white snow cap of Mount Ararat, which has snow all the year around because of its great height. How we longed for some of that snow!
 

"Then the miracle happened. The captain walked in and announced that plane number seven had its new supercharger installed and was ready for high altitude tests, and ordered my buddy and me to make the test. At last we could escape the heat!
 

"Needless to say, we wasted no time getting on our parachutes, strapping on our oxygen cans, and doing all the half dozen other things that have to be done before 'going up.'
 

"Then a climb into the cockpits, safety belts fastened, a machinist gives the prop a flip and yells, 'Contact,' and in less time than it takes to tell it we were in the air. No use wasting time warming up the engine when the sun already had it nearly red hot.
 

"We circled the field several times until we hit the fourteen-thousand-foot mark and then stopped climbing for a few minutes to get used to the altitude.
 

"I looked over to the right at the beautiful snow-capped peak, now just a little above us, and, for some reason I can't explain, turned and headed the plane straight toward it.
 

"My buddy turned around and looked at me with question marks in his eyes, but there was too much noise for him to ask questions. After all, twenty-five miles doesn't mean much at a hundred miles an hour.
 

"As I looked down at the great stone battlements surrounding the lower part of the mountain, I remembered having heard it had never been climbed since the year seven hundred before Christ, when some pilgrims were supposed to have gone up there to scrape tar off an old shipwreck to make good luck emblems to wear around their necks to prevent their crops being destroyed by excessive rainfall. The legend said they had left in haste after a bolt of lightning struck near them and had never returned. Silly ancients! Who ever heard of looking for a shipwreck on a mountain-top?
 

"A couple of circles around the snow-capped dome, and then a long swift glide down the south side, and then we suddenly came upon a perfect little gem of a lake, blue as an emerald, but still frozen over on the shady side. We circled around and returned for another look at it. Suddenly my companion whirled around and yelled something and excitedly pointed down at the overflow end of the lake. I looked and nearly fainted.
 

"A submarine? No, it wasn't, for it had stubby masts, but the top was rounded over with only a flat cat walk about five feet across down the length of it. What a strange craft, built as though the designer had expected the waves to roll over the top most of the time and had engineered it to wallow in the sea like a log, with those stubby masts carrying only enough sail to keep it facing the waves! (Years later, in the Great Lakes, I saw the famous 'whaleback' ore carriers with this same kind of rounded deck.)
 

"We flew down as close as safety permitted and took several circles around it. We were surprised when we got close to it at the immense size of the thing, for it was as long as a city block and would compare very favorably with the modern battleships of today. It was grounded on the shore of the lake with about one fourth of the rear end still running out into the water, and its extreme rear was three fourths under water. It had been partly dismantled on one side near the front, and on the other side there was a great door nearly twenty feet square but with the door gone. This seemed quite out of proportion as even today ships seldom have doors even half that large.
 

"After seeing all we could from the air, we broke all speed records back to the airport.
 

"When we related our find, the laughter was loud and long. Some accused us of getting drunk on too much oxygen, and there were many other remarks too numerous to relate.
 

"The captain, however, was serious. He asked several questions and ended by saying, 'Take me up there, I want to look at it.'
 

"We made the trip without incident and returned to the airport.
 

" 'What do you make of it?' I asked, as we climbed out of the plane.
 

" 'Astounding,' he replied. 'Do you know what ship that is?'
 

" 'Of course not, sir.'
 

" Ever hear of Noah's ark?'
 

" 'Yes sir. But I don't understand what the legend of Noah's ark has to do with us finding this strange thing fourteen thousand feet up on a mountaintop.'
 

" 'This strange craft,' explained the captain, 'is Noah's ark. It has been sitting up there for nearly five thousand years. Being frozen up for nine or ten months of the year, it couldn't rot and has been on cold storage, as it were, all this time. You have made the most amazing discovery the age.'
 

"When the captain sent his report to the Russian government, it aroused considerable interest, and the Czar sent two special companies of soldiers to climb the mountain. One group of fifty men attacked on one side, and the other group of one hundred men attacked the mountain from the other side.
 

"Two weeks of hard work were required to chop out a trail along the cliffs of the lower part of the mountain, and it was nearly a month before the ark was reached.
 

"Complete measurements were taken and plans drawn of it as well as many photographs, all of which were sent to the Czar of Russia.
 

"The ark was found to contain hundreds of small rooms and some very large with high ceilings. The large rooms usually had a fence of great timbers across them, some of which were two feet thick, as though designed to hold beasts ten times as large as elephants, somewhat like one sees today at a poultry show; only instead of chicken wire, they had rows of thinly wrought irons bars along the fronts.
 

"Everything was heavily painted with a waxlike paint resembling shellac, and the workmanship of the craft showed all the signs of a high type of civilization.
 

"The wood used throughout was oleander, which belongs to the cypress family and never rots, which, of course, coupled with the facts of it being painted and it being frozen most of the time, accounted for its perfect preservation
 

"The expedition found on the peak of the mountain above the ship the burned remains of the timbers which were missing out of the one side of the ship. It seems that these timbers had been hauled up to the top of the peak and used to build a tiny one room shrine, inside of which was a rough stone hearth like the altars the Hebrews use for sacrifices, and it had either caught fire from the altar or been struck by lighting, as the timbers were considerably burned and charred over and the roof was completely burned off.
 

"A few days after this expedition sent its report to the Czar, the government was overthrown and the godless Bolshevism took over, so that the records were never made public and probably were destroyed in the zeal of the Bolsheviks to discredit all religion and belief in the truth of the Bible.
 

"We Russians of the air fleet escaped through Armenia, and four of us came to America where we could be free to live according to the 'good old Book,' which we had seen for ourselves to be absolutely true, even to as fantastic sounding a thing like a world flood."
 

That is the story as allegedly told by Mr. Roskivitsky. The question arises whether we are to accept this story or not. If it is true, we certainly would have a most remarkable testimony for the truth of the Biblical account of the Flood. However, I should like to call attention to the following facts:
 

1) The story is well told, and the subject is such as appeals to the imagination. Every Bible student would like just such evidence to annihilate forever all skepticism and cheap ridicule that has been leveled at Noah's ark and the story of the Biblical Flood. But for that very reason the reader must not be carried away with unreasonable enthusiasm, for it is very easy in a case like this for the wish to become the father of the belief.
 

2) The report claims that a great number of men, numbering more than 150, actually saw the ark on Mount Ararat, but, strangely enough, of this great number there is only one known eyewitness to tell the story of this most remarkable discovery. The official report prepared for the Czar was lost or willfully destroyed by the Bolsheviks because of their hostility to the Bible. It is possible, of course, but we must consider it strange indeed that this most important document, dealing with one of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever made, would reach its destination just in time to meet with such a disastrous fate. One would also expect that a copy of such an important report would have been retained and signed by all the witnesses because of its significance to science and Bible knowledge and that, of the 150 odd men that are supposed to have visited the scene and carefully investigated the ark, at least one or a few men would have reported this strange discovery.
 

3) It is claimed that the ark was discovered at an elevation of fourteen thousand feet and that it required about a month for the searching expedition of 150 men to reach the place where it was held in eternal ice. This raises several important questions. If the ark actually came to rest at that elevation, how could the animals in the ark have descended from so high a mountain down is steep, icy, and impassable slopes? It is conceivable that some of the animals could have descended without receiving harm, but many would have perished.
 

The Bible says that the ark rested on Mount Ararat, but this does not mean that it necessarily rested on one of the very highest peaks of this rugged mountain chain. Mountain peaks of fourteen thousand feet elevation are covered with ice and snow the year round. It is admitted that the wood of the ark may have been preserved during these millennia, being kept in a constant frozen condition, but what about snow slides, rock movements, or the fearful storms that occur in mountain regions? It seems incredible that a structure so large as the ark could have escaped uninjured or complete destruction during the 4,500 years of action by snow, rocks, and mountain storms.
 

4) it is extremely difficult to verify or disprove the report. Just which of the many mountain peaks in the Armenian Highlands was Mount Ararat? On which of these did the ark come to rest? If the exact peak or even in a general way the location of this discovery had been given, the story could be verified. But to send and expedition to the Armenian Mountain Range for the search of Mount Ararat and the ark with so little direction is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. It would be an extremely costly expedition and , therefore, very difficult to find an archaeologically minded millionaire to finance such an undertaking. In short, the story has all the characteristics of the Old Testament apocrypha. It is good to read, it appeals to the imagination, but lacks positive proof.
 
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER VII
 

The Beginning and the Duration of the Flood
 

After all preparations had been completed and Noah and his family had entered the ark, the storm broke, and there followed the most destructive catastrophe this world has ever experienced or will experience until heaven and earth will pass away on the day of final Judgment. The record of this event is given in simple language, terse and majestic. The account reads like the logbook of a sea captain, and it is quite possible that Noah actually did record from day to day the events here related. The account reads as follows: "In the 600^th year of Noah's life, on the 17^th day of the second month, on that very day the fountains of the great abyss were all broken open, and the windows of the heavens were opened. (The rain fell on the earth for forty days and nights.) That same day Noah with Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah's sons, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons accompanying them, went into the ark, together with all the various kinds of wild beasts, all the various kinds of domestic animals, all the various kinds of land reptiles, and all the various kinds of birds, everything with feathers and wings; of all creatures in which there was the breath of life, a pair of each, joined Noah, in the ark.
 

Those that entered were a male and female of every kind of animal, as God had commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in. The flood continued for forty days upon the earth. The waters mounted and lifted the ark so that it rose above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, so that the ark floated on the surface of the waters. The waters rose higher and higher on the earth, until the highest mountains everywhere under the heavens were all covered. Fifteen cubits above them the waters rose, so that the mountains were covered. Every creature that moved on the earth perished, including birds, domestic animals, wild beasts, all the land reptiles, and all mankind. Of all that was on the land, everything in whose nostrils was the breath of life died; every living thing was blotted off the face of the earth, both men and animals and reptiles and birds; they were blotted off the earth, so that Noah alone was left, and those that were with him in the ark. The waters rose on the earth for 150 days." (Gen. 7:11-24. Smith and Goodsppd Version.)
 

There is a majestic awfulness and awe-inspiring solemnity about this picture. There is nothing here of the trivial or the spectacular, nothing to arouse the carnal sympathies for those men and women and children that perished in this fearful destruction. We see nothing of the death struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agonies of husband and wife, of parent and child, as they flee in terror before the rising waters, climbing from hilltop and to ever greater heights, only to be pursued even there by a remorseless foe until they all perished. Nor is a word said of the sadness of those who were safe within the ark, looking out upon the destruction that was wrought all about them. The Babylonian tradition of the Flood, which in many respects is similar to the Biblical, differs widely at this point. Tears are shed in heaven over this catastrophe, and even consternation seizes upon the heavenly inhabitants, while with the ark itself the Chaldean Noah is represented as saying: "When the storm came to an end and the terrible water spouts ceased, I opened the window and the light smote upon my face; I looked at the sea, tentatively observing, and the whole humanity had returned to mud. Like seaweed the corpses floated. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and wept, and my tears fell upon my face."

Picture #15
There is one profound impression left upon the reader of the Biblical account of the Flood, and that is that of utter desolation. There is a scene of indescribable sadness all about Noah, and there prevails an awful silence, the silence of universal death. We hear nothing but the moaning of the surging waters that bear up the ark. We see not an object to break the monotony of the dull and shoreless expanse of this universal ocean. "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 the earth and every man. ... The were destroyed from the earth, and Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark."
 
 

Macaulay has pictured the appalling ruin of the Deluge in the following lines:
 
 

With the words: "Then God remembered Noah and all them within the ark," the narrative turns to the description of the gradual decrease of the water until dry land again appeared. The falling of the waters is described with the same pictorial language as its rapid rise. God remembered Noah. This was a dynamic remembering and produced definite results. For forty days the Flood had increased so that the waters covered the highest mountains to the depth of fifteen cubits of water, and it remained at that level for 150 days.
 

The statement that the waters covered all the highest hills under the whole heaven clearly indicates that the Deluge was a universal flood. In fact, the universality of the Flood is everywhere implied in the entire Biblical account, as passages such as the following clearly show: "And the Lord said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth Me that I have made them" Or, "And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me...and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." Or, "Behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die...For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." 

These and other statements similar to them cannot be interpreted to mean anything else but that the entire earth, even the highest elevation on the face of the earth, was completely submerged by the floods of the Deluge.

Picture# 16
Some have argued that a universal Flood cannot be meant because of the difficulties involve, but that the words of the Jewish writer must be interpreted in the sense of what he meant by the whole world. To the Jew, when Genesis was written, the world was very small, comprising in general the territory bounded in the north by the Black Sea and the Armenian Highlands; in the east, by the territory immediately beyond the Tigris; in the south, by the Persian Gulf and Abyssinia in Africa; and the west, by the eastern islands of the Mediterranean Sea. But in reply to this and similar views it must be said that it is not a question of what the Jews knew and the extent of man's habitation when Genesis was written, but that the sacred writer clearly states that the whole earth, be it large or small, was destroyed by the Flood and that the entire human race as wiped off the face of the earth, except the eight souls of the family of Noah. And when Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament refer to the Flood, their statements imply that they understood it to have been a universal flood, just as Moses describes it. We accept Genesis and the rest of the Bible as more than a mere human document. It is God's own infallible record, and therefore no other interpretation is possible.
 

After the end of the 150 days, the Waters were abated. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark rested upon Mount Ararat. The Ararat Mountains are located in Armenia between the Black and Caspian Seas. The tallest peak is said to be 17,750 feet high and is still called by the natives the Kuhi Nuch, that is, the Mountain of Noah. Ararat is also the name of the country. That the ark settled on Ararat does not mean that it settled on that tall peak towering 17,000 feet into the air. All this statement implies is that the ark came to rest some where in the highland of Ararat. The waters continued to subside, and so by the first of the tenth month the tops of the mountains had become visible. Noah waited patiently forty days longer, which brings us to the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when he sent forth a raven to find out to what extent the surface of the earth had dried up. The raven flew to and fro, that is, from the mountaintop to the ark and back, or from mountain peak to mountain peak, but he was not taken back into the ark, because he found sufficient food to satisfy his needs. After that, Noah sent out a dove. Three times in succession he sent out doves at regular intervals of seven days. The first dove returned shortly because it found no place to alight and rest. The dove is a bird which will settle only upon such places or objects as are dry and clean. The second dove, a week later, returned in the evening of that day; that is, it had tarried longer than the first dove, and it brought with it a fresh olive leaf. This as the first sign of new life re-appearing on the desolated earth. The third dove did not return. Noah now perceived that the earth as dry. This, however, does not necessarily imply that the whole earth had completely dried off in all places. There is good evidence to show that this as not the case, but that in large inland basins great bodies of water remained for a long period of time after Noah left the ark, possibly for centuries or more. In Asia, in western North America, in northern Africa, and in Australia there are found large areas which are called interior basins, without exterior drainage to the sea, but with interior drainage to some lake or fossil lake. The physical evidence points with convincing proof to the fact that these basins were at one time full of water.

Picture # 17
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is but a remnant of a much larger Lake that once occupied this region. Another similar body of water was west of this lake and occupied the greater part of the present States of Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and California. Another so-called fossil lake was Lake Agassiz, named for the great scientist and father of American glacial geology. This ancient lake covered an area of land in the present territory of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota, Ontario, and Minnesota. 650 miles long and more than 200 miles wide, it covered an area of about 110,000 square miles and had a depth of 500 feet. The present Lake Winnipegosis and Lake Winnipeg are remnants of this lake.
 

Even the present arid steppes of Mongolia and Turkestan in Central Asia were not always arid, for concerning this region, Upton Close rites: "Now semi-arid waste stretches o sand and gravel very like the America State of Wyoming, it was once a lush lake country." (See ch. XIV, Glacial and Fossil Lakes.)
 

Similar bodies of water existed in other places on this and other continents. Their disappearance greatly affected the climate and also plant and animal life in these regions.
 

On the first day of Noah's 601^st year, Noah removed the covering of the ark and saw that the earth was dry, and on the 27^th day of the second month the earth was dried, and God commanded him to leave the ark. The Flood had begun on the 17^th day of the 600^th year of Noah, and Noah left the ark on the 27^th day of the 601^st year of his life, which makes the duration of the Flood one year and ten days.
 

It is difficult to realize what must have been the feeling of Noah and his family when they came forth from the ark and set their feet for the first time on the new earth, the only living human beings in all the world. What a change had been wrought all about them! Everywhere the remains of a dead world - dead people, dead animals, dead cities, and a dead civilization. How indescribably lonely they must have felt and what a dread and fear must have come upon them!
 

The first act of Noah was to bring unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving for having so graciously protected him and all that were with him in the ark. "He smelled a sweet savor," the text says. That is He graciously accepted the sacrifice of Noah; and He made a covenant with Noah that He would never again curse the ground for man's sake. He gave him a visible token of this covenant and said: "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." "And God said: This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." And God blessed Noah and his sons with the blessing of Adam and Eve and said unto them: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth," and He again gave them dominion over all the beasts of the field (Gen. 9:1-7)
 

This is the history of the Flood as recorded by Moses in the first book of the Bible. To countless millions of all ages this book has been and still is the inspired Word of God, and therefore correct in every detail, also when dealing with natural phenomena and scientific facts. The Bible is not a textbook on geology or any other science, but whenever it touches fields of knowledge belonging to these categories, it is reliable and not merely representing in poetical or allegorical language the erroneous, naive, or limited views current at the time when it as written. But the historicity of the Deluge does not depend upon Genesis alone. It is confirmed by other sacred writers of the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments and by Christ Himself. Thus Job refers to the Flood in Chapter 22:15-16: "Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood?" Or Is. 54:9:"For this is as the waters of Noah unto Me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee." And in Luke 3:36 - Noah and his son Shem are mentioned in the genealogy of Christ. In Matt. 24:37-38 our Savior refers to the Flood in the following words: "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son Man be; for as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage until the day that Noe entered into the ark." And Heb. 11:7 Noah is numbered among the heroes of faith. And Peter refers to Noah and the Flood 1Peter 3:20) as follows: "Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." And 2 Peter 2:5:"And spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person...bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly." The apocryphal book "The Wisdom of Solomon," written between 140 B. C... and 50 B. C., has a reference to the Flood (chap. 10:4), indicating that the Jews of that time considered the Flood of Noah an historical fact.
 

For the unbiased reader there cannot be any doubt that Moses and other inspired writers mentioned above, including our Lord Himself, regarded the Deluge as a universal flood and a great historical fact. To deny this means to question the infallibility of the Bible and that of Christ Himself.
 
 
 

CHAPTER VIII
 

Further Problems Connected with the Flood
 

The ark with its animal cargo was the first serious stumbling block we encountered in the Mosaic record of the Flood, but we face another and possibly even a more formidable one when we proceed to consider the magnitude of the Deluge and the cosmic revolution required to bring it about. It is evident beyond a doubt that Moses intended to convey the idea that the Deluge was a universal flood, that every continent, every island, and every place inhabited by man or beast was covered with water, and that the flood rose to a height sufficient to cover the loftiest mountains with fifteen cubits of water. As we contemplate these facts with all their implications, the problems involved grow to such proportions as to make it well-nigh impossible to believe that the literal meaning of the words was intended, and hence that some other interpretation must be sought.
 

The very first questions which stare us in the face in this picture are: Whence came the water sufficient to submerge the entire earth? And what became of the water when the Flood subsided?
 

The answer found in Genesis is: "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.,"and there came pouring rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights.The waters came from heaven above and from the earth below. But that raises two further questions: what was the source of the water that poured forth from the windows of heaven? And what was the source of the water that came from the great deep? Some Bible students have held that this universe is surrounded by a vast sea of water. They base this view on Gen. 1:6-7, where we are told that God placed a firmament over the earth and divided the waters which were under the firmament from those over the firmament. And the same interpreters hold that the waters of the Flood which poured forth "from the windows of heaven" came from this vast supply of water surrounding the universe. There are very serious objections to his view which need not be discussed here.
 

