What would one naturally expect in a revelation by God to man?1. We should expect God to reveal truths of which mankind were ignorant.2. We should expect God to make no errors of fact in His revelation.3. We should expect God to make His revelation so clear and so definitethat it could be neither misunderstood nor misrepresented.4. We should expect God to ensure that His revelation should reachallmen; and should reach all men directly and quickly.5. We should expect God's revelation of the relations existing betweenHimself and man to be true.6. We should expect the ethical code in God's revelation to be complete,and final, and perfect. The divine ethics should at least be abovehuman criticism and beyond human amendment.
To what extent does the Bible revelation fulfil the above natural expectations?
1. Does the Bible reveal any new moral truths?
I cannot speak very positively, but I think there is very little moral truth in the Bible which has not been, or will not be traced back to more ancient times and religions.
2. Does the Bible revelation contain no errors of fact?
I claim that it contains many errors of fact, and the Higher Criticism supports the claim; as we shall see.
3. Is the Bible revelation so clear and explicit that no difference of opinion as to its meaning is possible?
No. It is not. No one living can claim anything of the kind.
4. Has God's revelation, as given in the Bible, reached all men?
No. After thousands of years it is not yet known to one-half the human race.
5. Is God's revelation of the relations between man and God true?
I claim that it is not true. For the word of God makes it appear that man was created by God in His own image, and that man sinned against God. Whereas man, being only what God made him, and having only the powers God gave him,couldnot sin against God any more than a steam-engine can sin against the engineer who designed and built it.
6. Is the ethical code of the Bible complete, and final, and perfect?
No. The ethical code of the Bible gradually develops and improves. Had it been divine it would have been perfect from the first. It is because it is human that it develops. As the prophets and the poets of the Jews grew wiser, and gentler, and more enlightened, so the revelation of God grew wiser and gentler with them. Now, God would know from the beginning; but men would have to learn. Therefore the Bible writings would appear to be human, and not divine.
Let us look over these points again, and make the matter still clearer and more simple.
If the children of an earthly father had wandered away and forgotten him, and were, for lack of guidance, living evil lives; and if the earthly father wished his children to know that they were his children, wished them to know what he had done for them, what they owed to him, what penalty they might fear, or reward they might ask from him; if he wished them to live cleanly and justly, and to love him, and at last come home to him—what would that earthly father do?
He would send his message toallhis children, instead of sending it to one, and trusting him to repeat it correctly to the others. He would try to so word his message as that all his children might understand it.
He would send his children the very best rules of life he knew. He would take great pains to avoid error in matters of fact.
If, after the message was sent, his children quarrelled and fought about its meaning, their earthly father would not sit silent and allow them to hate and slay each other because of a misconception, but would send at once and make his meaning plain to all.
And if an earthly father would act thus wisely and thus kindly, "how much more your Father which is in Heaven?"
But the Bible revelation was not given to all the people of the earth. It was given to a handful of Jews. It was not so explicit as to make disagreement impossible. It is thousands of years since the revelation of God began, and yet to-day it is not known to hundreds of millions of human beings, and amongst those whom it has reached there is endless bitter disagreement as to its meaning.
Now, what is the use of a revelation which does not reveal more than is known, which does not reveal truth only, which does not reach half those who need it, which cannot be understood by those it does reach?
But you will regard me as a prejudiced witness. I shall therefore, in my effort to prove the Bible fallible, quote almost wholly from Christian critics.
And I take the opportunity to here recommend very stronglyShall We Understand the Bible?by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. Adam and Charles Black; 1s net.
There are two chief theories as to the inspiration of the Bible. One is the old theory that the Bible is the actual word of God, and nothing but the word of God, directly revealed by God to Moses and the prophets. The other is the new theory: that the Bible is the work of many men whom God had inspired to speak or write the truth.
The old theory is well described by Dr. Washington Gladden in the following passage:
They imagine that the Bible must have originated in a mannerpurely miraculous; and, though they know very little about itsorigin, they conceive of it as a book that was written in heavenin the English tongue, divided there into chapters and verses,with headlines and reference marks, printed in small pica,bound in calf, and sent down by angels in its present form.
