While the details of Hasisadra's adventure are, at least,
compatible with the physical conditions of the Euphrates valley,
and, as we have seen, involve no catastrophe greater than such
as might be brought under those conditions, many of the very
precisely stated details of Noah's flood contradict some of the
best established results of scientific inquiry.
If it is certain that the alluvium of the Mesopotamian plain has
been brought down by the Tigris and the Euphrates, then it is no
less certain that the physical structure of the whole valley has
persisted, without material modification, for many thousand
years before the date assigned to the flood. If the summits,
even of the moderately elevated ridges which immediately bound
the valley, still more those of the Kurdish and Armenian
mountains, were ever covered by water, for even forty days, that
water must have extended over the whole earth. If the earth was
thus covered, anywhere between 4000 and 5000 years ago, or, at
any other time, since the higher terrestrial animals came into
existence, they must have been destroyed from the whole face of
it, as the Pentateuchal account declares they were three several
times (Genesis vii. 21, 22, 23), in language which cannot be
made more emphatic, or more solemn, than it is; and the present
population must consist of the descendants of emigrants from the
ark.
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