The Flood

We pass from the realm of myth to that of legend, where the story goes back to some actual event. Stories of a great flood are found in many countries, widely separated from one another. The problem of their relationship is akin to the wider problem of the diffusion of culture: did similar institutions arise from similar conditions affecting different branches of the human race? Or did they spring from one centre, such as Egypt, a view which rests on skilful arguments? Now floods and their momentous consequences must have been experienced at times in most parts of the world, but the similarity of the stories points to one place of origin, which must be Egypt or Mesopotamia. In the Bible we are concerned only with the latter country, since the Babylonian and Hebrew versions of the Flood are so closely allied. Mesopotamia must have suffered from vast floods at the close of the Ice Age, when the accumulation of snow on the mountains of Armenia, etc., melted. But recent excavations at Ur in southern Babylonia point to a definite period about 4000 B.C. when an earlier civilisation was wiped out, its remains being covered with silt to the depth of eight feet, on the top of which the remains of a later age were found. If Abraham came from this Ur, the story will have been brought from the east by the ancestors of the Hebrew race.

The compiler of Genesis used two documents, J and P; from these he made selections, which he placed side by side, leaving many repetitions, inconsistencies, and even contradictions. J tells the story as it was known in the early days of the monarchy; P dates from the Exile or later and its writers seem to have remodelled the story with the purpose of bringing out its religious lessons and differentiating it from the polytheistic Babylonian version. The outstanding differences between the two sources are that in J the Flood lasts sixty-one days, in P 365; and that J gives two of every unclean animal and fourteen of the clean, P two of each kind.

5-8. Introduction (J).

imagination . . . evil. The evil tendency of man's heart is taught in Jer. 5:23 ; Hos. 4:1ff; in later Jewish theology and the Epistle to the Romans it plays a great part.

9-12, Introduction (P). Parallel to 5-8.

saw the earth, etc. Reversing the verdict of 1:31.

13-22 (P). gopher. Cypress. pitch, i.e. bitumen. The Hebrew word is apparently taken from Assyrian. The size of the Ark is 450 feet x 75 x 45.

covenant. According to P's theory each new age is inaugurated by a covenant. P, reflecting that the law of clean and unclean had not been proclaimed, gives two of every animal.