The Hebrew word translated with "firmament" in the English and "Feste" in the German Bible has caused great difficulties to the translator because it is hard to know the real meaning. The literal meaning is "a spreading out," then "dome of heaven." The purpose of the firmament was, according to Genesis, to divide the waters which still constituted a part of the chaos on the emerging earth from the waters which were above. The meaning of this statement can only be a separation between the solid and the gaseous matter, between the water in liquid form on earth and the water in gaseous form in the atmosphere. The work of the second day of creation therefore consisted in the creation of the atmosphere surrounding the earth, with the laws governing the atmosphere. The source of the water that came from above must therefore be sought here. Either it came from the atmosphere directly, that is, it was, as it were, wrung out of the atmosphere itself by reducing its water content, or it came from the clouds in the atmosphere or from both sources. And who is able to estimate the amount of water contained in the atmosphere surrounding our globe today? There are good reasons to believe that the atmosphere of the first world contained a greater amount of humidity than it does today. The climate and the vegetation which existed in the world seem to demand this. Who is able to calculate the vast seas of water contained in the atmosphere surrounding our globe at that time, and who is able to measure the water which floats over our heads in the form of clouds? It has been estimated that a single cloud supplying four inches of rainfall over a territory with a radius of one hundred miles contains approximately nine billion tons of water. It is quite possible that the water contained in the prediluvian atmosphere and that which floated over the earth in clouds was equal to the total amount of water on the face of the earth.
 

The Biblical expression "the windows (or the sluices) of heaven were opened" is the Hebrew way of describing an incessant torrential rain pouring down upon the face of the earth. But we need not even assume that such great changes affected the atmosphere. It is quite possible that the rains of the Deluge came from the same source which supplies the water for the rains today, that is, through the process of evaporation and cloud formation.
 

Now, it is true that the water cycle on our planet operates in a closed system. That is to say, evaporation increases the rainfall in a given area but does not thereby increase the total quantity of water on the face of our earth, but merely distributes it. However, it must be remembered that the Flood changed the original balance between land and water segments, and a rain of 40 days and 40 nights would contribute very materially to such a change. But that immediately raises another question: How could the clouds form fast enough and continue to form and to produce those quantities of water required for a rain as described in Gen. 7:12? What produced the necessary evaporation? This is another of those questions for which we have no completely satisfactory answer, simply because we have no way of knowing the exact conditions of the atmosphere in the antediluvian world or the changes that were brought about by the world catastrophe. The best we can do is to guess at a possible or probable answer. Even in normal times nature is full of difficult questions and unsolved mysteries; the great Flood was something extremely abnormal and a violent interference with the regular laws of nature; hence it need not disturb us unduly if unsolved difficulties remain. However, in answer to that question, it might, first of all, be said that there are areas in the tropics of the world today where there is but one season, namely, the rainy season, where rains continue to fall without interruption day after day, year in and year out. An unbelievable quantity of water circulates there between the earth and the sky through the normal process of evaporation and rainfall, and all that under perfectly normal conditions.
 

In the second place, there is indisputable evidence, to which further reference will be made later, that the Flood was accompanied by an abrupt change in climate resulting ultimately in the rigors of the arctic and antarctic regions of our present world. The impact of this sudden change must have been terrific as the cold air and the cold water currents met and mingled with the warm. Mountains of fog and clouds would rise into the air only to discharge their load again in the form of torrential rains, such as re described in the account of the Flood.
 

And, finally, there is also the possibility that extensive volcanic activities in every part of the earth contributed toward the formation of clouds and the fall of rain on a scale postulated in the Biblical Flood account. That the Flood was accompanied by volcanic activities on an unprecedented scale will be shown later. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to this fact and to point out that the action of volcanoes may well have had something to do with producing clouds and a rainfall unequaled in all the history of our earth. That active volcanoes give off vapor in quantities almost beyond comprehension is a fact established by observation. Steam equivalent to 460 million gallons of water has been observed to issue from one of the subsidiary cones of Mount Etna within one hundred days, which would mean 4,600,000 gallons of water a day, and that only from one secondary cone of one volcano. And then imagine hundreds and thousands of volcanoes in furious activity all over the earth and the seas, and the cloud-forming possibilities at once appear as beyond calculation. We must always bear in mind that the Deluge was an act of God's judgment upon the wickedness of man. It was therefore a divine interference with the regular and established laws of nature, and yet the forces by which this judgment was carried out and the destruction of the world was wrought were latent in nature. Even in the deluge the laws of nature were operating, but on a scale unprecedented in the entire history of the universe.
 

The other sources of the Deluge waters mentioned are the fountains of the deep. The question here is : "what is meant by the fountains of the great deep?" The Hebrew word t'hom is translated by Gesenius as "Urwasser, Ozean, dasgrosze Weltmeer." Delitzsch translates it with "unfathomable ocean." By the great deep evidently, then, is meant the water of all the oceans of the world; the breaking forth of the fountains of the great deep would, then, mean that the ocean broke out and poured over the land. But what caused the waters to break forth? We are told that all the fountains of the great deep broke open. When we hear such words as fountains, wells, or springs, the average person thinks of water welling forth from some orifice in the earth, in more or less quiet and orderly fashion. Springs and fountains always call up pleasant pictures in the mind, and we think of meadows, pasture land, and mountainsides with water a bubbling or gushing forth to water the thirsty land or to bring cool refreshment to man and beast. Many of our adult mental images are the unaltered remnants of childhood experiences. This is true especially of such images as were based on verbal description or on pure imagination.. Our fist impressions of the Deluge were received in early childhood, and the picture drawn for us then was interpreted in the light of our childhood experiences. This picture was carried into adult life with but few modifications. Hence, when the Bible tells us that the fountains of the great deep broken open we are apt to think of springs and fountains such as were known to us in our meadows or on the mountain sides quietly welling forth their water in refreshing streams or babbling brooks. But the statement that the fountains of the great deep were broken open implies a great deal more. It means that the earth was rent, that great fissures and chasms appeared on the surface of the earth. But that happens only in violent cataclysms, such as are caused by earthquakes or volcanic activities. The Deluge was a terrible judgment of God which He brought upon the world because of the wickedness of men and which is comparable only with the final judgment, awaiting the world at the end of time. When God came down on Mount Sinai to proclaim His law, He descended in a dark and threatening cloud. Lightning and thunder accompanied Him, and the whole mountain and the earth round about trembled. When God had finally determined the complete destruction of Pharaoh, he first struck terror into the hearts of the Egyptian hosts, causing them to flee even before the water had come upon them. And the last judgment of the world is described in the New Testament as a day of fearful wrath and consternation for the wicked. They are described as crying out to the mountains, "Fall upon us," and to the hills, "Cover us." And the Apostle, referring to this day, writes that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of the living God.
 

The Deluge was a day of judgment for the first world. Hence it is certain that God manifested His anger before the Flood destroyed man. That wicked and godless generation was to realize before death overtook them that they had fallen into the hands of the living God, whom they would not acknowledge. Heaven and earth were thrown into a furious and terrible revolution. The lightning flashed without ceasing, and the thunders rolled from pole to pole throughout the heavens. These were the trumpets and bugle calls of God announcing that the day of judgment had come. The earth heaved and trembled in its very foundations. Its writhing convulsions encircled the earth. Volcanoes belched forth fire, water, steam, and brimstone, to add more horrors to this terrifying spectacle of divine judgment. This is not a mere fancy of the imagination. If all the foundations of the great deep broke open, as Moses says, this certainly implies such violent and cosmic disturbances as just described. And that something like this did occur somewhere in the remote past of our earth's history is verified by the condition of the rocks in the earth's crust. Geologist are acquainted with these conditions and describe them accurately, attributing them to violent upheavals and continental revolution, but because it is regarded as unscientific to accept the Biblical account of a world-wide catastrophe, they find other explanations and place these events in the nebulous past of millions and billions of years ago.
 

Until about 125 years ago geologists accepted one kind of a flood theory or another. Cuvier, for example, believed in a series of catastrophic floods, with a new creation of life after each. But since then it is no longer regarded as orthodox geology. Hence the modern men of science refuse to accept it. Today it is difficult to find a textbook on geology with even so much as a reference to the Biblical Flood. This would be heretical science, and such books are therefore promptly placed on the Index Librorum Prhibitorum. But there are still a few lone voices crying in the wilderness of modern geology who accept Genesis as a trustworthy record of the early history of our earth, and foremost among these is George McCready Price, an able geologist and a brilliant writer. Others are the late Sir J. William Dawson of Canada and a few geology teachers in some church colleges. Concerning such a world-wide revolution and the traces it left on the rocks of the earth, Dr. Price writes: "In the rocks of all parts of the world, ancient displacements have been detected, with throws of vertical range measuring from 200 to 2,000 feet; and if these were suddenly brought about, as all analysis seems to indicate, there must have, at some time in the past, been earthquakes of indescribable violence."
 

And Edward Suess, the noted Austrian geologist, says: "The earthquakes of the present day are certainly but a faint reminiscence of those telluric movements to which the structure of almost every mountain range bears witness. Numerous examples of great mountain chains suggest by their structure the possibility, and in certain cases the probability, of occasional intervention in the course of great geological processes of episcodal disturbances of such indescribable and overpowering violence that the imagination refuses to follow the understanding and to complete the picture of which the outlines are furnished by observation of facts. Such catastrophes have not occurred since the existence of man, at least not since the time of written records."
 

Earthquakes as described are capable of doing just what the words of Moses imply, viz., to tear the earth into great fissures and cause the fountains of the deep to open, to pour forth water, steam, and molten rock. In the year 1783 a great earthquake occurred in Calabria which caused fissures to be opened 500 feet wide and a thousand feet long, and down them were precipitated men, women, and children, houses, churches, public buildings, and whole farms. Some of the gaping chasms closed again. Others remained open until nature slowly healed its scars.
 

Simultaneously with the terrible earthquake in Lisbon in 1755, a wide fissure was torn open in Morocco across the straits from the Spanish Peninsula, and an entire village with a population of 8,000 people was literally swallowed up.
 

In the earthquake which shook the South Island of New Zealand in 1848, a fissure was formed averaging eighteen inches in width and traceable for a distance of sixty miles. The subsequent earthquake seven years later in the same region gave rise to a fissure traceable for ninety miles.
 

The earthquake of Owens Valley, California, in 1872 was accompanied by the formation of a fault forty miles in length and with a vertical displacement of five to twenty feet. In an earthquake in 1887 in Arizona and Mexico, a zigzag fault thirty-five miles long, with a maximum throw of twenty feet, was produced.
 

The great Japanese earthquake of 1891 was accompanied by a fault forty miles in length, with throws exceeding thirty-three feet in height, in one of which one side was placed permanently at a different level from the other.
 

From 1811 to 1812 occurred one of the greatest earthquakes in the history of our country. The loss of life was comparatively small because the country was still very sparsely settled and there were no populous cities in the stricken area. This may account for the fact that this catastrophe is not so well known as other historic earthquakes which resulted in the destruction of great cities and caused the death of thousands of people.
 

This earthquake is known as "the great earthquake in the West." It occurred in the Mississippi Valley, affecting a region along the Mississippi and some of its tributaries about 300 miles long between the mouth of the Ohio and that of the St. Francis. But serious shocks were also felt far beyond in the mountain region of Tennessee and as far east as Pittsburgh and the Atlantic Ocean.
 

The greatest intensity of the quake was experienced at New Madrid, a small town about one hundred miles south of St. Louis. Shock followed shock at varying intervals between December, 1811, and February, 1812. The water of the river was changed to a reddish hue and became thick with mud thrown up from the bottom of its bed. The earth on the shores opened in gaping fissures and, closing again, threw the water, sand, and mud in huge jets higher than the tops of the trees. The atmosphere was filled with a thick vapor or gas, to which the light imparted an eerie purple tinge. The current of the Mississippi was driven back in its course with appalling velocity for several hours in consequence of an elevation of its bed, but before long the accumulated waters came booming back with a tremendous roar, carrying everything ruthlessly before them.
 

The change wrought in the topography in the stricken area was staggering. Thousands of acres of fine forest land were completely swallowed up. Hills had disappeared, and new lakes were found in their place. The earth was rent into innumerable fissures which swallowed up whatever happened to be in their course. In many places the gaping earth revealed unsuspected secrets. Human graves were torn open and their contents scattered over the surface. Bones of the extinct mastodon and the ichthysosaurus were brought to light to the astonishment of the natives. Numerous lakes became elevated ground over the surface of which vast heaps of sand and other debris were scattered. In other places upland forest regions dropped fifty to one hundred feet, forming awesome chasms or new lakes. One of the lakes thus formed was about seventy miles long and from three to twenty meles wide. Similar topographical changes were caused in Tennessee and at other places along the river which had been affected by the earthquake.
 

The country around New Madrid, Missouri, is since then known as the "the sunk country."
 

Multiply these events and the scenes of New Madrid by ten thousand times ten thousand, and try to visualize that similar scenes occurred simultaneously in every part of the earth, and then we shall be able to construct for ourselves an approximate picture of what is implied in the few but pregnant words of Genesis "and the fountains of the great deep broke open."
 

But even that is not all. These violent earthquakes not only caused the earth to be rent, forcing it to yield up whatever streams or reservoirs of water were contained in its bowels, but earthquakes, especially when occurring near the sea or on the floor of the ocean, cause gigantic tidal waves know to have risen to heights of ten, twenty, thirty, even fifty and sixty feet or more, above the normal tide level. Large areas of land have thus been inundated, and the force with which these tidal waves strike has irresistibly swept away everything before them. Forest have been uprooted; the works of man wiped out as so much dust; large blocks of rock lifted and moved to higher levels, and over great distances; deposits of sand and gravel and other superficial accumulations have been torn up and swept away, while ruin, destruction, desolation, debris, in short, a completely altered topography were left in the wake.
 

One of the most lucid descriptions of such a wave is given by Darwin in The Voyage of the Beagle, chapter 14. Darwin writes: "The disturbances seem generally, as in the case of Concepcion, to have been of two kinds: first, at the instant of the shock, the water swells high up on the beach with a gentle motion, and then as quietly retreats; secondly, some time afterwards, the whole body of the sea retires from the coast, and then returns in waves of overwhelming force...

"Shortly after the shock a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay with a smooth outline; but along the shore it tore up cottages and trees as it swept onwards with irresistible force. At the head of the bay it broke in a fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty-three vertical feet above the highest spring tides.

"Their force must have been prodigious; for at the fort a cannon with its carriage, estimated at four tons in weight, was moved fifteen feet inwards. A schooner was left in the midst of the ruins to hundred yards from the beach.
 

"The first wave as followed by two others, which in their retreat carried away a vast wreck of floating objects. In one part of the bay a ship was pitched high and dry on shore, and then as carried off, again driven on shore, and again carried off. In another part two large vessels, anchored near together were whirled about and their cables were thrice wound around each other; though anchored at a depth of thirty-six feet, they were for some minutes aground."
 

An earthquake which occurred on the Island of Sicily and in southern Italy in 1908 practically wiped out the two cities of Messina and Reggio with an approximate loss of human life of 200,000. It has been called "the world's most cruel earthquake." These two cities are located nearly opposite each other on the strait of Messina. At first the sea retired,

as a result of the earthquake, and then rolled back, with furious destruction, followed by others and ever rising higher. At Messina the height of the waves was nearly twenty-six or twenty-seven feet, and at San Allessio as high as forty feet, sweeping everything before them. What had not been destroyed by the earthquake was wiped out by the water.
 

An earthquake at Concepcion, Chile, set in motion a wave that traversed the ocean to the Society and Navigator Islands, three and four thousand miles away, causing incalculable damage.
 

Concerning the devastating power of an earthquake, d'Orbigny, a noted French geologist of the last century, has the following to say: "After having seen at Callao in Peru the ravages which a sweeping earthquake may make, I am justified in believing that the upheaval of the Andes would suffice to destroy at one stroke by a movement of water all the terrestrial fauna of the globe. At Callao, during the earthquake which occurred at the end of the last century, the waters carried over the land ships there at anchor and changed the whole aspect of the country."
 

The devastating earthquakes accompanying the Flood were supplemented, or rather were produced either in part or entirely, by volcanic activities simultaneously occurring in every part of the earth. This, too, is not mere speculation, but is borne out by the physical evidence found in the crust of the earth, particularly in the mountain areas, but by no means confined to those sections. In speaking of this evidence, Dr. Price writes: "Extinct volcanoes are found in all parts of the world. Great numbers of badly eroded volcanic necks or plugs, often with radiating dikes, like the spokes of a cart wheel, showing where they once were. The Rocky Mountains contain many such wrecks of former volcanoes; but almost every corner of the globe, including many regions where no volcanic activities have been seen within historic times, shows signs of former action. Many such relics of old volcanoes are to be seen in the New England States and in Eastern Canada, in the British Isles, in France and Germany, and, indeed, in many regions where the thought of volcanic activity seems almost as strange as that of snow in the tropics."
 

Other evidence for universal volcanic activity at the time of the Flood is found in the presence of Loess in every part of the world and in the conditions under which it was deposited. The soil called "loess" is believed by diluvial geologists to be of volcanic origin, while the manner in which, and the places where, it has been deposited, its ubiquity, the lateness of its deposition, its disregard for watersheds, seems to postulate the action of water on a scale equal only to the great Flood described in Genesis; however, other geologists regard loess as a wind deposit.
 

An interesting paper on the subject "Scientific Proof of a Universal Flood" was read before the Philosophical Society of Great Britain in February, 1929, by Dr. Philip J. Le Riche, M. R. C. S., L. R. C. P. In this paper Dr. Le Riche builds up a formidable argument to show that loess is of volcanic origin and that its ubiquity and the character of its deposition argues in favor of a universal flood. While some of the other arguments advanced by the speaker were questioned by members of that learned society, no one seems to have challenged this argument. Concerning these loess deposits, Dr. Le Riche said: "One of the most interesting and the most superficial of all deposits is called 'loess.' It is a yellow homogeneous clay or loam, unstratified, and when crushed in the fingers forms an impalpable dust. It is found as the topmost of all deposits, and its distribution is extensive. It covers a wide area in Central Europe, in Northern France and Belgium, up the valleys of the Rhine and its tributaries. It spreads across Silesia, over the plains of Poland and Southern Russia. It extends into Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Hungary, Transylvania and Roumania, sweeping far up into the Carpathians, where it reaches a height of two thousand feet. In the United States it is widely distributed in the great basin of the Mississippi.

Picture # 18
"The loess is found extensively in China. In Shansi it reaches a height of nine thousand feet. In hilly regions it fills up valleys and traversed mountain chains. It spreads over the ground so completely as to conceal inequalities. In the Mississippi Valley of the United States, and in Europe in the Rhine Valley, the loess rests in places upon elevations of eight hundred feet above the river, but does not occur at higher levels. This would clearly indicate that it is a water deposit.."
 

"What is the origin of the Loess? Sir Henry Howorth compares the loess to the "Moya,' or volcanic mud, that is thrown out in certain districts, and its calcareous ingredients seem to point to a subterranean origin; and he shows that it consists of comminuted angular particles, free from structure and from the presence of foraminifera, and that it is charged with carbonates. The loess is apparently a substance of volcanic origin deposited slowly in water and then acted upon by the wind in many places after its deposition. That it is not of marine origin, the microscopical evidence clearly shows..

"Those who assert that the loess is the product or glacial action, in fact, is 'glacial milk,' cannot maintain that glacial products are fertilizing agents, whereas it is well known that volcanic products are fertilizing agents. My belief is that the loess is the product of subterranean volcanic eruptions... and that it is volcanic dust. It fulfills the conditions necessary for a volcanic product, viz.: That it is extremely light in the air or in water, and it is one of the most fertile of soils, its fertility being in the loess itself... Silica is known to be a product of volcanic action, and this would explain its occurrence with loess...

"The distribution of the loess in positions so far apart as China, the Danube and the Rhine, and in North America, lying everywhere in the same stratigraphical position - and the surmise that it was deposited in water - leads one to suppose that it was the very latest of all the sedimentary deposits."

In the Voyage of the Challenger, Sir C. Wyville Thompson states that over a large part of the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, pumice occurs in quantity in different stages of decay, and that this is more especially evident in the "red clay" area; and he traces a great part of the material of the red clay to this source. Nodules containing a large proportion of manganese peroxide, he says, are usually more or less abundant in the "red clay," and are believed to be derived from the decomposition of volcanic products.

Picture #19
Here again we have evidence of volcanic products being found as a superficial deposit, as ocean deposits.

Dr. G. Frederick Wright, in his Man and the Glacial Period, states: "The connection of lava-flows on the Pacific Coast with the Glacial Period is unquestionably close. For some reason which we do not understand, the vast accumulation of ice in north America is correlated with enormous eruptions of lava west of the Rockies. The extent of outflow of lava west of the Rockies is almost beyond comprehension. Literally hundreds of thousands of square miles have been covered by them to a depth - in many places - of thousands of feet.
 

"Here again we find volcanoes exerting their influence at the higher levels in the strata; but in the Rockies it is more as if the tired earth, in its last throes, had belched forth these enormous emanations of lava, as it were, in its dying effort. So from the lowest to the highest layers of the earth's crust we find that volcanoes and volcanic products have been in the main causes (if not the entire cause) of stratification. The volcanic mud of the Old Red Sandstone, the argillaceous material of the oil-shales of the carboniferous, the lavas of the Tertiary, the pumice of the Atlantic Ocean, the loess - ubiquitous and most superficial - all these are of undoubted volcanic origin."
Picture #20
So much for the evidence of volcanic activity on a worldwide scale somewhere in the past history of our earth. And now a word about the potential effects these may have had in changing the face of the earth.
 

