Day 1: Antediluvian

I put out a call to the blogging community in regards to needing help getting topics for letters I hadn’t yet filled in. And I got a lot of good ones. Some I still don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with them.

Lillian from Hopes and Dreams gave me Antediluvian. I had never heard of this word and wasn’t sure at all what I was going to do with it.

Antediluvian
1. of or belonging to the period before the Flood. Gen. 7, 8
2. very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated; primitive

I don’t ever recall hearing my pastor use this word when referring to anything before the great flood, nor do I recall it being mentioned in Sunday School.

Thanks to Lillian, I learned somthing new. I did a bit of research and it seems as though there is a general concensus about the definition; however the word is being applied to things not at all Biblical (i.e. vampires). I’ll get to that in a bit.

There is also a general concenus that Antediluvian Civilizations were much more complex than we might havve originally thougt. The Bible fives some clues that the peoples of Genesis were much more advanced.

• The Annals of Adam (specifically, Genesis 4:17-22) state that men did have a civilization, in that they built cities, beginning with a city named Enoch, after the named son of Cain. This civilization had command of agriculture, domestication, music, and metallurgy (specifically bronzeworking and ironworking).
• The Annals of Noah state that mankind existed on the earth for 1656 years before the Flood (Genesis 5; see also Genesis 7:11). They also state that in Noah’s day that civilization was a violent one and might have degenerated into anarchy.
• The Annals of Shem, Ham and Japheth give a description of Noah’s Ark. Its size alone says that a civilized society must have built it.

Outside of the antediluvian Biblical context. Vampires are referred to as Antediluvians, which appears to have originated with White Wolf Publishing in their fictional role playing game, the World of Darkness.

According to game legends, antediluvians are the vampires of the Third Generation. Supposedly they were created by Caine’s first childer, Enoch, Irad & Zillah. Game lore hold there to be thirteen of them, and their sins ar to blame for God causing the Great Deluge.

For each of these vampires come the thirteen original clans of Vampire: the Masquerade: Assamites, Brujah, Cappadocian, Followers of Set, Gangrel, Lasombra, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Ravnos, Salubri, Toreador, Tzimisce & Ventrue. The game’s lore mentions that each clan’s weaknesses comes from a curse Caine set upon the Antediluvian Founders of the clan. Apocrypha texts of the Book of Nod imply that there may be other unknown antediluvians, who never sired.

If you have a moment don’t forget to check out my A to Z short story over at A Short A Day.