Mr. Gladstone and Genesis Part 2

The creation of man is announced as a separate act, resulting from a particular resolution of Elohim to "make man in our image, after our likeness." To learn what this remarkable phrase means we must turn to the fifth chapter of Genesis, the work of the same writer. "In the day that Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elohim made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat _a son_ in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth." I find it impossible to read this pa.s.sage without being convinced that, when the writer says Adam was made in the likeness of Elohim, he means the same sort of likeness as when he says that Seth was begotten in the likeness of Adam. Whence it follows that his conception of Elohim was completely anthropomorphic.

In all this narrative I can discover nothing which differentiates it, in principle, from other ancient cosmogonies, except the rejection of all G.o.ds, save the vague, yet anthropomorphic, Elohim, and the a.s.signing to them anteriority and superiority to the world. It is as utterly irreconcilable with the a.s.sured truths of modern science, as it is with the account of the origin of man, plants, and animals given by the writer of the second chief const.i.tuent of the Hexateuch in the second chapter of Genesis. This extraordinary story starts with the a.s.sumption of the existence of a rainless earth, devoid of plants and herbs of the field. The creation of living beings begins with that of a solitary man; the next thing that happens is the laying out of the Garden of Eden, and the causing the growth from its soil of every tree "that is pleasant to the sight and good for food"; the third act is the formation out of the ground of "every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air"; the fourth and last, the manufacture of the first woman from a rib, extracted from Adam, while in a state of anaesthesia.

Yet there are people who not only profess to take this monstrous legend seriously, but who declare it to be reconcilable with the Elohistic account of the creation!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Nineteenth Century,_ 1886.]

[Footnote 2: Both dolphins and dugongs occur in the Red Sea, porpoises and dolphins in the Mediterranean; so that the "Mosaic writer" may have been acquainted with them.]

[Footnote 3: I said nothing about "the greater number of schools of Greek philosophy," as Mr. Gladstone implies that I did, but expressly spoke of the "founders of Greek philosophy."]

[Footnote 4: See Heinze, _Die Lehre vom Logos,_ p. 9 _et seq._]

[Footnote 5: Reprinted in _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews,_ 1870.]

[Footnote 6: "Ancient," doubtless, but his antiquity must not be exaggerated. For example, there is no proof that the "Mosaic" cosmogony was known to the Israelites of Solomon's time.]

[Footnote 7: When Jeremiah (iv. 23) says, "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void," he certainly does not mean to imply that the form of the earth was less definite, or its substance less solid, than before.]

[Footnote 8: In looking through the delightful volume recently published by the Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, a day or two ago, I find the following remarks on the nebular hypothesis, which I should have been glad to quote in my text if I had known them sooner:--

"Nor can it be ever more than a speculation; it cannot be established by observation, nor can it be proved by calculation. It is merely a conjecture, more or less plausible, but perhaps in some degree, necessarily true, if our present laws of heat, as we understand them, admit of the extreme application here required, and if the present order of things has reigned for sufficient time without the intervention of any influence at present known to us" (_The Story of the Heavens,_ p.

506).

Would any prudent advocate base a plea, either for or against revelation, upon the coincidence, or want of coincidence, of the declarations of the latter with the requirements of an hypothesis thus guardedly dealt with by an astronomical expert?]

[Footnote 9: Lectures on Evolution delivered in New York (American Addresses).]

[Footnote 10: Reuss, _L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi,_ vol. i, p. 275.]

[Footnote 11: For the sense of the term "Elohim," see the essay ent.i.tled "The Evolution of Theology" at the end of this volume.]

[Footnote 12: Perhaps even hippopotamuses and otters!]