'>U . A- o . o c .
'^ PRINCETON, N. J. *^
Presented by~^(S\^ . o> . oC(2yr'V 33 .3D Division xD-s^ Si) I
THE NEW BIBLICAL GUIDE.
THE NEW
Biblical Guide
Vol II.
REV. JOHN URQUHART,
Author of
What are we to Believe?'' "Modern Discoveries and the Bible ;
"The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures ;" &'C.
Member of the Society of Biblical Archceology ,
and Associate of The Victoria Institute.
tlLonbou :
S. W. PARTRIDGE & Co.,
8 & 9, Paternoster Row, E.C.
PREFACE,
THE validity of the teaching which is now enthroned in our Theological Halls and Colleges, which is revolutionising the libraries of the Ministry, and which is at the present moment forcing itself upon the day- schools, and even upon the Bible Classes and the Sabbath Schools, of our country, can be tested in two ways. Criticism professes to be a science with a history of "discoveries" which have laid its foundations. Foundations are not always all that they are said to be. But when they are doubted, they can be inspecfted and tried. That is one way in which the Higher Criticism may be, and has been, tested. When it presses its conclusions upon the public, we may inspecTt its processes, and inquire whether these startling " results " are due to essential error, or are as completely established as we are assured that they are.
But there is an easier, more rapid, and more satis- facftory test. We can place those conclusions by the side of facfls. Scientific men once assured the public that it was impossible to utilize steam for the crossing of the Atlantic. Nobody requires to disprove that to-day, or thinks it worth while to discover just where the learned men went wrong. Fadls have killed the theory, and it is left behind as an undeniable and pitiable error, the only good thing about it being that it neither emptied a pocket nor ruined a soul. How it fares with the
viii. Preface,
critical theories, when placed by the side of those marvellous discoveries which are the special glory of our age, the reader will now discover for himself.
The present volume of The Guide, which is partly a second and enlarged edition of my book. Modern Discoveries and the Bible, will be followed by others, which, together with it, will present one of the fullest accounts of the recent confirmations of Scripture hitherto published.
A complete Index will be given in the concluding vjlume of the work. Meanwhile, the very full Table of Contents may meet all requirements.
I may add that the volume has had the signal advantage of having been largely revised by Mr. Theo. G. Pinches, of the British Museum, one of the very foremost Assyriologists of our time. To him and to the numerous authors whose works I have laid under contribution, my warmest acknowledgments are due.
John Urquhart.
CONTENTS.
THE CRITICS AND THE BIBLE.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
I,* The help brought by the Osmanli Turks to the struggHng CaHph — 2, Criticism imagines that it brings assistance to Christianity wrestling with the world's repugnance to belief in the supernatural.
CHAPTER I.
How THE Trouble Began.
3, Semler's early history : Amand Saintes' summation of his life-work — 4, His judgment of what the time required : His "Accommodation Theory."
CHAPTER II.
The Father of the Higher Criticism.
5, Eichhorn explains away the supernatural from the Scrip- tures—6, Specimens of his e.\egesis— 8, He coins the title for the new unbelief — 9, His trouble, spiritual blindness.
CHAPTER III.
The Theory of Paulus.
9, Paulus began as a disciple of Eichhorn — 10, He perceives that Eichhorn's system is a failure: His own theory — 11, The Miracles of the New Testament explained as subjedive im- pressions.
* The numbers represent the pages.
X. Contents.
CHAPTER IV.
De Wette's Theory.
13, De Wette attends the lectures of Paulus : He sees that the theory of illusion labours under mighty difficulties — 14, His mythical theory and the supposed late origin of writing — 15, Criticism, thus brought to maturity, becomes rank infidelity — 16, Rapid discrediting of the Bible history — 18, His spiritual unrest.
CHAPTER V. The Jehovistic and Elohistic Theories.
20, " The Sir Isaac Newton of criticism '" — 21, Astruc s early history : the hypothesis that ancient documents supplied the materials for Genesis— 22, His device for distinguishing them — 23, The imaginary Jehovist and Elohist — 24, Astruc limited his theory to Genesis, and stated his belief that Moses was the compiler : the application of his theory by the critics — 25, " The Evolution of God ! "
WHAT THE CRITICS WISH TO DO WITH THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I. They Wish to Destroy Faith in its Reliability.
27, Their attempt to pass off the higher criticism as Biblical criticism — 29, They are not the same : Higher criticism destructive — 30, Dr. Driver represents our Lord's words as a Jesuitical conformity to the prejudices of His time — 31, He represents Old Testament history as only modified and coloured traditions ; The New Testament history, according to him, only slightly better — 32, Dr. Horton says that the Chronicler exag- gerates—33, Dr. Horton corrected — 35, Failure of another attempt to show that Scripture statements are unreliable —36, Dr. Davidson tries, in like manner, to break faith in the Gospels.
Contents. xi.
CHAPTER II.
Thev Wish to Destroy the Unity of the Bible, and TO Blot Out its Earlier History.
38, The critics assure us that we have no knowledge of Israel earlier than 800 b.c. — 40, Canon Cheyne's contention that the whole of the patriarchal history must be given up — 41, What the critics put in its place — 43, Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood : Ezekiel represented by Dr. Driver as approving of priestly forgery in the manufacture of Mosaic laws — 44, The dislocation of the Bible.
CHAPTER III.
They Seek to Destroy Faith in the Integrity and Genuineness of the Biblical Books.
46, Astruc and Eichhorn accepted the Mosaic authorship cf the Pentateuch : Eichhorn's demonstration — 47, This position abandoned by the critics — 48, The integrity of almost all the books denied — 50, " The two Isaiahs " now become many : the fate of Jeremiah, the Psalms, and Job.
CHAPTER IV.
They Wish to Banish the Idea of the Inspiration of THE Bible.
51, The claim which the Bible makes for the Old Testamen' — 54, Dr. Horton's inability to state what Inspiration is — 55, Denial of Inspiration by Kuenen and Professor Bruce.
CHAPTER V.
They Would Rob the Bible Even of Honesty.
56, Acceptance of critical theories as to the forgery of tl e Biblical Books fatal to belief in the Scripture — 57, Shapira's Deuteronomy — 58, Kuenen's view of Deuteronomy — 59, Similar statements made with regard to the rest of the Pentateuch— 60, Wellhausen's view of the so-called Priestly Code : Dr. Horton's view of the New Testament.
xii. Contents.
CHAPTER VI.
Thev Would Deprive the Bible of its Place as a
Revelation of God.
62, Denial of revelation the foundation principle of the higher criticism — 63, Kuenen's admissions : the Israelitish on the same level as the other religions— 64, No choice ever made of Abraham or of Israel : the Israelitish religion a human development — 65, This teaching actually proposed for adoption by the Free Church of Scotland — 66, The inevitable conse- quences.
WHY THE CRITICS CANNOT SUCCEED.
CHAPTER I.
Their Science is Based Upon Hypothesis Which are
Untrue.
67, Its foundation principle is that the Bible is of merely human origin— 68, This leaves the unapproached excellencies of the Bible without explanation, and proves that the principle assumed is not in accordance with fad -68, It fares similarly with the other leading principle, the steadily upward develop- ment of humanity— 70, Discovery proves that the earliest ages were not the rude and savage times which the critical principle implies- 71, They were marked by excellence in the arts, and by clear teaching regarding God.
CHAPTER II.
It is Founded Upon Impossible Pretensions.
74, Their pretended ability to trace the hands of different
writers a delusion— 75, There are no such experts — 76, Mr.
Robert Buchanan's demonstration of the non-existence of the
expert —77, Dean Milman's judgment— 78, The expert's failure
Contents. xiii.
CHAPTER III.
The Chief Corner-stone of Their "Science" is a
Gigantic Blunder.
80, Astruc's theory not the contribution of a scholar — 81, Explanation of the terms Elohim andjfehovah — 82, The names supposed to be interchangeable— 83, The names are not, and never were, interchangeable — 84, The gross carelessness and blundering of the critics, and the blind acceptance of so-called results by scholars — 85, Blunders in regard to the Psalms — 88, Critical inconsistency— 89, Alleged use of "El Shaddai " : of " Israel "^90, Of Padan-Aram.
II.
MODERN DISCOVERIES AND THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I.
How the Discoveries Originated.
94, Napoleon's expedition to Egypt— 95, His designs— 97, Impressions made upon the French soldiery by the architeftural remains of Egypt : European interest in the inscriptions — 98, The difficulty of the task presented — 99, Discovery of the Rosetta stone — 100, The help which it promised — loi, Attempts by Young and Zoega at decipherment— 102, Their defeat.
CHAPTER II.
Champollion and His Labours.
103, His early history- — 104, Early preparations for his life work -105, His early fame— 106, Discovers the Demotic alphabet — 107, Reads some names on the Egyptian inscriptions in 1822 : Controversy with Dr. Young — 108, Work rapidly advanced : Leaves Paris to obtain leisure to pursue his re- searches, and finally concentrates all his powers upon this one effort — 109, The concluding pages of his Egyptian grammar dictated from his death-bed.
xiv. Contents.
CHAPTER III.
First and Last Steps. no, The difficulties of Egyptian decipherment : The origin of written characters— 112, The method pursued by Cham- pollion in his discovery ; Compares the two names Cleopatra and Ptolemy — 115, He solves the problem of the origin of the alphabet — 116, Work done by his successors.
CHAPTER IV. Help From the East. 117, The story of the Assyrian discoveries— 118, The ruins of Persepolis — 120, Visits of Delia Valle, Chardin, and Carstens Niebuhr— 122, Representations of the Sculptures— 124, Niebuhr makes a list of 42 charadters, which he imagines may be the alphabet of the Cuneiform inscriptions.
CHAPTER V. Light Breaks. 124, Miinter's surmise — 126, Grotefend's attention is drawn to the problem — 127, He succeeds in reading the names of Xerxes, Darius, and Hystaspes in 1802 — 128, In 1836, the entire alphabet of the Persian writing is simultaneously discovered by Lassen and Burnouf, and independently, in 1837, by Rawlinson in Persia — 129, Doubts as to the reality of the discovery— 130, The doubts removed.
CHAPTER VI. The Progress of Discovery. 131, The marvellous opportuneness of the discoveries made in the East — 132, The supreme importance of these made in Elgypt and in Assyria— 133, Layard's discoveries — 134, The tablets procured from the palace library of Assur-bani-pal remove serious difficulties in the way of Assyrian research : The Assyrian treatises, like the Pentateuch, named from their opening words — 135, Discovery at Hillah — 136, Discoveries at Tell-Loh and Tel-el-Amarna — 137, Collapse of chronological difficulties supposed to be raised by the discoveries: confirma- firmations of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
Contents. xv.
CONFIRMATIONS OF THE PENTATEUCH.
CHAPTER I. The Creation History. 139, Rationalistic theory of its origin— 140, But the guesses of " the Savage Ancestor" could not have anticipated the dis- coveries of Science, as Genesis has admittedly anticipated them — 141, The existence of a primaeval revelation— 142, This hope- lessly lost and restored in Genesis— 143, Trace of primaeval belief in the inscriptions of Persepolis— 144, The Creation tablets discovered by George Smith and Hormuzd Rassam— 145, Points of agreement between the Chaldean and the Scriptural accounts— 146, The primaeval abyss— 147, The heavenly bodies appointed for signs and for seasons : Discovery of the name Adapa, and of the institution of the Sabbath— 148, Critics deny the antiquity of the Sabbath— 149, The sacredness attached to the number seven— 150, The old Babylonian Sabbath law : its great antiquity : Other references carry us back to the origin of our race, and the creation of the world.
CHAPTER II. "The Chaldean Genesis." 152, Copies of the Babylonian tablets supposed to have been carried by Abraham from Chaldea, to have come into the pos- session of Moses, and to have formed the basis of the account in Genesis— 153, The supposed consolations of the theory ; The Chaldean tradition shows distinct traces of revelation- 154, It is only one of many like traditions which all point to the early possession by man of knowledge which could only have come by revelation— 155, The Vedic hymns: The Phoeni- cian tradition: The Greek and Roman— 156, Whence came the knowledge imbedded in all of them ? -158, The Chaldean tradition — 164, The suggestion that the Polytheistic elements gradually subsided, leaving clear Monotheistic teaching behind, set aside by the fadls— 166, Professor Sayce's judgment as to the radical distindlion between the creation tablets and the Scripture account.
xvi. Contents,
CHAPTER III.
The Creation of Man.
167, The ancient traditions regarding the origin of the human race are distorted accounts of the truth once known, and now restored in Scripture — 168, The Greek account - 169, The Libyan tradition— 170, The grotesque accounts of the Baby- lonians and the Greeks point to a similar explanation — 174, The Persian and Greek legend of the origin of woman — 175, The Bible enables us to recognise the truth amid this mass of error.
CHAPTER IV.
Where was Paradise ?
177, The question dropped by Theology, but taken up by Science — 179, Attempt by Delitzsch to identify Babylon with Eden — :8o, Eden was not identical with Paradise — 181, " Eden " an Accadian word, meaning an elevated plateau — 182, This is admitted by Delitzsch— 183, The indications point to Armenia — 185, The fruitfulness of the plateau : Four rivers — 187, Discovery that, after all, men had emigrated from one centre : The indications point to the Table-land of Central Asia as the cradle of the human race— 189, Admission by Haeckel — 190, Dr. Marcus Dods and the repetitions in the Scripture account of the creation : The Unity of Genesis — 193, The meaning of Tolcdoth — 194, The so-called repetitions part of the plan of the Book, and a proof of its unity.
CHAPTER V.
The " Myths " of Genesis.
197, No vagueness or accent of uncertainty in the informa- tion regarding primaeval man in Genesis : Are the narratives true ? — 198, The magnitude of the events has left its mark in the traditions of the human race — 199, They reveal the inspira- tion of Genesis — 200, Man's life in Paradise — 201, The Hindu, Arab, Greek, Roman, Accadian, and other legends — 205, The Tree of Life — 207, Sayce, Pinches, Schrader, and Lenormant on the ancient Babylonian tradition.
Contents. xvii.
CHAPTER VI.
The " Myths " of Genesis (Continued J.
213, The Fall is a fad— 214, The traditions evidently point to an event, which is clearly narrated in Genesis alone — 215, Lenormant quoted: The Japhetic tradition — 216, The account of the Bundehesh — 218, Assyrian tradition discovered by Professor Sayce— 219, Account discovered among the Tel-el-Amarna tablets : The Sumerian name of Babylon embalms the memory of the event — 221, The scene in the garden pidlured on a Babylonian gem— 222, The universal serpent myths — 226, The Cherubim— 227, Their nature — 228, Their office — 229, Identical with the Greek Griffins — 230, With the Sphinxes of Egypt — 231, And with the Assyrian Kiriihi — 235, The testimony of the traditions.
CHAPTER VII.
The Fouxdatioxs of Human History.
236, The fadls narrated in Genesis are the origin of the national traditions — 237, The names given by Eve to her sons belong to the oldest known form of human speech — 238, Mean- ing of " Cain " — 239, Former difficulties in interpreting the name " Abel" — 240, The murder of Abel has left its trace in the myths about city builders, and the practice of the laying of foundations in blood.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Antediluvians.
245, Geology now recognises the distindtion between men before and men after the flood — 246, Geology and the Antedi- luvians— 247, It finds traces of the three races mentioned in Genesis — 248, The existence of the arts — 249, Antediluvian longevity — 251, The ten generations of Antediluvian men — 253, The testimony of Berossus — 255, The Babylonian and Biblical genealogies.
xviii. Contents.
CHAPTER IX.
Traditions of the Deluge.
256, The Deluge set down among " the Myths of Genesis: " Supposed to be an undeniable Impossibility — 257, The Bible Story : The Fearful Fruits of Sin — 258, The Argument for Different "Sources" which rests upon the Different Names applied to God — 260, The Separated Narratives are only Frag- ments : Each Needs the Other, and proves the Essential Unity of the Bible History — 261, Critical Methods Unscientific — ^262, "Was the Deluge a Fadl ?— 263, Its Traces in the Traditions of the Mexicans — 264, The Crees : The Lemi Lenape— 265, The American nations — 266, The Indians — 267, The Legend of Manu — 269, The oldest form of the Indian Legend— 270, The Tradition of the Malays — 272, The Chinese : The Persians — 274, The Greeks : The Romans — 276, The Aramaeans— 278, The Phrygians— 279, The Egyptians— 280, The Chaldeans — 284, The Tradition according to the Monuments— 290, The Points of Resemblance between the Biblical and the Babylonian Accounts — 292, The Nizir of the Inscriptions — the Ararat of Scripture— 293, The Scriptural Account not derived from the Babylonian — 296, The supposed Additions of P in existence 1500 years before he was born.
CHAPTER X. The Date of the Deluge.
298, The Unsatisfaftory Nature of Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology— 299, A Marvellous Break in Egyptian History — 301, The first six Dynasties may cover the Antedeluvian Period — 302, No Representations of gods on the Monuments of the first three Dynasties— 303, When did the Sixth Dynasty close ? — 304, The very Day of the Deluge Retained in Egyptian and other Traditions— 305, The Corroborees of the Australians: Customs in Fiji and Peru— 306, Similar Customs of the Persians and the Druids— 307, Of the Mexicans — 308, Their Connexion with the Deluge.
Contents. xix.
CHAPTER XI. Geology and the Deluge. 309, Conflid: between Geological Theories and the Scriptures — 310, Cause of the Conflidl — 311, The Huttonian Theory — 312, Mistaken Calculations — 313, Sidgwick's Earlier Opinions — 314, His Recantation, and what led to it — 315, The Surrender of Faith — 316, Geologists now Admitting the Truth of the Scripture History — 317, The Dodrine of Uniformity — 318, The Dodrine affords no Explanation of the present Surface Soil, &c. — 319, The Duke of Argyll's Protest — 320, Sir Henry Howorth declares the Bible right in regard to the Deluge, and Geologists wrong — 322, The Testimony of the Gravel-beds — 324, Of the INIud-beds— 326, The Glacial Theory Powerless to Explain the Phenomena — 327, The Prolonged Submergence Theory equally Unsatisfadtory— 329, The Theory that Boulders, Mud, Clay, and Sand were Distributed by Gigantic Rivers, Likewise Abandoned — 331, The Great Ice-sheet Theory also Inadequate —333, The Adion of Water Universally Admitted — 338, Sir Joseph Prestwich's Paper — 340, Sir J. W. Dawson's Testimony and Note on Genesis v. 29.
CHAPTER XII.
Was this Inundation Universal ?
343, Assertions that the Flood was local — -344, Theories which
make it Labour under Difficulties— 352, The Glacial Drifts all
Formed at one Period — 357, Difficult to say where this Flood
was not.
CHAPTER XIII. Was the Inundation of Geology the Flood of the Bible? 358, Geology shows that there were Earlier Inundations — 359, But in this Flood Animal Life Perished in Huge Masses — 361, The Destrudion was Sudden— 362, Animal Remains almost a common feature of the Gravel and Loam Deposits : They are more numerous in the Neighbourhood of Elevations — 363, The remains of the Ice-preserved Mammoths show that they were drowned— 365, The Testimony of the Cave Deposits: They testifv to one Flood, and one Flood only— 366, It was as
XX. Contents.
Transient as it was Violent — 372, The Flood came after Man's Appearance upon the Earth— 374. The Scientific Division between Palaeolithic and Neolithic Man Another Testimony.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Unity of Man.
381, A Truth Taught by the Bible Alone— 385, The loth Chapter of Genesis the Charter of Human Freedom — 386, Voltaire's Rejedion of the Unity of the Human Race — 389, Opposition from Theories of Development — 390, Differences in Colour, and in Hair, and in Height — 404, Admissions in TJie Vestiges — 408, The Classification of the Scripture Superior to that of Science— 409, Discovery of the Relationships of Language — 410, The Threefold Division of the Bible borne out by Investigation— 411, The Affiliation of the Nations.
CHAPTER XV.
Nimrod: His Times and Work.
429, The First Civilization of Babylonia was Hamitic — 430, The Art of Writing was Hamitic in its Origin— 433, The Names of The Ancient Mesopotamian Cities were Hamitic —433. The Civilization and Religion were Hamitic— 434, Assyrian Civilization was Babylonian in its Origin— 435, The Cities named in Genesis x. the most Ancient in the Land — 438, Identification of Erech — 441, Of Accad— 442, Of Shinar — 443, Nineveh : Resen — 444, These References shatter the Critical Theory as to the "Prophetic Narrator" — 446, Gilgamesh and Nimrod — 447, Prof. Hommel's Identification.
THE NEW BIBLICAL GUIDE
THE CRITICS AND THE BIBLE:
What they wish to do with it: and why they cannot succeed.
A BAND of warriors, who had left their homes on the Steppes, and, under the guidance of an intrepid leader, had set out to seek a more favoured settlement, were descending a mountain-side. As they reached a turning in the descent, the chief stopped his steed, and gazed with flaming eyes upon the plain below. Two hostile armies were preparing for the crash of battle. Only taking time to note which side was the weaker, and, therefore, the more in need of succour, the chief ranged his troops, and threw himself and them into the fray.
Wherever the strangers attacked, they were vic- torious ; and by-and-bye their newly-found foes were fleeing from the field. The sovereign whom they had so unexpecftedly rescued was the Commander of the faithful, the head of the Mahommedan world ; and
2 The New Biblical Guide.
the warriors, who, obeying their leader's generous impulse, had come to his assistance, were the Turks. They were hailed not only as friends, but as saviours. Favours were heaped upon them. But the generous Caliphs had in their newly-found allies more dangerous foes than those whom they had encountered upon the field of battle. The Arab, who had planted the faith of Mahomet with the sword, and watered it with Christian blood, was soon overthrown, and the Turk reigned in his stead.
It is impossible to deny that, when the Higher Critics began their work, they imagined that they rendered a similar service to a distressed Christianity. The infidelity introduced into Germany by the English deists and Voltaire, and popularised by Bahrdt, Reimarus, and Lessing, had covered the land. It permeated the aristocracy and the German courts. The leaders in the reviving national literature were bending all their energies to spread it in the subtlest forms among the German people. And, while all this was going on, the ministers of the churches were either asleep, or were quite unprepared for the struggle. But the German Universities of the time numbered among their professors some of the mightiest scholars whom that land had ever produced. These were men of Christian sympathies, if not of deep Christian convictions. They threw themselves into the struggle, and, with the aid of Schleiermacher and of others, they overbore for a time the rude and blatant infidelity of the hour. The victory, however, was dearly won. The old faith went down under the
How the Trouble Began. 3
overwhelming influence of a teaching which was
infidel at heart, and Christian only in appearance and in name.
CHAPTER I.
How THE Trouble Began.
THE way was prepared by Semler, who was born at Saalfeld in 1725, where his father was Arch- deacon. The revival, begun by Spener, deeply in- fluenced the Court of the Archduke, and had quickened the life of the Archdeacon's home. In an age of rampant unbelief and intellectual revolt against the truth, Semler was nurtured in a home where he breathed an atmosphere of genuine and deep piety. He tells us that there was not a corner in all the house where, as a child, he had not wept before God, and implored forgiveness of his sins. The savour of that personal piety never left his home life. The fragrance of a better, because a believing, past clung to the man, notwithstanding the open contradiction to it furnished by the thirty years of his professorship at Halle, where, in the words of a by no means bitter or prejudiced historian of RationaHsm, Semler "made use of his chair and his pen to undermine the very foundations of Christianitv." *
Amand Satntes.
4 The New Biblical Guide,
He had imbibed the principles of Rationahsm from his professor ; and, when he commenced his own career, it seemed to him that, in order to save Christianity, he had first of all to save it from its friends. He directed his energies, therefore, to Avreck and ruin the orthodox views of the Bible. He did this in the name of *' Criticism." " The field of criticism," he says, "was, at the period of my first essays, still uncultivated." There was nothing in the Scriptures, he maintained, to exempt them from the judicial inspection of human reason, or to protect any part of them from its condem- nation or rejection. There was a great deal in them which no cultured defender would embarrass himself with. It was, consequently, necessary to distinguish between what was essential, and what was non- essential. What more could anyone desire to retain than the articles which are embraced in the Apostles' Creed ? He accordingly drew the line there, but virtually gave up the inspiration of the Bible, its accuracy, and even its honesty. The part of his work which he regarded with the greatest favour was his Accommodation Theory. This was meant to be a bridge by which unbelievers could, without difficulty, cross over into the Christian camp. Our Lord and His Apostles, says Semler, accommodated themselves to the prejudices, the errors, and the superstitions of their time. They did not mean to teach that there was such a thing, for example, as demoniac possession ; but the people believed there was, and so our Lord and the Apostles talked as if they
The Father of the Higher Criticism. 5
believed it, too. It was, hence, in vain for sceptics to bring up the words of the Scripture in proof that the Scripture taught that behef. It was a mere accommodation to a popular error of the time. The same explanation was given of the Bible statements regarding angels, the Lord's second coming, the resurrection from the dead, and the inspiration of the Scriptures.
CHAPTER II.
The Father of the Higher Criticism.
EICHHORN, Professor at Jena, and afterwards at Gottingen, saw deeper into the heart of unbelief than Semler had done. The great objection against Christianity and the Bible was the stamp of the supernatural with which they are impressed so deeply. " Miracles," said the deists, " do not happen. They have never happened. We cannot accept any book as even historically true which contains narra- tives of alleged miraculous events." That very feature, they maintained, disposed of the demand of any such document for serious examination. Eichhorn imagined that, unless this stumbhng-block were removed out of the way, no other modification would avail. But to him this new task appeared extremely easy. " You reject the Bible," he said in effect, "because it contains accounts of miraculous occurrences. It is quite true that it has long been
6 The New Biblical Guide.
understood to do this ; but, like many another popular and long-lived belief, this is an entire delusion. Among the Greeks and Romans, and still more among the Eastern peoples, everything that happened of an extraordinary kind was attributed to immediate Divine action. The Hebrews saw God everywhere, and they spoke of direct Divine intervention, where we, in our colder fashion, would talk of some * Provi- dential ' event, or of some happy chance. It would be folly to set down their glowing piety as imposture ; and it is equally foolish for commentators to treat soberly as miraculous narratives what, both to the writers arid to those for whom they wrote, were only edifying accounts of ordinary events."
In his Urgeshichte, or " Primeval History," Eich- horn applies his theory to the explanation of the first three chapters of Genesis. Adam, he says, had not lived long, surrounded by the beasts, before he re- marked that there was a blank in the creation. He noticed that all other creatures were in pairs. He alone had no mate. He felt his solitariness. Then " there awoke in him the desire to have a companion. He wandered here and there in Eden — the author of our primitive history has passed over this detail in silence — to seek in this place a creature like himself. Wearied by these efforts, he fell into a profound slumber, and he dreamed that he was divided in two. When he awoke and had examined this hitherto unexplored part. Eve presented herself before him, and * God brought her to him.' It is true," he con- tinues, "that the text runs: * And God took one of
The Father of the Higher Criticism. 7-
his ribs;' but that expression can only mean this : he dreamed ; and it seemed to him that, during his slumber, God had taken one of his ribs."
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is explained away in like fashion. It was a vegetable poison. The scene which followed presented greater difficulties. How was it possible to represent God's interview with the sinful pair, the expulsion of them from the Garden, and the doom pronounced upon the serpent, as a simple attempt to relate merely natural events in devout Eastern phrases ? But the German Professor was not wanting in boldness^ "Towards the evening of the same day," on which they had eaten the forbidden fruit, he says, " a violent storm broke forth. . . It was possibly the first which man had witnessed since his appearance upon the earth. ^ And they heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden ' (Genesis iii. 8). ' The voice of God!' — who does not know that this magnificent expression is used a thousand times to designate thunder ? The rolling of the thunder is ' the voice of the Lord God;' and, since the noise resounded for a long time in Adam's ear, ' the Lord God walked in the garden.' A new thunder-clap sounded behind the trees, and Adam believed that he heard the words : ^A dam ! where art thou ? ' Excuses then follow excuses. Adam imputes the offence to Eve, Eve to the serpent. . . . The dialogue of Adam with Eve is nothing else, in my judgment, than the remorse which harasses the evil conscience of the guilty," &c.
In the same way, in subsequent papers, he dealt
â– 8 The New Biblical Guide.
with the other narratives in Genesis. Moses, for example, having long meditated upon the sufferings of his people, had a dreami, in which he was told to go to their deliverance. He took this for a Divine inspiration. The smoke and flame on Mount Sinai proceeded from a fire which he had kindled " to assist the imagination of the people." The effecft of this stratagem was increased, he said, b}^ a violent tempest which chanced to break out at that very moment ! These examples are enough to show the enormous sacrifices, not only of Scripture, but also of common sense, which Eichhorn made to conciliate unbelief. It was not infidelity that was refuted or corredted. That was justified, acclaimed, and enthroned. It was the Bible that was rebuked, and stripped of all its supernatural claims. This is specially significant when we remember that Eichhorn is the acknow- ledged father of "the higher criticism," and also the inventor of its name. The phrase first of all occurs in the preface to his " Introdudlion to the Old Testa- ment," in which he applies the term, "the lower criticism," to investigations concerning the text of the Scriptures, and suggests "the higher criticism" as an appropriate title for investigations into the origin and authorship of the various books of the Bible. His claim to the paternity of this so-called science is more fully supported by another facft. It was he who introduced, as we shall see immediately, the Jehovistic and Elohistic theories into the Theo- logical Schools of Germany. He thus gave to the higher criticism the only seemingly scientific basis
The Theory of Pauitis. 9
which it has ever had. But it is also hi;::hly Gugo^estive that the confessed parent of the critical school should have been afflicted with spiritual blindness. He brought vast learning to his self-imposed task, but no spiritual insight. Ewald, himself a rationalist, says of Eichhorn : '' We cannot fail to recognise that, from, the religious point of view, the Bible was to him a closed hooky
CHAPTER HI. The Theory of Paulus.
A FURTHER advance was made by Professor Paulus, who was born in 1761, and died at Heidelberg in 1851, having almost completed his ninetieth year. Paulus began by accepting Eichhorn's explanation of miracles, and, indeed, commenced his career by contributing to a periodical conducted by the father of the higher criticism. He soon saw, however, that the attempt to maintain that the Bible contained no narratives of miraculous occurrences doomed the new science to failure and to ridicule. What kind of form should a narrative of a miraculous event wear, if the records of Elijah's deeds, for instance, and of our Lord's, were never intended to ascribe the performance of miracles to either ? And what was to be made of the sharp contrast between the Master and His forerunner, in the New Testament, where we are told that, while " John did no miracle "
10 The New Biblical Guide.
(John X. 41), the very enemies of Jesus admitted that *'this Man doeth many miracles" (John xi. 47) ? And even if this could be explained on Eichhorn's principles, what was to be made of the evangelist's distincft statements : "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Gahlee, and manifested forth His glory " (ii. 11) ; and " This is again the second miracle which Jesus did, when He was come out of Judaea into Gahlee " (iv. 54) ?
It was quite evident that, if the supernatural were to be taken out of the Bible, some other means must be adopted. Paulus believed that he saw his way to lay down a new bridge for the unbelievers who were inclined to patronise the Bible, and to rank them- selves under the banner of a sufficiently modified Chris- tianity. His theory had the merit of simplicity. The Bible writers were sincere and truthful; but they were men with ill-balanced minds. They suffered from hal- lucinations. They imagined that they heard voices from heaven, while these supposed voices were merely the movings of their own hearts, the impressions of their own excited brains. Merely natural occurrences, on this account, immediately assumed a supernatural aspe(5l. The aged priest Zacharias, the father of the future Forerunner, who had long meditated over the lack of a son, was engaged in offering the incense in the Holy Place. He was excited by the thought that in the near presence of God he might present his prayer for the coveted gift. What, then, was more natural than that he should see in the wreaths of the as- cending smoke an angel form, and that he should then
Tlie 1 neory 0/ taiuiis, 11
imagine that he heard a voice assuring him that his desire was granted? In the same way Mary mistakes a pa&sing stranger for the Archangel Gabriel !
This new theory was fearlessly applied by Paulus to the New Testament miracles. The philosophy of Kant was then achieving its great, but temporary, popularity'. Kant distinguished between the objective fact and the subjective impression — between, that is, the actual thing which I see and the impression which I have of what I see. It is a mighty aid to a lame theory to have a grand philosophical buttress like that, and Paulus immediately seized and utihsed it. Let me give the reader a few of these explanations. It is necessary that we bear with their blasphemy in order that we may see clearly the daring of this new unbelief.
There was nothing too sacred for Paulus to touch and to desecrate. In the Transfiguration " the objective fact " and " the subjective impression " * were separated in the following manner. The moment had come for the first rosy, glowing dawn of day. Two passing strangers, clothed in white, and who had apparently no objection to pass over moun- tain summits on their way, were in conversation with the Lord Jesus. Just then the rays of the rising sun strike upon the three ; '' whereupon Peter, always precipitate in his judgments," says Paulus, " cries (on seeing the two unknown) * it is Moses and Elias ! ' Assuredly," he adds, '' he knew nothing of them
* Thomas Carlyle, who had a broad common-sense impatience of vain distinctions, tells of an interview with Coleridge, who was retailing Kant, and droning in some unintelligible fashion of " sum-m-m-ject and om-m-m-ject."
12 The New Biblical Guide.
himself." The miracle of the walking upon the storm- tossed sea disappears in the same way. The stormy waters did not promise a pleasant voyage, and so our Lord went round by the shore. The disciples saw Him in the dim light, and imagined that He was walking upon the water. Let me hurry to close this sad record with a brief mention of two other achieve- ments of the second father — the Isaac — of this boasted, and so-called ^'sacred science." At the baptism of our Lord in the Jordan both John and Jesus were filled with deep emotion. Just at the moment of the baptism they heard a thunder-clap, and it seemed to both that they heard the words — ** Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It might be supposed that the Resurrection would present greater difficulties. But, on the contrary, that was easity disposed of. Our Lord did not really die. He had a fainting fit; and, in spite, I suppose, of Roman vigilance, so well able to distinguish between a faint and death, and of the Roman spear-thrust that pierced the heart so that there came out water and blood, our Lord revived on the morning of the third day !
CHAPTER IV. De Wette's Theory.
BUT while the theologians of Germany, and a few in our own country, were lending the ear to Paulus, a new explanation of the miraculous narratives in Scripture v/as being formed, which was
De Wette's Theory. 13.
destined to last longer and to work more mischief than either of those which had gone before. Its author was De Wette, who was born in 1780, and died in 1849, at Basel, in Switzerland. He studied at Jena, and had Paulus as one of his professors. He was much impressed by the latter's lectures, and, like many others, accepted the theory that miracles owed their place in Scripture to the mistakes and illusions of the writers. But it is the fate of all such explanations to give way under the strain necessary to compel them to meet and to cover the facts. Growing experience convinced De Wette that Paulus's illusion theory would not do. Were there no sane men^ was there not one accurate observer, among the many writers of the Old Testament, and of the New ? To maintain such a theory was not merely to traduce the sacred writers ; it was an insult to one's own common sense.
But De Wette found elsewhere what seemed to him a quite unexceptionable means of escaping from the miraculous. Spinoza, the Dutch Jew, had long before declared his conviction that the Pentateuch had not been written by Moses. He maintained that it " was clearer than daylight " that it was from the hand of another writer, who was later than Moses by several centuries. This had been repeated in various forms by others, and the one later writer suggested by Spinoza grew into several. These notions, however, might never have led to the new departure had it not been for another and more important fact. The scholarship of Germany was at
14 The New Biblical Guide,
this time under the influence of what may be des- cribed, without any exaggeration, as a craze. There are times when even sober science is run away with, as it has been run away with by the bacillus and by evolution ; and it is no great matter for astonishment that the learned in Germany should have been run away with by " the myth." The facts recorded in the early history of Greece and Rome were, by the touch of that terrible word, turned into cloud and mist. They were not facts at all ; they were legends, fables, myths. Writing is a comparatively late art (so the wise said then in their ignorance). Records came into existence long after the times when those things were said to have been done ; and what the writers placed upon papyrus or upon parchment were only the dreams which fancy, imagination, and patriotic enthusiasm had woven around some great outstanding names.
That craze was long ago sobered, corre6led, flagel- lated, and killed by reflection and discovery ; but its unfortunate offspring, which fastened upon the brain of a German theologian, still lives and flourishes. It flashed across De Wette's mind that here was the solution of the difliculty regarding miracles. Eich- horn had begun with denying that the Bible contained any narratives of miraculous events. The writers were only piously, and with Oriental fervour, ascribing to the direct intervention of God purely natural occurrences. Paulus went farther. He freely admit- ted that the Bible did contain accounts of miracles. But these accounts, he said, were written by weak-
De Wette's Theory. 15
minded, though perfe(5lly honest, enthusiasts. They mistook purely natural occurrences for miraculous occurrences. De Wette now advanced farther still. With Paulus, he freely admitted that the Bible did speak of miracles. But the accounts, he said, were not committed to writing till long after the supposed events had occurred. What the writers found among their people was not history, but legends, which in the course of ages had gathered round some great name. Thus at one stroke, the historical truth of the Bible was laid in the dust, and upon its ruins the founda- tions of the reconstructed higher criticism were finally laid. Eichhorn, behind the poetry of the narratives, had still left us historical events. Paulus still left us these as the foundations of the supposed illusions of the Biblical writers. But now all the history was ruthlessly sacrificed, and nothing was left that could be looked upon as a revelation of God, or as a reliable history of our race, or of Israel, or of our Redeemer. The attempt to break down the wall of faith to make a way for unbelief into the Christian Church had brought its punishment. Faith had perished, and unbelief of the most radical character reigned in its stead.
De Wette began by maintaining, in 1805, that Deuteronomy was not from the same hand as the preceding four Books of the Pentateuch. In the year following appeared his great work — " The Introduc- tion to the Old Testament." This book made a great impression not only in Germany, but in other lands as well, our own among: the number. In it he gave up
l6 TJic New Biblical Guide.
the traditional dates of the Old Testament Books. The consequences of this surrender were not only fully admitted, but also stated and insisted upon as making the higher criticism a necessity. In the face of the legendary character of the Scriptures, no one could, he maintained, say off-hand what the real historical facts were. There was also an entire absence of external historical testimony bearing upon the events — a statement which De Wette might have known was untrue then and which is ludicrously false now. What, then, was to be done ? We must call in the critics to search for the needles of fact among the hay-stacks of fable ! We are reduced, he said, to the necessity of weighing the contents of the Books to see what ground- work of fact may lie beneath the legendary narratives.
This publication increased his fame, and he was appointed Professor of Theology at Heidelberg in 1807, and thus became a colleague of his old master, Paulus. He was removed from Heidelberg in 1810 to the new University of Berlin. There, in 1817, he published his '' Historical and Critical Introduction to the Old Testament." The Mosaic authorship and historical character of the Pentateuch were given up. Many of the Psalms ascribed to David were assigned to a later date. Doubt was thrown upon the correct- ness of the belief that the Messianic Psalms referred to Jesus. The Books of Chronicles were said to have been written to glorify the Levitical caste. The same corrupting doubt spread like a cancer and fastened upon every Book of the Bible. In a later edition
De Wette's Theory. 17
of the work which we have last named, and which he pubhshed in 1845, he openly gives up the historical character of the whole. " Everything is written," he says, ''from an exclusively theocratical point of view" — such is his way of stating the fa(5l that the Scrip- tures are written from God's view-point. " Everything is subordinated to this plan," he continues, "more or less logically. Further, God Himself directly intervenes in history by revelations and miracles; in other words, history gives place to mythology.'' De Wette underlined the word "mythology."^
Such was the final and permanent form of the higher criticism. The Bible was of as little historical worth as the Iliad of Homer, the ^neid of Virgil, or the sacred books of the Hindus. How little is left us will be plain from the following, which I quote from Dr. Hurst's " History of RationaHsm." f " De Wette," he says, "reflects somewhat on the moral character of John, perhaps without intention, when he supposes him to have written late in life — a time when his faith would naturally predominate over his love of facts .... According to De Wette, the narrator ma\- intend to write history, but he obviously does it in a poetic way. The first three Evangelists betray a legendary and even a mythical character. This explains the discrepancies in their histories, and also in the discourses and doctrines of Jesus. The miracle which took place at the baptism of Christ was a pure myth ; and the resurrection and re- appearance of Christ have their existence more in
* Lehrbuch der hist.—ktit. Einleitung in A.T. pp. 179, 180. t p. 200.
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the mind than in history. With this view '-'f the New Testament, it is not surprising^ the Old should receive even more rigorous usage. The larger part of the Pentateuch was supposed to be taken from two old documents, the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and was compiled somewhere near the close of the regal period. The five Books, purporting to have been written by Moses, are the Hebrew Epic, and contain no more truth than the great Epic of the Greeks. As the Iliad and Odyssey are the production of the rhap- sodists, so is the Pentateuch, with the exception of the Decalogue, the continuous and anonymous work of the priesthood. Abraham and Isaac are equally fabulous with Ulysses and Agamemnon. A Canaan- itish Homer could have invented nothing better than the journeys of Jacob and the marriage of Rebecca. The departure from Egypt, the forty years in the Wilderness, the seventy Elders at the head of the tribes, and the complaints of Aaron, are each an independent myth. The character of myths is varied in different Books ; poetic in Genesis, juridical in Exodus, priestly in Leviticus, political in Numbers, etymological, diplomatical, and genealogical, but seldom historical, in Deuteronomy."
De Wette, in spite of his unbelief, and, indeed, because of it, struggled hard to find a foothold some- where for the religious life. He had destroyed the foundation of fadt — the rock of truth. It was necessary, therefore, to plant religion upon feeling. In conjunction with Schleiermacher, the great German preacher, whose colleague he became in
De Wette's Theory,
19
Berlin, he direcfted the thoughts of his fellow- countrymen to this last refuge. In pursuit of his purpose, he published a religious novel in 1822. It bore the title : Theodore; or, The Doubter's Consecration. It gave as little satisfac^tion as Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsmere, and other attempts among ourselves. The religion of feeling is faced again and again with
THE TOWN OF BASEL.
the awkward question, "But is it true?" It may well be called " the religion of feeling;" for, apart from feeling, it lacks every other element of vital religion. It has no law, and no hope. It has no past from which it may draw consolation and wisdom, and it has no future whose attrac5lions may hasten
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lagging steps, and inspire God-like sacrifices. It has no revelation and no assurance. De Wette lived long enough to find out all this. Baron Bunsen met him in Switzerland, where De Wette w^as attending a conference of the Moravian Brethren. He was struck with the look of weariness, and yet of earnest seeking, on the great critic's face. There was a still more pathetic confession of failure made afterwards in his dying chamber at Basel. He had wTitten in pencil some lines, which were found among his papers after his death. The concluding words are given by Dr. Hurst in the following verse : —
" I lived in times of doubt and strife,
When child-like faith was forced to yield ; I struggled to the end of life : Alas! I did not gain the field."
CHAPTER V. The Jehovistic and Elohistic Theories.
WE must now turn for a few moments to say a word or two about one who is constantly called " the Sir Isaac Newton of Criticism." What claim Jean Astruc (who was born in 1684, and died in 1766) has to rank as the peer of the discoverer of the law of gravitation, we shall inquire by-and-bye ; meanwhile, it is enough to note that the critics name him so with veneration and gratitude. His father was a Protestant pastor, who, when the Edicft of
The Jehovistic and Elohistic Theories. 21
Nantes was revoked, and French Protestants became the objects of relentless persecution, thought it best to conform, and became a Roman Catholic. His son carried with him much of the old Protestant vigour, and took a very high place among the medical men of his time. It was also due, no doubt, to the traditions of his home, that he studied the Scriptures for himself, though without the old faith. It was plain to him that Moses (whose authorship of the Pentateuch he did not doubt) had used ancient docu- ments in compiling the Book of Genesis. The latest event in that Book took place some 200 years before his day, and it consequently dealt with matters of which Moses could have had no personal knowledge. The thought of these ancient documents brings great comfort to the minds of some men, and we are, therefore, constantly hearing of them. They seem to them to afford firm ground for faith in accepting the Book as historical. But who will vouch for the ancient documents ? Would not Moses have required constant Divine revelation as to their reliability? And, if this be so, would not the same Divine revela- tion have sufficed to give the whole as God meant it to be handed down to us ? Besides, too, what ancient document could have contained the story of the great Creation periods ? These events had transpired long ages before man appeared upon the scene, and that narrative, now acknowledged to be in such striking accord with the most recent scientific discovery, could have been penned only through the immediate inspiration of God.
22 The New Biblical Guide,
But if it be granted that Moses used ancient documents, Astruc's inquiry as to whether we can now distinguish these in the present Book of Genesis is quite in order. It seemed to him that the first chapter of the Book affords the clue in its repeated and exclusive use of the name God — in Hebrew, Elohim. It must be remembered that Astruc was a Frenchman, and had for ten years resided in Paris, at a time when the niceties of style were as much studied as the punctilios of etiquette. We can hardly be surprised, then, that he should conclude that an author who used the name Elohim 31 times in a chapter containing only 31 verses, must have known no other name for God. For how otherwise could he have inflidled or endured what to the sensitive Frenchman was so frightful a monotony? After mentionins^ the fact that two names for the Divine Being — Elohim, translated " God " in the English version, and Jehovah, translated Lord (printed always in capital letters) — are used in Genesis, he says it is natural to imagine that they were used to vary the style. But one fa(5t, he argues, excludes that supposition. "These words," he writes, "are never confounded together. There are entire chapters where God is always named Elohim, and never Jehovah. There are others, in at least as great number, where the name Jehovah is given to God, and never that of Elohim. If Moses had composed Genesis at his own hand, it would be necessary to ascribe this singular and fantastic varia- tion to him. But is it possible to imagine that he had carried negligence to such a point in the composition
The JeJiovistic and Elohistic Theories. 23
of so short a book as Genesis ? Can we cite any like example ? and dare we, without proof, impute to Moses a fault which no other writer has ever com- mitted ? Is it not, on the contrary, more natural to explain this variation by supposing, as we do, that the Book of Genesis is formed of two or three memoirs, joined and stitched together in fragments, the authors of which had each given to God always the same name, but each a different name — one that of Elohim, and the other that of Jehovah or Jehovah-Elohim ? "* Such is the origin of the once famous names "Jehovist" and '' Elohist." The '' Jehovist " was the imaginary writer who knew and used no other name for God than Jehovah; and the ''Elohist" was his equally imaginary companion who knew and used only the name Elohim. We shall see immediately, when we show ''Why the critics cannot succeed," that this theory, lauded as *'a brilliant" and "epoch- making discovery," was baseless as a dream. Our business now is to note that Astruc's hypothesis was immediately adopted by Eichhorn, and laid down as the foundation of his new science — the higher criticism. Eichhorn proceeded to separate the documents, although he strongly maintained, with Astruc, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Those who followed carried the analysis ever further, till the Law was represented as such a patchwork as the world till then had never seen or imagined, and till one may have feared that Lord Macaulay's New Zealander, making researches into extinct British and
♦ Conjectures sur les Memoires Originaux, pp. 11-13.
24 T^l^^ N^"^ Biblical Guide.
European civilisation, might be so misled by critical theories as to conclude that the term "Mosaics " had been introduced into art from the composition of the Pentateuch !
Astruc applied his hypothesis only to Genesis. But that limitation was soon discarded, and the whole Pentateuch was cut up and divided among various imaginary writers, as to whose number the critics were by no means agreed. Once they had divided Genesis into sections, it seemed to them that they could trace a difference in the style of each imagined writer. This new " discovery " led to wonderful results. Men, who could not settle a single case of disputed authorship in the literature of their own time and of their own mother tongue, spoke with the utmost confidence of the authorship of a verse, and sometimes even of a single word, in writings more than 3,000 years old, and which were written in a language which no one now understands perfectly !
But a further principle was introduced by Vatke to give depth to the critical sense of certainty, and to lend still greater boldness to its operations. Hegel had applied the principle of development, or evolu- tion, to human history. Vatke, who had studied under Reuss at Strasburg, now applied the Hegelian philosophy to the explanation of religion. Thought of God, and of immortality, and of duty, like thought of freedom and of human rights, had, he maintained, its first rude beginnings, and afterwards its slow but steadily progressive development. There was first the seed, then the stalk, then the ear, and, last of all, the
The Jehovistic and Elohistic Theories. 25
full corn in the ear. Men began with a belief in the power possessed by various objects. This belief was then transferred to unseen spirits. By-and-bye these spirits were believed to be ruled over by mightier spirits, that is, by gods. These gods were worshipped, and then, in the long process of centuries, came the supreme development of belief that there was one supreme God. And last of all came the final form of faith, that this supreme God was the only God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
With this mighty '* discovery," the last shades of doubt were swept from the critics' path. If you know the exact date when this belief in the unity of God was evolved — if you are certain that it did not come into existence before the Babylonian exile — wLat more do you need to enable you to date with the utmost confidence every Book of the Bible, and every part of every Book ? Wherever you find clear teaching about the unity of God, that section could not, say the critics, have been written before the exile. Consequently the larger part of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and other portions of the Scripture, are at once brought down to the time of Malachi and later. The principle is as simple as the rule of three, and its results are still more extraordinary. But what if the principle is false ? What if its falsehood is glaring to any man who will confront it with honest inquiry? What, then, of the men who without inquiry have taken that falsehood in their right hand, and actually gloried in tramphng under their feet the immaculate Word of God ? Who can
26 The New Biblical Guide.
contemplate without pity the condemnation with which their names will yet be named among men, or think with unmoved soul of the remorse that awaits them when all the Tearfulness of this work shall be realised in the unveiled presence of God ?
WHAT THEY WISH TO DO WITH THE BIBLE*
CHAPTER I. They WISH to Destroy Faith in its Reliability.
THEY generally begin by impressing upon their readers the perfe(5l legitimacy of the criticism of the Scriptures ; and, in order to obtain a verdicft in their favour, they shelter their admittedly new science under the time-honoured name of "Biblical Criticism." Now, I have no wish to fight over a name, or to blame greatly even the unfortunate choice of a word. It is quite true that the term " criticism " seems to assume a good deal. If the Bible is of God, it is our part to receive it, and not to criticise it. But we have been long accustomed to literary criticism, in which there has been little presumption and often very great helpfulness. We have had the criticism of Shake- speare, of Browning, of Tennyson, and of others, and that criticism has almost always been steeped in admiration and even in reverence. It has shown the excellence of the author's work, and how great that load of indebtedness is, under which he has laid us.
28 The Xew Biblical Guide.
It has dwelt upon beauties of expression. It has thrown a flood of light upon what (without its help) would have been, to many, painful obscurities and puzzling references. It has brought fully into view masterliness in plan, and loftiness and breadth of conception.
No one, who values these writers, would dream of objecting to such criticism of their works. And Biblical criticism has in the same way proved itself to be the handmaid of faith. It has been loyal to the Scripture. Instead of rejecting or of questioning its supernatural claims, it has felt these claims to be a call to service. Because of the unmatched glory of the Bible, " Biblical criticism " has felt itself to be the noblest of the sciences. There are felicities of expression here to dwell upon, and thousands of references on which light requires to be shed. Each Book of the Bible has its plan and its purpose. Each has its place in that great unity which we name " the Bible." It is the delight of Biblical criticism to explore and to explain these things. There are obscurities, too, and difficulties, and seeming discrep- ancies and contradictions, which it has investigated and cleared away, and it has shown how many a serious difficulty was only an entrance to fuller light. In a word, as science has revealed the glory of God in His works, so "Biblical criticism" has unveiled the glory of God in His Word.
But "the higher criticism" is not "Biblical criticism." The attempt to pass the one off as the other forcibly reminds us of a tragedy which impressed
TJiey wish to Destroy Faith in its Reliability. 29
us in childhood's tender days. The wolf gets into the good old grandmother's bed ; puts on her cap ; and attempts to draw the little Red Riding Hood of faith within the reach of her fangs by a careful imitation of the kind old lady's voice. But the accents are not the same. There are, indeed, high-sounding phrases about "the Divine Library," " our glorious heritage," etc., etc. But we are told in the same breath that we can no longer retain the beliefs regarding it which were universal in all the churches twenty years ago. The Book, we are told, is not infallible. And then, where " Biblical criticism '* used to explain and to justify, the " higher criticism " seizes every infidel objection and lays it before the reader, often without the slightest intimation that any explanation of it has ever been given, and always with the air of a confident, though sometimes seem- ingly sad, conviction that no explanation is possible which does not admit that there are errors in the Bible. Dr. Driver, who is constantly quoted as the pattern of a modern critic, and who is pointed to as a man who can combine acceptance of the higher criticism with a full acceptance of the Scripture, leaves so little for any soul to rest upon, that one is astonished at the ignorance or the effrontery of the men who presume to quote him as a proof that the higher criticism and faith can dwell together. Are they aware that he adopts Semler's theory of Accom- modation, and insists that our Lord's words about the Old Testament do not express our Lord's own view of its claims ? Here are his words : " Our
30 The New Biblical Guide.
Lord," he says, '' accepted, as the basis of His teaching, the opinions respecting the Old Testament current around Him."* UnwilHng to raise " issues for which the time was not yet ripe," He used, this writer says, the language of those around Him, and seemed to fall in with their ideas, just as Dr. Driver might talk in orthodox society as if he had never doubted the infallibility of the Scriptures! But what should we think of Dr. Driver ? And what shall we say of such a daring libel upon the Faithful and True Witness ?
But this is not all. For, indeed, Dr. Driver has got no further than page i8 of his preface, when he casts the reliability of the Old and the New Testaments to the winds. "Two principles," he says, "will, once they are recognised, solve all the difficulties of the Old Testament;" and these difficulties, he takes upon him to say, "are insuper- able" "upon the traditional view" — that is, upon the view held by the Lord Jesus, by the Prophets, by the Evangelists, and by the Apostles. Now these difficulties, like the unsolved problems of science, command attention and interest. No man can hear with indifference of "two," or even ten, principles, the recognition of which will solve them all. Everyone will be eager to know what these "two principles" are. What are they, then? Here is the reply, which I give in Dr. Driver's own words: "(i) that in many parts of these books" (of the Old Testament) "we have before us traditions''' — the
* Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 19.
They wish to Destroy Faith in its Reliability. 31
italics are Dr. Driver's — "in which the original representation has been insensibly modified, and sometimes (especially in the later books) coloured by the associations of the age in which the author recording it lived ; (2) that some freedom was used by ancient historians in placing speeches or discourses in the mouths of historical characters." It fares somewhat better, he proceeds to say, with the New Testament ; for, he writes : *' while in the Old Testament, for example, there are instances in which we can have no assurance that an event was recorded until many centuries after its occurrence, in the New Testament the interval at most is not more than 30 — 50 years."
These, then, are Dr. Driver's two principles ! But, when these principles shall be " recognised," what will be left us ? In the Old Testament, traditions — traditions, too, be it remarked, which have not come down to us even in their purity, but which have been "modified" and "coloured." What is the exadl historical value of the Catholic " Lives of the Saints ? " And who would concern himself with any attempt to solve the difficulties of an " omnium gatherum " like that ? How could such a compilation escape being filled with inconsistencies and contradidlions ? That principle is quite enough, without any second, to make a complete clearance of Old Testament difficulties. For we have no longer got any Bible to defend: we have no history even left us to under- stand. He imagines that he has made a notable concession in the case of the New Testament.
32 The New Biblical Guide.
What is the worth of it ? People have been known to forget, to imagine, to exaggerate, to mix up, and to mistake, even within the short interval of thirty to fifty years. And if this rag-basket is all that now stands for the Old and the New Testaments, will Dr. Driver and his fellow-critics kindly tell us where we shall find "the Oracles of God?" We can sometimes tell a man's parentage by his looks Does not the new criticism strikingly resemble the old infidelity ?
What this is to mean for pulpit teaching may be seen in Dr. Horton's books. He is a pupil and trustful follower of Professor Driver. Like Dean Farrar and others, he retains the old phraseology re- garding the Scriptures, with an added unctuousness which seems to indicate that phrases have to be strengthened that they may do duty for banished things. He speaks of "Our Inspired Histories" — the capital letters are the Doctor's; of "an Over- ruHng Spirit directing their composition;" of "the Inspired Book;'' etc.j etc. Now mark what kind of things these "Inspired Histories" are represented to be by Dr. Horton. After accusing the writer of the Chronicles, for example, of wilfully suppressing, mis-stating, and exaggerating facts, he says : " The most startling exaggeration, however, is in the price which David paid for the threshingfloor. This, in II. Samuel xxiv. 24, is 50 shekels of silver, in I. Chron. xxi. 25, 600 shekels of gold. It almost looks as if the later authority had thought David's acknowledgment insufficient, and had wished to
They wish to Destroy Faith in its Reliability. 33
present the great king's generosity in a larger light."* Where, then, was the "Overruling Spirit directing the composition'.' of Chronicles? And what is the precise value of such ''Inspired Histories?" But the passage suggests other questions, which are equally grave. The reader will notice that there is not the slightest hint that any explanation has ever been given of this difficulty. Dr. Horton knows that there are explanations which have satisfied multitudes of Christian men of well-balanced minds and, some of them, of far greater learning than Dr. Driver. Why, then, is no hint dropped that a solution of the difficulty exists ? Is not this " suppression " of a very unworthy kind ? But if the reader will turn to the passages and peruse them afresh, there is another question which, I think, he will ask with much astonishment, and with not a little indig- nation. It is this : Did Dr. Horton read the passages in their connection ? Did he read even the words upon which he commented ? Or did he quote them from Dr. Driver, taking it for granted that, when a critic condemns, there can be no appeal ? The things purchased are not the same. In 11. Samuel xxiv. 24, we read that " David bought the threshing- floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver." In I. Chron. xxi. 22, we are told that David said to Oman," Grant me the place of this threshingfloor," and in verse 25 we read, " So David gave to Oman for THE PLACE 600 shekels of gold by weight." Here the words, "the place," which are kept to
* Inspiration and the Bible, p. 146.
34 The New Biblical Guide.
so persistently in Chronicles, are enough to suggest that there may have been two parts of the transaction, and that Samuel gives us one of them and Chronicles the other. David wanted immediate accommodation for an altar and a sacrifice. He received them and paid for them. But he had also perceived that this Divinely-indicated place of accepted sacrifice for guilt was the long-looked-for Temple-site, in which God should "put His name." He must, therefore, also make provision for this, and so " the place of the threshingfloor," the whole hill-farm — the entire mountain-top, which must henceforth be holy unto the Lord — must be secured. For this a worthy price is paid — '' 600 shekels of gold by weight.'' A glance at the context, in which the statements occur, leads one to ask how any man could have missed that explanation. In Samuel nothing is said about the Temple building, or of David's preparation for it. That part of Scripture has in view only the ending of the plague. In Chronicles, on the other hand, David's preparation for the building of the Temple is the sole theme of the closing chapters of the Book, and the passage about the purchase is the introduction to this closing section of the history. Chapter xxii. begins : " Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel." Then follow the account of the preparations made for the future structure, and the arrangements for the service which was to make its courts dear and memorable to Israel and to the world. How could any man miss seeing this, or,
They wish to Destroy Faith in its Reliability. 35
seeing it, keep silent concerning it, and parade this so-called "difBculty" as if any explanation were an utter impossibility?
The same course of suppression of information^ which, in justice to his readers and in fairness to those whose most sacred convictions he seeks to discredit, he ought not to have withheld, is pursued throughout. His one purpose is to show that in the Bible we have a mass of unreliability, and that, in- stead of it being the one infallible Book, it is among the most fallible of all. Take one other example. "The magnificence of Solomon is set in a dazzling light," he sa3's, "when the 'twenty measures of pure oil' promised to Hiram (i. Kings v. 11), appear as '20,000 baths' (=2,000 measures), besides the doubled quantity of grain and the 20,000 baths of wine." * In this case, it is simply impossible that Dr. Horton can have read these passages (i. Kings v. 11, and II. Chronicles ii. 10) with any care. In Kings, the Scripture states what was ''sent to Hiram," the King of Tyre. When we turn to Clironicles, we are amazed to find, in the face of this alleged indefensible con- tradiction, that it is an entirely different matter that is spoken of. Here, the Scripture is dealing with the provision made /or Hiram's servants ! "And, behold,"" says Solomon, " I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, 20,000 measures of beaten wheat, and 20,000 measures of barley, and 20,000 baths of wine, and 20,000 baths of oil " (ii. Chron. ii. 10).
* Ibid., p. 147.
36 The New Biblical Guide.
How was it possible to read the words and not see that Kings and Chronicles were not speaking of the same thing ? Those, who console themselves with the belief that the New Testament will be left them though the Old should fall, may certainly point to what seem to be authoritative utterances. They may recall statements to the effect that the battle has been fought out over the New Testament, and that faith has been triumphant. These assur- ances are delusive. The same uncertainty is im- ported into the Gospels. The theory now adopted, after trying every other save that of the full inspiration of God, is that later evangelists copied an earlier Gospel — that of Mark. What the critics teach as to the kind of work they gave us, will be seen from the following: — ''A later evangelist," says Davidson, "never thought of an earlier one being infallibly correct ; any more than he supposed himself to be infallible.* Using the records of his predecessors, he followed his own method, which was not a critic's, but a collector's ; not the habit of a literary man, but of one unaccustomed to commit events to writing, of one unconcerned about faults or defects. What we think important, as marring consistency and creating difficulty, was unimportant to them. The little value they attached to our present perplexities in the Gospels made them indifferent to their avoidance or elucidation."!
* He evidently forgot Luke's claim that he "had perfect understanding of all things from the very first " (anothen, literally, "from above").— Luke i. 3.
+ Introduction to the Study of the Neui Testament, by Samuel Davidson, D.D. vol. L, pp. 453, 454.
They Blot Out the Earlier Bible History. 37
Plainly, Dr. Davidson could himself have w^ritten a much more accurate Gospel ! But I need not dwell upon this. I content myself with the simple state- ment that the reader will now see that the words which stand as the title to this chapter are amply justified. The aim of the critics and of their followers is to destroy faith in the reliability of the Bible.
CHAPTER II.
They wish to Destroy the Unity of the Bible, AND TO Blot Out its Earlier History.
ONE stupendous testimony to the supernatural origin of the Bible is the fa(5l that, though it has come into existence *' at sundry times and in divers manners," it is, nevertheless, a complete whole, having beginning, middle, and end. Through all these parts, written by men far sundered in time, the story of Israel and of man is told from its commencement to its close. In the opening pages of the Bible, the scheme of salvation is predicted; and its final words show the glorious accomplishment of God's eternal plan. I need not linger upon this characteristic, which no other book in the world shares. I mention it only to say that, if we are to believe the critics, this marvellous unity lies shattered -at their feet.
38 The New Biblical Guide,
When we take up the Bible as the new school would have us receive it, we find that the blue pencil, so to speak, has been drawn through page after page. Every chapter in Genesis, in Exodus, in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Deuteronomy, in Joshua, and in Judges, has been erased. The same mark lies upon the earlier parts of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Wellhausen and Kuenen, the great *' authorities" to whom all the new school bow, tell us that there is no history of Israel which takes us beyond 800 B.C. Up to the times of Hosea and Amos, we have our feet, they say, upon some solid groundwork of fa(5l. But beyond that limit, they tell us, all is bog and mist. Kuenen, while repudiating the contention that the sacred records are rejected on account of their recording miracles, says : " Inde- pendently of the question whether the Israelites were miraculously fed with manna and quails, the account of their forty years' wandering through the peninsula of Sinai must be set aside as unhistorical. . . Indeed, the representation of Israel's earliest history presented to us in the books named after Moses and Joshua, must be rejected as in its entirety impossible." *
A few pages earlier he takes great pains to show how utterly unreliable this earlier portion of the Scripture history must be held to be. " Our faith in Israel's own accounts of her career," he says, " is at once severely shaken by the discovery that by far the greater number of those accounts did not proceed from contemporaries, but were written very long
♦ The Religion of Israel, vol. I., pp. 21, 22.
Tkey Blot Out the Earlier Bible History. 39
after the events of which they treat . . . this appHes especially to the accounts of the period of the Judges, the conquest of Canaan, the times of Moses and the patriarchs. They are separated by an interval of many centuries from the facts which they alone communicate to us. . . On the most favourable supposition . . a period of more than five centuries'' (the italics are Kuenen's) "inter- venes between the event and the earliest account, while a very large majority of the narratives — and just those which are very important for our object — are at least two centuries younger. Now let it be care- fully noted what this means. . . . The oldest accounts of the Mosaic time were as far removed from Israel's law-giver as we Dutchmen are from the beginning of the Hoek and Kabeljauw quarrels. Suppose that we knew of the latter only by traditions,^ which had never been committed to writing up to this time ; should we have the boldness to trust our- selves to the historian, who now wrote them for the first time, as a safe guide ?" *
Some people, who like to see good in everything, and who are slow to admit that there is evil in anything, used to remark when the critical views were first aired in this country : *' Well, what does it matter who wrote the Pentateuch and Joshua, or when they were written ? Opinions regarding date and authorship do not alter the contents of a book. The Bible is still God's Book, no matter how, when, or by whom it was communicated." The critics
* Ibid., pp. 16-18.
40 The New Biblical Guide.
have now supplied the answer, and have shown these friends, who so much disHke being reckoned as ^'alarmists," that the letting in of waters is some- times followed by a devastating flood. The flood has followed in this case. The critics knew from the first all that depended upon late authorship. Late authorship meant dependence upon tradition, or upon legend, instead of upon observation. Instead of testimony at first hand (as that of Moses and of Joshua would have been), we have now, according to the critics, nothing at all that any sane man can regard as worthy of the name of testimony. Between the time of Moses and the reign of Josiah, about nine centuries elapsed. Nine centuries from our own time will take us back to the year looo of our era — to the time, say, of Canute of England (1016) and Malcolm II. of Scotland (1003). Let us suppose that some one was now to write the story of these ancient monarchs for the first time, and to do his utmost to gather everything that floating traditions and local legends could supply. Who would dream of regarding the result as history ? And who would ever think of quoting it as a record of fad^s ? The late date is the critical mine dug under the citadel of truth. Let it once be fired, and the whole strud^ure subsides in irretrievable ruin.
This is, therefore, one of the chief expedients of the higher criticism. Some years ago Canon Cheyne published a startling appeal in one of our monthlies. He strongly urged leading Christian teachers to confer together, and, by a timely compromise with
They Blot Out the Earlier Bible History. 41
the critics, save something out of the wreck of the Bible. By way of showing how far these representa- tives of the churches would require to go, he declared that it was imperative that all the earlier history of Israel should be utterly abandoned. Let no teacher of youth, he said, henceforth speak as if he knows, or suffer the children to imagine that he knows, anything whatever of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Everything up to that point would have to be surrendered absolutely. The creation of the world and of man ; his fall, and the secret of our sin and of our woe ; the Deluge ; the call of Abraham — all must cease to be taught or to be believed. Only upon these terms could anything at all be saved; and it was only possible to secure these terms by immediate acftion. Further delay would inevitably be fatal, and all would be lost.
