“This flood inundated Thessaly. Deucalion, who escaped it, built a temple to Jupiter Phryxius, that is, to Jupiter, whose help had saved him from the flood. The monument was still standing in the time of Peisistratos, who restored it and consecrated it to Jupiter Olympian, making it one of the finest edifices in Greece. It still existed with the same name in the reign of Hadrian, who had a lot of work done on it. Deucalion also inaugurated celebrations in honour of those who had perished in the flood; they were still being held in Sylla’s time, on the first day of the month of Anthesterion, and were named ἱδροΦορια.”

“But we must agree with the Greeks themselves that nothing is less certain than the date of this particular flood. The event was so little fixed in time and so little known that the Greeks called everything that was obscure and uncertain ogygian. The flood laid waste to Attica; a few writers add to it Boeotia, a low and marshy land, which, if the traditions are to be believed, did not become inhabitable again for nearly two hundred years.”

“Historians also speak of the floods of Prometheus, of Xisuthrus, and of another very well-known flood that took place on the island of Samothrace, when the Black Sea flooded and burst the banks of the Bosporus. The dates of these floods are little known and may in fact all be the same one, but recollections varied among the different peoples who had suffered them.”

“So we can judge that these areas have been even less fortunate than Thessaly, Attica and Boeotia, where floods were only transient, whereas the unlucky provinces of Holland are still regularly flooded.”

“To the authority taken from categorical expressions in the book of Genesis, all highly worthy of our faith, we will add others, although we believe that they are unnecessary for a true believer – which not everyone is happy enough to be. We will take our proofs from our knowledge of history and physics; and even if they do not persuade us with the same force as those to be found in Holy Writ, we should be enlightened enough to see the great superiority of the latter over anything our own stock of knowledge can supply us.

In favour of the universality of Moses’ flood , we can put forward the almost universal traditions kept up by all peoples in the four corners of the earth, although the nations have given their floods dates and periods that differ as much between them as they do from the date of Noah’s flood . These differences have not prevented many Christian historians from paying scant attention to the chronology of the fabulous and heroic times of Greece and Egypt, and to assign all these individual facts to the period and the unique event that the historian of the Hebrews has left us.

If this procedure troubles the ideas of chronologists of good faith a good deal, yet it must be recognised how much it is based in reason, since there is not a single one of these floods , although they are described as distinct by the ancients, in which one cannot immediately recognise anecdotes and details occurring in the book of Genesis. We see the same cause for this terrible punishment, a single family saved, an ark, animals, and the dove Noah sent out – a messenger that is nothing other than the rowing boat or raft mentioned in the profane traditions. Lastly, we can even find the sacrifice offered by Noah to God, who had saved him. From this point of view, all the individual floods can be identified with the story and the period of the flood in the Book of Genesis. Deucalion (in whose family we find a Japheth), Prometheus and Xisuthrus are all individuals who can be reduced to Noah alone, and theirs has seemed the most convincing testimony to the universality of our flood . This proof has hence been frequently used by defenders of the Jewish traditions. Yet does a theory that overturns all antiquity and the chronologies of the peoples remain unanswerable? Undoubtedly not; the theory has found many adversaries. Although this is one of the commonest proofs of the flood , no chronologist has adopted it, and all of them have assigned each of these floods to diverse and distinct periods, and they must not be condemned out of hand. This theory, which so strongly supports the universality of the flood , because of the striking and singular analogy of details found in profane authors and in the sacred writer, otherwise strongly contradicts it; and far from concluding that the Mosaic flood was universal, and that it left only a single family living in all the human race, we could, on the contrary, judge by individual anecdotes from countries where these scattered traditions have been kept up, that it is clear in all of them that a few ancient witnesses and ancient inhabitants survived who, after escaping, passed on to their descendants what had happened to their countries in such and such a river, on such and such a mountain, and in such and such a sea, since Noah, isolated and enclosed in the ark, floating with the wind on the summits of Armenia, could hardly have known what was happening at the time in all four corners of the earth. The Thessalians, for instance, said that during the flood , the river Pineiós was considerably swollen with rain, and overflowed its bed and valley, and divided Mount Ossa from Mount Olympus, which had been joined and continuous before, and the waters flowed through this gap into the sea. Herodotus, who, many centuries later, went to confirm the tradition on the spot, judged by the appearance of the slopes and the position of the escarpments that nothing was more likely or more well-founded.

