We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claim
that no religion known to man can be truly said to be original. All
religions, the Christian religion included, are adaptations or variants
of older religions. Religions are not _revealed_: they are _evolved_.
If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in
whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its
revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been
a religion which fulfils those conditions.
According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years
ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which
was at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era.
Here I recommend the study of Laing's _Human Origins_, Parson's _Our
Sun God_, Sayce's _Ancient Empires of the East_, and Frazer's _Golden
Bough_.
In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of
Manchester spoke as follows:
Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall
we assign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so long
preceded Sargo I. and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best
answer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel:
"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern
Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C.
in possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture
adopted by them--a culture, moreover, which appears to have
sprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far,
far older still, and have existed in its _completed_ form in the
fifth thousand B.C., an age to which I unhesitatingly ascribe the
South Babylonian incantations."... Who does not see that such
facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past?
A culture which was _complete_ one thousand years before Adam must have
needed many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guess
that Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years.
Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error
of time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well,
an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in
a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it _has_ a bearing on
evolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisation
lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends.
Here I quote from _Our Sun God_, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:
To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with
the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations that
the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge,
and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the
Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus
under Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the
observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by
the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or
even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created,
is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in
an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these
pregnant words:
"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel
our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that
the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three
thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed
in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the
Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."
The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the
legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the
Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.
Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires_ of the East,
speaks as follows:
With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new
departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period
of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_.
Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the
waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their
sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch
it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every
species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and
lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove
and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the
raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark.
He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain
of Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadians
believed the heavens to rest--where, too, they placed the
habitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race.
Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south
of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself.
On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine
by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared in
the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be
destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his
wife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of
the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made
their way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the books
buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and
re-established themselves in their old country under the government
first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile,
other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here,
under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by the
Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a
tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win
for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros... But
the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel
frustrated their purpose by confounding their language and
scattering them on the mound.
These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously
borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.
Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires of the East_, speaking of the
Accadian king, Sargon I., says:
Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian
Solomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law,
the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how his
father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had
fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses,
to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how
he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought him
up as his own son, until the time came when, under the protection
of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on
the throne of his forefathers.
From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the
Flood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and
very likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendary
Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient
mythical figure?
Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth," from
_Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson: