CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XIV.THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—Bible.Thus, as we have seen, through countless future ages will the sun, with his incandescent envelope of hydrogen, and the planets, with their life-sustaining atmospheres of oxygen, fulfil their appointed times and courses. But if we could conceive that all atmospheres, solar and planetary, were suddenly blotted out and forever annihilated, so that these great orbs thenceforth rolled along as they do now, but only as black globes in an ocean of space of Stygian darkness, new atmospheres would at once begin to be formed, and these would soon again surround the sun and planets, precisely like those which now exist.Sweeping along in darkness, the force of gravity would gather around each of these bodies vast accumulations of aqueous vapor and other gases condensed from the attenuated matter of surrounding space. The planets, by their axial rotations, would again generate from these regions, newly occupied as the system drifted along through space, electrical energy of enormous quantity and potential. Earth would again hear the mighty mandate, “Let there be light,” and from her poles to herequator the skies would blaze with brush-light auroras. Suddenly, with a mighty leap, the pent-up currents would flash across to their opposite electric pole, the auroras would gradually die away, and instantly the molecules of hydrogen would begin to sift out at the solar and those of oxygen at the planetary terminals. The electrical currents driving their furious pathway through the rapidly gathering hydrogen envelope, the sun would first begin to faintly flicker with hazy, nebulous light; the light would gather intensity, and soon flash and glow with energy; the solar nucleus within would become intensely heated and liquefied or partially volatilized, and again the solar streams of incandescent heat and light would radiate forth on every side; the commingled gases, oxygen and nitrogen, would once more surround each planetary globe, and we should have a new solar envelope just as we now see it, and new planetary atmospheres like our own; and then, and not till then, would the opposing generative forces permanently counterbalance each other and electrolytic decomposition become practically stationary, except to compensate for the slight variations constantly liable to occur in the complicated running of the mechanism. So the mutilated crustacean re-grows his lost claws, and so our own gaping wounds are healed by the greatvis medicatrix naturæ. The most stable of all things is mutually balanced instability; perhaps there is no other form of stability.The “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace concernsitself only with the aggregate matter of which our solar system is composed, and the force of gravity, including cohesion, ignoring the action of the equally powerful force of repulsion. But there is another nebular hypothesis much older than that of Laplace and far more scientific, for it utilizes both the force of gravity and cohesion and the radiant force of repulsion in the generation of our solar system. We refer to what is known as the Mosaic cosmogony. Whatever the origin of this magnificent narrative may have been, whether written down by Moses originally, or by him derived from the sacred learning of Egypt, with which he was fully acquainted, or by the Egyptian scribes drawn from Ethiopia, and still further back from the sacred traditions of India, it bears internal evidence, when properly rendered from the Hebrew record, of a knowledge of these stupendous phenomena (which no human eye could ever have beheld) which is most remarkable. The commonly accepted versions do not clearly bring out the full meaning of the original,—indeed, it would have been impossible for the earlier translators to have done so,—but when critically and etymologically rendered, very surprising coincidences with the succession of events as they must actually have occurred, and the principles involved in the successive stages of creation, will be found in nearly every part of the record.This record is embodied in the first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter of Genesis. The Hebrew was long believed to be an original,if not an inspired, language, but it is now well known to have been a derivative or root language, made up much like the English, and, like it, having the meanings of its words primarily determined by those of the root-stems from which they have been formed. The roots of these Hebrew words are to be found among the languages of many older peoples, and nearly all of them have now been traced to their immediate origin. Another source of error is in the so-called Masoretic pointing, which was not introduced for a thousand years after the time of Moses, and which has often changed the signification of the older words, and even the form of the words themselves; but by critical researches the roots and their combinations have been isolated, so that we are now able to possess a much mere accurate knowledge of the Mosaic record than was possible in former times, for, of course, no original copies have come down to us. It is not a reconstruction of the record which has been made, but a careful editing by means of the derivation and true signification of the words used, and by careful comparison among the most ancient versions accessible to modern research. The English version, while imperfect in its rendering of this ancient narrative, is not to be considered by any means a false translation, but it largely errs in failing to give the full radical meaning of the words employed in the original.As an illustration of this indefiniteness of rendering in the ordinary English version let us consider the opening sentences of the narrative: “Inthe beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”In the “beginning” of what? Does it mean the beginning of our own solar system? or of all systems? or of all space? or of Jehovah (for He has not yet been mentioned or described)? or of the Aleim themselves,—that is, did the work begin as soon as the forces began? and did the latter originate spontaneously, or otherwise? What “God” is meant? Is it Jehovah, or Aleim, or some other God not yet mentioned or described? If we will take every name in the Bible which is translated God (and it may be any of these according to the English rendering), we will have legion. We shall even find that the same word which is translated “God” was applied by Jehovah on one occasion to Moses. “Created”? What is meant by this word? Was the creating a creation out of nothing? out of something pre-existing? or something coexisting elsewhere? Was the creation a direct or an indirect one? by the use of the forces of nature, or by overriding the forces of nature? Was it a physical creation by an inconceivable action of mere thought, or will? and if so, was this thought, or will, God himself, or one of his attributes or powers only? “The heaven”? What heaven? Was it that to which the virtuous are supposed to go after death? or was it some more physical heaven? Wastheheaven the atmospheric heaven, the interplanetary heaven, the heaven of interstellar space, or that more extended heaven which liesbeyond our knowledge? Wastheheaven one of these which He created, or did He create all the different heavens of all the solar systems and nebulæ at the same time? “Without form”? Was the earth without any form at all? or merely without its present form? or without some particular form not mentioned? If the earth was a physical structure it must have hadsomeform; what was it? “And void”? Was the earth void like a soap-bubble? or void like a ray of light? or a vacuum? If it was empty, what was it that was empty? How could the heaven and earth be void after they had been brought into existence? “Darkness was upon the face of the deep”? What deep? Was it the sea not yet created? or the earth, which is anything but a “deep”? was it the atmosphere? or all space? If the latter, did all other systems of space wait for their light on ours? or did we wait on theirs? are there no new systems now forming, and none to be formed hereafter? If all space is meant, where was its outside, or its face? and what occupied the intervening regions? was it a physical face or the face of a vacuum? Were these statements to be accepted by faith or reason? If the former, was it a faith which could only have come from the experience of after-ages? or was it based on theipse dixitof Moses? What was the basis of faith when the record was first written? was it from generally accepted tradition or by revelation? Is the record anonymous or does it reveal the name of its author? If to be endorsed by knowledge and reason, why should not the narrative be strictlyand accurately translated, even at the expense of conciseness and elegance of diction, in order that the exact force of every word shall be fully felt and recognized? If the record is from divine revelation, it is still more essential to know precisely what was revealed; otherwise we are no better than idolaters; we are worse, in fact, for we have changed and falsified the landmarks of religion, and bear false witness against God Himself. We must not interpret Genesis by records made long subsequently; it must speak for itself or not at all.When construed in accordance with the exact definition of the words themselves quite a new and strange light is thrown upon the history of the events thus recorded. The great importance of a strict construction of the translation and fidelity to the original is emphasized by the fact that the same word was never used in this record to express a different sense in different parts, nor were two different words ever used in different places to express the same meaning. It is, therefore, necessary to give every word of the original its exact fulness and force. The basis of the following critical translation is to be found in “Mankind: their Origin and Destiny” (Longmans & Co., London, 1872), but a careful comparison has been made with other accepted authorities, and the root-meanings of the separate words have been carefully traced out, so that many necessary changes will be found to have been made in order to bring out the precise sense of the original. There is no actual literal, critical, etymological, and scientificrendering embraced in a single translation known to us, and which is complete in itself; but that which follows will be found, it is believed, to give every word its particular etymological shade of meaning, and to employ the same word in the same place, for the same purpose, and with the same signification as it was understood to have, in its original form, when first recorded. The specific root-meanings of the most important words used are further explained in detail in a separate section below.The use ofAleim, “the powerful Forces,” in the plural, followed by the verb in the singular, is a Hebraism, and indicates the collective character of the forces as specially energized, sent forth, and directed by Jeove (Jeova or Jehovah is the Chaldaic form of the word, the original Hebrew being Jeove), who does not appear by name in this narrative, though, as we shall see, specially delegated power from some higher source is that characteristic which is most emphasized throughout the record. These forces are personified, as is usual in ancient records (and, indeed, in modern thought), but they are in reality the “powers of God.” The author of the work above referred to says, “The idea of Moses was that there was a Supreme God … and that He only acts by means of his agents calledAleim, the Gods, in the plural and indefinite number, or embassadors, or voices.” The ancient belief in the unity of all forces in one creative individuality is also most clearly shown in some of the oldest Vedaic hymnsof India (see Max Müller, “The Veda”). “Self (Atman) is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman (Force) itself is but Self.”Of the religion of the ancient Egyptians (see “Evolution and Christianity,” by J. F. York) it is said, “The chief theological characteristic of this first of all known civilized religions is the doctrine of the Divine Unity. As M. de Rougé says, ‘One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval God; everywhere and always it is one substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable God.’ ” The Egyptian cosmogony, as the fragments have come down to us (see Professor Arnold Guyot, “Creation”), is as follows:1. Theoriginal gaseous form, and the darkness of matter.2. The successive transformations.3. Light, as the first step in this development.4. The separation of the waters below from the waters above the expanse.5. Periods of development of indefinite length.6. The sun, moon, and earth organized last.The wordMlactou, which occurs several times repeated in the summing up of this narrative, explains the character ofAleimmost fully, as specially energized and directed agencies or forces. This word never has any other meaning. Even when applied to a king it was not a king as amonarch, but as the specially directed agent of God.I. Samuel xxviii. 17, “The Lord hath sent the kingdom out of thine hand; … because thou obeydst not the voice of the Lord.” When, inExodus xiii. 21it is said that “Jeove went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud,” this is explained, in chapter xiv. verse 19, to mean that this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was Mlac, a messenger, or agent. It is translated “angel” in the English version, but it was not a personal angel; it was a specially energized and directed force. In the earliest times it was not the God of fire, or of force, or of justice which men feared, but fire, or force, or justice; the anthropomorphic conception came later with the generalization of all fire, all force, or all justice. We say now that a malefactor fears the law; what he really fears, however, is punishment. In this record we are dealing with the primordial forces of God,—gravity, electricity, attraction, repulsion, cohesion, vital force, etc., etc., but acting with special energy for a predetermined result. Of these forces Dr. McCosh says, in his work on Christianity and Positivism, “One God, with his infinitely varied perfections,—his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, his love, his mercy; we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regardingthisforce, not as something independent of God, but as thevery power of God acting in all action; so that in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In more rugged and virile form this was precisely the old Mosaic philosophy, the philosophy of the arcana of the Egyptian temples, and of the Vedaic age of the Aryans of India. Where was the radiant center of this unfailing search-light which has poured its broad belt of dazzling brightness down to our day from those old, prehistoric ages?So De Jouvencel, in his “Genesis according to Science,” says, “We should not place the works of nature on one side and nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person.”The word which in the English version is translated “rested,” in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not meanrested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered “came to a state of rest,” it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth’s crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony,and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, “God rests as the creator of the visible universe.The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibriumwhich we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence.” In “The Unity of Nature” the Duke of Argyle says, “We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily.”The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean “created—and made,” as though marking a broad class distinction between thedifferentprocesses before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered “made” indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creationab initio,—that is,out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered “fashioned like the work of a sculptor” is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word “made;”so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The wordBrameans that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is. What we see in the sky, among the nebulæ, are later developments of like solar systems, in like manner, from the midst of the substance of the same illimitable and eternal space.But biology has an interest in this account of creation equally as great as has cosmology. The wordBrais first applied to the formation of the individualized substance of the heavens and the earth. They were fashioned or carved out like a sculpture from something on which the forces could operate. There was, of course,creationinvolved, but it was a mental, not a physical process. When a sculptor has completed his clay figure he has brought forth agreat creation, perhaps, and the “creation” is still his own, though the figure be cast in bronze by hired workmen in the foundry, who execute the sculptor’s will at two dollars a day, it may be, each. Beyond this mental element there is no morecreation, in its widest sense, than when a boy “creates” a new point on his pencil by guiding his hand and knife to sharpen it.When the “diffused light” came, it is not said that it was “fashioned like the work of a sculptor,” or that it was even “made;” but that it “came into existence.” “Let there be light, and there was light,” as the English version has it. But when the radiant energy of the sun came to be formed, on the fourth day, it did not “come into existence,” nor was it “fashioned like the work of a sculptor;” it was “made.” The reason is that it was not a development from the preceding “diffused light,” but a new kind of light, made mechanically by the electrolysis of aqueous vapor around the sun’s body, forming a hydrogen envelope, and by driving the furious torrents of electricity from the planets through this atmosphere, while the auroral, “diffused light” of the earth was gradually dying away during the process. Hence there was no room for the wordBra, or for the wordIei(came into existence) here; the word to be used wasOsh. And when life was first introduced,—vegetable life, the primal life,—the word used is notBra; this life was not “fashioned” or developed from other life. But when animal life was afterwards introduced, the word used isBra; it was a refashioning. What was this life fashioned out of? It was not “made;” it did not “begin to exist;” it was developed. In this manner the earth was finally filled with animal life. Then came the introduction of the human race. Here we again have the wordBra, thrice repeated; but when this introduction of mankind was first projected, and before it was executed, itwas in these words, “We willmake[the rootOsh] mankind;” or, in the English version, “Let usmakeman.” There seems here to have been a gradual ascent of living organisms by development, almost precisely in accordance with the most recent teachings of science. Two essentially differentkindsof light were successively produced, independently of each other; the earlier kind “came into being,” and the later “was made.” The substance or entity of the heavens and of the earth, generically, “was fashioned.” Three successive introductions of organic life not essentially different from each other occurred; the first is described thus: “Let the earth bring forth; … and the earth brought forth,” in the English version; or “There shall be made to grow; … and there was caused to arise suddenly out of the ground … vegetation,” as more accurately rendered. The second form of organic life, in order of time, the animal, was “fashioned.” The third form, mankind, was also “fashioned,” and this was done long subsequently to the introduction of the second.If the wordBrahad any signification oforiginal creationit would have been applied to the first creation of life, for it was far more wonderful and original that there should be vegetable life which grew and developed, which brought forth flowers and then fruit, which formed germinative seeds, and from these successively and continuously reproduced its multifarious species, than thatanimallife should have been introduced long afterwardsto repeat these same things which vegetation had been, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, already doing for untold ages,—from the third period of the earth’s long history to the fifth; and more especially still when we consider that vegetable life and animal life, in their lowest forms, have no positive line of division between them.And ifOsh, which is applied to the genesis of solar light, be capable of the signification oforiginal creation, then this word should have been applied to the generation of the “diffused light” of the second day, for the genesis of light is far more wonderful and original than the subsequent production of sunlight, after the forming earth had existed for two whole formative periods, from the second to the fourth, under the constant illumination of this universally diffused auroral light. If, on the other hand, the words applied to the first generation of light and the first generation of life be held to mark anoriginal creation, then these words are never applied in this whole narrative to the genesis of theentityof the heavens, or the earth, or the sun and moon, or to animal life, or the life of man.The radiant light and heat of the sun were not made until the fourth day, while the introduction of vegetable life dates from the long antecedent third day of creation. Prior to the development of the sun’s thermal light there could have been, as we have already shown, no free oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere; and it is a remarkable circumstancethat vegetation, which is the only form of organic life which could have existed and propagated its species in an atmosphere composed of carbonic, nitrogenous, and aqueous vapors, devoid of oxygen, is that particular form of life which has been selected for this purpose, and its advent placed prior to the making of the sun. It would have been far more reasonable (previous to our present knowledge of these things) to have placed the formation of the sun in advance of the introduction of life; it is surprising that this was not done, unless we give to these “ancients” a knowledge of the principles of natural science far beyond anything hitherto attributed to them.In the same connection there is described a stage preparatory to and leading up to the simultaneous development of the sun’s light and heat, and the sifting out of hydrogen around the solar core, and of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere, which is equally remarkable. The “separation of the waters” described in verses 6 and 7 has never been fully rendered into English, or even understood in the original, as the words seemed meaningless in their literal sense until correctly interpreted by the facts set forth in the present work.We must first note that the separation of the waters of space to two opposite foci, with an intervening space of attenuated matter, and their condensation there into two entirely different bodies, was the work of the second day, while the formation of the terrestrial rain-clouds and seas, as connected together, was a work of the third day, andwas not accomplished until then, which was long afterwards. These entirely different operations—different in time, place, character, and circumstance—have always been confounded with each other; but one is in reality systemic and the other merely local.In verse 6 there was decreed an expanse orthinning(an attenuated region) in thecenterof the waters, and a separation was made by the formation of two “spots” (verse 7), one under the expanse and the other above the expanse; the expanse was space, interplanetary space. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his book on Creation, says, “It is to be regretted that the English version has translated the Hebrew wordexpanseby the wordfirmament…. The difficulties they [the commentators] have created for themselves arose … from depriving it of its cosmogonic character and belittling it by reducing the great phenomena there described to a simple modification of the terrestrial atmosphere …. They forget that this thin covering of clouds is but a temporary and ever-changing one, and that the clouds areinthat heaven rather than above it …. They forget that this is not the true heavens in which are spread the sun and moon and stars …. This grand day, so dwarfed and misunderstood, is the one in which are described the generations of the heavens, announced by Moses, which otherwise find no place in the narrative of the creative week.”The two foci of waters were the solar and terrestrial; around these bodies were gathered by theattraction of gravity, and there condensed, the aqueous vapors from the attenuated intervening matter of space; the earth by its rotation generated the enormous electrical currents which still continue; when these made their mighty leap across to the sun, the diffused auroral light around the earth gradually disappeared, hydrogen and oxygen began to be evolved at the opposite poles—the sun and the earth—from the condensed envelopes of aqueous vapor which surrounded them, the sun’s hydrogen atmosphere was pierced, as in the pail-of-water experiment described in an earlier chapter of the present work, by the planetary electric currents, the sun became incandescent, andpari passuthe earth became fitted, by the development of oxygen, for the abode of animal life. As taking part in this great mechanical transformation, the sun was said to have been “made;” it did not “come into being.”Just prior to the introduction of vegetable life—during the same creative epoch, in fact, and for the support of which life it was necessary—the waters under the expanse were condensed into rain-clouds and seas, and there is a curious reference (verse 9) to the appearance of the earth’s dryness “as produced by the action of an internal fire;” the gradual cooling of the earth by the radiation of its internal heat of condensation into space would account for this appearance, and, in connection with the diffused auroral light throughout the whole sky, would doubtless have sufficed for the support of vegetable life.In verse 16 the fixed stars (the suns of other systems) are referred to, but in a parenthetical statement—almost deprecatory, in fact—that “the dim and almost extinct lights” the same forces created also, but when they were created is not stated in the record. The occasion for this incidental remark is to be found in the preceding statement that the two new luminaries, the sun and moon, were the two “superior bodies in size of the starry lights.” Having mentioned the stars in this comparison, the author feels called upon to add that the latter also had been similarly created,—that is, that they were not original existences, and of course they are not, but they were not created at that epoch, and are not said to have been.In chapter ii. verse 4, which opens the second narrative (quite a different history, by the way), Jeove appears Himself, joined with the Aleim, and henceforth this personal connection is maintained; the English version translates this composite word “The Lord God,” which means the Master God; the correct reading is, however, the “God of gods,” or what we call the “God of the forces of nature,” or the “God omnipotent.”In the whole Mosaic cosmogony there is nothing which can even suggest a gradually closing nebulous mass; the element of rotation is absent (and it would not have been understood by the people even if presented); but, with this exception, the processes of development are substantially in accord with what must really have taken place, and in the order described. But it is, as before stated, absolutelyessential to understand the root-meanings of all the more important words used in the original. A superficial translation is not only meaningless, but misleading; whereas, when accurately understood, the record is one of the most remarkable ever presented to human intelligence. The words used were selected deliberately for their specific shades of meaning, and, unless these are properly rendered, to the uninformed the narrative will present a simple succession of startling phenomena, while to the educated student each of these changes carries within its verbal index its origin, its mode, and the knowledge of the forces at work. To the one it is a dramatic spectacle performed on the stage in front; to the other it is the same work as seen behind the curtain, with all the intermoving mechanism (the author’s manuscript the sole guide), the interplay of complicated forces, the triumphant successes, the rapt attention, and even the sudden applause extorted at each wondrous climax from the skilled actors themselves, who are at the same time unceasingly engaged in working out the mighty drama of creation. One might readily believe that the original author of this record was thoroughly acquainted with the processes involved in the development of a solar system like our own from the diffused primordial matter of space, substantially as we have endeavored, in the present work, to deduce them from the most recent investigations and discoveries of science.Of the watery vapors condensed above the expanse of space many of the ancient writers had afar more correct knowledge than had those who translated these chapters from the original into the various modern languages. In the Psalms we read, “Praise him, … ye waters that be above the heavens;” in the Song of the Three Holy Children, “O all ye waters that be above the heavens.” Theophilus speaks of the “visible sky as havingdrawn to itselfa portion of the waters of chaos at the time of the creation.”Saint Augustine says that the firmament has been formed “betweenthe upper and the lower waters,” and quotesGenesis i. 6 and 7, as his authority.Thousands of years ago, as far back as the days of the Pythagoreans, and even long before, mankind was acquainted with the mariner’s compass, telescopic tubes, and glass lenses; they knew that the moon receives her light by reflection from the sun, of the presence of mountains and valleys on the lunar surface, that her day and night are each a fortnight in length, that there were other planets known to the Egyptians besides the seven known to the Greeks (the Brahmans reckoned fifteen of them), that the sun is the center of our planetary system, that the earth and the other planets revolve around it, that the earth is round and rotates on its own axis daily, that weight is a principal element in the maintenance of these rotations, that the fixed stars are suns, and that the Milky Way appears white from the number of stars which it contains. Kircher quotes from an ancient Syrian author the philosophy of the sidereal system, dividing it into many layers or spheres attached to orbits, each presidedover by a spirit. In the eighth sphere are placed the fixed stars, “still higher two other layers of stars not less luminous, and of different sizes, the nebulæ and the small stars of the Milky Way, and the whole is surrounded by the celestial waters, which spread over the whole firmament, and which compose the great sea of light and the boundless ocean.” The sources of all this wondrous knowledge can be traced back through Chaldea, Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, through the colony of Meroë, to India.ROOT-MEANINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORDS USED IN THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.Aleim(“corruptly called Elohim by the modern Jews, but always Aleim in the synagogue copies”) means the Strong Forces (or, by subsequent impersonation, subaltern gods), operating to carry out the purposes and execute the plans of Jeove.Al, the root, signifiesStrong,strength,a ram;Al-emeansStrongin a personal sense;Aleim(plural) means the Forces, the Strong-ones, the Powers, and in Egyptian mythology, the subordinate, or executive, gods, the demi-urgi.Exodus vii. 1, “And the Lord [Jeove] said unto Moses, See I have made thee a god [Aleim] to Pharaoh; thou shalt speak all that I command thee.”Bra,carved,cut,fashioned like the work of a sculptor,gave a new shape to,formed from unformed material. FromBr,a knife;br-i,to carve,to cut.Brashit,in the commencementor beginningof individualized existence(with the initial prepositionb-).Bsignifiesin;it(which is related toat) signifiesindividualized existence;rash, aprincipleorbeginning, or acommencement.At, connected with the Chaldaic, signifiessubstance,essence, orindividuality, “the thing itself” (Latin,ens); it is correctly translated “individualized substance.”Eshmim, the combination of the prepositionewith the substantiveshmim, the word signifyingof the visible heavens, or the planisphere.Artz, the earth in a state of aridity, or as a generalized expression for the earth;arsignifies theearth, and the terminationtzintensifies the signification ofdrought,whiteness,aridity; in contrast with this isadme,red earth, orproductive earthorsoil.U-is a conjunction, signifyingandorthen, in the sense of succession of time, something like our phrase “and then.”Teoudoes not mean “without form,” nor doesubeoumean “and void,” as rendered in our English version, at least not in the ordinary sense of these words. “Teourefers to extinct life, or to existenceshut up as in a tomb and in darkness, whileu-beourefers tolife which is about reappearing, but still hidden in the egg or the ovary, and waiting for the word which shall cause the dawn of creation to shine upon it.” These words are more properly rendered “tomb-like darkness and undeveloped.”Eshcmeansdarkness; not merely an intense darkness, but what may be denominated a “thick darkness;” it is anenshroudingdarknesswhichcompressesandhinders. It is precisely such a darkness as would be produced by the interstratified cloud-layers between the convolutions of a forming spiral nebula, or the cloud-strata surrounding the earth before electrolytic decomposition of the aqueous vapors had ensued. With the advent of the sun, in the narrative, this darkness and the term which expresses it disappear.Teou-mis the word above explained, with the termination-m, expressing the idea ofarrested,doubtful,indefinite, as applied to all existence; the word “undifferentiated nature” properly interprets its vagueness and general character of an abyss of being, in the etymological sense of “nature” as the totality of things at that time born or produced.Rovemeansbreath, in the sense of an expanding, liberating, or developing spirit; its literal meaning is “the breath, the spirit which dilates and frees.”Mrepht,brooded with incubating love;rephis composedofre, “to be full of good-will, to be agreeable,” andeph, “to cover, to protect, to incubate, to brood.”Mim,the seeds of all beings,the waters. It is said, “the choice of this letterm, to signify water [the alphabetical Egyptian lettermis represented by the two undulatory lines which in the hieroglyphics represent water], is connected with the Egyptian ideas of the cause of the generation of living beings.”Numbers xxiv. 7, “He shall pour the waters out of his buckets, and the seed [zro] in the waters [b-mim].” The latter word is plural in form, but both singular and plural in sense.Aour,diffused light; a light resembling the dawn, but quite distinct from the light of the sun. The latter was not established until the fourth day, and its advent is characterized by a new word,leair, “to cause light tomoveabove the earth.”Joumisday, generically, andlilenight.Rqiô,the expanse;atrqiô,the individualized substance of the expanse. Space, in the opinion of the Egyptians, “not being a vacuum, but a material substance, Moses could say, and was even compelled to say, ‘the substance of space, that which constitutes it.’ ”Osh, made. This word first occurs in verse 7, and is there applied to themakinga separation between the waters or aqueous vapors condensed around the earth and those condensed around some similar spot “above, as regards the individuality of the expanse,”—to wit, the solar core or nucleus,—to which, attracted by gravity from the attenuated vapors of the space between, is due the subsequent establishment of the solar light and heat, as in an electrical arc light, and the presence of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere. These processes, involving the constitution of our atmosphere and of the sun’s photosphere and chromosphere, were not completed until two subsequent cosmical periods had elapsed, from the third to the fifth. The wordosh, in its different combinations and inflections, is also used in verse 11, where it signifies “making,” as applied to fruit; “yielding” fruit, in verse 12; “they made,” as applied to the sun and moon, in verse 16; “made,” as applied to the entity ofquadrupeds and higher animals generally, in verse 25; “we will make,” as applied to man, verse 26; “had made,” as applied to “every entity of creation,” verse 31; “had made,” as applied to the specially directed work asmlactou, chapter ii. verse 2; and finally, in the general summing up in verse 3 of the second chapter, as an element in a compound substantive phrase “according to the making-act,” or “in accordance with the making of creation.”“Oshout,” it is said, “signifies a manual operation, carried on according to a previously conceived idea, or model.”We find a similar use of the substantive infinitive with a preceding preposition in verse 21, chapter iii. “Ctnoutis derived fromtne, a consoling word.Tnout, the infinitive of the conjugation Piel, adds to the word the act of causing to be done, and of doing with care.”A similar construction,lraout, is employed in chapter ii. verse 19, translated in the English version, “and brought them unto Adamto seewhat …”; more literally, “as regards the act of seeing,” or according to a vision, or show. That is, they were brought and presented to his sight.The object in writing these two words,braandl-osh-out, together at the very end of the narrative was to conclusively establish the fact, beyond all possible doubt, that the whole work of creation was an orderly and harmonious progression.Mlactou, which word is used twice in verse 2 and once in verse 3 of the second chapter, and not previously, is also introduced for specific emphasis. It means that the whole preceding work of creation was, in its nature, “the work of Mlac,” a messenger, or a specially energized and directed agency, sent to fulfil the appointed work of Jeove. Its purpose was to forever prevent the belief that the work of creation was due to mere natural forces, on the one hand, operating by chance; and, on the other, that these forces were independent gods carrying out their own purposes, and of their own will. It was set up as a double barrier against rationalism on the one side and polytheism on the other.It may be incidentally added that the popular belief that“Adam was created out of the dust of the earth” is not in accordance with the original record. In the second narrative, chapter ii. verse 7, the wordophris rendered “dust” in our English version, but it does not signify ordinary terrestrial dust at all; “its radical meaning is to volatilize a substance, to sublimate it.” The true signification of the word used is analogous to a “material essence.” The same word is used inNumbers xxiii. 10as a synonym for “seed;” it is said that “the Septuagint version translatesophrbysperma.”The formation, described in the third chapter, of the female human being out of one of the ribs of Adam, excised for that purpose (which is a matter of almost universal popular belief), is not, in reality, what is stated in the original. In verse 21 of chapter ii. the words are rendered in our version, “And he took one of his ribs.” What is really said, however, is “And he brought out another one from his sides.” So the similar expression in verse 22 in reality signifies, “caused to be made according to womankind the individualized substance of his side.”The word translated “of his ribs” is precisely the same as is subsequently used by the same writer (Exodus xxxvii. 27) to designate the location of the supporting rings upon an altar of incense, and is there rendered, “by the two corners of it, upon the two sides.”The defective translation is due to imperfect knowledge, at that time, of the processes of organic development. The true signification is that given in the “Institutes of Manu”: “Having divided his own sub-sistence, the Mighty Power became half male and half female.”The words rendered “help meet” in verses 18 and 20 have a far higher meaning; “I will make him a help meet” should be translated, “I will cause to be made for him an overseeing help as a guide, an instructor, a revealer.” And in verse 20 of chapter iii., “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve,” the latter word is not translated; the correct rendering is, “And Adam called the symbolic name of his wife the female serpent-wise revealer, she who explains, points out things, whoinstructs,” for that is what the true root-meaning of Eve signifies. The concluding words of this verse, “because she was the mother of all living,” are obviously mistranslated, for not only was she not a mother at all, but she did not even conceive, as stated in the next chapter, until she had left the garden finally. The true signification is, “because she was the mother of all [spiritual, see verse 22, as contradistinguished from animal and vegetable] life.”The female human being, the word translated woman, has the generic root-signification of “flame,” while, prior to Eve, that of the Adamic man is the “red earth.” As the male was formed from a material earthly essence, the female was created one remove further from the gross and material in the direction of the spiritual; and her powers were distinctively subjective, those of intuition, while those of the male were objective, those derived from instruction. Even in the final curse (so called) the man turns back to the earth to earn his subsistence, while the woman turns forward to the instruction of the future men and women, the children; for the words, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” have left one word of the original untranslated, and by supplying this the sense is entirely changed, “and conceiving, and bringing forth, in sorrow shalt thou bring up, care for, and train children.” In those countries childbirth was never attended with much pain or sorrow.The obvious effect of the whole inspired or traditionary second narrative is to clearly differentiate the contrasted faculties of the two sexes, and the root-meanings of the words employed, whether Moses himself perceived it or not, are a testimonial of the highest possible character for woman, instead of being, as rendered in the ordinary versions, a mark of inferiority, or even of degradation. In the garden scene, when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she did not do it hastily or from mere temptation; it is said that “she considered it attentively;” the same word being used as was employed in the first narrative to mark the intense interest and almost superhuman character of the consideration by the Aleim of the work, as its successive stagesappeared, which they were delegated to perform, and which Jeove himself directed. The prize, to her, far outweighed the penalty, and the aspiring sibyl dared to lift the innermost veil in the adytum of the temple, and grasp the lofty truths which made her as one of the Aleim. So fell Prometheus.And then, no sooner had the flame-crowned seer won her precious prize, than, woman-like, she turned and laid it before her husband, and he, the innocent one, “did eat.”The serpent was not a mere snake, be it understood; it was the Egyptian Typhon, the dark Spirit of doubt, the questioner, the tempter, the eternalif, the why, whence, what, and whither?It was her insatiable aspiration to reach the highest possible limits of human knowledge which gave strength to her daring, and not a childish fancy for an apple. All this, of course, is lost in the translation. It is as though the national standard of a mighty people had been disinterred from the remains of past ages, which had been borne aloft at the head of mighty armies for centuries, and for which thousands had gloriously died in battle in defence of a sacred cause, and which now, its past history untraced, has been catalogued as a brass bird of some sort mounted on a stick.It is to be regretted that there is no plain, popular work by a thoroughly capable scholar, without theological or anti-theological bias, which treats of the origin, form, root-derivation, usage, accurate signification, and construction of the comparatively few words employed in the ancient narratives which compose the first half-dozen chapters of Genesis, and, we may add, the book of Job; something like those inestimable works which deal with the ancient cosmogonic literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, China, Phœnicia, and Central America. Nothing of this sort is to be found, at all events in a form accessible to the general reader, and such a work, in small compass, would be of the highest importance to popular instructors, to students, and to the public as well, for it would throw a flood of light on these extremely valuable but, hitherto, so illy-comprehended records.THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.1.Aleim, the Forces, fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in the commencement of individualized existence, the individualized substance of the heavens and the individualized substance of the earth.2. And the earth was in tomb-like darkness and undeveloped, and there was compressive hindering darkness on the surface of undifferentiated nature. And the dilating and liberating Spirit of the Forces hovered with incubating love on the surface of the seeds of all beings, the waters.3. Then Aleim said, There shall be a diffused light; and a diffused light was.4. And Aleim regarded with attention the individualized substance of the diffused light, because good. And Aleim caused a separation to be made between the diffused light and between the compressive hindering darkness.5. Then Aleim exclaimed for the diffused light,Day!and for the compressive hindering darkness exclaimed,Night!And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;First Day.6. Then Aleim said, There shall be an expansion obtained by a thinning in the center of the waters, and there was that which caused a separation to be made by occupying a spot, the waters according to the waters.7. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the expanse, and caused a separation to exist by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are under as regards the expanse of space, and by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are above as regards the expanse of space; and it was so.8. Then Aleim exclaimed for the expanse of space,The Heavens!and there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Second Day.9. And Aleim said, The waters which are underneath the heavens will tend directly, in order to meet in it, towards a single spot fixed upon for their meeting; and of dryness produced by the action of an internal fire the appearance shall be made; and it was so.10. Then Aleim exclaimed for the dryness,Earth!and for the spot fixed upon for the meeting of the waters exclaimed,Seas!Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.11. And Aleim said, There shall be made to grow from the earth a dwarf vegetation which can be trodden under foot, a maturing plant causing to be sowed around it a seed, the strong and woody substance of fruit making fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself above the earth; and it was so.12. And there was caused to arise suddenly and full of strength a dwarf vegetation, a maturing plant sowing around it seed after his kind; and the woody substance yielding fruit whose seed is in itself after his kind. Then Aleim considered it, because good.13. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Third Day.14. Then Aleim said, There shall be starry-lights in the expanse of space of the heavens to separate between the duration of the day and between the duration of the night; and they shall be for signs, and for seasons, and for the days which make the year, and for the repetitions of years.15. And they shall be for luminous bodies in the expanse of space of the heavens to cause light to move above the earth; and it was so.16. And Aleim made a double individualized substance, the superior in size and excellence of the starry-lights, the individualized substance which was the greater of the luminous bodies to represent the rule of the day, and the lesser luminous body to represent the rule of the night.Of the dim and almost extinct lights [the stars] they made the individualized substance also.17. And Aleim established these individualized substances in the expanse of space of the heavens to make light move above the earth.18. And to be representatives of dominion during the day and during the night, and to separate between the continuance of diffused light and between the continuance of compressivehindering darkness; then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.19. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fourth Day.20. Then Aleim said, The waters shall bring forth a swarm of swarming creatures having living breath; and that which flies, the birds, shall be made to fly with strength and fleetness above the earth in the space extended of the heavens.21. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor the individualized substance of those which are superior in size of the gigantic reptiles and every individualized substance having living breath, that moveth, which they had produced, swarming from the waters, according to their kind; and every individualized substance of flying thing with wings, after his kind. Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.22. And Aleim blessed these individualities by saying, propagate your species and multiply yourselves, and fill the individualized substance of the waters in the seas; and as for the flying thing, it shall multiply itself on the earth.23. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fifth Day.24. Then Aleim said, From the earth shall be brought forth the living breath according to its kind, the quadruped, and the being which moveth about, and the terrestrial animal according to its kind; and it was so.25. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the animal of the earth according to his kind, and the individualized substance of the quadruped according to his kind, and every individualized substance that moveth about of red earth according to his kind. Then Aleim regarded it, because good.26. Then Aleim said, We will make mankind of a like order of intellect with ourselves, and they shall extend their dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the bird of the heavens, and over the quadruped, and over all of the earth, and over all the moving beings that move about over the earth.27. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor theindividualized substance of mankind in the exactness of a shadow cast upon a wall; on this shadow Aleim carved the individuality; male and female they fashioned the individualized substance.28. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance. And Aleim said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the individualized substance of the earth, and subdue it, and extend your dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all life of the being which moveth about over the earth.29. And Aleim said, Behold I have given for you every useful plant-substance yielding seed, yielding seed which there is over the surface of all the earth, and every individualized substance of tree which has in it fruit pertaining to a tree yielding seed, yielding seed for you, it shall be for food.30. And for all animal life of the earth, and for everything that flies in the heavens, and for every being that moveth over the surface of the earth which has in it living breath, every individualized substance which is a green maturing plant shall be for food. And it was so.31. Then Aleim looked at every individualized substance which they had made, and behold it was as good as possible. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Sixth Day.(Chapter ii.) 1. Then the finishing was made of the heavens, and of the earth, and of all the orderly arrangement.2. And Aleim [the Forces] finished on the seventh day the divinely appointed and directed work which they had performed; and they came again to a state of rest on the seventh day from all the appointed work which they had done.3. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance of the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it they returned to their primitive condition from all the divinely appointed and directed work which the Forces had fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in accordance with the making of creation.

