Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER XVI.

_THE DE­TAILS OF THE CRE­ATION NAR­RA­TIVE._

§1. _The Ex­pla­na­tion of the Vers­es._

It re­mains on­ly now to go over the nar­ra­tive, the _gen­er­al_ bear­ing of which I have thus en­deav­oured to vin­di­cate, so that mi­nor mat­ters of de­tail, in which it is sup­posed (1) that some con­tra­dic­tion to known phys­ical fact may still lurk, and (2) some­thing that neg­atives the ex­pla­na­tion sug­gest­ed, may be cleared up.

Let us take it se­ri­atim:--

“In the be­gin­ning God cre­at­ed the heav­en (plu­ral in the orig­inal) and the earth.”

As I have be­fore re­marked, we have no re­al need to dis­cuss whether “bara” means orig­inat­ed (cre­at­ed where noth­ing pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed), or whether we should ren­der it “fash­ioned,” i.e., mould­ed ma­te­ri­al (thus as­sumed in terms to be) al­ready in ex­is­tence.

Ei­ther will yield per­fect­ly good and con­sis­tent sense; but, as a mat­ter of fact, there is a vir­tu­al con­sen­sus of the best schol­ars that the word is here used to de­note orig­inal pro­duc­tion of the ma­te­ri­al.

It is al­so clear that the text is in­tend­ed to em­brace the whole sys­tem of plan­ets, suns, stars, and what­ev­er else is in space. So the Psalmist un­der­stood it: “By the word of the Lord were the heav­ens made, and _all_ the host of them by the breath of his mouth.[1]” Nor is there any rea­son­able doubt, ex­eget­ical­ly, that the sub­se­quent al­lu­sion to the sun, moon, and stars, refers (as the sense of the text it­self ob­vi­ous­ly re­quires) to their _ap­point­ment_ or ad­just­ment to cer­tain re­la­tions with the earth, and as­sumes their orig­inal ma­te­ri­al pro­duc­tion in space, to have been al­ready stat­ed or un­der­stood.

“And the earth was (be­came) with­out form[2] and void, and dark­ness was up­on the face of the deep. And the Spir­it of God moved up­on the face of the wa­ters.”

I have, in an­oth­er con­nec­tion, al­ready re­marked on this verse, and so shall not re­peat those re­marks.

[Foot­note 1: Psa. xxxi­ii. 6, and so Psa. cii. 25; _cf_. 2 Pe­ter iii. 5.]

[Foot­note 2: Waste (R.V.).]

I will on­ly say that the el­emen­tal strife and rush­ing to­geth­er of chem­ical el­ements un­der the stress of var­ious forces and the pres­ence of enor­mous heat, would nat­ural­ly en­vel­op the globe in dense vapours, a large por­tion of which would be wa­tery vapour, ca­pa­ble of con­den­sa­tion or of dis­per­sion, un­der prop­er con­di­tions, af­ter­wards to be pre­scribed and re­al­ized. As it is beau­ti­ful­ly ex­pressed in Job xxxvi­ii., “When I made the cloud the gar­ment there­of, and thick dark­ness a swad­dling-​band for it” (verse 8).

Then com­mences the se­ri­al or­der of Di­vine acts with ref­er­ence to the _Earth_:--

(1) “AND GOD SAID; LET THERE BE LIGHT: AND THERE WAS LIGHT.”

This verse is com­mon­ly tak­en as in­di­cat­ing a cre­ation of light for the first time in the en­tire cos­mos or uni­verse. And if it be so, there is no ob­jec­tion, on any sci­en­tif­ic ground, to the as­ser­tion that there was once a time when as yet the vi­bra­tions and waves which we con­nect with the idea of Light, had not yet be­gun. It is true that neb­ular mat­ter, as now ob­served, is be­lieved to be, par­tial­ly at any rate, self-​lu­mi­nous. But this fact, sup­pos­ing it to be such, is not in­con­sis­tent with a still ear­li­er time when light had not yet be­gun. From the “wave-​the­ory” of light, which is one of those work­ing hy­pothe­ses which are in­dis­pens­able, and which, in a sense, may be said to be demon­strat­ed by their in­dis­pens­abil­ity, it can clear­ly be seen that if light is caused by rapid vi­bra­tional move­ment, there must have been--or at any rate there is noth­ing against an au­thor­ita­tive dec­la­ra­tion that there was--a mo­ment of time when the first vi­bra­tional im­pulse was giv­en, when, in fact, God said “Let there be light, and there was light,” _be­fore_ which al­so there was “dark­ness up­on the face of the deep.[1]”

[Foot­note 1: It al­so needs on­ly to be re­marked, in pass­ing, that we are re­al­ly in com­plete ig­no­rance as to the light-​medi­um, the “lu­minif­er­ous-​ether” out­side the com­par­ative­ly thin stra­tum of our own ter­res­tri­al at­mo­sphere. We do not know whether there might not have been a con­di­tion of the medi­um in which, up to the mo­ment of a cre­ative _fi­at_, it was in­ca­pable of trans­mit­ting light-​waves.]

There is no nec­es­sary con­nec­tion be­tween the cre­ation of light _per se_, and the ex­is­tence of any par­tic­ular source (or sources) of light to our plan­et or to oth­er plan­ets.

No jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is now need­ed for such a re­mark, and the al­most for­got­ten cav­ils of one of the “Es­says and Re­views” may still sur­vive as a “sci­en­tif­ic” cu­rios­ity, to warn us against too hasti­ly con­clud­ing that (in sub­jects where so lit­tle is re­al­ly _known_) the Bible must be wrong, and the favourite hy­poth­esis of the day right.

But as a mat­ter of fact, the text, es­pe­cial­ly when read in con­nec­tion with Job xxxvi­ii., need not be tak­en to re­fer to any orig­inal cre­ation of light in the uni­verse gen­er­al­ly, but mere­ly to the let­ting in of light on the hith­er­to dark and “waste” earth. The com­mand “Let there be light” was fol­lowed on the next day by the for­ma­tion of a fir­ma­ment or ex­panse. So that all the verse _nec­es­sar­ily_ im­plies is, that the thick clouds and vapours which sur­round­ed the earth were so dealt with, that light could reach the earth: the light was thus di­vid­ed from the dark­ness, and the ro­tat­ing globe would ex­pe­ri­ence the al­ter­na­tion of day and night.

The “day” hav­ing thus been cre­at­ed for­mal­ly (so to speak), the Di­vine Au­thor pro­ceeds to mark, by His own Pro­ce­dure, the use of the “days” which He had pro­vid­ed for the earth.

On this view, of course, the ori­gin of light as a “force”--the first be­gin­ning of its pul­sa­tions--is not de­tailed, any more than the ori­gin of elec­tric force, or heat, or grav­ita­tion.

Here, too, I may re­mark that the idea of _cre­ation_, which it has been one of my chief ob­jects to de­vel­op, is il­lus­trat­ed. This re­mark holds good, whether an orig­inal cre­ation of light is in­tend­ed, or on­ly an ar­range­ment where­by light was for the first time in­tro­duced to the earth's sur­face. The idea of cre­at­ing light not on­ly in­volves the Di­vine Con­cep­tion of the thing, and the mar­vel­lous method of its pro­duc­tion,[1] but doubt­less, al­so, all those won­der­ful laws of re­flec­tion, re­frac­tion, po­lar­iza­tion, and a thou­sand oth­ers, which the sci­ence of Phys­ical Op­tics in­ves­ti­gates.

[Foot­note 1: And this is still a mys­tery to us. _What_ light is we do not know--we can on­ly speak of our own sen­sa­tion of it. Nor do we know _what_ vi­brates to pro­duce light. Hy­po­thet­ical terms, such as “ether,” “lu­minif­er­ous-​medi­um,” and so forth, on­ly con­ceal our ig­no­rance.]

Nat­ural­ly enough, in this case, the dou­ble idea in­volved in cre­ation--the Di­vine con­cept and its re­al­iza­tion--will, in the na­ture of things, fall in­to one. No pro­cess of evo­lu­tion is re­quired; none is in­di­cat­ed by sci­ence. Di­rect­ly the Di­vine hand gave the im­pulse con­cur­rent­ly with the Di­vine thought--light would be. In the na­ture of things there is no place for a line be­tween the Di­vine fi­at and its re­al­iza­tion, as there is in the pro­duc­tion of life-​forms on the earth. Or, on the oth­er view, di­rect­ly the Di­vine com­mand went forth, the vapours would clear and al­low the trans­mis­sion of light.

(2) “AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE A FIR­MA­MENT (EX­PANSE) IN THE MIDST OF THE WA­TERS, AND LET IT DI­VIDE THE WA­TERS FROM THE WA­TERS....AND GOD CALLED THE FIR­MA­MENT HEAV­EN.”

There has been gath­ered round this verse what I may call rather an ill-​na­tured con­tro­ver­sy, be­cause there is no re­al ground for it; and the ob­jec­tions tak­en seem rather of a de­sire to find out some­thing against the nar­ra­tive at any price, than to make the best of it. The verse, when du­ly trans­lat­ed, im­plies that an “ex­panse”--the set­ting of a clear space of at­mo­sphere around the globe--formed one of the spe­cial de­sign-​thoughts of the Cre­ator, fol­lowed by its im­me­di­ate (or grad­ual) ac­com­plish­ment. I think we should have hard­ly had so much cav­illing over this word “ex­panse” if it had not been for the term sub­se­quent­ly used by the Sev­en­ty in their Greek ver­sion ([Greek: stereô­ma]). The an­cients, it is said, be­lieved the space above the earth to be “sol­id.”

Now I would con­tend that even if the He­brew writ­er had any mis­tak­en or con­fused no­tions in his own mind, that would not af­ford any just ground against rev­ela­tion it­self. But I would point out that many of the ex­pres­sions which may be quot­ed to show the idea of so­lid­ity, are clear­ly po­et­ical. And if we go to the po­et­ic or se­mi-​po­et­ic as­pect of things, may I not ask whether there is not a cer­tain sense in which the earth-​en­ve­lope may be said to be sol­id? The air has a con­sid­er­able den­si­ty, its uni­form and in­ex­orable pres­sure on ev­ery square inch of the earth's sur­face is very great. Such a word as [Greek: stereô­ma] (_fir­ma­men­tum_) does not im­ply so­lid­ity in the sense in which gold is sol­id--as if the heav­ens were a mass of met­al, and the stars set in it like jew­els; it im­plies, rather, some­thing fixed and of­fer­ing re­sis­tance.

It is ob­vi­ous that a cre­ative act was nec­es­sary for this “ex­panse.” We know of spheres that have no at­mo­sphere; and we are so ig­no­rant of the true na­ture of what is be­yond the ut­most reach of our air-​stra­tum, that there is room for al­most any con­sis­tent con­jec­ture re­gard­ing it.

More­over, ob­serve that the at­mo­sphere is not a _chem­ical_ com­bi­na­tion of gas­es, and one, there­fore, that would take place like any oth­er of the metal­lic, saline, or gaseous com­bi­na­tions, of which no de­tailed ac­count is giv­en--all be­ing cov­ered by the gen­er­al phrase, “God cre­at­ed the heav­en and the earth.” The air is a me­chan­ical mix­ture, point­ing to a spe­cial de­sign and a spe­cial act of ori­gin. The nec­es­sary pro­por­tions of each gas and its com­bined prop­er­ties could not have orig­inat­ed with­out guid­ance.

