Antediluvian: Difference between revisions

[[File:Tissot The Creation.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|right|The Creation, beginning of the Antediluvian (i.e., Pre-Flood) world. (Artist's rendition by [[James Tissot]].)]]

The [[SumerianEridu flood mythGenesis]] is alleged to be the direct mythological antecessor to the biblical flood recordmyth as well as other Near Eastern flood stories, and reflects a similar religious and cultural relevance to their [[Sumerian religion|religion]]. Much as the Abrahamic religions, ancient Sumerians divided the world between pre-flood and post-flood eras, the former being a time where the gods walked the earth with humans. After the flood, humans ceased to be immortal and the gods distanced themselves.<ref>van der Toorn, Karel; Becking, Bob; van der Horst, Pieter Willem (1999), ''Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible'' (second ed.), Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company, {{ISBN|0-8028-2491-9}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=January 2020}}

[[File:Jacopo Bassano workshop - Animals boarding the Noah's Ark - Louvre.jpg|thumb|right|200 px|[[Noah]] prepares to leave the antediluvian world, [[Jacopo Bassano]] and assistants, 1579]]

In the [[Bible|Christian Bible]], [[Torah|Hebrew Torah]] and [[Quran|Islamic Quran]], the antediluvian period begins with the Fall of the first man and woman, according to [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] and ends with the destruction of all life on the earth except those saved with [[Noah]] in the [[Noah's Ark|ark]] (Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives). According to Bishop [[James Ussher|Ussher]]'s 17th-century [[Ussher chronology|chronology]], the antediluvian period lasted for 1656 years, from Creation (some say the fall of man) at 4004 BC to the Flood at 2348 BC.<ref>Abbott, W. M. (1990). "James Ussher and 'Ussherian' episcopacy, 1640–1656: the primate and his Reduction manuscript". Albion xxii: 237–259.</ref> The elements of the narrative include some of the best-known stories in the Bible – the creation, [[Adam and Eve]], and [[Cain and Abel]], followed by the genealogies tracing the descendants of Cain and [[Seth]], the third mentioned son of Adam and Eve. (These genealogies provide the framework for the biblical chronology, in the form "A lived X years and begat B".)<ref>Ussher, J, 1650. ''Annals of the World: James Ussher's Classic Survey of World History'' {{ISBN|0-89051-360-0}} (Modern English republication, ed. Larry and Marion Pierce, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2003)</ref>

The Bible speaks of this era as being a time of great wickedness.<ref>{{Bibleref2|Genesis|6:4–5|KJV}}</ref> There were [[Gibborim (biblical)|Gibborim]] (giants) in the earth in those days as well as [[Nephilim]]; some [[Bible translation]]s identify the two as one and the same. The Gibborim were unusually powerful; Genesis calls them "mighty men which were of old, men of renown".<ref>Multi-version compare Genesis [http://studybible.info/compare/Genesis%206:4 6:4] &amp; [http://studybible.info/compare/Genesis%206:5 6:5]</ref> The antediluvian period ended when God sent the Flood to wipe out all life except Noah, his family, and the animals they took with them. Nevertheless, the Nephilim (literally meaning 'fallen ones', from the Hebrew root n-f-l 'to fall') reappear much later in the biblical narrative, in [[Book of Numbers|Numbers]] {{Bibleref2-nb|Numbers|13:31–33|9}} (where the spies sent forth by [[Moses]] report that there were Nephilim or "giants" in the [[promisedPromised landLand]]).

[[File:Cole Thomas TheCole - Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge 1829- Smithsonian.jpg|thumb|right|The Deluge subsides, thought in early geology to be responsible for the formation of sediments, with only traces of the antediluvian world. [[Thomas Cole]], 1829]]

Early scientific attempts at reconstructing the [[history of the Earth]] were founded on the biblical narrative and thus used the term ''antediluvian'' to refer to a period understood to be essentially similar to the biblical one.<ref name="Rudwick">[[Martin J. S. Rudwick|Rudwick, M. J. S]] (1992): ''Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World'', [[University of Chicago Press]], 280 pages. [https://books.google.com/books?id=eM0xUqbjzs0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false Excerpt] from Google Books</ref> Early scientific interpretation of the biblical narrative divided the antediluvian into sub-periods based on the [[Genesis creation narrative#The six days of Creation: Genesis 1:3-2:3|six days of Creation]]:

[[File:Thomas Cole Thomas- The Garden of Eden (1828).jpg|thumb|right|''[[Garden of Eden]]'' by [[Thomas Cole]], 1828. The lush vegetation and foggy atmosphere are typical of biblical interpretation of the antediluvian period.]]

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the understanding of the nature of early Earth went through a [[Scientific revolutionRevolution|transformation]] from a biblical or [[Deism|deist]] interpretation to a naturalistic one. Even back in the early 18th century, [[Plutonism|Plutonists]] had argued for an ancient Earth, but the full impact of the [[Deep time|depth of time]] involved in the Pre-Adamitic period was not commonly accepted until [[uniformitarianism]] as presented in [[Charles Lyell]]'s ''Principles of Geology'' of 1830.<ref>[http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/uniformitarianism ''Uniformitarianism: World of Earth Science'']</ref> While each period was understood to be a vast aeon, the narrative of the pre-Adamitic world was still influenced by the biblical storyline of creation in this transition. A striking example is a description from ''Memoires of Ichtyosauri and Plesiosauri'', 1839, describing fossil species in a world with land, sea and vegetation, but before the creation of a separate sun and moon, corresponding to the third day of creation in the Genesis narrative:

A modern naturalistic view of the ancient world, along with the abandonment of the term 'antediluvian', came about with the works of [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]] and [[Louis Agassiz|Agassiz]] in the 1860s.

*The adjective ''antediluvian'' is sometimes used [[figurative language|figuratively]] to refer to anything that ismean of great age or outmoded. [[H. P. Lovecraft]] was particularly fond of the term, using it frequently in his horror stories.

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