THE DELUGE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 322, 23 February 1910, Page 3

THE DELUGE.

To the.. Editor. Sir, —Let me assure your correspondent "C.W.W." that "New Chum" and mys'elf are two entirely different and distinct persons. Ilis ("C.W.W.'s") objections against the historicity of the Biblical Flood have been repeated numberless times, and can be read in various magazine articles wherein savants of different nationalities are accustomed to air their opinions On Biblical ana other subjects. The historicity of the Deluge is conlinncd by the tradition existing in all places and at all times as to tiiie occurrence of a similar catastrophe. F. von iSchwars (Sintllutte und Volkerwauderungen) enumerates sixtythree such Hood stories, all, in his opinion, independent of the Biblical account. It. Andree (Die Flutsagen Ethnographiscli Betrachtel) dis'cusses eighty-eight different Hood stories, and considers sixty-two of them as independent of the Chaidee and Hebrew tradition. Moreover, these stories extend through all the 'races of the earth excepting the African; these are excepted not because it is certain that they do not possess' any Flood traditions, but because their traditions 'have not as yet been sufficiently investigated. Lenormant pronounces the Flood story as the most universal tradition in the history ol primitive man, and Franz Delitzsch was' of opinion that we might as well consider the history of Alexander the Great a myth as to call the Flood tradition a fable. It would indeed be a greater miracle than 'that of the Deluge itself if the various and different conditions surrounding the several nations of the earth liad produced among them a tradition substantially identical. Opposite causes would have produced the same effect. It is' not necessary to maintain either the geographical or the anthropological universality of the Deluge. "C.W.W." would seem to be bent on demolishing a phantasm of his own imagination, whilst all the time believing that he was proving the unreliability of the inspired volume.—l am, etc., BIiBLIOAL STUDENT.