We have already pointed out that volcanic activity may greatly increase the normal process of evaporation and thus seriously affect the climate in a given region. But that is not all. For just as the destructive forces of earthquakes are not limited to the tremors of the earth itself, but are seriously aggravated by the tidal waves which they produce, so the destructive potentialities of a volcano are not limited to the eruption itself, to the lava flows or the falling of cinders and volcanic ash, but are enormously augmented by the disturbance they cause in the sea. To realize what unbelievable devastation the sea may cause on land and to the works of man in a moment of time, when disturbed by volcanic activities, one need but read the descriptions of the historic eruptions of the world's great volcanoes, such as Vesuvius, Krakatoa, Mount Pele'e, and others. One example will suffice here, and I shall choose the eruption of Krakatoa which occurred in the latter part of August, 1883.
 

Krakatoa is located on an island of the Dutch East Indies of the same name, about one hundred miles from Batavia, Java. Until the year 1883 few had ever heard of Krakatoa, but in that year there were symptoms that the volcanic powers in this defunct volcano were about to awake from the slumber that had endured for many generation. Notable warnings were given. Earthquakes were felt, and deep rumblings proceeded from the earth, showing that some disturbance was in preparation. At fist the eruption did not threaten to be of any serious type. In fact, the people of Batavia arranged a picnic expedition to the island to observe at close range the strange actions of this mountain.

Picture #21
As the summer of this dread year advanced, the vigor of Krakatoa steadily increased. The noises became more and more vehement and more audible on shores ten miles distant, then twenty miles, and still these noises waxed louder and louder until they could be heard over an area equal to about two Midwestern States. With each successive convulsion, quantities of fine dust were projected aloft into the clouds. The wind could not carry this dust away as rapidly as it was hurled upward by Krakatoa, and accordingly the atmosphere became heavily charged with suspended particles, a pall of darkness thus spreading over the adjoining seas and islands. Such was the thickness and the density of this atmospheric dust that for a hundred miles around, the darkness of midnight prevailed at midday. Then the awful tragedy of Krakatoa took place. Many thousands of the unfortunate inhabitants of the adjacent shores of Sumatra and Java were destined never to behold the sun again. They were swept away to destruction in an invasion of tremendous waves with which the seas surrounding Krakatoa were agitated. Gradually the development of the volcanic energy proceeded, and gradually the terror of the inhabitants of the surrounding coast rose to a climax. July had ended before the manifestation of Krakatoa had attained even full violence. As the days of August passed by, the spasms of Krakatoa waxed more and more vehement. By the middle of that month the panic was widespread, for the supreme catastrophe was at hand.
 
 

On the night of Sunday, August 26, 1883, the blackness of the dust clouds, now much thicker than ever in the straits of Sunda andadjacent parts of Sumatra and Java, was only occasionally illuminated by lurid flames from the volcano. The Krakatoa thunders were on the point of their complete development.
 

At the town of Batavia, a hundred miles distant, there was no quiet that night. The houses trembled with the subterranean voilence, and the windows rattled as if heavy artillery were being discharged in the streets, and still these efforts seemed to be only rehearsing for the supreme display. By ten o'clock on Monday morning, August 27, 1883, the rehearsals were over, and the performance began. An overture consisting of two or three introductory explosions was succeeded by a frightful convulsion which tore away a large part of the island of Krakatoa and scattered it to the winds of heaven. In that final effort all records of previous explosions on this earth were completely broken.
 

Never before was a noise of such intensity heard on this globe. It must, indeed, have been a loud noise which could travel from Krakatoa to Batavia and preserve its vehemence over so great a distance; but we should form a very inadequate conception of the energy of the eruption of Krakatoa if we thought that its sounds were heard by those merely a hundred miles off. This would be little indeed compared with what is recorded in testimony which it is impossible to doubt. The explosion was heard 3,000 miles away, just four hours after the explosion had occurred. It is estimated that the explosion blew about a cubic mile of solid material into ashes which rose in the form of a dark cloud seventeen miles into the atmosphere, completely hiding the sun by its denseness over the vast area and finally encircling the earth. The disturbance in the atmosphere was registered by thermometers over the whole world. Huge waves, up to one hundred feet above high time, were generated in the sea and rushed along the low-lying coast of Java and Sumatra, sweeping far inland and destroying 1,295 towns, villages, and lives of nearly 40,000 people. By the force of the tidal waves a large ship was carried inland for a mile and a half and left stranded thirty feet above the sea level. Great blocks of stone weighing from thirty to fifty tones were also carried inland for two or three miles.
 

During the days, weeks, and months of the Flood when judgment was being executed on the first world, there were probably ten thousand and more Krakatoas, Mount Pele'es, and Vesuviuses shaking and tearing at the foundation of the earth, roaring their incessant thunders as a terrible funeral dirge, belching forth dust and steam and lava and boulders, and illuminating the death struggles of a perishing world with their terrifying and lurid volcanic fires.

Picture # 22
This is not a fantastic assumption or a mere figment of the imagination. The very foundation rocks of our earth bear evidence that these things happened. And as one contemplates this world judgment and the cosmic forces latent in the universe, in the atmosphere, in the earth, and in the sea released and becoming operative simultaneously in every part of the world for the duration of the Flood and extending even beyond, then there are no longer any serious difficulties in solving the problems of the Flood waters. In addition, we also find in this event or series of events a key to many of the vexing problems of geology, such as the enormous foldings and faults, found in the rocks, lava flows and lava intrusions in unexpected places, the problem of erratics and drifts, and a thousand other unexplainable features found on the surface or in the crust of our earth. 

These planetary seismic and volcanic revolutions no doubt were accompanied by the larger movements of land and sea segments both up and downward, thus forcing the water of the sea over the entire land areas. Such movements of land and water segments have been observed repeatedly since geologic or historic time. A well-known example, and one that is generally found in standard textbooks of geology, is the Temple of Jupiter Serapis in the Bay of Naples. This temple was built in roman times and probably began to sink while still in use, as appears from the two ancient pavements, one above the other. There is evidence that the building was submerged to the depth of nearly twenty feet. Since then the land has again risen, but just when the re-elevation began is not definitely known. There is some documentary evidence, however, to show that it was in progress during the early years of the sixteenth century and was probably completed in 1538, when a volcanic eruption in the neighborhood resulted in the formation of Monte Nuovo. 
 

On the coast of Egypt ancient rock-cut tombs are now visible beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, showing both down and upward movements. The testimony of old buildings show that the eastern end of the Island of Crete is sinking while the west and south are rising. South of Stockholm in Sweden the remains of an ancient hut were found sixty-five feet below the surface, buried in marine deposits which contained shells of the same species now living in the Baltic. The west coast of Greenland is sinking. Buried forests have been found on the delta of the Mississippi and on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, also in Holland and northern Germany.

Picture # 23
Geikie states that raised coral reefs, formed by living species of coral, are a conspicuous feature of the geology of the West Indies region. The terraces of Barbados are particularly striking. In Cuba a raised coral reef occurs at a height of one thousand or eleven hundred feet above the sea. In Peru modern coral limestone has been found 2,900 or 3,000 feet above sea level. Again, in the Solomon islands, evidence of a recent uprise is furnished by coral reefs lying at a height of eleven hundred feet. Raised beaches are found in the higher altitudes of the northern and southern hemispheres. They occur in many parts of the coast line of Britain. The coast line on both sides of Scotland is likewise fringed with raised beaches, sometimes several occurring one after the other. And the list of examples could be multiplied to show that ever since historic times up - and downward movements of land masses have been observed. It is not claiming the impossible therefore or even the unusual to assume that the complete submergence of the face of the earth was due at least in part to the subsidence of large masses of land below sea level and a corresponding raising of the bottom of the sea to higher levels, thus bringing about a more equal distribution of the existing quantity of water over the earth's entire surface.
 

The "great deep" of Genesis is the ancient universal ocean, from which the dry land emerged when God commanded these two elements to separate on the third day of Creation. According to the Bible, it is the dry land that is the uncertain element on the surface of this earth and liable to submergence at any time when "the bounds place on thesea by its Maker shall be loosened." For it is God "who gave the sea His decree that it should not pass His Limits," who"shut up the sea with doors," who "appointed to the waters bounds that they may not pass, that the return notto cover the earth." The element of mutability is therefore in the solid earth rather than in the sea; and when God for a season removed the bounds of the sea which He had first given by decree, and raised the bars which has been closed against the "proud waves," the sea again engulfed the whole earth and returned to a condition prevailing before the third day of creation (Prov. 8:29; Job 38;8-11; Ps. 104:9.)
 

But there is still another question which needs to be considered in this connection, and that is the question concerning the altitude of the antediluvian mountains. The Mosaic account states that the water of the Flood rose to a height of fifteen cubits over the highest mountains. Does this mean that the water rose to an elevation to cover such heights as Pikes Peak, Mount Everest, Mount Mckinley, and all the other highest peaks in the world's mountain ranges? This does not necessarily follow. On the contrary, we may well assume that the mountains of the world before the Flood were not of the same altitude as the mountains of our world today. The uniform springlike climate which prevailed over the entire earth before the Flood and the complete absence of desert or arctic regions would seem to preclude the existence of such lofty mountain barriers as we know them today. Besides, it is a well-known fact that the tops of our mountains are overlaid with strata of fossiliferous rocks, which show that these rocks were laid down in water and that they were formed after life had appeared on the earth. This evidence is found not only throughout the length and breadth of the mountain ranges on this continent, but also in the Himalayas, the Alps of Europe, and in other great mountain ranges of the earth.
 

And, finally, the question must be answered: "is there enough water on our planet to cover the entire earth?" Apelles, an heretical teacher, raised this question as early as the second century of our era. The Gnostics and Manichaeans in the same age likewise questioned the universality of the Flood, for similar reasons, and since then this question has been raised again and again. The answer must be a very emphatic yes! Geographers estimate the total land surface of our globe at approximately 58,000,000 square miles. The proportion of land to water area on our earth is about three tenths to seven tenths. That is, there is more than twice as much water as land. The area of the Pacific Ocean alone is nearly ten million square miles greater than all the continents and the islands of the sea added together. If the water now stored in the form of glacial ice on Greenland and Antarctica alone were released, the volume of the sea would be raised by one hundred and fifty feet.
 

The average depth of the ocean is twelve thousand feet. That is equal to twelve times the average height of the land surface. The volume of all the ocean water is therefore greater than the mass of land protruding above sea level. If all the deeper parts of the ocean were filled up by materials to a mean depth, and all of the highest elevations on land would be planed down to an average level, a universal ocean covering the entire earth to the depth of one and a half miles would result. Surely the objection that there was not enough water on the earth to produce the Flood, therefore, cannot stand, nor would anyone seriously contend that the omnipotent God and Creator of the universe lacked the physical means by which such a deluge could have been brought upon the earth.
 

This chapter might therefore quite fittingly be concluded with a quotation from an article by Lt. Col Davies which appeared in the: Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute of London in 1930: "The question as to where the water came from and where it went to will only trouble those who hold extreme views as to the fixidity of oceanic and continental levels. If the sea beds can rise and the continents sink, there is no difficulty whatever in finding enough water, even for a universal flood." (P.95.)
 

The Deluge, we must remember, was both a miracle and a natural event. It was a miracle because it was an intervention of divine power and justice in the laws of nature, which God Himself had fixed; and it was a natural event because it was carried out by forces already latent in nature. In this it resembles the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea. The omnipotent God, who created heaven and earth, has placed infinite forces in the universe itself. He released these forces for a season, and the destruction of the world was the result. The Flood is a miracle and therefore beyond the comprehension of finite man. It is a mystery which can be understood only through faith in the omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the universe.

PART III
 

Extra-Biblical Evidence for the Flood

CHAPTER IX
 

Flood Traditions Among the Nations of the World
 

Until about one hundred years ago the historical fact of the Flood was almost universally accepted, not only by members of the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, but also by the men of science. Then arose the so-called doctrine of uniformitarianism, and, with that, Darwinism; the catastrophe of the Flood did not fit into this system. It was rejected for geological, biological, and historical reason. The textbooks of these sciences continue to ignore the Flood altogether, and anyone who still seriously contends for a belief in the universal Flood meets with opposition, scorn, and ridicule even in many quarters of the Church. For this reason we shall next turn to evidence for a universal flood found outside the Bible.
 

The first evidence to be noted is that of the Flood traditions. The account of the Flood in Genesis does not stand alone. Traditions similar to this record are found among nearly all the nations and tribes of the human race. And this is as one would expect it to be. If that awful world catastrophe, as described in the Bible, actually happened, the existence of the Flood traditions among the widely separated and primitive people is just what is to be expected. It is only natural that the memory of such an event was rehearsed in the ears of the children of the survivors again and again and possibly made the basis of some religions observances. The religious ceremonies connected with these traditions, as found, e.g., in Egypt, Mexico, and among some tribes of the American Indians, can be satisfactorily explained only in this light. This awful disaster left an indelible impression upon the minds of men before they were scattered abroad; and whether we go to ancient Babylon, to the Sumerians or to the Chaldeans, to the Chinese or to the American Indians, to the natives of the Pacific Islands or to the ancient inhabitants of India, everywhere is found some trace of a Flood tradition and a memory of a fearful catastrophe which destroyed mankind and left but one or a few survivors.
 

But, as might be expected, these traditions have been modified through the ages and have been influenced by the customs of the various peoples and by the environment in which they are found and thus have taken on local color and sometimes extravagant and fantastic proportions, so that the kernel of truth in many cases is seriously obscured. And yet, when stripped of the accretions which have accumulated as they were handed down from father to son through the generations, the essential facts of this great catastrophe are easily discernible. There is almost complete agreement among them all on the three main features: 

1. There is a universal destruction of the human race and all other living things by water.

2. An ark, or boat, is provided as the means of escape.

3. A seed of mankind is preserved to perpetuate the human race. To these might be added a fourth, which, though not occurring in all the traditions, occurs very frequently, namely, that the wickedness of man is given as the cause of the flood.
 

Naturally, these Flood traditions have aroused the curiosity of scholars. They have been collected and studied, but the men who collected them were not necessarily interested in establishing the truth of the Biblical account of the Flood. Some of them at least have other interests and treated these as other traditions and mythologies found among the nations of the world. Among the noted scholars of the last generation who worked in the field of traditions and myths including the Flood traditions, were men like Frazer and the German scholar Wundt. In recent years a collection of mythologies of all races has been published by the Archaeological Institute of America. This collection includes the Flood traditions of many peoples. In Germany Dr. Johannes Riem has made an extensive study of this subject and has embodied the results of his findings in his book Die Sintflut in Sage und Wissenschaft. In the introduction to this book the author makes the following significant statement: "Among all traditions there is none so general, so widespread on earth, and so apt to show what may develop from the same material according to the varying spiritual character of a people as the Flood tradition. Lengthy and thorough discussions with Dr. Kunike have convinced me of the evident correctness of his position that the fact of the Deluge is granted because at the basis of all myths, particularly nature myths, there is a real fact, but that during a subsequent period the material was given its present mythical character and form."
 

Dr. Riem furnishes a map of the world indicating where Flood and rainbow traditions are found. According to this map, Flood traditions are most common in Asia and on the islands immediately south of Asia and on the North American continent. Though found in Africa, they are not nearly as common as on other continents. Studies dealing with the Babylonian, Assyrian, or Sumerian Flood traditions are very numerous. Dr. Richard Andree, another German scholar, has compiled another collection of Flood traditions. He has collected eighty-eight different Flood traditions. Twenty of these have an Asiatic origin; five come from Europe; seven were found in Africa; ten in Australia and the South Sea Islands; and forty-six were found among the aborigines of the Americas. Hugh Miller, the famous Scottish geologist of the last century, also enumerates a great number of Flood traditions and expresses the following opinion concerning them: "There is, however, one special tradition which seems to be more deeply impressed and more widely spread than any of the others. The destruction of well-nigh the whole human race, in an early age of the world's history, by a great deluge, appears to have so impressed the minds of the few survivors, and seems to have been handed down to their children, in consequence, with such terror-struck impressiveness that their remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant countries, and among the most barbarous tribes. It was the laudable ambition of Humboldt, first entertained at a very early period of life, - to penetrate into distant regions, unknown to the natives of Europe at the time, that he might acquaint himself in fields of research altogether fresh and new, with men and with nature in their most primitive conditions. In carrying out his design, he journeyed far into the woody wilderness that surrounds the Orinoco and found himself among tribes of wild Indians whose very names were unknown to the civilized world. And yet among even these forgotten races of the human family he found the tradition of the deluge still fresh and distinct; not confined to singles tribes, but general among the scattered nations of that great region, and intertwined with curious additions, suggestive of the inventions of classic mythology of the Old World. 'The belief in the great deluge,' we find him saying, 'is not confined to one nation singly, the Tamanacs, it makes part of a system of historical tradition, of which we find scattered notions among the Maypures of the great cataracts; among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, which runs into the Caura; and among almost all the tribes of the upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacs are asked how the human race survived this great deluge - the age of water - of the Mexicans, the say a man and a woman saved themselves on a high mountain called Tamanacu, situated on the banks of the Asiveru, and casting behind them over their heads the fruits of the mauritia palm tree, they saw the seeds contained in these fruits produce men and women, who re-peopled the earth.' "
 

For very obvious reasons it will be impossible to deal with all or even many of these traditions. A few must suffice to give examples of their content and character and to show that they are found in all age among people of various cultural levels and in all lands and countries of the earth.
 

Our first selection will be taken from those found among the American Indians, and the first of these is one found among the Athapascan Tribe on the west coast of our country. The story begins with the making of a new sky to replace the old one, which is threatening to fall. After describing in some detail the rebuilding of a new heaven, the story continues:
 

"Then upon the earth that was they caused rain to fall. Every day it rained, every night it rained. All the people slept. The sky fell, the land was not. For a very great distance there was no land. The waters of the oceans came together. Animals of all kinds drowned. Where the waters went, there were no trees. There was no land. Water came, they say. The waters completely joined everywhere. Trees and grass were not. There were no fish or land animals or birds. Human beings and animals alike had been washed away. The wind did not blow through the portals of the world, nor was there snow, nor frost, nor rain. It did not thunder, nor did it lighten. Since there were no trees to be struck, it did not thunder. There were neither clouds nor fog, nor was there sun. It was very dark. Then it was that this earth with its great, long horns got up and walked away down this way from the north. As it walked along through the deep places, the water rose to its shoulders. When it came up into shallower places, it looked up. There is a ridge in the north upon which the waves break. When it came to the middle of the world in the east under the rising of the sun, it looked up again. There where it looked up will be a large land near to the coast. Far away to the south it continued, looking up. It walked under the ground. Having come from the north, it traveled far south and laid down. Nagaitche, standing earth's head, had been carried to the south. Where earth laid down, Nagaitche placed its head as it should be and spread gray clay between its eyes on each horn. Upon the clay he placed a layer of reeds and then another layer of clay. In this he placed upright blue grass, brush and trees. 'I have finished,' he said. 'Let there be mountain peaks here on its head. Let the waves of the sea break against them.' "
 

According to the historian Bancroft, the Papago Indians of Arizona have the following Flood tradition: "The Great Spirit first made the earth and its creatures. Then he came down to look at his handiwork. Digging in the ground he had made, he found some clay. He took this back into the sky with him and let it fall back into the hole he had excavated.
 

"Immediately there came out man, in the form of Montezuma, the hero of this legend. With his help there also came forth all the Indian tribes in order. The last to come were the apaches, wildest of all tribes, who scattered to the four winds as soon as they issued forth. Peace and happiness was in the world those first days. The sun being nearer to the earth than it is now, all the seasons were warm, and no one wore clothing. Men and animals shared a common tongue, and all were brothers.
 

"Then a fearful catastrophe shattered the golden days. A great flood destroyed all flesh wherein was the breath of life, except Montezuma and a coyote who was his friend. The coyote had prophesied the flood's coming, and Montezuma, his friend, had believed him. He hollowed out a boat for himself and kept it waiting on a mountaintop. The coyote was pretty wise, too. He gnawed out a great cane by the river bank, calked it with gum, and with the coming of the waters clambered into it.
 

"The great waters rose, but Montezuma and the coyote floated upon them and were saved. When the waters receded, the man Montezuma and the wolf who had warned him met on dry land. Anxious to discover how much dry land was left, the man sent out the coyote to explore, and the animal reported that to the west, the south, and the east there was sea, but to the north he could find no sea, though he had journeyed until he was weary. Meanwhile the Great Spirit, with the help of good old Montezuma, had restocked the earth with men and animals."
 

