EWMaaBUtiftS*!] .W*iS|lisSst=}3Sn!|W;®:; 1 ^Phkh : !i#«a;!%?3s ■ |g2a!%® 8!i illliil H< !"'«<«, . i£§|jK|jJ« ilii1?S!SsS iiiHrijjSi: IMP llililill mmmm IfeSi »*#*»! . ' iHiiSl S5£n!$^S:Ei iSiS'^SlBSEilSSSaUSSiifiiinv iliillisIliSaSiiiiaii ;ii! Hi ■ II ;®«5iS!3^sS)n£is.j iKHSHHEj; isat-s agS® Sg*333S2tei rti ixrjn.mjH}; %3j«ggBHSS; lliiiiiii - ' ' islJiii BfiJBaa&teSaSMElKrW '■V ■, hm«k faSaraS liH isig-illil ffffiBhsSSfnir :iiXw OTSii lUililii jeS^Si*; • ■ ; .?• 'N^wShSP! pppsi ■sS'; 2a.!*r ijr tc-^nfste: taS^S* '''«2“.TJf ■ ■ WWWKMi liplMpS ssSfflfel lilii'lll IM “-•*3 ip ±r. ■"■ iiifflis mii feiiijjj ’f iTrirma'ii"- j'~ sn"**’ ***'*ji»**'* :nHHeiiiRU£*« /T \ ( ■< r '■■■■■-.. / '■ J r ’>• v.7 . c./y. *?'z- §rom f0e £t6rarg of (professor 'Wiffiam |^enr2 (Breen 3$equeaf0efc f$tm to f0e £ tfirarp of (prtneefon £0eofogteaf ^enttnarg BT 701 . D3 1896 Dawson, John William, 1820- 1899. Eden lost and won « EDEN LOST AND WON EDEN LOST AND WON STUDIES OF THE EARLY HISTORY AND FINAL DESTINY OF MAN AS TAUGHT IN NATURE AND REVELATION SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, LI., D. F.R.S. Etc Author of “ The Story of the Earth" “ The Origin of the World" “ Modern Science in Bible Lands" “ Salient Points in the Science of the Earth ” etc FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 1896 I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/edenlostwonstudiOOdaws_O PREFACE HE time has come when the Science of the Earth and of Man should take bolder ground than heretofore on the question of the validity of the literary and historical criticism which deals so freely with the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures. These records present them¬ selves to the student of nature in special aspects. He alone can fully appreciate the internal evidence which they afford of antiquity and accordance with the earlier remains and monuments of our species. He alone can measure their accordance with physical facts open to observation in relation to the past, present, and future of humanity. The field of investigation in these directions is already large and promising, and is widening every day ; and there is reason to believe that, if occupied by an enlightened natural science and an V VI Pi'eface intelligent and reverent study of the Bible, it may not only be held against the aggressive forces of agnostic philosophy and destructive criticism, but may be made to yield much new evidence of the beautiful congruity of the Old and New Testa¬ ments, and of both with nature and with human history. To promote in some degree this ob¬ ject, so vital to the progress of civilization and the highest interests of mankind, is the purpose of the following papers, which originally appeared in the Expositor , and are now collected, with some additions and amendments. September , 1895. J.W.D. CONTENTS PART I PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL PROBABILITIES RESPECTING THE AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY OF THE MOSAIC BOOKS I PAGE Introductory ........ 3 II The Personality of Moses . 11 III The Book of Genesis . *35 IV Early Man and Eden 59 V Antediluvians and the Deluge . . . .81 vii Vlll Contents VI The Dispersion and Abraham VII The Exodus PART II MAN AND NATURE , FALLEN AND VIII Man before the Fall ... IX The Fall and its Results . X PAGE . 105 125 RESTORED • 157 . 1 77 The Restoration . 207 PART I Physical and Historical Probabilities re¬ specting the Authorship and Authority of the Mosaic Books OUR POINT OF VIEW OTUDENTS of nature who are also Christians, ^ have a special interest in the pending contro¬ versies respecting the Pentateuch. The methods of critical dissection now applied to those books, referring as they do so much more to minute points of external linguistic form than to sub¬ stantial reality, necessarily appear somewhat superficial and unscientific to men accustomed to deal with certain or verifiable natural facts, while their results are at the best unsatisfactory. Should they bring into discredit, even for a time, the testimony of the early books of our Bible, the consequences may be serious to the progress of science as well as to the higher in¬ terests of society in general. To science these books have been of inestimable value, as establish¬ ing in the popular mind a broad basis for scientific work. Their distinct testimony to the unity of nature, as the product of one design, to the unity 4 Eden Lost and Won of man, to the progressive development of the creative work, and to the regulation of all things by invariable law, has emancipated the human mind from tendencies the most hostile to true progress. From want of this influence in bygone times, and even yet in certain places, the scientific study of nature has been hampered on the one hand by ecclesiastical bigotry and by pagan superstitions, and on the other by popular dis¬ turbances and extreme revolutionary movements. Past experience warns us that even the present generation may see all science swept away except that which is immediately promotive of national wealth, or of the arts of defence and destruction. This may happen either at the hand of a reckless democracy or of a brutal bigotry ; but it can never happen so long as the Bible is a household book. Another aspect of this matter touches a higher plane than that of natural science. Many of the more advanced Biblical critics are not ashamed to attribute fraud and even conspiracy to the authors of the early books of the Bible, and yet these critics profess to attach to these forged documents a certain religious value. Such moral obliquity is a two-edged sword, cutting every way against the interests of society, and must have a potent influence in favour of those causes of Our Point of View 5 moral disintegration which science and humanity have so much reason to dread. The reflex influence of these ideas on Christi¬ anity itself is also most serious. The Old Testa¬ ment constitutes the historical foundation of Christianity, on which Jesus and His disciples built their whole system of belief, and to the genuineness and validity of which they bore the most decided testimony. If this foundation be removed, the teaching of Christ and the Apostles may become of as little value as would that of the priests and scribes who are alleged to have palmed a fictitious Deuteronomy on good King Josiah. These considerations are at least sufficient to justify a close if friendly investigation and scrutiny of the results of higher criticism. It may be added that the Bible is a book full of references to natural facts and to those problems relating to the early history of man which belong to the domain of archaeology, and that in our time the pick and spade of the excavator, the measurements and observations of the topographer and geologist, the collections of the zoologist and botanist, and the study of ancient monuments and inscriptions, have thrown a flood of light on previously obscure portions of Holy Writ. The scientific worker may thus claim the right, 6 Eden Lost and Won however humbly and tentatively, to study for him¬ self from his own point of view these ancient records, and to place before the world, at least in the form of suggestions for inquiry, such points as strike his attention in his reading of the Old Testament, however trifling and unimportant they may seem in the estimation of literary specialists. This, as a student of nature and the Bible, I propose with all humility to do. I am not unaware of the evils that threaten humanity from agnostic evolution, and that this has been too much fostered by scientific men ; but the advanced evolutionists and the advanced critics have long since united their forces, and true Christianity and true science are now face to face with both. It is not necessary, how¬ ever, to take a pessimistic view of the situation. The observation and study of fifty years have shown me the rise and fall of several systems of philosophy and criticism, and the Word of God still abides and becomes wider in its influence. It may be useful in the first place to define the terms employed in the heading of this part. The term physical may be taken in the broad sense of what is termed physiography, as including all natural facts, or facts relating to natural things ; questions, therefore, of geography, of physical Our Point of View 7 features, and of physical changes which may have occurred in the places referred to in the Bible. If, for example, in the narratives of Eden, of the Deluge, of the Exodus, or of the Cities of the Plain, we find references to natural conditions, existing at an early date, which have passed away and have been forgotten, we may obtain indica¬ tions of the dates of these narratives ; just as if, in annals relating to southern Italy, we should find that the writer had no knowledge of Mount Vesuvius, but only of its predecessor, the tree- clad circle of Mount Somma, we should know that he had lived before the year 79 of the Christian era, and might still believe this even if we found in the writing certain substitutions for obsolete words, or interpolated notes. In regard to archaeology and history, we may have similar evidence. An event stated or a person referred to in one record only, may remain uncertain, or may be accepted with some reserve on the testimony of a single witness ; but a coin, an inscription or a writing of an independent author, may at once carry such event or person into the domain of certainty, and would sweep away a host of doubts that might have been conjured up by apparent inconsistencies or defects in the original document. 8 Eden Lost and Won In any case it cannot be denied that such evidence, whether physical or historical, deserves consideration, and this is all that I shall ask ; though for simplicity I may use, as a working hypothesis, the supposition that the ancient Hebrew leader Moses was an actual personage, and that he may have written or edited books to which tradition has attached his name, and of certain portions of which he is in the docu¬ ments themselves explicitly stated to have been the author. II THE PERSONALITY OF MOSES II THE PERSONALITY OF MOSES HE first of our illustrations may be grouped around the idea of the personality of Moses, and will refer principally to the Book of Genesis and the earlier part of Exodus. We need not attach much importance to the ob¬ jection taken to the story of the infancy of Moses, on the ground that there are other old legends of infants committed to the waters for safety. Even if the ancient Assyrian king Sargon had been similarly preserved ages before Moses, and even if Jochebed had known the tale, the only fair inference would be that it may have given a hint of which she availed herself. But there are in the story of Moses certain coincidences, in the nature of the oppression, the places where the Israelites were employed, and the two midwives, with some recent discoveries in Egypt, which deserve notice in this connection. We owe to the labours of Prof. Flinders Petrie 1 1 Illahun , Kahun , and Garofr, 1890. 11 12 Eden Lost and Won the excavation of a town now called Kahun, in the Nile Valley, near the entrance to the Fayoum. It was a temporary group of mud tenements erected for the labourers, mostly slaves and captives, assembled in a gang, or what the French in modern Egypt would have termed a Corvee or forced labour, for the erection of a brick pyramid for Usurtesen II., a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, and who may have lived a thousand years before Moses. Under the floors of the huts of these poor people were found numerous skeletons of infants packed in common boxes. Whether these babes died from neglect and carelessness, or were purposely destroyed, we do not know ; but in the circumstances the latter is not improbable, and, if so, it would afford a more ancient instance of the policy of the Pharaoh of the oppression, who, if he was the great Rameses, had more ample means than his predecessor Usurtesen to carry out forced labour on a large scale. Prof. Petrie’s original account of the buried infants of Kahun is in the following graphic terms : — “ Many new-born infants were found under the floors of the chambers, and, strange to say, usually in boxes which by their forms were made for other purposes. In short, unlucky babes seemed to have been conveniently The Personality of Moses 13 put out of the way by stuffing them into a toilet case or clothes box, and digging a hole in the floor for them. I fear these discoveries do not reflect much credit upon the manners and customs of the small officials of the twelfth dynasty.” We read that the Hebrews were employed in building two store-cities or arsenal fortresses, Pithom and Rameses. The site of Pithom, near the eastern end of the Wady Tumilat, has been definitely ascertained by Naville. That of Rameses was probably at the western end of the same \ valley, where it opens on the Delta, the distance between the two places being thus about thirty miles. It would seem that two gangs were em¬ ployed simultaneously at these places, no doubt lodged in mud huts and guarded by soldiers to pre¬ vent escape. This accounts for the two midwives, for the Egyptians were systematic even in their oppressions, and there would be an official ac¬ coucheur for each gang, whose duty it would be to save alive or to destroy the children born in the Corvee, as might be directed from headquarters. Thus the whole proceeding of Pharaoh might have been in accordance with very ancient precedent, though of a kind more appropriate to foreign prisoners than to people like the Israelites, long naturalized in the country. Perhaps it was this H Eden Lost and Won circumstance that excited the compassion of the midwives, and perhaps it was the gratitude of the Hebrew mothers and their friends that was the means employed by God to “ build them houses.” These incidental points render it probable that Moses was born at Rameses, rather than at Pithom, as the Court is more likely to have been at the former place, and the river of the story was either the eastern branch of the Nile or the canal flowing from it through Wady Tumilat, the land of Goshen. We may also infer that Jochebed and her husband were actual labourers in the Corvee, and therefore subject to all the bitterness of “ hard service ” to which their people were subjected. It is curious also that discoveries published in 1891 in respect to another instance, far separated in time and place, now for the first time enable us fully to understand these quaint incidents, which would not have occurred to any but a contemporary annalist, and are stated by him as matters of course without a word of comment. There could not surely be a better illustration of the antiquity of the story.1 That a child ushered into life in circumstances 1 The reference to the “birth-stools” in Exodus i. 16 is another incidental touch of ancient Egyptian rather than Hebrew customs. The Personality of Moses 15 so unfavourable should exercise so important an influence in the world, is in itself a marvel, or would have been so had it not led to his adoption into the royal family of Egypt, and in the palmy days of the great nineteenth dynasty, and probably in the reign of one of the most illustrious of the Pharaohs, Rameses II. It is true that attempts have been made to fix the date differently, but the recent discoveries of Naville at Pithom seem defi¬ nitely to settle the date of the building of that city, as in the reign of the great Rameses ; and not only its inscriptions but its structure, and its bricks, some with and some without straw, tally with the Biblical account. Moses may thus be identified with the Osarsiph of Manetho (though some regard this name as belonging to Joseph, or as arising from confounding him with Moses, a not unnatural mistake), or with the Arisu or Areos of the great Harris papyrus, names which represent a Semitic leader of rebellion in the troubled times which suc¬ ceeded the reign of Rameses II. and closed the nineteenth dynasty. This papyrus, an historical document written in the reign of Rameses III., testifies that at the close of the three or four short reigns after the great Rameses, occupying in all about twenty years, an emigration from Egypt took place, and that there was a time of anarchy, fol- 1 6 Eden Lost and Won lowed by a new dynasty inaugurated by the father of Rameses III. The Hebrew and Egyptian records thus concur in the fact that great disasters occurred at the close of the nineteenth dynasty, and probably in the reign of Siptah, its last king, the regency of whose queen Ta-user, and his unoccupied tomb usurped by a succeeding king, testify to his disastrous and untimely end.1 The first and most important fact here for our present purpose, is that the period to which the Hebrew lawgiver is thus assigned is that of the culmination of Egyptian art and literature, and is marked by a similar degree of enlightenment in Babylonia, Phoenicia, and southern Arabia. We are only beginning to understand the height of civilization to which Egypt and other ancient countries around the Mediterranean had attained even before the time of Moses. Maspero and Tomkins 2 have illustrated the extent and accuracy of the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians of this period. The latter closes a paper on this sub¬ ject with the following words : “ The Egyptians, dwelling in their green, warm river-course and on 1 See as to this, Kellog’s Stone Lecture , 1877. 2 Papers on the Lists of Thothrnes III. at Karnak. The Personality of Moses 17 the watered levels of their Fayoum and Delta, were yet a very enterprising people, full of curiosity, literary, scientific in method, admirable delineators of nature, skilled surveyors, makers of maps, trained and methodical administrators of domestic and foreign affairs, kept alert by the movements of their great river, and by the necessities of commerce, which forced them to the Syrian forests for their building timber, and to Kush and Pun for their precious furniture-woods and ivory, to say nothing of incense, aromatics, cosmetics, asphalt, exotic plants, and pet and strange animals, with a hun¬ dred other needful things.” The heads copied by Petrie, from Egyptian tombs, show that the physi¬ cal features of all the peoples inhabiting the sur¬ rounding countries were well known to them, as well as their manners, industries, and arts. The papers of Lockyer1 have shown that long before the Mosaic age the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile had mapped out the heavens, ascertained the movements of the moon and planets, estab¬ lished the zodiacal signs, discriminated the poles of the ecliptic and the equator, ascertained the laws of eclipses and the precession of the equinoxes, and, in fact, had worked out all the astronomical 1 Nature , 1892-4. 2 1 8 Eden Lost and Won data which can be learned by observation, and had applied them to practical uses. Lockyer would even ask us to trace this knowledge as far back as 6,000 years B.C., or into the post-glacial or antedilu¬ vian period ; but however this may be, astronomy was a very old science in the time of Moses, and it is quite unnecessary to postulate a late date for the references to the heavens in Genesis or in Job. In geodesy, and allied arts also, the Egyptians had long before this time attained to a perfection never since excelled, so that our best instruments can detect no errors in very old measurements and levellings. The arts of architecture, metallurgy, and weaving had attained to the highest develop¬ ment. Canalization and irrigation, with their con¬ sequent agriculture and cattle-breeding, were old and well-understood arts ; and how much of science and practical sagacity is needed for regulating the distribution of Nile water, any one may learn who will refer to the reports of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff and his assistants. Sculpture and painting in the age of Moses had attained their acme, and were falling into conventional styles. Law and the arts of government had become fixed and settled. Theology and morals, and the doctrine of rewards and punishments, had been elaborated into com¬ plex systems. Ample materials existed for history, The Personality of Moses 19 not only in monuments and temple inscriptions, but in detailed writings on papyrus. Egypt has left a wealth of records of this kind unsurpassed by any nation, and very much of these belongs to the time before Moses ; while, as Birch has truly said, the Egyptian historical texts are, “ in most in¬ stances, contemporaneous with the events they record, and written or executed under public con¬ trol.” There was also abundance of poetical and imaginative literature, and treatises on medicine and other useful arts. At the Court of Pharaoh correspondence was carried on with all parts of the civilized world, in many languages, and in various forms of writing, including that of Egypt itself, that of Chaldea, and probably also the alphabetical writing afterwards used by the Hebrews, Phoeni¬ cians, and Greeks, but which seems to have originated at a very early period among the Mineans, or Punites, of south Arabia.1 Education was carried on in institutions of various grades, from ordinary schools to universities. In the latter, we are told, were professors or “ mystery teachers ” of Astronomy, Geography, Mining, Theology, His¬ tory, and Languages, as well as many of the higher technical arts. A college song, of earlier date than 1 Discoveries of Glaser, summarized by Sayce. 20 Eden Lost and Jfron that of Moses, which has been preserved to us,1 shows indeed that these higher institutions did not condescend to the mere mechanic arts, but were intended to prepare their students for public life and for the more learned professions.2 This knowledge was, of course, not diffused among the servile population, though even slaves were sometimes educated as scribes ; but then we are told that Moses had the advantage of studying in the highest colleges of the country, and so of being learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and of obtaining access to all the literary treasures of the temple libraries, while he would also have the benefit of anv ancient lore in the Chaldean script which Jacob may have brought from Canaan ; and in his sojourn in Midian he might have access to the Minean letters and literature. I may remark here, in passing, that it would now seem that the language and theology of the book of Job can be better explained by supposing it to be a portion of Minean literature obtained by Moses in Midian, than in any other way. This view also 1 “ Records of the Past.55 2 Heliopolis, at which Moses was probably educated, is now supposed to have had a more monotheistic and purer tone of theology than other centres of Egyptian education in the time of the nineteenth dynasty. The Personality of Moses 2 1 agrees better than any other with its references to natural objects, the art of mining and other matters. We may thus easily imagine that a man of ability and energy, having such opportunities, would be more widely and deeply cultivated, not merely than his contemporaries among the Israel¬ ites, but than any other Hebrew between the time of Rameses II. and that of Solomon. The literary productions of such a man are not to be judged of by any arbitrary theory of development taking place in a rude pastoral people. It is true generally, though by no means universally, that rude nations do not produce great literary works. Still the exceptions to this, even in early English and Anglo-Saxon literature, are noteworthy. But in the case of Moses he was intellectually a product of the ripened civilization of Egypt, naturally a man of power and genius, and, may we not add, spiritually a man very near to God. In contrast with this, the results of modern criticism of a cer¬ tain type attribute the noble works which bear the name of Moses to unknown men living in times of comparatively little culture, when such writings were little needed, and so leave nothing worthy of Moses or of the great and critical period in which he acted. 22 Eden Lost and Won We should not, however, adopt exaggerated notions of the supposed rudeness of the Hebrews at the time of the conquest of Canaan. The Book of Exodus indeed affords good evidence of the exist¬ ence of an impulsive and ignorant element among the emigrants from Egypt, and forty years of desert life, while they might train in endurance and self-denial, and perhaps in more pure and simple manners, could not be favourable to progress in art and literature. It is surprising with what avidity the occurrence at the site of Lachish of remains of rude huts overlying the ruins of the old Amorite city has been seized on by a certain class of writers as evidence of the rudeness of the Israel¬ ites in the time of Joshua. It really indicates nothing of the kind. The conquering Israelites were an army living in tents, and probably in no condition immediately to rebuild Lachish. They may have occupied its ruins with a temporary garrison or may have allowed the fugitive Arnor- ites to return to the old site. But in either case we should expect the first buildings erected to be no better than those found by Petrie. The fact only marks the entire destruction of the town and the occupation of the site by people of few resources, as would be the case with the Amorites themselves after the plunder and burning of their city and the capture of their flocks and herds. The Personality of Moses To return to the time of Moses, he may have had other sources of information not accessible to his Egyptian fellow-students. The discoveries at Tel-Loh 1 and elsewhere in Babylonia, have shown that there existed in the Chaldean plain, before the time of Abraham, a primitive civilization equally high with that of the early Egyptian dynasties, and, like it, deeply imbued with the idea of per¬ petuating personal history and national annals. The inscriptions on the statues of the ancient king Gudea are remarkable examples of this. It is thus in every way probable that the tribe of Abraham carried from the East records in the cuneiform character inscribed either on clay tablets or on prepared sheep-skins, and these would certainly be preserved and added to in the time of Joseph, if we may judge from the very numerous biographical sketches which have been obtained from Egyptian tombs. Such Semitic literature, if it existed, would certainly be accessible to Moses, as well as the family traditions which he might learn orally from his mother, and it would naturally be most inter¬ esting to him to compare these with Egyptian history and mythology. 