Such a cataclysm as the Deluge, which washed the whole world of
that time out of existence, would never be forgotten by the survivors.
They would talk about it to their children and their children’s
children. For 500 years after the Deluge, Shem lived on to relate the
event to many generations. He died only ten years before the birth of
Jacob. Moses preserved the true account in Genesis. Sometime after the
Flood, when God-defying people built the Tower of Babel, Jehovah
confused their language and scattered them “over all the surface of the
earth.” (Ge 11:9) It was only natural that these people took with them
stories of the Flood and passed them on from father to son. The fact
that there are not merely a few but perhaps hundreds of different
stories about that great Deluge, and that such stories are found among
the traditions of many primitive races the world over, is a strong proof
that all these people had a common origin and that their early
forefathers shared that Flood experience in common.—
These folklore accounts of the Deluge agree with some major features of
the Biblical account: (1) a place of refuge for a few survivors, (2) an
otherwise global destruction of life by water, and (3) a seed of mankind
preserved. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Druids of
Britain, the Polynesians, the Eskimos and Greenlanders, the Africans,
the Hindus, and the American Indians—all of these have their Flood
stories. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Vol. 2, p. 319)
states: “Flood stories have been discovered among nearly all nations and
tribes. Though most common on the Asian mainland and the islands
immediately south of it and on the North American continent, they have
been found on all the continents. Totals of the number of stories known
run as high as about 270 . . . The universality of the flood accounts is
usually taken as evidence for the universal destruction of humanity by a
flood and the spread of the human race from one locale and even from one
family. Though the traditions may not all refer to the same flood,
apparently the vast majority do. The assertion that many of these flood
stories came from contacts with missionaries will not stand up because
most of them were gathered by anthropologists not interested in
vindicating the Bible, and they are filled with fanciful and pagan
elements evidently the result of transmission for extended periods of
time in a pagan society. Moreover, some of the ancient accounts were
written by people very much in opposition to the Hebrew-Christian
tradition.”—Edited by G. Bromiley, 1982.
In times past, certain primitive people (in Australia, Egypt, Fiji,
Society Islands, Peru, Mexico, and other places) preserved a possible
remnant of these traditions about the Flood by observing in November a
‘Feast of Ancestors’ or a ‘Festival of the Dead.’ Such customs reflected
a memory of the destruction caused by the Deluge. According to the book
Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, the festival in Mexico was held on
the 17th of November because they “had a tradition that at that time the
world had been previously destroyed; and they dreaded lest a similar
catastrophe would, at the end of a cycle, annihilate the human race.”
(By Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, Edinburgh, 1867, Vol. II, pp. 390, 391)
Notes the book The Worship of the Dead: “This festival [of the dead] is
. . . held by all on or about the very day on which, according to the
Mosaic account, the Deluge took place, viz., the seventeenth day of the
second month—the month nearly corresponding with our November.” (By
J. Garnier, London, 1904, p. 4) Interestingly, the Bible reports that
the Flood began “in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the
month.” (Ge 7:11) That “second month” corresponds to the latter part of
October and the first part of November on our calendar.

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