When we turn to Wellhausen's History of Israel, we begin to understand the Canon's alarm. This leader of the new school leaves us little indeed. " The Law of the Lord," in which, says the Psalmist, the righteous finds all his delight, is whittled down to something less than the ten commandments — how much less, Wellhausen, at the time of writing his paper for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, had not quite decided. But one thing was absolutely certain. Moses knew nothing whatever of the Books which Jew and Christian had so long assigned to him, and of which our Lord again and again cited him as the author. They were a late — a very late — production, and are a collection of legends and inventions. Isaac and
42 The New Biblical Guide.
Jacob never had any existence. Abraham may have actually lived ; but, if he did, he had no connection with those entirely mythical personages. But how then, asks the reader, were they thus connected together, and how did they get into the story of God's people ? That matter, reply the critics, is easily explained. The Israelites found the names in the Canaanitish legends, just as the conquerors of England became acquainted with the native legends about Kmg Arthur. The Israelites took up these stories and retailed them as their own. The stories gradually changed to suit their new patrons. The Canaanitish heroes were represented as forefathers of the tribes of Israel. What more natural, then, than that the story-tellers should interweave the fortunes of their nswly-found progenitors one with another, and that Abraham and Isaac, and then Isaac and Jacob, should be represented as father and son? There is not one solitary scrap of evidence to sup- port this extraordinary imagination : there is nothing that even suggests it. But such slight circumstances as these form no impediments to the higher criticism. This is Wellhausen's theory; and that is believed to be enough to secure it respect and acceptance, and to blot out from the page of history the entire record of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!
We shall see, m another part of this volume, how marvellously God has made true science answer this compound of learned extravagance and of man wor- ship. I am now only answering the question as to what it is that the critics wish to do with the Bible.
They Blot Qui the Earlier Bible History. 43
Canon Cheyue had the hope that, if we should all agree to give up the patriarchs, we might be allowed to retain as history what is told us in the Penta- teuch regarding their descendants. But we did not respond ; we lost our opportunity ; and the critics have decreed the destruction of the whole. Dr. Driver is exceedingly careful to say nothing that will shock his readers. He is generally content to let them draw the conclusions to which, like a skilful counsel, he does his best to shut them up. But even he cannot refrain from indicating his conviction that all the story of the giving of the Law through Moses at Sinai is a myth. For example, Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood ! " The insti- tution," he says, "which was among the last to reach a settled state, appears to have been the priesthood. Till the age of Deuteronomy " (that is, according to the critics, the time of Josiah, goo years after Moses) ''the right of exercising priestly offices must have been enjoyed by every member of the tribe of Levi."* It was not till after the destruction of the high places by Josiah, say the critics, that the family of Zadok insisted upon this service being confined to them ! This action " was endorsed," writes Dr. Driver, "by Ezekiel !" The proof of this is Ezekiel's prophetic delineation of a Temple that has never yet been built, and that will not be built until the Lord is King in Zion !
But let us not lose sight of the grave fact that even this " moderate critic " fullv admits and teaches that
* Introduction to the Literature cf the Old Testament, p. i^6.
44 The New Biblical Guide.
the acceptance of the higher criticism means the complete surrender of behef in the earlier Books of the Bible. It is the critics' mission to wreck all faith in them and to declare that the history of the foundation of God's kingdom in the earth is a pure invention. There was no thought of the Cross and no preparation for it. There was no Passover and no exemption from death behind the shelter of the blood (Exodus xii.). There was no selection and consecration of Aaron and of his family for the priesthood (Exodus xxviii.). There was no giving of the tribe of Levi to him for the service of the priesthood (Numbers iii. 5-9). David's arrangement of the descendants of Aaron into four-and-twenty courses must be equally mythical (i. Chronicles xxiv.) ; and all the Old Testament references to the selection of Aaron and his seed, and all the New Testament references to it, must either be a lamentable mistake, or a still more lamentable deception.
But it is not the priesthood, the sacrifices, the feasts, and the types alone that go. The whole history of the making of the nation, and of the founding of the kingdom of God in its midst, goes with them. There may have been a departure, or even an escape, of Israel from Egypt. But, if there was, we may be sure, say the critics, that the miracles recorded in Exodus never happened. The story of the wilderness wandering is a similar bit of romance. There never was any manifestation of God at Sinai. No Tabernacle was commanded to be made, nor was any ever erected. Instead of the Temple having
They Blot Out the Earlier Bible History. 45
been constructed on the plan of the Tabernacle, the romance of the Tabernacle was moulded upon the structure of the Temple; ''for the truth is," writes Wellhausen, " that the Tabernacle is the copy, not the prototype of the Temple at Jerusalem." There was no ark, no altar, and no sacrifice arranged by God, nor made, reared, and offered by Israel. There were no chastisements and no deliverances. The whole of the incidents, with which the Pentateuch is packed, are a collection of falsehoods, invented to exalt the priesthood. Again I remind the reader that I am keeping strictly to the business now in hand. The overwhelming refutation of these blas- phemies will follow in due time. We shall see how experts, worthy of the name, have followed the steps of Israel in the desert, and found the Pentateuch to be a record stamped on every page with the impress of truth. We shall see also how from other sides the same testimony is borne. But meanwhile we have to note the wonderful opportuneness of these discoveries, and how, but for them, the critics might have shattered the faith of countless multitudes in the Word of God. Nothing would have been left to us but this mass of alleged falsehood and impos- ture. For, not only would the earlier history have gone ; the more recent history, seeing that it accepted the old, would have stood convicted of ignorance or of deceitfulness, equally fatal to its claims.
46 The New Biblical Guide.
CHAPTER III.
They Seek to Destroy Faith in the Integrity AND the Genuineness of the Biblical Books.
WHEN Astruc formulated his theory as to the Elohistic and Jehovistic documents from which, he suggested, Genesis was compiled, he had no doubt whatever as to Moses being the author of that Book as well as of the rest of the Pentateuch. His hypothesis only attempted to show where Moses got his information.
Eichhorn, the father of the higher criticism, was equalty untroubled by any suspicion as to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. In his Introdiiciion to the Old Testament, he scouts the idea that Moses was not its author. He says : " From Joshua down to Ezra and Nehemiah, right through all the centuries, we have the clearest testimonies to the existence of these Books. Who," he asks, "could have written them? ' Ezra,' cry their foes — ' Ezra, after the Babylonian exile' ! " But, since there are references to the Law in all the other Old Testament Books, he rightly argues that Ezra must, in this case, have also written all the other Books of the Old Testament, a task which, he adds, " plainly exceeds all human power." Going further back to Josiah's time, and dealing with the suggestion that the Law was forged when it was said
They Destroy Faith in the Bible. 47
to have been discovered, he inquires : " If the priests j of that time forged these Books, whence came the Egyptian spirit which they breathe — especially the second Book ?" That is a question which the critics have not yet answered, and which, indeed, they have declined to face. He then proves the Mosaic author- ship by three propositions, to the support of which he brings all the resources of his critical sagacity and vast learning. His argument is worth summarising. It is as follows : — I. These Books are older than the other Old Testament writings. This he supports by the fact (i), that it is favoured by the language in which they are written, which abounds in older forms ; (2), he who planned these Books cannot have lived later than Moses ; (3), Ezra cannot have composed them ; (4), they were forged neither by the priests in the time of Josiah nor by those sent to the Samaritans; (5), they were not composed between the times of David and those of Joshua. II. He then shows that Moses could have been their author ; and. III. that only such a man as Moses could have , written the Books.
But the critics have thrown to the winds the reasonings of their founder, and have, step by step, accepted the positions of the infidelity against which he contended. At the present time, the authorship of Moses has completely vanished. The very earliest part of the Pentateuch (and that only a small portion) came into existence five or six hundred years after the supposed Legislator of Israel had passed away. Then came Deuteronomy,
48 The New Biblical Guide,
forged in the time of Josiah, some 300 years later; and last of all came the latest forgery, attributed to Ezra, 200 years later still. The Pentateuch is said, indeed, to be the Law of Ezra, and not the Law of Moses. And yet it is all ascribed to Moses by these supposed authors ! What kind of Bible would the critics leave us if they had their way? Would it be God's book, or the devil's ?
Eichhorn argued that, since the other Books refer to the Law, the Law must have been earlier. The critics have felt the force of the objection. How have they met it ? They have removed it, by bringing most of the other Books down to a later time. " We have not," says Dr. Giles, one of the English popularisers of the higher criticism, "the Hebrew writings in their original state, but . . . they are a compilation, put together after the nation had returned . . from Babylon."* These remarks form the conclusion of his chapter on Joshua. Judges, too, was " written after the inhabitants of Judea had been carried captives to Babylon." The Book of Ruth, he says, was " compiled out of original papers, like all the rest of the Jewish history, after the captivity of Babylon."
The Books of Samuel share the same fate. We do not have them, says Dr. Driver, in their original form. They are the work of earlier and later writers. "In the older narrative" there are "sub- sequent insertions." "The entire phenomena," he writes, "appear to be best explained by the supposi-
Hebnw and Christian Records, vol. I., p. 154.
They Destroy Faith in the Bible, 49
tion that the basis consists of a narrative which was afterwards expanded," etc. " The song of Hannah," he says, "is not early in style, and seems unsuited to Hannah's position."*
The Books of Kings suffer, we are assured, from the same strange fate ; for this " Hebrew Litera- ture," of which Dr. Driver treats, is utterly unlike any other literature under the sun. Elsewhere men handed down earlier works as they found them. If they wanted to add anything, they did not, Hke the cuckoo, lay their eggs in another's nest. They wrote their own books, and gave them as their own to their contemporaries and to posterity. But here, in the highest literature of all, the critics assure us that they see through the dimness of the ages ghostly forms of forgers, editors, and compilers, meddling and muddling everywhere. Speaking of i. Kings, Dr. Driver says : "The parts of chapters iii. to xi., which have been added, or expanded, by the com- piler, are distinguishable without much diffi- culty."t We meet such expressions as " to the same hand," which did something, *' is due " some- thing else ; and, according to the critics, the work of expositors, and by-and-bye, we suppose, of preachers and of Bible classes, will consist — not in any attempt to understand God's message — but to rummage in this bundle of shreds and patches, and to give every man back his own. As for messages of God, we must then grope in the darkness of our own inner consciousness ; for we can hardly expect
* Introduction, pp. 164-168. + Ibid., 180.
50 The New Biblical Guide.
to find Divine light and truth where the laws of ordinary honesty are outraged on every page !
But it is not the historical Books only which are mangled in this fashion. Every one has heard of ^' the two Isaiahs." The first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah were declared to be the only portion of the Book which was really penned by that prophet, and the rest from the 40th chapter onward was said to have been written by some great unknown. This idea was long ago riddled by unanswerable obje(5lions ; but it is the critics' way to ignore all adversaries. They have changed their theory, indeed, but they have changed it for the worse, atid not for the better. The first thirty-nine chapters are now divided between Isaiah and a number of other but unknown writers. Speaking, for example, of chapter xxiv. 1-14, Driver says: "Modern critics agree generally in the opinion that this prophecy is not Isaiah's." Of another portion, he writes : " The prophecy can only be attributed to an author living towards the close of the exile" — that is, about two hundred years after Isaiah was dead. Even Jeremiah does not escape the critical hacking and hewing. Hardly a Psalm can now, with the consent of the critics, be assigned to David, though so many of them bear his name. Such a book as that of Job, which was declared by earlier critics to be a distindl unity, is now assigned to some three or four different writers. In all the Books, too, alterations upon the text are made without the slightest regard to the testimony of the manuscripts. The critics have dispensed with all
They Banish Inspiration. 51
such laborious methods of inquiry ; and wherever, in their possible ignorance of Hebrew, they meet an obscurity or a difficult phrase, they substitute something of their own invention. Thus that sub- lime expression in Job of the Church's hope: "I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c., is cut bodily out of the text and placed beneath the page as a foot-note. Of course, there is not a shadow of ground for this in the manuscripts. But the critic has made up his mind that such a clear note of confidence as that is was utterly impossible in Job's time, and so out the passage must go ! The reader will conclude with me that, whatever this style of criticism may be, it is not scholarship.
CHAPTER IV.
They wish to Banish the Idea of the Inspiration of the Bible.
THE Bible itself has explicitly stated its own claims. When Paul answers the question: *'What advantage, then, hath the Jew?" his reply is : " Chiefly because that unto them were committed the Oracles of God " (Romans iii. 2). This is an expression which leaves no loophole of escape to those who would lessen the miracle of Divine Inspira- tion. Speaking merely as an expositor. Principal Moule expands the Apostle's answer thus : " The Oracles of God, the Utterances of God, His unique
52
The New Biblical Guide.
Message to man ' through His prophets, in the Holy Scriptures.' Yes, here was something which gave to the Jew an ' advantage ' without which the others would either have had no existence, or no significance. He was the trustee of Revelation. In his care was lodged the Book by which man was to live and die ; through which he was to know immeasurably more about God and about himself than he could learn from all other informants put together." * The words cover the largest claim which has ever been made for the Bible. Not only are the thoughts from God; but the utterances, the expressions, the phrases, are His. The words in which the thoughts are clad are God's words. In view of what is to follow, it is well to note that this claim is made for the Scripture committed to the Jew, that is, for the Old Testament.
While they are thus said to have proceeded from God, man's real authorship is, on the other hand, distin(ftly denied. We read in ii. Peter i. 21 : " No prophecy ever came by the will of man : but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost." I quote here, from the Revised Version, which in this instance gives the force of the Greek more exa(5tly. These words mean, and can only mean, that no part of the Old Testament is due merely to a man's desire to speak a word of consolation or of rebuke to the men of his time. No part of it came at any time from man's will, but " men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost."
There are many like statements, both in the Old
* The Epistle to the Ramcins, pp. 79, 80.
They Banish Inspiration. 53
and in the New Testaments. Moses had been favoured
with personal access to God. God had spoken with
him face to face, as a man with his friend. Moses
passes away, and Joshua takes the great Law-giver's
place. He has to bear the same heavy burden as
Moses bore, and to be strengthened and guided for
the same unselfish and unending service. But this
open fellowship with God is not to be his. Why ?
Because God speaks now in the Word which Moses
has written. ^'This Book of the Law shall not
depart out of thy mouth ; but thou shalt meditate
therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to
do according to all that is written therein : for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou
shalt have good success " (Joshua i. 8). In the first
Psalm we are told of three things that the righteous
man does not do, and of one thing that he does do.
This is that "his delight is in the Law of the Lord;
and in His Law doth he meditate day and night."
With a soul in contacSl with that Word of the Lord,
everything follows that blesses man and that serves
God ; for in this way the roots of his life are steeped
in God's life. The Law is God's expressed mind and
heart. God communes with us there in these Oracles
that are not dead words but living things, touches of
the Divine fingers, breathings of the Divine Spirit.
Our Lord's words, "the Scripture cannot be broken," will be remembered (John x. 35), and those other in which both the Old and the New Testa- ments are summarised : " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the
54 The New Biblical Guide,
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." It is God that spoke in Moses, and in David, and in Malachi, and in Christ. And so the Word placed upon the sacred page is unalterable in its very form. It cannot be "loosed," taken down, and shaped anew. It retains eternally the form which was given to it at the first. In none of these descriptions is there the slightest hesitation, or uncertainty, or haziness. Clearly and emphatically the words of the Bible are claimed as the words of God. They are His Oracles, His Utterances. But, when we come to those who would fain find a place for the higher criticism among the Churches, all is changed. Dr. Horton devotes twenty-four pages of his book. Inspiration and the Bible, to the question, " What is Inspiration ? " He himself sums up the result of these nearly 8,000 words very fairly in the following sentence : " We have an Inspired Book before us, but we are not yet clear as to what must be included in our idea of Inspiration"! * But, if Dr. Horton, in twenty-four pages devoted to the question, " What is Inspira- tion?" cannot tell us what in his judgment Inspiration is, what means this mass of verbiage ? Why use 8,000 words to tell us nothing ? The simple explana- tion is that he is endeavouring to perform the very difficult feat of running with the hare, while at the same time hunting with the hounds. Like Paterson Smyth t and Dean Farrar, J he does not wish openly
* P- 25- â– |- How God Inspired the Bible. X The Bible : Its Meaning and Supremacy.
They Banish Inspiration. 55
to deny that the Scriptures are *'the Utterances of God," although he effecftually repudiates their infalli- biHty. But the men for whose teaching he desires to find acceptance, trouble themselves with no disguise. According to them, the pretensions of the Bible to Divine origin lie shattered irretrievably at the feet of the critics. It is the shattering of these claims, Kuenen tells us, that has made the higher criticism possible. It had first to show, or try to show, that the claims of the sacred Books of Israel were as badly founded as those of the sacred books of the Hindoos. He broadly asserts that the Old Testament is not, in any peculiar sense, the Word of God. * In accordance with this declaration, he sets the idea, that the Bible contains real predictions, entirely aside. ''Prophecy," he says, *'is a human phenomenon proceeding from Israel, diredted to Israel." t And the same conviction is only too evident even where it is not confessed. When Professor Bruce speaks of " the defects of the prophets," and dwells upon what he thinks is the "moral crudity" of their conceptions and upon their *' one-sided emphasis," J how is it possible to receive this " moral crudity " and " one-sided em- phasis " as a message from God ? It is not to be imagined that Dr. Bruce would presume to correct his Maker ; and the only possible conclusion which can, accordingly, be drawn from his corrections of the prophets is that they gave what were simply their own conceptions — in other words, that, even where
* Prophets and Prophecy, p. 593. + Ibid., p. 4. J The Gifford Lectures.
56 The New Biblical Guide,
the Bible most emphatically professes to give us God's word, it gives us only man's.
That this is the only logical position for the higher critics, and that the foundations of their so-called ** science " are utterly irreconcilable with any real belief in the Inspiration of the Bible, will be shown in our next chapter.
CHAPTER V.
They would Rob the Bible even of
Honesty.
THAT is, surely, a sad ending for men who set out with the promise that they would help us to rise to higher views of the glory of the Bible. Professor Denny, in a paper read before a Belfast Conference, said that criticism called upon us " to resign what we could not but resign;" but that in exchange it would "regain for us at first hand a conception of the authority of Scripture, which would serve all our purposes as Christians, evangelists, and theologians." But, when we can estimate what claim a forgery has upon our respe6l and our obedience, we shall have gained a right idea of the authority which criticism leaves to the Old and the New Testaments.
They Rob the Bible of Honesty. 57
The extraordinary thing about these retailers of critical ideas, is that they require to be reasoned with upon this matter. The critics themselves do not trouble to safeguard the honour of the Bible. They state their conclusions, and either honestly accept the result, or leave the reader to draw the inevitable inference. They make no secret of the fac5t that their so-called science would leave the Bible no moral authority whatever. Some years ago a Jew, named Shapira, a resident in Jerusalem and a dealer in curios, stated that a most ancient manu- script of Deuteronomy had come into his possession. It eclipsed in point of antiquity, he said, the most prized treasures of the great Libraries. The authori- ties of the British Museum were prepared to purchase it ; and with all due care the precious MS. was con- veyed to London. Scholars were set to work to advise the Trustees as to its value. The first glance showed its importance, as the document was strik- ingly in accord with the critical theories. But closer examination left those who were inclined to hail its advent, wiser, and possibly sadder, men. The MS. was a palpable forgery. Who cares to know where it is to-day ? Would it not be an impertinence to enquire its exadl value for the scholars who wish to ascertain the readings of the original ? Who would ever dream of consulting it ? If Shapira's were the only manuscript which the world had ever seen of Deuteronomy, would not the suggestion that it should be regarded as having authority over the human conscience, and that it should be read in our churches
58 The New Biblical Guide,
and be received by all men as the "Word of God, be regarded as an indication of insanity ?
And yet that is the very position in which criticism would place the Book of Deuteronomy which we now possess. It tells us that this Book was really forged, when it is said to have been discovered by Hilkiah, the high priest, in the days of Josiah. The account of its alleged discovery was, according to the critics, an added lie. Kuenen says*: "It may now be accepted as proved, that the discourses and laws of Deuteronomy were put into the mouth of Moses, and that this was done about the time at which we see this Book make its appearance. . . . It is thus certain that an author of the seventh century B.C. . . . has made Moses himself pro- claim that which, in his opinion, it was expedient in the real interests of the Mosaic party to announce and introduce. At a time when notions about literary property were in their infancy, an a(ftion of this kind was not regarded as at all unlawful. Men used to perpetrate such fidtions as these without any qualms of conscience."
The utter baselessness of this accusation will be made manifest by-and-bye. Meantime, it is enough to notice that the critics would leave us here not even an honest producftion. They would stamp as a daring and heartless forgery a Book which our Lord quoted as God's Word, and in which Moses warns solemnly against the slightest alteration in what is written, saying : " Ye shall not add unto the Word
* Religion of Israel, rol. H., pp. 18, 19.
They Rob the Bible of Honesty, 59
which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it." But the Book of Deuteronomy does not stand alone in the critics' Bible. A still graver charge is brought against the rest of the Pentateuch. It is daring enough to put into the lips of Moses words which he never uttered. But what shall we say of words put into the mouth of God ? Yet the critics tell us that the Pentateuch is simply a glaring and persistent instance of this very blasphemy. For a purpose — and that the base one of exalting themselves and establishing their authority over the people — the priests are said to have represented God as giving through Moses Laws which were never spoken by God, and of which Moses knew nothing !
But it will be remembered that the Pentateuch and Joshua contain more than the Laws given by God through the mediator, Moses, the type of Him that was to come. There is, in addition, an entire history of Israel, which has ever been held to be the most important part of that nation's story. All of it, say the critics, is additional falsehood and imposture. It was necessary to fill in the picfture to make this tissue of lies wear the appearance of truth ; and so one incident after another was imagined and added. It was needful also, they say, to show by examples what the Laws meant, and how they were to be enforced; and so fresh incidents were invented to make all this clear, and to impose further upon the people. Here is how Wellhausen speaks — evidently with the full approval of his
6o The New Biblical Guide.
editor, Dr. Robertson Smith — of that which, after the critical dissed^ion of the Pentateuch has done its worst, remains as its chief portion — "the Priestly Code." Referring to the wide divergence of critical views regarding its age, he says: "It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely ; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to hide its own, . . . It has actually been successful with its moving tabernacle, its wandering camp, and other archaic details, in so concealing the true date of its composition that its many inconsistencies with what we know" have escaped detection! What name would best suit these imaginary rascals, and what place in any honest man's dwelling could be assigned to their handiwork, I shall leave the reader to judge. It is enough for me to say that the last thing any honest man would dream of, would be to make it the companion of his most sacred moments, or to place it in the hands of those who desire to know anything of Him who cannot lie.
I need not dwell upon the critical theories regard- ing other Books, such as Chronicles, Daniel, and Esther. It will be enough to show that even the New Testament would not be left us, if the critics had their way. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus, writes Dr. Horton, " cause great difficulty, not only l)ecause of their contents, but also because in the life of the apostle, as it is known to us, there is actually no point at which we can place them. . . . Again, there are the letters to the Ephesians and the
They Rob the Bible of Honesty, 6i
Colossians; in the present state of criticism, we are hardly justified in assuming that they were written by St. Paul without entering into a long discussion." But he adds, that, though they should be forgeries, they have "an intrinsic value." They "remain a possession for the Church, a light and an instru(5lion, a revelation, though the writer should be some un- known disciple of the great apostle, who wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, but preferred to write under the name of his master, rather than obtruding his own personality " *
What! moved by the Holy Ghost, and descending to imposture ! The objecftion was too patent to be passed over, and so Dr. Horton continues : " * But,' exclaims the anxious and puzzled Bible reader, ' this questioning of Pauline authorship would represent the letters as forgeries and impostures ! ' The answer to that difficulty is to be found in the better know- ledge of the hterary practice of the Ancient World. It is perfe(ftly certain that a disciple of St. Paul's, anxious to communicate his master's teaching to the Churches, would not hesitate to veil his own hand under the form of a letter from his master; what we should call 'forgery,' he would call modest3^" t I need not say that this is a libel upon antiquity. It is enough to remark that, if the critics were to have their way, we should not only cease to have an honest Bible, but should have to think of the Spirit of truth and holiness as being a participator in falsehood and fraud !
* Inspiration and the Bible, pp. 26, 27. f Ibid., pp. 28, 92.
62 The New Biblical Guide,
CHAPTER VI.
They would Deprive the Bible of its Place
AS A Revelation of God.
THIS is not only the outcome of the Higher Criticism, but is also the very hypothesis with which it begins, and the principle which it never for a moment abandons. It is, in short, the breath of its lips. The Bible is for it a merely natural production. The critics assume that the Bible has come into existence as other books have come into existence, and that its origin and contents are to be explained in the same way as the origin and contents of other books. Taking this ground of pure naturalism, and treating behef in the supernatural origin of the Bible as a superstition to be ignored and not to be reasoned with, everything is explained from this standpoint, and everything is arranged in accordance with it. Thus, to take one example, the mention of Cyrus by name, in Isaiah xlv. i, is treated as a con- clusive proof that that chapter (and, indeed, the whole of the closing twenty-seven chapters) was written after the exile. An ordinary believer finds no difficulty in the naming of Cyrus 200 years be- fore his career began. The inspiration of God has worked bigger marvels than that. But that is an explanation which "no scholar" could entertain! The name is therefore taken as an incontrovertible proof that the latter chapters of Isaiah were not
They Deny the Fact of Revelation. 63
penned by that prophet, but are the work of some one who wrote after Cyrus had inscribed his name on the page of history.
But the critics have been quite expHcit upon this matter. They leave us in no doubt whatever that, in their opinion, the Bible contains no special message from God, nor any special unveiling of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The religion of Israel, which is detailed with such minuteness in Scripture, attributes every one of its minute details to God. They were all God- given. Such is the testimony of the Scripture. Let us now hear that of the critics. '' For us," writes Kuenen, while speaking of ''the principal religions" of the world, that is, of Hinduism, Buddhism, Con- fucianism, Mohammedanism, and the rest — " For us the IsraeHtish is one of those religions, nothing less, but also nothing more."* He declares emphatically that there is no "specific difference between Israel's reHgion and its sisters. Without a shadow of doubt we deny the existence of such a difference." t
At the very foundation of the scheme of salvation lies the choice of Abraham and the selection of Israel. But we have already seen that, if we are to accept the teaching of the critics, everything about God's calling of him, and his walking with God a pilgrim and a sojourner in the land of Canaan, is a baseless fable. The same value, they tell us, must be attached to what has hitherto been most surely believed among us regarding the Divine selection of
* The Religion of Israel, vol. I., p. 5. t Ibid., p. 10.
64 T^he New Biblical Guide.
Israel. "This idea," says Kuenen, "seems to us a childish fancy. Israel is no more the pivot on which the development of the w^hole w^orld turns, than the planet which we inhabit is the centre of the uni- verse. In short, we have outgrown the beliefs of our ancestors. Our conception of God and of the extent of his activity, of the plan of the universe and its course, has gradually become far too wide and too grand for the ideas of Israel's prophets to appear any longer otherwise than misplaced in it."* That is, in plain language, God never spoke unto the fathers by the prophets ! God has never spoken to mankind at all ! There has been — according to the critics — no revelation of God whatever. A preacher, who has done much to break faith in the Bible and to wreck the spiritual power and usefulness of his brethren, took for his text one day the words : " So God created man in His own image ; in the image of God created He him." He said that he would take the liberty to make a transposition. He then read the text as follows : " So man created God in his own image ; in the image of man created he Him." That blasphemy sums up faithfully the critical theory regarding the Bible teaching concerning God. Kuenen says that JaJivism, that is, the Old Testament teaching about God, has passed through three forms. "Those three forms are the Jahvism of the people, of the prophets, and of the Law. . . The people acknow- ledged and worshipped other gods besides Jahveh, and thus fell naturally into what is usually called by
* Ibid., p. 9.
They Doiy the Fact of Revelation. 65
a technical name, syncretism^ that is, into a combina- tion and interminghng of ideas and customs which had originally been connected with various gods» The prophets saw in Jahveh the only god" — the word is printed with a small g — " and so came naturally^ as it were, to ascribe to Him alone all the attributes and characteristics which in polytheism, and by the people, were distributed among the different gods. The Law, finally, must be regarded as a compromise between the popular religion and the Jahvism of the prophets."*
Such is "the revelation" of the higher criticism, which the Churches are now to be asked to accept instead of the revelation which God Has given of Himself. God, according to the critics, has been evolved. "The Kingdom of God," a manual for Bible-classes, prepared by the Rev. Herbert Stead, and sent forth by an Edinburgh Publishing House, was proposed for adoption to " The Welfare of Youth" Committee of the Free Church of Scotland. The book was happily rejected through the timely exposure made of its teaching by some faithful men. The book was intended, however, to instil this critical blasphemy into the minds of the young. The represen- tation made was that Moses did not teach that there was only one God; for has not Wellhausen said, that Moses would, in so doing, have given Israel a stone instead of bread ? t The time was too early for such teaching. Nobody as yet had any such notion, or was able to grasp it. What Moses did,
* Ibid., p 230. t Art. Isrreel, Encyclopcrdici Britannica.
66 The New Biblical Guide.
say the Critics, was to prevail upon the tribes, which were eventually blended into one people, to select one of their tribal idols, and to worship it only. The tribes, say they, agreed to do this ; and when Moses had accomplished that, his work was •done. Then, as the ages rolled on, the Israelites began to boast of this selected idol. It was far stronger than the gods of the surrounding peoples. The last stage, which, says Wellhausen, came "long, very long afterwards " — about the time of the exile — was the acceptance of the notion that this idol was the one and only god, the creator of heaven and of earth !
That is the seed of Atheism which is to be taught to the children of this country, and which is now being communicated to their future ministers and teachers. Can we wonder at Canon Fremantle's confession : " We must be content henceforward to be Christian Agnostics;" or at Archdeacon Wilson's statement : '' God is Mind, Law, and Tendency, or none of these things ... The personality of God is a memory, vanishing under the steady gaze of reason." Where can such teaching lead but into the jungle of Agnosticism, or the abyss of Pantheism and of Atheism ?
WHY THE CRITICS CANNOT SUCCEED.
CHAPTER I.
Their Science is Based upon Hypotheses WHICH ARE Untrue.
I MIGHT dwell upon the presumption which lies beneath all the researches of the critics — the non-interference of the supernatural. They fully accept the position of philosophic unbelief that "miracles do not happen," and never have happened. This is to them as unquestionable as the theory of gravitation. In the Scriptures, consequently, there is nothing that is not of human origin, and that cannot be explained upon the same principles as any other merely human production.
But, if the Bible is only Jewish literature, how can its special characteristics be explained ? There is a Jewish literature outside the Scriptures. Philo and Josephus were contemporaries of our Lord and of the Apostles. They have left voluminous works behind them, which are in our possession now. The Apocrypha of the Old Testament is from the pens of writers who lived from 300 B.C. to 100 a.d., thus
68 The New Biblical Guide,
presenting us with the remains of a Hterary activity ranging over from three to four centuries. The Jewish Talmud presents us with the later remains of Jewish scholarship. But between those works and the Scriptures not even the most daring depreciator of the Bible will venture to institute a comparison. The Bible, which stands alone even in Christian literature, is still more solitary among the literature of the Jews. If miracles have never happened, how can we explain this startling difference ? It is the part of science to take accurate account of facts, and to find out causes which are adequate to their production. And, if man has never produced among Jews or Christians anything which can be placed on a level with the Bible, the criticism which assumes it to be of merely human origin stumbles at the outset.
But the critics have another working hypothesis, and that is Hegel's principle of evolution. Humanity, they believe, has started at the lowest rung in the ladder of existence, and has been going steadily up- ward ever since ; and it is expected that somewhere in Germany the race will shortly emerge upon the lofty plane of perfectness. Let the reader please understand that I am not indulging in ridicule, but am giving him a sober description. Hegel placed his confidence in the German people as the leaders of humanity. This theory the critics have elabor- ated. They have drawn up a time-table, in which the stations gradually reached, in this advance from the lowest savagery, are tabulated. A certain state
Their Science Based upon Untrue Hypotheses. 6g
of society, and certain ideas of God, had been attained about 1500 B.C., that is, in the days of Moses ; and a certain stage both in social hfe and rehgious thought had been reached in the time of David, about 1050 B.C. The reader will at once see how easy criticism becomes once this time-table is drawn up. Do you wish to know whether a certain book, or a certain portion of a book, could have been written by Moses or by David ? You have only got to note at what point the human race had then arrived, and the answer to the question is found at once. If there are evidences in the document of a civilisation more advanced than was possible in the time of Moses or of David, and of purer religious thought than had been then attained, the matter is settled irrevocably. These men could not have been their authors ! In this way you require only the necessary confidence to write down the date of every Psalm, and of every portion of the Pentateuch. But these proceedings are liable to be arrested by a withering doubt. Is the time-table rehable ? It requires only a moment's reflection to see that the theory is a dream. For the last century, or century and a half, Europe certainly has lived in an age of progress. But where has there been steady pro- gression during the last 2,000 years ? Has it been in Africa, or in Asia Minor, or in Greece, or in Italy, or in Spain? The children of the Pharaohs, and of the men, adepts in many an art, over whom the Pharaohs ruled are found in the Copts of to-day. But these have totally forgotten the skill which has
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made their land an astonishment even in its ruin, and they seem to have lost the very abilities pos- sessed by their fathers. In the time of the Apostles, Asia Minor was covered with splendid cities. It was enriched by a busy commerce. It was the home of the arts, and of the highest civilisation of the time; and we know what it is to-day. The northern coast of Africa rejoiced in similar prosperity and advancement ; but where shall we look now for that ancient greatness ? If retrogression so radical as this has actually happened, what becomes of our time- table, with its supposed steady and forward flow of human advancement ? Is it a thing to be reverently inscribed in our class-rooms; or is it a figment that should be cast on the dust-heap beside many another discarded product of human folly ?
But discovery has been still more unkind to the critics than recorded history. The spade of the excavator brought to light, almost the other day, what there is good reason to believe are the ruins of an antediluvian city. The American explorers had already laid bare the ancient city of Nippur, in Baby- lonia, when they saw indications that the ruins of another city lay beneath that which they had exca- vated. This, when uncovered, was seen to be of a very high antiquity. What, then, was the condition of art displayed in the earlier city? Did the time- table suit ? Had there been the steady progression, the regularly unfolding development so devoutly believed in by the critic ? On the contrary, the art displayed in the decorations of the earlier city was
Their Science Based upon Untrue Hypotheses. 71
higher than that displayed in the later. The arch, once supposed to have been a comparatively late architectural discovery, was already there. "As the work" of excavation "progressed," says an account supplied by the explorers, " the archaeologists on the spot were amazed to find that the lower city seemed to have enjoyed a higher form of civilisation than the other one. . . The carvings were larger and richer, the architecture more elaborate, and the buildings greater in size and more gorgeously decorated." Antediluvian graves have been found, too, in France and elsewhere ; for the men were contemporaries of animals which wholly perished in the Deluge. But neither were these the savages which the time- table taught us to expert. They were no mean artists ; there was evidence that trade was already circulating the products of various lands ; and they had the hope of immortality, as attested by their funereal customs.
The critical theory of the steadily progressive evolution of God is as completely overthrown by modern discovery. All the indications point to the existence of a primeval Revelation. This was gradually adulterated, and then overlaid with rapidly multiplying idolatries, till the light became darkness. That is the story, for example, of the beliefs of India regarding the deity. Hindu religious thought began with the knowledge of the one living and true God. But, as early as the period to which their most ancient sacred hymns belong, there is evidence of a departure from that pure primeval faith. That belief
72
The New Biblical Guide.
in one great First Cause ''retired," says Hardwicke, '•' far-off into the background. . . It was the feeble and expiring echo of an older and a purer revela- tion." * Since these ancient days, there has been change in the religious thought of India, but nothing whatever of the upward development which the higher criticism regards as the necessary experience of our race. The wreckage, too, of that early know- ledge of God is found everywhere. It exists even amid the fetish worship of degraded Africa. Waitz says in his Anthropologic : "From north to south of Africa the negroes adore one supreme God, in addition to their numberless fetishes." It survived amid the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans. ''The Peruvians," says Prescott, "recognise a Supreme Being, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, and they worship Him under the name oi Pachochan- ach, that is to say. He who sustains and gives life to the world,'' " There was no image," writes Pressens^, "of this invisible being. The temple reared to him near Lima existed before the rule of the Incas. The Aztecs, the ancestors of the Mexicans, believed in a Supreme God, the Lord of the universe. They offered prayers to Him as the invisible, incorporeal God, by whom we live, who is everywhere present, who knows all our thoughts, and dispenses all the gifts without which man is as nothing. The remembrance of this old monotheism was retained in Mexico, as is proved by the pyramidal temple raised by King Nizah to the unknown God, the Cause of Causes.
* Christ and other Masters, part II., p. lo.
It is Founded upon Impossible Pretensions. 73
There was no visible representation of Him, and the offerings brought to Him were flowers and incense. ' No one has the right to command me,' said a Mexican king ; ' there must, then, be above the sun a greater God who commands it to pursue its ccurse without ever changing.' " *
The same traces of a pure primeval faith are found among the gross idolatries of Babylon and of Egypt. The history of the Christian Church, with its saint worship, and its idolizing of relics ard of holy places, enables us to understand that older lapse from a pure spiritual worship. Man's progress has not been upward, but downward ; and the critical time-table is worthless and misleading. It is based upon a hypothesis which is opposed alike to the testimony of Scripture, and of history.
CHAPTER n.
It is Founded upon Impossible Pretensions.
ONCE it is taken for granted that the Pentateuch is a compilation from writings by various authors, and not the original work of one writer, it naturally becomes of importance to enquire whether the various documents can be separated and whether
* A Study of Ori^^ins, p. 510.
74 -^^^^ ^^"^ Biblical Guide.
their relative ages can be ascertained. This is the special work which the critics assure us they are not only able to do, but also have done. They can tell where each of these imaginary documents begins and ends. They can do even more than this, they assure us. Part of their very complicated theory is that the documents have been cunningly welded together through the labours of one editor after another. These all did their best and their busiest to remove everything that would prevent the success of this huge imposture upon posterity. They also supplied what they judged to be wanting, so that the deception might be complete. But what is there that human ingenuity cannot accomplish ? The critics, once set upon the track of those deceivers, pierce through all their devices ! They show where a phrase has been supplied here, and a word substi- tuted or added there. Never, in short, was imposture so completely unveiled, nor the work of deception so completely undone.
Now, we are all so partial to the marvellous in human achievements, that many are charmed with this account, and believe it straightway. A small amount, however, of critical scepticism may render us and them good service here. We are told to " trust the experts." They are "devout" men and competent scholars, and we can leave ourselves, we are assured, with absolute safety in their hands. But when men present themselves as "experts," it is only common prudence to enquire whether their claims are well founded. This is the more necessary
It is Founded upon Impossible Pretensions. 75
where the matters to be committed to them are important. We should not, even if our children were in the last extremity, readily allow men to hack and hew at their tender limbs without the most absolute assurance that they were in the hands of sympathy and skill that would neither err nor fail. And if matters have come to such a pass with the Scriptures (behef m which has brought glory to our land, and all power for good to our own souls) that they have to be operated upon in this wsiv, we want to know whether this alleged discernment of the critics is really a possession, or is only a dream.
The answer to this is decisive : it admits of no reply. Experience has proved, and is proving daily, that the critics claim a power which has never been possessed by man. Questions regarding authorship are constantly occurring, but no man ever dreams of inviting the assistance of "the experts." And for the best of all reasons — there are no experts. There are plays of Shakespeare in which the great dramatist is known to have been assisted by others ; but no man has ever professed his ability to separate Shakespeare's work from that of his friends. Beau- mont and Fletcher collaborated together ; but who has ever been supposed qualified to issue an edition in which Beaumont's work will be completely separated from Fletcher's? There is collaboration of the same kind among writers to-day, but the only " experts " who will be able to tell the public what parts were written by each, are the authors them- selves, or possibly the printers, who are able to
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produce their manuscripts. So thoroughly is this known and accepted, that it is no matter of astonish- ment when men whose business it is to study the literature of the time, make what may be fairly described as gigantic mistakes. There is no branch of study over which the words are, so to say, more largely written : " It is human to err." Mr. Robert Buchanan wrote a letter to a daily newspaper * in 1894, in which he said : " My own experience as an author has been a curious, and not an uninstrudtive one. For many years I was, as is well known, a favourite objedl of critical attack. At last, at the time when the opposition was at its highest, I deter- mined to put the honesty of criticism to the test, by publishing a new book anonymously. St. Abe and his Seven Wives was received with a chorus of eulogy. The editor of the Athenceum, who would have cut off his right hand rather than praise any work of mine, was the first to give it a welcome. The editor of the Spectator, who had begun to eye me askance because I was sceptical about the Trinity, based on my anonymous poem a whole theory of American humour. ' Would that in England we had the humorists who could write as well ! ' wrote another critic, adding : ' but with Thackeray our last writer of humour left us.' Just previous to the publication, an even more significant circumstance occurred. My publisher sent early proof-sheets to a great London daily, and received immediately afterwards a com- munication from the office, stating that a lengthy
* The Daily Chronicle.
It is Founded upon Impossible Pretensions. yj
and eulogistic review was in type, but that the ' Chief required to be satisfied on one point, whether the poem was by ' Lowell.' My publisher refused to answer the question, and the review was never printed.
" On another occasion I wrote, for a London manager, a prologue in verse for a great Shakespearian producftion. At my request the manager concealed my name, and it was whispered about that the prologue was by Mr. Swinburne. The newspapers praised the trifle immoderately, and one zealous critic, who loved Mr. Swinburne and hated me, described it as a masterpiece, full of the ' large utterance of the early gods ' — frankly confessing afterwards that he would have torn the thing to shreds if he had guessed the authorship." Here the ablest men of the time, whose trade has been about literature from their youth, blunder hopelessly with regard to the authors and the books of their own time. Not one would dare to set up as " an expert." The very idea would be looked upon as an infallible sign of incipient lunacy. Shall we, then, admit the claim when made by the critics in regard to a literature separated from their own time by an interval of three thousand years ?
This tremendous claim of the critical expert has scandalised even those who sympathised with many of their beliefs. Dean Milman wrote long ago : *'That the Hebrew records, especially the Books of Moses, may have been compiled from various docu- ments, and it may be at an uncertain time — all this is assuredly a legitimate subject of inquiry. There
78 The New Biblical Guide.
may be some discernible marks and signs of difference in age and authorship. But that any critical micro- scope, in the nineteenth century, can be so exquisite and so powerful as to dissect the whole with perfect nicety, to decompose it, and assign each separate paragraph to its special origin in three, four, or five, or more independent documents, each of which has contributed its part — this seems to me a task which no mastery of the Hebrew language, with all its kindred tongues, no discernment, however fine and discriminating, can achieve." *
To this and many a like protest the critics have never attempted a reply. But they have, nevertheless, given a very complete answer. Criticism is by no means ancient, yet space has already been found for one or two schools, and these have shown how little dependence is to be placed upon any. The older critics held that, although ideas as to age and authorship had been so completely revolutionised, the Books of the Bible still stood for the critic in the same order as for the orthodox. The oldest portion was the Law, then came the Psalms, and last of all the Prophets. This was complacently regarded as a triumph of criticism, and was said to be proved by the test of language, &c. But this order has since been completely reversed, and w^e are told that the order to be accepted now is the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Law ! Again, Colenso is said by his biographer to have established, by the most painstaking researches, the antiquity of the supposed Elohistic document;
" History of the Jews, pp. 23, 24.
It is Founded upon Impossible Pretensions. 79
but, about a month before he died, he left it on record that he had completely changed his opinion, and believed that the Elohistic document was much later than the Jehovistic. Now, if a critic cannot depend upon himself, has he any right to ask the public to rely upon him ?
But when we look into the works of the critics, we find them to be in hopeless disagreement about the most essential characteristics of the writings with regard to which they claim to be infallible experts. I give in opposite columns some critical judgments regarding the supposed Elohistic docu- ment*:—
"The substance of tra- dition is followed with great fidelity." — Davidson, Introduction, I., 26.
" An instructive example of this earliest kind of historical composition." — Ewald, History of Israel, I., 78.
"Represents traditions very simply." — Ewald, I., 42.
" Simple, inartificial." — Davidson, I., 26.
"Makes of the smallest story a living picture." — Ewald, I., 32. .
" His accounts can by no means be regarded as reproductions of popular traditions." — Kuenen, Re- ligion of Israel, II., 163.
" It unites in itself all the characteristics of the later historiography." — Kuenen, II., 196.
"Too systematic, too little natural." — Kuenen, Five Books of Moses, p. 40.
" The historical picture lacks life and motion." — Kuenen, II., 161.
There could not be more opposite judgments than
See Watson's Hulsean Lectures, p. 164.
8o The New Biblical Guide.
these. Who has blundered ? If the blunder is with the earlier critics, then all who trusted them were grievously misled. If it lies with the later, then those who confide in them are deceived. And who shall decide this all-important question ? We shall require a new school of " experts " to judge the "experts," and to tell us whether to place our confidence in the earlier or in the later — or in neither.
CHAPTER III.
The Chief Corner-stone of their "Science" IS A Gigantic Blunder.
DR. JEAN ASTRUC is constantly spoken of by the critics and their followers as the " Sir Isaac Newton of Criticism." In the chapter on " Jehovistic and Elohistic Theories," his performance has been described, and I need not dwell upon it here. It may be stated, however, without fear of contradidliion, that Astruc's theory was not the contri- bution of a scholar ; for a scholar would have studied the words Elohim and Jehovah, and would have asked whether there was anything in their meanings as Hebrew words which explains their certainly striking use, not only in Genesis, but throughout the whole of the Old Testament. Yehovah, or Yavch, is, like many other Old Testament names (Isaac, Jacob, etc.), a verb. It is the third singular of the Hiphil, or causative,
Their Corner-stone a Gigantic Blunder. 8e
conjugation of the verb ''to be," "to come into existence," '' to come to pass." Yehovah, or Yahweh, consequently means, " He shall cause it to be," " He shall cause it to come to pass." That the word is emphatically used with this signification, is plain from the frequently-recurring expression : " For I am the Lord;" that is, "I am Jehovah," "I am He who shall bring it to pass." The names El, Eloah, Elohim, refer as clearly to God's power, as Jehovah refers to God's faithfulness. El is "the Mighty One," Eloah means "mightiness," and Elohim (its plural) " mightinesses." There is no mystery what- ever, therefore, about the words. Elohim is equiva- lent to "the Almighty;" Jehovah is "the Fulfiller," the God of Covenant, He who has promised and who will perform, who has threatened and who will punish. The very presence of these names shows the discernment and that infinite fulness and clearness of thought characteristic of all Scripture.
But Astruc was in search of supposed " docu- ments," and he fastened upon the use of these names as the clue which he needed. Jehovah was the name of God used, he said, by one writer. This ancient author was forthwith called '•' the Jehovist," or "the Jehovistic writer." Elohim was the name used by another of those makers of ancient docu- ments, and he was accommodated with the title of "the Elohist," or "the Elohistic writer." Having thus secured the documents, the critical microscope was applied, and the result was a chorus from all sides of surprise and delight. The cry was : " they
82 The New Biblical Guide.
are quite independent," and "they are entirely different : each has its own distindl characteristics." As to these characfleristics, we have just seen how the critics flatly contradidl each other ; and as to their being quite independent, it is now confessed that they have been so cunningly dovetailed into each other, as to give the critics no end of trouble, which is just what we should expett in any one document which was wrongly supposed to consist of two or more.
But the matter, to which I have now to draw attention, is much more grave than the fadl of critical disagreements. It affedls the entire fabric of the higher criticism ; and, as far as I am aware, there has never been a more serious charge brought against any so-called science. It is that Astruc's supposed discovery was a gigantic blunder, and that its long and wide acceptance is perhaps the most astounding instance of combined ignorance and thoughtlessness on record.
It is taken for granted that, where one writer used Elohim, another would have used Jehovah. These names of God are, consequently, supposed to be interchangeable. This has been accepted from the first as a fundamental axiom, the absolute truth of which no critic seems ever to have questioned. It is taken for granted that Jehovah and Elohim are so perfectly synonymous that editors could have substi- tuted one for the other, and that the only reason for the use of either was some prediledlion of the writer, or some fashion of the period. This supposition is
Their Corner-stone a Gigantic Blunder. 83
the only basis upon which the theories can possibly stand. Remove it, and the entire fabric falls in hopeless ruin. And yet nothing less than this will have to be removed. The names never were interchangeable. They are not inter changeable now. There are scores and scores of passages in which no critic will dare to substitute ^^/zo7;<^/z for Elohini. Everyone acquainted with Hebrew is aware of the fact that Jehovah never has the article. You find the phrase the Elohim, but never, at any period or in any book, the Jehovah. It is also w^ell known that Jehovah never has a pronominal suffix.
Here let me add a word for the sake of those not acquainted with Hebrew. The Hebrew possessive pronouns, instead of remaining separate words, and of being placed before the noun, as with us, are placed after it, and form one word with it. Thus Elohim ' God," becomes Elohenii, in the phrase " Our God." Now, we meet again and again with the phrases, my Elohim, our Elohim, your Elohim, etc. ; but never once, throughout the whole of the Old Testament, with such a combination as my Jehovah, our Jehovah, etc. This fadi is quite capable, I believe, of explanation. There was in this name, as we have seen from its meaning as a Hebrew word, that which awed the heart with the shadow of judgment. It is this feeling which has probably deprived us of all certain knowledge of the true pronunciation of the name. The vowels now printed in our Hebrew Bibles are those of Adonai, and sometimes of Elohim, which words were substituted for Jehovah in public and
84 The New Biblical Guide.
private reading. But whatever the explanation of that Jewish custom may be, it is certain that the meaning of the names was never lost sight of by the writers of Scripture, and that there was that in their signification which led to the use of Elohim with the article and the possessive pronouns, and which rigorously forbade such combinations in the case of Jehovah. This distin(ftion is observed from Genesis to Malachi. The names, therefore, were never inter- changeable, and the theory which is based upon their supposed interchangeabihty must be abandoned by every man who desires to deal truly with facts.
It is eloquent of the utter recklessness with which the critical craze has been pushed and welcomed, that similar blundering has persistently clung to it.
It is only after results have been painfully reached, and scrupulously tested, that men generally declare that they are no longer able to beheve with their fathers. Has this care, then, been exercised as to these names? So far is this from being the case, that it would appear as if it is still necessary to ascertain the very elements of this problem. Two writers on the Psalms, to whom the English public owe a debt of gratitude, give currency, for example, to the assertion that, in the first forty-one Psalms, Jehovah occurs 272 times, and Eloliini only fifteen times.* The former statement is nearly corre(ft, but the latter gives less than a third of the real number. Elohim occurs, in fadl, no fewer than forty-eight times.
* Perowne, The Book of Psalms, I. 76 : Binnie, The Psalms, etc., 128. The correct figures are: Jehovah 274 times, El and Elohim 65 times, Adoiiai 14 times.
Their Corner-stone a Gigantic Blunder. 85
The cause of this error is that both those writers have accepted without examination statements made by Dehtzsch. The results pubHshed by him have led to a still more astounding statement. Perowne says : " From Psalm Ixxxv. to the end of the Psalter, the name Jehovah again becomes prevalent, and to such an extent, that in Books iv. and v. (Psalms xc.-cl.) it occurs 339 times, and Elohim, of the true God, but once (cxliv. 9)." Binnie gives the same figures, but with the important modifica- tion that Elohim .occurs occasionally " in a compo- site form,'- though "in its simple form" it is but once met with as applied to the true God. "These curious fad^s," he adds, "were first collected by Dr. Delitzsch in a work published twenty-four years ago. Their importance has been universally recognised." It is an unpleasant task to point out mistakes in works otherwise so painstaking and so admirable ; but it is hard to imagine how so unfounded a state- ment ever came to be made, or to be repeated. In Psalm cviii. alone, Elohim is found six times in its simple form ; and for (the so-called) Books iv. and v. of the Psalter, the true figures are: Jehovah 379, Elohim 45. Hengstenberg has allowed himself to be misled in the same way. " In the whole fourth book," he says, ''Elohim does not occur once, in the fifth only seven times, while Jehovah, according to Delitzsch, occurs 236 times." It wall hardly be credited, in the face of these statements, made by one writer and adopted by another, both of European fame, that in the seventeen Psalms which form the
86 The New Biblical Guide.
fourth book (Psalms xc.-cvi.), Elohiin occurs eight- een times, and in the fifth (Psalms cvii. — cl.) twenty- seven, and not seven, times! The full figures are: Jehovah 384, El and Elohim 67, Adonai 12.
This absence of careful enquiry is as painfully con- spicuous in many of the theories. Colenso maintains that Elohim was the older name, and that it was gradually supplanted by Jehovah. Dr. Robertson Smith believes exa(?tly the reverse, and says that Jehovah, being regarded in later times as too sacred a name for use was discontinued, and that Elohim was not only used instead, but was even substituted for Jehovah in writings of an older date. Now the slightest glance at the names in the books of the Old Testament is alike destructive of the one theory and of the other. Hengstenberg asserts, with quite as little foundation, that, while '' Elohim had become so strange in later times that only the Jehovah-Vsdi\m?> of David were taken for insertion into the later cycles," yet, at some earlier period, Jehovah had been so abused that it was discontinued in favour of Elohim, and that Elohim by itself is to be taken as equivalent to Jehovah-Elohim !
The reader will see from the following table that the use of both names characterises every period of the Old Testament history, and that the alleged Jehovistic and Elohistic periods are the merest fancies. The use of the names was determined by the matter of the books, and not by any fashion of the period. Opposite the name of each book will be found, in parallel columns, the number of times Jehovah and Elohim are found in it, the Divine
Their Corner-stone a Gis^antic Blunder.
87
names El and Eloah, also attributed to the Elohist, being included in the latter : —
Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua . Judges . Ruth
I. Samuel II. Samuel
I. Kings II. Kings
I. Chronicles II. Chronicles Ezra
Nehemiah Esther . Job
Psalms . Proverbs
|
Jehovah. |
Elohim. '. : |
|
162 |
228 ' |
|
397 |
1X8 |
|
311 |
52 |
|
395 |
38 |
|
550 |
352 |
|
222 |
70 |
|
174 |
52 : |
|
18 |
3 |
|
320 |
94 |
|
151 |
63 ! |
|
25« |
92 j |
|
277 |
79 1 |
|
174 |
114 |
|
384 |
185 |
|
37 |
97 |
|
17 |
74 1 |
|
0 |
0 |
|
32 |
113 |
|
737 |
410 |
|
«7 |
6 |
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
Jeremiah+ .
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel .
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk .
Zephaniah .
Haggai
Zechariah .
Malachi
|
Jehovah. |
Elohim. 1 |
|
0 |
40 |
|
I* |
0 |
|
' 448 |
lOI |
|
, 725 |
115 |
|
32 |
I |
|
: 435 |
40 |
|
8 |
57 |
|
j 46 |
26 |
|
! 33 |
II |
|
1 81 |
II |
|
I 7 |
0 |
|
' 26 |
15 |
|
i 40 |
II |
|
13 |
I |
|
13 |
5 |
|
35 |
4 |
|
Yd |
3 |
|
133 |
12 |
|
47 |
8 |
The confusion existing among the learned in re- gard to these names forms a pitiable spectacle.
The opinion expressed by Delitzsch is exceedingly curious. He holds that the names neither indicate different authors, nor is the choice of them deter- mined in any way by the subjedl with which the author deals. It was merely an attempt to honour God by using now the one name, now the other. " One and the same author at one time pleased himself in the use of the Divine name Elohim, and at another time in the use of the Divine name Jehovah " / With Lange, Kalisch, and others, Elohim
Chapter viii. 6: "A flame of Jehovah," translated in E.V. "A most vehement flame." t The E.V. renders Adonai-Jehovah by Lord-God.
88 The New Biblical Guide,
is the name of God in His relation to mankind at large, and Jehovah His name as Israel's God ; and yet we find Jehovah in places where no reference to Israel is possible, and even in the lips of the heathen !
Quite as little importance seems to be attached to consistency as to enquiry. Colenso strenuously con- tends that the use of the names is an undeniable mark of different authorship. And yet he not only admits that both names were used alike by the Elohist and by the Jehovist, but he is at pains to show that they are not synonymous, and that each writer was occasionally compelled by his subjedl-matter to use the name which is said to chara(5lerise the producSlions of the other!* What possible basis can be left for the Rationalistic theory after such an admission as that ? The same confession is made even more fully by Bleek. Not only does he admit that the names are not synonymous ; he contends that there are cases where Jehovah a.nd Elohim could not be interchanged. What place is left, then, the reader asks, for the theory which Bleek, like the rest of his school, supports ? The reply is ingenious. Where either name may be employed so far as the context is concerned, you may then discover in their use the marks of diverse authorship ! t But even under this form of the theory, it is impossible for him to remain consistent. He goes right in the teeth of his own canon in his view of Job,X maintaining the unity of the entire book in the face
* The Pentateuch, etc.. Critically Examined, p. 257, etc. + Introduction to Old Testament, vol. I., pp. 268, 269. + Ibid, vol. II., p. 289.
Their Corner-stone a Gis^antic Blunder
of the most marked diversity in the use of the names that is to be found in the whole of the Old Testament. Other assertions, equally baseless, are made with all the assurance that could possibly accompany the announcement of the most undeniable fad^s. It is said that the Elohist speaks of God occasionally as El Shaddai (the Almighty), but that this name is never used by the Jehovist. Now the truth is, that the name is first of all met with in a Jehovistic passage : — ''Jehovah appeared unto Abraham, and said unto him, I am El Shaddai " (Genesis xvii. i). In Exodus vi. 3, Ruth i. 20, 21, Job xl. 2, Psalm xci. i, etc., it also occurs in Jehovistic passages. The purpose of such a statement is as patent as its inaccuracy; but it displays an eagerness to uphold a theory which has proved too much either for the critic's carefulness or for his honesty. " Again," says Colenso, " the Elohist uses Israel as a personal name for Jacob — the Jehovist never."* The value of this will be understood when the tw^o following facts are mentioned: — First, in the Elohistic sections, Jacob is not only used as well as Israel, but more than twice as often. Secondly, the only Jehovistic secftions which are met with in Genesis, after the change is made in the Patriarch's name, are chapters xxxviii. and xxxix. ; and there Jacob is not once referred to, and, as a matter of course, neither name is used. A distinction is thus professedly drawn between the Jehovistic and the Elohistic sed^ions of Genesis in regard to the names of Jacob, when the alleged Jehovistic document has
* The Pentateuch, etc., p; 176.
go The New Biblical Guide.
no occasion to employ the one or the other, and the use of both is confined to the Elohistic ! It may be safely said that few controversies have been marked by more daring misrepresentations of fadls.
But all these achievements are surpassed by the following instances of critical jugglery. There is one alleged distinc5tion between the supposed documents, which presents the strongest appearance of all. It is said that each has its own name for the mountainous distridl to the north of Mesopotamia. '' The Elohist," says Colenso, " uses always Padan, or Padatt-Aram, . . where3iSthe]eh.ovist uses Aram-Naharaim.''* This statement is startling. That each class of passages should have its own name for the same distrid^, and should keep to it throughout, is almost sufficient in itself to settle the question of separate authorship. And the statement is put forth with a full conscious- ness of its decisive characfler. The existence of the distin(ftion begets such gratitude in Bishop Colenso's breast, that, for the moment, he is tempted to believe that its presence is due to a special providence. " This circumstance," he says, "that such unmistakeable'' (let the reader mark the term) — " such unmistakeable differences of expression distinguish, throughout the book of Genesis, the parts which are due to these separate writers, may almost, with reference to the momentous issues involved, be called providential, since it enables us to speak positively on some points which might otherwise have been still subjed^ to doubt. "t
♦ The Pentateuch, etc., p. 176. I Ibid., p. 177.
Their Corner-stone a Gigantic Blunder. 91
These distinctive marks are indeed a vital part of the critic's case ; and this is, beyond doubt, the most important of them all. However, even though the facets were as here stated, it might be per- mitted to raise the enquiry whether it is quite certain that the names are applied to the same place ; whether, for example, Aram-Naharaim (translated Mesopotamia in our English version), ''the highlands of the two rivers," may not be the name of a wide district, and Padan-Aram, " the cultivated land of the highlands," the name of a particular part of it. But surely, in the face of even such semi-pious exultation as this, it could never be tolerated to hint a suspicion of the facts ! These must surely have been fully ascer- tained; and, whatever weak points there may be in the critic's case, no one would dream of finding it here. But, nevertheless, it is just here where the fatally weak point is. There never were any snch fads to be grateful for ! Aram-Naharaim occurs only once in the whole of Genesis, and then, too, as the name for a wide district : Abraham's servant " arose and went to Mesopotamia (Aram-Naharaim), unto the city of Nahor" (xxiv. 10). It occurs only once besides in the whole of the Pentateuch, and again as the general name of a districl: (Deut. xxiii. 4). We do not insist on this evident use of Aram-Naharaim as a general name. We ask attention to the fadt that the word occurs but twice in the whole of the Pentateuch, and only once in Genesis.
Now% would not even this have been a perilously narrow base for so stupendous an induction ? And
92 The New Biblical Guide.
does it not require a peculiar moral build to make so confident a statement, knowing that there was only this behind it ? But all is not yet told. The very first mention of Padan-Aram, the alleged distinctive name of the Elohist, occurs in a Jehovistic section (Gen. XXV. 20). This was not at first noticed, but, when attention was dired^ed to it, what was pro- posed ? To alter the theory to suit the fa(?t ? Little does he know of critical courage and resource who would think so ! No ; it was proposed to claim that verse as Elohistic/or the sole reason that it had Padan- Aram in it! '' Fa(5ts are against you," was once objedled to a perfervid orator. " So much the worse for the fadls," was the ready reply; and so here the fa(5t was extinguished that the theory might be saved. We might characterise such procedure. When it marks the trade, the commercial speculations, or even the politics, of the day, we know what terms spring unbidden to our lips. But it may be enough to say that, in pursuing it, the critics, w^hatever the temporary effect of their work may be, are not sapping the founda- tions of faith in the integrity of the Scriptures ; they are only digging the grave of their own reputation.
We shall now, however, leave the theories and methods of the critics, and test their results. It has happened, in God's gracious providence, that true science and genuine discovery have entered the very fields covered alike by the Scripture and by criticism. Here we have the decision of unquestioned and un- questionable truth regarding these problems. Let us see for which side in this controversy truth has decided.
MODERN DISCOVERIES AND THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I.
How THE Discoveries Originated.
I AM now about to show how modern discoveries in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, the Peninsula of Sinai, Palestine, Arabia, and elsewhere, have
VIEW NEAR GHIZEH.
94
The New Biblical Guide,
triumphantly disproved present-day attacks upon the Scriptures. But, before I summon these witnesses to give their testimony, it may be well for me to give the reader some information about them, and to say how they have acquired the right to intervene in this high matter.
Up to the close of the eighteenth century, men had little idea of the treasures which lay concealed in Egypt, and they had no foreshadowing whatever of the miracle that was shortly to bring back a past
NAPOLEON.
civilisation to the light of day. But, just as the century was closing, the busy brain of Napoleon
How the Discoveries Originated. 95
Buonaparte brought that ancient land within its survey, and made it the base of one of his gigantic plans. He had triumphed over the armies of the Continent ; but there was one apparently relentless foe, whom he had been unable to conquer or to humble. Great Britain, secure in her island home, and unchallenged mistress of the seas, met him everywhere with her intrigues, and her treasures, and occasionally with her soldiers. There was one way by which that incessant enmity might be stilled. It was to attack her in her sea-washed fortress, and there to pierce her to the heart. He had just gone over all the plans for the invasion, and he had finally aban- doned the project in despair. The risks attending the undertaking were too tremendous to be faced.
But genius triumphs over difficulties, and another plan at once presented itself. England lived upon her commerce. Any fatal injury inflicted upon that would lay her greatness in the dust. There was a way by which this could be done, and he laid his plan before the French Directory. England was conduct- ing her vast trade monopoly with India by the Cape of Good Hope — a long and circuitous route. Napoleon proposed that he should be entrusted with a picked army, and should proceed to Egypt, subjugate the country, and open a short and direct trade-route to India by way of Egypt and the Red Sea. This would be in French hands, and would kill the English trade. It will be noted that Napoleon's plan was, in effect, an anticipation of the great enterprise (strangely enough, still due to the French)
96 The New Biblical Guide.
which has now so wonderfully shortened the distance between us and our Indian Empire.
For reasons of its own, the Directory entered readily into Napoleon's plans. His rapidly-increasing glory was making him a dangerous factor in French politics. Preparations were accordingly rapidly pushed forward, and he set sail with a large fleet from Toulon, at sunrise, on 19th May, 1798. The design which the Dire(5lory had sand^ioned was gigantic enough ; but the aims which Napoleon fostered in his own bosom, and which he confessed only to a few, were still vaster. Europe, over which he had swept at the head of the French armies, appeared now too contracted a field for his ambition. No great Empire, he said, had ever been founded except in the East. The East, then, should witness once more the rise of a great and world-wide dominion. His plan was first of all to conquer Egypt, then to make terms with Syria, and, having massed the Syrians with his own and with the Egyptian troops, to thunder at the gates of Constantinople. The Turkish strength would then be welded into the mass already gathered. Having thus secured his base, he would follow in the steps of Alexander the Great, conquer Babylonia, Persia, and India, and make himself master of the world.
The dream has remained a gorgeous fancy. But something sprang from the expedition to Egypt of which Napoleon had little idea. He had arranged that the army should be accompanied by men competent to explore the country. One hundred
How the Discoveries Originated. 97
of the most famous men of France went with him. This Httle army was composed of hterary men, archaeologists, scientists, and artists. It was known that the land was covered with magnificent ruins, and with some of the most stupendous monuments which human art and labour have ever reared; and it was resolved that this opportunity should be seized to bring these things to the knowledge of the world at large. But, much as they had heard of what the land contained, they were still unprepared for the spectacles which awaited them. Denon tells how, as Desaix's army came in sight of the ruins of Upper Egypt, the entire force suddenly halted with one consent, and without one word of command having been uttered. They remained for a moment or two speechless and breathless, in rapturous astonish- ment ; and then, with the same spontaneity and unanimity, they rent the stillness of the desert with a shout of admiration and delight. The heroes of the new time rendered their homage to the greatness of the past. It was a moment that was long remem- bered, and Denon says that it made him proud of his nation, for it was one more proof that the French are a nation of artists and of poets.
The pen and the pencil, wielded by the greatest masters of the time, united to make Egypt once more famous. The numerous drawings and descrip- tions were published at the expense of the French Government, and the astonishment which the French soldiers had felt on the sands of Egypt communicated itself to the peoples of Europe. Egypt and her
g8 The New Biblical Guide,
wonders became the theme of lectures, of articles, and of common conversation. There was, however, something further accomplished, without which all this would have had small connection with the story which I have to tell. Among the wonderful things discovered were some manuscripts of great age, written upon the papyrus for the manufacture of which Egypt was once so famous. There was no doubt whatever that these were manuscripts, wTitten
NAME OF THOTMES II. NAME OF HIS QUEEN NITOCRIS.
documents intended to communicate information or to perpetuate some record or title. But the writing was the strangest of mediums by which one mind ever sought to communicate its thoughts to another. A kindred form of writing was chiselled everywhere upon the gateways and the walls and the pillars of the temples. It was engraved even upon the interiors of the tombs. It consisted of representations of
How the Discoveries Originated. gg
animals, of vegetables, of things in the heaven, in the waters, and on the earth. The figures were drawn with wonderful freedom, vigour, and truth. They formed what seemed to be a widely-extended alphabet. But what was the alphabet ^ and what was the language ?
