Metabiblical

Ruminations on the biblical.

S. R. Driver, The Cosmogony of Genesis

S. R. Driver’s 1904 commentary on Genesis contained an essay which I think is worth reprinting in full for the interested reader. Here it is, with small formatting changes to make it appropriate for HTML. Original page numbers are given [in brackets] at the beginning of each page. The footnote numbering differs from the original, but the footnotes are those of Driver himself. The table of geological periods was a difficult case for formatting, and so I have both copied a facsimile of it and produced a modified version in text form.

The interested reader who wishes to read the essay in facsimile can find it here: https://archive.org/details/bookofgenesiswit0000unse_r0j7/page/19/mode/1up

The Cosmogony of Genesis1.

It remains to consider some important questions to which the cosmogony which we have just been studying gives rise. We have to ask, namely, (i) Does the picture which it affords of the past history of the world agree with that which is disclosed by science? (ii) What is the origin of the cosmogony? and (iii) What is its true value and import to us?

(i) Those who have read Pearson On the Creed may remember how at the end of his exposition of Art. I. (fol. 68) he says that heaven and earth were created ‘most certainly within not more than six, or at farthest seven, thousand years,’ from the age in which he was writing. That was the 17th century. But since Pearson’s time geology has become a science, and has disclosed, by testimony [p. 20] which cannot be gainsaid, the immense antiquity of the earth. The earth, as we now know, reached its present state, and acquired its rich and wondrous adornment of vegetable and animal life, by a gradual process, extending over countless centuries, and embracing unnumbered generations of living forms. Those white cliffs which rise out of the sea on our southern coasts, when examined by the microscope, are seen to consist mostly of the minute shells of marine organisms, deposited at the rate of a few inches a century at the bottom of the ocean, and afterwards, by some great upheaval of the earth’s crust, lifted high above the waves2. Our coal measures are the remains of mighty forests, which have slowly come and gone upon certain parts of the earth’s surface, and have stored up the energy, poured forth during long ages from the sun, for our consumption and enjoyment3. These and other formations contain moreover numerous fossil remains; and so geologists have been able to determine the order in which, during the slowly passing ages of their growth, higher and higher types of vegetable and animal life were ever appearing upon the globe. Nor is this all. Astronomers, by the study and comparison of the heavenly bodies, have risen to the conception of a theory explaining, by the aid of known mechanical and physical principles, the formation of the earth itself. The solar system—i.e. the sun, earth, and other planets with their satellites—existed once as a diffused gaseous mass, or nebula, of immense dimensions, which gradually condensed, and became a rotating sphere; and from this in succession the different planets were flung off, while the remainder was more and more concentrated till it became what we call the sun. One of these planets, the earth, in process of time, by reduction of temperature and other changes, developed the conditions adequate for the support of life4. The time occupied by all these processes cannot of course be estimated with any precision; but it will in any case have embraced millions of years: a recent work on astronomy places the time at which the moon was thus flung off from the then liquid earth, at about 57,000,000 years ago5.

Is now the teaching of geology and astronomy on the subjects referred to in the preceding paragraph consistent with what we read in Gen. i.?

Obviously it is not consistent with it, if by ‘day’ is meant a period of 24 hours. It is, however, conceivable that the writer, in spite of his regular mention of ‘evening’ and ‘morning,’ may have used the word in a figurative sense, as representing a period, aware indeed that the work of the Creator could not be measured by human standards, but at the same time desirous of artificially accommodating it to the period of the week. Let us, now, at least provisionally, grant this metaphorical use of the term ‘day’: the following questions will then arise. Do the ‘days’ of Genesis correspond with well-defined geological periods? and does the order in which the different living things and the heavenly bodies are stated to have been created agree with the [p. 21] facts of geology and astronomy? To both these questions candour compels the answer, No. Here is a table of the succession of life upon the globe, taken (with some modification of form) from Sir J. W. Dawson’s Chain of Life in Geological Time6:—

PERIODS.ANIMAL LIFE.VEGETABLE LIFE.
1. (Eozoic) LaurentianEozoon Canadense7.Doubtful.8
2. (Eozoic) HuronianAge of Protozoa (lowliest marine animals).Indications of plants not determinable.
3. (Paleozoic) CambrianInvertebrata: Age of mollusks, corals, and crustaceans.Marine plants (sea-weeds, &c.).
4 (Paleozoic) SilurianAs (3), and fishes begin.Earliest land plants.
5. (Paleozoic) DevonianFishes abundant (but no modern species).
Earliest insects9.
6. (Paleozoic) Carboniferous.Amphibians begin (species allied to frogs, newts, and water-lizards, some of the last large crocodile-like creatures).Coal plants; chiefly tree-ferns and large mosses (flowerless plans), pines, and cycads.
7. (Paleozoic) PermianEarliest true reptiles.
8. (Mesozoic) TriassicEarliest marsupial mammals.
9. (Mesozoic) JurassicAge of monster reptiles and of birds.Earliest modern trees.
10. (Mesozoic) Cretaceous
11. (Cainozoic) TertiaryAge of extinct mammals. First living invertebrates.Age of palms and dicotyledenous Angiosperms.
12. (Cainozoic) Post-TertiaryAge of modern mammals and man.Age of palms and dicotyledonous Angiosperms.

The earliest organic forms appear in the remains belonging to the period first named, marked, as its name implies, by the ‘dawn of life.’

In Genesis the order is:—

Third Day. Grass, herbs (i.e. vegetation more generally), trees.

(Fourth Day.—Luminaries.)

Fifth Day.—Aquatic animals, both small (שרץ, ‘swarming things’) and great (תנינים, ‘sea-monsters’), and winged creatures (birds; also probably such insects as usually appear on the wing).

