Suppose that some later polyhistor, as devoid of critical
faculty as most of his tribe, had found the version of Berosus,
as well as another much nearer the original story; that, having
too much respect for his authorities to make up a
tertium
quid of his own, out of the materials offered, he followed a
practice, common enough among ancient and, particularly, among
Semitic historians, of dividing, both into fragments and piecing
these together, without troubling himself very much about those
resulting repetitions and inconsistencies; the product of such a
primitive editorial operation would be a narrative analogous to
that which treats of the Noachian deluge in the book of Genesis.
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.
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