These were the problems which the newly-recovered marvels of Egypt laid before the intellect of the time. They were pondered in many a study ; but the task was of that kind which subdues the most resolute determination and turns it into despair. There was no point discoverable at which one could make a beginning. Not a letter could be recognised; not a word could be fixed upon that was known and which could be broken up into its letters, so that these could be traced elsewhere, and the force of the unknown characters be guessed from their neighbourhood to those that were known. Archimedes needed some- thing stable on which he could rest his lever ; and, in the absence of some known point in the centre or border of this mysterious language, the keenest intelligence and the happiest ingenuity were alike baffled.
In this condition matters might have remained for centuries, but the day had dawned when these stones were once again to speak. Interest was suddenly deepened in the study, and at the same moment the despair which had rested like a black cloud upon it, gave place to eager hope. In lygg Lieutenant Bouchard, a French artillery officer, then with Napoleon in Egypt, made one of the most fortunate
100 The New Biblical Guide.
discoveries that have marked the career of Egyp- tology. The soldiers were digging the foundations of a new fort at Rosetta, when a stone was come upon the importance of which he at once recognised. It was carefully excavated and laid aside. But the fortunes of war robbed Lieutenant Bouchard of his fame. The fort was captured by the British, and the precious Rosetta stone now lies in the British Museum, instead of in the Louvre at Paris.
Nothing could have been more fortunate, however, than this discovery. The stone contained an inscrip- tion in three forms of writing. There is first of all the strange writing of the monuments, called the hieroglyphic, or sacred characfter. Then followed an inscription in another kind of writing, employed at a later period in Egypt. It was the writing in common use, and was on that account called the Demotic, or the writing of the people. Last of all, came an inscription in Greek. The conclusion was natural that all three inscriptions told the same story, and that it was put in three forms of writing that it might be the more widely made known. If this were so, then the Greek gave the translation of the hieroglyphic writing, and so put into the hands of the learned the long-looked-for key to the decipher- ment. The Greek was easily read. It was an edi(5l of the Egyptian priesthood, decreeing that a statue should be erecfted to Ptolemy Epiphanes in each temple, and that divine honours should be paid to him annually on the anniversary of his birth.
Here, then, the key to the mystery was found at
How the Discoveries Originated. lor
last. With the help of this Greek translation, one ought to be able to decipher the hieroglyphics, recover the alphabet, and make at least the beginning of a dicftionary and of a grammar. But a key of this kind needs the touch of genius to apply it and to turn it. Many were the attempts made, and precisely equal was the number of failures. The usual clamour of wavering and of doubt arose. Were the Egyptian characters really letters of an alphabet, or were they representations of things and ideas? The first ground was broken by Thomas Young, who was born at Milverton, in Somerset, in 1779. Studious from his childhood, he early acquired a wide acquaint- ance with Oriental languages and with science, especially that of chemistry. He has left enduring marks of his work in several departments of investiga- tion. He was the undoubted discoverer of the true theory of light, and he made the earliest, successful attempt to solve this Egyptian mystery. He main- tained that the hieroglyphic characters represented sounds, and not ideas. He also insisted (in common with Zoega, a Dane) that certain groups of letters which were surrounded by a line, and so cut off from the rest, were proper names. But the achievement, with which his name will always be associated, was the beginning which he made in the identifications of the Egyptian alphabet. He gave correct values to five of the letters.
This was as far, perhaps, as man could go, even with the help of the Rosetta stone. The problem was infinitely more difficult than was at first imagined ; and
102 , The New Biblical Guide.
Young, although he did not then know it, had made as many blunders as discoveries. Some of the values which he gave to the characters were entirely wrong, and no one could have told which were the fortunate identifications, and which were the mistakes. We shall now have to leave our own shores and to watch the progress of discovery in another land, to which God has assigned a large and honourable share in the discoveries which have shed such light upon His Word.
CHAPTER II. Champollion and his Labours.
HOW dependent every science has been upon genius, the history of each abundantly testifies. Patient observation and persistent toil may have accumulated material, but the hosts of these workers are like an army without a general. No great advance is ever made without the advent of some capable man who is able to group the huge array of facts, and to see the hidden truths and laws to which they point.
This is still more true of the founding of any science. There may be multitudes of observations, and learned treatises may be poured out by scores, and yet the whole may be nothing better than a curious inquiry. Genius alone can solve the problems by which the inquiry has been arrested, and give it an unchallenged
Champollion and his Labours.
103
place among the sciences which have a right to teach, for the simple reason that they have something worth imparting. Egyptology was waiting for its
CHAMPOLLION.
founder ; and the same Providence which had excited the inquiry, now furnished the man. Jean-Francois Champollion was born at Figeac, in the South of
104 The New Biblical Guide,
France, on the 23rd of December, 1790. He was, therefore, only seven years old when Napoleon started on his expedition to Egypt. But he was born in a house devoted to learning. His brother, known under the name of ChampoUion-Figeac, was twelve years older, and was an eager and successful student of the ancient languages. He early attained the position of Professor of Greek literature, at Grenoble. He devoted himself to the education of his younger brother, and was rewarded by the child's eager interest. From his earliest years, the younger Cham- pollion turned his attention to the Oriental languages, and employed his time for recreation in copying the letters of the Hebrew and of other alphabets. The interest excited by the Egyptian Expedition speedily communicated itself to the home of the Champollions, and the elder brother published in 1806 a letter on the Greek inscription on the temple at Denderah. Jean-Fran9ois was then sixteen, but years before this he had been impressed with the conviction that it was his destiny to solve the problem of the hieroglyphic writing. This conviction became with advancing years a resolve and an absorbing passion. Everything tended to fan the flame. Egypt was in the air. The conversation and the writings of scholars and literary men were full of references to the newly-investigated country, to its wonders, and to the problem presented by its strange picture- writing. These characteristics of the time, however, would not have evolved the discovery or the dis- coverer. But God met the time by the gift of the
Champollion and his Labours. 105
man. While still a lad, Champollion began his life- work, and from the outset he exhibited a capacity and genius that astonished his contemporaries. It had been suggested by some French scholars that the ancient language of Egypt was substantially the same as the Coptic. It struck him that, if this were so, the ancient names of the provinces and cities of Egypt would find an explanation as Coptic words. He set himself to collect the names from the Greek and Latin authors, from Arab Geographers, and from the Hebrew Bible. As the result of this special study, he not only confirmed the opinion that the ancient Egyptian was closely allied to the Coptic, but he was also able to reconstruct the map of Egypt as it existed in the days of the Pharaohs. He read a paper on the subject in 1807 before the Academy at Grenoble. The ability displayed, joined to the fact that the author had not com- pleted his seventeenth year, attracted the attention of the learned, and led to his being invited to Paris, where he was able to pursue his studies under the best auspices.
But the honours which came so early did not blight the fair promise of his youth. To him honour was little, and work was everything. It is a remark- able feature in the story that his attention was drawn so early, and so powerfully, to the study of Coptic. He now met, for the first time, with an engraving of the Rosetta stone, and the study of it convinced him more than ever that the knowledge of Coptic was the direct road to the decipherment of the hiero-
io6 The New Biblical Guide.
glyphics. Had he known everything which the future had to reveal on this matter, he could not have formed a truer judgment. He now threw himself with renewed ardour into the study of this tongue. He made himself a Coptic Grammar, and began a Coptic Dictionary, which he continued to enrich with new words up to the time of his death.
It is a common mistake to imagine that great discoveries are the achievement of some inspired moment. They are, on the contrary, the results of long and laborious processes, into each of which a man's whole strength and devotion have been put. They do not preach the gospel of luck, but the gospel of work. The law holds good here also — "What- soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," and "he who soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly." The Demotic, or popular writing of ancient Egypt, was the simplest. Plutarch had mentioned that it had an alphabet of twenty-five letters. These letters Champollion discovered. in 1808, by a careful com- parison of a Demotic manuscript with the Demotic writing on the Rosetta stone. To make himself more familiar with his new acquisition, he used the Demotic alphabet for writing his notes. He tran- scribed Coptic texts into it, and he wrote his Coptic exercises in it. This practice led to an amusing blunder. One of these compositions of Champollion's was found by a learned French Academician, and was actually published as a Coptic text of the time of the Antonines !
But the harvest of Champollion's toil seemed to be
Champollion and his Labours. 107
long delayed. In his '' Egypt under the Pharaohs," pubUshed in 1814, he could only say that the studies which he was pursuing -strengthen each day the flattering hope, possibly an illusion, that we shall find at last in those pictures, where Egypt has painted only material objects, the sounds of language and the expressions of thought." Other eight years were needed to reach the goal, but then the secret was read and the work was done. On the 17th September, 1822, Champolhon read a paper before the Academy of Inscriptions, in which he showed how he had been enabled to read on the Egyptian monuments the names of Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Alex- ander, Berenice, Arsinoe, and the word -autocrator." The hieroglyphic alphabet was at last discovered.
Genius, as we shall immediately see when we try to follow ChampoUion's process, has seldom had a finer illustration than in the steps which he followed in making his discovery. Meanwhile we complete ChampoUion's story. The pubhcation of the dis- covery involved him in an unpleasant controversy with the friends of Dr. Thomas Young. Some of our fellow-countrymen were ungenerous enough to try to rob Champolhon of his well-won laurels, that they might, for the sake of Enghsh glory, add them to those which already adorned the head of Young. Champollion acted with good temper and discretion. Arago and Silvestre de Sacy, after an investigation of the case, decided that ChampoUion's method was essentially different from that followed by Young, and that the conjectures of the latter had taken an
io8 The New Biblical Guide.
erroneous direction. The question has long since sunk to rest, and ChampolHon has now no competitor for his well-deserved honours.
His discovery was carried still further, and in 1823 he read before the Institute a series of papers in which he distinguished three elements of the Egyptian system of writing, the emblematic, the ideographic, and the alphabetic. These papers were published in the following year at the expense of the Govern- ment. One labour speedily followed another. A visit to Egypt was undertaken, in which he amassed a large collection of materials. He had now become one of the foremost men of the time, and few distinguished visitors were content to leave Paris without meeting the great Egyptologist. As a mark of the royal favour, a court office was bestowed upon him, which gave him the entree to the king's presence. Another mark of appreciation, which he no doubt valued more, was the creation of a chair of Egyptian Archaeology at the College of France, to which he was appointed the first Professor.
But his mission was more to ChampolHon than all besides ; and, in order to secure time for study, he turned his back upon his admirers, and sought the seclusion and quiet of the country. There he threw himself into the completion of his ancient Egyptian Grammar and ancient Egyptian Dictionary. He also prepared for publication the vast materials which he had collected during his travels in Egypt, and published a prospectus of his projected book at the close of the year 1831. But an attack
Champollion and his Labours. log
of apoplexy in December warned him that his working day was near its end. He therefore aban- doned his other labours, and concentrated his attention upon his Egyptian Grammar. The con- cluding pages were dicftated from his dying bed to his brother ; and as the last was finished, he said : — " There you have what I hope is my carte de visite to posterity." That Grammar is an enduring monu- ment to his memory, and has long held its place as the highest authority in the new science. He died in Paris on 4th March, 1832, closing a life of epoch- making labour before he had completed his 42nd year. "Few funerals," says the writer in the Nouvelle Biographic Generalc, whose sketch I have largely followed — ''few funerals have been honoured by a greater concourse. The friends and the pupils who had accompanied him to Egypt mourned him, because they had found him invariably kind, indul- gent, upright, simple, generous, just as in his studies he was sincere and incapable of assigning to himself what belonged to another. The man was valued more than the scholar." He adds the following from Chateaubriand: "Since the birth of letters there have been few men who have rendered services equal to those which consecrate the name of Cham- pollion for immortality; " and this from Silvestre de Sacy : " His discoveries will endure as long as the immortal monuments with which he has made us acquainted."
no The New Biblical Guide.
CHAPTER III. First and Last Steps.
THE decipherment of the old Egyptian writing was a more stupendous task than any one at first anticipated. Instead of a simple alphabet of at most twenty-five letters, there are signs which were reckoned by Brugsch in 1872 at over three thousand."^ In addition to the multiplicity of these, there is another complication. The alphabetic system of writing, with which we are familiar, is a growth, or rather, a supreme discovery. It was a great gain to get something which would convey to a friend at a distance the thought which one was too far off to utter by speech. A pi(5ture, roughly sketched, of a man lying on a couch, might, for example, be enough to intimate that the sender of the communication was sick. But writing soon passed this first rude stage, and practice made men quick to read in picftured objed^s the intimation of ideas. Symbols were chosen, no doubt, by leading spirits, who were recognised as authorities, and these were taught in the schools. These symbols, or representations of thought, have been called ideographs.
The next great step was the discovery that pi(5lures of objects . might be used to represent
*Vigoroux: La Bible et Us Deconvertes Modernes (6th edition, 1896), vol. 1.115-132.
First and Last Steps. iii
sounds, and that the sounds put together might be made to spell out the names of things quite different from those represented by the figures.
From this discovery a second soon sprang. The name could be broken up into syllables, and the pidlure was identified thereafter with the opening or the closing syllable of the word, as the writing authorities of the time might decide. This gave greater ease in spelling out words. The last stage was the analysis of the syllables into elementary sounds, and the using of a limited number of the old figures to make an alphabet. In this way the syllables themselves could be spelled as well as the words.
The Egyptians were as conservative as they were progressive. They eagerly embraced all that was helpful in the new, but they preserved the old with deep loyalty and affecftion. The result is that all these systems were in use. The figures in the inscriptions are used to represent ideas, syllables, and elementary sounds. This fact made the decipher- ment of the inscriptions a task of extraordinary difficulty, and any one less endowed with patience, with resource, and with the necessary linguistic knowledge, would have given up the work in despair before it was well begun.
I mention these things lest it should be imagined that the feat, the story of which I am about to tell, was merely the inspiration of some happy moment. It was only the first vidlory in a long campaign, em- bracing years of ceaseless thought and of Herculean
112 The New Biblical Guide.
toil. But this first battle had in it the promise of all the after vidlories. The Rosetta stone has been mentioned. That had a Greek translation of the Egyptian text, which was of the utmost value. A stone of a like kind was found in the South of Egypt, at Philae. This contained a similar decree of the Egyptian priesthood in honour of Cleopatra. It had been suggested by Zoega that the names enclosed in an envelope, or oval, were those of royal personages. The reader may have already marked the lines surrounding the names of Thotmes II. and of his queen, Nitocris, on page 98. These ovals occurred in the Egyptian text just where the Greek translation showed that they should be met with. This fad^. was of the first importance, as it gave Champollion the key to the problem. With these two names, Cleopatra and Ptolemy, he might make at least a beginning in discovering the alphabet.
The engravings on page 114 will enable us to look on the problem as it presented itself to him. Each name is given in Egyptian and in Greek, as it appears in the inscriptions. The ancient Egyptian is sometimes written, as in the name of Cleopatra, perpendicularly, the reader beginning at the top of the column. In Ptolemy's name, it is written horizontally, as in our own writing, and reads like our own, from left to right. In other inscriptions the writing is read from right to left, but in this last case the position of the figures is reversed. They are made to face the reader.
One most fortunate circumstance in connection with these two names —
First and Last Steps. 113
CLEOPATRA
AND
PTOLEMY,
was that they have no fewer than five letters in common. The first five letters in Ptolemy, PTOLE, appear also in Cleopatra. Here was a guide and test already made. If the writing was alphabetic, then these characters ought to appear in their right places in both names. With two instructive exceptions, this is so, and Champollion was, therefore, assured that he was on the right track.
He might now have proceeded without further preparation, and have assigned values to the letters according to their places in these names. But hasty work is always slow, and not seldom disastrous. It was generally agreed that Coptic represented the ancient Egyptian, and Champollion had given some of the best years of his life to its study. He was now to find the use of this acquisition. There must be some law, he reasoned, by which this alphabet is governed. In the Greek alphabet the power of each letter is the initial sound of its name. Alpha has the power of a, Beta of b, Gamma of g, Delta of d, and so on. But the Phoenician alphabet, from which the Greek is derived, takes us a step further. The names Alpha, Beta, &c., have no meaning as Greek words ; but the Phoenician alphabetic names, which these Greek names represent, are real Phoenician words. Aleph meant an ox, Beth a house, Gimel a camel, and Daleth a door. The meaning of this fa(5l is plain. The letters were originally pictures of
114 ^^^ â– ^^'^ Biblical Guide.
these objects, and when they came to be used as
L -^ -
D
1.
KAEOnATPA
1
a
3 4
5 6 7
>0 II
W
nTOAEMAlOE
' 3 ^ ^ 7
/o.ii oO
K L
E(I)
O
P
A
T
R
A
|
!. S |
- P |
|
2.iO. |
- T |
|
3.<^ - |
- 0 |
|
i.£bb ■|
- L |
|
5 / - |
- M |
|
vflU - |
- AI(II) |
|
5 1 . |
- S |
alphabetic sounds, each letter had the power of the
First and Last Steps. ii5
opening sound of its name. It was a simple plan, consistently followed out in the Phoenician alphabet. Was it not hkely that the same plan had been followed in all the ancient alphabets, and also, there- fore, in this Egyptian one ?
ChampoUion consequently subjeaed the objefts represented to a close inspection.
The figure of the lion, or lioness rather, is easily recognised. Its name in Coptic is Labo. Its value, then, would be L. This identification was most encouraging, for the letter has the second place in Cleopatra and the fourth place in Ptolemy, just as it should have. Another figure about which there could be no mistake, was the eagle. Its name in Coptic is A horn. It should, therefore, have the power of A. It appears, it will be noticed, as the sixth and the ninth letters in Cleopatra, which showed that the law held good in this case also. The seventh letter in the queen's name is a hand, the Coptic for which is Tot. It ought consequently to be a T, which suits exaaiy. But, when he turned from the queen's name to the king's, the hand was not there ! There is in the second place, where the T should be, a semi- circle instead. Here was a check, but one which ChampoUion turned into a fresh discovery. This discovery was that there was more than one sign for the letter T. The noting of this faft prepared him for the difiiculties which were yet to be met with in the decipherment of the inscriptions. On looking again at the queen's name, we see the same semi-circle at the end. It has nothing to do with the spelhng
Ii6 The New Biblical Guide.
of the name. But, if not, why was it there ? Here was another problem, and another discovery was the result. The symbol must have been added for some purpose, and the most likely reason was that it was used to point out that this royal name was di feminine one. Champollion remembered that the Coptic feminine article has T as its initial sound. The difficulty was thus turned into an additional con- firmation.
We need not follow the story further, except to add that this comparison resulted in finding the values of twelve letters, and in discoveries which paved the way for further triumphs. Other names were studied, which resulted in fresh additions to the alphabet. He published in 1824 his Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphique, in which he gave the values of the signs, and laid down rules for the decipher- ment of the inscriptions, the correctness of which experience has only the more fully established. Before his death he had drawn up a list of two hundred and sixty hieroglyphs, which have simple alphabetic values.
The path thus opened was rapidly entered upon by a noble army of investigators. The discovery of papyri, and the publication of their contents and of the inscriptions chiselled upon the monuments, have almost daily furnished new fields and fresh stimulus. ''When he died, in 1832," says M. Maspero — Champollion's successor in the Egyptian chair at the College of France — "Charles Lenormant, and Nestor I'Hote, in France; Salvolini, Rosellini,
Help from the East. 117
Ungarelli, in Italy ; and soon after, the Messrs. Leeman's, in Holland ; Osburn, Birch, and Hincks, in England ; Lepsius, in Germany — set themselves courageously to the work. The schools which they founded have since prospered, and Egyptology has made in half a century considerable progress. This has been exemplified in France by Emmanuel, de Rouge, the second chief of the school after Champollion, de Saulcy, Mariette, Chabas, Deverai, de Horrack, Lefebure, Pierret, Jacques de Rouge, Grebaut, Revillout, Loret, Bouriant, Amelineau ; in Germany, by Brugsch, Diimichen, Lauth, Eisenlohr, Ebers, Stern, de Schack, Erman, Wiedemann ; in Austria, by Reinisch and de Bergmann ; in Holland, by Pleyte ; in Norway, by Lieblein ; in Sweden, by Piehl ; in Russia, by Golenischef and de Lemm ; in England, by Goodwin and Lepage-Renouf ; in Italy, by R. Lanzone, Rossi, and Ernesto Schiaparelli. Egyptology establishes itself more firmly day by day. In a few years Egyptologists will decipher historical and literary texts with as much certainty as Latinists read the works of Cicero and of Livy."*
CHAPTER IV.
Help from the East.
TO call up from the dead and long-forgotten past the Egypt of Abraham, of Joseph, and of Moses, was much. But God's answers have always
* G. Maspero. Histoire Ancienne Des Peuples d'Orient, p. 732.
ii8 The New Biblical Guide,
the fulness and the splendour of the Divine Majesty. And so other lands have been made to join in the testimony, and a reply to present and past unbelief has been provided which is the astonishment of our time.
Away in the old Persian Empire, about thirty miles east of Schiraz, on the Persian Gulf, lay the remarkable ruins of an ancient city. A well-known incident in the career of Alexander the Great had invested the place with historic interest. Flushed with wine, and at the suggestion of an unworthy woman, he gave orders that this city, Persepolis, should be given to the flames. But it may be due to that very fadl that these unique ruins had been so long preserved, and that they so imperiously demanded the attention of Europe. If the city had b3en allowed to pass through the usual stages of decay, it would have become, like the other cities of that ancient empire, an indistinguishable heap. One city would have risen upon the dust of its predecessor, each new ere6lion more sordid than the last, till all the splendour of the past had been buried under the ruins of wretched hovels. But, from that night of devastation and of terror, the place appears to have been deserted, and the remains stood out, an almost solitary testimony to the civilisation and magnificence of ancient Persia.
For centuries Eastern travellers had described the splendours of Persepolis, which we ought to designate a spacious palace rather than a city. In front of a semi-circle, formed by nature in the grey marble rocks
Help from the East.
119
of the mountain, an extensive platform, construd^ed of huge marble blocks, was carried out into the plain. On this platform the buildings were erected, porticos and pillars of which are still standing. Two
PERSIAN PALACE.
gigantic staircases give access to the platform from the plain below. On the sides of these staircases, on the porticos, and elsewhere, are sculptured figures of guards, ambassadors, bearers of tribute,
120 The New Biblical Guide.
courtiers, and kings. These figures were accompanied by what seemed to be inscriptions, but they were in a kind of writing which resembled no known alphabet. The chara(5ters were formed by a number of lines, each of which resembled a nail, or rather a wedge. From this peculiarity, the writing received the name by which it has now long been known — the cuneiform, that is, the wedge-shaped.
The ruins were visited by Pietro della Valle, an Italian gentleman whose romantic history drew more attention to the account he published than it would otherwise have commanded. His work was
y .j^«< A- r- ^n « 1 « ^^ --7
K-&T c^l >t!T ►£! <B ^TT
ASSYRIAN WRITING.
issued in 1621. He presented his readers with drawings of some of the signs in the inscriptions, and ventured the opinion that the writing ought to be read, like our own, from left to right. This opinion was afterwards fully confirmed, and ought always to be gratefully remembered as the first step made in a great and momentous discovery.
Sixty years later, Chardin, a French Huguenot, but a naturalised Englishman who was patronised by Charles II., visited the ruins. In the account of his travels, published in 1674, he gave a copy of a
Help from the East. 121
complete inscription. This attracted fresh attention to the new problem, and it gained in interest as scholars recalled the facft that the city had been built by the ancient Persian kings. It was felt that the inscriptions must necessarily contain much important information. Some, indeed, scouted the idea that such strangely uniform chara(5lers could belong to any system of writing ; but the convicftion gained ground steadily that they were really inscriptions, and not mere architectural adornments.
All doubt upon this point was finally swept away by the researches of another traveller, Carstens Niebuhr. Michaelis had suggested to the king of Denmark the idea of sending a deputation of learned men to visit Eastern lands. He believed that their investigations would throw much light upon the Bible. The idea was heartily entered into by the king, and it has had results of which neither he nor Michaelis dreamed. Niebuhr was one of four selected, and he was the only member of the party who lived to see his native land again. On his return he passed through Persia, and, visiting Persepolis, was charmed, as every previous traveller had been. His book, which was published at the king's expense, gave a full account of the place, and was accompanied with engravings and with carefully executed copies of the inscriptions and of the sculptures. He made the inscriptions the subject of most painstaking study. He noticed that each con- tained three different kinds of writing, in which the same matter seemed to be repeated. This was
SCULPTURES ON THE WALLS OF PERSEPOLIS.
(The king giving an audience. The guards in attendance.;
124 -^^^^ New Biblical Guide.
afterwards proved to be the case. The Persian monarchs of that date, like the monarchs who preceded them, and like their successors of to-day, had to issue their proclamations in three different languages.
Niebuhr made a careful study of the simplest form of the Persepolitan writing. He picked out what appeared to be the letters of the alphabet. These numbered forty-two. But there he stopped. Neither he nor any man of the time could determine the value of a single letter, nor say in what language the inscriptions were written. It was in the year 1765 that Niebuhr made his alphabetic list, and for thirty-seven other years nothing was done. The writing of Persepolis appeared likely to take its place among those mysteries from which no man may hope to lift the veil, and which seem to exist only to define the limits of human power and to teach proud man humility.
CHAPTER V.
Light Breaks
THE year 1802 is a memorable one in the annals of Assyriology. It was then only that the first success was attained and that a beginning was made which convinced scholars that diligent study alone was needed to give voice once more to those records of the past.
The name of Mlinter, a Dane, ought to be men-
126 The New Biblical Guide.
tioned among those of the early labourers who did something toward laying the foundations of the new science. A close study of the inscriptions published by Niebuhr led him to the conclusion that the first of the three forms of writing was alphabetic ; the second syllabic, that is, the signs, were used to re- present syllables and not the sounds of vowels and of consonants : and the third form (which was invariably the shortest) ideographic, the signs representing in this case neither letters nor syllables, nor, in fa6t, sounds of any kind, but ideas. The Chinese writing and our own numerals, i, 2, 3, 4, &c., have made us familiar with this last system. A Chinese written proclamation is equally intelligible to men who speak different languages, and the figures which we use in our arithmetic speak with equal diredlness to the natives of any European nationality.
Miinter's shrewd surmise was correc^t as to the two first kinds of writing, but not quite so happy in regard to the third. The third kind is only ideo- graphic in part, the larger portion of it being syllabic, like the second kind of writing. This conjecture left the problem very much where it had been before. But this very year was to see the study placed on quite a different level. A conversation took place one day between the Librarian of the University of Gottingen and a young student, named Grotefend. Their theme was the inscriptions of Persepolis; and the suggestion was made that Grotefend, who was fond of hard problems, should turn his attention to the subject. The story of the discovery
Light Breaks. 127
which followed I have already told in another work.* It is enough to say here, that, by what must always be regarded as one of the brightest illustrations of genius, he succeeded in deciphering the names of Xerxes, Darius, and Hystaspes. But there Grotefend's progress was arrested. We have already seen that Champollion's wonderful triumph was due to a long preparation, during which he had made himself master of the Coptic. A similar preparation was needed here, and of that neither Grotefend nor any scholar of his time had enough. The knowledge of the AncidVit Persian tongue had not then been recovered, and until that w^as had, nothing could be done.
Meanwhile, however, scholars were as busy in this latter direction as if it had been fully known how much depended upon their efforts. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in the history of these discoveries than the Providential leading shown in the remark- able converging of many lines of investigation, and in the unconscious co-operation of the first scholars of the time. One student, for example, from the knowledge which he had acquired of the Ancient Persian, added two letters to the beginning of the alphabet discovered by Grotefend. There were four charadlers frequently repeated at the end of words, and which he accordingly concluded must be a grammatical termination. Now, the first and the third of these charadlers was the same, and had been shown by Grotefend to have the value of a.
* The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures (Marshall Brothers, London, 7s. 6d.).
128 The New Biblical Guide,
The termination, then, was in the form axay, where X and y were as yet unknown. But this ending seemed to be that of the genitive plural (it appeared in what was strongly suspected to be the phrase " King of kings "), and the genitive plural in Ancient Persian was anam. Here, then, were two new letters, n and m, and the identification of these led to the discovery of one or two others.
This represented the entire results of thirty-four years' study. Grotefend's discovery was made in 1802, and it was now 1836. Would this Assyrian mystery ever be unveiled ? The reply came in the sudden announcement, in this very year, that the entire alphabet had been discovered by two scholars labouring independently — Eugene Burnouf in Paris, and Lassen in Germany. A third independent dis- coverer had afterwards to be added in the person of Colonel Rawlinson, who had attacked the problem in Persia, face to face with the inscriptions themselves. It was now proved that the first kind of writing upon the monuments of Persepolis was closely allied to the Zend, an ancient dialedl of Persia, in which the Avesta is written.
Great as this triumph was, however, the work was as yet only begun. Two other writing systems, enshrining communications of the most vital moment, but which were locked up in two dead languages, still confronted those who were toiling at the task of decipherment. The wonderful dis- coveries of ancient sculptures, buildings, and palaces, made by Botta and Layard in the land which had
Light Breaks.
129
once borne the name' of Assyria, stimulated public curiosity, and incited scholars to fresh efforts. I need not weary the reader with details. It is enough to say that the second writing was discovered to be in
COLONEL RAWLINSON.
a tongue regarded as Scythian or Medic, and the third in a language allied to the Hebrew, and spoken by the inhabitants of Assyria and of Babylonia. It is no cause for surprise that, when the new science of Assyriology began to give its translations of the
130 The New Biblical Guide,
inscriptions, doubts should have been entertained as to their reUability. Were they really translations, or were the translators victims of their own imagina- tions ? These doubts were laid to rest by one or two indisputable facets. A vase was found in Egypt which b3re the name of Xerxes in hieroglyphics. There was also a name written in the cuneiform character. The application of the discovered alphabet showed this to be the name of Xerxes in his native Persian. This incident had a powerful effe(5l in convincing scholars that the Persian cuneiform alphabet was not an imagination, but a real discovery.
A test, which was still more satisfactory, was applied by the Royal Asiatic Society to the more difficult Assyrian decipherments. An inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. was chosen. It consisted of 1,000 lines in perfect preservation, and treating of a great variety of matters. Lithographed copies were placed in the hands of Sir Henry Rawlinson, of London, Mr. Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, and Dr. Hincks, of Dublin. Dr. Oppert, of Paris, requested that he might be added to the number of decipherers. The translations were made independently, and were sent to the Secretary in sealed packets. These were opened in the presence of Dean Milman, Dr. Whewell, Mr. Grote, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson. They were found to be in substantial agreement, and there could be no further question that God had once more required that which was past, and, for His own wise and gracious purposes, had brought back again these old civilisations to the light of day.
The Progress of Discovery. 131
CHAPTER VI.
The Progress of Discovery.
IT is a striking fact that the numerous branches of research, which have thrown such a flood of hght upon the Bible, are all children of the present century. The time of our visitation, when the Protestantism of the English-speaking world would have to wrestle with a death-dealing scepticism, was at hand ; and God had already begun to muster the forces which will sweep back the attack to the abyss from which it has sprung. Our admiration is increased when we note with what marvellous skill those forces, which God has thus called into existence, are adapted for their work. The Bible was to be attacked in the name of science, and with all the eclat and masterful authority which clothe distinguished learning. And so God raises up witnesses for His Word, whose learning is still more authoritative, and whose science is the mightiest marvel of the time. Aaron's rod once more swallows up the rods of the wise, who seek to discredit the messengers of God.
The excavations in Palestine have disclosed ancient Hebrew inscriptions, which show that the Hebrew writing had already been long in use in the Ninth Century B.C. Mr. Bliss has also laid bare the founda- tions of an Amorite city, which have something to say regarding the Israelitish Invasion. The researches
132 The New Biblical Guide.
of Dr. Glaser in Arabia, have brought to Hght an ancient civiHsation, whose monuments seem to show that the use of the Hebrew writing goes back to a remote antiquity, and that the Book of Job might have existed as we have it now before the time of Moses. The Sinaitic survey and the researches of Professor Palmer, of Mr. Trumbull, and of others, have led scholarship past the quibblings of Colenso, and have disclosed the marvellous fidelity of the narrative of Israel's memorable journeyings.
But the discoveries in Egypt and in Assyria still eclipse all others. These are the two lands with whose ancient condition the Bible makes us specially acquainted. For a space of four hundred and thirty years the history of Israel is the history of Egypt. Abraham goes down into it. Joseph becomes an inmate and a trusted servant in one of its princely homes. He is afterwards a prisoner in one of its jails, and at last becomes the all-powerful minister of one of the last of the shepherd kings. The Israelites enter the land as favoured guests; and they leave it, more than two centuries afterwards, an immense people, who have escaped from a degrading and murderous tyranny. Now the Egypt of that ver}^ period has, in these last days, been brought back from the grave. If that is the Egypt with which the Bible has all along made us acquainted, then not all the scholarship that has ever been born will convince any rational man that the Bible is "old wives' fables" and not veritable history.
The records of Assyria and of Babylonia are of
The Progress of Discovery. 133
greater importance still; and, strange to say, it is just these which have been recovered in greatest abundance. While the Assyrian and the Persian and Medic writing upon the monuments of Ancient Persia were engaging the eager attention of scholars, the importance of their studies was emphasized by the unlooked-for discovery of the palaces, the sculptures, and the inscriptions, of the Assyrian kings. Botta had laid bare the halls of Sargon, the father of Sennacherib; and Layard, who had visited the country in 1840, was led to undertake two expeditions froni 1845 to 1847, and from 1849 to 1851. The excavations made during those periods had the most astonishing results. Ancient Nineveh was recovered, and the foundation was made of the British Museum's unrivalled Assyrian colledtion.
Layard's discoveries were the sensation of the time. A society was organized under the name of The Assyrian Excavation Fund. The Trustees of the British Museum placed ^^3,000 at the disposal of Sir Henry Rawlinson for the same purpose ; and excavations were made under his direction, and that of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam and of Mr. Loftus. These efforts resulted in the recovery of several ancient sites, and the collection of a large number of inscriptions and of objects of ancient Mesopotamian art. Other expeditions followed, notably those of M. Oppert, the distinguished French Assyriologist, and of Mr. George Smith.
These labours were marked by one extraordinary
134 ^^^^ ^^"^ Biblical Guide.
circumstance. Layard had come upon the palace hbrary of Sennacherib, and Rassam* was fortunate enough to discover, in 1853, that of Assur-bani-pal, where Loftus also worked ; and George Smith, at a later period, obtained from the same ruins a number of those precious little clay tablets covered over with fine Assyrian writing. Without the help of these, Assyriologists could never have conquered the diffictdties of the writing of the most important inscriptions which research had gathered. Those documents contained among them the classics of Ancient Assyria and Babylonia, and had difficulties even for the scholars of that age, which rejoiced in the possession of the ancient Babylonian lore. But here those very difficulties were explained. The library found in the palace of Assur-bani-pal was the library of the Palace-School, and contained grammatical paradigms, word-lists, and copies of the ancient classics, accom- panied by an Assyrian translation. The collection also embraced tablets referring to geography, natural history, theology, astronomy, or astrology rather, and history. One noteworthy feature of these works is that they are named just as the Hebrews named the Books of the Pentateuch. Genesis was always referred to by the Jews as Bereschith, or, " In the beginning," the word with which the Book opens ; Exodus was Elleh Shemoth (these are the names), &c. The opening word or phrase of the Book was used in the same way to designate these Ancient Babylonian texts.
Since then, we have been startled from time to time
* The greater part of our collections of tablets is due to this explorer.
The Progress of Discovery. 135
by fresh discoveries which have given unexpe6led entrance into entirely new fields ; and the probability is that those surprises are not yet at an end. Not long before George Smith died, he bought from a merchant at Bagdad, on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, a large number of tablets which had been discovered at Hillah, part of the suburbs of Ancient Babylon. The side of a ravine had been undermined by the rains and had fallen away, leaving a number of large coarse jars exposed to view. When taken down and examined, they were found to be filled with small tablets which proved to be the con- trails, sales, loans, and other commercial transactions of many of the principal merchants of Babylon at the period to which they refer. Most of them were carefully dated, and they stretch over a long period, which includes the later Babylonian dominion and the beginning of the Persian. It was in those tablets that scholars once more made the acquaintance of
THE FIRST TABLET FOUND MENTIONING BELSHAZZAR.
the long lost Belshazzar, already found by Sir Henry Rawlinson on cylinders discovered at Ur.
136 The New Biblical Guide.
In 1881, the excavations conducted by M. de Sarzec at Tell-Loh again lifted the veil from the ancient civilisation of Babylon. Returning in 1894, he recovered records of the ancient kings of the land, v^hich take us back to the very dawn of human history. The year 1887 witnessed another discovery, the far-reaching importance of which is becoming increasingly manifest. Some peasants at Tel-el- Amarna, in the south of Egypt, came upon a large collection of clay tablets in the ruins of the Palace once occupied by Amenophis III. and Amenophis IV., two kings of the i8th dynasty. Though found in Egypt, these documents were not in the writing of ancient Egypt, but (with a few exceptions) in the writing and language of ancient Babylon. This was remarkable enough, but it was a small matter in comparison with the surprise which followed. Several of the letters were written from Palestine, and were reports and communications which reveal fully the political condition of that country at the very time when the Israelites seem to have been crossing the desert to enter upon its possession. The expedition, sent out by the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, has discovered at Nipur what Dr. Hilprecht believes to be the ancient Calneh, and has, in any case, brought to light what is evidently an antediluvian city.
When the discoveries first attracted attention, it was imagined that they created another harvest of Biblical difficulties. That impression has long since disappeared from every well-informed mind. Every year shows more fully the marvellous fidelity and
The Progress of Discovery, 137
fulness of the Scripture. So deep is the impression made by these confirmations of the Bible, that archaeologists find themselves forced into conflict with the rationalists. " Dupuis," said M. Chabas, the distinguished Egyptologist, " after having built his chronology of forty or fifty thousand years upon the Zodiac discovered at Denderah, complacently said : ' I have cast the anchor of truth into the midst of the ocean of time.' He had cast the anchor into the midst of an ocean of errors. At the moment when he wrote his book, Champollion was born at Figeac, and thirty or forty years afterwards he deciphered the hieroglyphs, which proved that the famous Egyptian Zodiacs were only Greek Zodiacs of the Roman Epoch." The supposed disproof of the Bible chronology consequently collapsed, and covered its authors with well-merited shame and confusion.
Later feats of infidelity are being rapidly subjedled to the same fate. "It is," writes Dr. Bickell, ''a fadl well worthy of remark, that the great historical discoveries of our epoch in a way join hands to defend the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. While Egyptology makes us acquainted v/ith the condition of Egypt even to the minutest details, and thus proves the authenticity of that Book by compelling us to admit that its author must, like Moses, have lived in the Valley of the Nile, Assyriology demonstrates the falsity of the hypothesis of various original sources, and proves the unity of this fundamental writing of Divine revelation."
We shall now look at some of those gracious gifts
138 T^^^ ^^'^ Biblical Guide.
of God's Providence, which have proved such a succour to our faith, and which provide so triumphant a reply when we are compelled to speak with the enemy in the orate.
MODERN DISCOVERIES AND THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I. The Creatiox History.
I
T is startling to find confirmations in the literature of Babylon, of Assyria, and of other countries, of the first chapter of Genesis. That chapter contains an account of afts done by God before man existed. There was no human witness of those things; and, if they find a record in human literature, it must be by , revelation and not as a matter of history.
There is a very easy and much favoured solution of this difficulty. It is to set down the Bible story and every reflection and echo of it as traditions of early • speculations regarding the origin of the universe. It was impossible that man, it is urged, should not ask the question whence he and all things else had come. Hence, we are told, sprang up the idea of God; and, when that was once laid hold of, what was so natural as further guesses about the manner in which the earth, the heavenly bodies, vegetables, animals, and men, were originated? These speculations, we are
140 The New Biblical Guide.
told, were followed by others as to the order in which the various parts of Creation succeeded each other. Thus, a little common sense, we are reminded, disposes of the whole mystery. Men of old were like ourselves; and as we, with our wider knowledge, have our evolution theories, so they, with the inexperience and the lively imagination of their savage existence, had their Creation theories!
But, simple and satisfactory as this explanation has appeared to many, it is burdened with enormous difficulties. Even the most enthusiastic of its supporters would hardly expedt the guesses of their savage ancestors to anticipate modern investigation ; and still less would they be prepared to find in these guesses a discriminating and accurate summary of the laboriously reached, and highly-prized, results of Nineteenth Century science. But such is the record whose existence we have to explain. The order of events in the first chapter of Genesis is the very order of events as now ascertained by science. This has long been felt to be the case by Christian scientists ; but, as discovery has proceeded, the conviction has extended and deepened. Genesis i. 3 states that the first thing which God created, after the origination of matter, was light. That statement was long ridiculed, and ridiculed too, in the name of science. But the ideas of science have undergone what is little less than a revolution on the subject of light ; and scientists now unite in telling us that '' Light is the first of all that exists." How has it happened that Genesis taught that truth before the discoveries were
The Creation History. 141
made and before the researches even began ? By what strange chance did it put that first in the series, and so anticipate one of the biggest achievements of this Nineteenth Century?
And, although that could be explained, the difficul- ties of the man who insists that the Creation story in Genesis is merely savage guess-work, would only have begun. For the story is wonderfully explicit. It states that all life did not come at once, and that the world did not spring into its present condition in a moment. It had been the scene of successive crea- tions and arrangements. Now, here again, we have facts and not guesses. Put "evolution" instead of creation, and no better statement than this can be given of the earth's history even in the opinion of those who rejecl: the claims of Scripture. But the Bible is also right as to the stejs by which the earth came into its present condition. It was long denied that vegetation preceded the introduction of animal life ; but the existence of the graphite beds proves that there was a profuse vegetation in the earth's early history. The abundant and gigantic reptile life followed. Then cam.e the mammalia; and, last of all, man. Now that is the order of fact, an order which it was impossible for early man to know, except by revelation.
There are indications, as we shall see, that these things were known before Moses, and that there must have been a primeval revelation. We find wrecks of that revelation everywhere in the ancient religions. Many of the maxims of Confucius, and some of the
142 The New Biblical Guide.
statements in the Egyptian funereal Ritual, which startle us by their loftiness and purity, are part of that lost inheritance of early man. That revelation seems to have laid the future bare as well as the past. Osiris dies and rises again, and becomes the Judge of all, and the Egyptian is saved by being united to him — all of which seems a foreshadowing of the history of Jesus. There appears to have been light shed also upon the very nature of God, as we are enabled to trace the docftrine of the Trinity running through many of the ancient religions.
This early revelation was hopelessly lost. How hopelessly it was lost, what has been called " The Chaldean Genesis " will prove to us by-and-bye. In laying the foundation of His redeeming work, and in calling out a people for His name, God once more revealed the truth, and revealed it the more gloriously. In the revelation given by Moses, the old gift was restored, and restored with still fuller light. We shall now look at some of those testimonies yielded by the wrecks of the older revelation to the truth of the new revelation given to Israel.
A slight, but, nevertheless, a striking, coincidence was observed in the inscriptions at Persepolis. These inscriptions are in three languages, Persian, Assyrian, and Medic, or Susian. The Assyrian, like the Susian, is a mere translation of the Persian text; and, as we should exped^, the arrangement and the order of the Persian text is stri(ftly followed in the other two tables. But in one phrase of the Assyrian translation there is a striking difference. De Saulcy,
The Creation History. 143
an early labourer on the Persepolitan inscriptions, meeting the phrase " earth and heaven," had put down a certain Assyrian sign as meaning " earth," because it stood apparently for the Persian word bumin, which has that meaning. The other sign which followed was, of course, fixed upon as that for "heaven." But fuller light showed that de Saulcy was mistaken. While the Persian read : '* earth and heaven," the Assyrian had the order of the words reversed, and the inscription in that tongue ran : ''heaven and earth."
This, of course, seems at first glance a very small matter. But science ponders the small as well as the great, and scholars were not above inquiring into the reasons of this unexpe6ted change. It was quite clear that it was not due to chance ; for it il' as found in all the trilingual inscriptions. In the first and the third of the three languages, that is, in the Persian and the Susian, Orrnuzd is called "the Father of earth and heaven;" but in the Assyrian table this order is constantly reversed, and the phrase reads, "the Father of heaven and earth." A full acquaintance with the inscriptions of the Persian kings, and with the minute care which they always exercised to keep in line with the customs and with the beliefs of their subjects, led M. Oppert to the conclusion that the order of the words "heaven and earth" indicated' the belief of the Assyrians that the heavens were created before the earth.
This has now been fully established by subsequent discoveries. The order in the Assyrian inscriptions
144
The New Biblical Guide.
of Persepolis, is the order which the Assyrian inscriptions always followed. We have it, for example, in the first of the Creation tablets, as we shall see immediately. These were found by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam and Mr. George Smith, in the ruins of the palace of the Assyrian king, Assur-bani-pal. Mr. Rassam preceded Mr. Smith by many years, and found large portions of the legend, whilst Mr. Smith's
ONE OF THE COPIES OF THE DELUGE LEGEND.
(From George Smith's Chaldean Genesis).
additions were comparatively small. To Mr. Smith belongs the great honour of first recognizing its nature^ and translating it. The tablets are fragmentary, and the series is incomplete. The opinions of Assyriologists vary as to their age. The edition which we possess was made for Assur-bani-pal's Palace-School, and must be assigned to about 660 B.C. But it was a copy
The Creation History. 145
of a Babylonian classic, which was already ancient. George Smith assigns its origin to some time between 2000 and 1550 B.C. In all probability its composition was long before these dates. I shall now briefly indicate the points of contadl between the narrative in Genesis and the statements of the Assyrian tablets. The Scripture affirms that the first condition of things was a watery mass enveloped in darkness: ''And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep " (Genesis i. 2). We have a clear echo of this in the first Creation tablet : —
"When on high the heavens proclaimed not, and earth beneath recorded not a name,
then the abyss of waters was in the beginning their generator, the chaos of the deep (Tiamat) was she who bore them all. Their waters were embosomed together, and the plant was ungathered, the herb (of the field) ungrown." *
Here, we are told, before vegetation appeared, and before a name was proclaimed in heaven or recorded on earth, in other words, before a thing existed, there was "the abyss of waters," "the chaos of the deep." That " was in the beginning their generator," and "bore them all." It may be worth noting, as another echo of the Scripture, that heaven "proclaims" the name, and earth "records" it. The reader will remember the oft-repeated statement in Genesis i. that God named His works: "And God called the light ' Day,' and the darkness He called ' Night.' . . . And God called the firmament * Heaven.' . . . And God ca//^^ the dry land 'Earth,'
* Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 63.
146 The New Biblical Guide.
and the gathering together of the waters called He 'Seas.'"
Other echoes of the truth about the primeval chaos, which show how deeply this part of the primeval revelation impressed the minds of the first men, are found in the Babylonian Mythology. The primal mass of waters, is called in Hebrew tihom, in Assyrian tiamat. This becomes the goddess Tiamat, who plays, as we shall see in the next chapter, a great part in the world's story, according to the mythology of Babylon. We possess a large part of the thir^ Book, or tablet, of the Babylonian Creation story ; but it is difficult to trace in it anything which throws light upon the Creation story of the Bible. It is a picture of fierce struggle among the gods. But the fifth Book corresponds clearly with the fourth Creation day, in which the heavenly bodies were created. The tablet reads : —
" He prepared the mansion of the great gods : he fixed the stars that corresponded with them, even the twin-stars. He ordained the year, appointing the ^igns of the Zodiac over it. For each of the twelve months he fixed three stars, from the day when the year issues forth to (its) close. He founded the mansion of the Sun-god who passes along the ecliptic, that they might know their bounds, that they might not err, that they might not go astray in any way • He established the mansion of Bel and Ea along with Himself. Moreover, he opened gates on either side.
He strengthened the bolts on the left hand and on the right, and in the midst of it he made a staircase.
He illuminated the Moon-god that he might be watchman of the night,
and ordained for him the ending of the night that the day might be known.
The Creation History. 147
(saying) : " Month by month, without break, keep watch in
(thy) disk.
At the beginning of the month rise brightly at evening,
with glittering horns, that the heavens may know.
On the seventh day halve (thy) disk." *
Here, the appointing "to rule over the day and over
the night," and "for signs, and for seasons, and for
daysand years" (Gen.i. 14, 18), echoes clearly through
all the meanderings of Babylonian mythology. The
light has been turned into darkness and the fine
gold into dross ; but we can see that both light and
gold were once possessed. Of another tablet, or
Book, either the 6th or the 7th of the series, we
have, so far, only the opening lines. But these
lines carry on the Creation story in the same order
as is observed in the Scripture account. They run
thus : —
" At that time the gods in their assembly created (the beasts). They made the living creatures,
the beasts of the field, the animals of the field, and the reptiles of the field."
Another text gives us the name of the first man. He is called Adapa. Two other ancient inscriptions have been found which were supposed to be other versions of the Babylonian Creation story. But they appear to be only prolonged references to it, and they need not detain us. I shall close this chapter with a notice of a most welcome ray of light from ancient Babylon. It used to be denied that there was any trace of a seventh-day Sabbath among the early institutions of humanity. We were reminded that
* Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 70.
L
148 The New Biblical Guide.
the Egyptians knew nothing of it ; that the Greek week was one of ten days ; that the Roman week had eight; that the Peruvians had a cycle of nine days; and the Mexicans had one of five days and another of thirteen. Davidson, in his " Introdu(5tion to the Old Testament," has an elaborate argument, under no fewer than three divisions, the purpose of which is to show that the Old Testament itself does not teach that the Sabbath is older than the time of Moses. The undeniably ancient and widespread division of time into weeks was said to be a very obvious invention. The moon passes through its changes in twenty-nine and a-half days, and the fourth part of that time is nearly seven days. There was no attempt made to show why the ancients should have divided the moon's period into four, and not into three divisions rather, which, if they had been made weeks of ten days each, would have approximated much more nearly to the twenty-nine and a-half days. But now, Eberhard Schrader, who himself belongs to the rationalistic school, says: "We are not to regard it (the Sabbath) as having a specific Hebrew origin, nor as having come to the Hebrews through the Arameans. It should be considered rather as an ancient Babylonian institution, which the Hebrews brought with them from their stay in South Babylonia." *
This point no longer admits of dispute, as fa(fts have closed the argument and added another to the fast accumulating confirmations of Scripture. God's
* Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, Vol.!., p. 19.
The Creation History. 149
division of time has left its mark in the sacredness attached to the number seven from the very infancy of humanity. Nothing could show more clearly than this does the folly of looking upon the Sabbath as a purely Semitic institution. We find the idea of the sacredness of this number firmly rooted in the earliest civilization of Babylon, which was non- Semitic, and from which every other civilization upon the earth has sprung. ''Seven," says Professor Sayce, "was a sacred number, whose magic virtues had descended to the Semites from their Accadian, predecessors. When the Chaldean Noah escaped from the Deluge, his first ad^ was to build an altar and to set vessels, each containing the third of an ephah, by sevens, over a bed of reeds, pine-wood, and thorns. Seven by seven had the magic knots to be tied by the witch ; seven times had the body of the sick man to be anointed with the purifying oil. As the Sabbath of rest fell on each seventh day of the week, so the planets, like the demon messengers of Anu, were seven in number, and ' the god of the number seven ' received peculiar honour." f
This in itself would have been significant enough ; but the discovery of a calendar tablet for the inter- calary month Elul, has shown us the seven-day week ^ and the Sabbath in full sway in Ancient Babylonia. Each day is set apart for one of the many divinities of the Babylonian Pantheon ; but the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days are named " evil days," and described, among other things, as being *' unsuitable for work."
t Hibbert Lectures, pp. 6i, 82.
150 The New Biblical Guide,
For each of these days the following restri(5tions are enjoined afresh : " The Shepherd of mighty nations must not eat flesh cooked at the fire (or) in the smoke. His clothes he must not change. White garments he must not put on. He must not offer sacrifice. The king must not drive a chariot. He must not issue royal decrees. In a secret place the augur must not mutter. Medicine for the sickness of his body he must not apply. For making a curse it is not fit." * Not till the day had passed and the darkness had fallen, or till the next day had dawned, must the king even present his sacrifice to the gods.
The stern rigidity of this Sabbath law, like the rigidity of the Pharasaic Sabbath, speaks of an institution almost alone in its antiquity and sacred- ness. To have placed a taboo like this upon the a(5tion even of the king and of the magicians, the spiritual lords of Babylon, the Sabbath law must have lain at the very foundation of all that primeval man reckoned sacred. And the great antiquity of the Sabbath is shown by other testimonies. " Its institution must have gone back," says Professor Sayce, " to the Accadian epoch, since the term used to represent it in the text is udu khnlgal, ' an unlawful day,' like the Latin ' Dies nefastus,' which is rendered by Sulum, X or ' rest-day,' in Assyrian." t And, strange to say, we are able to go behind even these things, and to see something of the early sweetness of
* Ibid, p. 71. + Ibid, p. 76.
t This should be Khulgalhim, from the Akkadian Khulgal. Salum (when it occurs), does not mean "rest-day," but is simply the construct case of the noun Sulmu, " peace."
" The Chaldean Genesis^ 151
the God-given rest-day. In an explanation of the term Sabattuv, we have the sweetest name for the Sabbath which ever fell from man's lips. It is explained as meaning yum nukh libbi, " a day of rest for the heart." That name told of a time when the Sabbath was understood and rejoiced in. It was not merely a ceasing to toil, and a rest for the body. It was the day of the soul's home-coming to God, when it feasted at God's table, and bathed in the sunshine of God's love. There is also another significant name for the Sabbath, which brings a further confirmation to the Scripture. It is called "the day of completion " (of labours) : a name which finds its explanation in Genesis ii. 2 : " And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made."
CHAPTER II.
The Chaldean Genesis.'
SUCH was the title which George Smith gave to the Assyrian tablets which tell the story of the Creation and of the Deluge. No description could be happier or more true. Those tablets preserved the traditions of the origin of the world and of the first great judgment upon mankind, and they held that place among the Babylonians and Assyrians which Genesis holds among ourselves.
152 The New Biblical Guide.
But the scepticism, so natural to all of us, is fruit- ful in suggestions. It is not altogether a matter of blame that it is so. Our trust is a sacred gift, and the bestowal of it anywhere has infinite issues. The soul weds what it believes and trusts in. The truster and the trusted become one, and the thought and the life of the one are blended with the thought and the life of the other. We must admit, then, that it is natural and right that the demand for our faith should awake alarm and vigilant suspicion and keen-eyed inquiry.
But we may mistake that which alone has the right to claim our trust, and which alone has the power to bless ; and, instead of inquiring, we may seek only to justify rejedlion by inventing excuses for unbelief. Such a spirit is fertile in resource ; and, in some instances, it has apparently discovered that it can intrench itself in this "Chaldean Genesis." Abraham, it remembers, dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees. These traditions could not be unknown to him. He, no doubt, oftentimes in his younger days perused those very tablets, and the reading of them may have formed part of his early training. Is it not highly probable that he took copies with him when he left his native land ? These would be precious heirlooms to his princely descendants, who, we now know, must have been able, as the other dwellers in Canaan were, to read the Babylonian writing, and to under- stand, and even to correspond in, the Babylonian language. The tablets would, it is further imagined, be taken with Jacob down into Egypt, and there
** The Chaldean Genesis.''' 153
Moses would, no doubt, have had access to them. What more is needed to explain the Genesis of the Bible ? Moses had only to re-write the old Babylonian story. And — here at last comes the unvailing of the cloven hoof, so cleverly concealed till now — if no one would expecSt us to regard the Creation tablets as the very Word of God, is it one whit more reasonable to ask us to accept this amended edition of them as a revelation from on high ?
A theory of that kind has amazing comfort in it for many. They are disturbed by the claim made for the Bible as a direct and miraculous gift from the hand of God, and they recover their equanimity when they think they can explain the Bible as an ordinary human production. It may be worth our while, then, to pause for a moment or two, and to see what this theory is worth, and whether the Chaldean Genesis was, or could have been, the progenitor of the Genesis of the Bible.
But let me, first of all, show that, even if the Genesis of the Bible were the offspring of the Baby- lonian tradition, this would not efface the fa(?t of Revelation. I have already pointed to the presence of statements in the Chaldean traditions of Creation, which are distinct anticrpations of modern science, and which man in the first ages could have known only by communications from One who knew the fadls. Among these are the statements as to the production of the earth and of the heavenly bodies, of vegetation, and of animal life in successive stages. Science makes that very communication to us as
154 ^^^^ ^^'^' Biblical Guide.
one of her most valued discoveries. Another facft, which made, as we shall immediately see, a tremendous impression upon the imagination of primeval man, was the origination of the splendour of the universe, and of the beauty and fulness of the earth, from a dark, chaotic mass of waters. Science has not yet proved this, but knows that it is distinctly pointed to by converging discoveries. Where did the early men get hold of that knowledge, and how did it happen that they not only knew what science is pointing toward in the end of this 19th century of the Christian era, but knew it so well that their thoughts were as fully saturated with it as if they had acftually groped their way in that awful gloom, and had been shocked and appalled by the tumult of that mighty uproar ? That there is only one answer possible is plain to all. These things, of which the traditions speak, are facts. They are fa(fts which were hid in the depths of a past that early man could not have penetrated. And yet early man knew them, and knew them broadly and fully. Some One who knew them must have told him — in other words. Heaven must have spoken with earth, and revelation is a facTt as undeniable and as patent as any with which science has to deal.
It is well, too, to note at this point that this early revelation was the possession of entire humanity, and not of Chaldea only. Its traces are found in India, as well as in Mesopotamia. In one of the Vedic hymns the following lines occur : —
"In the beginning there was neither nought nor aught.
'* The Chaldean Genesis.'' 155
Then there was neither sky nor atmosphere above.
****** Then there was neither death nor immortality. There was neither day, nor night, nor light, nor darkness. Only the Existent One breathed calmly, self-contained. Nought else than Him there was — nought else above, beyond. Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom. Next all was water, all a chaos indistinct." *
The Ancient Phenician tradition was recorded by Sanchoniathon as follows: — "The beginning of all things was a dark and condensed windy air, or a breeze of dark air, and a chaos turbid and indistinct like Erebus ; and these things were infinite, and for a long time had no bound." t
Similar traditions were possessed by the Greeks and the Romans. Ovid put them in verse, not unworthily rendered by Dryden thus —
" Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball. And heaven's high canopy that covers all, One was the face of nature ; if a face : Rather a rude and indigested mass : A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed. Of jarring seeds, and justly chaos named. No sun was lighted up the world to view, No moon did yet her blunted horns renew, Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky, Nor poised, did on her foundations lie, Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown ; But earth and air and water were in one.
All were confused, and each disturbed the rest,
For hot and cold were in one body fixed.
And soft with hard, and light with heavy, mixed.
But God, or nature, while they thus contend.
To these intestine discords put an end.
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driven,
And grosser air sunk from ethereal heaven," &c., &c. \
* Monier Williams' Hindu Wisdom, p. 22. t Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 3. t Ovid's " Metamorphoses."
156 The New Biblical Guide,
I need not multiply quotations, and shall make these suffice. But let me once more say that those wide-spread traditions present a problem of which there can, it seems to me, be only one solution. Whence comes this picfture, outlined and filled in more or less completely in the ancient traditions of one and another of the great branches of the human family ? If we say these are versions of some more , ancient, central tradition — that they are the echoes and reverberations of a voice that spoke or sung these things in some far-off time — the question still remains. The problem has only changed its form. Whence did that tradition come ? Whose voice was it that first woke the echoes, which have gone on reverberating down the ages ? Everyone knows to- day that this talk about light having been born out of darkness, and the beauty and fulness of the earth having been a development from a chaos — *' a rude and indigested mass " — is not the mere tissue of poetic fancies, which it was once supposed to be. It is, on the contrary, a record of sober facfts. But everyone knows equally well that the science which has taught us this is the latest born of all, and is, indeed, the child of these last days. Bryant has an amusing note on a passage in Hesiod, in which the ancient Greek poet touches upon these things. Nothing had been heard from geology when Bryant was in his prime ; but he had read of the Deluge, and he knew that there had then been water and chaos and confusion enough. He accordingly rushed to the conclusion that the ancients had mixed matters
'^The Chaldean Genesis.''' 157
somewhat ; and so he instru(5led his readers that the ancients supposed the mundane system ''to commence from the Deluge, The confusion which prevailed at the Deluge is represented as the chaotic state of nature; for the earth was hid, and the heavens obscured, and all the elements in disorder!''
We now know that the ancient poet was wiser than his modern commentator; but we have stili to say whence the superior information of the former was derived. It could not have been from human experience; for, in the days of that chaos, no hfe existed. We know equally well that it did not spring from science. Men then paced the earth in utter ignorance of those wondrous records, stored tier on tier beneath their feet. And yet the words bear the indubitable stamp of knowledge. Their source, then, was in some thought that had grasped these things, , and that had seen and known them. Whose thought, then ? Not man's, we have said. Whose, then, if not God's ?
**The Chaldean Genesis" has, therefore, some right to a name which alhes it with the precious gift of God's Word. But we have now to answer the question whether this Chaldean Genesis has been used, or could have been used, by Moses or some ' other writer, to give us the Genesis of the Bible. Let me ask the reader to first of all mark what this Chaldean Genesis is, and if I tax his patience by asking him to grope his way through this realm of darkness, his experience will be valuable in helpin.:^' him to appreciate my reply. I quote the translation
158 The New Biblical Gtiide.
given in Professor Sayce's The Higher Criticism and the Monuments. The first tablet tells that the universal blank was first broken by the Creation of the gods.
" Then were the (great) gods created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth (the first) Until they grew up (and waxed old), (when) the gods Sar and Kisar (the upper and lower firmaments) were created. Long were the days (until) the gods Anu (Bel and Ea were created) ; Sar (and Kisar created them).
The rest of the tablet is broken, so that at this point silence falls upon the Chaldean Genesis. The third tablet is the next in order recovered so far. It deals with the subjed^ion of chaos ; and the strife by which the darkness and disorder were swept away was the subjedl of the great Epic of Accadia and of Babylon. Tihoni, in Assyrian tiamat, " the watery deep," and the usual word for " the sea," became in Accadian mythology a gigantic female monster.
*' The gods have surrounded her {i.e., Tiamat), all of them ; Together with those whom ye have created, I (Merodach)
marched beside her. When they had armed themselves (?) beside her, they approached
Tiamat. (Merodach), the strong one, the glorious, who desists not night
or day, the exciter to battle, was disturbed in heart. Then they marshalled (their) forces ; they create darkness (?) The mother of Khubur, the creatures of them all, multiplied weapons not (known) before ; she produced (?) huge snakes whose teeth were pointed, unsparing was (their) edge. She filled their bodies with poison like blood. She clothed with terror the raging vampires. She uplifted the lightning-flash, on high she launched (it).
'^ The Chaldean Genesis:' 159
She fills them with venom (?) so that with . . .
their bodies abounded though their breasts bent not.
She stationed the dragon, the great serpent, and the god
Lakha(ma). the great reptile, the deadly beast, and the scorpion-man, the devouring reptiles, the fish-man, and the zodiacal ram, lifting up the weapons that spare not, fearless of battle. Strong is her law, not previously repeated. Thereupon the eleven monsters like him {i.e., Kingu) she sent
forth. Among the gods her forces she (launched). She exalted Kingu (her husband) in the midst ; ^beside) her (he
w^as) King. They marched in front before the army (of Tiamat).
''The lines that follow," says Professor Sayce, " are so broken as to render a translation impossible. But we gather from what is left that the news of the preparations made by Tiamat was brought to the gods by Sar or An-sar, the primeval god of the Firmament. Then, it would seem, Sar sends forth one god after another among his family, beginning with Anu, the Sky-god, to oppose the forces of evil: " I sent forth Anu ; he did not go forth. Ea feared and returned. I sent Merodach, the seer of the gods; he felt the courage to face Tiamat. He opened his mouth and said . . . ' I am (your) avenger ; I will bind Tiamat.' Once more the mutilated state of the fragments makes further translation impossible, but
we learn that eventually Babylonian seal, with picture
, , J r A OF THE CONFLICT.
the gods made a leaSt, (Ptom Geo. smith's ChaUean Genesis.)
after having created the vine for the purpose, and
i6o The New Biblical Guide.
retired to the highest heaven, leaving the issue of the confli(5t in the hands of Merodach.
" The fourth tablet, or book of the Epic, is in an almost perfect condition, and runs as follows : —
"They (the gods) established for him [i.e., Merodach) the mercy- seat of the mighty ; before his fathers he seated himself for sovereignty. "Yea, thou (O Merodach), art glorious among the great gods, thy fortune is unrivalled, thy festival (that) of Anu ! O Merodach, thou art glorious among the great gods ; thy fortune is unrivalled, thy festival (that) of Anu ! Since that day unchanged is thy command. High and low entreat thy hand : may the word that goes forth from thy mouth be established ;
unopposed is thy festival. None among the gods has surpassed thy power, the sustainers of the . . . (and) the mercy-seat of the god
of the canopy of heaven. May the place of their gathering (?) become thy home ! O Merodach, thou art he who avenges us ! We give thee the sovereignty, (we) the hosts of all the universe ! Thou possessest (it), and in the assembly shall thy word be
exalted. Never may thy weapons be broten ; may they reach thy foes ! O lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth his trust in
thee, and pour out the soul of the god who has hold of evil." Then they laid upon their friend a robe ; to Merodach, their firstborn, they spake; " May thy destiny, O lord, be before the god of the canopy of
heaven ! A word and (the gods) have created ; command that they may
fulfil (it). Open thy mouth, let the robe perish ; Say to it : ' Return ! ' and the robe will be there." He spake with his mouth, the robe perished ; he said to it " Return ! " and the robe appeared again.
'* The Chaldean Genesis,'' i6i
When the gods, his fathers, saw the word that came forth from
his mouth they rejoiced, they reverenced Merodach as king, they bestowed upon him the sceptre, the throne and reign ; they gave him a weapon unsurpassed, consuming the hostile. "Go " (they said), " and cut off the life of Tiamat ; let the winds carry her blood to secret places," The gods, his fathers, determine the destiny of Bel (Merodach). The path of peace and obedience is the road they cause him to
take. He made ready the bow, he prepared his weapon. He made the club swing, he fixed for it the thong (?), and the god lifted up the curved-sword, he bade his right hand
hold (it) ; the bow and the quiver he hung at his side ; he set the lightning before him ; with the swift-glancing gleam he filled his body. He made also a net to enclose the Dragon of the Deep (Tiamat). He seized the four winds that they might not issue forth, any
one of them, the south wind, the north wind, the east wind, and the west wind. He brought to his side the net, the gift of his father Anu ; he created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, a wind
unrivalled, and he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, the
seven of them, confounding the dragon Tiamat as they swept after him. Then the lord (Bel) raised the deluge, his mighty weapon. He mounted the chariot, a thing not (seen) before, terrible. He stood firm and hung the four reins at its side. (He held the weapon) unsparing, overflowing, rapid."
"The next few lines are much broken; then we read : —
On that day they beheld him, the gods beheld him, the gods his fathers beheld him, the gods beheld him. And the lord (Bel) approached, by the waist he catches Tiamat ; she seeks the help (?) of Kingu her husband.