But the main pur­pose of the ex­panse, as stat­ed in the text, was to reg­ulate the wa­ter sup­ply. That vast mass­es of wa­tery vapour must at one time have en­veloped the globe, seems prob­able--apart from rev­ela­tion; and that part of this should con­dense in­to seas and fresh-​wa­ter, and part re­main sus­pend­ed to pro­duce all the phe­nom­ena of in­vis­ible air-​mois­ture and vis­ible cloud, while an “ex­panse” was set, so that the earth sur­face should be free, and that light might freely pen­etrate, and sound al­so, and that all the oth­er reg­ular func­tions of na­ture de­pen­dent on the ex­ist­ing re­la­tion of earth and air should pro­ceed--all this was very nec­es­sary. And when we rec­ol­lect what a bal­anced and com­plex scheme it is--how very far from be­ing a sim­ple thing; we rec­og­nize in the ad­just­ment of earth's at­mo­spher­ic en­ve­lope, a spe­cial re­sult wor­thy of the day's work.

Whether the sep­ara­tion be­tween the con­densed but ev­er re-​evap­orat­ing and re-​con­dens­ing wa­ter on the earth's sur­face, and the wa­ter vapour in the at­mo­sphere, is _all_ that is meant by the di­vi­sion of the “wa­ters that are above the fir­ma­ment” from those be­low, it would not be wise to as­sert. We know so lit­tle of the con­di­tion of space be­yond our own air, and so lit­tle of the great stores of hy­dro­gen which have been sug­gest­ed to ex­ist in space (and might com­bine to form vast quan­ti­ties of liq­uid), that we may well leave the phrase as it stands, con­tent with a par­tial ex­pla­na­tion.

(3) “AND GOD SAID, LET THE WA­TERS UN­DER THE HEAV­EN BE GATH­ERED TO­GETH­ER UN­TO ONE PLACE, AND LET THE DRY LAND AP­PEAR: AND IT WAS SO. AND GOD SAID, LET THE EARTH PUT FORTH GRASS (VEG­ETA­TION), HERB YIELD­ING SEED, AND FRUIT TREE BEAR­ING FRUIT AF­TER ITS KIND, WHERE­IN IS THE SEED THERE­OF.”

The on­ly re­marks that the first part of this verse calls for, are, _first_, that it ex­plains how far from mere chance-​work the emer­gence of land from the wa­ter was; _sec­ond_ how well it il­lus­trates the use of terms re­lat­ing to cre­ation.

The whole scheme of the dis­tri­bu­tion of the sur­face of earth in­to land and wa­ter is one which de­mand­ed Di­vine fore­sight and a com­plete ide­al[1] which was to be at­tained by the ac­tion and re­ac­tion of nat­ural forces, just as much as the pro­duc­tion of the most spe­cial­ized form of plant-​or an­imal-​life.

[Foot­note 1: Com­pare Job xxxvi­ii. 10, 11, and Psa. civ. 9.]

This is not the place to go in­to de­tail as to how much of the world's life-​his­to­ry and its cli­mat­ic con­di­tions de­pend on the dis­tri­bu­tion of land and wa­ter. It is suf­fi­cient to rec­og­nize the im­mense im­por­tance of that dis­tri­bu­tion.

But, in the sec­ond place, it will be ob­served that while it is nat­ural to sup­pose (though not log­ical­ly nec­es­sary) that the work­ing out of the Di­vine plan _com­menced_ im­me­di­ate­ly on the is­sue of the Di­vine com­mand and the de­clared for­mu­la­tion of the Di­vine scheme, yet we know--few things are bet­ter known--that the whole scheme was not com­plete­ly re­al­ized in one day, or one age--cer­tain­ly not _be­fore_ there was any ap­pear­ance of plant-​life, aquat­ic, or dry land, or any ap­pear­ance of an­imal-​life.

I be­lieve (though I have lost my ref­er­ence) it is held by some au­thor­ities that the po­si­tion of the great _oceans_ as they are now (and omit­ting, of course, all mi­nor coast vari­ations) has been fixed from very ear­ly ge­olog­ic times. But, apart from that, we have am­ple ev­idence of whole con­ti­nents aris­ing and be­ing again sub­merged; and of con­tin­ual changes be­tween land and wa­ter of the most wide-​reach­ing char­ac­ter again and again hap­pen­ing dur­ing the progress of the world's his­to­ry. So that here we may see clear­ly an in­stance where the rev­ela­tion of the cre­ative act must be held to re­fer to the great pri­mal de­sign--teach­ing us that it is a fact that at first all _was_ laid down, fore­seen, and de­signed by the Cre­ator; but not re­fer­ring to any­thing like an ac­count of the _re­sults_ up­on earth, which, for aught we know to the con­trary, may not yet be com­plete.

As to the sec­ond part of the text, we are here in­tro­duced to the com­mence­ment of life-​forms on earth.

No sep­ara­tion is record­ed. Di­rect­ly the chem­ical el­ements of mat­ter have so com­bined that a sol­id earth and liq­uid wa­ter (salt and fresh) are formed, and the cool­ing pro­cess has gone on suf­fi­cient­ly long to en­able the dense vapours part­ly to set­tle down and con­dense, part­ly to re­main as vapour (di­vid­ing the wa­ters above from the wa­ters be­low)--di­rect­ly this pro­cess is aid­ed by the ad­mis­sion of dif­fused light and by the ad­just­ment of the at­mo­sphere, and the su­per­fi­cial ad­just­ment of the dis­tri­bu­tion of wa­ter and land sur­face is pro­vid­ed for, then plant-​life is or­ga­nized.

It will be ob­served that even aquat­ic plants and al­gae though grow­ing in or un­der wa­ter, are nev­er­the­less con­nect­ed with the _earth_; so that the phrase, “Let the _earth_ bring forth,” is by no means in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

The ear­li­est rock de­posits are able to tell us lit­tle about the first be­gin­ning of plant-​life. More­over, as an­imal-​life be­gan on­ly with the in­ter­val of one day (the fourth), we should ex­pect to find--on the sup­po­si­tion that the heav­en­ly _fi­at_ at once re­ceived the _com­mence­ment_ of its ful­fil­ment on each day--that the first low­ly spec­imens of veg­etable and an­imal life are al­most co­eval. And this is (ap­par­ent­ly) the fact.

It is to be re­marked that plant and an­imal al­ways ap­pear in na­ture as two sep­arate and _par­al­lel_ king­doms. It is not that the plant is low­er than the an­imal, so that the high­est plant takes on it some of the first char­ac­ters which mark the low­est an­imal: but both start sep­arate­ly from minute and lit­tle spe­cial­ized forms so sim­ilar that it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to say which is plant and which is an­imal.[1]

[Foot­note 1: See this well sum­ma­rized in Nichol­son's “Man­ual of Zo­ol­ogy” (sixth edi­tion, 1880), p. 13, _et seq._]

All the be­gin­nings of life in _ei­ther_ king­dom would there­fore be ill-​adapt­ed (most of them, at any rate) for preser­va­tion in rock-​stra­ta.[1]

[Foot­note 1: I think this is quite suf­fi­cient, with­out re­ly­ing on the ev­idence of the great quan­ti­ties of _car­bon_ in the ear­li­est (Lau­ren­tian, Huro­ni­an, &c.) stra­ta in the form of graphite. It is pos­si­ble, or even prob­able, that this may be due to car­bon sup­plied by mass­es of lit­tle spe­cial­ized _Thal­lo­phyte_ and _Anophyte_ veg­eta­tion.]

All we know for cer­tain is that veg­etable-​life was close­ly co­eval with the low­est an­imal-​life, and that it was very long be­fore spe­cial­ized forms, even of _cryp­togams_, made a great show in the world.

Prob­abil­ity is en­tire­ly in favour of the ac­tu­al pri­or­ity be­ing in veg­etable forms; and more than that is not re­quired. For the Mo­sa­ic nar­ra­tive, while it places the ori­gin of the veg­etable king­dom ac­tu­al­ly first, lets the _fi­at_ for the an­imal king­dom fol­low al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

As to the _or­der_ of ap­pear­ance of the plants, I will re­serve my re­marks for the mo­ment.

(4) “AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHTS IN THE FIR­MA­MENT OF THE HEAV­EN, TO DI­VIDE THE DAY FROM THE NIGHT; AND LET THEM BE FOR SIGNS, AND FOR SEA­SONS, AND FOR DAYS, AND FOR YEARS: AND LET THEM BE FOR LIGHTS IN THE FIR­MA­MENT TO GIVE LIGHT ON THE EARTH.”

The sun and the stars, and all the host of heav­en, are clear­ly un­der­stood to have been cre­at­ed “in the be­gin­ning,” un­der the gen­er­al state­ment of fact which forms the first verse of the nar­ra­tive.

The 14th verse has al­ways been un­der­stood to re­fer to the es­tab­lish­ment of the _re­la­tions_ be­tween the earth and the sun, moon, and stars, which have, as a mat­ter of fact, been rec­og­nized by all ages and all peo­ple ev­er since. The writ­er of the 104th Psalm cer­tain­ly so un­der­stood the pas­sage--

“He ap­point­ed the moon for sea­sons; The sun knoweth his go­ing down.[1]”

The writ­er was in­struct­ed to use pop­ular­ly in­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage, and so the text speaks of the lights as they _ap­pear_ in the sky or fir­ma­ment.

Even if we sup­pose that be­fore this act, the sun was al­ready in­can­des­cent, and the moon ca­pa­ble of re­flect­ing the light, the whole ar­range­ment of the earth's ro­ta­tion may have been such that the al­ter­na­tions of light and dark­ness may have been very dif­fer­ent from what they are now, and the sea­sons al­so. A mo­ment's re­flec­tion re­gard­ing the obliq­ui­ty of the earth's ax­is, nu­ta­tion, the pre­ces­sion of the equinox­es, the ec­cen­tric­ity of the or­bit and the changes in the po­si­tion of the or­bit, will show us what am­ple room there was for a spe­cial ad­just­ment and adap­ta­tion be­tween the earth and its satel­lite and be­tween both to the so­lar cen­tre.[2] So that faith which ac­cepts this as a Di­vine ar­range­ment made among the spe­cial and for­mal acts of Cre­ation, can­not be said to be un­rea­son­able, or to be fly­ing in the face of any known facts.

[Foot­note 1: Ver. 19, &c. The same word is al­so used of “mak­ing” priests (l Kings xii. 31), and ap­point­ing (R.V.)(“ad­vanc­ing” A.V.), (“mak­ing,” as we fa­mil­iar­ly say) Moses and Aaron (1 Sam. xii. 6).]

[Foot­note 2: And the Psalmist just­ly speaks of God as _prepar­ing_ the light of the sun (Psa. lxxiv. 16).]

It is very re­mark­able, as show­ing how lit­tle we can at­tribute this nar­ra­tive, on any ba­sis of prob­abil­ity, to mere fan­cy or guess-​work, that this mat­ter should have been as­signed to the fourth day--_af­ter_ the fi­at for plant-​life had gone forth.

But the fact is that the un­reg­ulat­ed light, and the va­porous uni­form cli­mate that must have con­tin­ued if the fourth day's com­mand had nev­er is­sued, though it might have served for a time for the low­est be­gin­nings of life, es­pe­cial­ly ma­rine or aquat­ic, would ul­ti­mate­ly have ren­dered any ad­vance in the se­ries of de­sign im­pos­si­ble. Such a fact would nev­er have oc­curred to an ig­no­rant and unin­spired writ­er.