Another legend of the great flood is similar, with an eagle substituting for the wolf.
 

The Arapaho Flood tradition as recorded by Sherman Coolidge, an educated member of that tribe, reads as follows: "Long ago before there was any animal life on earth, the entire surface of the planet was covered with water, except the top of one high mountain. Upon this mountain sat a lone Arapaho, poor, weeping, and in great distress. The Great spirit saw him and felt sorry for him, and in his pity sent three ducks down to the poor Indian. The Arapaho ordered the ducks to dive down into the waters and bring up some dirt. The first and second tried, but after remaining under water for a long time, each returned without any dirt. Then the third went down and was gone so long that the surface of the water where he disappeared had become still and quiet. The Arapaho believed this duck to be dead, when she returned to the surface with some dirt in her bill. As soon as the Arapaho received this bit of dirt, the waters began to subside.
 

"In a short time the waters had receded so far that they could not be seen from the top of the highest mountains, but this Arapaho, who was endowed with supernatural wisdom and power, knew that they surrounded the earth, even as they do to this day. The Arapaho, who had been saved by the ducks, then became the sole possessor of the land. He made the rivers and made the trees to grow and then the buffaloes, elks, deer, and other animals, all the birds of the air and the fishes in the water and all the trees and bushes and all other things that can be grown by planting seed in the ground."
 

Another interesting Indian Flood tradition is that of the Algonquins from the northeastern part of our continent. The story of this tradition runs as follows: Long ago there came a powerful snake when man had become evil. The strong snake was the enemy of living beings, and they became confused and hated one another. Then both fought and annihilated one another, not keeping their peace. The small man fought with the keeper of the dead. Then the powerful snake made a great resolve to destroy all men and living beings. She brought the black snake, the monster, the rushing waters. The rushing waters spread out over the mountains and destroyed all living things. On Turtle island was Manabozho, The grandfather of the human race and of living beings. Being born creeping on Turtle Island, he is ready to move and to dwell. Men and living beings floated on the water, seeking the back of the turtle. The sea monsters were many, and they destroyed many (men). Then the daughter of one of the spirits helped them into a boat, and all together they cried out: "Come help, manabolho, the grandfather of living beings, of men, and of turtles." Altogether on the back of the turtle the men were. Greatly frightened, Manabozho prayed the turtle to restore everything. Then the waters subsided, the mountains and plants became dry, and the evil one went elsewhere.
 

There are other portions of America in which the tradition of the flood is still more distinct than among the forests of the Orinoco. It is related by Herrera, one of he Spanish historians of America, that even the most barbarous of the Brazilians had some knowledge of the general deluge; that in Peru the ancient Indians reported that many years before there were any Incas all the people were drowned by a great flood, save six persons, the progenitors of the existing races, who were saved on a float; that among the Mechoachens it was believed that a single family was preserved, during the outburst of the waters, in an ark, with a sufficient number of animals to replenish the new world; and, more curious still, that it used to be told by the original inhabitants of Cuba that 'an old man, knowing the deluge was to come, built a great ship and went into it with his family and abundance of animals; and that, wearying during the continuance of the flood, he sent out a crow, which at first did not return, staying to feed on the dead bodies, but afterwards returned bearing with it a green branch.' 
 

The resemblance borne by this last tradition to the Mosaic narrative is so close as to awaken a doubt whether it may not have been but a mere recollection of the teaching of some early missionary. Nor can its genuineness now be tested, seeing that the race which cherished it has been long since extinct. It may be stated, however, that a similar suspicion crossed the mind of Humboldt when he was engaged in collecting the traditions of Indians of the Orinoco; but that on further reflection and inquiry he dismissed the doubt as groundless. He even set himself to examine whether the district was not a fossiliferous one, and whether beds of sea shells, or deposits charged with the petrified remains of corals or of fishes, might not have originated among the aborigines some mere myth of a great inundation sufficient to account for the appearances in the rocks. But he found that the region was mainly a primary one, in which he could detect only a single patch of sedimentary rock, existing as an unfossiliferous sandstone. And so, though little prejudiced in favor of the Mosaic record, he could not avoid arriving at the conclusion, simply in his character as a philosophic inquirer who had no other object than to attain to the real and the true, that the legend of the wild Maypures and Tamanacs regarding a great destructive deluge was simply one of the many forms of that oldest of traditions which appears to be well-nigh coextensive with the human family, and which, in all its varied editions, seems to point at one and the same signal event."... The admirable reflection of Humboldt suggested by the South American traditions seems, incidentally at least, to bear out this view. "Those ancient traditions of the human race,' he says, 'which we find dispersed over the whole surface of the globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philosophical study of our own species. How many different tongues belonging to branches that appear totally distinct transmit to us the same facts! The traditions concerning races that have been destroyed and the renewal of nature, scarcely vary in reality, though every nation gives them a local coloring. In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific Ocean, it is always on the loftiest and nearest mountain that the remains of the human race have been saved; and this event appears the more recent in proportion as the nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have of their own existence has no very remote date.'
 

According to a Mexican Flood tradition, Coxcox, also called Tezpi by other tribes, saved himself, his wife, his children, some animals, and some grain, from a great flood by embarking in a boat or raft. When the Great Spirit ordered the water to withdraw, Tezpi sent out from his ship a vulture. This bird feeds on carrion and hence did not return because of the great number of carcasses strewn all over the earth. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the hummingbird alone returned, bringing with it a branch covered with leaves.
 

According to the Buffalo Courier Express, the recent Dana and Ginger expedition into an unexplored region of Mexico found remnants of an ancient Maya Flood tradition.
 

Comment of these Indian Flood traditions is unnecessary. Some of the details are fantastic and have been influenced by the environment and mode of living of the primitive aborigines of this continent, but the basic elements of the Biblical Flood are easily discernible. There is a universal Flood covering the whole earth, destroying all men and every living thing. There is a Noah, who is saved with his family. There is also a boat or a raft by which the human race, animal, and plant life are saved from total annihilation. There are the birds, which were sent out to explore the surface of the earth after the Flood, and even the olive leaf has not been omitted. There are elements which may even be an echo of the confusion of the tongues at babel.
 

The natives of Alaska have the following flood traditions: Formerly the father of the Indian tribe lived toward the rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge would desolate the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself and his family and all the animals. He floated for several months on the water. The animals, who could then talk, complained and murmured against him. A new earth at length appeared. He thereafter alighted with all the animals, which then lost the gift of speech as a punishment for their complaining.
 

The natives of Sudan call Lake Chad in Bornu, Bahar el Nuh, i.e., the lake of Noah, and they believe that a flood submerging the whole earth had its origin in this lake. The Hottentots call the progenitors of their race Noh and Hingnoh, and the natives of Greenland have a tradition according to which ten generations of men had lived upon the earth when a universal flood came and the earth capsized like a boat and the whole human race was destroyed. Only one man saved himself. When he struck the earth with his rod, a woman was created for him. From this pair the present human race has descended.
 

The Hawaiians say that long after the time of Kumuhonua, the first man, the earth became wicked and careless of worship of the gods. One man was righteous, Nu-u. He made a great canoe with a house on it and stored it with food, taking plants and animals into it. Then the waters came up over all the earth and destroyed all of mankind except Nu-u and his family. When he came out upon the land after the water had subsided, he looked up and saw the moon and though that it was Cane, and he came down on a rainbow to reprove Nu-u, but he did not punish him, for Nu-u did this by mistake. When he returned to the sky, he left the rainbow behind him as a token of his forgiveness.
 

In eastern Tartary the Mongols will tell you that it has been said from time immemorial that in remote antiquity the waters of the deluge flooded the district, and when they had receded, the places where they had been were covered with sand.
 

The Battaks of Sumatra say that when the earth grew old and dirty, the Creator - whom they call Debata - sent a flood to destroy every living thing. Debata was angry. The last human pair had taken refuge, not in an ark, but on the top of the highest mountain, and the waters of the deluge had already reached their knees when Debata, the Lord of all, repented of his resolution to make an end to all mankind.
 

Magnificently picturesque legends have grown up among the natives of Engano - an island to the west of Sumatra - and among the Sea Dyaks of Sarawak in Borneo. The Bugi-speaking Toradjas of the Central Celebes tell of a flood which covered the highest mountain, leaving bare only the tip of Mount Wawom Pebato. This time no lucky pair escaped. Instead, the only living creatures to survive the flood were a pregnant woman and a pregnant mouse.
 

According to the legend of the primitive inhabitants of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, some time after they had been created, men grew careless. They disobeyed the rules of the Creator, disregarded the commands he had given them. So like Jehovah in Genesis, he sent a flood, and it covered all the land except one mountain, Saddle Peak, where the Creator himself lived..
 

The Kurnai, an aboriginal Australian tribe of Gippsland in Victoria, tell that long ago a great flood came to their land, and all were drowned except a black man and two or three women. The Fijians, too, had a great flood, but they are uncertain in their memory whether it was partial or universal.
 

Polynesia, Micronesia, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii, New Guinea, and Melanesia, all have their flood tales, handed down from generation to generation over countless years.
 

The Melanesians of the New Hebrides will tell how their legendary hero, Quat, disappeared from this world in a deluge.
 

An early Welsh legend stated that once the Lake of Llion burst, flooding all the lands so that everyone was drowned except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped with a pair of every kind of living thing, so that the descendants of this couple restocked with animals derived from those they had saved.
 

A Lithuanian story is very similar. According to this, Pramzimas, the supreme deity, looked out of the window of heaven and observed the wickedness of mankind; so he determined to destroy them. He sent two great giants, Wandu and Wegas, that is to say, water and wind, to execute his orders, and after twenty days only a remnant of mankind was left upon the top of a high mountain. Pramzimas looked out again and notice this. He was eating nuts at the time, and by an accident he let fall a nut shell which dropped upon the mountain. Into this everyone climbed and thus was saved. Only a single old couple remained on the spot, and they were naturally disturbed by the catastrophe. So the god sent them the rainbow to comfort them and told them to jump nine times over the bones of the earth. This they did, and nine fresh couples sprang up to become the ancestors of the nine tribes of the Lithuanians.
 

According to a legend of the gypsies of Transylvania, there was a time when man lived forever and when neither worry nor sickness troubled them. Meat and fruits existed in abundance, and the rivers flowed with milk and wine. Men and animals lived happy lives and were without fear of death. Then it happened one day that a strange old man arrived at the house of an old couple and asked to lodge for the night. He slept in the cabin, and the man's wife took good care of him. As the man departed on the following day, he gave to his host a vessel in which there was a small fish and said: "keep this fish, and do not eat it. When I come back in nine days and you return the fish to me, I will reward you." After that he departed. The woman desired the fish for supper, but her husband answered: "I have promised the old man to return the fish to him. You will have to promise me that you will spare the fish and keep it until our guest returns." The woman swore and said: "I will not kill that little fish, I will keep it, so helpme God." In the absence of her husband, however, her desire to eat the fish grew stronger and stronger, and finally she took it out of the vessel and placed it on some hot coals. But barely had she done so, when there flashed the first lightning on earth, which struck and killed the woman. Thereupon it began to rain, and the river rose and overflowed its banks. On the ninth day the old man returned and said to his host: "you have kept your oath, and you did not kill the fish. Take another wife, gather your kinsfolk, and build a boat in which you shall save yourselves. All creatures and all men shall perish in the water, but you shall remain alone. Take also animals and seed of trees and herbs with which to replenish the earth. The old man departed, and the rain came and continued for a whole year, and nothing but water and sky could be seen. After a year the water subsided, and the man disembarked with his second wife, his relatives, and the animals. But now they had to labor, cultivate, and sow to live. Labor and sorrow was from now on in their life; to this were added sickness and death. As a result, man multiplied very slowly, and it took many thousands of years before mankind was again as numerous as they had been before.
 

In this legend the basic elements of the Noachian Flood are clearly discernible, but intermingled with it are faint echoes of other historic facts, which have been distorted into fantastic myths. The story of the fish seems to point to India for its background, for the fish also plays an important role in the Hindu flood saga. The reference to a time when neither man nor animals feared death, and when labor and sorrow had not yet entered the human life, evidently refers to the state of man's original innocence in Paradise. The woman's desire to eat the fish is clearly a variation of Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden, but this need not surprise us. Both traditions have survived in one form or another and frequently are found confused, as in this gypsy flood tradition.
 

The traditions in India and China tell, with varying details, the same story of the carrying away of the old world by a flood and the re-peopling of the earth by some who had been miraculously preserved. Manu, whom the Hindus regard as the great progenitor of the race, was warned, so their tradition goes, by a great fish that the earth was about to be engulfed by water. He was told to build a ship and to put into it all kinds of seeds, together with the seven Rishis, or holy beings. The flood came as announced and covered the whole earth. The ship was made fast to the horns of the fish, which drew it on in safety and finally landed it on the loftiest summit of the Himalayas. Manu was permitted by God to create the new race of mankind.
 

It will be noticed here that there are seven companions of Manu; hence eight were saved. This is the very number mentioned in Genesis. Another fact is that Manu is called Satya, that is, the righteous. It was said of Noah that he was righteous among his generation. And then, to make this flood tradition still more remarkable, there is added this story as reported by Hugh Miller: "The holy Satyavrata, having on one occasion drunk mead, became senseless and lay asleep, naked, and Charma, one of three sons who had been born to him, finding him in that sad state, called on his two brothers to witness the shame of their father, and said to them, what has now befallen? In what state is our sire? But the two brothers were more dutiful than Charma and hid him with clothes; and recalled to his senses, and having recovered his intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Charma saying, Thou shalt be a servant of servants."
 

This certainly is a most remarkable and startling echo of the incident recorded in Gen. 9:20ff. One would be inclined to doubt its authenticity if it were not reported by so eminent a scholar and careful scientist as Hugh Miller.
 

According to the Chinese traditions, Fah-he escaped from a deluge which destroyed the human race with the exception of himself, his wife, his three sons, and three daughters, and from these, the whole earth was peopled.
 

The Persians had a tradition that the world had been corrupted by Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness. It was necessary to cover it with a flood so as to sweep away its impurities. The rain fell in drops as large as a bull's head, and the flood rose to man's height above the earth, so that all the creatures of Ahriman were destroyed.
 

Berosus, a Chaldean priest, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, compiled a history of the Chaldeans based on ancient Chaldean records and traditions for Seleucus Nicator, his king. In this account he reports the following legend as he found it: "In the reign of Xisuthros, the tenth king of Babylon, there was a great flood. Before this occurred, the god Kronos appeared to the king in a dream and warned him that on the 15^th day of the month Daisios all men would perish by a flood." He told him to write a history of the world from the beginning and to bury it in the city of the sun at Sippara and then to build a ship and to enter it with his family and his dearest friends, to deposit in the ship provisions for food and drink and to cause wild animals and birds and quadrupeds to enter it, so as to prepare everything for the voyage. And when Xisuthros asked in which direction he ought to navigate the ship, he was told, toward the gods, and he was bidden to pray that good might come to man Xisuthros obeyed and built a ship five stadia in length and two in breadth, about three thousand feet long and twelve hundred feet wide. He collected together all that he had been ordered to do and embarked with his wife and his children and his intimate friends. The deluge having come and being on the wane, Xisuthros sent out some of the birds. These, finding no food or resting place, returned to the ship. Some days after, Xisuthros sent them out again, but they returned again to the ship, with their feet full of clay. When they were released a third time, they returned no more. Thereupon Xisuthros learned that the earth was again bare. He made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it had rested upon a mountain. He thereupon disembarked with his wife and daughter and pilot, raised an altar and sacrificed to the gods, and at the same time disappeared with those who accompanied him. Meanwhile those who had remained in the ship, not seeing Xisuthros return, disembarked and proceeded to look for him, calling him by his name. They did not see Xisuthros again, but heard a voice from heaven bidding them be pious toward the gods, as he had, in fact, received the reward of his piety and had been taken away to live henceforth among the gods and that his wife, his daughter, and the pilot of the ship had shared his fortunes. The voice also told them to return to Babylon and, when there, following the decrees of destiny, to dig up the writings buried at Sippara and make them known among men. The voice added that this country where they were was Armenia. Having heard the voice, they sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to Babylon. Of the ship of Xisuthros, which rested in Armenia, portions still remain in the mountains of Armenia, and pilgrims bring back the asphalt which they have scraped from the ruins, and it is used as a preservative against magic. The companions of Xisuthros went to Babylon, dug up the writings deposited at Sippara, founded numerous towns, built temples, and restored Babylon."
 

Manetho, who lived about 250 B. C. and wrote the ancient history of the Egyptians, relates that there was a world-wide catastrophe in which one, called Toth, was saved. Before this cataclysm, Toth inscribed on a slab of stone in sacred language the principles of all knowledge and after the catastrophe translated the writing into common language. With the Deluge tradition the Egyptians connected the commemoration of the dead, which was done by symbolical ceremony, in which the priest placed the image of Osiris in a sacred ark and launched it out into the sea and there watched it disappear from sight. This ceremony was observed on the 17^th day of Athyr, which corresponds to the date given in the Mosaic accounts of the Flood.
 

In the ancient town of Apamea in Phrygia, there was a pillar on which was carved an ark, which, according to tradition, had come to rest on that very spot. A coin was also found on one side of which was represented an ark with the door wide open and a patriarchal figure receiving a returning bird into the ark. On the other side of the coin is shown a man and his wife leaving the ark. On the ark itself appears the name "Noe."
 

The Greeks had the following tradition: Prometheus had a son who reigned in Phthia and marrie Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. Because Zeus wished to destroy mankind, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, made a coffer, or box, into which he put all the necessities of life and into which he withdrew with Pyrrha. Zeus having caused a great rain to fall, the greater part of Greece was inundated. Deucalion, having been tossed about by the sea for nine days and nights, at length came to the shore at Parnassus. The rain having ceased, he came out of his coffer and offered a sacrifice to Zeus, who sent Hermes to ask him what he wanted. He replied that he wished to people the earth. By order of Zeus he and his wife then threw stones behind them. Those thrown by Deucalion became men, while those thrown by Pyrrha became women.
 

The Greeks had another very interesting legend, with elements of Flood traditions, concerning the Island of Atlantis. According to this legend, there was a large island in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules. This was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other islands. From this island one could pass to the whole of the opposite continent, which surrounded the true ocean: for their sea, which is within the straits of Hercules, is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a continent. Now, in this Island of Atlantis, there was a great and wonderful empire which had control over other islands and parts of the continent. But in the course of history there occurred a violent earthquake and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune all the warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the Island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea. Because of this, those parts of the sea are impenetrable because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way.
 

Plato treats the material of this tradition in his unfinished dialog Critias. After describing the division of the earth among the gods and the races of men, and after telling in some detail about the people, the government, and the ideal conditions prevailing upon the mythical Island of Atlantis, Plato continues: "For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws and well affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirts, practicing gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober and saw clearly that all these goods were increased by virtuous friendship with one another and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost and friendship perishes with them. By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, all that which we have described waxed and increased in them; but when this divine portion began to fade away in them and became diluted too often and with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, then they, being unable to bear their fortune, became unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see, they became base and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness they still appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were filled with unrighteous avarice and power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules with law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a most wretched state, and wanting to inflict punishment on them that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into his most holy habitation, which, being placed in the center of the world, sees all things that partake of generation. And when he had called them together, he spake s follows:
 

Here the dialog breaks off abruptly. No one knows why. It is evident, however, from the context that Plato was about to announce the displeasure of the gods and their judgment to an apostate people. The dialog, so far as we have it, is extremely interesting. It contains elements which betray faint memories of people, of a world, and of conditions in a world as existed before the Flood. There seem to be even some very faint echoes from Paradise and some indistinct relics of the confusion of tongues and definite memories of a great flood.
 

The Roman Flood tradition has been preserved by the well-known Latin poet Ovid in his work called Metamorphoses. Ovid lived and wrote at the time of Caesar Augustus, and for reasons unknown was banished from Rome, in the later part of his life, to the regions of the Black Sea, where he wrote the Metamorphoses. Roman and Greek mythologies formed the subject of a number of his poetic works. In this particular poem the Creation and Flood traditions formed the basis. Though highly poetic in language and treatment, the poem presents these legends as they were current among the Greeks and Romans from ancient times.
 

The poem begins with the story of creation. Man is described as "one of heavenly seed engendered, made in the likeness to the gods that govern everything." Man lived originally in a state of happiness, innocence, and blessedness. 

Then sprang up first the golden age, which of itself maintained The truth and right of everything, unforced and unconstrained. There was no fear of punishment, there was no threatening law In brazen tables nailed up, to keep the folk in awe.
 