Sixth Day.—Land animals, both domesticable and wild, and creeping things (small reptiles; perhaps also creeping insects). Man.

The two series are evidently at variance. (1) The geological record contains no evidence of clearly defined periods, such as (ex hyp.) are represented [p. 22] by the ‘days’ of Genesis. This, however, may perhaps be considered a minor discrepancy. (2) In Genesis vegetation is complete two ‘days’,—i.e. two periods,—before animal life appears: geology shews that they appear simultaneously—even if animal life does not appear first. The two are found side by side in humble forms; and they continue side by side, advancing gradually till the higher and more complete types are reached: one does not appear long before the other. (3) In Genesis fishes and birds appear together (Fifth Day), and precede all land-animals (Sixth Day); according to the evidence of geology, birds appear long after fishes, and they are preceded by numerous species of land-animals (including in particular ‘creeping things’).

The second and third of these discrepancies are formidable. To remove them, harmonists have had recourse to different expedients, of which the following are the principal.

(1) It has been supposed that the main description in Genesis does not relate to the geological periods at all, that room is left for, these periods between v. 1 and v. 2, that the life which then flourished upon the earth was brought to an end by a catastrophe the results of which are alluded to in v. 2, and that what follows is the description of a second creation, immediately preceding the appearance of man. This, implying as it does a destruction and subsequent restoration, is called the ‘restitution-hypothesis.’ It labours under most serious difficulties. The assumption of an interval between v. 1 and v. 2 wide enough to embrace the whole of geological time, though in the abstract exegetically admissible, is contrary to the general tenor of the opening verses of the narrative; the existence of the earth, together with the whole flora and fauna of the geological periods, prior to the creation of light and formation of the sun is scientifically incredible; and the existing species of plants and animals are so closely related to those which immediately preceded man, that the assumption of an intervening period of chaos and ruin is in the last degree improbable. Arbitrary in itself, and banned by science, the restitution-hypothesis, though advocated in the last century century by Kurtz and Dr. Chalmers, has otherwise been seldom adopted by modern apologists.

(2) The vision-theory. Upon this view the narrative is not meant to as the actual succession of events, but is the description of a series of visions, presented prophetically to the narrator’s mental eye, and representing not the first appearance of each species of life upon the globe, but its maximum development. The ‘drama of creation,’ it is said, is described not as it was enacted historically, but optically, as it would present itself to a spectator, in a series of pictures, or tableaux, embodying the most characteristic and conspicuous feature of each period, and, as it were, summarizing in miniature its results. The Third Day is identified with, the Carboniferous period (No. 6 in the Table), the marine life of the preceding periods, copious though it was, being supposed to be not visible in the tableaux, and consequently disregarded. This theory was attractively expounded in Hugh Miller’s Testimony of the Rocks (1857), a work which was for many years extremely popular in this country. The objections to it are enumerated by Delitzsch10. The revelation of the unknown past to a historian, or even to [p. 23] a prophet, by means of a vision, is unexampled in the OT., and out of analogy with the character and objects of prophecy; the narrative contains no indication of its being the relation of a vision (which in other cases is regularly noted, e.g. Am. vii.—ix.; Is. vi.; Ez. i. &c.); it purports to describe not appearances (‘And I saw, and behold…’), but facts (‘Let the earth … And it was so’), and to substitute one for the other is consequently illegitimate; the resemblances between Gen. i. and other cosmogonies—especially the Babylonian—shew that the writer has before him ‘not a vision, but a tradition.’ There is also the material difficulty that, while marine animals, small as well as great, were not hidden from view in the tableau of the Fifth Day, the fishes so characteristic of the Devonian period (which precedes the Carboniferous period) are not described: in accordance with the hypothesis itself, these should have been noticed before the vegetation of the Third Day. Indeed this last difficulty may be stated more generally: if the past was expressly revealed in the form of a vision, is it likely that the picture as a whole would be so widely different from the reality as it unquestionably is?

(3) Sir J. W. Dawson11, distinguished Canadian geologist of the last century, rejecting (p. 193) the hypothesis of Hugh Miller, as Hugh Miller before him had rejected that of Kurtz, adopted another method of reconciliation, assigning nearly the whole of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic periods (Nos. 4 to 9 in the Table) to the Fifth Day, and supposing Nos. 2 and 3 to contain such relics as survive of the work of the Third Day. The objections to this scheme are: (a) it brings together fishes and birds, which nevertheless are in reality widely separated (Nos. 4 and 9 in the Table); (b) Genesis places the appearance of ‘creeping things’ on the Sixth Day, while in fact they appear in what Sir J. W. Dawson assigns to the Fifth Day (Nos. 6 and 7)12; (c) in Genesis vegetation, including trees, is complete on the Third Day, whereas prior to the Silurian period (No. 4) nothing but the humblest forms of marine vegetation is observable. Sir J. W. Dawson is conscious of the last difficulty; and he allows that the existence before the Silurian period of vegetation that would satisfy the language of Genesis still awaits proof. He is sanguine himself that in time this proof may be forthcoming; but the fact that vegetable life is admitted to have advanced progressively from lower to higher forms is not favourable to the expectation, and it is certain that no other geologist shares it13.