It is here im­pos­si­ble to say whether the whole ar­range­ments in­di­cat­ed were made at once in obe­di­ence to the Di­vine De­sign, or were pro­duced grad­ual­ly.

It has been sug­gest­ed that uni­for­mi­ty of cli­mate and tem­per­ature con­tin­ued up till the car­bonif­er­ous ages, at any rate; and it is on­ly in the lat­er ages that such dif­fer­ences of _fau­na_ in dif­fer­ent parts of the world ap­pear, as to show dif­fer­ences of cli­mate more like what we have at present.

Whether this is so or not, I am not con­cerned to ar­gue. The nar­ra­tive tells us that God did, at a cer­tain point in his Cre­ative work, de­sign and or­dain the nec­es­sary ar­range­ments; and phys­ical sci­ence may find out, when it is able, how and when the ad­just­ments spo­ken of came about.

(5) AND GOD SAID-- (i.) Let the wa­ters bring forth the mov­ing crea­ture that hath life, (ii.) Let fowl fly above the earth on the face of the ex­panse.

As to (i.) the “cre­ation” con­sist­ed of--great sea-​mon­sters (or wa­ter mon­sters), and ev­ery liv­ing thing that moveth.

Then the an­imal life re­ceived a _bless­ing_. An­imals, even the lowli­est, are ca­pa­ble of a new fea­ture in life--hap­pi­ness in their be­ing, which can­not be pred­icat­ed of plants.

(6) AND GOD SAID-- (i.) Let the earth bring forth the liv­ing crea­ture af­ter its kind ... the beast of the earth _af­ter its kind (Car­nivo­ra)_, cat­tle _af­ter its kind_ (_Un­gu­la­ta_), and ev­ery­thing that creep­eth on the ground _af­ter its kind_.[1]

And al­so--

(ii.) Let us make man.... So God cre­at­ed man in His own im­age--in the im­age of God cre­at­ed He him; male and fe­male cre­at­ed He them.

(7) Then fol­lowed the day of rest.

[Foot­note 1: See page 178.] [Tran­scriber's Note: Chap­ter XIV.]

§ 2. _The Or­der of Events con­sid­ered._

It was con­ve­nient first to bring these lat­er Cre­ative Acts to­geth­er be­fore be­gin­ning any re­marks about any one of them.

It will now be de­sir­able to no­tice what oc­curred, be­cause here the ques­tion of _or­der_ is con­cerned. I could not avoid a par­tial state­ment on this sub­ject at an ear­li­er page, nor would it be quite suf­fi­cient sim­ply to re­fer the read­er back to those pages. At the risk of some rep­eti­tion, I will there­fore con­sid­er the sub­ject here. It will be ob­served that on the old­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion, which passed over the spe­cial act of God in _de­sign­ing_ and _pub­lish­ing the de­sign,_ and de­scend­ed at once to the earth to the pro­cess of pro­duc­ing the de­signed forms, this or­der was mat­ter of great im­por­tance.

Grant­ing the sup­port­ers of this view that the six days are un­equal pe­ri­ods of­ten of vast du­ra­tion, with or with­out im­por­tant sub­di­vi­sions, they are bound to make out that each cre­ation be­gan, and was at any rate well ad­vanced, _be­fore_ the next be­gan. We ought, in fact, to see a pe­ri­od more or less pro­longed when the whole of what is in­di­cat­ed in the _plant_ verse was well ad­vanced, _be­fore_ any ma­rine or fresh-​wa­ter life ap­peared at all.[1]

[Foot­note 1: There was “evening and morn­ing” of the third day, i.e., be­gin­ning and _com­ple­tion_, and al­so the whole in­ter­val of the fourth day, _be­fore_ the com­mand of the fifth.]

All at­tempts to make out that this _was_ so, have proved fail­ures. It is as­sumed, for in­stance (and just­ly so), that life on the globe be­gan with low veg­etable forms; these rep­re­sent­ed the “grass” of the text, and it is sug­gest­ed that the “fruit tree” is rep­re­sent­ed by the De­vo­ni­an and Car­bonif­er­ous _conifers_. This in it­self is a very strained view. It is rec­ol­lect­ed that the terms used are not sci­en­tif­ic, but for the world at large; but with­out con­fin­ing “fruit tree” to mean on­ly trees hav­ing _ed­ible_ fruit, still the ap­pear­ance of a few first species of _conifers_ in the De­vo­ni­an, can hard­ly be called an ad­equate ful­fil­ment of the re­quire­ments of the pas­sage. But even so, myr­iads of fish and oth­er an­imals ex­ist­ed _be­fore_ the De­vo­ni­an and Car­bonif­er­ous plant age.

The an­imal forms that so ex­ist­ed, have there­fore to be _ig­nored_, or are as­sumed to have been cre­at­ed with­out spe­cial no­tice: and it is said that the Mo­sa­ic pe­ri­od of “mov­ing crea­tures of the deep,” fish­es and mon­sters, on­ly be­gan when the rocks be­gin to show _great abun­dance_ of shells, of fish, and sub­se­quent­ly of huge rep­til­ians which pre­pared the way for birds--which grad­ual­ly make their ap­pear­ance to­wards the Trias.

But the De­vo­ni­an “age of fish­es” (De­vo­ni­an in­clud­ing old red sand­stone) was far too im­por­tant a pe­ri­od to be thus got rid of; and it is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand _why_ the nar­ra­tive should ex­clude all the ex­ten­sive and beau­ti­ful (though of­ten lit­tle spe­cial­ized) or­ders of ma­rine life--all the Corals, the Mol­lus­ca and Ar­tic­ula­ta, which had long abound­ed--es­pe­cial­ly some of the Crus­taceans, not an unim­por­tant group of which (_Trilo­bite_[1]) had al­so cul­mi­nat­ed and al­most passed away be­fore the De­vo­ni­an; to say noth­ing of the fact that _land_ “creep­ing things” (scor­pi­ons among _crus­tacea_, and ap­par­ent­ly winged in­sects) had oc­curred.

[Foot­note 1: It is re­mark­able that the Trilo­bites rapid­ly cul­mi­nat­ed, so that we have the largest and most per­fect forms, such as _Para­doxus_, with the low­est (_Ag­nos­tus_) in the same beds in Wales (Etheridge's “Phillips' Man­ual,” Part II. p. 32).]

It is a spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ty al­so, that if _in­sects_ are in­clud­ed among the “creep­ing things” of the _earth_ then var­ious fam­ilies of the “land-​cre­ation” (sixth day) be­came rep­re­sent­ed _be­fore_ the great rep­tiles of the “wa­ter-​cre­ation” (fifth day).

The fact is that a glance at the sub­joined Ta­bles (which are on­ly gen­er­al­ly and ap­prox­imate­ly cor­rect) will suf­fice to show how the main fea­tures of the progress of life-​forms dif­fer from what is re­quired by the old­er meth­ods of read­ing Gen­esis. To re­duce the ta­ble with­in lim­its, I have grouped to­geth­er all the low­er forms of life in the an­imal ta­ble, viz., the sponges, corals, en­crinites, and mol­luscs. It is suf­fi­cient to say that these ap­pear in all the rocks ex­cept the very old­est--the Cae­len­ter­ata be­gin­ning, and the Mol­lus­coids ex­hibit­ing an ear­ly or­der in _bra­chiopo­da_, which seems to be dy­ing out. Crus­taceans and in­sects ap­peared as ear­ly as Sil­uri­an times.

The idea of suc­ces­sive “king­doms” or “pe­ri­ods,” each of which was _com­plete_ in its ac­tu­al fau­na up­on earth be­fore the next was ful­ly ush­ered in, can no longer be de­fend­ed.

It is in the _com­ple­tion_ of one class of life be­fore the oth­er, that the fal­la­cy of the pe­ri­od the­ory lies--for com­ple­tion is es­sen­tial to that the­ory which sup­pos­es “the Mo­sa­ic au­thor” to have in­tend­ed to de­scribe the _pro­cess of pro­duc­tion on earth_.

But it is quite im­pos­si­ble to de­ny that there _is_ a cer­tain ob­serv­able move­ment and grad­ual pro­ces­sion in the his­to­ry of life which is ex­act­ly con­sis­tent with what is most like­ly to have hap­pened, sup­pos­ing the Di­vine de­signs of life-​forms were first de­clared in suc­ces­sive or­der at short in­ter­vals of time, and then that the pro­cess­es of na­ture worked out the de­signs in the ful­ness of time and grad­ual­ly in or­der, each one _be­gin­ning_ be­fore the next, but on­ly be­gin­ning.

I do not de­ny that it is per­fect­ly _con­ceiv­able_ that the Cre­ator might have de­signed the forms in one or­der, and that the ac­tu­al pro­duc­tion or evo­lu­tion of the cor­re­spond­ing liv­ing crea­tures might not have been (for rea­sons not un­der­stood) ex­act­ly, or even at all, co­in­ci­dent with the or­der.

But it is im­pos­si­ble to de­ny the strong feel­ing of prob­abil­ity that the com­mands would _be­gin_ to be worked out, in the or­der in which they were ut­tered.

And here it is that the cor­re­spon­dence which un­doubt­ed­ly ex­ists, gives rise to con­tro­ver­sy.

From one point of view it is just enough to en­cour­age the “pe­ri­od” hold­ers to try and ar­range a scheme; but it is just hot enough to pre­vent their op­po­nents (just­ly) tax­ing them with strain­ing or “tor­tur­ing” the text and fail­ing fair­ly to make out their case af­ter all. From an­oth­er point of view the cor­re­spon­dence is so far es­tab­lished, and so un­de­ni­ably un­prece­dent­ed (in hu­man cos­mogo­nies) and note­wor­thy, as to de­mand im­per­ative­ly our care­ful con­sid­er­ation and com­pel us to ac­count for it.

It will be ob­served, first of all, that the whole “cre­ation” (omit­ting all in­ci­den­tal and prepara­to­ry works) is stat­ed in _groups_ each hav­ing an or­der with­in it­self.

_Group_ 1. God cre­at­ed (both land and wa­ter) “veg­eta­tion”--plants yield­ing seed, fruit-​trees.

_Group_ 2. In wa­ter, not nec­es­sar­ily ex­clud­ing _am­phib­ia_:--Great aquat­ic mon­sters; fish and all oth­er crea­tures that move. In air:--Winged fowl.

_Group_ 3. On land gen­er­al­ly--for some forms are am­phibi­ous:--Beasts (_Car­nivo­ra_), cat­tle (_Un­gu­la­ta_, &c.), and oth­er things that creep on the ground (the small­er and low­er forms of life col­lec­tive­ly).

The or­der _with­in_ the groups is ev­ident­ly of no con­se­quence, be­cause the writ­er does not ad­here to it in two con­sec­utive vers­es deal­ing with the same sub­ject; while the “ver­sions” seem to point to some vari­ations in the text it­self as to ar­range­ment, though not as to sub­stance.

But as re­gards the or­der _of_ the groups them­selves, it is, as I said, very nat­ural (but yet not log­ical­ly in­evitable) to ex­pect that when the re­sults came to be ex­is­tent on earth, those re­sults should ex­hib­it a se­quence cor­re­spond­ing to the or­der in which the groups were cre­at­ed. And it is nev­er de­nied (in _any_ of the most re­cent pub­li­ca­tions[1]) that to this ex­tent na­ture con­firms the be­lief.

