Deluge and the Exodus. We begin with the Deluge as the starting-point of history. Back of that event is a land of shadows. We have so little knowledge of the world before the flood that its history cannot be written. But since that fact we tread upon firm ground, having both the Bible and secular history to confirm each other.

I. THE DELUGE. With regard to this event we note:

1. The fact of a general deluge is stated in Scripture (Gen. 7.), and attested by the traditions of nearly all nations. Compare the story of Xisuthros in Berosus; the record in the Chaldean tablets; the Greek myth of Deucalion; the Mexican tradition; and the legends of the North American Indians.[A]

2. The date is given in reference Bibles (following Archbishop Ussher) as B. C. 2348. This is probably incorrect. It may have been a thousand years earlier. But as archæologists are not yet agreed, we give Ussher's chronology, here and elsewhere, merely as a convenience in the arrangement, not as accurate.

3. Its cause was the wickedness of the human race (Gen. 6. 5-7). Before this event all the population of the world was massed together, forming one vast family and speaking one language. Under these conditions the good were overborne by evil surroundings, and general corruption followed.

4. Its extent was undoubtedly not the entire globe, but so much of it as was occupied by the human race (Gen. 7. 23), probably the Euphrates valley. Many Christian scholars, however, hold to the view that the Book of Genesis relates the history of but one family of races, and not all the race; consequently, that the flood may have been partial, as far as mankind is concerned.

5. Its purpose was: 1.) To destroy the evil in the world. 2.) To open a new epoch under better conditions for social, national, and individual life.

II. THE DISPERSION OF THE RACES. (B.C. 2247?) 1. Very soon after the deluge a new instinct, that of migration, took possession of the human family. Hitherto all mankind had lived together; from this time they began to scatter. As a result came tribes, nations, languages, and varieties of civilization. "The confusion of tongues" was not the cause, but the result of this spirit, and was not sudden, but gradual (Gen. 11. 2, 7).

2. Evidences of this migration are given: 1.) In the Bible (Gen. 9. 19; 11. 8). 2.) The records and traditions of nearly all nations point to it. 3.) Language gives a certain proof; for example, showing that the ancestors of the English, Greeks, Romans, Medes, and Hindus—races now widely dispersed—once slept under the same roof. At an early period streams of migration poured forth from the highlands of Asia in every direction and to great distances.

III. THE RISE OF THE EMPIRES. In the Bible world three centers of national life arose, not far apart in time, each of which became a powerful kingdom, and in turn ruled all the Oriental lands. The strifes of these three nations, their rise and fall, constitute the matter of ancient Oriental history, which is closely connected with that of the Bible. These three centers were Egypt (called in the Bible Mizraim, Gen. 10. 6, 13), of which the capital was Memphis; Chaldea, of which the capital was Babel or Babylon (Gen. 10. 10; 11. 2-9); and Assyria, of which the capital was Nineveh (Gen. 10. 11). We might add to these the Canaanite or Phenician city of Sidon (Gen. 10. 15, 19), and its