THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
3b-5, 13a, 14-18). The account closes with the divine blessing (ix. 1); the conferring of lordship over the animal kingdom — but with the command to abstain from blood (ix. 2—4); the granting of power over the lives of those who kill their fellow men (ix. 5 sqq.) and with the promise that the deluge shall not be repeated (ix. 8-17). The two accounts are in essential agreement. The command to take three pairs of each kind of clean animals and but one of the unclean, may be merely a more exact statement, and the words (vii. 9) " they went in two and two unto Noah in the ark " may signify that there were male and female of each kind (cf. vii. 16). The distinction of clean and unclean is older than the Mosaic law and is found among non-Hebrew peoples (see Dietary Laws of the Hebrews, §2). It is also doubtful whether the duration of the flood is differently stated; Noah can scarcely have sent forth the dove immediately at the end of the forty days' rain, since this account also states that the earth was completely covered; therefore, the flood must have lasted longer than sixty-one days (forty of rain and twenty-one of expectancy). According to the Elohistic account, the flood must have begun on the seventeenth day of the month Iyyar and ended on the twenty-seventh of the same month, in the following year.
The fundamental truth of this Biblical story is that beneath the present humanity another lies buried, which by its moral perversity, called upon itself a divine judgment; the deluge was universal, not in the sense that it covered all the 3. Its Sig- earth's surface, but in the sense that nificance it affected all mankind. Its extent, and Con- therefore, is limited to that part of the sequences, earth inhabited by man. The Biblical narrator thinks of Western Asia and perhaps of the Mediterranean countries: he knew nothing of the rest of the world or of mountains loftier than Ararat. Such an immense structure as the ark, 300 cubits long, 50 broad, and 30 high, must have required as long a time for its construction as is mentioned in Gen. vi. 3, especially as Noah had so few helpers. The conduct of animals under the influence of terrifying natural phenomena indicates how it was possible to bring them together in the ark. It is noteworthy that in the Jehovistic narrative appears for the first time an altar and a burntoffering. The altar is an elevation raised up toward God, and the object of the burnt-offering is that the smoke should bear the sacrifice aloft. The visible signs of the divine presence which appear in Gen. ii, and iii. 24 have vanished and the earth is no longer God's dwelling-place. What the Elohistic accounts tell of God's words to Noah, teaches the relation of the new humanity to the world about it. The rainbow is the promise that no such catastrophe shall recur. The Jews find in Gen. ix. 1 sqq. what are called the seven commandments of Noah, namely (1) to refrain from idolatry, (2) from blasphemy, (3) from murder, (4) from adultery and, (5) from theft, (6) to practise righteousness, and (7) to eat no flesh with blood.
Of the various deluge legends found in all parts of the world, the most interesting, because of its striking resemblance to the Biblical recital, is the Baby-
lonian legend in cuneiform writing, known since
1872 (see Creation, Babylonian Accounts).
The account forms the eleventh canto of a great
Babylonian epic the hero of which is
4. Baby- Gilgamesh, to whom his ancestor Sit-
lonian and napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, corn- Hebrew municates the history of the deluge and Accounts of his miraculous preservation. It
Compared, begins with the decision of the gods to punish mankind. The god Ea reveals the coming deluge to the hero in a dream and commands him to build a ship and rescue himself and his family therein. He obeys, builds the vessel, loads it with silver, gold and " seeds of life " of all kinds, takes in all his family and retainers, as well as the cattle and beasts of the field, and then closes the door of the vessel, on a sign agreed upon with the divinity. Now begins the deluge, so violent that the very gods are terrified. The storm lasts six days and six nights; on the seventh day, there is a respite — the ship steers toward the land of Nisir and is stranded on a mountain there. On the seventh day after this, the hero sends forth a dove, which, however, returns; a swallow also comes back, but a raven remains outside. Thereupon, he lets (all) go to the four winds, erects an altar on the top of the mountain and offers a sacrifice, the odor of which is greedily inhaled by the gods. Only the god Bel is wrathful that his intention to destroy all mankind has been frustrated; he is, however, pacified by Ea. Upon this, Bel enters the ship, blesses Sitnapishtim and his wife and declares that both, from this time, shall be reckoned among the gods, and that Sitnapishtim shall live afar off at the mouth of the stream. " Thither they bore me," says Sitnapishtim, " and in a far-off place at the mouth of the river, they set me down." This recital closely resembles that of the Bible both in the Elohistic and in the Jehovistic version. In the Babylonian tale, however, the ethical idea is not prominent, while the Biblical account is distinguished by its sternly moral quality. The cuneiform recital is also narrowly Babylonian in its geography, while the Biblical account treats of localities outside of Israel. The land of Nisir in the Babylonian recital may be sought farther south in the region east of the Tigris, beyond the lower Zab. How can the similarities of the two accounts be explained? The hypothesis that both the Biblical versions were first written during the Exile with a knowledge of the Babylonian legend, is untenable. For the Jehovistic writing is unquestionably pre-exilic and even if the priest codex which contains the Elohistic account was edited during the Exile, it must be conceded that its pictures of primitive times are not invented, but drawn from older sources. The hypothesis must also be rejected that the account was transmitted to Palestine about the middle of the second millennium B.C. With all their resemblances, the two accounts differ fundamentally, both in spirit and substance, and it should therefore be assumed that they represent two independent traditions of the same event — the Biblical recital having been brought into Palestine by the Hebrews in their migration from the East.
[Prof. Hermann Vollrat Hilprecht of the Univer-