There was no town enclosed yet with walls and ditches deep. No horn nor trumpet was in use, no sword nor helmet worn. The world was such that soldiers' help might easily be forborne, The fertile earth yet was free, untouched of spade or plough, And yet it yielded of itself of everything enough. And men themselves contented well with plain and simple food That on the earth by Nature's gift without their travail stood. The springtime lasted all the year, and Zephyr with his mild And gentle blast did cherish things that grew of own accord. The ground, untilled, all kind of fruits did plenteously afford. No muck nor tillage was bestowed on lean and barren land to make the corn of better head and ranker for to stand. Then streams ran milk, then streams ran wine, and yellow honey flowed From each green tree whereon the rays of fiery Phoebus glowed.

Then came a change. Man was less carefree and was now forced to labor in the sweat of his brow -
 

And ancient springtime Jove abridged and made thereof anon four season: winter, summer, spring, and harvest off and on.
Then first of all began the air with fervent heat to swelt; Then icicles hung roping down; then, for the cold was felt,
Men 'gan to shroud themselves in house' their houses were the thicks,
And bushy queaches, hollow caves, or hurdles made of sticks.
Then first of all were furrows drawn, and corn was cast in ground; The simple ox with sorry sighs to heavy yoke was bound.
Next after this succeeded straight the third and brazen age; More hard of nature, somewhat bent to cruel wars and rage,
But yet not wholly past all grace. Of iron is the last In no part good and tractable as formerages past;
For when that of this wicked ages once opened was the vein, Therein all mischief rushed forth, the faith and truth were fain
And honest shame to hide their heads: for whom stepped stoutly in, Craft, treason, violence, envy, pride, and wicked lust to win.
 

Conditions grew from bad to worse. Man became more wicked and lawless still - 
 

All godliness lies under foot ... Men say that giants went about the realm of heaven to win, To place themselves to reign as gods and lawless lords therein.

Jupiter, enraged by the arrogance and lawlessness of men, finally resolves to destroy the human race. He called a council of the gods to make known to them his decision.

Now when the gods assembled were, and each had ta'en his place, Jove, standing up aloft and leaning on his ivory mace,
Right dreadfully his bushy locks did thrice or four times shake, Wherewith he made both sea and land and heaven itself to quake,
And afterward in wrathful words his angry mind thus brake: "I never was in greater care nor more perplexity
How to maintain my sovereign state and princely royalty, When with their hundred hands apiece the add-footed rout
did practice for to conquer heaven and for to cast us out; For though it were a cruel foe, yet did that war depend
upon one ground, and in one stock it had his final end; but now, as far as any sea about the world doth wind,
I must destroy both man and beast and all the mortal kind. I swear by Styx's hideous streams that run within the ground,
all other means must first be sought; but when there can be found no help to heal a festered sore, it must away be cut Lest that the parts that yet are sound in danger should be put.
And therefore as they all offend, so am I fully bent That all forthwith, as they deserve, shall have due punishment."
These words of Jove some of the gods did openly approve, and with their sayings more to wrath his angry courage move.
And some did give assent by signs; yet did it grieve them all that such destruction utterly on all mankind should fall:
Demanding what he proposed with all the earth to do When that he had all mortal men so clean destroyed, and who
On holy altars afterwards should offer frankincense, And whether that he were in mind to leave the earth from thence
To savage beasts to waste and spoil because of man's offense. The King of Gods bade cease their though and questions in that case
And cast the care thereof on him: Within a little space He promised for to frame a new, another kind of men
By wondrous means, unlike the first, to fill the world again. And now his lightning he had thought on all the earth to throw,
But that he feared lest the flames perhaps an high should grow As for to set the heaven on fire and burn up all the sky.
He did remember furthermore how that by destiny A certain time should one day come wherein both sea and land
And heaven itself should feel the force of Vulcan's scorching brand, So that the huge and goodly work of all the world so wide
Should go to wreck; for doubt whereof forthwith he laid aside His weapons that the Cyclops made, intending to correct
Man's trespass by a punishment contrary in effect: And, namely, with incessant showers, from heaven poured down,
He full determined with himself the mortal kind to drown.

As soon as he between his hands the hanging clouds had crushed, With rattling noise down from heave the rain full sadly gushed.
The rainbow, Juno's messenger, bedecked in sundry hue, To maintain moisture in the clouds great waters thither drew:
The corn was beaten to the ground, the tillman's hope of gain, For which he tiled all the year, lay drowned in the rain.
Jove's indignation and his wrath began to grow so hot That for to quench the rage thereof his heaven sufficed not;
His brother Neptune with his waves was fain to do him ease, Who straight assembling all the streams that fall into the seas,
Said to them standing in his house: "Sirs, get you home apace - You must not look to have me use long preaching in this case.
Pour out your force (for so is need), your heads each one unpenned, And from your open springs your streams with flowing waters send."
He had no sooner said the word but that returning back Each one of them unloosed his spring and let his waters slack;
And to the sea with flowing streams swollen above their banks, One rolling in another's neck, they rushed forth by ranks.
Himself with his three-tined mace did lend the earth a blow that made it shake and open ways for waters forth to flow.
The floods at random where they list through all the fields and stray; Men, beasts, trees, corn, and with their gods were churches washed away.
If any house were built so strong against their force to stand, Yet did water hide the top, and turrets in that pond
Were overwhelmed: no difference was between the sea and the ground, For all was sea; there was no shore nor landing to be found.
Some climbed up to tops of hills, and some rowed to and fro In boats, where they not long before to plough and cart did go.
One over corn and tops of towns whom waves did overwhelm Doth sail in ship, another sits a-fishing in an elm.
In meadows green were anchors cast (so fortune did provide), and crooked ships did shadow vines, the which the flood did hide.
And where but the'other day before did feed the hungry goat, The ugly seals and porpoises now to and from did float.
The sea-nymphs wondered under waves the towns and groves to see, And Dolphins played among the tops and boughs of every tree.
The grim and greedy wolf did swim among the silly sheep, The lion and the tiger fierce were borne upon the deep.
It booted not the foaming boar his crooked tusks to whet, The running hart could in the stream by swiftness nothing get.
The fleeting fowls long having sought for land to rest upon, Into the sea with weary wings were driven to fall anon.
The outrageous swelling of the sea the lesser hillocks drowned; Unwonted waves on highest tops of mountains did rebound.
The greatest part of men were drowned, and such as 'scaped the flood , Forlorn with fasting overlong, did die for want of food.
Against the fields of Aonia and Attic lies a land That Phocis hight, a fertile ground while that it was a land:
but at that time a part of sea, and even a champion field Of sudden waters which the flood by forced rage did yield,
Whereas a hill with forked top the which Parnassus hight Doth pierce the clouds and to the stars doth raise his head upright.
When at this hill (for yet the sea had whelmed all beside) Deucalion and his bedfellow without all other guide
Arrived in a little barque, immediately they went And to the nymphs of Corycus with full devout intent
Did honour due and to the gods to whom that famous hill Was sacred, and to Themis, in whose most holy will
Consisted then the oracles. In all the world so round A better nor more righteous man could never yet be found
Than was Deucalion, nor again a woman, maid nor wife, That feared God so much as she, nor led so good a life.
When Jove beheld how all the world stood like a splash of rain And of so many thousand men and women did remain
But one of each, howbeit those both just and both devout, He broke the clouds and did command that Boreas with his stout
And sturdy blasts should chase the flood that earth might see the sky and heaven the earth; the seas also began immediately 
their raging fury for to cease. Their ruler laid away His dreadful mace, and with his orders their woodness did allay.

Then 'gan the sea to have a shore and brooks to find a bank, And swelling streams of flowing floods within their channels sank.
Then hills did rise above the waves that had them overflow, And as the waters did decrease, the ground did seem to grow.
And after long and tedious time the trees did show their tops, All bare save that upon the boughs the mud did hang in knops.
The world restored was again, which though Deucalion joyed Then to behold, yet for because he saw the earth was void
And silent like a wilderness, with sad and weeping eyes And ruthful voice he then did speak to Pyrrah in this wise;
"O sister, O my loving spouse, O silly woman, left As only remnant of they sex that water hath bereft,
whom Nature first by right of birth hath linked to me fast In that we brother's children been, and, secondly, the chaste
And steadfast bond of lawful bed, and, lastly now of all, The present perils of the time that lately did befall;
On all the earth, from east to west, where Phoebus shows his face, There is no more but thou and I of all the mortal race.
The sea hath swallowed all the rest, and scarcely are we sure That our two lives from dreadful death in safety shall endure,
for even as yet the dusky clouds do make my heart addrad. 
 

Would God I could my father's art of clay to fashion men And give them life that people might frequent the earth again.
Mankind, alas! Doth only now within us two consist As moulds whereby to fashion men, for so the gods do list."
And with these words the bitter tears did trickle down their cheek Until at length between themselves they did agree to seek
To God by prayer for his grace, and to demand his aid by answer of his oracle...
 

Their prayers were answered. The goddess bade them pick up stones and throw them over their backs behind them. A first they hesitated because they did not understand, but then they did as they were told, and the stones thrown by Deucalion turned into men, while those thrown by Pyrrha were formed into women, and thus came into being a new race of men to reoccupy the earth.
 

One cannot read the amazing Flood tradition of the ancient Romans presented here in highly poetic form by the great poet Ovid without being deeply impressed. It is not difficult to recognize in this poetic account elements of the primeval history of the human race, such as the creation of man, the state of innocence of original man, the perfection and happiness of Paradise, the fall of man, the curse of sin, and the Flood, all skillfully woven together in this beautiful poem. Time could not erase these profound memories of the race, and hence we find them recurring in varying forms and shades with different people. The Roman story of the Flood as presented by Ovid is, next to the Babylonian, the most interesting of the many Flood traditions found among the nations of the world.
 

CHAPTER X
 

The Babylonian Flood Account
 

The most remarkable of all Flood stories outside the Bible is the Babylonian account of the Flood, which was brought with thousands of other clay tablets from the ancient library of Assurbanipal in Nineveh to the British Museum, where it was accidentally discovered by George Smith, a British orientalist, in 1872. As early as 1845 Layard had begun to dig in a mound which proved to be the site of Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria. In this mound he found the ruins of two palaces that had been destroyed by fire. One turned out to be that of Sennacherib, known to us from the Second Book of Kings. The other was the ruined palace of Asurbanipal, who reigned from 668 to 626 B.C. From these palatial ruins, especially those of Assurbanipal's palace, he brought back a number of treasures, including about 20,000 clay tablets and fragments of clay tablets covered with cuneiform inscriptions. The work of sorting and deciphering these tablets was a difficult one. Mr. Smith was engaged to make copies of the inscriptions of the more important tablets for foreign scholars, and in doing so he acquired a thorough knowledge of the cuneiform script, which was at that time still little understood. While engaged at this task, he accidentally came across a small fragment of a tablet on which he read these words: "The mountain of Nisir stopped the ship. I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and a resting place it did not find, and it returned."
 

Smith perceived at once that these lines resembled an incident in the account of the Flood of Noah as recorded in Genesis, and he began an untiring search for the missing fragment. His labors were rewarded beyond expectation. He found not only many fragments of this account of the Flood but parts of two other copies. When he had assembled all the fragments that he could find, he made a careful translation of the whole text, in which there were, of course, still many gaps. He published the result of this most remarkable discovery before a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology on December 30, 1872.
 

Naturally, this discovery created a great stir not only among scholars, but among the public in general. Until then it had been generally believed that the Babylonian version of the Flood tradition as related by Berosus had been borrowed from the Book of Genesis during the Babylonian Captivity. But here was a Flood tradition almost identical in many of the smallest details, yet dating from a period long before the Babylonian captivity and forming a part of a larger epic, evidently of considerable antiquity.
 

Immediately after this discovery became known, the owners of the London Daily Telegraph invited Mr. Smith to go out to Assyria at their expense to search for further Flood tablets. He had not labored very long on the site of Assurbanipal's palace when something next to the miraculous happened, for he actually found further fragments of the tablets which he had first discovered in the British Museum. He returned three times to ancient Nineveh, but while there during his third expedition, he succumbed to an illness brought on very largely by overwork and his zeal for research.
 

The following is a translation prepared by Dr. Alexander Heidel (died in 1955) brilliant Assyriologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. This is a part of The Gilgamesh Epic, published by the University of Chicago Press.
 

TABLET XI
 

1. Gilgamesh said to him, to Utnapishtim the Distant:

2. "I look upon thee, Utnapishtim,

3. Thine appearance is not different; thou art like unto me

4. Yea, thou art not different; thou art like unto me.

5. My heart had pictured thee as one perfect for the doing of battle;

6. (But) thou liest (idly) on (thy side, (or), on thy back.

7. (Tell me), how didst thou enter into the company of the gods and obtain life (everlasting)?"

8. Utnapishtim said to him, to Gilgamesh:

9. "Gilgamesh, I will reveal unto thee a hidden thing,

10. Namely, a secret of the gods will I tell thee.

11. Shurippak (1) - a city which thou knowest,

12. (And which) is situated (on the bank of) the rive Euphrates -

13.That city was (already) old, and the gods were in its midst.

14. (Now) their heart prompted the great gods (to) bring a deluge.

15. (There was {?} Anu, their father;

16.Warlike Enlil, their counselor.

17. Ninurta, their representative;

18. Ennugi, their vizier;

19. Ninigiku (that is ) Ea, also sat with them.(2)

20. Their speech he repeated to a reed hut:

21. 'Reed hut, reed hut! Wall, wall!

22. Reed hut, hearken! Wall, consider!

23. Man of Shurippak,(3) son of Ubara-Tutu!

24. Tear down (thy) house, build a ship!

25. Abandon (thy) possessions, see (to save) life!

26. Disregard (thy) goods, and save (thy) life;

27. (Cause to) go up into the ship the seed of all living creatures.

28. The ship which thou shalt build,

29. Its measurements shall be (accurately) measured;
 

2. Probably the swelling of Utnapishtim. Some good photographs of reed houses have recently been published by John van Ess in the National Geographic Magazine LXXLXII 1942) 410f.
 

3. This expression, as shown by the following lines, refers to Utnapishtim.
 

31. Cover it (li)ke the subterranean waters.'

32. When I understood this, I said to ea, my lord:

33. '(Behold), my lord, what thou hast thus commanded

34. (I) will honor (and) carry out.

35. (But what) shall I answer the city, the people, and the elders?'

36. Ea opened his mouth and said,

37. Speaking to me, his servant:

38. "Thus shalt thou say to them:

39. (I have le)earned that Enlil hates me,

40. That I may no (longer) dwell in Yo(ur) city,

41. Nor turn my face to the land of Enlil.

42. (I will therefore g)o down to the aps^u and dwell with Ea, my (lor)d.(4)

43. (On) you he will (then) rain down plenty;

44. (... of b)irds(?) ... of fishes.

45. (...) Harvest wealth.l

46. (In the evening the sender) of the storm (?)

47. Will cause a wheat rain to rain down upon you.'(5)

48 soon as (the first shimmer of mor)ning beamed forth,

49. The land was gathered (about me).

50-53. (Too fragmentary for translation.)

54. The child (brou)ght pitch,

55 (While) the strong Brought (whatever else) was needful.

56. On the fifth day (I) laid its framework.

57. One Iku^(6) was its floor space, one hundred twenty cubits each was the height of its walls;

58. One hundred twenty cubits measured each side of its deck(7)

59. I 'laid the shape' of the outside (and)fashioned it.(8)

60. Six (lower) decks I built into it.

------------------------------------------------------------
 

4. The apsu^, the place where Ea had his dwelling, was the subterranean sweet- water ocean, from which, e.g., the water of the river was though to spring forth. But in this line it probably refers to the Persian Gulf.
 

5. Here the original obviously has a play on words, the purpose of which is to deceive the inhabitants of Shurippak to the last moment (cf. Carl Frank in Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie XXXVI (1925 218 . This line can also be translated "he will cause a destructive rain (lit. A rain of misfortune) to rain down upon you." This evidently is the intended meaning of the passage. But Ea knew that the people of Shurippak would interpret these words differently.
 

6. About 3,600 square meters or approximately an acre (see A.J. Sachs in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No 96 (December 1944);, pp.29-39.
 

7. Placing the Babylonian cubit at about half a meter (see the article by Sachs referred to above), the deck had a surface of approximately 3600 square meters, or one iku^. Utnapishtim's boat was an exact cube
 

8. The ship. Utnapishtim now attached the planking to the framework.
 

62. Its ground plan I divided into nine (sections). (9)

63 . I drove water-stoppers into it. (10)

64. I provided punting poles and stored up a supply.(11)

65. Six Shar(12) of pitch I poured into the furnace,

66. (And) three shar of asphalt ( poured) into it.

67. Three shar of oil the basket carriers brought:(13)

68. Besides a shar of oil which the saturation ({?} of the water stoppers) consumed.

69. Two shar of oil (which) the boatman stowed away.

70. Bullocks I slaughtered for (the people).

71. Sheep I killed every day.

72. Must, red wine, oil, and white wine,

73. (I gave) the workmen (to drink) as if it were river water,

74. (So that) they made a feast as on New Year's day.

75. I (...) Ointment I put my hands.

76. (...) The ship was completed.

77. Difficult was (the...).

78. ... above and below
 

10. This line probably means that he drove pointed pieces of wood between the seams to help make the boat watertight. Thus Paul Haupt in Beitrage zur Assyriologie X, Heft 2 (1927), 6, and Armas Salonen, Die Wasserfahrzeuge in Babyloneien (Helsinki, 1939( p. 100f.
 

11. Or: what was needful (cf. Line 55).
 

12. Var.: three shar, one shar is 3600. The measure is not given in these lines Perhaps we have to supply sutu^; one sut^ was equal to a little over two gallons. Three shar would then correspond to about 24,000 gallons (cf. Schott, op. cit., p.67, n. 11.)
 

13. If the translation "basket carriers" is correct, we may perhaps assume that the baskets were coated with asphalt, or some such substance (so Haupt in beitrage zur Assyriologue, X, Heft 2, 18). But I am rather inclined to believe that the oil was contained in vessels carried in some kind of sling. Thus in Egypt large pottery amphorae filled with wine were transported in netted pot slings carried on a pole (for a beautiful and easily accessible illustration see The National Geographic Magazine, LXXX (1941) 495.) The same mode of transportation is depicted on a plaque discovered by the Oriental Institute among the ruins of Opis, in babylonia (a good picture of this plaque is found in J.H. Breasted, Ancient Times, Boston, etc., 1935), p. 155. Attention may be drawn also to the manner in which a demijohn is enclosed and carried. Salonen's view (op. Cit., p. 15. N.2) that sussullu denotes a kind of ladle has been refuted by Meier inOrientalistische Literaturzeitung, XLII.I Col. 306.
 

80. (Whatever I had I) loaded aboard her;

81. Whatever I had of silver I loaded aboard her;

82. Whatever I (had) of gold I loaded aboard her;

83. Whatever I had of the seed of all living creatures (I loaded) aboard her.

84. After I had caused all my family and relations to go up into the ship

85. I caused the game of the field, the beasts of the field, (and) all the craftsment0 go (into it.)

86. Shamash (14) set for me a definite time:

87. 'When the sender of the stor(rm [?] causes a destructive rain to rain down in the evening,

88. Enter the ship, and close thy door.' (15)

89. That definite time arrived:

90. In the evening the sender of the sto(rm [?] caused a destructive rain to rain down.

91. I viewed the appearance of the weather;

92. The weather was frightful to behold.

93. I entered the ship and closed my door.

94. For the navigation (? Of the ship to the boatman Pazur-Amurri

95. I entrusted the mighty structure with its goods.

96. As soon as the first shimmer of morning beamed forth,

97. A black cloud came up from out the horizon.

98. And thundered (16) within it,

99. While Shullat and Hanish went before,

100. Coming as heralds over hill and plain;

101 Irragal (17) pulls out the masts;

102. Ninurta (18) comes along (and) causes the dykes to give way;

103. The anunnaki (19) raised (their) torches,

104. Lighting up the land with their brightness; (20)

105. The raging of Adad reaches unto heaven

106. (And) turns into darkness all that was light.
 

17. Another name of Nergal, the god of the underworld.
 

18. God of war and lord of the wells and irrigation works (knut Tallqvist, Akkadische Goetterepitheta, Helsinki, 1938, pp. 424-26
 

19. The judges in the underworld
 

20. These two lines perhaps refer to sheet lightning on the horizon; forked lightning, which is accompanied by thunder peals, is attributed to Adad (Jensen, op. Cit., p. 496, and Ebeling in Reallexikon der assyriologue, vol. I, (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932), p. 24.
 

108. (For) one day the tem( [pest] blew).

