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Though it needs not such indirect confirmations to convince us of the truth of the
narratives in the Bible, it is very remarkable how all historical investigations, when
really completed and rightly applied, confirm the exactness of what is recorded in the
Holy Scriptures. But their chief value to us must always be this, that they tell us of
that Ark which alone rides on the waters of the deluge, and preserves for ever safe
them who are "shut in" there by the hand of Jehovah.
CHALDEAN NARRATIVE OF THE DELUGE
In general we may say that we have two Chaldean accounts of the flood. The one
comes to us through Greek sources, from Berosus, a Chaldean priest in the third
century before Christ, who translated into Greek the records of Babylon. This, as the
less clear, we need not here notice more particularly. But a great interest attaches to
the far earlier cuneiform inscriptions, first discovered and deciphered in 1872 by Mr.
G. Smith, of the British Museum, and since further investigated by the same
scholar.^21
These inscriptions cover twelve tablets, of which as yet only part has been made
available. They may broadly be described as embodying the Babylonian account of
the flood, which, as the event took place in that locality, has a special value. The
narrative is supposed to date from two thousand to two thousand five hundred years
before Christ. The history of the flood is related by a hero, preserved through it, to a
monarch whom Mr. Smith calls Izdubar, but whom he supposes to have been the
Nimrod of Scripture. There are, as one might have expected, frequent differences
between the Babylonian and the Biblical account of the flood. On the other hand,
there are striking points of agreement between them, which all the more confirm the
scriptural account, as showing that the event had become a distinct part of the history
of the district in which it had taken place. There are frequent references to Erech, the
city mentioned in Genesis 10:10; allusions to a race of giants, who are described in
fabulous terms; a mention of Lamech, the father of Noah, though under a different
name, and of the patriarch himself as a sage, reverent and devout, who, when the
Deity resolved to destroy by a flood the world for its sin, built the ark. Sometimes the
language comes so close to that of the Bible that one almost seems to read disjointed
or distorted quotations from Scripture. We mention, as instances, the scorn which the
building of the ark is said to have called forth on the part of contemporaries; the
pitching of the ark without and within with pitch; the shutting of the door behind the
saved ones, the opening of the window, when the waters had abated; the going and
returning of the dove since "a resting-place it did not find," the sending of the raven,
which, feeding on corpses in the water, "did not return;" and, finally, the building of
an altar by Noah. We sum up the results of this discovery in the words of Mr. Smith:
(^)