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THE
ORIGIN OF THE WORLD,
ACCORDING TO
REVELATION AND SCIENCE.
BY J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.,
PRINCIPAL AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF M'GILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL; AUTHOR OF
"ACADIAN GEOLOGY," "THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN,"
"LIFE'S DAWN ON EARTH," ETC.
"Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach thee."
--_Job._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1877.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY
THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF DUFFERIN,
K.P., K.C.B., ETC.,
GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA,
_This Work is Respectfully Dedicated_,
AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM TO ONE WHO GRACES THE
HIGHEST POSITION IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY HIS
EMINENT PERSONAL QUALITIES, HIS REPUTATION AS
A STATESMAN AND AN AUTHOR, AND HIS KIND
AND ENLIGHTENED PATRONAGE OF EDUCATION,
LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE.
PREFACE.
The scope of this work is in the main identical with that of
"Archaia," published in 1860; but in attempting to prepare a new
edition brought up to the present condition of the subject, it was
found that so much required to be rewritten as to make it essentially
a new book, and it was therefore decided to give it a new name, more
clearly indicating its character and purpose.
The intention of this new publication is to throw as much light as
possible on the present condition of the much-agitated questions
respecting the origin of the world and its inhabitants. To students of
the Bible it will afford the means of determining the precise import
of the biblical references to creation, and of their relation to what
is known from other sources. To geologists and biologists it is
intended to give some intelligible explanation of the connection of
the doctrines of revealed religion with the results of their
respective sciences.
A still higher end to which the author would gladly contribute is that
of aiding thoughtful men perplexed with the apparent antagonisms of
science and religion, and of indicating how they may best harmonize
our great and growing knowledge of nature with our old and cherished
beliefs as to the origin and destiny of man.
In aiming at these results, it has not been thought necessary to
assume a controversial attitude or to stand on the defensive, either
with regard to religion or science, but rather to attempt to arrive at
broad and comprehensive views which may exhibit those higher harmonies
of the spiritual and the natural which they derive from their common
Author, and which reach beyond the petty difficulties arising from
narrow or imperfect views of either or both. Such an aim is too high
to be fully attained, but in so far as it can be reached we may hope
to rescue science from a dry and barren infidelity, and religion from
mere fruitless sentiment or enfeebling superstition.
Since the publication of "Archaia," the subject of which it treats has
passed through several phases, but the author has seen no reason to
abandon in the least degree the principles of interpretation on which
he then insisted, and he takes a hopeful view as to their ultimate
prevalence. It is true that the wide acceptance of hypotheses of
"evolution" has led to a more decided antagonism than heretofore
between some of the utterances of scientific men and the religious
ideas of mankind, and to a contemptuous disregard of revealed religion
in the more shallow literature of the time; but, on the other hand, a
barrier of scientific fact and induction has been slowly rising to
stem this current of crude and rash hypothesis. Of this nature are the
great discoveries as to the physical constitution and probable origin
of the universe, the doctrine of the correlation and conservation of
forces, the new estimates of the age of the earth, the overthrow of
the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the high bodily and mental
type of the earliest known men, the light which philology has thrown
on the unity of language, our growing knowledge of the uniformity of
the constructive and other habits of primitive men, and of the
condition of man in the earlier historic time, the greater
completeness of our conceptions as to the phenomena of life and their
relation to organizable matters--all these and many other aspects of
the later progress of science must tend to bring it back into greater
harmony with revealed religion.
On the other side, there has been a growing disposition on the part of
theologians to inquire as to the actual views of nature presented in
the Bible, and to separate these from those accretions of obsolete
philosophy which have been too often confounded with them. With
respect to the first chapter of Genesis more especially, there has
been a decided growth in the acceptance of those principles for which
I contended in 1860. In illustration of this I may refer to the fact
that in 1862 it was precisely on these principles that Dr. McCaul
conducted his able defence of the Mosaic record of creation in the
"Aids to Faith," which may almost be regarded as an authoritative
expression of the views of orthodox Christians in opposition to those
of the once notorious "Essays and Reviews." Equally significant is the
adoption of this method of interpretation by Dr. Tayler Lewis in his
masterly "Special Introduction" to the first chapter of Genesis, in
the American edition of Lange's Commentary, edited by Dr. Philip
Schaff; and the manifest approval with which the lucid statement of
the relations of Geology and the Bible by Dr. Arnold Guyot, was
received by the great gathering of divines at the Convention of the
Evangelical Alliance in New York, in 1873, bears testimony to the same
fact. The author has also had the honor of being invited to
illustrate this mode of reconciliation to the students of two of the
most important theological colleges in America, in lectures afterwards
published and widely circulated.
The time is perhaps nearer than we anticipate when Natural Science and
Theology will unite in the conviction that the first chapter of
Genesis "stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful
simplicity and grandeur of its words," and that "the meaning of these
words is always a meaning ahead of science--not because it anticipates
the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and
runs as it were round the outer margin of all possible discovery."[1]
In the Appendix the reader will find several short essays on special
points collateral to the general subject, and important in the
solution of some of its difficulties, but which could not be
conveniently included in the text. More especially I would refer to
the summaries given in the Appendix of the present state of our
knowledge as to the origin of life, of species, and of man--topics not
discussed in much detail in the body of the work, both because of the
wide fields of controversy to which they lead, and because I have
treated of them somewhat fully in a previous work, "The Story of the
Earth and Man," in which the detailed history of life as disclosed by
science was the main subject in hand.
J. W. D.
_May, 1877._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MYSTERY OF ORIGINS AND ITS SOLUTIONS.
Reality of the Unseen.--Personality of God.--Possibility of a
Revelation of Origins.--Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic Solutions
of the Mystery.--The Abrahamic Genesis.--The Mosaic Genesis Page 9
CHAPTER II.