109. Fast it blew and (...)

110. Like a battle (it ca)me over the p(eople).

111. No man could see his fellow.

112. The people could not be recognized from heaven.

113. (Even) the gods were terror-stricken at th deluge.

114. They fled (and)ascended to the heaven of Anu; (21)

115. The gods cowered like dogs (and) crouched in distress (?)

116. Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail;

117. The lovely voiced lady of the g(ods) lamented:

118.'In truth, the olden time has turned to clay,

119. Because I commanded evil in the assembly of the gods!

120. How could I command (such) evil in the assembly of the gods!

121 (How) could I command war to destroy my people,

122. (For) it is I who bring forth (22) (these) my people!

123. Like the spawn of fish they (now) fill the sea.'

124. The Anunnaki-gods wept with her;

125.The gods sat bowed (and) weeping.

126. Covered were their lips...

127. Six days and (six) nights

128. The wind blew, the downpour, the tempest, (and) the fl(ood) overwhelmed the land.

129. When the seventh day arrived, the tempest, the flood,

130. Which had fought like an army, subsided in (its) onslaught.

131. The sea grew quiet, the storm abated, the flood ceased.

132. I looked upon the sea, (all) was silence.

133. And all mankind had turned to clay;

134. The ... was as level as a (flat) roof.

135. I opened a window, and light fell upon my face.(23)

136. I bowed, sat down, and wept.

137. My tears running down over my face.

138. I looked in (all) directions for the boundaries of the sea.

139. At (a distance of)twelve (24) (double hours) there emerged a stretch of land.

140. On Mount Nisir (25) the ship landed.

141. Mount Nisir held the ship fast and did not let (it) move.

142. One day, a second day, Mount Nisir held the ship fast and did not let (it) move
 

21. The sky god 22. Lit., gives birth 
 

23. On the transposition of this line see Schott in Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie, XLII, p. 139ff.
 

24. Var.: fourteen 25. This name could also be read Nimush.
 

143. A third day, a fourth day, Mount Nisir held the ship fast and did not let (it) move.

144. A fifth day, a sixth day, Mount nisir held the ship fast and did not let (it) move.(26)

145. When the seventh day arrived.

146. I sent forth a dove and let (her) go.

147. The dove went away and came back to me;

148. There was no resting place, and so she returned.

149. (Then) I sent forth a swallow and let (her) go.

150. The swallow went away and came back to me

151. There was no resting place, and so she returned.

152. (Then) I sent forth a raven and let (her) go.

153. The raven went away, and when she saw that the waters had abated,

154. She ate, she flew about, she cawed, (and) did not return.

155. (Then) I sent forth (everything) to the four winds and offered a sacrifice.

156. I poured out a libation on the peak of the mountain.

157. Seven and (yet) seven kettles I set up.

158. Under them I heaped up (sweet) cane, cedar, and myrtle.

159. The gods smelled the savor,

160. The gods smelled the sweet savor.

161. The gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer.

162. As soon as the great goddess (27) arrived,

163. She lifted up the great jewels which Anu had made according to her wish:

164. 'O ye gods here present, as surely as I shall not forget the lapis lazuli on my neck,

165. I shall remember these days and shall not forget (them) ever!

166. let the gods come near to the offering;

167. (But) Enlil shall not come near to the offering.

168. Because without reflection he brought on the deluge

169. And consigned my people to destruction!'

170. As soon as Enlil arrived

171. And saw the ship, Enlil was wroth;

172. He was filled with anger against the gods, the Igigi:(28)
 

27. That is, Ishtar. 28. The gods of heaven
 

173. 'Has any of the mortals escaped? No man was to live through the destruction'

174. Ninurta opened his mouth and said, speaking to warrior enl(il):

175. 'Who can do things without Ea?

176. For ea alone understands every matter.'

177. Ea opened his mouth and said, speaking to warrior Enlil;

178. 'O Warrior, thou wisest among the gods!

179. How, O how couldst thou without reflection bring on (this) deluge

180. On the sinner lay his sin; on the transgressor lay his transgression!

181. Let loose, that he shall not be cut off: pull tight, that he may not ge(t) (too loose). (29)

182. Instead of sending a deluge, would that a lion had come and diminished mankind!

183. (Or) instead of thy sending a deluge, would that a wolf had come and dim(inished) mankind!

184.(or) instead of thy sending a deluge, would that a famine had occurred and (destroyed) the land!

185. (Or) instead of thy sending a deluge, would that Irra(30) had come and smitten mankind!

186. (Moreover it was not I who revealed the secret of the great gods;

187. (But) to Atrahasis (30)I showed a dream, and so he learned he secret of he gods.

188. And now take counsel concerning him'.

189. Then Enlil went up into the ship.

190. He took my hand and caused me to go aboard.

191. He caused my wife to go aboard (and to kneel down at my side.

192 Standing between us, he touched our foreheads and blessed us:

193. 'Hitherto Utnapishtim has been but a man;

194. But now Utnapishtim and his wife shall be like unto us gods.

195. In the distance, at the mouth of the rivers, Utnapishtim shall dwell!'

196. So they took me and caused my to dwell in the distance, at the mouth of rivers."
 

30. Irra is the god of pestilence; Atrahasis is a descriptive epithet meaning "the exceedingly wise" - is another designation for Utnapishtim

This remarkable Flood story is part of the great Gilgamesh Epic. It was found in the ruins of the Assurbanipal library in Nineveh. The original was written centuries before Moses wrote Genesis. Though there is a striking similarity between the two narratives, one is not based upon the other, but both describe independently an actual historical event.
 

It had become fashionable with scholars like Delitzsch, King, Skinner, Driver, Wundt, Jastrow, and others who followed them to ascribe the Hebrew Flood account to Babylonian sources. Some held that this story was brought from Babylon to Canaan by Abraham; others said that they were transmitted to the West in the so-called Amarna period, but the great majority of scholars hold that knowledge of it was obtained in Babylon at the time of the Exile. Two arguments are generally advanced for this position: the one argument is the great age of Babylonian civilization, which involved the idea that civilization in the West had only developed a little before 2000 B.C. by Arabs from Arabia; the other argument is based on the frequency of inundations in Babylonia, which gave rise to these so-called nature myths. In 1909, Albert Clay opposed these theories and held that the Babylonian origin of the Biblical Deluge story was without foundation. He argued that the Biblical Deluge story was indigenous to the West and that, on the other hand, the Babylonian Deluge story as preserved in the Gilgamesh Epic had West-Semitic elements and that therefore the influence was rather from the West.
 

Dr. Alexander Heidel is of the opinion that both the Biblical and the Babylonian Flood accounts revert to a common source of some kind. This source need not at all have sprung from Palestine soil, but may have originated in the land of Babylonia, where the Book of Genesis (11:1-9) localizes the home of postdiluvian mankind and from where Abraham emigrated to Palestine. Since we know that several different Deluge versions were current in the Tigris-Euphrates area, this explanation is a very distinct possibility.
 

No fair- and open-minded person can, in the face of this accumulation of Flood traditions, which are found with so many people, persist in relegating the Biblical story of the world-wide Flood to the realm of meaningless fable, as Huxley does. Even the great Wundt, whom no one will accuse of being unduly influenced by Biblical evidence, and who does his utmost to find a reasonable case for an independent origin of the various flood sagas, is forced to admit:"Of the combination of all these elements into a whole (the destruction of the earth by water, the rescue of a singe man and seed of animals by means of a boat, etc), however, we may say without hesitation, it could not have arisen twice independently."
 

And Sir J. William Dawson, LL.D., the famous Canadian geologist, writes: "Further, we know now that the Deluge of Noah is not a mere myth or fancy of primitive man or solely a doctrine of the Hebrew Scriptures. The record of the catastrophe is preserved in some of the oldest historicaldocuments of several distinct races of men, and is indirectly corroborated by the whole tenor of the early history of most of the civilized races.
 

"As to the actual occurrence of the Deluge as a wide spread catastrophe affecting, with a few stated exceptions, the whole human race, we have thus a concurrence of the testimony of ancient history and tradition, and of geological and archaeological evidence, as well as of the inspired records of the Hebrew and Christian revelation. Thus no historical event, ancient or modern, can be more firmly established as matter of act than this."
 

To deny that, is to cast away not only the Word of God, but to reject also the most ancient and most sacred traditions of universal humanity.
 

And Hugh Miller concludes his observations on the Flood traditions with the following remarks: "Such are some of the traditions of the great catastrophe which overtook the human family in its infancy and made so deep an impression on the memories of the few awe-struck survivors that the race never forgot it. Ere the dispersal of the family it would have of course existed as but one unique recollection - a single reflection on the face of an unbroken mirror. But the mirror has since been shattered into a thousand pieces, and now we find the object, originally but one, pictured in each broken fragment, with various degrees of distinctness, according to the various degrees of injury received by the reflecting medium"
 

In conclusion we may therefore say: "If there was not such a world catastrophe of which all the Flood traditions bear witness, how can they be accounted for?" Nature myths have their origin in a great historical fact. We cannot escape the conclusion that these Flood traditions are an indisputable proof that the world catastrophe as described in Genesis is one of the greatest facts of all history. It has left an indelible impression on the memory of the entire human race.
 

CHAPTER XI
 

Other Historical Evidence for the Flood
 

One of the most remarkable chapters in the first section of Genesis is the chapter dealing with the genealogical tables of the antediluvian patriarchs. This chapter is remarkable not only because of its accurate enumeration of the chief representatives of the ten generations preceding the Flood, including the exact age of each of the patriarchs at the birth of his first son and his full age at the time of his death, but also because of the enormous ages to which these antediluvian fathers lived before death overtook them. According to this genealogy, Adam lived 930 years, Methuselah, the oldest man of the human race, 969 years, while the shortest life reported is that of Enoch, who was 365 years old when he was translated into heaven without seeing death. The full meaning of these ages can only be appreciated by comparison. If we translate these ages into our own time, it would mean that the fathers of the present generation would have lived and associated with the men and women who were born at the time of St. Paul or St. John. No wonder, therefore, that this chapter, above others, has been subjected to much criticism, skepticism, and ridicule. But it is a most significant fact that these ten antediluvian generations reappear with a most stubborn persistency in the ancient traditions of the various races and that they end, as the Bible says, with a great flood.
 

In the following table the reader will find in parallel columns the names of the antediluvian Biblical patriarchs and the ten antediluvian kings of Egypt and Babylon as found in the respective traditions of these countries.
 

PATRIARCHS                                                     Egypt                                             Chaldean Kings

Adam                                                                     Ptah                                                     Alorus

Seth                                                                       Ra                                                        Alaparus

Enos                                                                      Su                                                         Almelon

Cainan                                                                   Seb                                                       Ammenon

Mahalaleel                                                             Hosiri                                                    Amegalarus

Jared                                                                     Set                                                        Daonus

Enoch                                                                    Hor                                                       Aedorachus

Methuselah                                                             Tut                                                        Amempsin

Lamech                                                                 Ma                                                         Otiartes

Noah                                                                     Hor                                                        Xisuthros
 

The long lives of the Biblical patriarchs have been lengthened by grotesque exaggerations in both the Egyptian and Chaldean traditions. The first king of the Babylonian chronology ruled 36,000 years. Their oldest king ruled 64,800 years. The Babylonian genealogies and chronologies are reported by Berosus, whose unit of chronology is the sarus. There is some reasonable doubt as to the exact meaning of this word. Suidas informs us that it had at least two values among the Babylonians, the one astronomical, corresponding to 3,600 years; the other civil, corresponding to eighteen and a half years. If we take the latter meaning, these exaggerated ages are reduced considerably and become almost identical with the ages of the Biblical antediluvian patriarchs.

Genesis gives the age of each patriarch at the birth of his eldest son; the Chaldean chronology gives the duration of each reign. That the two could be easily confused as they were handed down by tradition must be admitted.
 

Reckoning the sarus at 18 years and six months, we get the following results:
 

                                     Year of birth of                                                         The reign of the

                                            The oldest son of                                                         Chaldean ant-

                                          Each patriach                                                                 diluvian Kings

Adam ............................................... 130                                                             Alorus ..................... 185

Seth ...............................................    105                                                            Aloparus .................... 56 ½

Enos ...............................................     90                                                            Almelon ..................... 240 ½

Cainan ................................................ 70                                                             Ammenon ................... 222

Mahalaleel .........................................  65                                                              Amegalarus ................. 333 

Jared ................................................... 162                                                          Daonus ........................ 185

Enoch .................................................. 65                                                            Aedorachus ................. 333

Methuselah .......................................... 187                                                          Amempsinus ............... 185

Lamech ................................................ 182                                                        Otiartes ........................ 148

Noah's age at the Flood ......................   600                                                           Xisuthros ..................... 333

                                                        -----------                                                                                         ----------

Total for period before the flood .......... 1,656                                                                                             2,221
 

As we compare these totals, the difference is not very great. But it must be remembered that there is a considerable deviation in the different forms in which the biblical figures have been handed down. And we need not be surprised at this, because figures in Hebrew are peculiarly liable to suffer at the hands of transcribers. Thus we find that according to the Samaritan version the total period before the Flood adds up to 1,302 years, while according to the Septuagint its duration was 2,242. Comparing with this the Chaldean figure of 2,221, we find a discrepancy of only twenty-one years, which is most remarkable, to say the least.

There also appears to have been some connection or confusion between Enoch and Noah. In ancient traditions both are holy men, and Enoch, like Noah, is said to have predicted the Flood. In Genesis, Enoch is translated into heaven without seeing death. In the Babylonian and Chaldean, this is ascribed to Noah. It is also a curious fact that the dynasty of gods with which the Egyptian mythical history begins sometimes contains seven reigns, while others enumerate ten. In one record the same name is found for the seventh and tenth dynasty. The seventh reign is reported as having lasted for 300 years. That happens to be the exact number of years that Enoch, the seventh of the antediluvian patriarchs, lived after the birth of his son Methuselah. The unusual means by which God removed Enoch from this land of the living seems to have left a profound impression upon the generations that followed, and hence it is not surprising that he is at times confused with Noah.
 

But these traditions are not limited to Egypt and Babylon. The Sibylline books speak of ten ages which elapsed between Creation and the Deluge. The Hindus enumerate nine Brahmidikas, who with Brahma, their maker, are called the ten Pitris, or fathers; the Chinese tell of ten emperors who shared the divine nature and reigned before the dawn of historic times; and the Phoenicians also regard ten generations of patriarchs.
 

Here, as in the case of the Flood traditions, we find ourselves confronted with an impressive array of concordant testimony, gathered from the four quarters of the earth, which leaves no room for doubt in regard to the common ground of the ancient narrative. There are ten patriarchs in the antediluvian genealogy in Genesis, and with a strange persistence this same number reappears in the legends of a great number of nations, especially among those whose history dates back to the very beginning the human race, as that of Egypt, Babylon, China, and India. Then there is also a strange agreement with respect to the unusual age of this antediluvian generation, though the details have been changed in the oral transmission of these traditions. Finally, three is that remarkable agreement on the fact that the Flood regularly occurs during the reign and the life of the last of these patriarchal kings. One of the Babylonian records closes with these words: "they ruled 241,200 years. The deluge came upon the land."
 

Here, then, is another interesting and stubborn fact which must be met honestly, for all these ever-recurring incidents found with so many peoples so widely separated with respect to both time and place cannot be accounted for as a mere accident. These traditions, differing in some of their details, evidently have a common source in the same historical facts.
 

But there is another tradition found with many peoples in widely separated areas in both ancient and modern times which bears witness to the historical fact of the Flood, even to the extent of pointing to the season of the year in which this fearful cataclysm destroyed the human race. That season is the festival of the New Year, observed at the disappearance of the Pleiades at the end of October or the beginning of November. Urquhart, who reports these traditions says that a new -year festival connected with, and determined by, the Pleiades seems to be one of the most universal of all customs. It is not only the fact that New Year's Day was observed by so many people at about the same time which makes this significant, but that the observance of this event was always connected with the memory of the dead or was observed as a feast of the ancestors.
 

The natives of Australia observed this day at about the season mentioned. On this occasion they painted a white stripe over their arms, legs, and ribs, and dancing by the light of the fire appear like so many skeletons celebrating. The same custom is found among the savages of the Society Islands, where the closing of the old and the opening of the new year were celebrated about November. At the conclusion of this celebration each man, returning to his hut, was expected to offer a special prayer for the spirit of the departed relatives.
 

In the Fiji Islands a commemoration of the dead takes place toward the end of October.
 

In Peru the new year came at the beginning of November and was called Ayamarka, which signifies "carrying a corpse." The festival was celebrated in memory of the dead and was observed with songs and music and by placing food and drink upon the graves of the dead.
 

The Hindus celebrate their Durga, a festival of the dead, which originally was their New Year's day and was observed on the 17th day of November.
 

The Persians called November Mordad, that is, the angel of death, and the feast of the dead, which took place at the same time as in Peru, was considered a New Year's festival. 
 

With the ancient Druids the night of the first of November, in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world, was full of mystery. According to a custom connected with this event, the priestesses were obliged at this time to pull down and rebuild each year the roof of their temple as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the world. If one of them, in bringing the material for the new roof, let fall her sacred burden, she was seized by her enraged companions and torn to pieces. On this same night the Druids extinguished the sacred fire, which was kept burning throughout the rest of the year; and at the signal all the fires in the community were put out, and it was believed that, in the complete darkness that followed throughout the land, the phantom spirits of those who had died during the preceding year were then carried by boats to the judgment seat of the god of the dead.
 

A strange relic of this Druidic festival has survived in our present Hallowe'en (Hallow Eve) on the last day of October and All saints and All souls Days on the first and second of November. In former years the relics were even more numerous - in the Hallowe'en torches of the Irish and the bonfires of the Scotch and Welsh, while in France it was customary to visit the cemeteries and graves of their ancestors at this time.
 

The Mexicans to this day observe a day of the dead in much the same way and at the same time. They still place food and drink upon the graves of the departed ancestors, as modern travelers in that country have observed.
 

In ancient Egypt the day of the dead was observed on the 17^th day of Athyr, which corresponds to the 17^th day of November. On this day the Egyptian priest would place an image of the god Osiris in a sacred ark and launch it into the sea until it was borne out of sight.
 

Now it must be admitted that the origin of these strange traditions is not as clearly traced as the Flood traditions, and yet there seems to be a connection between these strange events and that great event in the history of the human race.
 

The date of the festival corresponds to the date of the Flood if, as some hold, the year began in the fall of the year. There are others who question this. All these traditions have in common a remembrance of the dead, which seems to point to a major calamity of the human race. Then there are echoes of a perishing world and the rebuilding of another. Customs and traditions found so widely scattered and with so many people must have their origin in some great experience in the past history of man. There is no common experience of the human race which would so well account for these strange customs and traditions as the Flood. And we may therefore well agree with Urquhart, who in concluding his remarks on these traditions says: ; "Here the traditions not only unite in bearing down to our own times that awful cry of anguish which once shook earth and sky, but also fix upon the very month and the very day which the Scriptures have recorded."
 

And, finally, there is the extra-Biblical Flood evidence that has been contributed by archaeology and modern excavations. Organized and scientifically directed excavation activities on sites of ancient civilizations had a modest beginning about a century ago. Since then they have been extended to a great many places in the region once occupied by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Roman, and the great Semitic, Hittite, and Persian empires of early Bible times. American and European archaeologists have co-operated in these endeavors, and through their joint efforts a great wealth of interesting and important information has been brought to light concerning these ancient people and their civilization which for these many centuries had been buried under great mounds of drifting desert sand. And much to the confusion and embarrassment of the Bible critics, these discoveries have proved again and again that the historical events recorded in the Old testament are not fables or mere folklore, as they had claimed, but true and reliable history in every detail. This also applies to the Biblical account of the Flood.
 

Reference has already been made to the Babylonian Flood story discovered by George Smith of the British Museum in the Assurbanipal library of ancient Nineveh. Since then Prof. H.V. Hilprecht of Pennsylvania University has discovered a fragment of still another Deluge story on the site of ancient Nippur. But since the ancient Flood traditions have already been discussed in the previous chapter, further reference is unnecessary.
 

A French expedition under the leadership of M. Jacques de Morgan carried out a most extensive series of excavations on the mound concealing the ancient city of Susa, the Biblical Shushan of Nehemiah and Esther. In still more recent times a British-American expedition, under the direction of Leonard Woolley, concentrated its efforts on the site of ancient Ur, the original home of Abraham. In both of these cases, discoveries were made which in the opinion of competent archaeologists bear witness to the historical fact of the Biblical Flood.
 

