But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions, dissimilar in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from Chaldea. By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the ordinal numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a lunar year, beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October), at the autumnal equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the Author of the Targum of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi and Kimchi, among the Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages; and proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis among the moderns. The rain begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark the 17th day of the second month--_i.e._, Marcheshvan. The great force of the waters lasts 150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month--_i.e._, Nisan (March-April)--the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following year--that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox--the waters have completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the second month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus eleven days--that is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365 days. Now, under the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria, the rains of late autumn begin towards the end of November, and at once the level of the Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow of the two rivers occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at the end of May, from which time the waters go down. At the end of June they have left the plains, and from August to November are at their lowest level. Now the dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist, and re-stated as we have been doing according to Michaelis and Knobel, accord perfectly with these phases of the rising and falling of the two Mesopotamian rivers. They accord even better in the primitive system which served for starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has been so ingeniously restored by M. Schræder,[45] a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its greatest height and 150 for its decrease. According to this system, the leaving of the ark must have taken place on the first day of the 601st year of Noah's life--that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox. Thus the deliverance of the father of the new humanity, as well as the Covenant made by God with him and his race, were fixed on the very day to which an ancient opinion which has maintained itself among the Jews assigned the creation of the world. As to the beginning of the Deluge,