OBJECTS AND NATURE OF A REVELATION OF ORIGINS.
Objects to be Attained by a Revelation of Origins.--Its Method and
Structure.--Vision of Creation.--Translation of the First Chapter of
Genesis 35
CHAPTER III.
OBJECTS AND NATURE OF A REVELATION OF ORIGINS
(_continued_).
Character of the Revelation and its Views of Nature.--Natural Law.--
Progress and Development.--Purpose and Use.--Type or Pattern 70
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEGINNING.
The Universe not eternal.--Its Creation.--The Heavens.--The Earth.--
The Creator, Elohim.--The Beginning very Remote in Time 87
CHAPTER V.
THE DESOLATE VOID.
Characteristics of Biblical Chaos.--The Primitive Deep.--The Divine
Spirit.--The Breath of God.--Chaos in other Cosmogonies.--Chemical
and Physical Conditions of the Primitive Chaos 100
CHAPTER VI.
LIGHT AND CREATIVE DAYS.
What is Implied in Cosmic Light.--Its Gradual Condensation.--Day and
Night.--Days of Creation.--Their Nature and Length.--They are
Olams, AEons or Time-worlds.--Objections to this View
Answered.--Confirmations from Extraneous Sources. 115
CHAPTER VII.
THE ATMOSPHERE.
Its Present Constitution.--Waters Above and Below.--The "Expanse"
of Genesis not a Solid Arch.--Mythology of the Atmosphere.--
Superstitions connected with it Opposed by the Bible. 157
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DRY LAND AND THE FIRST PLANTS.
The Earth of the Bible is the Dry Land.--Its Elevation and Support
above the Waters.--Structure of the Continents arranged from the
first.--The First Vegetation.--Its Nature.--Introduction of Life.--
Organization and Reproduction.--Objections considered.--Geological
Indications. 174
CHAPTER IX.
LUMINARIES.
How Introduced.--What Implied in this.--Dominion of Existing Causes.
--Astronomy of the Hebrews.--Not Connected with Astrology 199
CHAPTER X.
THE LOWER ANIMALS.
The Sheretzim, or Swarmers.--Their Origin from the Waters.--The
Great Reptiles.--Their Creation.--Coincidences with Geology.
--Hypotheses of Evolution 211
CHAPTER XI.
THE HIGHER ANIMALS AND MAN.
The Placental Mammals.--The Principal Groups of these.--Man, how
Introduced.--His Early Condition.--His Relations to Nature 230
CHAPTER XII.
THE REST OF THE CREATOR.
The Sabbath of Creation.--The Modern Period.--Its Early History.
--The Fall and Antediluvian Man.--Postdiluvian Extension of Men 249
CHAPTER XIII.
UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
Biblical Account of his Introduction and Early History.--Historical
Testimony with respect to his Unity and Antiquity.--Testimony of
Language 263
CHAPTER XIV.
UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN (_continued_).
Geological Evidence of Antiquity of Man.--General Conditions of
Post-glacial and Modern Periods.--Remains of Man in Caverns, in
River-gravels, etc.--Palaeocosmic and Neocosmic Men 294
CHAPTER XV.
COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS.
Geological Chronology.--Table of Succession of Life.--Points of
Agreement of the Two Records.--Parallelism of Genesis and Physical
Science with Reference to the Origin and Early History of the World.
--Conclusion 322
APPENDICES.
A.--True and False Evolution. 363
B.--Evolution and Creation by Law. 373
C.--Modes of Creation. 377
D.--Theories of Life. 383
E.--Recent Facts as to the Antiquity of Man. 386
F.--Glacial Periods in Connection with Genesis. 395
G.--Chemistry of the Primeval Earth. 400
H.--Tannin and Bhemah. 405
I.--Ancient Mythologies. 408
K.--Assyrian and Egyptian Texts. 412
L.--Species and Varieties in Connection with Evolution and the
Unity of Man. 414
THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
THE MYSTERY OF ORIGINS AND ITS SOLUTIONS.
"The things that are seen are temporal."--PAUL.
Have we or can we have any certain solution of those two great
questions--Whence are all things? and Whither do all things tend? No
thinking man is content to live merely in a transitory present, ever
emerging out of darkness and ever returning thither again, without
knowing any thing of the origin and issue of the world and its
inhabitants. Yet it would seem that to-day men are as much in
uncertainty on these subjects as at any previous time. It even appears
as if all our added knowledge would only, for a time at least, deprive
us of the solutions to which we trusted, and give no others in their
room. Christians have been accustomed to rest on the cosmogony and
prophecy of the Bible; but we are now frankly told on all hands that
these are valueless, and that even ministers of religion more or less
"sacrifice their sincerity" in making them the basis of their
teachings. On the other hand, we are informed that nothing can be
discerned in the universe beyond matter and force, and that it is by a
purely material and spontaneous evolution that all things exist. But
when we ask as to the origin of matter and force, and the laws which
regulate them--as to the end to which their movement is tending, as to
the manner in which they have evolved the myriad forms of life and the
human intelligence itself--the only answer is that these are
"insoluble mysteries."
Are we, then, to fall back on the real or imagined revelations and
traditions of the past, and to endeavor to find in them some foothold
of assurance; or are we to wait till further progress in science may
have cleared up some of the present mysteries? Whatever may be said of
the former alternative, all honest students of science will unite with
me in the admission that the latter is hopeless. We need not seek to
belittle the magnificent triumphs of modern science. They have been
real and stupendous. But it is of their very nature to conduct us to
ultimate facts and laws of which science can give no explanation; and
the further we push our inquiries the more insuperably does the wall
of mystery rise before us. It is true we can furnish the materials for
philosophical speculations which may be built on scientific facts and
principles; but these are in their nature uncertain, and must
constantly change as knowledge advances. They can not solve for us the
great practical problems of our origin and destiny.
