Philip Ochieng
6 November 2009
opinion
The Standard draws attention to one of the many deluges which have invaded our country -- a "deluge of floods". But why worry? If, for all these years, Kenyans have survived a daily million of tsunamis from politicians' mouths, what can touch them?
When the Lord God opens the floodgates, Kenyans do not wait for him to appoint a "righteous" figure to save them through a miraculous boat. Their own boat (of credulity) is steadier than Noah's Ark on Ararat, Deucalion's Argo on Parnassus and Bezaleel's "Ark of the Covenant" on Horeb.
No, we fear none of the greatly violent apocalypses of the kind that John saw on Patmos (see Revelation). The more celebrated Noachian deluge was a destructive diluvial cataclysm second only to armageddon.
Armageddon -- the Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megi-- the Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddddo (Mount Megiddo) -- refers to the eschatological battle between the "Sons of Light" and the "Sons of Darkness" which the Essene-Gnostics of Alexandria and Qumran -- the proto-Christians -- expected upon the Messiah's arrival.
"Eschatology" comes from a Greek word which means "end of the world". The "First Coming" and battle actually took place -- the holocaust of 66-70 AD in which the "Sons of Darkness" (led by Titus of Rome) flattened Jerusalem, Qumran, Yotapata, Masada and other concentrations of the "Sons of Light".
Christianity was the historic outcome of that defeat of the "Sons of Light". But a Second Coming was immediately envisaged. And so eschatology has remained central to Christology ever since Constantine grabbed it, turned it upside down and imposed it on Europe. The fundamentalism now choking the American intellect is its latest expression.
The adjective diluvial (or diluvian) refers especially to the Noachian deluge in Genesis. Diluvial and deluge derive from the Latin diluvialis, from the verb diluere, "to wash away" (dis, "apart" or "away from", and luere, "to wash"). Alluvium is the fertile matter which a deluge scoops in one place and deposits in another.
From lavare, a form of luere, we have the archaic verb to lave ("to wash") and noun lavatory. This originally referred to a washroom and only later came to mean an excretory facility. Either way, a lavatory washes away your waste matter.
Diluere has also spawned the verb "to dilute" -- to weaken a concoction by adding water to it. But the root-meaning remains. Literally, to dilute is to "wash away" (the power of alcohol, etc.)
In a Sumerian myth the Jews borrowed during their Babylonian exile from 586 BC, the deity Enlil sought to unleash a universal flood to wash away mankind's growing power. But, Enki, a divine rival, advised Ziusudra to build a teba ("box") with which to save his family so that mankind could regenerate afterwards.
The story is universal. Among the Luo, Simbi Nyaima was a watery holocaust, a mystical bury-all for evil people. The verb imo can mean to flood, to overwhelm with a deluge. A deluge, then, is simply another word for a flood. If so, what on earth is a "deluge of floods"?
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