Our present object limiting itself to the Creation of Man, as set forth in the above two documents each, the reader now perceives, distinct altogether the one from the other we withhold (contrary to our habit) authorities for our arrangement of the "document Elohim." The Hebraist will concede that we have adhered with rigid fidelity to the Text; and that suffices until we resume biblical mysteries on a future occasion, when authority enough shall be forthcoming. Yet, to the curious investigator, we feel tempted to offer the "Air" of the Music of the Spheres: If he be a musician, he can play it on a piano; if he is a geometrician, he will find its corresponding notes on the sides of an equilateral triangle added to the angles of a square; if he loves metaphysics, Plato will explain the import of unity, matter, logos, perfection, imperfect, justice, repose; while Pythagoras will class for him monad, duad, triad, quaternary, quinary, senary, and septenary. We hope to strike the OCTAVE note some day ourselves; but, in the meanwhile, should the reader be profound in astronomical history, and if he can determine the exact time when the ancients possessed neither more nor less than "five planets, besides the Sun and Moon," there are two archæological problems his acumen will have solved-1st, the arithmetico-harmonical antiquity of the number 7; and 2d, the precise era beyond which it will thenceforward be impossible to carry back the composition of that ancient Ode we term "Genesis i-ii. 3." 66 Being of an epoch much more recent; arranged upon a geographical basis purely Chaldæan; and containing allusions to a garden of DELIGHT (like the famed " hanging-gardens" of Babylon, and the paradisiacal parks of Persia); the "Jehovistic document" throws little or no light upon ancient ethnography. A-DaM, as we shall see, never was intended by the Jehovistic writer, to be the proper-name “ Adam," as the versions pretend. The woman AiShaH (when the masoretic points or other arbitrary and modern diacritical marks are removed) becomes ASH, or (vowels being vague) ISE: identified with the Coptic ISE, as well as with the hieroglyphical appellative of that primordial ISI, whom the Greeks (through the addition of their euphonizing Sigma) made into the goddess ISIS: "for," says CLEMENS Alexandrinus, “in that which belongs to the occult the enigmas of the Egyptians are similar to those of the Hebrews." 675 One of the titles of this myrionymed goddess was "the universal mother;" and naturally so, "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen. iii. 20). "I am," says ISIS, "Nature; parent of all things, the sovereign of the elements, the primary progeny of Time, the most exalted of the deities, the first of the heavenly gods and goddesses, the queen of the shades, the uniform countenance; who dispose with my rod the numerous lights of heaven, the salubrious breezes of the sea, and the mournful silence of the dead; whose single deity the whole world venerates in many forms, with various rites and many names. The Egyptians, skilled in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies, and call me by my true name, Queen ISIS." 57 In consequence, the "document JEHOVAH" does not especially concern our present subject; and it is incomparable with the grander conception of the more ancient and unknown writer of Genesis Ist. With extreme felicity of diction and conciseness of plan, the latter has defined the most philosophical views of antiquity upon cosmogony; in fact so well, that it has required the paleontological discoveries of the XIXth century—at least 2500 years after his death to overthrow his septenary arrangement of "Creation;" which, after all, would still be correct enough in general principles, were it not for one individual oversight, and one unlucky blunder; not exposed, however, until long after his era, by post-Copernican astronomy. The oversight is where he wrote (Gen. i. 6-8): "Let there be RaQIe;” i. e., a firmament; which proves that his notions of "sky" (solid like the concavity of a copper basin with stars set as brilliants in the metal),677 were the same as those of adjacent people of his time: indeed, of all men before the publication of NEWTON's Principia and of LAPLACE'S Mécanique Céleste. The blunder is where he conceives that AUR, “light,” and IOM, “day” (Gen. i. 14—18), could have been physically possible three whole days before the “two great luminaries," Sun and Moon, were created. These venial errors deducted, his majestic song beautifully illustrates the simple process of ratiocination through which—often without the slightest historical proof of intercourse-different "Types of Mankind," at distinct epochas, and in countries widely apart, had arrived, naturally, at cosmogonic conclusions similar to the doctrines of that Hebraical school of which his harmonic and melodious numbers remain a magnificent memento. That process seems to have been the following. The ancients knew, as we do, that man is upon the earth; and they were persuaded, as we are, that his appearance was preceded by unfathomable depths of time. Unable (as we are still) to measure periods antecedent to man by any chronological standard, the ancients rationally reached the tabulation of some events anterior to man, through induction—a method not original with Lord Bacon, because known to