CHAPTER XIV.THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—Bible.Thus, as we have seen, through countless future ages will the sun, with his incandescent envelope of hydrogen, and the planets, with their life-sustaining atmospheres of oxygen, fulfil their appointed times and courses. But if we could conceive that all atmospheres, solar and planetary, were suddenly blotted out and forever annihilated, so that these great orbs thenceforth rolled along as they do now, but only as black globes in an ocean of space of Stygian darkness, new atmospheres would at once begin to be formed, and these would soon again surround the sun and planets, precisely like those which now exist.Sweeping along in darkness, the force of gravity would gather around each of these bodies vast accumulations of aqueous vapor and other gases condensed from the attenuated matter of surrounding space. The planets, by their axial rotations, would again generate from these regions, newly occupied as the system drifted along through space, electrical energy of enormous quantity and potential. Earth would again hear the mighty mandate, “Let there be light,” and from her poles to herequator the skies would blaze with brush-light auroras. Suddenly, with a mighty leap, the pent-up currents would flash across to their opposite electric pole, the auroras would gradually die away, and instantly the molecules of hydrogen would begin to sift out at the solar and those of oxygen at the planetary terminals. The electrical currents driving their furious pathway through the rapidly gathering hydrogen envelope, the sun would first begin to faintly flicker with hazy, nebulous light; the light would gather intensity, and soon flash and glow with energy; the solar nucleus within would become intensely heated and liquefied or partially volatilized, and again the solar streams of incandescent heat and light would radiate forth on every side; the commingled gases, oxygen and nitrogen, would once more surround each planetary globe, and we should have a new solar envelope just as we now see it, and new planetary atmospheres like our own; and then, and not till then, would the opposing generative forces permanently counterbalance each other and electrolytic decomposition become practically stationary, except to compensate for the slight variations constantly liable to occur in the complicated running of the mechanism. So the mutilated crustacean re-grows his lost claws, and so our own gaping wounds are healed by the greatvis medicatrix naturæ. The most stable of all things is mutually balanced instability; perhaps there is no other form of stability.The “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace concernsitself only with the aggregate matter of which our solar system is composed, and the force of gravity, including cohesion, ignoring the action of the equally powerful force of repulsion. But there is another nebular hypothesis much older than that of Laplace and far more scientific, for it utilizes both the force of gravity and cohesion and the radiant force of repulsion in the generation of our solar system. We refer to what is known as the Mosaic cosmogony. Whatever the origin of this magnificent narrative may have been, whether written down by Moses originally, or by him derived from the sacred learning of Egypt, with which he was fully acquainted, or by the Egyptian scribes drawn from Ethiopia, and still further back from the sacred traditions of India, it bears internal evidence, when properly rendered from the Hebrew record, of a knowledge of these stupendous phenomena (which no human eye could ever have beheld) which is most remarkable. The commonly accepted versions do not clearly bring out the full meaning of the original,—indeed, it would have been impossible for the earlier translators to have done so,—but when critically and etymologically rendered, very surprising coincidences with the succession of events as they must actually have occurred, and the principles involved in the successive stages of creation, will be found in nearly every part of the record.This record is embodied in the first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter of Genesis. The Hebrew was long believed to be an original,if not an inspired, language, but it is now well known to have been a derivative or root language, made up much like the English, and, like it, having the meanings of its words primarily determined by those of the root-stems from which they have been formed. The roots of these Hebrew words are to be found among the languages of many older peoples, and nearly all of them have now been traced to their immediate origin. Another source of error is in the so-called Masoretic pointing, which was not introduced for a thousand years after the time of Moses, and which has often changed the signification of the older words, and even the form of the words themselves; but by critical researches the roots and their combinations have been isolated, so that we are now able to possess a much mere accurate knowledge of the Mosaic record than was possible in former times, for, of course, no original copies have come down to us. It is not a reconstruction of the record which has been made, but a careful editing by means of the derivation and true signification of the words used, and by careful comparison among the most ancient versions accessible to modern research. The English version, while imperfect in its rendering of this ancient narrative, is not to be considered by any means a false translation, but it largely errs in failing to give the full radical meaning of the words employed in the original.As an illustration of this indefiniteness of rendering in the ordinary English version let us consider the opening sentences of the narrative: “Inthe beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”In the “beginning” of what? Does it mean the beginning of our own solar system? or of all systems? or of all space? or of Jehovah (for He has not yet been mentioned or described)? or of the Aleim themselves,—that is, did the work begin as soon as the forces began? and did the latter originate spontaneously, or otherwise? What “God” is meant? Is it Jehovah, or Aleim, or some other God not yet mentioned or described? If we will take every name in the Bible which is translated God (and it may be any of these according to the English rendering), we will have legion. We shall even find that the same word which is translated “God” was applied by Jehovah on one occasion to Moses. “Created”? What is meant by this word? Was the creating a creation out of nothing? out of something pre-existing? or something coexisting elsewhere? Was the creation a direct or an indirect one? by the use of the forces of nature, or by overriding the forces of nature? Was it a physical creation by an inconceivable action of mere thought, or will? and if so, was this thought, or will, God himself, or one of his attributes or powers only? “The heaven”? What heaven? Was it that to which the virtuous are supposed to go after death? or was it some more physical heaven? Wastheheaven the atmospheric heaven, the interplanetary heaven, the heaven of interstellar space, or that more extended heaven which liesbeyond our knowledge? Wastheheaven one of these which He created, or did He create all the different heavens of all the solar systems and nebulæ at the same time? “Without form”? Was the earth without any form at all? or merely without its present form? or without some particular form not mentioned? If the earth was a physical structure it must have hadsomeform; what was it? “And void”? Was the earth void like a soap-bubble? or void like a ray of light? or a vacuum? If it was empty, what was it that was empty? How could the heaven and earth be void after they had been brought into existence? “Darkness was upon the face of the deep”? What deep? Was it the sea not yet created? or the earth, which is anything but a “deep”? was it the atmosphere? or all space? If the latter, did all other systems of space wait for their light on ours? or did we wait on theirs? are there no new systems now forming, and none to be formed hereafter? If all space is meant, where was its outside, or its face? and what occupied the intervening regions? was it a physical face or the face of a vacuum? Were these statements to be accepted by faith or reason? If the former, was it a faith which could only have come from the experience of after-ages? or was it based on theipse dixitof Moses? What was the basis of faith when the record was first written? was it from generally accepted tradition or by revelation? Is the record anonymous or does it reveal the name of its author? If to be endorsed by knowledge and reason, why should not the narrative be strictlyand accurately translated, even at the expense of conciseness and elegance of diction, in order that the exact force of every word shall be fully felt and recognized? If the record is from divine revelation, it is still more essential to know precisely what was revealed; otherwise we are no better than idolaters; we are worse, in fact, for we have changed and falsified the landmarks of religion, and bear false witness against God Himself. We must not interpret Genesis by records made long subsequently; it must speak for itself or not at all.When construed in accordance with the exact definition of the words themselves quite a new and strange light is thrown upon the history of the events thus recorded. The great importance of a strict construction of the translation and fidelity to the original is emphasized by the fact that the same word was never used in this record to express a different sense in different parts, nor were two different words ever used in different places to express the same meaning. It is, therefore, necessary to give every word of the original its exact fulness and force. The basis of the following critical translation is to be found in “Mankind: their Origin and Destiny” (Longmans & Co., London, 1872), but a careful comparison has been made with other accepted authorities, and the root-meanings of the separate words have been carefully traced out, so that many necessary changes will be found to have been made in order to bring out the precise sense of the original. There is no actual literal, critical, etymological, and scientificrendering embraced in a single translation known to us, and which is complete in itself; but that which follows will be found, it is believed, to give every word its particular etymological shade of meaning, and to employ the same word in the same place, for the same purpose, and with the same signification as it was understood to have, in its original form, when first recorded. The specific root-meanings of the most important words used are further explained in detail in a separate section below.The use ofAleim, “the powerful Forces,” in the plural, followed by the verb in the singular, is a Hebraism, and indicates the collective character of the forces as specially energized, sent forth, and directed by Jeove (Jeova or Jehovah is the Chaldaic form of the word, the original Hebrew being Jeove), who does not appear by name in this narrative, though, as we shall see, specially delegated power from some higher source is that characteristic which is most emphasized throughout the record. These forces are personified, as is usual in ancient records (and, indeed, in modern thought), but they are in reality the “powers of God.” The author of the work above referred to says, “The idea of Moses was that there was a Supreme God … and that He only acts by means of his agents calledAleim, the Gods, in the plural and indefinite number, or embassadors, or voices.” The ancient belief in the unity of all forces in one creative individuality is also most clearly shown in some of the oldest Vedaic hymnsof India (see Max Müller, “The Veda”). “Self (Atman) is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman (Force) itself is but Self.”Of the religion of the ancient Egyptians (see “Evolution and Christianity,” by J. F. York) it is said, “The chief theological characteristic of this first of all known civilized religions is the doctrine of the Divine Unity. As M. de Rougé says, ‘One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval God; everywhere and always it is one substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable God.’ ” The Egyptian cosmogony, as the fragments have come down to us (see Professor Arnold Guyot, “Creation”), is as follows:1. Theoriginal gaseous form, and the darkness of matter.2. The successive transformations.3. Light, as the first step in this development.4. The separation of the waters below from the waters above the expanse.5. Periods of development of indefinite length.6. The sun, moon, and earth organized last.The wordMlactou, which occurs several times repeated in the summing up of this narrative, explains the character ofAleimmost fully, as specially energized and directed agencies or forces. This word never has any other meaning. Even when applied to a king it was not a king as amonarch, but as the specially directed agent of God.I. Samuel xxviii. 17, “The Lord hath sent the kingdom out of thine hand; … because thou obeydst not the voice of the Lord.” When, inExodus xiii. 21it is said that “Jeove went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud,” this is explained, in chapter xiv. verse 19, to mean that this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was Mlac, a messenger, or agent. It is translated “angel” in the English version, but it was not a personal angel; it was a specially energized and directed force. In the earliest times it was not the God of fire, or of force, or of justice which men feared, but fire, or force, or justice; the anthropomorphic conception came later with the generalization of all fire, all force, or all justice. We say now that a malefactor fears the law; what he really fears, however, is punishment. In this record we are dealing with the primordial forces of God,—gravity, electricity, attraction, repulsion, cohesion, vital force, etc., etc., but acting with special energy for a predetermined result. Of these forces Dr. McCosh says, in his work on Christianity and Positivism, “One God, with his infinitely varied perfections,—his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, his love, his mercy; we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regardingthisforce, not as something independent of God, but as thevery power of God acting in all action; so that in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In more rugged and virile form this was precisely the old Mosaic philosophy, the philosophy of the arcana of the Egyptian temples, and of the Vedaic age of the Aryans of India. Where was the radiant center of this unfailing search-light which has poured its broad belt of dazzling brightness down to our day from those old, prehistoric ages?So De Jouvencel, in his “Genesis according to Science,” says, “We should not place the works of nature on one side and nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person.”The word which in the English version is translated “rested,” in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not meanrested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered “came to a state of rest,” it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth’s crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony,and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, “God rests as the creator of the visible universe.The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibriumwhich we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence.” In “The Unity of Nature” the Duke of Argyle says, “We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily.”The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean “created—and made,” as though marking a broad class distinction between thedifferentprocesses before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered “made” indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creationab initio,—that is,out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered “fashioned like the work of a sculptor” is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word “made;”so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The wordBrameans that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is. What we see in the sky, among the nebulæ, are later developments of like solar systems, in like manner, from the midst of the substance of the same illimitable and eternal space.But biology has an interest in this account of creation equally as great as has cosmology. The wordBrais first applied to the formation of the individualized substance of the heavens and the earth. They were fashioned or carved out like a sculpture from something on which the forces could operate. There was, of course,creationinvolved, but it was a mental, not a physical process. When a sculptor has completed his clay figure he has brought forth agreat creation, perhaps, and the “creation” is still his own, though the figure be cast in bronze by hired workmen in the foundry, who execute the sculptor’s will at two dollars a day, it may be, each. Beyond this mental element there is no morecreation, in its widest sense, than when a boy “creates” a new point on his pencil by guiding his hand and knife to sharpen it.When the “diffused light” came, it is not said that it was “fashioned like the work of a sculptor,” or that it was even “made;” but that it “came into existence.” “Let there be light, and there was light,” as the English version has it. But when the radiant energy of the sun came to be formed, on the fourth day, it did not “come into existence,” nor was it “fashioned like the work of a sculptor;” it was “made.” The reason is that it was not a development from the preceding “diffused light,” but a new kind of light, made mechanically by the electrolysis of aqueous vapor around the sun’s body, forming a hydrogen envelope, and by driving the furious torrents of electricity from the planets through this atmosphere, while the auroral, “diffused light” of the earth was gradually dying away during the process. Hence there was no room for the wordBra, or for the wordIei(came into existence) here; the word to be used wasOsh. And when life was first introduced,—vegetable life, the primal life,—the word used is notBra; this life was not “fashioned” or developed from other life. But when animal life was afterwards introduced, the word used isBra; it was a refashioning. What was this life fashioned out of? It was not “made;” it did not “begin to exist;” it was developed. In this manner the earth was finally filled with animal life. Then came the introduction of the human race. Here we again have the wordBra, thrice repeated; but when this introduction of mankind was first projected, and before it was executed, itwas in these words, “We willmake[the rootOsh] mankind;” or, in the English version, “Let usmakeman.” There seems here to have been a gradual ascent of living organisms by development, almost precisely in accordance with the most recent teachings of science. Two essentially differentkindsof light were successively produced, independently of each other; the earlier kind “came into being,” and the later “was made.” The substance or entity of the heavens and of the earth, generically, “was fashioned.” Three successive introductions of organic life not essentially different from each other occurred; the first is described thus: “Let the earth bring forth; … and the earth brought forth,” in the English version; or “There shall be made to grow; … and there was caused to arise suddenly out of the ground … vegetation,” as more accurately rendered. The second form of organic life, in order of time, the animal, was “fashioned.” The third form, mankind, was also “fashioned,” and this was done long subsequently to the introduction of the second.If the wordBrahad any signification oforiginal creationit would have been applied to the first creation of life, for it was far more wonderful and original that there should be vegetable life which grew and developed, which brought forth flowers and then fruit, which formed germinative seeds, and from these successively and continuously reproduced its multifarious species, than thatanimallife should have been introduced long afterwardsto repeat these same things which vegetation had been, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, already doing for untold ages,—from the third period of the earth’s long history to the fifth; and more especially still when we consider that vegetable life and animal life, in their lowest forms, have no positive line of division between them.And ifOsh, which is applied to the genesis of solar light, be capable of the signification oforiginal creation, then this word should have been applied to the generation of the “diffused light” of the second day, for the genesis of light is far more wonderful and original than the subsequent production of sunlight, after the forming earth had existed for two whole formative periods, from the second to the fourth, under the constant illumination of this universally diffused auroral light. If, on the other hand, the words applied to the first generation of light and the first generation of life be held to mark anoriginal creation, then these words are never applied in this whole narrative to the genesis of theentityof the heavens, or the earth, or the sun and moon, or to animal life, or the life of man.The radiant light and heat of the sun were not made until the fourth day, while the introduction of vegetable life dates from the long antecedent third day of creation. Prior to the development of the sun’s thermal light there could have been, as we have already shown, no free oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere; and it is a remarkable circumstancethat vegetation, which is the only form of organic life which could have existed and propagated its species in an atmosphere composed of carbonic, nitrogenous, and aqueous vapors, devoid of oxygen, is that particular form of life which has been selected for this purpose, and its advent placed prior to the making of the sun. It would have been far more reasonable (previous to our present knowledge of these things) to have placed the formation of the sun in advance of the introduction of life; it is surprising that this was not done, unless we give to these “ancients” a knowledge of the principles of natural science far beyond anything hitherto attributed to them.In the same connection there is described a stage preparatory to and leading up to the simultaneous development of the sun’s light and heat, and the sifting out of hydrogen around the solar core, and of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere, which is equally remarkable. The “separation of the waters” described in verses 6 and 7 has never been fully rendered into English, or even understood in the original, as the words seemed meaningless in their literal sense until correctly interpreted by the facts set forth in the present work.We must first note that the separation of the waters of space to two opposite foci, with an intervening space of attenuated matter, and their condensation there into two entirely different bodies, was the work of the second day, while the formation of the terrestrial rain-clouds and seas, as connected together, was a work of the third day, andwas not accomplished until then, which was long afterwards. These entirely different operations—different in time, place, character, and circumstance—have always been confounded with each other; but one is in reality systemic and the other merely local.In verse 6 there was decreed an expanse orthinning(an attenuated region) in thecenterof the waters, and a separation was made by the formation of two “spots” (verse 7), one under the expanse and the other above the expanse; the expanse was space, interplanetary space. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his book on Creation, says, “It is to be regretted that the English version has translated the Hebrew wordexpanseby the wordfirmament…. The difficulties they [the commentators] have created for themselves arose … from depriving it of its cosmogonic character and belittling it by reducing the great phenomena there described to a simple modification of the terrestrial atmosphere …. They forget that this thin covering of clouds is but a temporary and ever-changing one, and that the clouds areinthat heaven rather than above it …. They forget that this is not the true heavens in which are spread the sun and moon and stars …. This grand day, so dwarfed and misunderstood, is the one in which are described the generations of the heavens, announced by Moses, which otherwise find no place in the narrative of the creative week.”The two foci of waters were the solar and terrestrial; around these bodies were gathered by theattraction of gravity, and there condensed, the aqueous vapors from the attenuated intervening matter of space; the earth by its rotation generated the enormous electrical currents which still continue; when these made their mighty leap across to the sun, the diffused auroral light around the earth gradually disappeared, hydrogen and oxygen began to be evolved at the opposite poles—the sun and the earth—from the condensed envelopes of aqueous vapor which surrounded them, the sun’s hydrogen atmosphere was pierced, as in the pail-of-water experiment described in an earlier chapter of the present work, by the planetary electric currents, the sun became incandescent, andpari passuthe earth became fitted, by the development of oxygen, for the abode of animal life. As taking part in this great mechanical transformation, the sun was said to have been “made;” it did not “come into being.”Just prior to the introduction of vegetable life—during the same creative epoch, in fact, and for the support of which life it was necessary—the waters under the expanse were condensed into rain-clouds and seas, and there is a curious reference (verse 9) to the appearance of the earth’s dryness “as produced by the action of an internal fire;” the gradual cooling of the earth by the radiation of its internal heat of condensation into space would account for this appearance, and, in connection with the diffused auroral light throughout the whole sky, would doubtless have sufficed for the support of vegetable life.In verse 16 the fixed stars (the suns of other systems) are referred to, but in a parenthetical statement—almost deprecatory, in fact—that “the dim and almost extinct lights” the same forces created also, but when they were created is not stated in the record. The occasion for this incidental remark is to be found in the preceding statement that the two new luminaries, the sun and moon, were the two “superior bodies in size of the starry lights.” Having mentioned the stars in this comparison, the author feels called upon to add that the latter also had been similarly created,—that is, that they were not original existences, and of course they are not, but they were not created at that epoch, and are not said to have been.In chapter ii. verse 4, which opens the second narrative (quite a different history, by the way), Jeove appears Himself, joined with the Aleim, and henceforth this personal connection is maintained; the English version translates this composite word “The Lord God,” which means the Master God; the correct reading is, however, the “God of gods,” or what we call the “God of the forces of nature,” or the “God omnipotent.”In the whole Mosaic cosmogony there is nothing which can even suggest a gradually closing nebulous mass; the element of rotation is absent (and it would not have been understood by the people even if presented); but, with this exception, the processes of development are substantially in accord with what must really have taken place, and in the order described. But it is, as before stated, absolutelyessential to understand the root-meanings of all the more important words used in the original. A superficial translation is not only meaningless, but misleading; whereas, when accurately understood, the record is one of the most remarkable ever presented to human intelligence. The words used were selected deliberately for their specific shades of meaning, and, unless these are properly rendered, to the uninformed the narrative will present a simple succession of startling phenomena, while to the educated student each of these changes carries within its verbal index its origin, its mode, and the knowledge of the forces at work. To the one it is a dramatic spectacle performed on the stage in front; to the other it is the same work as seen behind the curtain, with all the intermoving mechanism (the author’s manuscript the sole guide), the interplay of complicated forces, the triumphant successes, the rapt attention, and even the sudden applause extorted at each wondrous climax from the skilled actors themselves, who are at the same time unceasingly engaged in working out the mighty drama of creation. One might readily believe that the original author of this record was thoroughly acquainted with the processes involved in the development of a solar system like our own from the diffused primordial matter of space, substantially as we have endeavored, in the present work, to deduce them from the most recent investigations and discoveries of science.Of the watery vapors condensed above the expanse of space many of the ancient writers had afar more correct knowledge than had those who translated these chapters from the original into the various modern languages. In the Psalms we read, “Praise him, … ye waters that be above the heavens;” in the Song of the Three Holy Children, “O all ye waters that be above the heavens.” Theophilus speaks of the “visible sky as havingdrawn to itselfa portion of the waters of chaos at the time of the creation.”Saint Augustine says that the firmament has been formed “betweenthe upper and the lower waters,” and quotesGenesis i. 6 and 7, as his authority.Thousands of years ago, as far back as the days of the Pythagoreans, and even long before, mankind was acquainted with the mariner’s compass, telescopic tubes, and glass lenses; they knew that the moon receives her light by reflection from the sun, of the presence of mountains and valleys on the lunar surface, that her day and night are each a fortnight in length, that there were other planets known to the Egyptians besides the seven known to the Greeks (the Brahmans reckoned fifteen of them), that the sun is the center of our planetary system, that the earth and the other planets revolve around it, that the earth is round and rotates on its own axis daily, that weight is a principal element in the maintenance of these rotations, that the fixed stars are suns, and that the Milky Way appears white from the number of stars which it contains. Kircher quotes from an ancient Syrian author the philosophy of the sidereal system, dividing it into many layers or spheres attached to orbits, each presidedover by a spirit. In the eighth sphere are placed the fixed stars, “still higher two other layers of stars not less luminous, and of different sizes, the nebulæ and the small stars of the Milky Way, and the whole is surrounded by the celestial waters, which spread over the whole firmament, and which compose the great sea of light and the boundless ocean.” The sources of all this wondrous knowledge can be traced back through Chaldea, Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, through the colony of Meroë, to India.ROOT-MEANINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORDS USED IN THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.Aleim(“corruptly called Elohim by the modern Jews, but always Aleim in the synagogue copies”) means the Strong Forces (or, by subsequent impersonation, subaltern gods), operating to carry out the purposes and execute the plans of Jeove.Al, the root, signifiesStrong,strength,a ram;Al-emeansStrongin a personal sense;Aleim(plural) means the Forces, the Strong-ones, the Powers, and in Egyptian mythology, the subordinate, or executive, gods, the demi-urgi.Exodus vii. 1, “And the Lord [Jeove] said unto Moses, See I have made thee a god [Aleim] to Pharaoh; thou shalt speak all that I command thee.”Bra,carved,cut,fashioned like the work of a sculptor,gave a new shape to,formed from unformed material. FromBr,a knife;br-i,to carve,to cut.Brashit,in the commencementor beginningof individualized existence(with the initial prepositionb-).Bsignifiesin;it(which is related toat) signifiesindividualized existence;rash, aprincipleorbeginning, or acommencement.At, connected with the Chaldaic, signifiessubstance,essence, orindividuality, “the thing itself” (Latin,ens); it is correctly translated “individualized substance.”Eshmim, the combination of the prepositionewith the substantiveshmim, the word signifyingof the visible heavens, or the planisphere.Artz, the earth in a state of aridity, or as a generalized expression for the earth;arsignifies theearth, and the terminationtzintensifies the signification ofdrought,whiteness,aridity; in contrast with this isadme,red earth, orproductive earthorsoil.U-is a conjunction, signifyingandorthen, in the sense of succession of time, something like our phrase “and then.”Teoudoes not mean “without form,” nor doesubeoumean “and void,” as rendered in our English version, at least not in the ordinary sense of these words. “Teourefers to extinct life, or to existenceshut up as in a tomb and in darkness, whileu-beourefers tolife which is about reappearing, but still hidden in the egg or the ovary, and waiting for the word which shall cause the dawn of creation to shine upon it.” These words are more properly rendered “tomb-like darkness and undeveloped.”Eshcmeansdarkness; not merely an intense darkness, but what may be denominated a “thick darkness;” it is anenshroudingdarknesswhichcompressesandhinders. It is precisely such a darkness as would be produced by the interstratified cloud-layers between the convolutions of a forming spiral nebula, or the cloud-strata surrounding the earth before electrolytic decomposition of the aqueous vapors had ensued. With the advent of the sun, in the narrative, this darkness and the term which expresses it disappear.Teou-mis the word above explained, with the termination-m, expressing the idea ofarrested,doubtful,indefinite, as applied to all existence; the word “undifferentiated nature” properly interprets its vagueness and general character of an abyss of being, in the etymological sense of “nature” as the totality of things at that time born or produced.Rovemeansbreath, in the sense of an expanding, liberating, or developing spirit; its literal meaning is “the breath, the spirit which dilates and frees.”Mrepht,brooded with incubating love;rephis composedofre, “to be full of good-will, to be agreeable,” andeph, “to cover, to protect, to incubate, to brood.”Mim,the seeds of all beings,the waters. It is said, “the choice of this letterm, to signify water [the alphabetical Egyptian lettermis represented by the two undulatory lines which in the hieroglyphics represent water], is connected with the Egyptian ideas of the cause of the generation of living beings.”Numbers xxiv. 7, “He shall pour the waters out of his buckets, and the seed [zro] in the waters [b-mim].” The latter word is plural in form, but both singular and plural in sense.Aour,diffused light; a light resembling the dawn, but quite distinct from the light of the sun. The latter was not established until the fourth day, and its advent is characterized by a new word,leair, “to cause light tomoveabove the earth.”Joumisday, generically, andlilenight.Rqiô,the expanse;atrqiô,the individualized substance of the expanse. Space, in the opinion of the Egyptians, “not being a vacuum, but a material substance, Moses could say, and was even compelled to say, ‘the substance of space, that which constitutes it.’ ”Osh, made. This word first occurs in verse 7, and is there applied to themakinga separation between the waters or aqueous vapors condensed around the earth and those condensed around some similar spot “above, as regards the individuality of the expanse,”—to wit, the solar core or nucleus,—to which, attracted by gravity from the attenuated vapors of the space between, is due the subsequent establishment of the solar light and heat, as in an electrical arc light, and the presence of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere. These processes, involving the constitution of our atmosphere and of the sun’s photosphere and chromosphere, were not completed until two subsequent cosmical periods had elapsed, from the third to the fifth. The wordosh, in its different combinations and inflections, is also used in verse 11, where it signifies “making,” as applied to fruit; “yielding” fruit, in verse 12; “they made,” as applied to the sun and moon, in verse 16; “made,” as applied to the entity ofquadrupeds and higher animals generally, in verse 25; “we will make,” as applied to man, verse 26; “had made,” as applied to “every entity of creation,” verse 31; “had made,” as applied to the specially directed work asmlactou, chapter ii. verse 2; and finally, in the general summing up in verse 3 of the second chapter, as an element in a compound substantive phrase “according to the making-act,” or “in accordance with the making of creation.”“Oshout,” it is said, “signifies a manual operation, carried on according to a previously conceived idea, or model.”We find a similar use of the substantive infinitive with a preceding preposition in verse 21, chapter iii. “Ctnoutis derived fromtne, a consoling word.Tnout, the infinitive of the conjugation Piel, adds to the word the act of causing to be done, and of doing with care.”A similar construction,lraout, is employed in chapter ii. verse 19, translated in the English version, “and brought them unto Adamto seewhat …”; more literally, “as regards the act of seeing,” or according to a vision, or show. That is, they were brought and presented to his sight.The object in writing these two words,braandl-osh-out, together at the very end of the narrative was to conclusively establish the fact, beyond all possible doubt, that the whole work of creation was an orderly and harmonious progression.Mlactou, which word is used twice in verse 2 and once in verse 3 of the second chapter, and not previously, is also introduced for specific emphasis. It means that the whole preceding work of creation was, in its nature, “the work of Mlac,” a messenger, or a specially energized and directed agency, sent to fulfil the appointed work of Jeove. Its purpose was to forever prevent the belief that the work of creation was due to mere natural forces, on the one hand, operating by chance; and, on the other, that these forces were independent gods carrying out their own purposes, and of their own will. It was set up as a double barrier against rationalism on the one side and polytheism on the other.It may be incidentally added that the popular belief that“Adam was created out of the dust of the earth” is not in accordance with the original record. In the second narrative, chapter ii. verse 7, the wordophris rendered “dust” in our English version, but it does not signify ordinary terrestrial dust at all; “its radical meaning is to volatilize a substance, to sublimate it.” The true signification of the word used is analogous to a “material essence.” The same word is used inNumbers xxiii. 10as a synonym for “seed;” it is said that “the Septuagint version translatesophrbysperma.”The formation, described in the third chapter, of the female human being out of one of the ribs of Adam, excised for that purpose (which is a matter of almost universal popular belief), is not, in reality, what is stated in the original. In verse 21 of chapter ii. the words are rendered in our version, “And he took one of his ribs.” What is really said, however, is “And he brought out another one from his sides.” So the similar expression in verse 22 in reality signifies, “caused to be made according to womankind the individualized substance of his side.”The word translated “of his ribs” is precisely the same as is subsequently used by the same writer (Exodus xxxvii. 27) to designate the location of the supporting rings upon an altar of incense, and is there rendered, “by the two corners of it, upon the two sides.”The defective translation is due to imperfect knowledge, at that time, of the processes of organic development. The true signification is that given in the “Institutes of Manu”: “Having divided his own sub-sistence, the Mighty Power became half male and half female.”The words rendered “help meet” in verses 18 and 20 have a far higher meaning; “I will make him a help meet” should be translated, “I will cause to be made for him an overseeing help as a guide, an instructor, a revealer.” And in verse 20 of chapter iii., “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve,” the latter word is not translated; the correct rendering is, “And Adam called the symbolic name of his wife the female serpent-wise revealer, she who explains, points out things, whoinstructs,” for that is what the true root-meaning of Eve signifies. The concluding words of this verse, “because she was the mother of all living,” are obviously mistranslated, for not only was she not a mother at all, but she did not even conceive, as stated in the next chapter, until she had left the garden finally. The true signification is, “because she was the mother of all [spiritual, see verse 22, as contradistinguished from animal and vegetable] life.”The female human being, the word translated woman, has the generic root-signification of “flame,” while, prior to Eve, that of the Adamic man is the “red earth.” As the male was formed from a material earthly essence, the female was created one remove further from the gross and material in the direction of the spiritual; and her powers were distinctively subjective, those of intuition, while those of the male were objective, those derived from instruction. Even in the final curse (so called) the man turns back to the earth to earn his subsistence, while the woman turns forward to the instruction of the future men and women, the children; for the words, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” have left one word of the original untranslated, and by supplying this the sense is entirely changed, “and conceiving, and bringing forth, in sorrow shalt thou bring up, care for, and train children.” In those countries childbirth was never attended with much pain or sorrow.The obvious effect of the whole inspired or traditionary second narrative is to clearly differentiate the contrasted faculties of the two sexes, and the root-meanings of the words employed, whether Moses himself perceived it or not, are a testimonial of the highest possible character for woman, instead of being, as rendered in the ordinary versions, a mark of inferiority, or even of degradation. In the garden scene, when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she did not do it hastily or from mere temptation; it is said that “she considered it attentively;” the same word being used as was employed in the first narrative to mark the intense interest and almost superhuman character of the consideration by the Aleim of the work, as its successive stagesappeared, which they were delegated to perform, and which Jeove himself directed. The prize, to her, far outweighed the penalty, and the aspiring sibyl dared to lift the innermost veil in the adytum of the temple, and grasp the lofty truths which made her as one of the Aleim. So fell Prometheus.And then, no sooner had the flame-crowned seer won her precious prize, than, woman-like, she turned and laid it before her husband, and he, the innocent one, “did eat.”The serpent was not a mere snake, be it understood; it was the Egyptian Typhon, the dark Spirit of doubt, the questioner, the tempter, the eternalif, the why, whence, what, and whither?It was her insatiable aspiration to reach the highest possible limits of human knowledge which gave strength to her daring, and not a childish fancy for an apple. All this, of course, is lost in the translation. It is as though the national standard of a mighty people had been disinterred from the remains of past ages, which had been borne aloft at the head of mighty armies for centuries, and for which thousands had gloriously died in battle in defence of a sacred cause, and which now, its past history untraced, has been catalogued as a brass bird of some sort mounted on a stick.It is to be regretted that there is no plain, popular work by a thoroughly capable scholar, without theological or anti-theological bias, which treats of the origin, form, root-derivation, usage, accurate signification, and construction of the comparatively few words employed in the ancient narratives which compose the first half-dozen chapters of Genesis, and, we may add, the book of Job; something like those inestimable works which deal with the ancient cosmogonic literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, China, Phœnicia, and Central America. Nothing of this sort is to be found, at all events in a form accessible to the general reader, and such a work, in small compass, would be of the highest importance to popular instructors, to students, and to the public as well, for it would throw a flood of light on these extremely valuable but, hitherto, so illy-comprehended records.THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.1.Aleim, the Forces, fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in the commencement of individualized existence, the individualized substance of the heavens and the individualized substance of the earth.2. And the earth was in tomb-like darkness and undeveloped, and there was compressive hindering darkness on the surface of undifferentiated nature. And the dilating and liberating Spirit of the Forces hovered with incubating love on the surface of the seeds of all beings, the waters.3. Then Aleim said, There shall be a diffused light; and a diffused light was.4. And Aleim regarded with attention the individualized substance of the diffused light, because good. And Aleim caused a separation to be made between the diffused light and between the compressive hindering darkness.5. Then Aleim exclaimed for the diffused light,Day!and for the compressive hindering darkness exclaimed,Night!And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;First Day.6. Then Aleim said, There shall be an expansion obtained by a thinning in the center of the waters, and there was that which caused a separation to be made by occupying a spot, the waters according to the waters.7. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the expanse, and caused a separation to exist by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are under as regards the expanse of space, and by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are above as regards the expanse of space; and it was so.8. Then Aleim exclaimed for the expanse of space,The Heavens!and there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Second Day.9. And Aleim said, The waters which are underneath the heavens will tend directly, in order to meet in it, towards a single spot fixed upon for their meeting; and of dryness produced by the action of an internal fire the appearance shall be made; and it was so.10. Then Aleim exclaimed for the dryness,Earth!and for the spot fixed upon for the meeting of the waters exclaimed,Seas!Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.11. And Aleim said, There shall be made to grow from the earth a dwarf vegetation which can be trodden under foot, a maturing plant causing to be sowed around it a seed, the strong and woody substance of fruit making fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself above the earth; and it was so.12. And there was caused to arise suddenly and full of strength a dwarf vegetation, a maturing plant sowing around it seed after his kind; and the woody substance yielding fruit whose seed is in itself after his kind. Then Aleim considered it, because good.13. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Third Day.14. Then Aleim said, There shall be starry-lights in the expanse of space of the heavens to separate between the duration of the day and between the duration of the night; and they shall be for signs, and for seasons, and for the days which make the year, and for the repetitions of years.15. And they shall be for luminous bodies in the expanse of space of the heavens to cause light to move above the earth; and it was so.16. And Aleim made a double individualized substance, the superior in size and excellence of the starry-lights, the individualized substance which was the greater of the luminous bodies to represent the rule of the day, and the lesser luminous body to represent the rule of the night.Of the dim and almost extinct lights [the stars] they made the individualized substance also.17. And Aleim established these individualized substances in the expanse of space of the heavens to make light move above the earth.18. And to be representatives of dominion during the day and during the night, and to separate between the continuance of diffused light and between the continuance of compressivehindering darkness; then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.19. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fourth Day.20. Then Aleim said, The waters shall bring forth a swarm of swarming creatures having living breath; and that which flies, the birds, shall be made to fly with strength and fleetness above the earth in the space extended of the heavens.21. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor the individualized substance of those which are superior in size of the gigantic reptiles and every individualized substance having living breath, that moveth, which they had produced, swarming from the waters, according to their kind; and every individualized substance of flying thing with wings, after his kind. Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.22. And Aleim blessed these individualities by saying, propagate your species and multiply yourselves, and fill the individualized substance of the waters in the seas; and as for the flying thing, it shall multiply itself on the earth.23. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fifth Day.24. Then Aleim said, From the earth shall be brought forth the living breath according to its kind, the quadruped, and the being which moveth about, and the terrestrial animal according to its kind; and it was so.25. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the animal of the earth according to his kind, and the individualized substance of the quadruped according to his kind, and every individualized substance that moveth about of red earth according to his kind. Then Aleim regarded it, because good.26. Then Aleim said, We will make mankind of a like order of intellect with ourselves, and they shall extend their dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the bird of the heavens, and over the quadruped, and over all of the earth, and over all the moving beings that move about over the earth.27. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor theindividualized substance of mankind in the exactness of a shadow cast upon a wall; on this shadow Aleim carved the individuality; male and female they fashioned the individualized substance.28. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance. And Aleim said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the individualized substance of the earth, and subdue it, and extend your dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all life of the being which moveth about over the earth.29. And Aleim said, Behold I have given for you every useful plant-substance yielding seed, yielding seed which there is over the surface of all the earth, and every individualized substance of tree which has in it fruit pertaining to a tree yielding seed, yielding seed for you, it shall be for food.30. And for all animal life of the earth, and for everything that flies in the heavens, and for every being that moveth over the surface of the earth which has in it living breath, every individualized substance which is a green maturing plant shall be for food. And it was so.31. Then Aleim looked at every individualized substance which they had made, and behold it was as good as possible. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Sixth Day.(Chapter ii.) 1. Then the finishing was made of the heavens, and of the earth, and of all the orderly arrangement.2. And Aleim [the Forces] finished on the seventh day the divinely appointed and directed work which they had performed; and they came again to a state of rest on the seventh day from all the appointed work which they had done.3. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance of the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it they returned to their primitive condition from all the divinely appointed and directed work which the Forces had fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in accordance with the making of creation.

