Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/782

 DELUGE

702

DELUGE

number being schismatics and 15,000 Catholics of various rites; over 5000, perhaps, belonging to the Latin Rite. Clergy and Religious. — Priests of the African Missions, 49: Jesuits, 47; Brothers of the Christian Schools, 17; Petits Freres de Marie, 8; Sisters of Notre-Dame des Apotres, 92; Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers, 77 ; Ladies of the Sacred Heart, 34 ; Religious of Marie Reparatrice, 14 ; Filies de la Charity, 14; Filies de Notre-Dame des Douleurs, 9; PieusesMeres de laNigritie, 16. Parishes. — There are 4 Latin parishes: at Choubra (Cairo quarter), Zeitoun (subiu-b of Cairo), Tantah, and Zagazig; 2 succursal parishes (mission churches) : at Mahalla-el- Kebir, and Zifteh. Edticational Institutions. — 1 Jesuit college with 450 pupils; .3 schools conducted by the Priests of the African Missions; at Tantah (231), Zeitoun (75), and Zifteh (50); 2 Christian Brothers' schools at Choubra (250), and Zagazig (50); the Sisters of Notre-Dame des Apotres have 6 institutions: at Tantah (249), Zagazig (150), Zeitoun (110), Zifteh (100), Mahalla (80), and Matarieh (38); 1 boarding-school conducted by the Ladies of the Sacred Heart (60); and 1 institution of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers (220), making a total of 2113 pupils. Charitable Institu- tions. — 3 hospitals: 1 conducted by the Filies de la Charity, and 2 by the Pieuses Meres de la Nigritie (150 to 200 sick); 2 orphanages: 1 for boys, con- ducted by the Filies de la Charity (60 orphans), and 1 for girls by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers (78 orphans); 5 dispensaries in charge of the Sisters of Notre-Dame des Apotres, where several hundreds of sick daily receive gratuitous treatment; 1 home for the aged conducted by the Filies de Notre-Dame des Douleurs where from 50 to 60 inmates, both men and women, are cared for gratuitously ; 1 house of refuge in charge of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of An- gers.

The Prefecture of the Delta owes its development chiefly to the prodigious growth of the city of Cairo which, in extending its limits, had to stretch out upon prefectorial territory. Here, as in all cosmopolitan and growing centres, the missionaries have found their chief obstacle in religious indifference.

Gerarchia Callolica (Rome, 1908); Missiones Catholiccc (Rome, 1907), 352-54; Lane, Modern Egi/plians (London. 1871); Bael, Cairo of To-day (London, 1902); Dicey, The Egypt of the Future (London, 1906).

AUGUSTIN DURET.

Deluge, the name of a catastrophe fully described in Gen., vi, 1-ix, 19, and referred to in the following passages of Sacred Scripture: Wisd., x, 4; xiv, 6-7; Ecclus., xvi, 8, xliv, 17-19; Is., liv, 9; Matt., xxiv, 37-39; Luke, xvii, 26-27; Hebr., xi, 7; I Peter, iii, 20-21 ; II Peter, ii, 5. In the present article we shall consider: I. The Biblical Account; II. Its Historicity; III. The Universality of the Flood; IV. Collateral Questions.

I. Biblical Accodnt of the Deluge. — The Book of Genesis gives the following brief account of the Del- uge: God sees the wickedness of men, and determines to destroy them excepting Noe and his family ( vi, 1-S). He reveals his decree to Noe and instrvicts him how he may save himself and the seed of all animal life by means of an ark to be built according to certain di- mensions (vi, 9-22). Seven days before the Flood, God commands the patriarch to enter the ark (vii, 1-5). Noe completes his entrance into the ark on the very day on which the Flooii begins; the rain falls for forty days and nights ; all living things outside the ark are destroyed; the waters prevail upon the earth a hundred and fifty days (vii, 6-24). The waters decrease, the earth dries up: Noe ascertains its condition by means of a raven and a dove sent out from the ark (viii, 1-14). Noe obeys the Divine com- mand to leave the ark, builds an altar, offers sacrifice,

makes a covenant with God, and begins to be a hus- bandman (ix, 1-27).

Simple as this account seems to be, the Biblical critics maintain that it is a mosaic made up of two Flood stories, differing in authorship and in contents. They assign one to the Yahwistic writer usually desig- nated by the letter J; the other, to the post-exilic priestly writer generally known as P. According to Kautzsch, the sections vi, 1-8; vii, 1-5, 7-10, 12, 16b-17, 22-23; viii, 2b-3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22; ix, 18-27, belong to J, while P claims vi, 9-22; vii, 6, 11, 13-16a, 18-21; vii, 24-viii, 2a; viii, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19; ix, 1-17. This division of the text is based on the fol- lowing grounds: (1) J uses the divine name Yahweh, P employs Elohim; (2) J and P narrate the same series of events; (3) J and P differ in language; (4) J and P disagree in their statements.

The composite character of the Flood story does not conflict with its Mosaic authorship. The most con- servative Bible student will grant that Moses was not an eye-witness of the Deluge. Prescinding from Divine revelation, he must have derived his informa- tion about the event either from tradition or from written documents. If Biblical criticism has suc- ceeded in restoring the main sources utilized by Moses in his history of the Flood, it has rendered a most sig- nal service to exegesis. Happily we are in the posi- tion to be able to control the value of the critical conclusions by means of the Babylonian or Akkadian account of the Deluge. Without delaying over its form as contained in the fragments of Berosus which are of comparatively recent date, we find that the version given in a cuneiform inscription on tablets preserved in the British Museum, and first deciphered by George Smith in 1872, contains a combination of the P and J elements of the Flood story. This version is said by experts to date back at least to about 3000 B. c. It is certain, therefore, that the so-called P and J docu- ments reconstructed by the critics were combined long before the Biblical text was put in writing. This fact is confirmed bj' a Deluge story contamed in Scheil's recently discovered fragment, which cannot be dated much later than 2140 b. c. Critics can no longer deny the existence of a Flood tradition similar to the history contained in the Book of Genesis, antedating our Biblical account. In order to uphold their division of the inspired text into the so-called J and P documents, they maintain that the Akkadian story was copied partially in the J and partially in the P documents, and that the Biblical "Redactor" reunited these two partial accounts into one. This series of assumptions, however, is at best an awkward attempt to explain away a fact which stands in the way of their theory. But we are prepared to admit the critical division of the Flood account in spite of its disagreement with the results of recent discoveries, if the critical arguments are really cogent.

( 1) We are told the J uses the Divine name Yahweh, while P employs Elohim. But the following consid- erations must be kept in mind: First, we are hardly sufficiently sure of the use of the Divine names in the primitive inspired text to build a solid argument on their occurrence in the present text-form. Secondly, in the present te.xt-form Elohim occurs twice in the Yahwistic document, vi, 2, and vii, 9. Thirdly, six passages in the section vii, 16-viii, 20, are assigned to the Yahwistic writer, though the name Yahweh does not occur once. Fourthly, the variation of the Divine names in the Deluge story can be explained satisfac- torily without resorting to the violent measure of dividing up the text between two distinct writers.

(2) It is alleged that J and I' report the same events. If we examine the two ilocmnents as reconstructed by the critics, in the light of this contention, we find that they arc fragmentary and that they do not con- tain two series of events. J passes from God's deter- mination to destroy the world (vi, 1-8) to the Divine