BOOK IL THE SECOND AGE OF THE WORLD. B.C. 2448—1921. V THE DELUGE—THE DESCENDANTS ΟΓ NOAH—THE DIVISIONS or THE NATTONS—THE EEIGNS OP BELUS, BEMTRAMTS, NIN us, ÂBTYAGES, CYRUS, DARIUS—THE DIVISIONS OP THE WORLD INTO EUROPE, ASIA, AND APRICA—THE COLONIZATION OP EUROPE—THE TOWER OP BABEL. CH. I.—The Deluge, and Life and Death of Noah. IN the hundredth1 year of his life, Noah, now that the flood covered the earth, entered the ark with seven souk, which ark he had finished twenty years before, as God had conversed with him for a hundred years. And the waters increased upon the earth for a hundred and fifty days, the Lord raining upon it for forty days and nights ; when, on the twenty-seventh1 day of the seventh month, the ark rested on the mountains of Armenia ; after forty days, Noah sent out a raven, and after that a dove bearing an olive branch, and at last, on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, he went forth out of the ark, the year having come round again to the very same day on which he had entered it ; when the moon had entered the seventeenth day of the. second month. And the sacrifice of Noah was accepted, and he received permission to eat flesh, provided it was without blood ; and the rainbow was placed in heaven, as a covenant the deluge 1 This clearly means the hundredth year of Noah's life, after the birth of Shem, Ham, and Japhet ; that is to say, when he was six hundred years old. See, however, note on chap. vìi. 8 Our author is not quite correct here ; the flood began on the seven* ieenth day of the second month (Gen. vii. 11), and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark rested on Ararat (Gen. viii. 4) . On the twenty-seventh day of the second month he left the ark (Gen. viii. 14). Moreover, he did not send out a dove bearing an olive branch ; but he sent forth the dove, and she returned to him in the evening, " And lo» in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off" (Gen. viii. 11).