In these circumstances no apology is needed for a thorough and careful
inquiry into those foundations of religious belief which rest on the
idea of a revelation of origins and destinies made to man from
without, and on which we may build the superstructure of a rational
religion, giving guidance for the present and hope for the future. In
the following pages I propose to enter upon so much of this subject as
relates to the origin and earliest history of the world, in so far as
these are treated of in the Bible and in the traditions of the more
ancient nations; and this with reference to the present standpoint of
science in relation to these questions.
To discuss such questions at all, certain preliminary admissions are
necessary. These are: (1) The reality of an unseen universe, spiritual
rather than material in its nature. (2) The existence of a personal
God, or of a great Universal Will. (3) The possibility of
communication taking place between God and man. I do not propose to
attempt any proof of these positions, but it may be well to explain
what they mean.
(1) That the great machine for the dissipation of energy, in which we
exist, and which we call the universe, must have a correlative and
complement in the unseen, is a conclusion now forced upon physicists
by the necessities of the doctrine of the conservation of force. In
short, it seems that, unless we admit this conclusion, we can not
believe in the possible existence of the material universe itself, and
must sink into absolute nihilism. This doctrine is expressed by the
apostle Paul in the statement, "The things that are seen are temporal,
but the things that are not seen are eternal," and it has been ably
discussed by the authors of the remarkable work, "The Unseen
Universe." That this unseen world is spiritual--that is, not subject
to the same material laws with the visible universe--is also a fair
deduction from physical science, as well as a doctrine of Scripture. I
prefer the term spiritual to supernatural, because the first is the
term used in the Bible, and because the latter has had associated with
it ideas of the miraculous and abnormal, not implied at all in the
idea of the spiritual, which in some important senses may be more
natural than the material.
(2) The idea of a personal God implies not merely the existence of an
unknown absolute power, as Herbert Spencer seems to hold, or of "an
Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," as Matthew
Arnold puts it, but of a Being of whom we can affirm will,
intelligence, feeling, self-consciousness, not certainly precisely as
they occur in us, but in a higher and more perfect form, of which our
own consciousness furnishes the type, or "image and shadow," as Moses
long ago phrased it. On the one hand, it is true that we can not fully
comprehend such a personal God, because not limited by the conditions
which limit us. On the other hand, it is clear that our intellect, as
constituted, can furnish us with no ultimate explanation of the
universe except in the action of such a primary personal will. In the
Bible the absolute personality of God is expressed by the title "I
am." His intimate relation to us is indicated by the expression, "In
him we live, and move, and have our being." His all-pervading essence
is stated as "the fullness of him that filleth all in all." His
relative personality is shadowed forth by the attribution to him of
love, anger, and other human feelings and sentiments, and by
presenting him in the endearing relation of the universal Father.
(3) With reference to the possibility of communication between God and
man, it may truly be said that such communication is not only
possible, but infinitely probable. God is not only near to us, but we
are in him, and, independently of the testimony of revelation, it has
been felt by all classes of men, from the rudest and most primitive
savages up to our great English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, that if
there is a God, he can not be excluded from communion with his
intelligent creatures, either directly or through the medium of
ministering spirits.[2] Farther, placed as man is in the midst of
complex and to him inexplicable phenomena, involved in a conflict of
good and evil, happiness and misery, to which the wisest and the
greatest minds have found no issue, subject to be degraded by low
passions and tempted to great extremes of evil, and himself weak,
impulsive, and vacillating, there seems the most urgent need for
divine communication. It may be said that these are conflicts and
problems which God has left man to decide and solve for himself by his
own reason. But when we consider how slow this process is, and how
imperfect even now, after the experience of ages, we seem to need some
intervention that shall stimulate the human mind, and impel it forward
with greater rapidity. Farther, it would appear only right that an
intelligent and accountable being, placed in a world like this, should
have some explanation of his origin and destiny given him at first,
and that, if he should perchance go astray, a helping hand should be
extended to him.
Practically it is an historical fact that all the great impulses given
to humanity have been by men claiming divine guidance or inspiration,
and professing to bring light and truth from the unseen world. It
would be too much to say that all these prophets and reformers have
been inspired of heaven; but scarcely too much to say that they have
either received a message of God, or have been permitted to transmit
to our world messages for weal or woe from powers without in
subordination to him. Farther, we shall have reason in the sequel to
see that in far back prehistoric times there must have been impulses
given to mankind, and revelations made to them, as potent as those
which have acted in later historic periods. In Holy Scripture the Word
of God is represented as "enlightening every man;[3]" and with
reference to our present subject we are told that "by faith we
understand that the ages of the world were constituted by the Word of
God, so that the visible things were not made of those which
appear."[4] In other words, that the will of God has been active and
operative as the sole cause throughout all ages of the world's
creation and history, and that the visible universe is not a mere
product of its own phenomena. We may call this faith, if we please, an
intuition or instinct, a God-given gift, or a product of our own
thought acting on evidence afforded by the outer world; but in any
case it seems to be the sole possible solution of the mystery of
origins.
These points being premised, we are in a position to inquire as to the
teaching of our own Holy Scriptures, and in this inquiry we can easily
take along with them all other revelations, pretended or true, that
deal with our subject.
Max Mueller, in his lectures on the Science of Religion, rejects the
ordinary division into natural and revealed, and adopts a threefold
grouping, corresponding to the great division of languages into
Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic. With some modification and explanation,
this classification will serve well our present purpose. As to natural
and revealed religions, if we regard our own as revealed, we must
admit an element of revelation in all others as well. According to the
Hebrew Scriptures revelation began in Eden, and was continued more or
less in all successive ages up to the apostolic times. Consequently
the earlier revelations of the antediluvian and postdiluvian times
must have been the common property of all races, and must have been
associated with whatever elements of natural religion they had. When,
therefore, we call our religion distinctively a revealed one, we must
admit that traces of the same revelation may be found in all others.
