own people, the story they carried with them when they left their native land to cross the desert.

EDGAR J. BANKS, Ph.D., Field Director of the recent Babylonian Expedition of the University of Chicago, The Bible and the Spade, pp. 9, 26, 27, 32, 33. Copyright, 1913. The International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations.

That the great alluvial plain at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris was among the countries first occupied by man after the Deluge, is affirmed by Scripture, and generally allowed by writers upon ancient history....

Besides their correct notions on the subject of creation, the primitive Chaldaeans seem also to have been aware of the general destruction of mankind, on account of their wickedness, by a Flood; ... Here again we have a harmony with Scripture of the most remarkable kind a harmony not confined to the main facts, but reaching even to the minuter points, and one which is altogether most curious and interesting. The Babylonians have not only, in common with the great majority of nations, handed down from age to age the general tradition of the Flood, but they are acquainted with most of the particulars of the occurrence. They know of the divine warning to a single man, the direction to construct a huge ship or ark, the command to take into it a chosen few of mankind only, and to devote the chief space to winged fowl and four-footed beasts of the earth.... They know that the ark rested in Armenia; that those who escaped by means of it, or their descendants, journeyed towards Babylon; that there a tower was begun, but not completed, the building being stopped by divine interposition and a miraculous confusion of tongues. As before, they are not content with the plain truth, but must amplify and embellish it. The size of the ark is exaggerated to an absurdity,...

RAWLINSON, Five Great Monarchies (2nd ed., London, 1871), Vol. I, pp. 43, 145, 147.

In Table-Case A are fragments of the Assyrian account of the Creation and the Deluge. According to the translations that have been made, there are many passages in them which remind us of the Bible records, but they are mixed up with the pagan mythology,... The similarities have led some of the German professors and so-called "higher critics" to imagine that the inspired account is derived from the polluted pagan source.... As well might we affirm that the ocean receives her supply of seaweed from the shore by gathering with her waves the dried dead piles of weed that lie upon the beach. The shrivelled weed originally came from the ocean. It was once living and fresh, but exposure to the air and sun and sand have made it dry and putrid, and it only has a slight resemblance to what it once was. So with these ancient records of the past-they too are dead and dry and contaminated with many traces of heathen religion.

During the many centuries which had elapsed between the days of Adam and Moses, God had not been silent. We know that He spoke directly to Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. Because the history of these

18

MORE ON THE FLOOD

centuries is compressed into so few chapters in the Bible, in imagination we are inclined to place Abraham quite near the beginning of the world's history, whereas, even if our dates are correct, he was about half way between 4000 B. C. and the Lord's birth at Bethlehem. The Lord said: "Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws." It is therefore certain that the laws given to Moses were not the first God had given. The earliest revelations were very soon corrupted till only traces of the pure truth were left, and it was necessary that God should again make Himself known, and show to Moses what was true and what was false.

ADA R. HABERSHON, The Bible and the British Museum, Chapter VII, "The
Nineveh Gallery," pp. 37, 38.

Further proof that the Bible version of the flood is correct is found in a recent discovery by Professor H. V. Hilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania, of the fragment of a tablet in the Nippur temple excavations at Nippur, an ancient city of Babylonia, located about fifty miles from Babylon. The supposed date of the tablet is between 2137 and 2005 B. C., which would make it probable that the writer of it had obtained his version of the prophecy either directly from a survivor of the deluge, or from the next generation following...

Referring to this latest discovery of deluge tablets, Bishop Samuel Fallows, as reported in the Chicago American, of March 19, 1910, says: "I read of the discovery with great interest. It is another of the many proofs that are coming to hand that the critics of the accuracy of the Old Testament are wrong. Rev. Melville P. Boynton, in the same paper, said: "We have an additional argument to refute the critics of the accuracy of the Bible. I congratulate Professor Hilprecht on the good work. In the past three years, in fact, archaeological research has consistently brought forth proofs, if these were needed, of the truth of the Old Testament.'

7.

J. ELWIN WOODWARD, Historic and Prophetic Diagram of the World, pp. 66, 67.

Has the prophecy of Noah foretelling the "three great divisions of the human race" been fulfilled?

BIBLE EVIDENCE.

Genesis 10:1, 32-Now there are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

SECULAR EVIDENCE.

The second is that miracle of ethnological prophecy by Noah in Gen. 9:26, 27, in which we have foretold in a sublime epitome the three great divisions of the human race, and their ultimate historic destinies. The three great divisions, Hamitic, Shemitic, and Japhetic, are the

EXTRAORDINARY DOCUMENT

19

three ethnic groups into which modern science has divided the human race. The facts of history have fulfilled what was foretold in Genesis four thousand years ago.

