Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being...

[19:1] See "The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science," by Prof. Wm. Denton: J. P. Mendum, Boston.

[19:2] "There were giants in the earth in those days." It is a scientific fact that most races of men, in former ages, instead of being larger, were smaller than at the present time. There is hardly a suit of armor in the Tower of London, or in the old castles, that is large enough for the average Englishman of to-day to put on. Man has grown in stature as well as intellect, and there is no proof whatever—in fact, the opposite is certain—that there ever was a race of what might properly be called giants, inhabiting the earth. Fossil remains of large animals having been found by primitive man, and a legend invented to account for them, it would naturally be that: "There were giants in the earth in those days." As an illustration we may mention the story, recorded by the traveller James Orton, we believe (in "The Andes and the Amazon"), that, near Punin, in South America, was found the remains of an extinct species of the horse, the mastodon, and other large animals. This discovery was made, owing to the assurance of the natives that giants at one time had lived in that country, and that they had seen their remains at this certain place. Many legends have had a similar origin. But the originals of all the Ogres and Giants to be found in the mythology of almost all nations of antiquity, are the famous Hindoo demons, the Rakshasas of our Aryan ancestors. The Rakshasas were very terrible creatures indeed, and in the minds of many people, in India, are so still.

Their natural form, so the stories say, is that of huge, unshapely giants, like clouds, with hair and beard of the color of the red lightning. This description explains their origin. They are the dark, wicked and cruel clouds, personified.

[19:3] "And it repented the Lord that he had made man." (Gen. iv.) "God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent." (Numb. xxiii. 19.)

[20:1] Gen. iv.

[20:2] Gen. vi. 1-3.

[20:3] See chapter xi.

[20:4] The image of Osiris of Egypt was by the priests shut up in a sacred ark on the 17th of Athyr (Nov. 13th), the very day and month on which Noah is said to have entered his ark, (See Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 165, and Bunsen's Angel Messiah, p. 22.)

[21:1] Gen. vi.

[21:2] Gen. viii.

[22:1] See chapter xi.

[22:2] Josephus, the Jewish historian, speaking of the flood of Noah (Antiq. bk. 1, ch. iii.), says: "All the writers of the Babylonian histories make mention of this flood and this ark."

[22:3] Quoted by George Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 43-44; see also, The Pentateuch Examined, vol. iv. p. 211; Dunlap's Spirit Hist. p. 138; Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 61, et seq. for similar accounts.

[23:1] Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 285, 286.

[23:2] Volney: New Researches, p. 119; Chaldean Acct. of Genesis, p. 290; Hist. Hindostan, vol. i. p. 417, and Dunlap's Spirit Hist. p. 277.

[23:3] Ibid.

[23:4] Legends of the Patriarchs, pp. 109, 110.

[23:5] Gen. vi. 8.

[23:6] The Hindoo ark-preserved Menu had three sons; Sama, Cama, and Pra-Japati. (Faber: Orig. Pagan Idol.) The Bhattias, who live between Delli and the Panjab, insist that they are descended from a certain king called Salivahana, who had three sons, Bhat, Maha and Thamaz. (Col. Wilford, in vol. ix. Asiatic Researches.) The Iranian hero Thraetona had three sons. The Iranian Sethite Lamech had three sons, and Hellen, the son of Deucalion, during whose time the flood is said to have happened, had three sons. (Bunsen: The Angel-Messiah, pp. 70, 71.) All the ancient nations of Europe also describe their origin from the three sons of some king or patriarch. The Germans said that Mannus (son of the god Tuisco) had three sons, who were the original ancestors of the three principal nations of Germany. The Scythians said that Targytagus, the founder of their nation, had three sons, from whom they were descended. A tradition among the Romans was that the Cyclop Polyphemus had by Galatea three sons. Saturn had three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; and Hesiod speaks of the three sons which sprung from the marriage of heaven and earth. (See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 509.)

[23:7] See chap. xi.

[23:8] "It is of no slight moment that the Egyptians, with whom the Hebrews are represented as in earliest and closest intercourse, had no traditions of a flood, while the Babylonian and Hellenic tales bear a strong resemblance in many points to the narrative in Genesis." (Rev. George W. Cox: Tales of Ancient Greece, p. 340. See also Owen: Man's Earliest History, p. 28, and ch. xi. this work.)

[24:1] See Taylor's Diegesis, p. 198, and Knight's Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 107. "Plato was told that Egypt had hymns dating back ten thousand years before his time." (Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 185.) Plato lived 429 B. C. Herodotus relates that the priests of Egypt informed him that from the first king to the present priest of Vulcan who last reigned, were three hundred forty and one generations of men, and during these generations there were the same number of chief priests and kings. "Now (says he) three hundred generations are equal to ten thousand years, for three generations of men are one hundred years; and the forty-one remaining generations that were over the three hundred, make one thousand three hundred and forty years," making eleven thousand three hundred and forty years. "Conducting me into the interior of an edifice that was spacious, and showing me wooden colossuses to the number I have mentioned, they reckoned them up; for every high priest places an image of himself there during his life-time; the priests, therefore, reckoning them and showing them to me, pointed out that each was the son of his own father; going through them all, from the image of him who died last until they had pointed them all out." (Herodotus, book ii. chs. 142, 143.) The discovery of mummies of royal and priestly personages, made at Deir-el-Bahari (Aug., 1881), near Thebes, in Egypt, would seem to confirm this statement made by Herodotus.

Of the thirty-nine mummies discovered, one—that of King Raskenen—is about three thousand seven hundred years old. (See a Cairo [Aug. 8th,] Letter to the London Times.)

[24:2] Owen: Man's Earliest History, p. 28.

[24:3] Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 185.

[24:4] Ibid. p. 411.

[24:5] Owen: Man's Earliest History, pp. 27, 28.

[24:6] Goldzhier: Hebrew Mytho. p. 319.

[24:7] Ibid. p. 320.

[25:1] Translated from the Bhagavat by Sir Wm. Jones, and published in the first volume of the "Asiatic Researches," p. 230, et seq. See also Maurice: Ind. Ant. ii. 277, et seq., and Prof. Max Müller's Hist. Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 425, et seq.

[25:2] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 55.

[25:3] See Thornton's Hist. China, vol. i. p. 30, Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 205, and Priestley, p. 41.

[25:4] Priestley, p. 42.

[26:1] Bunce: Fairy Tales, Origin and Meaning, p. 18.

[26:2] The oldest Greek mythology, however, has no such idea; it cannot be proved to have been known to the Greeks earlier than the 6th century B. C. (See Goldzhier: Hebrew Mytho., p. 319.) This could not have been the case had there ever been a universal deluge.

[26:3] Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 72-74. "Apollodorus—a Grecian mythologist, born 140 B. C.,—having mentioned Deucalion consigned to the ark, takes notice, upon his quitting it, of his offering up an immediate sacrifice to God." (Chambers' Encyclo., art, Deluge.)

[26:4] In Lundy's Monumental Christianity (p. 209, Fig. 137) may be seen a representation of Deucalion and Pyrrha landing from the ark. A dove and olive branch are depicted in the scene.

[27:1] Chambers' Encyclo., art. Deucalion.

[27:2] Baring-Gould: Legends of the Patriarchs, p. 114. See also Myths of the British Druids, p. 95.

[27:3] See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 99.