On the other hand, when we characterize our religion as Hebrew or
Semitic, we must bear in mind that in its earlier stages it was not so
limited; but that, if as old as it professes to be, it must include a
substratum common to it with the old religions of the Turanians and
Aryans. Neglect of these very simple considerations often leads to
great confusion in the minds both of Christians and unbelievers, as to
the relation of Christianity to heathenism, and especially to the
older and more primitive forms of heathenism.
The Turanian stock, of which the Mongolian peoples of Northern Asia
may be taken as the type, includes also the American races, and the
oldest historical populations of Western Asia and of Europe; and they
are the peoples who, in their physical features and their art
tendencies, most nearly resemble the prehistoric men of the caves and
gravels. They largely consist of the populations which the Bible
affiliates with Ham. They are remarkable for their permanent and
stationary forms of civilization or barbarism, and for the languages
least developed in grammatical structure. These people had and still
have traditions of the creation and early history of man similar to
those in the earlier Biblical books; but the connection of their
religions with that of the Bible breaks off from the time of Abraham;
and the earlier portions of revelation which they possessed became
disintegrated into a polytheism which takes very largely the form of
animism, or of attributing some special spiritual indwelling to all
natural objects, and also that of worship of ancestors and heroes. The
portion of primitive theological belief to which they have clung most
persistently is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which in
all their religious beliefs occupies a prominent place, and has always
been connected with special attention to rites of sepulture and
monuments to the dead. Their version of the revelation of creation
appears most distinctly in the sacred book of the Quiches of Central
America, and in the creation myths of the Mexicans, Iroquois,
Algonquins, and other North American tribes; and it has been handed
down to us through the Semitic Assyrians from the ancient
Chaldaeo-turanian population of the valley of the Euphrates.
The Aryan races have been remarkable for their changeable and
versatile character. Their religious ideas in the most primitive times
appear to have been not dissimilar from those of the Turanians; and
the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Scandinavians, and Celts have all gone
some length in developing and modifying these, apparently by purely
human imaginative and intellectual materials. But all these
developments were defective in a moral point of view, and had lost the
stability and rational basis which proceed from monotheism. Hence they
have given way before other and higher faiths; and at this day the
more advanced nations of the Aryan, or in Scriptural language the
Japhetic stock, have adopted the Semitic faith; and, as Noah long ago
predicted, "dwell in the tents of Shem." No indigenous account of the
genesis of things remains among the Aryan races, with the exception of
that in the Avesta, and in some ancient Hindoo hymns, and these are
merely variations of the Turanian or Semitic cosmogony. God has given
to the Aryans no special revelations of his will, and they would have
been left to grope for themselves along the paths of science and
philosophy, but for the advent among them of the prophets of "Jehovah
the God of Shem."
It is to the Semitic race that God has been most liberal in his gift
of inspiration. Gathering up and treasuring the old common
inheritance of religion, and eliminating from it the accretions of
superstition, the children of Abraham at one time stood alone, or
almost alone, as adherents of a belief in one God the Creator. Their
theology was added to from age to age by a succession of prophets, all
working in one line of development, till it culminated in the
appearance of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to expand itself over
the other races. Among them it has undergone two remarkable phases of
retrograde development--the one in Mohammedanism, which carries it
back to a resemblance to its own earlier patriarchal stage, the other
in Roman and Greek ecclesiasticism, which have taken it back to the
Levitical system, along with a strong color of paganism. Still its
original documents survive, and retain their hold on large portions of
the more enlightened Aryan nations, while through their means these
documents have entered on a new career of conquest among the Semites
and Turanians. They are, however, it must be admitted, among the Aryan
races of Europe, growing in a somewhat uncongenial soil; partly
because of the materialistic organization of these races, and partly
because of the abundant remains of heathenism which still linger among
them; and it is possible that they may not realize their full triumphs
over humanity till the Semitic races return to the position of
Abraham, and erect again in the world the standard of monotheistic
faith, under the auspices of a purified Christianity.
It follows from this hasty survey that it is the Semitic solution of
the question of origins, as contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, that
mainly concerns us; and in the first place we must consider the
foundation and historical development of this solution, as many
misconceptions prevail on these points. We may discuss these subjects
under the heads of the Abrahamic Genesis and the Mosaic Genesis, and
may in a subsequent chapter consider the results of these in the
Genesis of the later Scripture writers.
THE ABRAHAMIC GENESIS.
It has been a favorite theory with some learned men that the earlier
parts of the book of Genesis existed as ancient documents even in the
time of Moses, and were incorporated by him in his work, and attempts
have been made to separate, on various grounds, the older from the
newer portions. Until lately, however, these attempts have been
altogether conjectural and destitute of any positive basis of
archaeological fact. A new and interesting aspect has been given to
them by the recent readings of the inscriptions on clay tablets found
at Nineveh, and to which especial attention has been given by the late
Mr. G. Smith, of the Archaeological Department of the British Museum.
Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, one of the kings known to the Greeks by
the name of Sardanapalus, reigned at Nineveh about B.C. 673. He was a
grandson of the Biblical Sennacherib, and son of Esarhaddon, and it
seems that he had inherited from his fathers a library of Chaldean and
Assyrian literature, written not on perishable paper or parchment, but
on tablets of clay, and containing much ancient lore of the nations
inhabiting the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Assurbanipal,
living when the Assyrian empire had attained to the acme of its
greatness, had leisure to become a greater patron of learning than any
preceding king. His scribes ransacked the record chambers of the
oldest temples in the world; and Babel, Erech, Accad, and Ur had to
yield up their treasures of history and theology to diligent copyists,
who transcribed them in beautiful arrow-head characters on new clay
tablets, and deposited them in the library of the great king. It
would appear that, at the same time, these documents were edited,
archaic forms of expression translated, and lacunae caused by decay or
fracture repaired. They were also inscribed with legends stating the
sources whence they had been derived.
