Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/785

 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 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 ) that even at that remote age, it was wholly diiTerent hitni the Caucasian race. Again, the languages of the a- r^ springing from Noe are said to be in a state of li". 'lopment different from that in which we find the laiiutiages of the peoples of unknown origin. Finally, jjthe Bii)lical account of the Flood is .said to admit a restriction of its anthropological universality as read- ly as a limitation of its geographical completeness; or if "land" be substituted in our translation for !arth, the Book of Genesis speaks only of the men in- .labiting a certain district, and not of the men of the whole earth, as being the victims of the waters. Con- riderations like these have induced .several Catholic writers to regard as quite tenable the opinion that the Deluge did not destroy all men outside the ark.
 * lii' 1- lood for the following reasons: Tribes which cer-
 * i,' Ills present the Negro race just as we find it to-day,

But if the reason advanced for limiting the Flood to I certain part of the human race Ije duly examined, they are found to be more specious than true. The ibove scientific arguments do not favour a partial lestruction of the human race aljsolutely, but only in so far as the uninterrupted existence of the various races in question gives them more time for the racial levelopment and the historical data that have to be larmonized with the text of Genesis. Those who arge the.se arguments grant, therefore, implicitly that the allowance of a projier length of time will explain the facts on which their argiunents are based. As there is nothing in the teaching of the Bible preventing us from assigning the I"lood to a much earlier date bhan has u.sually been done, the difficulties urged on the part of science against the anthropological uni- rersality of the Flood may be easily evaded. Nor can IV.— 45

the distribution of the nations as described in the tentli chapter of Genesis be appealed to, seeing that this section does not enumerate all races of the earth, but confines itself probably to the Caucasian.

Science, therefore, may demand an early date for the Deluge, but it does not necessitate a limitation of the Flood to certain parts of the human race. The question, whether all men perished in the Deluge, must be decided by the teaching of the Bible, and of its authoritative interpreter. As to the teachings of the Bible, the passage which deals ex professo with the Flood tGen., vi-ix), if taken by itself, may be inter- preted of a partial destruction of man; it insists on the fact that all inhabitants of the "land", not of the "earth", died in the waters of the Deluge, and it does not explicitly tell us whether all men lived in the "land". It may also be granted, that of the pas- sages which refer incidentally to the Flood, Wis., x, 4; xiv, 6; Ecclus., xliv, 17 sqq., and Matt., xxiv, 37 sqq., may be explained, more or less satisfactorily, of a par- tial destruction of the human race by the inundation of the Deluge; but no one can deny that the prima facie meaning of I Peter, iii, 20 sq., II Peter, ii, 4-9, and II Peter, iii, 5 sqq., refers to the death of all men not contained in the ark. The explanations of these pas- sages, offered l>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