The Creation of God, Jacob Hartmann [e manga reader TXT] 📗

earth’s surface are filled with water. These immense expanses form oceans, seas, lakes, rivers. The ocean bed is just as uneven as the dry portion of the earth’s surface. The numerous islands are the mountains of the ocean bed, some of greater, others of lesser extent.

2. The fluid part of the terrestrial globe fills the hollow places of the solid portion of the earth’s crust. These are the great and small depressions, or greater and smaller basins.

3. The earth’s weight has always been the same, neither increased nor diminished. This includes both the solid and liquid part of this terrestrial globe.

4. The fluid portion of this terrestrial globe has neither increased nor diminished. It cannot, because the quantity of oxygen and hydrogen is limited to this earth. None can get away, and none can come to it.

5. Water may change its position, or state—split up into elements; make clouds, mist, hail, snow, or rain, or dew—but it ultimately returns to the great basin of water where it came from.

6. If water rises in any one locality beyond the ordinary sea level, water has diminished in some other locality. The quantity of water on the earth’s surface has not increased, except in one locality.

7. Rain cannot fall over the whole surface of this earth at one time.

8. There is always daylight and sunshine, night and darkness, on this earth.

9. Heat and cold vary in the different parts of this earth. The atmosphere is different in the various parts of the earth’s surface. There is a perpetual winter, summer, spring, or autumn in various parts on this globe.

10. The rays of the sun strike the various portions of the earth at different times. This variation in the direction of the sun’s rays produces a corresponding variation in the intensity of the sun’s heat and light at different places, and accounts for the difference between the torrid and the frigid regions, etc.

11. The atmosphere does not, and cannot, carry beyond a certain percentage of aqueous vapor. When it becomes overcharged the moisture must fall, in raindrops when the temperature is warm enough.

12. The sun’s heat regulates the amount of aqueous vapor the atmosphere can carry in the form of clouds. When the atmosphere is fully saturated, rain must fall.

13. When the atmosphere is cool or cold, the raindrops congeal, and we have snow or hail.

14. There are regions on the earth where it never rains, probably never rained. The rainless region of Asia is of vast extent. It includes part of Tibet, the great desert of Gobi, and part of Mongolia—a space estimated to comprise about 2,000,000 square miles. There are other rainless regions on the face of the earth’s surface. There is a great diversity in the yearly amount of rainfall; the highest is about 60 inches, the lowest 21 and less.

15. There is no great difference between the polar and equatorial diameter of the earth, the average number of miles being about 8,000.

Taking the above facts in consideration—the conformation of the earth’s surface, the elevation above the sea level, table-lands or plateaus, and mountains, the fixed quantity of water upon the surface of the earth, the influence of heat and cold, the condition of the atmosphere, etc., a general deluge must be rigidly excluded.

Supposing it rained forty days and forty nights, how many inches of rainfall could we possibly get? We can know to an inch the quantity of rain that would fall. The water would certainly roll down the hills and mountains, fill up the lakes and rivers, overflow the banks, and rise in the lowlands to a certain hight.

The deluge, Noah’s deluge, was a local affair, if it ever occurred. Granting such a flood did take place, it never extended beyond that portion of Asia, Chaldea. Supposing that the rivers Tigris and Euphrates may have overflowed and caused a flood say of fifty feet rise above the level of the sea (which is impossible, because the surplus waters would flow into the seas and oceans), how insignificant is the rise of fifty feet even in comparison with table-lands 10,000 feet above the sea-level, and mountains 20 to 30,000 feet above the sea-level.

As to the extent of the rainstorm that caused this deluge, I do not suppose that the clouds held in the atmosphere extended over 500, or say 1,000, square miles over the region where the rain fell.

As to collecting the animals for the ark from all over the globe, that is just as ridiculous as the deluge itself.

It is to be presumed that the person or persons who wrote the first seven chapters of the Bible had not the slightest idea of the geographical condition of the earth’s surface. It was not known. They thought that their locality embraced the whole earth. Even in Columbus’s time they had no idea of the extent of this earth. The seas that they probably had some knowledge of may have been the Gulf of Persia, the Red sea, the Mediterranean or Arabian sea, probably the Caspian. That was about the extent. They had means neither of land travel nor of navigation.

Verse 20: “Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail, and the mountains were covered.”

A cubit, standard, contains 21 inches. Fifteen multiplied by 21 gives 315 inches, or 26 feet 3 inches. How can 26 feet 3 inches of water cover plateaus 10,000 feet high and mountains like the Ida, 4,000 feet, and the Himalayas 29,000 feet in height? Mount Ararat in Asia Minor is 17,112 feet high.

These are figures. They do not lie. We have here positive proof. I defy contradiction. Every man and woman with a little sense can prove it. And any priest or clergyman that will maintain the truth of a general deluge after reading this statement, is either a fool, or a fraud and an infamous liar.

In fact, the entire rainfall during the forty days and nights would have had as much effect on this globe as a pint of water would have to drown an elephant.

Verse 21: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.”

Verse 22: “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, all that was on dry land, died.”

Verse 23: “And every living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Verse 24: “And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.”

Mount Ararat is situated in Persia about 150 to 200 miles south of the Black sea, and about 300 miles west of the Caspian sea, about 500 miles east of Aleppo and the Mediterranean sea, and about 700 miles north of the Gulf of Persia, from Mount Sinai about 1,000 or more miles northeast, and a similar distance from the Red sea.

Arabia is about 700 miles across between the Persian gulf and the Red sea. The distance between the shores of the Persian gulf and the Caspian sea is about five hundred miles.

The Caspian chain of mountains are situated about two hundred miles north of Mount Ararat, and they extend from the Sea of Azof north, running southwest to the Caspian sea.

The entire tract of territory where this deluge is said to have occurred does not embrace one thousand miles in any given direction, and takes in but two countries—Turkey and Persia—and only a portion of either. It does not extend farther north than the Caspian mountains and the Black sea, east than the Mediterranean sea, west than the Caspian sea, and south than the Persian gulf and Arabia.

Turkistan, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan form the eastern boundary of Persia.

The twenty-six feet three inches of the rise of water in consequence of the rain could not have extended beyond the limits indicated above.

At the period of the deluge there were immense countries east of Turkistan, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan—Russia north, the Chinese empire and Hindostan farthest south. Europe and Africa could not be reached. So that all living substance was not destroyed and could not be destroyed. Nor was all living substance destroyed in the country where the flood occurred, because those living on high table-lands were out of reach of the flood.

We must necessarily draw our own conclusions as to the truth or falsity of the statements contained in verses 21, 22, 23. Some destruction of life may have taken place, limited to the locality.

There are other evidences that go to show the incorrectness of the scripture. The Hindoo era, or the era of the Caleyung, dates 3001 B.C., seven hundred and fifty-six years before the deluge. This country was flourishing at the time of the flood. Moreover, the Hindoos counted their months by the progress of the sun through the Zodiacs.

Keep the figures of the deluge in mind, 2348 B.C.

China, north of Hindostan and east of the deluged territory, was flourishing 2700 B.C. It was not touched by the flood. It had its own floods, separate and distinct from Noah’s.

In 2347 B.C., one year after the flood, Noah made wine from grapes.