("SUBJECT TO AUTHORITY")
The sacred author of this work, Genesis, complied with the ideas
acceptable to his era; it was almost necessary; for without this
condescension he would not have been understood. There remain for us
merely a few reflections on the physics of those remote times. As for
the theology of the book: we respect it, we believe it most firmly, we
would not risk the faintest touch to its surface.
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth." That is the way they
translate it, yet there is scarcely any one so ignorant as not to know
that the original reads "the gods created heaven and earth"; which
reading conforms to the Phœnician idea that God employed lesser
divinities to untangle chaos. The Phœnicians had been long
established when the Hebrews broke into some few provinces of their
land. It was quite natural that these latter should have learned their
language and borrowed their ideas of the cosmos.
Did the ancient Phœnician philosophers in "the time of Moses" know
enough to regard the earth as a point in relation to the multitude of
globes which God has placed in immensity? The very ancient and false
idea that heaven was made for the earth has nearly always prevailed
among ignorant peoples. It is scarcely possible that such good
navigators as the Phœnicians should not have had a few decent
astronomers, but the old prejudices were quite strong, and were gently
handled by the author of Genesis, who wrote to teach us God's ways and
not to instruct us in physics.
"The earth was all _tohu bohu_ and void, darkness was over the face of
the deep, the spirit of God was borne on the waters."
"Tohu bohu" means precisely chaos, disorder. The earth was not yet
formed as it is at present. Matter existed, the divine power had only to
straighten things out. The "spirit of God" is literally the "breath" or
"wind" which stirred up the waters. This idea is found in fragments of
the Phœnician author, Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like all the
other peoples of antiquity, believed matter eternal. There is not one
author of all those times who ever said that one could make something of
nothing. Even in the Bible there is no passage which claims that matter
was made out of nothing, not but what this creation from nothing is
true, but its verity was unknown to the carnal Jews.
Men have been always divided on the eternity of the world, but never on
the eternity of matter.
"_Gigni de nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse reverti,"_ writes
Persius, and all antiquity shared his opinion. God said, "Let there be
light," and there was light, and he saw that the light was good, and he
divided the light from darkness, and he called the light _day_ and the
darkness _night_, and this was the evening and the morning of the first
day. And God also said that the firmament, etc., the second day ... saw
that it was good.
Let us begin by seeing whether the bishop of Avranches Huet, Leclerc,
etc., are right, against those who claim that this is a sublime piece of
eloquence.
* * * * *
The Jewish author lumps in the light with the other objects of creation;
he uses the same turn of phrase, "saw that it was good." The sublime
should lift itself above the average. Light is no better treated than
anything else in this passage. It was another respected opinion that
light did not come from the sun. Men saw it spread through the air
before sunrise and after sunset; they thought the sun served merely to
reinforce it. The author of Genesis conforms to popular error: he has
the sun and moon made four days after the light. It is unlikely that
there was a morning and evening before the sun came into being, but the
inspired author bows to the vague and stupid prejudice of his nation. It
seems probable that God was not attempting to educate the Jews in
philosophy or cosmogony. He could lift their spirits straight into
truth, _but_ he _preferred_ to descend to their level. One can not
repeat this answer too often.
The separation of the light from the darkness is not part of another
physical theory; it seems that night and day were mixed up like two
kinds of grain; and that they were sifted out of each other. It is
sufficiently well established that darkness is nothing but the
deprivation of light, and that there is light only in so far as our eyes
receive the sensation, but no one had thought of this at that time.
The idea of the firmament is also of respectable antiquity. People
imagined the skies very solid, because the same set of things always
happened there. The skies circulated over our heads, they must therefore
be very strong. The means of calculating how many exhalations of the
earth and how many seas would be needed to keep the clouds full of
water? There was then no Halley to write out the equations. There were
tanks of water in heaven. These tanks were held up on a good steady
dome; but one could see through the dome; it must have been made out of
crystal. In order that the water could be poured over the earth there
had to be doors, sluices, cataracts which could be opened, turned on.
