Other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened--Sayce
in England, Lenormant in France, Schrader in Germany--with the
result that the Hebrew account of the Deluge, to which for ages
theologians had obliged all geological research to conform, was
quietly relegated, even by most eminent Christian scholars, to
the realm of myth and legend.[238]
Sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this discovery, and an
evidently widespread fear to have it known, have certainly impaired
not a little the legitimate influence of the Christian clergy.
And yet this adoption of Chaldean myths into the Hebrew
Scriptures furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the
value of our Bible as a record of the upward growth of man; for,
while the Chaldean legend primarily ascribes the Deluge to the
mere arbitrary caprice of one among many gods (Bel), the Hebrew
development of the legend ascribes it to the justice, the
righteousness, of the Supreme God; thus showing the evolution of
a higher and nobler sentiment which demanded a moral cause
adequate to justify such a catastrophe.
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