is structure
is hardly such as might be expected from a writer possessed of full and
infallibly accurate knowledge. Once more, it would seem that it is not
necessarily the mere inclination of the sceptical spirit to question
everything, or the wilful blindness of infidels, which prompts grave
doubts as to the value of a narrative thus curiously unlike the ordinary
run of veracious histories.

But the voice of archaeological and historical criticism still has to be
heard; and it gives forth no uncertain sound. The marvellous recovery of
the records of an antiquity, far superior to any that can be ascribed to
the Pentateuch, which has been effected by the decipherers of cuneiform
characters, has put us in possession of a series, once more, not of
speculations, but of facts, which have a most remarkable bearing upon
the question of the truthworthiness of the narrative of the Flood. It is
established, that for centuries before the asserted migration of Terah
from Ur of the Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox interpreters
of the Pentateuch, took place after the year 2000 B.C.) Lower
Mesopotamia was the seat of a civilisation in which art and science and
literature had attained a development formerly unsuspected or, if there
were faint reports of it, treated as fabulous. And it is also no matter
of speculation, but a fact, that the libraries of these people contain
versions of a long epic poem, one of the twelve books of which tells
a story of a deluge, which, in a number of its leading features,
corresponds with the story attributed to Berosus, no less than with the
story given in Genesis, with curious exactness. Thus, the correctness of
Canon Rawlinson's conclusion, cited above, that the story of Berosus was
neither drawn from the Hebrew record, nor is the foundation of it,
can hardly be questioned. It is highly probable, if not certain, that
Berosus relied upon one of the versions (for there seem to have been
several) of the old Babylonian epos, extant in his time; and, if that is
a reasonable conclusion, why is it unreasonable to believe that the
two stories, which the Hebrew compiler has put together in such an
inartistic fashion, were ultimately derived from the same source? I say
ultimately, because it does not at all follow that the two versions,
possibly trimmed by the Jehovistic writer on the one hand, and by the
Elohistic on the other, to suit Hebrew requirements, may not have been
current among the Israelit