1 By Sarzac, noticed in “Journal Society of Bib. Litera¬ ture, “ Quarterly Statement Palestine Exploration Fund,” and “ Records of the Past.” 24 Eden Lost and Won Do not all these considerations eminently qualify Moses to be the historian of the primitive world, and is it possible to point to any other name in Hebrew literature having the same breadth of view or depth of information as the royal scribe of the nineteenth dynasty ? Would not any writing of his be in advance of the men of his time, and would it be wonderful if it failed at first to leaven their minds, and if it should stand up through the ages as a light towering above that of all the chroniclers and prophets of later times, whose minds were less cultivated and more occupied with their immediate surroundings ? I refer now to the man, not to the question of his Divine inspiration. We may thus easily picture to ourselves the boy Moses, indoctrinated by his mother, who was also his nurse, in the traditions of his fathers, in their greatness in the time of Joseph, and their cruel bondage under the existing government ; and no doubt taught also their simple ancestral faith, so different from the complex polytheism of Egypt. With these feelings strong within him he enters the schools and colleges of Egypt, and as he drinks in the learning of that wonderful land, compares it with what he has learned in his maternal home. Later he regards the whole matter in a practical light, and thinks that by his hand his people may The Personality of Moses 25 be freed. He finds them unprepared ; but, as an exile and an older and wiser man, believes himself the commissioned agent of God for their deliver¬ ance, but, chastened by experience and by the Divine spirit, prepares to teach them in a plain and popular form those rudiments of history and those prophetic destinies which he has so long and pain¬ fully studied, along with that better and purer faith which had sustained Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their long and eventful lives. Hence, according to a theory which seems to agree with all historical facts and to be thoroughly consistent in itself, arose the Book of Genesis. We have considered the personality of Moses and his environment in Egypt with reference to the probable nature of his literary productions : but another element enters into the question. The task assigned to him was the liberation of a nation of serfs and their transference to a new region, physically different from that in which they had been born and nurtured. In connection with this he had to provide for them a new religion, and a political and social organization different from that of their Egyptian lords ; or, rather, he had to revise and modernize old institutions and to develop them into a system suitable to the changed condi¬ tions of the people. To succeed in this it was 2 6 Eden Lost and Won necessary to arouse a religious enthusiasm sufficient to cause the Israelites to break entirely with Egypt and enter into a new life. In later times we have seen something similar effected on a far lower plane, in the great uprising of the Arabian tribes under Mohammed. What the Koran was to the Arabs the Book of Genesis may have been to the Israelites. Without any elaborate argument, but by a series of simple statements, it erected a mono¬ theistic religion and converted into creatures of the one God all the objects which the heathen are wont to worship, and reduced to merely human forms heroes and demigods. It then asserted the Divine commission and promises given to Abraham and the patriarchs, and exalted them as the chosen friends of God, and the fathers of a peculiar people. It thus stirred up the people with the enthusiasm of a new and pure religion, with the memories of former greatness, and with the promise of a great and glorious victory over their oppressors and the hope of a new and better country. It placed the original relations of the Israelites and Egyptians on the historic and memorable standpoint of the administration of Joseph. Could anything have been better fitted for the then existing crisis of the national affairs of the Hebrews, or more likely to lead to the practical facts of the Exodus and the The Personality of Moses 27 conquest of Canaan? Was there ever a time in the history of the people when such a book was so likely to have been produced ? Thus Genesis stands before us a great and masterful politico- religious tract for the time of Moses and the mis¬ sion he had to fulfil, and fits into no other place in the Hebrew history. If it has outlasted its immediate occasion and has become the foundation of the religion not only of Israel but of the whole world, the lower reason may be found in its won¬ derful power combined with childlike simplicity, and in that world-embracing scope which provides for the blessing of all nations ; the higher reason in the Divine wisdom bestowed by God on His servant Moses, who, more than any other Hebrew prophet, was like unto the heaven-descended Son of man whose advent he foresaw. But the personality of Moses appears in the Pentateuch in another way, much as that of Julius Caesar appears in his Commentaries. There is no formal biography or laboured eulogy, such as might have been expected from later and inferior men, but a gradual development of character, appearing incidentally, here and there, from the beginning to the end. He appears first as an educated man, in the prime of life, strong and self- reliant, and fired with an ambition to be the 2 8 Eden Lost and Won deliverer of his people. Failing in the rash and impulsive attempt, he sinks into an obscure and quiet life in pastoral Midian, which may, however, have been a time of thought and study, and of learning in that ancient literature at the time existing in Arabia. Roused from inactivity by the vision of the burning bush, he is now diffident and full of distrust of himself, strongly impressed with the difficulty of his great mission, and scarcely reassured by the promise of Divine support. As he enters on his work we find him bold and resolute in the presence of the new Pharaoh, to whom he must have appeared almost as the apparition or “Ka” of a royal prince of the last generation, raised again from the dead ; but in presence of his own people depressed and bowed down by their unbelief and timidity, and constantly retiring from the king’s obstinacy and the people’s fears to the presence of God, from which he returns with renewed strength. It has been well said of him that to the people he was all God, to God nothing but the people ; his own person and interests were nowhere. This grand self-abnegation appears through all his life, in the patience, forbearance, and kindness with which he led Israel like a flock, and in his willing¬ ness that he himself should perish if Israel thereby could be saved. Even the sad and pitiful visitation The Personality of Moses 29 of his one sin of temper at Meribah by exclusion from the promised land, while a confession of infirmity, is a testimony to the high moral plane on which he moved. The law which he is said to have given is in harmony with the man. It has of late been customary to speak of the harsh and cruel edicts of the law of Moses as unworthy of God. But what of the lofty morality of the decalogue, the merciful provisions for the poor, for strangers and for domestic animals ; of the social and sanitary provisions which, according to recent statistics, still give the people who practise them an advan¬ tage in the struggle for existence over the people of the most civilized Gentile nations? Jesus Himself is here the best apologist for Moses, when He says of one of these laws, “ It was because of the hardness of your hearts ” — because they were not fit for better. In the case of that very law, that of divorce, the frightful laxity that has crept into some modern nations shows that they also are unfit as yet for the better law of Christianity. It is scarcely necessary to refer to the Lex talionis , the law of slavery and other enactments tending to limit evils which could not be altogether removed. The end of Moses in the Pentateuch is unique, \ 30 Eden Lost and Won like his life. Excluded from the long wished-for Canaan, he sings, beyond Jordan, that glorious death-song, the poem of all the ages down to the time when Christ shall bring into His rest the last sufferer from the persecutions of this evil world. After this last utterance, which even the hardest of the critics are scarcely disposed wholly to wrest from him, he sinks into that mysterious burial whence no relic- worshipper can extract any shred for superstitious veneration, and in connection with which no one can establish a shrine or place of pilgrimage. Can it be supposed for a moment that such a career could have been imagined or patched to¬ gether by Shaphan the scribe, or Hilkiah the high priest, or later and more obscure writers, especially if they were men of the moral character attributed to them by critics? The argument here is of the same character with that which convinced John Stuart Mill that there must be a foundation of contemporaneous history underlying the life of Christ in the Gospels. Two objections have been taken to this argu¬ ment. One is, that in the life of Moses there are many miracles, and that these prove a mythical element and later origin. Modern science has, however, removed the old objections to miracles The Personality of Moses which used to be discussed by metaphysicians and theologians ; and a special consideration of those attributed to Moses shows, as we may see in the sequel, that they come within the range of physical possibility. Another is, that while the Egyptian theology dealt largely and very precisely with a future life and resurrection, these elements do not appear in the teaching of Moses. Jesus, however, here is again the apologist of Moses, and shows that the belief in immortality and a future state is implied even in referring to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.1 Still the doctrine of immediate retribution prevails in the Mosaic teaching. This, on the theory of Mosaic authorship, may be at¬ tributed to two reasons : one of a lower, and the other of a higher order. The Egyptian doctrine of a future life, in the time of Moses, had de¬ generated into a system of priestly absolution, which he seems to have been determined to discountenance as an abuse. Besides this, it appears to be implied in the Mosaic system that all Israel, as chosen of God and as professing faith in Him, is a holy people whose future happiness is guaranteed, but who are, nevertheless, subjects \ Matt. xxii. 32. 32 Eden Lost and Won of Divine chastisement in this life. This is in some sense Christian doctrine as well. The Christian may believe his future inheritance sure, yet he knows that “ whom God loveth He chasten- eth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” This is the kind of faith by which, in all ages, martyrs have been animated ; and as we see in the New Testament itself, such faith is less likely to expatiate on pictures of heavenly bliss than to be occupied with the stern duties and responsibilities of the present. Such faith would be appropriate to the Mosaic age rather than to later times. It is also to be observed that a new religion, arising in Egypt, would, from the standpoint of the critic or that of the “ natural man,” be likely to conform to Egyptian usages, especially in externals, while we should expect very strong contrasts in point of doctrine. Thus these peculiarities in the Mosaic religion agree with its probable origin in the time and place assigned to it, and not in any later period, when the Jews were more in contact with the nations of Asia. The manner in which the writer of Genesis deals with the material at his disposal, demands a separate consideration. / III THE BOOK OF GENESIS 3 Ill THE BOOK OF GENESIS REFERENCE has been made in the preceding article to the following points : — I. That no Hebrew writer down to the time of Solomon, or perhaps even to that of the intro¬ duction of Greek literature into the East, could have had so ample means for writing the early history of the world as those possessed by Moses, when regarded as a Hebrew imbued with the culture of the great civilized Egypt of the nine¬ teenth dynasty. 2. That at this period the Egyptians were most zealous in the preservation of historical facts, and were in possession of vast stores of information available for historical literature. 3. That it is in every way probable that there existed, up to the time of Moses, ancient docu¬ ments of Hebrew history, extending from the time when Abraham departed from the, at that time, learned and literary region of Chaldea, and 35 Eden Lost and Won 36 that such documents were probably more access¬ ible in the time of Moses than at any later period. 4. That the crisis of the affairs of Israel in the time of Moses demanded just such a compendium of the history of the race as is found in Genesis ; and that such a book was a necessary factor in the history of the Exodus and the subsequent events. 5. That the personality of Moses, as developed in the following history, testifies to a truthful por¬ traiture, which could not have been produced by obscure writers living at a later date. 6. That Genesis thus stands appropriately at the birth of the Israelitish nation, and is related to it in the manner of cause and effect, while there is no other period in the history of the chosen people to which it would have been so suitable. Centering these considerations in the personalfty of Moses, we have found a natural adaptation to time and place, and a congruity of the literature with the actual history which afford strong evi¬ dence of contemporaneity and truthfulness. We may now proceed to consider the materials of Genesis, and the manner in which they were used on the supposition that Moses was the author or editor of the book. The Book of Genesis relates altogether to time anterior to that of Moses. This lapse of time may The Book of Genesis 37 be divided into three periods of very unequal length, which are treated in somewhat different ways, though these are subordinate to the con¬ tinuous and homogeneous character of the history, which, beginning with matters relating to mankind in general, gradually and by successive stages concentrates itself on the interests of Israel alone. The first portion relates to the Creation, the antediluvian world, and the deluge. It has no connection with Egypt or Palestine, and, in so far as it has any local colouring, this belongs to that Euphratean region from which the father of the faithful is alleged to have emigrated. The second part extends from the call of Abraham to the time of Joseph, and is early Palestinian in its geographical and historical re¬ lations. In these respects it is even more primi¬ tive than the time of Moses, and if not based on contemporary documents must have been written by some one having a rare gift of throwing his vision back into times anterior to his own. In so far as Moses is concerned, it is not likely that he had previous knowledge of Palestine, but he must have been familiar with Egyptian literature re¬ lating to it, and he must often have met with people of Canaan, and with Egyptian officers who had travelled in the country. He must, therefore, 38 Eden Lost and Won have possessed sufficient knowledge to edit docu¬ ments relating to Palestine, and to understand the geographical and tribal relations with which such historical documents were concerned. The third portion of the book, relating to Jacob and Joseph, is almost wholly Egyptian in its scenery and colouring, and its conditions must have been perfectly familiar to Moses, especially if, as now supposed, the administration of Joseph was not under one of the foreign kings of the Hyksos race, but under one of the greatest native sovereigns, Thothmes III. The treatment of this part of Genesis bespeaks a writer thoroughly ac¬ quainted with the Egypt of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. The first of these three sections covers a vast lapse of time — three thousand years, or probably, more, of human history, besides the unmeasured geological periods before man appeared. The second and third extend over only the 430 years which, according to the Hebrew chronology, inter¬ vened between the entry of Abraham into Canaan and the Exodus. If these three portions of Genesis were compiled by Moses from documents of various dates, the greater part of this material must have been ob¬ tained from Hebrew rather than from Egyptian The Book of Genesis 39 sources. No doubt the Heptarchy of the Great Gods of Egypt is analogous to the seven creative days, and may have been so understood in the esoteric learning of the Egyptian priests. There can be little doubt also that the Horshesu, or mythical children of Horus, represent the ante¬ diluvian patriarchs of Moses and the Chaldean legends. Not improbably, also, there may have been Egyptian narratives of the visit of Abraham and his tribe, of the immigration of Jacob, and of the rule of Joseph. There must, however, have been records of the Abrahamidae themselves ; and Egyptian precedents would authorize us to believe that such documents would be scrupulously cared for, and would, probably, be deposited with the mummy of Joseph, either in some tribal tomb or sanctuary, or in the house of his descendants. Supposing such materials to be accessible to Moses, and that it was part of his Divine mission to use them for the instruction and deliverance of his people, we should suppose that his treat¬ ment of the different documents might be some¬ what varied. In the case of the first and second sections, the material might consist in part of definite and specially arranged statements of great antiquity, like those of the creation and the deluge, in part 40 Eden Lost and Won of toledoth, or genealogical lists, and in part of biographical and historical annals. The two former classes of material a conscien¬ tious editor would leave untouched, except perhaps to add a few explanatory notes or to modernize archaic expressions. The third or narrative ma¬ terial he might treat with a freer hand, and might even re-write in the style of his own time. We should thus have, in the earlier parts of Genesis, a twofold structure, consisting, in the first place, of ancient documents, written, perhaps, by different hands, at widely different times ; and, secondly, the modernized and freer biographical and historical sketches interwoven with the older material, though perhaps occasionally including sections of older documents unchanged. It is thus quite unneces¬ sary to imagine any later editor than Moses, in order to account for those diversities of style and treatment which have caused critics to postulate several authors and redactors. Since writing the above, I have found this aspect of the case very clearly stated by Prof. Green, of Princeton. He says : “The difference of diction in different sections of the Pentateuch is largely to be accounted for by the diversity of theme or of the character of the composition. The critics The Book of Genesis 4i claim that what they call the document P is clearly dis¬ tinguishable from J E in point of language. Now, to P they assign genealogies, dates, legal sections, and such grand, world-wide events as the creation and the deluge ; but, as a rule, all narratives in the sphere of individual life are given to J E, only mere snatches from them, such as a few disjointed sentences or summary paragraphs, being allowed to P. It is obvious that a division of this sort must necessarily result in a diversity of diction. Words are signs of thought, and where the lines of thought are distinct so must the diction be. Words and phrases in constant use in ordinary narrative have no place in genealogies and ritual laws ; and, vice versa , the peculiarity of the diction of the former is not to be expected in the latter.” ( See note. ) This is simply common sense and natural prob¬ ability, and it goes farther than the contention above, since it shows that even if there were no previous documents, differences might be expected between technical lists and detailed biographies. I quote it also to show that some writers on these subjects think it worth while to descend from the pinnacle of the higher criticism and to inquire as to those probabilities which arise from the con¬ stitution of mind and its implements. The latter part of Genesis, relating to the closing years of the life of Jacob and to that of Joseph, we may suppose to be wholly of Mosaic authorship, and in the best style of the Hebrew prophet, un¬ less indeed he found ready to his hand a version of this beautiful story written by Joseph himself, 42 Eden Lost and Won or by some pious and able scribe under his direc¬ tion. Either view would suffice to account for the minute acquaintance with Egyptian manners and customs at the date referred to, and the literary similarity of the style to that of Egyptian writers of the period ; and which, by a far-fetched and most improbable conjecture, has been supposed to have furnished later writers with the materials of this marvellous history. This later portion of the book is separated from the earlier by the introduction of the Edom¬ ites in chapter xxxvi., which forms a sort of appendix to the previous history, and may have been brought in partly because the Edomites were the most closely related of the other Hebrew races to the Israelites, because they had at this time very intimate relations with Egypt, and because they had already definitely separated themselves from Israel and had become a part of the heathen world. We shall see in the sequel that the neglect of this genealogy, and the failure to recognise the fact that the Edomites and other nations de¬ scended from Abraham and Lot were Hebrews as well as the Israelites, has led some Egypto¬ logists into amusing errors. All those tribes which sprang from “ Abraham the Hebrew ” were Hebrews or “ Aperiu ” in the classification of the The Book of Genesis 43 Egyptians, who well knew their kinship in features, language, and customs, as a part of the multi¬ tudinous Asiatic races known as “ Amu ” in their ethnology. These preliminaries having been settled, we are now in a position to glance at some of the physical and archaeological characteristics of the earlier part of Genesis. Some of the peculiarities of the earliest Mosaic document, that of the seven creative days, I have already discussed in previous publications,1 to which I may refer, but our present inquiry leads us to consider certain of its other features. The theological purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is too obvious to require any remark, except to note the thorough manner in which it relegates to the creative power of the one true God all the natural powers and objects which entered into the complicated polytheism of Egypt and other ancient nations, and the skill with which it founds this on the unanswerable proposition that the universe is not eternal or fortuitous or self- made, but a product of a divine First Cause. To secure fully, however, this theological end, it was necessary to deal with physical facts and laws, and 1 Expositor , vol. iii., April, 1886, p. 284; see also “The Origin of the World.” 44 Eden Lost and Won with an order of development of the cosmos, which is here divided into seven stages, the last of these being used as the foundation of the Sabbath. So exactly does this arrangement fit in with the requirements of that fourth commandment which lies at the foundation of the whole religion of Israel, as based on the hope of a Redeemer, and which consequently figures as the sole ritual observance included in the moral law, that it is not wonderful that some have alleged that the seven creative days are an after-thought intended to support the observance of the Sabbath. Fortu¬ nately for the credit of Moses, we now know that the story of creation and the week of seven days, and the pre-eminence of the seventh day, existed long before his time. It is not Egypt, but Chaldea, the native country of Abraham, that has furnished this evidence in the now well-known creation tablets disinterred from the ruins of the royal library of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria. They show that in the most primitive times a story of creation similar to that in Genesis, but more diffuse and polytheistic in its theology, existed in Chaldea. It is thus rendered in the highest degree probable that this legend in some form was a part of the mental furniture of Abraham and his tribe, before they left their primitive home. Assurbanipal, the The Book of Genesis 45 royal collector of these records, it is true, lived about 673 B.C., but the scribe who edited them informs us that they are of much earlier date, and not so much Assyrian as early Chaldean, or Akkadian, being probably as old as 1,600 years before the time of the Assyrian collector. A remarkable confirmation of their antiquity also reaches us from the West The sacred book of the Quiche Indians of Central America, origin¬ ally translated by Brasseur de Bourbourg, and more recently referred to by Bancroft in his “ Native Races of the Pacific Coast,” 1 contains a creation- legend in many respects similar to that of Chal¬ dea. It would thus seem that in the early dawn of human history before the people of Asia and those of America had separated, the story of creation was known. In face of such facts, it is idle to suppose that the knowledge of the creative week came to the Jews from late intercourse with Assyria. In that case it would have appeared in a different form, even if purified of its polytheism ; for the later Assyrians, though they had a week of seven days, and regarded the seventh day as sacred in the sense of being an unlucky day for secular work, 1 Vol. iii. 46 Eden Lost and Won do not seem to have connected this with the creation, so much as with the sun and moon and the five planets known to them, as our own Saxon forefathers also did. If, again, we compare the simple and sublime form in which the creative days appear in Genesis, with the more turgid and diffuse guise in which they are embodied in the Chaldean or Akkadian tablets, we need not doubt as to the relative antiquity of their sources. We can imagine a simple, concise, monotheistic account to have been the nucleus of a padded-out polytheistic story like that of the Chaldean priests. We can also imagine a terse rhythmical version easily com¬ mitted to memory to have appertained to simple primitive folk, while an enlarged and ornate form may have been better suited to a temple liturgy in honour of a pantheon of deities. We can readily suppose a simple record of creation to have been communicated perhaps in a vision of six days to some inspired seer of early times, but cannot suppose this in the case of a complicated and idolatrous version. Further, the Chaldean tablets bear witness to their own secondary character, for while they take us back to a time when Tiamat, the abyss or “ deep,” alone existed, they admit that at this time The Book of Genesis 47 “ the gods had not sprung up any one of them,” and “the great gods also were made.” These gods are, indeed, elemental beings, corresponding to the firmament, the stars and other things which appear merely as physical objects in Genesis. Bel or Belus seems to be the only exception, and to be a sort of demiurgus, the medium between the Creator and His work, and corresponding to the Almighty Word in Genesis. Thus we have as the result of this comparison, that while we must recognise the Hebrew account as the more primitive of the two, we must also recognise it as the better and more scientific. On arriving at such a conclusion we can scarcely avoid a feeling of awe and reverence for this early monu¬ ment at once of human reason and Divine revela¬ tion. I do not think it necessary to discuss the ques¬ tion whether or not the days of creation represent long periods of time, since it is only on that sup¬ position that they admit of any comparison with natural facts, or would even in any natural sense be comprehensible in themselves. Further, these are obviously days not of man, nor even astronomi¬ cal days, but days of God ; and the last, or seventh day, is allowed to run on indefinitely without any termination. This view is held by Jesus in the 48 Eden Lost and Won Gospels, when in arguing with the Jews about the Sabbath He says, “ My Father worketh until now.” It is also the view of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he speaks of man’s failure to enter into God’s Sabbath, of Christ’s entering into His sabbatism, and of that sabbatism which “ remaineth for the people of God.” It is thus evident that Jesus, the Jews of His time, and the early Christians had no difficulty in believing that the creative days represent aeons or days of God, and this, of course, without any idea of recon¬ ciliation with modern science. We have now to look at this old record from the purely physical standpoint, and to inquire as to its representation of the actual development of the earth and its inhabitants. This may be best done by translating its terms into those now in use, and regarding it as a series of word-pictures, not so much of successive stages of the earth, as of suc¬ cessive introduction of new features, the old arrangements still continuing except as modified by the new. Its initial statement that in the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth re¬ quires no formal proof. The universe cannot have been eternal or self-created. It must have proceeded from a self-existent First Cause. But The Book of Genesis 49 in the beginning the earth was formless and void, enveloped in a dense vaporous mass and in thick darkness. It contained the resulting cosmos only potentially, not actually. This must be developed in the work of the creative week. 1. Light is introduced either from a photo¬ sphere surrounding the earth itself, or from diffused luminous matter filling the space within the earth’s orbit — possibly from both. 2. The laws regulating the suspension of clouds in the atmosphere, and the preservation of a clear aerial film between the waters above and those below, are established. 3. The earth’s crust is ridged up to form embryo continents. This earliest dry land becomes clothed with the first vegetation. 4. The heavenly bodies become distinct by the concentration of light around the sun. These bodies are not gods, but (relatively to man) merely time-measurers. 5. The waters are stocked with the lower forms of animal life, and this is succeeded by the domi¬ nance of reptiles and birds in the air and on the waters. 6. The mammals became dominant, more especially on the land, and finally man is intro¬ duced. 4 50 Eden Lost and Won We have here a consistent scheme of the de¬ velopment of the solar system, and especially of the earth, agreeing in the main with the results of modern astronomy and geology. It would not be easy even now to construct a statement of the development of the world in popular terms so concise and so accurate. It has been objected that light is introduced before the sun ; but on any of the hypotheses of the origin of the solar system this is probable. It has been objected that land plants are intro¬ duced before animals, yet this is in itself likely ; and I have elsewhere shown that there are geolo¬ gical evidences of an early archean vegetation yet unknown in its details.1 The translation of the word Tanninim as “whales” or “monsters” has obscured a distinct reference to the reign of rep¬ tiles, by the use of a word which elsewhere in the Bible is applied only to the crocodile and the larger serpents. Objection has even been made to the omission to mention the earliest marsupial mammals, which appeared in the reign of rep¬ tiles ; but we are to look here for great leading features, not for special mention of creatures in their time insignificant. We might as well object 1 “Geological History of Plants.” The Book of Genesis 5 1 to there being no special notice of batrachians, or of wingless as distinguished from winged birds. Besides, it has been remarked that in Leviticus small mammals are included with reptiles in the same general terms. These and similar objections proceed from trusting to merely negative evidence or misinterpreting words. When rightly under¬ stood they leave our early seer, and the Egyptian graduate who edits his words, on a much higher mental plane than that of their modern critics. Over against these objections we may place certain grand dominant principles and facts, in which this early record is in harmony with all the true science and philosophy that the world has ever known. We have here a grand conception of the unity of nature, and of the interdependence of all its parts as a continuous work of an Almighty Power. In the physical world the light, the ocean, the atmosphere, the dry land, even the distant lumin¬ aries of heaven are all parts of one system. In the world of life the plant and the animal are linked together, and all the forms of animal life, from the lowest to the highest, constitute one series, including predaceous and carnivorous beasts as well as those that are harmless ; and finally man crowns the series, with full recognition on 52 Eden Lost and Won the one hand of his affinity with the animal world, and on the other of the rational mind, which enables him to understand and rule nature, and hold communion with God Himself. With all this, there is no myth or superstition connected with any natural object, no sign of fetichism or idolatry, or of any merely astrological use of the heavenly bodies, such as we might have expected in the later and more corrupt times of the Eastern world. Our old record also anticipates in some of its aspects the Nebular Theory. It recognises the distinction of light from luminaries, even from the great sun himself, who thus ceases to be a deity and becomes a mere work of the Creator. It knows the constitution of the atmosphere, and that balancing of the clouds over a clear stratum of air which involves so many complex arrange¬ ments. It knows that the land arose out of the primeval ocean ; that plant life on the land must precede that of the animal, even by a long time ; that the lower animals of the waters antedate those of the land — the mammals and man closing the list. It thus informs us of successive reigns of invertebrates, of reptiles, of mammals, and of man ; and in the whole appear design and development combined. The Book of Genesis 53 There is, further, in the Genesis record, an entire absence of any local colouring — nothing to connect it with the features or population of any special region. In this wholly cosmical and general style it differs from the Chaldean Genesis, and from anything in later Hebrew literature, even from the poetical version of the same history which appears in the 104th Psalm. No distinction appears here of any varieties or races of men, of any grades of higher and lower tribes, of any autochthones as distinguished from strangers. In this the record is not in the tone either of Chaldea or of Egypt, and is also eminently diverse from later Jewish habits of thought. This unity and equality of man stamps the document as a Divine revelation, or at least as pertaining to a time antecedent to such distinctions, which even in the days of Moses, and indeed long before, were engraved on the mind of every nation, and against which Paul had long afterwards to argue before the cultivated Athenians, to whom the unity of man seemed a strange novelty. Considered even as a mere editor, it would require a man of the breadth of culture and strong moral sense of Moses not to be tempted to tamper with such a document, and to adapt it to the notions of his own and succeeding times. 