BOOK III. OF DEIFIED PATRIARCHS. HEAD I. OF NOAH, UNDER OTHER NAMES.

○It were premature, at the opening of a Book which is to be occupied with the deifying of the patriarchs, to do more than indicate the manner in which the first of them is to be considered, and the distinction upon which the treatment of him depends. It has been usual with the moderns, and especially with Mr. Bryant and Mr. Faber, to find the patriarch Noah under a great variety of names, and to refer to him whatever in the fables of the heathen is connected with the waters; and the effect has been that two things, which the heathen relations continually blend, namely what is told of the man and what is told of the event, have been confounded in the inquiry, and made to prove one another.¹ I shall endeavour to show, in the course of the present Book and of that which follows it, that the two are to be kept apart; that what is told of the man belongs to the deifying of the patriarchs, and what is told of the vessel and the waters to the remembrance of the Deluge; and that the question, in each tradition, is which of the two it has retained. It will be convenient to begin with what the sacred text affirms, and with the testimony of a single witness from India, who has been brought forward as relating the story of Noah under another name. NB-35-003 NB-40-018

○Two places of the sacred text are to be set together, for the sake of what they leave out. The first gives the character of the man: "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."² The second gives his occupation after the Deluge, and what befell him from it: "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent."³ Neither of these places speaks of the vessel, of the waters, or of any creature in them; they describe a person, and what he did. Where a tradition retains a husbandman who planted, it retains the man; where it retains the flood and the vessel, it retains the event; and whether any tradition retains both is not, as I conceive, to be assumed, but to be shewn by the testimonies of that tradition, taken one by one. The rule which results is that a deity in whom the husbandman is found is to be tried by the places which concern the husbandman, and a deity in whom the vessel is found by those which concern the Deluge; and I shall endeavour to apply it without allowing the one to be supplied from the other.⁴ NB-35-003

○Sir William Jones, of whom I have the one essay, and that at second hand as regards what it relates of India, says that "if we produce, therefore, an Indian king of divine birth, eminent for his piety and beneficence, whose story seems evidently to be that of Noah," we may fairly offer a conjecture that he was also the same personage with Saturn; and he names this king Menu, or Satyavrata, and suspects that all the fourteen Menus are reducible to one, called Nuh by the Arabs.⁵ He offers it, it is to be observed, as a conjecture, and I do not treat it as more. Of the Chaldean relation, however, which is preserved under the name of Berosus, it is to be remarked that Cronus, that is Saturn, is there the Deity who appears to the man and warns him of the flood; the saved man is Xisuthrus, and he is not Cronus.⁶ By this witness, then, Saturn is the author of the warning and not the person warned; and the identification which Sir William Jones has proposed is not borne out by it, nor is it contradicted, since one name may have been given to both. I note the difference and draw no more; the relation from India, which I have at second hand, is not to be corrected by the Chaldean, nor the Chaldean bent to the Indian. NB-40-018

○The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is that Noah is to be sought under other names only in those traditions which retain the man, and that the places of the sacred text which concern him are the measure of the sufficiency of any such identification; so that a name which is given to a husbandman, or to a just man who walked with God, may be referred to the patriarch, while a name which is given to one who is warned of the flood, or to the vessel, belongs to the event. The proof of it, which requires the examination of the several traditions in which the patriarch is alleged to be found, is reserved for the heads which follow, and for the Book of the Waters. It may be objected, in the first place, that the distinction is one which the ancients themselves did not observe; to which I answer that their failure to observe it is the reason why it is to be observed by their interpreter. It may be objected, in the second place, that Sir William Jones, with the whole of the Indian relation before him, has judged the story to be that of Noah; to which I answer that I do not dispute the judgment, which he offers as a conjecture and which I have not the means of trying, but only decline to extend it beyond what the Chaldean witness will bear. And it may be objected, lastly, that if the man and the event are not to be assumed together, the conclusion of the whole is in danger; to which I answer that the conclusion is endangered only by an assumption, and that the proof, which has not yet been given, is the more secure for not having been anticipated.⁷ NB-35-003 NB-40-018