CHAPTER XIV.THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—Bible.

“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—Bible.

“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—Bible.

Thus, as we have seen, through countless future ages will the sun, with his incandescent envelope of hydrogen, and the planets, with their life-sustaining atmospheres of oxygen, fulfil their appointed times and courses. But if we could conceive that all atmospheres, solar and planetary, were suddenly blotted out and forever annihilated, so that these great orbs thenceforth rolled along as they do now, but only as black globes in an ocean of space of Stygian darkness, new atmospheres would at once begin to be formed, and these would soon again surround the sun and planets, precisely like those which now exist.Sweeping along in darkness, the force of gravity would gather around each of these bodies vast accumulations of aqueous vapor and other gases condensed from the attenuated matter of surrounding space. The planets, by their axial rotations, would again generate from these regions, newly occupied as the system drifted along through space, electrical energy of enormous quantity and potential. Earth would again hear the mighty mandate, “Let there be light,” and from her poles to herequator the skies would blaze with brush-light auroras. Suddenly, with a mighty leap, the pent-up currents would flash across to their opposite electric pole, the auroras would gradually die away, and instantly the molecules of hydrogen would begin to sift out at the solar and those of oxygen at the planetary terminals. The electrical currents driving their furious pathway through the rapidly gathering hydrogen envelope, the sun would first begin to faintly flicker with hazy, nebulous light; the light would gather intensity, and soon flash and glow with energy; the solar nucleus within would become intensely heated and liquefied or partially volatilized, and again the solar streams of incandescent heat and light would radiate forth on every side; the commingled gases, oxygen and nitrogen, would once more surround each planetary globe, and we should have a new solar envelope just as we now see it, and new planetary atmospheres like our own; and then, and not till then, would the opposing generative forces permanently counterbalance each other and electrolytic decomposition become practically stationary, except to compensate for the slight variations constantly liable to occur in the complicated running of the mechanism. So the mutilated crustacean re-grows his lost claws, and so our own gaping wounds are healed by the greatvis medicatrix naturæ. The most stable of all things is mutually balanced instability; perhaps there is no other form of stability.The “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace concernsitself only with the aggregate matter of which our solar system is composed, and the force of gravity, including cohesion, ignoring the action of the equally powerful force of repulsion. But there is another nebular hypothesis much older than that of Laplace and far more scientific, for it utilizes both the force of gravity and cohesion and the radiant force of repulsion in the generation of our solar system. We refer to what is known as the Mosaic cosmogony. Whatever the origin of this magnificent narrative may have been, whether written down by Moses originally, or by him derived from the sacred learning of Egypt, with which he was fully acquainted, or by the Egyptian scribes drawn from Ethiopia, and still further back from the sacred traditions of India, it bears internal evidence, when properly rendered from the Hebrew record, of a knowledge of these stupendous phenomena (which no human eye could ever have beheld) which is most remarkable. The commonly accepted versions do not clearly bring out the full meaning of the original,—indeed, it would have been impossible for the earlier translators to have done so,—but when critically and etymologically rendered, very surprising coincidences with the succession of events as they must actually have occurred, and the principles involved in the successive stages of creation, will be found in nearly every part of the record.This record is embodied in the first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter of Genesis. The Hebrew was long believed to be an original,if not an inspired, language, but it is now well known to have been a derivative or root language, made up much like the English, and, like it, having the meanings of its words primarily determined by those of the root-stems from which they have been formed. The roots of these Hebrew words are to be found among the languages of many older peoples, and nearly all of them have now been traced to their immediate origin. Another source of error is in the so-called Masoretic pointing, which was not introduced for a thousand years after the time of Moses, and which has often changed the signification of the older words, and even the form of the words themselves; but by critical researches the roots and their combinations have been isolated, so that we are now able to possess a much mere accurate knowledge of the Mosaic record than was possible in former times, for, of course, no original copies have come down to us. It is not a reconstruction of the record which has been made, but a careful editing by means of the derivation and true signification of the words used, and by careful comparison among the most ancient versions accessible to modern research. The English version, while imperfect in its rendering of this ancient narrative, is not to be considered by any means a false translation, but it largely errs in failing to give the full radical meaning of the words employed in the original.As an illustration of this indefiniteness of rendering in the ordinary English version let us consider the opening sentences of the narrative: “Inthe beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”In the “beginning” of what? Does it mean the beginning of our own solar system? or of all systems? or of all space? or of Jehovah (for He has not yet been mentioned or described)? or of the Aleim themselves,—that is, did the work begin as soon as the forces began? and did the latter originate spontaneously, or otherwise? What “God” is meant? Is it Jehovah, or Aleim, or some other God not yet mentioned or described? If we will take every name in the Bible which is translated God (and it may be any of these according to the English rendering), we will have legion. We shall even find that the same word which is translated “God” was applied by Jehovah on one occasion to Moses. “Created”? What is meant by this word? Was the creating a creation out of nothing? out of something pre-existing? or something coexisting elsewhere? Was the creation a direct or an indirect one? by the use of the forces of nature, or by overriding the forces of nature? Was it a physical creation by an inconceivable action of mere thought, or will? and if so, was this thought, or will, God himself, or one of his attributes or powers only? “The heaven”? What heaven? Was it that to which the virtuous are supposed to go after death? or was it some more physical heaven? Wastheheaven the atmospheric heaven, the interplanetary heaven, the heaven of interstellar space, or that more extended heaven which liesbeyond our knowledge? Wastheheaven one of these which He created, or did He create all the different heavens of all the solar systems and nebulæ at the same time? “Without form”? Was the earth without any form at all? or merely without its present form? or without some particular form not mentioned? If the earth was a physical structure it must have hadsomeform; what was it? “And void”? Was the earth void like a soap-bubble? or void like a ray of light? or a vacuum? If it was empty, what was it that was empty? How could the heaven and earth be void after they had been brought into existence? “Darkness was upon the face of the deep”? What deep? Was it the sea not yet created? or the earth, which is anything but a “deep”? was it the atmosphere? or all space? If the latter, did all other systems of space wait for their light on ours? or did we wait on theirs? are there no new systems now forming, and none to be formed hereafter? If all space is meant, where was its outside, or its face? and what occupied the intervening regions? was it a physical face or the face of a vacuum? Were these statements to be accepted by faith or reason? If the former, was it a faith which could only have come from the experience of after-ages? or was it based on theipse dixitof Moses? What was the basis of faith when the record was first written? was it from generally accepted tradition or by revelation? Is the record anonymous or does it reveal the name of its author? If to be endorsed by knowledge and reason, why should not the narrative be strictlyand accurately translated, even at the expense of conciseness and elegance of diction, in order that the exact force of every word shall be fully felt and recognized? If the record is from divine revelation, it is still more essential to know precisely what was revealed; otherwise we are no better than idolaters; we are worse, in fact, for we have changed and falsified the landmarks of religion, and bear false witness against God Himself. We must not interpret Genesis by records made long subsequently; it must speak for itself or not at all.When construed in accordance with the exact definition of the words themselves quite a new and strange light is thrown upon the history of the events thus recorded. The great importance of a strict construction of the translation and fidelity to the original is emphasized by the fact that the same word was never used in this record to express a different sense in different parts, nor were two different words ever used in different places to express the same meaning. It is, therefore, necessary to give every word of the original its exact fulness and force. The basis of the following critical translation is to be found in “Mankind: their Origin and Destiny” (Longmans & Co., London, 1872), but a careful comparison has been made with other accepted authorities, and the root-meanings of the separate words have been carefully traced out, so that many necessary changes will be found to have been made in order to bring out the precise sense of the original. There is no actual literal, critical, etymological, and scientificrendering embraced in a single translation known to us, and which is complete in itself; but that which follows will be found, it is believed, to give every word its particular etymological shade of meaning, and to employ the same word in the same place, for the same purpose, and with the same signification as it was understood to have, in its original form, when first recorded. The specific root-meanings of the most important words used are further explained in detail in a separate section below.The use ofAleim, “the powerful Forces,” in the plural, followed by the verb in the singular, is a Hebraism, and indicates the collective character of the forces as specially energized, sent forth, and directed by Jeove (Jeova or Jehovah is the Chaldaic form of the word, the original Hebrew being Jeove), who does not appear by name in this narrative, though, as we shall see, specially delegated power from some higher source is that characteristic which is most emphasized throughout the record. These forces are personified, as is usual in ancient records (and, indeed, in modern thought), but they are in reality the “powers of God.” The author of the work above referred to says, “The idea of Moses was that there was a Supreme God … and that He only acts by means of his agents calledAleim, the Gods, in the plural and indefinite number, or embassadors, or voices.” The ancient belief in the unity of all forces in one creative individuality is also most clearly shown in some of the oldest Vedaic hymnsof India (see Max Müller, “The Veda”). “Self (Atman) is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman (Force) itself is but Self.”Of the religion of the ancient Egyptians (see “Evolution and Christianity,” by J. F. York) it is said, “The chief theological characteristic of this first of all known civilized religions is the doctrine of the Divine Unity. As M. de Rougé says, ‘One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval God; everywhere and always it is one substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable God.’ ” The Egyptian cosmogony, as the fragments have come down to us (see Professor Arnold Guyot, “Creation”), is as follows:1. Theoriginal gaseous form, and the darkness of matter.2. The successive transformations.3. Light, as the first step in this development.4. The separation of the waters below from the waters above the expanse.5. Periods of development of indefinite length.6. The sun, moon, and earth organized last.The wordMlactou, which occurs several times repeated in the summing up of this narrative, explains the character ofAleimmost fully, as specially energized and directed agencies or forces. This word never has any other meaning. Even when applied to a king it was not a king as amonarch, but as the specially directed agent of God.I. Samuel xxviii. 17, “The Lord hath sent the kingdom out of thine hand; … because thou obeydst not the voice of the Lord.” When, inExodus xiii. 21it is said that “Jeove went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud,” this is explained, in chapter xiv. verse 19, to mean that this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was Mlac, a messenger, or agent. It is translated “angel” in the English version, but it was not a personal angel; it was a specially energized and directed force. In the earliest times it was not the God of fire, or of force, or of justice which men feared, but fire, or force, or justice; the anthropomorphic conception came later with the generalization of all fire, all force, or all justice. We say now that a malefactor fears the law; what he really fears, however, is punishment. In this record we are dealing with the primordial forces of God,—gravity, electricity, attraction, repulsion, cohesion, vital force, etc., etc., but acting with special energy for a predetermined result. Of these forces Dr. McCosh says, in his work on Christianity and Positivism, “One God, with his infinitely varied perfections,—his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, his love, his mercy; we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regardingthisforce, not as something independent of God, but as thevery power of God acting in all action; so that in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In more rugged and virile form this was precisely the old Mosaic philosophy, the philosophy of the arcana of the Egyptian temples, and of the Vedaic age of the Aryans of India. Where was the radiant center of this unfailing search-light which has poured its broad belt of dazzling brightness down to our day from those old, prehistoric ages?So De Jouvencel, in his “Genesis according to Science,” says, “We should not place the works of nature on one side and nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person.”The word which in the English version is translated “rested,” in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not meanrested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered “came to a state of rest,” it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth’s crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony,and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, “God rests as the creator of the visible universe.The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibriumwhich we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence.” In “The Unity of Nature” the Duke of Argyle says, “We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily.”The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean “created—and made,” as though marking a broad class distinction between thedifferentprocesses before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered “made” indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creationab initio,—that is,out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered “fashioned like the work of a sculptor” is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word “made;”so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The wordBrameans that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is. What we see in the sky, among the nebulæ, are later developments of like solar systems, in like manner, from the midst of the substance of the same illimitable and eternal space.But biology has an interest in this account of creation equally as great as has cosmology. The wordBrais first applied to the formation of the individualized substance of the heavens and the earth. They were fashioned or carved out like a sculpture from something on which the forces could operate. There was, of course,creationinvolved, but it was a mental, not a physical process. When a sculptor has completed his clay figure he has brought forth agreat creation, perhaps, and the “creation” is still his own, though the figure be cast in bronze by hired workmen in the foundry, who execute the sculptor’s will at two dollars a day, it may be, each. Beyond this mental element there is no morecreation, in its widest sense, than when a boy “creates” a new point on his pencil by guiding his hand and knife to sharpen it.When the “diffused light” came, it is not said that it was “fashioned like the work of a sculptor,” or that it was even “made;” but that it “came into existence.” “Let there be light, and there was light,” as the English version has it. But when the radiant energy of the sun came to be formed, on the fourth day, it did not “come into existence,” nor was it “fashioned like the work of a sculptor;” it was “made.” The reason is that it was not a development from the preceding “diffused light,” but a new kind of light, made mechanically by the electrolysis of aqueous vapor around the sun’s body, forming a hydrogen envelope, and by driving the furious torrents of electricity from the planets through this atmosphere, while the auroral, “diffused light” of the earth was gradually dying away during the process. Hence there was no room for the wordBra, or for the wordIei(came into existence) here; the word to be used wasOsh. And when life was first introduced,—vegetable life, the primal life,—the word used is notBra; this life was not “fashioned” or developed from other life. But when animal life was afterwards introduced, the word used isBra; it was a refashioning. What was this life fashioned out of? It was not “made;” it did not “begin to exist;” it was developed. In this manner the earth was finally filled with animal life. Then came the introduction of the human race. Here we again have the wordBra, thrice repeated; but when this introduction of mankind was first projected, and before it was executed, itwas in these words, “We willmake[the rootOsh] mankind;” or, in the English version, “Let usmakeman.” There seems here to have been a gradual ascent of living organisms by development, almost precisely in accordance with the most recent teachings of science. Two essentially differentkindsof light were successively produced, independently of each other; the earlier kind “came into being,” and the later “was made.” The substance or entity of the heavens and of the earth, generically, “was fashioned.” Three successive introductions of organic life not essentially different from each other occurred; the first is described thus: “Let the earth bring forth; … and the earth brought forth,” in the English version; or “There shall be made to grow; … and there was caused to arise suddenly out of the ground … vegetation,” as more accurately rendered. The second form of organic life, in order of time, the animal, was “fashioned.” The third form, mankind, was also “fashioned,” and this was done long subsequently to the introduction of the second.If the wordBrahad any signification oforiginal creationit would have been applied to the first creation of life, for it was far more wonderful and original that there should be vegetable life which grew and developed, which brought forth flowers and then fruit, which formed germinative seeds, and from these successively and continuously reproduced its multifarious species, than thatanimallife should have been introduced long afterwardsto repeat these same things which vegetation had been, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, already doing for untold ages,—from the third period of the earth’s long history to the fifth; and more especially still when we consider that vegetable life and animal life, in their lowest forms, have no positive line of division between them.And ifOsh, which is applied to the genesis of solar light, be capable of the signification oforiginal creation, then this word should have been applied to the generation of the “diffused light” of the second day, for the genesis of light is far more wonderful and original than the subsequent production of sunlight, after the forming earth had existed for two whole formative periods, from the second to the fourth, under the constant illumination of this universally diffused auroral light. If, on the other hand, the words applied to the first generation of light and the first generation of life be held to mark anoriginal creation, then these words are never applied in this whole narrative to the genesis of theentityof the heavens, or the earth, or the sun and moon, or to animal life, or the life of man.The radiant light and heat of the sun were not made until the fourth day, while the introduction of vegetable life dates from the long antecedent third day of creation. Prior to the development of the sun’s thermal light there could have been, as we have already shown, no free oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere; and it is a remarkable circumstancethat vegetation, which is the only form of organic life which could have existed and propagated its species in an atmosphere composed of carbonic, nitrogenous, and aqueous vapors, devoid of oxygen, is that particular form of life which has been selected for this purpose, and its advent placed prior to the making of the sun. It would have been far more reasonable (previous to our present knowledge of these things) to have placed the formation of the sun in advance of the introduction of life; it is surprising that this was not done, unless we give to these “ancients” a knowledge of the principles of natural science far beyond anything hitherto attributed to them.In the same connection there is described a stage preparatory to and leading up to the simultaneous development of the sun’s light and heat, and the sifting out of hydrogen around the solar core, and of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere, which is equally remarkable. The “separation of the waters” described in verses 6 and 7 has never been fully rendered into English, or even understood in the original, as the words seemed meaningless in their literal sense until correctly interpreted by the facts set forth in the present work.We must first note that the separation of the waters of space to two opposite foci, with an intervening space of attenuated matter, and their condensation there into two entirely different bodies, was the work of the second day, while the formation of the terrestrial rain-clouds and seas, as connected together, was a work of the third day, andwas not accomplished until then, which was long afterwards. These entirely different operations—different in time, place, character, and circumstance—have always been confounded with each other; but one is in reality systemic and the other merely local.In verse 6 there was decreed an expanse orthinning(an attenuated region) in thecenterof the waters, and a separation was made by the formation of two “spots” (verse 7), one under the expanse and the other above the expanse; the expanse was space, interplanetary space. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his book on Creation, says, “It is to be regretted that the English version has translated the Hebrew wordexpanseby the wordfirmament…. The difficulties they [the commentators] have created for themselves arose … from depriving it of its cosmogonic character and belittling it by reducing the great phenomena there described to a simple modification of the terrestrial atmosphere …. They forget that this thin covering of clouds is but a temporary and ever-changing one, and that the clouds areinthat heaven rather than above it …. They forget that this is not the true heavens in which are spread the sun and moon and stars …. This grand day, so dwarfed and misunderstood, is the one in which are described the generations of the heavens, announced by Moses, which otherwise find no place in the narrative of the creative week.”The two foci of waters were the solar and terrestrial; around these bodies were gathered by theattraction of gravity, and there condensed, the aqueous vapors from the attenuated intervening matter of space; the earth by its rotation generated the enormous electrical currents which still continue; when these made their mighty leap across to the sun, the diffused auroral light around the earth gradually disappeared, hydrogen and oxygen began to be evolved at the opposite poles—the sun and the earth—from the condensed envelopes of aqueous vapor which surrounded them, the sun’s hydrogen atmosphere was pierced, as in the pail-of-water experiment described in an earlier chapter of the present work, by the planetary electric currents, the sun became incandescent, andpari passuthe earth became fitted, by the development of oxygen, for the abode of animal life. As taking part in this great mechanical transformation, the sun was said to have been “made;” it did not “come into being.”Just prior to the introduction of vegetable life—during the same creative epoch, in fact, and for the support of which life it was necessary—the waters under the expanse were condensed into rain-clouds and seas, and there is a curious reference (verse 9) to the appearance of the earth’s dryness “as produced by the action of an internal fire;” the gradual cooling of the earth by the radiation of its internal heat of condensation into space would account for this appearance, and, in connection with the diffused auroral light throughout the whole sky, would doubtless have sufficed for the support of vegetable life.In verse 16 the fixed stars (the suns of other systems) are referred to, but in a parenthetical statement—almost deprecatory, in fact—that “the dim and almost extinct lights” the same forces created also, but when they were created is not stated in the record. The occasion for this incidental remark is to be found in the preceding statement that the two new luminaries, the sun and moon, were the two “superior bodies in size of the starry lights.” Having mentioned the stars in this comparison, the author feels called upon to add that the latter also had been similarly created,—that is, that they were not original existences, and of course they are not, but they were not created at that epoch, and are not said to have been.In chapter ii. verse 4, which opens the second narrative (quite a different history, by the way), Jeove appears Himself, joined with the Aleim, and henceforth this personal connection is maintained; the English version translates this composite word “The Lord God,” which means the Master God; the correct reading is, however, the “God of gods,” or what we call the “God of the forces of nature,” or the “God omnipotent.”In the whole Mosaic cosmogony there is nothing which can even suggest a gradually closing nebulous mass; the element of rotation is absent (and it would not have been understood by the people even if presented); but, with this exception, the processes of development are substantially in accord with what must really have taken place, and in the order described. But it is, as before stated, absolutelyessential to understand the root-meanings of all the more important words used in the original. A superficial translation is not only meaningless, but misleading; whereas, when accurately understood, the record is one of the most remarkable ever presented to human intelligence. The words used were selected deliberately for their specific shades of meaning, and, unless these are properly rendered, to the uninformed the narrative will present a simple succession of startling phenomena, while to the educated student each of these changes carries within its verbal index its origin, its mode, and the knowledge of the forces at work. To the one it is a dramatic spectacle performed on the stage in front; to the other it is the same work as seen behind the curtain, with all the intermoving mechanism (the author’s manuscript the sole guide), the interplay of complicated forces, the triumphant successes, the rapt attention, and even the sudden applause extorted at each wondrous climax from the skilled actors themselves, who are at the same time unceasingly engaged in working out the mighty drama of creation. One might readily believe that the original author of this record was thoroughly acquainted with the processes involved in the development of a solar system like our own from the diffused primordial matter of space, substantially as we have endeavored, in the present work, to deduce them from the most recent investigations and discoveries of science.Of the watery vapors condensed above the expanse of space many of the ancient writers had afar more correct knowledge than had those who translated these chapters from the original into the various modern languages. In the Psalms we read, “Praise him, … ye waters that be above the heavens;” in the Song of the Three Holy Children, “O all ye waters that be above the heavens.” Theophilus speaks of the “visible sky as havingdrawn to itselfa portion of the waters of chaos at the time of the creation.”Saint Augustine says that the firmament has been formed “betweenthe upper and the lower waters,” and quotesGenesis i. 6 and 7, as his authority.Thousands of years ago, as far back as the days of the Pythagoreans, and even long before, mankind was acquainted with the mariner’s compass, telescopic tubes, and glass lenses; they knew that the moon receives her light by reflection from the sun, of the presence of mountains and valleys on the lunar surface, that her day and night are each a fortnight in length, that there were other planets known to the Egyptians besides the seven known to the Greeks (the Brahmans reckoned fifteen of them), that the sun is the center of our planetary system, that the earth and the other planets revolve around it, that the earth is round and rotates on its own axis daily, that weight is a principal element in the maintenance of these rotations, that the fixed stars are suns, and that the Milky Way appears white from the number of stars which it contains. Kircher quotes from an ancient Syrian author the philosophy of the sidereal system, dividing it into many layers or spheres attached to orbits, each presidedover by a spirit. In the eighth sphere are placed the fixed stars, “still higher two other layers of stars not less luminous, and of different sizes, the nebulæ and the small stars of the Milky Way, and the whole is surrounded by the celestial waters, which spread over the whole firmament, and which compose the great sea of light and the boundless ocean.” The sources of all this wondrous knowledge can be traced back through Chaldea, Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, through the colony of Meroë, to India.ROOT-MEANINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORDS USED IN THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.Aleim(“corruptly called Elohim by the modern Jews, but always Aleim in the synagogue copies”) means the Strong Forces (or, by subsequent impersonation, subaltern gods), operating to carry out the purposes and execute the plans of Jeove.Al, the root, signifiesStrong,strength,a ram;Al-emeansStrongin a personal sense;Aleim(plural) means the Forces, the Strong-ones, the Powers, and in Egyptian mythology, the subordinate, or executive, gods, the demi-urgi.Exodus vii. 1, “And the Lord [Jeove] said unto Moses, See I have made thee a god [Aleim] to Pharaoh; thou shalt speak all that I command thee.”Bra,carved,cut,fashioned like the work of a sculptor,gave a new shape to,formed from unformed material. FromBr,a knife;br-i,to carve,to cut.Brashit,in the commencementor beginningof individualized existence(with the initial prepositionb-).Bsignifiesin;it(which is related toat) signifiesindividualized existence;rash, aprincipleorbeginning, or acommencement.At, connected with the Chaldaic, signifiessubstance,essence, orindividuality, “the thing itself” (Latin,ens); it is correctly translated “individualized substance.”Eshmim, the combination of the prepositionewith the substantiveshmim, the word signifyingof the visible heavens, or the planisphere.Artz, the earth in a state of aridity, or as a generalized expression for the earth;arsignifies theearth, and the terminationtzintensifies the signification ofdrought,whiteness,aridity; in contrast with this isadme,red earth, orproductive earthorsoil.U-is a conjunction, signifyingandorthen, in the sense of succession of time, something like our phrase “and then.”Teoudoes not mean “without form,” nor doesubeoumean “and void,” as rendered in our English version, at least not in the ordinary sense of these words. “Teourefers to extinct life, or to existenceshut up as in a tomb and in darkness, whileu-beourefers tolife which is about reappearing, but still hidden in the egg or the ovary, and waiting for the word which shall cause the dawn of creation to shine upon it.” These words are more properly rendered “tomb-like darkness and undeveloped.”Eshcmeansdarkness; not merely an intense darkness, but what may be denominated a “thick darkness;” it is anenshroudingdarknesswhichcompressesandhinders. It is precisely such a darkness as would be produced by the interstratified cloud-layers between the convolutions of a forming spiral nebula, or the cloud-strata surrounding the earth before electrolytic decomposition of the aqueous vapors had ensued. With the advent of the sun, in the narrative, this darkness and the term which expresses it disappear.Teou-mis the word above explained, with the termination-m, expressing the idea ofarrested,doubtful,indefinite, as applied to all existence; the word “undifferentiated nature” properly interprets its vagueness and general character of an abyss of being, in the etymological sense of “nature” as the totality of things at that time born or produced.Rovemeansbreath, in the sense of an expanding, liberating, or developing spirit; its literal meaning is “the breath, the spirit which dilates and frees.”Mrepht,brooded with incubating love;rephis composedofre, “to be full of good-will, to be agreeable,” andeph, “to cover, to protect, to incubate, to brood.”Mim,the seeds of all beings,the waters. It is said, “the choice of this letterm, to signify water [the alphabetical Egyptian lettermis represented by the two undulatory lines which in the hieroglyphics represent water], is connected with the Egyptian ideas of the cause of the generation of living beings.”Numbers xxiv. 7, “He shall pour the waters out of his buckets, and the seed [zro] in the waters [b-mim].” The latter word is plural in form, but both singular and plural in sense.Aour,diffused light; a light resembling the dawn, but quite distinct from the light of the sun. The latter was not established until the fourth day, and its advent is characterized by a new word,leair, “to cause light tomoveabove the earth.”Joumisday, generically, andlilenight.Rqiô,the expanse;atrqiô,the individualized substance of the expanse. Space, in the opinion of the Egyptians, “not being a vacuum, but a material substance, Moses could say, and was even compelled to say, ‘the substance of space, that which constitutes it.’ ”Osh, made. This word first occurs in verse 7, and is there applied to themakinga separation between the waters or aqueous vapors condensed around the earth and those condensed around some similar spot “above, as regards the individuality of the expanse,”—to wit, the solar core or nucleus,—to which, attracted by gravity from the attenuated vapors of the space between, is due the subsequent establishment of the solar light and heat, as in an electrical arc light, and the presence of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere. These processes, involving the constitution of our atmosphere and of the sun’s photosphere and chromosphere, were not completed until two subsequent cosmical periods had elapsed, from the third to the fifth. The wordosh, in its different combinations and inflections, is also used in verse 11, where it signifies “making,” as applied to fruit; “yielding” fruit, in verse 12; “they made,” as applied to the sun and moon, in verse 16; “made,” as applied to the entity ofquadrupeds and higher animals generally, in verse 25; “we will make,” as applied to man, verse 26; “had made,” as applied to “every entity of creation,” verse 31; “had made,” as applied to the specially directed work asmlactou, chapter ii. verse 2; and finally, in the general summing up in verse 3 of the second chapter, as an element in a compound substantive phrase “according to the making-act,” or “in accordance with the making of creation.”“Oshout,” it is said, “signifies a manual operation, carried on according to a previously conceived idea, or model.”We find a similar use of the substantive infinitive with a preceding preposition in verse 21, chapter iii. “Ctnoutis derived fromtne, a consoling word.Tnout, the infinitive of the conjugation Piel, adds to the word the act of causing to be done, and of doing with care.”A similar construction,lraout, is employed in chapter ii. verse 19, translated in the English version, “and brought them unto Adamto seewhat …”; more literally, “as regards the act of seeing,” or according to a vision, or show. That is, they were brought and presented to his sight.The object in writing these two words,braandl-osh-out, together at the very end of the narrative was to conclusively establish the fact, beyond all possible doubt, that the whole work of creation was an orderly and harmonious progression.Mlactou, which word is used twice in verse 2 and once in verse 3 of the second chapter, and not previously, is also introduced for specific emphasis. It means that the whole preceding work of creation was, in its nature, “the work of Mlac,” a messenger, or a specially energized and directed agency, sent to fulfil the appointed work of Jeove. Its purpose was to forever prevent the belief that the work of creation was due to mere natural forces, on the one hand, operating by chance; and, on the other, that these forces were independent gods carrying out their own purposes, and of their own will. It was set up as a double barrier against rationalism on the one side and polytheism on the other.It may be incidentally added that the popular belief that“Adam was created out of the dust of the earth” is not in accordance with the original record. In the second narrative, chapter ii. verse 7, the wordophris rendered “dust” in our English version, but it does not signify ordinary terrestrial dust at all; “its radical meaning is to volatilize a substance, to sublimate it.” The true signification of the word used is analogous to a “material essence.” The same word is used inNumbers xxiii. 10as a synonym for “seed;” it is said that “the Septuagint version translatesophrbysperma.”The formation, described in the third chapter, of the female human being out of one of the ribs of Adam, excised for that purpose (which is a matter of almost universal popular belief), is not, in reality, what is stated in the original. In verse 21 of chapter ii. the words are rendered in our version, “And he took one of his ribs.” What is really said, however, is “And he brought out another one from his sides.” So the similar expression in verse 22 in reality signifies, “caused to be made according to womankind the individualized substance of his side.”The word translated “of his ribs” is precisely the same as is subsequently used by the same writer (Exodus xxxvii. 27) to designate the location of the supporting rings upon an altar of incense, and is there rendered, “by the two corners of it, upon the two sides.”The defective translation is due to imperfect knowledge, at that time, of the processes of organic development. The true signification is that given in the “Institutes of Manu”: “Having divided his own sub-sistence, the Mighty Power became half male and half female.”The words rendered “help meet” in verses 18 and 20 have a far higher meaning; “I will make him a help meet” should be translated, “I will cause to be made for him an overseeing help as a guide, an instructor, a revealer.” And in verse 20 of chapter iii., “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve,” the latter word is not translated; the correct rendering is, “And Adam called the symbolic name of his wife the female serpent-wise revealer, she who explains, points out things, whoinstructs,” for that is what the true root-meaning of Eve signifies. The concluding words of this verse, “because she was the mother of all living,” are obviously mistranslated, for not only was she not a mother at all, but she did not even conceive, as stated in the next chapter, until she had left the garden finally. The true signification is, “because she was the mother of all [spiritual, see verse 22, as contradistinguished from animal and vegetable] life.”The female human being, the word translated woman, has the generic root-signification of “flame,” while, prior to Eve, that of the Adamic man is the “red earth.” As the male was formed from a material earthly essence, the female was created one remove further from the gross and material in the direction of the spiritual; and her powers were distinctively subjective, those of intuition, while those of the male were objective, those derived from instruction. Even in the final curse (so called) the man turns back to the earth to earn his subsistence, while the woman turns forward to the instruction of the future men and women, the children; for the words, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” have left one word of the original untranslated, and by supplying this the sense is entirely changed, “and conceiving, and bringing forth, in sorrow shalt thou bring up, care for, and train children.” In those countries childbirth was never attended with much pain or sorrow.The obvious effect of the whole inspired or traditionary second narrative is to clearly differentiate the contrasted faculties of the two sexes, and the root-meanings of the words employed, whether Moses himself perceived it or not, are a testimonial of the highest possible character for woman, instead of being, as rendered in the ordinary versions, a mark of inferiority, or even of degradation. In the garden scene, when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she did not do it hastily or from mere temptation; it is said that “she considered it attentively;” the same word being used as was employed in the first narrative to mark the intense interest and almost superhuman character of the consideration by the Aleim of the work, as its successive stagesappeared, which they were delegated to perform, and which Jeove himself directed. The prize, to her, far outweighed the penalty, and the aspiring sibyl dared to lift the innermost veil in the adytum of the temple, and grasp the lofty truths which made her as one of the Aleim. So fell Prometheus.And then, no sooner had the flame-crowned seer won her precious prize, than, woman-like, she turned and laid it before her husband, and he, the innocent one, “did eat.”The serpent was not a mere snake, be it understood; it was the Egyptian Typhon, the dark Spirit of doubt, the questioner, the tempter, the eternalif, the why, whence, what, and whither?It was her insatiable aspiration to reach the highest possible limits of human knowledge which gave strength to her daring, and not a childish fancy for an apple. All this, of course, is lost in the translation. It is as though the national standard of a mighty people had been disinterred from the remains of past ages, which had been borne aloft at the head of mighty armies for centuries, and for which thousands had gloriously died in battle in defence of a sacred cause, and which now, its past history untraced, has been catalogued as a brass bird of some sort mounted on a stick.It is to be regretted that there is no plain, popular work by a thoroughly capable scholar, without theological or anti-theological bias, which treats of the origin, form, root-derivation, usage, accurate signification, and construction of the comparatively few words employed in the ancient narratives which compose the first half-dozen chapters of Genesis, and, we may add, the book of Job; something like those inestimable works which deal with the ancient cosmogonic literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, China, Phœnicia, and Central America. Nothing of this sort is to be found, at all events in a form accessible to the general reader, and such a work, in small compass, would be of the highest importance to popular instructors, to students, and to the public as well, for it would throw a flood of light on these extremely valuable but, hitherto, so illy-comprehended records.THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.1.Aleim, the Forces, fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in the commencement of individualized existence, the individualized substance of the heavens and the individualized substance of the earth.2. And the earth was in tomb-like darkness and undeveloped, and there was compressive hindering darkness on the surface of undifferentiated nature. And the dilating and liberating Spirit of the Forces hovered with incubating love on the surface of the seeds of all beings, the waters.3. Then Aleim said, There shall be a diffused light; and a diffused light was.4. And Aleim regarded with attention the individualized substance of the diffused light, because good. And Aleim caused a separation to be made between the diffused light and between the compressive hindering darkness.5. Then Aleim exclaimed for the diffused light,Day!and for the compressive hindering darkness exclaimed,Night!And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;First Day.6. Then Aleim said, There shall be an expansion obtained by a thinning in the center of the waters, and there was that which caused a separation to be made by occupying a spot, the waters according to the waters.7. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the expanse, and caused a separation to exist by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are under as regards the expanse of space, and by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are above as regards the expanse of space; and it was so.8. Then Aleim exclaimed for the expanse of space,The Heavens!and there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Second Day.9. And Aleim said, The waters which are underneath the heavens will tend directly, in order to meet in it, towards a single spot fixed upon for their meeting; and of dryness produced by the action of an internal fire the appearance shall be made; and it was so.10. Then Aleim exclaimed for the dryness,Earth!and for the spot fixed upon for the meeting of the waters exclaimed,Seas!Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.11. And Aleim said, There shall be made to grow from the earth a dwarf vegetation which can be trodden under foot, a maturing plant causing to be sowed around it a seed, the strong and woody substance of fruit making fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself above the earth; and it was so.12. And there was caused to arise suddenly and full of strength a dwarf vegetation, a maturing plant sowing around it seed after his kind; and the woody substance yielding fruit whose seed is in itself after his kind. Then Aleim considered it, because good.13. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Third Day.14. Then Aleim said, There shall be starry-lights in the expanse of space of the heavens to separate between the duration of the day and between the duration of the night; and they shall be for signs, and for seasons, and for the days which make the year, and for the repetitions of years.15. And they shall be for luminous bodies in the expanse of space of the heavens to cause light to move above the earth; and it was so.16. And Aleim made a double individualized substance, the superior in size and excellence of the starry-lights, the individualized substance which was the greater of the luminous bodies to represent the rule of the day, and the lesser luminous body to represent the rule of the night.Of the dim and almost extinct lights [the stars] they made the individualized substance also.17. And Aleim established these individualized substances in the expanse of space of the heavens to make light move above the earth.18. And to be representatives of dominion during the day and during the night, and to separate between the continuance of diffused light and between the continuance of compressivehindering darkness; then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.19. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fourth Day.20. Then Aleim said, The waters shall bring forth a swarm of swarming creatures having living breath; and that which flies, the birds, shall be made to fly with strength and fleetness above the earth in the space extended of the heavens.21. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor the individualized substance of those which are superior in size of the gigantic reptiles and every individualized substance having living breath, that moveth, which they had produced, swarming from the waters, according to their kind; and every individualized substance of flying thing with wings, after his kind. Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.22. And Aleim blessed these individualities by saying, propagate your species and multiply yourselves, and fill the individualized substance of the waters in the seas; and as for the flying thing, it shall multiply itself on the earth.23. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fifth Day.24. Then Aleim said, From the earth shall be brought forth the living breath according to its kind, the quadruped, and the being which moveth about, and the terrestrial animal according to its kind; and it was so.25. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the animal of the earth according to his kind, and the individualized substance of the quadruped according to his kind, and every individualized substance that moveth about of red earth according to his kind. Then Aleim regarded it, because good.26. Then Aleim said, We will make mankind of a like order of intellect with ourselves, and they shall extend their dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the bird of the heavens, and over the quadruped, and over all of the earth, and over all the moving beings that move about over the earth.27. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor theindividualized substance of mankind in the exactness of a shadow cast upon a wall; on this shadow Aleim carved the individuality; male and female they fashioned the individualized substance.28. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance. And Aleim said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the individualized substance of the earth, and subdue it, and extend your dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all life of the being which moveth about over the earth.29. And Aleim said, Behold I have given for you every useful plant-substance yielding seed, yielding seed which there is over the surface of all the earth, and every individualized substance of tree which has in it fruit pertaining to a tree yielding seed, yielding seed for you, it shall be for food.30. And for all animal life of the earth, and for everything that flies in the heavens, and for every being that moveth over the surface of the earth which has in it living breath, every individualized substance which is a green maturing plant shall be for food. And it was so.31. Then Aleim looked at every individualized substance which they had made, and behold it was as good as possible. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Sixth Day.(Chapter ii.) 1. Then the finishing was made of the heavens, and of the earth, and of all the orderly arrangement.2. And Aleim [the Forces] finished on the seventh day the divinely appointed and directed work which they had performed; and they came again to a state of rest on the seventh day from all the appointed work which they had done.3. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance of the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it they returned to their primitive condition from all the divinely appointed and directed work which the Forces had fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in accordance with the making of creation.