54 Eden Lost and Won Lastly, in the wonderful development of the cosmos there is no distinction of good and evil powers in nature, of things clean and unclean, noxious or healthful. All things are parts of the system of the All-wise, and all are in their places very good. But beyond this it has one great practical and humanly theological conception, and this is the idea of rest. God finished His work and entered into His rest, and invites man to enter into it with Him. This idea is not so much that of a mere weekly Sabbath as that of a perennial rest, into which man enters as the possessor of a complete and finished world in which everything is good. This is no doubt the foundation on which the obligation of the weekly Sabbath ultimately rests ; but here it appears in its broadest and grandest form as a cosmic day of rest in which man is to enjoy all that in previous aeons has been prepared for him. It is the true and perfect picture of the primitive golden age, which has imprinted itself on the imagination of every generation of men. The special human history which begins in the second chapter of Genesis, and which has so absurdly been supposed to be a duplicate and even contradictory version of this, starts from the same point, though with a local aspect, but soon intro¬ duces us to that tragedy which for a time deprived The Book of Genesis 55 man of this primitive rest, which, however, “ still remaineth ” for the people of God. All these peculiarities of the introduction to Genesis, while they tend to throw its composition back into the dim antiquity of our race, and to separate it from all special religions, even from that of the Israelites themselves in later times, fit it to be the foundation of all religion, and the companion of all science, and endear it to every mind instinct with the love of nature. We are never weary of it. Like the songs of childhood, it is ever fresh, and we return to it with joy as an oasis of peace into which the turmoil of human passion can never enter — the very garden of the Lord. May we not believe that we owe this precious document to the hand of the great Hebrew sage and prophet, and that it was the foundation of the teaching whereby, under God, he changed a nation of slaves, deeply sunk in degradation and idolatry, into a free, independent, and God-fearing people ? Note. — My friend, the Rev. Dr. Carmichael, of Montreal, has recently published a paper in which he shows how easy it would be to dissect many modern writings into two docu¬ ments ; and Prof. Sayce has taken occasion in an article in the Contemporary Review (Oct., 1895) to protest strongly against the analytical methods employed by the “higher criticism,” maintaining that the structure of all ancient documents disproves such piecemeal composition as that supposed. IV EARLY MAN AND EDEN §7 IV EARLY MAN AND EDEN WE have seen that the first chapter of Genesis, with verses first to third of the second, constitutes a complete record of a finished and perfected world, with man at its head, entering into the Sabbatism of his Creator. This is the ideal world of our narrator in its golden age, and it implies not a merely stationary con¬ dition, but a gradual development of nature in utility and beauty, under the benevolent guidance of a rational being destined to overspread, and to subdue and rule the world. Had this con¬ tinued, according to him, there had been no sin and suffering on the one hand, and none of those woes or benefits which have sprung from the acquisition of the practical knowledge of good and evil. It is the short continuance of the golden age and the descent from the unruffled current of primitive innocence to the boiling rapids of the great moral fall that must next attract our 59 6o Eden Lost and Won attention, and I think we shall find that in no part of the Pentateuch is there more certain evidence of primitive authorship and Mosaic editing than in the history of Eden and the antediluvian age, or more exact correspondence in these respects with the facts ascertained from other sources. To many critics the second chapter of Genesis is in part an imperfect repetition of the first, con¬ stituting a different version of creation, of later date, but found by the redactors among their material and somewhat unskilfully patched in with their work. To a scientific reader, however, it assumes a different aspect, being evidently local in its scope, and relating to conditions of the introduction of man not mentioned in the general account of creation. It is as if a writer on primi¬ tive man were to precede his special treatment of that subject by a general account of the whole history of the earth ; and, having thus fixed the geological date of the introduction of man, should then proceed to a detailed account of the early Anthropic period. This second narrative has a special introduction, which connects it with the previous history, and at the same time marks a new beginning with the formula — “ These are the generations,” etc.— which reappears in subsequent portions of the book, and Early Man and Eden 61 which implies that this new section has a human rather than a cosmical interest, and thus forms a link between the general physical and organic creation and the history of man, in connection with a particular region which it proceeds to specialize in the description of Eden. All this, as we shall see immediately, is carefully, and in a truly scientific manner, carried out in detail. A preliminary point, however, is to inquire why the narrator introduces a new designation of God — Jehovah-Elohim,1 instead of Elohim merely. It is clear that, on the hypothesis of a Mosaic author¬ ship or editorship, we cannot attribute this to a new redactor or author of different date, and must be prepared to consider the change as a part of the plan of the book, and made for some definite purpose, which may probably be learned from the book itself. It may seem at first sight that this question is foreign to our present purpose ; but science and history concern themselves with names as well as with things and facts, and the origin and use of terms may often throw important light both on dates and causes. It may therefore be proper to attend very shortly here to the use of the name 1 I shall use the ordinary spelling of the name Jehovah, as the most familiar, though probably not correct. 62 Eden Lost and Won Jehovah as explained in the work we are consider¬ ing. We shall best understand this by noting its history as stated by the author, his own personal relations to it, and the manner in which he assigns its use to his characters. He first introduces it to us in the remarkable saying attributed to the first mother on the birth of Cain, “ I have gotten a man the Jehovah,” or “the one that is to be.” What precise theological meaning we are to attach to this saying it is unnecessary to inquire ; but we can scarcely be wrong in supposing that it refers in some way to “ the seed of the woman ” promised in a previous passage, and that Eve connects the birth of her son with this promise. The name reappears on the birth of Eve’s grandson Enos, when either Seth, the father of Enos, or man in general began to “call on the name of Jehovah,” or “praised and called on the name of Jehovah,” which would seem to imply that special attention was at this time directed to the coming deliverer as a Divine person. I can scarcely help connecting this with the hint of two distinct religions conveyed in the story of the marriage of the sons of God (Beni-ha-Elohim) with the daughters of men (Benoth-ha-Adam), which seems to imply that the Cainites retained exclusively the worship of Elohim or the God of Nature, while the Sethites, Early Man and Eden 63 regarded as the heirs of the promise made to Adam, invoked the name of Jehovah, and that the two tribes, after remaining separate for a time, were re-united by these marriages. Of course, I cannot for a moment entertain the idea of mar¬ riages between angelic beings, whether good or bad, and human wives, and the use of the term sons of God, in Job and elsewhere, for superhuman beings may be placed with the fact that men also are called sons of God, and in one passage (Ps. lxxxii. 6) “ gods,” as well as “ children of the Most High.” From these marriages, contracted in an unlawful way by capture on the part of the men,1 there arose a mixed progeny, physically more powerful and energetic than either of the pure races, the Nephelim and Gibborim of the antediluvian time ; and whose remains are prob¬ ably now known to us in the gigantic skeletons of the caverns of the Palanthropic ages. Subsequently to this we find occasional examples in Genesis, especially in the earlier part, of the use of the name Jehovah by the personages of the history ; but in the more important places, as in the successive revelations to Abraham, Isaac and 1 Compare chap. ii. 24, and our Lord’s comment on it (Matt. xix. 5). We may have to return to this curious ques¬ tion of the mixed marriages. 64 Eden Lost and Won Jacob, and in the closing benediction of the latter, the formula “ God Almighty ” is used.1 Hence when at a much later date God communes with Moses (Exod. iii.), and reveals himself by the name of Jehovah in connection with the redemption of Israel, we find Moses addressing God as Adonai, and expressing himself as if it was a question with him by what name he should introduce God to his countrymen. In harmony with this is the state¬ ment that God was not known to the patriarchs by the name or in the character of Jehovah, and that His formal name to them was God Almighty. With this also agrees the objection attributed to Pharaoh, “ Who is Jehovah that I should obey him?” and “I know not Jehovah.” Had the name Adon been used, he would have known this as a Semitic name for God, and even the name of Elohim was probably known to him in the same connection. From all this it appears that while our narrator in Genesis attributes a great antiquity to the name Jehovah, and connects it with the idea of a covenant of redemption made with man, he represents it as falling into comparative disuse, and in Exodus it is again brought to the front by the agency of Moses. If this is true, who so likely as 1 Gen. xvii. i, xxviii. 3, xxxv. 11, xlviii. 3, xlix. 25 ; also in Jacob’s emotional blessing of Benjamin, xliii. 14. Early Man and Eden 65 Moses to have introduced the name into the early history of man ? By doing so and constantly repeating it in his narrative, he forced it on his readers’ memories as a name, not merefy of a tribal and national God, but as one claiming supremacy over all men, and especially as having to do with the redemption of man from sin and slavery, and with their own special deliverance. Thus it was proper to introduce it everywhere in his narrative, but not to give it premature prominence in the language of his characters. We see also from these facts the expediency of the transition expres¬ sion Jehovah-Elohim, the Lord-God. By this he marks the change from the general account of the creation to the special history of man, and from the cosmical work of the Godhead (Elohim) to the special work of election and redemption which form his theme after the fall, while at the same time he avoids the possibility of supposing that he believes in a plurality of gods, and that Jehovah is a distinct God from Elohim. All this is perfectly in accordance with the personality of Moses as previously defined, and strongly points to him as editor and author of Genesis and Exodus. Why should not the man who represents himself as specially commissioned to make God known by this name, use it in all that part of his history which 5 66 Eden Lost and lVo?z refers to the chosen people ? and as it designated not only the God who was and is, but the God to come as the deliverer, what more appropriate than its use in those earlier parts of his story in which he represents the promise of redemption as given in advance to Adam and Eve ? The whole treat¬ ment of the name is perfectly consistent with itself, and no one is historically so likely as Moses to have been at once the “ Jehovist ” and “ Elohist ” of Genesis. But the descriptive part of the second chapter of Genesis affords still more certain argu¬ ments to which we must now turn. The statements made in the fifth and following verses are puzzling at first sight, and different from what we should have expected. “No shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground ; but there went up a mist from the earth and watered 1 the surface of the ground.” This obviously refers to a condition of the earth, or a part of it, immediately antecedent to the introduction of man, and the picture it presents is that of an alluvial flat recently aban¬ doned of the waters, in a rainless climate and 1 Caused to be watered. Early Man and Eden 67 watered by dense mists or copious dews, and thus eventually becoming clothed with the rank vegeta¬ tion that may exist in such places. If Moses was the writer, was he thinking of the alluvium of the Nile as the inundation leaves it ? The subsequent localization of Eden shows that this could not have been the locality in view. The picture is, however, that of the alluvial plain of a great river, at first a mere expanse of sand and mud exhaling vapour, but afterwards clothed with plants, and ultimately converted into the Garden of the Lord. We may suppose the time to have been that following one of the later submergences of the margins of the continents, immediately before the advent of man and his companion animals. With reference to these last, it is to be observed that we are not now, as in chapter first, dealing with the whole animal creation, but with a local fauna, that of the Edenic region which was man’s first habitat. The objec¬ tion therefore sometimes taken that this second account of the creation of animals is contrary to the first, falls to the ground. The second descrip¬ tion refers merely to the advent of a Modern local fauna. The idea thus conveyed to us is that man was produced on some recently elevated alluvial plain, a view quite in accordance with historical fact, 68 Eden Lost and Won since it has usually been on the latest geological formations that man has by preference settled, and that populous nations have most rapidly grown up. This was not an idea likely to have occurred to a writer or compiler dwelling on the hills and valleys of Palestine. It would better suit the Egyptian, who believed men and animals to have sprung from the fertile mud of the Nile ; or an inhabitant of the Great Idinu, Sumir, or Euphratean plain, whose people seem always to have believed that they occupied the primitive abode of man ; so that if we regard this composition independently alto¬ gether of inspiration, it is likely to be of Egyptian or Mesopotamian origin rather than Palestinian. It should be stated here, however, that it has been generally admitted that, under any hypothesis as to the origin of man, he must in a state of nature have enjoyed a warm and equable climate afford¬ ing supplies of vegetable food throughout the year, and free from the incursions of the more formid¬ able beasts of prey. Such conditions are to be realized only in tropical oceanic islands, or in the deltas of great rivers in low latitudes. Haekel, in his “History of Creation,” and of course without any reference to Genesis, after discussing the relative merits of various places, concludes that the human species must have originated near the Persian Gulf Early Man and Eden 69 or on an imaginary continent now submerged to the south of it, — thus, as we shall see, agreeing very nearly with the old record in Genesis. This leads, however, to consider the actual site selected by our narrator for the primitive abode of man, of which he gives a geographical description which we shall find has a most far-reaching significance. “Gan Eden,” says Sir Henry Rawlinson, “an¬ swers to the old Babylonian Gan Dunya, and must have been situated on the Euphrates and three other rivers watering the plain of Babylonia.” Many of the older writers, as is well known, favour this view, and among later authorities may be mentioned Delitszch, Pinches and Sayce. It agrees also, as we have seen, with the introductory description. Without waiting at present to notice objections, we may proceed at once to indicate the character of the geographical description, and the consequent standpoint and date of the writer. Eden, according to our narrator, was a district or region within which, and probably in its eastern part, was planted the “ Garden ” intended for the primal abode of man.1 It was irrigated by four rivers, and I think in a document so ancient it is 1 We need not stop to enquire as to the precise meaning of the word translated “ eastward ” or “ beforehand.” 70 Eden Lost and Won not necessary to insist on a later Semitic usage, which would cause us to understand the word “ heads ” as “ mouths,” and so to render unintellig¬ ible the whole description from a geographical point of view. We may assume that the four rivers were confluent in the region and that the “ heads ” into which they were divided are their sources. One of these rivers, the Euphrates, or Perath, was evidently the standpoint of the writer, for he merely gives its name. The second, Hiddekel, or Tigris, he says, goeth in or toward the front or east of Assyria or Asshur. The third, Gihon (rushing or pushing river), is said to run around the land of Cush. The fourth, or more distant river, Pison (spreading river), being probably more distant and less known to his readers, he character¬ izes more fully. It runs around the land of Havilah, where there is gold, “ and the gold of that land is good ; there is bedolach and shoham stone.” We are thus restricted to the region of the Euphrates and Tigris ; and to the eastward of the latter are the important rivers Kherkah and Karun, both flowing into the Shat-el-Arab formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, and, as modern exploration shows, corresponding with the indications of our old geographer. Early Man and Eden 7i Taking them now in the order of the narrative, and identifying the Pison with the Karun, we find that this alone of the four rivers flows down from the high range of the mountains of Luristan (the ancient Zagros), which lies along the western frontier of Persia, and is the only range of granitic and metamorphic rocks near to the old Eden plain. These hills have, according to the late eminent geologist, William Kennet Loftus,1 2 gold washings in some of their streams, abundance of garnets, crystalline quartz and serpentine, as well as of the pure white gypsum, afterwards used so extensively by the Assyrians, and they afford also jade, flinty slate, chert and jasper, suitable for the tools and implements of primitive man. Furthermore, this is the sole region near to the valley of the Lower Euphrates which yields these treasures. I have already, in a paper in The Expositor l stated the reasons for believing that the “ gold bedolach and shoham stone ” of our old narrative should be regarded as intended to represent native metals, 1 “ Geology of the T urko-Persian F rontier, and of Districts Adjoining ” — Journal of Geological Society of London , vol. x. p. 247. I have carefully examined the collections of Loftus, now preserved in London. 2 March, 1887. See also “ Modern Science in Bible Lands.” 72 Eden Lost and Won pearly or other stones available for personal orna¬ ment, and jade and its allied rocks ; in other words, “ gold, wampum and stone for implements,” the treasures of primitive man. I need not repeat the evidence here ; but may state a curious confirm¬ ation which I have not seen noticed. In the Apocalypse, where the description of Eden is repeated and extended in that of the New Jeru¬ salem, we find the “ gold, bedolach and shoham ” of Genesis represented by the golden streets, the pearly gates, and the foundations of precious stones. Thus the Karun, the Pasi-Tigris of Greek writers, flowing from the ancient Mount Zagros, and spreading on the Euphratean plain, is the only one of the four great rivers of the region to which the description of our author can apply, and for this identification we are indebted to the labours of an English geologist, who had, however, no reference in his explorations to Biblical history. This same river Pison is said to traverse the land of Havilah ; and as this name belongs to the early post-diluvian period, it proves, as we shall see, the date of our writer. But in the account of the dispersion of men in Genesis x., we read of two Havilahs- — one the son of Cush, of the linfe of Ham, the other a son of Joktan, of the line of Shem. We should at first sight be inclined to Early Mail and Eden 73 prefer the Cushite Havilah ; but the author or editor of Genesis adds a note to the effect that it was the Shemitic Havilah who had his dwelling “ as thou goest towards Sephar, the mountain (or hill country) of the East, which can be no other than Mount Zagros.1 The next river, the Gihon, which, if represented by the modern Kherkah, runs parallel to, but not from the Zagros chain,2 is said to compass the land of Cush, not an African Cush or Ethiopia, but that same Cushite people which, according to Genesis, established the earliest king¬ dom in the plain of Shinar. The existence of this early Cushite or Turanian kingdom, and its im¬ portance and civilization, and the colonies which it sent into Arabia and Africa, are now well known from the ancient Chaldean inscriptions, especially those of Tel-loh ; and Hommel has quite recently confirmed the identification of Nimrod with the old Chaldean hero Gisdubar,3 and has even published an inscription calling him the founder of Erech, the 1 Connected no doubt with the Sepharvaim and Sippara of early times, and with the early settlement of Semitic Elamites in Persia. 2 In most modern maps it is otherwise, but Loftus shows that this is incorrect, our old geographer in Genesis being more accurate than those of more modern times. 3 Journal of Biblical Archeology, November and De- cember, 1893. Another name of this hero is Gilgamos. 74 Eden Lost and Won city which, according to Genesis, was the beginning of his kingdom. The connection of the Tigris from the earliest times with the beginning of the Assyrian empire is well known. Thus we identify the site of Eden by both the physical and the historical geography of our narrative. Having, however, thus verified this unique and ancient geographical description, we may go a step farther, and find the date of the narrator himself. He is clearly not an antediluvian writer, for his political geography, according to the tenth chapter of the same book, applies to post-diluvian times. But he belongs to a very early post-diluvian time — to that age when the Cushite empire founded by Nimrod was still dominant on the Lower Tigris, when the Shemites of Asshur and Havilah were beginning to establish independent kingdoms on the north and east, destined at a very early date to subvert that of the Cushites, and when Cush was a name not for an African but for an Asiatic nation. We know from the Chaldean records themselves that at a very ancient period the Elamite people, represented in the time of Abraham by Chedor- laomer and his allies, had already triumphed over the old Cushite kingdom, which was never restored in its primitive form. Therefore, just as this early writer fixes his geographical point of view on the Early Man and Eden 75 bank of the Euphrates, he fixes his chronological standpoint between the time of Noah and that of Abraham, and probably nearer to the former than to the latter. The only other alternative would be to suppose that some later writer had contrived to place himself in imagination so closely in the geographical and historical environment of a supposed ancient author, that modern discoveries, of which he must have been entirely ignorant, would only serve to confirm his statements. This is simply incredible ; but even this unlikely sup¬ position has been provided for. In the time to which we have referred the de¬ scription of Eden, it is certain that the Persian Gulf extended farther to the north-west, and that the outlets of the four rivers of the Babylonian plain were more separated, and their banks even more low and marshy than in modern times. This was a consequence of a great post-glacial submergence, probably the same with the historical deluge. The locality was therefore less suited than even at present to be the Garden of the Lord ; and much of it was probably submerged, and only in later times gradually reclaimed by the silting-up of the head of the gulf. But in the early antediluvian time, the second continental period of geologists, it must have been higher than now, the Persian Gulf 76 Eden Lost and Won must have been in part dry land, the four rivers must have been more nearly united, and the marshy Babylonian plain may have been comparatively dry and forest-clad. Our old narrator must have known this as a historical or traditional fact, and that the site of the Garden of Eden had become greatly deteriorated if not obliterated in his time. Therefore, though he is bold enough to place the aboriginal abode of man in this unlikely locality, he makes no attempt to identify the precise site of the garden, but only of the district in which it had been situated. This is the attitude not of a writer of fiction, but of an annalist living near to the times which he describes, and rigidly adhering to the evidence before him, even when appearances were against it. We have, therefore, arrived, on infallible evi¬ dence furnished by geology, geography and his¬ tory, at the conclusion that the original author of the document of which the second chaptbr of Genesis forms a portion, flourished somewhere between the time of the Deluge and that of the patriarch Abraham. This conclusion cannot now be shaken by any literary criticism, and is in every way likely to be further confirmed by new discoveries. We have, also, a right on lin¬ guistic grounds to carry this statement forward, Early Man and Eden 77 at least to the beginning of the fourth chapter, and to suppose that a writer who shows himself so careful and so accurate in his geography and history, will be equally so in the biographical details into which he next enters. Further, we cannot suppose that a document so important as this was unknown to Moses or other learned men of his time, and was left to be disinterred by later historians. If any literary evidence can be adduced to prove that it is a Hebrew trans¬ lation by the great Lawgiver from a Turanian original, or that its diction has been in any way modified or modernized, we may be prepared to listen to this ; but nothing can shake the demon¬ stration of its original date and geographical accuracy. The historical critics have thus at least one dated document from which they may, if so disposed, make a new departure in their investigations. I do not propose to write a commentary on Genesis, and therefore in my next paper shall move onward to the narrative of the Deluge, which, if I mistake not, can now be very fully illustrated by geological and archaeological facts, and referred to its true position as pre-Mosaic history. V ANTEDILUVIANS AND THE DELUGE V ANTEDILUVIANS AND THE DELUGE IN the last chapter attention was directed to the remarkably clear evidence afforded by the description of Eden as to the antiquity and authorship of the early part of Genesis. Did space permit, this might be confirmed and ex¬ tended by many details of the succeeding ante¬ diluvian history, but we must at present only consider this cursorily, and proceed as rapidly as possible to the narrative of the Deluge, which has many physical relations of the highest im¬ portance, and has recently been subjected to much hostile criticism ; but is now happily begin¬ ning to rid itself of its adversaries. In the present state of our knowledge, the Palanthropic age of Geology, the earlier part of the Anthropic or so-called Quaternary Period, may be held to correspond with the Antedi¬ luvian age of history, though there are naturally 82 Eden Lost and Won divergences arising from the different points of view and various kinds of material afforded by the record of the earth and that of human his¬ tory. This earliest human age is separated from the ordinary historic period, according to Gene¬ sis, by the Deluge of Noah, and according to Geology by the great post-glacial submergence which marks the division between Palanthropic man with his contemporary animals and the men and animals of the Neanthropic age, and which has recently been so ably illustrated by Prest- wich in his memoirs on the “ Rubble Drift,” and allied deposits in Europe.1 From this submer¬ gence the continents of the northern hemisphere have only partially arisen, so that they are now smaller in area than in the Palanthropic age, though some of their mountains may be more elevated. The two records agree in assuring us that this submergence was of short duration, and that it destroyed many of the wild animals and the greater part of the men of the period.2 1 Transactions Royal Society of Londo?i , 1893, p. 903. Quarterly Journal Geological Society London , vol. xlviii., p. 326. Also paper read to Victoria Institute, March, 1894. 