The memory of the effects of the flood was also preserved in Boeotia. The river Colpias swelled prodigiously, its bed and valley were filled up with water, and it overflowed the peaks that had enclosed it around Mount Ptoüs, and its waters drained through this new issue. The inquisitive Wheler, who, during his journey to Greece, had the chance to examine the area, compared the historical tradition with the natural signs that had been left behind, and agreed that events had probably unfolded in this way.

The flooding of the Greek archipelago and the Mediterranean by the Black Sea also gave the Greeks and the peoples of Asia Minor many signs of phenomena that were specific to the places where destruction was wreaked. The well-known Mr de Tournefort has identified all the places where the force of the flood waters of the Black Sea had flowed from one bank to the other along the straits of Constantinople. The details he gives and the description he makes of the amazing escarpments that this sudden and violent irruption once produced by cutting into the mass and the solidity of the land, is one of the most interesting parts of his travels, and the most instructive for physicists and other historians of nature. We will not give any more examples (although there is a larger number in Europe, Asia and even America) of such unique details in countries where the traditions of a flood lived on, and which, by apparently proving clearly that in each area there are signs that individuals were left alive, would completely contradict the letter of the Book of Genesis concerning the universality of the flood . It is always said, however, that these national floods date from the same time as the Hebrew flood . No matter how much support the previous observations might give to chronologists who have not wished to confound all the national floods with our own, the proof born from the analogies these floods share with ours is so strong that it must convince us to make them one; and the proof follows the text detailing the flood’s universality so well, and is in such conformity with it, that all good Christians must strive to resolve the objections that oppose it. This may not be as difficult as might be thought, at least as regards the observations deriving from particular peoples and countries. The traditions relating the effects of the flood in Thessaly, Boeotia and the countries of Thrace and Asia Minor refer to natural signs that are so authentic that we cannot doubt, according to the observations of travellers who have examined them both as historians and as physicists, that the effects of these floods accord with the traditions in these countries. Now, are these effects – that is, the savage and terrible devastation to be seen in the mountains and continents of the countries that were once harrowed by the extraordinary flooding of Pineios, Colpias and the Black Sea – unique on earth and peculiar to these countries alone? Is it not true, for instance, that in the straits of Constantinople we can see such steep, lacerated and rounded coasts that always lie opposite the descent of waters from higher lands, and which lie in the alternating and corresponding angles formed by the strait? And lastly, can such alternating angles, which correspond to each other with such perfect regularity, only be found in this strait? Physicists have today learned that the opposite is true. This admirable arrangement of straits, valleys and mountains is found everywhere on earth without any exception. This is among the most interesting and newest problems posed in this century, for which we are still seeking a solution. But is the solution not immediately obvious? These places and these steep slopes, evenly matching each other, in the course of all the valleys of the earth, are identical to the arrangement that can be seen in the strait of Constantinople and in the valleys of Pineios and Colpias. They therefore have the same origin, and are therefore signs of the same fact. But these signs are universal; it is therefore certain that the fact was universal; that is, it is true, as stated in the Book of Genesis, that since the eruption of sources and the fall of rain was general, so the torrents and flooding that followed them travelled over the whole surface of the earth, which was what we had to prove. Two objections can be raised to this solution: 1. Physicists do not yet agree that these alternating angles and escarpments existing in our valleys are the effects of the flood. On the contrary, they see them as proofs of an underwater period, and not of transient flooding. 2. As favourable as this solution seems, one feels nonetheless that witnesses must have remained alive everywhere on earth, since the physical signs that are the basis of our solution still exist in many different countries. The flood , in truth, may have been universal, but it may not be affirmed that the destruction of the human race was also universal. We will reply to the first objection in the third part of this article, when we deal with the effects of the flood. We will try to reply to the second objection here. The terrible effects of the flood were witnessed by Noah and his family in the places in Asia where he lived; this cannot be contested. Although Noah was inside the ark when the rains began, he saw everything happening around him. He saw rain falling from the sky, the abysses of the earth opening up and spewing forth subterranean waters; he saw the rivers swell, breaking their banks, filling the valleys, and sometimes spreading over the neighbouring peaks that channelled their courses, and sometimes shattering these peaks in their weakest places, thus laying down new routes across the continents before gushing into the seas. Mount Ararat doubtless only bears its name, which means the curse of quaking in eastern languages, because Noah’s family, who landed near this mountain in Armenia, recognised the horrible traces and awful destruction that the eruption of the waters, the fall of torrents and the earthquakes, cursed by the Lord, had brought about and left behind. Now this could have been true for other places on earth too, where particular details about the flood have been preserved. It is from Noah’s family that we have them, since, as the descendants of the patriarch successively spread across the continents, they recognised elsewhere the same signs that had been left by the flood in Armenia, and they must have judged the nature of the destructive causes by the nature of the damage. This, then, is the source of the individual details involving countries that have passed them on to us. The details were transmitted by the signs themselves and will do so forever. But, it will be objected again, the dates are not the same. But what does this matter, if the facts are the same? Do the Hebrews, who have given us the history of the universal flood , agree among themselves about the period? Are there not immense differences in the dating they have left us, and do we not nonetheless agree that there was only one flood? Let us suppose, therefore, that the same is true of profane history, that it presents the same fact, in spite of the difference in dates; and as for individual circumstances, let us suppose that the signs alone suggested them to the new inhabitants of the earth, and do not indicate, as some would like to conclude, the presence of different witnesses who survived, which would be totally contrary to our faith. The chronologists, in truth, might never adopt this idea, but if they agree about the fact, it is a quite natural reason to adopt the theologians’ viewpoint about the period, since they find that physicists agree with them on this point. Moreover, if some physical or historical difficulties are still present in this solution, it will be the task of centuries, of time and the progress of our knowledge to resolve them.