St. Paul; "for his unseen things from the creation of the world, his eternal power and godhead, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom. i. 20). Man, they felt, could not have lived upon earth without animal food; ergo, "cattle" preceded him; together with birds, reptiles, fishes, &c. Nothing living, they knew, could have existed without light and heat; ergo, the solar system antedated animal life, no less than the vegetation indispensable for animal support. But terrestrial plants cannot grow without earth; ergo, dry land had to be separated from pre-existent "waters." Their geological speculations inclining rather to the Neptunian than to the Plutonian theory- for Werner ever preceded Hutton-the ancients found it difficult to "divide the waters from the waters" without interposing a metallic substance that "divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament;" so they inferred, logically, that a firmament must have been actually created for this object. [E. g., “The windows of the skies" (Gen. vii. 11); "the waters above the skies" (Ps. cxlviii. 4).] Before the "waters" (and here is the peculiar error of the genesiacal bard), some of the ancients claimed the pre-existence of light (a view adopted by the writer of Genesis Ist); whilst others asserted that "chaos" prevailed. Both schools united, however, in the conviction that DARKNESS - Erebus 678 anteceded all other created things. What, said these ancients, can have existed before the "darkness?" ENS ENTIUM, the CREATOR, was the humbled reply. ELOHIM is the Hebrew vocal expression of that climax; to define whose attributes, save through the phenomena of creation, is an attempt we leave to others more presumptuous than ourselves. "GOD," nobly exclaims De Bretonne, "has no need to strike our ears materially to make himself heard, our eyes to make himself seen. The first act of triumph of the spirit over matter is the discredit of emblems that have disguised the infinite God; and the first step towards truth is to recognize him without image, after having, for so long a period, modelled him after our own." 679 What definition of the Godhead more sublime than that in the Hindoo Vedas? "He who surpasses speech, and through the power of whom speech is expressed, "know, O thou! that He is BRAHMA, and not these perishable things that man adores. "He who cannot be comprehended by intelligence, and he alone, say the sages, "through the power of whom the nature of intelligence can be understood, know, “O thou! that He is BRAHMA, and not these perishable things that man adores. "He who cannot be seen by the organ of vision, and through the power of whom the "organ of seeing sees, know, O thou! that He is BRAHMA, and not these perishable things that man adores. "He who cannot be heard by the organ of audition, and through the power of "whom the organ of hearing hears, know, O thou! that He is BRAHMA, and not these perishable things that man adores. "He who cannot be perceived by the organ of scent, and through the power of "whom the organ of smelling smells, know, O thou! that He is BRAHMA, and not "these perishable things that man adores." 680 Phoenician, Chaldæan, and many other nations' cosmogonies present both striking resemblances and divergences. Some of them are compared with Genesis, very ably, by Palfrey; 681 from whom we borrow these words of the Alexandrian cosmogony of DIODORUS SICULUS "This is not unlike what Euripides says, who was a disciple of Anaxagoras. For this is his language in the Melanippe: 'There was one aspect to sky and earth; Then the secret powers doing their office Finally, men themselves."" But that which ancient philosophers attained through the laws of inductive reasoning, if to themselves clear and satisfactory, could not be conveyed in a form so indefinite to the intelligence of the illiterate, nor to children. Such undeveloped minds require dogmatical tuition. The teachers, so to say, had inductively ascended along an imaginary ladder, from man as its basis; until, having established some facts in nature antecedent to his terrestrial advent, they reached its top, when they recognized that there must be a FIRST CAUSE anterior to the "beginning:" but, so soon as these scientific results were to be conveyed to pupils, the dogmatical method became necessary: wherefore the preceptors reversed the order; and, commencing at the top of the supposititious ladder, they taught "In the beginning ELOHIM created." Each rung, as they came down, marked, like degrees on a scale, the order in which previous induction had established the relative places of events; and thus every intellectual nation possessed a "Genesis." That of the Hebrew Elohistic writer possesses the superior merit of being a scientific hymn, 682 arranged in true accordance with the septenary scale of numerical harmonies. Viewed as a literary work of ancient humanity's loftiest conception of Creative Power, it is sublime beyond all cosmogonies known in the world's history. Viewed as a narrative inspired by the Most High, its conceits would be pitiful and its revelations false; because telescopic astronomy has ruined its celestial structure, physics have negatived its cosmic organism, and geology has stultified the fabulous terrestrial mechanism upon which its assumptions are based. How, then, are its crude and juvenile