[Foot­note 1: I have done my best to ver­ify this from the well-​known lat­est Man­uals of Etheridge, See­ley, and Al­leyne-​Nichol­son.]

I am aware that Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley's re­cent ar­ti­cles may at first sight seem to go against this; but that is not so on any grounds of ac­tu­al fact, but of a par­tic­ular _in­ter­pre­ta­tion_--which I sub­mit is whol­ly un­war­rant­ed.

For in­stance, it is in­sist­ed that the “sea-​mon­sters” of the sec­ond group in­clud­ed _sire­nia_ and _cetacea_ (dugongs, man­atees, and whales, dol­phins, &c.), which are mam­mals. In that case a por­tion of the com­mand would not have been obeyed--a num­ber of the de­signed forms would have been kept in abeyance--for a long time. And the same is still more true if bats--a high­ly placed group of mam­mals--were in­clud­ed in “winged fowl.”

But both these in­ter­pre­ta­tions are dis­tinct­ly ar­bi­trary, in­ca­pable of hold­ing good, and al­so en­tire­ly ig­nore the con­di­tions of a Rev­ela­tion.

The nar­ra­tive is not dis­cussed or de­fend­ed as an or­di­nary sec­ular nar­ra­tive, which is true ac­cord­ing to the _writ­er's unin­spired in­ten­tion or the state of his per­son­al knowl­edge_. It is de­fend­ed as a Rev­ela­tion. The dis­tinc­tion is as ob­vi­ous as it is im­por­tant, di­rect­ly a mo­ment's con­sid­er­ation is ac­cord­ed.

If we as­sume, for a mo­ment, that God _did_ (on any the­ory what­ev­er of In­spi­ra­tion) in­struct, di­rect, or en­able the writ­er in mak­ing the record, then it is ob­vi­ous that the writ­er ei­ther put down what he saw in a vi­sion, or what was in some oth­er man­ner borne on his mind. In any case, he could have had no crit­ical knowl­edge, and no his­tor­ical knowl­edge as an eye-​wit­ness, of the ac­tu­al facts; and he may very well there­fore have used lan­guage the full mean­ing of which he did not ap­pre­hend.[1] What alone is es­sen­tial is, that the nar­ra­tive as it stands, on an or­di­nary crit­ical, lin­guis­tic, and gram­mat­ical in­ter­pre­ta­tion, should not con­tain any­thing which is un­true. Sup­pose, for ex­am­ple, the word “tan­nînîm” to be _in­ca­pable_ of bear­ing any oth­er mean­ing lin­guis­ti­cal­ly than “cetacean,” then the nar­ra­tive might be ob­ject­ed to; but if it will bear a mean­ing which is con­sis­tent with fact, then it is no mat­ter that the writ­er at the time had an er­ro­neous, or (what is more like­ly) no de­fined, idea in his own mind of the mean­ing. And so with “winged fowl”--the ob­jec­tion fails en­tire­ly, un­less it can be shown, not on­ly that the writ­er might have thought “bats” to be in­clud­ed, _but_ that lin­guis­ti­cal­ly the word _can­not have_ any oth­er mean­ing than one which would in­clude bats.[2]

[Foot­note 1: As is con­stant­ly the case in prophet­ic writ­ings. Rev­ela­tion tells of the re­mote past some­times as well as the fu­ture, and in nei­ther case could the in­spired writ­er ful­ly un­der­stand the mean­ing that was wrapped up in his sen­tences.]

[Foot­note 2: As a mat­ter of fact, in the one case, if the writ­er's knowl­edge were of any im­por­tance, it is al­most cer­tain that he did _not_ mean _cetacean_ or _sire­ni­an_. In the oth­er case it is im­pos­si­ble to say whether he thought “bats” were in­clud­ed or not. It is not in the na­ture of things that the writ­er could ev­er have seen or even heard of a man­atee or a dugong; nor is it like­ly that he had been a sea-​far­er, or could have seen any Mediter­ranean cetacean. As far as his own knowl­edge went, he prob­ably had but a very con­fused idea. And if we re­fer to the po­et­ic de­scrip­tion in Psalm civ. 25, 26, we find “leviathan,” though dis­tinct­ly a sea crea­ture, still one of which the writ­er had on­ly a vague tra­di­tion­al idea, cer­tain­ly not a _known_ Mediter­ranean dol­phin, for in Job xli. the same term is ap­plied to the crocodile.]

We have ev­ery right, then, to say that the “tan­nînîm” of the text may be tak­en to re­fer to that great and re­mark­able age of Sauri­ans which is not on­ly of very great im­por­tance in it­self, but be­comes dou­bly so when we see its con­nec­tion back­ward with the fish­es, and for­ward through the Ptero­dactyles to Odonto­for­mae (_Ap­ator­nis_ and _Ic­thy­or­nis_) and mod­ern winged birds (_Hes­per­onis_ for the Pen­guins); and through the Di­nosaurs[1] with the Sauror­nithes, with the _Di­nor­nis_ and the struthious birds; and through the The­ri­odonts with the mam­malian _car­nivo­ra_.

[Foot­note 1: And per­haps the pachy­der­ma­tous mam­mals (Nichol­son, “Zo­ol­ogy,” p. 566).]

In that case the se­quence of the two groups, plants and aquat­ic an­imal-​forms, is ex­plained. They come al­most to­geth­er--plants be­ing prob­ably ac­tu­al­ly the first, and mol­lus­ca, fish­es, and sauri­ans.

There is, fur­ther, no re­al dis­pute that the Sauri­ans led up to the Aves, and that the third group (of mam­mals) fol­lows all the mem­bers of the sec­ond group. The ear­li­est known mam­mal (_mi­crolestes_) is an iso­lat­ed fore­run­ner of not very cer­tain lo­ca­tion, the re­al bulk of the mam­malian or­ders be­gin­ning in the Eocene. See­ing, too, how very close­ly one Cre­ative com­mand is record­ed to have fol­lowed on the oth­er, it is not in any way against the nar­ra­tive that some land forms of crus­taceans and in­sects (and pos­si­bly oth­ers) be­gan to ap­pear at an ear­ly stage, when the veg­etable and wa­ter-​an­imal forms had on­ly pro­gressed as far as the Sil­uri­an and De­vo­ni­an ages. Nor should we won­der if mam­malian forms had oc­curred ear­li­er. I men­tion this be­cause of the ev­ident gap in the ge­olog­ic record be­tween the Cre­ta­ceous and the Eocene, and be­cause in the ar­ti­cle of De­cem­ber, 1885 (and else­where), Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley has used lan­guage which sug­gests that mam­mals may have ex­ist­ed of which the rocks give no sign. E.g. (p. 855): “The or­ga­ni­za­tion of the bat, bird, or ptero­dactyle, pre­sup­pos­es that of a ter­res­tri­al quadruped ... and is in­tel­li­gi­ble on­ly as an ex­treme mod­ifi­ca­tion of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of a ter­res­tri­al _mam­mal or_ rep­tile.” The ital­ics are of course mine. And again (p. 855), “I am not aware that any com­pe­tent judge would hes­itate to ad­mit that the or­ga­ni­za­tion of these an­imals (whales, dugongs, &c.) shows the most ob­vi­ous signs of their de­scent from ter­res­tri­al quadrupeds.”

I do not quote these words of so great a mas­ter as pre­sum­ing to ques­tion them (even if, as a sci­en­tif­ic ver­dict, I had any mo­tive for so do­ing), but mere­ly to point out as a mat­ter of plain and fair rea­son­ing, that if a Di­vine Cre­ator had de­signed cer­tain forms to be grad­ual­ly at­tained by the pro­cess­es of Evo­lu­tion, it would not be nec­es­sary that any ac­tu­al­ly re­al­ized form or tan­gi­ble crea­ture should have ex­ist­ed as an­ces­tors. Log­ical­ly, the ne­ces­si­ty is _ei­ther_ that cer­tain an­imals should have ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist­ed whose de­scen­dants grad­ual­ly lost or gained cer­tain fea­tures and func­tions till the forms we are speak­ing of re­sult­ed, _or_ that cer­tain pat­terns or de­signs should have been cre­at­ed ac­cord­ing to which de­vel­op­ment pro­ceed­ed by reg­ular laws till the forms in ques­tion re­sult­ed.

A few words as to the terms used in de­scrib­ing the con­tents of each group, may be added. It is ob­vi­ous that the terms are in­tend­ed to be ex­haus­tive of cer­tain main groups which are de­scribed suf­fi­cient­ly, with­out be­ing cast in a form which would have been in­com­pat­ible with the use (at the time) of a hu­man agent as the medi­um of the record­ed Rev­ela­tion.

(1) “Veg­eta­tion” (of an in­def­inite char­ac­ter, but not bear­ing seed), plants bear­ing seed, trees bear­ing fruit with the seed in it--cer­tain­ly ex­haust the en­tire range of plant-​life.

(2) Mov­ing crea­tures that live (and fish are af­ter­wards ex­press­ly men­tioned) and great mon­sters (tann[i=]n[i=]m), cov­er the en­tire field of life up to Rep­til­ia as far as these are aquat­ic forms.

(3) The terms used for the third group are al­so ob­vi­ous­ly ex­haus­tive--the sep­arate men­tion of the _cat­tle_ and the _beast_ (Car­nivo­ra and Un­gu­lates) is a form which is in­vari­ably no­ticed through­out the Old and New Tes­ta­ments. The “creep­ing things” would in­clude all mi­nor forms, all land rep­tiles not de­scribed above as the “tann[i=]n[i=]m,” and in­sects.

And it is re­mark­able that the tor­tois­es, the snakes, and, the more mod­ern forms of crocodile and lizard, and the am­phib­ia and high­er in­sects, are all cain­ozoic--some of them were pre­ced­ed by more or less tran­si­to­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tives, e.g., the Car­bonif­er­ous _Eosaurus_ and Per­mi­an _Pro­to­saurus_ the an­cient Labyrinthodons and Urode­las, Ch­elo­ni­ans and the am­ph­icaelian crocodiles. Snakes have no palaeo­zoic rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Land in­sects, as might nat­ural­ly be ex­pect­ed, go back to the times when land veg­eta­tion was suf­fi­cient­ly es­tab­lished, and ap­pear grad­ual­ly all along the line from the Sil­uri­an on­wards. The mod­ern types, how­ev­er, are Ter­tiary.

The suc­ces­sion, we ob­serve, may be il­lus­trat­ed by the re­sem­blance of a num­ber of ar­rows shot rapid­ly one af­ter the oth­er in so many par­al­lel cours­es: all would soon be mov­ing near­ly to­geth­er.

Plant-​life, the sub­ject of the first Di­vine de­sign­ing, has, as far as we can rea­son­ably say, the start. Ac­cord­ing to known laws it ap­pears in el­emen­tary and un­de­vel­oped forms, and grad­ual­ly pro­gress­es. One group (Cryp­togams) reach­es a mag­nif­icent de­vel­op­ment and be­gins to die away in point of grandeur, though still abun­dant­ly ex­em­pli­fied. Phanerogam­ic plants in their low­est groups of gym­nosperm ex­ogens then be­gin to ap­pear in the De­vo­ni­an conifers, grad­ual­ly fol­lowed by _cy­cads_. And it is not till Cain­ozoic times that we have the en­doge­nous grass­es and palms and an­giosper­mous ex­ogens.