The newer idea of the inspiration of the Bible is also well expressed by Dr. Gladden; thus:
Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is not the dictationby God of words to men that they may be written down in books:it is rather the disclosure of the truth and love of God to menin the processes of history, in the development of the moralorder of the world. It is the light that lighteth every man,shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. Thereis a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the recordof that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; itsmost impressive disclosures are in the field of action. "Thusdidthe Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formulaof revelation than "Thus saith the Lord." It is in that greathistorical movement of which the Bible is the record that we findthe revelation of God to men.
The old theory of Bible inspiration was, as I have said, the theory that the Bible was the actual and pure word of God, and was true in every circumstance and detail.
Now, if an almighty and all-wise God had spoken or written every word of the Bible, then that book would, of course, be wholly and unshakably true in its every statement.
But if the Bible was written by men, some of them more or less inspired, then it would not, in all probability be wholly perfect.
The more inspiration its writers had from God, the more perfect it would be. The less inspiration its writers had from God, the less perfect it would be.
Wholly perfect, it might be attributed to a perfect being. Partly perfect, it might be the work of less perfect beings. Less perfect, it would have to be put down to less perfect beings.
Containing any fault or error, it could not be the actual word of God, and the more errors and faults it contained, the less inspiration of God would be granted to its authors.
I will quote again from Dr. Gladden:
What I desire to show is, that the work of putting the Bibleinto its present form was not done in heaven, but on earth; thatit was not done by angels, but by men; that it was not done all atonce, but a little at a time, the work of preparing and perfectingit extending over several centuries, and employing the labours ofmany men in different lands and long-divided generations.
I now turn to Dr. Aked. On page 25 of his book,Changing Creeds, he says:
Ignorance has claimed the Bible for its own. Bigotry has madethe Bible its battleground. Its phrases have become theshibboleth of pietistic sectarians. Its authority has beenevoked in support of the foulest crimes committed by the vilestmen; and its very existence has been made a pretext for theorieswhich shut out God from His own world. In our day Bible worshiphas become, with many very good but very unthoughtful people, adisease.
So much for the attitude of the various schools of religious thought towards the Bible.
Now, in the opinion of these Christian teachers, is the Bible perfect or imperfect? Dr. Aked gives his opinion with characteristic candour and energy:
For observe the position: men are told that the Bible is theinfallible revelation of God to man, and that its statementsconcerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted asstatements made upon the authority of God. They turn to itspages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes,scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific),inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is farworse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed bymen who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeedsthe imperturbable "God said." The heart and conscience of manindignantly rebel against the representations of the Most Highgiven in some parts of the Bible. What happens? Why, suchmen declare—are now declaring, and will in constantlyincreasing numbers, and with constantly increasing force andboldness declare—that they can have nothing to do with a bookwhose errors a child can discover, and whose revelation of Godpartakes at times of blasphemy against man.
I need hardly say that I agree with every word of the above. If anyone asked me what evidence exists in support of the claims that the Bible is the word of God, or that it was in any real sense of the words "divinely inspired," I should answer, without the least hesitation, that there does not exist a scrap of evidence of any kind in support of such a claim.
Let us give a little consideration to the origin of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, were said to be written by Moses. Moses was not, and could not have been, the author of those books. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence to prove that Moses ever existed. Whether he was a fictitious hero, or a solar myth, or what he was, no man knows.
Neither does there appear to be any certainty that the biblical books attributed to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest were really written by those kings or prophets, or even in their age.
And after these books, or many of them, had been written, they were entirely lost, and are said to have been reproduced by Ezra.
Add to these facts that the original Hebrew had no vowels, that many of the sacred books were written without vowels, and that the vowels were added long after; and remember that, as Dr. Aked says, the oldest Hebrew Bible in existence belongs to the tenth century after Christ, and it will begin to appear that the claim for biblical infallibility is utterly absurd.