[p. 24] (4) Professor Dana14, accepting the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, begins by seeking to accommodate it to the first five verses of Gen. i. Accordingly, following substantially Prof. Guyot15, he considers that the terms ‘earth’ and ‘waters’ in v. 2 do not denote anything which we should call by those names, but matter in that unimaginable condition in which it was not yet endowed with force or the power of molecular action: the creation of ‘light’ (v. 3) was in reality the endowment of this ‘inert’ matter with these capacities; vv. 6-8 (the Second Day) describe the making of the earth, ‘water’ there not denoting what the Hebrews knew as water, but the attenuated substance of the universe, while yet diffused, in a nebulous or vaporous form, through space, and v. 7 describing the separation of the earth from this diffused matter; and when it is said that on the Third Day the earth brought forth grass, herbs, and fruit-trees, the meaning really is, that it brought forth different species of sea-weed, and the lowest, seedless types of land-vegetation (these being all the forms of vegetation which geology recognizes before fishes, which are assigned by Genesis to the next day: see Nos. 3, 4 in the Table). Prof. Dana was a most eminent geologist; but the fact that, in order to harmonize the cosmogony of Genesis with the teachings of science, he was obliged to have recourse to such extraordinary and unnatural interpretations of the words of Genesis, is the best proof that the two are in reality irreconcilable16.

So much for the geological difficulties of the cosmogony of Genesis. Let us now consider the astronomical difficulties presented by it. (1) The creation of the sun, moon, and stars, after the earth. The formation of the heavenly bodies after the earth is inconsistent with the entire conception of the solar system—and indeed, if we think also of the, stars, with that of the whole [p. 25] celestial universe—as revealed by science. Both the stars in their far-distant courses, and the planetary system with which this globe is more intimately connected, form a vast and wonderfully constituted order, so marked by correlation of structure, by identity of component elements (as revealed by the spectroscope), and by unity of design, as to forbid the supposition that a particular body (the earth) was created prior to the whole, of which it is a single and subordinate part. (2) The commonly accepted theory (Laplace’s) of the formation of the solar system by the gradual condensation of a nebula, does not permit the consolidation of the earth, the appearance upon it of water, and the growth of vegetation, before the sun was ‘made,’ i.e. while the substance of the sun was still in a diffused gaseous state. At such a period, it is doubtful if the earth itself would not also have been in a gaseous state; certainly, it would not have cooled sufficiently for water to exist upon it, and trees to grow17. The solution usually offered of these difficulties is that be in v. 14 means appear, and made in v. 16 means not formed, but either (Dana) made to appear, or (Dawson) appointed, viz. to their office and work: the luminaries, it is argued, may thus have existed long previously, but it was only on the Fourth Day that they ‘appeared’ (the thick vapour around the earth having previously concealed them), and were ‘appointed’ to the functions enumerated in vv. 14-18. But this explanation is quite untenable. Hebrew is not such a poverty-stricken language as to have no word expressing the idea of ‘appear’ (see v. 9); and had the writer intended ‘appear,’ it may be safely affirmed that he would have said so. The sense attached to ‘made’ is also illegitimate: in the very few passages where עשה means appointed, either this sense is at once apparent from the context18, or the word is followed by a specification of the office or function intended19: used absolutely, it can be only a synonym of ‘formed20.’ Verses 14-18 cannot be legitimately interpreted except as implying that, in the conception of the writer, luminaries had not previously existed; and that they were ‘made,’ and ‘set’ in their places in the heavens, after the separation of sea and land, and the appearance of vegetation upon the earth (vv. 6-8, 9-13). No reconciliation of this representation with the data of science has as yet been found.

One discrepancy more, of a different kind, remains still to be noticed. From the injunction in v. 30 it is a legitimate inference that the narrator considered the original condition of animals to be one in which they subsisted solely on vegetable food. This is not merely inconsistent with the physical structure of many animals (which is such as to require animal food), but is [p. 26] contradicted by the facts of palaeontology, which afford conclusive evidence that animals preyed upon one another long before the date of man’s appearance upon the earth.

From all that has been said, only one conclusion can be drawn. Read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of Gen. i. creates an impression at variance with the facts revealed by science: the efforts at reconciliation which have been reviewed are but different modes of obliterating its characteristic features, and of reading into it a view which it does not express. The harmonistic expedients adopted by Sir J. W. Dawson and Prof. Dana are in reality tantamount to the admission that, understood in the natural sense of the words—and we have no right to impose any other sense upon them—it does not accord with the teachings of science. While fully bearing in mind the immediate design of the writer, to describe, viz. in terms intelligible to the non-scientific mind, how the earth was fitted to become the abode of man, it is impossible not to feel that, had he been acquainted with its actual past, he would, while still using language equally simple, equally popular, equally dignified, have expressed himself in different terms, and presented a different picture of the entire process. It will also, further, be now apparent that the admission, granted provisionally above (p. 20), that ‘day’ might be interpreted as representing a period, is of no avail for bringing the narrative into harmony with the teaching of science; and that consequently there is no occasion to understand the word in any but its ordinary sense.

(ii) What then may we suppose to have been the source of the cosmogony of Genesis? In answering this question, we must bear in mind the position which the Hebrews took among the nations of antiquity. In the possession of aptitudes fitting them in a peculiar measure to become the channel of revelation and the exponents of a spiritual religion, the Hebrew nation differed materially from its neighbours; but it was allied to them in language, it shared with them many of the same institutions, the same ideas and habits of thought. Other nations of antiquity made efforts to fill the void in the past which begins where historical reminiscences cease, and framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man, or to solve the problems which the observation of human society suggested. It is but consonant with analogy to suppose that the Hebrews were conscious of the same needs; and either formed similar theories for themselves, or borrowed those of their neighbours. Thus many, perhaps most, nations, where they had no knowledge of science to guide them, have given the reins to their imagination, and framed cosmogonies21. These cosmogonies reflect partly the impressions made upon the nation framing it by the physical world, partly the general mental characteristics of the nation, partly the conception of deity current in it. That the physical element in such cosmogonies was usually erroneous, and often grotesque, was a natural consequence of the ignorance of physical science possessed by those who constructed them. The theological element varied according as the conceptions of deity current in a particular nation were more or less spiritual: where, for instance, polytheism prevailed, places had to be found in the process for the various divine beings, and the cosmogonies consequently became often theogonies.

