For the Pentateuchal story is indubitably a patchwork, composed
of fragments of at least two, different and partly discrepant,
narratives, quilted together in such an inartistic fashion that
the seams remain conspicuous. And, in the matter of
circumstantial exaggeration, it in some respects excels even the
second-hand legend of Berosus.
There is a certain practicality about the notion of taking
refuge from floods and storms in a ship provided with a
steersman; but, surely, no one who had ever seen more water than
he could wade through would dream of facing even a moderate
breeze, in a huge three-storied coffer, or box, three hundred
cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, left to drift without
rudder or pilot.<8> Not content with giving the exact year of
Noah's age in which the flood began, the Pentateuchal story adds
the month and the day of the month. It is the Deity himself who
"shuts in" Noah. The modest week assigned to the full deluge in
Hasisadra's story becomes forty days, in one of the Pentateuchal
accounts, and a hundred and fifty in the other. The flood,
which, in the version of Berosus, has grown so high as to cast
the ship among the mountains of Armenia, is improved upon in the
Hebrew account until it covers "all the high hills that were
under the whole heaven"; and, when it begins to subside, the ark
is left stranded on the summit of the highest peak, commonly
identified with Ararat itself.
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