Such was the current astronomy, _and_ one was writing for Jews; it was
quite necessary to take up their silly ideas, which they had borrowed
from other peoples only a little less stupid.
"God made two great lights, one to preside over the day, the other the
night, and he made also the stars."
True, this shows the same continuous ignorance of nature. The Jews did
not know that the moonlight is merely reflection. The author speaks of
the stars as luminous points, which they look like, although they are at
times suns with planets swinging about them. But holy spirit harmonized
with the mind of the time. If he had said that the sun is a million
times as large as the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one
would have understood him. They appear to be two stars of sizes not very
unequal.
"God said also: let us make man in our image, let him rule over the
fishes, etc."
What did the Jews mean by "in our image"? They meant, like all
antiquity:
_Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._
One can not make "images" save of bodies. No nation then imagined a
bodiless god, and it is impossible to picture him as such. One might
indeed say "god is nothing of anything we know," but then one would not
have any idea what he is. The Jews constantly believed god corporal, as
did all the rest of the nations. All the first fathers of the church
also believed god corporal, until they had swallowed Plato's ideas, or
rather until the lights of Christianity had grown purer.
"He created them male and female."
If God or the secondary gods created man male and female in their
resemblance, it would seem that the Jews believed God and the Gods were
male and female. One searches to see whether the author meant to say
that man was at the start ambisextrous or if he means that God made Adam
and Eve the same day. The most natural interpretation would be that god
made Adam and Eve at the same time, but this is absolutely contradicted
by the formation of woman from the rib, a long time after the first
seven days.
"And he rested the seventh day."
The Phœnicians, Chaldeans, and Indians say that God made the world in
six periods, which Zoroaster calls the six gahambars, as celebrated
among Persians.
It is incontestable that all these people had a theogony long before the
Jews got to Horeb and Sinai, and before they could have had writers.
Several savants think it likely that the allegory of the six days is
imitated from the six periods. God might have permitted great nations to
have this idea before he inspired the Jews, just as he had permitted
other people to discover the arts before the Jews had attained any.
"The place of delight shall be a river which waters a garden, and from
it shall flow four rivers, Phison ... Gehon..., etc., Tigris,
Euphrates...."
According to this version the terrestrial paradise would have contained
about a third of Asia and Africa. The Euphrates and Tigris have their
sources sixty miles apart in hideous mountains which do not look the
least like a garden. The river which borders Ethiopia can be only the
Nile, whose source is a little over a thousand miles from those of the
Tigris and the Euphrates; and if Phison is the Phase, it is curious to
start a Scythian river from the fount of a river of Africa. One must
look further afield for the meaning of all these rivers. Every
commentator makes his own Eden.
Some one has said that the Garden was like the gardens of Eden at Saana
in Arabia Felix celebrated in antiquity, and that the parvenu Hebrews
might have been an Arab tribe taking to themselves credit for the
prettiest thing in the best canton of Arabia, as they have always taken
to themselves the traditions of all the great peoples who enslaved them.
But in any case they were led by the Lord.
"The Lord took man and set him in the midst of the garden, to tend it."
It was all very well saying "tend it," "cultivate the garden," but it
would have been very difficult for Adam to cultivate a garden 3,000
miles long. Perhaps he had helpers. It is another chance for the
commentators to exercise their gifts of divination ... as they do with
the rivers.
"Eat not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil." It is
difficult to think that there was a tree which taught good and evil; as
there are pear trees and peach trees. One asks why God did not wish man
to know good from evil. Would not the opposite wish (if one dare say so)
appear more worthy of God, and much more needful to man? It seems to our
poor reason that God might have ordered him to eat a good deal of this
fruit, but one must submit one's reason and conclude that obedience to
God is the proper course for us.
"If you eat of the fruit you shall die."