Thus, as we have seen, through countless future ages will the sun, with his incandescent envelope of hydrogen, and the planets, with their life-sustaining atmospheres of oxygen, fulfil their appointed times and courses. But if we could conceive that all atmospheres, solar and planetary, were suddenly blotted out and forever annihilated, so that these great orbs thenceforth rolled along as they do now, but only as black globes in an ocean of space of Stygian darkness, new atmospheres would at once begin to be formed, and these would soon again surround the sun and planets, precisely like those which now exist.

Sweeping along in darkness, the force of gravity would gather around each of these bodies vast accumulations of aqueous vapor and other gases condensed from the attenuated matter of surrounding space. The planets, by their axial rotations, would again generate from these regions, newly occupied as the system drifted along through space, electrical energy of enormous quantity and potential. Earth would again hear the mighty mandate, “Let there be light,” and from her poles to herequator the skies would blaze with brush-light auroras. Suddenly, with a mighty leap, the pent-up currents would flash across to their opposite electric pole, the auroras would gradually die away, and instantly the molecules of hydrogen would begin to sift out at the solar and those of oxygen at the planetary terminals. The electrical currents driving their furious pathway through the rapidly gathering hydrogen envelope, the sun would first begin to faintly flicker with hazy, nebulous light; the light would gather intensity, and soon flash and glow with energy; the solar nucleus within would become intensely heated and liquefied or partially volatilized, and again the solar streams of incandescent heat and light would radiate forth on every side; the commingled gases, oxygen and nitrogen, would once more surround each planetary globe, and we should have a new solar envelope just as we now see it, and new planetary atmospheres like our own; and then, and not till then, would the opposing generative forces permanently counterbalance each other and electrolytic decomposition become practically stationary, except to compensate for the slight variations constantly liable to occur in the complicated running of the mechanism. So the mutilated crustacean re-grows his lost claws, and so our own gaping wounds are healed by the greatvis medicatrix naturæ. The most stable of all things is mutually balanced instability; perhaps there is no other form of stability.

The “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace concernsitself only with the aggregate matter of which our solar system is composed, and the force of gravity, including cohesion, ignoring the action of the equally powerful force of repulsion. But there is another nebular hypothesis much older than that of Laplace and far more scientific, for it utilizes both the force of gravity and cohesion and the radiant force of repulsion in the generation of our solar system. We refer to what is known as the Mosaic cosmogony. Whatever the origin of this magnificent narrative may have been, whether written down by Moses originally, or by him derived from the sacred learning of Egypt, with which he was fully acquainted, or by the Egyptian scribes drawn from Ethiopia, and still further back from the sacred traditions of India, it bears internal evidence, when properly rendered from the Hebrew record, of a knowledge of these stupendous phenomena (which no human eye could ever have beheld) which is most remarkable. The commonly accepted versions do not clearly bring out the full meaning of the original,—indeed, it would have been impossible for the earlier translators to have done so,—but when critically and etymologically rendered, very surprising coincidences with the succession of events as they must actually have occurred, and the principles involved in the successive stages of creation, will be found in nearly every part of the record.

This record is embodied in the first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter of Genesis. The Hebrew was long believed to be an original,if not an inspired, language, but it is now well known to have been a derivative or root language, made up much like the English, and, like it, having the meanings of its words primarily determined by those of the root-stems from which they have been formed. The roots of these Hebrew words are to be found among the languages of many older peoples, and nearly all of them have now been traced to their immediate origin. Another source of error is in the so-called Masoretic pointing, which was not introduced for a thousand years after the time of Moses, and which has often changed the signification of the older words, and even the form of the words themselves; but by critical researches the roots and their combinations have been isolated, so that we are now able to possess a much mere accurate knowledge of the Mosaic record than was possible in former times, for, of course, no original copies have come down to us. It is not a reconstruction of the record which has been made, but a careful editing by means of the derivation and true signification of the words used, and by careful comparison among the most ancient versions accessible to modern research. The English version, while imperfect in its rendering of this ancient narrative, is not to be considered by any means a false translation, but it largely errs in failing to give the full radical meaning of the words employed in the original.

