THE DELUGE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 319, 19 February 1910, Page 7

THE DELUGE.

To the Editor. Sir,—Your corespondent, "Biblieal Student," in the issue of the -'News'' of the 10th inst., wishes me to give some reasons for considering the Bible's account of the Flood not historical. I might say shortly one reason for my scepticism as to its historical reliability is that if the ''windows of heaven" were opened for forty days and forty nights, or even for a longer time, that the prodigious volume of water required f or covering the whole earth with an ocean almost five miles deep (the altitude of those high hills, the Htmilavas, are not less than two miles above. Mt. Arrarat, the Ark's harbor of refuge) that such a volume of liquid could have been contained* in the superincumbent atmosphere is incredible to absurdity. Nor could such an ocean of .watur have subsided in 150 days. 1 mvsclf have known it to rain 30 days and nights almost iininterniittently in Australia, and y'-t not. ha'f the globe was .submerged.. Another somewhat cogent reason is that from the sizes given the alleged capacity of the Ark for containing the infinite 'multitude of terrestrial living things with their fodder is simpty - physical imposihility. The construction of'the Ark seems primitive, being far inferior to the vessels of the dav. ?£ might- have been thought that God, if virtually the Builder., ought almost 1" ■have favored some hiii'her instruction '.n naval architecture. The wanton drowning of all the poor, inoffensive animals ■with man seems needless; indeed, the necessity for an overwhelming deluge is not obvious, as one fiat of omnipotence might have destroyed man at one stroke, and saving Noah and his family. As monuments and mummies of the presumed date of the Blood and prior to it exist.now in Egypt, it might look as if those people., however corrupt, had luckily escaped the drowning cataclysm. H ' "Biblical Student" and "New Chum" are one, he ("New Chum") has himself intimated that the story of the Flood as one of the passages quoted by me was not intended for literal history.— I am, etc., C.W.W.