Yet Adam ate, and did not die in the least; they say he lived another
nine centuries. Several "Fathers" have considered all this as an
allegory. Indeed, one may say that other animals do not know that they
die, but that man knows it through his reason. This reason is the tree
of knowledge which makes him foresee his finish. This explanation may be
more reasonable, but we do not dare to pronounce on it.
"The Lord said also: It is not good that man should Le alone, let us
make him an helpmate like to him." One expects that the Lord is going to
give him a woman, but first he brings up all the beasts. This may be the
transposition of some copyist.
"And the name which Adam gave to each animal is its real name." An
animal's real name would be one which designated all the qualifications
of its species, or at least the principal traits, but this does not
exist in any language. There are certain imitative words, cock and
cuckoo, and _alali_ in Greek, etc. Moreover, if Adam had known the real
names and therefore the properties of the animals, he must have already
eaten of the tree of knowledge; or else it would seem that God need not
have forbidden him the tree, since he already knew more than the Royal
Society, or the Academy.
Observe that this is the first time Adam is named in Genesis. The first
man according to the Brahmins was Adimo, son of the earth. Adam and Eve
mean the same thing in Phœnician, another indication that the holy
spirit fell in with the received ideas.
"When Adam was asleep, etc.,... rib ... made a woman." The Lord, in the
preceding chapter, had already created them male and female; why should
he take a rib out of the man to make a woman already existing? We are
told that the author announces in one place what he explains in another.
We are told that this allegory shows woman submitted to her husband.
Many people have believed on the strength of these verses that men have
one rib less than women, but this is an heresy and anatomy shows us that
a woman is no better provided with ribs than her husband.
"Now the serpent was the most subtle of beasts," etc., "he said to the
woman," etc.
There is nowhere the least mention of the devil or a devil. All is
physical. The serpent was considered not only the subtlest of all beasts
by all oriental nations; he was also believed immortal. The Chaldeans
had a fable about a fight between God and a serpent; it is preserved by
Pherecides. Origen cites it in his sixth book against Celsus. They
carried snakes in the feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians attributed a sort
of divinity to the serpent, as Eusebius tells us in his "Evangelical
Preparations," book I, chapter X. In India and Arabia, and in China, the
serpent was the symbol of life; the Chinese emperors before Moses wore
the serpent sign on their breasts.
Eve is not surprised at the serpent's talking to her. Animals are always
talking in the old stories; thus when Pilpai and Locman make animals
talk no one is ever surprised.
All this tale seems physical and denuded of allegory. It even tells us
the reason why the serpent who ramped before this now crawls on its
belly, and why we always try to destroy it (at least so they say);
precisely as we are told in all ancient metamorphoses why the crow, who
was white, is now black, why the owl stays at home in the daytime, etc.
But the "Fathers" have believed it an allegory manifest and respectable,
and it is safest to believe them.
"I will multiply your griefs and your pregnancies, ye shall bring forth
children with grief, ye shall be beneath the power of the man and he
shall rule over you." One asks why the multiplication of pregnancies is
a punishment. It was on the contrary a very great blessing, and
especially for the Jews. The pains of childbirth are alarming only for
delicate women; those accustomed to work are brought to bed very easily,
especially in hot climates. On the other hand, animals sometimes suffer
in littering, and even die of it. As for the superiority of man over
woman, this is the quite natural result of his bodily and intellectual
forces. The male organs are generally more capable of consecutive
effort, more fit for manual and intellectual tasks. But when the woman
has fist or wit stronger than those of her husband she rules the roost,
and the man is submitted to woman. This is true, _but_ before the
original sin there may have been neither pain nor submission.
"God made them tunics of skin."
This passage proves very nicely that the Jews believed in a corporal
god. A Rabbi named Eliezer has written that God covered Adam and Eve
with the skin of the tempter serpent; Origen claims that the "tunic of
skin" was a new flesh, a new body which God made for man, but one should
have more respect for the text:
"And the Lord said 'Behold Adam, who is become like one of us.'" It
seems that the Jews at first admired several gods. It is considerably
more difficult to make out what they mean by the word God, _Eloim_.
