DELUGE
705
DELUGE
1\-, there are serious difEeulties connected with the ani-
liials in the ark, if the Flood was geographically uni-
versal; How were they brought to Noe from the re-
niiitc regions of the earth in which they lived? How
ci'uld eight persons take care of such an array of
In asts? Where did they obtain the food necessary
for all the animals? How could the arctic animals
In 1' with those of the torrid zone for a whole year and
under the same roof? No Catholic commentator will
repudiate an explanation merely for fear of having to
admit a miracle; but no Catholic has a right to admit
Biblical miracles which are not well attested eitlier by
scripture or tradition. What is more, there are traces
•n the Biblical Flood storj' which favour a limited ex-
tent of the catastrophe: Noe could liave known the
geographical universality of the Deluge only by
revelation; still the Biblical account appears to have
been written by an eye-witness. If the Flood had
been universal, the water would have had to fall from
the height of the mountains in India to the level of
those in Armenia on which the ark rested, i. e. about
11, .500 feet, within the space of a few days. The fact
that the dove is said to have found " the waters . . .
upon the whole earth", and that Noe "saw that the
face of the earth was dried", leaves the impression
that the in.spired writer uses the word "earth" in the
restricted sense of "land". Attention has been
drawn also to the " bough of an olive tree, with green
lea\es" carried by the dove in her mouth on her sec-
iiid return to the ark.
2) The Deluge must have been anthropologically iiji\ersal, i. e. it must have destroyed the whole hu- man race. After limiting the extent of the Flood to a [lart (pf the earth, we naturally ask whether any men ivcd outside the region covered by its waters. It has irin maintained that not all men can have perished in
- lii' 1- lood for the following reasons
- Tribes which cer-
aiiily sprang from Noe were preceded in their earliest ■ II 1 Icments by other tribes whose origin is unknown > u<: the Dravidic tribes preceded the Arj-ans in In- !': the proto-Medians preceded the Medians; the idians preceded the Cushites and Semites in Ka; the Chanaanites were preceded in Palestine ilier races. Besides, the oldest Egjiitian monu-
- i,' Ills present the Negro race just as we find it to-day,
y the opponents of the anthropological universality of the Deluge, are hardly sufficient to re- move all reasonable doubt. We turn, therefore, to authority in order to arrive at a final settlement of the question. Here we are confronted, in brief, with the following facts: Up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the belief in the anthropological universality of the Deluge was general. Moreover, the Fathers regarded the ark and the Flood as tj-pes of baptism and of the Church; this view they entertained not as a private opinion, but as a development of the doctrine contained in I Peter, iii, 20 sq. Hence, the typical character of both ark and Flood belongs to the " mat- ters of faith and morals" in which the Tridentine and the Vatican Councils oblige all Catholics to follow the interpretation of the Church.
IV. Collateral Questions. — These may be re- duced to the time of the Deluge, its place, and its natural causes.
(1) Time of the Deluge. — Genesis places the Deluge in the six-hundredth year of Noe; the Masoretie text assigns it to the year 16.56 after the creation, the Sa- maritan to 1307, the Septuagint to 2242, Flavius Jo.sephus to 2256. Again, the Masoretie text places it in B. c. 2350 (Klaproth) or 2253 (Liiken), the Sa- maritan in 2903, the Septuagint in 3134. According to the ancient traditions (Liiken), the A.ssyrians placed the Deluge in 2234 B. c. or 2316, the Greeks in 2300, the Egyptians in 2600, the Phoenicians in 2700, the Mexicans in 2900, the Indians in 3100, the Chinese in 2297, while the Armenians assigned the building of the Tower of Babel to about 2200 B. c. But as we have seen, we must be prepared to assign earlier dates to these events.
(2) Place nj the Flootl.— The Bible teaches only that the ark resto<l on a mountain in Armenia. Hence the Flood must have occurred in a place whence the ark could be carried towards this mountain. The Baby- lonian tradition places the Deluge in the lower valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.
(3) Xnlural Ciiuses of the Fhod. — Scripture .a.ssigns as the causes of the Deluge the hea\'\* forty days' rains, the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, and the opening of the flood-gates of heaven. This does not exclude the opinion that certain natural forces were at play in the catxstrophe. It has been suggestetl that the axis of the earth was shifted on account of the earth's collision with a comet, or that powerful volcanic eruptions raised new mountains in the sea, or that an earthquake caused a tidal wave to overrun certain portions of the dry land. Thus, Siiss speaks of the frequency of earthquakes and of stomM
