Lastly, in the Bible, Noah lives after the flood for 350 years; the tablet and Berosus both assign to him, together, rather strangely, with his daughter and the helms man,* that translation to heaven for his piety which Genesis gives to Enoch. Before translation, he was visited by Izdubar, and the region was deemed a sacred region, On a general comparison of these two profoundly interesting records, the result appears to be that in what is circumstantial only there is much difference along with some curious resemblance; but in the outline of the fundamental facts, and in the moral considerations applicable, they are completely at one. The wickedness of the antediluvian world, the Divine anger, the command to build, the use of this vehicle of escape, and the erection of an altar of thanksgiving, are recorded alike in both. We have no right to assume that either of the accounts, as it stands, is contemporary with the period of the flood. The point in which the Bible account is inferior, is the absence of local coloring. Yet this, so far from impairing its claim to our acceptance, appears on the contrary to accredit it, because it is a feature which, given the circumstances of the case, there was reason to expect. If, indeed, we ride the hobby of the negative criticism, the Bible account bristles everywhere with difficulty. It is inconceivable that the framers should have in that case departed so widely from the inscription in points so palpable to all the world, or should have let slip the local color with which a fabricator or late relator would have been forward to dress up his narrative. But if we take Abraham, with his ancestors and his posterity, as a nomad people, religious and of simple life such as the Bible represents them; at an earlier period hanging on the outskirts of the Babylonian power, at a later one migratory toward the West, it was natural for them to drop the local coloring of a region with which all their relations had come to an end; and this has been done, not in the case of the flood only, but throughout the Abrahamic narrative down to the entry into the promised land.

The most significant difference of all between the two records is that the inscription is based upon polytheism, while in the Bible, here as elsewhere, all is based upon

* Schrader, i. 60.

That is to say,

the doctrine of one God. the simpler form is the basis of the Bible narrative, and the simpler form, according to the generally recognized principle, is that nearest the source, most closely akin to the occurrence or the original record. The religion of Noah agrees with that of the common father, Adam; the religion of Hasisadra has departed from the primitive belief, and exhibits to us those multiplied and deteriorated images of the deity which human infirmity and sin had introduced.

While Schrader glances at the period when the Babylonian flood legend reached the Hebrews as that of the prophetic narrator of early Biblical history," he candidly adds, "I am led to the obvious conclusion that the Hebrews were acquainted with this legend at a much earlier period, and that it is far from impossible that they acquired a knowledge of these and the other primitive myths now under investigation as far back as in the time of their earlier settlements in Babylonia, and that they carried these stories with them from Ur of the Chaldees." For him they are all myths; the original invention is in Babylonia, and the Hebrews are early copyists. For others, however, they are histories; and the twin versions bear testimony by their concurrence, and even in some respects by their discrepancies, to their historical character. If there was remoulding, it may be the more detailed and circumstantial narration which is presumptively entitled to the credit of it; and the Bible story, more sparing in its details, but far broader and more direct in the terrible lesson it conveys, may reasonably be judged to have come down from the source with the smallest amount of variation from the original.

It may be noticed that the translation to heaven of Hasisadra, the Noah of the tablets, is in curious accordance with that far larger development both of the underworld and of the future state which marks alike the Babylonian and the Egyptian systems in comparison with that of the Old Testament, and forms an interesting but separate subject of discussion.

The Hebrew story of the Deluge has long been supported by a diversity of traditions among nations and races of the world, but never before with such particularity, or such corroboration in the sense and to the extent before described. But

though we have now a new and important witness in court on our behalf, yet undoubtedly, if the narrative be provably untrue, the testimony of both, or of any number of traditional witnesses, must fall to the ground.

The voice of natural science has not been, and probably is not at present, uniform on this subject. The negative has just been presented to the world, of course with great ability, and also in a sufficiently magisterial form, by Professor Huxley. He conceives that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures;* and, as these are not trustworthy, the consequence is that it must not stand but fall. With this proposition I have here nothing to do. Mr. Huxley selects the flood-story for the capital article of his indictment. But he treats it as little worthy of serious notice. "It is difficult to persuade serious scientific inquirers to occupy themselves in any way with the Noachian deluge." He finds, indeed, a sort of historic nucleus for a partial deluge in the occasional desolating floods of the Euphrates and Tigris. But be it partial or be it general, he applies the same contemptuous negative doctrine to the deluge: perhaps most of all to a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which places it "at the end of the glacial epoch!"§ I am far from intending to enter in a controversy which I have no capacity to handle. Yet I may be bold enough to mention, that, while Mr. Huxley is speaking in the name of science at large, some votaries of science hold an entirely different language. Moreover, that the idea of a flood was not thus summarily dismissed by the luminaries of the scientific world anterior to the present day; and that the grounds of this dismissal are not of recent discovery, but were fully open to the geologists of the last generation. Quite recently the doctrine of a deluge has been maintained by Sir J. Dawson, by Mr. Howorth, and by the Duke of Argyll (if I interpret him aright), all of whom are surely to be considered as serious scientific inquirers."