[p. 27] The cosmogony of Genesis seems, in its arrangement, to have been determined ultimately by the observation that there is a rank and order in natural products, and by the reflexion that one part of nature is in various ways dependent upon, or supported by, another.

The more immediate source of the Biblical cosmogony, however, there can be little doubt, has been brought to light recently from Babylonia. Between 1872 and 1876 that skilful collector and decipherer of cuneiform records, the late Mr George Smith, published, partly from tablets found by him in the British Museum, partly from those which he had discovered himself in Assyria, a number of inscriptions containing, as he quickly perceived, a Babylonian account of Creation. Since that date other tablets have come to light; and though the series relating to the Creation is still incomplete, enough remains not only to exhibit clearly the general scheme of the Cosmogony, but also to make it evident that the cosmogony of the Bible is dependent upon it. The tablets themselves come from the Library of Asshurbanipal (668—626 B.C.) at Kouyunjik (Nineveh); but Asshurbanipal’s Library is known to have included many transcripts of earlier texts; and Assyriologists entertain no doubt that the contents of the tablets are much more ancient than the 7th cent. B.C., and are probably (Sayce) as old as the 22nd or 23rd cent. B.C.

There is no occasion to give here a translation of the whole of the tablets which have been discovered22; but the reader cannot properly estimate their bearing upon the Biblical narrative without having the characteristic parallels placed before him, and being made acquainted with the general outline of their contents. It should only be premised that some particulars of the Babylonian cosmogony were known before these discoveries from extracts which had been preserved from Berossus—a Babylonian priest, who lived about 300 B.C., and compiled a work on Babylonian history—and Damascius (6th cent. a.D.); and the accuracy of these particulars (apart from certain textual corruptions) has been fully established by the inscriptions23.

The inscriptions preserved on these tablets are written in a rhythmical form; and form in reality a kind of epic poem, the theme of which is the glorification of Marduk (Merodach, Jer. 1. 2), the supreme god of Babylon, declaring how, after a severe conflict, he had overcome the powers of chaos and darkness, and had so been enabled to create a world of light and order. The poem is conceived polytheistically; but this fact does not neutralize the underlying resemblances with Gen. i. The first tablet (of which only [p. 28] a fragment is preserved) describes how, before what we call earth or heaven had come into being, there existed a primaeval watery chaos (Tiâmat, corresponding to the Heb. tehōm, the ‘deep’ of Gen. i. 2), out of which the Babylonian gods were evolved:—

When above | the heaven was not yet named,
And the land beneath | yet bare no name,
And the primaeval Apsū (the abyss), | their begetter,
And chaos (?), Tiâmat, | the mother of them both—
(5) Their waters | were mingled together,
And no field was formed, | no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods | still none had been produced,
No name had yet been named, | no destiny yet [fixed];
Then were created | the gods in the midst of [heaven ?]
(10) Lachmu and Lachamu | were produced,
Long ages passed . . . .
Anshar and Kishar | were created, and over them . . . .
Long were the days, then there came forth . . . .
Anu, their son . . . .
(15) Anshar and Anu . . . .
And the god Anu . . . .
Ea, whom his fathers, [his] begetters . . . .

Different Babylonian deities thus gradually came into being. Tiâmat, or the deep, represents ‘a popular attempt to picture the chaotic condition that prevailed before the great gods obtained control, and established the order of heavenly and terrestrial phaenomena’: in the sequel she is personified as a gigantic monster. The belief that the world originated out of water was a consequence, Assyriologists hold, of the climatic conditions of Babylonia. During the long winter, the Babylonian plain, flooded by the heavy rains, looks like a sea (Bab. tiamtu, tiâmat). Then comes the spring, when the clouds and water vanish, and dry land and vegetation appear. So, thought the Babylonian, must it have been in the first spring, at the first New Year, when, after a fight between Marduk and Tiâmat, the organized world came into being24.

The subsequent parts of the first tablet describe how Apsū, disturbed at finding his domain invaded by the new gods, induced Tiâmat to join with him in contesting their supremacy: he was, however, subdued by Ea; and Tiâmat, left to carry on the struggle alone, provides herself with a brood of strange and hideous allies25.

The second, third, and fourth tablets, describe how the gods, alarmed at Tiâmat’s preparations, having taken counsel together, appointed Marduk as their champion, and how Marduk equips himself with winds and lightnings for the fray. The account of the combat, in the fourth tablet, is told with dramatic force and vividness. Armed with his weapons, Marduk advances; he seizes Tiâmat in a huge net, and transfixes her with his scimitar. The [p. 29] carcase of the monster he split into two halves, one of which he fixed on high, to form a firmament supporting the waters above it:—

(137) He cleft her like a flat(?) fish | into two parts,
The one half of her he set up, | and made a covering for the heaven,
Set a bar before it, | stationed a guard,
(140) Commanded them not | to let its waters issue forth.
He marched through the heaven, | surveyed the regions thereof,
Stood in front of the abyss, | the abode of the god Ea.
Then Bel26 measured | the structure of the abyss,
A great house, a copy of it, | he founded E-sharra;
(145) The great house E-sharra, | which he built as the heaven,
He made Anu, Bel, and Ea, | to inhabit as their city.