1 62 The New Biblical Guide,
she looks, and seeks his counsel. But his plan was destroyed, his action was ruined, and the gods his allies who marched beside him beheld how (Merodach) the first-born held the yoke upon them. He laid judgment on Tiamat, but she turned not her neck. With her hostile lips she announced opposition. (Then) the gods (come to the help) of Bel, they approach thee, they gathered their (forces) together to where thou wast, and Bel (launched) the deluge, his mighty weapon, (against) Tiamat, whom he requited, sending it with these words : " (War and) trouble on high thou hast excited; (strengthen) thy heart and stir up the (battle) ! "
'* Then come five more mutilated lines, and after that the poem continues —
. . . ' Against my fathers thou hast directed thy hostility, May thy host be fettered, may they bind thy weapons ! Stand up and I and thou will fight together.' When Tiamat heard this,
she uttered her former spells, she repeated her plan. Tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. From its roots she strengthened her seat completely. She recites an incantation, she casts a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. Then there stood up Tiamat (and) Merodach, the seer of the gods ; they hurried to the combat, they met in battle. Then Bel spread out his net, he enclosed her. He sent before him the evil wind which seizes from behind, and he opened the mouth of Tiamat that she should swallow it ; he made the evil wind enter so that she could not close her lips. With the violence of the winds he fills her stomach, and her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted. He swung the club, he shattered her stomach, he cut out her entrails, he dissected the heart ; he took her and ended her life. He threw down her corpse, he stood upon it. When Tiamat, who marched in front, was conquered, he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown.
" The Chaldean Genesis.''
and the gods her allies who marched beside her trembled (and) feared (and) turned their backs. He allowed them to fly and spared their lives.
163
They were surrounded by a fence, without power to escape. He shut them in and broke their weapons ; he cast his net and they remain in the meshes. (All) the quarters of the world they filled with mourning ;
M
164 ^^^^ ^^"^ Biblical Guide.
they bear their sin, they are kept in bondage,
and the eleven monsters are filled with fear.
As for the rest of the spirits who marched in her rear (?),
he laid cords on their hands . . .
At the same time he (treads) their opposition under him.
And the god Kingu who had marshalled their (forces)
he bound, and assigned him (to prison) along with (the other) gods.
And he took from him the tablets of destiny (that were) upon him.
With the stylus he sealed (it) and held the ... of the tablet.
After he had fettered (and) laid the yoke on his foes,
he led the illustrious enemy like an ox,
he established fully the victory of An-Sar over the foe.
Merodach, the hero, obtained the reward (?) of Ea.
Over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch, and
Tiamat whom he had bound he turned head backwards ;
Then Bel trampled on the underpart of Tiamat.
With his blows unceasing he smote the skull,
he broke (it) and caused her blood to flow ;
the north wind carried (it) away to secret places.
He beheld, and his countenance rejoiced (and) was glad.
The presents of a peace-offering he caused them (i.^.,the foe) to
bring to him. So Bel rested ; his body he feeds. He strengthens his mind (?), he forms a clever plan, and he broke her like a dried fish in two pieces ; he took one half of her and made it the covering of the sky ; he stretched out the skin, and caused a watch to be kept, enjoining that her waters should not issue forth. The sky is bright (?), the lower earth rejoices (?), and he sets the dwelling of Ea (the Sea-god) opposite the deep. Then Bel measured the circumference (?) of the deep ; he established a great building like unto it (called) E-Sarra (the
firmament) ; the great building E-Sarra which he built in the heaven he caused Anu, Bel, and Ea to inhabit as their stronghold." *
Such is the Chaldean Genesis. The theory which traces the Genesis of the Bible to these traditions
* The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 63-69.
" The Chaldean Genesis,''' 165
proceeds upon the notion that the traditions, like the waters, were purified as they ran. The riotous imaginations are supposed to have grown sober with advancing years, till, from this turbid mass of idola- trous fancies, we got the pure and simple story told in the first and second chapters of Genesis.
But we have conclusive proof that this primitive record never sobered down. The waters ran for long ages and never became purer. In the account left by Berossus, a Chaldean priest of the third or fourth century B.C., we have still this conflict between Bel and Tiamat, between the huge monsters and the gods.
How is it, then, that the law of development operates in Egypt, or in the wilds of Sinai, and not in the plains of Mesopotamia? In the account written by Berossus, 1,200 years later than Moses, and from the very materials which Moses is supposed to have used, those grotesque and hideous features are still preserved, and are indeed more grotesque and hideous still. There is no clearing away of mythological rust there ! Everything is as crude, and as full of idolatry and superstition, as in the monuments themselves. We might leave the matter there, and say that, what was impossible for Berossus in the 3rd century before our era, was at least equally impossible for Moses in the 15th century B.C. But we shall ask anyone, who may still cling to this hypo- thesis, to apply a further test of its truth. Let him conceive himself shut up with such creation literature as is now before us. Let him imagine his mind saturated with that and unvisited by a single ray of
1 66 The New Biblical Guide.
the clear light of Scripture ; and then let him say whether he could sit down and concoct, verse by verse, the first chapter of Genesis. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? And is there anything more required than the setting of the two narratives side by side, to show that with Moses there was another and higher Spirit than with Berossus — the Spirit of the Almighty ?
"The resemblances and differences," says Professor Sayce, "between the Biblical and the Babylonian accounts are alike striking. The polytheism which underlies the one with the thinly veiled materialism which overlies it, is not more profoundly contrasted with the devout monotheism of the other than is the absolute want of mythological details in Genesis with the cosmological myths embodied in the cunei- form poem. We pass as it were from the Iliad to sober history. Where the Assyrian or Babylonian poet saw the action of deified forces of nature, the Hebrew writer sees only the will of the one supreme God."
The Chaldean Genesis is itself a testimony that revelation is a fact. The story is built upon outlines which perfect knowledge of creation's mysteries could alone have furnished. And the Genesis of the Bible is also in itself the proof that He who gave the first revelation gave us this second revelation, that men might know him who is behind all things and in all things — the living God, our Maker, and our Father.
The Creation of Man. 167
CHAPTER III.
The Creation of Man.
^"P^HE idolatries of the nations show how com- ^ pletely the truth regarding God had perished. There are distinct traces of the primal knowledge and behef which speak of a teaching as full and pure, in some parts, as that of Scripture. But the God- given light of those earty times seems to have been speedily forsaken, and then to have been almost utterly forgotten.
We have another example of the depths of this frightful darkness in the old world's thought and teaching about man.
All knowledge of man's origin and of the original unity of the human race had perished. Each race was supposed to have sprung up spontaneously from the soil of the land in which it was found. This was the account which the Greeks (the most philosophical of the nations and the teachers of the Roman world) gave of themselves. We can understand how such a belief destroyed the sacredness of human life and banished utterly every idea of human brotherhood.
And yet, strange to say, this seemingly monstrous theory of human origin sprang from a misunder- standing of a truth that was once fully known, and which the Bible alone has restored to us. The name which was applied by the Greeks to themselves and others was "Autochthones." It is made up of two
1 68 The New Biblical Guide,
words, atitos, self, and chihon, land ; and it meant that they had sprung from the land itself, and, in their own case, from the land or soil of Greece. We marvel at the grotesque conception, and we ask ourselves how such a notion could ever have suggested itself to any sane man. The explanation is that they were clinging to a venerable tradition which they had ceased to understand. Turn to Gen. ii. 7, and you have the key to the mystery. We read there : "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." In one respect the Greeks were quite right. Man had sprung from the soil; but it was at the touch of a Creative hand. The primeval revelation had been broken up, and this and other fragments went floating down the stream of time. And now the restored revelation enables us to under- stand how the fragments should be arranged, and to see on them the writing of the Divine hand which thus bears an unexpected testimony to the Scripture. I have quoted one-half of the verse in Genesis. The other half tells us that God breathed into man's *' nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.'' It is striking to discover that this latter half of the anciently revealed truth about man's origin has yielded another grotesque and misleading theory. Sanchoniathon states the Phoenician belief in these words : '* Of the wind Colpias and his spouse Baau was born the human and mortal pair of Protogonous (first-born) and Aeon. And Aeon found out how to eat the fruit of the tree." Colpias, or Kolpias, is made up of two Phoenician, or Hebrew, words.
The Creation of Man. 169
These are Kol (voice), and Piali (breath), and mean " the voice of the breath." '' Protogonous " (first- born) is Adam, and "Aeon," who ''found out how to eat the fruit of the tree " is, no doubt, Eve. Here we mark other fragments of the shattered truth. Other traits are added among other peoples, which group more or less fully the fragments of the wrecked knowledge of a better time. "The traditions of Libya," says Lenormant, " made the first human being, larbas, spring from plains heated by the sun, and gave him for food the sweet acorns of the oak tree. According to the ideas of the Egyptians, we are told that ' the fertilizing mud left by the Nile, and exposed to the vivifying action of heat induced by the sun's rays, brought forth germs which sprang up as the bodies of men.' This belief, translated into a mythological form, made human beings spring from the eye of Ra-Har-em-akhuti ; in other words, the sun. The emanation which brings forth in such wise the material part of men, does not, however, prevent a later demiurgic operation which gives them the finishing touches, and endows them with a soul and intellect. Among the Asiatic races of the 'Amu and the Tama'hu (corresponding to the races of Shem and Yapheth in the Biblical account), this operation is attributed to the goddess Sekhet, while Har performs the same office for the negroes. As to the Egyptians, who regarded themselves as superior to all other races, their fashioner was the supreme demiurge Khnum, and it is in this connec- tion that he appears upon some monuments moulding
1 70 The New Biblical Guide.
clay, wherewith to form man, upon the same potter's wheel on which he has already shaped the primordial egg of the universe. ... In the cosmogony of Peru, the first man created by the Divine omnipo- tence is called Alpa camasca, 'Animated Earth.' Among the tribes of North America, the Mandans related that the Great Spirit moulded two figures of clay, which he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth, one receiving the name of First Man, the other that of Companion. The great god of Tahiti, Taeroa, formed man out of red earth, and the Dayaks of Borneo, proof against all Mussulman influences, go on telling from generation to genera- tion how man was formed from earth." *
If those notions are indeed the relics of primeval Revelation, we should expect to find them less distorted and more recognisable in the early tradi- tions of Babylonia, the father-land of the nations. Some of them have been preserved in a great national poem, the authorship of which belongs to remote antiquity. George Smnth believed it to be not later than 1700 B.C., and, therefore, two centuries older than the Pentateuch. The opinion now enter- tained is that it is probably older than 2000 B.C. It is of special interest because of its containing a long account of the Flood, to which I shall refer again. The poem was found in the library of the ruined palace of Assur-bani-pal. It consists of twelve tablets, and sets forth the adventures of an Ancient Babylonian hero, whose name wa^s at first read '' Izdubar," but
♦ The Beginnings of History, pp. 48-50.
The Creation of Man. 171
the proper pronunciation of which has since been discovered, by Mr. Pinches, to be Gilgames. This is none other than the Gilgamos of Greek mythology, and this identification, as well as the presence in the poem of what is evidently the original form of the legend of Actaeon and his dogs, has impressed scholars with a fresh sense of the stability of these old traditions. Gilgames was believed by George Smith and other Assyriologists to be the Nimrod of the Bible. In this poem he is represented as having a close friend and companion in Eabani. " In this ancient legend," says George Smith, speaking of the I2th tablet, " Heabani, the hero, appears to bear a close resemblance to the Greek rural deity Pan, since he is figured as a satyr, having the body of a man, with the legs, horns, and tail of an ox. This figure occurs very frequently on the gems, and may always be recognised by these characteristics. Heabani is also represented as dwelling in a remote place, three days' journey from Erech ; as living in a cave, and associating with the cattle and creeping things of the field."*
Mr. Pinches says: " I have considerable difficulty in accepting this theory, principally because there is no mention, in the description of Eabani of his 'having the legs, horns, and tail of an ox.' On the contrary, his hair is said to have been long like that of a woman, and he was probably, therefore, the Babylon- ian tpye of a wild man of the woods, whom Gilgames lured from his retreat among the wild creatures
* Records of the Past, IX., 129, 130.
172 The New Biblical Guide,
of the place where he dwelt, and set to better things." But, in any case, Eabani is lured from that seclusion by the messengers of Gilgames. Possibly, we can see there another reflection of the truth. Adam's first companionship was that of the beasts of the field, till the sense of a new need awoke within him, and he saw that there was no help-meet for him in the whole creation. With the aid of Eabani, Gilgames overcomes Humbaba, a tyrant who is the enemy of Erech. The goddess Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus, whose overtures Gilgames has rejected, creates a fierce bull to assault and slay him. But with the help of Eabani the bull is slain. Eabani is his comrade and helper apparently in many a struggle ; but the connection is at last severed by Eabani's death. Gilgames is inconsolable. He also desires to escape death ; and he sets out to seek the abode of Par-napistim, the Noah of the Babylonians, whom the gods have made immortal. Par- napistim refuses to communicate the secret of immortality; but he tells why it was the gift was conferred upon him, and in his narrative he embraces the story of the Deluge. Gilgames afterwards suc- ceeds in obtaining an interview with Eabani, who is summoned from the realms of the dead. To this, as I have already said, we shall return. There are passages in the poem which show clear traces of the knowledge of the mode of man's creation. The god- dess Aruru creates Eabani in the following fashion :
" The goddess Aruru washed her hands, and having kneaded clay, she threw it on the ground.
. . . . She created Eabani."
The Creation of Man, 173
The name Eabani means ''Ea is creator, literally, Ea-making." Now among the titles of Ea are these : "the potter," "the moulder of clay." Other references reveal the same belief. One tablet says that "the god with the piercing eye (Ea) associated them in a pair." Ea "formed" them to be subjea to the gods; and another speaks of "the race of men whom his two hands have formed." Ea, whose name some identify with Jah or Jehovah, is, says Lenormant, "the god of the supreme intelligence, the master of all wisdom, ' god of the pure life, diredlor of purity,' 'he who raises the dead to life,' 'the merciful one with whom hfe exists.' Here we are given a kind of litany of gratitude, which has been preserved to us on a bit of a clay tablet, that, perhaps, made part of a colledlion of cosmogonic poems. One of the most usual titles of Ea is that of 'Lord of the human species'; and more than once in the religious and cosmogonic documents there is reference to the connexion between this god and ' man who is his own.' " *
We have other glimpses of the same truth in Par-napistim's narrative of the Deluge. He himself is called " clay." There is in all this a touching fidelity. Man clings to the wrecks of his ancient knowledge, feeling assured that these " broken lights " are better than any sparks which he himself can kindle. But there was no help in those fragments of the truth. They were bits of a shattered message, from which all the sense had escaped. It is only when we take
* The Beginnings of History, pp. 55, 56.
174 ^^^^ ^^"^ Biblical Guide.
up the restored truth that we knowthe purpose of God. The story of the creation of man solves the enigma of human life. It is a reminder of our lowliness, and of our greatness. We are of the earth, earthy ; but there is something besides the earthy : there is that which can grasp the thought of God, and which misses everywhere the home for which it was made, until it finds that home in God. The littleness and the loftiness of man, the pathos and the tragedy of humanity are already summed up in those words : " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul " (Genesis ii. 7).
There was another grotesque conception of the original condition of man which was treasured by the highest wisdom of the ancient world, but which has long since been swept away by the light of the Bible. It is that man and woman were originally one, and that they were afterwards separated ! The ancient Persian legend ran that a stalk arose out of the rhubarb plant, which grew into the double form of a man and a woman joined together at the back. " Ahuramazda divided them, endowed them with motion and ad^ivity, placed within them an intelli- gent soul, and bade them to be humble of heart, to observe the law ; to be pure in their thoughts, pure in their speech, pure in their adlions." Thus were born Mashya and Mashyana, the pair from which all human beings are descended.*
Plato, in his " Banquet," makes Aristophanes tell
♦ Ibid, p. 61.
The Creation of Man. 175
the same story. '' Our nature of old was not the same as now. ... It was then one man-woman. . . . the entire form of every individual of the human race was rounded, having the back and sides as in a circle. It had four hands, and legs equal in number to the hands ; and two faces upon the circular neck, alike in every way, and one head on both the faces placed opposite," &c. These were afterwards separated as a punishment ! The same belief seems to have prevailed in Babylonia. Berossus speaks of ''men with two heads, one of a man, the other of a woman, united on the same body."
What can have given rise to that strange notion ? We have evidently here again that fidelity to the past which clings to the merest fragment of an ancient faith. We understand the whole when we place the legend in the light of these words : '' For Adam there was not found an help-meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept ; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made He a woman, and brought her unto the man " (Gen. ii. 20-22). Here everything is rational, natural, and honouring to God and man. God creates man first. Man is to be the guide and the protedlor of the life that will be committed to his care ; he has to make a home for his bride. He must, therefore, know the world in which they are to dwell, and acquaint himself with its joys and its dangers. He must be master of the place before he can enthrone her as its mistress.
176 The New Biblical Guide.
That was one reason ; but there was another. Adam was to know the value of the gift which God was about to give. He had, therefore, to wait till he reahsed his loneliness. And then the wisdom and love of God were still more gloriously revealed. Woman was to come to man as his other self; bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. She came to him sanctified too, as the fruit of his suffering. Tradition had preserved only the cutting of the woman out of the man's side, and had gathered round that its own crude surmises. But here we are on holy ground ; for w^e are face to face with the Eternal Love. And there is another and grander truth in the heart of this recovered history. This first marriage is the type and the prophecy of another marriage. Christ's Bride is the fruit of His suffering. She is fashioned from His pierced side, and is flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone. He has gone to prepare a place for her; and by-and-bye He will come, when she is ready, and receive her to Himself. Men talk of the progressiveness of Revelation. There is progressive- ness ; but not in their sense of the word. There is no progress from error to truth. The end, clearly grasped and fully known, is here already in the very beginning. The only progress is from dawn to full meridian brightness ; from prediction to fulfilment ; from shadow to substance.
Where was Paradise ? 177
CHAPTER IV.
Where was Paradise ?
IT may be imagined that this is a question which the world is leaving far behind it. If we are to believe the Positivists, the story of the creation of the lirst human pair, of God's caring for them, and placing them in the garden He had planted, belongs to the first essays in human thinking. All this, like every- thing that savours of theology, is part, we are told, of the childhood of humanity ; and now that we have become men, we have finally laid aside our childish things. Were we to listen again to the wise men who speak of ''the myths and legends of Genesis," we should conclude that the time had long gone by when any sensible or sober-minded man could be exped^ed to give five minutes' consecutive thought to the ques- tion which heads this chapter. We might as soon expect him to attempt to determine the latitude and longitude of Utopia as to enquire "Where was Paradise ? " But, strange, to say this very question is being asked to-day with an earnestness and a pertinacity which are, in themselves, one of the weightiest rebukes to the hastiness and hardihood of unbelief. The problem which was refused when propounded by religion, has had to be resumed and mastered at the bidding of science.
There have been many answers to our question ; for, once speculation dispenses with cautious induction ,
178 The New Biblical Guide,
there is no limit to its careering wildness. Some have found the cradle of the human race in America. Others have fixed upon Ceylon. Africa has had its advocates, and Europe has also had its claims argued. As if this were not going far enough, some have sought for the first abode of man in the bosom of the earth, or somewhere under it, while others have abandoned the earth altogether, and placed the site of Paradise in the moon !
Assyriology has not yet settled this question, although, as we shall see, there is one indication which contributes largely towards the settlement of it. The inhabitants of Siberia informed Peter the Great that their country contained the veritable Paradise of Scripture, and the Bab34onians, with more show of reason, held the opinion that the site of man's first, but long-lost home, was to be found in Babylon itself. This latter claim has impressed some leading Assyriologists, and they have thrown their whole strength into the. attempt to justify it. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out that the name by which Babylonia is often referred to on the monuments — Gan-Duniyas (''the enclosure of the God Duniyas") — bears a resemblance to the Gan-Eden, or " Garden of Eden " of Genesis. But no argument for identi- fying Babylon with Eden can any longer be founded upon this name. The earlier reading "Gan-Duniyas was a mistake, the true reading of the cuneiform being now shown to be Kar-Dunias." It will be observed that the Biblical description of the site of Eden is very full. Four rivers are named, and also the lands which
Where was Paradise ? lyg
they water. Two of these rivers are, undoubtedly, the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Euphrates was called Pura-nitnu in Accadian, or "the water which bends," (?) on account of its winding course. The name of the Tigris bore in the same language — probably the oldest in Babylonia — was written with the characters mas-gti-gar, "the running," and was pronounced Idikna. The name Hiddekel, of Genesis, contains this last word along with the prefix {H)id, which signifies "river" in the ancient Accadian. The presence of these two rivers in the plains of Babylonia, and, above all, their uniting in one stream — the Shat-el-Arab — and sending their united waters through Babylon, were quite enough to suggest an identification of the locality of the first city with that of the first human home. It was necessary, how- ever, to find other two rivers to correspond to the Pison and the Gihon of Scripture. There is a river called Juha, which waters the plain of Eridu, the present Abu-Scharein. The Babylonian tradition has placed the sacred grove (of which we shall say something in a subsequent chapter) in Eridu. Sir Henry accordingly identifies Gihon with the Juha, and believes that he is able to fix the exadt site of the sacred grove at a place which is now called Dhib.
But, by far the most notable attempt to identify Babylon with Eden, is that made some years ago by Friedrich Delitzsch, Professor of Assyrian in the University of Leipzig. To establish his identifica- tion, he published, in 1881, his Wo lag das Paradies ? (Where lay Paradise?) a book of 346 pages. In this
i8o The New Biblical Guide.
volume he lays the results of Assyrian investigation under tribute to prove that the cradle of the human race must be looked for in Babylonia. He has to encounter the same difficulty which Rawlinson had to meet, in the identification of the Pison and Gihon of Scripture. These rivers are named y^rs^ in Genesis, and it is evidently implied that they were not less important, and not less well known than the Tigris and the Euphrates, which are subsequently mentioned. But Delitzsch is driven to minimize the importance of the Pison and the Gihon. He endeavours to show that they were not rivers, but canals. This is fatal to his theory, and there can be no doubt that this, the most learned and sustained attempt which has been made to prove that Eden was in Babylonia, has only resulted in demonstrating that such an identification is impossible.
There is one contribution, however, which Assyriology has made towards the solution of this question, which is of the utmost importance. Scholars have treated the name "Eden" as if it were a Hebrew word, and an etymology has been found for it which makes it yield the sense of "pleasure," or " pleasantness." Understood in this way, the term would throw no light upon the situation of the place, but simply embody the memories of the enjoyment, and possibly, also, of the regrets, of those who were driven from its precincts. Another glance, however, at the record in Genesis, will show that Eden was not Paradise. It was an extensive region, and evidently, when Moses wrote, one that was well
Where was Paradise ? i8i
known. Without a single word as to its locality, or as to its boundaries, the Scripture says : *'The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had made." Eden, then, was a large district, and in the eastern portion of it God planted the garden which He gave to the first man and woman for their abode. A glance also at the description in Genesis, will show that the distric5l was an elevated one, and not a low-lying plain hke that of Babylonia. "And a river," says the Scrip- ture, "went out of Eden (that is, originated in that region) to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads," and each of these streams was the fountain-head, or origin, of a river, the name of which is given, and the course of which is traced. It is a place lofty enough, then, to be the birth-place of mighty rivers, and was, in fa(5t, the plateau in which, at least, these two rivers known to us, the Tigris and the Euphrates, take their rise. It is evident, too, that Eden was not in itself a fruitful locality. If it had been, there was no reason why God should have planted a garden in it, and there would have been no hardship in the expulsion to which Adam and Eve were afterwards condemned for their transgression.
Now the one contribution which the Babylonian explorations have so far made to the elucidation of this subje6l, is the discovery that Eden is not a Hebrew word at all, and that it does not mean, and never did mean, " pleasure," or "pleasantness." It is a word which has come down from the very earliest
1 82 The New Biblical Guide.
times, and it belongs to the earliest form of human speech of which the monuments of Babylonia present a record. It belongs to the old Accadian, the language of the oldest civilization, and of the oldest religion of the races of Mesopotamia. '' Eden, in the Accadian and Sumerian texts," says Lenormant, "is used sometimes to designate the plain in opposition to the mountain. But this is never the bottom of the valley of the two rivers, abundantly irrigated, and consequently eminently fertile and susceptible of luxuriant cultivation. It is, on the contrary, an elevated plateau, imperfedlly watered, in parts absolutely sterile, and where it is not so, more fitted for pastoral life than for agriculture." It is, in fa(5l, the name for '' a steppe," "a desert." In that garden of delight, planted in the heart of barrenness, God taught man that He was lord of nature, and gave him an emblem and a proof of the love which enfolded him. What we are told also of the occupations of Cain and Abel, ma}'^ have a deeper meaning than we have hitherto imagined. Abel submitted to the dis- pensation of chastisement. He followed the manner of life for which the plateau was fitted: he 'Svas a keeper of sheep." But Cain would not submit. He would restore by his own skill and toil what God had taken away. The steppe would bloom again into a Paradise: he "was a tiller of the ground." Sacrifice and offering may have been in this instance, as in many another, the fruit of the life, the revelation of the spirit which presented them.
Even Mr. Friedrich Delitzch, notwithstanding his
Where was Paradise ? 183
attempt to locate Eden on the low Babylonian plains, has to admit the corredlness of this statement. He himself says that *' Eden " is the ancient Sumerian word Edin, and that it means a "steppe" and a ''desert." This is confirmed, and indeed, placed beyond all question by the fa(?t that the Sumerian Edin is translated in Assyrian by the word Seru, which has always the sense of '* desert."*
There is an additional indication of the character of the place in what we are told regarding the clothing which God provided for Adam and Eve after their expulsion. In the garden they had no need of covering ; but when they were driven to the territory without, we are told, that unto Adam " and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them" (Gen. iii. 21). The temperature, therefore, as well as the fruitfulness of the garden, was the result of Divine arrangement; and when Adam and Eve were driven bej^ond its boundaries, special provision had to be made to protect them from the inclemency of the surrounding region. All this, consequently, accords with the light which Assyrian researches have cast upon the name. The garden was in Eden, that is, upon a plateau; and a region so well known, that it was the plateau par excellence, and needed no other designation. Now, is there any district which would at once be called up before the mind of an Oriental, by the name of Eden or plateau? The geographer is aware that
*La Bible et les Decouvertes Modernes. By M. Vigouroux (6th edition), vol. i,, pp. 264, 265.
184 The New Biblical Guide,
there is one quarter of the world which is pre- eminently the region of elevated plains. Asia is the continent of mountain plateaux, and forms, in one most important respect, an ideal centre for the human race ; for from its lofty plains there is access to every quarter of the habitable globe. Speaking of this vast region, Malte Brun says: —
" Our attention is first called to that immense plateau, or elevated plain, which rises between the 30th and 50th parallels, and which extends from the Caspian Sea to the lake of Baikal, and from the sources of the Indus to the wall of China. It is known by the incorrect name of the plateau of Tartary ; but may be more properly called Central Asia. It is an assemblage of naked mountains, enormous
rocks, and very elevated plains Such is the great Asiatic
chain ; it is the most extensive system of mountains that has hither- to been discovered on the globe. Perhaps the Cordilleras alone rival it in elevation, while the central mountains of Africa may equal it in extent. The numerous and great rivers which issue from the central plateau of Asia on all sides, the sterility of the soil, and the intensity of the cold which exists there in all seasons, even in the plains and valleys, are better evidences of its immense height than the vague mensuration of Mr. Crawford."
The indications in Genesis point to a special portion of this central mass. It is the region of Armenia, where the Tigris and the Euphrates take their rise.
Sir John Herschell speaks of it as occupying "a belt extending across the neck of Asia Minor, between the Caspian, the Caucasian range, the Euxine, and the Mediterranean." * It thus, for purposes of migration, formed the best possible cradle for our race, since on north, east, south, and west lay the lands which have sustained the millions of humanity. Mrs. Somerville says that "the cold, treeless plains of Armenia, the earliest abode of man,
* physical Geogra()hy of the Globe, p. 153.
Where was Paradise ? 185
7,000 feet above the sea, bear no traces of the Garden of Eden ; Mount Ararat, on which the ark is said to have rested, stands a soHtary majestic volcanic cone,. 17,260 feet above the sea, shrouded in perpetual snow. Though high and cold, the soil of Armenia is richer than that of Anatolia, and is better culti- vated. It shelves on the north in luxuriant and beautiful declivities to the low and undulating valley of Kara, South of the Caucasus ; and on the other hand, the broad and lofty belt of the Kourdistan mountains, rising abruptly in many parallel ranges from the plains of Mesopotamia, form its southern limit, and spread their ramifications wide over its surface." * Malte Brun also says, speaking of the same region : —
" This country forms a very high plateau, crowned with mountains still higher. Ararat and Kohi-Seiban show from a great distance their summits covered with perpetual snow. Several parts of Armenia have undergone changes by the operation of earthquakes. Djebel-Nimrod, that is, the mountain of Nimrod, has sometimes emitted flames. . . . The cold, very intense in the high districts, leaves only three months for the season of vegetation, including seed-time and harvest ; yet the crops of corn are abundant. Walnut and apple trees are to be found here; the latter afford, in the cold district of Akhlat, apples weighing nearly a pound."
The testimony as to the fruitfulness of this steppe is confirmed, especially in one important particular, by a more recent writer. Mr. C. B. Norman, The Times correspondent during the war in 1877, writes: "Armenia is a land flowing with milk and honey, with many flocks and herds. As in India, so here, there is no dearth of meat; large quantities of cattle
♦ Fhysical Geography, Chapter iii,
Where was Paradise ? 187
may be procured in every village." * It is clear that Abel, when he became " a keeper of sheep," simply adapted himself to the region in which God had placed him.
In that region the Tigris and the Euphrates both take their rise, as also the Kur and the Araxes, which unite and flow into the Caspian Sea. The district, its present aspect, and more especially its antiquities, has been the subject of too little investigation to enable us to say whether these last can be identified with the Pison and the Gihon of Scripture. There have also been physical changes, which would no doubt interfere with perfect identification. The Euphrates and the Tigris, for example, both disappear beneath the surface of the earth, and flow on for some distance along subterraneous channels. But so much is certain — that Armenia is still the place where the Tigris and the Euphrates and two other great rivers take their rise, and that it must have been to the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and to the Chaldean ancestry of the Israelites, the plateau, the steppe, to which the term Eden could be applied unchallenged by the pretensions of any other with which they were familiar.
Such, then, is the conclusion to which we are led by the Scripture, interpreted in the light shed upon this word Edeti or Edin. And now comes the wonder- ful part of the story. Men have laughed at this ancient tale, and have implored us not by any means to mistake it for history. But science, following
* Armenia and the Campaign of 1887, by C. B. Norman, p. 470.
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the pathway of sober investigation, has been brought face to face with this question. There is no scorn in its look, but rather reverent surprise. It did not begin with the supposition that all mankind had emigrated from one centre. Other theories seemed much more likely than that; but all of them have had to be surrendered. One discovery after another has placed it beyond the possibility of doubt that the earth has been peopled from the first, as it is being peopled to-day, by emigration, and that the various streams of humanity have issued from a common centre. This in itself is strange, when we call to mind that the Bible is the only book which has declared this truth. For thirty-three centuries the Scriptures have bestowed, as a possession upon every believing heart, what science is now beginning to proclaim as an indubitable truth ! But there is something still more startling. Where is that centre, from which those streams of human life have found their way into all the earth ? Will the reader believe it, that the manifold indications, which science has traced, all point to this very table-land of Central Asia ! Quatrefages, the great French scientist and anthro- pologist, says that the study of the various populations, and of their languages, has led scientists of the greatest deliberation and authority " to place the cradle of the human race in Asia, not far from the central mass of that continent, and in the neighbour- hood of the region where all the principal rivers which plough their way to the north, to the south, and to the east, take their rise."
Where was Paradise ? i8g
So strong, indeed, is the pressure of this body of evidence, that the foes of the Bible and of religion are compelled to bow to it, and to confess, that in this matter the testimony of Scripture is borne out by fadls. " I admit," says Haeckel, in his History of Creation, that the human race has had a single primitive father-land, .... This so-called Paradise can be placed neither in Australia, nor in America, nor in Europe ; but, following a number of indications, it may, on the contrary, be placed in Southern Asia." It is in Armenia that the human form attains its highest development. It is in Central Asia alone that wheat, the most nourishing of all plants, is indigenous, and from thence man has carried it south, east, north, and west. It is the native home, too, of the domesticated animals which have shared his wanderings. And, begin where we please, we trace the three great races — the white, the yellow, and the black, and the three great branches of human speech, back and back, losing the trace for a moment where it has been disturbed by conquest, but regaining it again, till we stop at some side of the great table-land of Central Asia. There, science now assures us, lies the fatherland of humanity. This is but another proof that the Word of God will be eventually justified by the very sciences in the name of which its statements have been questioned and condemned. Simple, child- like, faith grasps the wisdom of the ages: the way of unbelief is the way of rebuke and shame. Faith, like its Master, may say: "He that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad,"
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Let me ask the reader to mark, before I close this chapter, what the Higher Criticism mainly rests upon in its repudiation of this part of the sacred history. Genuine science brings almost every year a harvest of confirmations to the Bible story of Creation and of the early life of man. It not only bids us retain this book ; it also convinces us more and more of its enormous value. It is my intention to deal fully in the course of this work with the arguments and the assumptions of the critics and of their followers ; but meanwhile a word may be let fall by the way. Dr. Marcus Dods, in his book on Genesis (p. 13), makes the following statement: — "One does not need," he says, "to be a critic to see that we have in those two chapters (Genesis i. and ii.) two distincft narratives of Creation from two different sources, and brought together by the compiler of the book." This refers to the apparent repetition in Genesis ii. of what was told us in chapter i. The Dodlor has not noticed that this seeming repetition — so far from proving the presence of a second document — is one of those marked characteristics which show that we have to do with one and the same writer from the beginning to the end of the book. Chapter ii. 4 is the beginning of a new section of the history. The name "Genesis," which we give to the Book, is founded upon the following peculiarity. The inspired writer gives us a number of histories, which set before us the origin of the world, and of man. Then we have man's early history, till the nations spread out over the earth. The history follows the nations no further. For a
Where was Paradise? igi
great promise was made to one branch of the human family. In the race of Shem there is to be a gathering again of mankind, for there is to be in his tents a meeting place of men with God. We are, therefore, led down through the line of Shem till we come to Terah. Terah has three sons, the younger of whom is Abraham. This one man is chosen, and the story of his call and of his fellowship with God, is told us' and in that story the promise is embalmed, that in Abraham and in his seed all nations are to be blessed. The book, it will be observed, still remembers the nations, which it would seem to have abandoned. It forsakes them only because it is remembering them ; for the story of the chosen race is the story of how all men are to be blessed in it. So constantly is this one objed^ kept in view, that everything is sub- ordinated to it. Abraham has more than one son; but the story keeps to that one of Abraham's children from whose line this promised blessing is to spring. This man, Isaac, has two sons. Again a choice is made for the same reason, and we are led along the line of Jacob, and not along the line of Esau; and then the story of the Scripture is henceforth, for eighteen hundred years, the story of Israel, till, in the Acts and in the Epistles, it becom.es once more the story of the nations.
There is no other book in the world that so serves one clear and perpetually remembered purpose, as this of Genesis : and yet that is the book which the critics have chosen to represent as a patchwork that cannot be matched in all the extravagances of literary
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imposture, or folly, or madness ! There is also another stamp upon it, which might have stayed the dese- crating hand of the most regardless of men. The book is one prolonged prophecy . We have noted that the choice of the line, from which blessing is to emerge for all nations, is narrowed more and more. First, it is Shem's, then Terah's, then Abraham's, then Isaac's, and last of all Jacob's. All confess that the book was finished, and was in existence as we have it now long centuries before there was the slightest sign that Israel had any blessing in it for the Gentiles. But we now know that every step in that selection of a race was taken with absolute correctness. From Israel, and from Israel alone, have the light and the power come, in which men of every nationality and clime have rejoiced, and in which they are rejoicing now. There is only one explanation of that feature^ The book is of God. No one besides could have had the sustained conviction that the scattered races of mankind would yet be endued with the spirit of brotherhood ; and no other could have so carried the light of this extraordinary hope with unfaltering and unerring steps along the line of that small and despised people from whom the Christ was to spring. That, I repeat, might have stayed the critic's hand, and have prevented this controversy. But it has not done so; and the humiliating necessity is thrust upon us to enter on this confli(5t, and to pursue it to the bitter end. For we must either expose the hollow- ness of this ** new learning," or weakly and faithlessly allow it to shatter the trust, and to wither the hope
Where was Paradise ? 193
and the power, of the children of God. I have said that the repetition in chapter ii. is a proof of one- ness, and not of variety of authorship. Each of the sedlions which carry on the purpose of the book begins with the phrase, "These are the generations of," or, ''This is the book of the generations of" (see V. i; vi. g; x. i ; xi. 10; xi. 27; &c.). The word translated "generations" is Toledoth, which refers not to what goes before, but to what comes after. The Toledoth of Abraham are those who sprang from him, and not those from whom he sprang. The critics, in representing chapter ii. as ^. second account of Creation, are consequently convicted of blundering at the very outset. In using this word Toledoth, the writer declares that it is not an account of Creation at all. It takes for granted that the heavens and the earth are already existing. "The Toledoth of the heavens and the earth," are not the origin of the heavens and the earth; they are, on the contrary, the things for which the heavens and the earth were created, namely, man and the great drama of human history. Let me ask the reader to note this carefully, in view of what I am now about to mention. The Toledoth are never the things which precede, but the things which follow. Thus, in " The generations of Terah," nothing whatever is said of the forefathers of Terah. The Toledoth embrace only Terah's children. This is the invariable meaning of the word. In Ruth iv. 18, the Toledoth, or "generations," of Pharez, are the descendants, and not the ancestors, of Pharez. The critics have, therefore, fatten into a conspicuous and
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significant mistake, when they made their so-called ''first account" of the Creation end with the opening words of Genesis ii.4: "These are the generations (Toledoth) of the heavens and of the earth." There are no Toledoth of the heavens and of the earth in that so-called first account. It is the story of their own Creation, and not of what came after them. The introduction of the word for the first time in Genesis ii. 4 is an intimation that we are now to enter upon the next chapter of the history. But, so little does this vaunting criticism regard the testimony of language, that it has placed this word in a connec- tion which it does not suit, and puts a sense upon it which it repudiates.
But what of the "repetition?" Is not man's and woman's creation re-told, as well as the creation, at least of part, of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms? The reply is that the critic has here stumbled again. Every new sed^ion of the book begins with just such a recapitulation. It takes that special part of the preceding history from which the next is to spring, and makes it the foundation of the new chapter in the history. And it is never a mere repetition. What was previously briefly told, is told again (as in this narrative of the creation of Adam and Eve and of the domesticated animals and the plants for man's service) with new fulness and freshness. Now, in the face of all this, look once more at these words: "One does not need to be a critic to see that we have in those first two chapters two distinct narratives of Creation from two different
Where was Paradise? 195
sources." Could anythino^ be blinder or more foolish ?
But Dr. Dods goes further, and certainly does not fare better. He adds that, " The most obvious distindlion in style is the constant use of the name Jehovah (in chapter ii.), instead of the title God" (page 13). Critics, and still more, their imitators, have fallen into an unfortunate habit of careless inaccuracy. Of this there could scarcely be a better example than the foregoing statement. The title "God," which appears in the first chapter, is not dropped in the second. It is continued in the second chapter, but in combination with another name — Jehovah. What is this but an intimation to the reader that he now comes to a new revelation of God — a revelation which is expressed in this added name ? The continuation of the name " God " {Elohim) shows that we have to do still with the same writer, and the additional name '' Lord " (Jehovah) merely indicates a new and higher stage in the history — an onward step in the revelation of the Almighty.
The alleged law also, that the names Jehovah and Elohim, "Lord" and "God," show the hands of different writers, is a bare-faced fiction. That was a blunder originally made, as we have already seen, by a French Physician, named Astruc, who imagined that he had made a discovery, and only dreamed a dream. Not a single critic now believes in that alleged discovery ; for all of them credit the same writer with the use of both names. When they came to divide the
196 The New Biblical Guide.
book up, they found it impossible to keep to their supposed law, and so their Jehovist uses the name Elohim, and their Elohist uses the name Jehovah. That is, their Elohist is a Jehovist, and their Jehovist is an Elohist. In other words, their supposed distinction is a fiction, and its continuation in the face of these facts is a fraud.
Wellhausen is not more fortunate in his attack upon the age of Genesis. He says that the first word Bereshith, "in the beginning," was unknown to the ancient Hebrews in the sense of '' the commence- ment of time." This is another mistake. The word is used in that very sense in Hosea ix. 10 : "I saw your fathers as the first-ripe in the fig-tree at her first time." Here, " at the first time " is bereshith, the very word used in Genesis. It also occurs three times in Proverbs, twice in Job, &c., with the same signification.
He is equally mistaken in his contention that bara, in the sense of creating out of nothing, is another late Hebrew word. It is used, in the same sense as in Genesis, in Amos iv. 13, and in other unquestioned ancient Hebrew. In other phrases culled from the first chapter, he is also glaringly wrong. The Assyrian inscriptions (as we have already seen, and shall immediately see further) have now placed it beyond doubt that the language of the first chapters of Genesis takes us back to the very beginnings of human speech, and that — so far from bearing the marks of a late origin — the language of the first chapters of Genesis belongs to a high antiquity.
The '* Myths'' of Genesis. 197
CHAPTER V. The " Myths " of Genesis.
I PURPOSE looking, in the present chapter, at the claims of what professes to be the opening page of the story of man's life upon the earth. There is nothing vague or uncertain in those early chapters of Genesis. There is no haze as if the writer only half saw the things he described ; nor is there any brokenness or confusion as if he had caught hold of one thing and another floating down the stream of tradition and did not well know how to piece them together. The story flows evenly on. It is simply but graphically told. The mind from which the story flowed, grasped the things of which it speaks fully and clearly. The hand which penned it was that of a master. The impression made upon the mind of even the dullest reader is immediate, distinct, deep, and abiding.
We have now to ask whether these things are true. Did the writer follow cunningly devised fables when he made them known to the world, or did he speak words of soberness and truth ? If you and I, dear reader, have to begin to pity the Bible as a poor old book, and to beg people not to expect too nmch from it, and not to deal too hardly with it ; if we have to entreat them to remember that Genesis was written for a horde of escaped slaves, and long
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before men knew so much as they do in these enlightened days ; then we shall have honesty enough, I think, to say that guess and mistake are not revela- tion, and that that cannot be the word of God which is not half so good or true as the word of man.
We are able, fortunately, to put this matter to the proof. The very magnitude of the events, said to have happened, supplies the test we require. Man, according to the Scripture, sprang from one home, and long existed as one family. These events are bound up with the experience, therefore, not of one section of humanity, but of the entire race. If, then, they were indeed great and momentous, they must have left their mark and their memory every- where. They must have been part of the inheritance of the race handed down from age to age. Now, if there is neither mark nor memory, neither consequence nor tradition among the nations, the absence of them would surely prove to be one of the greatest of all possible difficulties in the way of receiving the Bible narrative as true. But if, on the other hand, we meet mark and memory, consequence and tradi- tion everywhere, then these are facts the significance of which all will immediately see. Far sundered peoples will then unite in lifting a testimony to the Scripture which cannot be slighted, and which cannot be explained away.
The reader will also see that it is possible for this testimony to do more than prove the truth of Genesis. The traditions may convince us even of its inspira- tion. The claim of the Bible to be a revelation is
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 199
not confined to the creeds of either Jewry or of Christendom, or to distinct statements contained in the Old Testament or in the New. That claim is imbedded in the very structure of the Scripture. Whenever it speaks of man, it speaks of him as he is in the sight of God. The Bible is written from God's view-point, not from ours. Its statements and descriptions are constantly couched in the language of omniscience. There is nothing in the mind of God, or in the mind of man, in the past, the then present, or the then future, that is hid from the mind which here speaks. Now the mere comparison of the Scripture story with the traditions of the nations may show how far this great claim can be sustained. If, in the traditions, we have only wrecks and fragments of the truth, which Genesis alone shows us how to piece together and to understand ; if we have elsewhere only confused echoes, and here the one clear, consistent speech; then this unparalleled phenomenon must be explained. The question must be faced as to whence this gift has come. If it be of man, why is there nothing like it elsewhere ? Why does it stand so absolutely apart from every other record ? If it be of God, if it is the outcome of Divine knowledge and the gift of Divine love, then we have a full explanation. It is hke the mind from which it has come. Every other explanation is ruled out by the necessities of the case as inadequate ; and we have, consequently, here, one of the many con- curring demonstrations that the Bible is God's book and not man's.
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That is our argument. Let us now apply it, first of all, to the pidlure presented of
MAN'S LIFE IN PARADISE.
Of this we have no glowing picture in the Bible ; for here, as elsewhere, God's words are words to the wise. It is only as we cherish them that they live and glow. The bare facts are told us, and that, too, in the simplest and briefest fashion. There is no word-painting, and yet the picture is there for all who will look. The first human pair are surrounded with beauty and fulness. Every tree is there "that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." We can imagine the daily wonder and delight experienced by fully-formed minds in the midst of such a scene endowed with the power to enjoy it and possessed of the conviction that it was theirs. There was widening knowledge, it is true, and ever- deepening experience, but no lessening of the old joys, and no shadow of sadness. There was toil, but only such as brought them into closer fellowship with nature, and made them possess and love the place which God had given them for a home. It was a life of unconscious innocence and of childlike sim- plicity : " they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." It was a life, also, of Divine fellowship. God walked with them in the garden in the cool of the day, when they might be abroad without injury or discomfort.
Now, if this were the first experience of our race, it could never be forgotten. The sense of loss would deepen the memories of the primal bliss. Many a
The ^^ Myths'' of Genesis. 201
question would be asked by succeeding generations regarding Paradise, and the story, brightened by many a glowing imagination, would be handed on from age to age. What, then, is the fact ? Has the memory of the early joy lived on ? Here is the answer. *' Hindu legends are agreed in representing man as one of the latest produd^s of creative wisdom, as the master- work of God, and also in extolling the first race of men as pure and upright, innocent and happy. ' The beings who were thus created by Brahma are all said to have been endowed with righteousness and perfect faith ; they abode where- ever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment ; their hearts were free from guile ; they were pure, made free from soil by observance of sacred insti- tutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt ; and they were filled with perfect wisdom, by which they contemplated the glory of Vishnu.' "* " The idea," says William Aldis Wright, ''of a terrestrial Paradise, the abode of purity and happiness, has formed an element in the religious beliefs of all nations. Arab legends tell of a garden in the East, on the summit of a mountain of jacinth, inaccessible to man ; a garden of rich soil and equable temperature, well-watered, and abounding with trees and flowers of rare colour and fragrance. "t We meet the same tradition in India. " In the centre of lambu dwipa, the middle of the seven continents of the Puranas, is the golden mountain
Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, Part 2, p. 130. + Smith's Bible Dictionary. Art. Eden.
202 The New Biblical GiUde.
Mern, which stands Hke the seed-cup of the lotus of the earth, On the summit is the vast city of Brahma, renowned in heaven, and encircled by the Ganges, which, issuing from the foot of Vishnu, washes the lunar orb, and falling thither from the skies, is divided into four streams, that flow to the four corners of the earth. In this abode of Divinity is the Nandana, the grove of Indra ; there too, is the lambu tree, from whose fruit are fed the waters of the lambu river, which give life and immortality to all who drink thereof. The enchanted gardens of the Chinese are placed in the midst of the summits of Houanlun, a high chain of mountains further north than the Himalaya, and further east than Hindukush. The fountain of immortality, which waters these gardens, is divided into four streams, the fountains of the supreme Spirit, Tychin."*
"This legend of the Brahmins, in the hands of Buddhist rivals, has been subjected to fresh embellish- ment. The latter, in depicting Maha-Mcru, inform us of 'square-faced inhabitants,' who are exempted from all kinds of sickness, and from other evils incident to humanity. ' They do not perform any kind of work, as they receive all they want, whether as to ornaments, clothes, or food, from a tree called kalpa-wurksha. This tree is one hundred yojanas high, and when the people require anything, it is not necessary that they should go to it to receive it, as the tree extends its branches, and gives whatever is desired. When they wish to eat, food is at that
* Ibul.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 203
instant presented ; and when they wish to He down, couches at once appear. There is no relationship, as to father, mother, or brother. The women are more beautiful than the devas. There is no rain, and no houses are required. In the whole region there is no low place or valley. It is like a wilder- ness of pearls ; and always free from all impurities, like the court of a temple or a wall of crystal. The inhabitants live to be a thousand years old ; and all this time they enjoy themselves like the devas, by means of their own merit, and with the assistance of the kalpa tree.' "*
The same traditions lived on among the Greeks and Romans. Hesiod sings :
" On earth the sons of men abode From ills apart, and labour's irksome load, And sore diseases, bringing age to man ; Now the sad life of mortals is a span.
Like gods they lived, with calm, untroubled mind, Free from the toil and anguish of our kind."
And Ovid :
" The golden age was first, when man, yet new, No rule but uncorrupted reason knew. And with a native bent did good pursue."
"The idea," says M. F. Lenormant, "of the Edenic happiness of the first human beings, con- stitutes one of the universal traditions. Among the Egyptians, the terrestrial reign of the god Ra, who inaugurated the existence of the world and of human life, was a golden age to which they continually looked back with regret and envy ; to assert the
* Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, Part 2, pp. 134, 135.
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superiority of anything above all that imagination could set forth, it was sufficient to affirm that 'its like had never been seen since the days of the god Ra.'"*
The reader will have noticed the mention of the river "divided into four streams," and the lofty elevation ascribed to man's primal abode. The Chaldean tradition seems to depart from this latter testimony, in the attempt to identify Paradise with a much-revered district in Babylonia. But its echoes of otherpartsof man'sancient story nevertheless coincide strikingly with the Scripture narrative. The abode of Tammuz (who is in all probability to be identified with Abel) was "the garden of Edin, or Eden, which Babylonian tradition placed in the immediate vicinity of Eridu."t A fragment of an ancient Accadian hymn, which I shall quote in a subsequent page, speaks of "a stalk or vine,'' which grew up into an overshadowing tree in Eridu. The root of this tree was "of bright lapis." It "teemed with fertility." "Its seat was the central place of the earth;" and "its foliage was the couch of the primeval mother."!:
It will thus be seen that tradition gives here no uncertain sound. If man's life has always, as the evolutionists would have us believe, gone on from worse to better, whence has come this universal determination to look back to the dawn of history, and to declare that "the former times were better than these?" It is not a natural tendency. Men are never weary of talking of progress, and are
♦ The Beginnings of History, p. 67. + Professor Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 237, 238. t Ibid.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 205
slow to part with the conviction that the present far outshines the past. If that flattering unction has been cast away, and if men of every nation have looked back to the first times as the best; if the ages roll onward with a sense of loss, which grows fainter, indeed, as all memories do with the lapse of time, but which we find to be deeper and more painful the further we go back; then there must have been some answering experience — an experience which becomes intelHgible in the simple picture of Edenic life presented by these first words of Scripture, and which is fully intelligible only there.
Let us now glance at another feature in the story.
THE TREE OF LIFE
Stood in the midst of the garden. It conferred the gift of immortality. If we may borrow from the picture of Paradise given in the last book of Scrip- ture, which, in so many ways, makes answer to the first, the very leaves of the tree cured every ill. Wounds were healed and sickness fled. Whatever remedy man needed to repel the invasion of bodily ill, was there. The fruit of the tree also seems to have had the power of so repairing the daily waste of the human frame, that the springs of enjoyment and ac^tivity were preserved in all their original bounding fulness. Now, once more, if this is not ficlion, but fact, it must have left recollections that lived. If such a gift as that was ever enjoyed by the human race, it could not soon be forgotten. Tap the stream of genuine tradition where we may,
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there must be some trace, we should think, of such a wonderful endowment.
That tradition is not silent we have already seen. The lambu tree of Indian mythology grew in the sacred grove, and its fruit feeds the waters of the lambu river, which confer immortality on all who drink them. The same reminiscence shows itself in the grotesque Norse legends of the Yggdrasil, the sacred ash, under one of whose roots is the holy Urdar-fount. "Near the fountain stands a very beauteous dwelling, out of which go three maidens, named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld. These maidens fix the life-time of all men, and are called Norns. It is also said that the Norns, who dwell by the Urdar-fount, draw every day water from the spring, and with it and the clay that lies around the fount they sprinkle the ash, in order that its branches may not rot and wither away. This water is so holy that everything placed in the spring becomes as white as the film within an egg-shell." By the side of this we may place the Grecian myth of the garden kept by three sisters, the Hesperides. In this garden grew a tree, which bore golden apples. The tree was guarded by a fierce dragon, called Ladon, which never slept. The ancient Aryans of India had their soma, the liquor extracted from the branches of a tree which they named amritam — "that which renders immortal." The Persian tradition is equally clear. The Haoma is named in the Mazdean books the tree of life. The sacred juice of the Haoma is called in the Yacna "that which banishes death."
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 207
The Assyrian inscriptions have latterly yielded an ample confirmation of this part of the Scripture history. A ''sacred tree" is referred to, strangely enough, in an inscription by Eri-aku, king of Larsa, who is, beyond doubt, the Arioch, king of Ellasar, mentioned in Genesis xiv. This sacred tree is also distinctly described by him as "the sacred tree of Eridu," that is, of Paradise. There is also an oracle in connection with the sacred tree; a circumstance which shows with what veneration this memory of a better past was cherished. The inscription runs thus: "To the god Ningirsu, his king, Eri-aku, shepherd of the possessions of Nipur, executor of the oracle of the holy tree of Eridu, the shepherd of Ur and the temple E-Udda-im-tigga, king of Larsa, king of Sumir and Accad,"&c.
Commenting on this inscription. Professor Sayce writes: "In the pre-Semitic period of Babylonian history, the site of 'the holy tree of Eridu' was still remembered, andan oracle existed under its branches." He also says : "The garden and its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldea in pre- Semitic days. A fragment has been preserved of an old Accado-Sumerian hymn, with a Semitic-Babylonian translation attached to it, which tells us something about them. The garden stood hard by Eridu, 'the good city,' as it was called by its Sumerian founders, and thus in the very region where the salt 'river' of the Persian Gulf was divided into its four heads. The hymn begins as follows: —
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In Eridu a palm stalk grew overshadowing ; in a holy place did it
become green ; its root was of bright lapis which stretched towards the deep ; (before) the god Ea was its growth in Eridu, teeming with fertility ; its seat was the (central) place of the earth ; its foliage (?) was the couch of Zikum the (primeval) mother. Into the heart of its holy house, which spread its shade like a
forest, hath no man entered. (There is the home) of the mighty Mother who passes across the
sky. In the midst of it was the god Tammuz.
The sacred tree whose branches reached to heaven, while its roots were nourished by the primeval deep, was the tree which supported the world. It was emphatically a 'tree of life,' and is accordingly represented time after time on the monuments of Babylonia and Assyria. Not infrequently it was attended by two guardian spirits, perhaps ' Kirubi,' the Hebrew ' Cherubim,' who stood or knelt on either side, with wings behind their shoulders, and the heads sometimes of eagles and sometimes of men or women. In their hands they usually hold a fruit, which Dr. Tylor has recently explained as represent- ing the pollen of dates with which they are fertilising the sacred tree. The tree, consequently, must have been the palm, so characteristic of Babylonia, where its fruit formed the staple food of the people, while the juice was made into wine. In Accado-Sumerian days the wine was called ' the draught of life,' and, after the importation of the vine into Babylonia, one of the numerous divinities of primeval Chaldea was called ' the goddess of the tree of life ' in the dialect
The "Myths'' of Genesis. 209
of the north, and ' the goddess of the vine ' in the dialect of the south." *
Mr. Pinches has found a fuller copy of the inscrip- tion translated above by Professor Sayce. His version, given in a paper read before the Vic^toria Institute on January 20, 1896, is as follows : —
"In Eridu there grew a dark vine — in a glorious place was it brought forth ; Its form bright lapis-stone, set in the world beneath. The path of Ea in Eridu is filled (with) fertility ; His seat is the centre-place of the earth ; His couch is the bed of Nammu. To the glorious house, which is like a forest, it shade extends — no
man enters its midst. In its interior is the sun-god, Tammuz, Between the mouths of the rivers (which are) on both sides."
"There is no doubt," says Mr. Pinches, " that this highly poetical description is that of the Babylonian Paradise — the name Eridu, mentioned above, is a sufficient indication of that, for it is the name of a city, a 'good city,' which, at the time the Persian Gulf extended farther inland than now, stood upon its shore. Within it grew ' the dark vine,' probably so called from its shade-giving branches, which, according to the sixth line, extended like a forest to * the glorious house ' {ana biti ellu), or, as the Akkadian has it, 'its glorious house' {c-azaggdnita). Eridu was regarded by the Babylonians as being the place which the path of Ea, the god of rivers, streams, &c., filled with fulness of fertility, the 'place of the eye of the land' (Akk. ki igi kuram),
* The " Higher Criticism " and the Veraict of the Monunieitts, pp. loi, 102.
210 Tlie New Biblical Guide.
where Nammu, the river-god, has his bed, which formed also the resting-place of Ea. Here, too, was the abode of Tammuz — * Tammuz of the Abyss,' who dwelt between the mouths of the rivers that were on both sides {ina birit pi ndrd[ti] . . kilallan).
"The Babylonian Paradise had, therefore, the tree, either of knowledge or of life, and the picture they give of it is grand in its way — a wide-extending vine, gloriously bright like unto beautiful lapis-lazuli, blue and white {iihiil ebbi) in colours and appearance. Once, probably, accessible to man, it was afterwards forbidden to him, for 'no man enters its midst' {a7ta libbi-siL maxima Id irrubu). It was a well- watered place, for the river-gods seem to have had it under their special protection, and to have devoted to it their special attention, for on each side of the abode of Tammuz flowed two rivers — beyond a doubt the Tigris and the Euphrates."
Representations of the tree are met with on monuments of all kinds, bas-reliefs, paintings, and Babylonian cylinders. It seems to have had a large place in the religion of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. " We frequently," says Schrader, ''meet on the Assyrian monuments a sacred tree, which, judg- ing from its appearance, must have been a cypress. On each side is a priest holding a pine apple in his hand, and paying homage to the tree. It follows, from the fact that this tree is a species of incor- ruptible wood, the cypress, that it symbolises life, life imperishable, eternal. This is shown by the presence of the priests, placed in adoration by its
The " Myths " of Genesis. 211
side, and, above all, by the following circumstance. Upon the coffins discovered at Warka, and now preserved in the British Museum, one sees a singular representation. It is that of the tree of life. It signifies necessarily life eternal, immortality. Possi- bly, it is true, these coffins may be relatively modern, and of the times of the Seleucides ; but, even if this be so, we may rest assured, that the artists of that time Hmited themselves to reproducing symbols of a high antiquity, which had been handed down from generation to generation."* The adoration of the priest is sufficient to indicate the sacred associations of this ancient symbol. " This sacred tree," says Vigouroux, "is incontestably one of the most exalted emblems of the Babylonian religion. It is always accompanied by personages who attest its high importance. These are sometimes royal figures in adoration, sometimes winged genii, set to guard it. Frequently above the sacred plant hovers the sym- bolical image of the supreme god, Ilu. Sometimes it is surrounded by the seven stars of the Great Bear, by the sun and by the moon." t
Lenormant shows that the worship of Asherah among the Canaanites and the Israelites, a goddess who is so frequently referred to where, in the Author- ised Version, we have the word " grove," is another testimony to the universality of this belief about the tree of life. " The image of the tree of life," he says, " among the Chaldeo-Assyrians was the objedl
* Semitismiis tind Babylonismus in Jahrbiicher fiir Protestantische Theologie, 1875. t La Bible et les Decouvertes Modernes, I. 274, 275 (6th Edition).
212 The New Biblical Guide.
of a genuine divine cult ; the simulacra seem to have been arranged after the fashion of the old-fashioned May-poles of Western Europe, and trees laden with all kinds of attributes and ornaments were carried every year at springtime, as symbols of life, to be burned in the court of the temple of Atar'Ate (Atergatis), at Hierapolis, in Syria."*
Here again, therefore, we find the impress of an experience, the remembrance of a boon, which has lived on in every branch of the human family. There is no effect without a cause ; and these traditions point back indubitably to a provision once made against age, disease, and death ; and so far from the story of the tree of life in the midst of the garden being a hindrance to the defenders of revelation, and a stumbling-block in the pathway of belief in the literal accuracy and in the full inspiration of Genesis, its presence is a defence and glory It solves a riddle for which there would otherwise have been no solution : it explains what it is that the dim, and often grotesque, traditions of the nations have for ages been trying to utter.
* The Beginnings of History, p. 96.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis, 213
CHAPTER VI.
The '* Myths " of Genesis (Continued).
THERE is one incident of the Edenic life upon which the entire scheme of revelation turns, and which, therefore, demands more than a passing notice : I refer to
THE FALL.
Through one act of disobedience man's attitude towards God is represented as having been totally changed, and a new relationship is inaugurated between God and man. Man's innocence is supplanted by sin ; his home is lost ; his ease and deHght are exchanged for misery and want. The Creator becomes the Redeemer. No one needs to be told that here again disbeHef in the Bible story is simply the rejec- tion of the only solution of the most awful problem connected with man's existence. The fa(5l of sin — of a baseness tainting every human life — is visible to men everywhere. The words, which we feel to be the truest which hand has ever penned, are the words that confess this darkness and burden. We recognise those as the noblest lives which have striven to remove the burden. Sages pass into the wilds, and spend their days in meditation, in a vain, but neverthe- less sustained and impassioned, endeavour to cleave some pathway for man into holiness and rest. Altars flame over all the earth with bleeding sacrifices in
214 -^^^^ A"^z£' Biblical Guide,
order that guilt may be forgiven. Philosophers and poets vie with each other in confession of man's proneness to evil and in lamentation over it. No man, in short, can shut out belief in the presence in every human life of moral taint. And just as little can any man deny that, universal as the presence of sin is, it is, nevertheless, not natural. Every heart feels, alike in its judgment of others and of itself, that sin ought not to be. Whence, then, has it come ? If it is not natural to us, and if it never- theless pervades the entire family of man, it must have broken into our life somehow ; and it must have entered into it high enough in the stream of human life to account for the presence of the virus in every nation and in every individual experience.
The traditions here again, amid all their confusion, bear the most distindl testimony to the truth of Genesis. The evil entered, Genesis tells us, through the great mother of our race. The Norse legend says of " the golden age : " '' This was the age that lasted until the arrival of the women out of Jotun- heim, who corrupted it." The same testimony, as to the source of human ills, meets us in the old classic fable regarding Pandora. She was the first woman, and was given by Jupiter in marriage to the progenitor of the human race. Her name, " Pandora " — the all-gifted — speaks the preciousness of the gift. Each of the gods had endowed her with some excellence ; but she was a fatal boon to Epimetheus. " In the house of Epimetheus was a closed jar,
The " Myths " of Genesis, 215
which he had been forbidden to open. But the curiosity of the woman could not resist the tempta- tion to know its contents ; and, when she opened the lid, all the evils incident to man poured out. She had only time to shut down the lid, and prevent the escape of hope." In this last feature of the story we have the reflection of the promise made to the sinful pair, as they were expelled from Paradise. They carried with them the hope of restoration. The seed of the woman should yet triumph over their subtle adversary, and should undo the evil which her sin had wrought.
Speaking of the form which the tradition took amongthe Japhetic group of nations, Lenormant says : ''■Originally — and this, at present, is one of the most firmly established of all points for science— originally in those legends common to Oriental Aryans prior to their separation into two branches, the first man was the personage called by the Iranians, Yima, and by the Hindus, Yama. Son of heaven and not of man, Yima united in his one individuality those charadter- istics bestowed in Genesis separately upon Adam and Noah, the fathers of the two races of men, the antediluvian and the postdiluvian. Later, he appears merely as the first king of the Iranians, although a king whose existence, like that of his subjects, is passed in the midst of Edenic beatitude, in the Paradise of the Airyana-Vaedja, abode of the earliest men. But after a season of pure and blameless living, Yima commits the sin which is to burden his des- cendants ; and this sin, which causes him to lose his
2i6 The New Biblical Guide,
authority, and, driving him outside the paradisaic land, gives him over to the power of the serpent, the wicked spirit, Angromain3'us, who ends by destroying him amid horrible torments. We find an echo of this tradition of the loss of Paradise, in consequence of a misdeed prompted by the evil spirit, in a fragment, incontestably one of the most ancient contained in the collection of the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians : * I have created the first and the best of places and abodes, I, who am Ahuramazda, the Airyana-Vaedja of excellent nature. But in opposition to it, Angromainyus, the murderer, created a hostile thing — the serpent, issue of the river, and the winter, work of the Daevas.' And this latter scourge it is, resulting from the power of the serpent, which compels the abandonment for ever of the paradisaical region."*
The Bundehesh relates the story in this fashion : " Man was, the father of the world was. He was destined for heaven on condition that he should be humble of heart ; that he should fulfil the work of the law with humility ; that he should be pure in his thoughts, pure in his speech, pure in his actions, and that he should not call upon the Daevas. With such incHnations, man and woman ought reciprocally to promote each other's happiness, and such indeed were their thoughts in the beginning, such their actions. They came together as man and wife.
" At the first their speech was in this wise : * Ahura- mazda (the good principle, God) gave the water, the
* The Beginnings of History, pp. 76-78.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 217
land, the trees, the animals, the stars, the moon, the sun, and all good gifts which come of a pure root and of a pure fruit.' Afterward a lie crept into their thoughts, and changed their natures, saying to them : * It is Angromainyus (the evil principle, Satan) who has given the water, the land, the trees, the animals, and all that has been called by a name on the earth.' Thus it was that at the beginning, Angromainyus deceived them in regard to the Daevas, and cruelly sought to beguile them to the end. In consequence of believing in this lie, both of them became like the demons, and their souls will be in hell until the renewal of the body.
'' They ate for thirty days, covered with black raiment. After these thirty days they went to the chase ; a white she-goat appeared before them ; they drew milk from her breasts with their mouths, and were nourished by this milk, which gave them much pleasure
"The Daeva who told the lie became bolder; appeared a second before them, and brought them fruits of which they ate, and in consequence of this, of the hundred advantages which they enjoyed, hut one remained to them.*
"After thirty days and thirty nights, a sheep, fat and white, appeared before them ; they cut off his left ear. Taught by the heavenly Yazatas, they drew fire from the tree Konar, by rubbing it with a fragment of wood. Both of them set fire to the
* The italics are Lenormant's own. The coincidence of this form of the traditions, with the Scripture history, is very striking.