In the mound which covered all that was left of the glories of ancient Susa, de Morgan found the remains of a number of successive settlements, one lying above the other. The relics of the first settlement, since then known as Susa 1, were found eighty-four feet below the top of the mound. In this stratum, representing the first settlement, was found a great quantity of painted pottery, some simple household articles, such as axes made of copper, circular hand mirrors, also made of copper, and some small receptacles which from their size and appearance have been termed cosmetic pots. The potter found was decorated with delicate artistic designs and reveals an advanced stage of skilled workmanship.
 

These relics represented the oldest civilization on this site, but the significant fact is that this stratum was separated from the next above it by a layer of five feet of solid deposit containing no relic whatsoever, while above this sterile layer was found an unbroken continuity of settlements to the very top. But this five-foot sterile layer not only interrupted the regular continuity, but also marked a distinct change in the character and workmanship of the relics found indicating a lapse of time of possibly several centuries.
 

Since de Morgan's discoveries, pottery of the same character and age was found on a site about eighty-five miles to the northwest of Susa called Tepeh Musyan, and still later the same was also traced to scattered sites in Mesopotamia to the west and eastward as far as Baluchistan. The questions therefore arise: what caused the break in time? What forces of nature deposited the clean stratum separating two distinct civilizations?
 

It has been suggested that an extended period of drought made the place uninhabitable and led to its abandonment and that the layer of clean soil would accumulate dust and sand carried there by the wind from the arid and barren region round about. But in reply to that it might be said that drought never extended over a period of centuries, but at most over a cycle of a few years or a decade. If the early inhabitants of Susa had been compelled to abandon their homes for a time on account of drought, they most certainly would have returned after a few years, or others would have taken their place, and there would not have been such a distinct interruption in the continuity of the civilization.
 

War might have been another reason for the abandonment of this site. It is true, war might totally destroy a city or many cities, as it has done frequently in the past, but a war in that early stage of human history would hardly have been able to wipe out completely a whole civilization extending from Mesopotamia to Baluchistan.
 

For these and other reason, and because of certain traditions embodied in the list of kings of the first postdiluvian dynasty of Kish in the lower Euphrates, Peake and other archaeologists, including Woolley, have come to the conclusion that the early painted pottery of Susa 1 and of the regions mentioned represents an antediluvian civilization and that the clean deposit was caused by the Biblical Deluge, which completely wiped out the race that had lived there. Centuries later the same region and the same site were re occupied by a new race, which developed a new civilization on the graves of a race that had perished in the Flood.
 

But even more convincing evidence than that found in Susa was discovered by Leonard Woolley in 1929 on the ancient site of Ur. These excavations have already been described with some detail in a previous chapter, and what was said there need not be repeated here. But it may not be amiss to call particular attention here to the fact that in Ur as well as in Susa the first settlement was separated from the next above by a deposit of considerable thickness containing no relics whatsoever, and that, in the second place, this layer not merely separated two distinct settlements, but two distinct civilizations removed from each other by several centuries. In Susa the lowest settlement was found eighty-four feet below the top of the mound. With a layer five feet in thickness separating it from the next above. In Ur the excavation had to go down sixty feet before it reached the bottom, while the layer which separated the first settlement from those that followed was found to consist of clean clay, eight feet in thickness. And while the origin and character of the deposit in Susa was somewhat uncertain, there is no question as to the origin and character of the deposit at Ur. Here it is clear that the stratum of clay covering the earliest settlement was laid down in water; and judging by the thickness of the layer and the area affected, the Flood was of a magnitude far exceeding the dimensions of a local river inundation.
 

Conditions very similar to those found at Ur were discovered at about the same time at Kish, another ancient city of the lower Euphrates not far from Ur.
 

It is but natural that these discoveries have aroused much interest and excitement among archaeologists, and a great many theories have been offered as an interpretation. But the men who supervised and participated in these excavations, and were able to examine the deposits and the relics found on the very spot where these cities had been buried, were unanimous in their conclusion that this earliest civilization, represented by the findings in Susa, Ur, Kish, and in the entire area extending from Mesopotamia to Baluchistan, was wiped out by a flood of unparalleled magnitude and that this disaster must be the Flood described in Genesis.
 

The conclusions of these archaeologists are well summarized by M.E.L. Mallowan in an article in the National GeographicMagazine of January, 1930. "The meaning of the stratum became instantly obvious. Our clean bank of clay was the deposit of a great flood that had wiped out the primitive civilizations beneath it.
 

"The casual observer might argue that such a find was only to be expected in a country whose two great rivers flooded annually, and that our clay bank merely indicated an ancient local flood. True, it was an ancient and a local flood in a sense, but there is every reason to believe that it was something very much more than this: that it was the great Biblical Flood related in the book of Genesis, a flood that afterward came to be regarded not as a local but as a world flood.
 

"The extraordinary importance of this discovery cannot be overestimated, and it is therefore all the more necessary to point out the salient features to those skeptics who will wish to disbelieve. The point to be considered is this: Does the flood discovered beneath the earliest known remains at Ur represent a World Flood or does it not? It is well to remind ourselves here that our investigations are only at the beginning, inasmuch as they were made at the very end of last season; but that makes it the more remarkable, in that all the available evidence goes to prove that our flood involved a national and not merely a local catastrophe. Let us summarize what we know about it.

"First and foremost, the remains beneath the flood deposit are the oldest and the deepest ever found at Ur. That is proved from the amount of soil cleared from the surface and from the age of the remains above.
 

"Secondly, the particular type of civilization obliterated by the flood never again appeared; its outstanding characteristics, in particular the brilliant painted pottery, were wiped out from everyday use.
 

"Thirdly, above the flood deposit came a new people, the Sumerians, who had just learned to write and whose earliest legends spoke of a great flood. The flood that they described was handed down to later traditions and finally became crystallized in the Genesis account, which corroborates the old tradition in almost every detail." (. 118 ff.)
 
 
 

When the enemies of Jesus complained that His disciples and even the children had joined in the triumphant song of "Hosanna to the Son of David," Jesus replied that if these were silent, the very stones would immediately cry out. When scholars and churchmen refuse to accept divine revelation and are ashamed to give honor to Almighty God, the stones and the material remains of generations and things that have been must cry out, and the indistinct babbling of humanity's childhood, as recorded in its mythologies and traditions, must bear witness. And strange enough, the very men who so frequently close their eyes and ears to revealed truth of Scripture become the instruments in the hands of God to interpret for their fellow men this testimony and thus, like Balaam of old, unwittingly become prophets of God, confirming the truth as revealed in the Bible.
 
 
 

CHAPTER XII
 

Geological Evidence for a Universal Flood
 

The greatest opposition to the Biblical Flood story has come, strangely enough, from the men whose very business it is to observe nature in its wonderful and manifold forms and to search out the mysterious laws that govern it. That is particularly true of the geologist. The science of geology has contributed much toward a better understanding and appreciation of the planet upon which we live. But not all that geology teaches is science or is established as truth by actual measurement, demonstration, or some other scientific method of discovering truth. Much of geology is pure speculation and is as such on the same basis as philosophy, or must be accepted on faith, as the truths of theology. There is no quarrel with this since some truths are beyond scientific demonstration. Or as Thomas Aquinas has so well said:"There is a point, however high it may be, beyond which reason must confess its inability to understand, but it is just at this point that faith comes to the rescue of reason; the mind in matters of faith gives the assent to truth upon the authority of God manifested through revelation and thus man completes the edifice of his knowledge with the structure of supernatural truth. The realm of faith then is not to be conceived in opposition to the realm of natural truth but as the culmination for in both reign supreme the same divine intelligence." We do not quarrel with modern geology for advancing theories as possible solutions where truths cannot be established by scientific demonstration, but we have a serious quarrel with geology or any other science when such theories are dogmatically presented as established facts and when these sciences are intolerant toward any other view belief, or theory.
 

Until the early part of the last century geologists accepted the Biblical Flood as a historical fact and were agreed in tracing to this great world cataclysm many of the phenomena in and on the surface of the earth's crust, which since then have given rise to a great many theories concerning the history, development, and age of our earth and its inhabitants. This change did not occur suddenly or as the result of some important geological discovery, but was a part, or the practical working out, of a large movement of thought known as Rationalism which gradually spread over all of Europe and the rest of the Western World and touched every phase of intellectual life, such as theology, science, philosophy, literature, and even education. Human reason was made the measure of all things. Whatever could not be harmonized with reason was rejected. Even the Bible was subjected to this treatment. This meant the removal, as acceptable truth, of everything which partook of the miraculous or of any direct interference with the affairs of men or the universe on the part of a personal, Omnipotent God.
 

In biology, Rationalism led to the revival of the ancient Greek theory of evolution as an explanation of the origin of the life that is found in the universe. The Biblical Flood story could, of course, not be made to fit into such a mechanistic scheme any more than the story of Creation as related in Genesis. Hence both the biblical account of Creation and the story of the Flood were ruled out as unacceptable, and the modern theory of geology, which is evolutionistic in its basic principle, too their place. And yet even modern geology and other sciences have unwittingly contributed much to confirm the Biblical account of the Flood. It is through the untiring efforts of geologists and other scientists that the earth has yielded up physical evidence in great abundance to substantiate the record of Moses concerning a universal flood. The examination of a part of such evidence will therefore next engage our attention in this study.
 

The first of this type of evidence I wish to submit is what the geologists call "rubble drift and "ossiferous fissures." By "rubble drift" is meant a certain type of deposit or sediment consisting of massive, angular unrolled material tumultuously deposited in local pockets and catchment areas, generally full of shattered bones. And by "ossiferous fissures" are meant great fissures or rents in the earth which were formed by some violent contortion of the surface of the earth.
 

The evidence of such fissures has been found in manyplaces of the earth, some of them measuring from 140 to 300 feet in depth. They were filled with debris which drifted into them soon after they opened. This probably explains why they did not close again. Such fissures have been found in England, France, southern Spain, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere. The interesting feature of these fissures is the debris found in them, for they are filled with the remains of animals, among them those of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the reindeer, the horse, the hog, and the ox. These bones found in them cannot be of animals which fell in alive or were buried there, for no skeleton is complete. They cannot have been brought there by streams, for those who have examined them found no signs on them of having been rolled. Neither could the bones have been exposed to the weather for a long time, for none of them show marks of weathering. That water had something to do with depositing them is indicated by the very general cementing together of the deposits by calcite.
 

Again, it has been observed by such a competent geologist as Prestwich that these ossiferous fissures are usually found upon isolated hills of considerable height, places on which we might expect animals to gather in seeking safety from an approaching flood. Fleeing in terror and driven by the common danger, the carnivorous and herbivorous alike sought refuge on the same elevation, only to meet even here a common watery grave. A very remarkable classical example of such an isolated hill is found in Burgundy, France, in the valley of the Soane. The hill is about 1,030 feet above the surrounding plain, with steep flanks on all sides. A fissure near the top of the hill is crowded with animal skeletons. No skeleton is entire, the bones are fractured, are thrown together in disorderly fashion, and are unweathered and ungnawed. Again we have the strange phenomenon that bears, wolves, horses, and oxen, animals which are ordinarily not found together as peaceful neighbors, scale an isolated mountain only to die and have their remains preserved in a common grave. Such a flood as is described in Genesis offers the most reasonable explanation for this phenomenon.
 

Another most spectacular example of an ossiferous fissure is found in the isolated little island of Cerigo, near Corfu, off the coast of Greece. This occurs on a barren mountain, in the form of a fossiliferous deposit, a short distance from the sea. It is called the mountain of bones. It is a mile in circumference at the base, and from the base to the summit is covered with bones. The character of this mountain as well as of those already mentioned is such that animals could not have congregated here to feed, but the most reasonable solution for this phenomenon is the rising of flood waters driving them to this elevation. There they perished and were buried by the same flood water.
 

According to Prestwich, the rubble deposit in England indicates that the country was submerged to a depth of at least one thousand feet, while on the Continent we find evidence of submergence up to three thousand feet.
 

Equally interesting examples of this kind of deposits are found in the Rock of Gibraltar, where fissures nearly three hundred feet deep and filled with debris similar to that just mentioned have been discovered. Animal remains described are practically the same as those found in the hills of France. These fissures on Gibraltar exist at different altitudes. The highest of them has an elevation of eleven hundred feet. In one of them man-made implements are said to have been found.
 

Similar deposits were discovered in a cavern near Palermo on the Island of Sicily. An enormous number of hippopotamus bones were found there, some of them so well preserved that they could be carved and formed into ornaments. More than twenty tones of bones were shipped for commercial purposes within six months after the discovery of this cavern. The bones were mostly of the hippopotamus, but there were also found among them those of the deer, the ox, and the elephant. The bones were mixed together without order and were broken and scattered in fragments, but again they are described as showing no signs of having been gnawed or weathered.
 

A large deposit of bones in a cavity of the calcareous beds of the steppes of Russia was discovered in 1847 near Odessa. In this cavity were found 4,500 bones of bears derived from at least one hundred individual animals; with these were found remains of species of the cat family, hyenas, horses, boars, mammoth, rhinoceros, aurochses, and the deer, together with remains of numerous insectivores and rodents, such as hares, otters, martens, as well as wolves and foxes.
 

At a village near Brunswick, Germany, a collection of tusks, teeth, and bones was discovered piled together in a heap and embedded in diluvial loam. In this heap were found eleven tusks of elephants, over eleven feet long; another fourteen feet, eight inches long and twelve and three-fourths inches in diameter; thirty molar teach, many large bones, some of them five and six feet, eight inches long.
 

Mixed with these were bones and teeth of the rhinoceros, the horse, the ox, and the stag, all of them in a confused mass, but none of them rolled or broken.
 

A bone deposit near Stuttgart in South Germany contained the remains of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the horse, the deer, the ox, and of small carnivores.
 

Another most interesting fissure was found at Malta, the island made famous by St. Paul's journey to Rome, in which were found in great abundance the remains of birds, especially water birds. With them were mingled sharks' teeth, fish bones, and the remains of frogs, two species of fresh water turtles from one and a half to two feet high, large numbers of small shells; and intermingled with all of this debris were stones of various sizes strange to the locality in which they were found. And, lastly, there were present in this same fissure large blocks of stone, some measuring fifteen feet in circumference, having deep grooves and hollows scooped out of their surface, all of which is irrefutable evidence that the debris found here, together with other circumstances mentioned, was carried here by the action of water. At least no other agent known to man would have been able to deposit and mix these remains in the manner in which they are found.
 

For an interpretation of the debris found in this Maltese cavern, Howorth quotes Dr. Lester Adams:"The history of the deposition of the contents of the fissure cavern of Muaidra in Malta, read by the light the data produce, appears to me to be as follows: We perceive three distinct kinds of arrangement of the debris in connection with the fossiliferous deposit. First, when water passed down the floor, bearing along pebbles and fragments of bones and teeth of proboscidians, rodents, birds, skulls, etc. Second, a rush of water containing blocks of sandstones from the slope above, together with sand and portions, nay, even entire carcasses of the animals just mentioned; and finally, the scourings of the rock surface and whichever organic remains still lodged thereon, up even to the very level of the plateau on which the fissure opened. Third, the mode wherewith the organic remains and the stones were piled indicatied that they had been conveyed, at all events for most part, from the east and north side of the gap for the reason that the debris and remains were piled upon a pile well along the concave eastern wall; the most perfect remains being invariably found towards the interior of the gap, as if they had come sooner to a standstill."
 

A similardeposit is found at Agate Springs in Sioux County in the northwestern corner of Nebraska. What remains of the hill covers about ten acres. This bone bed was accidentally discovered in 1876. It contains the bones of rhinoceroses, camels, giant wild boars, and other animals, buried together in a confused mass as only water would deposit them. It is estimated that the bones of about nine thousand complete animals are buried on this one hill. Clear signs indicate that the bone layer once extended over a very wide area; hence it is likely that many times that number of animals were brought together at this hill and buried there by the action of water.
 

This is a fact that is most important. Animals of every kind died in great numbers and were buried apparently almost instantly. With many there can be no doubt that this was so. It has been suggested that ruthless man slaughtered these animals, but considering the number of the remains that have been found, thrown together in great heaps, mixed in great confusion, large and small animals, herbivorous and carnivorous, mammals, and birds, all in one pile, buried in alluvial deposits, intermingled with remains of plants and trees, sea shells and fish, this theory becomes absurd on the face of it. Neither man nor beast could have wrought such havoc in the plant and animal world and buried the carcasses before nature's scavengers devoured and destroyed them, nor could man have buried them in such enormous depth and in such places as they are frequently found.

Picture # 24 & 25
It has also been suggested that some pestilence or common disease may have been responsible for the sudden death of these animals. But what pestilence is known to man which would carry away every kind of animal - the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, elephants and mice, rhinoceroses and frogs, bisons and snakes, tigers and fish, land snails and insects - all at one time? There may be, and there have been, diseases which have ravaged certain species and nearly annihilated them in a given area, but a pestilence which brought about a universal destruction of animal life is unknown and normally impossible. But even if that were possible, the questions then arise; who buried these carcasses? Who collected them in these great pits and on the hilltops? When animals are stricken with sudden disease, they are too weak to travel to a common burial ground.
 

Drought and other causes have been suggested as a means of destruction, but none of them offers a satisfactory explanation. None of them is a sufficient to kill, collect, and bury these millions of animals. There is only one known force in nature which is capable of doing just that, and that is water. A great flood of water is the only reasonable explanation for this strange phenomenon. For what else could have driven these animals together on hilltops and caused them to perish in such numbers but the waters of an all engulfing flood? It does not require an overactive imagination to reconstruct a picture of the scenes which were enacted on those hills and hundreds of thousands of other hills like them in every part of the earth. One can see the terrified and panic-stricken beasts stampeding to higher grounds and to the hilltops before the onrushing Flood. The lion took no heed of he lamb, nor the wolf of the hare; all were bent on saving their own lives. What a horrifying heart-rending cry of despair there must have gone up from the mouths of these uncounted multitudes of terrified beasts of the field and forests! But one by one these mouths were stopped as the waters of the Flood overtook them, until at last even the tallest and strongest succumbed.
 

Then followed the burial. The convulsions of the earth had provided the graves. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, just as they had collected on the tops of these hills. There the bones of the large and the small, the gentle and the ferocious, the carnivorous and the herbivorous, were thrown together in wild confusion in a common grave, and there the Almighty has preserved them for a memorial and a warning that generations of men yet to follow may behold and learn that the lord, our God, is "a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourthgeneration" of them that hate Him.
 
 
 

CHAPTER XIII
 

Glacial and Fossil Lakes, Coal Beds, and Oil Deposits
 

In Genesis 8:13-14 we read: "And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked; and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried."
 

These words need not be interpreted to mean that all the earth in every continent and on every body of land as these are now constituted were dry and appeared then as they do now. The text merely stated that land and water were again definitely separated and that the land was now sufficiently dry so that Noah and the animals with him could safely leave the ark to repossess and repopulate the earth. The fact is that the Flood waters had not completely drained to their present basins, and large bodies of water continued to exist for centuries, a few of them even surviving to the present day. In fact, the existence of large inland bodies of water or the remains of such bodies of water as fossil lakes, as they are also called, is further evidence of a universal flood as described in Genesis. At any rate such a flood would offer the most plausible explanation for their existence. If we had no record of a universal flood, we would postulate one to account for the origin of the existing fossil lakes.

The territory now made desolate by the Gobi Desert in China was, by all indications, at one time a great inland lake as large as the present Mediterranean Sea. The existence of this inland sea of central Asia is attested by the abundant sedimentary deposits about the margin and also by the Chinese historical reference to it as the great Han Hai, or Interior Sea.

According to C.F. Wright, Lake Baikal in Siberia, the surface of which stands more than fifteen hundred feet above sea level, is proof that the whole of Siberia was at one time submerged under a great depth of marine water. In support of his views he advances a number of proofs, among them the fact that there is found in that lake marine life, including an Arctic type of seal, which proves a close relation between this lake and the Arctic Sea. The seals found there closely resemble the seals now frequently found at Spitzbergen. It also seems significant that very similar seals are found in the Caspian Sea. Their remains have been found in the Aral Sea as well.
 

In India there is a similar well-marked inland basin with clear evidence of having been filled with water at one time. As these inland bodies dried up and the climate became more arid, the region gradually changed into a desert. The Thar Desert in India, east of the Indus, really was traversed in prehistoric times by rivers and contained populous cities and villages. Relics of such cities are now being dug up.
 

Similar conditions obtained in Mongolia, Turkestan, and Central Asia. Where there was once a well-watered, fertile country, there is now semiarid or desert land.
 

In the Tibetan tablelands, the highest tableland in the world, averaging sixteen thousand feet above sea level, we find numerous lakes, generally salt or alkaline, scattered over the western and northwestern section. And here, too, the traces left clearly indicate that this high tableland was at one time submerged in a great sea.
 

