Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 87:348 (Oct 1930)
Article: The Bible In Its Setting
Author: Melvin Grove Kyle

BSac 87:348 (Oct 1930) p. 453

The Bible In Its Setting

Melvin Grove Kyle

V

The Deluge And The World Before And After

I. The Moral History Of The Antediluvian World

A brief analysis of the narrative of the Flood and of the world before and after will contribute much to clarify our understanding of events. In Gen. 6:1–8, we have a description of the corruption of the world and a statement of the providential plan for its destruction. This gives in briefest form the moral history of the antediluvial world. This is followed at once, Gen. 6:9–8:22, by a particular account of God’s dealings with Noah and the world. This gives us the natural history of the Flood. Whatever may be anyone’s opinion concerning the theory of different documents joined together in this narrative, it will contribute much also to clearness, if each one will read the whole account rapidly, with only these general and natural divisions of its rhetoric in mind, to see whether or not anything more is needed for a complete understanding of this story. The most important thing in Bible study is to give first strict attention to exactly what the Bible narrates without either reading into it, or reading out of it, any suggestions of criticism higher or lower or any ideas interjected by modern occidental ways of rhetoric or microscopic ways of criticism. An eminent specialist among physicians once said to me, “If you need a doctor, always go to a general practitioner first, because every specialist tends to find his own specialty.” That involves a principle and suggests a method just as applicable to literature as to medicine. Every critic, radical or conservative, tends—I will not say intends—to find his

BSac 87:348 (Oct 1930) p. 454

own specialty. Let us then follow the ways of the general practitioner and find out exactly what the Biblical account says for itself.

Turning then first in order to the moral history of the antediluvian world, we discern, even in the brevity of the account, some principles of universal application. The first stage of that history is recorded in but two verses, Gen. 6:1–2. We are confronted immediately with two sharply contrasted classes, “the sons of God,” and “the daughters of men.” The contrast is altogether lost sight of by the use of high-powered critical microscopes. Clearly from the results, the contrast was of the utmost importance. Exactly what is it? Some critics, as Dr. Moffatt in his modern translation, would have it that the “sons of God” were in this case angels, and so turn the whole story into a myth; �...