2i8 The New Biblical Guide. .
tree; they quickened the fire with their mouth ; they burned first, bits of the tree fvonar, afterwards, of the date and myrtle trees. They roasted this sheep, which they divided into three portions. . . . Having eaten dog's flesh, they covered themselves with the skin of the animal. They then betook themselves to the chase and made themselves clothes of the skin of the deer." *
Here the traces of the first transacftions in human history are still more distinct. The first step in the fall is the believing of Satan's lie ; the next is the eating of forbidden fruit through the deceptive wiles of Satan's emissary. The clothing of the now deceived and despoiled human pair in skins, will also be noted by the reader. Till recently no written allusions to the fall had been discovered in the Assyrian inscriptions ; but the silence has at last been broken. " The fragment of a legend," says Professor Sayce, " discovered by myself a short while ago, introduces us to yet another version of the origin of man. In this the first man — ' the seed of mankind' — is named Adapa (or Adama), and he is made the son of Ea, the culture-god of Eridu. Ea, it would seem, had been his creator, and had originally made him like the animals. But Anu, the god of heaven, intervened, raising Adapa into an upright position, and changing the food and raiment with which Ea had provided him. The words of the ancient Babylonian poem offer a curious analogy to the statements of Scripture, that, after the expulsion from Paradise, Adam was
♦ Ibid, pp. 79, 80.
The "Myths'' of Genesis. 219
condemned to ' eat the herb of the field ' (Genesis iii. 17, 19), while ' the Lord God made coats of skins ' for him and Eve.
" A subsequent portion of the myth of Adapa has been discovered among the cuneiform tablets of Tel- el-Amarna. We learn from this that the Babylonian hero was summoned to appear before the throne of Anu in heaven, on the charge of breaking the wings of the southern wind. There he was offered ' the food of life,' and ' the water of life.' But, instrucfted by his father Ea, he touched them not. He put on, however, the garment that was given him, and anointed himself with oil. And when Anu asked him wherefore he had not eaten or drunken, so that ' the gift of life ' could not now be his, he replied that he had attended to the warnings of his father Ea, since the food and water of life would have been to him the food and water of death." *
The long silence of the inscriptions on this incident in man's early history has been further broken through recent discoveries. A very ancient name of Babylon in the Sumerian tongue is Tin-tir-ki. This, after many mistranslations, has now been fully understood. Tin means " Seat of life," according to the inscriptions tir is **tree," and ki means ''place." The name is, therefore, "The place of the tree of life." Here the designation of the first post-diluvian city embalms the memory of man's primal bliss. The sword with which Merodach lights his battles recalls the " flaming sword" of the Cherubim "which turned every way."
* The " Higher Criticism," and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 94, 95.
Q
220 The New Biblical Guide.
In a hymn, in the same ancient tongue, it is described as "a weapon of fifty heads," "whose Hght gleams forth Hke the day," and " the terror of whose splendour (overwhelms) the world." "'The wicked serpent,' ' the serpent of darkness,' " says Prof. Sayce, was mentioned in Sumerian texts, and Mr. Boscawen has lately found a Babylonian fragment forming part of the third tablet in the Creation series, in which the fall of man seems to be described in plain terms. He gives the following translation of it : —
" In sin one with another in compact joins. The command was estabhshed in the garden of the god. The Ansan-tree they ate, they broke in two, Its stalk they destroyed. The sweet juice which injures the body, Great is their sin. Themselves they exalted. To Merodach their Redeemer he (the god Sar) appointed their fate."*
But, altogether apart from these references, the Assyrian monuments yield in this instance the most distinct testimony to the truth of Scripture.
"The fadl:," says Lenormant, "that there existed in the cosmogonic traditions of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a myth regarding the tree of life and the fruit of Paradise, the a(?tion of which closely resembled in form the Bible narrative of the tempta- tion, seems positively established, in the absence of written records, by the representation on a cylinder of hard stone, preserved in the British Museum, whereon are seen a man and woman, the first wearing on his head the kind of turban peculiar to the Baby-
♦ Ibid, pp. 103, 104.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis
221
THE TEMPTATION, ACCORDING TO A BABYLONIAN CYLINDER.
lonians, seated face to face, on either side of a tree, with horizontal branches, from which hang two large bunches of fruit, one in front of each of these personages, who are in the acft of stretching out their hands to pluck them. Behind the woman a
serpent uprears itself. The illus- tration might be used to illustrate the narrative of Genesis, and as Friedrich Delitzsch has remarked^ is capable of no other explanation."*
It will be noted that the man and the woman are engaged in a conference. The subje(5l of conference and deliberation is evident, as both of them point towards the fruits which are on the lowest branches of the tree. In this more ancient form the recolledlion of the first incident in the melancholy story of human guilt is identical with the Bible record. The Greek legend is clearer than that of the Norsemen. And what is still vague or unintelli- gible in the Grecian version, is made clear in the Chaldean. The test appointed for obedience is the fruit of a certain tree. There is a conference between the man and the woman as to whether this fruit shall be eaten. A third takes part in it, and that third is a serpent. The serpent stands erect —
"The Beginnings of History, pp. 98, 99.
222 The New Biblical Guide.
contrary to what is now its natural posture — and it stands behind the woman, communicating with her and not with the man.
We do not dwell upon this point. We shall only ask the reader to remember once more that sin is universal ; that it is everywhere condemned by men as a thing which ought not to be ; that it is, there- fore, an invasion (as the Scripture says it is) of our nature, and not an outcome of it ; and, finally, that, as we trace the legend backwards, step by step, we come, at last, to a form which presents, as in a mirror, the story of the Bible. Pandora is a myth ; but the scene in Paradise is the event from which the myth sprang.
It is impressive to mark how tradition agonizes, as it were, to throw back the deepening clouds of ignorance, and to cling to the wrecks of ancient memories. It is that story which is told in these ever-varying legends which take us back to the first events in human history. Every feature in the Bible picture re-appears somewhere and somehow in the national myths, or in national worships. We have already marked the presence of
THE SERPENT
in the picture on the Babylonian cylinder. Serpents have been objects of worship to men of every race. Lucan, the Latin poet, addresses them, in his Pharsalia, thus : —
" Ye serpents too, who, gay with golden bands, Crawl, harmless gods, in all earth's many lands."
The circumstance of divine honours being paid to
The '^Myths'' of Genesis. 223
this reptile has led scholars to imagine that the pradlice could not have arisen from the scene in Eden. But a little steady refledlion seems all that is needed to restore this confusion to order. How has it happened that this most marvellous prominence has been given to the serpent ? We find it thus honoured everywhere in the idolatries of antiquity, and in those which still survive. Max Mliller, while combating the view "that all these conceptions came from one and the same original source," and "that they are all held together by one traditional chain," himself admits that " these conceptions " are universal. "There is," he says, an "Aryan, there is a Semitic, there is a Turanian, there is an African serpent." How, then, did the serpent commend itself to the devotion of one and all of those races ? What is there in this animal to make it stand out beyond every other in the whole Creation, and to gather round it the reverence and the fear of universal man ? That is a question which true science must feel itself compelled to investigate, and the Scripture contains a record, which, it is not presumptuous to say, has every element in it of a completely satisfactory explanation. In the first home, and the very cradle of the human race, the serpent was intimately asso- ciated with, and was made the instrument of, man's tempter and of God's great foe. What so natural as that men should conceive that this close associa- tion was continued, and that, wherever they went, they should seek to disarm the hostility of their enemy by professions of reverence and of devotion ?
224 The New Biblical Guide.
But we find this root of fa(5l still evident enough in the traditions themselves. " Side by side," says Lenormant, "with divine serpents of an essentially favourable and protective characfler . . . We find in all mythologies a gigantic serpent, personifying the nocturnal, hostile power, the evil principle, material darkness, and moral wickedness.
" Among the Egyptians, it is the serpent Apap, who fights against the Sun, and whom Hor pierces with his weapon. Among the Chaldeo-Assyrians, we find mention of a great serpent called " the Enemy of the Gods," anih Hani. We are distinctly told that Pherecydes of Syros borrowed from the Phoenician mythology his story of the old Ophion, the serpent god, first master of heaven, precipitated with his companions into Tartarus by the god Cronos, who triumphs over him at the beginning of all things. . . .
" Mazdaeism is the only religion in the symbolism of which the serpent never appears, except as an evil agent. ... In the conception of Zoroastrian dualism, the animal itself belongs to the impure and adverse Creation of the Evil Principle. It was under the form of a great serpent, too, that Angro- mainyas, after having endeavoured to corrupt heaven, leaped upon the earth, and under this form he fights Mithra, the god of the pure sky ; finally, it is under this form that he will one day be overcome, chained for three thousand years, and at the end of the world be burned in liquifying metals.
" In these Zoroastrian narratives, Angromainyas,
The "Myths'' of Genesis. 225
under the form of a serpent, is the emblem of wickedness, the personification of the evil spirit, just as clearly as is the serpent of Genesis, and that, too, in a sense almost as thoroughly spiritual." After referring to the representations in the Vedas, which saw the old strife with the serpent in the thunder- storm, and to the attempt of a German scholar to explain the whole circle of these beliefs and prac5lices as arising from phenomena of the weather (!), our author continues : " The Vedic myth is only one of the applications of a symbolic story, which goes very much farther back into the primitive past of humanity, before the ethnic divisions of the ancestors of the Egyptians, the Semites, and the Aryans, the three great races represented by the three sons of Noah ; this we know, since we meet it, without exception, among them all. . . . But, in the case of the Egyptians, we find the same myth with a much loftier and more general interpretation. With them the serpent, Apap, is not the storm-cloud ; he is the personification of the darkness which the Sun, under the form of Ra or Hor, contends against, during his no(fturnal passage around the lower hemisphere, and over which he is destined to triumph before re- appearing in the East. The conflidl of Hor with Apap is ever renewed at the seventh hour of the night, a little before sun-rising, and the thirty-ninth chapter of The Book of the Dead demonstrates that this conflict between light and darkness was looked upon by the Egyptians as the emblem of the moral conflict between good and evil. The serpent in the
226 The New Biblical Guide.
paradisaical legends of Chaldea and Phoenicia is no longer the thunder-cloud, but suggests the narrative of Genesis." *
These experiences, therefore, in the early days of the parents of the human race, have left abiding marks. But there was another which must have made quite as deep an impression upon the memory and the imagination of the fathers of humanity. The Scripture tells us that ''the Lord God sent him (Adam) forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove out the man ; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden
CHERUBIM
and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life " (Gen. iii. 23, 24).
The Cherubim appear again in the Scripture. Moses is commanded to make representations of them, and to place them above the Mercy-seat in the Holiest of all. When the Temple is eredled by Solomon, provision is similarly made for their over-shadowing the Mercy-seat there. Ezekiel's mission begins with a vision of God ; and in the revelation of the Divine Majesty we see four Cherubim beneath the expanse on which was set the Throne of God. The form of these Cherubim is minutely described by the prophet. It is that of a man, but the feet are straight "feet," like the feet of an ox, and each had four faces and four wings, and a man's hands under their wings. *'As for the likeness of their faces," says the
' The Beginnings of History, pp. 107-113.
The ^'Myths'' of Genesis. 227
Scripture, " they four had the face of a man, and the face of a Hon on the right side ; and they four had the face of an ox on the left side ; they four also had the face of an eagle " (Ezekiel i. 10). They are seen again in the revelation of God made to the Apostle John in Patmos. They are named " living creatures " in Ezekiel, and that name is again applied to them in Revelation. " Before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal : and in the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four living creatures full of eyes before and behind. And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second living creature like a calf, and the third living creature had a face as a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle " (Revelation iv. 6, 7).
It might be supposed that in the visions granted to Ezekiel and to John the Cherubim were not real existences, but only symbols. There is, no doubt, something to be said for that view. Much in both visions is undoubtedly symbolic, and the symbolism in this case might seem to be easily grasped. The Cherubim might be regarded as emblematic of earth's manifold life, which is still under God's control, and which moves together in the accomplishment of His purposes. But there are objections to that inter- pretation which appear to be insuperable. The angels are not symbols, but real existences ; and these living creatures are spoken of as though they were as real existences as they. The Cherubim, indeed, are evidently of a higher order than the rest of the angel host. They are nearer God : the eyes with
228 The New Biblical Guide.
which their bodies are covered, denote mightier intelligence ; and it is they who lead the heavenly praises.
There is no doubt that we have here a mingling of the symbolic and the real. The Cherubim are real and mighty celestial existences ; and the representa- tions which link them to the earthly creation are evidently to be understood in another way. They are not symbols of God's earthly creations ; but, on the contrary, God's earthly creations reveal the fulness of varied power, and service, and glory, which are in the Cherubim. What we and the higher earthly beings are in comparison with the rest of God's earthly creation, that are the Cherubim in comparison with the angelic hosts on high. Such seems to be the right solution of this difficulty ; but, in any case, their close relation to God's throne indicates a guardianship of the Divine Majesty. They are the vindicators of God's broken law. The position of the symbolic Cherubim over the Mercy-seat, in the sandluary, is in stride agreement with this. They are looking down towards the law within the ark. But their gaze is stopped by the blood-stained Mercy- seat. The law has, indeed, been broken, but a death has been endured for the sinful, and a life has been offered on their behalf. That blood-stained Mercy- seat arrests their gaze, and stops their inquiry into the fulfilment of the law. All is attained — all is done ! I need not point out that when, God placed Cherubim at the entrance to Paradise, "and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the
The "Myths'' of Genesis. 229
way of the tree of life," the choice of these heavenly ministers was in stri(5l accord with their place as vindicators of the Divine justice ; and the presence of these glorious beings was a revelation to fallen man of the awfulness of his transgression. The holy splendours of the throne of God were placed where God's holy law had been despised and profaned.
But our special purpose at present is to inquire whether the witnesses, whose testimony has so wonderfully confirmed other statements of these first chapters of Genesis, have anything to say about the Cherubim. When one asks whether they ever guarded the entrance to Eden, have those witnesses any answer? The reply will again surprise us. The memory of this great event, which was God's first revelation of the awfulness of sin, was carried with men everywhere. If the reader will consult Smith's Classical Dictionary, he will find the following under the word " Gryps " or " Gryphus " (the Greek equivalent of the ancient Kerub): " A griffin, a fabulous animal dwelHng in the Rhipaean mountains, between the Hyperboreans and the one-eyed Arimaspians, and guarding the gold of the north. The Arimaspians mounted on horseback, and attempted to steal the gold, and hence arose the hostility between the horse and the griffin. The body of the griffin was that of a lion, while the head and wings were those of an eagle." " It is probable," continues the writer of the article, "that the origin of the belief in griffins must be looked for in the East, where it seems to have been very ancient. They are also mentioned among
230 The New Biblical Guide.
the fabulous animals which guarded the gold of India."
The sphinxes of Egypt, which guarded the ap- proaches to the temples, are too well known to require description here. The best known is that beside the pyramids. "This huge, mutilated figure," says Ampere, "has an astonishing effect; it seems like an eternal spectre. The stone phantom seems attentive ; one would say that it hears and sees. Its great ear appears to collect the sounds of the past ; its eyes, directed to the east, gaze as it were into the future; its aspect has a depth, a truth of expression, irresistibly fascmating to the spectator. In this figure, half statue, half mountain, we see a wonderful majesty, a grand serenity, and even a sort of sweet- ness of expression."*
The memory of the vision at Eden still held its hand upon the Egyptian sculptor. But it is in the first home of man after the Flood that we find in this, as in so many other matters, the clearest traces. Layard has described the tremendous impression made upon his Arab diggers, when the first human- headed bull was dug out of the ruins of ancient Nineveh. On his way to the excavations he was met by two of his Arabs, "urging their mares to the top of their speed. On approaching me they stopped. 'Hasten, O Bey,' exclaimed one of them— 'hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. Wallah ! It is wonderful, but it is true ! We have seen him with our eyes' .... On reaching the ruins
* Quoted by Lenormant, Ancient History of the East.
The "Myths'' of Genesis. 231
I descended into the new trench. . . . The Arabs withdrew the screen they had hastily constructed, and disclosed an enormous human head sculptured in full, out of the alabaster of the country. They had uncovered the upper part of a figure, the re- mainder of which was still buried in the earth. I saw at once that the head must belong to a winged lion or bull. It was in admirable preservation. The expression was calm, yet majestic. I was not sur- prised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition."
We now know that these gigantic sculptures, which were planted at the gateways of the Assyrian palaces, were by no means regarded as mere ornaments. They were looked upon as supernatural watchers, who guarded the entrance from the approach of evil, just as the Cherubim had preserved Paradise from being again polluted by the foot of sinful man. "The bulls," says Lenormant, "whose images are placed at the gateways of the palaces and temples, are the guardian genii who watch over the dwelling. They are looked upon as living beings. As the result of a veritable magical operation, the supernatural creature which they represent is supposed to reside within these bodies of stone. This explains the saying of King Asshur-ah-idin, at the end of the inscription on the terra-cotta prism deposited in the foundations of his palace at Nineveh: 'In this palace, may the propitious genius, the propitious colossus, guardian of the footsteps of my royalty, who rejoices my majesty, perpetuate his presence
232 The New Biblical Guide.
always, and its arms (the arms of the king's majesty) will never lose their strength.' And a Httle before that, in speaking of the workmanship of the palace : 'The gates of fir with solid panels, I have bound them with bands of silver and of brass, and I have furnished the gateways with genii, with stone colossi, which, like the beings they represent, overwhelm {with fear) the breast of the wicked, protecting the footsteps, conducting to their accomplishment the steps of the king who made them ; to right and to left I have caused their bolts to be made.' The *two bulls of the gate of the temple E-shakil,' the famous pyramid of Babylon, are registered in the divine lists, among the secondary personages composing the court of Marduk, the god of this temple, with its *two door- keepers,' and the 'four dogs of the god.' The same list gives the names of the 'two bulls of the gate of Ea,' as well as those of 'his eight doorkeepers,' and also the names of the 'two bulls of the gate of the goddess Damkina,' his consort, and 'of the six bulls' of the three gates 'of the Sun.' In a bi-lingual document, Accadian with an Assyrian version, of a rather singular nature, and unfortunately fragmentary, which appears to have formed part of the funeral liturgy, we read invocations to the two bulls who flanked the gate of the infernal abode, which were no longer simulacra of stone, but living beings, like the bulls at the gates of the celestial palaces of the gods. The following is what is said * in the ears of the bull which stands to the right of the bronze enclosure': — ' Great Bull, most great Bull, stamping before the holy gates, he
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 233
opens the interior; director of Abundance, who supports the god Nirba, who gives their glory to the cultivated fields, my pure hands sacrifice toward thee.'
"So it seems that this bull plays the part of a kind of Atlas, carrying the earth with its harvests upon his shoulders. Herewith follows the address 'in the ears of the bull to the left of the bronze enclosure' —
* Thou art the Bull begotten by the god Zu, and at the entrance of
the tomb (is) thy act of carrying.
For eternity, the Lady of the magic ring has rendered thee
immortal. (Now) the great . . . the confines, the limits, . . . fixing the portals of heaven and of earth, . . . that he may guard the gate!'"
"Such," continues Lenormant, "are the readings furnished us from the cuneiform inscriptions upon the nature and significance of the genii, in the form of winged bulls with human countenance, whose images were stationed as guardians at the portals of the edifices of Babylonia and Assyria. But these supernatual beings were not only c^Wedshedi, 'genii,' by reason of their nature, and ' bulls,' from their form. It is also certain that they were given the name of kirubi. A talismanic monument in the collection of M. Louis de Clercq, bearing a magic formula, which we find repeated upon a great number of analogous objects, employs the term kirub (written phonetically ki-ru-bu), where shed, or the correspond- ing ideographic group is used elsewhere. Hence it follows that with the Chaldeo-Assyrians, from the tenth to the fifth century before our era, the kirnb,
234 ^^^^ ^^"^ Biblical Guide.
whose name is identical with the Hebrew kinih, was the winged bull with a human head."*
This last discovery is another heavy blow to rationalistic criticism. It was maintained that we had in those Cherubim, plain and, indeed, over- whelming, proof of the late origin of the Pentateuch. Cherub (kerub), it was contended, was not a Semitic word. There was nothing in the Hebrew, or in any cognate language, which threw any light upon it. But there is an Aryan root, grabh, which means to seize, and there is the Greek word grupes, or griffins. These, it was argued, were fadls, the meaning of which could not be mistaken. The Hebrews had got the idea and the name from the Aryan, or Japhetic, family; and this must have been when they were in close contact with that branch of the human race, namely, during the Persian dominion. It was then, we were told on " high authority," that Israel first heard of the grupes, and introduced them into the Temple and into the Book of the Law ! But discovery — which, as it has rolled on its way, has crushed under its wheels so many of the things with which the infancy of criticism has amused itself — has smashed this also. The name appears in a Semitic tongue, and in the very form of the Hebrew word five centuries before the Persian dominion comes into existence !
But true criticism has now before it a bigger and more fruitful problem. Every nation and people under heaven have retained the memories which we
* Beginnings of History, pp. 122-126.
The ''Myths'' of Genesis. 235
have now looked at. Scattered as far as this wide earth permits, and separated from each other by vast stretches of land and sea, for thousands of years, all alike have clung to these recollections. It was inevitable that they should undergo change. But they have, nevertheless, preserved their identity. Distorted and blurred as they are, we immediately recognize their kinship, and say : " Yes ; that is just what we also find here, there, and everywhere besides." The recollections have not only passed into national legends, which have been handed down from sire to son ; but they have also entered into their religious worship, and have been bound up with their faith and hope. Man, they say, once had a home of unclouded joy, free alike from bodily ill, from grief, and from the fear of death. Then came sin and loss. The story is precise in its details. There was a tree connected with man's first joy, and a tree was equally connected with his first transgression. In some way a serpent enters into the transaction, and in such a way that ever afterwards the serpent is feared and worshipped. Celestial guardians, extra- ordinary in their form, in their unslumbering vigilance, and in their matchless might, prevent all return to the place of rest, and joy, and immortality. Go where we will, we find the same story. What does it mean ? Have all nations dreamed the same dream ; and have they all alike been deluded with the con- viction that the dream was a reality ? If that explanation is impossible, then we must conclude that far back in man's early story there was some
236 The New Biblical Guide.
transaction in which all these elements had a place. And further reflection will lead to the conviction that the third chapter of Genesis is not merely one of the national myths, but that it is, on the contrary, the history which explains the myths. For here, and here alone, all is sober, rational, coherent, and worthy of God and man.
CHAPTER VII.
The Foundations of Human History.
THOSE who speak and write of "the myths" of Genesis betray a lack of perception which is in itself a grave disqualification for the position of true critics. No man possessed of clear judgment will class the like and the unlike together. The narratives in Genesis have nothing of the grotesque- ness, or of the wild improbability, of myth; they are, on the contrary, marked by the sobriety, the simplicity, and the directness of history. There is also another indication of unfitness revealed by this class of speakers and writers. They lack the scientific instindl:, which not only observes and classifies phenomena, but also traces them to their origin. Even myths must have sprung from some- thing. If every nation under heaven has kept on, all down the ages, telling each in its own way the same stor}^, then there must be some cause for the sameness of the story. It might happen by accident
The Foundations of Human History. 237
that two widely-sundered peoples, or even three, should dream the same dream, or imagine the same romance. But when we come to six, to twenty, to scores, we stop. That explanation ceases to be probable, or even possible. Accident may explain much ; but accident cannot by any possibility explain that. Far up the ages something happened, when men still lived together, to which the memory of all sections of humanity clings. And when the inquirer, looking round for information as to what that some- thing is, finds one version of the story in which he is met by all the limpid clearness, and all the inimitable connectedness, of truth, he feels that he has traced the streams of tradition to the fountain from which they have all sprung.
We have seen how these streams of tradition lead us back to the early narratives of Genesis. I have now to ask the reader to note how marvellously every incident recorded there has been confirmed by recent research. Eve gives names to her sons, on the meaning of which the Hebrew language can throw no light whatever. Cain used to be explained by the Hebrew word kanah, "to erect, create, acquire, possess." This derivation was supposed to be sup- ported by Eve's words : " I have gotten {kanithi) a man from the Lord;" or rather, '*'! have gotten a man — even Jehovah " (Gen. iv. i). But the derivation of Cain from kanah is attended with difficulties. A new light is now thrown upon the whole question through the recovery of the ancient languages of Mesopotamia, the early home of the United human family, and that
238 The New Biblical Guide.
in which the echoes of the primeval form of human speech have Hngered longest. Cain means "shoot," ** sprout," or ''off-spring."* This meaning of the name sheds a new and welcome light upon Eve's words: "I have gotten a man — even Jehovah." " Offspring " points to the promise given in the previous chapter, of the " seed " of the woman, who should avenge her wrong, and sweep away the awful fruits of her sin. Eve believed that this child was the " seed " — the promised Messiah, the God-man, who would re-open the gates of Paradise and restore the lost fellowship with God.
The name Abel (in Hebrew, Hebhel) presented quite as formidable difficulties to those who tried to explain it as a Hebrew word. Hebhel, a Hebrew word which is spelled in the same way, means " breath " ; and Gesenius says that Abel was " so called from the shortness of his life." This is followed in Tregelles's Gesenius by the interjected expostulation of the Editor — "but he had his name from his birth!" The rabbinical explanation was similar. The mean- ing "vanity," which the Hebrew word Hebhel also bears, was assigned as the reason why the name was applied to this first victim of murderous hate, whose life appeared only for a moment, and then vanished away. But this interpretation, like the other, was open to the fatal objection that the name, in that case, must have been given to Abel after his death, and not at his birth. Eve, we may be certain,
Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptioiii, and the Old Testament (Williams and Norgate),vol. i.,p-45-
The Foundations of Hiunan History. 239
conferred it without any notion of the tragedy with which it was to be associated.
All these devices of baffled learning are now happily unnece'ssary. The word is met with among the Babylonians and Assyrians, who used it in the sense of "son." It appears in the names of Nebuchad- nezzar's father, Nabopolassar, which is in Babylonian Nabu-ABLA-nsur — "Nebo protect the son." It also appears in the name of the Assyrian king, Assur- bani-pal, or Asnr-hani-ABLI — *'Asur created the son." But even with the Assyrians and Babylonians the word pointed back to remote times. "It seems," says Schrader, "to be a foreign word in Assyrian, since it does not occur in any other Semitic language in an appellative sense, and, taken in this sense, has no satisfactory derivation. It was probably adopted into the Assyrian from the Sumiro-Akkadian, in which the word for ' son ' is ibila,'" * Later discovery has corrected this finding. The Akkadians borrowed the word from the Babylonians ; for it is an ancient Semitic word. The Babylonian has two words for ''son,'' mdni and dhlu. The construct case of the latter is abil, and from this the Akkadian word ibila was no doubt taken. Mdru means "male-child," and dblu, "son," though the two words are practi- cally interchangeable. Abhi is from the verb abalu "to bring."
These words of the first chapter of Genesis take us back, as I have already remarked, to the earliest days of human history ; and the record, which
"-IbU, p. 46.
240 The New Biblical Guide.
recalls so accurately the names of the past, has a claim to be credited with the same minute know- ledge and faithfulness when it records the events of the past. And proofs are not wanting which show that such confidence will not be misplaced. Two things are told us in Genesis iv. about Cain. His brother's sacrifice is accepted of God, and his is rejected. Cain was very angry. '' And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him " (Genesis iv.8).
That is the first thing: Cain's hand was dyed with his brother's blood. The second thing is mentioned in verse 17: ''and he builded a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch." Cain was thus the founder of the first city. His history affords a ready explanation of his departure from the simple and isolated life then followed by the rest of the human family. He was haunted by the fear of vengeance. Surrounded by friendly neigh- bours, and protected by city walls, he could bid such farewell to fear as a guilty conscience would allow.
Now, if these things did really happen, it seems natural to expect that they would leave their trace in the legends common to all nations. These speak, as we have seen, of man's first abode of splendour and purity and peace and deathlessness, and they tell how that best of heritages was lost. Are they silent, then, about this awful crime ? Have they nothing to say about the brother-slayer and his city ?
The names of the twelve months of the year, which slightly varied, were used in common by the
The Foundations of Human History. 241
Babylonians and the Jews, are generally indicated in the Assyrian inscriptions by signs. These signs take us back to the old Accadian, and are connected with the legends which embalmed the story of man's early days. In scanning these ancient names, we are struck by the name for the third month — Sivan. " Sivan " is connected with the Aramaic Seyan, which means ''dirt," or ''clay." The reference there will be immediately apparent when we mark the Accadian name for the same month. This last is segga, and its meaning is "making of bricks." The abbreviated forms in which the name also appeared were two — "the brick," and "the twins." The sign on the Zodiac which indicates the month is also " the twins." The protecting deity of the month was Sin, the elder brother of Bel.
Here, then, in this third month, two things are strangely brought together — the making of building material, and two brothers. Other inscriptions make it plain that it w^as a sacred custom among the Assyrians to prepare their bricks for building in this third month. An inscription of Sargon records that the rite was duly observed by him. It read as follows: "In the month of the first summer, the month of the royal twin, . . . which, by the decrees of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the God with the bright eye, that bricks be made in it, in order to build a city, or a house, has been called 'the month of the brick,' in the day of the invocation ... I have caused his bricks to be moulded (those for the new city being built for the king). To Laban, lord of the brick foundations, and
242 The New Biblical Guide.
to Nergal, son of Bel, I have immolated sheep as victims, I have caused flutes to be played, and I have raised my hands in invocation."
The mention of the victims will be noted. The walls of the city were, so to say, laid in blood. These indications are explained and emphasized by the traditions of all nations. The legend meets us in the story of Romulus and Remus. The two brothers quarrelled because of the omens granted by the gods. The birds appeared first to Remus, and he claimed that his site should be chosen for the city. But Romulus afterwards had an omen, which he contended showed that his site was approved. They had a subsequent meeting, as Romulus was building, and then the pent-up wrath flamed out. Remus was slain, and Romulus built his city with hands stained with his brother's blood. The story meets us every- where. Each famous city, of the origin of which the legends speak, has human blood poured into its trenches. Murder and city-building are bound to- gether. The city-builder is stained with this blackest of crimes. The stones of his city walls are laid in the blood of one whose life ought to have been to him among the most sacred which the earth contained. There is no apparent connection between city-building and brother-slaying. What, then, has made the nations link these so closely together ? The Scrip- ture supplies an explanation, which brings us out of myth into the sobriety and the light of history. Put that narrative aside, and there is nothing in the whole world's literature to make known to us what all
The Foundations of Human History. 243
those signs and tales are striving to say. Accept it as history, and the mystery is solved.
We should hardly expedl the magical incantations and other ancient inscriptions of Babylonia to furnish a comment upon an expression in Genesis. The story of the first crime is told in Genesis iv. with that marvellous simplicity and suggestive brevity which are found in the Scriptures alone. " Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell" (verse 5). He was in no mood for conversation with anyone, and least of all with Abel. God expostulates with him. " And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth ? And why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and unto thee is its desire. And thou shalt rule over it?" (verses 6, 7). The last reference is evidently to sin, and not to Abel. God, after warning Cain of his danger, encourages him. Sin shall not seize him as a prey, but he (Cain) shall triumph over it. And thus encouraged, Cain appears to have made a good beginning, and sin was baffled for a time. For the next words are: *' And Cain talked with his brother." This was an advance. With that lowered face, no speech had been possible. But now the brow has cleared, something of the old brightness has returned, the old brotherly intercourse is renewed, and Satan is temporarily subdued. But it was the gleam before the tempest. The way of peace had been entered, but it was not clung to. It happened after- wards that they were engaged away from the home.
244 ^^^^ ^^'^' Biblical Guide.
and the old passion burst out in awful fury. *' It came to pass, when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him."
Now the comment to which I refer relates to the wqrd rohetz, translated "lieth," in the phrase "sin lieth at the door." It has been felt that the connection calls for the stronger meaning ''croucheth," or " is a lier-in- wait." The representation is that sin watches for Cain's outgoing, and is ready to spring upon him the moment he appears. Here, now, the Assyriologist comes to our help. "The participle robec,'' says Lenormant, " here employed as a substantive, con- stitutes the only known Hebrew example of the verb rabag, taken in that sense, which, in Arabic, is invariably given to rebaca, and sometimes to rebadaha whence the lion is described as rabbadh, 'that which holds itself in ambush,' and morabedh is a ' soldier of the great guard.' In Assyrian, on the other hand, rabac has the two current acceptations — the one as frequent as the other — of ' lying down, resting,' or of ' lying in ambush, spying.' Further- more, the Assyrian-Semitic name used to designate one of the principal classes of demons is rabic, ' he who holds himself in ambush, spreader of snares,' corresponding to the Akkadian mashkim. The seven Rabici are numbered among the most redoubtable of the malevolent and infernal spirits. We find them again in the Rabidhaton of Mussulman demonology, where they are represented as fallen angels, who were cast out together with Adam. The demons, more- over, according to the Chaldaic conception, do not .
The Antediluvians. 245
limit themselves, as here represented, to lying in wait for man at the door of his dwelhng, attacking him to his face, or following behind him in order to throw themselves upon him when he is not on his guard. ' They, the door does not keep them back, the bar of the door does not repel them ; within the door they insinuate themselves like snakes.' Here is a conjuration, mtended to keep them away from the king. ' Into the palace they shall never enter ; to the gate of the palace they shall never approach ; the king they shall never attack.'"*
We can easily understand how the Divine warning to Cain would be told and re-told, and how every word of God's speech would be pondered. It would be pondered all the more that, in this very phrase about sin crouching at the door, light appeared to be shed upon the mysteries of the unseen world and upon the fearful enmity and methods of our unseen foes.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Antediluvians.
THERE is another of the so-called "myths" of Genesis which demands more than a passing notice, and that is the account given of antediluvian man. Of him, both science and tradition have something to say as well as the Scripture. Geology now recognizes the very distinction which the
* The Beginnings of History, pp. 175, 176.
246 The New Biblical Guide,
Scripture has all along laid down between men before the flood, and men after the flood. The ** human period," says Sir William Dawson, *' is divided into two portions by a great submergence, in which certain races of men and many animals perished." On this point we do not now dwell, as it will come before us immediately. The Scripture gives a brief but graphic description of the state of society in the period before the flood. The passions of men were let loose. " The wickedness of man was great in the earth." " The earth was filled with violence." Now one result of this injustice and violence would be that weaker races would be dispossessed and driven forth into new regions. The settled habits and calm pursuits of civilized life would, consequently, in the case of these outcasts, be abandoned for those more immediately necessary to minister to daily need.
Now it is just such a state of things that geology has revealed. Men are found previous to the great submergence, or flood, spread over an astonishingly wide area ; and wherever we find them in this outer circle, the fringe, as it were, of the life of the period, they are all marked by one character. They have apparently neither fields nor flocks, though they have skill enough to shape such implements and weapons as they require, and, if brain capacity be any test, are even more largely endowed with mental power than the men of to-day. Theirs is a hand-to- mouth existence. They prey upon the lower life which is around them : they live by the chase. " Dr. John Evans," says Mr. S. R. Pattison, "in his
The Antediluvians, 247
standard work on The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain in 1872, records discoveries of these remains in six caves and fifty-four gravel banks in England and Wales. The number of such discoveries has, at least, been doubled since that date, and foreign localities are still more numerous. Public and private museums are everywhere displaying those shaped flints amongst the articles which appeal to curiosity and interest. They have been found in Spain, Italy, Greece, Algeria, Upper and Lower Egypt (it is said in the conglomerate slabs of which the tombs of the kings are built), Palestine, India, and even in North x\merica ; all substantially of the same type, lying under similar conditions, of the same geological age, and apparently testifying of the same social epoch. They occur beyond the bounds of our ordinary history, and denote a community of character over an area startling from its extent. It is as though the world had at one time passed through a hunting or predatory stage, as regards man and the mammals, interrupted by a watery catastrophe."
That is the testimony of science as to the kind of existence to which the weaker races, and those driven further from the old home, were reduced. The Scripture further carefully distinguishes two races of antediluvian men. The genealogies, or the descen- dants, of Cain and of Seth are carefully separated. These two races — the sons of God and the daughters of men — intermarry, and a third race spring from this union. These the Scripture calls '' nephilim,''
248 The New Biblical Guide.
men of great physical strength, and of lawless Hfe. Referring to
THESE THREE RACES,
Sir J. W. Dawson says : " It is interesting to note here that in the Post-Glacial or palanthropic (antediluvian) period also we find in Europe three races, that of Truchere, of which only a single example is at present known, presenting a medium stature and mild features, and possibly representing the Sethites ; that of Canstadt, coarse, robust, and brutal, and representing the lower type of the Cainites ; and. the gigantic Cro-Magnon race, attaining sometimes a stature of seven feet, with prodigious muscular power, large brains, and coarse massive features. In the Deluge history it is the Sethites that survive, the Cainites and half-breeds perish. So, in the transition to the Neanthropic period, it is the Truchere race that survives and becomes the basis of the Iberian and other modern races; the Canstadt and Cro-Magnon types, as races, disappear. So far as our information now extends, the parallel is very exact."*
The Scripture refers the birth of
MANY OF THE ARTS
to the antediluvian period. Cain, as we have already seen, was the first city builder ; and among Cain's descendants one discovery speedily followed another. We hardly look for much evidence of the state of civilisation in the igth Century among the
♦ Eden Lost and Won, pp, 87, 88.
The Antediluvians. 249
inhabitants of what we may call the outposts of humanity. The antediluvian cave-dwellers and in- habitants of Britain and of France, were in that very position then. And yet they were by no means destitute of the tastes and of the arts of civilisation. The engravings on smoothed bones, which have been found among the remains of their dwellings, prove them to have been artists of no mean order. " The needles," says Sir J. W. Dawson, "and the marks carved on the arms of some of the figures executed in bone or ivory, would seem to indicate clothing, and even embroidery. The numerous and well-made harpoons show the capture of large fish, and conse- quently the possession of canoes. . . . Lastly, there would seem to be no doubt that the art of the potter was invented during the Palanthropic age." t
In striking accord with this is the discovery of a more ancient city beneath the immense brick plat- form, on which the already ancient city of Nipur, in Southern Babylonia, was built. From the huge deposit of mud and sand which covers it, and which can have proceeded neither from the Euphrates nor from the Tigris, there is reason to believe that the more ancient city is antediluvian. Here the arts were more highly developed than in its post-diluvian successor.
But the Scripture speaks also of
THE LONGEVITY
of these fathers of our race. The ages of the chiefs of ten generations are given. The youngest of them
t Modern Science in Bible Lands (Third Edition), pp. 68, 69.
250 The New Biblical Guide.
lives for 365 years, and the oldest for 969. That is, the longest life endured for nearly ten centuries, and the shortest for nearly four. Even this last is a mighty span. Translating the figures into a space which we can grasp and measure, this life-time would cover an interval extending from the present back through the reigns of the Georges, of Queen Anne, of William and Mary, of the Stuarts, of Good Queen Bess, of Mary, of Edward vi., Henry viii., Henry vii., Richard iii., Edward iv., and back still through thirty-five years of the reign of Henry vi. Such a life would have witnessed the dawn of European learning, the rise of the Reformation, the birth of science, and all the religious, political, and social changes that have re-constituted European society. All this, we repeat, would be covered by the shortest period assigned to one human life, while the longest would extend from the present back to the year 931, or till within thirty-one years of the death of Alfred the Great.
Now, it may at first sight seem strange to suggest that geology has anything to say about this. But surely, if human lives covered centuries, geology, which searches out the traces of these men before the flood, must have somethinsr to say about that. It discovers tokens of their presence in the weapons which they used in the chase, and in the bones of the animals which they slew and fed upon. But, if the longevity of antediluvian man is a myth — if he died then after a few years as he dies now — these gravel beds will show it. His abode will soon become
The Antediluvians. 251
his burial place, and his bones will repose side by side with those of his vidtims.
What, then, is the truth as to this matter ? Here is the answer. " It is a fa6t," says Mr. S. R. Pattison, whom we have already quoted, "that up to the present time no human bones have been found in the beds containing the tools, though there are abundant bones, teeth, tusks, and horns of animals. The reply that human bones decay quickly is not satisfacl:ory, as other mammalian fragments are preserved in the same circumstances." ^ Where skeletons have been ( found, some are those of very old men, whose teethj ^ have been worn down to mere stumps by long use. f
Such is the testimony of geology. The life which has left its traces there, does seem to have stretched over a mightier span than human life can boast to-day. But, if this were the law of man's existence in that early time, some trace of it must have been left in those traditions which are only history passed on from lip to Hp, with ever-growing variations, it is true, but which have, nevertheless, within the variations a body of solid fact. The number of generations from the Creation to the flood, including that of Noah, is ten, and the names and ages of the ten great fathers of our race are minutely recorded. Now it is a significant fadl that this very number ten re-appears with most remarkable persistency in the / ancient traditions of the various races. The Egyptians * believed that ten deities reigned before man. The Sybelline books speak of ten ages which elapsed
* The Age and Origm of Man Geologically Considered, p. 13.
S
^^
252 The New Biblical Guide.
between the Creation and the Deluge. The Iranians looked back to their ten Peischaddin, or monarchs, "the men of the ancient law," who drank of the pure homa, the drink of the immortals, and who watched over holiness. The Hindoos speak of the nine Brahmidikas, who with Brahma, their maker, are called the ten Pitris, or fathers. The Germans and the Scandinavians tell of the ten ancestors of Odin ; the Chinese of the ten Emperors, who shared the Divine nature, and reigned before the dawn of historic times ; the Arabs of the ten kings of the Adites, primitive inhabitants of the Peninsula embraced between the Red Sea and the Persian I Gulf. The Phoenician historian, Sacchoniathon, \also gives ten generations of Primitive Patriarchs. We find ourselves," says Lenormant, "con- fronted with an imposing array of concordant testimony, gathered in from the four quarters of the earth, which leaves no room for doubt in regard to the common ground of the ancient narratives, touching the primal days of man among all the great civilised nations of the old world. The agree- ment as to the number of antediluvian patriarchs with the Bible statement in the traditions of nations — most diverse one from another — is manifested in a striking way. They are ten in the story of Genesis, and with a strange persistence this number ten is reproduced in the legends of a very great number of nations, when deaUng with their primitive ancestors, yet shrouded in the midst of fable. To whatever epoch they trace back these ancestors, whether before
The Antedihivians. 253
or after the Deluge, whether the mythic or historic side predominate in their physiognomy, they invari- ably offer this sacramental number ten."*
This testimony regarding the number of generations cannot be overlooked. Why each should have fixed upon ten will be hard to explain, except on the supposition that we have here the deep impress of one of the great outstanding facts of primeval history. The testimony is quite as explicit regarding the longevity of the patriarchs, only here tradition runs riot. Just as it has made gods out of the leaders of primeval men, so has it here added the wonders of imagination to the marvels of fact. We are familiar with the vast periods assigned to the early monarchs by Egyptian and Chinese chronology. Berossus in the same way presents us with the Babylonian tradition, but in a form which enables us to get at the truth which the tradition has veiled. He gives the reigns of the antediluvian kings in Sari. The ordinary value attached to the Sarus is 3,600, so that his chronology would make the entire period between man's creation and the flood to extend to 432,000 years. But Suidas informs us that the Sarus had also another value among the Babylonians — that, namely, of eighteen years and a half. His words are : ''Sari are with the Chaldeans a measure and a number. 120 Sari, according to the calculation of the Chaldeans, make 2,222 years, for the Sartis contains 222 lunar months, which is equivalent to eighteen years and six months."
* The Beginnings of History, pp. 218, 219.
254 ^^^^ -^^^^ Biblical Guide.
The Sams had, therefore, two values, both astro- nomical, one corresponding to 3,600 years, the other to eighteen years six months. Now, by giving this latter value to the Sari of the Babylonian chronology, we reach a result which is in startling accord with the chronology of the Bible. The practical agree- ment of the two chronologies is the more conclusive that the result is reached in two different ways: Genesis gives the age of each patriarch at the birth of his eldest son ; the Chaldean chronology gives the duration of each reign. Before presenting the reader with a tabulated form in which they will be able to compare the two accounts, it is necessary to remark that there is a considerable divergence in the three forms in which the Bible figures have been handed down to us. The figures in the Hebrew Bible have been guarded with a care never, in all earth's history, bestowed upon those in any other book. We naturally, therefore, accept these as the most reliable. The Saniaritan text was not likely, either in its origin or in its preservation, to have been subje(5ted to the same scrupulously vigilant care. The Greek version, called the Septuagint, and made about three centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, displays an indifference to exacflitude, which warns us against placing any great reliance upon it here. In the following table the reader will find these testimonies placed side by side.
It will be observed that, though following an entirely different method of calculation, the difference between Berossus and the Septuagint is only twenty-
The Antediluvians. 255
two years ! This may account for the variations in the Septuagint. The figures in Berossus were no doubt known to the Jewish translators, or to after copyists ; and it is quite in keeping with the charadler of that version that an attempt should have been made to bring the two accounts into agreement. It is impossible for us to close this chapter without expressing our gratitude to God, that in
|
Year |
of the |
Birth |
|||||
|
of the |
eldest |
Son of |
|||||
|
each Patriarch |
|||||||
|
Biblical |
according to the |
Chaldean |
|||||
|
en |
|||||||
|
Antediluvial Patriarchs. |
%1 0. |
c 7) |
t |
Antediluvian 1 Kings. |
li OS |
K 'u |
It |
|
Adam |
130 |
130 |
230 |
Alorus |
185 |
10 |
36,000 |
|
Seth |
105 |
105 |
205 |
Alaparus |
5^* |
3 |
10,000 |
|
Enos |
90 |
90 |
190 |
Almelon |
240* |
13 |
46,800 |
|
Cainan |
70 |
70 |
170 |
Ammenon |
222 |
43,200 64,800 |
|
|
Mahalaleel |
65 |
65 |
165 |
i Amegalarus |
3^^ |
18 |
|
|
Jared |
162 |
62 |
162 |
Daonus |
185 |
36,000 64.800 36,000 28,800 64,800 |
|
|
Enoch |
6«i |
60 |
i6s |
Edoranchus |
333 |
18 |
|
|
Methuselah |
187 |
67 |
167 |
' Amempsinus |
185 |
10 |
|
|
Lamech |
182 |
53 |
188 |
Otiartes |
T,R |
8 |
|
|
Noah's age at flood |
600 |
600 |
600 |
Xisuthrus |
333 |
18 |
|
|
Total |
1656 |
1302 |
2242 |
2220 |
120 |
432,000 |
these early chapters of Genesis He has given us the key to read the myths and legends of ancient tradition. That tradition is like a child, who comes to us with an overwhelming sense of the importance of what he has to tell, but who has misheard and misunderstood, and who, therefore, only inspires a thirst for knowledge which he cannot satisfy. But, once we know the facls, we not only understand the child's tale, we also gain something even from his
256 The New Biblical Guide.
telling it. The matter is set in a fresh light. He leads us, child as he is, to new points of view. And so God, communicating to us the great outstanding fa^s in the early history of humanity, has enabled us to understand the Hspings of tradition, and to reaHse still more fully those wondrous times, when man, fresh from his Creator's hand, felt himself creation's master and the world's king.
CHAPTER IX.
Traditions of the Deluge.
THIS is another of the accounts which have long been reckoned among the myths of Genesis. It was imagined that it was quite enough to point to this, or to the narrative of the fall, or to that of the creation of woman, to sweep the pretensions of the Book to the winds. The opponents of revelation seemed, indeed, to have here a more than ordinarily strong show of reason on their side. It was supposed to be granted by all parties that a universal deluge was an utter impossibility. Science, and especially geology, had for ever made an end of that dream ! It was thought by good but timid souls that it was time to compromise the matter, and to try to save the claims of Scripture, by forcing such an interpretation upon it as science might admit. The universal deluge was given up, and all that was contended for was that
Traditions of the Deluge. 257
a local deluge was not an impossibility. Strange to say, the world, which, in the days of Pye Smith, had thought it had heard the last of the Deluge, is to-day treating this very matter with seriousness and interest ; and still more strange is it that geology, grown older and wiser, has now acknowledged that the Bible was right, and that geologists were wrong !
Let us recall the Bible story. It is related in the 6th, 7th, and 8th chapters of Genesis, and bears everywhere the stamp of reality. There is no appear- ance of legend, or even of poetry, in the narrative. The tale is told simply, and with brief, but clear and pregnant, statement. The judgment was preceded by an apostasy. Up to a certain period, those who feared God had kept themselves separate from those who feared Him not. But, when men multiphed, intercourse was followed by laxity and sin. The children of God intermarried with the daughters of men. One step led to another. They became poly- gamists : the sons of God "took them wives of all which they chose." The downward course once entered upon, the descent was rapid. The children outdid the fathers in wickedness. Hitherto the rights of men had been admitted and respected, but now came times of usurpation and of robbery. The children of those who gave way to one passion became the slaves of more. They lusted after dominion and possessions. They were " heroes," "men of renown." "The earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt ; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God
258 The New Biblical Guide.
said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before men ; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth." Noah is commanded to build an ark as a refuge for himself, for his family, and for representatives of every species of animal life. When all the prepara- tions had been made, the long-delayed judgment fell, and the ark, careering on the face of the deep, held all that remained alive upon the earth. After a year and ten days the earth was dried ; and, as at first from the direct; creative act of God, so now from the door of the ark, life poured forth on hill and plain and valley. And, under the shadows cast by the memories of that awful judgment, men went out to re-enter the restored inheritance.
That is, in brief, the Bible story. It might have been supposed that this record had been subjedled to quite enough insult when it had been doubted and denied. But the so-called critic has gone further than the infidel. A wonderful theory, started by a French physician, has been taken up and ridden to its death by German theology. It is that Genesis is a patchwork, put together from the writings of different authors. Everyone has noticed the use of different names for the Divine Being in the Old Testament. He is sometimes called God, sometimes The Lord, sometimes The Lord God. That circumstance may not have troubled our readers much. If it has attrad^ed their attention at all, they have probably reflecfted that the New Testament presents an exacftly parallel feature. The Redeemer is sometimes named the Lord,
Traditions of the Deluge. 259
sometimes Jesus, and at other times Christ, Jesus Christ, and Christ Jesus. No doubt they have con- cluded that each name is taken because it is the most fitting designation in the circumstances, and that the use of the name is ruled by the meaning and the context. If they were, therefore, asked to explain the use of the Divine names in Genesis, they would explain it on such lines as these. Such an explana- tion as that, however, will not pass current with the critics. These men have vision keen enough to discern what will never be visible to an ordinary eye. They smile at our simplicity. They mark here the joining and patching of what appears to us the seamless garment of the Bible narrative. To them it is perfedlly plain that one writer could not have had more than one name for the Divine Being. He could not have called Him at one time Elohim, or God, though that means the All-mighty, and at another time have called him Jehovah, or Lord, though that means the All-faithful ! No, it would take two men, says the critic, for that. The reader must not think of asking him why. Critics do not like interruptions, and are apt to set them down to pure impertinence. They tell us that they are "experts," and that they have a right to lay down the law ; and certainly it must be owned that they are exceedingly expert at that. There is no getting out of it, for we are told there is — for them — a most wonderful agreement among them about this. The different names show different writers ; and so the one narrative of the flood is broken up into two. Sometimes a verse has to be
26o The New Biblical Guide,
divided, and one-half given to one and the other half to the other !
It so happens, however, that in this instance the critics have furnished a very convincing proof of the erroneousness of their theory. They have maintained, that when this separation is effecTted by putting on one side what has been contributed by the Jahvist (the writer supposed to use the name Lord), and on the other by the Elohist (who is supposed to confine himself to the name God), the result is two complete and separate accounts — the completeness and distinctness of which amount to a demonstration that the critics are right.
Now there are two objecftions to the admission of this claim. First of all, the accounts are not complete ; on the contrary, they are glaringly incom- plete. The division places in one account every verse where days are mentioned, and in the other, every passage in which years and months are recorded. Among several curious results of this disse(5lion, there is one which will sufficiently show what we are to think of the claim to completeness. The so-called Jahvistic account is charac^terised (just as the other is) by great minuteness. It mentions, for example, that the Lord (Jehovah) shut Noah in. But in this " complete story" which the critics present us with, there is nothing whatever said about Noah's entering the ark, or about his leaving it ! In other words, the complete story is so incomplete that it has neither beginning nor ending ! We might dwell upon the facft also that their so-called Elohistic account tells us
Traditions of the Deluge. 261
the date of the flood, giving us the year and the month and the day when the rain descended and the floods came. It tells us how long the flood lasted, and the year and the month and the day when the Hfe, so long shut up in the ark, once more touched the earth and resumed its ancient possession. From the so- called Jahvistic narrative all this is absent, and absent for the simple reason that these are not and never were separate accounts, but are parts of one simple and consecutive narration.
So fares it, then, with one critical pretension. The other is equally hollow. They say that they have put together these two narratives by simply following the indications afforded by the use of the various names applied to God. Our readers will hardly believe us when we say that the statement is not true. Yet it is most emphatically untrue. Men will yet be astounded at the scandalous disregard of accuracy which has been shown by the critics throughout this controversy. Had they rigidly followed the indications given by the names, their incomplete accounts of the Flood would have been still less complete. But they have actually gone right in the teeth of their own law, and unblushingly helped themselves from one section in order to piece out another. Verses are divided, although no name of God whatever appears in them. Whenever it seems necessary, a piece is taken from the midst of an Elohistic passage to help out the Jahvistic, and vice versa. So far is this carried, indeed, that the beginning and the end of the 4th verse of the 8th
262 The New Biblical Guide.
chapter are placed in the Jahvistic narrative, and the middle of the verse is left in the Elohistic ! Seven verses (chap. viii. 6-12) are then taken bodily from the same Elohistic section, to fill out the Jahvistic story ! Even this was not enough for Bishop Colenso, and he himself became, forthwith, a Scriptural writer, and manufa(ftured a verse or two to give the necessary completeness to these two man-made narratives !
We may safely leave the critics to the oblivion which, sooner or later, must assuredly overtake them. We pass on to a more important theme. We have looked at the Biblical story, and we have now to ask is it true ? Was
THE DELUGE A FACT?
It may appear as if this were a question which it is now impossible to answer. But, happily, the question can be answered. We propose to call two witnesses which can, if rightly questioned, yield us most important, and indeed conclusive, testimony. These are Science and Tradition. The former we shall question in a subsequent chapter ; the latter we shall summon now. It is unnecessary to repeat an argument which I have already stated somewhat fully in the preceding chapters. It is only needful that I should point out its application to the present case. If this awful tragedy ever happened ; if the entire human race perished save one family, and perished by the hand of God in punishment of sin ; then that judgment must have cast long shadows. Through generation after generation the story must
Traditions of the Deluge. 263
have lived on. It must have been the most awful and the most solemn recollection of our race. Many things may have been forgotten, but that could not be forgotten. If, then, we search the traditions of one nation after another, and find no trace anywhere of such a fearful calamity; if, among the things handed down from sire to son, this has no place; if poets have not numbered it among their themes, and the learned have not retained it among the treasures culled from the wisdom and the knowledge of the past ; then we might, with every show of probability, conclude that no such event had ever happened. But, if we find that the reverse of all this is the truth ; if that recoUecftion has a large place among the treasures of learning and the themes of poetry ; if it has moulded the traditions of every se(5lion of the far-sundered family of the man ; then the con- clusion is evident. There must have been some awful disaster which left its impress upon the minds of men before they were scattered abroad upon the earth ; and the traditions would, in that case, be a testimony to man's unity as well as to the fadl of the Deluge.
We now call our witnesses. The Mexicans, composed of various nationalities, gave the Flood a prominent place among their traditions. It was represented in paintings as well as handed down in story. Coxcox saved himself and his wife from the general destruction by embarking in a boat, or according to other traditions, on a raft. Coxcox is named Tezpi by the Mechoachans, according to
264 The New Biblical Guide,
whom, says Humboldt, '' he embarked in a spacious scalli with his wife, his children, several animals and grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind. When the Great Spirit, Tezcatlipoca, ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent out from his ship a vulture, the zopilote; this bird, which feeds on dead flesh, did not return, on account of the great number of carcasses with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed. Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the humming bird, alone returned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves. Tezpi, seeing that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark near the mountain of Cohuacan."
Tribes which have left behind them almost all other memories, still retain this. "The Crees," says Dr. Richardson, who accompanied Franklin in his journey to the shores of the Polar Sea, " all spoke of a universal Deluge, caused by an attempt of the fish to drown Wcesachootchacht, a kind of demi-god, with whom they had quarrelled. Having constructed a raft, he embarked with his family, and all kinds of birds and beasts. After the flood had continued some time, he ordered several water-fowl to dive to the bottom : they were all drowned ; but a musk rat, having been despatched on the same errand, was more successful, and returned with a mouthful of mud." *
There are many forms of the tradition among the American and other peoples. Emerson gives the following translation of a chant by the Lenni Lenape: —
* Harcourt's The Doctrine of the Deluge.
Traditions of the Dehtge. 265
"Long ago,'' they sang, "came the powerful serpent when men
had become evil. The strong serpent was the foe of the beings, and they became
embroiled, hating each other. Then they fought and despoiled each other, and were not
peaceful. Then the strong serpent resolved all men and women to destroy
immediately. The black serpent monster brought the snake water rushing — The wide waters rushing wide to the hills, everywhere spreading,
everywhere destroying. At the island of the turtle was Manabozho, of men and beings
the Grandfather. Being born creeping, at turtle land he is ready to move and
dwell. Men and beings all go forth on the flood of waters, moving
afloat everyway, seeking the back of the turtle. The monsters of the sea were many, and destroyed some of
them. Then the daughter of a spirit helped them in a boat, and all
joined, saying. Come, help Manabozho, of all beings, of men and turtles, the Grandfather. All together, on the turtle then, the men then, altogether. Much frightened, Manabozho prayed to the turtle that he
would make all well again. Then the waters ran off, it was dry on mountain and plain, and
the great evil went elsewhere by the path of the cave."*
"Similar traditions," says Dr. Cave, "were pre- served by the Nicaraguans, the BraziHans, and the Cubans. Indeed, even so antipathetic a critic as Mr. Brinton confesses that ' there are no more common heirlooms ' than flood traditions — that in these traditions ' the person saved is always the first man,' and that ' the American nations, among whom a distin(5l and well-authenticated myth of the deluge
* Indian Myths, page 352.
266 The New Biblical Guide.
was found, are as follows : — Athapascas, Iroquois, Cherokees, Chikasaws, Cuddos, Natchez, Dakotas, Apaches, Navajos, Mandans, Pueblo Indians, Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascahs, Mechvacans, Toltecs, Natonas, Mayas, Quiches, Haitans, natives of Darien and Popoyan, Muyscas, Quichmas, Tuppinambas, Achaguas, Araucanians, and doubtless others.'* Nor should we omit the facft that the ' Popul Vuh,' the sacred book of Guatemala, concerning which Max Miiller writes one of his interesting essays in the first volume of his Chips from a German Workshop, knows of a first race of men who were destroyed by water."!
In one grotesque form and another, the same story of the primeval catastrophe is presented. But the sub- ject: would demand a volume rather than a chapter, and I must leave many of these unnoticed. The tradi- tions of India and China tell, with varying details, the same story of the carrying away of the old world by a flood, and the re-peopling of the earth by some who had been miraculously preserved. Manu, whom the Hindoos regard as the great progenitor of the race, was warned, their tradition said, by a great fish, that the earth was about to be engulphed. He was told to build a ship, and to put into it all kinds of seeds, together with the seven Rishis, or holy beings. The flood came as announced, and covered the whole earth. The ship was made fast to the horns of the fish, which drew it on in safety, and finally landed it on the loftiest summit of the Himalayas. Manu
* Myths of the New World, p. 226. + Inspiration of the Old Testament, pp. 61, 62.
Traditions of the Deluge. 267
was permitted by God to create the new race of mankind. Dean Milman has thrown the story into poetic form, while assuring us that he follows the original closely. "The name Manuja, Manu-born, as the appellative of the human race (in Sanscrit books), is from Manu ; from thence the Gothic ' Manu,' which we have preserved. Manu is the representative of man." The fish reveals to Manu the gigantic nature of the coming judgment.
" When the awful time approaches— hear from me what thou
must do: In a little time, O Blessed— all this firm and seated earth, All that moves upon its surface— shall a deluge sweep away. Near it comes, of all creation — the ablution day is near ; Therefore what I now fore-warn thee — may thy highest weal
secure. All the fixed and all the moving— all that stirs, or stirreth not, Lo, of all the time approaches — the tremendous time of doom. Build thyself a ship, 0 Manu!— strong with cables well
prepared. And thyself, the seven sages— mighty Manu, enter in. All the living seeds of all things— by the Brahmans named of
yore. Place thou first within thy vessel — well secured, divided well, From thy ship keep watch, O hermit — watch for me as I draw
near ; On shall I swim before thee —by my horn thou'lt know me well. This the work thou must well accomplish — I depart ; fare thee
well! Over those tumultuous waters — none without mine aid can sail_ Doubt not thou, O lofty-minded — of my warning speech the
truth. To the fish thus answered Manu—' all that thou requirest I
will do.' "
The fiood having come, and Manu having prepared
268 The New Biblical Guide.
his vessel, and embarked with his seven companions and precious freight, the fish appears, and the ship is made fast to its horn.
"Dancing with the tumbling billows— dashing through the
roaring spray, Tossed about with winds tumultuous— in the vast and heaving
sea, Like a trembling drunken woman — reeled that ship, O king of
men. Earth was seen no more, no region — nor the intermediate space ; Al around a waste of waters— water all, and air, and sky. In the whole world of creation— princely son of Bharata ! None was seen, but those seven Sages— Manu only and the fish. Years and years, and still unwearied— drew that fish the bark
along. Till at length it came, where lifted— Himavan its loftiest peak. ' To the peak of Himalaya, bind thou now thy stately ship.' At the fish's mandate quickly — to the peak of Himavan Bound the sage his bark, and ever— to this day, that loftiest peak Bears the name of Manhubandhan— from the binding of the
bark. To the sage, the God of mercy— thus with fixed look bespake : ' I am Lord of all creation — Brahma, higher than all height ; I in fish-like form have saved thee — Manhu , in the perilous hour ; But from thee new tribes of creatures— gods, asuras, men, must
spring. All the worlds must be created- all that moves, or moveth not, By an all-surpassing penance — this great work must be achieved. Through my mercy, thy creation— to confusion ne'er shall run.' Spake the fish, and on the instant — to the invisible he passed."
The reader will here notice the seven companions of Manu. This makes the whole number saved to be eight, the very number mentioned in the Scripture. Another coincidence is that Manu is called Satya, that is, ''the righteous," the epithet applied to Noah.
Traditions of the Deluge. 269
The oldest form of the Indian legend is found in the Veda, and is at least as old as 1,000 B.C. '' In the morning they brought to Manu water for washing, as men are in the habit of bringing it to wash with the hands. As he was thus w^ashing, a fish came into his hands (which spake to him), * Preserve me ; I shall save thee.' (Manu inquired), * From what wilt thou save me?' (The fish replied), 'A flood shall sweep away all these creatures ; from it will I rescue thee.' (Manu asked), ' How shall thy preservation be effecl:ed ? ' (The fish said), ' So long as we are small, we are in great peril, for fish devours fish ; thou shalt preserve me first in a jar. When I grow too large for the jar, then thou shalt dig a trench, and preserve me in that. When I grow too large for the trench, then thou shalt carry me away to the ocean. I shall then be beyond the reach of danger.' Straightway he became a large fish, for he waxes to the utmost. (He said), ' Now in such and such a year, then the flood will come; thou shalt, therefore, construcSl a ship, and resort to me ; thou shalt embark in the ship when the flood rises, and I shall deliver thee from it.' Having thus preserved the fish, Manu carried him away to the sea. Then in the same year which the fish had enjoined, he construdled a ship and resorted to him. When the flood rose, Manu embarked in the ship. The fish swam towards him. He fastened the cable of the ship to the fish's horn. By this means he passed over this northern mountain [Himavat, or Himalaya]. (The fish said), 'I have delivered thee ; fasten the ship to a tree. But lest
270 The New Biblical Guide.
the waters should cut thee off whilst thou art on this mountain, as much as the water subsides, so much shalt thou descend after it.' He accordingly descended after it, as much as it subsided. Wherefore also this, viz., ' Mamis-descent,' is the name of the northern mountain. Now the flood had swept away all these creatures ; so Manu alone was left here. Desirous of offspring, he Hved worshipping and toiling in arduous religious rites. Among these he also sacrificed with the pakka offering. He cast clarified butter, thickened milk, whey, and curds as an oblation into the waters. Thence in a year a woman was produced. She rose," &c.'''
The tradition of the Malays runs thus : " After the islands had been peopled by the first man and woman, a great rain took place, by which they were finally submerged ; but before the highest places were covered by the waters, two large double canoes made their appearance. In one of these was Rakoro, the god of carpenters ; in the other Rokola, his head workman, who picked up some of the people, and kept them on board until the waters had subsided ; after which they were again landed on the island. It is reported that in former times, canoes were always kept in readiness agamst another inundation. The persons thus saved, eight in member, were landed at Mbenga, where the highest of their gods is said to have made his first appearance. By virtue of this tradition the chiefs of Mbenga take rank before all others, and have always acted a conspicuous part
* Muir. Sanscrit Texts, Vol. H., p. 324-
Traditions of the Deluge. 271
among the Fijis. They style themselves Ngaliduva- kilangi (subject to heaven alone)." *
The Voguls tell the story in the following fashion : —
" After seven years of drought, the great woman said to the great man, ' It has rained elsewhere ; how shall we save ourselves ? The other giants have assembled in a burgh to take counsel together. What shall we do ? '
"The great man answered, 'Let us cut a poplar tree in half, hollow it, and make of it two boats. We will then twist a rope five hundred fathoms long out of willow roots, and bury one end in the earth, and fasten the other to the prows of our boats. The man who has children shall go on board the boat with what belongs to him, and over them shall be placed a covering made of skins of oxen ; victuals shall be prepared for seven days and seven nights, and be placed beneath the covering. When all is done, we will find room in each boat for vessels filled with liquid butter.'
*' After having thus assured their own safety, the two giants traversed the villages, and entreated the inhabitants to build boats and twist ropes. Some did not know how to go about it, and to such the giants gave the necessary instructions. Others pre- ferred to seek a spot where they could take refuge ; but they sought in vain, and the great man to whom they applied, because he was their elder, declared that he knew of no place of refuge vast enough to be a safe place for the people. ' Behold now,' he
* Hardwick: Christ and other Masters, Part III.
272 The New Biblical Guide.
added, ' we are about to be overtaken by the holy water, for already for two days past we have heard the roar of its waves. Let us enter the boats without delay ! '
" The earth was soon submerged. Those who had not built boats perished in the warm water, and the same thing happened to the owners of the boats whose rope was too short, as well as to those who had not supplied themselves with melted butter to ease the play of the rope against the sides of the boat.
'' The water began to fall on the seventh day, and before long the survivors set foot upon those portions of the ground which had emerged. But, alas ! there were no longer upon the surface of the earth either trees or plants ; the animals had perished, the fishes even had disappeared. Being on the verge of dying of hunger, men supplicated the great god Numi-tarom to create anew fishes, animals, trees, and plants. And their prayer was granted." *
The Chinese tradition is still more remarkable. It gives the date of the flood as 4,000 years before the Christian era. Fuh-he is regarded as the author of Chinese civilisation. He escaped from a deluge which destroyed the human race with the exception of himself, his wife, his three sons, and three daughters, and from these the whole earth was peopled, f
The Persians taught that, the world having been corrupted by Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness, it was necessary to cover it with a flood so as to sweep away its impurity. The rain fell in drops as large as
♦ The Beginnings of History, pp. 453, 454. \ Ibid, HI., 16.
