DELUGE
704
DELUGE
(xi, 7) the inspired writer is not less clear about the
historicity of the Flood: "By faith, Noe having re-
ceived an answer concerning those things which as
yet were not seen, moved with fear, framed the ark
for the saving of his house, by the which he condemned
the world : and was instituted heir of the justice which
is by faith." St. Peter (I Peter, iii, 20) too refers to
the ark and the Flood as historical facts: "When
they waited for the patience of God in the days
of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few,
that is, eight souls, were saved by water". He re-
turns to the same teaching in II Peter, ii, 5. We
might appeal to Is., liv, 9; Nah., i, 8; Ezech., xiv,
14; Ecclus., xliv, 18 sq.; Ps. xxviii, 10; xxxi, 6; but
what has been said sufficiently shows that the Bible
urges the historicity of the Deluge story.
(6) As to the view of Christian tradition, it suffices to appeal here to the words of Father Zorell who main- tains that the Bible story concerning the Flood has never been explained or iniderstood in any but a truly historical sense by any Catholic writer (cf. Hagen, Lexicon Biblicura). It would be useless labour and would exceed the scope of the present article to enumerate the long list of Fathers and Scholastic theologians who have touched upon the question. The few stray discordant voices belonging to the last fifteen or twenty years are simply drowned in this unanimous chorus of Christian tradition.
((•) The historicity of the Biblical Hood account is confinned by the tradition existing in all places and at all times as to the occurrence of a similar catastrophe. F". von Schwarz (Sintfluth und Volkerwanderungen, pp. 8-18) enumerates sixty-three such Flood stories which are in his opinion independent of the Biblical account. R. .\ndree (Die Flutsagen ethnographisch betrachtet) discusses eighty-eight different Flood stories, and considers sixty-two of them as indepen- dent of the Chaldee and Hebrew tradition. More- over, these stories extend through all the races of the earth excepting the African; these are excepted, not because it is certain that they do not possess any Flood traditions, but becau.se their traditions have not as yet been sufficiently investigated. Lenormant pronounces the Flood story as the most universal tradition in the history of primitive man, and Franz Delitzsch was of opinion that we might as well consider the history of Alexander the Great a myth, as to call the Flood tradition a fable. It would, indeed, be a greater miracle than that of the Deluge itself, if the various and different conditions surrounding the several nations of the earth had produced among them a tradition substantially identical. Opposite causes would have produced the same effect.
III. Univer.s.\lity of the Deluge. — The Biblical accoimt ascribes some kind of a universality to the Flood. But it may have been geographically univer- sal, or it may have been only anthropologically uni- versal. In other words, the Flood may have covered the whole earth, or it may have destroyed all men, covering only a certain part of the earth. Till about the seventeenth century, it was generally believed that the Deluge had been geographically universal, and this opinion is defended even in our days by some conservative scholars (cf. Kaulen in Kirehenlexikon). But two hinidred years of theological and scientific study devoted to the question have thrown so much light on it that we may now defend the following con- clusions :
(1) The geographical universality of the Deluge may be safely abandoned. Neither Sacred Scripture nor universal ecclesiastical tradition, nor again scien- tific considerations, render it advisable to adhere to the opinion that the Flood covered the whole surface of the earth. («) The words of the original text, ren- dered "earth" in our version, signify "land" as well as "earth"; in fact, "land" appears to have been their primary meaning, and this meaning fits in admir-
ably with Gen., iv, v, and Gen., x; why not adhere to
this meaning also in Gen. , vi-ix, or the Flood story. Why
not read, the waters " filled all on the face of the land",
"all flesh was destroyed that moved in the land", "all
things wherein there is the breath of life in the land
died", "all the high mountains under the whole
heaven (corresponding to the land) were covered"?
The primary meaning of the inspired text urges there-
fore a universality of the Flood covering the whole
land or region in which Noe lived, but not the whole
earth.
(b) As to the cogency of the proof from tradition for the geographical universality of the Flood, it must be remembered that very few of the Fathers touched upon this question ex projesso. Among those who do so there are some who restrict the Deluge to certain parts of the earth's surface without incurring the blame of offending against tradition. The earthly paradise, e. g., was exempted by many, irrespective of its location on the top of a high mountain or else- where; the same must be said of the place in which Mathusala must have lived during the Flood according to the Septuagint reading; St. Augustine knows of writers who exempted the mountain Oljmipus from the Flood, though he himself does not agree with them ; Pseudo-Justin hesitatingly rejects the opinion of those who restrict the Flood to the parts of the earth actually inhabited by men ; Cajetan revived the opinion that the Flood did not cover Olympus and other high mountains, belie\'ing that Genesis spoke only of the mountains under the aerial heaven; Tos- tatus sees a figure of speech in the expression of the Bible which implies the universality of the Flood; at any rate, he exempts the earthly Paradise from the Deluge, since Henoch had to be .saved. If the Fathers had considered the universality of the Flood as part of the body of ecclesiastical tradition, or of the deposit of faith, they would have defended it more vigorously. It is true that the Congregation of the Inde.x con- demned Vossius's treatise " De Septuaginta Interpre- tibus" in which he defended, among other doctrines, the view that the Flood covered only the inhabited part of the earth; but theologians of great weight maintained that the work was condemned on account of its Protestant author, and not on account of its doctrine.
(c) There are also certain scientific considerations which oppose the view that the Flood was geograph- ically universal. Not that science opposes any diffi- culty insuperable to the power of God ; but it draws attention to a number of most extraordinary, if not miraculous phenomena involved in the admission of a geographically universal Deluge. First, no such geo- logical traces can be found as ought to have been left by a imiversal Deluge ; for the catastrophe connected with the beginning of the ice-age, or the geological deluge, must not be connected with the Biblical. J' Secondly, the amount of water required by a universal I' Deluge, as descrilied in the Bible, cannot be accounted '■ for by the data furnished m the Biblical account. If \ the surface of the earth, in round nimibers, amounts t to 510,000,000 square kilometres, and if the elevation of the highest mountains reaches abmit 9000 meti-es, the water required by the Bil'lical Flcicid, if it be uni versal, amounts to about 4.(>00.000,OUO cubic kilo- metres. Now, a forty days' rain, ten times more copious than the most violent rainfall known to us, will raise the level of the sea only about 800 metres; since the height to be attained is about 9000 metres, there is still a gap to be filled by imknown sourcef amoiniting to a height of more than 8000 metres, in order to raise the water to the level of the greatest moimtains. Thirdly, if the Biblical Deluge was geo- graphically universal, the sea water and the fresh water would mix to such an extent that neither the marine animals nor the fresh-water animals could have lived ui the mixture without a miracle. Fourth-