But I must not offer these statements on my own authority. Let us return to Dr. Gladden. On page 11 ofWho Wrote the Bible?I find the following:
The first of these holy books of the Jews was, then, The Law,contained in the first five books of our Bible, known among usas the Pentateuch, and called by the Jews sometimes simply"The Law," and sometimes "The Law of Moses." This was supposedto be the oldest portion of their Scriptures, and was by themregarded as much more sacred and authoritative than any otherportion. To Moses, they said, God spake face to face; to theother holy men much less distinctly. Consequently, their appealis most often to the Law of Moses.
The sacredness of the five books of "The Law," then, rests upon the belief that they were written by Moses, who had spoken face to face with God.
So that if Moses did not write those books, their sacredness is a myth. Now, on page 42, Dr. Gladden says:
1. The Pentateuch could never have been written by any oneman, inspired or otherwise.2. It is a composite work, in which many hands have beenengaged. The production of it extends over many centuries.3. It contains writings which are as old as the time of Moses,and some that are much older. It is impossible to tell howmuch of it came from the hand of Moses; but there areconsiderable portions of it which, although they may havebeen somewhat modified by later editors, are substantiallyas he left them.
On page 45 Dr. Gladden, again speaking of the Pentateuch, says:
But the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. Thelast event related in that book occurred four hundred yearsbefore Moses was born; it was as distant from him as thediscovery of America by Columbus is from us; and other portionsof the narrative, such as the stories of the Flood and theCreation, stretch back into the shadows of the age whichprecedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in hisday could have given us these reports from his own knowledge.Whoever wrote this must have obtained his materials in one ofthree ways:1. They might have been given to him by divine revelationfrom God.2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, fromstories, folklore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, andso preserved from generation to generation.3. He might have found them in written documents existing atthe time of his writing.
As many of the laws and incidents in the books of Moses were known to the Chaldeans, the "direct revelation of God" theory is not plausible. On this point Dr. Gladden's opinion supports mine. He says, on page 61:
That such is the fact with respect to the structure of theseancient writings is now beyond question. And our theory ofinspiration must be adjusted to this fact. Evidently neitherthe theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenaryinspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful studyof the writings themselves brings before us. These writings arenot inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word.The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while theywere supposed to be the work of a single author. To such acomposite literature no such theory will apply. "To make thisclaim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertainedresults of criticism, would compel us to take such positionsas the following: the original authors of each one of thewritings which enter into the composite structure were infalliblyinspired; every one who made any changes in any one of thesefundamental writings was infallibly inspired; every compilerwho put together two or more of these writings was infalliblyinspired, both as to his selections and omissions, and as to anyconnecting or explanatory words which he might himself write;every redactor was infallibly inspired to correct and supplement,and omit that which was the product of previous infallibleinspirations. Or, perhaps, it might seem more convenient to attachthe claim of a plenary inspiration to the last redactor of all;but then we should probably have selected of all others the oneleast able to bear the weight of such a claim. Think of makingthe claim for a plenary inspiration of the Pentateuch in itspresent form on the ground of the infallibility of that one ofthe scribes who gave it its last touches some time subsequent tothe death of Ezra."
Remember that Dr. Gladden declares, on page 5, that he shall state no conclusions as to the history of the sacred writings which will not be accepted by conservative critics.
On page 54 Dr. Gladden quotes the following from Dr. Perowne:
The firstcompositionof the Pentateuch as a whole could nothave taken place till after the Israelites entered Canaan.The whole work did not finally assume its present shape tillits revision was undertaken by Ezra after the return from theBabylonish captivity.
On page 25 Dr. Gladden himself speaks as follows:
The common argument by which Christ is made a witness to theauthenticity and infallible authority of the Old Testamentruns as follows:Christ quotes Moses as the author of this legislation; thereforeMoses must have written the whole Pentateuch. Moses was aninspired prophet; therefore all the teaching of the Pentateuchmust be infallible.The facts are that Jesus nowhere testifies that Moses wrote thewhole of the Pentateuch; and that he nowhere guarantees theinfallibility either of Moses or of the book. On the contrary,he set aside as inadequate or morally defective, certain lawswhich in this book are ascribed to Moses.
So much for the authorship and the inspiration of the first five books of the Bible.