Traditions of the Deluge. 273
a bull's head, and the flood rose to a man's height above the earth, so that all the creatures of Ahriman were destroyed. Here the cause of the Deluge, the guilt, namely, of the world which was delivered over to destruction, comes more clearly into view. The Zend-Avesta, the sacred book of the Parsis, has a different version. The judgment is brought about by a terrible Winter instead of by a flood. But mention is made of the preservation of all animal and vegetable life, and of the means by which this was to be accomplished. Yima, who figures in the legend, is the first man, the first king, and the originator of civilisation :
"And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying: 'O fair Yima, son of Vivanghat ! Upon the material world the fatal Winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost : upon the material world the fatal Winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvi deep on the highest tops of mountains. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilder- ness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of the stables. Before that Winter, those fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle ; now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world, the land wherein footprints of sheep may still be seen. Therefore make thee a vara (enclosure), long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds.
274 ^^^^ New Biblical Guide.
and of red blazing fires. Therefore make thee a vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men ; a vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be a fold for flocks. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men, and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth ; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth ; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest best, and finest kinds on this earth ; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food, and the sweetest of odour. All those seeds thou shalt bring, two of every kind, to be kept in- exhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the vara.'"* The Greek and Roman versions are even more striking. Hesiod, in his "Works and Days," after referring to the mighty span of patri- archal life, when —
"Still a hundred. years beheld the boy Beneath the mother's roof, her infant joy, All tender and unformed,"
adds :
" But when the flower
Of manhood bloomed, it withered in an hour,
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe ;
Nor mutual outrage would their hands forego :
Nor would they serve the gods, nor altars raise,
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove engulphed ; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues."
Ovid tells the story yet more fully in his equally
""Sacred Books of the East, Vol. IV., pp. 15-21.
Traditions of the Deluge. 275
immortal verse. The earth is full of awful tyranny and murderous violence. Jove summons the assembly of the gods, tells what he has seen of the earth's guilt, and concludes with the words :
"Mankind's a monster, and the ungodly times Confederate into guilt are sworn to crimes ; All are alike involved in ill, and all Must by the same relentless fury fall."
The gods assent :
"Yet still with pity they remember man, And mourn as much as heavenly spirits can."
The heavens pour down the "impetuous rain."
But this is not enough. Neptune's aid is sought and
immediately given. To his '' brooks and floods " the
'^ watery tyrant " commands :
"Your powers employ, And this bad world, as Jove requires, destroy. Let loose the reins to all your watery store. Bear down the dams, and open every door."
The awful results are soon apparent :
"The expanded waters gather on the plain. They float the fields and overtop the grain ; Then, rushing onwards with a sweepy sway, Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds away. Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sapp'd by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods. The solid piles, too strongly built to fall, High o'er their heads behold a watery wall. Now sea and earth were in confusion lost : A world of waters and without a coast."
Only Deucalion and his wife are left, the best of all their kind.
Here the correspondencies with the narrative of
276 The New Biblical Guide,
the Bible are striking. But other forms of the Greek and Roman tradition were in starthng agreement with the Scripture. "The author of the treatise On the Syrian Goddess,'' says Lenormant, ''erroneously attributed to Lucian, has preserved for us the Diluvian tradition of the Aramaeans, the direct off- spring of that of Chaldsea, as related in the famous sanctuary of Hierapolis, or Bambyce.
" The majority of the people, says he, relate that the founder of the temple was Deucalion-Sisythes, the same Deucalion under whom occurred the great inundation. I have also heard the account which the Greeks likewise give of Deucalion ; the myth is thus conceived. The present race of men is not the first ; for there was formerly another, all the men of which have perished. We come of a second race, which descends from Deucalion, and has multiplied in the course of time. As to the first men, it is said that they were full of pride and insolence, and that they committed many crimes, not keeping their oaths, not exercising the laws of hospitality, not sparing suppliants ; therefore they were punished by a tremendous disaster. Suddenly vast masses of water burst forth from the earth, and rains of an extraordinary abundance began to fail ; rivers flowed outside their beds, and the sea overpassed its bounds ; everything was covered with water, and all mankind perished. Deucalion alone was preserved alive, that he might give birth to a new race by reason of his virtue and his piety. This is the way in which he was preserved : He
Traditions of the Deluge. 277
placed himself, with his children and his wives, in a great chest, which he had, and whither there came to take refuge with him, swine, horses, lions, serpents, and all other terrestrial animals. He took them all in unto himself; and all the while that they were in the chest, Zeus inspired these animals with a reciprocal friendship, which prevented them from devouring each other. In this manner, shut up in a single chest, they floated as long as the waters were in their strength. Such is the Greek account of Deucalion.
'' But in addition to this tale, which is also related among them, the people of Hierapolis tell a marvel- lous story, to the effect that in their country there was opened an enormous chasm, which swallowed up all the waters of the flood. Then Deucalion raised an altar and dedicated a temple to Hera near this very chasm. I have seen this chasm, which is very narrow, and located beneath the temple. Whether it was larger beforetime, and is now con- tracted, I know not ; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of the circumstance which is related, they perform the following rite : twice a year the water of the sea is brought into the temple. Not only the priests carry it in, but a multitude of pilgrims come from every part of Syria, from Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bearing water. They pour it out in the temple, and it runs down into the chasm, which, notwithstanding its small- ness, swallows up in this way no inconsiderable quantity. It is said that this is done in consequence
278 The New Biblical Guide.
of a religious command given by Deucalion to pre- serve the memory of the catastrophe and of the benefit received by him from the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."*
We have a striking proof of the hold which this tradition had, in a medal which was struck at Apamea, in Phrygia, about the end of the second century of our era. The city was anciently called Kibotos, or the ark, and on the medal a square vessel is seen floating on the water. Inside, through the
uncovered roof, are seen two persons, a man and a woman. The same two individuals are seen on the dry land with uplifted hands, evidently indicating gratitude and praise. A bird is perched on the top of the ark, while another comes bearing a branch between its feet. In the legend round the margin is the word no, and again on the ark itself noe, or Noah. With this we have to conned^ the traditions of the country to which the medal refers. King Annachos, it was said, who lived for more than 300-
* The Beginnings of History, pp. 418-420.
Traditions of the Deluge. 279
years, foretold the flood " and wept and prayed for his people, seeing the destru(5lion that was coming upon them." Evidently, in the second century of the Christian era the Phrygians recognised the identity of their tradition with the Biblical narrative, and hence the name Noah, which appears on the medal. In the name Annachos, it is easy also to recognise the name Enoch, and the confirmation of the Scripture which tells us that he prophesied of coming judgment.
It is evident from a passage in PJato's Timseus that the Egyptians also had a tradition of a universal deluge, or, as the Egyptian priests are represented describing it to Solon, " the chief deluge." Up to the present time, hov/ever, modern researches have not recovered the story. But a description of a destruction of mankind has been found on the tomb of Seti I. at Thebes. *
Ra assembles the gods, and says : " Behold the men who have been begotten by myself! They utter words against me : tell me what you would do in such a case. Behold I have waited and have not slain them before listening to their words." The reply is: " Let thy face permit it, and let those men who devise wicked things be smitten, and let none among them exist." A goddess named Hathor went forth and ** slew the men upon earth. . . . And behold Sechet for many nights trod with his feet their blood even to the city of Heracleopolis." The anger of Ra is appeased by an offering. Seven thousand pitchers of
* Records of the Past, Vol. VI., pp. 103-112.
28o The New Biblical Guide.
liquor were made from fruit mixed with human blood. Ra came to see the vases, and said : " It is well. I shall protect men because of this. I lift my hand in regard to this that I shall no more slay mankind." In the middle of the night he commanded the vases to be overthrown. The result was a flood, which, in accordance with Egyptian experience, was regarded as a sign of returning favour.
The cause of the destruction of the human race, and the solemn assurance given by Ra, are points of agreement with the Biblical narrative which are too evident to require comment. The departure from the Biblical account in regard to the way in which the race was exterminated admits of an easy explanation. The annual flooding of the country, by the rising of the Nile, was so mighty a boon to Egypt, that the people appear to have regarded with repugnance the associating of an inundation with calamity and Divine vengeance.
We now come, last of all, to the greatest of all the traditions — the Chaldean. Of this we now possess two forms. One of them — the narrative of Berossus — has been in the possession of the learned for more than twenty centuries. As Noah was the tenth patriarch, so Xisuthrus, as we have seen, was the tenth antediluvian king, Ardates, his father, being the ninth. " .^fter the death of Ardates," says Berossus, '* his son Xisuthrus succeeded, and reigned eighteen sari. In this time happened the great Deluge ; the history of which is given in this manner. The Deity, Chronos, appeared to him in a
Traditions of the Deluge. 281
vision, and gave him notice that upon the fifteenth day of the month Dalsia there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He, therefore, enjoined him to commit to writing a history of the beginning, procedure, and final conclusion of all things, down to the present term ; and to bury these accounts securely at the city of the Sun at Sippara : and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his friends and relations : and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, and to take in also all species of animals, that either fly or rove upon the earth ; and trust himself to the deep. Having asked the Deity, whither he was to sail ? He was answered, ''To the gods:" upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. And he obeyed the Divine admonition : and built a vessel five stadia (furlongs) in length, and in breadth two. Into this he put everything which he had got ready ; and last of all conveyed into it his wife, children, and friends. After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out some birds from the vessel ; which, not finding any food, nor any place to rest their feet, returned to him again. After an interval of some days, he sent themi forth the second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with these birds ; but they returned to him no more: from whence he formed a judgment, that the surface of the earth was now above the waters. Having, therefore, made an opening in the vessel, and finding upon looking out, that the vessel
282 The New Biblical Guide.
was driven to the side of a mountain, he immediately quitted it, being attended by his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus immediately paid his adoration to the earth ; and having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods. These things being duly performed, both Xisuthrus and those who came out of the vessel with him disappeared. They, who remained in the vessel, finding that the others did not return, came out with many lamentations, and called continually on the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more; but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to the gods; and likewise inform them that it was upon account of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods; that his wife and daughter, with the pilot, had obtained the same honour. To this he added that he would have them make the best of their way to Babylonia, and search for the writings at Sippara, which were to be made known to all mankind : and that the place where they then were was the land of Armenia. The remainder, having heard these words, offered sacri- fices to the gods ; and taking a circuit, journeyed towards Babylonia.
*' The vessel being thus stranded in Armenia, some part of it yet remains in the Corcyraean mountains in Armenia; and the people scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet. In this manner they returned to Babylon ; and having found the writings at Sippara, they set about
Traditions of the Deluge. 283
building cities, and erecting temples : and Babylon was thus inhabited again."*
The general agreement of the above tradition with the Bible history might lead one to suspedl: that something of the latter had filtered into it during its transmission. But we are now able to go back to the sources of Berossus, and to discover that the tradition had not been tampered with. George Smith discovered, in 1872, fragments of an Assyro-Baby- lonian legend older than Abraham. He was sent out to Nineveh in 1873, at the expense of The Daily Telegraph, to try to find the missing pieces of the old clay tablets on which the poem was inscribed. Among the treasures recovered in the second expe- dition was a small fragment of another story of the Deluge. Gilgamos, the hero, goes on a long journey and finds Hasisadra {i.e., Xisuthrus), who tells him the story of his preservation. He informs him that the great gods held a council and resolved to bring a flood upon the earth. The god Ea revealed the decision to Hasisadra, and told him to abandon his house, to construct a great vessel, and to bring into it seed of all life. The dimensions of the ship were given him by the god. Hasisadra tells Gilgamos how much pitch he placed on the outside of the vessel, and how much on the inside, and the pro- vision he made of bread and wine and food for the animals. The storm which ushers in the Deluge is described. So terrible is it, that the gods them- selves flee before it. Six days and seven nights the
* Cory : Ancient Fragments, pp. 29-31.
284 The New Biblical Guide.
tempest rages, and the flood casts down to the ground. The surface of the sea is covered with corpses hke the stems of trees. Hasisadra wept. The ship is arrested by a mountain called Nizar.
In view of the extreme importance of this form of the tradition, I give Professor Sayce's translation of the tablet :—
** Mr. George Smith's discovery, more than twenty years ago, of the Babylonian version of the story of the flood, has now become a commonplace of books on the Old Testament or ancient history. We have only to compare it with the narrative in Genesis to see how startlingly alike the two are. This is the way in which the old Chaldaean poet described the great catastrophe :
' Sisuthros spake unto him, even unto Gilgames : ' " Let me reveal unto thee, O Gilgames, the tale of my preser- vation, And the oracle of the gods let me declare unto thee, The city of Surippak, which as thou knowest, is built (on the
banks) of the Euphrates, This city was (already) old when the gods within it set their
hearts to cause a flood, even the great gods (as many as) exist : Anu the father of them, the warrior Bel
their prince, Uras their throne-bearer, En-nugi (Hades) their chief, Ea the lord of wisdom conferred with them, and repeated
their words to the reed-bed : * Reed-bed ! O reed-bed ^
Frame, O frame ! Hear, O reed-bed, and understand, O frame! O man of Surippak, son of Ubara-Tutu, frame the house, build
a ship ; leave what thou canst ; seek life 1
* The frame of the ship was constructed of reeds. Hence the reeds were called upon to be ready to lend themselves to the work of building the boat.
Traditions of the Deluge. 285
Resign (thy) goods, and cause (thy) soul to live,
And bring all the seed of life into the midst of the ship.
As for the ship which thou shalt build,
. . . Cubits (shall be) in measurement its length ;
And . . . cubits the extent of its breadth and its height.
Into the deep (then) launch it."
I understood and spake to Ea my lord :
" As for the building of the ship, O my lord, which thou hast
ordered thus, I will observe (and) accomplish (it) ;
(but what) shall I answer the city, the people, and the old men ? " (Ea opened his mouth and) says, he speaks to his servant, even
to me: " (If they question thee) thou shalt say unto them : Since (?) Bel is estranged from me and I will not dwell in (your) city, I will not lay my head (in) the
land of Bel ; but I will descend into the deep ; with (Ea) my lord will I dwell, (Bel) will rain fertility upon you, (Flocks?) of birds, shoals of fish."
:^ * * * *
On the fifth day I laid the plan of it {i.e., the ship) ; in its hull (?) its walls were 10 gar (120 cubits ? ) high ; 10 gar were the size of its upper part.'
Another version of the account of the deluge, of which a fragment has been preserved to us, puts a wholly different speech into the mouth of Ea, and gives the hero of the story the name of Adra-Khasis. This fragment is as follows :
" I will judge (him) above and below. (But) shut (not thou thy door) (until) the time that I shall tell thee of. (Then) enter the ship, and close the door of the vessel ; (bring into) it thy corn, thy goods, (thy) property, thy (wife), thy slaves, thy handmaids, and the sons of (thy) people.
286 The New Biblical Guide.
the (cattle) of the field, the beasts of the field, as many as I
appoint . . . I will tell thee of (the time) and the gate (of thy ship) shall
preserve (them) " Adra-knasis (the reverently intelligent) opened his mouth and
says, he speaks to Ea (his) lord : " (O my lord) none has ever made a ship (on this wise) that it
should sail (?) over the land . . ."
Here the fragment is broken off. The other version proceeds thus :
" I fashioned its side, and closed it in ; I built six storeys (?), I divided it into seven parts ; its interior I divided into nine parts. I cut worked (?) timber within it. I saw the rudder and added what was lacking. I poured 6 sars of pitch over the outside ; (I poured) 3 sars of bitumen over the inside ; 3 sars of oil did the men carry who brought it . . .
1 gave a sar of oil for the workmen to eat ;
2 sars of oil the sailors stored away. For the ... I slaughtered oxen ; I killed (sheep ? ) daily.
Beer, wine, oil and grapes
(I distributed among) the people like the waters of a river, and
(I kept) a festival like the festival of the new year. ... I
dipped my hand (in) oil : (I said to) Samas : The storeys (?) of the ship are complete ;
. . . is strong, and the oars (?) I introduced above and below . . they went
two-thirds of it. "With all I had I filled it ; with all the silver I possessed I filled it ; With all the gold I possessed I filled it ;
With all that I possessed of the seed of life of all kinds I filled it. I brought into the ship all my slaves and my handmaids, the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field, the sons of my
people, all of them did I bring into it.
Traditions of the Deluge. 287
The Sun-god appointed the time and
utters the oracle. In the night will I cause the
heavens to rain destruction ;
enter into the ship and close thy door.
That time drew near (whereof) he utters the oracle :
In this night I will cause the heavens to rain destruction.
I watched with dread the dawning of the day ;
I feared to behold the day.
I entered within the ship and closed my door.
When I had closed the ship to Buzur-sadi-rabi the sailor
I entrusted the palace with all its goods.
Mu-seri-ina-namari (the waters of the morning at dawn)
arose from the horizon of heaven, a black cloud ;
the storm-god, Rimmon, thundered in its midst, and
Nebo and Merodach the king marched in front ;
the throne bearers marched over mountain and plain ;
the mighty god of Death let loose the whirlwind ;
Uras marches causing the storm (?) to descend ;
the spirits of the underworld lifted up (their) torches,
with the lightning of them they set on fire the world :
The violence of the storm-god reached to heaven ;
all that was light was turned to (darkness).
(In) the earth like (men) perished (?).
Brother beheld not his brother, men knew not one another. In
the heaven the gods feared the deluge, and hastened to ascend to the heaven of Anu. The gods cowered like a dog, lying in a kennel. Istar cried like a woman in travail.* The great goddess spoke with a loud voice : ' The former generation is turned to clay. The evil which I prophesied in the presence of the gods, when I prophesied evil in the presence of the gods, I prophesied the storm for the destruction of my people. "What I have borne, where is it ? Like the spawn of fish it fills the deep.' The gods wept with her because of the spirits of the underworld,
" A variant text has " like one filled with wrath."
288 The New Biblical Guide.
the gods satdejected in weeping,
their lips were covered , , ,
Six days and nights
rages the wind ; the flood and the storm devastate,
The seventh day when it arrived the flood ceased, the storm
Which had fought like an army
rested, the sea subsided, and the tempest of the deluge was ended.
I beheld the deep and uttered a cry,
for the whole of mankind was turned to clay ;
like the trunks of trees did the bodies float.
I opened the window and the light fell upon my face ;
I stooped and sat down weeping ;
over my face ran my tears,
I beheld a shore beyond the sea ;
twelve times distant rose a land.
On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded ;
The mountain of the country of Nizir held the ship and allowed it not to float.
One day and a second day did the mountain of Nizir hold it.
A third day and a fourth day did the mountain of Nizir hold it.
A fifth day and a sixth day did the mountain of Nizir hold it.
When the seventh day came I sent forth a dove and let it go.
The dove went and returned ; a resting place it found not and it turned back.
I sent forth a swallow and let it go ; the swallow went and returned ;
a resting place it found not and it turned back.
I sent forth a raven and let it go.
The raven went and saw the going down of the waters, and it approached, it waded, it croaked, and did not turn back. Then I sent forth (everything) to the four points of the com- pass ; I offered sacrifices, I built an altar on the summit of the mountain. I set libation vases seven by seven ;
beneath them 1 piled up reeds, cedar wood and herbs.
The gods smelt the savour, the gods smelt the sweet savour:
the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer.
Traditions of the Deluge. 289
Already at the moment of her coming, the great goddess Hfted up the mighty bow which Anu had made according to his
wish (?) These gods, by my necklace, never will I forget! Those days, I will think of them and never will forget them. May the gods come to my altar ; (but) let not Bel come to my altar, Since he did not take counsel but caused a flood and counted
my men for judgment.' Already at the moment of his coming Bel saw the ship and stood still ; he was filled with wrath at the gods, the spirits of heaven,
(saying) : Let no living soul come forth, let no man survive in the
judgment ! Uras opened his mouth and says, he speaks to the warrior Bel : Who except Ea can devise a speech ? for Ea understands all kinds of wisdom. Ea opened his mouth and says, he says to the warrior Bel : ' Thou art the seer of the gods, O warrior ! Why, O why didst thou not take counsel, but didst cause a
deluge ? (Let) the sinner bear his own sin, (let) the evil doer bear his own
evil doing. Grant (?) that he be not cut off, be merciful that he be not
(destroyed) Instead of causing a deluge let lions come and minish mankind . Instead of causing a deluge let hyaenas come and minish
mankind ; Instead of causing a deluge let there be a famine and let it
(devour) the land ; Instead of causing a deluge let the plague-god come and minish
mankind ! I did not " reveal (to men) the oracle of the great gods, But sent a dream to Adra-khais, and he heard the oracle of the
gods." Then Bel again took counsel and ascended into the ship. He took my hand and caused me, even me, to ascend.
290
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he took up my wife (also and) caused her to bow at my side ; he turned to us and stood between us ; he blessed us (saying) : Hitherto Sisuthros has been mortal, but henceforth Sisuthros and his wife shall be like unto the gods,
even unto us, and Sisuthros shall dwell afar at the mouth of the rivers. Then he took us afar, at the mouth of the rivers he made us
dwell.'"*
Here, then, in the most ancient of all the tradi- tions, the main features of the Biblical narrative are most clearly seen. The resemblances are striking, numerous, and, indeed, continuous, as the following, which I place in parallel columns, will show : —
The Scripture.
I. The cause of the judg- ment : — "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." " The earth also was cor- rupt before God, and the earth was filled with vio- lence" Genesis vi. 5, 11).
The Babylonian Legend.
Bel brings the flood be- cause of man's sin. Ea has to plead with him even for the life of Sisuthrus. " Let the sinner," he urges, " bear his own sin, the evil- doer bear his own evil- doing. Grant that he be not cut off, be merciful that he be not destroyed."
n. "But Noah found Sisuthrus is warned by
grace in the eyes of the the gods to leave all he has Lord " (vi. 8). and to " seek life."
IIL Noah is commanded The gods say : " O man
to make an ark (vi. 14). of Surripak . . . frame
the house, build a ship."
* The Higher Criticism versus the Monuments, pp. 107-113.
Traditions of the Deluge. 291
The Scripture. The Babylonian Legend.
IV. The dimensions are given by God (vi. 15).
V. "Thou . . . Shalt pitch it within and with- out with pitch" (vi.14).
VI. " And of every Hv- ing thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee " (vi. 19).
VII. " And all flesh died that moved upon the earth " (vii. 21).
VIII. The extent of the deluge: — "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered " (vii. 19).
IX. " And the ark rested . . . upon the mountains of Ararat" (viii. 4).
X. Noah sends out birds to ascertain the condition of the earth (viii.6-ii).
XI. " And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord " (viii. 20).
The dimensions are given by the gods.
" I poured 6 sars of pitch over the outside, (I poured) 3 sars of bitumen over the inside."
" And bring the seed of all life into the midst of the ship."
" The whole of mankind was turned to clay."
" The gods feared the deluge, and hastened to ascend to the heaven of Anu."
"On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded ; the mountain of the coun- try of Nizir held the ship and allowed it not to float."
Sisuthrus sends out birds for the same purpose.
" I offered sacrifices, I built an altar on the sum- mit of the mountains."
292 The New Biblical Guide.
The Scripture. The Babylonian Legend.
XII. " I will establish Ea intercedes with Bel my covenant with you; and prevails, so that " in- neither shall all flesh be stead of causing a deluge,'' cut off any more by the lions, etc., shall *"â– * come and waters of a flood ; neither minish mankind."
shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth " (ix. II).
XIII. " I do set my bow '' Already at the moment in the cloud, and it shall be of her coming, the great for a token of a covenant goddess lifted up the between me and the earth " mighty bow which Anu had (ix. 13). made according to his
wish."
I have placed (IX.) the statement of the inscription that the ship grounded on the mountain of the coun- try of Nizir as parallel to that of the Scripture that the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. George Smith has shown that the parallel is exact. '' The position of Nizir can be determined," he writes, *' from an inscription of Assur-nazirpal, king of Assyria. He made an expedition to this region, and starting from an Assyrian city near Arbela, crossed the Lower Zab, and marching eastward between latitudes 35 and 36, arrived at the mountains of Nizir. These mountains lay east of Assyria, but they form part of a series of mountain chains ex- tending to the north-west into Armenia."* This is also an indirect confirmation of the Bible statement that " all the fountains of the great deep " were
* Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaology, Vol. II., p. 231.
Traditions of the Deluge. 293
'' broken up." Sisuthrus is addressed as a man of Surripak ''on the bank of the Euphrates." Now, had this been only a land flood, caused by a deluge of rain, the ark would have been borne along by the descending waters into the Persian Gulf. But it is driven in the contrary direction and set upon the top of a lofty range. This means that there must have been an invasion from the sea. The rain flood, rushing south, was met by a mightier, sweeping northward from the Indian Ocean.
But, notwithstanding these numerous and striking agreements, the Babylonian legend is neither pro- genitor nor rival of the Scripture. It is defiled, and defaced ; and it contains distortions of the truth grave enough to make us sensible of how much we owe to this despised Genesis. The need of a revelation is nowhere more deeply felt than when we contemplate these Assyrian, or rather Accadian, records. The truth was there; but it was inextricably mingled with error which spread darkness not only over the earth's past, but also over heaven. The legend took from man far more than it gave. It only partially restored his brotherhood with the past, while it wholly robbed him of God. For the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to have been declared by Moses, he had to pass the Egyptian priests and the Chaldean documents, and to speak with God. There is no part of Scripture that bears upon it more broadly and deeply the stamp of Divinity than these early chapters of Genesis.
But, while the Assyrian records prove the utter
294 The New Biblical Guide.
baselessness of the theory that Moses drew his materials from human sources, these, and the other traditions, prove that the Deluge, so often doubted and denied, must now be accepted as a fa(?t. I shall deal in a subsequent chapter with the geological indications ; but the fact is equally incontestable, though we confine our argument to the traditions. This argument has never been better put than by Kalisch, in his commentary on Genesis. " The harmony," he says, ''between all these accounts, is an undeniable guarantee that the tradition is no idle invention ; a fiction is individual, not universal ; that tradition has, therefore, a historical foundation ; it is the result of an event which really happened in the ages of the childhood of mankind." There was a time when our race was swathed in the fury of this awful judgment, and when, as all the traditions testify, but one family was saved to become the seed of a new era. To deny that is to cast away not only the Word of God, but to reject as well the most ancient and most sacred traditions of universal humanity.
Before I close this chapter, let me note the bearing of the Babylonian legend upon a notorious critical contention. " In the account of the Flood, the main narrative," says Dr. Driver, " is that of P, which has been enlarged by the addition of elements derived from J."^' P stands for "Priestly legal writer," a creature of the critical imagination who is supposed to have written about 450 B.C., and to
♦ Introduction, p. 13.
Traditions of the Deluge. 295
have forged a multitude of laws, and to have fabri- cated a large portion of Bible history in the interests of the priests. J is another of these curious pro- ducts of the critical brain, and is a supposed Judaean writer that lived about 800 B.C. His narrative was pieced and patched, they say, by successive hands. It blended with others, and the whole was worked over by later writers, who never seemed to think that enough had been done to it. And let it be remembered, that this nightmare has not a single scrap behind it of historical fact or of manuscript testimony. There is not, in any manuscript in exist- ence, or in any manuscript of which information has come down to us, the slightest indication that those imaginary patchers and menders ever were at work. Nobody ever saw those separate documents, or has lifted the slightest whisper about differing editions. Go back as far as we can, we have only the good old Bible which we have in our hands to-day. We find it, as high as we can ascend the stream of history, unabridged, and unaltered.
What, then, does the critical breaking up of Genesis and the other Books rest upon ? How do they seek to justify this wreck and ruin of the Word of God ? Simply by so-called " principles of criticism " which would not leave us a single entire book in any literature ! They have an appreciation of the style and manner of a writer that is keener than a blood- hound's scent. Let him come into the document at any point, and they will recognise him. Let him insert a phrase, or even a word, and they will detect
2g6 The New Biblical Guide.
it ! I have already shown how Hterary history, as well as universal experience, has disposed of this absurdity. But will the reader allow me to give him one practical lesson in the minuteness (and in the fallacy) of this pseudo-criticism ? Let him turn, then, to Genesis, chapters vi. to ix. Take a pencil and draw a line along the following passages : vi. 1-4 ; vii. 1-5 ; 7-10; 12; 16, 17; 22,23; viii. 2 and first half of 3; 6-12; last half of 13; 20-22; ix. 18-27. These belong to J, the Judaean writer, of 800 B.C., we are told. The rest has been supplied by our friend P of 450 b.c.
There are trifling corrections of this analysis, some parts being traced to another writer J^ ; but these we need not trouble about. Let us note that " the two accounts " differ broadly in matter. J does not know that the Flood came because of man's sin. It is P and J^ to whom we are indebted for the know- ledge of that. J is a man of limited information ; or, perhaps I should say, P is more largely endowed with creative genius, or, as some might put it, is more given to romancing than J. J knows nothing of the command to build the ark. He is equally ignorant of the facts that the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat, that God pledged Himself not to destroy the earth again by a Flood, and that He set His bow in the cloud as the perpetual token of this covenant with the earth. For all these things we are indebted to the not over-veracious P.
Now the Babylonian legend sweeps this whole dream-tissue away. There never were two such separate
Traditions of the Deluge. 297
accounts of the Flood. All these things — I have taken -them from my table of the correspondences between the Scripture and the monumental account — are bound together in the one Babylonian legend. They are alike part of the same great enduring memory. They are not the romancings of a Jewish priest in the year 450 B.C. They belong to the unforgotten facts of the early history of man. They did not need to be invented. They were already known, and already written, not only before the imaginary Judaean writer is supposed to have written in 800 B.C. : they formed part of one story, and were written and handed down as one story, before Moses was born and, in all probability, before Abra- ham left Chaldaea. Quite a number of Psalms were said by the critics to have been written in the times of the Maccabees (about 168 B.C.). Their dates for these Psalms were actually admitted by many writers who ought to have known better. It has now been discovered that those very Psalms were quoted and referred to as long and widely known more than fifty years before the time when the critics, led by their infallible instinct, declared that they had been written ! The Babylonian account of the Flood has performed a similar service; for it proves that the supposed imaginings of P were already printed on clay tablets fifteen hundred years before he was born.
298 The New Biblical Guide,
CHAPTER X.
The Date of the Deluge.
STRIKING as those Deluge traditions are, with which we have dealt in the last chapter, there are others which are still more marvellous. These carry us beyond the facSt of the Deluge, and appear to indicate its date. We are sometimes startled at the calm and self-assured manner with which Assyrian and Egyptian scholars set down events that happened, and enumerate kings that reigned, five thousand and more years before our era. It is well to bear in mind that very ancient Assyrian chronology depends upon a couple of statements or so by comparatively modern Assyrian and Babylonian kings. As for Egyptian chronology, it is a well-known facft that there is none. The Egyptians have left us, so far as we know at present, no chronological data; and what passes as Egyptian chronology is simply a temporary makeshift, suggested by Lepsius, and adopted by other scholars. Professor Flinders Petrie is not, speaking comparatively, extreme in his claims for the antiquity of the ancient Egyptian dynasties ; but it seems that even his chronology must be very seriously modified. A number of papyri have been discovered at Kahun. They appear to have been part of the archives of a temple, and among them is a kind of Day-book in which the priests recorded
The Date of the Deluge. 299
any remarkable events. Among these is the position of the star Sirius. It is stated that it was seen for the first time on the horizon at daybreak on the i6th of the eighth month in the seventh year of King Usertesen III., a monarch of the 12th Egyptian dynasty. Dr. Borckhardt shows that this astro- nomical fact proves that the 7th year of Usertesen III. must have fallen between 1876 and 1872 B.C. But Dr. Petrie put the latest date of Usertesen III. at 2622 B.C. Even his Egyptian chronology, there- fore, turns out to be eight centuries too high.
It seems likely, however, that the records of both countries carry us up to dates beyond that assigned by the Bible to the Deluge. Some of us have suggested that this is so, from the simple reason that these are antediluvian dates, and that the very ancient kings of whom the writer speaks are kings that reigned before the Flood. The reply is obvious, that we have no ground for the suggestion, and that the Flood cannot be admitted unless we have some indication that the continuity of history has been broken by that rude dividing- line.
Now, I think that the dividing line may possibly be found in a remarkable break in the history of ancient Egypt. From the close of the Sixth Dynasty to the end of the Eleventh (a period which covers a space of nearly five hundred years), the history of Egypt is prac5lically a blank. "After the reigns of Apappus and Nitocris, which closed the Sixth Dynasty," says M. Mariette,in his brief but valuable History of Egypt *
* Gilbert and Rivington.
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''a sudden and unforeseen check was given to the progress of civilisation ; and during four hundred and thirty-six years — from the Sixth to the Eleventh Dynast}' — Egypt seems to have disappeared from the list of nations. When she awoke from her long sleep, on the accession of the Entefs and Menuhotefs (of the Eleventh Dynasty), it was to find that her ancient traditions were quite forgotten. The old family names, the titles of the functionaries, the writing, and even the religion itself seemed changed. No longer were Thinis, Elephantine, and Memphis the capitals, but Thebes was for the first time chosen as the seat of sovereign power. Besides this, Egypt had been shorn of a considerable portion of her territory, and the authority of her kings was limited to the Thebaid. The monuments, which are barbaric, primitive, some- times even coarse, confirm all this ; and on looking at them, we might easily believe that Egypt under the Eleventh Dynasty had reverted to that period of infancy through which she had already passed under the Third."*
The reader will note the words which I have put in italics. How is it possible to account for ancient traditions being quite forgotten, for the cessation of old family names and the titles of the funcStionaries, and for a new writing, and a new religion, if we are dealing with the same people ? The same people must needs have retained much that has here been cast away, and the only satisfactory explanation of the fa.6ts seems to be that the Egyptian people of the Eleventh •^ p. 14, 15.
The Date of the Deluge. 301
Dynasty were neither the descendants of those of the ^ixth, nor the heirs of their traditions. There was, that is to say, an end to the old population, which the Deluge fully accounts for, and which nothing else that we know of can well explain.
In view of the probability that these first six dynasties cover the antediluvian period, it is interesting to note their characteristics. We have indications, in such fringes of the antediluvian population as found their way to France and Britain, that commerce and the arts were not unknown to the first men. But here in this vast centre of hfe and human industry, art and civilisation are at their very highest. The first three dynasties "have left," says Mariette Bey, '' but few monuments — and these are marked by a rudeness and indecision of style which shows that as yet Egyptian art was in its infancy. These dynasties, therefore, represent that primary period of develop- ment through which all peoples pass before they become a nation." *
With the Fourth there is a change. The arts spring to sudden perfection, and so complete is the control of the king that the nation seems to have but one will. It is the era of the great Pyramid. " One hundred thousand men, who were relieved every three months, are said to have been employed upon this gigantic undertaking. It would assuredly tax our modern ingenuity to be obliged to construa a like monument; but a far more difficult problem would be the eredtion within it of chambers and corridors,
* Ibid, p. 7.
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which — notwithstanding the superincumbent weight of thousands of tons — should last perfectly unmoved for sixty centuries. The Fourth Dynasty marks a culminating point in the history of the kingdom. By an extraordinary movement forwards, Egypt threw off all trammels, and emerged in the glory of a fully- developed civilisation. From this moment class- distincftions were recognised in Egyptian Society, and art attained a breadth and dignity that even in later and more brilliant days were hardly surpassed. Towns were built ; large farms were established, on which thousands of heads of cattle were reared, and where antelopes, storks, and wild geese were domesti- cated. Abundant harvests repaid the careful cultiva- tion of the soil. The architec^ture of the houses was good. The infantine country seems, at this point, to have everywhere developed into a youth full of life and vigour. That splendid statue of Khafra, now in the Ghizeh Palace, is, notwithstanding its 6,000 years, a work of the finest execution. It is the pro- dudtion of the Fourth Dynasty. So, too, are the Pyramids, which from the very earliest times, have been reckoned among the seven wonders of the world." Referring again to this statue of Khafra, Mariette Bey says : — " It shows that 6,000 years ago the Egyptian artist had but little more progress to make." *
It is worthy of note also, that " there is an entire absence of all representations of the gods"t on the monuments of the first three dynasties. The gods *p. III. +P.115.
The Date of the Deluge. 303
are the creation of the era when man's brotherhood and the old simphcity were ahke forgotten.
We have now but one more question to ask. When did the Sixth Dynasty close ? The Egyptian chronology of Lepsius and Brugsch, as I have already remarked, is certainly exaggerated, seeing that it is based upon a calculation of three reigns to a century. But even w^th this exaggeration, Mariette Bey places the catastrophe which broke the course of Egyptian civilisation at 3,500 years before the Christian era. This gives 1,504 years from the beginning of Egyptian history to the times when the ancient civilisation suddenly ceased. This interval is not calculated, as the dates are given by Manetho, the Egyptian historian. Now, the chronology contained in Genesis places the Flood 1,656 years after the creation of man. This leaves an interval of 152 years for the arrival of the first settlers in the Nile Valley. Approaching the Deluge epoch from the other side, the chronology printed in the margin of our English Bibles places it at 2,349 ^-C- We know that the real date is in excess of this by 93 years at least, so that we arrive at 2,442 B.C. The inflated chronology of the Egyptologists places it, as I have said, at 3,500. The difference of 1,054 years may be largely, if not wholly, regarded as an error.
Here, then, is testimony that the continuity of human history has been suddenly broken in the Nile Valley ; that the break is complete ; that it entails a new beginning in everything ; and, finally, that the break happens about the very time when Biblical
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chronology says that the Deluge occurred. It is startling to find indications which thus point to the very time of the Deluge. But the same land of ancient knowledge and of mystery has something more to tell us of that tragic time. It has embalmed its memories of the great Flood in a form which fixes
THE VERY DAY
when the rains descended and the fountains of the great deep were broken up. And that day is the very day named in the Bible.
In Astronomical Myths, Based on Flammarion's *' History of the Heavens, ''hy ]ohn F. Blake (Macmillan and Co., 1877), there is a remarkable chapter on the Pleiades. The appearance of that constellation on the horizon at sunset, and afterwards of its passing the meridian at midnight, marked for the ancient world the commencement of Spring and the beginning of the New Year. The observance of this day is one of those customs which show that the scattered peoples were once one family, for we find it everywhere — even among the most savage tribes. " A New- Year's festival," says Mr. Blake, " conned^ed with and deter- mined by the Pleiades, appears to be one of the most universal of all customs."*
But the New Year's joy was shadowed by sad memories. " We find," continues our author, ''that everywhere this festival of the Pleiades' culmination at midnight (or it may be of the slightly earlier one of their first appearance at the horizon at apparent sunset) was always connedled with the memory of
♦p. 115-
The Date of the Deluge. 305
the dead. It was a 'feast of ancestors.' Among the Australians themselves, the corroborees of the natives are conned^ed with a worship of the dead. They paint a white stripe over their arms, legs and ribs, and, dancing by the light of their fires by night, appear like so many skeletons rejoicing. What is also to be remarked, the festival lasts three days, and commences in the evening."*
The same custom is found among the savages of the Society Islands. The closing of the old and the opening of the New Year were celebrated about November " by a 'usage resembling much the popish custom of mass for souls in Purgatory,' each man returning to his home to offer special prayers for the spirits of departed relatives." f
In Fiji, in the Tonga group, '' a commemoration of the dead takes place towards the end of Odlober, and commences at sunset.
"In Peru the New Year's festival occurs in the beginning of November, and is called Ayamarca^ from aya, a corpse, and marca, carrying in arms, because they celebrated the solemn festival of the dead with tears, lugubrious songs, and plaintive music ; and it was customary to visit the tombs of relations, and to leave in them food and drink. The facft that this took place (at the time of the discovery of Peru) on the very same day as a similar ceremony takes place in Europe, which was only an accidental coincidence, which is all the more remarkable because the two appear, as will be seen in the sequel to have *p. 118. tP. 119.
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had the same origin, and therefore at first the same date, and to have altered from it by exacftly the same amount. These instances from races south of the equator, prove clearly that there exists a very general connedlion w^ith New Year's Day, as determined by the rising of the Pleiades at sunset, and a festival of the dead."*
Let me summarise the other fadls which are given in detail in Mr. Blake's book. On the 17th of November the Hindoos celebrate their Durga, a festival of the dead, which was also originally their New Year's Day. The Persians called " November, M or dad, the angel of death," and the feast of the dead took place at the same time as in Peru, and was considered a New Year's festival. The same is true of other nations, and there are distincft traces of the custom among the Greeks and the Romans. We come nearer home when we speak of the Celtic tribes, and we also obtain clearer indications of what inspired these striking. memories and rites.
" The first of November was \vith the Druids," says Mr. Blake, " a night full of mystery, in which they annually celebrated the re-construction of the world. A terrible rite was conne(?ted with this ; for the Druidess nuns were obhged at this time to pull down and re-build each year the roof of their temple, as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the world. If one of them, in bringing the materials for the new roof, let fall her sacred burden, she was lost. Her companions, seized with a fanatic trans-
*p. 119
The Date of the Deluge. 307
port, rushed upon her and tore her to pieces, and scarcely a year is said to have passed without there being one or more vicl:ims. On this same night the Druids extinguished the sacred fire, which was kept continually burning in the sacred precincts, and at that signal all the fires in the island were one by one put out, and a primitive night reigned throughout the land. Then passed along to the west the phantoms of those who had died during the preceding year, and were carried away by boats to the judg- ment-seat of the god of the dead. Although Druidism is now extindl, the relics of it remain to this day; for in our calendar we still find November ist marked - as All Saints' Day, and in the pre-Reformation calendars the last day of Od^ober was marked All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls'; indicating clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the evening, and originally regulated by the Pleiades — an emphatic testimony how much astronomy has been mixed up with the rites and customs even of the English of to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in the Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the Scotch, the coel-coeth fires of the Welsh, and the tindle fires of Cornw^all, all hghted on Hallowe'en. In France it still lingers more than here, for to this very day the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries, and lunch at the graves of their ancestors.
'' If the extreme antiquity of a rite can be gathered from the remoteness of the races that still perform it, the facl: related to us by Prescott, in his History
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of the Conquest of Mexico, cannot fail to have great interest. There we find that the great festival of the Mexican cycle was held in November, at the time of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades. It began at sunset, and at midnight, as that constellation approached the zenith, a human vi(5lim was offered up, to avert the dread calamity which they believed impended over the human race. They had a tradition that the world had been previously destroyed at this time, and they were filled with gloom and dismay, and were not at rest until the Pleiades were seen to culminate, and a new cycle had begun; this great cycle, however, was only accomplished in fifty-two years." *
The connection of these ceremonies with the Deluge will now be clear. The commemoration of the world's renovation by the Druids, and the tradition of the Mexicans put this beyond the reach of doubt. But it is only when we turn to the Egyptian tradition that the confirmation of the Scripture is complete. " Among the ancient Egyptians the same day was very noticeable, and they took care to regulate their solar calendars that it might remain unchanged. Numerous altered calendars have been discovered, but they are all regulated by this one day. This was determined by the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight. On this day commenced the solemn festival of Isia, which, like the corroborees of the Australians, lasted three days, and was celebrated in honour of the dead, and of Osiris, the lord of tombs." * Pp. 124, 125.
Geology and the Deluge. 309
'' The commemoration of the dead," adds our author, '' was conne^ed among the Egyptians with a Deluge, which was typified by the priest placing the image of Osiris in a sacred coffer or ark, and launching it out into the sea till it was borne out of sight. Now, when we conned this fadl, and the celebration taking place on the lyth day of Athyr, with the date on which the Mosaic account of the Deluge of Noah states it to have commenced, 'in the second month (of the Jewish year, which corresponds to November), the 17th day of the month,' it must be acknowledged that it is no chance coincidence, and that the precise date here stated must have been regulated by the Pleiades, as was the Egyptian date."*
Here the traditions not only unite in bearing down to our own times that awful cry of anguish which once shook earth and sky, but also fix upon the very month and the very day which the Scripture has recorded !
CHAPTER XI.
Geology and the Deluge.
npHE linking of these two names together may be J- painfully suggestive of doubt and difficulty. Everyone is aware of the great, and seemingly insuperable, objediions which have been urged against the Scripture narrative of the Flood in the * Pp. 121, 122.
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name of Science, and especially in the name of Geology. But, even were this still true, it would be impossible to dissociate the names. When the Bible tells of an event which brought to a sudden and violent end every creature that lived upon the earth, with the sole exception of those preserved in the ark; and when it says that the catastrophe was induced by great convulsions, which must have left their mark ("All the fountains of the great deep were BROKEN up" — Gen. vii. ii), it touches upon ground which the youngest of the physical sciences has made specially its own.
Geology must, therefore, have something to say upon this matter, and we are all aware that it has not kept silence. The pioneers of that science were, many of them, men who reverenced the Bible, and to them it seemed as if their investigations furnished one of the most conclusive testimonies to the truth of its statements in regard to the Flood. We have no wish to apportion the blame for the divergence which has since occurred. Perhaps theologians were too dogmatic, and too much bent upon making facfts square with beliefs ; and perhaps scientists were too impatient and contemptuous. But conflict was unavoidable. No question has ever been thrashed out, and no cause has ever been won, without it. It is also human to err, and every science has had to make progress through mistakes as well as by discoveries. It is no shame to the most recent addition to the sisterhood of the physical sciences, if it has fared with her as with all the rest. Although
Geology mid the Deluge. 311
geology has given itself enthusiastically to the ascer- taining of facts, there have been hasty indu(ftions and mistaken theories ; and we submit that it is these last, and not the facets themselves, which have been in antagonism with the statements of Scripture.
Let it be clearly understood, however, that, in dealing with these facts and in quoting the opinions of eminent geologists, we are by no means repre- senting that geologists generally are agreed as to the interpretation of the facets. It is quite enough for us that geologists have themselves long demanded a re-consideration of the subjedl on purely scientific grounds, and that men of the very foremost rank in the Science now admit almost all that the believer in the Bible contends for.
The early geologists gave a name to the boulder clay which expressed their conviction that it was a standing testimony to the Deluge so graphically described in the early chapters of Genesis. They called it Diluvium — that is, soil and stones borne along and deposited by a flood. But, while the name was retained, the idea which suggested it was afterwards condemned as a mistake. This was by no means all. The pendulum swung back strongly to the other side. It was contended that the present condition of the earth's surface showed that no universal Deluge had taken place. The doctrine, that catastrophes had anything to do with the present condition of the earth's surface, was set aside in favour of Hutton's theory, that it was the result of slow and long-continued processes. Geologists
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developed a profuse liberality in regard to time.
Where people had formerly spoken of thousands of
/years, they now dealt in millions. We remember
j reading, somewhere, of a trench that was dug in the
/ desert sand to determine the age of an Egyptian
\ monument. The calculation was supposed to be
! exceedingly simple. The sand accumulated at a
certain rate, which it was easy to determine. The
depth of the trench, from the surface to the base of
the statue, would afford the data for a sum in pro-
( portion, which would infallibly determine its age. The diggers began : they went down to a depth which ran the calculation up to many thousands of years. They went down still deeper, and the aston- ishment increased. But at the base they found a Roman tile, which shattered the calculation. Its presence proved that the Romans were then in the land ; and, instead of tens of thousands of years,
y the explorers had to be content with something
^^ less than 2,000. In accordance with this system of calculation, 12,000 years were assigned as the age of certain cones in Mount Etna, and 18,000 as the age of other volcanoes in France ; and, since the light pumice stone on those heights was still lying undisturbed, it was argued that no flood could have passed over them within the period assigned by Scripture to the existence of man upon the earth.
The change in the attitude of the earlier geologists on this point is shown in the life of Sedgwick, to whose labours British geology has been so largely indebted. His biographer, in view of the present
Geology and the Deluge. 313
re-opening of the question, says that the following, " written, it will be remembered, sixty-three years ago " (that is, in 1825), " will be read with interest." "As we are unacquainted," writes Professor Sedg- wick, '' with the forces which put the diluvian waters in motion, we are also, with very limited exceptions, unable to determine the dire(?tion in which the currents have moved over the earth's surface. Many parts of the North of Europe seem to have been swept over by a great current which set in from the north. In some parts of Scotland there has been a great rush of water from the north-west. The details given above show that the currents which have swept over different parts of England have not been con- fined to any given diredlion. It may, perhaps, be laid down as a general rule, that the diluvial gravel has been drifted down all the great inclined planes which the earth's surface presented to the retiring waters. . . . The fa(?ts brought to light by the combined labours of the modern school of geologists seem, so far as I comprehend them, completely to demonstrate the reality of a great diluvian catas- trophe during a comparatively recent period in the natural history of the earth. . . . The sacred records tell us — that a few thousand years ago 'the fountains of the great deep were broken up,' and that the earth's surface was submerged by the waters of a general deluge ; and the investigations of geology tend to prove that the accumulations of alluvial matter have not been ^oing on many thousand years ; and that they were preceded by a great
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catastrophe which has left traces of its operation in the diluvial detritus which is spread out over all the strata of the earth." *
Four years after the above was written, Sedgwick made a prolonged visit to the Continent. Sir Charles Lyell "tells us," says Sedgwick's biographer, ''that Sedgwick returned full of magnificent views ; throws overboard all the diluvian hypothesis ; is vexed he ever lost time about such a complete humbug. He did not himself admit," continues his biographer, " that his conversion was so complete as this report of his conversation would imply ; but no doubt his views had been greatly modified and extended by what he had seen on the Continent, and by his intercourse with foreign geologists."! We have a significant hint as to some of the influences which led to this change of view. Sedgwick says, in a letter to Sir Roderick Murchison: "Humboldt ridiculed (the dodtrine) beyond measure when I met him in Paris. Prevost ledlured against it." The change was decided enough, and he read what he called his recantation of his former statements when giving his address as President of the Geological Society in 1831. His recantation was significant of the tendency of the time. Catastrophes were scouted as explanations of geological phenomena. All changes had come about through the slow operation of forces which are still at work in our own time. It was taken for granted that these processes had gone on
The Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick, Vol. I., pp. 292, 293.
I Ibid, p. 357.
Geology and the Deluge. 315
without interruption, and that they had been neither accelerated nor retarded.
These views have been accepted by many com- mentators as utterly beyond dispute, and many have been the shifts to reconcile science and Scripture. The Deluge, we have been told, was not universal, though the Scripture uses language which can have no other meaning. A few, now unfortunately a rapidly increasing number, have boldly declared that the Bible does teach that the Flood was over all the earth, but that science shows that it never was, and that it could never have been. Kalisch, for example, in his Commentary on Genesis, says: ''No Deluge destroyed a wicked and disobedient race of men." And_ again; "Geological evidence denies the possi- bility of a universal Deluge, both in general, and especially within the last 5,000 years." It is saddening to think what such surrenders of Scripture have done. It has often been loudly declared that the inspiration of the Bible was unimpaired, although its inaccuracy in matters of fact was freely admitted ; but for those who made, and for those who often sorrowfully accepted, the admission, belief in the real inspiration and authority of Scripture was hopelessly shattered. Its claim to infallibility, it was supposed, had been tested and disproved ; and man, who had fondly imagined that a hand was here stretched out from the unseen to clasp his, found himself alone, bur- dened, and stumbling on in deepening darkness. Who can tell what that has meant, and what it
means now, for thousands ? And if it be true that
w
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all of it is the fruit of mistake and haste, who can measure the culpability and the remorse of those who believed the word of man, and refused to believe the word of God ?
Many of my readers will learn with surprise, not unmingled with other feelings, that after all that has been said about the impossibility of a universal Deluge, geologists are now admitting an accumulating array of fadls, which all point to the conclusion that there has been a wide-spread Deluge since man appeared upon the earth. This is not yet, indeed, to be found in geological text-books. Other theories — the insufficiency of which fads are daily proving — hold the place which the rejecl:ed truth of a Flood that swept away man, and bird, and beast, must eventually take. This is partly due to an error which could hardly have been escaped in the infancy of the science. The older geologists were confronted by evidences of startling changes in the condition of the earth. These changes, as I have already indicated, they explained as the results of sudden catastrophes, which, again, were the consequences of direct: Divine intervention. Against that explanation Hutton raised his protest. He was fortunate in being followed by two gifted writers, whose pens secured for his theory the verdict of their own and of a subsequent generation. These were Dr. Playfair and Sir Charles Lyell. The former gained the ear of the leaders of thought ; the latter, while retaining that conquest, secured besides the verdict of the general reading public. The theory which they advocated was also
Geology and the Deluge. 317
greatly in their favour. It is the province of science to explain the unknown by means of the known ; and, just as barbarism steadily retreats before the advance of civilisation, so the mysterious in nature disappears before the advance of science. Lyell contended that nature should be studied in her ordinary processes. These were not only capable of effecfting transformations ; they had brought about mighty changes, and further changes were actually in process now. All that was needed was time. Let air currents and ocean tides, volcanoes and earthquakes, and rain, and snow, and frost, work on through myriads and millions of years, and the supposed results of alleged mysterious catastrophes, would be accomplished by the ordinar}- processes of nature.
It was one of those theories whose imperial sweep has for many minds a resistless charm. The doctrine of uniformity swept everything before it. There were protests from important quarters ; but they fell upon unheeding ears. It was pointed out that the processes of nature were not uniform in the sense contended for. Changes do not proceed constantly at the same rate. A child grows at the rate of two inches a year ; but it would be absurd to conclude from this that we had ascertained the rate of human growth during the three-score years and ten allotted to us in this mortal sphere. The law of uniformity would in that case (if the infant had 20 inches to start with) give us 13 feet 4 inches as a man's height when he came to die. But, if the law of uniformitv has to be
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modified in regard to the formation of the rocks, it has no place at all as an explanation of the phenomena which the elder'geologists connedted with the Flood. " Misleading as I deem the arguments of Lyell and his scholars to have been when applied to the older beds," says Sir Henry.Howarth, " the}- were much more so when applied to explain the superficial mantle of gravel, clay, sand, &c., which covers the ragged and ruined surface of the older rocks, and gives to the earth its generally smooth and undulating outline. The former deposits are, for the most part, arranged in regularly stratified beds, with a regular succession which can be studied in many places in an undisturbed condition. It is very different with the superficial soft beds, which are so incongruous and heterogeneous in stru6^ure, which mantle the country irrespective of its contour, which often contain blocks of stone that have travelled hundreds of miles from home, and which afford so many puzzles to us all. Yet if there be a geological horizon, which it is important that we should study on sound principles, it is assuredly this one, for it enshrines the last completed chapter in the history of the world, and, among many other interesting riddles, contains the explanation of the mysterious problem of the origin of our race."
After observing that these beds remain in many respedts the despair of geology, he quotes the following striking passage from the late Professor Forbes : " The occurrence of vast masses of primitive rocks, apparently without any great wear and tear of travelling, upon secondary or alluvial surfaces at
Geology and the Deluge. 319
great distances from their origin, has been one of the numerous opprobria of geology. It is pecuHarly so, because a thousand circumstances demonstrate that the deposition of these masses has taken place at the very last period of the earth's history. No considerable changes of surface have occurred since. These blocks are superficial, naked, deposited upon the bare rock, which has received no coating of soil since, and are often placed in positions of such ticklish equilibrium that any considerable convulsion of nature, whether by earthquake or debacle, must inevitably have displaced them. A geologist might, therefore, justly be asked, ' If you cannot account for these very latest and plainest phenomena of change and transport on the earth's surface, whose various revolutions you pretend to explain, how shall we follow you, when you tell us of the metamorphoses of slates and throes of granite ? " *
For many years, geologists noted the fafts without permitting themselves to discuss, or even to indicate, the conclusions to which they point. In a paper read by the Duke of Argyll, before the Scottish Geographical Society, several years ago, he said that it had long appeared to him "one of the most curious circumstances connected with geological science, that this idea of a great and very recent submergence of our northern hemisphere to some such depth as 2,000 feet," had been admitted without its necessary consequences being realised. He continued : " There has been, I think, a sort of
* The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, Vol. I., p. 9.
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unconscious disposition in all of us to avoid looking it in the face. I do not mean that we are consciously dishonest with ourselves or others. It is not that we wish deliberately to suppress facts in order to maintain a theory. It is simply that an incongruous fa(5t is a trouble to us — an embarassment from which we are apt to avert our eyes." In two books for geologists, written by a geologist, the writer, Sir Henry Howorth goes still further. He has no desire to rescue Scripture from the imputation of inaccuracy, for in The Mammoth and the Flood, published in 1887, he speaks of the Bible narrative of Creation as '' a crude cosmological hypothesis," and a "cosmology in which the origin of things is traced with the simplicity and naivete that characSterise all ancient thought." But he has no sympathy with the indisposition of his colleagues to admit the necessary deducflions from indisputable facfts. Speaking of the traditions of the Flood, he says: *' To rejecTt them because they happen to be contained in a venerable book, whence many genera- tions of men have drawn their teaching, is to revert to the intolerable attitude of the Middle Ages. It may be quite rational and right to apply to the Bible the same canons of criticism and analysis that we apply to any other book, and to test and to sift its contents by this and no other method, but it is irrational to go beyond this, and to refuse credence to a story because it is contained in the Bible.''' The italics are the author's. He adds, that scientific men " ought to be as little dominated by the tyranny of scientific orthodoxy as by the dogmatism of
Geology and the Deluge. 321
theologians. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. The casuistical efforts employed by the defenders of literal accuracy in the Bible, and of the truth of every clause and of every sentence where the position was absolutely untenable, threw the advocates of science into a mood in which they were disposed to reject any statement, which had Biblical support, as superstitious."*
We shall now endeavour to set the fadls before our readers. There can be no doubt that there has been a temporary submergence of at least a large part of the old world and of the new, in times which (speaking geologically) are comparatively recent. Much of the evidence for this statement will be found in a most interesting and able paper by the Duke of Argyll, pubHshed in Good Words, January, 1884. We can only point in a summary fashion to the great outstanding fadts which prove the state- ment we have now made. One result of a sudden rush of water is the sweeping away of the soil. The stones, cleanly washed, are heaped together, and formed into beds of gravel; and by-and-bye, when the turbulence is over, the soil, held hitherto in solution by the lashing and rushing waters, subsides and forms beds of mud. The shghtest observation, or even reflection, is enough to prove that this is the ordinary result of a flood. When we meet with gravel beds and mud beds anywhere, we know that they are there in consequence of such adlion as we have described. Now, if there has been a Flood such as
The Mammoth and the Flood, pp. lo, i:
322 The New Biblical Guide,
the Scripture pictures, its traces must be discoverable. A rush of waters, such as was needful to sweep life from the surface of the globe, must have done its work upon the soil of the earth as well. Beds of gravel and of mud must be met with everywhere.
That is a test of the truth of the Bible narrative which science, and even common sense, have a right to impose. What, then, is the reply ? The reply is. That is even so ! The gravel and mud beds are every- where. Science dutifully records the fa(ft, but has, so far, failed to draw what seems to be the inevitable con- clusion. One explanation which has been suggested, is that they are the result of local floods, and that the rivers have occasionally swept over their banks, and wrought havoc at least along portions of their course. That suggestion is a natural one ; but it gives way at the slightest scrutiny of the facts. These gravel beds do not only lie along river courses, or on the sides of valleys. They are found on elevations where no river has ever flowed. A slate quarry, for example, was opened on Moel Tryfan, part of the Snowdon range, at a height of 1,390 feet above the level of the sea. On the top of the slate was an immense bed of gravel. The gravel was full of sea- shells, including not only species which belong to the shore, but species also which belong to the deep sea. How did the gravel come to be deposited on the mountain-top, and how did the shells surge up there from the bottom of the deep? There can be but one answer : Moel Tryfan, as the Duke of Argyll points out, must have been submerged beneath the sea. It
Geology and the Deluge. 323
is quite clear, also, that the submergence was only temporary and tumultuous. Otherwise there would have been orderly deposits, as there are in the rocks which have been slowly formed beneath the placid waters of the ocean. But all, on the other hand, has been mixed up and churned together. Now, this is not the case with Moel Tryfan only. There are similar gravel beds all over Lancashire, Cheshire, Stafford- shire and Worcestershire. In Cheshire, they are found near Macclesfield, at 1,200 feet above the sea- level. They are found all over Europe. The town of Munich, 1,500 feet above the sea, is surrounded by) deep pits of gravel, which has evidently been swept^ down from the Alps. It is also a feature of the , American Continent. Darwin found the strata in Patagonia " everywhere capped," he says "by a mass of gravel, forming, probably, the largest beds of shingle in the world ; it certainly extends from near the Rio Colorado to between 600 and 700 nautical miles southwards; at Santa Cruz (a river a little south of St. Julian) it reaches to the foot of the Cordillera; half-way up the river its thickness is more than 200 feet; it probably everywhere extends to this great chain whence the well-rounded pebbles of porphyry have been derived." He says, if this great bed of pebbles was piled into a mound, " it would form a great mountain chain ! " What torrent washed these pebbles from the mountain-sides, swept them free from the soil that had clung to them, massed them together, and passed away without waiting to mingle them or cover them with deposits that would have
324 The New Biblical Guide.
told of long years and ages of submergence under placid water? The Flood explains it. Is there any- thing else that can ?
So far, we have spoken only of the gravel ; but the distribution of the mud, which was swept away in the rush, and deposited as the tumult of the waters subsided, bears the same testimony. '' There is, all over the centre of Europe," says the Duke of Argyll, " a prodigious formation which has been a great puzzle to geologists. You will find an elaborate account of it in Sir Charles Lyell's work. It is called in German, ' The Loess.' It occupies the whole valley of the Rhine from Basel down to Belgium, while in height it reaches 1,600 feet, answering closely to the measurement of Moel Tryfan, the difference of a hundred or two hundred feet being nothing in such a question. If you have proof that the submergence of the land has been 1,400 feet to 1,500 feet in Scotland and Wales, it is quite natural that you should find it extending to 1,600 feet in the centre of Europe. The hills of the Rhine valley are sometimes entirely covered with that mud. Geologists have been immensely puzzled with that mud. They do not know what to make of it. There have been fifty different theories about it. Sir Charles Lyell called it, and that was very remarable, the 'inundation mud.' He had no doubt whatever that it was the result of water. The only question was — what kind of water."
But the mud beds are as universal as the gravel beds. They cover the great plains of the Argentine Republic in the form of a modified lehm, or loess,
Geology and the Deluge. 325
which Darwin calls Pampas mud. Burmeister says : " The diluvial deposit .... extends over the whole Brazilian plain, from the flanks of the Cordilleras to the borders of the Atlantic." They are found also in Bolivia, at a height of over 1,300 feet. The beds of mud are found in all latitudes. Even the Australian Continent has not escaped. Huge beds of gravel (as well as other mementoes) are met with there 150 and 200 feet deep. There are other evidences. There are- stones and huge boulders, which do not belong to the surrounding strata, and which have been swept along from great distances. Erman, the renowned Siberian explorer, says : '^The ground at Yakutsk . . . consists, to the depth of at least 100 feet, of strata of loam, pure sand, and magnetic sand. They have been deposited' from waters which at one time, and it may he presumed suddenly, overflowed the whole country as far as the Polar Sear Again, referring to the immense \ quantities of birch trees buried under the tundras ] and in New Siberia, he says: ''It is only in the/ lower strata of the New Siberian wood-hills that the/ trunks have that position which they would assumeV in swimmmg or sinking undisturbed. On the summit ) of the hills they lie flung one upon another in the / wildest disorder, forced upright in spite of gravitation, f and with their tops broken off, or crushed, as if\ they had been thrown with great violence from the * south on a bank, and there heaped up." He concludes : '' So it is clear that, at the time when the elephants and trunks of trees were heaped up
326 The New Biblical Guide.
together, one flood extended from the centre of the continent to the furthest harrier existing in the sea, as it now is." In other words, that part of the world was for a brief period totally submerged.
In another large work, published in 1893 — The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood — Sir Henry Howarth has sustained this conclusion by an enormous mass of evidence. Many geologists have contended that it is quite unnecessary to admit a Flood, in order to account for these phenomena. It is now ascertained beyond doubt that, some time in the latter part of this earth's history, there was a great development of glaciers on all the elevated portions of its surface • Lyellandthe rest of the Huttonian School maintained that this would account for the drift which is met with everywhere. Nothing more was required than that one Continent after another shall be put down under the sea for a time, through slow and entirely natural changes. Then icebergs, floating over those covering waters, would accomplish all the rest. They would melt as they floated, and the gravel and soil which they had ground down as they descended the mountain sides, and the blocks which had fallen upon them, and which they carried off with them, would all be dropped into the sea.
In this way, it was assumed, the great gravel beds, the boulder clay and loam deposits, and the mighty boulders scattered on hill-tops and on plains, would all be accounted for. But the theory is open to two grave objections. Melting icebergs would not separate boulders from gravel, or gravel from clay and loam.
Geology and the Deluge. 327
Everything would be precipitated together, and the deposits would be of an entirely different character from those which have to be accounted for. The other objection is equally fatal. A prolonged submergence would have led to the clay, the loam, and the gravel being regularly stratified and solidified like the other rocks which were deposited in that way, and which form the earth's crust. The feature of these deposits is the absence of regular stratification, and the comparative suddenness with which they must have been made. " Glaciers," says Sir Henry Howarth, "will not explain the existence of the drift spread out, not in the form of moraines, but in continuous sheets, stretching over hundreds of miles of level country. Glaciers cannot, it seems to me, explain the separation of the drift into beds of gravel, of sand, and of clay ; the known debris of glaciers are mixed and heterogeneous, and not separated and sorted in this fashion. Glaciers cannot explain the mounds called eskers, kames, or whale-backs ; nor the long dykes called asar by the Swedes, which, in many cases, are partially stratified ; nor the partial stratification, the false bedding, and the huge curving lines of deposit which the sands and fine gravels of the drift series often assume." *
The supposition of submergence under the sea, which geologists have generally favoured, is now abandoned by many leading men. Mr. Belt, writing in the Quarterly Journal of Science (vol. vii. pp. 82, 83), shows that the absence of shells and
* The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, Vol. H., p. 774.
328 The New Biblical Guide.
of other indications of sea-life, entirely disproves it. He says : " Excepting around the southern border of the Baltic, and just so far as, and no farther than, the Scandinavian glaciers reached, and carried up fragmentary shells from the arms of the sea they had crossed, the northern drift does not contain sea-shells or any other marine organism. For thousands of square miles, south of the irregular line I have indicated, up to and around the Carpa- thians, the northern drift is spread out, and not a trace of marine life, not even a diatom, has been recorded from it, while at its base, between the Oder and the Elbe, fresh water shells abound. To believe that Europe gradually sank down below the level of the sea until the latter had its shore-line more than 1,000 feet up the flanks of the mountains, and that it rose again, without the sea leaving behind it any traces of life excepting fresh water shells, is such an extreme hypothesis, and so contrary to all we know respecfting the composition of existing sea-bottoms, that it is probable that its present acceptance is simply a survival from the time when there was no other way of explaining the existence of water up to
such a height Those who
advocate the former existence of these oscillations of the surface, are those who urge that we should not call in the aid of any but existing agencies ; yet where do they now find a shoreless and a shell-less sea ? Put down a dredge anywhere in the ocean within depths of less than 2,000 feet, and in the small quantity of clay, mud, sand, or gravel scraped
Geology and the Deluge. 329
up, it will be scarcely possible to take out a teacupful that shall not teem with marine organisms ; yet we are taught that an immense area in Europe and America has been a sea-bottom, and every part of it a sea-beach, as the land rose again without any existence of marine life having been left behind."*
The theory of a prolonged submergence under the ocean is one of many impossible explanations of phenomena, which can only be explained by the mighty Deluge recorded in Scripture, and the memories of which still survive in the national traditions. Another of these rejected hypothesis is that the present position of boulders, mud, clay, sand, and gravel is due to the aclion of rivers, but rivers of enormous volume, and whose waters spread out over the surrounding country with ocean-like fulness. A single question demolishes that refuge. How were those rivers fed ? Where did the waters come from, which they rolled along ? To have main- tained such rivers, the conditions of our earth and its atmosphere would have to be entirely changed. Our rainfall would have to be increased an hundred- fold ; and to secure that, there would have to be a corresponding enlargement of water surface to provide the watery vapour wherewith to supply the clouds and the necessary rainfall.