Several commentators state that this phrase, "one of us," means the
Trinity, but there is no question of the Trinity in the Bible.[2]
The Trinity is not a composite of several gods, it is the same god
tripled; the Jews never heard tell of a god in three persons. By these
words "like unto us" it is probible that the Jews meant angels, Eloïm.
For this reason various rash men of learning have thought that the book
was not written until a time when the Jews had adopted a belief in
inferior gods, but this view is condemned.[3]
"The Lord set him outside the garden of delights, that he might dig in
the earth." Yet some say that God had put him in the garden, in order
that he might cultivate _it._ If gardener Adam merely became laborer
Adam, he was not so much the worse off. This solution of the difficulty
does not seem to us sufficiently serious. It would be better to say that
God punished Adam's disobedience by banishing him from his birthplace.
Certain over-temerarious commentators say that the whole of the story
refers to an idea once common to all men, i.e., that past times were
better than present. People have always bragged of the past in order to
run down the present. Men overburdened with work have imagined that
pleasure is idleness, not having had wit enough to conceive that man is
never worse off than when he has nothing to do. Men seeing themselves
not infrequently miserable forged an idea of a time when all men were
happy. It is as if they had said, once upon a time no tree withered, no
beast fell sick, no animal devoured another, the spiders did not catch
flies. Hence the ideal of the Golden Age, of the egg of Arimana, of the
serpent who stole the secret of eternal life from the donkey, of the
combat of Typhon and Osiris, of Ophionée and the gods, of Pandora's
casket, and all these other old stories, sometimes very ingenious and
never, in the least way, instructive. _But_ we should believe that the
fables of other nations are imitation of Hebrew history, since we still
have the Hebrew history and the history of other savage peoples is for
the most part destroyed. Moreover, the witnesses in favor of Genesis are
quite irrefutable.
"And he set before the garden of delight a chérubin with a turning and
flaming sword to keep guard over the gateway to the tree of life." The
word "kerub" means bullock. A bullock with a burning sword is an odd
sight at a doorway. But the Jews have represented angels as bulls and as
sparrow hawks, despite the prohibition to make graven images. Obviously
they got these bulls and hawks from Egyptians who imitated all sorts of
things, and who worshipped the bull as the symbol of agriculture and the
hawk as the symbol of winds. Probably the tale is an allegory, a Jewish
allegory, the kerub means "nature." A symbol made of a bull's body, a
man's head and a hawk's wings.
"The Lord put his mark upon Cain."
"What a Lord!" say the incredulous. He accepts Abel's offering, rejects
that of the elder brother, without giving any trace of a reason. The
Lord provided the cause of the first brotherly enmity. This is a moral
instruction, most truly, a lesson to be learned from all ancient fables,
to wit, that scarcely had the race come into existence before one
brother assassinated another, but what appears to the wise of this
world, contrary to all justice, contrary to all the common sense
principles, is that God has eternally damned the whole human race, and
has slaughtered his own son, quite uselessly, for an apple, and that he
has pardoned a fratricide. Did I say "pardoned"? He takes the criminal
under his own protection. He declares that any one who avenges the
murder of Abel shall be punished with seven fold the punishment
inflicted on Cain. He puts on him his sign as a safeguard. The impious
call the story both execrable and absurd. It is the delirium of some
unfortunate Israelite, who wrote these inept infamies in imitation of
stories so abundant among the neighboring Syrians. This insensate Hebrew
attributed his atrocious invention to Moses, at a time when nothing was
rarer than books. Destiny, which disposes of all things, has preserved
his work till our day; scoundrels have praised it, and idiots have
believed. Thus say the horde of theists, who while adoring God, have
been so rash as to condemn the Lord God of Israel, and who judge the
actions of the Eternal Being by the rules of our imperfect ethics, and
our erroneous justice. They admit a god but submit god to our laws. Let
us guard against such temerity, and let us once again learn to respect
what lies beyond our comprehension. Let us cry out "O Altitudo!" with
all our strength.
