The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-04-27
BIBLE HISTORY.
Was the Delnge Universal or
Merely LocaIi
Rev. Dr. Reed Discourses on Modern Criticism
and Ancient Revelation = Science
Versus the Bible

Rev. J. Sanders Reed, DID,, delivered an
able discourse last evening at Trinity
Church on the "Noachian Deluge-Was 1t
UNIVERSAL"
The speaker asserted that it was not, and
to prove the correctness of his theory
quoted from tie leading scientific writers OF
the day. In the course of his remarks he
said Every race and nation has tradi
ton of flood. 1t is found in the literature
of Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Ph9necia,
Syria, Greece and Rome 1t is repeated in
China, India, Scandinavia, KamSchatka,
and the islands of the South Sea. 1t is de-
picted in Mexican paintings, on antique
coins, and on the seals and tablets of Ac
cadia.
''Our Indians can tell us stories Of it. The
earliest missionaries heard of it among the
FIJI Islanders, Plato speculates upon it,
Plutarch, Lucian and Ovid repeat it often.
The story is the property of no race or
country. 1t comes through all the chief
branches OF the human family. The sons of
Shem wrote of it in book we call the
Bible. The sons of Japhet remembered it
in India, Greece. Scandinavia and Britain.
The sons of Ham inscribed it on tablet
some 1000 years before Christ ana the in
scription is legible to-day.
AN ACOADlAN ACCOONIs
''Let US take a look at The Accadian ac-
count of the deluge. In the year 1919 pOr-
ton of the royal library at Nineveh was
unearthed. 1t WAS room filled foot high
with tablets and cylinders of baked clay,
covered with Inscriptions so minute that
some Of them cannot be read without the
aid of magnify ing glass. Thousands OF
these fragments were sent to the British
Museum. From one of them in the year
1872 the late lamented George Smith de-
ciphered the old Babylonian story OF the
flood. This tablet is of great antiquity. IL
was nodded in the year GO d. e. The ln-
scription on 1t is very much older, never,
as it is translation from the Assyrian OF
the ancient Accadlan monograph OF the year
100 B. c. The exodus did not take place
until the year 1920 b. C. The inscription on
the tablet then antidates any writings of
Moses by two hundred or three hundred
years.
The Accadian language, from which it
was translated, was the language of the
primitive Babylonians, the speech OF the
Babel builders before the confusion OF
tongues. This is an amazing tind,' for the
world may have ON this brick and clay the
original story of the deluge Fragments of
several editions of this poem have been
found, and by fitting them together almost
the whole OF the original text has been re-
covered.
TESTIMONY OF THE TABLETS.
ne name OIL the nero Oh THIS DdnE iOHldu
account is LiSuthsOs. which is the Accadian
for Noah."
The speaker here read the latest transla-
ton of the inscription found on the tablets
above mentioned, which agrees infinitely
with the Biblical account found In Genesis,
and then continued, as follows:
" Men who have Sneered at the notion of
Notwithstanding deluge must now recaSt
the expression of their faces. One or two
little tablets of baked clay are behind the
Bible. Moses was not to be believed But
they cannot silence the voice of the tablets
that cry out from the library at Nineveh.
" Suppose you cut out from the Old Tesla
ment the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth
chapters of Genesis. have you destroyed the
earliest record of the deluge? Have you
suppressed the original source of all the eX-
tant traditions OF such cataStropneF Not
for moment.
"Scientifc research does not permit US to
assert the universally of the deluge. What
was the intent Of the delugeP God" it is
said, saw that the wickedness of the
Adamite was great in the earth, and deter
mined upon his destruction.
Where were the descendants of Adam
living as the time? In Western Asia, as we
are taught-not by the Bible alone, but also
by philology. They had not yet dispersed.
"a German author says: There is no evil
dence that Egypt was known or inhabited
before the food. Congregated as the ante
diluvians we're, between the Euphrates and
the Indus, local humiliation would have
answered every purpose.
SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS.
There was no occasion for the submer-
sion of the whole surface of the earth in
order to exterminate race that had not
wandered beyond the confines Of single
continent.
1.-The emergency did not demand uni
versal deluge, and besides there are positive.
physical and scientific objections to its uni
"a
fauna. The indigenous mammalia of Amer
lea are wholly dissimilar 10 those of the Old
World.
Let those who still maintain the univer-
salty of the deluge ponder well upon this
fact: There are now known more than $50
distinct species of beetles in the island of
Madagascar.
Did Noah take a representative of every
one into his ark, and is that how they came
to be preserved ? 1t is the verdict Of modern
research that the deluge was the effect of
the operation of natural causes, and not the
product OF an especial divine Intervention"