t above the sea-level over Palestine, without covering
the rest of the globe to the same height. Even if, in the course of
Noah's six hundredth year, some prodigious convulsion had sunk the whole
region inclosed within "the horizon of the geographical knowledge" of
the Israelites by that much, and another had pushed it up again, just
in time to catch the ark upon the "mountains of Ararat," matters are not
much mended. I am afraid to think of what would have become of a vessel
so little seaworthy as the ark and of its very numerous passengers,
under the peculiar obstacles to quiet flotation which such rapid
movements of depression and upheaval would have generated.

Thus, in view, not, I repeat of the recondite speculations of infidel
philosophers, but in the face of the plainest and most commonplace of
ascertained physical facts, the story of the Noachian Deluge has no more
claim to credit than has that of Deucalion; and whether it was, or was
not, suggested by the familiar acquaintance of its originators with the
effects of unusually great overflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is
utterly devoid of historical truth.

That is, in my judgment, the necessary result of the application of
criticism, based upon assured physical knowledge to the story of the
Deluge. And it is satisfactory that the criticism which is based, not
upon literary and historical speculations, but upon well-ascertained
facts in the departments of literature and history, tends to exactly the
same conclusion.

For I find this much agreed upon by all Biblical scholars of repute,
that the story of the Deluge in Genesis is separable into at least two
sets of statements; and that, when the statements thus separated are
recombined in their proper order, each set furnishes an account of
the event, coherent and complete within itself, but in some respects
discordant with that afforded by the other set. This fact, as I
understand, is not disputed. Whether one of these is the work of an
Elohist, and the other of a Jehovist narrator; whether the two have been
pieced together in this strange fashion because, in the estimation
of the compilers and editors of the Pentateuch, they had equal and
independent authority, or not; or whether there is some other way of
accounting for it--are questions the answers to which do not affect the
fact. If possible I avoid _a priori_ arguments. But still, I think it
may be urged, without imprudence, that a narrative having th