The empire of Assyria went down in blood, and its palaces were
destroyed with fire, but the imperishable clay tablets which had
formed the treasure of their libraries remained, more or less broken
it is true, among the ruins. Exhumed by Layard and Smith, they are now
among the collections of the British Museum, and their decipherment is
throwing a new and strange light on the cosmogony and religions of the
early East. Though the date of the writing of these tablets is
comparatively modern, being about the time of the later kings of
Judah, the original records from which they were transcribed profess
to have been very ancient--some of them about 1600 years before the
time of Assurbanipal, so that they go back to a time anterior to that
of the early Hebrew patriarchs. Their genuineness has been endorsed,
in one case, by the discovery by Mr. Loftus, in the city of Senkereh,
of an apparent original, bearing date about 1600 years before Christ,
and other inscriptions of equal or greater antiquity have been found
in the ruins of Ur, on the Euphrates. Nor does there seem any reason
to doubt that the scribes of Assurbanipal faithfully transcribed the
oldest records extant in their time. Their care and diligence are also
shown by the fact that where different versions of these records
existed in different cities, they have made copies of these variant
manuscripts, instead of attempting to reduce them to one text. The
subjects treated of in the Nineveh tablets are very various, but those
that concern our present purpose are the documents relating to the
creation, the fall of man, and the deluge, of which considerable
portions have been recovered, and have been translated by Mr. Smith.
These documents carry us back to a time when the Turanian religions
had not yet been separated from the Semitic. The early Chaldeans,
termed Cushites in the Bible, and who under Nimrod seem to have
established the first empire in that region, are now known to have
been Turanian; and among them apparently arose at a very early period
a literature and a mythology. The Chaldeans were politically
subjugated by the Semitic Assyrians, but they retained their religious
predominance; and until a comparatively late period existed as a
learned and priestly caste. To these primitive _Chasdim_ were
undoubtedly due the creation legends collected by the scribes of
Assurbanipal. They were obtained in the old Chaldean cities, in the
temples under the guardianship of Chaldean priests; and their date
carries them back to a time anterior to the Assyrian conquest, and in
which Chaldean kings still reigned. Here, then, we have an important
connecting link between the cosmogonies of the Turanian and Semitic
races; and leaving out of sight for the present the legends of the
deluge and other matters allied to it, we may inquire as to the nature
and contents of the Assyrian and Chaldean record of creation.
The Assyrian Genesis is similar in order and arrangement to that in
our own Bible, and gives the same general order of the creative work.
Its days, however, of creation, as indeed there is good internal
evidence to prove those of Moses also are, seem to be periods or ages.
It treats of the creation of gods, as well as of the universe, and
thus introduces a polytheistic system; and it seems to recognize, like
the Avesta, a primitive principle of evil, presiding over chaos, and
subsequently introducing evil among men. These points may be
illustrated by an extract from Mr. Smith's translation. It relates to
the earlier part of the work:
"When above were not raised the heavens,
And below on the earth a plant had not grown up
The deep also had not broken up its boundaries
Chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea or abyss) was the producing mother
of them all
These waters at the beginning were ordained
But a tree had not grown a flower had not unfolded
When the gods had not sprung up any one of them
A plant had not grown and order did not exist
Were made also the great gods
The gods Lahma and Lahamu they caused to come * * *
And they grew * * *
The gods Sar and Kisar were made
A course of days and a long time passed
The god Anu * * *
The gods Sar and * * *"
Here the first existences are Chaos (Mummu, or confusion) and Tiamat,
which is the Thalatth of Berosus, representing the sea or primitive
abyss, but also recognized as a female deity or first mother. Then we
have Lahma and Lahamu, which represent power or motion in nature, and
are the equivalents of the Divine Spirit moving on the face of the
waters in our Genesis. Next we have the production of Sar or Iloar and
Kisar, representing the expanse or firmament. Sar is supposed to be
the god Assur of the Assyrians, a great weather god, and after whom
their nation and its founder were named. The next process is the
creation of the heaven and the earth, represented by Anu and Anatu.
Anu was always one of the greater gods, and was identified with the
higher or starry heavens. In succeeding tablets to this we find Bel or
Belus introduced, as the agent in the creation of animals and of men;
and he is the true Demiurgus or Mediator of the Assyrian system. Next
we have the introduction of Hea or Saturn, who is the equivalent of
the Biblical Adam, and of Ishtar, mother of men, who is the Isba or
Eve of Genesis. The rest of this legend evidently relates to deified
men, among whom are Merodach, Nebo, and other heroes.
The first remark that we may make on this Assyrian Genesis is that,
while it resembles generally the Mosaic account of creation, it also
strongly resembles the old cosmogonies of the Egyptians and Persians,
and those of the widely scattered Turanians of Northern Asia and of
America. As an extreme illustration of this, and to obviate the
necessity of digression at this point of our inquiry, I introduce here
some extracts from the Popul Vuh, or sacred book of the Quiche Indians
of Central America, an undoubted product of prehistoric religion in
the western continent.[5]
"And the heaven was formed, and all the signs thereof set in
their angle and alignment, and its boundaries fixed toward
the four winds by the Creator and Former, and Mother and
Father of life and existence--he by whom all move and
breathe, the Father and Cherisher of the peace of nations
and of the civilization of his people--he whose wisdom has
projected the excellence of all that is on the earth or in
the lakes or in the sea."
