Home › The Deluge Not a Myth › The Deluge Not a Myth: China

The Deluge Not a Myth: China

There has been much discussion as to whether the great inundation which occurred in China during the reign of Yao is identical with that of Genesis or not. The close proximity of date lends a strong support to the assumption, and the supposition that the scene of the Biblical Deluge was local in its origin, but possibly widespread in its results, further favours the view.

As the rise of the Nile at Cairo is the only intimation which the inhabitants of Lower Egypt have of the tropical rains of Central Africa, so the inundation of the countries adjacent to the head waters of the great rivers of China may alone have informed the inhabitants of that country of serious elemental disturbances, only reaching, and in a modified form, their western frontier; and it may well have been that the deluge which caused a national annihilation in Western Asia was only a national calamity in the eastern portion of it.

This view is strengthened if we consider that Chinese history has no record of any deluge prior to this, which could hardly have been the case had the Chinese migrated from their parent stock subsequent to an event of such importance; assuming that it had occurred, as there seems valid reason to suppose, within the limits of written history. The anachronism between the two dates assigned by Chinese authors (2297 в.c.) and the Jewish historian's calculation (2104 в.c.) is only one hundred and ninety-three years, and this is not so great but that we may anticipate its being explained at some future date. Strauchius' computation of 2293 в.c. for the date of the Biblical deluge is within four years, and Ussher's (2349- 2348) within fifty-one of the Chinese one. The reason for supposing the deluge of Yao to be historically true, will be inferred from the arguments borrowed from Mr. Legge on the subject of the Shu-king, in another portion of this volume. It is detailed in the great Chinese work on history, the T'ung-këen-kang-muh, by Choo He, of which De Mailla's History of China professes to be a translation.

This states that the inundation happened in the sixty-first year of the reign of Yao (2297 в.c.), and that the waters of the Yellow River mingled with those of the Ho-hi-ho and the Yangtsze, ruining all the agricultural country, which was converted into one vast sea.