Two matters are principally treated in the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis. First, Moses sets forth the cause for which God willed to destroy and blot out, by a general flood of the whole world, the entire race of men and of animals (a few excepted). Next, he describes the structure of the Ark built by Noah at God's command, in which Noah himself, with his family and several animals of every kind, escaping the disaster of the Flood, might be preserved as a seedbed, so to speak, of the later restoration and renewal of the world. But we shall devote this eighth book to the first part of this chapter — that is, to explaining the cause of the Flood. Now Moses teaches that the cause of the Flood that was sent was the wickedness (improbitas), depravity, and malice of the men of that time: not wickedness of just any sort, but enormous, monstrous, and intolerable — wickedness which, exceeding all bound and measure, drove God, otherwise most clement and most loving toward the human race, to the destruction of nearly all mankind.

Now the wickedness of the men of that age was distinguished chiefly by four things. First, it was universal — that is, the wickedness not of a few men but of all, with the sole exception of the eight who were preserved from the destruction of the Flood; and whether all of these were good, or whether the other seven were saved on account of Noah's holiness, is not altogether certain. Nor was that wickedness confined to the posterity of Cain — that is, to impious and criminal men only — but it spread even to those descended from those most holy men, Seth and Enos: so that the very men who, because of their descent from most holy parents, and because they were themselves professors of divine wisdom, piety, justice, and holiness, were called “sons of God,” were infected and corrupted by the same contagion of evil. The malice of men in that time was therefore universal; and Moses, signifying this, says: “All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.”¹

SECONDLY, it was no middling or tolerable wickedness, but supreme depravity carried to the utmost extreme — and, as Scripture is wont to speak, “complete” or “consummated” malice. Moses indicated this when he said that God saw that the wickedness of men was great upon the earth, and that every thought of the heart was bent upon evil at all times. Nor indeed was it a brief wickedness: it lasted a very long time — for nearly seven hundred years — so that one may well marvel at the incomparable patience and longsuffering of God, who for so long endured such perversity of morals and such a cesspool of vices, waiting for those men to come to their senses and repent. But they, “according to their hardness and impenitent heart, were treasuring up to themselves the wrath of God” (Rom. 2). Finally, this declares the magnitude of those men's malice: that though often warned, terrified by divine threats, and for a hundred years watching the ark being built by Noah — a most certain testimony and proof of the coming flood and of the general destruction of mankind — they nevertheless could in no way be called back from their impiety and depravity. Although Moses does not say this in express words, it may be gathered from the fact that he writes that God granted those men a hundred and twenty years — allotting them, namely, a space for coming to their senses and doing penance.²

Nor does it fail to support this point that St. Peter, in the second chapter of his later Epistle, calls Noah a “herald of justice” (iustitiae praeco) — by which it is signified that he preached to the men of his time the justice of God, that is, that justice which avenges and punishes crimes, and which, unless they departed from their wickedness, would punish them with a most dreadful penalty [reading partly reconstructed]. Or he preached justice by teaching how fair and just it is to worship God rather than the creature, to obey the divine commands, and to desire and pursue heavenly and eternal goods rather than earthly and mortal ones; or he preached that justice which must be kept and exercised toward one's neighbor — namely, by restraining both hand and mind from every evil deed.³

Such, then, and so great was the wickedness of that age, which earned the punishment of the Flood. Nor will that malice be unlike it which shall precede the general conflagration of the world at the consummation of the age — as the Lord indicated not obscurely in Luke 18 and Matthew 24, when he said: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” and “Because iniquity shall abound, the charity of many shall grow cold”; and further on: “For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage... so also shall the coming of the Son of man be.”

But Berosus Annianus has recounted, subtly and distinctly, of what sort and how great the wickedness of the men of that time was. I am not unaware that this Berosus is not the true Berosus who is frequently and honorably named by Josephus, Eusebius, Jerome, and other ancient writers — a point we established with clear arguments in the eleventh book of our commentaries on Daniel, in the first question. Nevertheless, it pleases me [?] to record in these commentaries certain things drawn from that book: both because some of them are sufficiently akin to the narrative of Moses and plausible in themselves, and also to gratify certain learned men who, once captivated by devotion to and faith in that Berosus Annianus, can scarcely shake off their love of his book even after being convicted by the weightiest arguments. Thus, then, he relates at the opening of his history, whose origin he traces back to before the Flood:⁴

“Before the famous calamity of the waters, by which the whole world perished, many ages passed, which were faithfully preserved by our Chaldeans. Now they write that in those times, near Lebanon, there was Enos, a very great city of giants, who lorded it over the whole world. These men, trusting in the vastness and strength of their bodies, invented weapons and oppressed everyone; and being slaves to lust, they invented musical instruments and every kind of pleasure. They ate men, procured abortions and prepared them as food. They lay with their mothers, daughters, and sisters, with males and with beasts; and there was no crime they did not commit — despisers of religion and of the gods. At that time many were preaching and prophesying, and carving upon stones their prophecies concerning the destruction of the world that was to come. But those men, grown accustomed to such things, mocked everything, while the wrath and vengeance of the heavenly powers pressed hard upon them for their impiety and crimes.” Thus Berosus Annianus.⁵

BUT who would believe that Josephus — who diligently and carefully gathered from every quarter all that the pagan writers handed down concerning the Flood and the Ark — would have passed over a testimony about the cause of the Flood so express, so clear, and agreeing so aptly with the narrative of Moses, had it been transmitted by the true Berosus, whom he so often calls upon as a witness of Hebrew affairs? Especially since he did not omit to report a certain brief statement of Berosus about the Flood and Noah's Ark in the first book of his Antiquities, in these words: “Berosus the Chaldean, speaking of this flood, writes of Noah roughly as follows: It is said that a part of this vessel still survives in Armenia, at the mountain of the Gordyaeans, and that some scrape off the bitumen from it and carry it away with them, which the people of that place are accustomed to use as an amulet.”⁶