it is not necessarily the mere inclination of the sceptical
spirit to question everything, or the wilful blindness of
infidels, which prompts grave doubts as to the value of a
narrative thus curiously unlike the ordinary run of
veracious histories.

But the voice of archaeological and historical criticism still
has to be heard; and it gives forth no uncertain sound. The
marvellous recovery of the records of an antiquity, far superior
to any that can be ascribed to the Pentateuch, which has been
effected by the decipherers of cuneiform characters, has put us
in possession of a series, once more, not of speculations, but
of facts, which have a most remarkable bearing upon the question
of the truthworthiness of the narrative of the Flood. It is
established, that for centuries before the asserted migration of
Terah from Ur of the Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox
interpreters of the Pentateuch, took place after the year 2000
B.C.) Lower Mesopotamia was the seat of a civilisation in which
art and science and literature had attained a development
formerly unsuspected or, if there were faint reports of it,
treated as fabulous. And it is also no matter of speculation,
but a fact, that the libraries of these people contain versions
of a long epic poem, one of the twelve books of which tells a
story of a deluge, which, in a number of its leading features,
corresponds with the story attributed to Berosus, no less than
with the story given in Genesis, with curious exactness. Thus,
the correctness of Canon Rawlinson's conclusion, cited above,
that the story of Berosus was neither drawn from the Hebrew
record, nor is the foundation of it, can hardly be questioned.
It is highly probable, if not certain, that Berosus relied upon