Memories of the Flood

In discussing the flood ( Notes on Scripture ), Edwards supports the historical accuracy of the biblical account with long quotations from Samuel Bochart’s Geographia Sacra: Seu Phaleg Et Chanaan , Grotius’s De veritate religionis Christianæ , and several other sources:

‘Bochart says, ‘The fame of the flood, wherein a few only remaining, the rest of men perished, was diffused among all nations. The Hieropolitans (in Lucian’s dea Syra ) frame a large history thereof, and that drawn out of their own archives, every way parallel with Moses’ narration, excepting that, instead of Noah, the name Deucalion is substituted. Plutarch makes mention of the dove sent out of the ark, etc. The same Abydenus, from whom also we learn, that the ark rested in Armenia, and that the relics thereof were extant there, which is also taught by Berosus and Polyhistor and Nicholas Damascenus. Epiphanius also affirms, that they were to be seen in his time.’ And Grotius . . . , where we have many concurring testimonies of the most ancient, touching the universal flood and its traditional notices among the pagans. So Berosus makes mention of the flood and ark, and Alexander the Polyhistorian of the preservation of animals in the ark . . . .

“Martinius . . . tells us, ‘That there is great mention of the flood among the Sinac writers.’ Johan. de Lact. de origin Gent. American . . . , acquaints us, ‘That there is a constant tradition of the flood amongst the Indians, both in New France, Peru, etc.’ Alexander Polyhistorian and Cyril in Josephus say, ‘There was a great flood, and that there was one Nisurus to whom Saturn revealed it, and bid him make an ark; and he did so, and gathered some of all beasts into it. And that the ark was in Armenia, and the fragments of it are in Heliopolis.’ Yea, we find some memory of the raven and the dove sent forth by Noah, preserved in some fragments amongst pagan writers. Thus Sandford de descensu , ‘Plutarch, out of the ancient theology, makes mention of the dove sent out of Noah’s ark.’ So Bochart, in his preface to Hist. de animal. Sacris , tells us, ‘That peradventure the raven sent forth by Noah belongs to the Greek fable of the raven sent forth by Apollo, which returned not till after the figs were ripe.’ But more expressly, in the same preface, Bochart affirms, ‘That of this history of the dove sent forth by Noah, there are evident vestigia or characters to be found in Abydenus, Plutarch, and the Arabians.’ To conclude this discourse of the flood, we have a concise, yet clear hypotyposis, or adumbration, of it in Ovid, Met ., Lib . 1, Fab . 7.”

I haven’t checked the originals. Perhaps Edwards and his sources were imagining closer parallels to the biblical story than the evidence allows. But it’s a well-known fact that flood stories are found all over the world (see Frazer’s The Great Flood: A Handbook of World Flood Myths ). If Edwards gives a reasonably accurate assemblage of ancient and other evidence, how are we to account for it? The fact of a tradition is there; where might it have come from?