the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire like a
torturer."[44]
[44] Origen against Celsus, book iv., ch. xi.
The mythologies of all nations are largely founded upon the
"religious history" of a flood. The doctrine of a triplicated
God saved from destruction by a storm-tossed ark which rested on
some local mountain answering to Ararat, and which was filled
with the natural elements of reproduction, is found amongst the
traditions of every country of the globe. In Egypt, the
destructive agency drives the God into the ark--or into the
fish's belly, where he is obliged to remain until the flood
subsides. In other words, at the time of the destruction of the
world, the creative agency is forced within the womb of Nature,
there to remain until it again comes forth to recreate the world;
nor does the symbolism end here, for this God--the sun, or the
reproductive power within it, which every year is put to death by
the cold of winter, must for a season remain lifeless, but, at
the proper time, will come forth with healing in his wings. This
God must issue forth to life through female Nature.
The god-man, Noah, who appears under one appellation or another
in all extant mythologies, was slain, or shut up in a box, ark,
or chest in which he or his seed was preserved from the ravages
of a mighty flood, or from destruction by the calamity which had
befallen the rest of mankind. In one sense he represents a
Savior, in another sense he is the saved, for he is the seed of a
former world and is born again from a boat, a symbol which always
represents the female energy. Sometimes he is shut up in a
wooden cow, from which he issues forth to new life. Again this
storm tossed mariner is born from a cave, or the door of a rocky
cavern, within which he had been preserved from some terrible
catastrophe, caused either by water or fire.
Sir W. Jones, Faber, Higgins, and many others who have
investigated this subject are confident that the Noah of Genesis
is identical with Menu, the law-giver of India, and that both are
Adam, a man who appears with his three sons at the end of each
cycle, or six hundred years, to renovate the world. In the six
hundred and first year of Noah's life, in the first month, on the
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