Another physical proof of the universality of the flood and of the great changes it brought about all over the face of the earth have been seen in the surprising number of marine bodies that can be found both on the surface of the earth and inland on all continents, without there being any exceptions to this striking singularity due to distance from the sea, the size of a region, height of mountains or depth of excavations. These are indisputably the sure and enduring signs of a universal upheaval, whatever it might have been, and if we except some modern naturalists, all scholars and even all mankind agree to see them as the tokens of the flood , and as the relics of the ancient world it destroyed.

This is a very strong proof, and so it has often been used. Yet the antiquity of the Egyptian pyramids has been marshalled against it; the pyramids date almost from the birth of the world, yet decomposed shells were already present in the formation of the stones used to build them. Now what a vast succession of centuries is not presupposed by such a formation? And how can we explain this phenomenon without admitting the eternity of the world? Could the presence of marine bodies in the stones of the pyramids be explained by one cause, and the presence of the same bodies in our stones by another? That would be absurd. On the other hand, in questions touching on faith, what need is there to explain everything? We should also note here that if the proofs taken from the steep escarpments that we see regularly arranged in all the world’s valleys were recognised as good and solid, yet this second proof, taken from the marine bodies buried in our continents, could not help prove the same fact. For if the waters and torrents of the flood , by descending from the summits and from the middle of the continents towards the seas, and by winding their way over the surface of the earth, dug all the deep furrows that men have called valleys; and if these waters, by digging into the solidity of our continents and cutting away at them in this way, have produced the steep slopes of our hillsides, coasts and mountains in all the places whose resistance and exposure forced them to change direction, then they might also have carried the marine bodies there, since marine bodies can be found in what remains of the mass of the old furrowed ground. The earthquake that shattered Mount Ararat, and which gave it its hideous and frightening aspect, was not the cause of fossils being placed in the debris left behind, nor was it the action separating Europe from Asia at the strait of the Black Sea what placed marine bodies in inland rocks, whose edges and shape are revealed in the escarpments and jagged forms that were torn away on both sides. I do not think we need a long explanation to judge this natural and reasonable, and nothing contradictory results for the flood , since either one of these proofs is enough to show physical traces of its universality. It merely follows that one of these two signs of the history of the earth can be attributed to some completely different fact than the flood , and has no relation with the period to which we assign it.”

“They have sometimes evoked only the waters of the earth, but sometimes auxiliary waters have been sought in the vast stretch of the skies, in the atmosphere or the tail of a comet.”

