The Deluge Confessed

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1875

The Deluge Confessed.

It is quite refreshing to find one fact mentioned in the Bible, which the modern men of science are willing to admit is confirmed by the progress of discovery. Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, makes the subjoined most interesting account of the record of the deluge, which he has lately deciphered from the Assyrian monuments:—

The cuneiform inscription which I have recently found and translated, gives a long and full account of the deluge. It contains the version or tradition of this event which existed in the early Chaldean period at the city of Erech (one of the cities of Nimrod), now represented by the ruins of Warka. In this newly discovered inscription, the account of the deluge is put as a narrative into the mouth of Xisuthrus, or Noah. He relates the wickedness of the world, the command to build the ark, its building, the filling of it, the deluge, the resting of the ark on a mountain, the sending out of the birds, and other matters. The narrative has a closer resemblance to the account transmitted by the Greeks from Berosus, the Chaldean historian, than to the biblical history, but it does not differ materially from either. The principal differences are as to the duration of the deluge, the name of the mountain on which the ark rested, the sending out of the birds, etc. The cuneiform account is much longer and fuller than that of Berosus, and has several details omitted both by the Bible and the Chaldean historian. This inscription opens up many questions of which we knew nothing previously, and it is connected with a number of other details of Chaldean history which will be both interesting and important. This is the first time any inscription has been found with an account of an event mentioned in Genesis.