As to the authorship of other books of the Bible, Dr. Gladden says of Judges and Samuel that we do not know the authors nor the dates.
Of Kings he says: "The name of the author is concealed from us." The origin and correctness of the Prophecies and Psalms, he tells us, are problematical.
Of the Books of Esther and Daniel, Dr. Gladden says: "That they are founded on fact I do not doubt; but it is, perhaps, safer to regard them both rather as historical fictions than as veritable histories."
Of Daniel, Dean Farrar wrote:
The immense majority of scholars of name and acknowledgedcompetence in England and Europe have now been led to forman irresistible conclusion that the Book of Daniel was notwritten, and could not have been written, in its present form,by the prophet Daniel, B.C. 534, but that it can only have beenwritten, as we now have it, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes,about B.C. 164, and that the object of the pious and patrioticauthor as to inspirit his desponding countrymen by splendidspecimens of that lofty moral fiction which was always commonamongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah."So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willinglysuffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink tothe ground under the weight of their own inadequacy.(The Bible and the Child.)
I return now to Dr. Aked, from whose book I quote the following:
Dr. Clifford has declared that there is not a man who hasgiven a day's attention to the question who holds the completefreedom of the Bible from inaccuracy. He has added that "itis become more and more impossible to affirm the inerrancyof the Bible." Dr. Lyman Abbott says that "an infallible bookis an impossible conception, and to-day no one really believesthat our present Bible is such a book."
Compare those opinions with the following extract from the first article inThe Bible and the Child:
The change of view respecting the Bible, which has marked theadvancing knowledge and more earnest studies of this generationis only the culmination of the discovery that there weredifferent documents in the Book of Genesis—a discovery firstpublished by the physician, Jean Astruc, in 1753. There arethreewidely divergent ways of dealing with these results ofprofound study, each of which is almost equally dangerous tothe faith of the rising generation.1. Parents and teachers may go on inculcating dogmas about theBible and methods of dealing with it which have long becomeimpossible to those who have really tried to follow the manifolddiscoveries of modern inquiry with perfectly open and unbiasedminds. There are a certain number of persons who, when theirminds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simplyincapableof grasping new truths. They become obstructives,and not infrequently bigoted obstructives. As convinced as thePope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towardsthose who see that the old views are no longer tenable is anattitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of theodium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrewand the rack of mediaeval Inquisitors, and would, in the lastresource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake.Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by custom andadvancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to dealwith. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rationalexamination of the truths which they impugn. They think thatthey can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by thelifelong inquiries of the ablest students, while they have notgiven a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancythat even the ignorant, if only they be what is called "orthodox,"are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful,and often incomparably more able, than themselves. Off-handdogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professionalreligionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars,however profound and however pious, if only they shout "Infidel"with sufficient loudness.
Those are not the words of an "Infidel." They are the words of the late Dean Farrar.
To quote again from Dr. Gladden:
Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor thetheory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the factswhich a careful study of the writings themselves brings beforeus.These writings are not inspired in the sense which wehave commonly given to that word.The verbal theory ofinspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to bethe work of a single author.To such a composite literatureno such theory will apply.
The Bible is not inspired. The fact is thatno"sacred" book is inspired.All"sacred" books are the work of human minds. All ideas of God are human ideas. All religions are made by man.
When the old-fashioned Christian said the Bible was an inspired book, he meant that God put the words and the facts directly into the mind of the prophet. That meant that God told Moses about the creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments.
Many modern Christians, amongst whom I place the Rev. Ambrose Pope, of Bakewell, believe that God gave Moses (and all the other prophets) a special genius and a special desire to convey religious information to other men.
And Mr. Pope suggests that man was so ignorant, so childlike, or so weak in those days that it was necessary to disguise plain facts in misleading symbols.
But the man, Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to him: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to develop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man out from the brutes; and the time was six hundred millions of years"—if God had said that to Moses, do you think Moses would not have understood?