“These expressions seem solely to indicate the eruption of underground waters and falling rain, but our physicists have given much freer rein to their imaginations.”

“These circumstances do not tally with Burnet’s ideas and show us that the ancient world was subject to the same vicissitudes as the new. An anecdote related to the flood to which little attention has been paid is also mentioned here: the interruption of the normal course of nature, and especially of day and night, which shows that at that time there was a major disturbance in the annual course of the globe, in its daily rotation, and a great alteration in daylight and even in the sun. The memory of this change in the sun at the time of the flood was also kept up by the Greeks and Egyptians. In Mr Pluche’s history of the heavens, we read that the name Deucalion in fact means weakening of the sun .”

“If we should give any credence to this bold theory, we believe it should be less as a result of Whiston’s authority and calculations than of the universal terror that the appearance of these extraordinary stars have always caused in all nations of the earth without any exception due to differences in climate, morals, religion, practices or customs. We have not yet given enough thought to this fear and its origins, and we have not, as we should have done, looked into the ancient traditions concerning this interesting subject or the allegories with which scripture and the figurative style of the earliest peoples related great natural events.

“We can judge by the theories of Burnet and Whiston alone, which have been adopted wholly or in part by many other physicists, how baffling the question of the physical causes of the flood is. Yet there is a suspicion that these scholars have made the problem more complex than it really is by taking too broadly what the Book of Genesis says about the flood’s surpassing the highest mountains by fifteen cubits. Almost all scholars have concluded from this expression that the earth must have been completely surrounded by a sphere of water rising to such a height above the ordinary level of the seas – an enormous volume, which has led scholars sometimes to break our world into pieces, causing it to collapse under the waters, or sometimes to dissolve it and make it fluid, and almost always to borrow from elsewhere in the universe the waters needed to fill up the vast spaces stretching up to the peaks of our mountains. But if we follow the text of Genesis, do we need to create such difficulties for ourselves or make the natural events that occurred at that time so manifold? Since most commentators have thought that there were unusually large tides, why could they not restrict themselves to this simple and powerful means, which makes the fluidity we rightly suspect in the earth’s continents so plausible? The author of a new map of the world has recently used this fluidity to explain the phenomena and the effects occurring during great upheavals.

“If the fluidity of the continuous earthly layers is one of the main causes of the periodic movements that regularly stir up the seas in their basins, it is quite likely that the strongly agitated seat of the earthly vault at the time of the flood could have led to entire seas being carried onto the continents, and for the continents to be plunged towards the centre of the earth by being submerged underwater in an alternating movement that is very similar to our daily tides – but with such a force and speed that sometimes the maritime atmosphere was dried up when the terrestrial atmosphere was submerged, and sometimes the latter regained its natural state by pushing back the waters into their ordinary basins. The surface of the earth is divided equally enough into continents and seas for the waters of the seas alone to have been sufficient to cover half the globe at a time when the agitation of the entire body of the earth made it abandon the other. The physicist should not see anything impossible in such a process, and the theologian nothing contrary to the text of Genesis; no other waters would have been needed than those of our globe, and nobody would have been able to escape from the universal tidal waves.

The third question relating to the flood concerns its effects, and scholars are highly divided on the subject. For a long time they agreed to look at the dispersal of marine bodies as one of the consequences of this great event, but the difficulty lies in explaining this effect in a way that conforms to the arrangement and action of waters, layers and territories where they are found; and this is why naturalists hardly agree among themselves.”

“How could the peak of Mount Ararat be seen by Noah, with its horrifying degradation, inspiring horror and fright, as Mr de Tournefort still noted at the beginning of this century?”

“But all the theories concerning the origin of fossils will be made unnecessary and will be given up completely if the idea attributing their place and origin solely to a long and ancient period under water of all the countries that are today inhabited continues to win as many supporters as it does today. The numerous observations we owe to our century and our time, to enlightened people, many of whom are not to be suspected of innovation on the subject of religion, have led us to this idea, which all discoveries confirm every day; and it may well be the theory that physicists and even theologians will be satisfied with, since it has been thought possible to blend the strange mutation that occurred in nature with the consequences and effects of the flood as related in sacred history.”