2 I pointed out the geological evidence of the Deluge in “Modern Science in Bible Lands,” chapter iv., 1888, also in an article in the Contemporary Review , 1890. Antediluvians and the Deluge 83 When I first wrote on this subject in my volume entitled “Archaia” (i860), it was impossible to affirm with certainty that there were any known remains of antediluvian man ; but now the ex¬ ploration of caverns and other deposits has given us abundant relics of these men and their works, and we know that before the Deluge they had distributed themselves widely over the Eur- Asian continent at least. We cannot here enter into the details of these discoveries, but reference may be made to works cited in the notes. A very short survey of the Antediluvian Age as recorded in Genesis will enable us to show the principal points of contact. Genesis gives us in the line of Seth only ten antediluvian generations, but these cover at least sixteen centuries and possibly twenty-two, a time amply sufficient for the events which it records, and to permit a very wide dispersion of men over the earth. The Cainite list is shorter, having only seven names. It has been supposed that this is a repetition of part of the other ; but as Lenormant has well said, “ the resemblance is an assonance not an identity.” On our present hypothesis the Cainite list is probably defective, owing to severance of the Cainite stock from the other branch of the human family to which 84 Eden Lost and Won the genealogy probably belongs. Hommel 1 has shown a strong probability that the ten antedi¬ luvian kings of Berosus, the Babylonian historian, represent the ten patriarchs of Genesis, so that we have here concurrent Chaldean testimony, while the Horshesu or Children of Horus may be regarded as their representatives in Egypt. The length of the lives of these patriarchs, though far inferior to that assigned to the Chaldean kings, has been made an objection to our record. On the other hand, in the case of a new and vigorous species living in a natural manner, and free as yet from the attacks of epidemic disease, there is nothing impossible in this, and the state¬ ment made without comment argues a document of great antiquity. A curious incidental con¬ firmation of it comes from a time much nearer to that of Moses, in the remark attributed to Jacob in his interview with Pharaoh, when he says, “ few and evil have been the days of my sojourning,” in comparison with that of my fathers, though Jacob’s years had already reached 130; so that the editor of Genesis believes Jacob to have been acquainted with these long lives as recorded in the annals of his predecessors. 1 Proc. I?ist. Bib. Archceology , March, 1893. Antediluvians and the Deluge 85 The key to the whole antediluvian history, after the fall, is the murder of Abel, a sad story of crime and family disruption, which, gilded by the fancy of poets of the later ages and the in¬ ventions of priests, has spread itself over the world. There can now be no doubt that the goddess Ishtar of the Chaldeans is not a mere lunar or star myth, however she may have been emblematized by such things, but a veritable woman and the first mother of men. Probably the oldest literary record of Ishtar is that in the Akkadian legend of the Deluge, in which she is represented as mourning over the destruction of men, and calling them the children she had brought forth. This settles her true primitive character, and agrees with the old Babylonian doctrine stated by Sayce,1 that Tammuz or Adonis was not her husband but her son, slain by his brother Adar, afterwards fitly the god of war. It is for him that in an old Chaldean hymn she descends to Hades in the vain hope of restoring him from the dead, and it was for him that the Phoenician women continued in later days to weep. Ishtar is Astarte, Artemis, Athor, and a host of later deifications of mother- 1 “ Hibbert Lectures,” 1887. 86 Eden Lost and Won hood, culminating in our own time in that of the Virgin Mary. Her history must have been known to Moses and other well-read scribes of his day, and we may fairly attribute to this the prominence given to the story in its original guise of a family tragedy, deprived of its later surroundings of myth and idolatry. This is the manner of Moses in treating the myths of the heathen. Cain becomes a fugitive and establishes a separate community, the Beni ha-Elohim of our last paper, among whom, on the one hand, arts and inventions flourished, and on the other hand some tribes fell away into a rude and nomadic barbarism. The Sethites, the proper sons of Adam, probably remained in the original seats of man and pursued a quiet agricultural and pas¬ toral life. But a time came when the warlike and lawless tribes of the Cainites invaded the Sethite territory and carried off the daughters of Seth as captives, and hence arose a mixed race from which sprang bold adventurers and physi¬ cally powerful men, who introduced everywhere a reign of violence and terror. There has been much superficial comment on the so-called “ Song of Lamech,” recorded in the genealogy of Cain.1 1 Genesis iv. 23. Antediluvians and the Deluge 87 It is probably connected with the period now referred to in the following manner : — Lamech had captured two Sethite wives, and in doing so resistance had been made, in which he had slain a young man who had previously wounded him. He dreads blood-revenge, and affirms that his crime differs from Cain’s in being of the nature of war rather than of murder, and therefore less criminal. He addresses his song to his wives, probably lest they should betray him to their hostile kinsmen. He has thus the somewhat equivocal credit, as I pointed out many years ago,1 of being the first to draw a distinction between homicide in battle and mere murder. Thus immediately before the flood there were three divisions of humanity, Sethites (Beni ha- Adam), and Cainites (Beni ha-Elohim) and Nephilim or metis. It is interesting to note here that in the Post-Glacial or Palanthropic period also we find in Europe three races,2 that of Truchere, of which only a single example is at present known, presenting a medium stature and mild features, and possibly representing the Sethites ; that of Canstadt, coarse, robust, and brutal, and representing the lower type of the Cainites ; and the gigantic Cro-Magnon race, 1 u Archaiap i860. 2 Quatrefages , “Hommes Sauvages,” etc. 88 Eden Lost and Won attaining sometimes a stature of seven feet, with prodigious muscular power, large brains and coarse and massive features. In the Deluge history it is the Sethites that survive, the Cainites and half- breeds perish. So in the transition to the Ne- anthropic period, it is the Truchere race that survives and becomes the basis of the Iberian and other modern races, the Canstadt and Cro-Magnon types, as races, disappear. So far as our informa¬ tion now extends the parallel is very exact. Thus just as in the case of its geographical information as to Eden, our old document seems to be correct in its archaeology, and asserts itself as a history dating from the earliest post-diluvian times. Another curious note carries with it a similar conclusion. Before the final diluvial catastrophe, we know, on the evidence of geology, that the mild climate of the early human period which had replaced the rigours of the Glacial Age, was begin¬ ning to relapse into a colder condition, an effect possibly of partial subsidence of the land already beginning to divert ocean currents and to diminish the radiating surface. Hence the condition of men was becoming less comfortable, and popula¬ tion would become concentrated in the milder regions, while tribes starved out in the north would fight their way southward. This corresponds with Antediluvians and the Deluge 89 that gradual “ cursing of the ground,” recognised in the saying attributed to the Sethite Lamech, the father of Noah,1 who hoped that in the time of his son some amelioration would take place. It thus appears that, as far as yet known to us from geological investigation, the details of the antediluvian world were present to the mind of the writers of Genesis, in a clear, definite and non- mythical manner, which bespeaks an early date and accurate sources of information. Further, they must have been collected and published by one who had exceptional means of access to the earliest records of the ancient Hebrews. All this points to Moses as the probable possessor of the records of Abraham, and the man on whom of all others it was most incumbent to publish these precious portions of ancient literature, in the then existing crisis of the history of his people. Could we enter on the religious aspect of these chronicles, all this would become more apparent, but here we have to do only with their physical and historical relations. Regarding, as we are justified in doing, the Deluge as an established event in geological 1 “ This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed55 (Gen. v. 29). 90 Eden Lost and Won history, and as not a local but a very widely extended phenomenon, we may first ask under what aspect it would probably be presented to us in a Mosaic version of the ancient records of the catastrophe. It is evident that on our hypothesis as to the authorship of Genesis, the only human evidence available to the author must have been that of survivors ; and they could testify merely to the facts observed in their own locality or such neighbouring regions as might be explored by them after the event If, as some critics allege, the narrative in Genesis is made up from two sources, there must have been at least two lines of history or tradition transmitted to later times ; but unfortunately the evidence of this duplex history is of a very shadowy and uncertain character. If Moses were the editor, he must have had access not only to the records he has handed down, but to the Chaldean accounts similar to those dis¬ interred in our own time, and to the story of the destruction of the early Egyptians by the anger of Ra and that of the continent of Atlantis by sub¬ mergence ; but he no doubt preferred the traditions which came to him from Hebrew sources. In any case, like the Chaldean legend, which professes to have been orally delivered by Hasisadra,1 the 1 Otherwise called Um-7iipistim. Antediluvians and the Deluge 91 Babylonian Noah, the story as presented in Genesis is given as that of an eye-witness or of eye-witnesses. This is proved by a number of details as to the voyage of the Ark, which could not have been otherwise obtained. I may mention one in parti¬ cular — the statement that the waters prevailed to the depth of fifteen cubits over the hills. This is obviously the remark of some one who knew that the water-draft of the Ark was about this measure, and so could testify that in the course of the drift¬ age it nowhere met with a less depth of water. We can easily imagine the importance attached to this fact by men who felt themselves first moving on the waves and then drifted by a powerful current, and who must have dreaded that their un¬ manageable ship would ground somewhere and go to pieces. Other particulars of this kind are the note of the time when the Ark began to float and was observed to “ go ” upon the waters, the occur¬ rence of a storm of wind, the ebbing and flowing of the retiring water, and the time intervening between the grounding of the Ark and the general drying up of the soil. This form of the record, while it insures a truthful narrative in so far as human testimony extends, cuts away all those objections which relate to the extent of the 92 Eden Lost and Won Deluge, since the narrator merely gives his per¬ sonal experience and is not responsible either for causes or universality, except as within his own observation. As it stands, and viewed as indivi¬ dual testimony, the narrative is a marvel of clear observation and transparent truthfulness, and, without any pretensions to science, affords many data for a comprehension of the real nature and causes of the flood, as well as with reference to the date and origin of the history. Perhaps the most important of these considera¬ tions are those relating to the agencies employed in producing the effects observed, more especially as these enable us at once to get rid of the entirely inadequate notion that the Deluge may have been a river inundation, and they also serve to give us some definite ideas of the physical conceptions of man in that remote period. We must however bear in mind that we have before us merely a record of phenomena, not an investigation into causes. The words in the Revised Version of the Bible are given thus : — “ On the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened ; and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” It may be observed in passing that some critics Antediluvians and the Deluge 93 separate this passage into two, referring the two earlier clauses to an Elohist and the last to a Jehovist source. There seems, however, no better warrant for this than the supposition that the third clause is a repetition of the two before it ; but this we shall find is impossible. We may therefore take the whole as one continuous statement. It is scarcely necessary to say that throughout the Old Testament the word deep ( tehom ) is used to denote the sea in its widest and most general sense. In the first chapter of Genesis it is a uni¬ versal ocean before the origin of the continents. Afterwards it is still the ocean, but now restrained by God’s “ decree/’ shut up with “ doors,” or with “bars,”1 or, as in Psalm civ. : — “Thou coveredst it (the land) with the deep as with a vesture, The waters stood above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled. At the voice of Thy thunder they hasted away : Ascended the mountains, descended the valleys To the place which thou hadst founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, That they return not again to cover the earth.” It may be remarked here that with all the Bible writers who refer to the subject, the support of the earth above the waters is a precarious thing, 1 Proverbs viii. 20; Job xxxviii. 8--10. 94 Eden Lost and Won depending solely on the will of God and capable of being reversed. This is probably connected both with the creation record and with that of the Deluge. As to the “ fountains ” of the great deep, the word used ( mayan ) is not that usually employed for a spring or fountain, but rather for a basin or reservoir. The reference is probably the same with that in Job xxxviii. 1 6, “ Hast thou entered into the springs1 of the sea, or hast thou walked in the abysses2 of the deep ? ” The disruption or breaking up of these fountains or reservoirs can in this connection have no other reference than to the abrupt and violent suspension of that “ decree ” or the opening of those “ bars ” and “ doors ” by which the sea is restrained from asserting its old dominion over the land ; and be it noted here that this is the first and leading cause of the Deluge as observed by our narrator, and it accords with the statement that the Ark drifted northward toward the mountains of Armenia, as would be the case if the waters of the Indian Ocean were poured into interior Asia. So much for the first and leading phenomenon of the Deluge. 1 Nebek , a word used only in this place and translated ftege in the Septuagint. 2 Revised Version, “recesses.” Antediluvians and the Deluge 95 The second is less easy of explanation. If heaven means the cloud-bearing atmosphere as defined in Genesis i.,1 the opening of its hatches or chimneys, for the word ( aroobbah ) does not designate a window in the ordinary sense, but some kind of roof-opening, must refer to an atmospheric phenomenon. On the other hand, there is a passage in Isaiah2 where the word evidently refers to volcanic orifices : “ For the windows (chimneys ?) from on high are opened and the foundations of the earth do shake.” That seismic and volcanic phenomena should accom¬ pany such a convulsion as the Deluge would be very natural, and as some of the volcanoes around Lake Van and Mount Ararat have been in eruption in modern times, and, according to Loftus, one of them still emits heated vapour from its crater,3 it is not impossible that our narrator may have witnessed such phenomena, adding terror to the desolation of the flood.4 There is, however, 1 “ And God called the firmament heaven.” 2 Isa. xxiv. 18. 3 Journal Geological Society , vol. xi. p. 314. 4 I find a curious discussion of this and other subjects connected with the Deluge in a work by Macfadzean, on the “Parallel Roads of Glenroy,” Menzies, Edinburgh, 1882. Among other things the author suggests that the great beds of unstratified gravel flanking the hills east of the Euphrateo- 96 Eden Lost and Won another phenomenon not unlikely to have been present, which may have attracted his attention— that of the tornado or waterspout. Appearances of this kind seem to be implied in the Chaldaean account, and the strong upward suction of water¬ spouts might well be represented as the opening of chimneys in the sky. With regard to the third appearance, the rain of forty days, it is unnecessary to say anything, except that the word employed is that used for the continuous and heavy rain of the rainy season ; and that though no doubt a striking and promi¬ nent appearance, it was rather an accompaniment of other disturbances than a leading efficient cause of the flood. I have entered somewhat fully into this part of the discussion, because so much misconception seems to prevail among literary men on the subject, and because it would be impossible to assign either authorship or editorship to a man of the intellectual standing of Moses, were we to attribute to our document such crude and childish views as those connected with it bv some of its * modern commentators, more especially by those tigris valley may be of diluvial origin, in which case they would be equivalents of the “ Rubble-drift.” Antediluvians and the Deluge 97 who would restrict it to a local river inundation, an occurrence which must have been too familiar both to the original narrator and to Moses to permit them to connect the annual inundation either of the Euphrates or the Nile with a world- wide catas¬ trophe. On the other hand, while it is impossible to con¬ found the Deluge with a river inundation, it is quite unnecessary to ascribe to it universality in that absurd sense which would imply an enormous addition to the waters of the globe, sufficient to swamp all the dry land, nor even in that sense which would imply a universal subsidence of the continents or a wholesale elevation of the ocean bed. When the narrator uses such universal terms as “ every living thing was destroyed which moved upon the ground,” he means universality, first in the sense of what he could see, and secondly in that of the absolute destruction of all land-life • within his ken. His personal knowledge, by the terms of the narrative, extended over a territory from the lower Euphrates to the highlands of Armenia. Beyond this the editor gives us no other means of judging than that which we find in his account of the dispersion of post-diluvian men over Western Asia, Southern Europe and Northern Africa, and the inference that these regions were 7 I 98 Eden Lost and Won then destitute of human inhabitants ; though later we hear of certain mountain tribes in Syria, the Rephaim and others, not actually traceable to any of these lines of migration, but who may have been stragglers in advance of the main colonies, and not recorded. We now know from the evidence of the later deposits of Europe and Asia that the geological submergence corresponding to that recorded in Genesis was much more extensive than the limits deducible from the calm, judicial narrative of the Egyptian savant and prophet. We have also in the Deluge a typical example of the usual character of the miracles of the Mosaic books. It was an unusual phenomenon produced by natural and physical causes, but under circum¬ stances which show that it occupies a place in the higher sphere of the Divine government of rational beings. The Deluge is the solution of the problem presented by a race of men too far gone in de¬ pravity to be reclaimed, and it is predicted to an inspired prophet. In these senses it is miraculous, but in its physical aspect it is a submergence of the land, resembling many that have occurred in earlier ages before man was upon the earth, and differing from them mainly in its comparative brevity. A great agnostic prophet of our time tells us that the sufferings of humanity are to be 99 Antediluvians and the Deluge alleviated by “ the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.” Moses, with a deeper penetration, knows that when men have lost all touch of higher and spiritual realities, and have devoted themselves entirely to the perishing physical “ veracities ” of the seen and temporal, a time may come when no hands, either impious or pious, can save them from that utter destruction to which even the unchang¬ ing laws of nature may be made helplessly to drive them. I have elsewhere 1 treated of the details of the Deluge, and the superficial character of the objections taken to it. One of these may deserve notice here, because it is connected with facts to which attention has only recently been directed. The Ark of Noah has been a fertile source of scoffing, and certainly the construction of such a vessel, even though our narrator modestly calls it a box or chest and not a ship, in this differing from his Chaldean confreres , seems remarkable at so early a date, though in very ancient times the Akkadian literati did not so regard it. But we have just learned from the inscriptions of King 1 “Origin of the World,” Magazine of Christum Litera¬ ture, Oct., 1890; Contemporary Review, Dec., 1889. IOO Eden Lost and Won Gudea at Tel-Loh that almost immediately after the Deluge men were navigating the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and we have known for some time that the Phoenicians, one of the earliest branches of emigration from the Lower Euphrates, launched their barks at once on the Mediterranean. Whether, therefore, Noah was the first navigator or not, the art was not lost by his successors. Nor have we a right to say that the peculiar name of the Ark in the Hebrew record proceeds from ignorance of maritime affairs- — a truly remarkable ignorance on the part of people who had lived in Lower Egypt and on the Coast of the Red Sea, and afterwards were the nearest neighbours of the Phoenicians. The term really marks the primitive age of the document. It is deserving of notice in this connection, that Jacob in his death-song speaks of ships in connection with the coast of Canaan (Gen. iv., 9), while in Exodus the mother of Moses calls her little basket of papyrus, in which her child was placed on the river, an Ark. It was certainly not a ship or boat ; but like Noah’s Ark a box or basket coated with bitumen, and on a small scale intended for a similar pur¬ pose. I have in the publications already referred to shown that the Ark was a refuge only for selected kinds of animals, not for all the animals Antediluvians and the Deluge IOI in the world ; that is, if we take our idea of its inmates from Genesis rather than from a toy “ Noah’s Ark.” We may safely predict that the Biblical history of the antediluvian time and of the Deluge will be more and more valued as knowledge advances, and that it will be more and more clearly seen that it could not have been written or compiled later than the Mosaic age. In the meantime one may be thankful for a record which places those primi¬ tive and otherwise prehistoric men, known to us outside of the Bible only by their bones and im¬ plements, in rational and spiritual contact with ourselves, and renders their history helpful to us and to our children in these “ last days.” I Vi THE DISPERSION AND ABRAHAM 103 W / VI THE DISPERSION AND ABRAHAM ' S 'HE narrative of the flood is followed by some religious and prophetic details, which though valuable as the inauguration of a new por¬ tion of the Divine programme with respect to man, do not so much concern our present purpose as the genealogical table of the affiliation and disper¬ sion of men given in the tenth chapter. These “ Toledoth ” of the sons of Noah, being of the nature of a dry and condensed list of names, and not directly referring to the spiritual interests of humanity, are, of course, regarded as an “ Elohist ” document, though in the only reference to God in the chapter He is designated by the name Jehovah. We need not, however, trouble our¬ selves with this distinction, as we shall find that this, like some other documents we have been studying, carries its date within itself. The great historical value of this table is almost universally admitted, but it has met with some- 105 io 6 Eden Lost and Won what unfair treatment at the hands of some his¬ torians and archaeologists, apparently from the cir¬ cumstance that their line of study has accustomed them to trace backward obscure trains of events, and to infer the classification of peoples from cranial and linguistic characters. They seem to forget that an annalist, who is writing of actual migrations occurring in his own time, is on dif¬ ferent ground and must proceed in a different way. His statements are hence said by them to be “ ethnographical rather than ethnological ” ; as if a document that can inform us that certain people of a certain known lineage actually went to a par¬ ticular country and settled there, could be less scientific than the inferences which a later en¬ quirer, entirely ignorant as to the actual facts, could deduce from skulls and languages. Our old ethnologist seems to have foreseen this treatment, and takes care to tell us four times over that he treats of the descendants of Noah after their known genealogy, their languages, their countries, and the nations that proceeded from them. With him all this is a matter of certain contempor¬ aneous history, not of inference. Nor does any later hand seem to have added to his work, for it is veiy limited in time, and takes no notice of the later migrations, intrusions and mixtures which The Dispersion and Abraham 107 we know to have occurred. Beginning with the three sons of Noah — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — he takes them in reverse order, evidently because he cannot trace the progeny of Japheth so far as that of the others, and because his subsequent his¬ tory is to deal mainly with the race of Shem. He knows of seven sons of Japheth as founders of tribes or nations, but he can trace only two of them to the second generation, and he can desig¬ nate their habitation only by the vague term, the “ Isles ” (or the sea coasts) “ of the Gentiles,” mean¬ ing the northern shores of the Mediterranean. The descendants of the four sons of Ham are better known to him. He traces them for three generations, mentions in some detail the early Empire of Nimrod, unless we regard this as a subsequent insertion by a so-called Jehovist writer, and gives some geographical details as to the natives of Palestine and Northern Africa. The children of Shem he traces in some in¬ stances to the fourth generation, but disposes summarily of the different lines except that of Eber, preparatory to the more detailed account of the Hebrews in the special genealogy of Shem. Here then again we seem to have a dated docu¬ ment, probably by a Semitic writer, whose geo¬ graphical standpoint may have been in or near io8 Eden Lost and Won Shinar, from which he believes the early migra¬ tions to have radiated, and his standpoint in time toward the close of the Nimrodic Empire, before the early conquests of the Elamites, and before the movement of the family of Abraham from Meso¬ potamia. His latest note as to this is the two¬ fold division of the family of Eber1 into Pelegites, who went northward and westward into Syria and Palestine, and Joktanites who went south to found the Semitic tribes of Arabia. His time of writing was after the founding of the first Babylonian and Assyrian nations, and before the date of the oldest inscriptions of Tel-Loh and Mugheir. We may thus believe that his date, though perhaps a little later, is not very different from that of the “ Jeho- vist ” who gives us the description of Eden, and whose position in place and time we have already noticed. It is to be noted that, like the so-called Jehovist who precedes and follows him, the writer of Genesis x. believes that the survivors of the Deluge and their immediate descendants were civilized men, capable of practising agriculture, of building cities and towns, and of migrating by sea as well as by land. We may also infer that 1 The name Peleg refers to this division (Gen. x. 25), a division confirmed by Chaldean records, according to Pinches. The Dispersion and Abraham 109 he regards the primitive language of man in Shinar as that Turanian monosyllabic tongue spoken and written by the earliest Akkadians, while the Semitic and Aryan languages were later derivatives, though of very early origin. We may also fairly infer that, according to him, the primi¬ tive type of man was that of the early Chaldean, and that the diverse characters which we find so early in Asia and Africa had sprung of isolation, change of habits of life, and unmixed heredity. In these short statements we may sum up his philology and ethnology. We may now enquire as to his facts respecting the primary dispersion of men, bearing in mind that his table of affiliation extends over only three generations, and cannot be held responsible for any subsequent movements or mixtures of nations. This limitation of his range removes many diffi¬ culties which have been conjured up by continuing the record conjecturally into later times. It thus happens that even old writers, from Josephus to Bochart, by attending to the limit of time, could, in the main, understand his statements, though in modern times discoveries in Chaldea and Egypt have thrown very important light on some of the more difficult points.1 1 The excellent series of racial types from Egypt, pre- I IO Eden Lost and Won From our author’s point of view there are naturally three main branches, corresponding to the three sons of Noah ; but these branches are not equal in magnitude or extension. In this the children of Ham take the lead, establishing the first empire and giving off three main streams of migration. Japheth comes next with two main lines of colonization ; Shem, though spread east, west, and south, seems to move more slowly, and to follow in the wake of the Hamites, whom in many places he supplants. Ham obviously represents that vast assemblage of people whom ethnologists have been in the habit of naming Turanian. The language of the early Akkadian empire of Chaldea was of Tura¬ nian type, and with this the features of the earliest rulers represented by the monuments correspond. The faces of these men, while somewhat triangular and sometimes with oblique eyes, strongly re¬ semble those of the earlier Egyptians and the Punites of Southern Arabia as well as the Lapps, Chinese, and Japanese. Our author does not tell us of their settlements in Northern and Western Europe, and in Northern and Eastern Asia, which pared, by Prof. Petrie for the British Association, is of great value, and also the figures found by De Sarzac at Tel-Loh. The Dispersion and Abraham iii may not have been peopled so early. He gives, however, some detail as to other lines of migration. One of these is to the south-west along the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, and thence to the Upper Nile. This was the line of the Cushites and their allies, and while the early settlements of Cush were in Chaldea the name ultimately became localized in Africa. A second branch, that of Mizraim, made its way to Lower Egypt, the Mazor or Misr of all subsequent history. A third stretched from the Persian Gulf and the Valley of the Euphrates to the Coast of the Mediterranean, and thence the Phcenicians or Canaanites took to the sea and “ were scattered abroad,” at the same time acquir¬ ing a language of Semitic type. We may remark here that the early monuments both of Chaldea and Egypt show that these primitive Hamites were not negroid, though some of them were dark, and classed by the Egyptians among the black races. If negro races are included in the record, they appear only as the descendants of Put or Phut, a name which may have referred to negro nations lying to the south of Egypt ; but the majority of the Hamites were not black or with negroid features, and it is certain that at a very early period they became intermixed both with the Japhetic and Semitic tribes. Of the two I 12 Eden Lost and Won lines of travel assigned to the sons of Japheth, one runs northward to the regions bordering the Black Sea and the Caspian, the other westward along the south coast of Europe, the coasts or isles of the Gentiles, constituting the Greek and allied races of the northern side of the Medi¬ terranean. For the family of Shem, we have at this early time no very extensive geographical distribution. Asshur represents the early Assyrians, who bor¬ rowed letters and many of the arts of life from the Chaldeans, whose empire they eventually sub¬ verted. Elam represents an early and formidable nation in the hill country of Western Persia. Aram, Arphaxad, and Lud, occupied the Upper Euphrates and regions adjoining as far as Asia Minor, and portions of Palestine, mixing there with the Canaanites. Joktan went southward and mingled with the Hamites in Arabia. It is evident that this affiliation of nations belongs to an early date, and extends over only a limited area of the old continent, which con¬ stitutes the known world of the author. This world extends from the Euphratean Plain to Persia on the one hand, and Greece on the other, and from the Black Sea on the north to the Upper Nile on the south. It includes the world The Dispersion and Abraka?n 113 as known to the earliest Chaldeans and Egyptians, probably the whole peopled world of the time, unless in the case of roving tribes, who had moved beyond the ken of the more central com¬ munities. It is not too much to say that, regarded with this limitation, all modern research has vin¬ dicated its accuracy, and where it seems to be con¬ tradictory to ethnological facts this has been found to depend upon later intrusions and mixtures. It would require a volume with many pictorial illustrations to give the evidence in full of this statement ; but this can be obtained in many commentaries and historical books. A summary of the main facts, though with some errors and omissions, will be found in Sayce’s little work, “ The Races of the Bible.” 