But the com­mand re­gard­ing an­imal life had fol­lowed the oth­er af­ter a short in­ter­val, so that we soon see this de­vel­op­ing _pari pas­su_ with the oth­er groups--first the low­er ma­rine forms and grad­ual­ly ad­vanc­ing to the Pisces, Am­phib­ia, Rep­til­ia, and then to Aves, as a spe­cial di­vi­sion in the sec­ond great de­sign group. Last­ly the mam­mals ap­pear and man.[1] But through­out all, we see the rise, cul­mi­na­tion, and de­cay of many tran­si­to­ry and ap­par­ent­ly prepara­to­ry groups--such as, for ex­am­ple, the Labyrinthodons and Urode­las--pre­ced­ing the mod­ern types of Am­phib­ia; an­cient fish-​forms pre­ced­ing mod­ern ones, and ei­ther dy­ing out or leav­ing but a few and dis­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tives; or again, the whole tribes of an­cient Sauri­ans, of which some­thing has al­ready been said. All these won­der­ful un­der-​cur­rents and cross-​cur­rents, ris­es and falls, ap­pear­ances and dis­ap­pear­ances, nev­er­the­less all work to­geth­er till the whole earth is peo­pled with the forms, de­signed in the be­gin­ning by the Heav­en­ly Cre­ator.

[Foot­note 1: Nor should we be sur­prised to find (should it be so dis­cov­ered) that some an­imals ap­peared af­ter man. (_Cf_. “Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry” for Dec. 1885, p. 856.)]

No ac­count of Cre­ation can be oth­er than won­der­ful and mys­te­ri­ous; nor can the mys­tery of the Di­vine act be ex­plained in lan­guage oth­er than that of anal­ogy.

We can speak with­out mys­tery of a hu­man ar­chi­tect con­ceiv­ing a de­sign in his mind; and when he ut­ters it, it is by putting the plans and de­tails up­on pa­per, and hand­ing them over to the builders, who set to work (un­der the ar­chi­tect's su­per­vi­sion, and in obe­di­ence to all the rules he has pre­scribed as to the meth­ods of work and ma­te­ri­als to be used).

All this we can trans­fer by anal­ogy on­ly, to a Di­vine de­sign. The de­sign is in the Di­vine mind, and He ut­ters it in no ma­te­ri­al plans or draw­ings: the forces of na­ture and the chem­ical el­ements, His obe­di­ent builders, have no hands to re­ceive the plans or eyes to scan them; but we can per­ceive the anal­ogy di­rect­ly, and that is all that is nec­es­sary for Faith.

The ori­gin of all we see in the world and in the en­tire Cos­mos is, then, in God; and as re­gards the ad­just­ments of our globe and its re­la­tions, and the ac­tu­al life-​forms in plant and an­imal, they came in­to ex­is­tence pur­suant to groups of types or de­signs, made by the Di­vine Mind, and de­clared by Him from His Throne in heav­en, in six sev­er­al days--pe­ri­ods of the ro­ta­tion of our earth.

That is the mes­sage of Rev­ela­tion. It re­quires no strain­ing of the sa­cred text: it takes ev­ery­thing as it stands, and the seem­ing­ly lengthy ex­pla­na­tion it re­quires is not to ma­nip­ulate the text, but to clear away the heap of mis­tak­en con­cep­tions that have gath­ered round it:--to es­tab­lish the idea, that the terms “God said, Let there be,” and so forth, mean Heav­en work, in the de­sign and type--not earth work in its re­al­iza­tion and build­ing up. Es­tab­lish­ing this by il­lus­tra­tion and ar­gu­ment, noth­ing more is re­quired in the way of tex­tu­al ex­ege­sis ex­cept to ar­gue for the re­jec­tion of per­verse and un­sus­tain­able mean­ings long giv­en to “days,” to “ex­panse” or “fir­ma­ment,” and to “great whales” in the nar­ra­tive.

It will be ad­mit­ted read­ily that if this ac­count of Cre­ation is the true one, if the mean­ing as­signed to the Gen­esis nar­ra­tive is cor­rect, it af­fords no hin­drance to _any_ con­clu­sions that may pro­gres­sive­ly be de­mand­ed by the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of life-​his­to­ry on earth.

It re­quires us to be­lieve that the forms which life as­sumes are not chance forms, nor the _un­premed­itat­ed_ re­sults of en­vi­ron­ment and cir­cum­stance. But we are not told pos­itive­ly which forms are tran­si­to­ry, which are fi­nal.

It is on­ly a mat­ter of prob­able opin­ion, which it is quite open to any one to dis­pute, that there is any in­di­ca­tion of fi­nal­ity. I should per­son­al­ly be in­clined to think that we have in­di­ca­tions that car­nivo­ra, un­gu­lates, and birds are fi­nal forms; that no evo­lu­tion will ev­er mod­ify a bird fur­ther in­to any­thing that is not a bird; that no tran­si­tion be­tween the un­gu­lates and the car­nivo­ra is pos­si­ble; that the _pro­boscideae_ are not a fi­nal but a tran­si­to­ry type, dy­ing out grad­ual­ly--our ele­phants and sim­ilar forms will dis­ap­pear as the mastodon did.

But I ad­mit this is all mere spec­ula­tion, in which I ask no one to fol­low me.

On one im­por­tant point on­ly is there a dif­fer­ence; and if the text is ev­er proved wrong on that, it must be giv­en up. But it is here that all sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge fails, in _any way what­ev­er,_ to touch the sa­cred text. There _is_ an unique and ex­cep­tion­al ac­count of one “spe­cial cre­ation.” A man “Adam” is de­scribed as hav­ing been ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed, not born as an ul­ti­mate­ly mod­ified de­scen­dant of an­ces­tors orig­inal­ly far re­moved from him­self. That is not to be de­nied; not on­ly was his bod­ily form spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed (con­formably to the _type_ cre­at­ed in Gen­esis i. 26), but a spe­cial spir­itu­al and high­er life was im­part­ed--for I be­lieve that no one dis­putes this as the mean­ing of the ex­pres­sion, “breathed in­to his nos­trils the _breath of lives,_ and man be­came a liv­ing soul.”

It must be not­ed again--al­though I have be­fore al­lud­ed to this in some de­tail--that it is not im­pos­si­ble that, pur­suant to the gen­er­al com­mand “Let us make man,” there _may_ have been oth­er hu­man cre­ations, per­haps not en­dowed with the high­er life of Adam. If it is found dif­fi­cult to re­al­ize this be­cause the _im­age of God_ is con­nect­ed (from the very first) with the de­sign of Man's life-​form, still it is to be re­mem­bered as an un­de­ni­able fact, that the form, though one as­sumed by God Him­self in the In­car­na­tion, _is con­nect­ed_ in struc­ture and func­tion with the gen­er­al an­imal (Mam­malian) type, and that even the Adam­ic or spir­itu­al­ly en­dowed man _may_, by ne­glect­ing the high­er and giv­ing way to the low­er na­ture, de­vel­op much of the pure­ly bes­tial in him­self. So that the bare pos­si­bil­ity of a pre-​Adamite and im­per­fect man can­not be _à pri­ori_ de­nied. More than that it is not nec­es­sary to say. Nor is it nec­es­sary that any ori­gin of man should be lim­it­ed to six or eight thou­sand years back. If the state of the text is such that a per­fect chronol­ogy is pos­si­ble,[1] then all that the Bible goes back to chrono­log­ical­ly is the par­tic­ular man Adam. And it is quite im­pos­si­ble that any sci­en­tif­ic or his­tor­ical con­tra­dic­tion can arise there­from.

[Foot­note 1: It should be borne in mind that just as Rev­ela­tion is of­ten ab­so­lute­ly silent on many points that mere cu­rios­ity would like to see ex­plained, so al­so, the Di­vine Au­thor may have al­lowed parts of the orig­inal text of Rev­ela­tion to be so far lost or ob­scured as to leave fur­ther points that _might_ have been once record­ed, now doubt­ful. All that we may be quite sure of is that the text has been pre­served for all that is es­sen­tial to “life and god­li­ness.”]

AP­PENDIX.

_PRO­FES­SOR DELITZSCH ON THE GAR­DEN OF EDEN._

The in­for­ma­tion here put to­geth­er is a com­pi­la­tion from pa­pers in “The Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry,” and oth­er sources. It has no pre­ten­tions to orig­inal­ity, but on­ly to give a brief and con­nect­ed ac­count of the sub­ject, more con­densed and freed from sur­round­ing de­tails than that which the orig­inal sources af­ford.

Be­fore en­ter­ing on the sub­ject, I would again call at­ten­tion to the sur­pass­ing im­por­tance of these ear­ly chap­ters of Gen­esis. And, I add, that un­be­liev­ers are es­pe­cial­ly glad to be able to al­lege any­thing they can against them, be­cause they are aware that hard­ly any chap­ters in the Bible are more con­stant­ly al­lud­ed to, and made the foun­da­tion of prac­ti­cal ar­gu­ments by our Lord and His Apos­tles, than these ear­ly chap­ters in the Di­vine vol­ume. If these chap­ters can be shown to be myth­ical, then the di­vine knowl­edge of our Lord, as the Son of God, and the in­spi­ra­tion of His Apos­tles, are put in ques­tion. All through the Old Tes­ta­ment, al­lu­sions to Adam and to the ear­ly his­to­ry in Gen­esis oc­cur; and among oth­er pas­sages, I will on­ly here in­vite at­ten­tion to the 31st chap­ter of Ezekiel, where there is, in a most beau­ti­ful de­scrip­tion of the cedar-​tree, an al­lu­sion to “Eden, the Gar­den of God” (see al­so chap­ter xxvi­ii. ver. 13), which some have thought to in­di­cate that the site was still known, and ex­ist­ing in the time of the prophet. This at least may be re­marked, that in verse 9, where the prophet speaks of the “trees that _were_ in the Gar­den of God,” the word _were_ is not in the orig­inal, and the sense of the con­text would rather de­note the present tense--“the trees that _are_ in the Gar­den of God.”

But it is in the New Tes­ta­ment that the most re­peat­ed and strik­ing al­lu­sions to Adam, the temp­ta­tion of the wom­an by the Ser­pent, and the en­trance of sin and death in­to the life-​his­to­ry of mankind, oc­cur.[1]

[Foot­note 1: See on this sub­ject page 137 _ante_.] [Tran­scriber's note: Chap­ter X.]

As re­gards the nar­ra­tive of Eden it­self, there has been, from the very ear­li­est times, some dis­po­si­tion to re­gard it as mys­ti­cal or “al­le­gor­ical,” i.e., to re­gard it as rep­re­sent­ing spir­itu­al facts of temp­ta­tion and dis­obe­di­ence, un­der the guise or sto­ry of an ac­tu­al au­di­ble ad­dress by a ser­pent, and the eat­ing of an ac­tu­al fruit. The ear­li­est trans­la­tors seem to have glossed the “Gan-'Eden,” ev­ery­where in the Old Tes­ta­ment (_ex­cept_ in Gen. ii. 8), by the phrase “the par­adise of plea­sure,” or some oth­er sim­ilar term. And the Vul­gate _al­ways_ us­es some phrase, such as “place of de­light,” “volup­tas,” “deli­ci­ae,” &c. It must be ad­mit­ted that there is some temp­ta­tion to this course, be­cause of the in­vet­er­ate ten­den­cy of the hu­man mind to re­duce things to its own lev­el--to sup­pose ev­ery­thing to have hap­pened _in ways which are with­in its present pow­ers to com­pre­hend._ We fig­ure to our­selves the fear and dis­like _we_ should our­selves ex­pe­ri­ence, of a large snake; we imag­ine the amaze­ment with which an in­tel­li­gi­ble voice would be heard to pro­ceed from such a crea­ture; so far from be­ing _tempt­ed, we_ should at once be moved to hos­til­ity or to flight; and thus we are in­clined to throw doubt on the nar­ra­tive as it stands.