"The Gods, Eloïm, seeing that the daughters of men were fair, took for
spouses those whom they chose." This flight of imagination is also
common to all the nations. There is no race, except perhaps the
Chinese,[4] which has not recorded gods getting young girls with child.
Corporeal gods come down to look at their domain, they see our young
ladies and take the best for themselves; children produced in this way
are better than other folks' children; thus Genesis does not omit to
say that this commerce bred giants. Once again the book is in key with
vulgar opinion.
"And I will pour the water floods over the earth." I would note here
that St. Augustin (City of God, No. 8) says, "_Maximum illud diluvium
graeca nec latina novit historia_." Neither Greek nor Latin history
takes note of this very great flood. In truth, they knew only
Deucalion's and Ogyges' in Greece. These were regarded as universal in
the fables collected by Ovid, but were totally unknown in Eastern Asia.
St. Augustin is not in error when he says history makes no mention
thereof.
"God said to Noah: I will make an agreement with you and with your seed
after you, and with all the animals." God make an agreement with
animals! The unbelievers will exclaim: "What a contract!" But if he make
an alliance with man, why not with the animals? What nice feeling, there
is something quite as divine in this sentiment as in the most
metaphysical thought. Moreover, animals feel better than most men think.
It is apparently in virtue of this agreement that St. Francis of Assisi,
the founder of the seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers, and hares,
"Sing, sister hoppergrass, brouse brother rabbit." But what were the
terms of the treaty? That all the animals should devour each other; that
they should live on our flesh; and we on theirs; that after having eaten
all we can we should exterminate all the rest, and that we should only
omit the devouring of men strangled with our own hands. If there was any
such pact it was presumably made with the devil.
Probably this passage is only intended to show that God is in equal
degree master of all things that breathe. This pact could only have been
a command; it is called "alliance" merely by an "extension of the word's
meaning." One should not quibble over mere terminology, but worship the
spirit, and go back to the time when they wrote this work which is
scandal to the weak, but quite edifying to the strong.
"And I will put my bow in the sky, and it shall be a sign of our pact."
Note that the author does not say "I have put" but "I will put my bow";
this shows that in common opinion the bow had not always existed. It is
a phenomenon of necessity caused by the rain, and they give it as a
supernatural manifestation that the world shall never more be covered
with water. It is odd that they should choose a sign of rain as a
promise that one shall not be drowned. But one may reply to this: when
in danger of inundations we may be reassured by seeing a rainbow.
"Now the Lord went down to see the city which the children of Adam had
builded, and he said, behold a people with only one speech. They have
begun this and won't quit until it is finished. Let us go down and
confound their language, so that no man may understand his neighbor."
Note merely that the sacred author still conforms to vulgar opinion. He
always speaks of God as of a man who informs himself of what is going
on, who wants to see with his eyes what is being done on his estate, and
who calls his people together to determine a course of action.
"And Abraham, having arrayed his people (there were of them three
hundred and eighteen), fell upon the five kings and slew them and
pursued them even to Hoba on the left side of Damas." From the south
side of the lake of Sodom to Damas is 24 leagues, and they still had to
cross Liban and anti-Liban. Unbelievers exult over such tremendous
exaggeration. But since the Lord favored Abraham there is _no_
exaggeration.
"And that evening two angels came into Sodom, etc." The history of the
two angels whom the Sodomites wanted to ravish is perhaps the most
extraordinary which antiquity has produced. But we must remember that
all Asia believed in incubi and succubæ demons, and that moreover these
angels were creatures more perfect than man, and that they were probably
much better looking, and lit more desires in a jaded, corrupt race than
common men would have excited. Perhaps this part of the story is only a
figure of rhetoric to express the horrible lewdness of Sodom and of
Gomorrah. We offer this solution to savants with the most profound
self-mistrust.