But, though all the rain were provided, and these mighty rivers were rolling on to the ocean, their operation would be insufficient. Sir Henr}- Howarth quotes the following from the pen of " an acute
* Ibid. pp. 831, 832.
330 The New Biblical Guide.
writer " in the Philosophical Magazine (vol. ix. 195, 166) : — " I have often been curious to know whether the writers who ascribe these diluvial phenomena to the actual operations of atmospheric waters draining off the surface of the earth, ever could have attempted to present to their minds anything like a precise view of the districfts in question, and of the pheno- menon they undertake to explain ; for instance, of the stru(?ture of Luneburgh Heath, and all the vast diluvial flats of the North of Germany. These are occupied by one vast accumulation of gravel, partly chalk flints, derived probably from a zone of that formation, which must originally have occupied this tract (as may be seen from the chalk pit at Luneburgh), but every apparent mass of which has been swept away, and buried beneath its own ruins ; but with these are intermingled vast blocks of granite, often as large as small cottages, for which at a little distance, I have more than once mistaken them ; this granite being derived from the Norwegian mountains, on the opposite side of the Baltic. Now I will attempt to explain all this on the fluvial theory. First, the rivers now flowing through the North of Germany must have changed their course so frequently as to have covered, successively, every inch of the North of Germany, since this gravel is universally distributed; and this they must have done, though we do not find, from the earliest records preserved of the topography of the country, that they are in the habit of changing their course in the least. Secondly, they must have washed away evtry projecting mass
Geology and the Deluge. 331
of the chalk formation, although we do not find that the slightest mound of the most ancient entrenchments in the neighbourhood has been sensibly affected by atmospheric causes for some thousands of years. Thirdly, they must have carried blocks of many tons in weight for some hundreds of miles, though they have now unaccount- ably left off transporting anything more than a few ounces, and that only for short distances. Fourthly, they must have transported these blocks up their currents; since the granite was derived from the opposite side of the Baltic, but the actual course of all the streams is towards the Baltic."
Another theory, to which Dana and other dis- tinguished geologists have clung, is the melting of enormous ice-sheets and glaciers, which supplied the waters for such a flood as has undeniably been at work. But glaciers and ice-sheets do not move up hill, and their melting waters will not transport blocks of stone and gravel to elevations higher than themselves. Those blocks and gravel pits are found on the tops of our hills from 1,600 feet to 2,000 feet above sea-level. In the summary of a paper read before The British Association in 1850, Mr. Robert Chambers, the author of The Vestiges of Creation, showed an honesty and fearlessness which were some atonement for that earlier work. Recognising that the fashionable glacier, ice-cap, and ice-sheet theories would not explain the phenomena, he asked: (i) "How could ice move over so large a portion of the North American continent, in a direction admitted to
X
332 The New Biblical Guide.
be tolerably uniform, allowing for slight deviations easily explicable as owing to irregularities in the original surface, and this without any mountain chain to give it forth ? (2) How was this ice capable of ascending slopes and topping mountains of con- siderable height ? (3) How, in such a valley as that of the Forth, could there be an ice torrent of undeviating flow for many miles, and deep enough to envelop hills many hundred feet high ? "
The theory is also plainly inadequate to account for the same phenomena where no glaciers can have been. " The same conclusion," writes Sir Henry Howorth, "seems to follow from the existence of far-travelled blocks in the tropics far away from any possible ice-adlion, or from that of any diurnal movement of water as known to us. Thus the hottest region of the earth as known to us is probably British Guiana, yet it was there that Sir Robert Schomburgh discovered a great mass of travelled boulders, looking, he tells us, strikingly like the refuse of a smithy. This is clearly a region, as Murchison says, where no ice or glaciers can ever have existed.
"These fadts," he continues, "are paralleled by those observed in Jamaica by De la Beche . . . ; by the boulders found in the plain of Upper India, and by those in Persia, described by Mr. W. T. Blandford. All these seem to have no other possible explanation than that they have been distributed by water in rapid movement. Again, if we go to another distri(ft, Mr. Darwin says of the Azores : * At my request, Sir
Geology and the Deluge. 333
C. Lyell wrote to Mr. Harting, to inquire whether he had observed erratic boulders on these islands, and he answered that he had found large fragments of granite and other rocks, which do not occur in the Archipelago.' "*
In all these theories one fa6l is acknowledged. The deposits of mud, clay, sand, gravel, and boulders, were made by water. This will be plain from what has preceded ; but the following from Sir Henry Howorth's pages will emphasize the facSt. " Professor Andrewes," he writes, " speaking of the gravel deposits of the United States, says : ' These gravel hills are often sharp and conical, and interspersed with deep circular valleys without outlets, from which the region has obtained the popular name of the Potash Kettles. ... It would seem to be an unavoidable inference that our drift of this region not only came from the north, but it came in a vast sweep of water, deep enough to cover gravel hills 800 feet high, and with velocity enough to throw such coarse material into lofty and steep summits.'
" Dr. Hildyard, who has described the wide-spread deposits, known as the Orange Sand Formation, in Mississippi and elsewhere, says he attributes them to a great inundation of water, apparently devoid of organic life.
"The most notable witness, however, is Professor Dana, with whom on this issue I only feel disposed to quarrel when he attributes the stupendous flood to which he appeals to so inadequate a cause as the
* Ibid, pp. 887, 888.
334 ^^^^ -^^^ Biblical Guide.
melting of an ice-sheet. In regard to the reality and vast proportions of the flood in America, he speaks in very plain language.
**He is constrained by the fac5ts, as they present themselves there, to say of the superficial deposits : * I. The prevalent stratification of the old terraced alluvium over New England, is evidence of its sedimentary character; 2. From the vast width of many of the alluvial regions, we infer an extraordinary flow of waters over the country ; 3. The great thick- ness of the deposits, rising in some places to 200 feet or more above the river, and no doubt originally filhng the valley to the level of the upper terrace, and still more the frequent occurrence of thick obhquely laminated layers — one such in the Newhaven region reaching the extraordinary thickness of eight feet, are indication of a very rapid and abundant supply of sand and gravel ; and the beds of coarse stones, often intermingled, tell of currents of immense power, or of sudden falls from the floating or overhanging ice ; 4. The vast flow of waters, and the vast flow of sand and gravel, were concurrent events ; 5. The extent of the floods throughout New England, is proved by the extent and chara(?ter of the deposits, which also indicate that the melting of the glacier did not occur only at the southern margin, so creeping slowly northwards, but simultaneously over its wide extended surface.'
"On the geology of the Newhaven district, he says : ' When it is considered that the waters which levelled this plain, were the same that distributed
Geology and the Deluge. 335
the sand and gravel of the drift formation ; that, in other words, the plain is only the upper surface of the drift formation then deposited, it is obvious that the waters, to have made such a slope over so wide a region, even to the shores of the bay, must have been those of a flood of no common magnitude. For the last mile, the flooded waters of Mill River were united in one great tumultuous sea with those of Western Hamden, or those of the several tributaries of Wilmot Brook, for the plain in this part has one level all the way across, a distance of three miles. Such a flood . . . must have been simultaneous with the deposition of the material arranged by the waters/ And he concludes, . . . . ' that the formation of the northern part of the plain beyond fifty feet in elevation, was due mainly to the floods of fresh water filling the valleys, and spreading widely over the plains.'
'' Dana again presses this teaching home in his Manual. 'The fact,' he says, 'that a flood, vast beyond conception, was a final event in the history of the glacier {i.e., of the great American ice-sheet), is manifest in the peculiar stratification of the flood- made deposits, and in the spread of the stratified drift southward along the Mississippi valley to the Gulf, as first made known by Hildyard. Only under the rapid contribution of immense amounts of sand and gravel, and of water from so unlimited a source, could such deposits have been accumulated.' "
Dana fully admits the enormous and unparalleled character of this inundation ; but he attempts to
336 The New Biblical Guide.
show that the flood could have come from melting glaciers. Commenting on this obviously inadequate explanation, Sir Henry Howorth says : " These are the extravagant demands on our credulity made by a great geologist, who cannot deny the vast diluvial effects, but shrinks from an appeal to an adequate cause, and shelters himself behind a transcendental one, in order to avoid what seems to be a quarrel with the Uniformitarian views of orthodox geology. I prefer the courage of another great geologist, in some respects the greatest geologist who ever lived." My readers will forget any difficulty which may be found in the occasional technicalities of these extracts and of those which may follow, in the intense interest with which they peruse such testi- monies. I may conclude my present references to this book of Sir Henry Howorth's, by giving his own theory of what has occasioned the removal of those huge and isolated blocks, and the universal beds of gravel, sand, and loam. After referring to the antedi- luvian condition of the earth, he says: "Presently came a tremendous catastrophe, the cause of which, as I have tried to show in The Geological Magazine^ was the rapid, and perhaps sudden, upheaval of some of the largest mountain chains in the world, accompanied probably by great subsidences of land elsewhere. The breaking up of the earth's crust at this time, of which the evidence seems to be overwhelming, necessarily caused great waves of translation to traverse wide continental areas, as Scott Russell, Hopkins, Whewell, and Murchison
Geology and the Deluge. 337
argued the}^ would, and these waves of translation as necessarily drowned the great beasts and their companions, including palaeolithic man, and covered them with continuous mantles of loam, clay, gravel, and sand, as we find them drowned and covered. They also necessarily took up the great blocks which the glaciers had fashioned, and transported them to a certain distance, and distributed them and the drift associated with them, as we find them distri- buted. This induction seems to me to be complete, not only because it adequately explains the facts, but because it is the only theory that does so, and I know nothing against it, but the almost pathetic devotion of a large school of thinkers to the religion founded by Hutton, whose High Priest was Lyell, and which in essence is based on a priori arguments, like those which dominated mediaeval scholasticism, and made it so barren."*
Sir Henry's books were written, as I have said, for geologists ; and, if there was one thing further from his purpose than another, it was the vindication of the Bible account of the Deluge. He pronounces, indeed, a kind of anathema against the theologian who will dare to use for that purpose the fad^s which he brings together. But the reader will conclude with me that, when a man of science shows reason why geology should retracl: its assertion that the Deluge was impossible, and should humbly give it a place among the most certain facets in the earth's history, the behever in the Bible has a right to listen,
* Ibid, pp.20, 21.
338 The New Biblical Guide.
and good reason to rejoice. The Glacial Nightmare was published in 1893. Certain things have happened since then, which have carried this matter further. On the igth March, 1894, ^ rnemorable meeting was held in London in connection with the Vi(5loria Institute. A paper was to be read by the late Sir Joseph Prestwich, " the Nestor of Geology," and who was, on that same occasion, described by Professor Woodward, the President of the Geological Society, as occupying '' an unique position as the father of our science at the present time." Professor Prestwich was unable to attend, and his paper was read by Professor Rupert Jones, F.R.S. The President of the Institute, Sir G. G. Stokes, was in the chair, and a distinguished company, embracing many leading scientists, were present. The paper, it was recognised, was to mark a new era in authoritative British geological opinion about the Biblical statement regarding the Flood. The paper was chara(5lerised by very great caution, the writer resolutely refusing to go one inch beyond ascertained fa(5l. Here is part of the ''conclusion," in the statement of which we may say British geology began its confession of error: *' In concluding," he writes, " I would observe that all the phases of the Rubble drift have certain chara(5lers such as show a common origin. Briefly, whether it be the Rubble or Head over the Raised Beaches, the Osseous breccia on slopes, or the Ossiferous fissures, the materials of all of them present a complete absence of that wear which must result from river, sea, or ice ac5lion ; in all cases they are of local origin, while
Geology and the Deluge. 339
all the faunal remains in these, and in one division of the Loess, are such as might have come from the wreck of a land surface, and a land surface only. The bones of the animals have evidently been subjected to considerable, but not lasting, violence, for they are broken and splintered, yet not worn; and though these remains are associated together in, as it were, a common grave, it is impossible to suppose that, under the ordinary conditions of animal existence, such dissimilar orders could have been associated in life ; nor, as the bones are free from all traces of gnawing, could these remains have been colle6led and left by beasts of prey. These concurrent conditions, together with the mode of dispersion of the Rubble drift from many independent centres, seem to me, howsoever startling may be the conclusion, to be only explicable upon the hypothesis of a wide-spread, though local and short submergence, followed by early re-elevation ; and this hypothesis will, I think, be found to satisfy all the important conditions of the problem."*
The meeting of the VicTtoria Institute was equally memorable for other expressions of distinguished opinion. A letter was read from Sir J. William Dawson, in which he said: "As you are aware, I have for years, on geological and palseontological grounds, maintained the existence of a physical break between the earlier and later portions of the Anthropic Age, and that this was of the nature of a temporary submergence, which would probably
* Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. xxvii., pp. 280, 281.
340 The New Biblical Guide.
prove to be identical with the historical deluge. The conviction of the truth of this theory has been growing upon me in recent years, owing to the accumulation of new facts.''
Sir J. W. Dawson has since published his views in a tracSl, which embodies papers read by him before scientific gatherings.* He notes the salutary change which has come upon the attitude of scientific men towards this subje(?t. After quoting "the saying of an eminent writer," that '' at the present time it is difficult to persuade serious scientific inquirers to occupy themselves in any way with the Noachian Deluge ; they look at you with a smile and a shrug, and say they have more important matters to attend to," he says : " This may have been true of a certain clique in London in 1890, when it was written, but the fadls now known should stamp such an attitude as neither wise nor philosophical."
"We may now sum up," he adds, "the whole of the subject of this se6tion under the following general statements: — (i) Man and the land animals, his contemporaries, are the latest tenants of the earth, the latest terms in the long succession of animal forms which has extended through geological time. (2) The earliest races of men known to geology are separated from the modern world of ordinary history by a great physical cataclysm, involving the per- manent diminution of the area of our continents and the destrudlion of the majority of men, and of many forms of animal life. (3) We have every
* The Historical Deluge, in the Present Day Tracts (Religious Tract Society).
Geology and the Deluge. 341
reason to believe that the modern races of men are descended from survivors of these physical changes."
This testimony, from one of the very foremost geologists of our time, is clear and emphatic. He has also pointed out that, wherever the Bible has touched upon the natural conditions of that epoch, science confirms its statements. The Bible says, that ''all the fountains of the great deep" were ''broken up." It will be evident from what Sir Henry Howorth says about the undoubted breaking of the earth's crust, and the consequent huge, inundating waves, that this was what literally happened. Sir J. W. Dawson shows that the fadls which geology has gathered regarding antediluvian man can only be explained by the fall; and that there is distin(5t evidence of conditions growing continuously adverse to man's enjoyment of the earth, which show that the ground was cursed, as the Scripture declares it was, for man's sake (Gen. iii. 17, 18 ; V. 29). The introduction of the thorn and the thistle, which the Bible says were (because of man's sin) to accompany the fruit of his toil, geology shows to be comparatively recent. Man's "attempts," says Dr. Dawson, "to cultivate the soil to obtain vegetable food, and to cherish domestic animals, were assailed by the irruption of that composite flora of thistles and other weeds, whose recent origin and still more recent geographical distribution are well known, and which still dogs his steps, even in the distant lands of Australia."
Referring to Lamech's prophecy, that comfort
342 The New Biblical Guide.
would come through Noah, "because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed" (Genesis v. 29), he says: '' It was given to him to foresee that this dire evil, under which the men of his time were groaning, was remediable; but perhaps not to see that the remedy involved the destruction of the greater part of them. His prophecy is fulfilled in the fadl that a new world has arisen, and that physically the new world is better, in that the continents are more limiited, and the climate improved, while the giant beasts of the quarternary have passed away.
"It is singular," he concludes, "that so many Christian writers have failed to appreciate this physical cursing of the ground. The following is an example : —
'Modern science,' says Gaudet, 'seems to prove that the present condition of the earth is a natural result of the whole previous development, and that the miseries belonging to it are rather the remains of the primitive imperfedlion of matter than the effects of a fall, which intervened at a given moment.'
" Science, rightly understood, teaches the dire6l contrary of this, as I endeavoured to show as far back as i860 ; but it seems as if even Christian students would rather take their views of nature from the uncertain theories of current forms of philosophy, than from science properly so called. "t
+ The Historical Deluge (Religious Tracft Society), pp. 40-42.
Was this Inundation Universal ? 343
CHAPTER XII. Was this Inundation Universal?
SIR Joseph Prestwich, in the paper to which I referred in the last chapter, concludes that, though widespread, the Flood was nevertheless local. But that conclusion is reached by rigidly excluding all hills, the sides of which have not yet been shown to be marked by fissures into which the bones, stripped of the flesh, and broken by the plunging and lashing waters, have been driven. It will at once be evident that this is precarious ground for the denial of the Flood's universality, though sufficient perhaps to prevent the rigid scientist from asserting that it left no spot of earth uncovered. Sir Henry Howorth is equally emphatic about its non-universality. He clings to the belief that some favoured hill-tops were left uncovered, and that on these a few fleeing men and animals found a refuge, and so prevented the destrudlion from being universal. Shall I be forgiven, if I say that I should have preferred the shelter of the Ark to the chance of security on Sir Henry's hill-tops ? For many difficulties would have lessened materially the chances of safety in the latter case. First of all, it was plainly not every hill-top that would have sufficed. A hill more than 2,000 feet high does not stand at every man's door. And,
344 ^^^ -^^^ Biblical Guide.
when those supposed pinnacles of safety would have been reached, where was the food needed by men and animals ? And where were the shelter and the warmth quite as imperatively required during the intense cold which supervened? The waters did not subside in a day, or in a week, or in a month. The stripped and broken bones and the laminated clay prove that. There may be difficulties to some minds presented by the Bible History of the Ark. But they will be acknowledged even by those to be slight indeed, when compared with the difficulties presented by the hill-top theory. There was at least a shelter, and stored-up food, and human care in the former; but how representatives of all the manifold life, with which the earth teems to-day, could have been preserved in such haphazard fashion ; and how, when preserved for the moment, they could have been maintained on those bare and unprovisioned heights through the months of weary waiting, we cannot say, and we are equally powerless to imagine.
Geologists have had recourse to several theories, and the acceptance of any of these would involve the belief that the flood, whose action their science clearly indicates, could not have been universal. The deposits of gravel and of mud, and the presence of huge boulders far from the rocks of which they once formed part, are due, we are told, to a prolonged partial submergence of the land under the sea. While that submergence continued, masses of ice — parted from the great continental glaciers — were borne along the surface of the waters. These melted gradually,
Was this Inundation Universal ? 345
and dropped the burden of boulders, gravel, and mud, which they had carried with them. This might, indeed, account for the transfer of rocks, but not for the sorting of the other deposits. Melting icebergs would have let mud, sand, gravel, stones, and boulders all descend together in one promiscuous heap. They would not have given us beds of cleaned gravel, and separate beds of sand and clay.
Besides, too, the supposition of submerged con- tinents, covered by fleets of melting icebergs, will not explain other striking chara^eristics. These icebergs, if they carried sea-shells with them, would not have heaped them upon the present sea-beaches, and that, too, only to a height not exceeding 500 feet above the present sea-level. A great flood, meeting the present sea-coast, and having its burden arrested by it, could have done that: but there was nothing to attraa: floating icebergs, and force them to lay down their sea-shells just there.
"But this again," says Sir Henry Howorth, ''is only a small part of our problem. How comes it that no marine shells, except near the coast, are found in the drifts of the continental distridls ? How is it that they should be universally barren, except on the shores of Scandinavia, and the southern margin of the Baltic, the Atlantic, and the North Sea ? Here Mr. Belt has made some very judicious observations: ' Excepting around the southern border of the Baltic,' he says, 'and just so far as, and no farther than, the Scandinavian glaciers reached, and carried up fragmentary shells from the arms of the sea they
346 The New Biblical Guide.
had crossed, the northern drift does not contain sea-shells or any other marine organism. For thousands of square miles, south of the irregular line I have indicated, up to and around the Carpathians, the northern drift is spread out, and not a trace of marine life, not even a diatom, has been recorded from it, while at its base, between the Oder and the Elbe, fresh-water shells abound. To believe that Europe gradually sank down below the level of the sea until the latter had its shore-line more than 1,000 feet up the flanks of the mountains, and that it rose again without the sea leaving behind it any traces of life except fresh-water shells, is such an extreme hypothesis, and so contrary to all we know respedling the composition of existing sea-bottoms, that it is probable that its present acceptance is simply a survival from the time when there was no other way of explaining the existence of water up to such a height. . . . There is much evidence to show that vast continental areas were never below the sea-level from the close of the Palaeozoic period up to the end of the Tertiary period. Yet after this stability of surface over such an immense period of time, no hesitation is felt, in the comparatively insignificant Glacial period, in sending the surface of the land thousands of feet higher that ice might accumulate on the now low ranges, and thousands of feet lower that icebergs might float over the submerged lands ; and no difficulty is experienced in believing that it should finish its wonderful oscillations by regaining the level it had before the Glacial period commenced.
Was this Immdation Universal ? 347
It seems a burlesque on science that such theories should be prevalent amongst our geologists, and if they were not held by philosophers, they would be ridiculed as unphilosophical. Those who advocate the former existence of these oscillations of the surface, are those who urge that we should not call in the aid of any but existing agencies ; yet where do they now find a shore-less and a shell-less sea ? Put down a dredge anywhere in the ocean within depths of less than 2,000 feet, and in the small quantity of clay, mud, sand, or gravel scraped up, it will be scarcely possible to take out a teacupful that shall not teem with marine organisms ; yet we are taught that an immense area in Europe and America has been a sea-bottom, and every part of it a sea- beach as the land rose again, without any existence of marine life having been left behind ! ' " *
It is plain that the theory of submergence of the continents for thousands of years under the sea labours under heavy difficulties; and these are not the only adverse facts which it has to encounter. As this is a matter which calls for expert evidence, I avail myself again of Sir Henry Howorth's pages :
" The mixture of the shells is another remarkable feature in such of the beds as contain shells. There is no more interesting and romantic place in the world for the student of recent geology than the famous inlet at Uddevalla in South Sweden, whose shell-beds have been so much used in their works by Lyell and others. I have visited these beds twice,
* The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, pp. 830-832.
34S The New Biblical Guide.
and examined them with considerable care, on the last occasion with my friends, Mr. Robert Darbishire, F.G.S., and Professor Marshall, and in the company of Mr. Dickson, who has done so much to work out their contents. It seems to me that the story furnished by them has hardly been sufficiently realized. I will quote a description of them in the admirably graphic words of Linnaeus, who first called attention to them, which have been translated into equally graphic English by Dr. Latham : —
"'â– The shell-hills (Skalbargen) are rightly reckoned amongst the greatest wonders of Bohuslaen ; for they lie inland nearly a whole quarter of a mile in some places from the sea. These shell-hills consist of periwinkles and bivalve shells (Snacke-och Muskle- skal), which are here assembled in such numbers that one wonders how so many living beings existed on the earth. We visited Capell Hill, which lay a quarter of a mile beyond the southern Uddevalla Gate; then we went to Sammered, which lay nearly a quarter of a mile from the town, north-east. In both places were these shell-hills, especially, and most markedly, at Sammered. Here there were bare and hillocky ridges of grey stone on the sides which face the town or the sea, where the bay was originally bent in. The earth was slightly convex on the summits of the above-named hill, and made a curve, where the black mould, which was seldom more than a foot and a half deep, thinned off; the shell-bed, which was two or three fathoms deep, underlaid it. Under this came in succession pure
Was this Inundation Universal ? 349
clay. No shells were seen above this stratum. Among the bare hill ridges they stretched, however, altogether from the hill downwards under the black mould, often to the breadth of several gunshots. The shells lay clean and unchanged, with no addition of soil, only strewn over with a little gravel, such as is thrown upon the beaches.'
"This is a very faithful account of what is to be found here, and assuredly it is a very strange one. To find shells of the most fragile nature, perfec^tly preserved, heaped up in this fashion many feet thicky with hardly any mixture of sand or shingle, quite heterogeneousl}^ the species being mixed together in most admirable disorder, those from deep water being mixed with those which are purely littoral, shells which occur loosely in the sand being mixed with abundant specimens of more than one species of barnacles, which are attached to rocks, &c., and of mussels, &c., occurring gregariously in beds. This is assuredly a very puzzling assemblage. In the first place, it is absolutely clear that these shells could not and did not live where they were found. They could not have lived in heaps such as these. Shells having such very diverse habitats could not live together mixed up in this heterogeneous fashion, bivalves and univalves all huddled confusedly together in myriads. This is absolutely plain.
'' This has been noticed of the shell-beds else- where. Speaking of the Moel Tryfaen shells, Mr. Forbes says : ' I have lately examined them carefully with a view to see whether thev indicate an ancient
350 The New Biblical Guide.
coast-line and beach, or an ancient sea-bottom. But they cannot be regarded as indicating either, being a confused mixture of fragments of species from all depths, both littoral and such as invariably live at a depth of many fathoms . . . inhabitants, some of muddy grounds, some of sandy, some of rocky. Deep and shallow water species, mingled, could at no time have lived together, or have been thrown up on one shore.'
" Mr. Mellard Reade makes similar remarks in regard to the Lancashire drift shells. Thus he says: ^The association of the various species, distributed entirely without order through the clays, show that they could not possibly have lived together on the same bottom, some being peculiar to sand, others to mud, some to rock, others to shingle, some requiring deep water, and others shallow, so that the conclusion is irresistibly forced upon us that they must have been to a large extent transported.'
"Again, it is remarkable that there should be no evidence of this alleged submergence in the South of England. According to Lyell, ' the distri(5l south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel seems to have remained land during the whole of the Glacial period, at a time when the northern area was under water.' As Mr. Bell says : ' It would be a very surprising result if, while all the land north of the Thames and Bristol Channel and that of Ireland was submerged till only the summits of the highest hills appeared as scattered islets above the sea, all south of the Thames and Bristol Channel remained clear and dry
Was this Inundation Universal? 351
above water. In North Wales there was a sub- mergence of 1,400 feet, while at a short distance to the south of the Bristol Channel this great depression died out or disappeared, so that there was no submergence at all. Is this credible? . . . Can we suppose such an abrupt termination to an adlual submergence of the land ? that it could be so great immediately to the north of the Bristol Channel, and nothing at all immediately to the south of it, and this without any apparent break or disloca- tion in the strata along that line?'"*
Sir Charles Lyell himself states that the coal beds of Wales and Shropshire "have never been violently fractured or bent into folds . . . since they were deposited." That shows that since these beds were laid down there has been no depression of the land beneath the sea nor upheaval from the waters ; and that consequently, whatever explanation may account for the gravel bed on Moel Tryfaen and similar deposits throughout these two counties, the submer- gence theory will not suit. The glacial theory has been compelled by these and other facts to change its form. Instead of one submergence, it is held by a number of geologists that there has been a series of them, and that the laying down of the soil and gravel, and sand, and boulders, which now cover the rocky ribs of the earth is not due to any one submergence or flood. Even by those who admit flood a(5\ion, it is supposed that there has been a series of floods of limited extent, to which the
=* Ibid, pp. 833-836.
352 The New Biblical Guide,
present position of the drift is due. Sir Henry Howorth combats these opinions in a chapter of his *' Glacial Nightmare and the Flood." It bears the significant heading : " The Distribution of the Drift can only be explained by invoking a great Diluvial Catastrophe.''
From the mass of evidence which he brings to bear upon this contention, I make one or two extracts : — " Mr. Bennet says : ' It also seems to me that the glacial drifts, so far as I have seen them, have been all formed at one period^ and that not occupying so great a bulk of time as some would demand for them. Mr. Jukes Brown has reduced the drifts to an upper and lower division, and I should be induced to bring even these two into one. The drifts must have been more or less a tumultuous accumulation of deposits, with little or no order in their arrange- ment, being clay, gravel, and brick earth, according as the ice or water met with such materials as would make such deposits.' ■'*
After adducing other weighty testimonies, he cites the following admissions made by the originator of the glacial theory : —
"In his work on 'Lake Superior,' published in 1850, Agassiz says: 'I maintain that the cause which has transported these boulders in the American continent must have ad^ed simultaneously over the whole ground which these boulders cover, as they present throughout the continent an uninterrupted sheet of loose materials, of the same general nature,
♦ Ibid, pp. 851, 852.
Was this Inundation Universal ? 353
conne(5led in the same general manner, and evidently dispersed at the same time. Moreover, there is no ground at present to doubt the simultaneous disper- sion of the erratics over Northern Europe and Northern America, so that the cause which trans- ported them, whatever it may be, must have adled simultaneously over the whole tra(ft west of the Ural Mountains, and east of the Rocky Mountains . . . that is to say, at the same time over a space embracing two hundred degrees of longtitude.'
" Again, Dana, after noting that the Americans have recognised three separate and distinct periods for the drift, goes on to say : ' This generalization has been principally founded on the chara6lers of the drift of Lake Champlain and that of the valley of the St. Lawrence . . . but before we can adopt these sub-divisions of the glacial period with reference to so man}' distinct modes of adlion of the trans- porting agencies, or of the different degrees of intensity with which they adted, it will be necessary to prove the succession of the beds in question to be general, and not merely local. ... I see no reason in local fadls of this kind to infer that there were three distindl periods wdth reference to the intensity or mode of a(?tion of the dispersing forces. Dr. Bigsby detecfted no evidence of this sub-division of the drift in the region which he examined further to the west.'
" Again, speaking of the rapidity with which the beds were deposited. Professor Dana says : ' It may be queried, considering how much appears to have been done by a single wave, whether one year, or
354 ^^^^ -^^^ Biblical Guide,
even less, would not have sufficed for the upper division, or the upper twenty feet in certain parts of the formation. . . . The deposition of a large part of the older * alluvium,' if the above view is right, was a rapid work, much more rapid than has hitherto been suspected. . . . The evidences of rapid deposition are so many and obvious that they appear to set aside any theory of the glacial cold, which demands a slow decline of the era. . . . On the west side of Hallech's place the beds . . . evince the same free supply of material and rapid deposition under the acflion of the waves.' Professor Dana then goes on to argue that since the beds over certain regions are sandy throughout, and free from upper layers of fine river or bog detritus, such as is deposited about existing mud flats and sand hanks, that it appears quite positive these sandy beds did not lie for a long period beneath the water after the material was deposited.
" The facts and opinions I have just cited, attested by some of the most experienced explorers of the drift beds, seem to me to be conclusive against separating them into different horizons, and in favour of treating them as of one period, and, as it seems to me, distributed and arranged by the manifold operations of one versatile impulse, which could be no other than a mighty flood of waters, which was also capable of sifting them and then laying them down in this fashion."^
After showing how one phenomenon after another (such as the mixing together of sea and fresh-water
* Ibid, pp. 852-854.
Was this Inundation Universal ? 355
shells) is explained by the ad^ion of one enormous flood, he continues : — '' The same cause would explain why the drift beds are so universally barren in the interior of the country, while they contain marine shells and other debris as we approach the maritime distri(?ts, and this not in one locality, but in Scandinavia, North Germany, Great Britain, and America. A general and continuous submergence of the country cannot explain this fadl ; a transient flood of waters does explain it, for in passing from the sea on to the land it would deposit the marine organisms it bore along on the first opportunity, and having sifted them out, would pass on to arrange and mix together whatever soft materials it encount- ered. This would also explain the mixture of shells from different depths in great banks, such as we find at Uddevalla, lying many feet thick, unbroken, and cleared of sand and mud. Assuredly, nothing but rushing water, whose gentleness in carrying fragile objedts without breaking them, even when moving at a tremendous rate, has been often remarked, and will be referred to in the account of the Holmforth flood to be presently described, can explain all this. Certainly no diurnal causes known to me would heap up such banks of shells as we find at Uddevalla and elsewhere."*
'* While we cannot appeal to the sea or to other diurnal effects of water, we are compelled, it seems to me, to have recourse to a rapid and large flow of water, if we are to explain the mixture of materials
* Ibid, p. 856.
356 The New Biblical Guide.
from different neighbourhoods, as, for instance, of pebbles from Cumberland and the South of Scotland, with shells from the Irish Sea at Moel Tryfaen.
" Water moving in this way would sweep up and mix together and then throw down in great heaps when its current was arrested, all the debris that came in its way, and it must have been no ordinary marine submergence, but a widespread wave of water, which would pass over the country mixing the materials it met with. In the case of such a flood again, we should have the materials of the loose covering dominated very largely by the nature of the subjacent strata over wide distric^ts." *
It will be seen that this flood bears an extra- ordinary resemblance to the universal deluge of the Scriptures. So close is the likeness indeed that, if the views of the early geologists (who saw tokens of the work of that deluge everywhere) had been stfll maintained, Sir Henry Howorth would have had no quarrel with them. On the contrary, he desires to bring back again the terms which they invented, and which were lashed with ridicule by later geologists until they disappeared almost entirely from geological text-books. *' I would go a step further," he says, " and not only return to older opinions, but also return to older and better nomenclature. The Pleistocene Flood, though far from being universal, was certainly one of the most widespread catas- trophes which the world has seen. It forms a great dividing line in the superficial deposits as was
* Ibid, p. 857.
Was this Inundation Universal ? 357
maintained long ago, and as such, it is a very useful landmark which ought to appear in our nomenclature, and I do not know of any better terms than ante- diluvian and post-diluvian to mark the two great divisions of the post-Phocene beds."*
It will be observed that this striking admission is guarded by the statement that this Flood was "far from universal." But the reader will search Sir Henry's books in vain for any definition of its Hmits. According to his own admissions, its waters covered the North of Europe to a depth of at least from 1,600 to 2,000 feet. This same Flood was also in the south. It was in Africa. He proves that it poured its destruftive waters over Asia Minor ; that it was in India and in China, and in the Easter n Archipelago; that it was in Australia and in New Zealand ; that it was in the West Indies; and that its fearful ravages extended over North and South America.t The reader will feel with me that if this Flood was not universal, the places where it was not must have been pecuharly protefted, and will be somewhat hard to find.
Ibid, p. xix. t See The Mammoth and the Flood.
358 The New Biblical Guide.
CHAPTER XIII.
Was the Inundation of Geology the Flood of THE Bible ?
BEFORE the evidence can be looked upon as quite complete, one or two points have to be made still more clear. Geology shows that there were inundations previous to that which gave us the Rubbledrift, only it is equally explicit that this last inundation was on a gigantic scale, and was the greatest of them all. But was this last deluge the Flood of the Bible ? Is it quite certain that its waters swept continents and islands after man had appeared upon the earth ? The Bible also tells us that not only did mankind perish — with the exception of those saved in the Ark — but that there was a corresponding destru6lion, also, of other animal life. Does Science complete its testimony by confirming the Bible on each of these details ?
If it be asked, where is the evidence of a flood having swept over and covered the earth, we might well point to the huge travelled boulders and to the gravel and mud beds that are found every- where, and on which I have dwelt at length in a preceding chapter. These are, indisputably, the results of an inundation, and they are found on heights which no ordinary flood, no overflow of
Was this the Flood of the Bible? 359
rivers, or melting of glaciers, can account for. But this is only the first page of the story. We have melancholy, but abounding, testimony, not only that there has been a flood over the entire earth, but also that in that flood animal life perished in huge masses. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, if the ground could but tell the story of the dead of that time which lie hidden in its bosom, there is not a spot where man's cheek would not grow pale, and where his heart would not tremble. The earth is one wide sepulchre of life that then utterly passed away, and which, in all the fulness of its strength, went down quick into the deep. The remains of huge animals — the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and others — have been met with from the earliest times, and have, no doubt, given rise to the stories of giants, griffins, and dragons, which awed the new world's infancy. Pliny tells of a huge body displayed to view by the rending, in an earthquake, of a mountain in Crete. It was forty-six cubits in height. The Carthaginians, surrounding their territory with a ditch, found two skeletons, one twenty-four, and the other twenty- three cubits in length. Similar stories are met with in every subsequent age. Remains were found in France and elsewhere. They are so common in Sicily, and had attracted such universal attention, that we find a reference to them in Don Quixote. The barber, having asked the Don how big the giant Morgante might have been, went on to say : " Moreover, in the island of Sicily, there have been found long bones, and shoulder-bones so large, that their size manifest
360 The New Biblical Guide.
their owners to have been giants, and as big as great towers; for this truth geometry sets beyond doubt."
The truth of these popular conclusions was questioned even in early times, and the opinion was ventured that these were bones, not of men, but of animals. To Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, belongs the honour of having first presented this contention in a scientific form. Cuivier has long since dispelled every doubt, and restored to human knowledge the huge pachydermata of primeval times.
But truth is stranger than fidlion. And, when we have heard the story which investigation has to tell regarding these remains, we shall confess that it is still more astonishing than the imaginations of unscientific times. It is, first of all, essential that we recognize the significance of one common feature of all those bone deposits. Though wild animals die often enough in our own country, and still more abundantly in tropical climes, their remains are very rarely met with. Abundant provision has been made for their removal when dead, as well as for their sustenance when living. Nature has her scavenger corps, which never fails to do its duty. The soft parts swiftly disappear ; and even the bones, when exposed to the air, are soon dissolved. If we find, then, whole cemeteries of skeletons, and pits some- times many feet deep filled with bones — if these bones are ungnawed, and untouched by the weather, and preserve even to this day their delicate angles unmarred by decay — if animals of all kinds are
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 361
heaped together, the beasts of prey as well as the beasts of the field — if the young, as well as the full-grown and the old, are there — there is but one conclusion possible. A common and sudden destruction overtook them. They were the vi(?tims of a catastrophe which not only slew them, but which also buried them !
Let my readers note the following summary of facets and scientific opinions, for which we are indebted to Sir Henry Howorth's book. The Mammoth and the Flood. Those remains are not found in the North of Europe to any great extent, but in the more southern parts they are exceedingly abundant. They have not been found in the drift beds of Upper Suabia, for example ; but they are so plentiful in Lower Suabia that not a railway trench can be dug without exposing them to view. They occur in great numbers in the valley of the Danube, as well as in Hungary and Transylvania. They are so abundant beneath the waters which stretch from Norfolk to Dunkirk, that the place is called ''the burial ground" by sailors. They abound 'Mike ants," Cuvier says, in the valleys of the Chiana and the Arno, in Italy. " The place," he adds, "where one can realise most completely theirabundance, is in the Museum, which the Academy Valdernaise (established at Figline) has formed in a convent of that town, where there are several hundred specimens, filling two rooms, and all found in the neighbourhood. They are so common in the hills bordering the valley there, that the peasants have employed them with stones in building their
362 The New Biblical Guide,
walls." A heap of bones, ten feet square, embedded in diluvial loam, was found in Brunswick, embracing remains of specimens of the mammoth, the horse, the ox, and the stag, which must all have perished together. The skeletons of more than 100 rhinoceros were found together at Seveckenberg. Nordmann discovered the bones of about 100, in a hollow in some limestone rocks, near Odessa. In addition to these, there were the remains of other animals belonging to twenty-seven species.
We might go on with this catalogue, embracing discoveries in our own country and elsewhere ; let it suffice to say that they are an almost constant feature of the gravel and loam deposits. The young and the old are found together. It will be remembered that the Scripture tells us that the birds of the heaven perished as well as the beasts of the earth. The remains of the birds are mingled with those of the terrestrial fauna of the Palceolithic Age. The bones are not gnawed, and the animals were not the prey, therefore, of wild beasts. The bones have not been exposed to the weather, and the animals did not, consequently, die a natural death. How, then, did they perish ? Was it by the overflow of rivers ? That supposition is set aside by a remark of Strahlenberg's. *' Experience has shown," he says, " that more are found in elevations situated near high hills than along the low coast, or the flat tundra." That is, the animals were fleeing. They abandoned the lower levels, and tried to find a refuge on the higher ground, and were there over- taken and engulphed ! That this was the manner
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 363
in which they perished has, in a most wonderful way, been placed beyond the reach of doubt. In Siberia the ground seems to have been raised in the convulsion, and to have become exposed to a degree of cold which had not previously been customary in that latitude. The ground is frozen to a great depth. The consequence is, that the animals were frozen as they were engulphed, and are preserved entire to this day. Their hair, and skin, and flesh, are as fresh as if they had died yesterday. In cases which have been examined, the distension of the nostrils, and the gorging of the blood-vessels of the head with brown coagulated blood, show that the animals died from suffocation. Some were found with the heads in every case turned towards the North, as if they had been overtaken in the very act of flight from waters rushing up from the South.
There are distin(5t proofs, besides, that the end came with a flood. Erman, whose explorations were crowned, among other honours, by the medal of the Royal Geographical Society, says: "The ground at Yakutsk. . . consists, to the depth of at least one hundred feet, of strata of loam, pure sand, and magnetic sand. They have been deposited from waters which, at one time — and, it may he presumed, suddenly — overflowed the whole country, as far as the Polar Sea. In these deepest strata are found twigs, rocks, and leaves of trees of the birch and willow kinds ; and even the most unbiassed observers would at once explain this condition of the soil by comparing it to the annual formation of new banks
364 The New Biblical Guide.
and islands by the floods of the Lena at the present time ; for these consist of similar muddy deposits and the spoils of willow banks, but they lie about no feet higher than the ground which was covered by these ancient floods. Everywhere throughout these immense alluvial deposits are now lying the bones of antediluvian quadrupeds, along with vege- table remains." After speaking of other evidences of the wild rush of the whelming waters, he sums up the whole in the words : " So it is clear that at the time when the elephants and trunks of trees were heaped up together, one flood extended from the centre of the continent to the furthest barrier in the sea as it now is." *
Another striking feature in the discoveries is that of the cave deposits. The animals which had taken refuge there, and were overwhelmed, were subjected to the beating and the pressure of a force which the surging waves of a flood, that mingled their bones with rocks and pebbles brought from distant places, alone could supply. The flesh having been torn and decomposed, the skeletons were disintegrated, and the bones in some instances broken. They were mixed together in the wildest confusion. Many of them were driven into crevices with great force. Mud by the same force was also driven into the openings and crevices of the bones. There are two remarkable cases which bring before us all the pathos of that day of terror. The cave of Santenay, in Burgundy, is situated on an isolated plateau, with steep flanks
* Quoted in The Mammoth and the Flood, pp. 190, 191.
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 365
on all sides, rising to a height of several hundred feet above the plain. The animals had evidently fled to this elevation for safety, panting up the steep acclivity, and seeking refuge at last in the cave. The only agency which could have slain them there, and washed the bones into the crevices in which many of them are now found, was some mighty inundation great enough to cover even that place of fancied security. The other case is described by Spallanzani. In the island of Cerigo, near Corfu, there is a barren mountain, which " is a mile in circumference at the base, and from its base to its summit, is covered with bones both inside and out." * It is called "the mountain of bones." The animals had fled thither in the vain hope of escape. The fleeter, which had fled higher, were overtaken as surely as those which succumbed earlier.
The tale told by the caves is too plain to be mis-read. They speak of one flood, and of one flood only. It was a flood which came with a violent rush, but the violence of which speedily subsided, and was followed by a calm and gradual subsidence. McEnery^ in his Literature of Kenfs Cave, says : " The floor was surprised by a body of mud, which swept up and confounded promiscuously the materials lying upon it, and this body of mud so covering the bottom of the cavern was derived from without, and impelled inwards in a fluid state, and was composed of the adventitious transportable materials which it colled^ed in its march, namely, sand, clay, and
=* Ibid, 217.
366 The New Biblical Guide.
gravel. There is evidence," he says, "0/ only one such irruption, and no evidence of its having been preceded or followed by another. From an inspecStion of the compound charac^ter of the deposit reposing on the substratum of rubble, and enveloping the bones, it is certain that it is merely the sediment of a fluid that held in suspension clay and gravel, which it swept up in passing over the surface of the adjacent country, and threw its waves into the cavern in a tumultuous manner; this is manifest from the ruins of the ancient roof and floor buried in its sediment, in the shape of loose cones and slabs of spar, and in the accumulation against the opposite walls of heaps of gravel and bones. In the upper gallery they were so thinly dispersed that their existence is only traced by a straggling bone. At the foot of the slope, splinters of bone and of stones were driven into the crevices of the rock, and the remains of rodentia, accompanied by fine gravel, injected into the chambers of the skulls and long bones, places into which it was impossible for them to have penetrated without the agency of a fluid in violent commotion. Fragments of jaws and bones perfectly corresponding, that had been divided, not by the teeth of animals, but by mechanical force, were picked up in the upper and lower gallery, at the distance of seventy feet from each other.
" But that it was as transient as it was violent appears from the unrolled condition of the bones, and still more from the state of the album veins. The great majority of it was detained in the narrow
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 367
strait where it was deposited, between upright walls, in heaps, while scattered balls entangled in the mud, and, perhaps, carried down by eddies arising from cavities in the floor, were scattered through all depths ; more of it, from its buoyancy, was floated upwards to the surface ; the whole must have been reduced to powder, the teeth dislodged from their sockets, and the processes of the bones struck off in the supposition of a long-continued agitation of the mass. It further appears that the water subsided by degrees, in proportion as the liquid, in which the clay and gravel were suspended, escaped through the bottom of the cavern. The large masses of rock and heavier bones sank undermost, just as they are found. Marks of its gradual subsidence before the stalagmite had yet acquired consistence may be traced on the sides of the cavern like tide-marks.
"In the Treu des Noutons, M. Dupont found one hundred and fifty antlers of the reindeer, broken by the violence of the waters, and in the Trou du Frontal he remarked that the bones of the thirteen human skeletons were in inexpressible disorder. ' It was,' he says, ' unanimously admitted that they had been mingled with the stones and earth by a great inundation.' Speaking of the Trou de la Rosette, he says the occupants of this cave were ' overwhelmed by a deluge.' M. Le Hon, after describing the reindeer caves of Masset, Bise, Savigne, &c., observes : *At the termination of this period occurred the submergence of Northern Europe, spoken of by M. Dupont, when the waters in Belgium, at the
^,68 The New Biblical Guide.
o
epoch of the red-drift, rose two hundred and fifty metres.'
*'M. Cornalia, the explorer of the Lombard caves, says : ' In fa6t, people ask, are these the inundations which, making the animals flee before them upon the sides of the mountains, trapped them in those holes, their natural refuges, which, after they perished, formed their tomb ? As for the two grottoes . . . of Leglio and of Leorange, the last explanation suits better, and is probably the only true one. Chased into the grottoes by the waters, the bears and the other great mammalia were there drowned, and their carcases floated upon the internal waters, until, through the decomposition of their soft parts, they were able to gain the bottom of the cavern in its deepest part at the same time that the water, now become tranquil, deposited there the lime and the fine matter which till then it had held in suspension.'
"In regard to the Gibraltar caves. Captain Brome, who explored them with great devotion, speaking of the Genista cavern number 2, says: 'The remains presented the same appearance as those found in the first cave, as regards being semi-cracked, not rolled or water-washed, and very few with signs of having been gnawed. Everything almost was fragmentary, very few whole bones being met with. . . The scattered, broken state of everything found, together with the fac5l that the objects were almost invariably discovered near and under the sides of the cavern and passages, appears to me to mdicate that these
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 369
appearances would only have been caused by some convulsion, accompanied by flood.'
" I will conclude these extracts with one from the Duke of Argyll's address to the Edinburgh Geological Society on its fiftieth anniversary, in which he sums up the case before us in what seems to me unanswerable language : — ' I pass now to another fact and problem connected with Pleistocene Geology, which is of the highest interest and importance. I refer to the bone-caves of the South of Europe — caves not like almost all those found in this country, into which bones, more or less numerous, have been brought by men or by hyaenas, but caves packed from floor to ceiling with a breccia, mainly consisting of the skeletons of the great Pleistocene Mammalia, of the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the mammoth, the lion, and the large associated graminivora. Chiefly in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean such caves have been found in abundance, containing such a mass of animal remains, that it is certain that no agency but that of water could have brought them and huddled them up together in such heaps at one spot. For many years it has appeared to me that no existing theory accounted satisfactorily for such an assemblage of such creatures under such conditions. Lyell's explanation seems to me very unsatisfacftory. In the Morea, and other limestone countries, it is said, some rivers lose themselves in swallow-holes, and run the rest of their course — or long distance of their course — through channels underground. It is assumed that the great pachyderms, during a long
370 T^he New Biblical Guide.
course of ages, were perpetually tumbling into such rivers, and were being carried, each separately and singly, into the subterranean channels, until at last in particular places those channels became choked with their remains. I confess I doubt whether it is usual for the great pachyderms to die in the beds of rivers after this fashion, and to be carried down so often into swallow-holes. These great creatures generally retire to the depths of the forest when they sicken, and under ordinary conditions the cases would be rare in which they would be entombed in this way. But there are other conditions, not ordinary, but occasional, under which it is very conceivable that they should be swept into such openings in the rocks ; and what are such conditions? Why, simply these — that some inundation submerged the haunts of these creatures before they had time to escape ; and that this inundation was accompanied, and perhaps partly caused, by simultaneous move- ments in the earth's, crust, which opened swallow- holes, both more numerous and more capacious than those which had existed before. And here it must be observed that one important part of this explanation is not theory, but unquestionable fac5l. It is certain that these caves and fissures, so packed with carcases, are now almost universally dissociated and broken off from the old lines of drainage in which they discharged the fundlion of river channels. It is certain, therefore, that the old surfaces of country in which they occupied this position, have been totally destroyed ; and this destruction can only have
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 371
been due to great fraftures and great bendings of the underlying rocks. . . . Nothing, I think, but the bondage of a theory which is not founded on any sound philosophy, could banish from our consideration the high probability of one single explanation, which is this — that in very recent times great changes in the moulding of the earth's surface over a great part of Europe occurred with sufficient rapidity to cause a great destruction of animal hfe, and during the progress of a wide submergence to sweep the bodies of the drowned creatures into fissures and swallow- holes, which were opened or enlarged at the time.' " * The same testimony is repeated from Alaska, from North and South America, and from Australia. " One of the most experienced Austrahan geologists " contends that a mighty inundation will alone account for the faas. Everywhere the animals of the old world perished. They perished in masses. They perished by water. The mammoth and other species, till then numerous and wide-spread, became extindl. Earth saw the last of them. There is but one step wanting to complete the testimony of geology to Genesis, and to make ample and generous amends for sad suspicions and antagonism ; and we have now to point to the proofs that man also perished at the same time, and by the same cause. What, then I it may be asked, was man a contemporary of those enormous beasts ? The reply is, that not only was he then an inhabitant of the earth, but that he had also attained to some considerable facility in the art
* Ibid, pp. 219-224.
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of pictorial representation. Pictures of the mammoths and of other animals are found upon smoothed bones. These pic^tures, which give one no mean idea of the capacity of primeval man, prove that he must have lived before these animals passed away. But there is no necessity for marshalHng evidence in support of a fact which is now universally admitted. Weapons and instruments, formed of flint and bone, worked by human hands, are found in diluvial deposits and in caves along with the remains of the animals overtaken by the inundation. The bones of the antediluvians lie to-day commingled with those which belonged to the animals which were their dread or their prey. Schmerling, after years of patient and laborious investigation, declared it to be "beyond doubt that human remains were buried at the same time, and by the same cause as the remains of the extindl animals." He examined about forty caves, and found human implements in all, and human remains in many. M. Dupont, ''the famous explorer of the Belgian caves," says that man " inhabited the country before that huge inundation covered the whole of Belgium and the North of France. I have found manifest proofs of it everywhere." After describing the kind of life led by these Palaeolithic men, he continues : " But the end of that ancient age has come. Torrents of water rush over the land. The inhabitants, driven from their abodes, in vain seek a refuge on the hill-tops. Death strikes them, and a dismal cavern will be the tomb of the un- fortunates who witnessed this immense catastrophe."
Was this the Flood of the Bible? 373
"To me, nothing can be plainer," says Sir Henry Howorth, "than that the complete and sharply- defined disappearance of a type of man with a distinct fauna and flora, and its being replaced by an equally sharply-defined new type of man, with a new and distinct fauna and flora, means the sudden, the widespread, and complete destrudlion of the one, and an entirely separate and distinct new beginning caused by the old desolated distridl being re-occupied by a fresh migration. That it means, in faa, some cataclysm such as I have argued for on so many other grounds in these pag^s, and which is supported by an ever-increasing and ever-converging array of faas. I do not objeft to making immense drafts upon time when necessary, but I do objedt to sacrificing fadl; and logic at the shrine of uniformity, and to fancy we cover our impotence by an appeal to the ' grey years of eld.'
" I believe that the same potent cause which swept away the mammoth and the rhinoceros, the cave- bear and the hyaena from Europe, also swept away Palaeolithic man, and that this cause was as sudden as it was widespread.
" It seems to me that the human skeletons and bones which occur unweathered in precisely the same condition as those of the wild animals which accompany them, must point precisely the same moral. Like those of the extind^ animals, the human bones are buried deeply in undisturbed loess, &c. There is no pretence for saying that the human skeletons which have been hitherto found, and which
374 ^^^^ -^^^^ Biblical Guide.
were for the most part disintegrated and scattered, were buried artificially. The ground where they have occurred is imdistiirhed ground, and it does not seem arguable, therefore, that the remains of man, any more than the remains of the accompanying extindl animals, were artificially buried. If not artificially buried by his companions, I cannot understand how his remains, unweathered and fresh, should have been overlain by great depths of loam and loess in situations far above the rivers and their overflow; and in distric^ts where such overflow, even when it occurs, only deposits layers of loam, the thickness of brown paper at the most, except as I argued in the case of the extincft animals, by the operation of a great flood of waters. I do not know anything else in nature, competent in the first place, to destroy human life over a wide area, without obliterating or injuring the remains, and at the same time competent to entomb them in continuous masses of loam or gravel." *
The reader will have noticed the term *' Palaeo- lithic " which we have just used. The truth with which we are now dealing has made its impress upon the very terminology of geological science. The distinction between " Palaeolithic men " (that is, ancient stone men) and " Neolithic men " (new stone men), is really a testimony to the truth of Scripture. It indicates the existence of a deep and broad distinction between the men who were contemporaries of the mammoth, and the men
* Ibid, pp. 252, 253.
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 375
who came after. It is a distincSlion which is not confined to the weapons of the two races. There was a deeper difference — a difference not in frame, nor in abihty, but in habits and pursuits. The old race were hunters, the new were cultivators. The first had no domesticated animals, the latter had several. The first lived in caves, the latter had houses and hamlets on rudely fortified heights. The old race seem, then, to have been rough, hard, unsympathetic, and violent ; the new to have been gentler and kindlier. Now all this is exadlly what we should expecl: to find, if the statements of Scripture are to be taken as true history, not to speak of their being accepted as the words of Him who reads the secrets of the heart. The new race, no matter what the sons of Noah may have previously been — the new race could not possibly have walked to and fro in a world purged with so terrific a judgment, and not have been chastened in spirit.
But the agreement is still more wonderful. The new race was not the heir of the old. There is a long interval between the disappearance of Palaeolithic men in Europe, and the appearance there of Neolithic men. There is a distinct and wide gap between the two events. Mr. James Geikie says : " The cave deposits . . . testify to the remarkable fa(5f that the Old Stone Age did not graduate into the New Stone Age. The records of the latter epoch are separated very markedly from those of the former." And again, *' Between Palaeolithic and Neolithic man there is
376 The New Biblical Guide,
thus a wide gulf of separation." Summing up in one sedlion of his book, Sir Henry Howorth writes : " This completes the European and Siberian evidence, and I venture to think that few scientific conclusions can be supported by such an array of converging fa(5ls, and have such an absence of any real arguments of facfts against them. I submit with every confidence that I have proved the position that the extin(5lion of the mammoth in the Old World was sudden, and operated over a wide continental area, involving a wide-spread hecatomb, in which man, as well as other creatures, perished ; that this destruction was caused by a flood of waters which passed over the land, drowning the animals, and then burying their remains ; and that this catastrophe forms a great break in human continuity, no less than in the biological records of animal life, and is the great divide where history really begins." *
He sums up similarly the evidence presented in North America. *' Man, it would seem, therefore, has left his remains in America as in the Old World, in beds of distinctly pleistocene age. These remains compel us to adopt similar conclusions there as here. Thus, Dr. Abbot, who has given several figures of the implements he found, which are apparently of Palaeolithic type, says very justly : * It is not pracfticab^e to trace any connection between the characteristic chipped Palaeolithic implements and the polished, pecked, and finely- wrought objeCls of Indian origin; the one form certainly not having any necessary
* Ibid, p. 256.
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 377
conne61:ion with the other. The wide gap that exists between a full series of each of the two forms is readily recognized when the two are brought together, and no one will hesitate to acknowledge it ; but merely verbal descriptions of distin^ive characl:er- istics, prominent as they are to the eye, convey but little meaning.' The faft that the implements were deposited with the gravel is shown, not only by the undisturbed characl:er of the latter, but also that they have been found under the great boulders which pervade the gravel. Thus Dr. Abbot refers to one found twenty-one feet below the surface, direftly under and in contacl: with a boulder, weighing 100 lbs., a second boulder, of much larger size, being five feet above. He adds : ' The character of the mass, which was that of the bluff on the bank of the river near Trenton, was such as to render it impossible that this specimen could have reached this position subsequently to the deposition of the containing bed.'
"That the cause which buried both boulders and implements was earlier than the appearance of Neolithic man, is shown by the fadl that no relics of the latter are found with the old implements. The notion that these implements were dropped for amusement, or out of wantonness, or for any other cause, by the Indians into a river, is disposed of by the fact, that while many of them are fresh, others are weathered, and show that they have been exposed for a long time before they were buried, and were swept away with the fresh-looking ones by the same
^y8 The New Biblical Guide.
potent cause. This cause, it seems inevitable to conclude, was a flood of water.
" Dr. Abbot pertinently says : ' It is here strenuously maintained that the forces that caught up these later gravels also gathered in facft the rude implements that now give such interest to the deposit. It is evident, from the condition of some and the depth at which many are found, that they were made prior to the foundation of the containing bed, and were lost or discarded when the floods swept down the valley.
" ' These implements are indicative of man's presence, and have been placed in their present positions, varying three to forty feet in depth, by the same agency that laid down the gravels.'
" Every geologist who has written about these gravels has, so far as I know, invoked the agency of immense floods of water to account for them, most of them adding a corollary to which I completely demur, that the flood of water proceeded from a melting glacier. The extent of the flood may be gauged from a single sentence. 'Professor Dana,' says Professor Lewis, in an exhaustive study of the floods produced in Southern New England during the melting of the glacier, ' shows that the Connedlicut River rose one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty feet above its present level.' Many authorities might be cited to show the universality of this flood.
'' This concludes my case in regard to North America, and it seems to me to present a converging force which is irresistible, especially when read with
Was this the Flood of the Bible ? 379
the evidence already adduced from the Old World. I shall be asked, no doubt, to account for such a catastrophe as I postulate. Although it is no part of my present purpose to burden my account with hypotheses which may very well be postponed till all my faas are produced, I would remark that America presents in its great vertebral chain, the Rocky Mountains, evidences that vast revolutions have occurred in the crust of the earth in quite recent times, which were probably sudden or very rapid, and which would inevitably set in irresistible motion any masses of water within their reach. The absence of erratics from the Rocky Mountains is, it seems to me, only explicable on the theory that that range is a comparatively recent one. So is the presence on their flanks of immense sheets of auriferous gravels, with bone and human remains, recalling the lessons deduced by Murchison from the Ural Mountains. So is the fact that the Rocky Mountains, as Mr. Murray and others have pointed out, form only a slight zoological barrier compared with the smaller, but probably much older, ranges of the Cascade Mountains," &c. *
In one word, the old race of men ended suddenly and completely. They ended suddenly and entirely everywhere. There never has been a more complete and clearly defined disappearance in the world's whole history. We trace ancient man up to a certain point, and then he vanishes utterly. Young and old perish, and there is an end of them. Not only so.
* Ibid, pp. 322-334.
A I
380 The New Biblical Guide.
The animals, with which he shared the earth, perish also. They perish in multitudes, young and old together. They perish in a flood, and there is an utter end of them. The bones of the ancient men and of the ancient animals are mixed up together, and above these there are no animal remains and no human remains for ages after. Then new men and new animals appear — the animals and the men whose descendants hold the lands to-day, and who passed out gradually from the new cradle of humanity to re-possess the earth !
Could any proof be more complete, or anything form a grander vindication of the Word which said: '' And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beasts, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man : all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died"? And what is the lesson for to-day from this old strife of science and Scripture, now so near its close ? Is it not that the faith which rests on God's Word is safer than that which- rests on man's beliefs, and that they who trust in the Lord " shall not be ashamed nor confounded, world without end"?
The Unity of Man. 381
CHAPTER XIV. The Unity of Man.
FOLLOWING the world's story as it has been revealed in Scripture, we now come to the re- peopling of the earth. We may not have looked upon the ninth and tenth chapters of Genesis as of great importance. The tenth chapter especially may have been regarded as a dry and profitless list of names which once may have meant something, but which had long ago lost their significance. Title-deeds are not generally pleasant, or even easy, reading ; but we know that in many cases there could be no greater calamity than their loss. And these are the title- deeds of the nations. They are the warrant for the incorporation of every people under the sun in the great family of man. When we read: "These are the three sons of Noah ; and of them was the whole earth overspread. . . . These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations : and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood" (Genesis ix. 19; x.32), we discern the Divine image on the brow even of the savage and of the slave. In the light shed by these words we grow to love and to reverence humanity. Beneath all differences in customs, in culture, and in speech, we discern our brethren, the sons of God.
The knowledge of this truth we owe to the Scrip- ture alone. The traditions, which have preserved the
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memory of the Deluge, strangely enough fail us here. Ovid tells how Deucalion and his wife, weeping over the earth's desolation and terrified at their own loneliness, entreat with tears the counsel of the gods.
ESQUIMAUX.
They are told to cast their mother's bones behind their backs. After long and doubtful pondering, Deucalion concludes that by their mother the earth must be meant, and that
" The stones In her capacious body are the bones :
The Unity of Man. 383
These we must cast behind." "Descending from the mount, they first unbind Their vests, and veil'd, they cast the stones behind : The stone (a miracle to mortal view. But long tradition makes it pass for true) Did first the rigour of their kind expel, And suppled into softness as they fell."
Gradually they were changed into flesh and blood and bone, and grew into human form.
" What the man threw assumed a manly face.
And what the wife, renewed the female race. y '/^
Hence we derive our nature ; born to bear Laborious life, and hardened into care."
Here the link of conne6lion between those who escaped from the flood and those who came after them is broken. There is no link of connedlion even between these last. Each individual springs up a new creation. Quite in keeping with this was the belief of the Athenians that they had sprung from the soil. The term Aittochthones was applied to other peoples, in the belief that they also had had ai like origin. What was thus lost in the early tradi- tions it was impossible to recover by investigation. There is, consequently, nothing whatever in human literature to place by the side of this part of Scrip- ture. The truth of man's brotherhood furnished neither impulse nor restraint for Greek or Roman, Egyptian or Babylonian. And yet it will be noticed that, though all around is dense darkness, and though there is absolutely not one ray of light either in the wisdom of Egypt in which Moses was brought up, nor in the records of Babylon whence
384
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Abraham came, there is no dimness whatever here. There is not the sHghtest indication that the writer is balancing the testimonies of various traditions, or is trusting to the di(ftates of his own judgment.
A BUSHMAN.
Everything is clear and definite. To every side the sacred writer turns, and, ere he passes on to tell the story of the one chosen race, he puts on record the relationship in which the other nations stand to each other and to this. And here we trace the hand of God. Those lines are not of man, other- wise the knowledge they communicate would not be
The Unity of Man. 385
found here only. They are of Him to whom the night shineth as the day, and from whose eye the path of no race and of no man has ever been hid. It was a word of hope, too. God was about to choose one people for Himself, and, just as the record is about to deal with that, the nations are here arranged and numbered, showing that they were neither for- gotten nor uncared for. The hght about to be kindled would yet throw its brightness over every land; the fountain to be opened in Zion would visit with its streams all nations !
There are several points in these two chapters — and especially in the loth — which, like everything in revelation that passes beyond the narrow bounds of human knowledge, have been denied and turned into a reproach. We take, first, this grand charter of human freedom — the brotherhood of all nations. Had men given up their trust in the Word of God, that truth would long since have been erased from the human mind. As we have seen, there was nothing either in tradition, or in history outside of Scripture to support it. The enmities and inveterate prejudices, which separated the peoples of the earth, protested against it. The wide differences in the colour of the skin, in the character of the hair, and in the shape of the features and of the head of the various races, made its reception difficult ; and there were not wanting those who, in the name alike of science and of common sense, denounced it, and turned the statements of Scripture into an argument against its claim to be a revelation. To account for the differences,
386
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.\
La Peyrere published in 1655 his theory of pre-adamite races. Voltaire declared that no one who was not blind could doubt *' that the Whites, the Negroes,
A HOTTENTOT.
t
the Albinos, the Hottentots, the Chinese, and the Americans belong to entirely different races." This became the settled conviction of the T^rench philoso-
The Unity of Man.
387
phers. Virey, in 1801, maintained that there was a radical distin(5tion between the Negro and the White. A. Desmouhns contended for eleven different species, while Bory de Saint Vincent held that the number could not be less than fifteen. So strong did the case seem against the plain sense, or, let us say the ordinary interpretation, of Scripture, that, as usual, timid friends advised that it should be given up. Men, who were regarded as the very bulwarks of the churches, and their mightiest protedlion against the "oppositions of Science," proposed to capitulate. Why, it was asked, should we imperil the whole fabric of revelation by insisting upon the dogma of the unity of the human race ? There was cer- tainly room to suppose, it was urged, that other races were created as well as that which descended from Adam. Whether God had breathed into their nostrils the breath of life and fashioned them in His own image was negro and greek profiles. not said. There was thus a delightful vagueness in the new interpretation which gave infinite room for pride and prejudice and wrong. But man's charter was gone. The Scripture, it was said, concerned itself only with the Adamites. It was their sin that was punished by the flood — a flood which the others
388
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The Unity of Man. 389
were not affe(5led by. This doctrine entered, strange to say, even into the domain of diplomacy. When sore pressed by the British and French Governments on the subjedl of Negro slavery, the American Minister, Mr. Calhoun, maintained that the Blacks 1/ were not of the same species with ourselves. Our Government is said to have been so disconcerted by this line of argument that it ceased its remonstrances ! This do(ftrine of the Scripture is still strongly contested. If the dodlrine of evolution is to be accepted, and if man is descended from the ape, then mankind must have sprung from various ances- tors; and, I might add, new accessions to our race must be springing from various ancestors still. For if evolution of higher forms of life from lower is a law of nature, that law must be operating now. It is needless to say that there is absolutely no trace whatever of any such process; and the remains of primeval man refuses completely to support any theory of development. I give, on the opposite page, an engraving from a photograph of a skeleton of an antediluvian, or palaeolithic, man found in the cave at Mentone. It is regarded as one of the oldest human skeletons yet discovered; but this man was in structure as far removed from the brutes as we are who live to-day. It is the skeleton, in fa6t, of one of the noblest specimens of the human species. Mr. Riviere, who published the photograph, describes the skeleton as " that of a man six feet high, with a rather long but large head, high and well-made fore- head, and very large facial angle — 85°." A great deal
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has been made of a skull and a skeleton found at
Neanderthal ; but the brain capacity, says Huxley, is simply that of an average man, and "in no sense," he adds, ''can the Neander- thal bones be regarded as the remains of a human be- ing interme- diate between man and the apes."
