"The whole story precisely as it was written down travelled to Canaan,"--so we are told. And there,--we are asked to believe,--two Hebrew writers of very different temperaments and schools of thought, each independently worked up a complete story of the Deluge from this Gilgamesh legend. They chose out different incidents, one selecting what the other rejected, and _vice versa_, so that their two accounts were "mutually contradictory." They agreed, however, in cleansing it from its polytheistic setting, and giving it a strictly monotheistic tone. Later, an "editor" put the two narratives together, with all their inconsistencies and contradictions, and interlocked them into one, which presents all the main features of the original Gilgamesh story except its polytheism. In other words, two Hebrew scribes each told in his own way a part of the account of the Deluge which he had derived from Babylon, and a third unwittingly so recombined them as to make them represent the Babylonian original! The two accounts of the Deluge, supposed to be present in Genesis, therefore cannot be derived from the Gilgamesh epic, nor be later than it, seeing that what is still plainly separable in Genesis is inseparably fused in the epic. On the other hand, can the Babylonian narrative be later than, and derived from, the Genesis account? Since so many of the same circumstances are represented in both, this is a more reasonable proposition, if we assume that the Babylonian narrator had the Genesis account as it now stands, and did not have to combine two separate statements. For surely if he had the separate Priestly and Jehovistic narratives we should now be able to decompose the Babylonian narrative just as easily as we do the one in Genesis. The Babylonian adapter of the Genesis story must have either been less astute than ourselves, and did not perceive that he had really two distinct (and "contradictory") narratives to deal with, or he did not consider this circumstance of the slightest importance, and had no objection to merging them inextricably into one continuous account. It is therefore possible that the Babylonian account was derived from that in Genesis; but it is not probable. The main circumstances are the same in both, but the details, the presentment, the attitude of mind are very different. We can better explain the agreement in the general circumstances, and even in many of the details, by presuming that both are accounts--genuine traditions--of the same actual occurrence. The differences in detail, presentment, and attitude, are fully and sufficiently explained by supposing that we have traditions from two, if not three, witnesses of the event. We have also the pictorial representation of the Flood given us in the constellations. What evidence do they supply?