1 * * * I have already referred to the early date of this document, and the notes of an historical character interspersed, and which might be supposed to be later additions, all keep within the same time¬ limits. The writer never by any chance shows the least knowledge of the subsequent history of 1 Religious Tract Society. Bochart’s “Phaleg” is still of great value, and Lenormant’s “ Manual of Early Oriental History5’ and “ Beginnings of History 55 are useful. Eadie’s “Early Oriental History” has a useful summary, also Delitzsch’s Commentary on Genesis. 8 1 14 Eden Lost and Won the peoples to whom he refers. It is scarcely possible to imagine a later writer persevering in such reticence. Even in the previous episode of the prediction in very general terms of the future destiny of the sons of Noah, this is given as a prophecy by the patriarch, not as historical fact ; and the history as given in the tenth chapter shows no indication of its fulfilment, but rather the contrary, in the early dominance and expan¬ sion of the Hamites. The prominence given to the early Cushite and Asshurite nations on the Euphrates and Tigris are also very characteristic of an early date. It now appears1 that we may safely identify Nimrod with the Chaldean hero-hunter Gisdubar, a usurper who subverted, as far as the Cushites were con¬ cerned, the old patriarchal rule by a military despotism, and seems to have introduced a new priestly system in the form of Shamanism. This is, I think, the interpretation we should give to his alliance with his friend and adviser Heabani, who is represented pictorially as a man with the horns, feet, and tail of a bull, and hence has been sup¬ posed to be altogether a mythical personage ; but 1 H-ommel, Proceedings Society of Biblical Archaeology , 1893, pts. 1, 6, 7. The Dispersion and Abraham 115 if we take this as intended for his official garb, he assumes the guise of an American medicine¬ man. It is quite likely that a similar explanation applies to many of the so-called demons and genii of Babylonian and Assyrian sculptures, and that the Chaldean magi were originally Shamans. If, in addition to all this, Merodach the later tu¬ telar god of Babylon, is a deification of Nimrod,1 we see that Moses had good reason to preserve and hand down to succeeding times the old story of the Nimrodic Empire. We may note here that there is a remarkable absence from these documents of the race preju¬ dices and hatreds which arose from later conflicts, except perhaps in the one instance of Noah’s prophecy. All the great branches of humanity are alike to our annalist, except in so far as con¬ cerns the religious destiny of Shem, and that enlargement of Japheth which only modern times have seen fully realized. In this connection we must not forget that Moses was in a better position than we are to realize the actual facts of the dispersion of mankind. Independently of the Abrahamic documents to which he had access, 1 Sayce has argued in favour of this in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archcpology , vol. xi. Eden Lost and Won 1 1 6 we know that centuries before his time the geo¬ graphy and ethnology of the regions covered by Genesis x. were well known in Egypt. To this both the Egyptian monuments and the Tel-el- Amarna tablets testify. But, on the other hand, the Egyptians regarded themselves as distinct from and superior to the other races of men. This idea must have sunk deeply into the minds of the Hebrew slaves during the long reign of Rameses IL, and they must have greatly needed the facts stated in the ninth and tenth chapters of Genesis to raise them to a conception of their equality with their lordly masters, who we know regarded themselves as little less than gods, and the Hebrews as well as the mixed multitude which we find allied with them, as altogether inferior races. There was no later phase in the history of Israel in which such ideas were so much needed. With their sequel in the story of the Exodus they were indeed promulgated in Genesis for all time, wherever there has been the tyranny of race over race, or slaves to be freed. They are echoed in the wild chant of the negroes at the time of the American Civil W ar : — “ Oh go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land, Tell King Pharaoh To let my people go.” The Dispersion and Abraham 1 1 7 But their first and great occasion was the libera¬ tion of the Hebrews under Moses. I do not propose here to take up the tempting philological problems of the Tower of Babel, but may remark that its significance also is Mosaic and Exodic. It teaches the primitive unity of man on his new departure after the flood, that dispersion and national differences are parts of the Divine plan, though direct results of human ambition and love of aggrandizement ; and that the great cities and magnificent temple-towers, whether of Egypt or Babylon, are not necessarily connected with the Divine favour, but may be monuments of an idolatry oppressive to man and hateful to God. Thus the catastrophe of Babel was distinctly in furtherance of the mission of Moses, which looked forward to a kingdom of God and restitution of all things, in which the edict of national dispersion would be revoked. It would be interesting to know more of the fortunes of those early nations which migrated from Shinar ; but our historian, bridging over the intervening space with a mere genealogical list, passes at once to a different sphere in time, the age of Abraham and his contemporaries. Great political changes had occurred in the meantime. The kingdom of Nimrod had been broken up Eden Lost and Won 1 18 into smaller states. The warlike people of the Elamite mountains, under their king, Kudar Nan- kundi, a predecessor of Kudar Lagamar, the Chedorlaomer of Abraham’s time, had invaded the lowlands and reduced them to subjection, and had even pushed their conquests as far as the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.1 At one time the adventure of Abraham with the five kings from the East, recorded in Genesis xiv., being vouched for only by the Bible, was regarded as mythical ; but now we have it confirmed by contemporary inscriptions as well as by the later records of the Assyrian kings, who invaded Elam and restored to Babylonia idols which had been captured by the Elamites ages before. Thus this fragment of ancient history is authenticated by modern discovery, and proves to have been a contemporary record, for no subsequent writer up to recent times was likely to have met with it. Nor is the insertion of this episode in the history of Abraham unnecessary or gratuitous. It points to the origin of the first movement of the family of Abraham from Ur, before he received his divine commission, and to that probably enforced division of the Semites from which Peleg got his 1 Pinches has recognised the names of Chedorlaomer, Tidal, and Arioch in contemporary inscriptions. The Dispersion and Abraham 119 name. It serves also to point out the embryo condition at that time of nations at a later date great and populous, to indicate the wide extent of their movements, and to illustrate the character and position of the patriarch himself. Tomkins, in his “ Studies on the Times of Abra¬ ham,” has well illustrated many of these points ; but some singular confirmations of the history have appeared since the publication of that work. One of the most curious of these is a letter of the king of Jerusalem, whose name has been read Ebed-tob, to King Amenophis IV. of Egypt, in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. This letter shows that Salem or Jerusalem was a very ancient city, that it had a temple of a god recognised as the Most High, that its ruler was a priest-king, supposed to be appointed by the oracle of the god himself. Ebed-tob must have lived nearly two hundred years after Abraham, but his letter fully confirms the notice of Melchizedek, king of Salem, in Genesis, and the much later inferences from it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is on the other hand reason to believe that before the time of Moses, Salem had fallen into other hands, and that its people had lapsed from that purer faith with which Abraham had fraternised. Here again we have reference to historical facts which 120 Eden Lost and Won had become obsolete even in the time of Moses, and certainly must but for him have fallen out of sight in later times. An eminently Mosaic and most graphic picture in the life of Abraham is that of the overthrow of the Cities of the Plain. It stands forth in ancient literature as a unique description of a bitumen eruption, a kind of catastrophe to which the valley of the Lower Jordan, from its geological structure, was eminently subject, and of which we have an account that even now we could scarcely have understood, were it not for the destructive acci¬ dents of a similar kind, but on a smaller scale, which have occurred in the petroleum districts of North America. I have fully discussed this catas¬ trophe in an article on the “ Physical Causes of the Destruction of the Cities of the Plain,” in the Expositor} Everything here is natural, even to the final encrusting of the remains of Lot’s wife in the saline mud which accompanies eruptions of this kind. It bears evidence at once of the testi¬ mony of a contemporary, and of the careful diction of a man of scientific training, and it is not too much to say that the knowledge displayed in this episode exceeds anything that existed between 1 January, 1886, also “Modern Science in Bible Lands.” The Dispersion and Abraham 121 the science of ancient Egypt and that of our own time. But this, it may be said, was a miracle. True, but it was a miracle of the Mosaic type. It is a natural occurrence, but one rare and exceptional, and rendered miraculous by its association with divine justice and with moral and spiritual things. Had the great eruption of Krakatoa, or that of the hot springs of New Zealand in our own time, been predicted beforehand, and connected with the ini¬ quities of men who were “sinners before Jehovah exceedingly,” and had heavenly messengers been sent to deliver righteous people from these cala¬ mities, they would have been miraculous, precisely to the same extent in which the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was miraculous. Here we have another dated document belong¬ ing to the time of Abraham, if edited by Moses ; and that it could not have belonged to more recent times is rendered evident by the myths, exaggera¬ tions and absurdities which have been heaped around it by later commentaries belonging to ages of comparative ignorance, and of which no trace can be found in the original record. It would be invidious as well as unnecessary to give references. Instances abound everywhere in an¬ cient and modern literature.1 1 I may say here that the tendency of writers on Scrip- 122 Eden Lost and Wo7t The moral lessons of this narrative, and the interest of Lot in it would insure its preservation among the records of Abraham, and it would commend itself to the lawgiver, who insisted so strenuously on the punishment of sin in this world. It was left for Christ to show that in the judgment to come greater guilt will attach to the rejection of His loving message of salvation, than to any iniquity chargeable against the wicked inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. We must reluctantly pass over the times of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, which are replete with interesting proofs of our thesis, and must go on to the Exodus, in the account of which, if our hypo¬ thesis is correct, we shall find Moses writing of the events of his own time, and in which he himself played a great part. tural subjects to show their research by gathering around Bible history fables of every kind which have been connected with it, is most hurtful to the interests of truth. The retail¬ ing of Arab and mediaeval legends about Nimrod and the “ Dead Sea,” which one finds even in modern commentaries, are cases in point. Sayce and Pinches have, while these pages are in the press, adduced some curious additional confirmations from Assyria of the contemporaneous date of the history of Abraham in Genesis. See Co?itemporary Review, October, 1895. VII THE EXODUS 28 VII THE EXODUS HE Book of Exodus, as we have seen, is the main stem of the Pentateuch, that to which its roots in Genesis converge, and that which supports its branches, foliage and fruit in Num¬ bers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Everything in Genesis has its end and object in the emigration from Egypt, and the Exodus itself is that which sustains the historical fabric of the law and the conquest The whole thus constitutes one grand symmetrical literary structure, linked with con¬ temporary historical facts, and constituting the basis of Christianity itself. This great event may therefore form a suitable termination to this part of our discussion. Modern discoveries have enabled us to place the Exodus more satisfactorily than heretofore in con¬ nection with contemporary Egyptian and Pales¬ tinian history, and to appreciate every step of the march of Israel in search of liberty. Formerly 126 Eden Lost and Won this was difficult, in consequence of the unsettled state of Egyptian chronology and want of topo¬ graphical information, while our Biblical historian is careless even of the personality of the rulers of Egypt. To the writer of Genesis and Exodus they are collectively merely Pharaoh, just as we now speak of the Czar, the Sultan or the Khedive, with scarcely a thought of the individual name of the potentate in question. The historian of the Exodus is fortunately more particular as to topo¬ graphy, and the careful surveys of modern times have enabled us to follow his footsteps in a manner impossible at any previous period between the Exodus itself and the present day. The inscrip¬ tions and other records of the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties are also coming forward in a remarkable manner in aid of the comparative chronology. We may select a few facts bearing on questions of place and date, in evidence of the contention that the writer of the book of Exodus is a con¬ temporary of the events he describes, and that his chronology and topography are confirmed by modern investigation. Miracles indeed now thicken upon us as compared with the narratives in Genesis ; and this to some minds gives a mythical air to the narrative with which they The Exodus 12 7 are associated, simple and natural though it is in itself. It is, however, in the great critical periods of nations and of the world that such deviations from ordinary uniformity become most necessary and reasonable ; but in Exodus they are wonders of the true Mosaic type, mostly effected by natural means, and described in a manner to show accu¬ rate observation of facts. Naville’s discovery of the site of Pithom in the eastern part of the Wady Tumilat leading from the Nile to the ancient head of the Red Sea, and the further identification of Gesen and the City Rameses at the western end of the same valley, have fixed the point of departure of the Israelites and the earlier stages of their journey. The fact ascertained by its structure and inscriptions, that Pithom was a store or arsenal city built by the great Egyptian king Rameses II. has established the time of the oppression. The evidence that Pithom and Heroopolis were one and the same, and that this city was near the northern end of the Red Sea, then extending all the way to Lake Timsah, removes a number of geographical doubts, so that we may now proceed with some confidence in our enquiry as to the facts, whether physical or historical. A preliminary question is that of the time of the 128 Eden Lost and Won sojourn of Israel in Egypt, and I am glad to see that attention has been directed to this point in the Expositor of December, 1893.1 Those who have read that article will easily comprehend the following facts. To a cursory reader of Genesis and Exodus in the English versions, the period of the sojourn in Egypt seems to have been 400 or 430 years. In Genesis xv. the prediction to Abraham runs thus : “ And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.” Here it does not at first appear to the reader that the period of 400 years covers not merely the affliction but the whole sojourn, though this is evidently the inten¬ tion. In Exodus xii. 40 and 41 the termination of the period is given with great precision as follows: “Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt 2 was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass that all the hosts of 1 “ The Sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt,” by the Right Rev. the Bishop of Bath and Wells. 2 R.V. changes this for the worse. The Exodus 1 29 the Lord went out from the land of Egypt” Here again the sojourning is that in Canaan, as well as in Egypt This we learn in three ways : (1) the genealogical lists in the same book show that the residence of the Israelites in Egypt from the time of the immigration of Jacob extended only about 216 years ; (2) the Septuagint translation, to remove what seemed an ambiguity, or perhaps because their manuscripts were different from ours, add the words “ and in the land of Canaan ” ; and this is just the sort of question on which we should specially value the authority of the Septuagint ; (3) the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Septuagint ; (4) Paul in the Epistle to the Gala¬ tians states the whole period from the covenant with Abraham to the giving of the law at 430 years. We are thus enabled to conclude that the date so minutely given, even to a day, in Exodus xii. may be reckoned from the entry of Abraham into Canaan, and that the period of 430 years covers the whole of the sojourning which was to be the lot of his posterity till their return to Canaan as a conquering nation. This enables us also to see in this chronology the hand of Moses. It was not his mission to regard the Israelites as merely the descendants of an immi¬ grant Syrian chief who had come into Egypt 9 130 Eden Lost and Won about two centuries previously, but to direct his people to the promise made to Abraham, and to have them regard the whole of the sojourning, whether in Canaan or in Egypt, as one episode in their history, to be terminated by their possessing the promised land. To Moses the oppression is merely the means of obliging Israel to fulfil its divinely ordained destiny, which it must fulfil whether Pharaoh and the Egyptians are friendly or hostile. This wide grasp of the situation which many even of modern writers fail to take, befits the mind of the great Hebrew leader and the divine impulse that animated him. Paul, actuated by the same spirit, takes the same view.1 Some important historical conclusions hang on this question. Those who regard the 430 years as the time of the residence in Egypt, are obliged to place the entry of Joseph into that country in the reign of one of the foreign invaders known as the Hyksos or Shepherd kings, before the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, thereby raising a host of difficulties, such as the unlikelihood of 1 For an excellent summary of the evidence in favour of the shorter chronology, I may refer to Dr. Kellog’s Lectures on “Abraham, Moses and Joseph,” New York, 1887. The Exodus 131 the land of Goshen being open to occupation by the Israelites, the incongruity of a hatred of shepherds on the part of the invaders, who were themselves shepherds, the thoroughly native sur¬ roundings of Joseph in the history, and the impossibility of the Israelites having escaped being involved in the fierce and destructive warfare between the native Egyptians and the Hyksos, ending in the expulsion of the latter. On the other hand, the shorter date, say of 215 to 218 years, brings the deportation of Joseph into the later part of the reign of Thothmes III., the greatest king of the eighteenth dynasty, which succeeded the Hyksos, a king whose character and relations with Syria and its tribes fit in thoroughly with the Mosaic narrative, as do the subsequent events of Egyptian history up to the Exodus. We cannot look on the benevolent yet sagacious countenance of Thothmes, as represented on his statues, without feeling that he was a man likely to patronize Joseph, and we know that his imme¬ diate successors, the Amenhoteps, were friendly to Semitic peoples. Were it possible to devote one of these chapters to the life of Joseph, all these points could be fully illustrated with great benefit to our comprehension of the history of the great Hebrew minister, which has been disjointed in its l32 Eden Lost and Won historical aspect by the leaning of Egyptologists to the longer date. It is noteworthy here that on the correct chronology the two fine obelisks from On or Heliopolis, now in London and New York, must have been set up in the time of Joseph, and by his patron, Thothmes III., whose inscription occu¬ pies the central and original lines on the four faces. The lateral lines were added by Rameses II., the oppressor of the Israelites, who “knew not Joseph.” Thus these obelisks, so strangely transferred to the chief cities of the two sides of the Atlantic, are monuments of two epochs when Hebrew and Egyptian history came closely into contact. One other little point is too tempting to be passed by. In the twenty-third and following years of his reign, Thothmes III. invaded Pales¬ tine, defeating its allied kings at Megiddo, and reducing them to the condition of tributaries. He inscribed a list of the tributary tribes on the temple of Karnak, where it still exists, and has been copied and compared with the Semitic names of places and tribes in Palestine.1 Among the names are two which have been read, “Jacob 1 See Maspero and Tomkins, Transactions of Society of Biblical Archaeology, and Transactio?is Victoria Institute. The Exodus x33 El,” and “Joseph El,” the first near Hebron, the second farther north, — the addition of the name of God (El) to the names being supposed to in¬ dicate a special religious aspect, or to be similar to what we see in such names as Israel and Ishmael. This is inexplicable to those who hold to the long period, because on that theory the migration of Jacob to Egypt must have occurred about two centuries before the campaign of Thothmes, and such names could, in that case, be only survivals from an earlier date, a very unlikely supposition in the circumstances. Ac¬ cording to the correct chronology, all fits into place. Jacob must have settled in Egypt about the fortieth year of Thothmes III. In the twenty- third year of Thothmes he was still in Canaan. Further, we learn from Genesis that he had divided his tribe and his flocks into two bands, one at Hebron, the other as far north as Dothan ; and Genesis also intimates that he had already promoted Joseph, though then a mere boy, over his brothers ; 1 so that one of the divisions might be known as that of Jacob, the other as that of Joseph. We may even suppose that the brothers in charge of the Shechem or Dothan flocks may 1 The “ coat of many colours ” is a proof of this. x34 Eden Lost and Won have purposely named them as Joseph’s, that he, if he were to be promoted over them, might share in the ignominy of subjection to Egypt and in the loss of the tribute payment. In any case we can readily understand the officers of Thothmes registering the two divisions of the tribe of Jacob, or Israel, in this way.1 Further, when Jacob afterwards went to Egypt, he could be represented as already a vassal of the Pharaoh, and merely changing his habitation from one part of his dominions to another. Had Jacob known of those lists of Thothmes which remain to our own time, he could have referred to this relation. At the same time, the recent expulsion of the Hyksos must have left much land in Lower Egypt open to occupation by the Israelites. Thus, what in one view of the chronology is an insoluble enigma becomes a remarkable coincidence. All this must have been well known to Moses and his contem¬ poraries, but was not likely to be known to Israel¬ ites in later times. It would seem indeed as if even such native authorities as Manetho were mistaken as to these matters. The inscriptions of Thothmes remain, however, to tell their tale. 1 At the time of the Exodus, also, the northern site was assigned to the posterity of Joseph as properly theirs. The Exodus 135 In like manner our shorter chronology brings the advent of the king who knew not Joseph to the time of Horus or Seti I., the earliest kings of the nineteenth dynasty, who are known to have been hostile to the Semitic proclivities of the later kings of the preceding dynasty. It brings the height of the oppression into its proper place in the long reign of Rameses II., and the Exodus into one of the short reigns which succeeded ; while, as we shall see, it makes the Exodus itself one factor in the obscure ending of the great nineteenth dynasty, and its replacement by the twentieth. It has been objected to the shorter chronology that it does not give time for the multiplication of the Israelites to the millions of the Exodus. But we are not to limit the tribe of Jacob to the threescore and ten souls of his family. If Abraham could muster three hundred and eighteen fighting men “ born in his own house,” the tribe of Jacob could scarcely have been less numerous, and, besides, we are told that the increase of the Israelites in Egypt was exceptional (like that of some communities in Western America in recent times), and many foreigners must have attached themselves to them in the time of their prosperity. It was at one time supposed that Egyptian i36 Eden Lost and Won history gave no account of the Exodus, and Manetho would seem to have confused this event with the expulsion of the Hyksos ; but the certain identification of the Pharaoh of the oppression with Rameses II., and of the Pharaoh of the Exodus with the last of the nineteenth dynasty, removes this defect. A later king, Rameses III., belonging to the twentieth dynasty, has left us an autobiographical sketch, now known as the great Harris Papyrus, and in the introduction to this he narrates the causes which brought Setnekt, his father, to the throne as the founder of a new dynasty. This introduction has been translated by Eisenlohr, Brugsch, Birch, and Chabas.1 The translations differ somewhat in their details, but are summed up by Birch in the following state¬ ment : 2 “ The interval between Siptah, the last king of the nineteenth dynasty, and Setnekt (the first king of the twentieth) was one of much distur¬ bance. From the great Harris Papyrus it appears that a great exodus took place from Egypt. In consequence of the troubles for many years it says there was no master.” It also makes mention of one Arisu or Areos, a Syrian, as a leader in these 1 Transactions of Society of Biblical Archeology, vol. i. “ Records of the Past,” vol. viii. 2 “History of Egypt,” p. 186. The Exodus 137 disturbances. In other words, within about twenty years of the close of the long and pretentious, if not glorious, reign of Rameses II., the nineteenth dynasty came to an end in disaster and anarchy, out of which arose a new dynasty. As to the details of this revolution there are no doubt some differences of opinion ; but I think the majority of Egyptologists will accept the following general statements. Rameses II. died after a reign of sixty-seven years. He was succeeded by one of his sons, Meneptah, who was somewhat aged before his accession, and seems to have reigned only eight years. The principal event of his reign is an incursion of Lybians and others from the West, which was repelled ; but his annals contain no mention of any rebellion of slaves in Egypt. He seems to have died peacefully, and to have been buried with his fathers. Nevertheless, he has been often regarded as the Pharaoh of the Exodus ; but this probably arises from confound¬ ing him with one of his successors who has the same or a very similar name. He was succeeded by his son, Seti II., or Seti Meneptah. His reign also was short, probably only four years, and he seems either to have been slain in civil strife or to have had to flee to Ethiopia, a usurper, Amenmes, of whom little is known, apparently 138 Eden Lost and Won taking his place. He was replaced by the legiti¬ mate line in the persons of Siptah or Siptah Meneptah 1 and his queen Ta-user. After reign¬ ing seven years, Siptah disappears mysteriously, leaving an unoccupied tomb, afterwards plastered over and occupied by his successor, and apparently no heir who could succeed him, as his queen Ta-user is reckoned by Manetho as the last sovereign of the dynasty. At this time occurred the great Exodus and the anarchy referred to in the Harris Papyrus. Whether the Arisu of the papyrus represents the leader of the Exodus or an invader who took advantage of the anarchy, is not yet certainly known. In any case, out of the anarchy arose Setnekt, or Set the victorious, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. Rameses III., an able and successful ruler, was his son ; and it was in his reign that the Harris Papyrus was written. That Siptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus is rendered probable by his sudden dis¬ appearance while still a young man or in the prime of life, by his unoccupied tomb, by the attempted regency of his queen, and by the anarchy which followed. I may add that Siptah, as photographed by Petrie from a bas-relief on 1 Possibly a brother of Seti II. The Exodus 139 his tomb, shows the fine features of Rameses II., his grandfather, but cast in a weaker mould. He may have been as proud as Rameses II., but without his force of character, and is altogether such a person as we should expect in the haughty, petulant, yet vacillating ruler with whom Moses negotiated, and whose weak character was har¬ dened by God to his destruction. On the above view the comparative chronology of the life of Moses will stand thus : — Birth of Moses : 38th year of Rameses II. Flight of Moses to Midian : 78th year of Rameses II. Moses in Midian, 41 or 42 years, or, allowing for overlaps and preliminaries of Exodus, 40 years. Moses returns, Exodus : Israel in the Wilderness 40 years. 