Part 38 (1/2)

The separation of the light from the darkness is not part of another physical theory; it seems that night and day were mixed up like two kinds of grain; and that they were sifted out of each other. It is sufficiently well established that darkness is nothing but the deprivation of light, and that there is light only in so far as our eyes receive the sensation, but no one had thought of this at that time.

The idea of the firmament is also of respectable antiquity. People imagined the skies very solid, because the same set of things always happened there. The skies circulated over our heads, they must therefore be very strong. The means of calculating how many exhalations of the earth and how many seas would be needed to keep the clouds full of water? There was then no Halley to write out the equations. There were tanks of water in heaven. These tanks were held up on a good steady dome; but one could see through the dome; it must have been made out of crystal. In order that the water could be poured over the earth there had to be doors, sluices, cataracts which could be opened, turned on.

Such was the current astronomy, _and_ one was writing for Jews; it was quite necessary to take up their silly ideas, which they had borrowed from other peoples only a little less stupid.

”G.o.d made two great lights, one to preside over the day, the other the night, and he made also the stars.”

True, this shows the same continuous ignorance of nature. The Jews did not know that the moonlight is merely reflection. The author speaks of the stars as luminous points, which they look like, although they are at times suns with planets swinging about them. But holy spirit harmonized with the mind of the time. If he had said that the sun is a million times as large as the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one would have understood him. They appear to be two stars of sizes not very unequal.

”G.o.d said also: let us make man in our image, let him rule over the fishes, etc.”

What did the Jews mean by ”in our image”? They meant, like all antiquity:

_Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._

One can not make ”images” save of bodies. No nation then imagined a bodiless G.o.d, and it is impossible to picture him as such. One might indeed say ”G.o.d is nothing of anything we know,” but then one would not have any idea what he is. The Jews constantly believed G.o.d corporal, as did all the rest of the nations. All the first fathers of the church also believed G.o.d corporal, until they had swallowed Plato's ideas, or rather until the lights of Christianity had grown purer.

”He created them male and female.”

If G.o.d or the secondary G.o.ds created man male and female in their resemblance, it would seem that the Jews believed G.o.d and the G.o.ds were male and female. One searches to see whether the author meant to say that man was at the start ambis.e.xtrous or if he means that G.o.d made Adam and Eve the same day. The most natural interpretation would be that G.o.d made Adam and Eve at the same time, but this is absolutely contradicted by the formation of woman from the rib, a long time after the first seven days.

”And he rested the seventh day.”

The Phnicians, Chaldeans, and Indians say that G.o.d made the world in six periods, which Zoroaster calls the six gahambars, as celebrated among Persians.

It is incontestable that all these people had a theogony long before the Jews got to h.o.r.eb and Sinai, and before they could have had writers.

Several savants think it likely that the allegory of the six days is imitated from the six periods. G.o.d might have permitted great nations to have this idea before he inspired the Jews, just as he had permitted other people to discover the arts before the Jews had attained any.

”The place of delight shall be a river which waters a garden, and from it shall flow four rivers, Phison ... Gehon..., etc., Tigris, Euphrates....”

According to this version the terrestrial paradise would have contained about a third of Asia and Africa. The Euphrates and Tigris have their sources sixty miles apart in hideous mountains which do not look the least like a garden. The river which borders Ethiopia can be only the Nile, whose source is a little over a thousand miles from those of the Tigris and the Euphrates; and if Phison is the Phase, it is curious to start a Scythian river from the fount of a river of Africa. One must look further afield for the meaning of all these rivers. Every commentator makes his own Eden.

Some one has said that the Garden was like the gardens of Eden at Saana in Arabia Felix celebrated in antiquity, and that the parvenu Hebrews might have been an Arab tribe taking to themselves credit for the prettiest thing in the best canton of Arabia, as they have always taken to themselves the traditions of all the great peoples who enslaved them.

But in any case they were led by the Lord.

”The Lord took man and set him in the midst of the garden, to tend it.”

It was all very well saying ”tend it,” ”cultivate the garden,” but it would have been very difficult for Adam to cultivate a garden 3,000 miles long. Perhaps he had helpers. It is another chance for the commentators to exercise their gifts of divination ... as they do with the rivers.

”Eat not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.” It is difficult to think that there was a tree which taught good and evil; as there are pear trees and peach trees. One asks why G.o.d did not wish man to know good from evil. Would not the opposite wish (if one dare say so) appear more worthy of G.o.d, and much more needful to man? It seems to our poor reason that G.o.d might have ordered him to eat a good deal of this fruit, but one must submit one's reason and conclude that obedience to G.o.d is the proper course for us.

”If you eat of the fruit you shall die.”

Yet Adam ate, and did not die in the least; they say he lived another nine centuries. Several ”Fathers” have considered all this as an allegory. Indeed, one may say that other animals do not know that they die, but that man knows it through his reason. This reason is the tree of knowledge which makes him foresee his finish. This explanation may be more reasonable, but we do not dare to p.r.o.nounce on it.

”The Lord said also: It is not good that man should Le alone, let us make him an helpmate like to him.” One expects that the Lord is going to give him a woman, but first he brings up all the beasts. This may be the transposition of some copyist.

”And the name which Adam gave to each animal is its real name.” An animal's real name would be one which designated all the qualifications of its species, or at least the princ.i.p.al traits, but this does not exist in any language. There are certain imitative words, c.o.c.k and cuckoo, and _alali_ in Greek, etc. Moreover, if Adam had known the real names and therefore the properties of the animals, he must have already eaten of the tree of knowledge; or else it would seem that G.o.d need not have forbidden him the tree, since he already knew more than the Royal Society, or the Academy.

Observe that this is the first time Adam is named in Genesis. The first man according to the Brahmins was Adimo, son of the earth. Adam and Eve mean the same thing in Phnician, another indication that the holy spirit fell in with the received ideas.

”When Adam was asleep, etc.,... rib ... made a woman.” The Lord, in the preceding chapter, had already created them male and female; why should he take a rib out of the man to make a woman already existing? We are told that the author announces in one place what he explains in another.

We are told that this allegory shows woman submitted to her husband.