THE DELUGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 November 1928, Page 9

THE DELUGE

BIBLE STORY CONFIRMED. - Lieutenant-General Sir George MacMunn, writing in the London “Daily Telegraph” mentions that during the world war ho was- for three years Inspector-General of Communications in Mesopotamia, and held command there in the year following’the war. During those years lie travelled 25,000 mi-os ih his river steamer on the Tigris and Euphrates, and before going there was able to pay what is best described as a pilgrimage to that famous irrigation engineer, Sir William Willcocks, then residing in Egypt. General MacMunn’s article goes on as follows.: — Sir William had been employed shortly before the war by the Turkish Government to plan the revival of the ancient canal system of Babylonia. A few months before the Avar commenced the engineering firm of Sir John Jackson had completed tho Hindya barrage on the Euphrates, and had built the dam partly with bricks from Babylon bearing the name stamp of Nebuchadnezzar. Sir William is an enthusiastic student and interpreter of the Old Testament, and especially of Genesis;, and he was good enough to give mo his original tracings and notes. I was therefore able to study the rivers under the best auspices, and probably no one before or since has had the time to spend in moving up and down the streams and puzzling over all that has been said about them. When the Turkish officials fled before us, they left no machinery of government behind, so that the British had to organise a temporary administration in the rear of their fighting troops. Among the many problems that are mixed up. with revenue are those of land tenure. We soon found, especially when acquiring laud for army purposes, that you might buy land, but that you had not necessarily become the owner of the trees thereon. A Separate transaction with a different owner might be necessary. This, then, is why we are told that, when Abraham obtained the field of Machpelah in Mamre as a place of sepulture, ho saw that “the field and the cave therein, and all the trees that were in the field . . . were made sure” exactly as •he would have to do to this day.

Now the remarkable thing about it all is that almost every item in Genesis that can be cross-checked with other records is substantiated, so that it is not too much to accept as equally 'authentic, and that without infringing the law's which science has discovered, statements that cannot be crosschecked.

Story of the Flood.

But it is the story of the Flood that the traversing of the land with levels and a theodolite brings out in such extreme accuracy. First of all, however, to read it as it unfolds, it is essential, to put away the idea that the story in Genesis has anything to do of necessity with floods recorded or shown in other parts of the world, or with the traces of great waters and their results. The story is the story of what happens each year in Iraq only’ considerably intensified by unusual happenings. And we must allow that through the age the story has been developed beyond its original scope. The year that saw the fall of Kut was a year of unusual flood, and the army was intensely hampered thereby in its efforts for the relief. A few days after Kut fell, in the spring of 1916, I was on the Jlamar Lake in my steamer, moving up the Euphrates, close to Ur of the Chaldees, whose mounds could be seen far away, but save for that there was no land visible north, south, east, or west, and only now and again a palm top. Sir William Willcocks assumes that Noah was a big sheik and landowner somewhere in the vicinity of Babylon, 300 miles ’above Ur, that, wise in his generation, forewarned of God, he had prepared for the troubles that a weakening regime was bringing in the deterioration. of . the irrigation dams, which, from earliest times, were an essential of life on the Euphrates. Deteriorated dams and unusual weather brought the nemesis. The Gates of Heaven o.pened, and the usual spring floods of rainwater and melting snow from the Armenian uplands brought a gigantic flood, that swept all before it, and carried Noah’s vessel, with his families and his breeding stock, far away south to the swamps, where is now’ the Hamar Lake, and then ho doubt the head of the Persian Gulf. The “Gates of Heaven” opening is a clear enough description of rainstorms and snow, but we have something more effective than that. We are told that the “Fountains of the Deep came up.” Now’, to this day, every spring for forty days the south-west Shumal prevails in the Gulf, and it blows the sea water up like a wall for seventy’ miles and more over the dry’ flats, of the land on either side of the rivers, but especially on the Ur side. Because of this wall of sea the floods cannot run off the land. And the heavy spring floods to this day happen exactly as described in Genesis, when the “Fountains of the Deep” meet the waters that come from the opening of the “‘Gates of Heaven.” Now’, if you ask an Arab to-day what he calls the country that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates, a low plain, he will call it the “glebel.” But “glebel” also means mountain. The flood prevailed, we are told, 15 cubits (27 feet), and the gebel was covered. Which meaning of gebel shall we use? The rendering that “the waters prevailed 27 feet and the mountains were covered,”' or the one in use in Irak today, “the gebel,” the low plateau between'the rivers? Then again to-day’ the usual rise in the flood season is perhaps 12 feet, and the riparian villagers have to protect, themselves with high banks, and all the rivers have a flood bunk, wherever there is cultivation to be damaged. A rise of 27 feet would drown everyone, for there are no bills of refuge, while even a crowding on io some slight mound would but mean starvation. And, further, if Ararat is but a glutinative Summeriau for a a.moun, it is a name which tradition alone can have given later to the huge mountain top of Armenia. The slightly raised plateau wa.s flooded; there was no escape: the rain and snow-water floods were blocked by’ the in-blown sea as to-day; and the great boat was washed down to the swamps of the lower Euphrates, stuck on an ararat —the debris, possibly’ of a mul village—and came to rest near Ur, where, gehor tions later, wo find Noah’s descendant, Abraham, stepping on to the page of historoy. One can almost see the story happening under one’s eyes.