66

Mr. Howorth, in his learned and laborious work on "The Mammoth and the

* Nineteenth Century, July, 1890, p. 8. + P. 12. P. 14 S P. 13. "Modern Science in Bible Lands," p. 252. In The Scottish Geographical Magazine, April, 1890.

He

Flood," is not bound by any superstitious reverence for the mere text of the Book of Genesis; for, in his preface,* he casts aside as null its traditions respecting all that preceded the creation of man. collects largely not only the diluvial traditions of so many races and countries, but an immense mass of paleontological evidence, and, having laid this wide ground for his induction he declares that, in his judgment the whole points unmistakably "to a widespread calamity, involving a flood on a great scale. I do not see how the historian, the archæologist, and the palæontologist can avoid making this conclusion in future a prime factor in their discussions, and I venture to think that before long it will be accepted as unanswerable."t

Moreover, I am free to consider history no less a science, though a less determinate science, than geology or biology; and I quote in conclusion the following passage from Lanormant, which follows a copious collection of testimonies to the erudition of a deluge in almost all lands:

"La longue revue, à laquelle nous venons de nous livrer, nous permit d'affirmer que le récit du deluge est une tradition universelle dans tous les rameaux de l'humanité, à l'exception toutefois de la race noire. Mais un souvenir partout, aussi précis et aussi concordant, ne saurait être celui d'un mythe inventé à plaisir ; aucun mythe religieux ou cosmogonique ne présente ce caractère d'universalité. C'est necessairement le souvenir d'un evènement reél et terrible, qui frappa assez puissamment l'imagination des ancêtres de notre espèce pour n'être jamais oublié de leurs descendants. Ce cataclysme se produit près du berceaux primitif de l'humanité. "t

+ P. 463.

* Pp. ix., x. "Les Origines de l'Histoire," pp. 489, 490. Second edition, 1880. "The long review, to which we have just applied ourselves, warrants our affirming that the tale of the Deluge is a universal tradition among all the branches of the human family, excepting, however, the blacks. But a remembrance prevailing everywhere, so precise and so concordant, cannot be that of a myth arbitrarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents such a character of universality. It must of necessity be a recollection of a great and terrible occurrence, which impressed the imagination of the ancestors of our race so powerfully as never to have been forgotten by their descend

Tablets, with whom he is identified by Mr. George Smith.

Again, as Shem, Ham, and Japheth are four times mentioned together, and invariably in this order, it seems to follow naturally that this is the order of their ages. In ch. x., however, their descendants are set out in the inverse order, and Japheth takes precedence. But this also, upon reflection, may seem to be quite natural. Migration was largely connected with considerations of space and food. It may be that the younger had to give place to the elder, and that the children of Japheth had on this account to be the first in moving from the common centre.

Further in the Japhetic line the genealogy wholly stops with the next generation but one, whereas it is continued farther, not only in the Semitic line, which had to be connected with Abram, but also in the Hamitic, by the mention of Nimrod and of the Philistines. This, however, seems perfectly natural if the line of Japheth, as is probable, moved the first, and, as is manifest, went the farthest so as to be out of sight of the narrator, while the descendants of Shem and Ham re mained locally in contact with each other. Knobel has observed that in each of the three branches the enumeration begins with those who travelled to the greatest distance from the common centre (which is taken by him to be near Mount Ararat), and accordingly the Japhetites are reckoned from the northwest, the Semites from the southeast, and Hamites from the south

west.

Just as in the case of the Homeric Catalogue, this methodical arrangement probably gave great assistance to the memory of the first recorder.

Knobel has discussed with great minuteness and care the particular names of the recital, and he traces them to their historic seats; as has Bishop Browne, in the "Speaker's Commentary." Some examples may be given. The Japhetites are those (Japhah) of fair complexion. They take to the isles or coast-lands, the seaward countries of the north and west. Here we meet them in the Cimmerians and

Cimbri. Ashkenaz, the son of Gomer, is found in Scandinavia,§ the Scangia of

Jornandus, the chief seat of the German stock. Another route is marked in the same direction by Ascania,* in Asia Minor, a name found at various points of that region. Knobel thinks there is a trace of the Teutonic race in Teuthras, a name found on both sides in the war of the Iliad † He proceeds with the list of Japhetites as follows. Riphath, he thinks, is traced in the Carpathian country, Togarna in Armenia, Magog in the Slavs, Madai in the Medes, Javan in the Iaones or Ionians, Elisa in Eolians, Tarshish in the Tursenoi, Kïttim in the Chitians of Cyprus, Dodanim in the Dardanians, Tubal in the Iberians, Meshech in the Meschi or Moschi, Tiras in the Thracians (Thrax or Thras). Some among these particular interpretations-for instance, that given to Elisa-may be untenable. Bishop Browne § sets out the various opinions that have been held, mostly without declaring a preference. It is not, however, the accuracy of each particular identification, nor even of every particular item of the text, but the principles of the general arrangement, and the large number of cases reasonably clear, which give the subject its importance.

