Part 25 (1/2)

Egypt, the country out of which the Israelites came, had no story of the Creation and Fall of Man, _such as we have found among the Hebrews_; they therefore could not have learned it from _them_. The _Chaldeans_, however, as we saw in our first chapter, had this legend, and it is from them that the Hebrews borrowed it.

The account which we have given of the Chaldean story of the Creation and Fall of Man, was taken, as we stated, from the writings of Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 B. C.), and as the Jews were acquainted with the story some centuries earlier than this, his works did not prove that these traditions were in Babylonia before the Jewish captivity, and could not afford testimony in favor of the statement that the Jews borrowed this legend from the Babylonians _at that time_. It was left for Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, to establish, without a doubt, the fact that this legend was known to the Babylonians at least _two thousand years before the time a.s.signed for the birth of Jesus_. The cuneiform inscriptions discovered by him, while on an expedition to a.s.syria, organized by the London ”Daily Telegraph,” was the means of doing this, and although by far the greatest number of these tablets belong to the age of a.s.surbanipal, who reigned over a.s.syria B. C. 670, it is ”acknowledged on all hands that these tablets are not the originals, _but are only copies from earlier texts_.” ”The a.s.syrians acknowledge themselves that this literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources, and of course it is to Babylonia we have to look to ascertain the approximate dates of the original doc.u.ments.”[98:2] Mr. Smith then shows, from ”fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Creation and Fall” which have been discovered, that, ”_in the period from B. C. 2000 to 1500, the Babylonians believed in a story similar to that in Genesis_.” It is probable, however, says Mr. Smith, that this legend existed as _traditions_ in the country _long before it was committed to writing_, and some of these traditions exhibited great difference in details, _showing that they had pa.s.sed through many changes_.[99:1]

Professor James Fergusson, in his celebrated work on ”Tree and Serpent Wors.h.i.+p,” says:

”The two chapters which refer to this (_i. e._, the Garden, the Tree, and the Serpent), as indeed the whole of the first eight of Genesis, are now generally admitted by scholars to be made up of fragments of earlier books or earlier traditions, belonging, properly speaking, to Mesopotamia rather than to Jewish history, the exact meaning of which the writers of the Pentateuch seem hardly to have appreciated when they transcribed them in the form in which they are now found.”[99:2]

John Fiske says:

”The story of the Serpent in Eden is an Aryan story in every particular. The notion of Satan as the author of evil appears only in the later books, _composed after the Jews had come into close contact with Persian ideas_.”[99:3]

Prof. John W. Draper says:

”In the old legends of dualism, the evil spirit was said to have _sent a serpent to ruin Paradise_. These legends became known to the Jews _during their Babylonian captivity_.”[99:4]

Professor Goldziher also shows, in his ”Mythology Among the Hebrews,”[99:5] that the story of the creation was borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babylonians. He also informs us that the notion of the _bore_ and _yoser_, ”Creator” (the term used in the cosmogony in Genesis) as an integral part of the idea of G.o.d, _are first brought into use by the prophets of the captivity_. ”Thus also the story of the _Garden of Eden_, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, _was written down at Babylon_.”

Strange as it may appear, after the _Genesis_ account, we may pa.s.s through the whole Pentateuch, and other books of the Old Testament, clear to the end, and will find that the story of the ”_Garden of Eden_”

and ”_Fall of Man_,” is hardly alluded to, if at all. Lengkerke says: ”One single _certain_ trace of the employment of the story of Adam's fall is entirely wanting in the Hebrew Canon (after the Genesis account). Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the woman's seduction of her husband, &c., are all images, _to which the remaining words of the Israelites never again recur_.”[100:1]

This circ.u.mstance can only be explained by the fact that the first chapters of Genesis were not written until _after_ the other portions had been written.

It is worthy of notice, that this story of the Fall of Man, upon which the whole orthodox scheme of a divine Saviour or Redeemer is based, was _not_ considered by the learned Israelites as _fact_. They simply looked upon it as a story which satisfied the ignorant, but which should be considered as _allegory_ by the learned.[100:2]

Rabbi Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon), one of the most celebrated of the Rabbis, says on this subject:--

”We must not understand, or take in a literal sense, what is written in _the book_ on the _Creation_, nor form of it the same ideas which are partic.i.p.ated by the generality of mankind; _otherwise our ancient sages would not have so much recommended to us, to hide the real meaning of it, and not to lift the allegorical veil, which covers the truth contained therein_. When taken in its _literal sense_, the work gives the most absurd and most extravagant ideas of the Deity.

'Whosoever should divine its true meaning ought to take great care in not divulging it.' This is a maxim repeated to us by all our sages, princ.i.p.ally concerning the understanding of the work of the six days.”[100:3]

Philo, a Jewish writer contemporary with Jesus, held the same opinion of the character of the sacred books of the Hebrews. He has made two particular treatises, bearing the t.i.tle of ”_The Allegories_,” and he traces back to the _allegorical_ sense the ”Tree of Life,” the ”Rivers of Paradise,” and the other fictions of the Genesis.[100:4]

Many of the early Christian Fathers declared that, in the story of the Creation and Fall of Man, there was but an _allegorical fiction_. Among these may be mentioned St. Augustine, who speaks of it in his ”City of G.o.d,” and also Origen, who says:

”What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the _evening_ is named and the _morning_, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that G.o.d planted trees in Paradise like an husbandman? _I believe that every man must hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is concealed._”[100:5]

Origen believed aright, as it is now almost universally admitted, that the stories of the ”Garden of Eden,” the ”Elysian Fields,” the ”Garden of the Blessed,” &c., which were the abode of the blessed, where grief and sorrow could not approach them, where plague and sickness could not touch them, were founded on _allegory_. These abodes of delight were far away in the _West_, where the sun goes down beyond the bounds of the earth. They were the ”Golden Islands” sailing in a sea of blue--_the burnished clouds floating in the pure ether_. In a word, _the ”Elysian Fields” are the clouds at eventide_. The picture was suggested by the images drawn from the phenomena of sunset and twilight.[101:1]

Eating of the forbidden fruit was simply a figurative mode of expressing the performance of the act necessary to the perpetuation of the human race. The ”Tree of Knowledge” was a Phallic tree, and the fruit which grew upon it was Phallic fruit.[101:2]

In regard to the story of ”_The Deluge_,” we have already seen[101:3]

that ”Egyptian records tell nothing of a cataclysmal deluge,” and that, ”the land was _never_ visited by other than its annual beneficent overflow of the river Nile.” Also, that ”the Pharaoh Khoufou-cheops was building his pyramid, according to Egyptian chronicle, when the whole world was under the waters of a universal deluge, according to the Hebrew chronicle.” This is sufficient evidence that the Hebrews did not borrow the legend from the Egyptians.

We have also seen, in the chapter that treated of this legend, that it corresponded in all the princ.i.p.al features with the _Chaldean_ account.

We shall now show that it was taken from this.

Mr. Smith discovered, on the site of Ninevah, during the years 1873-4, cylinders belonging to the early Babylonian monarchy, (from 2500 to 1500 B. C.) which contained the legend of the flood,[101:4] and which we gave in Chapter II. _This was the foundation for the Hebrew legend, and they learned it at the time of the Captivity._[101:5] The myth of Deucalion, the Grecian hero, was also taken from the same source. The Greeks learned it from the Chaldeans.

We read in Chambers's Encyclopaedia, that:

”It was at one time extensively believed, even by intelligent scholars, that the myth of Deucalion was a corrupted tradition of the _Noachian_ deluge, but this _untenable_ opinion is now all but universally abandoned.”[102:1]