But this is to do what we just­ly com­plain of mod­ern ma­te­ri­al­ists and pos­itivists for do­ing--re­duc­ing ev­ery­thing to terms of present ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge.

It has to be borne in mind, that _un­der the con­di­tions of the case_, the ser­pent was nei­ther ug­ly, dan­ger­ous, nor loath­some, but beau­ti­ful and at­trac­tive; that the res­idents of the Gar­den were fa­mil­iar with the “voice of God”--i.e., they had ha­bit­ual in­tel­li­gi­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion with heav­en: prob­ably, al­so, free in­ter­course with an­gel­ic mes­sen­gers (in­con­ceiv­able as it may now seem to us) was mat­ter of dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ence to them. The wom­an would then rec­og­nize in the voice an An­gel com­mu­ni­ca­tion; and un­aware at first that it was an evil an­gel, it would ex­cite no sur­prise in her at all. Sen­sa­tions of ter­ror, sur­prise, dis­like, and so forth, were _ex hy­poth­esi_ un­known. Why then should not the nar­ra­tive be ex­act, un­less, in­deed, we have some _à pri­ori_ ground for sup­pos­ing that hu­man na­ture _nev­er could_ have been in a state where the voice of God and an­gels sound­ed in its ears, and where in­no­cence and the ab­sence of all evil emo­tion was the dai­ly con­di­tion of life? The un­be­liev­er may sneer at such a state, but _rea­son_ why it should _not_ have been, he can give none. So, again, with the idea of the “tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil” and the “tree of life.” We are no doubt tempt­ed to think that these terms may be sym­bol­ic; but a more care­ful re­flec­tion, and a de­lib­er­ate re­jec­tion of the _in­flu­ence of present ex­pe­ri­ences_, may lead us to ac­cept the nar­ra­tive more lit­er­al­ly. Even now, we are not un­fa­mil­iar with the ideas of medic­inal virtues in plants and fruits. I see noth­ing im­pos­si­ble in the idea that God may have been pleased to im­part such virtue to the fruit of a tree stand­ing in the midst of the Gar­den, that phys­ical health, im­mu­ni­ty from all de­cay, and con­stant restora­tion, should have been the re­sult of eat­ing the fruit; and the eat­ing of this fruit, we know, was freely per­mit­ted. The late Arch­bish­op Whate­ly sug­gest­ed, and I think with great prob­abil­ity, that the longevi­ty of the ear­li­est gen­er­ations of the Adam­ic race may have been due to the ben­efi­cial ef­fects of the eat­ing of this fruit, which on­ly grad­ual­ly died out. Just as we know at the present time, that pe­cu­liar­ities in­tro­duced in­to hu­man fam­ilies, of­ten sur­vive from fa­ther to son, till they grad­ual­ly die out af­ter many gen­er­ations.

Again, as re­gards the “for­bid­den tree,” it will not seem im­pos­si­ble, that as a sim­ple _test of obe­di­ence_ in a very prim­itive state, the rule of ab­sti­nence from a par­tic­ular fruit may have been lit­er­al­ly en­joined, and that the con­se­quence of the moral act of _dis­obe­di­ence_ (rather than the phys­ical ef­fect of the fruit eat­en) should have been the knowl­edge of evil, the first sen­sa­tion of shame, ter­ror, an­gry dis­sen­sion, and, worst of all, the alien­ation from God the source of all good, which fol­lowed.

All such con­sid­er­ations of the re­al­ity of the his­to­ry must gain great­ly in strength, if we can demon­strate that the Gar­den of Eden, the scene of the temp­ta­tion, the place where the trees that were the ve­hi­cles of such con­se­quences to the oc­cu­pants of the gar­den, stood, had a re­al ex­is­tence and ge­ograph­ical site. Now I need hard­ly re­mark that the Mo­sa­ic nar­ra­tive un­ques­tion­ably _pro­fess­es_ a ge­ograph­ical ex­act­ness and a lit­er­al ex­is­tence of the gar­den, as no fa­bled lo­cal­ity--no Utopia or gar­den of the Hes­perides. I need on­ly re­fer to the _da­ta_ af­ford­ed to us by Gen. ii. 8-14.

The Lord, it is said, plant­ed a gar­den in Eden: it was “east­ward;” but that does not di­rect­ly in­di­cate its site. From Gen. iv. 16, we al­so learn that the land of Nod where Cain dwelt (af­ter the mur­der of Abel) was on the east of Eden.

A riv­er went out and wa­tered the gar­den. Af­ter pass­ing the lim­its of Eden, the riv­er is said to have di­vid­ed it­self, or part­ed, in­to four heads, i.e., arms or branch­es. The first branch was called Pi­son. This branch “com­pas­seth,” i.e., forms the bound­ary along the whole length of, “_the_ Hav­ilah.” This coun­try is spo­ken of as be­ing a tract where­in was pro­duced good gold, “b'dolach” (trans­lat­ed “bdel­li­um”) and “shoham” (trans­lat­ed “onyx.”) The sec­ond branch was Gi­hon, which is de­scribed as sim­ilar­ly com­pass­ing the dis­trict of K[=u]sh. Here our A.V., by sub­sti­tut­ing “Ethiopia” for the orig­inal “C[=u]sh,” has made a gloss rather than a trans­la­tion; and this gloss has giv­en rise to sev­er­al er­rors of com­men­ta­tors in iden­ti­fy­ing the site of Eden. The Re­vised Ver­sion has cor­rect­ed the er­ror.

The third branch was Hid­dekel, the _Dik­latu_ of the Arabs, the Tigra of the old Per­sians, and the _Tigris_ of lat­er writ­ers. This is said to run east­ward to­wards As­syr­ia.[1] The fourth riv­er was the Frat or Eu­phrates. Ob­serve, in pass­ing, that the au­thor gives no de­tail about the great riv­er Eu­phrates, as be­ing well known; while he adds par­tic­ulars about the Tigris, and de­scribes the Gi­hon and the Pi­son in some de­tail.

[Foot­note 1: So the mar­gin of the A. and R. Ver­sions more cor­rect­ly.]

Now it will at once strike the read­er that two of these rivers are well known to the present day. The oth­ers are not.

It is in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of these two, and of the dis­tricts which they “com­passed,” which form the dif­fi­cul­ties of the prob­lem. Up till re­cent times, it is re­mark­able what a va­ri­ety of spec­ula­tions have been at­tempt­ed as to the sit­ua­tion of Eden. Dr. Ald­is Wright, the learned au­thor of the ar­ti­cle “Eden” in Smith's “Bib­li­cal Dic­tio­nary,” re­marks: “It would be dif­fi­cult, in the whole his­to­ry of opin­ion, to find any sub­ject which has so in­vit­ed, and at the same time com­plete­ly baf­fled, con­jec­ture, as the Gar­den of Eden.” And in an­oth­er place he thinks that “the site of Eden will ev­er rank with the quadra­ture of the cir­cle, and the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of un­ful­filled prophe­cy among those un­solved, and per­haps in­sol­uble, prob­lems which pos­sess so strange a fas­ci­na­tion.” It is, how­ev­er, to be re­marked, (1)that all that was writ­ten be­fore Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch's re­search­es were made known; and (2)that re­al­ly a great mass of the con­jec­ture and spec­ula­tion has been pure­ly in the air--un­der­tak­en with­out any ref­er­ence to the plain terms of the text to be in­ter­pret­ed. It is the ex­trav­agance of com­men­ta­tors, and their in­sist­ing on go­ing be­yond the nar­ra­tive it­self, that has raised such dif­fi­cul­ties, and made the prob­lem look more hope­less than it re­al­ly is.

To what pur­pose are “the three con­ti­nents of the old world” “sub­ject­ed to the most rig­or­ous search,” as Dr. Wright puts it--when it is quite plain from the text it­self, that the so­lu­tion is to be sought in the neigh­bour­hood of the Eu­phrates, or not at all? The whole in­quiry seems to have been one in which a vast cloud of learned dust has been raised by spec­ula­tors, who be­gan their in­quiry with­out clear­ly de­ter­min­ing, to start with, what was the point at is­sue. Ei­ther the de­scrip­tion in Gen. ii. 3-14 is meant for al­le­go­ry, or ge­ograph­ical fact: this ques­tion must first be set­tled; and if the lat­ter is agreed to, then it is quite in­con­ceiv­able that the words should im­ply any very ex­ten­sive re­gion, or any fan­cied realm ex­tend­ing over a large pro­por­tion of one or oth­er quar­ter of the globe. The prob­lem is then at once nar­rowed; and it is sim­ply un­rea­son­able to look for Hav­ila in In­dia, or for Pi­son in the province of Bur­ma, as one learned au­thor does!

Yet com­men­ta­tors have for­got­ten this; and gone--the ear­li­er ones in­to in­ter­pre­ta­tion of al­le­go­ry--the lat­er in­to im­pos­si­ble ge­ograph­ical spec­ula­tion; while on­ly the most re­cent have con­fined them­selves to the ob­vi­ous terms of the prob­lem as laid down in the nar­ra­tive it­self--a nar­ra­tive which (whether true or false) is clear­ly meant to be def­inite and ex­act, as we have seen. Our A.V. trans­la­tors are to be held, to some ex­tent, re­spon­si­ble for the free­dom which spec­ula­tion has ex­er­cised, by them­selves tak­ing the C[=u]sh of the nar­ra­tive to “Ethiopia,” i.e., to the African con­ti­nent--for which there is no au­thor­ity what­ev­er.

As re­gards the _al­le­gor­ical_ in­ter­pre­ta­tions, they are too ex­trav­agant for se­ri­ous no­tice. Souls, an­gels, hu­man pas­sions and mo­tives, are sup­posed to be rep­re­sent­ed by towns, rivers, and coun­tries. To all this it is enough to re­ply--What rea­son can we have for sup­pos­ing an al­le­go­ry sud­den­ly to be in­ter­po­lat­ed at Gen. ii. 8? There is no al­le­go­ry be­fore it, there is none af­ter.

Then as to the ear­ly ge­ograph­ical ex­pounders. Jose­phus and oth­ers sup­posed the al­lu­sion was made to the great rivers known to an­cient ge­og­ra­phy, all of which ran in­to that great­est riv­er of all, which en­cir­cled the globe. In this view, the Gi­hon might be the Nile, and the Pi­son the Ganges! Here, again, it may be re­marked it is im­pos­si­ble to read the nar­ra­tive and be­lieve that the au­thor meant any such widespread re­gion. Even if the au­thor had the an­cient ideas about cos­mog­ra­phy gen­er­al­ly, that would not pre­vent his be­ing ac­cu­rate about a lim­it­ed re­gion ly­ing to the east of a well-​known riv­er in a pop­ulous coun­try. In lat­er times Luther avoid­ed the dif­fi­cult spec­ula­tion by sup­pos­ing that the Del­uge had swept away all traces of the site! But un­for­tu­nate­ly for this con­ve­nient the­ory, it is a plain fact that the Del­uge did not sweep any two out of the four rivers named. The read­er who is cu­ri­ous on the sub­ject, will find in Dr. A. Wright's ar­ti­cle a brief ac­count of the var­ious iden­ti­fi­ca­tions pro­posed by all these com­men­ta­tors. It would not be in­ter­est­ing to go in­to any de­tail. I shall pass over all those ex­trav­agant views which go to places re­mote from the Eu­phrates, and come at once to the lat­er at­tempts to solve the ques­tion in con­nec­tion with the two known rivers, Eu­phrates and Hid­dekel (Tigris); as this is the on­ly kind of so­lu­tion that any rea­son­able mod­ern Bib­li­cal stu­dent will ad­mit.

The dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tions adopt­ed maybe grouped in­to two main at­tempts: (1) to find the place among the group of rivers that sur­rounds Mount Ararat in North­ern Ar­me­nia, _vis._, in the ex­treme up­per course of the Eu­phrates near its two sources; (2) to find the place be­low the _present_ junc­tion of the Eu­phrates and the Tigris, along some part of the unit­ed course, which is now more than two hun­dred miles long, and is called “Shatt-​el-'Aráb.”

But nei­ther of these at­tempts has been suc­cess­ful: the first must, in­deed, be ab­so­lute­ly dis­missed; be­cause the He­brew phras­es used in de­scrib­ing the four _branch­es_ of the riv­er that “went out,” and wa­tered the gar­den, and then part­ed, can­not be ap­plied to four in­de­pen­dent sources or streams--_up­stream_ of the Eu­phrates. It will not, then, sat­is­fy the prob­lem, to find four rivers some­where in the vicin­ity of the Eu­phrates, and which, in a gen­er­al way, en­close a dis­trict in which Eden might be placed. It may, in­deed, be doubt­ed whether this first at­tempt (which I may call the “North Ar­me­ni­an so­lu­tion”) would ev­er have been se­ri­ous­ly en­ter­tained, but from the fact that the name Gi­hon--or some­thing very like it--did at­tach it­self to the Arax­es or Pha­sis, a con­sid­er­able riv­er of Ar­me­nia. Find­ing a Gi­hon ready, the com­men­ta­tors next made the Pi­son, the Acamp­sis; and then as Pi­son was near the “Hav­ila land,” this coun­try was laid on the ex­treme north of Ar­me­nia; all this with­out a par­ti­cle of ev­idence of any kind.[1] I may here take the op­por­tu­ni­ty of re­mark­ing that a chance _sim­ilar­ity of names_[2] has been, through­out the con­tro­ver­sy, a fruit­ful source of en­larged spec­ula­tive wan­der­ing. Thus this name Gi­hon (Gai­hun, Jíkhún, G[=e][=o]n, &c.) that ap­pears in North Ar­me­nia, again ap­pears in con­nec­tion with the _Nile_; while again the name “Nile” has wan­dered back to the con­fines of Per­sia, and one of the _Eu­phrates_ branch­es is still called “Shatt-​en-​nîl.” The an­cients, in­deed, had very cu­ri­ous ideas about the Nile. Its re­al sources be­ing so long undis­cov­ered--no Speke or Grant hav­ing ap­peared--imag­ina­tion ran wild on the sub­ject. Not on­ly so, but it is re­mark­able that the name _Cush_ should have ac­quired both a Per­sian Gulf and an Egyp­tian em­ploy­ment: and the writ­er of the able ar­ti­cle in “The Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry” (Oc­to­ber, 1882) points out sev­er­al oth­er sin­gu­lar in­stances in which names are com­mon both to the African-​Egyp­tian re­gion, and to this.

[Foot­note 1: And it is as­ton­ish­ing to find the er­ror gen­er­al­ly per­pet­uat­ed in maps at­tached to mod­ern Bibles.]

[Foot­note 2: As dis­tinct from a re­al philo­log­ical con­nec­tion of a mod­ern name with a more an­cient one, and so forth.]

Turn­ing now to the sec­ond of the two the­ories, the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the site on the low­er part of the Eu­phrates af­ter its now ex­ist­ing junc­tion with the Tigris (and which the sup­port­ers of the the­ory have jus­ti­fied by mak­ing the Gi­hon and Pi­son two rivers com­ing from Eden) must al­so be set aside.

For the im­por­tant fact has been over­looked that it is quite cer­tain, that an­cient­ly, the joint stream, (Shatt-​el-'Aráb), as it now is, did not ex­ist. Though the Gen­esis nar­ra­tive tells us of a junc­tion _im­me­di­ate­ly out­side_ the south­ern bound­ary of the Gar­den, the Eu­phrates chan­nels and the Tigris branch (with part of the Eu­phrates wa­ter in it) flowed sep­arate­ly to the Per­sian Gulf. It is quite cer­tain that, in the time of Alexan­der the Great, the mouths of the Eu­phrates and Tigris were a good day's jour­ney apart. For this sep­arate out­flow there is the in­con­testable ev­idence of Pliny and oth­er au­thors quot­ed by Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch. I may here al­so re­mark, that an­cient­ly the Per­sian Gulf ex­tend­ed much far­ther in­land than it does now. In the time of Sen­nacherib, an in­land arm of the sea ex­tend­ed so far, that a _naval_ ex­pe­di­tion against Elam was pos­si­ble; more than one hun­dred miles in­land from the present sea-​line. The ex­ten­sion was called N[=a]r Mar­ra­tum. In Alexan­der's time, the city of Charax (now Mo­ham­ra) was found­ed close to the sea (that was in the fourth cen­tu­ry B.C.). It is known from lat­er his­to­ries, that short­ly be­fore the birth of our Saviour, the city was from fifty to one hun­dred and twen­ty Ro­man miles in­land. The change is due to the “Delta,” or al­lu­vial for­ma­tion at the mouth of the rivers.

Turn­ing, then, to the re­cent in­quiries (pub­lished in 1881[1]) by Pro­fes­sor Fried. Delitzsch, it must be con­fessed that the re­sults ob­tained are such as to com­plete­ly avoid all the dif­fi­cul­ties that be­set the oth­er ex­pla­na­tions: yet we ought not to be too con­fi­dent that it is a fi­nal or ab­so­lute ex­pla­na­tion. A cer­tain cau­tion and re­serve will still be wise­ly main­tained on the sub­ject. At any rate, they show that _an_ ex­pla­na­tion, one that an­swers _all_ the con­di­tions of the prob­lem, _can_ be giv­en; and that is a great thing.

[Foot­note 1: “Wo lag das Paradies” (Leipzig, 1881) is the ti­tle of the book.]

[Foot­note: Pro­fes­sor Friedrich Delitzsch is Pro­fes­sor of As­syri­ol­ogy in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leipzig.]

In plac­ing the site _on_ the Eu­phrates, and far from the moun­tain sources, there is no vi­olence done to the He­brew lan­guage used to de­scribe the first riv­er, as one that “went out,” and wa­tered the Gar­den. The words do not re­quire that the riv­er should ac­tu­al­ly _take_ its _rise_ with­in the Gar­den lim­its; but it is nec­es­sary that the riv­er should be so sit­uat­ed, that its wa­ters could be dis­tribut­ed by means of creeks or canals across the Gar­den, that it could be said the riv­er “went out and wa­tered the Gar­den.” Now it is a re­mark­able fact, that in the dis­trict just above Baby­lon, the bed of the Eu­phrates is in lev­el much high­er than the bed of the Tigris (Hid­dekel) to the east, and that hence there al­ways have been a num­ber of very vari­able chan­nels lead­ing from the Eu­phrates east­ward to the Tigris. These, it is well known, were of­ten en­larged by the an­cients and con­vert­ed in­to use­ful “in­un­da­tion canals” for ir­ri­ga­tion and the pas­sage of boats. Imag­ine, then, the high lev­el riv­er bed of the Eu­phrates, and var­ious streams flow­ing off it down to the val­ley of the Tigris, and we have a most ef­fi­cient­ly ir­ri­gat­ed “Gar­den,” and one ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribed by the text--the great riv­er “went out” and wa­tered it. The Eu­phrates, more­over, is li­able to great flush­es of wa­ter from the melt­ing of the snows in wide tracts of moun­tain or high­lands from which its wa­ters are col­lect­ed, and these vol­umes of wa­ter found vent from the over­charged moth­er-​chan­nel by es­cape, not on­ly through the side chan­nels, just spo­ken of, but al­so by oth­er im­por­tant branch­es on the oth­er side. Ev­ery one who has seen one of the great rivers of North­ern In­dia will at once re­al­ize the changes that take place where a riv­er li­able to floods has its bed at a high lev­el. It is al­most a mat­ter of cer­tain­ty that, in the course of years, the branch­es and chan­nels of rivers so con­sti­tut­ed will change, and old ones be left dry and de­sert­ed. These es­sen­tial to­po­graph­ical con­di­tions have al­ways to be re­mem­bered in in­ter­pret­ing the nar­ra­tive of Gen­esis ii.

In fact, they fur­nish us with points which help us in the prob­lem at the out­set. (1) There is a part of the Eu­phrates, just above Baby­lon, where the riv­er nat­ural­ly fur­nished abun­dant ir­ri­ga­tion for a Gar­den plant­ed east­ward of it, by means of nat­ural ir­ri­ga­tion chan­nels flow­ing from the high lev­el down to the low­er val­ley of the Tigris; and (2) there is al­so a point from which the Eu­phrates did branch out, and sev­er­al im­por­tant arms an­cient­ly ex­ist­ed.

Nor is the lo­cal­ity, in point of ver­dure and fer­til­ity, un­suit­able. Not on­ly do the an­cient his­to­ries make fre­quent men­tion of the canals and streams flow­ing from the Eu­phrates which I have al­lud­ed to, but they speak of the palm groves, the vines and the ver­dure of the Baby­lo­ni­an or Chaldean re­gion. Herodotus, in his first book, has the most glow­ing de­scrip­tion of the scene; and the kings of Baby­lon had nu­mer­ous en­closed gar­dens or parks: these were im­itat­ed in Per­sia, and gave rise to the Per­sian name “Fir­daus,” which Xenophon im­port­ed in­to Greek in the form of [Greek: pa­radeisos] or “par­adise”--the term which was adopt­ed by the Sev­en­ty trans­la­tors.

The ac­tu­al lo­cal­ity which Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch pro­pos­es as the most prob­able site of the Gar­den of Eden is be­tween the present Eu­phrates and Tigris, just to the north of Baby­lon. The bound­aries would be--rough­ly and gen­er­al­ly speak­ing--the two rivers for East and West; while for the North and South bound­aries we should draw par­al­lel lines through Ac­cad on the North and Baby­lon on the South.

But grant­ed that the gen­er­al lo­cal­ity and the re­la­tions of the riv­er Eu­phrates and Tigris sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments of the text by such a lo­ca­tion as this: how about the oth­er two _and_ the coun­tries which they com­pass? The trou­bles of the ear­li­er com­men­ta­tors will warn us, that we need not be too ready to force names, and to iden­ti­fy one riv­er, and then, _be­cause_ we have fixed that, make the coun­try which the text re­quires fol­low it!