18 last years of Rameses II. 8 years of Meneptah. ^ 3 or 4 of Seti II. 5 of Amenmes. 7 of Siptah. Last year of Siptah. Anarchy and Setnekt. 30 years. Rameses III., 10 years. Israel enters Canaan 10th year of Rameses III., and only one or two years after his successful raid into Palestine, in which he weakened the Hittites and other tribes preparatory to the conquest by Joshua.1 This remarkable parallelism of events, rendered in the highest degree probable by the most recent 1 He was perhaps the “Hornet” referred to in Exodus xxiii., Deut. vii., and Joshua xxiv. ; for the hornet or wasp was the emblem of Lower Egypt. 140 Eden Lost and Won discoveries, strengthens the conviction that in the early chapters of Exodus we are dealing with contemporary annals, and with the autobiography of the great law-giver. Let us now glance at the topography of the earlier part of the Exodus, that we may note the geography as well as the chronology of our author. The traveller who journeys by the railway from Cairo to Ismailia, taking with him a good map of the district, can appreciate at a glance the character and position of the land of Goshen and the facilities for exit to the East by the Wady Tumilat. This strip of fertile land, stretching across the desert, was originally the channel of a branch of the Nile flowing eastward into the Red Sea, which then extended along the depres¬ sion of the old Bitter Lakes, nearly or quite to Lake Timsah. Even before the time of Moses, the gradual silting up of the sea and the slight changes of level which this region has undergone had rendered it necessary to improve the outlet by artificial canalisation, a process continued and extended at intervals down to the present time, when the Sweetwater Canal irrigates the valley and carries the Nile water as far as Suez. This beautiful valley and a tract at its western end, rich in corn lands, pasturage and date palms, The Exodus 141 constituted the districts of Rameses or Goshen on the West and of Thukot or Succoth on the East. Of the former the capital was Rameses, of the latter Pithom. Both were fortified towns, built by Rameses II. with the forced labour of the Hebrews and of foreign captives, in order to form arsenals for his armies on their march to his eastern expeditions, and to keep in check the discontented Israelitish population. If now we read the twelfth to the fifteenth chapters of Exodus with this topography before us, we find ourselves in presence of the following stages of the Exodus : — (1) The Israelites, gathering at and near Ra¬ meses, where a large body of them was probably ordinarily stationed. The Egyptian Court may at the time have been in Rameses itself or at Bubastis, or at Zoan on the north, or may have been alternately in these different cities. (2) Negotiations going on between the Israel¬ ites, through Moses and Aaron, and the Pharaoh, respecting the desired permission to go into the desert to sacrifice. In these negotiations neither party was desirous to push matters to extremity ; because if the Israelites were to move without permission, they would expose themselves to de¬ struction by the Egyptian army, and the king was 142 Eden Lost and Won reluctant to provoke a servile war which might lead to invasion from the East, while there is reason to believe that his own position at home was not very secure. Besides this, Moses, as an old statesman of the time of the Great Rameses, was “ as a God ” to Pharaoh, so great was his prestige in the eyes of the Egyptians and the young king. On the other hand, the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened against any concession. (3) At length, through a succession of calami¬ tous plagues, conveying a strong impression of the Divine anger against the ruler of Egypt, the resolution of the king is broken and he allows the slaves to go. They have been prepared for this, and depart in haste, as if thrust out, and no doubt anxious to place themselves out of the reach of pursuit in case the fickle Pharaoh should change his mind. (4) Their route is not by the direct desert way to the north-east (the way of the Philistines), but eastward along the Wady Tumilat, the same route now followed by the railway and pursued by Wolseley in his memorable campaign. (5) Passing through the land of Rameses, they reach Succoth, of which Pithom was the capital, and encamp within its boundaries, somewhere be- ween Tel-el-Kebir and Pithom. They next pro- The Exodus 143 ceed eastward to Etham, on the edge or border of the desert, and again encamp. If we ask the precise place of this second encampment, it may, I think, be easily determined. Three miles east of Pithom the fertile valley widens into the oasis of Abu-suer, beyond which the desert rises in stages of hard gravel and sand with one sand-hill 90 feet high, commanding an extensive view both to the west and east as well as to the south. Here they would find plentiful pasturage and water, could watch the approach of any pursuing force, and could gather in stragglers, or those who had been tardy in following. From this place, by passing to the north of the present Lake Timsah, only four miles distant, a direct route through the desert to Palestine was open to them. (6) But now by Divine direction they swerve from this direct way of escape, and turn, at right angles to their former course, to the south ; ap¬ parently delivering themselves into the hands of their enemies, who, aware of the movement, at once enter into pursuit and come up with the retreating Israelites somewhere on the shore of that northward extension of the Red Sea then reaching past the old Bitter Lakes.1 1 Now again submerged by the Canal. 144 Eden Lost and Won (7) They were to encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the Sea, over against Baal- Zephon,1 a very precise designation of locality if we could discover the three points given. We may perhaps identify Pi-hahiroth with a place about 18 miles from Pithom and on the shore of the sea, known to the Egyptians as Pi-kerehet. This is Naville’s identification, who however sup¬ poses the place to be Jebel Mariam, only 14 miles from Pithom. It was more likely farther down, at or near the place now called the Serapium near the old Bitter Lakes.2 Migdol, or the watch tower, I am inclined to regard as a natural feature, most probably Jebel Shebremet, a northern outlier of the Geneffeh hills, though there may have been an Egyptian fort at this place. Baal-Zephon seems to have been a mountain on the opposite side of the sea, perhaps the northern peak of Jebel er Rabah, which would correspond with its name “ The Lord of the north.” My own conclusion, based on a careful consideration of the strategic features of the ground, was that the place of crossing was near the south end of the old Bitter 1 Exodus xiv. 1, 2. 2 The term Pi-kerehet implies that the place had a temple of Serapis. The Exodus 145 Lakes a little to the south of the pass between Jebel Shebremet and the sea. Naville prefers a more northern locality ; but after reading his latest exposition of his views in his address to the Vic¬ toria Institute (1893), I am inclined to adhere to my original opinion.1 The difference however amounts to only a few miles in the place of cross¬ ing, and leaves the main facts unchanged ; though Naville’s view implies bad generalship on the part of Moses, or that Pharaoh came upon his flank earlier than one would infer from the Biblical narrative or than was probable in the circum¬ stances. Th,ese points being premised, we may now ask the question how they agree with our supposition that the history is the testimony of a witness of the events, acquainted with the nature of the country and aware of all the conditions, Divine and human, under which the movement was to be effected. That the people should not proceed by the short northern route “ the way of the Philistines ” was an obvious dictate of prudence. It passed near im¬ portant fortified towns, and would lead to a direct and immediate conflict with a powerful military 1 Reasons are stated in detail in “ Modern Science in Bible Lands.” 10 146 Eden Lost and Won nation. On the other hand, the route by the Wady Tumilat was in the first instance through a practicable and well-watered country, inhabited by a friendly population, and with no fortified place other than Pithom. All went well accordingly with the fugitives, till they arrived at Etham 1 on the edge of the wilderness, and on the eastern boundary of Succoth. Here, if they pursued a straight course, they had before them a desert journey of several days in which Pharaoh was not likely to follow them, but at the end of which they might expect to meet hostile Canaanites. But why turn at this point and place the Red Sea between themselves and safety ? The immediate reason is said to have been, not dread of the wilderness or of the hostile Canaanites, but to induce Pharaoh to follow to his own destruction. In other words, it was placing an army in a posi¬ tion of difficulty in order to provoke an attack. The objects to be gained, if successful, would be to incapacitate the Egyptians from farther pursuit, to gain prestige in the opinion of all the neigh- 1 Etham has been supposed to be a defensive wall or fortress, but Naville is probably right in identifying it with a district at the edge of the desert, named Atuma by the Egyptians. The “ edge ” or border of the desert is at this place very well defined. The Exodus 147 bouring nations, and to be in a position to lie over for a time in the peninsula of Sinai to organize before attempting the conquest of Palestine. Still it was a bold and dangerous movement, even admitting that the Red Sea was known on certain rare and exceptional occasions to be fordable near Pi-hahiroth. We can readily believe that this was Divine rather than human strategy, and that only a strong faith in the guidance of God could induce any leader to attempt it. After exploring the country around Ismailia and toward the site of old Pithom, and south toward Suez, I placed myself one evening on the rising ground between Ismailia and the site of Pithom, near to where the Etham encampment probably was, and endeavoured to realize the thoughts and plans of the leader of Israel. He had already had some experience of the confusion and difficulty of the march of the host and the mixed multitude ; and casting his eye anxiously westward, may have seen crowds of stragglers, loiterers, and new recruits struggling to reach the camp, and to find their appropriate places, and may have thought of the consequences of a charge of Egyptian chariots against the rear of such a body, encumbered with every kind of impedimenta and without regular organization. Looking east 148 Eden Lost and Won he could see the long stretches of desert over which the way lay to the promised land, yellow and dreary, with few wells, and with predatory tribes to embarrass his movements. The moment was an anxious one, for next day must commit them to the dangers and privations of the desert journey, though it might free them from the risk of immediate pursuit on the part of Pharaoh. The intimation of the Divine will that the host must move southward, may have been a relief in the circumstances, though how it would result was a matter of faith. Looking in this direction, the leader could see the whole region as far as the steep high ridge of Jebel Attaka forty miles distant. In the foreground the eastern end of the Wady spread out into a plain, partly watered and cultivated, but affording no protection to the flank of the marching multitude, should Pharaoh pursue and attack them. At the distance however of fifteen miles the conical mass of Jebel Shebremet jutting from the Geneffeh range closes in the plain to a narrow pass ; 1 and, once there, a pursuing chariot force could strike only the rear of the host, and this in a narrow space which might be de- 1 I think Shebremet itself was the Migdol of the narrative ; but there may have been a watch-tower or post on the mountain to protect the pass. The Exodus 149 fended against it. So far the position of affairs was plain, all beyond was uncertain. We may be sure, however, that the camp was raised as early as possible in the morning, and that a push was made to occupy the Migdol or Shebremet pass in time to protect the people from any attack in the rear. Egyptian scouts must have dogged the march, for the change of direction was no sooner made than it was known to Pharaoh, and his immediate resolve was to take advantage of the movement. So rapidly were his arrangements made, that his chariot force, forming the van of his army, and probably led by Siptah himself, made its appearance in the evening, while the wearied Israelites were preparing to pitch their tents by the side of the sea near Pi-hahiroth, and were possibly settling a rear-guard across the pass to protect them through the night. But the sight of the broad line of advancing chariots struck terror into the people, and apparently banished all thought of resistance. The despair, the reproach of Moses for bringing them into this strait, his attempt to encourage them to stand fast, the cry¬ ing of Moses to the Lord, and the final order to go forward into the sea, are all vividly pictured in Exodus xiv., as by the pen of an actor in the scene. But the Egyptians did not at once attack. Eden Lost and Won 150 The hour was late and the pass was narrow, and the cloudy pillar in rear had some terrors for them, though it failed to give courage to the Israelites. In the meantime, by a Divine arrangement in favour of the fugitives, one of those strong north¬ east winds, which at some seasons course along the Red Sea valley, drove out the ebb-tide so as to leave a practicable passage across, just as in modern times, before the construction of the canal, a precarious crossing could sometimes be effected at low tide above Suez. Moses is directed to cause Israel to advance into the sea. It was no holiday procession. They were wearied with a day’s march and in the midst of preparations to encamp. Beaten with the wind and drenched with the rain, they had to descend in darkness into the muddy sea-bottom, and painfully, and we may be sure with many fears, to make their way across. Dread of the pursuers no doubt lent speed to their movements, and it may have been a somewhat tumultuous and hurried flight. They crossed in safety, and as the morning dawned on them they must have experienced that great revulsion of feel¬ ing to which voice was given in the impromptu song of Moses and the chorus of Miriam and her companion maidens. In the meantime the Egyptians, puzzled perhaps The Exodus 1 5 1 at first with the noise and commotion among the fugitives, discovered towards morning what had happened, and rushing forward in pursuit, plunged into the sea-bed, which they hoped might still give them time to cross. But they were engulfed in the swiftly returning waters.1 So perished Siptah Meneptah, his best officers, and the finest chariot force in the world. Egypt was left without a king, without the flower of its army, and without its ser¬ vile population, and became a prey to the anarchy and confusion incident to so sudden and unex¬ pected a revolution. Jehovah had triumphed gloriously. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host He had cast into the sea. His “chosen captains” were drowned in the Red Sea. We could not be certain from the history or the song that Pharaoh himself perished : perhaps the narrator himself did not certainly know this ; but the empty and usurped tomb in the valley of the kings at Thebes now tells the story. We may not trace further the march to Sinai. This has been admirably done in the report of the Ordnance Survey with its beautiful maps and 1 The extreme rise of spring tides at Suez is nine feet — an amount quite sufficient to produce a destructive “bore” in the circumstances referred to. 152 Eden Lost and Won photographs, and has been well followed up by the late Mr. E. H. Palmer, in his work the “ Desert of the Exodus,” in which he ably sums up the conclu¬ sions of the Survey as proving for all time that the narrative of the Exodus must have been written by an observant and highly intelligent contempo¬ rary. We have now reached the point where Moses becomes his own biographer ; and here every sen¬ tence bears witness to his hand, his head, and his heart, in such a manner that the most obtuse can scarcely fail to see the evidence of his authorship. It is true, however, now as of old that they who will not hear Moses and the prophets would not be persuaded if one should rise from the dead, even though the risen one should be Christ Himself. Under the preceding headings we have dis¬ cussed the bearing of natural facts on the author¬ ship of the five books of Moses, and a still more extensive subject would be the bearing of natural facts on the contents of these books in detail. Single departments of this enquiry might afford the material of volumes, and some of them I have treated of elsewhere.1 I may here select one, 1 “The Origin of the World,” “ Modern Science in Bible Lands.” The Exodus T53 because it admits easily of separate treatment, and because it has been somewhat neglected, though of paramount importance in reference to the rela¬ tions of the Pentateuch to the New Testament and to Christianity. I refer to the “ Fall of Man,” as connected with the past history and present condition of the world, and with the predictions of a future deliverance from the effects of this great and far-reaching calamity. PART II Man and Nature, Fallen and Restored VIII MAN PRIMEVAL 155 VIII MAN PRIMEVAL HE problem of absolute creation is at present insoluble, and may always remain so. Lotze well suggests that in some sense this must be the case under any imaginable conditions. If we sup¬ pose a naturalist, whether agnostic or theistic, to have actually witnessed the first emergence into being of low forms of life in the primeval waters, we cannot suppose that he would see any manipu¬ lation, or hear any command. He might perceive the appearance of living animals where there were none previously, but by what means inorganic atoms had been induced to arrange themselves in protoplasmic molecules, how they were enabled to shape themselves into organs, and how these be¬ came endowed with life, would be as inscrutable to the actual spectator and as much a matter of inference as they can be to us. If an agnostic, the witness of the fact might at once say, “ This is an example of purely spontaneous generation of an 157 158 Eden Lost and Won accidental or fortuitous character.” If a theist, he might say, “ This is the finger of God ” ; but the evidence for one view or the other would be exactly what it is to-day. Even if we were to suppose a biologist to be a witness of the origination of man from the dust of the ground or from inorganic molecules, or if, on the other hand, he were to wit¬ ness the production of a human child, however imperfect, from an anthropoid mother of however advanced type, he would have no clue to any merely material or physical explanation of the phenomenon. In either case he could not see the manner of the Divine action nor account for the results by mere necessity or chance. In point of fact, whatever forms of words we may invent to conceal our ignorance, we are no nearer the solu¬ tion of this great problem than was the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews when he said, “ By faith we perceive that the ages were consti¬ tuted by the word of God, so that things seen (tcl /3\e7 To/ievd), were not made out of physical appearances (e/c ^acvofiivcov).1 In accordance with this, the late Sir Richard Owen, when pressed by a friend to state his views as to the introduction of life, wrote, “ As I do not know the secondary 1 Chap. xi. v. 3. Man Primeval T 59 cause by which it may have pleased the Creator to introduce organized species into this planet, I have never expressed orally or in print any opinion on the subject.” 1 But though the actual fact of creation may thus be as much unknowable as the essence of God Himself, the laws and conditions of such an occur¬ rence are not unknown, and in the case of man we may ascertain certain of these conditions which have been fulfilled in his appearance on the earth. These may be stated here shortly, and as received results of scientific inquiry, without any elaborate proof or illustration, except in regard to certain accessory points. (1) Man is not known among the earliest of animals in point of time, but appears only after for vastly extended periods, living things of lower types had existed, and after the continents of the earth, with their mountains, plains, rivers, and climatal conditions, had been brought by long and complex physical processes very nearly into their present condition. (2) Man thus appeared at a time when the earth was already stocked with plants of the highest rank and with the highest grades of merely 1 “ Biography,” vol. i., chap, x., p. 309. i6o Eden Lost and Won animal life. Nay, there is good geological reason to believe that at the time of his first appearance the land was more richly peopled with plants and animals than it is at the present day, for there has certainly been extinction of many important species since the beginning of the human period, without a corresponding introduction of new forms in their place. (3) More especially we may affirm that at the time of man’s introduction the organic world had attained to completeness in regard to those vege¬ table productions which are useful and beautiful. The ancient floras of the older geological periods were not so suited to human needs, and they had passed away and had been replaced by flowering and fruit-bearing plants pleasant to the eye and good for food. (4) In the animal kingdom the great and fero¬ cious reptilian monsters of the Mesozoic or age of reptiles had disappeared, and the low and brutal mammals of the earlier Tertiary ; and though there still remained great and dangerous beasts of prey, all the forms of higher mammalian life which have proved most useful and congenial to man had been introduced. (5) In these preparations nothing was done for man beyond what, with due allowance for the lower Man Primeval 161 needs of humbler creatures, had been done for pre¬ vious forms of life ; for it is an established law that the physical and vital developments of the world have gone on pari passu from the dawn of life, and that new types of animals have not appeared until the conditions were favourable to them ; and as a rule the occurrence of such favour¬ able conditions did not long continue till appro¬ priate forms of life were introduced. This as a law is altogether independent of any opinions which may be entertained with reference to the develop¬ ment of animals or the possible causal relation of the environment to changes in organic beings. (6) It is also a law of the succession of life that lower and older forms of living beings are removed to make way for those that are newer and higher. For example the more varied and complex vege¬ tation of the middle and later Tertiary could not have occupied the world without the previous removal on'n. great scale of the more monotonous and lower vegetation of earlier periods, nor could the mammals of the Tertiary have co-existed with the enormous development of reptilian life in the previous period. This again is independent of the question whether we regard the succession as a result of repeated extinctions and creations or of any process of slow and gradual development. 162 Eden Lost and Won It follows from these statements that death and physical suffering must have existed from the in¬ troduction of animal life. The individual must die. Even the species is ultimately mortal. This is, in so far as we can understand, inseparable from the multiplication and succession of animal forms, and is indeed essential to their continued and happy existence. Let it be observed, how¬ ever, that in lower animals coming to a natural end of their life, the way is prepared for dissolution of the organism with a minimum amount of pain and without any of those aggravations which in man arise from a conscious and spiritual nature. This is true, notwithstanding those exceptional cases which have been cited as illustrations of cruelty in nature. Man is often unnecessarily cruel in his treatment of animals. Nature never is. Its apparent cruelty is mercy in disguise. It is most unreasonable to read into past states of the world and into the actions of the lower animals con¬ ditions which spring from the peculiarities of man, and from his special relation to the world around him and to a future life. This is particularly unfair on the part of those who would practically deny an ethical and spiritual element in man himself. It is also to be observed here that it is the con¬ scious individuality and the progressive rational Man Primeval 163 and spiritual nature of man that alone warrant the idea stated in the Bible that man was to have been exempted from the law of mortality. This, how¬ ever, is a subject to be discussed in the sequel. The stress laid on the doctrines of natural selection and struggle for existence has of late thrown into the background another principle which, because of this and of its vital importance, requires a more full illustration than those pre¬ viously noticed. This is the paramount influence of facility for expansion in the introduction of new forms of life. In point of fact, it seems to have been this more than any other condition of the environment that has been potent in the introduc¬ tion of new species of living beings in geological time, not as the primary cause, but as furnishing the combinations of circumstances in which alone such introductions are possible. The continents of the earth, or those portions of its surface which project above the general ocean covering, have in the main continued from the first in the same positions. Their foundations, once laid, have been those which continued to be built upon. They have, however, experienced many vicissitudes in the matter of elevation and depression. At certain periods their lower levels have been submerged and then re-elevated, and this has occurred again 164 Eden Lost and Won and again. These pulsations of the earth’s crust have synchronized with the great changes of fauna and flora marking geological periods, and it is in consequence of them that so very great a propor¬ tion of the stratified deposits of the continents are proved, by the fossil remains which they contain, to have been deposited under the sea. An ex¬ ample taken from the American Continent may make this plain. The great triangular internal plateau of North America between the Apalach- ians and the Rocky Mountains has preserved very continuous records of these earth-movements. At different periods of geological time, indicated by successive beds of fossiliferous limestone, it has been a vast Mediterranean Sea extending from the Gulf of Mexico almost to the Arctic Ocean. In these times of submergence any land animals or plants which inhabited it have been destroyed or have had to take refuge on the inland heights remaining above water, while the new inland sea has become the theatre of the development of swarms of marine creatures not known in previous periods, and coming in to occupy the new and favourable habitats provided for them. At one of these periods of submergence marked by the “ Corniferous ” limestone of the Devonian Period, nearly two hundred species of corals, most of them Man Primeval not previously known, sprang into existence to take advantage of the facilities offered them. When the land rose again into the plains and swamps of the Carboniferous age, a crowd of strange and previously unknown plants, insects, land-snails and batrachian reptiles appeared to take up the vacant ground. The testimony of geology is that while compression and struggle depauperate and finally kill, elbow-room and free¬ dom for expansion are connected with multipli¬ cation and improvement. The great physical changes of submergence and elevation of the con¬ tinents thus constitute veritable epochs in the succession of life. Each new marine fauna is the product of a time of extensive submergence. Each land fauna and flora belongs to a time of continental elevation. The times of submergence are those of great extinction of land-life whether animal or vegetable, and the times of elevation are marked by similar fatality to marine creatures. The whole may be stated under the two great laws : first, that living creatures are introduced or perish in accordance with great physical changes in their environment ;* secondly, that new forms of life are produced in the times and places favour¬ able to their comfortable subsistence, multiplica¬ tion, and extension. Such views as those above 1 66 Eden Lost and Wo ft stated may seem to some to tend toward the exploded idea of cataclysmal extinction and reno¬ vation. Of cataclysms involving universal destruc¬ tion of living creatures, it is true, we have no evidence ; but, on the other hand, it is perfectly certain that wide-spread physical changes, more especially of subsidence and elevation, have been