‘It is evident that the canopy of heaven is meant. Such is the enormous size of Tiâmat that one-half of her body, flattened out so as to serve as a curtain, is stretched across the heavens to keep the “upper waters”—the
“waters above the firmament” as the Book of Genesis puts it—from coming down’ (Jastrow)27. The ‘abyss’ was the huge body of waters on which the earth was supposed to rest (cf. on vv. 9, 10). E-sharra (‘house of fulness or fertility,’ Jensen) is a poetical designation of the earth, which was conceived by the Babylonians as a hollow hemisphere, similar in appearance to the vault of heaven, but placed beneath it (with its convex side upwards), and supported upon the ‘abyss’ of waters underneath (Jastrow, p. 431).

The fifth tablet (still incomplete) describes the formation of the sun and moon, and afterwards the appointment of years and months:—

(1) He made the stations | for the great gods,
As stars resembling them | he fixed the signs of the zodiac,
He ordained the year, | defined divisions,
Twelve months with stars, | three each, he appointed.
(5) After he had . . . . the days of the year| . . . . images,
He fixed the station of Nibir (Jupiter), | to determine their limits,
That none (of the days) might err, | none make a mistake.
(8) The station of Bel and Ea, | he fixed by his (Jupiter’s) side.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(12) He caused the moon-god to shine forth, | entrusted to him the night;
Appointed him as a night-body, | to determine the days.

The opening lines of tablet VII, where Marduk is hailed as the ‘Bestower of planting,’ and ‘Creator of grain and plants, who caused the green herb to spring up,’ shew that the poem mentioned the creation of vegetation; and it is probable that this was recorded in the lost parts of tablet V. (King, p. L).

The sixth tablet (the opening and closing lines of which have been recovered by Mr King) describes the creation of man:—

[p. 30]

When Marduk heard the word of the gods,
His heart prompted him and he devised [a cunning plan].
He opened his mouth, and unto Ea [he spake],
[That which] he had conceived in his heart he imparted [unto him]:
(5) ‘My blood28 will I take, and bone will I [fashion],
I will make man, that man may . . . .
I will create man who shall inhabit [the earth ?],
That the service of the gods may be established, and that [their] shrines [may be built]29.’

The seventh tablet consists of a hymn, addressed by the gods to Marduk, celebrating his deeds and character, and representing him as all-powerful, beneficent, compassionate, and just30 (cf. King, pp. LXIII ff., LXXXIX).

The differences between the Babylonian epic and the first chapter of Genesis are sufficiently wide: in the one, particularly in the parts not here repeated, we have an exuberant and grotesque polytheism; in the other, a severe and dignified monotheism: in the one, chaos is anterior to Deity, the gods emerge, or are evolved, out of it, and Marduk gains his supremacy only after a long contest; in the other, the Creator is supreme and absolute from the beginning. But, in spite of these profound theological differences, there are material resemblances between the two representations, which are too marked and too numerous to be explained as chance coincidences. The outline, or general course of events, is the same in the two narratives. There are in both the same abyss of waters at the beginning, denoted by almost the same word, the separation of this abyss afterwards into an upper and a lower ocean, the formation of heavenly bodies and their appointment as measures of time, and the creation of man. In estimating these similarities, it must further be remembered that they do not stand alone: in the narrative of the Deluge (see p. 104 f.) we find traits borrowed unmistakably from a Babylonian source; so that the antecedent difficulty which might otherwise have been felt in supposing elements in the Creation-narrative to be traceable ultimately to the same quarter is considerably lessened. In fact, no archaeologist questions that the Biblical cosmogony, however altered in form and stripped of its original polytheism, is, in its main outlines, derived from Babylonia. Nor ought such a conclusion to surprise us. The Biblical historians make no claim to have derived their information from a supernatural source: their materials, it is plain (cf. Luke i. 1—4), were obtained by them from the best human sources available; the function of inspiration was to guide them in the disposal and arrangement of these [p. 31] materials, and in the use to which they applied them. And so, in his picture of the beginnings of the world, having nothing better available, the author has utilized elements derived ultimately from a heathen source, and made them the vehicle of profound religious teaching.

We have said ‘derived ultimately‘; for naturally a direct borrowing from the Babylonian narrative is not to be thought of: it is incredible that the monotheistic author of Gen. i, at whatever date he lived, could have borrowed any detail, however slight, from the polytheistic epic of the conflict of Marduk and Tiâmat. The Babylonian legend of Creation must have passed through a long period of naturalization in Israel, and of gradual assimilation to the spirit of Israel’s religion, before it could have reached the form in which it is presented to us in the first chapter of Genesis. How, or when, it was first introduced among the Hebrews, must remain matter of conjecture. Its introduction may reach back to when the ancestors of the Hebrews lived side by side with the Babylonians in Ur (xi. 28)31, or when they ‘dwelt beyond the River’ (the Euphrates), in Mesopotamia, and ‘served other gods’ (Jos. xxiv. 2). Since, however, the Tel el-Amarna letters (c. 1400 B.C.) have shewn how strong Babylonian influence must have been in Canaan, even before the Israelitish occupation, this has been thought by many32 to have been the channel by which Babylonian ideas penetrated into Israel; they were first, it has been supposed, naturalized among the Canaanites, and afterwards,–as the Israelites came gradually to have intercourse with the Canaanites,–they were transmitted to the Israelites as well. But, whether one of these or some other explanation is the true one, the fact remains that we have in the first chapter of Genesis the Hebrew version of an originally Babylonian legend respecting the beginnings of all things. But in the Biblical narrative, the old Semitic cosmogony appears in a form very different from that in which we read it in the Babylonian Creation-epic. It appears ‘in the form which it received at the hands of devout Israelites moved by the Spirit of God, and penetrated with the pure belief in the spiritual Jehovah. The saints and prophets of Israel stripped the old legend of its pagan deformities. Its shape and outline survived. But its spirit was changed, its religious teaching and significance were transformed, in the light of revelation. The popular tradition was not abolished; it was preserved, purified, hallowed, that it might subserve the Divine purpose of transmitting, as in a figure,’ to future generations, ‘spiritual teaching upon eternal truths’ (Ryle, Early Narratives of Genesis, p. 12 f.)33.