The Semitic and Hamitic branches offer less difficulty to the investigator. No part is more satisfactory than that which relates to the nations of Palestine, and to the names of Canaan, Sidon, and Heth, where every particular, known to us from independent history or tradition, supports, so far as I can judge, in a most remarkable manner the trustworthiness of the record. Speaking generally, perhaps no one can go farther than Knobel in the work of identification. Пis treatise is of considerable authority, and is of the greater value because he does not belong to the school of conservative criticism.

IV. AS TO THE SINAITIC JOURNEY.

In his "Modern Science in Bible Lands," Sir J. Dawson has examined, with elaborate care, first the dwelling-place of the Israelites in Egypt, and their probable route from it until they cross the Ram Suph; and then, still more particularly, the account of their journeyings beyond the Red Sea. Thus he thinks that they

* Knobel, Revised Version, p. 39.
V. 705, and vi. 13.

Pp. 53, 60, 71, 77, 81, 95, 117, 123.
Speaker's Comm. Genesis'' in loc.

had crossed at a point,* now forming part of the Bitter Lakes of the isthmus, but then a part of the Red Sea itself, which was fed in ancient times by a branch of the Nile flowing eastward. Yam Suph, or sea of weeds, is the name given to it in the Bible.

Beyond the Red Sea, and onward to the Sinaitic region, the country has been surveyed by officers of the British Ordnance. All the instruments of modern science have been employed; the results have been published on a large scale; and the effect, as reported by Sir J. Dawson, has been entire agreement of the members of the party on essential points'' and the ascertainment of such complete coincidence of the actual features of the country with the requirements of the Mosaic narrative, as to prove it to be a contemporary record of the events to which it relates.||

The route pursued down the coast of the Red Sea, and then to the eastward,

was peculiar, as it seems to have been dictated by a combination of strategical considerations with those which concerned the subsistence of the people, and especially the supply of water. The local indications are on this account all the more remarkable. It is not possible, without exceeding the limits proper for the present observations, to convey the full force of the evidence which shows how the stamp of Egypt was impressed both upon the Israelites themselves, and upon the narrative in Exodus of their escape; inasmuch as it depends on the details of measurement, atmosphere, water-supply, and other physical circumstances, and their relation to the Mosaic narrative. The conclusions reached have no direct bearing upon the proofs of a Divine revelation through the Scriptures, but they are of great historical importance in establishing the credit of the Book, and its contemporaneous character as to the substance of its contents.-Good Words.

IN a paper which appeared in this Review in September 1889, I drew the attention of its readers to the subject of the communicability to man of the diseases of animals consumed as food, and I gave a résumé of the evidence which had accumulated in proof of the position maintained by the leading scientific authorities in every country, as to the risk of the virus of specific maladies being conveyed by the ingestion of affected meat. The importance of the inquiry centres in the question of the transmissibility of tuberculosis, because not only is this the most frequent morbific condition in cattle, and the most destructive to human life-being accountable for nearly half the deaths between the marriageable ages of fifteen to thirty-five years in Great Britain, and for one-fifth of the entire mortality but also because Koch's brilliant discovery of the bacillus has set at rest all doubt as to the cause of the malady, and as to the question of its identity in man and the lower animals. No

subject has more uninterruptedly engaged the attention of pathologists during the past twelve months, or is more likely to lead to results of the greatest practical importance: it has been discussed in the legislative assemblies of Europe and America, with a view to the settlement of the manifold difficulties, legal and scientific, by which it is surrounded; and public attention having been thoroughly roused to the gravity of the issues at stake, their solution is imperatively demanded in the interests alike of the large and important classes engaged in the supply of food to our markets, and the immeasurably larger and more important classes engaged in its consumption.

The links in the chain of scientific evidence, based upon experiments conducted through a series of years, may be thus formulated: (1) Tuberculosis is caused by a minute vegetable organisin, the bacillus ; (2) this organism is identical in mau and the lower animals, any slight apparent difference being purely morphological; (3) the disease is communicable from cattle to the human subject; (4) one of the