connected with the outgoing and incoming of suc¬ cessive faunas and floras in geological time. These considerations enable us to form some idea of the conditions under which man would most probably be introduced on the earth. It would surely be fair to suppose that this last and crown¬ ing type of the animal creation would be as well provided for as the swarming lower animals that had preceded him. We might go farther than this, and suppose that since man is a creature not endowed with instincts adapting him unfailingly to his environment, but requiring to work out for himself by reason, imagination, and habitude even the means of comfortable subsistence, and needing time to attain to this, he would be even more bountifully provided for. This would be only analogous to the remarkable fact of the long infancy and childhood of the individual man. The species, as well as the individual, must enjoy a protected childhood to acquire the knowledge and Man Primeval 167 the capacity needful to enable it to exist and assert its place at the head of creation ; because deficient in those natural instincts and powers, whether of locomotion, attack, or defence, which enable the lower animals each to play its part in nature without any special training. More than all this, man constituted a new depar¬ ture in the progress of the organic world — the introduction of a higher rational and moral nature ; and this new departure is marked out not merely in his physical frame and his large brain and erect position, but by those very deficiencies in swiftness and power and natural weapons, to which reference has already been made, and which mark him as the ruler and friend, not the enemy, of the lower creatures. We should therefore a priori expect man to appear in some favoured region affording supplies of vegetable food throughout the year, and not requiring protection either from excessive cold or heat, and exempt from the attacks of the more formidable predaceous animals. At the same time there should be facilities for extending his range as his numbers increased, and it might be expected that older forms of life belonging to previous periods and unsuitable for the new anthropic age would be removed out of his way. This would i68 Eden Lost and Won only be in accordance with the arrangements which existed in all previous cases of a similar kind, as we now know on the best geological evidence. I may quote here a saying of the late Hugh Falconer, one of the ablest of English palaeontologists, and who made so wonderful dis¬ coveries in the Tertiary mammals of India : “ Here (in the newer Miocene era) was clear evidence, physical and organic, that the present order of things had set in from a very remote period in India. Every condition was suited to the require¬ ments of man, the lower animals which approach him nearest in physical structure were already numerous ; and the wild stocks from which he trains races to bear his yoke in domesticity were established ; why then, in the light of a natural inquiry, might not the human race have made its appearance at that time in the same region.” Here Falconer recognises what we may call the Edenic conditions for the appearance of man, though they may perhaps not have been realized quite so early in geological time as he supposes.1 1 Quarterly Journal Geological Society , vol. xxi., 1865, p. 386. The occurrence of flints, supposed to be worked, in Miocene beds in Burma has been reported by Dr. Noetling : but Oldham has since shown that the evidence of age is defective (. Natural Science , Nov., 1894, Sept., 1895). The Man Primeval 169 Man would thus appropriately appear not in a period of submergence but of continental elevation, in an age when a mild climate existed over large portions of the world, and when plant and animal life had been developed in a high state of perfec¬ tion. The Bible idea of an Edenic plain, watered by large rivers, and therefore a part of a great con¬ tinent, in a temperate latitude, and with a warm, dry climate, stocked with trees and plants pleasant to the sight and good for food, and free from the more formidable wild beasts, comes as near as possible to what may be termed the natural requirements of the case, as we find them exempli¬ fied in the introduction of the lower animals which approach most nearly to man.1 But man, as we know, is not limited by un¬ changing instincts. He has the capacity to pro¬ skull and femur more recently found by Dr. Dubois in river alluvium in Java belong to a much more modern period, and do not warrant the conclusions based on them as to a species intermediate between men and apes. Should farther dis¬ coveries show that they really represent a primitive race of men, their characters would not be surprising, as we cannot suppose all of the earliest men to have been equal in brain development to the antediluvian giants of some of the cavern deposits, who were probably a hybrid race, and of excep¬ tional physical power. (See Nature , Feb. 28, 1895.) 1 See for a full discussion of this question and of the site of Eden, “ Modern Science in Bible Lands,” chapter iv. 170 Eden Lost and Won vide himself with many appliances, and to make up for his inferiority in natural tools by the devices of his inventive mind. Therefore, if we forecast his history, we must make some allowances for these peculiarities. The climatal conditions of our continents have also differed in different periods. In some a warm climate has extended nearly to the poles. In others cold conditions have pre¬ vailed far toward the equator. Man may have been introduced in a period of exceptional warmth, or of temperate climate tending to further im¬ provement. On the other hand, it is not prob¬ able that his advent should have occurred in a time of temperate climate tending toward refri¬ geration. In the latter case his possible habitat would be limited. In the former he would have wide scope for extension without increasing his artificial appliances. If he had to migrate, as population increased, into more severe climates, or into regions tenanted by formidable beasts, if he had to destroy or to tame animals and to enter on laborious cultivation, he must invent weapons and implements, provide clothing and shelter, obtain the aid of fire, and in many other ways change his condition. If, on the other hand, he was to have had his way prepared for him, as it had been for the other animals, his predeces- Man Primeval 171 sors, he might have been spared all this trouble, though the work of ameliorating the world and extending his Eden might have been slow and gradual, involving perhaps physical changes and the extinction of some animals, with the increase and migration of others, suitable to the com¬ panionship and service of man. Even in this case, however, his knowledge and capacities must have greatly increased in process of time. He must have become acquainted with many new and interesting, as well as useful, natural facts. He might, even if exempt from the practice of arts necessary to subsistence, have exercised his inventive powers and manual dexterity in a variety of pleasing ways conducive to his greater happi¬ ness. The increase of men would have produced a variety of new social and political relations, as well as need for facilities of communication, trans¬ mission of intelligence, preservation of records, determinations of time, distance, and direction ; and hence inquiry into the laws of nature, and scientific, literary, and aesthetic culture. What all this might have become in an unbroken golden age of primitive innocence, though we may infer somewhat from the principles already laid down, it would require the imagination of a poet gifted with very special insight and knowledge of man Eden Lost and Won 1 72 and nature to conceive fully. We may, however, readily fancy that it would have been something very different from the actual history of humanity. That such extension and improvement of man in his primitive state of innocence is implied in the Bible, we learn from the statement that he was not only to serve and to care for his garden, but also to increase and multiply and replenish the earth, and to subdue or bring it into subjec¬ tion ; as well as from the mention of gold, pearls and stones for implements or ornaments (gold, bedolach, and shoham stone) in connection with one of the rivers of Eden.1 If we ask in what precise geological period the conditions necessary to the advent of man actually occurred in any part of the world, geology informs us that this could not have been till the later part of the Miocene Tertiary, and in the warm temperate zone, as suggested in the above extract from Falconer. Possibly this time is too early, for all the known species of Miocene mammals are now extinct, so that if man, or any similar being existed then, we might suppose the species to have perished and to have been replaced by another. Further, the succeeding Pliocene, though a time of continental elevation, was also one of 1 See for the meaning of this the work cited in last note. Man Primeval 1 73 vast aqueous erosion and of gigantic volcanic eruptions and earth-movements, which could not fail to have been injurious or locally destructive to men had they been numerous at that time. The next age also, that of the Pleistocene, was one of unusually frigid climate, and also of great local vicissitudes, a glacial age in short, most un¬ favourable to human interests. Thus the earliest time in which the required conditions can be cer¬ tainly assumed would be the post-glacial conti¬ nental period, which is that in which we actually find the earliest certain remains of men, and the date of which does not conflict with the ordinarily received data of human chronology, and does not justify those exaggerated estimates of some geo¬ logists as to the antiquity of man, which are now apparently also contradicted by the probable date of the later Tertiary or Quaternary deposits. It now remains for us to inquire whether any¬ thing occurred to interrupt the normal develop¬ ment of the human species in accordance with the principles above stated, and what testimony we have in Bible history or in nature of such an occurrence as the “ fall of man.” This we may take up under the next head, in the first place from the Biblical or historical standpoint, and then in the light of our knowledge of early man 174 Eden Lost and Won from his actual remains in the superficial deposits referred to under a previous heading. These remains, imperfect though they are, we have al¬ ready seen, are sufficient to give much information respecting the races of antediluvian men, and their condition in at least certain portions of the world, as terms of comparison with the Biblical record of the Edenic age and the Fall. IX THE FALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 175 IX THE FALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES NDER the previous head we have considered ^ the natural conditions implied in the Edenic state of man, and the possibility that under favour¬ able circumstances he might have increased and multiplied and replenished the earth as a harmless and innocent being. We have also noticed the remarkable coincidence between the probable con¬ dition and environment of primitive man as inferred from geological facts and the statements of the early chapters of Genesis. That something inter¬ fered to prevent his development into a high and holy being, a fit ruler and head of creation, and reduced him to that savage and cruel condition in which we find him as evidenced by his remains in the caves and gravels, we too surely know ; but geology is silent as to the disturbing cause, and here therefore we may turn to the written record and enquire what light it throws on this difficult subject. The Book of Genesis presents man to us as 177 12 i78 Eden Lost and Won having intercourse with his Maker — such inter¬ course as our little ones still have when they startle us with their realistic utterances as to things to us unseen, or only dimly visible to faith, except when they shine before us in dreams and visions of the night, or in conditions of body when we have nearly shuffled off this mortal coil. We need not doubt this, however difficult it may be for us to think of men communing with God in the rustling of the evening breeze. It is what must have been in the first waking to consciousness of a rational being gifted with that higher spiritual life which, despite the absence of all the appliances of what we call civilization, placed him on a higher plane than that of the mere worldly man of later times, however far advanced in the arts of life. He is also in a state of probation. There is one tree of the garden of which he must not eat — one poisonous and even deadly fruit. He is like a child turned loose in a garden with permission to eat every fruit but one, because that is poisonous. Whatever profound questions as to the origin of evil or human responsibility may gather around this prohibition, it represents a condition of exis¬ tence everywhere and always in force ; for where are there not scattered around our paths, in all climates and states, fruits good for food, and others The Fall and its Consequences 179 that are unwholesome and dangerous ? It is the one conceivable limitation of human freedom in the Edenic state, and at the same time one that without any warning or command must have existed as a natural fact, so soon as man emerged from Eden. Thus the religion of Adam and Eve consisted of a communion with God and an understood pro¬ hibition which was also a warning against injury. This was the primitive embryo of religion in un¬ fallen man. It does not follow, as some now appear to hold, that it will serve equally for man in his present state. Had man adhered to this religion, however, it admitted of a development up to the intellectual and moral level of that of un¬ fallen angels. The disturbing element which deprives man of this covenant is the serpent, and no explanation is at first given as to the serpent being the agent of a malignant spirit. This could not be known in the first instance to the primitive pair. He is merely indicated as being the most subtle of the animals — - more insidious (naked) than any other. Naturally, the gliding, noiseless progression and the ability to execute all kinds of movements without limbs, have impressed this idea on man everywhere, and have given the serpent a large place in myths and i8o Eden Lost and Won superstitions, which may however be secondarily derived from his role as the tempter, for which these properties so well fit the animal. I may remark here that other peculiarities of the serpent are also referred to in the curse pronounced on him after the Fall. He is to go on his belly and eat dust. The serpent when about to strike coils his body and erects his head. When he fails or becomes afraid, he lowers himself abjectly and sneaks away with his head close to the ground. These natural attitudes are those referred to in the curse, and they for the first time suggest to us that the serpent here is the agent of an evil power of whom he becomes the symbol, and who is bold and aggressive in his temptation of Eve, but destined subsequently to occupy an abject and hateful position in relation to man, and especially to the promised seed of the woman who is to crush his head. The temptation presented to Eve is addressed to her ambitious longing for higher knowledge and power — a longing intended to be gratified in the gradual development of man from stage to stage of Divine culture, but not to be prematurely satiated by snatching the forbidden fruit. Whether or not the fruit was one having in itself a poisonous or intoxicating property, as some have supposed, it The Fall and its Consequences 1 8 1 had the immediate effect of opening their eyes, and the perception to which they attain is one of sexual shame or modesty, the knowledge of nakedness and the desire for clothing. This might lead to many curious ethnological inquiries. I shall mention here merely the fact that while the skeletons of prehistoric men in bone-caves, give evidence of the wearing both of clothes and ornaments, the tracings of the human figure which have been found in such caverns, are, so far as known, nude. In other words, the co-existence of clothing on the actual human figure, along with nudity on sculp¬ tured representations belongs to the earliest times, and hints to us the fact that man originally had no clothing and no cause to be ashamed of his want of it. This may also be connected with the nude representations of gods and goddesses, some of whom were often deified ancestors connected with the tradition of a golden age. Up to this point the simplicity and naturalness and primitive character of the whole story in Genesis are most evident. Let us now turn to the alleged consequences of the Fall in relation to natural facts. If, as already explained, we are to understand by Eden the “ Centre of Creation ” prepared for man, or the environment suited to a creature so I 8 2 Eden Lost and Won constituted, in which all external conditions were favourable to his happy existence, the expulsion from that special district, by whatever means effected, must have been a great and real calam¬ ity. It was exile from the surroundings and natural productions necessary to a happy life. It was throwing man into a struggle for existence under unfavourable conditions, and exposing him to labours, dangers, and sufferings before un¬ known. To nature in general it was also a grievous loss. Had man continued in his Edenic state, the con¬ ditions and the animal species of his new vital centre might have extended themselves widely over the continents, in a manner similar to that which seems to have occurred in the introduction of other types in previous periods. Under his new circumstances, if he is to maintain his dominion and even his existence, he must declare war against the other parts of organic nature, must invent weapons of destruction, and by virtue of his higher mental powers must become the tyrant of the world, more dreaded than any wild beast. He must also interfere with the true balance of animals and plants, and so introduce confusion, and deform the fair face of Nature by his arts and inventions. Nature must henceforth The Fall and its Consequences 183 suffer many injuries from the destructive domi¬ nance of man. The sentence of death passed upon man implies that he was originally free from the general doom of living beings. Whether this was to have been by a repeated rejuvenescence or renewal of youth, by a mere interchange of new tissues for those become effete, by a transition from the natural or psychic body to the spiritual body promised in the New Testament at the resurrection, or in some other way, we are not informed ; but there are different ways in which such immunity could be secured, and, as previously stated, it would be an appropriate endowment of man’s higher nature and instinctive desire for immortality. Now he falls under the general law, and though his life may at first be very protracted, he must surely die. In experiencing this fate, in so far as his physical frame was concerned, he but returns to dust out of which he was taken, but in so far as his spiritual nature is concerned, he retains that belief in a future existence, that universal instinct of immortality, which is perhaps the best natural evidence of his original unending life. It is cer¬ tainly as easy and natural to believe in man’s primitive immortality as to believe in the resurrec¬ tion of the dead body, so constantly maintained by J esus Christ and by Paul. 184 Eden Lost and Won The penalty of death is not to be immediately exacted, except in its shadow cast over the whole life of man ; and hope of a final though distant restoration is held out to him ; but in the mean¬ time the ground on which he treads and out of which he is to obtain food, is cursed for his sake. Judging from subsequent references, this would imply want of such permanent fertility as that secured to Eden by its irrigating streams, entailing much tillage and labour ; 1 and as in the case of the woe denounced on Cain, this infertility in some cases extending to absolute barrenness.2 There would seem also to have been a progressive deterioration, perhaps in climate as well as soil, for Lamech, the father of Noah, at the close of the antediluvian period is represented as speaking of it as an increasing evil in his time.3 On the other hand the blessing to Noah after the flood seems to refer to a partial removal of the curse, and from the terms of the promise to Noah, it would also appear that after the flood there was some restora¬ tion of fertility and amelioration of climate.4 We have already seen that if we identify the ante¬ diluvian age with that of the men of the Palan- thropic or “ Palseolithic ” caves and gravels, it is 1 Gen. iii. 17. 2 Gen. iv. 12. 3 Gen. v. 29. 4 Gen. viii. 22. The Fall and its Consequences 185 proved by geological facts that they suffered not merely from a retarded development of the organic world, but a gradual deterioration of climate ; so that before the occurrence of the great diluvial catastrophe which closed that period, there was much difficulty in finding means of subsist¬ ence, and many tribes of men had to resort to the rudest kind of hunting life, leading probably to much barbarism and violence. We are further told in Genesis that when men resorted to tillage and subsisted on the “ herb of the field,” their work would be obstructed by “ thorns and thistles.” This may appear to some a trifling penalty, but it would not seem such to one familiar with the number and troublesome nature of thorny and prickly plants in some parts of the world, or with the devastation which the thistle and its allies have worked on some of the finest plains on the earth. Like man, the great family of the Composite, so prolific of trouble¬ some weeds, and including the thistles and their allies, was a new thing on the earth, and may not have found its way at all into the Edenic Garden.1 1 We know of no Composite until the Tertiary age, except uncertain fragments. The family seems to be a new one, scarcely older than man himself, but gifted with remarkable powers of extension. i86 Eden Lost and Won It includes some showy plants, but many that annoy man so soon as he becomes a cultivator or even a shepherd. In our own time we have seen the thistles and their allies pursuing men in their new American and Australian homes, following them to the remotest districts, and molesting them in all their attempts at pasturage and culture. It is singular how many things the author of Genesis knew which until the other day were not dreamt of in our philosophy. The special penalty denounced on woman is one of the saddest parts of the Fall. Sorrow in that which was a part of the original blessing, and is the happiness of other living beings, in that child¬ bearing which in Eden would have been a chief joy and the means of replenishing the earth with a holy and happy race, was now in the fallen state to be hers, along with that inevitable submission to marital despotism which, especially in all primitive and rude states of society, falls to the lot of the weaker partner burdened with the cares and toils of maternity. It may be well here to say a few words as to the nature of the Assyrian legends of Creation and the Flood, which have come down to our time. These are regarded with respect by many who decline to admit the antiquity and genuineness of the records The Fall and its Consequences 187 in Genesis, and who wrrite as if the Hebrews had been indebted to a “ Babylonian element ” in com¬ posing the Pentateuch ; whereas it is evident that the Chaldean myths are related to the Bible only in the way in which an historical novel is related to authentic history. Any intelligent reader who will consult Maspero’s recent work on “ The Dawn of Civilization/’1 cannot fail to see that the Baby¬ lonian legends have been amplified in a wildly imaginative and even childish manner in the interest of priestly and idolatrous influences, and could not have afforded the material of the prosaic narrative of Genesis. They show that the early Chaldean scribes had access to some of the materials possessed by the author of Genesis, and illustrate the difference between poetical myths and inspired history — but nothing more. The more we ponder on the few but graphic touches of the primitive painter of Eden and the Fall, the more must we recognise their truth to nature and the certainty that they must truly represent the experience of the earliest human beings, and the reason of that degraded condition in which we find the oldest tribes of men yet known to us. Before going farther, however, there 1 “ Les Origines,” translated by Sayce. 1 88 Eden Lost and Won are a few details of the old story in Genesis which may merit a short consideration, in addition to that which we have given to the main features of the narrative. Was the tree of life an actual tree, or kind of tree, seen by primitive man ? This, I think, we can scarcely doubt, though the study of ancient mythology shows us that in different times and countries it may have been represented by different species, as the palm, the banyan, the persea, the oak, or even the mistletoe. 1 Had it any natural power to cure disease or injury, or to prolong life ? Were its leaves literally “ for the healing of the nations ” ?2 This we cannot know, unless we could find means to identify the species. It may have been merely a symbol or pledge of the immortality promised to man, though the words of the record would seem rather to imply a physical property. What were the cherubim and flaming sword which prevented access to it ? The former are represented to us not only in the Bible but in the pictured and sculptured symbolism of all the old idolatries, as animals or complex monsters compounded of animal forms, sometimes with the human head 1 In Chaldea, India, Egypt, Greece and Western Europe respectively. 2 Rev. xxii. 2. The Fall and its Consequences 189 superadded. Naturally interpreted, and in connec¬ tion with later mythological and Biblical ideas, this might mean primarily the irruption of formid¬ able beasts into Eden to replace man ; and its later symbolic use may refer to the injury inflicted on creation by the Fall, and that restoration of free¬ dom and progress predicted by Paul in a passage to be referred to in the sequel. In this case the heavenly “ animals ” or living creatures of Revela¬ tion chapters iv. and v. may be representatives of the redemption of the creation as associated with that of man. These living creatures, respectively like a lion, a calf, a sphinx with human head, and an eagle, when first introduced to the seer, are engaged in praising God as the Creator of all things, and when “ every created thing ” in the atmosphere, the land and the sea, ascribes honour and glory and blessing to God and to the Re¬ deemer in anticipation of the revelation of God’s purposes in the roll with seven seals, the four cherubim or living creatures say “ Amen.” As symbols therefore throughout the Bible and in the ancient idolatries, we may regard the cherubim as representing the copartnership of animated nature with man in his fall and final restoration — a great and glorious doctrine deserv¬ ing of more attention than it receives, more 190 Eden Lost and Won especially in relation to our duties toward the lower animals. But this is too large a subject and too frequently referred to in the Bible to be dis¬ cussed here, except to say that the Bible, while it lends no countenance to the doctrine of human descent from animals, or to idolatrous veneration for them, fully recognises our relations to them, God’s care of and for them, and our duty of mercy to them. The flaming sword, if we are to take Isaiah’s description of the Sword of Jehovah,1 or Ezekiel’s of the fire accompanying his cherubim 2 as referring to it, must have been some bituminous, electric, or volcanic fire or eruption striking terror into the human spectators. The symbolism in both cases would be the sympathy of nature with man in his fall, like the earthquake and eclipse at the death of Christ, or the rejoicing of nature in the revelation of the sons of God in the Psalms and the Apoca¬ lypse. The immediate object is stated to have been the exclusion of man for the time from his lost paradise. 1 Chap, xxxiv. 5 and 9-10. 