TCD MS 10516 folio 80 recto
[12th October 1916] their flood. But no such insight into the working of Nature is required by the people of these deserts. Here the ancient Jews* could witness a destructive deluge. Year after year they would see a mighty river overflowing its banks, a flood creeping insidiously over hundreds of thousands of square miles of country, human habitation engulfed, men seeking refuge in their boats, living things destroyed in millions; they would see the waters rising relentlessly higher until the dry land, – all that they knew of the vast world, – was converted into an ocean. How easy is it to conceive those Biblical fathers casting their thoughts over their limited universe, contemplating the insidious waters creeping round them in an inundating flood, and conceiving, in this waste, a great deluge
*Semites