--The first because it has not left traces in the history of...

--The first because it has not left traces in the history of civilization which support the Biblical narration, whereas modern data do not permit us to criticize the narration contained in the Qur'an. --The second because the Biblical and Qur'anic narrations evidently complement each other in their broad outlines, and modern data seem to provide both of them with remarkable historical support. The Flood The Biblical Narration of the Flood and the Criticism Leveled at It- A Reminder.

The examination of the Old Testament description of the Flood in the first part of this book led to the following observations: There is not just one description of the Flood, but two, written at different times; --the Yahvist version which dates from the Ninth century B.C. --the Sacerdotal version dating from the Sixth century B.C., so called because it was the work of priests of the time.

These two narrations are not juxtaposed, but interwoven so that part of one is fitted in-between parts of the other, i.e. paragraphs from one source alternate with passage from the other. The commentary to the translation of Genesis by Father de Vaux, a professor at the Biblical School of Jerusalem, shows very clearly how the paragraphs are distributed between the two sources. The narration begins and ends with a Yahvist passage.

There are ten Yahvist paragraphs altogether and between each one a Sacerdotal passage has been inserted (there are a total of nine Sacerdotal paragraphs). This mosaic of texts is only coherent when read from a point of view which takes the succession of episodes into account, since there are blatant contradictions between the two sources.

Father de Vaux describes them as "two accounts of the Flood, in which the cataclysm is caused by different agents and lasts different lengths of time, and where Noah receives into the Ark a different number of animals." When seen in the light of modern knowledge, the Biblical description of the Flood as a whole is unacceptable for the following reasons: a) The Old Testament ascribes to it the character of a universal cataclysm.

b) Whereas the paragraphs from the Yahvist text do not date the Flood, the Sacerdotal text situates it at a point in time where a cataclysm of this kind could not have occurred. The following are arguments supporting this opinion: The Sacerdotal narration states quite precisely that the Flood took place when Noah was 600 years old.