One of the most striking differences between the various branches of the human family is that of colour. But the researches of science have shown that no valid argument for difference in origin can be built upon that. The accompanying illustra- tions show corresponding se(ftions of the skin of the White and of the Negro. The reader will note at a glance that the strud^ure of the skin is in both cases the same. The only difference is the black colour in the lower cells of the upper portion of the Negro
SECTION OF THE SKIN OF A WHITE MAN, GREATLY MAGNIFIED.
The Unity of Man. 3^1
skin. "The difference in colouring," says Quatre- fages, the great French anthropologist, in his book on "The Human Species," published in "The International Scientific Series,"* is easily explained. We now know beyond a doubt that the skin of the Negro is exactly the same in composition as that of the White. We find the same layers in both : the dermis, the mucous layer, and the epidermis, present exadlly the same struct- ure. The layers are
merely thicker in the Negro. In these two great races, the mucous layer, situa- ted between the other two, is the
seat of colour. It is formed of cells, which are of a pale yellow colour in the fain White, of a
SECTION OF THE SKIN OF A NEGRO, GREATLY MAGNIFIED.
Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.
392 The New Biblical Guide,
( more or less yellow colour in the dark White, and of a blackish brown in the Negro. External in-
(â– fluences have, moreover, an influence on the organ, and modify the coloured secretion. Simon has shown
/ that freckles are nothing more than spots upon the
skin of the White presenting the chara(5leristics of
, the skin of the Negro. He also says that even the
: attempt to divide the races of mankind along the line jof colour is founded upon "entirely erroneous ideas. R.mong the Whites there are entire populations whose skin is as black as that of the darkest Negro. I I shall only quote the Bishareen and other tribes inhabiting the African coasts of the Red Sea, the Black Moors of Senegal, &c. On the other hand,
, there are Yellow Negroes, as the Bosjesmans, who
/ are the colour of light mahogany, or of cafe au lait,
i as Livingstone tells us."*
\ The differences in the hair give quite as insecure a basis for the denial of the unity of the race. The woolly-like hair of the Papuas is used as one of their prominent adornments, and is sometimes amplified until it is about three feet in circumference. " I have seen," says Prichard, in his great work on The Natural History of Man, " some Europeans whose hair is nearly, if not quite, as crisp as that of a Negro. Even among Negroes themselves there is a very great variety ; and if we take the entire mass of the black native races of Africa into comparison, we shall find tribes among them who, similar in complexion and in most other peculiarities, yet differ
* Pp. 48, 49-
The Unity of Man.
393
in regard to their hair, and present every possible gradation, from a completely crisp, or what is termed woolly, hair, to merely curled and even to flowing hair."*
A PAPUA OF NEW GUINEA,
There are very great differences also in the height of various populations. We present side by side representations of the tallest and of the most dimunitive races — the tall Patagonian, and the dwarf African Negro. But these differences are small in
*P.99.
A PATAGONIAN.
AN AFRICAN NEGRO DWARF.
^ The Unity of Man. 395
comparison with those among horses and among dogs, which nevertheless are admitted to be of the same species. Besides, too, the same variations in height are found among all nations and even in most families. Like many other difficulties, this seemed at first of a stupendous character. The African pygmies had taken their places among Greek tradi- tions, and were mentioned by Herodotus, but no one accepted the descriptions as serious. The surprise was considerable, therefore, when it was discovered that these supposed fables were merely an exaggeration of undeniable facts. The Dokos were first brought to the knowledge of Europe and of modern science through the narrative of a Galla slave named Dilbo, a native of Enarea. He had visited the country to the south-west of Kaffa, where the Dokos reside. He related his experiences to Dr. Krapf, a missionary. *'The country of Doko," writes Dr. Krapf, "is a month's journey distant from Kaffa, and it seems that only those merchants who are dealers in slaves go farther than Kaffa . . . Dilbo begins with stating that the people of Doko, both men and women, are said to be not taller than boys nine or ten years old. They never exceed that height, even in the most advanced age. They go quite naked ; their principal food are ants, snakes, mice, and other things which commonly are not used as food. They are said to be so skilful in finding out the ants and snakes that Dilbo could not refrain from praising them greatly on that account. They are so fond of this food, that even when they become acquainted
B I
396
The New Biblical Guide.
with better aliment in Enarea and Kaffa, they are, nevertheless, frequently punished for following their inclination of digging in search of ants and snakes as soon as they are out of sight of their masters. The skins of snakes are worn about their necks as ornaments. They also climb trees with great skill to fetch down the fruits, and in doing this they stretch their hands downwards and their legs upwards. They live in extensive forests of bamboo and other woods, which are so thick that the slave- hunter finds it very difficult to follow them in these retreats."
Dilbo's account has been amply confirmed by subsequent researches. Stanley's experiences, when passing through their territory, will be fresh in the memory of my readers. To compare these pygmies with ourselves inevitably suggests a difference in origin ; but a larger knowledge sweeps the suggestion aside. From the elaborate table of the average heights of the various races, given by Quatrefages,* I select the following : —
Feet. Inches. The smallest Bosjesmans and
|
Esquimaux ... |
..• 3 |
3'37 |
|
The average Bosjesmans |
... 4 |
5-93 |
|
Smallest Lapps .. |
... 4 |
6-33 |
|
Tallest Bosjesmans |
... 4 |
8-89 |
|
The Guanches ... |
" 4 |
8-97 |
|
The average Semangs ... |
... 4 |
9-00 |
|
The Papuans |
... 4 |
10*62 |
|
♦ The Human Species, p. |
57- |
The Unity of Man.
The smallest Chinese ...
The smallest Patagonians
The average Lapps
The smallest Sclaves
The smallest French
The smallest Germans
The average Cochin-Chinese ..
The Peruvians ...
The average Malays
The average Australians
The tallest Lapps
The average Australians
The average Fuegians ...
The French of the South )
The average Chinese )
The Magyars ...
The Jews ...
The Bavarians ...
The tallest Fuegians
The average French classes
The Austrian Germans
The Hottentots
The French of the North
The Esquimaux of Savage Island
The Russians
The Japanese
The Germans
The French upper classes (average)
The Fijians
The Negroes of Sekoto...
397
working
|
Feet. |
Inches |
|
4 |
11-84 |
|
5 |
0*24 |
|
5 |
0-31 |
|
5 |
0*62 |
|
5 |
075 |
|
5 |
i-8i |
|
5 |
2*00 |
|
5 |
279 |
|
5 |
2-87 |
|
5 |
2-99 |
|
5 |
3-50 |
|
5 |
3-66 |
|
5 |
3-98 |
|
5 |
4-17 |
|
5 |
4*37 |
|
5 |
4*45 |
|
5 |
4*68 |
|
5 |
4-96 |
|
5 |
5-24 |
|
5 |
5*27 |
|
5 |
5-47 |
|
5 |
5-56 |
|
5 |
5-98 |
|
5 |
6-o6 |
|
5 |
6-IO |
|
5 |
6*14 |
|
5 |
6-i8 |
|
5 |
6-31 |
|
5 |
6-34 |
398
The New Biblical Guide.
Feet.
5
5
5
Inches.
6-38 6*50 7*oo
7-48
8-23
9-17
10*98
0-48
2*6l
2*96 3'39 375 3-98
that though the
The average Belgians ...
The Esquimaux of Boothia Sound
The Austrian Roumanians
The tallest English (average) (
The tallest Australians ,, i
The Bengal Sepoys
The New Zealanders
The Tahitians
Mhaya
Schiffer Islanders
New Zealanders (tallest)
Patagonians of the North
Patagonians of the South
Schiffer Islanders (tallest) A glance at this table will show extremes differ widely, they are linked together by slender gradations, which effectually dispel the illusion. If we banish the pygmy from the family of Adam because of his dimunitive stature, he will not go without taking the Esquimaux with him; and these will drag the Lapps also away; and the Lapps the next in height, until we ourselves, and still taller races, will be compelled to follow. Climate, food, and habit are now recognized as the potent factors
iin these changes. The French have decreased in height in the islands of Mexico, and the British have grown taller in Kentucky, and in the Western States of America.
It has fared quite as badly with the attempt to found a distinction upon differences in the shape of the skull. To these differences modern science has
The Unity of Man.
399
devoted an immense amount of attention. Indeed, in the estimation of eminent anthropologists, the pursuit has become a hobby, and the matter has been overdone. M. Broca, who has collec^ted a large number of measurements, showing the proportion between the length and the breadth of the skull in various races, has shown " that it is not wise to -go too far in this direction." * The weight of the brain
|
Brain |
capacity ir inches. |
I cubic |
|
|
RACE. |
|||
|
Mean. |
Highest. |
Lowest. |
|
|
British |
96 |
105 |
91 |
|
Germans ) |
! 114 |
] 70 |
|
|
Anglo-Americans ) |
90 |
]' 97 |
)â– 82 |
|
Arabs |
89 |
^.8 |
84 |
|
Greco-Egyptians of the Catacombs ... |
88 |
74 |
|
|
Irish |
87 |
97 j |
78 |
|
Malays |
86 |
68 |
|
|
African Negroes |
83 |
99 |
65 |
|
Chinese |
82 |
91 |
70 |
|
Hindoos |
80 |
96 |
68 |
|
Mexcians |
79 |
92 |
67 |
|
Australians |
lOI |
58 |
|
|
Peruvians I |
75 |
83 |
68 |
|
Hottentots J |
83 |
63 |
has also been investigated with quite as great enthusiasm, but without obtaining any facts which would destroy the unity of the human species. Morton's tables (see above) give the capacity of the average British brain as 96 cubic inches, and that of the Australians and Hottentots as 75, a difference of only 15 cubic inches. When we recollect that even
Ibid, p. 371.
400
The New Biblical Guide.
this lowest is twice the brain capacity of the highest ape, we reahse how impossible is the attempt made by those who would prove ''the descent" or "the ascent " of man from ape ancestors.
The table given by Morton, the American anthro- pologist, shows again how, notwithstanding these differences, the various races ot men are linked together by the bands of brotherhood. The extremes have their difference diminished by almost insensible degrees. That there are differences, again, in the protruding jaw and the sloping forehead everyone is
HEAD OF A GALLA NEGRO.
HEAD OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
aware. The reader will find above a contrast which speaks for itself. No one attempts to deny these variations ; but the endeavour to divide mankind into several species by means of these characteristics has utterly failed. Even Haeckel, the German evolu- tionist, confesses that the attempt has been a failure. '' In these last ten years," he says, '* quite enough time and labour have been spent in studying and
The Unity of Man.
401
measuring minutely the cranial forms without any corresponding result. In fact, within the limits of a single race, for example among the peoples on the Mediterranean, the shape of the cranium can vary even to the most extreme forms." These differences suggest- ed to the Dutch Physician, Camper, who lived in the end of the eighteenth century, a means of measuring them. His system of measurement was as follows : — He drew a line, N C, from the opening of the ear to the base ^Q of the nostrils. Then anotherline,M I, was drawn from the most prominent part of the brow to the por- tion of the upper lip where the upper teeth have their root. The angle formed by these two hnes is what he called the facial angle. No one disputes that the angle so drawn varies very greatly.
402
The New Biblical Guide.
and varies greatly (as a general rule) among some of the races of mankind.
The above two heads are from Greek sculptures. They present very different types from the two which follow. But these represent some of the ancestors of
the French people, and are taken from profiles in one of the ancient cemeteries of France. And observation has effectually killed whatever shadow of argument may have been supposed to lie in these characteristics.
The Unify of Man. 403
The protruding of the lower jaw is not confined to inferior races, nor the opposite characteristic to superior races. A German anatomist has formed a collection of skulls from the neighbourhood of Gottingen, and " the scientists who have examined them were surprised," says Vigouroux,* "to see the Negro and Indian skulls which the Hanoverian soil had produced! "
Pritchard, in his Natural History of Man, sums up the results of the investigation as follows : " The different races of men are not distinguished from each other by strongly marked, uniform, and permanent distinctions, as are the several species belonging to any given tribe of animals. All the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations ; and there is, moreover, scarcely an instance in which the actual transition cannot be proved to have taken place." f But this battle was really fought and won long ago. From the first, naturalists of the very greatest name, Linnaeus and Buffon, for example, maintained that the teaching of Scripture was also the only possible conclusion of Science. Prichard, whose Researches into the Physical History of Mankind has long been the most important work on the subject, proved that Science refused to be responsible for the objections which had been raised in her name. How completely the ground was taken away from under the feet of those who contended for the existence of different species of men, may be seen from the following passage extracted from The
* Les Livres Saints et la Critique Rationaliste. t. HI., 361. t Page 473.
404 The New Biblical Guide.
Vestiges of Creation. We need hardly remind the reader that The Vestiges was written to advocate quite a different theory of Creation from that of the Bible. The Vestiges of Robert Chambers was the forerunner of The Origin of Species of Charles Darwin. Chambers's theory was that there were two origins of man, "one for the Asiatic, American and European varieties, and another for the African." The significance of what we are now to quote will therefore be appreciated. After speaking of the six leading varieties of the human family, he says : —
'' Each of these is distinguished by certain general features of so marked a kind, as to suggest to many enquirers that they have had distinct or independent origins. Of these peculiarities, colour is the most conspicuous ; the Caucasians are generally white, the Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans red. The opposition of two of these in particular, white and black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seems almost necessary to suppose separate origins. Of late years, however, the whole of this question has been subje(5^ed to a rigorous investigation by a British philosopher (Dr. Prichard), who has been remarkably successful in adducing evidence that the human race might have had ONE ORIGIN, for anything that can be inferred from external peculiarities.
'' It appears from this inquiry, that colour and other physiological characfters are of a more super- ficial and accidental nature than was at one time supposed. One fact is, at the very first, extremely
The Unity of Man. 405
startling, that there are nations, such as the inhabi- tants of Hindostan, apparently one in descent, which, nevertheless, contains groups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those important features on which much stress has been laid. Some other facets, which may be stated in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations — that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kaffirs, whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the best European nations. While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established ; for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to show the possibility of a natural transition by generation from the black to the white complexion, and from the white to the black. True whites (apart from Albinos) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had inter- mingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan^ where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other tribes of the same nation.*
* " Buckingham's travels among the Arabs. This fa<5t is the more valuable to the argument as having been set down with no regard to any kind of hypothesis." —(Note by Author of The Vestiges).
4o6 The New Biblical Guide.
*' The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effecft in modifying the human figure in the course of generations, and this even in its osseous strud^ure. About 200 years ago, a number of people were driven b}- a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim and Down in Ireland, towards the sea- coast, where they have ever since been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances even for Ireland ; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive kind, project- ing jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses, high cheek bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature. These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and barbarous condition all over the world ; it is particularly seen m the Australian Aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main, as clearly a result of good external conditions. 'Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food,' says Buffon, ' makes the human race degenerate. All these people w^ho live miserably are ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the country people are not so beautiful as those who live in towns ; and I have often remarked that in those villages where the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome and have better countenances.' He might have added that elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires,
The Unity of Man. 407
co-operate with food in increasing the elegance of a race of human beings."
After referring to some other faclis, the author adds the following remarkable confession : " We have but obscure notions of the laws which regulate this variability within specific limits, but we see them continually operating, and they are obviously favourable to the supposition that all the great families of men may have been of one stock."
The candour of these confessions must be admired; but, to anyone acquainted with the subject, no other course was possible. Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley distinctly admit there is nothing in the diversities of the various races inconsistent with the belief that all men have descended from a single pair. So unstable and so scientifically valueless are those variatiohs, that Quatrefages, after spending the greatest part of his life in the investigation, has given up the attempt even to classify the various families of the race. He has expressed the belief that the only possible conclusion of Science is that the human race sprang from a single pair.
Such is the justification which Science has brought to one part of God's revelation concerning the history of our race. It has told us that we are all the children of one father and mother. High and low, rich and poor, black and white, the civilised and the savage, east and west, and north and south — all of us have come from the home of that man, whom in an age of declension God found upright. All alike are the children of "righteous Noah," whom. God
^
4o8 The New Biblical Guide.
saved in the hour of judgment, and made the second father of the human race. That is the declaration of Scripture; and Science now confesses that it has tested the statement on every side, and finds that it cannot be overthrown. We now advance to another statement, which is still more definite. We have seen that Science has attempted a classification of the various families of mankind, and that it is deeply dissatisfied with its own work. But, long before Science began. Scripture had classified humanity on deeper grounds than mere external characteristics. It has made a threefold division of mankind, founded on descent. It will be noticed how the Scripture clings to this division. The one home of Noah becomes three homes. As mankind increases they keep within the bounds, so to speak, of these three camps. The growth of mankind is really the growth of three families. The three families become three peoples. Each people becomes, by-and-bye, agroup of nations; but in their latter, as well as in their earlier, condition, the threefold distin(?tion abides. In detail- ing the rise and the migrations and the settlements of the nations, the Scripture carefully groups them under those three heads; and when it speaks of the distant future, the threefold division is regarded as even then existing. The destinies of mankind are the destinies of Shem, Ham, and Japhet. "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant."
The Unity of Man. 409
We might endeavour to account for the perma- nence of these family characteristics. "The law of heredity," so much made of in our own time, would no doubt explain much ; and perhaps that long sojourn in the primeval home and under that patriarchal rule, whose traditions became the most sacred possessions of posterity, had an influence not less mighty. But our task is not to explain how the division has originated, but to ask whether the division is a fa(5l. Does Science, which in these last days has compassed sea and land, which has soared so high and burrowed so deep, which has laid such mighty hands upon the present and dragged forth from the tomb of the past its deepest secrets — has Science recognised the lines of this division? If it has recognised them; if, as knowledge increases, it is recognising them still more full}-; and if it is ranging the nations to-day in these same three camps ; — if all that is true, what shall we say of the Book that has endowed every believing man with all this knowledge from the first, and made him wiser than the sages? Whose stamp does the Book bear? Is it man's Book, or God's?
Professor Max Miiller tells how the learned were startled at the similarity between Sanscrit, the ancient language of India, and Greek and Latin. The similarity extended not only to words, but also to grammatical forms. For a long time scholars were content to chronicle it as a strange fac\ : it was not grappled with as a problem. But, under the influence of Frederick Schlegel, interest was at last effedtually roused. " Men like Bopp, and Burnouf, and Pott, and
I
410 The New Biblical Guide.
Grimm," says Max Miiller, " did not rest till some answer could be returned, and some account rendered of Sanscrit, that strange intruder, and great disturber of the peace of classical scholarship.
" The work which then began was incessant. . . . The Teutonic languages were soon annexed, the Celtic languages 3'ielded to some gentle pressure, the Slavonic languages clamoured for incorporation, the sacred idiom of Ancient Persia, the Zend, demanded its place by the side of Sanscrit, the Armenian followed in its wake; and when even the Ossetic from the valleys of Mount Caucasus, and the Albanian from the ancient hills of Epirus, had proved their birthright, the whole family, the Arian family of languages, seemed complete, and an historical fact, \ the original unity of all these languages, was \ established on a basis which even the most sceptical ) could not touch or shake." ^â–
There was little wonder that scholars revelled in their discoveries. They had come upon a vein of the richest ore; they had opened a mine where jewels were found at every step. But it was only a beginning. Following the indications of language, the old threefold division of the Scripture once more appeared. Men, scattered though they are over all the earth and intermingled one with another, were proved to belong to three great families. These are the Aryan, or Japhetic, the Semitic, and the Turanian, or Hamitic. The meaning of these philo- logical discoveries is fully admitted in The Vestiges.
^Selected Essays. Max Miiller. I. 123, 124.
The Unity of Man. 411
After having made the admissions to which we have
already referred, the author says: "The tendency of
the modern study of the languages of nations is to
the same point" (namely, "that all the great families
of man may have been of one stock.") " The last fifty
years" (he is writing in 1846) "have seen this study
elevated to the character of a science, and the light
which it throws upon the history of mankind is of a
most remarkable nature." After pointing out that the
Aryan, or Indo-European family, begins in India and
stretches through Persia into Europe, and includes
Sanscrit, Persian, Celtic, Greek, Latin with its
modifications, Italian, Spanish, &c., Russian and
Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch,
and Enghsh, he adds that the great number of
common terms which exist among these languages,
leaves " no doubt of their having all been derived
from a common source. Colonel Vans Kennedy
presents nine hundred words common to the Sanscrit
and other languages of the same family. In the
Sanscrit and Persian we find several which require
no sort of translation to an English reader, rs pader,
mader, sunn, dokhter, bradev, mand, vidhava ; likewise
asthi, a bone (Greek, osteon) ; denta, a tooth (Latin,
dens, dentis) ; eyeumen, the eye; bronwa, tht eye-brow
(German, hraiie) ; nasa, the nose; hrti, the heart ; stava,
a star; dhara, the earth (Latin, terra, Gaelic, tir) ;
arrivi, a river; nan, a ship (Greek, nans, Latin, navis) ;
ghau, a cow; sarpan, a serpent."*
The second family, the Semitic, is deeply marked
* Pp. 302, 303.
c I
412 The New Biblical Guide,
b}- verbal and grammatical characteristics, and embraces the Hebrew, Assyrio-Babylonian, Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopian. There is more hesitation in regard to the third division, as, from the compara- tively undeveloped chara(5ter of the languages, and the generally lower civilisation of the Hamitic peoples, the variations are greater. Professor Max Muller says: "The third family is the Turanian. It com- prises all languages spoken in Asia or Europe, not included under the Arian or Semitic families, with the exception perhaps of the Chinese and its diale(5^s. This is, indeed, a very wide range ; and the charac- teristic marks of union ascertained from this immense variety of languages are as yet very vague and general, if compared with the definite ties of relationship which severally unite the Semitic and the Arian." The mists, however, which obscured the connedtion when these words were written, have been slowly rising. We have a striking example of this in the Chinese, of which, it will be noticed, Max Muller speaks with hesitation. A close connection between the Accadian, an undoubted Hamitic tongue, the most ancient written language of Babylonia, and the Chinese, has been placed beyond doubt by the labours of J. C. Ball and others. So full is the evidence, and so exceedingly numerous are the similarities which the Chinese presents to that ancient tongue, that Mr. Ball calls it "the new Accadian."*
Such is the testimony of language to the early threefold division of the race. There is one more
•* See " Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology," for 1889 and 1890.
The Unity oj Man. 413
witness to complete the proof that the Scripture, in deahno; with the origin of humanity, is in very truth a revelation. Western Asia, as we shall afterwards see, was the cradle of the new humanity. If, then, this threefold division of the human race is a fa(5^, we should be able to find some trace of it there. The monuments, too, of that country, have in our own days strangely enough found interpreters. Those stone records should, therefore, have also something to say. What, then, is their testimony? The reply is simply overwhelming. " In Western Asia," says Professor Rawdinson,* "the several ethnic branches of the human family were more closely intermingled and more evenly balanced than in any other portion of the ancient world. Semitic, Indo-European, and Tatar or Turanian races, not only divided among them this portion of the earth's surface, but lay confused and interspersed upon it in a most remarkable entanglement. It is symptomatic of this curious inter-mixture, that the Persian monarchs, when they wished to publish a communication to their Asiatic subjecl:s, in such a way that it should be generally intelligible, had to put it out, not only in three different languages, but in three languages belonging to the three principal divisions of human speech. The region retains the same peculiarity to the present day. It is still inhabited by representatives of the three great divisions of the human race, and when the Government publishes its edidls, it has still to employ Indo-European (Persian), Semitic (Arabic),
* History of Herodotus. Vol. i, 528.
414 The New Biblical Guide.
and Turanian (Turkish) speech." The land bears upon it the ineradicable impress of this primal division of the human race, and it bears to-day, as it has borne through all those centuries, a silent but resistless testimony to the truth of Scripture.
Let us now briefly scan some of the remaining statements of the loth chaper. We have seen that, in the great outstanding features of this account, the book of Genesis — so scouted by the foes of Revelation, and so often trembled for by its friends — has been, indeed, a priceless boon to those who have received its teaching. They have rested on heights towards which Science is only climbing now ; and from those heights the eye has swept with commanding survey. Those who have taken Genesis in the faith that its every word is from God, have been nearest the truth, and have felt most the joy and the inspiration of the brotherhood of man, which the science of the igth century is at present unveiling. But the Scripture does not only deal in generalities, it descends to details. When it gives us these, are we following the same sure guidance ? Does it give us history as unerring as that written by the pen of the recording angel, or does it hand to us blundering traditions which tell only of the dotage or the childhood of humanity ?
Now this can be tested to-day, as it could not have been tested in any previous century. Comparative philology has been ranging the nations under the banners of the great families. But Genesis has done this from the first. Here, then, we have a plain
The Unity of Man. 415
and, indeed, a startlingly direa issue. Does philology confirm or contradict the Scripture ?
We take, first of all, the Japhetic family. The nation which holds the first place in this family is Gomer. It appears from Ezekiel xxxviii. 2-6, that the locale of Gomer is in " the north quarter." The name is found in the Assyrian inscriptions under the form Gimirraa. These are the Kimmerii of the Greek writers. They have been identified with the Cimbri of the Romans. In another form — Cymry — we find it as the name by which the Welsh have always designated themselves. Gomer is, then, the great Celtic race.
Regarding Magog, the next in order of the Japhetic peoples, Assyriology has as yet nothing definite to say. But a suggestion, based upon certain indications has been made which points to Lydia as Magog. Professor Sayce, in an article on "The Karian Language and Inscriptions," published in the ninth volume of The Transactions of the Biblical Society of Archaeology, says that ''the Karians were allied in blood to the Lydians and the Mysians; indeed, the very fact that all the three peoples joined in a common worship in the temple of Mylasa, shows that the languages they spoke could not have differed very materially one from another. With this agrees the further fact that more than one word is given as at once Karian and Lydian. Hardly any remains of the Mysian language have been preserved; a considerable number of Lydian words, however, has been handed down to us, and these seem to have
41 6 The New Biblical Guide.
an Indo-European complexion. We may therefore assume, at all events provisionally, that the Karian language belonged to the Aryan form of speech." The Madai, Assyriology has proved to be the Medes. The name is written in the very same way on the Assyrian monuments. The next name, Javan, is applied in the inscriptions of Sargon (the father of Sennacherib) at Khorsabad, and of Darius at Behistun, to Ionia and Greece. It is the name of the Greek tribes. Tubal and Meshech are names which constantly occur together in Scripture. They also occur together in an ancient inscription of Sargon, King of Assyria, who says that his dominion embraced within its range Tabal as far as to the Muski. He speaks several times of Mita, king of the Moschians. This has been thought to point to the latter as being the ancestors of the Muscovites — an opinion favoured by ancient authorities, but still in need of confirmation. Of Tiras nothing certain is as yet known.
This completes the main sub-divisions of the Japhetic peoples. These shot out branches which are also named. Science, however, has so far only shed light enough upon the names to give ground for speculations into which it would be profitless to enter. The only exception we shall make is that of Ashkenas, one of the sons of Gomer. That name the Jews have always applied to Germany. Now, taking the identifications which are certain, and comparing them with the discoveries of philology, what is the result ? It is that in every case Science emphatically confirms
The Unity of Man. 417
the Scripture. Genesis tells us that the Celts ; the Russians or Slavs ; the Medes, closely allied with the Persians, who in later times excelled the elder race ; the Greeks and the Germans belong to the Indo- European or Japhetic family. We have merely to set by the side of this the following, from Max M tiller : ''There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavs, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindoos, were living together beneath the same roof, and separate from the Semitic and Turanian races." The enumeration of the Bible, and that of the Philologist are, it will be noticed, almost identical !
The next in the Scriptural order is the Hamitic, which Science has called the Turanian . The languages of this class do not present the close affinities of the other two, the Aryan and the Semitic. The Turanian languages have been arrested in their development. The Hamitic race appears to have been more practical, sharp, and wide-awake than the others. It lived with its whole energies in the present and for the present. The other two races were more reflecftive, and, as we say, had more heart. There was a deeper answer in them to the marvels of creation, to the mysteries within them and without. They have furnished the thinkers, the philosophers, and the poets of humanity. This reflective tendency has shown itself in the lang- uages of the two families ; the unrefled:ive tendency has equally manifested itself in the Hamitic. It is with the Accadian, for example, that the use of signs to indicate words grew up, and thus they were the first
41 8 The New Biblical Guide.
to enable men to picfture their thoughts to the eye as well as to breathe them into the ear. But their writing system never advanced beyond this point. Neither they nor the Chinese have ever had the idea of using signs to represent letters, or even syllables. Spelling is a process that has no existence for the Chinaman. The Semitic and the Japhetic, or Arian, families took up the invention of their Hamitic brethren and carried it further. They made the art of writing by degrees the flexible and perfed^ instrument which it is to-day. The spoken languages are characterised in the same way. The Semites and the Arians have made hosts of derivatives according to fixed laws. Their words have become " roots," and each root, so to say, has sprung into life and borne fruit. The Hamitic languages are instances of arrested development. The Chinese, for example, is utterly wanting in adverbs, &c., and has nothing whatever that we can call a grammar. This lack afterwards led, through associa- tion with peoples who spoke more highly-developed languages, to imitation and changes, which have made the gulfs between the various parts of this family wider than in the other two families.
The family of Ham, the Scripture informs us, consisted of four principal divisions. These were — Cush, Mizraim or Egypt, Phut, and Canaan. The first home of the Cushite race, as is evident from the verses 7 to 10, was in the south of Mesopotamia, and specially round the head of the Persian gulf. N imrod was a son of Cush, and the scene of his triumphs over beast and man was the south of Babylonia.
The Unity of Man. 419
" And Cush begat Nimrod : he began to be a mighty one in the earth . . . And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar " (Gen. x. 8, 10). • Until comparatively recent times this was one of the outstanding difficulties of Genesis. The abode of the Kushites, or Ethiopians, was well known to be in Africa, and to many the idea of their having had their primal home in Babylonia was absurd. Chevalier Bunsen wrote : " An Asiatic Cushite exists only in the imagination of interpreters, and is the child of their despair."
References in ancient writers, to the Ethiopians might have taught the rationahsts caution in this matter. Herodotus, in describing the various nations represented in the great army which Xerxes led against Greece, speaks distinctly of two distinct and widely separated nations to which he assigns the name of Ethiopians. He says : '' Those Ethiopians who came from the more eastern parts of their country {for there were two distinct bodies in this expedition) served with the Indians. The Oriental Ethiopians have their hair straight, those of Africa have their hair more crisp and curling than any other men." And he distindtly calls these " Oriental Ethiopians " by this very name which Bunsen so roundly condemns — " Asiatic Ethiopians." * Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer, speaks in the same way. He describes the Ethiopians as *' a twofold people, lying extended in a long tra(5t from the rising to the setting sun."
^VII., 70.
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That this race was Hamitic, is rendered probable by the monuments. Hommel points out that the African Ethiopians were immigrants. " From the time of the twelfth dynastry (about 2200 B.C. ?) onwards a new race makes its appearance on the Egyptian horizon, viz., the Kashi in Nubia. According to this view, the much discussed Kushites (the Ethiopians of Homer and Herodotus) must originally have been Elamitic Kassites, who were scattered over Arabia, and found their way to Africa. It is interesting to note that the Bible calls Nimrod a son of Kush, and that the cuneiform alternative for Nimrod [Gisdubar] viz., Gibilgamis (originally Gibil-gab), shows an Elamitic termination." * They appear to have migrated at an early period, and to have occupied Abyssinia. The language of the Galla and other tribes, which are the descendants of the ancient masters of the country, is Hamitic. The same is also true of Egypt. The language has been affed^ed by the influences of which we have just spoken. It has a decidedly Semitic element; but the language itself is not Semitic. " In its main characfteristics it stands separate and apart, being simpler and ruder than any known form of Semitic speech, and having analogies which connecTt it on the one hand with Chinese, and on the other with the dialecfts of Central Africa." Of the nations which came forth from Egypt we know as yet little that is definite. There is one exception, however. The origin of the Philistines — of whom so much is said in Bible history,
* The A ncient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 39, 40.
The Unity of Man. 421
and the names of whose cities have still a place in our geography — is traced to Egypt. The Philistines have left no literature, and though monuments will no doubt be eventually discovered none are known at present. All that we now have is a few names, such as Achish, Goliath, Saph, and some which have come down to us in a Greek form. These present a decided resemblance to Egyptian names, and representations of the Philistines on Egyptian monuments prove that they also resembled that nation in personal appearance.
Of Phut we know little. The name, in the forms of Punt and Put, is met with on the Egyptian monuments. It is supposed by some to refer to Africa, by others to Arabia. But M. E. Lefebure finds a passage in a description on the tomb of Rameses VI., which speaks of the Land of Phut, or Punt, as encircling the whole of Canaan. Canaan, again, is well known to us. It was stated by Schrader that the name had not been found on the Assyrian monuments. "It is remarkable," he says, in The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, "that the Babylonians and Assyrians do not know the name Canaan as denoting the Philistaeo-Phoenician maritime country, inclusive of the mountain district as far as the Jordan." But since his book was published, the surprising discovery of the Tel-el- Amarna tablets has been made. In some of the hosts of letters there discovered, this name is used to designate Palestine. It is applied to the country in a letter from the King of Babylon, and also in others
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written from the country itself. The full force of this discovery carries us farther than the mere confirma- tion of the corredlness of the Scripture designation. The name was applied to the country in the time of Moses. This fact has very special significance when taken in connecftion with another. Professor Ebers, the Egyptologist, is struck with the close adherence of the spelling of the names of Gen.x. 6, 7, to that in use on the Egyptian monuments. He declares, in his Aegyptenund dieBiichevMose's (p. 55), that this account of the Hamitic people has been drawn from Egyptian sources ! Here both Assyriology and Egyptology concur in the discovery of evidence in this loth chapter of Genesis, which sustains one and the same conclusion — the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch.
The Canaanites occupy a large place in Old Testament history. They were a fierce race ; and, whenever Israel's sin separated them from their Strength, the Canaanite with his "chariots of iron," lorded it over them with a cruel mastery. We are met here, however, by the only difficulty which we have yet experienced. Quite a number of names have been handed down of men, such as Melchizedek, Hamor, Shechem, and also of places, all of which have a meaning in Hebrew. This would indicate that the Canaanites were Semites. It may be that in the South of Palestine the Canaanite, having early come into contacSt with a Semitic race, had adopted their language, and thus, perhaps, a place had been prepared for Abram, so that while he sojourned among them he should not be surrounded by people of another
The, Unity of Man. 423
speech. But we have one definite indication of the Hamitic character of the Canaanite. Among the offspring of Canaan the Hittites are named. Light has recently been thrown upon that ancient people and their powerful empire. Referring to their language, Professor Saycesays : — " The proper names, preserved on the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, show that it did not belong to the Semitic family of speech." Neither were they Aryans. Dr. William Hayes Ward, in Recent Research in Bible Lands, edited by Dr. Hilprecht, after mentioning that no '' Aryan race speaking an Aryan language, can have inhabited Asia Minor, except on the coasts near Greece, before 1000 B.C.," says : " But the Hittites occupied a part of this territory as far back, at least, as 1400 B.C., and probably long before. It is then probable that they were not Aryans, and to this conclusion the Egyptian pictures of them agree. They give us a short, stout race, with yellow skin, black hair, protuberant face, retreating forehead, beardless, and often wearing a queue. This is Mongolian, apparently. It is true that the Assyrian pictures do not resemble the Egyptians. They figure the Hittites as a short-headed people, often with laced boots turned up at the toes, but with features not differing from those of Syrians, Arabians, or Elamites. Indeed, the Assyrian artists seem to have been able to draw but one type of face, varying only in the length of the beard and the shape of the head- dress. They have no beardless men, only beardless women and eunuchs.
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" But here the Hittite art aids us. As the Hittites drew their own figure, it is short, stout, and with much of the ugly protuberant profile that we find given in Egyptian drawing, and often beardless. The features are not Semitic, nor are they Aryan. They agree much better with a Mongolian type. When we add to this the fa(5l that the proper names of persons and cities resist the attempt* to reduce them to Semitic triliterals or to Aryan roots, we may fairly conclude that they belong to a people who spoke one of that conglomerate of languages which has been called Turanian, which were spoken by the Mongolian peoples, now represented by Turcomans, rather than Chinese." The Hittite monuments are beginning to yield slowly to attempts at decipherment, and the results so far attained indicate the Hamitic character of the Hittite tongue.
Such, then, is the testimony regarding the second list of nations. So far as discovery is prepared to speak, it has to testify here also that the revelation of Scripture has anticipated the discoveries of Science. I now glance, in closing, at the grouping of the nations which are said to belong to the Semitic race. The first of these is Elam. Josephus and others identified the Elamites with the Persians, which would have made them a Japhetic race. This, however, has been disposed of by recent discovery. " Elam," says Schrader, " is by no means interchangeable with or equivalent to Persia." The name Elamtu occurs frequently on the Assyrian monuments, * Pp. 178, 180.
The Unity of Man. 425
and is there identified with Susiana, the ancient inhabitants of which appear to have been Semites. The next named are the Assyrians. A century ago it would have been impossible to say whether these were Semites or not : but their language as found on the monuments has set that question at rest for ever. It is closely allied to the Hebrew. The only other of the chief branches, which we can at present identify, is Aram, or Northern Mesopotamia. These are the Aramaeans who continued to be a predominant race in that region till the 7th century of our era. They have left a literature, with an ancient and well- known Semitic translation of the Scriptures, called the Peshito.
The sub-divisions of these branches, including the main families of the Semitic Arabs, are very full, but the light is still dim, and we confine ourselves to what Science has proved. Here, as elsewhere, discovery is only tracing what has been clearly written in this loth chapter of Genesis for 33 centuries. Menochius, writing in the 17th century, declares that nothing certain was known about the relationship between the nations grouped together in this loth chapter. The vail has begun to be lifted by the hand of Science only in our own day. But as the light pours in, we find, to our astonishment, that we are merely reading what the Bible has told us long before. In the darkest times the children of faith have always had here all the light that Science and discovery can now bestow ; and it has been here alone ! Should we not, then, value so true a witness and so sure a g-uide ? Is
426 The New Biblical Guide.
it too much to ask that we should trust it fully, and that we should take from it to-day, with lowliness and gratitude, the truths which neither Science nor discovery can yet teach us ? Tested on so many sides, we find it to be the Word of truth. It is the Word of truth, though it was written at a time when the dense darkness of ignorance Hid that truth from every unaided eye ; and we conclude, therefore, that it is not the word of man, but, what it has always claimed to be — the Word of God.
CHAPTER XV.
Nimrod: His Times and Work.
WE have seen, in our last chapter, how Science has begun to lift the vail from the past, and that her discoveries are largely things with the knowledge of which the Bible has enriched the children of God for five and thirty centuries. This is true in regard to passages of Scripture which are a bare and dry list of names. But now we come to history. In the midst of a long list of names, in this priceless tenth chapter of Genesis, we have the following bit of personal narrative : —
And Cush begat Nimrod : he began to be a mighty one in
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 427
the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord ; where- fore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah : the same is a great city (Genesis x. 8-12).
The Revised Version following the Jewish Targums translated: "Out of that land he (that is Nimrod) went forth into Assyria." But if this were corre(5t, the Assyrians would have boasted of the fa(5l that their cities had been builded by Nimrod. The mean- ing may be that Asshur was driven out by Nimrod's conquest; or we have here only a parallel account of the origin of the great Assyrian cities. The meaning of this will be plainer when I come to speak of the personality of Nimrod. In any case it is implied here that the man who achieved the mastery over the beasts of the field and of the forest, lusted after greater things. He longed for mastery over men. Violence to the lower creation grew into wrong towards those made in the image of God. The patriarchal relations were judged to be no longer sufficient, and the divinely-appointed rights of man- kind were no longer regarded. The organization of the community was substituted for that of the family and of the tribe ; and the authority of the father gave way to that of the king. It was a proud position to be the acknowledged patriarch of the human race, the lord of all men's homage and service; and to that position Nimrod aspired. He was the first founder of kingdoms, the originator of statecraft and of
D I
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conquest. He laid his yoke upon the four great cities — Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. These were the centre from which his forces swept out to extend his conquests.
That is the statement of Scripture. The words are few and simple, as the words of Scripture ever are; but the picture is clear, well-defined, and filled with details. It is found in a book which we are loudly told no man in this twentieth century can believe to be historical. It belongs to the earlier part, too — to that record of events preceding the time of Abraham, which Mr. Gore and his colleagues are ready to surrender to the critics. It is a domain which Professor Huxley has termed a realm of ''pure fi(ftion," which the critics, with more politeness, say contains only myths and fables, and which the writers of Lux Mundi, with still greater tenderness, designate a store of type and parable and allegory — of anything, in short, but of sober and truthful history. Fortunately, however, we can put this matter to a satisfactory and speedy test. We have, in these five verses, a clear and definite statement regarding one of the very earliest but most momentous revolutions in human history. It is the introducftion, in facfl, of a new era, and the very beginning of what we reckon as civilisation and history. If we can test this account we shall at once ascertain what Genesis is and how its statements are to be received. Now, God has, in a most marvellous way, enabled us to judge this matter. The land with which the Scrip- ture here deals has, in these last days, laid bare its
Nimrod: His Times and Work. 429
secrets. It has brought us face to face with the Hfe of the very earhest times, and has re-told their story.
Will the reader notice, first of all, that the Scripture pledges itself to the statement that the earliest civilization and the first dominion of Southern Babylonia was Hamitic ? Nimrod is said to have been the son of Cush, who was, we are also told, the eldest- born of Ham. It was a Hamite people, therefore, which, led by its chief, laid its yoke upon the necks of the various families of humanity, gathered them into cities, organised them as communities, taught them arts, and gave them laws. When English historians tell us that Britain was first inhabited by Celtic races, subdued and civilised by the Romans, then conquered by the Saxons, and, last of all, by the Normans, we expe6t to find distin(5l traces of these changes. They are not like the tides upon the shore, each obHterating every trace of that which preceded it. They are like the forests rather, which are gathered up as they decay, and are entombed in strata, in which their story may be fully read long ages after their branches waved in the breeze, and after the sunshine cast their shadows on the soil. Such changes in a nation's history leave behind them plentiful mementoes. We are confronted by them even when we do not seek them, and we cannot search for them without having the story more or less fully unfolded.
It is natural to imagine, then, that the researches which have brought Assyria and Babylon into the realm of authentic history, and laid bare layer after
430 The New Biblical Guide.
layer in the historical strata of Mesopotamia, will be able to say whether this narrative regarding the early Hamite subjugation and civilization of our race is history, or myth, or parable, or falsehood. We have seen that the statement involves the Hamitic origin of Babylonian civilization. But this conclusion now leads us further. Pastoral tribes, living in tents and roaming from place to place, may exist without being conscious of any lack in the absence of literature, or of documents, or even of the art of writing. But in the settled and busy life of cities, where there is perpetual necessity for correspondence, and where the sharply-defined rights of property call for properly-attested agreements and records, the case is different. Something more is required than verbal messages and agreements, and the recollections of living witnesses. In such a community, therefore, we should look for the origin of the art of writing ; and were we to find that, in its origin in Babylonia, this art really does bear a Hamitic stamp, we should feel at once that here was a correspondence between the statement in Genesis and the traces of early life in Mesopotamia, which is of the very greatest value and significance.
Turning now to the results of recent explorations, we are astounded at the completeness of their vindication of Scripture. The art of writing was Hamitic in its origin ! M. Oppert has long since placed this beyond a doubt by one of the most striking discoveries which have marked the progress of Assyrian research. It was known that the Accadian
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 431
inscriptions were the most ancient of all, and it was a natural inference that writing began with the Accadians, a Turanian or Hamitic race. But surmise has since given place to certainty. Numerous word- lists have been found in the library of the Assyrian king, Assur-bani-pal, at Nineveh and in the ruins of several cities in Babylonia. These consist of a large number of clay tablets, which give in one column Accadian words, and in another the corresponding Assyrian terms. The Accadian had long been a dead language; but, Accadian texts being highly valued by the Babylonians and the Assyrians, and being regarded with the utmost reverence, these lists were compiled, at an exceedingly early date, for the use of the scribes. The lists have settled the question as to the origin of the Babylonian writing. To explain this fully we should have to go more deeply into the origin of our written charad^ers than our readers would care to follow. Let it suffice to say that writing was, at first, simply drawing. If a man wanted to say something about an axe, he drew the picture of one. If he wished to say that he wanted an axe, the picture of a human bust with a hand held to the mouth gave the idea of wanting or asking, and by placing this sign along with that of the axe, the writer's meaning would be fully expressed. Familiarity with the signs enabled writers to dispense with carefully exadt representations : a few hurried strokes soon sufficed. That was the first stage. Then came a second, when the signs were taken as representing sounds, and were used to indicate
432
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sounds which could be placed together so as to form new words. Thus, for example, say that we agreed to let the sign for an apple also represent the first syllable of that word, namely, ap, and that the figure of a pointer not only represented that animal but also the first syllable of its name — point, we could put the two signs together to make the new word *' appoint."
Now this was really the character of both Accadian and Assyrian writing. The signs represented both obje(51:s and sounds; and it was this fact which led to Oppert's discovery as to the origin of the Baby- lonian writing. There is a sign which represents God. The Assyrians, when they used it as a sign of a divinity, called it by their name for god — Ilu ; but, when they used it as a mark of a syllable, they pro- nounced it an. When the Accadians used it purely as a sign, they sometimes read it a7ia, which was their name for heaven, in which sense the sign was occasionally used. When they used it as a sound merely they in certain cases pronounced it an. When M. Oppert asked himself how the same sign was, at one time, read Ilu, and, at another time, an, among the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians, there was but one answer possible. They had learned the art of writing from the Accadians. They had changed nothing. The signs still represented the old ideas, and still possessed the old values as sounds. The writing had, consequently, been originated and perfected by the old Accadian masters. It had been taught to their Semitic subjedls; and it had been
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 433
bequeathed to them with the dominion which eventually passed into their hands.
But they have left behind them other tokens that they had originated the civilization of Mesopotamia. The names of the cities were Hamitic. Down to the time of Nebuchadnezzar — that is, down through all the history of Babylon and Assyria for hundreds and thousands of years, the names of their ancient cities were written as their old Hamitic masters had first penned them. To understand the significance of these names we have to read them as Accadian ideographs. This is a fa(5\ which, like the former, is capable of only one interpretation. The Accadians originated the towns, and preserved their dominion long enough to engrave the names so deeply upon the minds of the people of the land, that no after changes — and these were many and great — were ever able to erase them. More than this, the civilization and religion of Mesopotamia were Hamitic. The names of the gods, like the names of the towns, are Accadian. That language, too, like Latin in the Roman Catholic Church, was the sacred language of the country. The hymns which the Babylonians and Assyrians used in their worship, in their magical incantations, and in what we may call their entire religious service, were a legacy from the Hamite people whom, in our partial ignorance, we call, to-day, Accadians. That the earliest civilization and the earliest empire of the human race after the flood were Hamitic is now conceded by all Assyri- ologists. ''The descendants of Ham," says Fran9ois
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Lenormant, 'Svere the first, after the Deluge, to advance in the path of material civiHzation, which they carried to a high degree of development."
But the statement will also have been noticed, that, subsequently to the founding of his dominion in Babylonia, Assur went forth from Babylonia, founded cities, and organised the Assyrian Empire. This means that the early Hamitic civilization and institu- tions were carried thither, and were made the basis of Assyrian as well as of Babylonian culture. This touches so broadly upon the origin and charadler of Assyrian civilization that it loudly challenges contra- diction or confirmation. Have we here, then, a myth — a conglomeration of fancies round some very small central fa(5l ; or is it a lucid statement of fact which has made the children of faith, ever since the words were written, heirs of a truth which the children of the world are only beginning to discover to-day ?
Whatever hesitation may once have been felt in answering that question, there is none whatever now. Schrader — whose rationalistic proclivities are, at times, painfully apparent — says that the Bible statement corresponds '' with all that we otherwise know respecting the relation of Assyria to Babylon. Just as the Assyrian system of writing and the Assyrian religion, we might say the entire Assyrian culture, had their ultimate root in Babylonia, so also the political supremacy of Babylonia gradually passed northwards until Assyria rose to power and became independent of the mother-country, and there arose
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 435
in the north a separate empire." Commenting specially upon the words " From this country he advanced to Assur," he adds: "this notice resped^ing the foundation of Assyrian dominion from Babylon as the starting-point, exadlly coincides with the monumental data.''
The evidence of the Babylonian origin of Assyrian civilization is now overwhelming. " The traditions of Nineveh," says one, " are essentially Chaldean ; everywhere, on the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates, we meet the same religion, the same forms of worship, the same language, the same writing, the same civilization, the same customs." Even when the two nations were in bitter antagonism, and when Babylonia was trampled under foot by Assyria, the Babylonian cities were still to the Assyrian his holy-places, and its ancient literature the sacred literature of his country. How deeply this veneration for the southern kingdom was rooted in the Assyrian mind, and how all-pervading was the Babylonian impress, will be understood from the following circumstance : — The builders of Nineveh used clay, and that, too, unbaked clay, in the con- struction of their edifices. Now they had abundance of stone close at hand. They have proved that they knew how to work it, for they have used it here and there in their buildings as well as in their colossal sculptures. But the body of the buildings was invariably of unbaked clay. There is only one possible explanation of this : they had been taught building by those who had worked in clay, and, long
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after they had learned to use more durable materials, they preserved the ancient custom. Babylonia has no stone, and clay is the only building-material available. Babylon was built of it, and the builders of Babylon, accustomed only to this, followed the same plan at Nineveh. That plan the Ninevites never departed from. The Babylonian fashions were followed, too, not only in the style, the arrangement, and the ornamentation of the buildings, but also in their huge substru(5tures. Babylonia being a level plain, utterly devoid of natural eminences, the palaces were raised upon enormous platforms. The irregu- larities of the ground in Assyria, however, afforded many a site where no platform was needed. But it mattered not to the Assyrian that nature had rendered art unnecessary. Tradition was stronger than con- siderations of convenience. The platform was used in Assyria just as it had been used in Babylonia.
Thus far the Scripture has not only been trium- phantly vindicated : we have gained a deeper insight into the value of its gifts. In statements of the utmost modesty and plainness, it has put us in possession of truths which are among the most valuable dis- coveries of the present day. The earliest civilization of Babylon was Hamitic, and the civilization of Babylon was the foundation of that of Assyria. But discovery takes us further. It enumerates the cities which Nimrod took or founded, and those also which Assur builded. Here the Scripture again exposes its claims to one of the severest tests. According to some. Genesis was written as late as the return
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 437
from the Babylonian exile. According to others, it was composed in the Seventh Century B.C., when Assyria had long subjugated Babylon, and when authentic history had been buried beneath countless strata of myth, fable, and that compound of history, mistake, and superstition, which we call tradition. According to the Scripture itself. Genesis was penned in the Fifteenth Century B.C., when centuries had obliterated that remote past, and the sharp outhnes of the history of those primeval leaders had yielded to the hand of time as completely as the forms of the edifices which they had reared. Any uninspired writer, even in the time of Moses, who should have ventured to say which were the most ancient cities of Babylonia and of Assyria, and to enumerate those which were the very beginnings of their country's glories, must inevitably have betrayed his ignorance and the ignorance of the times. Not to have erred here would have been simply a miracle. Perfect accuracy would be a fadl which only a full and unfailing inspiration would explain. The further down we carry the authorship, the strength of the argument increases, and the attempt to explain absolute correcSlness on any purely natural principles becomes the more hopeless.
What are the facts, then, as to the supreme antiquity of these cities ? Babylon, it will be observed, is not said to have been founded by Nimrod. It owed its beginning to other hands, as we shall see by-and-bye when deaHng with the eleventh chapter. Nimrod's way was prepared for
43^ The New Biblical Guide,
him by social changes. The origin of Babylon is thus carried still further back. Does modern discovery sustain, or does it controvert, the statement of the Scripture ? The reply shows the world's long indebtedness to the Bible. Babylon was, for the whole of Mesopotamia, one of its pre-eminently sacred cities. Even to its Assyrian conquerors, who crushed and chastised its frequent revolts, Babylon was *' the city of the gods." As to the other three cities which are named, it is only within recent years that we have any definite knowledge of them. Previously, readers of Scripture, at least readers of commentaries on Scripture, found themselves, after the most thorough study, wrapped in Egyptian darkness. Thanks to Assyriology, this reproach is now being wiped away. One city after another is being definitely identified, and every identification has up to the present moment been a tribute to the truth of Scripture. Erech, for example, was formerly identified by some with Edessa, in Northern Mesopo- tamia, and which is situated on the Scirtus, a tribu- tary of the Euphrates. This was the identification made by the Jerusalem Targum, and by Jerome, and it was accepted by a large number of critics. Bohlen and Winer, among others, advocated this opinion.
But there was a division in the critical camp on this matter. Gesenius, and others of almost equal name, were struck by the resemblance of the name Erech, to that of Arecca, mentioned by Ptolemy and a Roman historian. The city of Arecca lay near the frontier of Babylonia and Susiana. But both Edessa
Nimrod : His Times and Work, 439
and Arecca were far removed from Babylon. Recent discovery has shown us, hov^ever, that, v^hile warring critics were equally far from the truth, the Bible spoke with the fullest knowledge of facets. Erech has been at last definitely identified, and its ruins have been searched. It is now placed beyond doubt that it is the city named Uruk in the cuneiform inscrip- tions, and the ruins of which are now called Warka by the Arabs. It is situated on the left bank of the lower Euphrates, and on the south-east of Babylon. One of the earhest discoveries made in its mounds has proved the vast antiquity of the city. Mr. Loftus, in 1857, discovered there the most ancient documents (with the exception of the texts of Sargon of Agade found at Sippara, and those recently found at Nippur) which have yet been brought to light in the whole of Babylonia. It appears to have been regarded with a peculiar veneration, and seems to have been, in facl:, the Westminster Abbey of Mesopotamia. It is one vast cemetery. " It is difficult," says Dr. Kauler, *'to give even an approximate idea of the number of human remains accumulated (at Warka). With the exception of the ground occupied by the three principal edifices, all the rest of the site, the suburbs of the city, and the neighbouring desert to a distance which it is impossible to determine, are completely filled with tombs and human skeletons. No other place in the world can in this respeft be compared to Warka. Even the tombs of ancient Thebes do not embrace so enormous a mass of mortal remains. From its foundation to its fall under the Parthians,
440 The New Biblical Guide.
a period of 2,500 years at least, it appears to have been a sacred burial place for the entire country."
This is abundant proof, were there no other, that Erech was one of the most sacred, and, therefore, one of the most ancient, cities of Mesopotamia. But other indications of its vast antiquity are not wanting. " That we have in this spot," says Schrader, " a seat of very ancient civilization, is shown, quite apart from the ruins themselves, by the inscriptions of ancient Babylonian kings." In the non-Semitic account of the Creation (which is earlier than that known as '' the Chaldean Genesis "), Erech is men- tioned along with the antediluvian city of Niffer. " Niffer had not been built, E-kura (its great temple, apparently) had not been constructed ; Erech had not been built, E-ana (its chief temple) had not been construcSled." This shows that even in that ancient time, when the words were written, the origin of Erech was regarded as belonging to the very first days of humanity. Two other cities are named in Genesis along with Babel and Erech — Accad and Calneh. Of Accad, there was absolutely no trace whatever outside this notice in the Bible. It was so ancient that it had long disappeared from view before the era of history-writing began. Our readers will have noticed, however, the term Accadian, which we have had to use so frequently in referring to the ancient language and civilization of Babylonia. The name is met with constantly in the ancient inscriptions. It is the name both of a people and of a territory, but no distindl trace was found of Accad
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 441
as a city. Geo. Smith, however, as early as 187 1, identified it with the ancient Agade, over which reigned Sargon I., one of the most ancient of the kings whose names are mentioned on the monuments. But this was contested, and it was maintained that the correct reading of the name was Agane, and that there was no proof that Accad was at any time the name of a city. After Geo. Smith's death, however, about 1879, Mr. Pinches found in a report tablet, or letter, from Nineveh, the name of the city of Akkad. The phrase ''the city of Akkadi " was first found in a Babylonian inscription in 1882 of Nebuchad- nezzar I. (1150 B.C.)
There is thus no longer any possibility of doubting that the Scripture gives us in this record information which history did not furnish, and which even archaeology was slow to procure. In a letter dated May 31, 1897, Mr. Pinches, of the British Museum, writes me : — " Agade is well known as a city, and is often mentioned with Sipar, or Sippara. It was recognized by George Smith, and identified by him before 1877, almost certainly from inscriptions of Babylonia, as well as from those of Assyria.
" I have myself found, on Babylonian tablets, Agad (or Akad), Aggad (or Akkad) as the name of the city, and on one tablet (either in the Edinburgh Museum, or in private hands), the city appears written both Agade and Agad, thus proving the identity of these two names. This can hardly be other than the Accad of Genesis. The country is always called mat Akkadi, the land of Akkad."
442 The New Biblical Guide.
The city is frequently mentioned in conne(5lion with Sargon I., "the ancient hero," says Sayce, "of the Semitic population of Chaldea, who founded the first Semitic empire in the country, and established a great library in his capital city of Agade or Accad in Sippara." * Like Rome and Babylon, it was the beginning, the nucleus, of the ancient kingdom, and the cradle of the ancient people which bore its name ; and, though the city itself became less as the people became greater, and was by-and-bye for- gotten, its name lived on among its children, and in the territory which they had conquered.
As to Calneh, various guesses were ventured. The most probable seemed to be Fr. Delitzsch's identifica- tion of Calneh with the Kulunu, which is mentioned on the monuments. But Hilprecht has identified it with Nippur, which is now being so thoroughly excavated by the American explorers, and the vast antiquity of which they have placed beyond question. It is the " Niffer" of the reference in the Chaldean account of Creation which I have just quoted. Its antiquity was so great at the time the poem was written, that it is used to measure the remoteness of the origin of the world. Recent research has thus resulted in a vindication of the Scripture, which is startling in its completeness. The absolute accuracy of the Word of God has also received another illustration. All these cities are said to be "in the land of Shinar." Fran9ois Lenormant has shown that Shinar is identical with the name Sumer. The
♦ Records of the Past, New Series, I., 5.
Nimvod: His Times and Work. 443
Hebrew word is really Shingar or Singar. But ng is frequently changed in Accadian into m. Thus their word Dingir (God) becomes Dimmer, and Dmgira (a surname of the goddess Istar) becomes Dimir. In this way Singar or Sungar became Sumer or Shumer, in which form it is met constantly on the monuments.' The whole of Babylonia is designated Sumer and Accad, and among their other titles the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchs always embrace this— " king of Sumer and Accad." This division, however, belongs to a later time. The Scripture, speakmg of the time when Accad was but a city, and when its people had not yet carved out a portion of the land and given to it its own name, designates the entire distria the land of Shinar.
We have now to deal with the cities which Asshur founded. These were Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen. Do they also belong to the primeval times? '' Nineveh and Calah," says Maspero, "go back even to the time of the first Chaldean colonies." Nineveh, which had totally disappeared, and whose site had long been a matter of conjecl:ure, was discovered by Layard beneath the mounds on the left bank of the Tigris, opposite Mosul. It had been re-built with great splendour by Sennacherib, whose inscriptions were found detaihng what he had done for it. The truth was thus shown of another passage of Scripture (11. Kings xix. 36), which says that he spent his last years at Nineveh. The same discoverer was also fortunate enough to find in the mounds around the village of Nimrud, to the south of Nineveh,
E I
444 ^^^^ ^^'^ Biblical Guide.
the ruins of Calah. It is there that all the inscriptions have been discovered which shed light upon the really ancient history of Assyria — the period before the time of Sargon, the father of Sennacherib. Sennacherib mentions in one of his inscriptions a town Res-eni, which is doubtless the Biblical Resen ; and there are large mounds between the sites of Nineveh and Calah which, it is probable, cover its remains.
Of Rehoboth-Ir we at present know nothing. But what we have ascertained is quite enough to afford us an objedl lesson as to the important bearing which such minute confirmations have upon present controversies. I need not remind my readers that the critics are all agreed that the Pentateuch did not originate when the descendants of Jacob first became a nation. They tell us that it came into existence, at the very earliest, towards^the end of the Jewish kingdom, and just as the Jewish people were about to be carried away to Babylon. But, on the strength of this one passage, to which we have been devoting our attention, and which enumerates the most ancient cities of Assyria, Schrader, himself a Rationalist, but happily also an Assyriologist, declares that this opinion can no longer be sustained. He points out two circumstances fatal to the theory. After the time of Sargon, the father of Sennacherib, the town which he built and named after himself, Dursarrukin, or Sargon's town, became so famous that the name was never afterwards severed from the locality. But there is no hint of its existence here. The distrid^ is
Nimrnd : His Times and Work. .{45
named, the tr)wns arc cnuincrat(.'(l, and the position of Resen is dclined vvitliont the remotest r(.'rc;r(Micc to the famous city of after times. "The omission of * Sar{<on's-town,' " says Schrader, " amon^ the Ninevite towns mentioned in this passage, is one more proof that these verses were composed before the city was built, that is, earHer than 707 n.c. The prophetic narrator, therefore, hved and wrote before this time."
That is one fadl : here is another. From tlie time of Sennacherib, Nineveh "became the name for the entire network of towns between the Zab and the Tigris." The towns named here were made merely "quarters" of the great city, and the name Nineveh was applied to the whole, overshadowing and embracing all the others. "The I^iblical narrator, writing one hundred years before Sanherib (Senna- cherib)," says Schrader, " is not yd acquainted with this general designation.'' The italics are Schrader's, not mine. There is an indication, however, of a still higher antiquity for the so-called " Prophetic Narra- tor " (as Oppert, a greater authority in Assyriology than Schrader, has pointed out), in the words : "the same is a great city." The remains of Resen show, by the extent of the mounds which cover them, that it was a great city; but, far as we have gone in the decipherment of the cuneiform texts, we only find a bare mention of its name. It had played its part before Nineveh and Calah had become the seats of Assyrian inonarchs, and it had passed away before the earliest of the Assyrian inscriptions had been
^.^.6 The New Biblical Guide.
engraved. ''The phrase of Genesis," says Oppert, in his Expedition en Mesopotainie, " is anterior to the foundation of the first Chaldean Empire, at the end of the 2ist century B.C., and is much more ancient than the splendour of the great Nineveh." For these words, therefore, "the same is a great city," to have been written, we need a date not later than the TIME OF Moses himself.
Such is the emphatic testimony borne by the inscriptions to the antiquity, and to the historical characTter, of Genesis. We have still to deal with one point in this account of the first human sovereignty. Do we find any trace in the inscriptions of Nimrod himself? The country still resounds with his name. As we have seen, the village built upon the ruins of one of his cities is named after him, and to Nimrod all the ancient marvels of that land are still ascribed by the Arabs. These traditions are quite as manifest in the old Babylonian story of Gilgamesh, who is to the most ancient of kingdoms what Romulus was to Rome. With the story of Gilgamesh (whose name as it appeared upon the monuments used to be read Istubar, or Izdubar), Babylonian history begins, and the picture presented by the Mesopotamian legend so exad^ly corresponds to that presented in these few words of Scripture, that Assyriologists have been struck by the resemblance. " Almost all the features which Hebrew tradition attributes to Nimrod," says Maspero, "the Chaldean tradition reports concerning Izdubar (Gilgamesh), king of Siriippak (Erech-Suburi). Like Nimrod, he reigned
Nimrod : His Times and Work. 447
at Erech ; like Nimrod, he over-ran the land ; Hke Nimrod, he was a great hunter before God." "Several points," says the cautious Schrader, "and these the essential features that are mentioned or related in the Biblical passage respec^ting Nimrod, as, that he was a Babylonian, that he was a mighty hunter, that he crossed (over-ran) the land, that, while he did not found Erech, yet he made it his royal abode — all this is stated on clay tablets respe(51;ing the ancient Babylonian hero, Istubar (pronunciation doubtful)." " Izdubar," says Vigouroux, " is at once a great hunter and a great warrior. At first he possesses only Babylon and its environs ; but he extends his dominion little by little till it finishes by embracing the whole basin of the Euphrates and of the Tigris, from the mountains of Armenia in the north, to the Persian Gulf on the south. Friederich Delitzsch and Frangois Lenormant believe that this hero is no other than Nimrod."
So marked are the resemblances, that George Smith held that opinion from the first. It was shared by Sir Henry Rawlinson and by many others. A fatal blow was supposed to be given to this identifi- cation when Mr. Pinches discovered some years ago the Babylonian pronunciation of the name to be Gilgamesh. This identifies the Babylonian hero with the Gilgamos of Greek mythology. Professor Sayce, ^when Mr. Pinches' discovery was made, declared that it had " exploded " the identification of " Izdubar " with Nimrod. But Professor Hommel believes that he has proved that the Semitic reading
448 The New Biblical Guide.
of the name was Nimrod. He has found inscriptions in which si^ns having similar values are so rendered as to give a name not unlike this of Genesis.
It would seem, however, that Gilgamesh has been credited with the achievements of an older and greater personality. Mr. Pinches has pointed out that " Nimrod" is the name Merodach, or Amarudiik, the great god of the Babylonians, with an N prefixed. He shows that a similar change has been made in the name of Assur, or Assiinik, the God of the Assyrians, in the Bible. An N has been prefixed to it so that it appears as Nisroch. If this is so, and Nimrod is indeed Merodach, much would be explained. Like Nimrod, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Calneh. Like Nimrod, he was a great hunter before the Lord. He is represented as catching and kilhng the great dragon of chaos and confusion.
On this point, however, we are still in need of further light ; but the dimness which remains here only helps to emphasize the completeness of the testimony which these five verses bear to the claims of the Word of God. They tell us that the primitive civilization of Babylonia and its earliest organization was Hamitic ; and we have found that they were Hamitic. They name the earliest Babylonian cities and the most ancient cities of Assyria ; and we have found them in this also an unerring guide. They bind up these cities and that civilization and dominion with the history of one man ; and here, again, we discover that the Scripture has proved itself to be neither falsehood, nor fable, nor parable, but sober
Nhnrod : His Times and Work. 449
truth. And, last of all, the narrative bears the stamp of an antiquity which overthrows the most confident conclusions of so-called criticism as to the lateness of the age in which Genesis is said to have been written. All this may matter little for those who rejoice in the advance of unbelief; but it should have mighty significance for all whose hearts are on the side of faith, but who may have trembled for the ark of God. Man may cast down, but God will still build up.
E. Goodman &> Son, Phcenix Printing Works, Taunton.
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