(iii) It remains only to indicate in outline the nature of this teaching.

[p. 32]

(1) The Cosmogony of Genesis shews, in opposition to the conceptions widely prevalent in antiquity, that the world was not self-originated; that it was called into existence, and brought gradually into its present state, at the will of a spiritual Being, prior to it, independent of it, and deliberately planning every stage of its progress. The spirituality, not less than the dignity, of the entire representation is indeed in marked contrast to the self-contradictory, grotesque speculations of which the ancient cosmogonies usually consist. ‘It sets God above the great complex world-process, and yet closely linked with it, as a personal intelligence and will that rules victoriously and without a rival’ (Whitehouse, art. COSMOGONY in DB., p. 507b).

(2) Dividing artificially the entire period into six days, it notices in order the most prominent cosmical phaenomena; and groups the living creatures upon the earth under the great subdivisions which appeal to the eye. By this means it presents a series of representative pictures,—none, indeed, corresponding, in actual fact, to the reality, but all standing for, or representing it,—of the various stages by which the earth was gradually formed, and peopled with its living inhabitants; and it insists that each of these stages is no product of chance, or of mere mechanical forces, but is an act of the Divine will, realizes the Divine purpose, and receives the seal of the Divine approval34. It is uniformly silent on the secondary causes through which in particular cases, or even more generally, the effects described may have been produced; it leaves these for the investigation of science; it teaches what science as such cannot discover (for it is not its province to do so), the relation in which they stand to God. The slow formation of the earth as taught by geology, the gradual development of species by the persistent accumulation of minute variations, made probable by modern biology, are but the exhibition in detail of those processes which the author of this cosmogony sums up into a single phrase and apparently compresses into a single moment, for the purpose of declaring their dependence upon the Divine will.

(3) It insists on the distinctive pre-eminence, belonging to man, implied in the remarkable self-deliberation taken in his case by the Creator, and signified expressly by the phrase ‘the image of God.’ By this is meant, as was shewn above, man’s possession of self-conscious reason,—an adumbration, we may suppose, however faint, of the supreme reason of God,—enabling him to know, in a sense in which animals do not know, and involving the capacity of — apprehending moral and religious truth (see more fully on v. 26). Whether, as a matter of fact, man appeared originally as the result of an independent creative act, or whether, as modern biologists commonly hold, he appeared as the result of a gradual evolution from anthropoid ancestors, does not affect the truth which is here insisted on: however acquired, rational faculties are still his; and whether this opinion of modern biologists be true or not, there can at least be no theological objection to the supposition that, as God has undoubtedly endowed the organism of the individual with the power of [p. 33] developing mind out of antecedents in which no sign or trace of mind is discernible, it may also have pleased Him, by the workings of His providence in a far-distant past, to endow certain forms of organized being with the capacity of developing, in His good time, under the action of a suitable environment, the attributes distinctive of man.

It is important to have a clear and consistent view of the first chapter of Genesis. It stands upon the threshold of the Bible and to all who have anything more than a merely superficial knowledge of the great and far-reaching truths which science has brought to light, it presents the greatest difficulties. These difficulties are felt now far more acutely than they used to be: 70 or 80 years ago there was practically no geology; but the progress of science has brought the Cosmogony of Genesis into sharp and undisguised antagonism with the Cosmogony of science. The efforts of the harmonists have been well-intentioned; but they have resulted only in the construction a of artificial schemes, which are repugnant to common sense, and, especially in the minds of students and lovers of science, create a prejudice against the entire system with which the cosmogony is connected. The Cosmogony of Genesis is treated in popular estimation as an integral element of the Christian faith. It cannot be too earnestly represented that this is not the case. A definition of the process by which, after the elements composing it were created, the world assumed its present condition, forms no article in the Christian creed. The Church has never pronounced with authority upon the interpretation of the narrative of Genesis. It is consequently open to the Christian teacher to understand it in the sense which science will permit; and it becomes his duty to ascertain what that sense is. But, as the Abbé Loisy has justly said, the science of the Bible is the science of the age in which it was written; and to expect to find in it supernatural information on points of scientific fact, is to mistake its entire purpose. And so the value of the first chapter of Genesis lies not on its scientific side, but on its theological side. Upon the false science of antiquity its author has grafted a true and dignified representation of the relation of the world to God. It is not its office to forestall scientific discovery; it neither comes into collision with science, nor needs reconciliation with it. It must be read in the light of the age in which it was written; and while the spiritual teaching so vividly expressed by it can never lose its freshness or value, it must on its material side be interpreted in accordance with the place which it holds in the history of Semitic cosmological speculation35.