In Africa are found dry lakes or shrunken lakes of a similar character. Even the Sahara Desert was not always a desert. The skeleton of a well-marked river system is clearly visible, and, in addition, man-made implements have also been found there in great abundance.
 

Salt pans or salt licks found in many isolated areas of the Russian steppes and in our own Western prairies, often containing the remains of marine life, are further evidence of such inland lakes.
 

Here in America, too, there were at one time, as I have pointed out before, great inland bodies of water, such as Lake Agassiz in the north; Lake Bonneville, Lake Lahonton, in the West; and others. One of the most interesting of these ancient Lakes is Lake Algonquin, so called after a tribe of Indians inhabiting the region in early historic days, which at one time occupied the present area of the upper Great Lakes, i.e., Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and a large area of land north of Lakes Superior and Huron. This magnificent inland body of water is said to have had an area of a hundred thousand square miles and a depth in places of more than fifteen hundred feet. The Algonquin beach has been carefully mapped in the southern parts and is almost as distinct as the shores of our familiar modern lakes. The gravel bars ore often used as roads. The ancient shore is usually not far from the present lakes, but stands about twenty-six feet above their level. Its beaches are splendidly displayed on the north shore of Lake Superior, terrace after terrace rising for hundreds of feet at Peninsula and Jackfish Bay.
 

Lake Iroquois, which at one time occupied the basin of Lake Ontario but extended far beyond its present beaches, was another of these ancient storage basins, Cities like Utica and Rochester in the State of New York and Hamilton and Toronto in Ontario are built upon its ancient shores. Excavations in these old shore deposits have produced fossil remains of the mammoth, buffaloes, and the beaver eighty-three feet below the present surface. And teeth and tusks of the mammoth and the mastodon have been found in a number of places south of this old lake shore.
 

Still another well-known fossil lake on our own continent is Lake Agassiz, already referred to in chapter 8. This was a large inland body of water surpassing in size even Lake Algonquin. It covered parts of the present States of Minnesota and North Dakota and the Canadian Provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. It drained at different times to the Atlantic through the Mohawk Valley, to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi, and northward to Hudson Bay. Today the comparatively small lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis are all that remains of this great inland sea.
 

Lake Bonneville at one time occupied a part of the States of Utah, Nevada and Idaho. It had an area of 19,000 square miles, that is, it was nearly of the size of Lake Michigan today, and had a maximum depth of a thousand feet. The present Salt Lake near the city of that name, with an area of only one tenth of its ancestor, is all that remains of this great inland body of water.
 

Even our Great Lakes may well have had their origin in the Flood. These lakes are unique as great inland lakes and have no rival except in those of Central Africa. They are in the heart of the continent, a thousand miles from an ocean, and yet the basins of four of them dip down hundreds of feet below sea level. These greatest lakes in the world have no important river flowing into them, though a great rivers flows out. In fact, the main drainage of the region is away from them instead of toward them. The three upper lakes are balanced on the watershed between the three great river systems flowing toward Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic. Only a comparatively few miles separate the rivers that flow in these divergent directions. A very slight tilt in either direction might cause these great bodies of water to drain either into the Gulf of Mexico or into Hudson Bay instead of into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
 

Geologists believe that the cause of the origin of these lakes is not the same for all. The origin of Lake Nipigon and Lake Superior is ascribed to volcanic action and lava flow, which, it is said, caused a collapse of the underlying strata, thus giving rise to their present basins, while the other lakes are believed to be parts of ancient rivers that were blocked either by moraines or an uplift in the lower valley, thus causing the river to widen into the present lakes. Again, it is quite clear that the forces which may have been operative in bringing about this great change in the geography of our continent were available or active in the Flood. If land could rise or glaciers could form to dam up great bodies of water, the miracles of the Flood, with its catastrophic effects upon our earth, were also possible. But why are people willing to believe the one and refuse to accept the other?
 

Even geologists who will not admit the possibility of a universal flood agree that some of these lakes are the result of a great inundation which filled up their basins. Others are ascribed to the great continental glacier. Climatic changes and gradual evaporation caused them to disappear or to be reduced in size, leaving certain well-defined traces behind them. Again it must be admitted that the Deluge of the Bible offers a reasonable and the most satisfactory solution for this geological problem. A universal deluge would supply sufficient water to fill their basins, and the earthquakes and other disturbances accompanying this world catastrophe may well have changed the contour of the land and caused old courses of rivers to be changed or dammed and thus giving rise to these great inland bodies of water as described.
 

Still another most convincing proof from geology for a flood of a magnitude such as described in Genesis is found in the great coal beds found in all parts of the world.
 

Geologists are pretty well agreed that the source of all coal is some form of vegetable matter. Sir William Dawson writes: "...coal can under the present constitution of nature, be produced only in one way, namely by the accumulation of vegetable matter, for vegetation alone has the power of decomposing the carbonic acid of the atmosphere and accumulating it as carbon. This we see in modern times in the vegetable soil, in peaty beds, and in vegetable muck accumulated in ponds and similar places. Such vegetable matter, once accumulated, requires only pressure and the changes which come of its own slow putrefaction to be converted into coal.
 

"But in order that it may accumulate at all, certain conditions are necessary. The first of these includes the climatal and organic arrangements necessary for abundant vegetable growth. The second is the facility for the preservation of the vegetable matter, without decay or intermixture with earthy substances; and this for a long time, till a great thickness of it accumulates. The third is its covering up by other deposits, so as to be compressed and excluded from air. It is evident that when we have to consider the formation of a bed of coal several feet in thickness and spread, perhaps, over hundreds of square miles, many things must conduce to such a result, and the wonder is perhaps rather that such conditions ever have been effectively combined."
 

Dawson postulates three conditions requisite for the formation of coal. The first is a climatic one and other conditions capable of producing a profusion of vegetation sufficient to account for the great coal deposits of the world today. The question of climate and vegetation in the antediluvian world was discussed at some length in the chapter dealing with the physical world before the Flood. The antediluvian world, with its ideal climate and its luxuriant vegetation, meets all the conditions required here by Dawson. In addition to what was said there regarding climate and vegetation, a quotation from Figuier may find a place here. He writes; "Let us pause for a moment, and consider the general characters which belonged to our planet during the carboniferous period. Heat - though not necessarily excessive - and extreme humidity were the attributes of the atmosphere. The modern Allies of the species which formed its vegetation are now found only under the burning latitudes of the tropics; and the enormous dimensions in which we find them in the fossil state prove, on the other hand, that the atmosphere was saturated with moisture.
 

"Dr. Livingstone tells us that continual rains, added to intense heat, are the climatic characteristics of Equatorial Africa, where flourishes the vigorous and tufted vegetation which is so delightful to the eye.
 

"It is a remarkable circumstance that conditions of equable and warm climate, combined with humidity, do not seem to have been limited to any one part of the globe, but the temperature of the whole seems to have been nearly the same in very different latitudes. From the equatorial regions up to Melville Island, in the Arctic Ocean, where in our days eternal frost prevails - from Spitzbergen to the center of Africa, the Carboniferous flora is identically the same.
 

"When nearly he same plants are found in Greenland and Guinea; when the same species, now extinct, are met with of equal development at the equator as at the pole, we cannot but admit that at this period the temperature of the globe was nearly alike everywhere.
 

"What we now call climate was unknown in these geological times. There seems to have been then only one climate over the whole globe.
 

"It was at a subsequent period, that is, in later Tertiary times, that the cold began to make itself felt at the terrestrial poles..."
 

The second and third conditions required for the formation of coal from vegetable matter, according to Sir William Dawson, are: "The facility for the preservation of the vegetable matter without decay or the intermixture with earth substance and the covering up by other deposits, so as to be compressed and excluded from air."
 

What force of nature could better meet this condition than a flood such as God brought over the first world? Water alone possesses all requirements necessary, first, to uproot the existing vegetation, second, to drift it together in great heaps, and third, to bury it before it rotted. The presence of well-preserved fossil leaves and other delicate parts of plant life seems to prove beyond doubt that the burial must have been very soon after the plant was separated and destroyed.
 

The probable method of the formation of the coal beds is ably discussed by Price, who writes: "if we care to go into the question of probability of the coal formations, and can picture to ourselves the wide stretch of country clothed for long periods with the most luxuriant vegetation, and if we may suppose that the remarkable atmospheric condition of the ancient world may have absolutely precluded any parching droughts, thus rendering it quite improbable that the accumulated deposits of centuries should ever be burned up by forest fires, we shall have the probable source of materials. If now, in the great world catastrophe which seems to be indicated, these accumulations of many centuries were all washed away, dead and green together, and swept pell-mell into lakes or valleys, somewhat like the great natural 'raft' on the Red River, only on a far more enormous scale, the stumps of the trees would still carry many of their roots with them and would frequently float or stand in their natural upright positions. In this case, too, we would ultimately have the formation of an 'underclay' at the bottom of the bed from the action of the acids generated in the oxidizing mass; and this 'underclay' would naturally contain many roots or something resembling them." Price also points out that mixed up with the coal are found various kinds of marine life, such as crinoids and the clear-water ocean corals, and great quantities of fish remains.
 

There are two other features characterizing the coal beds which seem to prove that the reasoning of Dr. price is correct, viz., the well-preserved character of the plant remains and the kinds of plants composing them. With regard to the wonderful perfection with which the plants are found preserved in these beds the geologist Sir Archibald Geikie writes:"Not much is usually to be made out from the coal itself, for the vegetation has been so squeezed and altered that the leaves and branches cannot be recognized... But though the larger plants have usually not been preserved as well in coal, they may be found in great profusion and beauty in beds of rock above or below the coal... Now and then, the plants may be seen lying across each other in wonderful confusion, upon the bottom of the bed of rock that overlies the coal seam and forms the roof of the mine. Though all are squeezed flat like dried leaves in a book, they still retain their original graceful forms."
 

And speaking of coal deposits of Bohemia, Dr. Buckland writes: "The most elaborate imitations of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Italian palaces have no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal mines are overhung. The roof is covered as with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with festoons of most graceful foliage, flung in wild, irregular profusion over every portion of the surface. The effect is heightened by the contrastof the coal-black color of these vegetables with the light ground work of the rock to which they are attached."
 

Price says: "Most geologists who have written on this subject have bewailed the poverty of our language to convey an adequate idea of the marvelous perfection of the forms laid out to view through the opening of such beds of shale or fine sandstone. But this splendid preservation of the plant remains is a universal characteristic of all the coal-bearing rocks, not alone those of the Carboniferous system, but also those of the Jurassic, Cretaceous,, or Tertiary, or even the lignites of the Pleistocene. They are all much alike in these respects: they all contain wood or leaves, flowers, and fruits in a marvelous state of preservation."
 

And as to the kinds of trees and plants found, Price shows that they are chiefly plants and trees which do not grow in swamps or peat bogs and cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be supposed to have contributed to the formation of peatlike accumulation in the long ago. For example, we have in the Upper Cretaceous coal such kinds of sassafras, Laurel, tulip trees, magnolia, cinnamon, sequoia, poplar, willow, maple, birch, chestnut, elder, beech, elm with leaves of some palms, and hundreds of others. In the Tertiary of England and the continent we have such trees and shrubs as fig, cinnamon, various palms, varieties of Proteaceae (like those now found in India and Australia), cypress, sequoia, magnolia, oak, rose, plum, almond, myrtle acacia, with many other genera now found only in America. The Miocene strata of Greenland have yielded great numbers of the same genera.
 

All this seems to be most convincing evidence, not only of the fact that the world before the Flood was quite different so far as climatic conditions and distribution of vegetation is concerned, but also that this world was stripped of its marvelous and luxuriant vegetation by a flood of unparalleled magnitude, which then floated the debris together into great heaps where the material was covered, sealed, stored, and formed into coal for the benefit of the generations of men who were to follow. And what enormous quantities of this coal there have been stored up for the generations of men that were to inhabit the world that followed the Flood? Coal is found on every continent and on many islands of the sea. Some have more, others less, but there is sufficient coal stored below the surface of our earth to provide man with power, light, heat, and other substances derived from coal for hundreds of thousands of years. Lyell has estimated that the coal deposits in Nova Scotia alone are sufficient to provide a hundred million tons each year for fifteen thousand years, while the coal reserves of Alberta have been estimated at over 673 billion tons. This means that the coal mines of Alberta alone could supply the world with one millions tons of coal annually for a period of 673,000 years. The coal deposits of North China are estimated at 150 billion tons. Add to this the coal reserves of the rest of the American continents, of Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world, and our imaginations fails even to comprehend the magnitude of the constructive work wrought in the most destructive event in the history of our globe.
 

There the coal, thus preserved, had been stored many thousands of years. Man either did not know that it was there or did not know what to do with it when he found it. It was not until the eighteenth century, when the steam engine was invented and the Industrial Revolution was ushered in, that coal came into its own and became a means by which a new world order and a new civilization was created.
 

Huxley, though failing to give due honor to the omnipotent God for this wonderful creation, wrote very eloquently about coal and its meaning: "I suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when Julius Caesar was good enough to deal with Britain as we have dealt with New Zealand, the primeval Briton, blue with cold, may have known that the strange black stone which he found here and there in his wanderings would burn and so help to warm his body and cook his food. Saxon, Dane, and Norman swarmed in the land. The English people grew into a powerful nation; and Nature still waited for a return for the capital she had invested in ancient club mosses. The eighteenth century arrived, and with it James Watt. The brain of that man was the spore out of which was developed the steam engine, and all the prodigious trees and branches of modern industry which have grown out of this. But coal is as much an essential of this growth and development as carbonic acid is of a club moss. Wanting this coal, we could not have smelted the iron needed to make our engines; nor have worked our engines when we got them. But take away the engines, and the great towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire vanish like a dream. Manufactures give place to agriculture and pasture, and not ten men could live where now ten thousand are easily supported.
 

"Thus all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid life is Nature's investment in club mosses and the like so long ago. But what becomes of the coal which is burnt in yielding the interest? Heat comes out of it, light comes out of it; and if we could gather together all that goes up the chimney, and all that remains in the grate of a thoroughly burnt coal fire, we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral matters exactly equal in weight to the coal. But these are the very matters with which Nature supplied the club mosses, which made coal. She is paid back principal and interest at the same time; and she straightway invests the carbonic acid, the water, and the ammonia in new forms of life, feeding with them the plants that now live. Thrifty Nature, surely! No prodigal, but the most notable of housekeepers!"
 

To this Dawson adds: "All this is true and well told; but who is Nature, this goddess who, since the far-distant Carboniferous age, has been planning for man? Is this not another name for that Almighty Maker who foresaw and arranged all things for His people before the foundation of the world."
 

We stand aghast when contemplating the awfulness of the punitive justice of God as manifested in the destruction of the Flood. But at the same time we stand in holy wonderment at His mercy and kindness that, in the very act in which He punished and destroyed, He preserved in a most mysterious manner the vegetation He had created and stored in the bowels of the earth, to provide heat and power and a thousand other services to the generations which were to follow. Our God is great in His judgments and in all His wonderful works.
 

But even more wonderful, if that were possible, than the coal deposits, are the great oil reservoirs stored deep down in the interior of the earth. And, like coal, the existence of oil in certain localities must be regarded as a silent but persistent witness for a world catastrophe such as is recorded in Genesis.
 

Oil is found in fossiliferous strata and is therefore not an original creation, but a product of organic matter. It came into existence not until life had appeared on our planet and after living organisms had been destroyed and buried on a world wide scale. The problem of the origin of petroleum has puzzled scientists ever since it was first discovered, and various theories have been advanced in explanation, but none of them offers a solution so completely satisfactory as the one which attributes its origin to a great world catastrophe identical with, or at least similar to, the great Flood.
 

Petroleum has been known for a considerable time. Through seepage on the coast of the Caspian Sea, and through wells, man became familiar with it, but did not know what to do with it. Gradually he learned to use it for lighting and for medicinal purposes. Not until after the middle of the last century did oil assume its present importance in the industrial and commercial world.
 

The first oil well in the United States was drilled in 1859. The total oil production for that year was two thousand barrels. By 1931 the total output of oil had grown to 846 million barrels in the United States alone. The world wars increased the demands for oil enormously, and the world output of the precious liquid has reached astronomical figures.

Like coal, oil multiplies man's energy, but it is more concentrated than coal and more convenient for use than coal. Through the use of oil, man has increased to a still greater degree his mastery over the land, the sea, and the air and also over time and space and over other great natural barriers. As an illuminant, petroleum was much in demand, but as a source of energy it has come to be regarded by the great powers of the world as essential to national security and commercial leadership. The possession of coal and iron no longer suffices a nation if it is to maintain its position among the more important powers of the world. Hence it is not surprising that the possession of the world petroleum resources has become a matter of international rivalry and competition. And the world wars were largely fought over the question as to who was to control these great resources of energy and power.
 

Since the first oil well was sunk in 1859, millions and billions of barrels of this mysterious liquid have been pumped fromthe bowels of the earth and have been converted into energy and speed. It has made possible the automobile, the airplane, and the armoured tank; it has changed man's mode of life in peacetime and has completely revolutionized the science of warfare; it has changed social and economic conditions in the world and has within the short period of one generation completely revolutionized the civilization of the modern world.
                                                                          Pictures 26  &   27

The question concerning the origin of petroleum is all the more interesting and important because of these facts. Where does the oil which we pump from the earth come from? How did it get into the earth? In 1923 Dr. J.M. MacFarlane, professor of Botany at the university of Pennsylvania, published a notable book of over four hundred pages in which he discusses this question and, in doing so, proposes and defends very successfully the theory that fish are the source of all petroleum. In this book the author makes out a very strong case for the theory that fish destroyed in prodigious numbers somewhere in the distant past constitute the chief source of our oil deposits. Dr. MacFarlane summarizes the results of his investigation as follows: "in review of the evidence of the preceding chapters, the author was compelled to accept that fishes are the source of practically the entire supply of crude petroleum, also of natural petroleum derivatives like asphalt." He says that in these studies he has been increasingly impressed by the apparent recurring cataclysmic cycles which were responsible for the destruction of these myriads upon myriads of fishes.
 

As to the extent of some of these deposits, he shows that the Oligo-Miocene oil shales can be traced almost continuously for almost 2,500 miles, while the fishes, mollusks, polyzoa, and other organisms recorded from the Caucasian or the Galician centers how a marked similarity to those of Glarus or even of California; and these facts suggest to him that the destruction may have been essentially simultaneous all over this area. And hence he concludes; "It can be definitely said that through all of the geologic formations in which fish remains occur, the large proportion of the remains consist of entire fishes or of sections in which every scale is still in position; every fin is extended as in life attitude; the bones of the head, though often crushed in and broken through subsequent diastrophic strains, still retain almost the normal positions; while near them may be coprolites of the same or some other types of fish in a practically entire state. All of this conclusively proves that when myriads of such fishes were simultaneously killed, their bodies were deposited or stranded within a few hours or a few days at most after death, so that the flesh, the liver, the alimentary canal, and other soft parts were unquestionably enclosed and intact when sediment sealed them up. For numerous experiments that the writer has undertaken prove that even after five or six days dead fishes begin to lose scales, to be attacked and nibbled at by other fishes, by crabs, and by smaller fry, while as yet the flesh and entrails are enclosed, though softened. We unhesitatingly conclude then that a large proportion of the fishes met with in 'fish beds' and oil strata were stretched out and preserved intact by immediate and rapid entombment. So whatever amount of oil any individual or species may have contained, such must have filtered out gradually into surrounding strata."
 

However, we need not limit ourselves to fishes as the sole source of oil. No doubt all other organisms, containing substances convertible into oil, contributed to the great oil deposits of the present world. As life of every kind, including the myriads of the prehistoric reptiles great and small as well as all other living creatures, was suddenly overtaken, destroyed, and buried, sometimes in great heaps, numbering thousands upon thousands of individuals, the oil contained in these bodies was distilled by heat and pressure and thus stored in sands between impervious strata and there preserved through the ages to the present day.
 

Concerning the causes for the destruction of these myriads of fishes, MacFarlane writes: "As to the great agency at work in past geologic ages for wide-spread destruction of fish life, the writer would place in first rank the various volcanic and seismic disturbances that have periodically caused local or even cosmic changes of a fundamental nature." The writer then goes on to show that there is evidence of a widespread volcanic activity having occurred somewhere in the distant past, which is again in harmony with what was said in a previous chapter concerning volcanic and seismic activities accompanying the Flood.
 

We are familiar with the effects of a charge of dynamite or even an ordinary gunshot on fish if this is discharged in the water . It is also well known whatdestruction may be wrought on marine life by volcanic eruptions or great earth quakes if these occur near the coast or on the ocean floor. The great Flood was, as we have seen, accompanied by great internal disturbances within the earth. The antediluvian seas were filled with an