Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Julius Africanus/Extant Fragments of the Chronography/Part 4

by Julius Africanus

IV.^[1]

On the Deluge.

God decreed to destroy the whole race of the living by a flood, having threatened that men should not survive beyond 120 years. Nor let it be deemed a matter of difficulty, because some lived afterwards a longer period than that. For the space of time meant was 100 years up to the flood in the case of the sinners of that time; for they were 20 years old. God instructed Noe, who pleased him on account of his righteousness, to prepare an ark; and when it was finished, there entered it Noe himself and his sons, his wife and his daughters-in-law, and firstlings of every living creature, with a view to the duration of the race. And Noe was 600 years old when the flood came on. And when the water abated, the ark settled on the mountains of Ararat, which we know to be in Parthia;^[2] but some say that they are at Celænæ^[3] of Phrygia, and I have seen both places. And the flood prevailed for a year, and then the earth became dry. And they came out of the ark in pairs, as may be found, and not in the manner in which they had entered, viz., distinguished according to their species, and were blessed by God. And each of these things indicates something useful to us.

Footnotes

1. In Georgius Syncellus, Chron., p. 21, al. 17.
2. That is, in Armenia.
3. For there was a hill Ararat in Phrygia, from which the Marsyas issued, and the ark was declared to have rested there by the Sibylline oracles. [But see vol. v. p. 149.]