  1. The following pages are adapted in the main, with some abridgment, from an article contributed by the present writer to the Expositor, Jan. 1886, pp. 23-45. ↩︎
  2. See Huxley‘s striking lecture ‘On a piece of Chalk‘ in his Lay Sermons (reprinted in his Collected Essays, vol. VIII.). ↩︎
  3. Comp. two fine passages on the ‘Slowness of the Creative Process’ in Pritchard’s Analogies in the Progress of Nature and Grace, 1868 (the Hulsean Lectures for 1867), pp. 11 ff., 19 ff.; also Bonney‘s Old Truths in Modern Lights, p. 89 ff. ↩︎
  4. See Sir R. S. Ball‘s The Earth’s Beginnings (1901), esp. p. 246 ff. ↩︎
  5. Prof. H. H. Turner, Modern Astronomy (1901), p. 277. ↩︎
  6. Ed. 3 (1888). See the Table opposite to p.1; and (on No. 6) pp. 142-157. Cf. the same writer’s Relics of Primaeval Life (1897), p. 2. ↩︎
  7. If this be of organic origin, a question on which geologists still differ. Comp. Geikie‘s Text Book of Geology (1893), p. 694 f.; Bonney, Geol. Mag. 1895, p. 292. ↩︎
  8. Perhaps to be assumed from the large quantity of graphite (carbon) present in these rocks: see Geikie, p. 696, with note 1; Prestwich, Geology (1888), II. 21 f. ↩︎
  9. E.g. a kind of May-fly, as well as other forms (Chain of Life, p. 139 ff.). ↩︎
  10. Comm. über die Genesis, ed. 4 (1872), p. 18 f. ↩︎
  11. Origin of the World according to Revelation and Science,3 pp. 192—5. ↩︎
  12. To escape this difficulty Sir J. W. Dawson (Expositor, Apr. 1886, p. 297) limits rémes (see on i. 24) to ‘small quadrupeds’; but the limitation is arbitrary; for it is impossible to exclude reptiles from the expression. ↩︎
  13. The harmony represented as existing between Gen. i. and science, in the Table facing p. 1 of Sir J. W. Dawson’s Modern Science in Bible Lands3 (1895) is purely illusory: ‘vegetation,’ for instance, in the Biblical column means entirely land-plants, whereas the ‘Protogens in graphite beds’ which correspond ostensibly in the column headed ‘Vegetable life’ consist entirely of marine plants, to the exclusion of land-plants; and reptiles actually appear long before birds, not simultaneously with them, as they are represented as doing in the column headed ‘Animal life.’ The Table on p. 353 of the Origin of the World is illusory also upon similar grounds.
    The reader of Sir J. W. Dawson’s works should be aware that his statements on Biblical matters, especially where questions relating to science or criticism are involved, are to be received with much caution and distrust. ↩︎
  14. In the Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1885, p. 201 ff. ↩︎
  15. Creation (1884), p. 36: ‘The Heb. word maīm does not necessarily mean waters, but applies as well to a gaseous atmosphere’ (!). And ‘earth’ is similarly explained as denoting (pp. 35, 38) a formless sphere of gas—the ‘primordial cosmic material,’ out of which the universe was ultimately formed.
    The solution of the discrepancies proposed recently by Mr Capron (The Conflict of Truth, 1901, pp. 170 ff., 194), viz. that the text speaks only of the order in which the creative words were uttered, not of that in which the resulting effects were produced, yields a sense which is contrary to the obvious intention of the writer. Mr Capron argues also (p. 205 ff.) that by ‘earth’ and ‘water’ in Gen. i, 1, 2 is denoted gaseous matter; but the sense which he supposes to be expressed by these two verses (pp. 136 ff., 213) is not credible (v. 2 ‘And matter was then in a gaseous condition; for it was formless, homogeneous, and invisible, and the Spirit of the Almighty agitated with molecular vibrations the fluid mass’). ↩︎
  16. When therefore Prof. Dana’s authority is quoted for the opinion that Gen i. is in harmony with science, it must be carefully remembered how this harmony was obtained by him, viz. by imposing upon the words of Genesis meanings which it is simply impossible that they can ever have been intended to convey.
    See further, on Prof. Dana’s theory of reconciliation, the critique of the present writer in the Andover (U.S. A.) Review, Dec. 1887, pp. 641-9; and President Morton’s articles referred to below (p. 33). Comp. also Prof. T. G. Bonney at the Norwich Church Congress (Report of the Norwich Church Congress, p. 311; or in the Guardian, Oct. 16, 1895, p. 1588): ‘The story of Creation in Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from geology.’ Canon Bonney permits the writer to add that the statements on geological subjects contained in the preceding pages are in his opinion correct. ↩︎
  17. Cf. Prof. Pritchard, late Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, Expositor, Jan. 1891, p. 49 f.: ‘The existence of water [on the earth] before the concentration of the sun into the form of a sun is inconceivable with a competent knowledge of the facts of nature. So too is the existence of grass and fruit trees, antecedent to the same, or even under the condition of the invisibility of the sun as a sun’ (cf. p. 53). To the same effect, Occasional Notes of an Astronomer, p. 262 f. ↩︎
  18. As, ‘He made priests from among all the people’ (1 K. xiii. 31); 2 S. xv. 1 and 1 K. i. 5 (where ‘prepared’ is lit. made); 2 K. xxi. 6 (RVm.). But really in these passages ‘made’ means more than ‘appointed’; it means instituted, organized, i.e. it is merely a metaphorical application of the proper sense of ‘made.’ ↩︎