2 Chap. i. 13. I suppose Ezekiel’s vision of cherubim to be a vivid representation of God’s power and energy in nature, and in the affairs of men, even when they are in rebellion against Him. The Fall and its Consequences 19 1 For our present purpose all these features of the narrative in Genesis serve to emphasize the con¬ clusion that the present relations of man to other parts of nature are not normal, or in accordance with the usual arrangements of the Creator in the introduction of new types, or with the position of man as the culmination of the animal kingdom and the introducer of a higher type of rational existence. Consequently, that any system of theology or philosophy, which takes it for granted that the present condition of the world is merely “ a natural result of its whole previous develop¬ ment,” or that “ no important change took place at the time of man’s first transgression,” must neces¬ sarily lead to false conclusions. We may, it is true, admit that in a certain sense the present state of things is a result of the pre¬ vious development from the beginning, and that the fall itself must have entered into the original plan of the Creator as an episode in that develop¬ ment. Yet the introduction of man was in itself a new feature, and one implying the risk that any false step taken by a free rational agent might produce an effectual and perhaps ever-increasing derangement of the whole course of organic nature, not to be inferred at all from its previous ten¬ dencies. Paul grasps this fully when he says, 192 Eden Lost and Won “the creation was made subject to vanity,” that is to failure or unprofitableness. Ellicott and Mac¬ donald have also seized the significance of this possibility, but it has been missed by the greater part of modern commentators and philosophers. It is, in short, an inevitable conclusion of science that, when a rational and moral being has been introduced into the world with power to assume mastery over it, and with capacity for multiplica¬ tion and extension, any aberration on his part must subvert the ordinary operation of natural laws, and interrupt the progress of nature. Even evolutionists like Mivart and Wallace have per¬ ceived this, and have taken some account of it. It was also well known to naturalists in what have been called “pre-Darwinian” days, before the whirl of the evolutionary cyclone had carried so many naturalists off their feet. In i860, in my work entitled “ Archaia,” I discussed this subject and continued its consideration in “ The Origin of the World,” published in 1877. The conclusion had then been fully established by geology, that the introduction of a rational and inventive being, unarmed, unclothed, and subsisting on the spon¬ taneous productions of nature, must mark a new departure, and require important changes in the progress of the world, and that the conversion The Fall and its Consequences 193 of man into a savage creature, inventing weapons of destruction, would necessarily introduce the most serious disturbances. In studying the sub¬ ject, however, at that time I was not aware of cer¬ tain important facts discovered later, such as the following— (1) The deterioration of climate in the Northern Hemisphere which occurred in the early human period. (2) The probable identity of the so-called “ Palaeolithic ” men of Europe with the Antediluvians, and of the catastrophe which swept them away with the historical deluge. (3) The magnitude of the geographical and vital changes connected with the diluvial catastrophe. Wanting these important data, the following sentences express the conclusions attainable at that time. “ 1. Every large region of the earth is inhabited by a group of animals, differing in the proportions of identical species, and in the presence of distinct species from the groups inhabiting other districts. There is also sufficient reason to conclude that all animals and plants have spread from certain local centres, in which groups of species have been produced and allowed to extend themselves, until they met and became intermingled with species extending from other centres. Now, the district of Asia, in the vicinity of the Euphrates and Tigris, to which the Bible assigns the origin of the 13 194 Eden Lost and Won human race, is the centre to which we can, with the greatest probability, trace several of the species of animals and plants most useful to man, and lies near the confines of warmer and colder regions of distribution in the Old World, and also near the boundary of the Asiatic and European regions. At the period under consideration it may have been peopled with a group of animals especially suited to association with the progenitors of man¬ kind. 2. To remove all zoological difficulties from the position of primeval man in his state of inno¬ cence, we have but to suppose, in accordance with all the probabilities of the case, that man was created along with a group of creatures adapted to contribute to his happiness, and having no tendency to injure or annoy ; and that it is the formation of these creatures — the group of his own centre of creation — that is especially noticed in Genesis ii. 19 et seq., where God is represented as forming them out of the ground and exhibiting them to Adam. 3. The difficulty attending the early extension of the human race is at once obviated by the geo¬ logical doctrine of the extinction of species. We know that in past geological periods large and important groups of species have become extinct, and have been replaced by new groups extending from new centres ; and we know that this process The Fall and its Consequences 195 has removed, in early geological periods, many creatures that would have been highly injurious to human interests had they remained. Now the group of species created with man, being the latest introduced, we may infer, on geological grounds, that it would have extended itself within the spheres of older zoological and botanical districts, and would have replaced their species, which, in the ordinary operation of natural laws, may have been verging towards extinction. Thus, not only man, but the Eden in which he dwelt with all its animals and plants, would have gradually encroached on the surrounding wilderness, until man’s happy and peaceful reign had replaced that of the ferocious beasts that preceded him in dominion, and had extended at least over all the temperate region of the earth. 4. The cursing of the ground for man’s sake, on his fall from inno¬ cence, would thus consist in the permission given to the predaceous animals and the thorns and the thistles of other centres of creation to invade his Eden ; or, in his own expulsion, to contend with the animals and plants which were intended to have given way and become extinct before him. Thus the fall of man would produce an arrest in the progress of the earth in that last great revolu¬ tion which would have converted it into an Eden ; 196 Eden Lost and Won and the anomalies of its present state consist in a mixture of the conditions of the Tertiary with those of the human period. 5. Though there is good ground for believing that man was to have been exempted from the general law of mortality, we cannot infer that any such exemption would have been enjoyed by his companion animals ; we only know that he himself would have been free from all annoyance and injury and decay from external causes. We may also conclude that, while Eden was sufficient for his habitation, the re¬ mainder of the earth would continue, just as in the earlier Tertiary periods, under the dominion of the predaceous mammals, reptiles and birds. 6. The above views enable us on the one hand to avoid the difficulties that attend the admission of predaceous animals into Eden, and on the other the still more formidable difficulties that attend the attempt to exclude them altogether from the Adamic world. They also illustrate the geological fact, that many animals, contemporaneous with man, extend far back into the Tertiary period. These are creatures not belonging to the Edenic centre of creation, but introduced in an earlier part of the sixth creative day, and now permitted to exist along with man in his fallen state. I have stated these supposed conditions of the Adamic creation briefly, and with The Fall and its Consequences 197 as little illustration as possible, that they may connectedly strike the mind of the reader. Each of these statements is in harmony with the narra¬ tive in Genesis on the one hand, and with geology on the other ; and, taken together, they afford an intelligible history of the introduction of man. If a geologist were to state, a priori , the conditions proper to the creation of any important species, he could only say — the preparation or selection of some region of the earth for it, and its produc¬ tion along with a group of plants and animals suited to it. These are precisely the conditions implied in the Scriptural account of the creation of Adam. The difficulties of the subject have arisen from supposing, contrary to the narrative itself, that the conditions necessary for Eden must in the first instance have extended over the whole earth, and that the creatures with which man is in his present dispersion brought into contact must necessarily have been his companions there.” I have quoted the above as legitimate con¬ clusions of science attained thirty-five years ago, and which have not been affected even by the current theories of evolution, except in so far as these occupy the entirely irrational ground of agnostic causelessness. When, therefore, we find the earliest men known to us, to have been 198 Eden Lost and Won barbarous hunters and manslayers, at war with nature and with one another, and out of harmon¬ ious relations with their environment, we may be sure from the deductions of geological and archaeological science that there has been “ a fall of man.” There is, it is true, a modern philosophy which delights in exaggerating the present incongruity between man and nature, and deducing from this a denial of divine and benevolent purpose in creation ; I may quote an illustration from a recent paper of Mr. Herbert Spencer.1 “But the anthropocentric view does not appear acceptable to one who contemplates things with¬ out foregone conclusions. When he learns that millions upon millions of years passed during which the earth was peopled only by inferior brutes, and that even now three-fifths of its surface are occupied by an ocean basin carpeted with low creatures which live in darkness, utterly useless to man and only lately known to him ; and when he learns that of the remaining two- fifths, vast Arctic and Antarctic regions and vast desert areas are practically uninhabitable, while immense portions of the remainder, fever-breeding 1 Fortnightly Review , June, 1895. The Fall and its Consequences 199 and swarming with insect pests, are unfit for comfortable existence, he does not recognise much adjustment to the wants of mankind. When he discovers that the human body is the habitat of thirty different species of parasites, which inflict in many cases great tortures ; or, still worse, when he thinks of the numerous kinds of microbes, some producing ever-present diseases and consequent mortality, and others producing frightful epidemics, like the plague and the black death, carrying off hundreds of thousands or millions, he sees little ground for assuming that the order of Nature is devised to suit our needs and satisfactions. The truth which the facts force upon him is not that the surrounding world has been arranged to fit the physical nature of man, but that, conversely, the physical nature of man has been moulded to fit the surrounding world ; and that, by implication, the theory of things, justified by the evidence, may not be one which satisfies men’s moral needs and yields them emotional satisfactions, but, con¬ versely, is most likely one to which they have to mould their mental wants as well as they can.” It must be evident to common sense, that such a jaundiced view of nature is unfair both as as¬ suming that man is injured by the long pre¬ paration of the earth for him, and by his inability 200 Eden Lost and Won to inhabit the desert or the sea bottom ; and as neglecting to notice the evils which arise from human misconduct ; but in so far as there is any truth in the picture, it should at least excite the suspicion that some disturbing cause due to man himself, has intervened to mar that equilibrium which on the view even of the agnostic should have long ago resulted from the interaction of natural energies, even without the agency of an all-wise and benevolent Creator. We should not, however, omit to notice that according both to geological science and to Bible history, there may have been some mitigation of the cursing of the ground after the Deluge. The great diluvial catastrophe which separates Palan- thropic from Neanthropic man,1 which we can now identify with the historical deluge, greatly altered the physical geography of the Northern Hemi¬ sphere, and destroyed or expelled from its temperate regions many species of animals, while the climatal conditions of the previous period were somewhat ameliorated and the diminished size of the continents gave greater facilities for the dispersion of men, and for maritime inter- 1 See “ Modern Science in Bible Lands,” chap. iv. ; and “ Meeting-place of Geology and History.” The Fall and its Consequences 201 course. So in the patriarchal record we find the promise to Noah that man will no more be de¬ stroyed by a diluvial catastrophe, that the cursing of the ground will in some degree be removed, and that seedtime and harvest will not fail. These improved conditions, however, fell far short of re¬ storing the Edenic happiness, and left untouched all that part of the curse of nature which depends on the tyranny and misconduct of man himself. This, I apprehend, is implied in the singular rea¬ son that the alleviation is not given because the survivors of the Deluge have returned to Edenic innocence, but, on the contrary, because the taint of the Fall still clings to them, because “ the heart of man is evil from his youth,” and therefore they cannot help being out of harmony with nature, but they are allowed to enter on the new age with im¬ proved conditions.1 It results from this, however, that the most important part of the remaining curse is that which arises from the voluntary action of man himself. He continues to be the antagonist and destroyer of the lower animals, the deformer of the fair face of nature. He pursues to extinction the animals which he hunts for his profit or his 1 See Genesis viii. 20, etc. 202 Eden Lost and Won pleasure. He takes away the food and shelter of other creatures and so causes them to perish. He disfigures with his so-called improvements great spaces of the surface of the earth. He interferes with the nice balance of animated nature es¬ tablished of old, and has. introduced struggle, anarchy, violence and misrule. Farther, by his exhaustive cropping he has reduced vast areas of the earth’s surface to barrenness. These de¬ structive changes have already spread over much of the habitable land and are rapidly extending themselves ; and when he carries his innovations to the extreme we find a “ Black-country,” a pandemonium of fire and machinery overhung with a canopy of smoke, under which thousands toil, deprived of the most ordinary requirements of health and happiness, and whence all creatures save man and the beasts he has enslaved are excluded. Finally, we already hear the prediction that the culmination of applied science will be the discovery of means to provide artificially from their elements the food-substances necessary for human subsistence ; and then the world, or large portions of it, might be converted into a great congeries of factories, without a tree or a green field or any of the higher forms of animal life, and in which millions of men, cooped up in dense The Fall and its Consequences 203 communities, might grind out painfully the means of supporting a life deprived of the charm of everything that God has made for human enjoy¬ ment. This travesty of the New Jerusalem is that to which many eager minds are bending all their energies, and hoping some day to accomplish. It remains to enquire if God has not provided some better way to remedy the Fall of Man. X THE RESTORATION 205 X THE RESTORATION HE calamities produced by the Fall are not irretrievable. Man had been defeated in his first encounter with the serpent ; but the fight was to be continued. The enemy would have to adopt new, base, and insidious tactics, his head in the dust ; and, finally, a descendant of the beguiled woman will, though not without conflict and wounding, bruise his head. This protevangel, which is the key-note of the whole Bible, and the commission of the Saviour Himself, extends through the writings of prophets and psalmists down to the triumphant songs of the Apocalypse. For a time, however, little is said of the share of the lower creation, either in the defeat or the triumph. One note is struck in the blessing on Noah after the flood, referred to in the last article, which announces a removal of the curse, except that part of it which proceeds from “ the evil imagination of man’s heart.” Here and there the 207 208 Eden Lost and Won subject is referred to in the Book of Job, in the Psalms, in the prophecy of Ezekiel, and more fully in the remarkable passage in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, which paints peace among the lower animals and a little child as leading them. The cherubic figures also continued to testify through all this time to the share of the lower creation in the benefit of man’s redemption. It will be better, however, for our present purposes not to dwell on these passages, and to go on at once to the wonderful view of the relation of nature and man contained in the eighth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which may be considered as the central and crowning testimony on the subject. Paul was not merely an Apostle commissioned to preach to man the Gospel of salvation ; he was a scholar saturated with the Old Testament literature, and fully alive to the aspects of nature and of man viewed from the broadest and most philosophical standpoint. All these stores of knowledge and culture he was inspired to bring to bear on this difficult subject, and to draw from it truth useful to every Christian. The kernel of the passage reads as follows in the revised version : “For the earnest expectation (outstretched neck) of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to vanity The Restoration 209 (failure) not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it ; in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of cor¬ ruption (decay) into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together (with us) even until now.” The setting of this passage shows us the pur¬ pose for which it was introduced. The time was one of suffering for Christians, but this suffering leads to a future of incomparable glory. Nor are Christians to be alone in this glory. All nature, doomed to “ vanity ” and “ corruption ” by man’s fall, is to be emancipated from this painful dis¬ ability in his restoration, and this is linked with the fact that in man himself, not merely the soul and spirit, but the body also is to be redeemed. This accords with Paul’s reasoning elsewhere as to the first and second Adam,1 with the prediction of Peter as to a new heaven and new earth,2 and with the glowing pictures of restoration of Eden as the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse.3 The germ of the same doctrine we, no doubt, also have in the teaching of Christ.4 2 2 Pet. iii. 4 Matt. xxii. 29. 14 1 1 Cor. xv. 20, et seq. 3 Rev. xxi. 2 10 Eden Lost and Won Let us now examine more closely the testimony of St Paul. It is not necessary to discuss the many and often grotesque notions which have been held respecting the word “ creation ” (/ct lctis). Many of these arise from entire failure to appreci¬ ate the fact that the Apostle is dealing not with man alone, but with nature as a whole. The word can mean nothing less than all created things, especially when it has prefixed to it the adjective “whole” — “the whole creation.”1 More especially, no doubt, he refers to the animal creation as that which can best express its sufferings ; but there is a sense also in which vegetation and even inani¬ mate things can mutely complain of the wrong done them, or rejoice in the favour of God and give glory to Him.2 May we not, therefore, sup¬ pose that to thoughtful and inspired men, and to God Himself, creation has been all along lament¬ ing its losses by the Fall ? This creation, then, is represented as “ waiting with outstretched neck,” or “ groaning and travail¬ ing in pain.” The pain is not, however, that of dissolution, but that of birth, a very expressive figure, pointing to that failure of fulfilment of 1 See also verse 29 of the same chapter. 2 Isa. xxiv. 4, et seq.j Ps. xix. 1 cxlvi. 1. The Restoration 2 1 1 promise and progress to which the world was doomed by the fall of man. It is as if at the introduction of man the creation had come to the birth of a glorious new era, but its parturition was arrested by the Fall, and it continues in travail until now, and must so continue until the revealing of the sons of God. Thus there is no pessimism in Paul’s view. The travailing of creation is but an episode, a long delayed birth-pang in the great programme of God’s creation, which extends from the first introduction of life to the final consumma¬ tion. All through the geological ages there had been more or less of suffering and death, but these were in the interest of the greater happiness of the greater number, and for the sake of the onward progress of the whole. So even the aggravated sufferings of the lower creatures, by the sin of man, are the travail-pains of a new birth. Our sufferings also look toward the glory following, and our groans are the impatient longings for a promised redemption. The practical lesson, therefore, to us is not one of despair, but of faith and hope. The “ vanity ” to which nature has been sub¬ jected by man’s sin is literally failure or unprofit¬ ableness, a falling short of its purpose, just as in the case of a plant which puts forth its leaves but withers away before producing its flowers and fruit, 212 Eden Lost and Won and finally falls into “ corruption ” or decay, with¬ out fulfilling the main purpose of its existence. Nature was subjected to this “vanity,” not by any fault of its own, but “ because of him who sub¬ jected it,” that new head of creation who, failing in his obligations to God, fell from his first estate and was the cause of putting back the clock of the world by a whole age. Creation suffers in some sense even more severely than man, as the soldiers of an army may suffer more severely than the leader who, by folly or wickedness, has subjected them to danger and defeat. The animal creation more particularly suffers, not only directly, but indirectly, through the tyranny and cruelty of man himself. It cannot, like man, have a promise and a hope, nor can it have the support of the indwelling Spirit to sustain it, nor can it experi¬ ence the higher benefits of redemption, for it has not the immortal life and individuality of man ; and its past generations have all fallen in the wilderness ; only the final survivors can share the liberty of the restoration. This distinction Paul expresses by speaking of nature as a whole, not as individuals, and by characterizing its deliverance as one from bondage into the liberty which it will attain when the children of God, as individual heirs of glory, shall attain to their inheritance. The Restoration 21 3 I am aware that the belief that some animals may share in eternal life has not been without able advocates.1 But there seems to be no good scriptural evidence for it, and we have no reason to think that the intelligence of these animals goes beyond the requirements of their present life ; even in the case of man, only his spiritual life allies him with the unseen world. The things that are seen are temporal, and left behind here, just as much as our worldly goods — mere “wood, hay, stubble,” to be consumed by the final confla¬ gration. If we imagine a man dead to God and eternal things, with his whole mind engrossed in earthly affairs, we know that he would be in¬ capable of entering into eternal life. He could have nothing to take into it, any more than one of the lower animals, though unlike the animals he would have the actual guilt of moral depravity and of rejecting God’s offer of salvation. In St. Paul’s view, only those who are “ led by the Spirit ” can be “sons of God ” and “joint heirs with Christ.”2 If we look carefully into our Lord’s personal teaching, we shall see that it is these negative 1 See an Essay by Frances Power Cobbe, on the Future of the Lower Animals. 2 Romans viii. 14, etc. 214 Eden Lost and Won qualities, want of faith and of spiritual life, that are chiefly insisted on as disqualifying men for a future happy existence, and exposing them to the penalties of eternal death. If it is possible that there are men destitute of the germs of eternal life, a fortiori the lower animals must be in this case, though not deserving of any actual punish¬ ment, because having no moral responsibility, Questions of this kind were raised in opposition to our Lord’s teaching by the Sadducees, and it is instructive to notice how He met them. They held that the doctrines of the resurrection and future state are not taught in the Old Testament, and that the former is physically impossible. Jesus replies that they did not understand their own Scriptures, and cites a case in point from the Book of Exodus ; and that they were equally ignorant of what God can do : “ Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.” In the same connection, and as if opening incidentally to us the doors of the world to come, He adds, “ They who shall be accounted worthy to attain to that world (age) and the resurrection of the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more, for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” These are weighty The Restoration 2I5 words, coming to us direct from the heavenly world, and they include the substance of all the apostolic teaching respecting salvation and con¬ demnation, and the reality of the coming revela¬ tion of the sons of God. The Sadducees on this occasion drew from Christ a revelation which, whether profitable to them or not, is most precious to us in relation to the conditions of paradise regained. We may close this little digression with the thought, that if the lower animals are unable to share with us the glories of immortality, this gives us all the more reason to render their lives happy in the sphere to which they are limited, and renders us all the more inexcusable for any unnecessary cruelty to them. Just as, after the Deluge, there was some miti¬ gation of the original curse, so now, under the Christian dispensation, there must be some allevia¬ tion of the woes of creation in so far as the Spirit of Christ regulates the actions of men. “ The merciful man is merciful to his beast,” and an enlightened Christianity must necessarily have respect for those humbler creatures which have been subjected to failure not willingly, but by our fault. It is to be feared, however, that this great duty, so manifestly pointed out in the Bible, is as Eden Lost and Won 216 yet too little before the minds of the children of God, who should in this be like their Father in Heaven, who cares for all the works of His hands. Its full attainment is to come at the revealing of the sons of God ; and of this Christ speaks as identical with His own second coming, that age in which men die no more, but are as the angels, and are manifested as “ the sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection.” It is scarcely necessary to say to readers of the New Testament that this identity of the coming of Christ and the revealing of His people runs through all the apostolic writings. A good example is the statement of Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians, that “ when Christ who is our Life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” In the passage now in question Paul defines (verse 14) the sons of God to be those who are “led by the Spirit of God,” and the creation waits for the “ revealing ” of these, now in obscurity and even in suffering ; and this revealing he connects with the “ redemption of the body,” or the resurrection and new spiritual body of which he has written to the Corinthians.1 When this happy time comes, when death, the last enemy as well as the first, 1 1 Cor. xv. 44. The Restoration 2 1 7 has been finally overcome by Christ “ who is our Life,” then will the whole creation, wrecked by Adam’s fall, “ itself also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.” It seems further evident that this can be nothing else than the new heaven and new earth predicted by Peter,1 and the New Jerusalem of John, in which there is “no more curse.” It is now pertinent to our present purpose to enquire a little as to these foreviews in their relation to the Fall and to the promise of restora¬ tion. John, in the Apocalypse, bases his predic¬ tions of the final glory on the conditions of Eden and the Fall. In an anticipatory note of triumph in the earlier part of his book 2 he informs us : — “ Every created thing which is in the heaven, and in the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying : Unto Him that sitteth on the throne and unto the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and dominion for ever and ever.” To this the four living creatures or cherubim say “ Amen,” thus showing, as we have already seen, that, whatever their nature and significance 1 2 Peter iii. 13. 2 Chap. v. 13. Eden Lost and Won 218 in Eden, they are here heavenly representatives of creation redeemed. Thus we have presented to us the cherubim which guarded the Tree of Life in a new relation to paradise regained. The flaming sword on the other hand does not appear, unless it is represented by the lake of fire which is in contrast with the new heaven and earth. In like manner the golden streets, the pearly gates, and the walls of precious stones in the New Jerusalem, represent the gold, bedolach, and shoham stone carefully and laboriously collected by primitive man in one of the rivers of Eden.1 * The Tree of Life becomes a grove of trees, no longer inaccessible to man, and the streams of Eden are represented by “ a river of water of life.” It is in consistency with this adoption of the imagery of Eden that there shall be “ no more pain or death,” that “all things are made new,” and that “ there shall be no more curse.” The change from a garden to a city would seem to intimate that all that is good and that deserves continuance in the civilization of fallen man shall be preserved, unalloyed with evil, in his new and renovated world, while man shall no longer be the 1 See my work, “ Modern Science in Bible Lands,’5 and paper in a previous volume of the Expositor . The Restoration 219 foe and tyrant of creation, and the living things which remain as the result of God’s creative selec¬ tion from all that He has made, shall be delivered from failure and decay ; though in what way this can be accomplished we do not understand, and it would serve no good purpose to hazard conjectural explanations. This raises the great question — Is it the same earth in which we now live that is to experience this glorious change and to be the abode of the redeemed ? In so far as the New Testament Is concerned, the best answer is probably to be obtained from that remarkable passage in the second Epistle of Peter, in which the Deluge and the final catastrophe of the present world are placed in juxtaposition.1 With reference to the flood, Peter says that “ the earth, compacted (standing together) out of water and by means of water, being overflowed with water, perished,” in so far as its “ kosmos ” or arrangement was con¬ cerned. This clear description of a physical fact warrants us in attaching a like physical meaning to the succeeding statement that fire is being “stored up” for a new and different destruction, which will result in a greater change than that 1 2 Peter, chap. iii. 220 Eden Lost and Won effected by the flood, or in the production of a new heaven and new earth, not merely a new kosmos.1 In his excellent articles, in recent numbers of the Expositor, on the second coming of Christ, Prof. Agar Beet refers to the physical possibility of the earth becoming naturally dried up and lifeless as a prelude to a new era ; but this would require an immense lapse of time, and would scarcely agree with Peter’s foreview of a fiery destruction. There are two other ways in which such a change might be effected under the operation of ordinary physical laws, and of which we know something, because there is reason to believe that they have actually occurred in past time. The first is the impact of some solid body rushing toward the sun by the force of gravitation and striking the earth on its way. Such a collision might reduce the earth to a liquid or even vaporous condition, or, if less violent, might so affect its interior as to produce stupendous changes on its surface. It would, however, require a long time to restore the earth to a habitable condition after such an event. 1 The words yrj, Ko