“Mr Pluche is not alone in having embraced such a Christian system, which seemed to him all the more plausible since we do not find on our continents the remains of any habitation or labour of the first human beings, nor any material vestiges of the presence of human life. In his view, such vestiges would be highly common if the universal destruction of the earliest men had occurred on the same lands that we now live on – a powerful objection that has been brought against all the other theories, but which can nonetheless be opposed by another that has no less force to destroy all the ideas of the moderns.

“Mr Pluche and others, who have imagined that the ancient earth, which must have been devoid of marine fossils, was plunged under water, and the beds of former seas took its place, are forced to admit that the regions of the Tigris and the Euphrates were not included in this terrible submersion, and they alone were excepted out of all the lands of the ancient world. The name of these rivers and the surrounding countries, their incredible fertility, the serenity of the sky, the tradition of all the peoples, and in particular of sacred history, everything forces them to subscribe to this truth, and to say that this is the cradle of the human race ( Spectacle of Nature , vol. VIII, page 93). If we now examine how this exception could have occurred and what must have followed from it, we will only find what strongly contradicts the period that the new theory assigns to the emergence of our continents from the seas. If the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates were not swept from the face of the earth, and did not change as we are forced to admit, it must have been because there was no subsidence of the peaks from which these rivers flowed down to those directing them eastwards and westwards by channelling the streams and the large rivers that form them, nor any elevation to the beds of that part of our seas they flow into. Hence it must follow that all the expanse of earth confined by the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf could not have undergone any change in its former level and its slopes or in the nature of its lands, since the rear side of all the summits overlooking the deep valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which have not changed or become lower, the rear sides of these same summits overlooking Armenia, Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, etc. cannot have become lower either, and so all the vast lands situated around and outside the basin of the Euphrates and the rivers forming it did not subside, and were necessarily exempted from the general law due to their proximity to the cradle of the human race. They belong to that illustrious sample remaining from the ancient world, and so it is there that one could go to examine the difference that must be found between them, and to see if these lands do not contain marine fossils like all the rest of the new earth where we live. This is a journey that naturalists and travellers will spare us: we know that all these lands are filled like our own with marine productions that are foreign to their present state, and Pliny himself knew of fossilised cockles that had been found in Babylonia. So what becomes of the theory concerning the period of the continents emerging from the seas? Is it not clear that these observations destroy it, and that its supporters are no further forward, since there is no difference between the new and the old worlds, which is something absolutely necessary to validate their idea? Moreover, these reflections do not contradict the bases of their observations. If Mr Pluche and many others have recognised that our continents, after a long period under water, where their layers and shell-filled rocks were formed and built up, emerged from it in the past to become the habitat of men, then we can agree to it, even if there is no agreement about the period.

As for the historical and physical proofs of the flood and its universality, there will always be the uniformity of the traditions, their generality, as well as the proofs that can be drawn from the steep slopes and the alternating angles of our valleys, which, in the absence of marine bodies, can give us proofs that are actually new, but which are nonetheless just as strong as all the ones we have had until now. We can judge them by the following observations.

Mr Bourguet, and many other observers since, having remarked that all the mountain chains form alternating angles that correspond to each other, and that this arrangement of mountains is simply the result and consequent effect of the winding direction of our valleys, concluded that these valleys were the former beds of sea currents that once covered our continents, and that they nourished and produced the sea life whose remains can be found there. But if the sea beds once rose above the waters covering them, then the old slopes and the old directions of currents must have changed, as is necessarily the case in such a process. So why should we conclude today, in a state of nature that is completely different and completely opposed to the former one – since what was low has been raised up and what was high is now low – that the waters of our rivers and streams now follow the same paths as the old currents? Must they not on the contrary have flowed since that time across completely different and entirely new slopes? And is it not more reasonable and at the same time completely natural to think that if the ancient seas and their currents left some impression of their courses on their beds, then these impressions, such as they are, must no longer have any relation to the present arrangement of things or to the new shape of the continents? This reasoning must raise doubts about the dominant theory concerning the origin of the alternating angles. The winding paths of our valleys, which form these angles, are too closely related in their course and their ramifications to the position of our mountains and our continents not to raise the suspicion that they are a perfectly natural effect of their present position above the seas, and are not the traces and vestiges of sea currents in the ancient world. Since our continents have always been higher in the centre than near the seas that surround them, spring waters and rain have, from earliest times, had to wind a multitude of paths to overcome the land’s unevenness and reach the lower ground where the seas engulf them all. During the violent eruption of springs and the great rains of the flood , the resulting torrents would have had to dig and widen these furrows to the extent we see today. Last, the shape of our valleys, their tortuous winding paths, the large escarpments of the mountainsides and their slopes, are so much the effects and consequences of the course of the waters over our continents and of their descent from the summits of each country to the seas, that there is not a single one of these escarpments that does not continuously and invariably appear as higher land, from which the valley and the waters passing through them go down; so if ever in our day enough heavy rain and flooding occurred to fill up the valleys, as they did in the time of the flood , then the torrents that resulted from it would once again strike the same sheer banks that they struck and tore up in the past. It follows from all this a multitude of consequences, the overlong details of which would be out of place here; they will be found under the headings Valley, Mountain, River. It is up to the observers of our times to reflect on this theory, which may only have its simplicity against it. If they adopt it, what physical proof will not result from it in favour of the universality of the flood , since these alternating escarpments of our valleys are seen in all countries and regions of the earth? And what weight does it not give to the different traditions of certain peoples of Europe and Asia concerning the effects of the flood in their countries? Everything is connected by this means, physics and profane history are mutually confirmed, and both are marvellously reconciled with sacred history.”

“Some scholars,” he says, “have undertaken to measure the depth of the basin of the sea to make sure that enough water existed in nature to cover the mountains; taking their physics as a measure of their faith, they have decided that God did not do something because they cannot conceive how He did it. But a man who knows how to survey his land and measure a barrel of oil or wine has not received the gauge to measure the capacity of the atmosphere, nor the probe to establish the depths of the abyss. What is the use of calculating the amount of water in the sea when we do not know its extent? What conclusions can be drawn against the story of the flood due to the insufficiency of the sea waters if there is a perhaps a greater volume scattered across the sky? And lastly, what is the point of attacking the possibility of the flood by reasoning, when the fact is proved by a multitude of signs?”

“the children of Noah,” he says, “kept its memory alive among their descendants, who, following the example of their fathers, always began their feasts or public prayers by regrets and lamentations for what they had lost,”

“The Egyptians and most Orientals, to whomever we should attribute this invention, had an allegory or a painting of the consequences of the flood , which became famous and which can be found everywhere. It showed the aquatic monster killed and Osiris resuscitated; but out of the earth came hideous figures that attempted to dethrone him. They were monstrous giants: one had several arms, another tore up the largest oaks, and yet another held part of a mountain in his hands, which he then threw at the sky. They were all distinguished by peculiar acts and frightening names. The best known were Briareus, Othus, Ephialtes, Encelade, Mimas, Porphyrion and Rouach or Rhaecus. Osiris finally got the upper hand, and Horus, his beloved son, after having been badly mistreated by Rhaecus, was happily delivered from his clutches and appeared before him with the claws and mouth of a lion.

Now to show that this picture is historic, and that all the individuals that compose it are so many significant symbols or characters expressing the disorders that followed the flood , the hardship of the earliest men, and above all the wretched state of ploughing in Egypt, it will be enough to translate the individual names given to each of these giants. ‘Briareus’, derived from beri, serenitas, and from harous, subversa , means ‘ the loss of serenity’ ; ‘Othus’, from onittoth, tempestatum vices, ‘the succession or diversity of the seasons’; ‘Ephialtes’, from evi or ephi, nubes , and from althah, caligo , that is, nubes caliginis or nubes horrida, ‘the great mass of previously unknown clouds’; ‘Encelade’, enceled, fons temporaneus, ‘torrents, the ravages of great overflowing waters’ ; ‘Porphyrion’, from phour, frangere, and, by extension, frustulatim desringere, ‘earthquakes’ or ‘ the fracture of the earth’ that cracks the plains and overturns the mountains; ‘Mimas’, from maim, ‘the great rains’; ‘Rhaecus’, from rouach, ‘the wind’. How could it be, the author rightly asks, that all these names conspire by chance to evoke all the meteors that followed the flood , if such had not been the intention and the first meaning of the allegory? The figure of Horus was a consequence of it ( History of the Heavens, volume I, p. 107 and 108).