  19. As Ps. civ. 4; 1 S. viii. 16. ↩︎
  20. As v. 26, v. 1; Am. v. 8; Job ix. 9; Ps. cxv. 15, and regularly. ↩︎
  21. See particulars in the art. COSMOGONY in the Encycl, Britannica, ed. 9. ↩︎
  22. A translation may be found in Ball’s Light from the East (1899), pp. 2-18; in KB. VI. 3-39 (by Jensen), with notes, p. 302 ff.; and esp. in L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation (1902), 1.3 ff. [vol. II. has cuneiform texts only], containing many important new fragments. See also the chapter on the ‘Cosmology of the Babylonians’ in Jastrow’s Religion of Bab. and Ass. (Boston, U.S.A., 1898), pp. 407-453; and Zimmern in KAT.3 (1902), p. 491 ff., 584-6. ↩︎
  23. See the Greek text of Damascius in KAT.3 p. 490, or in Jensen’s Kosmologie der Bab. p. 270; and translations in G. Smith, Chald. Gen. p. 49 f., Lenormant, Origines de l’histoire2 (1880), I. 493 f., Gunkel’s Schöpjung und Chaos (1895), p. 17; KAT.3 l.c.: cf. also KAT.2 p. 12. It is parallel to the first extract from the Creation epic, cited below. For the Greek text of Berossus, see Müller, Fragm. Hist. Graec. II. 497 f., KAT.3 488—90 ; King, pp. XLV, LIV-LVI; and for translations, G. Smith, op. cit. pp. 40-42, Lenormant, p. 506 f., Gunkel, pp. 17-20, DB. I. 504b, KAT.3 l.c.: cf. KAT.2 pp. 6-9, 12-14, EncB. art. CREATION, § 15. ↩︎
  24. Jastrow, op. cit. pp. 411 f., 432 f.; Zimmern, CREATION (§ 4) in EncB. ↩︎
  25. Alluded to also in the extract from Berossus (see DB. I. 504b; and cf. Jastrow, pp. 414, 419). They are a further symbol of the disorder which ruled in chaos, and which had to be overcome before an ordered world could be produced. ↩︎
  26. I.e. Lord, a title of Marduk (cf. Is. slvi. 1; Jer. li. 44). ↩︎
  27. According to Berossus, the other half of the monster’s carcase was made into the earth. However, that is not stated in the present tablet. ↩︎
  28. Cf. Berossus, l.c. The emendation adopted in EncB. I. 946 n. 4 is seen now to be unnecessary (King, pp. LVI, LVII). ↩︎
  29. The passage cited in Auth. and Arch. 13 does not belong here (King, 202 f.) ↩︎
  30. There seem also to have been some points of contact between the Heb. and the Phoenician cosmogony. The Phoenicians cosmogony (as reported by Eus. Praep. Ev. I. 10. 1, 2), placed at the beginning of all things an ἀὴρ ζοφώδης καὶ πνευματώδης and χάος θολερὸν ἐρεβῶδες, both being ἄπειρα; after an indefinite period of time, the πνεῦμα, acting upon the χάος, gave rise to Μωτ–i.e., perhaps (see CREATION in EncB., § 7) τὸ Μωτ = תְּהֹמוֺת, the deeps–a watery, muddy mass (ἰλυς), containing the germs of all subsequent existence (πᾶσα σπορὰ κτίσεως), which assumed the form of a huge egg. See further Dillm.; Lenormant, I. 532 ff.; EncB. l.c. (also on the Phoen. Βααυ [=bōhū], said in Eus. § 4 to mean ‘night,’ and to be the mother of Αἰὼν (the world?) and Πρωτόγονος); DB. I. 504a. ↩︎
  31. Jastrow, Jewish Quart. Rev. 1901, p. 653. ↩︎
  32. E.g. by Sayce, Gunkel, Winckler, Zimmern. ↩︎
  33. That Heb. folk-lore told of a conflict of Jehovah with a dragon is apparent from Job ix. 13, xxvi. 11 (Rahab, ‘boisterousness,’ though in Is. xxx. 7, Ps. lxxxvii. 4, a poetical name of Egypt, being here manifestly the name of some monster). The context in Ps. lxxiv. 13-17, lxxxix. 9-12, where there follow allusions to Jehovah’s creative work, seems even to shew that the victory over Rahab, as an aboriginal monster symbolizing chaos, was pictured as having preceded the work of creation: cf. Is. li. 9, where, though the immediate reference is obviously to the overthrow of Egypt at the Red Sea, the imagery used by the prophet seems to have been borrowed by him from the same legend of the destruction of Rahab. Cf. Zimmern, The Bab. and Heb. Genesis, pp. 8—12; KAT3. 507 ff.; and art. RAHAB in DB. ↩︎
  34. Comp. above on vv. 3, 4. ↩︎
  35. See, further, on the subject of the preceding pages, Huxley, Collected Essays, IV. 64 ff., 139-200; Riehm, Der Biblische Schöpfungsbericht, Halle, 1881 (a lecture pointing out the theological value, at the present day, of the cosmogony of Genesis); C. Pritchard, Occasional Notes of an Astronomer on Nature and Revelation, 1889 (a collection of sermons and addresses, often very suggestive), p. 257 ff. (‘The Proem of Genesis,’ reprinted from the Guardian, Feb. 10, 1886); Dr Ladd, What is the Bible? (New York, 1890), chap. v. (‘The Bible and the Sciences of Nature’); Ryle, Early Narratives of Genesis (1892), chaps. i., ii.; H. Morton, The Cosmogony of Genesis and its Reconcilers, reprinted from the Bibliotheca Sacra, April and July, 1897 (a detailed criticism, by a man of science, who has also theological sympathies, of the schemes of the reconcilers. President Morton’s general conclusions are the same as those adopted above. See a note by the present writer in the Expositor, June, 1898, pp. 464—9); Whitehouse, art. COSMOGONY in DB.; Zimmern and Cheyne, art. CREATION in EncB.; Zimmern, The Bab. and Heb. Genesis (in a series of short, popular brochures, called ‘The Ancient East’), 1901, pp. 1—28; the Abbé Loisy, Les Mythes Babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genése (1901), pp. 1—102; Jastrow, Jewish Quart. Rev. July, 1901, pp. 620—654; L. W. King, Bab. Religion and Mythology (popular), pp. 53—146. ↩︎

More Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *