To be sure, the objection may be
raised that 7.24 (‘the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty
days’) cannot agree with 8.2b (‘and the rain was restrained from
heaven’), P and J respectively; as the rain is expressly stated to last forty
days it cannot very well have stopped after one hundred and fifty days. Those
who have some knowledge of the Semitic narrative style will not raise this
objection. For 7.24 is the conclusion of a section telling of the destruction
of the whole earth. This section is very naturally concluded by an anticipatory
remark to the effect that the whole catastrophe lasted in all four one hundred
and fifty days. That it really it anticipatory is shown by 8.3 (‘And after the
end of one hundred and fifty days the waters were abated’). According to my
opinion we have a similar anticipatory remark in 8.14 (‘And on the
twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was dry’). In 8.15 ff we hear
of the exit from the Ark, and of Noah’s sacrifice which is answered by God’s
promise. As we shall see later both sacrifice and promise agree excellently,
not with the twenty-seventh day of the second month, but with the previously
mentioned date in 8.13., New Year’s Day. On that day the waters were dried up
from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the Ark. But 8.14 stands as
the conclusion of the passage about the Deluge. The flood came to an end of the
twenty-seventh day of the second month. (Eduard Nielsen, Oral Tradition [Studies
in Biblical Theology 11; London: SCM Press, 1954], 99-100)