"Behold the first word and the first discourse. There was
yet no man nor any animal, * * * nothing was but the
firmament. The face of the earth had not yet appeared over
the peaceful sea, and all the space of heaven * * * nothing
but immobility and silence in the night."
"Alone also the Creator, the Former, the Dominator, the
Feathered Serpent--those that engender, those that give
being--they are upon the water like a growing light. They
are enveloped in green and blue, and therefore their name is
Gucumatz."[6]
"Lo now how the heavens exist, how exists also the Heart of
Heaven; such is the name of God. It is thus that he is
called. And they spake, they consulted together and
meditated; they mingled their words and their opinions."
"And the creation [of the earth] was verily after this wise.
Earth, they said, and on the instant it was formed; like a
cloud or a fog was its beginning. Then the mountains rose
over the water like great fishes; in an instant the
mountains and the plains were visible, and the cypress and
the pine appeared. Then was the Gucumatz filled with joy,
crying out: Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven,
Hurakan, Thunderbolt. Our work and our labor has
accomplished its end."
This corresponds to the work of the first four creative days; and next
details are given as to the introduction of animals, with which,
however, the Creator is represented as dissatisfied, because they
could not know or invoke the Creator. They are therefore condemned to
be subject to be devoured one of another. Again there is a council in
heaven, and the gods determine to make man. But he also is imperfect,
for he has speech without intelligence: so he is condemned to be
destroyed by water. A new council is held, and a second race of men
produced; but this fails in the capacity for religious worship--"they
forgot the Heart of Heaven." These were partly destroyed by fire and
partly converted into apes. Lastly another council is held, and
perfect men created. Then follows a remarkable series of stories
relating to the early history and migrations of men.
It is known that similar creation myths existed among the Mexicans
and other early civilized nations of America, and in ruder and more
grotesque forms even among the semi-barbarous and hunter tribes. Their
connection with the ancient Semitic and Turanian revelations of Asia
is unquestionable.
We have thus in the Assyrian Genesis a relic of early religious belief
belonging to a period when such widely separated stocks as the
Assyrian and American were still one: to a period, therefore,
presumably long anterior to that of Moses. Yet at this very early
period the central portions at least of the Turanian race had already
devised some means of recording their traditions in writing--probably
the arrow-head writing, afterwards used by the Assyrians, had already
been invented. Again, at this early period a complex polytheism had
already sprung up, and this was connected with cosmological ideas,
inasmuch as the primitive abyss, the firmament, the starry heavens,
the principle of life, were all subordinate gods; and so were also
some of the earliest of the patriarchs of the human race. It is
possible, however, that this was among the early Chaldeans an exoteric
representation for the vulgar, and that the priestly caste may have
understood it in a monotheistic sense. In any case, the idea of a
Supreme Creator remains behind the whole. Farther, in the early
Chaldean record we have a more detailed and expanded document than
that of the Hebrew Genesis, probably intended for the popular ear, and
to include as much as possible of the current mythology. As an
example, I quote the following in relation to the creation of the
moon, being apparently a part of the narrative of that creative period
corresponding with the fourth day of Genesis:
"In its mass [that is, of the lower chaos] he made a boiling,
The God Uru [the moon] he caused to rise out, the night he
overshadowed.
To fix it also for the light of the night until the shining of
the day,
That the month might not be broken and in its amount be regular.
At the beginning of the month at the rising of the night,
His horns are breaking through to shine in the heavens.
On the seventh day to a circle he begins to swell,
And stretches toward the dawn farther."
We now come to the historical connection of all this with Abraham and
with the Hebrew Scriptures. The early life of the "Father of the
Faithful" belongs to the time when Turanian and Semitic elements were
mingled in the Euphratean valley. Himself of the stock of Shem, he
dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, a city in whose ruins, now known by the
name of Mugheir, Chaldean inscriptions have been found of a date
anterior to that of the patriarch. In the time of Abraham a
polytheistic religion already existed in Ur, for we are told that his
father "served other gods." Further, the legends of the creation and
the deluge, and the antediluvian age, with the history of Nimrod and
other postdiluvian heroes, existed in a written form; and, strange
though this may seem, there can be little doubt that Abraham, before
he left Ur of the Chaldees, had read the same creation legends that
have so recently been translated and published by Mr. Smith. But
Abraham's relation to these was of a peculiar kind. With a spiritual
enlightenment beyond that of his age, he dissented from the Turanian
animism and polytheism, and maintained that pure and spiritual
monotheism which, according to the Bible, had been the original faith
of the sons of Noah. But he was overborne by the tendencies of his
time, and probably by the royal and priestly influence then dominant
in Chaldea, and he went forth from his native land in search of a
country where he might have freedom to worship God. It is thus that
Abraham appears as the earliest reformer, the first of those martyrs
of conscience who fear not to differ from the majority, the father and
prototype of the faithful of every age, and the earliest apostle of
the monotheistic faith which still reigns among all the higher races
of men.
Did Abraham take with him in his pilgrimage the records of his people?
It is scarcely possible to doubt that he did, and this probably in a
written form, but purified from the polytheism and inane imaginations
accreted upon them; or perhaps he had access to still older and more
primitive records anterior to the rise of the Turanian superstitions.
In any case we may safely infer that Abraham and his tribe carried
with them the substance of all that part of Genesis which contains the
history of the world up to his time, and that this would be a precious
heir-loom of his family, until it was edited and incorporated in the
Pentateuch by his great descendant Moses. It seems plain, therefore,
that the original prophet or seer to whom the narrative of creation
was revealed lived before Abraham, but we need not doubt that the
latter had the benefit of divine guidance in his noble stand against
the idolatry of his age, and in his selection of the documents on
which his own theology was based. These considerations help us to
understand the persistence of Hebrew monotheism in the presence of the
idolatries of Canaan and Egypt, since these were closely allied to the
Chaldean system against which Abraham had protested. They also explain
the recognition by Abraham, as co-religionists, of such monotheistic
personages as Melchisedec, king of Salem. They further illustrate the
nature of the religious basis in his people's beliefs on which Moses
had to work, and on which he founded his theocratic system.