It is, how­ev­er, in this mat­ter that Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch's work is so sat­is­fac­to­ry. He has point­ed out, that there is his­tor­ical ev­idence (and al­so that the lo­cal traces are not want­ing in the present day) to prove that, just be­low Baby­lon, we _can_ find two promi­nent­ly im­por­tant chan­nels or branch­es of the Eu­phrates, which will at least sup­ply the place of Pi­son and Gi­hon. As to the first, it is known that in his­toric times a great chan­nel called by the Greeks Pal­lakopas (nav­iga­ble for ships) used to car­ry off the sur­plus wa­ter of the Eu­phrates when swollen in the sum­mer sea­son by the melt­ing snows of the Ar­me­ni­an moun­tains. It branched off from the main riv­er at a point some­what north of Baby­lon, and flowed in­to the Per­sian gulf. There is, in­deed, no _di­rect_ ev­idence to show that this branch bore a name re­sem­bling Pi­son. _Pal­gu_ is the As­syr­ian whence the Greek Pal­lakopas was de­rived. It is re­mark­able, how­ev­er, that the word Pi­son close­ly re­sem­bles the cuneiform term “pisá­na,” or “pisánú,” which is used for a wa­ter-​reser­voir, a canal or a chan­nel; and as this “Pal­lakopas” was _the_ chan­nel _par ex­cel­lence_, it may very pos­si­bly have been called “pisá­na” or Pi­son, the (great) chan­nel. The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the chan­nel called “Pal­lakopas” will be found men­tioned in Colonel Ches­ney's work, “An Ex­pe­di­tion to the Tigris.” The name, how­ev­er, of this chan­nel is not the on­ly means we have of iden­ti­fy­ing it. The Scrip­ture says that the Pi­son com­pass­es the land of _Hav­ilah_. Now let us re­mem­ber, that the Scrip­ture tells of two Hav­ilahs: (1) The sec­ond son of Cush[1] and broth­er of Nim­rod, and (2) one of the great great grand­sons of Shem (Gen. x. 29). One we may call the Cushite Hav­ilah, the oth­er the Jok­tan­ite Hav­ilah. The dwelling-​place of the broth­er of Nim­rod is not men­tioned, but it is stat­ed that the Jok­tan­ite Hav­ilah dwelt in “Me­sha.” The tenth of Gen­esis is an im­por­tant chap­ter, as show­ing how the de­scen­dants of Noah branched out and spread over the coun­tries all round the Eu­phrates; some go­ing north to As­syr­ia (Nin­eveh), oth­ers to the east and west, and oth­ers south, to Ara­bia and Egypt. Now it so hap­pens that the whole coun­try west of the great Pal­lakopas chan­nel, was called by the As­syr­ians “Mashu.” Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch iden­ti­fies this Mashu of the cuneiform in­scrip­tions, with the “Me­sha” men­tioned in Scrip­tures, as the home of Hav­ilah. We have al­so in Gen. xxv. 8,[2] men­tion of a land of Hav­ila that is “be­fore”--i.e., east­ward of--“Egypt as thou goest to­ward As­syr­ia,” which would an­swer very well to this lo­cal­ity, west of the Eu­phrates. It is al­so known (from sources which it would take too long to de­tail) that this coun­try did yield gold-​dust. Pliny al­so men­tions “Bdel­li­um,” if that was the sub­stance known as “B'dolach.” It is in­deed un­cer­tain what this was, but Gese­nius long ago re­ject­ed the idea that it was a stone, be­cause there is no pre­fix to it, as there is to “shoham,” which fol­lows, and cer­tain­ly is a pre­cious stone. The man­na in the wilder­ness is de­scribed as be­ing of the “colour of bdel­li­um,” and was al­so like hoar-​frost;[3] hence the idea that b'dolach was a crys­tal. But a fra­grant and pre­cious gum-​resin seems more like­ly. The Ma­gi who came to wor­ship the In­fant Saviour from near this lo­cal­ity, brought of­fer­ings of _gold_, and al­so fra­grant gums and myrrh. Was “bdel­li­um” (as prob­ably be­ing a fra­grant gum) one of these of­fer­ings?

[Foot­note 1: See Gen. x. 9.]

[Foot­note 2: See al­so 1 Sam. xv. 7.]

[Foot­note 3: Ex­od. xvi. 14; Num­bers xi. 7: “The ap­pear­ance (lit. ”eye“) of it was as the ap­pear­ance of bdel­li­um” (R.V.).]

The “Onyx,” or “Shoham,” was most prob­ably a pure red cor­nelian, and this al­so was found in the Baby­lo­ni­an provinces, and was spe­cial­ly worn by the Baby­lo­ni­an kings.

So the coun­try west of the Eu­phrates an­swers very well to Hav­ila with­out any forc­ing, and with­out any plac­ing it there _be­cause_ of the riv­er ren­der­ing such a plan nec­es­sary.

As to the fourth riv­er (Gi­hon), Delitzsch iden­ti­fies it, still more clear­ly, with a chan­nel known as the “Shatt-​en-​níl,” which branch­es off from the Eu­phrates at Baby­lon it­self, and pass­ing the Scrip­tural city of Erech, re­joins the main riv­er low­er down. A clay tablet has ac­tu­al­ly been dis­cov­ered, hav­ing the Eu­phrates, Tigris, and this Shatt-​en-​níl chan­nel _to­geth­er_: the name of the lat­ter is giv­en as “K[=a]hán de,” or “Gughánde,” a name which close­ly re­sem­bles Gi­hon. The chan­nel is, how­ev­er, iden­ti­fied in­de­pen­dent­ly of the name. For the Gi­hon is par­tic­ular­ized in the nar­ra­tive, by the fact that it “com­pass­es” the land of Cush. This (as al­ready point­ed out) is not the Ethiopi­an Cush.

Delitzsch states, that the whole coun­try bound­ed by this branch was an­cient­ly called Kash-​shu, which he iden­ti­fies with the Cush of Gen­esis ii. The syl­la­ble “Kash” ap­pears through­out this lo­cal­ity. In fact Kash-​du or Kal-​du is the ori­gin of the fa­mil­iar name Chaldea. In the He­brew, Kush (Cush) is the name giv­en to the fa­ther of Nim­rod, who “be­gan” his king­dom about this very site--Erech, and Cal­neh, and Ac­cad (Gen. x. 8, 10). Hence it is not sur­pris­ing that relics of the name should be found all round this neigh­bour­hood. Nor does the ev­idence end here. The dis­trict im­me­di­ate­ly around Baby­lon was called “Kár-​dun­ish-​i,” i.e., the “Gar­den of the god Dun­ish.” Now Kar is the Tu­ra­ni­an form of the Semitic G[=a]n, or Gin[=a] (gar­den); and what is more like­ly than that, as the true sto­ry was lost in the hea­then tra­di­tions and mythol­ogy that grew up, the “gar­den” was at­tribut­ed to the god Dun­ish--where­as the re­al orig­inal had been not “Gàn­dun­ish,” but “Gan'Eden?” This, though on­ly a con­jec­ture, is the more prob­able, as one of the in­scrip­tion-​names of Baby­lon it­self was “Tin­ti­ra,” which, though a lit­tle ob­scure, cer­tain­ly means _ei­ther_ the “_grove_,” or the _“foun­tain,” of life._

We thus find, not on­ly that four great branch­es of the riv­er that “went out,” and wa­tered the Gar­den can be traced, but that the two re­al­ly do “com­pass” tracts, that can, with the high­est de­gree of prob­abil­ity, be iden­ti­fied as C[=u]sh or Kash, and Hav­ilah. The im­por­tance of Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch's work may now be briefly glanced at. It may be ob­ject­ed, that such a pro­cess of rea­son­ing as that put for­ward, is not con­vinc­ing to a gen­er­al read­er who has not the means of crit­iciz­ing or test­ing Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch's con­clu­sions: he there­fore can­not be sure that, in se­lect­ing two chan­nels to rep­re­sent the Pi­son and the Gi­hon, and in iden­ti­fy­ing “Mashu” with Me­sha of Hav­ilah, and one of the Baby­lo­ni­an dis­tricts with Kush, the Pro­fes­sor has at last hit off a so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which will not in its turn be dis­proved, as all ear­li­er so­lu­tions have been. There is, how­ev­er, this im­por­tant con­clu­sion to be safe­ly drawn, viz., that a com­plete ex­pla­na­tion in ex­act ac­cord with the He­brew text is _pos­si­ble_, and that hence noth­ing can be urged against the _nar­ra­tive_, on the ground (hith­er­to sneer­ing­ly tak­en) that the ge­og­ra­phy _was im­pos­si­ble_ and so forth.

Next let me very briefly sum up what it is that Dr. Delitzsch has done--mar­shalling the ev­idence, be­gin­ning from the broad end and nar­row­ing down till we ar­rive at the point.

(1) First, then, we are fixed by the nar­ra­tive to some place be­tween the Eu­phrates and the Tigris.

(2) We find in the an­cient in­scrip­tions of the chief city of this lo­cal­ity, con­stant al­lu­sions to a Gar­den, a prim­itive pair and a temp­ta­tion: one of these al­most ex­act­ly re­pro­duces the Bible sto­ry; it is not of the ear­li­est date and is a copy. But dis­cov­ery is far from be­ing ex­haust­ed; all that we know is _con­sis­tent_ with the idea of an orig­inal sto­ry, grad­ual­ly cor­rupt­ed by the ad­di­tion of leg­ends, and in­tro­duc­tion of mytho­log­ical per­sons and hea­then di­vini­ties. The true be­lief in one God, who made Him­self known by voice or vi­sion to His true wor­ship­pers, seems ear­ly to have been con­fined to a few of the Shemitic fam­ilies, while the oth­ers “in­vent­ed” gods of their own.

(3) We find that the re­gion about Baby­lon it­self was called Kár-​dun­ishi--which eas­ily re­calls Kar or Gán-​Eden. We al­so find the name (Tin­ti­ra) ap­plied, in­di­cat­ing a “grove” or “foun­tain” of life; in the lo­cal­ity where the di­rect leg­ends most abound.

(4) We find from an­cient au­thors that the dis­trict was one of rich ver­dure--a land of gar­dens and ir­ri­ga­tion.

(5) We find that some way above Baby­lon about Ac­cad, the lev­el of the riv­er bed Eu­phrates is so much high­er than the val­ley of the Tigris east­ward, that nu­mer­ous streams flow off from it, which would serve ad­mirably to ir­ri­gate a gar­den sit­uat­ed be­tween the two, east­ward of the Eu­phrates.

(6) We find that the Per­sian Gulf once ex­tend­ed more than one hun­dred miles far­ther in­land than it does now. That there was no joint out­flow of Tigris and Eu­phrates, but, though they did join their streams above, they part­ed again and had still sep­arate mouths--of the Tigris branch one, of the Eu­phrates sev­er­al.

(7) Last­ly, Pro­fes­sor Delitzsch finds two chan­nels which an­swer to Pi­son and Gi­hon.

(8) He proves these two to be the right ones by con­sid­er­ing the coun­tries which they “com­pass:” and ac­tu­al­ly finds the one that he sup­pos­es to be the “Gai­hûn,” called, in the cuneiform clay tablets, “Kahán or Gaghân-​dé.”

It is re­al­ly on­ly in (7) and (8) that there is any room for doubt and for fur­ther in­quiry.

At any rate, the cred­ibil­ity of the nar­ra­tive, and a be­lief in its pur­pose, as a to­po­graph­ical­ly ex­act state­ment of fact, not an al­le­go­ry or leg­end, is es­tab­lished.

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