As for Lot who offered his two daughters to the Sodomites in lieu of the
angels, and Lot's wife metamorphosed into the saline image, and all the
rest of the story, what can one say of it? The ancient fable of Cinyra
and Myrrha has some relation to Lot's incest with his daughters, the
adventure of Philemon and Baucis is not without its points of comparison
with that of the two angels appearing to Lot and his wife. As for the
pillar of salt, I do not know what it compares with, perhaps with the
story of Orpheus and Eurydice?
A number of savants think with Newton and the learned Leclerc that the
Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had learned reading and
writing, md that all these tales are imitation of Syrian fable.
But it is sufficient for us that it is all Holy Scripture; we therefore
revere it without searching in it for anything that is not the work of
the Holy Spirit. We should remember, at all times, that these times are
not our times, and we should not fail to add our word to that of so many
great men who have declared that the Old Testament is true history, and
that everything invented by all the rest of the universe is mere fable.
Some savants have pretended that one should remove from the canonical
books all incredible matters which might be a stumbling block to the
feeble, but it is said that these savants were men of corrupt heart and
that they ought to be burned, and that it is impossible to be an honest
man unless you believe that the Sodomites desired to ravish the angels.
This is the reasoning of a species of monster who wishes to rule over
wits.
It is true that several celebrated church fathers have had the prudence
to turn all these tales into allegory, like the Jews, and Philo in
especial. Popes still more prudent desired to prevent the translation of
these books into the everyday tongue, for fear men should be led to pass
judgment on what was upheld for their adoration.
One ought surely to conclude that those who perfectly understand this
work should tolerate those who do not understand it, for if these latter
do not understand it, it is not their fault; also those who do not
understand it should tolerate those who understand it most fully.
Savants, too full of their knowledge, have claimed that Moses could not
possibly have written the book of Genesis. One of their reasons is that
in the story of Abraham, the patriarch pays for his wife's funeral plot
in coined money, and that the king of Gerare gives a thousand pieces of
silver to Sarah when he returns her, after having stolen her for her
beauty in the seventy-fifth year of her age. They say that, having
consulted authorities, they find that there was no coined money in those
days. But it is quite clear that this is pure chicane on their part,
since the Church has always believed most firmly that Moses did write
the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts raised by the disciples
of Aben-Hesra and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book, now very rare,
entitled "Conjectures on Genesis," adds new objections, unsolvable to
human wisdom; but not to humble submissive piety. The savants dare to
contradict every line, the simple revere every line. Guard against
falling into the misfortune of trusting our human reason, be contrite in
heart and in spirit.
"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerare took
her to him." We confess, as we have said in our essay on Abraham, that
Sarah was then ninety years old; that she had already been kidnapped by
one King of Egypt; and that a king of this same desert Gerare later
kidnapped the wife of Abraham's son Isaac. We have also spoken of the
servant Agar, by whom Abraham had a son, and of how Abraham treated them
both. One knows what delight unbelievers take in these stories; with
what supercilious smiles they consider them; how they set the story of
Abimelech and this same wife of Abraham's (Sarah) whom he passed off as
his sister, above the "1001 nights" and also that of another Abimelech
in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also passed off as his sister. One can
not too often reiterate that the fault of all these studious critics
lies in their persistent endeavour to bring all these things into accord
with our feeble reason and to judge ancient Arabs as they would judge
the French court or the English.