Before leaving this part of the subject, I would observe that the view
above given; while it explains the agreement between the Hebrew
Genesis and other ancient religious beliefs, is in strict accordance
with the teachings of Genesis itself. The history given there implies
monotheism and knowledge of God as the Creator and Redeemer, in
antediluvian and early postdiluvian times, a decadence from this into
a systematic polytheism at a very early date, the protest and dissent
of Abraham, his call of God to be the upholder of a purer faith, and
the maintenance of that faith by his descendants. Besides this, any
careful reader of Genesis and of the book of Job, which, whatever its
origin, must be more ancient than the Mosaic law, will readily
discover indications that Abraham and the patriarchs were in the
possession of documents and traditions of the same purport with those
in the early chapters of Genesis, and that these were to them their
only sacred literature. The reader of the Pentateuch must carry this
idea with him, if he would have any clear conception of the unity and
symmetry of these remarkable books.
THE MOSAIC GENESIS.
In the period of 400 years intervening between Abraham's departure
from Ur and the exodus of Israel from Egypt, no great prophetic mind,
like that of the Father of the Faithful, appeared among the Hebrews.
But then arose Moses, the greatest figure in all antiquity before the
advent of Christ, and who was destined to give permanence and
world-wide prevalence to the faith for which Abraham had sacrificed so
much. Under the leadership of Moses, the Abrahamidae, now reduced to
the condition of a serf population, emancipated themselves from
Egyptian bondage, and, after forty years of wandering desert life,
settled themselves permanently on the hills and in the valleys of
Palestine. The voice of the ruling race, indistinctly conveyed to us
from that distant antiquity, maintains that the fugitive slaves were
an abject and contemptible herd; but the leader of the exodus informs
us that, though cruelly trodden down by a haughty despot, they were of
noble parentage, the heirs of high hopes and promises. Their migration
is certainly the most remarkable national movement in the world's
history--remarkable, not merely in its events and immediate
circumstances, but in its remote political, literary, and moral
results. The rulers of Egypt, polished, enlightened, and practical
men, were yet the devotees of a complicated system of hero and animal
worship, like that from which Abraham dissented, and derived in great
part from the "animism" which caused some of the oldest nations of the
world to associate a spiritual indwelling with the natural objects
surrounding them; or, if they had ceased to believe in this, they had
sunk into a materialistic devotion to the good things of the present
world, combined with a superstitious belief in the efficacy of
priestly absolution.
The slaves, leaving all this behind them, rose in their religious
opinions to the pure and spiritual monotheism of the great father of
their race; and their leader presented to them a law unequalled up to
our time in its union of justice, patriotism, and benevolence, and
established among them, for the first time in the world's history, a
free constitutional republic. Nor is this all; unexampled though such
results are elsewhere in the case of serfs suddenly emancipated. The
Hebrew lawgiver has interwoven his institutions in a great historical
composition, including the grand and simple cosmogony of the
patriarchs, a detailed account of the affiliation and ethnological
relations of the races of men, and a narrative of the fortunes of his
own people; intimating not only that they were a favored and chosen
race, but that of them was to arise a great Deliverer, who would bless
all nations with pardon and with peace,[7] and would solve once for
all those great problems of the relations of man to God and the unseen
world, which in the time of Moses as in our own were the most
momentous of all, and gave to questions of origins all their practical
value.
The lawgiver passed to his rest. His laws and literature, surviving
through many vicissitudes, have produced in each succeeding age a new
harvest of poetry and history, leavened with their own spirit. In the
mean time the learning and the superstition of Egypt faded from the
eyes of men. The splendid political and military organizations of
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Macedon arose and crumbled into dust.
The wonderful literature of Greece blazed forth and expired. That of
Rome, a reflex and copy of the former, had reached its culminating
point; and no prophet had arisen among any of these Gentile nations to
teach them the truth of God. The world, with all its national
liberties crushed out, its religion and its philosophy corrupted and
enfeebled to the last degree by an endless succession of borrowings
and intermixtures, lay prostrate under the iron heel of Rome. Then
appeared among the now obscure remnant of Israel, one who announced
himself as the Prophet like unto Moses, promised of old; but a prophet
whose mission it was to redeem not Israel only, but the whole world,
and to make all who will believe, children of faithful Abraham.
Adopting the whole of the sacred literature of the Hebrews, and
proving his mission by its words, he sent forth a few plain men to
write its closing books, and to plant it on the ruins of all the
time-honored beliefs of the nations--beliefs supported by a splendid
and highly organized priestly system and by despotic power, and gilded
by all the highest efforts of poetry and art.
