RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. (Contributed.) THE FLOOD. BIBLE STORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. A very interesting lecture was given in Sydney recently on the Flood by the Rev. Father W. Laws. The chair was occupied by Archbishop Slieehan. The lecturer stated the Roman Catholic point of view with great ability and clearnoss.i In the concluding section of the lecture Father Laws answered the question: Can the Biblical History of the Flood be demonstrated by archaeology? He said:— Remarkable Discoveries. This question comes as a sequel to the very remarkable report that was published in the daily Press some time ago, and which caused'no small stir in scientific and Biblical circles in many countries; nor is this to be wondered at, for it seems that the joint archaeological expedition of the English and American scientists, which has been carrying on excavations at various spots in Mesopotamia for some time past, has at last produced definite archaeological evidence of a mighty inundation which devastated Babylonia (according to these learned discoverers), about the year 3500 B.C. The following is taken from a report of these excavations in the Melbourne "Argus" of April 27, 1919. "At Kish, Dr. Langdon (director of the Oxford expedition to Kish) found a layer of alluvial mud a foot thick running through the town. In this layer there were precipitations of stranded, fish and clay vessels lying perfectly horizontal. Prof. Langdon estimates the date of the deluge, which caused this /stratum of mud, between 3400 and 3200 B.C. There was evidence of an earlier flood at Kish, dating from about 4000 8.C., but the later flood was the important one. Similar evidence has been obtained by Dr. Leonard Woolley at Ur. Here, well below the level of the modern plain, the excavators came Upon strata of soil, suddenly flattened out to the horizontal. . . When Mr. Woolley's excavators reached the virgin plain, eight solid feet of elear clay was found. Still lower was a ilat stratum rich in flint instruments and fragments of pottery, including painted vessels of a type hitherto unknown at Ur, Below all these came the. real river silt, upon which the primitive, inhabitants had built their first huts. Mr. Woolley's reading of the evidence furnished by the spade was that a catastrophic flood buried the low-lying parts of Ur, with their relics of the antediluvian civilisation, under a huge bank of -water-laid c'lay. This clay represents the deluge of Genesis, and it caused a breach in the continuity of civilisation in that part of Mesopotamia." Providence Began to Speak. What will the unbelieving critics of Holy Scripture say-to all this? These, in fact, commonly deny to Catholics even the right to express an opinion on the theories they have woven around the origin of the text of the Sacred Scripture. Not only do they utterly repudiate any Divine inspiration in the Bible, but they also refuse to admit the historical character of the most ancient books of the Sacred Scripture, treating them as mere works of fiction, which the Jewish scribes of a later date pro-, duced.from their imagination in order to glorify the origin and history of their race. * • : ; >- V.-

But. no sooner had the so-called "Higher Criticism", uttered this dictum, in the early part of the second half of the last century, than Divine Providence, we may say, began to speak. First of all, in the year 1887 were discovered at Tell-el-Amarna, in Egypt, the . now famous tablets, which, contrary to all expectations, threw such a flood of light on the Mosaic period of Scripture history. By the evidence of these tab-lets,-the unbelieving critics were forced to admit that what Holy Scripture narrated of Moses and his times was not only possible, but highly probable. Thus, the second millennium before Christ was opened up and definitely acquired to history.. .

The Excavator's Spade,

None the. less, the third millennium still remained intact; the higher criticism rejoiced in declaring that all that Sacred Scripture said of that millennium was mere fables or myths; Abraham and the Patriarchs, the founders of the Jewish people, their wandering from Mesopotamia to Palestine, and thence to Egypt; all this, at any rate, was the imaginative creation of Jewish story tellers who delighted in embellishing with myths and fables the imaginary history of the founders of their race. But these theories have long since been shattered; the spade of the excavator has no reverence for the dreams';of "pure" science; a mighty mass of documents has since been discovered in Babylonia; and nothing that the Bible says of this period can be shown .to be anything but in full accord with historical fact; the age of Abraham is now a definite historical period. What' remained for rationalistic criticism ?. Nothing else than to encamp in the yet untouched ground of the •fourth millennium. But already we may confidently prophesy that this ground will not remain much longer in its possession. Daily, historical documents are coming to light which definitely confirm the traditions of the Babylonians concerning the fourth millennium;. in fact, the greatest, and, to the incredulous, the. most' incredibly event of that period, the deluge, seems to have received just recently a juost unexpected confirmation."

Nothing that archaeology or excavation has discovered has ever shown that anything definitely aflinned by the Bible is false; and taught by the experience of the past wo may confidently expect that the same will happen iu • the future-,' in fact, the spade of the excavator is the best ally of the Sacred Scripture. A Qrowing Volume of Confirmatory Testimony. w&Tfe Ard-4-r?.. "a?taf''uSf owing to the discovery at a comparably rem.t data of the anctart K peoples who were in contact with the Jews rom the earliest times, we are enabled by careful study to clear up many «f the lo^-standi,,. against the Old 1 cstament, and to Uiul extrinsic support for its assertions. At one time, the early books of the Bible stood alone; they were the sole witness to the things they narrated, and were therefore regarded by secularistg as under suspicion, but Babylonia, Egypt and other countries have, in these years |>ast, been yielding up their secrets and have been furnishing us with a growing volume of confirmatory testiinos'v.

Father Laws has explained that neither the strict interpretation of tlie sacred text nor traditional Catholic teaching requires us to believe that the Deluge -extended to the whole earth. Once that is understood, the main difficulties vanish. Some of you may still be troubled by the statements as to the age of Noah, as to the one hundred years he took to build the Ark, as to the duration of the Flood, and so forth, but you should be satisfied with the general answer that we do not know anything about the ancient standards of measurement and calculation on which these ligures are based.

As to the animals that went into the Ark, it is a safe opinion that they were merely those which had become domesticated. I make that assertion, notwithstanding the words of the sacred text which seem to be absolutely universal: Noah is told to take with him representatives of every living species of fowls, beasts, and all things that creep upon the earth; but probably this is no more than a literary formula, stating emphatically that, of the live stock wlikh he possessed, he was to take some of -each kind. The animals therefore need not have been extraordinarily numerous, nor [need' there have been even one creeping thing among them. Perhaps I can illustrate this last point from a notice which I once saw outside a large store. It stated: "Everything on sale here from a needle to an anchor"; but on inquiry I found that one of the very few things which you could not get there was all anchor. You may take it then, that there are pitfalls in the speech of the ancient Semites just as there arc in ours,'and that it may be'many, a long day before we shall be able to detect them all.