"The soul of Sichem, son of King Hemor, cleaved to the soul of Dinah,
and he charmed his sadness with her tender caresses, and he went to
Hemor his father, and said unto him: Give me this woman for wife." Here
the savants are even more refractory. What! a king's son marry a
vagabond's daughter, Jacob her father loaded with presents! The king
receives into his city these wandering robbers, called patriarchs; he
has the incredible and incomprehensible kindness to get himself
circumcised, he and his son, his court and his people, in order to
condescend to the superstition of this little tribe which did not own a
half league of land! And what reward do our holy patriarchs make him for
such astonishing kindness? They wait the day when the wound of
circumcision ordinarily produces a fever. Then Simeon and Levi run
throughout the city, daggers in hand; they massacre the king, the
prince, his son, and all the inhabitants. The horror of this St.
Bartholemew is only diminished by its impossibility. It is a shocking
romance but it is obviously a ridiculous romance: It is impossible that
two men could have killed a whole nation. One might suffer some
inconvenience from one's excerpted foreskin, but one would defend
oneself against two scoundrels, one would assemble, surround them,
finish them off as they deserved.
But there is one more impossible statement: by an exact supputation of
date, we find that Dinah, daughter of Jacob, was at this time no more
than three years of age; even if one tries to accommodate the
chronology, she could not have been more than five: it is this that
causes complaint. People say: What sort of a book is this? The book of a
reprobate people, a book for so long unknown to all the earth, a book
where right, reason and decent custom are outraged on every page, and
which we have presented us as irrefutable, holy, dictated by God
himself? Is it not an impiety to believe it? Is it not the dementia of
cannibals to persecute sensible, modest men who do not believe it?
To which we reply: The Church says she believes it. Copyists may have
introduced revolting absurdities into reverend stories. Only the Holy
Church can be judge of such matters. The profane should be led by her
wisdom. These absurdities, these pretended horrors do not affect the
basis of our religion. Where would men be if the cult of virtue depended
on what happened long ago to Sichem and little Dinah?
"Behold the Kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before the children
of Israel had a king."
Behold another famous passage, another stone which doth hinder our feet.
It is this passage which determined the great Newton, the pious and sage
Samuel Clarke, the deeply philosophical Bolingbroke, the learned
Leclerc, the savant Frêret, and a great number of other scholars to
argue that Moses could not have been the author of Genesis.
We do indeed confess that these words could only have been written at a
time when the Jews had kings.
It is chiefly this verse which determined Astruc to upset the whole book
of Genesis, and to hypothecate memories on which the real author had
drawn. His work is ingenious, exact, but rash. A council would scarcely
have dared to undertake it. And to what end has it served, this
ungrateful, dangerous work of this Astruc? To redouble the darkness
which he set out to enlighten. This is ever the fruit of that tree of
knowledge whereof we all wish to eat. Why should it be necessary that
the fruits of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and more
easy to manage?
But what matter to us, after all, whether this verse, or this chapter,
was written by Moses, or by Samuel or by the priest from Samaria, or by
Esdras, or by any one else? In what way can our government, our laws,
our fortunes, our morals, our well being, be tied up with the ignorant
chiefs of an unfortunate barbarous country, called Edom or Idumea,
always peopled by thieves? Alas, these poor shirtless Arabs never ask
about our existence, they pillage caravans and eat barley bread, and we
torment ourselves trying to find out whether there were kinglets in one
canton of Arabia Petra before they appeared in the neighboring canton to
the west of lake Sodom.
_O miseras hominium mentes! O pectora caeca!_[5]
[1] Translated from an eighteenth-century author.
[2] The reader will remember in Landor's Chinese dialogues, when the
returned mandarin is telling the Emperor's children about England, there
is one place where they burst into giggles "because they had been taught
some arithmetic."
[3] The reader is referred to our heading: "Subject to authority".
[4] In Fenollosa's notes on Kutsugen's ode to "Sir in the Clouds," I am
unable to make out whether the girl is more than a priestess. She bathes
in hot water made fragrant by boiling orchids in it, she washes her hair
and binds iris into it, she puts on the dress of flowery colors, and the
god illimitable in his brilliance descends; she continues her attention
to her toilet, in very reverent manner.
[5] Our author's treatment of Ezekiel merits equal attention.