As an illustration of this indefiniteness of rendering in the ordinary English version let us consider the opening sentences of the narrative: “Inthe beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

In the “beginning” of what? Does it mean the beginning of our own solar system? or of all systems? or of all space? or of Jehovah (for He has not yet been mentioned or described)? or of the Aleim themselves,—that is, did the work begin as soon as the forces began? and did the latter originate spontaneously, or otherwise? What “God” is meant? Is it Jehovah, or Aleim, or some other God not yet mentioned or described? If we will take every name in the Bible which is translated God (and it may be any of these according to the English rendering), we will have legion. We shall even find that the same word which is translated “God” was applied by Jehovah on one occasion to Moses. “Created”? What is meant by this word? Was the creating a creation out of nothing? out of something pre-existing? or something coexisting elsewhere? Was the creation a direct or an indirect one? by the use of the forces of nature, or by overriding the forces of nature? Was it a physical creation by an inconceivable action of mere thought, or will? and if so, was this thought, or will, God himself, or one of his attributes or powers only? “The heaven”? What heaven? Was it that to which the virtuous are supposed to go after death? or was it some more physical heaven? Wastheheaven the atmospheric heaven, the interplanetary heaven, the heaven of interstellar space, or that more extended heaven which liesbeyond our knowledge? Wastheheaven one of these which He created, or did He create all the different heavens of all the solar systems and nebulæ at the same time? “Without form”? Was the earth without any form at all? or merely without its present form? or without some particular form not mentioned? If the earth was a physical structure it must have hadsomeform; what was it? “And void”? Was the earth void like a soap-bubble? or void like a ray of light? or a vacuum? If it was empty, what was it that was empty? How could the heaven and earth be void after they had been brought into existence? “Darkness was upon the face of the deep”? What deep? Was it the sea not yet created? or the earth, which is anything but a “deep”? was it the atmosphere? or all space? If the latter, did all other systems of space wait for their light on ours? or did we wait on theirs? are there no new systems now forming, and none to be formed hereafter? If all space is meant, where was its outside, or its face? and what occupied the intervening regions? was it a physical face or the face of a vacuum? Were these statements to be accepted by faith or reason? If the former, was it a faith which could only have come from the experience of after-ages? or was it based on theipse dixitof Moses? What was the basis of faith when the record was first written? was it from generally accepted tradition or by revelation? Is the record anonymous or does it reveal the name of its author? If to be endorsed by knowledge and reason, why should not the narrative be strictlyand accurately translated, even at the expense of conciseness and elegance of diction, in order that the exact force of every word shall be fully felt and recognized? If the record is from divine revelation, it is still more essential to know precisely what was revealed; otherwise we are no better than idolaters; we are worse, in fact, for we have changed and falsified the landmarks of religion, and bear false witness against God Himself. We must not interpret Genesis by records made long subsequently; it must speak for itself or not at all.

When construed in accordance with the exact definition of the words themselves quite a new and strange light is thrown upon the history of the events thus recorded. The great importance of a strict construction of the translation and fidelity to the original is emphasized by the fact that the same word was never used in this record to express a different sense in different parts, nor were two different words ever used in different places to express the same meaning. It is, therefore, necessary to give every word of the original its exact fulness and force. The basis of the following critical translation is to be found in “Mankind: their Origin and Destiny” (Longmans & Co., London, 1872), but a careful comparison has been made with other accepted authorities, and the root-meanings of the separate words have been carefully traced out, so that many necessary changes will be found to have been made in order to bring out the precise sense of the original. There is no actual literal, critical, etymological, and scientificrendering embraced in a single translation known to us, and which is complete in itself; but that which follows will be found, it is believed, to give every word its particular etymological shade of meaning, and to employ the same word in the same place, for the same purpose, and with the same signification as it was understood to have, in its original form, when first recorded. The specific root-meanings of the most important words used are further explained in detail in a separate section below.

The use ofAleim, “the powerful Forces,” in the plural, followed by the verb in the singular, is a Hebraism, and indicates the collective character of the forces as specially energized, sent forth, and directed by Jeove (Jeova or Jehovah is the Chaldaic form of the word, the original Hebrew being Jeove), who does not appear by name in this narrative, though, as we shall see, specially delegated power from some higher source is that characteristic which is most emphasized throughout the record. These forces are personified, as is usual in ancient records (and, indeed, in modern thought), but they are in reality the “powers of God.” The author of the work above referred to says, “The idea of Moses was that there was a Supreme God … and that He only acts by means of his agents calledAleim, the Gods, in the plural and indefinite number, or embassadors, or voices.” The ancient belief in the unity of all forces in one creative individuality is also most clearly shown in some of the oldest Vedaic hymnsof India (see Max Müller, “The Veda”). “Self (Atman) is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman (Force) itself is but Self.”

Of the religion of the ancient Egyptians (see “Evolution and Christianity,” by J. F. York) it is said, “The chief theological characteristic of this first of all known civilized religions is the doctrine of the Divine Unity. As M. de Rougé says, ‘One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval God; everywhere and always it is one substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable God.’ ” The Egyptian cosmogony, as the fragments have come down to us (see Professor Arnold Guyot, “Creation”), is as follows:

1. Theoriginal gaseous form, and the darkness of matter.

2. The successive transformations.

3. Light, as the first step in this development.

4. The separation of the waters below from the waters above the expanse.

5. Periods of development of indefinite length.

6. The sun, moon, and earth organized last.

The wordMlactou, which occurs several times repeated in the summing up of this narrative, explains the character ofAleimmost fully, as specially energized and directed agencies or forces. This word never has any other meaning. Even when applied to a king it was not a king as amonarch, but as the specially directed agent of God.I. Samuel xxviii. 17, “The Lord hath sent the kingdom out of thine hand; … because thou obeydst not the voice of the Lord.” When, inExodus xiii. 21it is said that “Jeove went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud,” this is explained, in chapter xiv. verse 19, to mean that this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was Mlac, a messenger, or agent. It is translated “angel” in the English version, but it was not a personal angel; it was a specially energized and directed force. In the earliest times it was not the God of fire, or of force, or of justice which men feared, but fire, or force, or justice; the anthropomorphic conception came later with the generalization of all fire, all force, or all justice. We say now that a malefactor fears the law; what he really fears, however, is punishment. In this record we are dealing with the primordial forces of God,—gravity, electricity, attraction, repulsion, cohesion, vital force, etc., etc., but acting with special energy for a predetermined result. Of these forces Dr. McCosh says, in his work on Christianity and Positivism, “One God, with his infinitely varied perfections,—his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, his love, his mercy; we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regardingthisforce, not as something independent of God, but as thevery power of God acting in all action; so that in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In more rugged and virile form this was precisely the old Mosaic philosophy, the philosophy of the arcana of the Egyptian temples, and of the Vedaic age of the Aryans of India. Where was the radiant center of this unfailing search-light which has poured its broad belt of dazzling brightness down to our day from those old, prehistoric ages?

So De Jouvencel, in his “Genesis according to Science,” says, “We should not place the works of nature on one side and nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person.”

The word which in the English version is translated “rested,” in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not meanrested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered “came to a state of rest,” it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth’s crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony,and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, “God rests as the creator of the visible universe.The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibriumwhich we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence.” In “The Unity of Nature” the Duke of Argyle says, “We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily.”

The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean “created—and made,” as though marking a broad class distinction between thedifferentprocesses before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered “made” indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creationab initio,—that is,out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered “fashioned like the work of a sculptor” is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word “made;”so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The wordBrameans that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is. What we see in the sky, among the nebulæ, are later developments of like solar systems, in like manner, from the midst of the substance of the same illimitable and eternal space.

But biology has an interest in this account of creation equally as great as has cosmology. The wordBrais first applied to the formation of the individualized substance of the heavens and the earth. They were fashioned or carved out like a sculpture from something on which the forces could operate. There was, of course,creationinvolved, but it was a mental, not a physical process. When a sculptor has completed his clay figure he has brought forth agreat creation, perhaps, and the “creation” is still his own, though the figure be cast in bronze by hired workmen in the foundry, who execute the sculptor’s will at two dollars a day, it may be, each. Beyond this mental element there is no morecreation, in its widest sense, than when a boy “creates” a new point on his pencil by guiding his hand and knife to sharpen it.

When the “diffused light” came, it is not said that it was “fashioned like the work of a sculptor,” or that it was even “made;” but that it “came into existence.” “Let there be light, and there was light,” as the English version has it. But when the radiant energy of the sun came to be formed, on the fourth day, it did not “come into existence,” nor was it “fashioned like the work of a sculptor;” it was “made.” The reason is that it was not a development from the preceding “diffused light,” but a new kind of light, made mechanically by the electrolysis of aqueous vapor around the sun’s body, forming a hydrogen envelope, and by driving the furious torrents of electricity from the planets through this atmosphere, while the auroral, “diffused light” of the earth was gradually dying away during the process. Hence there was no room for the wordBra, or for the wordIei(came into existence) here; the word to be used wasOsh. And when life was first introduced,—vegetable life, the primal life,—the word used is notBra; this life was not “fashioned” or developed from other life. But when animal life was afterwards introduced, the word used isBra; it was a refashioning. What was this life fashioned out of? It was not “made;” it did not “begin to exist;” it was developed. In this manner the earth was finally filled with animal life. Then came the introduction of the human race. Here we again have the wordBra, thrice repeated; but when this introduction of mankind was first projected, and before it was executed, itwas in these words, “We willmake[the rootOsh] mankind;” or, in the English version, “Let usmakeman.” There seems here to have been a gradual ascent of living organisms by development, almost precisely in accordance with the most recent teachings of science. Two essentially differentkindsof light were successively produced, independently of each other; the earlier kind “came into being,” and the later “was made.” The substance or entity of the heavens and of the earth, generically, “was fashioned.” Three successive introductions of organic life not essentially different from each other occurred; the first is described thus: “Let the earth bring forth; … and the earth brought forth,” in the English version; or “There shall be made to grow; … and there was caused to arise suddenly out of the ground … vegetation,” as more accurately rendered. The second form of organic life, in order of time, the animal, was “fashioned.” The third form, mankind, was also “fashioned,” and this was done long subsequently to the introduction of the second.

If the wordBrahad any signification oforiginal creationit would have been applied to the first creation of life, for it was far more wonderful and original that there should be vegetable life which grew and developed, which brought forth flowers and then fruit, which formed germinative seeds, and from these successively and continuously reproduced its multifarious species, than thatanimallife should have been introduced long afterwardsto repeat these same things which vegetation had been, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, already doing for untold ages,—from the third period of the earth’s long history to the fifth; and more especially still when we consider that vegetable life and animal life, in their lowest forms, have no positive line of division between them.

And ifOsh, which is applied to the genesis of solar light, be capable of the signification oforiginal creation, then this word should have been applied to the generation of the “diffused light” of the second day, for the genesis of light is far more wonderful and original than the subsequent production of sunlight, after the forming earth had existed for two whole formative periods, from the second to the fourth, under the constant illumination of this universally diffused auroral light. If, on the other hand, the words applied to the first generation of light and the first generation of life be held to mark anoriginal creation, then these words are never applied in this whole narrative to the genesis of theentityof the heavens, or the earth, or the sun and moon, or to animal life, or the life of man.

The radiant light and heat of the sun were not made until the fourth day, while the introduction of vegetable life dates from the long antecedent third day of creation. Prior to the development of the sun’s thermal light there could have been, as we have already shown, no free oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere; and it is a remarkable circumstancethat vegetation, which is the only form of organic life which could have existed and propagated its species in an atmosphere composed of carbonic, nitrogenous, and aqueous vapors, devoid of oxygen, is that particular form of life which has been selected for this purpose, and its advent placed prior to the making of the sun. It would have been far more reasonable (previous to our present knowledge of these things) to have placed the formation of the sun in advance of the introduction of life; it is surprising that this was not done, unless we give to these “ancients” a knowledge of the principles of natural science far beyond anything hitherto attributed to them.

In the same connection there is described a stage preparatory to and leading up to the simultaneous development of the sun’s light and heat, and the sifting out of hydrogen around the solar core, and of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere, which is equally remarkable. The “separation of the waters” described in verses 6 and 7 has never been fully rendered into English, or even understood in the original, as the words seemed meaningless in their literal sense until correctly interpreted by the facts set forth in the present work.

We must first note that the separation of the waters of space to two opposite foci, with an intervening space of attenuated matter, and their condensation there into two entirely different bodies, was the work of the second day, while the formation of the terrestrial rain-clouds and seas, as connected together, was a work of the third day, andwas not accomplished until then, which was long afterwards. These entirely different operations—different in time, place, character, and circumstance—have always been confounded with each other; but one is in reality systemic and the other merely local.

In verse 6 there was decreed an expanse orthinning(an attenuated region) in thecenterof the waters, and a separation was made by the formation of two “spots” (verse 7), one under the expanse and the other above the expanse; the expanse was space, interplanetary space. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his book on Creation, says, “It is to be regretted that the English version has translated the Hebrew wordexpanseby the wordfirmament…. The difficulties they [the commentators] have created for themselves arose … from depriving it of its cosmogonic character and belittling it by reducing the great phenomena there described to a simple modification of the terrestrial atmosphere …. They forget that this thin covering of clouds is but a temporary and ever-changing one, and that the clouds areinthat heaven rather than above it …. They forget that this is not the true heavens in which are spread the sun and moon and stars …. This grand day, so dwarfed and misunderstood, is the one in which are described the generations of the heavens, announced by Moses, which otherwise find no place in the narrative of the creative week.”

The two foci of waters were the solar and terrestrial; around these bodies were gathered by theattraction of gravity, and there condensed, the aqueous vapors from the attenuated intervening matter of space; the earth by its rotation generated the enormous electrical currents which still continue; when these made their mighty leap across to the sun, the diffused auroral light around the earth gradually disappeared, hydrogen and oxygen began to be evolved at the opposite poles—the sun and the earth—from the condensed envelopes of aqueous vapor which surrounded them, the sun’s hydrogen atmosphere was pierced, as in the pail-of-water experiment described in an earlier chapter of the present work, by the planetary electric currents, the sun became incandescent, andpari passuthe earth became fitted, by the development of oxygen, for the abode of animal life. As taking part in this great mechanical transformation, the sun was said to have been “made;” it did not “come into being.”

Just prior to the introduction of vegetable life—during the same creative epoch, in fact, and for the support of which life it was necessary—the waters under the expanse were condensed into rain-clouds and seas, and there is a curious reference (verse 9) to the appearance of the earth’s dryness “as produced by the action of an internal fire;” the gradual cooling of the earth by the radiation of its internal heat of condensation into space would account for this appearance, and, in connection with the diffused auroral light throughout the whole sky, would doubtless have sufficed for the support of vegetable life.

In verse 16 the fixed stars (the suns of other systems) are referred to, but in a parenthetical statement—almost deprecatory, in fact—that “the dim and almost extinct lights” the same forces created also, but when they were created is not stated in the record. The occasion for this incidental remark is to be found in the preceding statement that the two new luminaries, the sun and moon, were the two “superior bodies in size of the starry lights.” Having mentioned the stars in this comparison, the author feels called upon to add that the latter also had been similarly created,—that is, that they were not original existences, and of course they are not, but they were not created at that epoch, and are not said to have been.

In chapter ii. verse 4, which opens the second narrative (quite a different history, by the way), Jeove appears Himself, joined with the Aleim, and henceforth this personal connection is maintained; the English version translates this composite word “The Lord God,” which means the Master God; the correct reading is, however, the “God of gods,” or what we call the “God of the forces of nature,” or the “God omnipotent.”

In the whole Mosaic cosmogony there is nothing which can even suggest a gradually closing nebulous mass; the element of rotation is absent (and it would not have been understood by the people even if presented); but, with this exception, the processes of development are substantially in accord with what must really have taken place, and in the order described. But it is, as before stated, absolutelyessential to understand the root-meanings of all the more important words used in the original. A superficial translation is not only meaningless, but misleading; whereas, when accurately understood, the record is one of the most remarkable ever presented to human intelligence. The words used were selected deliberately for their specific shades of meaning, and, unless these are properly rendered, to the uninformed the narrative will present a simple succession of startling phenomena, while to the educated student each of these changes carries within its verbal index its origin, its mode, and the knowledge of the forces at work. To the one it is a dramatic spectacle performed on the stage in front; to the other it is the same work as seen behind the curtain, with all the intermoving mechanism (the author’s manuscript the sole guide), the interplay of complicated forces, the triumphant successes, the rapt attention, and even the sudden applause extorted at each wondrous climax from the skilled actors themselves, who are at the same time unceasingly engaged in working out the mighty drama of creation. One might readily believe that the original author of this record was thoroughly acquainted with the processes involved in the development of a solar system like our own from the diffused primordial matter of space, substantially as we have endeavored, in the present work, to deduce them from the most recent investigations and discoveries of science.

Of the watery vapors condensed above the expanse of space many of the ancient writers had afar more correct knowledge than had those who translated these chapters from the original into the various modern languages. In the Psalms we read, “Praise him, … ye waters that be above the heavens;” in the Song of the Three Holy Children, “O all ye waters that be above the heavens.” Theophilus speaks of the “visible sky as havingdrawn to itselfa portion of the waters of chaos at the time of the creation.”Saint Augustine says that the firmament has been formed “betweenthe upper and the lower waters,” and quotesGenesis i. 6 and 7, as his authority.

Thousands of years ago, as far back as the days of the Pythagoreans, and even long before, mankind was acquainted with the mariner’s compass, telescopic tubes, and glass lenses; they knew that the moon receives her light by reflection from the sun, of the presence of mountains and valleys on the lunar surface, that her day and night are each a fortnight in length, that there were other planets known to the Egyptians besides the seven known to the Greeks (the Brahmans reckoned fifteen of them), that the sun is the center of our planetary system, that the earth and the other planets revolve around it, that the earth is round and rotates on its own axis daily, that weight is a principal element in the maintenance of these rotations, that the fixed stars are suns, and that the Milky Way appears white from the number of stars which it contains. Kircher quotes from an ancient Syrian author the philosophy of the sidereal system, dividing it into many layers or spheres attached to orbits, each presidedover by a spirit. In the eighth sphere are placed the fixed stars, “still higher two other layers of stars not less luminous, and of different sizes, the nebulæ and the small stars of the Milky Way, and the whole is surrounded by the celestial waters, which spread over the whole firmament, and which compose the great sea of light and the boundless ocean.” The sources of all this wondrous knowledge can be traced back through Chaldea, Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, through the colony of Meroë, to India.

ROOT-MEANINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORDS USED IN THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.

Aleim(“corruptly called Elohim by the modern Jews, but always Aleim in the synagogue copies”) means the Strong Forces (or, by subsequent impersonation, subaltern gods), operating to carry out the purposes and execute the plans of Jeove.Al, the root, signifiesStrong,strength,a ram;Al-emeansStrongin a personal sense;Aleim(plural) means the Forces, the Strong-ones, the Powers, and in Egyptian mythology, the subordinate, or executive, gods, the demi-urgi.Exodus vii. 1, “And the Lord [Jeove] said unto Moses, See I have made thee a god [Aleim] to Pharaoh; thou shalt speak all that I command thee.”

Bra,carved,cut,fashioned like the work of a sculptor,gave a new shape to,formed from unformed material. FromBr,a knife;br-i,to carve,to cut.

Brashit,in the commencementor beginningof individualized existence(with the initial prepositionb-).Bsignifiesin;it(which is related toat) signifiesindividualized existence;rash, aprincipleorbeginning, or acommencement.

At, connected with the Chaldaic, signifiessubstance,essence, orindividuality, “the thing itself” (Latin,ens); it is correctly translated “individualized substance.”

Eshmim, the combination of the prepositionewith the substantiveshmim, the word signifyingof the visible heavens, or the planisphere.

Artz, the earth in a state of aridity, or as a generalized expression for the earth;arsignifies theearth, and the terminationtzintensifies the signification ofdrought,whiteness,aridity; in contrast with this isadme,red earth, orproductive earthorsoil.