Now, let me show you what the Christian asks us to believe. He asks us to believe that the God who was the first cause of creation, and knew everything, inspired man, in the childhood of the world, with a fabulous and inaccurate theory of the origin of man and the earth, and that since that day the same God has gradually changed or added to the inspiration, until He inspired Laplace, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Darwin to contradict the teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series of revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them to stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that He allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account of divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and that He is still looking on while a number of bewildered and antagonistic religions fight each other to achieve the survival of the fittest. Is that a reasonable theory? Is it the kind of theory a reasonable man can accept? Is it consonant with common sense?
Contrast that with our theory. We say that early man, having no knowledge of science, and more imagination than reason, would be alarmed and puzzled by the phenomena of Nature. He would be afraid of the dark, he would be afraid of the thunder, he would wonder at the moon, at the stars, at fire, at the ocean. He would fear what he did not understand, and he would bow down and pay homage to what he feared.
Then, by degrees, he would personify the stars, and the sun, and the thunder, and the fire. He would make gods of these things. He would make gods of the dead. He would make gods of heroes. He would do what all savage races do, what all children do: he would make legends, or fables, or fairy tales out of his hopes, his fears, and his guesses.
Does not that sound reasonable? Does not history teach us that it is true? Do we not know that religion was so born and nursed?
There is no such thing known to men as an original religion. All religions are made up of the fables and the imaginations of tribes long since extinct. Religion is an evolution, not a revelation. It has been invented, altered, and built up, and pulled down, and reconstructed time after time. It is a conglomeration and an adaptation, as language is. And the Christian religion is no more an original religion than English is an original tongue. We have Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, French, Saxon, Norman words in our language; and we have Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and all manner of ancient foreign fables, myths, and rites in our Christian religion.
We say that Genesis was a poetic presentation of a fabulous story pieced together from many traditions of many tribes, and recording with great literary power the ideas of a people whose scientific knowledge was very incomplete.
Now, I ask you which of these theories is the most reasonable; which is the most scientific; which agrees most closely with the facts of philology and history of which we are in possession?
Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was the work of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched and unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easy and just as reasonable to take theMorte d'Arthurand try to prove that it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations to man.
And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelation of the Holy Bible. Is God all-powerful or is he not? If he is all-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not have created him at once a wise and good creature? Even when man was ignorant and savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some means of revealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really wished to reveal Himself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to one or two obscure tribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness?
Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of terror, full of wonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshipped the sun and the moon; they worshipped ghosts and demons; they worshipped tyrants, and pretenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if God had come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had said, "Behold, I am the only God," these savages would not have left all baser gods and worshipped Him? Why, these men, and all the thousands of generations of their children, have been looking for God since first they learned to look at sea and sky. They are looking for Him now. They have fought countless bloody wars and have committed countless horrible atrocities in their zeal for Him. And you ask us to believe that His grand revelation of Himself is bound up in a volume of fables and errors collected thousands of years ago by superstitious priests and prophets of Palestine, and Egypt, and Assyria.
We cannot believe such a statement. No man can believe it who tests it by his reason in the same way in which he would test any modern problem. If the leaders of religion brought the same vigour and subtlety of mind to bear upon religion which they bring to bear upon any criticism of religion, if they weighed the Bible as they have weighed astronomy and evolution, the Christian religion would not last a year.
If my reader has not studied this matter, let him read the books I have recommended, and then sit down and consider the Bible revelation and story with the same fearless honesty and clear common sense with which he would consider the Bibles of the Mohammedan, or Buddhist, or Hindoo, and then ask himself the question: "Is the Bible a holy and inspired book, and the word of God to man, or is it an incongruous and contradictory collection of tribal traditions and ancient fables, written by men of genius and imagination?"
We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claim that no religion known to man can be truly said to be original. All religions, the Christian religion included, are adaptations or variants of older religions. Religions are notrevealed: they areevolved.
If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been a religion which fulfils those conditions.
According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which was at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era.
Here I recommend the study of Laing'sHuman Origins, Parson'sOur Sun God, Sayce'sAncient Empires of the East, and Frazer'sGolden Bough.
In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of Manchester spoke as follows:
Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shallwe assign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so longpreceded Sargo I. and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can bestanswer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel:"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in NorthernBabylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C.in possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian cultureadopted by them—a culture, moreover, which appears to havesprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far,far older still, and have existed in itscompletedform in thefifth thousand B.C., an age to which I unhesitatingly ascribe theSouth Babylonian incantations."... Who does not see that suchfacts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past?
A culture which wascompleteone thousand years before Adam must have needed many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guess that Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years.
Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error of time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well, an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, ithasa bearing on evolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisation lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends.
Here I quote fromOur Sun God, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:
To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted withthe remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations thatthe stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge,and the confusion of tongues were the common property of theBabylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodusunder Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And theobservance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, bythe Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, oreven Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created,is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For inan address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall thesepregnant words:"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodelour whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm thatthe Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, threethousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existedin Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of theChurch have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."
The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.
Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in hisAncient Empiresof the East, speaks as follows:
With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a newdeparture. From this event to the Persian conquest was a periodof 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle calledsaros.Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived thewaters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of theirsins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitchit within and without, and to stock it with animals of everyspecies. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, andlastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the doveand the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when theraven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark.He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountainof Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadiansbelieved the heavens to rest—where, too, they placed thehabitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race.Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little southof Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself.On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wineby sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared inthe heaven, in covenant that the world should never again bedestroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and hiswife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions ofthe blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people madetheir way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the booksburied by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, andre-established themselves in their old country under the governmentfirst of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile,other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here,under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by theGreek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect atower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so winfor themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros... Butthe tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Belfrustrated their purpose by confounding their language andscattering them on the mound.
These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.
Professor Sayce, in hisAncient Empires of the East, speaking of the Accadian king, Sargon I., says:
Legends naturally gathered round the name of the BabylonianSolomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law,the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how hisfather had died while he was still unborn, how his mother hadfled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses,to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and howhe was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought himup as his own son, until the time came when, under the protectionof Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat onthe throne of his forefathers.
From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and very likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendary Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient mythical figure?
Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth," fromChristianity and Mythology, by J. M. Robertson:
I have been challenged for saying that the story of Moses andthe floating basket is a variant of the myth of Horos and thefloating island (Herodii. 156). But this seems sufficientlyproved by the fact that in the reign of Rameses II., accordingto the monuments, there was a place in Middle Egypt whichbore the name I-en-Moshe, "the island of Moses." That is theprimary meaning. Brugsch, who proclaims the fact (EgyptUnder the Pharaohs, ii. 117), suggests that it can also mean "theriver bank of Moses." It is very obvious, however, that theEgyptians would not have named a place by a real incident inthe life of a successful enemy, as Moses is represented in Exodus.Name and story are alike mythological and pre-Hebraic, thoughpossibly Semitic. The Assyrian myth of Sargon, which is,indeed, very close to the Hebrew, may be the oldest form of all;but the very fact that the Hebrews located their story in Egyptshows that they knew it to have a home there in some fashion.The name Moses, whether it mean "the water-child" (so Deutsch)or "the hero" (Sayce,Hib. Lect.p. 46), was in all likelihoodan epithet of Horos. The basket, in the latter form, wasdoubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-bornGod-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus(i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horosdead"on the water,"and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clueto the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet otherEgyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptianshad a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as didHermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, where he gavelaws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, thismyth probably means that the Sun God, who has in the otherstory escaped the "massacre of the innocents" (the morningstars), now plays the slayer on his own account, since the slayingof many-eyed Argus probably means the extinction of the starsby the morning sun (cp. Emeric-David,Introduction, end).Another "Hermes" was the son of Nilus, and his name was sacred(Cicero,De Nat. Deor.iii. 22, Cp. 16). The story of thefloating child, finally, becomes part of the lore of Greece.In the myth of Apollo, the Babe-God and his sister Artemis aresecured in float-islands.
It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without some knowledge of ancient history and comparative mythology. It would be impossible for me to go deeply into these matters in this small book, but I will quote a few significant passages just to show the value of such historical evidence. Here to begin with, are some passages from Mr. Grant Allen'sEvolution of the Idea of God.
THE ORIGIN OF GODS.