The flood lasts twelve months and ten days, i.e.,
exactly a solar year. It begins in the six hundredth year of
Noah, on the seventeenth of the second month, rises for one
hundred and fifty days, and begins to fall on the seventeenth of
the seventh month. On the first month the tops of the mountains
become visible; in the six hundred and first year, on the first
of the first month, the water has abated; on the twenty-seventh of
the second month the earth is dry. God Himself gives instructions
and measurements for the building of the ark, as for the
tabernacle: it is to be three stories high, and divided
throughout into small compartments; three hundred cubits long,
fifty cubits broad, thirty cubits high; and Noah is to make it
accurately according to the cubit. When the water is at its
height, on the seventeenth of the second month, the flood is
fifteen cubits above the highest mountains--Noah having apparently
not forgotten, in spite of his anxiety, to heave the lead and to
mark the date in his log-book. This prematurely modern measuring
and counting cannot be thought by any one to make the narrative
more lifelike; it simply destroys the illusion.
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