U-is a conjunction, signifyingandorthen, in the sense of succession of time, something like our phrase “and then.”

Teoudoes not mean “without form,” nor doesubeoumean “and void,” as rendered in our English version, at least not in the ordinary sense of these words. “Teourefers to extinct life, or to existenceshut up as in a tomb and in darkness, whileu-beourefers tolife which is about reappearing, but still hidden in the egg or the ovary, and waiting for the word which shall cause the dawn of creation to shine upon it.” These words are more properly rendered “tomb-like darkness and undeveloped.”

Eshcmeansdarkness; not merely an intense darkness, but what may be denominated a “thick darkness;” it is anenshroudingdarknesswhichcompressesandhinders. It is precisely such a darkness as would be produced by the interstratified cloud-layers between the convolutions of a forming spiral nebula, or the cloud-strata surrounding the earth before electrolytic decomposition of the aqueous vapors had ensued. With the advent of the sun, in the narrative, this darkness and the term which expresses it disappear.

Teou-mis the word above explained, with the termination-m, expressing the idea ofarrested,doubtful,indefinite, as applied to all existence; the word “undifferentiated nature” properly interprets its vagueness and general character of an abyss of being, in the etymological sense of “nature” as the totality of things at that time born or produced.

Rovemeansbreath, in the sense of an expanding, liberating, or developing spirit; its literal meaning is “the breath, the spirit which dilates and frees.”

Mrepht,brooded with incubating love;rephis composedofre, “to be full of good-will, to be agreeable,” andeph, “to cover, to protect, to incubate, to brood.”

Mim,the seeds of all beings,the waters. It is said, “the choice of this letterm, to signify water [the alphabetical Egyptian lettermis represented by the two undulatory lines which in the hieroglyphics represent water], is connected with the Egyptian ideas of the cause of the generation of living beings.”Numbers xxiv. 7, “He shall pour the waters out of his buckets, and the seed [zro] in the waters [b-mim].” The latter word is plural in form, but both singular and plural in sense.

Aour,diffused light; a light resembling the dawn, but quite distinct from the light of the sun. The latter was not established until the fourth day, and its advent is characterized by a new word,leair, “to cause light tomoveabove the earth.”

Joumisday, generically, andlilenight.

Rqiô,the expanse;atrqiô,the individualized substance of the expanse. Space, in the opinion of the Egyptians, “not being a vacuum, but a material substance, Moses could say, and was even compelled to say, ‘the substance of space, that which constitutes it.’ ”

Osh, made. This word first occurs in verse 7, and is there applied to themakinga separation between the waters or aqueous vapors condensed around the earth and those condensed around some similar spot “above, as regards the individuality of the expanse,”—to wit, the solar core or nucleus,—to which, attracted by gravity from the attenuated vapors of the space between, is due the subsequent establishment of the solar light and heat, as in an electrical arc light, and the presence of oxygen in the terrestrial atmosphere. These processes, involving the constitution of our atmosphere and of the sun’s photosphere and chromosphere, were not completed until two subsequent cosmical periods had elapsed, from the third to the fifth. The wordosh, in its different combinations and inflections, is also used in verse 11, where it signifies “making,” as applied to fruit; “yielding” fruit, in verse 12; “they made,” as applied to the sun and moon, in verse 16; “made,” as applied to the entity ofquadrupeds and higher animals generally, in verse 25; “we will make,” as applied to man, verse 26; “had made,” as applied to “every entity of creation,” verse 31; “had made,” as applied to the specially directed work asmlactou, chapter ii. verse 2; and finally, in the general summing up in verse 3 of the second chapter, as an element in a compound substantive phrase “according to the making-act,” or “in accordance with the making of creation.”

“Oshout,” it is said, “signifies a manual operation, carried on according to a previously conceived idea, or model.”

We find a similar use of the substantive infinitive with a preceding preposition in verse 21, chapter iii. “Ctnoutis derived fromtne, a consoling word.Tnout, the infinitive of the conjugation Piel, adds to the word the act of causing to be done, and of doing with care.”

A similar construction,lraout, is employed in chapter ii. verse 19, translated in the English version, “and brought them unto Adamto seewhat …”; more literally, “as regards the act of seeing,” or according to a vision, or show. That is, they were brought and presented to his sight.

The object in writing these two words,braandl-osh-out, together at the very end of the narrative was to conclusively establish the fact, beyond all possible doubt, that the whole work of creation was an orderly and harmonious progression.

Mlactou, which word is used twice in verse 2 and once in verse 3 of the second chapter, and not previously, is also introduced for specific emphasis. It means that the whole preceding work of creation was, in its nature, “the work of Mlac,” a messenger, or a specially energized and directed agency, sent to fulfil the appointed work of Jeove. Its purpose was to forever prevent the belief that the work of creation was due to mere natural forces, on the one hand, operating by chance; and, on the other, that these forces were independent gods carrying out their own purposes, and of their own will. It was set up as a double barrier against rationalism on the one side and polytheism on the other.

It may be incidentally added that the popular belief that“Adam was created out of the dust of the earth” is not in accordance with the original record. In the second narrative, chapter ii. verse 7, the wordophris rendered “dust” in our English version, but it does not signify ordinary terrestrial dust at all; “its radical meaning is to volatilize a substance, to sublimate it.” The true signification of the word used is analogous to a “material essence.” The same word is used inNumbers xxiii. 10as a synonym for “seed;” it is said that “the Septuagint version translatesophrbysperma.”

The formation, described in the third chapter, of the female human being out of one of the ribs of Adam, excised for that purpose (which is a matter of almost universal popular belief), is not, in reality, what is stated in the original. In verse 21 of chapter ii. the words are rendered in our version, “And he took one of his ribs.” What is really said, however, is “And he brought out another one from his sides.” So the similar expression in verse 22 in reality signifies, “caused to be made according to womankind the individualized substance of his side.”

The word translated “of his ribs” is precisely the same as is subsequently used by the same writer (Exodus xxxvii. 27) to designate the location of the supporting rings upon an altar of incense, and is there rendered, “by the two corners of it, upon the two sides.”

The defective translation is due to imperfect knowledge, at that time, of the processes of organic development. The true signification is that given in the “Institutes of Manu”: “Having divided his own sub-sistence, the Mighty Power became half male and half female.”

The words rendered “help meet” in verses 18 and 20 have a far higher meaning; “I will make him a help meet” should be translated, “I will cause to be made for him an overseeing help as a guide, an instructor, a revealer.” And in verse 20 of chapter iii., “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve,” the latter word is not translated; the correct rendering is, “And Adam called the symbolic name of his wife the female serpent-wise revealer, she who explains, points out things, whoinstructs,” for that is what the true root-meaning of Eve signifies. The concluding words of this verse, “because she was the mother of all living,” are obviously mistranslated, for not only was she not a mother at all, but she did not even conceive, as stated in the next chapter, until she had left the garden finally. The true signification is, “because she was the mother of all [spiritual, see verse 22, as contradistinguished from animal and vegetable] life.”

The female human being, the word translated woman, has the generic root-signification of “flame,” while, prior to Eve, that of the Adamic man is the “red earth.” As the male was formed from a material earthly essence, the female was created one remove further from the gross and material in the direction of the spiritual; and her powers were distinctively subjective, those of intuition, while those of the male were objective, those derived from instruction. Even in the final curse (so called) the man turns back to the earth to earn his subsistence, while the woman turns forward to the instruction of the future men and women, the children; for the words, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” have left one word of the original untranslated, and by supplying this the sense is entirely changed, “and conceiving, and bringing forth, in sorrow shalt thou bring up, care for, and train children.” In those countries childbirth was never attended with much pain or sorrow.

The obvious effect of the whole inspired or traditionary second narrative is to clearly differentiate the contrasted faculties of the two sexes, and the root-meanings of the words employed, whether Moses himself perceived it or not, are a testimonial of the highest possible character for woman, instead of being, as rendered in the ordinary versions, a mark of inferiority, or even of degradation. In the garden scene, when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she did not do it hastily or from mere temptation; it is said that “she considered it attentively;” the same word being used as was employed in the first narrative to mark the intense interest and almost superhuman character of the consideration by the Aleim of the work, as its successive stagesappeared, which they were delegated to perform, and which Jeove himself directed. The prize, to her, far outweighed the penalty, and the aspiring sibyl dared to lift the innermost veil in the adytum of the temple, and grasp the lofty truths which made her as one of the Aleim. So fell Prometheus.

And then, no sooner had the flame-crowned seer won her precious prize, than, woman-like, she turned and laid it before her husband, and he, the innocent one, “did eat.”

The serpent was not a mere snake, be it understood; it was the Egyptian Typhon, the dark Spirit of doubt, the questioner, the tempter, the eternalif, the why, whence, what, and whither?

It was her insatiable aspiration to reach the highest possible limits of human knowledge which gave strength to her daring, and not a childish fancy for an apple. All this, of course, is lost in the translation. It is as though the national standard of a mighty people had been disinterred from the remains of past ages, which had been borne aloft at the head of mighty armies for centuries, and for which thousands had gloriously died in battle in defence of a sacred cause, and which now, its past history untraced, has been catalogued as a brass bird of some sort mounted on a stick.

It is to be regretted that there is no plain, popular work by a thoroughly capable scholar, without theological or anti-theological bias, which treats of the origin, form, root-derivation, usage, accurate signification, and construction of the comparatively few words employed in the ancient narratives which compose the first half-dozen chapters of Genesis, and, we may add, the book of Job; something like those inestimable works which deal with the ancient cosmogonic literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, China, Phœnicia, and Central America. Nothing of this sort is to be found, at all events in a form accessible to the general reader, and such a work, in small compass, would be of the highest importance to popular instructors, to students, and to the public as well, for it would throw a flood of light on these extremely valuable but, hitherto, so illy-comprehended records.

THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.1.Aleim, the Forces, fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in the commencement of individualized existence, the individualized substance of the heavens and the individualized substance of the earth.2. And the earth was in tomb-like darkness and undeveloped, and there was compressive hindering darkness on the surface of undifferentiated nature. And the dilating and liberating Spirit of the Forces hovered with incubating love on the surface of the seeds of all beings, the waters.3. Then Aleim said, There shall be a diffused light; and a diffused light was.4. And Aleim regarded with attention the individualized substance of the diffused light, because good. And Aleim caused a separation to be made between the diffused light and between the compressive hindering darkness.5. Then Aleim exclaimed for the diffused light,Day!and for the compressive hindering darkness exclaimed,Night!And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;First Day.6. Then Aleim said, There shall be an expansion obtained by a thinning in the center of the waters, and there was that which caused a separation to be made by occupying a spot, the waters according to the waters.7. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the expanse, and caused a separation to exist by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are under as regards the expanse of space, and by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are above as regards the expanse of space; and it was so.8. Then Aleim exclaimed for the expanse of space,The Heavens!and there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Second Day.9. And Aleim said, The waters which are underneath the heavens will tend directly, in order to meet in it, towards a single spot fixed upon for their meeting; and of dryness produced by the action of an internal fire the appearance shall be made; and it was so.10. Then Aleim exclaimed for the dryness,Earth!and for the spot fixed upon for the meeting of the waters exclaimed,Seas!Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.11. And Aleim said, There shall be made to grow from the earth a dwarf vegetation which can be trodden under foot, a maturing plant causing to be sowed around it a seed, the strong and woody substance of fruit making fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself above the earth; and it was so.12. And there was caused to arise suddenly and full of strength a dwarf vegetation, a maturing plant sowing around it seed after his kind; and the woody substance yielding fruit whose seed is in itself after his kind. Then Aleim considered it, because good.13. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Third Day.14. Then Aleim said, There shall be starry-lights in the expanse of space of the heavens to separate between the duration of the day and between the duration of the night; and they shall be for signs, and for seasons, and for the days which make the year, and for the repetitions of years.15. And they shall be for luminous bodies in the expanse of space of the heavens to cause light to move above the earth; and it was so.16. And Aleim made a double individualized substance, the superior in size and excellence of the starry-lights, the individualized substance which was the greater of the luminous bodies to represent the rule of the day, and the lesser luminous body to represent the rule of the night.Of the dim and almost extinct lights [the stars] they made the individualized substance also.17. And Aleim established these individualized substances in the expanse of space of the heavens to make light move above the earth.18. And to be representatives of dominion during the day and during the night, and to separate between the continuance of diffused light and between the continuance of compressivehindering darkness; then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.19. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fourth Day.20. Then Aleim said, The waters shall bring forth a swarm of swarming creatures having living breath; and that which flies, the birds, shall be made to fly with strength and fleetness above the earth in the space extended of the heavens.21. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor the individualized substance of those which are superior in size of the gigantic reptiles and every individualized substance having living breath, that moveth, which they had produced, swarming from the waters, according to their kind; and every individualized substance of flying thing with wings, after his kind. Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.22. And Aleim blessed these individualities by saying, propagate your species and multiply yourselves, and fill the individualized substance of the waters in the seas; and as for the flying thing, it shall multiply itself on the earth.23. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fifth Day.24. Then Aleim said, From the earth shall be brought forth the living breath according to its kind, the quadruped, and the being which moveth about, and the terrestrial animal according to its kind; and it was so.25. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the animal of the earth according to his kind, and the individualized substance of the quadruped according to his kind, and every individualized substance that moveth about of red earth according to his kind. Then Aleim regarded it, because good.26. Then Aleim said, We will make mankind of a like order of intellect with ourselves, and they shall extend their dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the bird of the heavens, and over the quadruped, and over all of the earth, and over all the moving beings that move about over the earth.27. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor theindividualized substance of mankind in the exactness of a shadow cast upon a wall; on this shadow Aleim carved the individuality; male and female they fashioned the individualized substance.28. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance. And Aleim said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the individualized substance of the earth, and subdue it, and extend your dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all life of the being which moveth about over the earth.29. And Aleim said, Behold I have given for you every useful plant-substance yielding seed, yielding seed which there is over the surface of all the earth, and every individualized substance of tree which has in it fruit pertaining to a tree yielding seed, yielding seed for you, it shall be for food.30. And for all animal life of the earth, and for everything that flies in the heavens, and for every being that moveth over the surface of the earth which has in it living breath, every individualized substance which is a green maturing plant shall be for food. And it was so.31. Then Aleim looked at every individualized substance which they had made, and behold it was as good as possible. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Sixth Day.(Chapter ii.) 1. Then the finishing was made of the heavens, and of the earth, and of all the orderly arrangement.2. And Aleim [the Forces] finished on the seventh day the divinely appointed and directed work which they had performed; and they came again to a state of rest on the seventh day from all the appointed work which they had done.3. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance of the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it they returned to their primitive condition from all the divinely appointed and directed work which the Forces had fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in accordance with the making of creation.

THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION.

1.Aleim, the Forces, fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in the commencement of individualized existence, the individualized substance of the heavens and the individualized substance of the earth.

2. And the earth was in tomb-like darkness and undeveloped, and there was compressive hindering darkness on the surface of undifferentiated nature. And the dilating and liberating Spirit of the Forces hovered with incubating love on the surface of the seeds of all beings, the waters.

3. Then Aleim said, There shall be a diffused light; and a diffused light was.

4. And Aleim regarded with attention the individualized substance of the diffused light, because good. And Aleim caused a separation to be made between the diffused light and between the compressive hindering darkness.

5. Then Aleim exclaimed for the diffused light,Day!and for the compressive hindering darkness exclaimed,Night!And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;First Day.

6. Then Aleim said, There shall be an expansion obtained by a thinning in the center of the waters, and there was that which caused a separation to be made by occupying a spot, the waters according to the waters.

7. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the expanse, and caused a separation to exist by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are under as regards the expanse of space, and by the occupation of the spot, of the waters which are above as regards the expanse of space; and it was so.

8. Then Aleim exclaimed for the expanse of space,The Heavens!and there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Second Day.

9. And Aleim said, The waters which are underneath the heavens will tend directly, in order to meet in it, towards a single spot fixed upon for their meeting; and of dryness produced by the action of an internal fire the appearance shall be made; and it was so.

10. Then Aleim exclaimed for the dryness,Earth!and for the spot fixed upon for the meeting of the waters exclaimed,Seas!Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.

11. And Aleim said, There shall be made to grow from the earth a dwarf vegetation which can be trodden under foot, a maturing plant causing to be sowed around it a seed, the strong and woody substance of fruit making fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself above the earth; and it was so.

12. And there was caused to arise suddenly and full of strength a dwarf vegetation, a maturing plant sowing around it seed after his kind; and the woody substance yielding fruit whose seed is in itself after his kind. Then Aleim considered it, because good.

13. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Third Day.

14. Then Aleim said, There shall be starry-lights in the expanse of space of the heavens to separate between the duration of the day and between the duration of the night; and they shall be for signs, and for seasons, and for the days which make the year, and for the repetitions of years.

15. And they shall be for luminous bodies in the expanse of space of the heavens to cause light to move above the earth; and it was so.

16. And Aleim made a double individualized substance, the superior in size and excellence of the starry-lights, the individualized substance which was the greater of the luminous bodies to represent the rule of the day, and the lesser luminous body to represent the rule of the night.

Of the dim and almost extinct lights [the stars] they made the individualized substance also.

17. And Aleim established these individualized substances in the expanse of space of the heavens to make light move above the earth.

18. And to be representatives of dominion during the day and during the night, and to separate between the continuance of diffused light and between the continuance of compressivehindering darkness; then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.

19. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fourth Day.

20. Then Aleim said, The waters shall bring forth a swarm of swarming creatures having living breath; and that which flies, the birds, shall be made to fly with strength and fleetness above the earth in the space extended of the heavens.

21. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor the individualized substance of those which are superior in size of the gigantic reptiles and every individualized substance having living breath, that moveth, which they had produced, swarming from the waters, according to their kind; and every individualized substance of flying thing with wings, after his kind. Then Aleim looked attentively at it, because good.

22. And Aleim blessed these individualities by saying, propagate your species and multiply yourselves, and fill the individualized substance of the waters in the seas; and as for the flying thing, it shall multiply itself on the earth.

23. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Fifth Day.

24. Then Aleim said, From the earth shall be brought forth the living breath according to its kind, the quadruped, and the being which moveth about, and the terrestrial animal according to its kind; and it was so.

25. And Aleim made the individualized substance of the animal of the earth according to his kind, and the individualized substance of the quadruped according to his kind, and every individualized substance that moveth about of red earth according to his kind. Then Aleim regarded it, because good.

26. Then Aleim said, We will make mankind of a like order of intellect with ourselves, and they shall extend their dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the bird of the heavens, and over the quadruped, and over all of the earth, and over all the moving beings that move about over the earth.

27. And Aleim fashioned like the work of a sculptor theindividualized substance of mankind in the exactness of a shadow cast upon a wall; on this shadow Aleim carved the individuality; male and female they fashioned the individualized substance.

28. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance. And Aleim said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the individualized substance of the earth, and subdue it, and extend your dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all life of the being which moveth about over the earth.

29. And Aleim said, Behold I have given for you every useful plant-substance yielding seed, yielding seed which there is over the surface of all the earth, and every individualized substance of tree which has in it fruit pertaining to a tree yielding seed, yielding seed for you, it shall be for food.

30. And for all animal life of the earth, and for everything that flies in the heavens, and for every being that moveth over the surface of the earth which has in it living breath, every individualized substance which is a green maturing plant shall be for food. And it was so.

31. Then Aleim looked at every individualized substance which they had made, and behold it was as good as possible. And there was a transition from light to darkness, and then there was a renewal of light;Sixth Day.

(Chapter ii.) 1. Then the finishing was made of the heavens, and of the earth, and of all the orderly arrangement.

2. And Aleim [the Forces] finished on the seventh day the divinely appointed and directed work which they had performed; and they came again to a state of rest on the seventh day from all the appointed work which they had done.

3. Then Aleim blessed the individualized substance of the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it they returned to their primitive condition from all the divinely appointed and directed work which the Forces had fashioned like the work of a sculptor, in accordance with the making of creation.

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