The story is a very familiar one; but it is marvellous beyond all
others. Nor is the modern history of the Bible less wonderful. Exhumed
from the rubbish of the Middle Ages, it has entered on a new career of
victory. It has stimulated the mind of modern Europe to all its
highest efforts, and has been the charter of its civil and religious
liberties. Its wondrous revelation of all that man most desires to
know, in the past, in the present, and in his future destinies, has
gone home to the hearts of men in all ranks of society and in all
countries. In many great nations it is the only rule of religious
faith. In every civilized country it is the basis of all that is most
valuable in religion. Where it has been withheld from the people,
civilization in its highest aspects has languished, and superstition,
priestcraft, and tyranny have held their ground or have perished under
the assaults of a heartless and inhuman infidelity. Where it has been
a household book, education has necessarily flourished, liberty has
taken root, and the higher nature of man has been developed to the
full. Driven from many other countries by tyrannical interference with
liberty of thought and discussion, or by a short-sighted
ecclesiasticism, it has taken up its special abode with the greatest
commercial nations of our time; and, scattered by their agency
broadcast over the world, it is read by every nation under heaven in
its own tongue, and is slowly but surely preparing the way for wider
and greater changes than any that have heretofore resulted from its
influence. Explain it as we may, the Bible is a great literary
miracle; and no amount of inspiration or authority that can be
claimed for it is more strange or incredible than the actual history
of the book. Yet no book has ever thrown itself into so decided
antagonism with all the great forces of evil in the world. Tyranny
hates it, because the Bible so strongly maintains the individual value
and rights of man as man. The spirit of caste dislikes it for the same
reason. Anarchical license, on the other hand, finds nothing but
discouragement in it. Priestcraft gnashes its teeth at it, as the very
embodiment of private judgment in religion, and because it so
scornfully ignores human authority in matters of conscience, and human
intervention between man and his Maker. Skepticism sneers at it,
because it requires faith and humility, and threatens ruin to the
unbeliever. It launches its thunders against every form of violence or
fraud or allurement that seeks to profit by wrong or to pander to the
vices of mankind; all these consequently are its foes. On the other
hand, by its uncompromising stand with reference to certain scientific
and historical facts, it has appeared to oppose the progress of
thought and speculation; though, as we shall see, it has been unfairly
accused in this last respect.
With its antagonism to the evil that is in the world we have at
present nothing to do, except to caution the student of this venerable
literature against the prejudices which interested and unscrupulous
foes seek to cultivate. Its doctrine of the origin of man and of the
world, and the relation of this to modern scientific and historical
results, is that which now claims our attention; and this more
especially in the relation which the Mosaic cosmogony, considered as
an early revelation from God, may be found to bear to the facts which
modern scientific research has elicited from the universe itself. The
aspects in which apparent conflicts present themselves are threefold.
At one time it was not unusual to impugn the historical accuracy of
the Pentateuch on the evidence of the Greek historians; and on many
points scarcely any corroborative evidence could be cited in favor of
the Hebrew writers. In our own time much of this difficulty has been
removed, and an immense amount of learned research has been reduced to
waste paper, by the circumstance that the monuments of Egypt and
Assyria have risen up to bear testimony in favor of the Bible; and
scarcely any sane man now doubts the value of the Hebrew history. The
battle-ground has in consequence been shifted farther back, to points
concerning the affiliation of the races of men, the absolute antiquity
of man's residence on the earth, and the condition of prehistoric men;
questions on which we can scarcely expect to find, at least for a long
time, any decisive monumental or scientific evidence. Secondly, the
Bible commits itself to certain cosmological doctrines and statements
respecting the system of nature, and details of that system, more or
less approaching to the domain which geology occupies in its
investigations of the past history of the earth; and at every stage in
the progress of modern science, independently of the mischief done by
smatterers and skeptics, earnest bigotry on the one hand, and earnest
scientific enthusiasm on the other, have come into collision. One
stumbling-block after another has, it is true, been removed by mutual
concession and farther enlightenment, and by the removal of false
traditional interpretations of the sacred records, as well as by
farther discoveries in relation to nature. But the field of conflict
has thereby apparently only changed; and we still have some Christians
in consequence regarding the revelations of natural science with
suspicion, and some scientific men cherishing a sullen resentment
against what they regard as an intolerant intermeddling of theology
with the domain of legitimate investigation. Lastly, the great growth
of physical science, and the tendency to take partial views of the
universe as if it were comprehended in mere matter and force, with
similarly partial views of the doctrines of continuity and the
conservation of forces, along with the growth of a belief in
spontaneous evolution as a philosophical dogma, have placed many
scientific minds in a position which makes them treat the whole
question of the origin and destiny of man and of the world with
absolute indifference.
There can nevertheless be no question that the whole subject is at the
present moment in a more satisfactory state than ever previously; that
much has been done for the solution of difficulties; that many
theologians admit the great service which in many cases science has
rendered to the interpretation of the Bible, and that most naturalists
feel themselves free from undue trammels. Above all, there is a very
general disposition to admit the distinctness and independence of the
fields of revelation and natural science, the possibility of their
arriving at some of the same truths, though in very different ways,
and the folly of expecting them fully and manifestly to agree in the
present state of our information. The literature of this kind of
natural history has also become very extensive, and there are few
persons who do not at least know that there are methods of reconciling
the cosmogony of Moses with that obtained from the study of nature.
For this very reason the time is favorable for an unprejudiced
discussion of the questions involved; and for presenting on the one
hand to naturalists a summary of what the Bible does actually teach
respecting the early history of the earth and man, and on the other to
those whose studies lie in the book which they regard as the Word of
God, rather than in the material universe which they regard as his
work, a view of the points in which the teaching of the Bible comes
into contact with natural science at its present stage of progress.
These are the ends which I propose to myself in the following pages,
and which I shall endeavor to pursue in a spirit of fair and truthful
investigation; having regard on the one hand to the claims and
influence of the venerable Book of God, and on the other to the rights
and legitimate results of modern scientific inquiry.
The plan which I have proposed to myself in this part of my subject
is to take the statements of Genesis in their order, and consider what
they import, and how they appear to harmonize with what we know from
other sources. This will occupy some space, but it will save time in
dealing with the remaining parts of the subject. Before entering upon
it, I propose to devote one chapter to the answers to three questions
which concern the whole doctrine of revealed religion, whether
Semitic, Turanian, or Aryan. These are: (1) _Why_ the origin of things
should be revealed; (2) _How_ it could be revealed; and (3) _What_
would require to be revealed in order to form the basis of a rational
theism.