REV. DYSON HAGUE, M.A., Vicar of the Church of the Epiphany; Professor of Liturgics, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in The Fundamentals, Vol. I, p. 286.

The contents of the tenth chapter of Genesis constitute a document of a character altogether extraordinary: for example, in the two following particulars. First, it is without parallel in the world. Nowhere else is there known to us a distinct and detailed endeavor to draw downwards from a single source the multiplication of men in the earth by families, and the distribution of them over the face of the earth..... If such a division actually took place, we might expect to find the traces of it in a threefold division of language, which has an unquestionable relation to race; and, conversely, such a divarication in language proves an early distribution of races or families, from which it took its origin. Without entering into details, it may be observed that the Book of Genesis associates the first distinctions of language with the local dispersion of man; and it is now known that, in days antecedent to the permanent bond of literature, such an association is agreeable not only to probability, but to the ascertained laws of experience. And now we find that comparative philology, dealing at large with the languages of the world, has resolved them into that very threefold division, which the distribution of man according to Genesis 10, into three great branches, anticipates and requires. Here is again an important service, rendered by modern science to belief.

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE, M.P., Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture. Revised and Enlarged, from Good Words, pp. 290-293.-1891.

8. What are some of the archaeological discoveries which have "dealt a terrific blow" to "radical and destructive criticism" of the Bible?

BIBLE EVIDENCE.

Job 5:12,13.-He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.

SECULAR EVIDENCE.

The greatest recommendation of archeological discovery, as valid evidence in support of Scriptural statements, lies in its casual nature. An inscription is discovered; with great patience and care a translation is made; and now it is found that certain persons and events mentioned tally with similar Scriptural records. But the discovery was wholly unexpected; so that the evidence is absolutely unbiased.

WILBERT W. WHITE, Editor The Biblical Review, head of the Bible Teachers' Training School, New York City. Editorial, The Biblical Review, p. 5, January, 1918,

20

HIGHER CRITICS SHOCKED

As we conclude this section of our subject we cannot help remarking that notwithstanding the extensive and long continued excavations in Egypt, which have laid bare so many wholly unknown social and political situations and shattered so many scholarly theories, the authority of the Bible writers as honest and well-informed men has not been, in any degree, harmed. This really is quite remarkable, for the reputation of almost every other ancient author who attempted to depict ancient Egyptian life has been seriously damaged. This is perhaps more significant in showing the unique importance of archeology in Bible study than anything we have yet said. Fifty years ago many pages were filled with the so-called "mistakes" of the Bible writers when they attempted to chronicle Egyptian conditions. To-day those pages are almost, if not wholly, blank.... While the Biblical critic, not the archeologist, must be depended upon chiefly to correct the work of the Biblical critic, yet it cannot be doubted that radical and destructive criticism has been dealt a terrific blow by the excavations of the last sixty years. This has been true, not only of the content of such criticism, but also of its method.

CAMDEN M. COBERN, D.D., Litt.D., in The Biblical Review, pp. 20, 37, January, 1918.

In short, from the origin of the higher criticism till this present time the discoveries in the field of archaeology have given it a succession of serious blows. The higher critics were shocked when the passion of the ancient world for writing and the preservation of documents was discovered. They were shocked when primitive Babylonia appeared as the land of Abraham. They were shocked when early Palestine appeared as the land of Joshua and the Judges. They were shocked when Amraphel came back from the grave as a real historical character, bearing his code of laws. They were shocked when the stele of the Pharaoh of the exodus was read, and it was proved that he knew a people called Israel, that they had no settled place of abode, that they were "without grain" for food, and that in these particulars they were quite as they are represented by the Scriptures to have been when they had fled from Egypt into the wilderness. The embarrassment created by these discoveries is manifest in many of the recent writings of the higher critics, in which, however, they still cling heroically to their analysis and their late dating of the Pentateuch and their confidence in the hypothesis of evolution as the key of all history.

FRANKLIN JOHNSON, D.D., LL.D., The Fundamentals, Vol. I, pp. 67, 68 Much is made of the historical difficulties and supposed contradictions between the Bible and other authentic records. But the whole tendency of recent investigation, historical and archaeological, is beyond doubt to establish not only the historicity and authenticity, but in many cases the minute accuracy, of the Bible record. This is shown by the vast and accumulating mass of literature by the foremost experts and highest authorities upon the testimony of the monuments, tablets, resurrected cities, mounds, libraries, and other records of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Sinai, as well as the immense amount of corroborative evidence from Asia