hypotheses about Human Creation to be received? Before answering this interrogatory, it may be instructive to peruse some Fathers of the Church: 1st. ORIGEN." To what man of sense, I beg of you, could one make believe, that the first, the second, and the third day of creation, in which notwithstanding an evening and a morning are named, could have existed without sun, without moon, and without stars? that, during the first day, there was not even a sky! Who shall be found so idiotic as to admit that God delivered himself up like a man to agriculture, by planting trees in the garden of Eden situate towards the East; that one of those trees was that of life, and that another could give the science of good and evil? No one, I think, can hesitate to regard these things as figures, beneath which mysteries are hidden." 683 The same patristic scholar adds elsewhere-"Were it necessary to attach ourselves to the letter, and to understand that which is written in the Law after the manner of the Jews or the populace, I should blush (erubesco dicere) to say aloud that it is God who has given us such laws: I should find even more grandeur and reason in human legislations; for example, in those of the Athenians, of Romans, or of Lacedæmonians." "'684 2d. CLEMENS Alexandrinus —“ For your Genesis in particular was never the work of Moses."685 "Horum ergo scripta (Orphei et Hesiodi) in duas partes intelligentiæ dividuntur; id est, secundum litteram sunt ignobilis vulgi turba confluxit, ea vero quæ secundum allegoriam constant omnis philosophorum et eruditorum loquacitas admirata est." 686 St. Clement applies exactly the same principles to Genesis (xxvi.), where he exclaims "O divine jesting! It is the same that Heraclitus attributes to Jupiter. Abimelech is Jesus Christ, our king, who, from the heavens above, considers our sports, our actions of grace, our transports of joy." "1687 3d. St. AUGUSTINE "There is no way of preserving the true sense of the first three chapters of Genesis, without attributing to God things unworthy of him, and for which one must have recourse to allegory."688 4th. St. JEROME who, in his commentary, upon Jeremiah, enforces the allegorical method"Sive MOSEN dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esdram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso." 689 Let the most philosophic of many truly-learned Rabbis close the list:— MAIMONIDES "There are some persons to whom it is repugnant to perceive a motive in a given law of the (divine) laws; they love better to find no rational sense in the commandments and prohibitions. That which leads them to this, is a certain feebleness they feel in their souls, but upon which they are unable to reason, and of which they know not how to give any account. This is what they think. If the laws should profit us in this (temporal) existence, and that they had been given to us for such or such a motive, it might very well be that they are the product of the reflection and of the intelligence of a man of genius: if, on the contrary, a thing possesses no comprehensible sense and that it produces no advantage whatever, it emanates, without doubt, from the Deity, because human thought could not lead to such a thing. One would say that, according to these weak minds, man is greater than his Creator; because man (according to them) speaks and acts while aiming at a certain object; whereas God, far from acting similarly, would order us, on the contrary, to do that which to ourselves is not of the least utility, and would forbid us from actions that cannot cause us the slightest damage." (Arabicè, 'Dellàlat el Khàyereen; Hebraicè, More Neboukhim; "Guide to the Strayers," ch. xxxi.: MUNK's Translation, Paris, 1833.) They all-i. e., the Fathers of the first centuries - attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture, the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mystical, which lay concealed as it were under the outward letter. The former they treated with the utmost neglect ; 690 following St. Paul's authority"For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." — (2 Corinth. iii. 6.) Section G.-COSMAS-INDICOPLEUSTES. But, in the proportion that Hellenic learning faded in Alexandrian schools, so patristic talent and scholarship also deteriorated. That "Genesis" which, by the earlier Fathers, had been ascribed to EZRA rather than to MOSES, and the language of which, to more refined Grecian intellects, appeared too contemptible for Divinity unless construed in an allegorical sense, at length began to be accepted verbatim et litteratim by Christian writers: the strenuousness of orthodoxy, in any creed, increasing always in the ratio that mental culture declines. At last, arose a Monk who, unjustly forgotten by the Church though he be now, did more to petrify theological stolidity in Europe, for 800 years, with respect to the first three chapters of Genesis, than any human being but himself- COSMAS-Indicopleustes. "He is," says the learned Mr. Sharpe, "of the dogmatical school which forbids all jnquiry as heretical. He fights the battle which has been so often fought before and since, and is even still fought so resolutely, the battle of religious ignorance against scientific knowledge. He sets the words of the Bible against the results of science; he denies that the world is a sphere, and quotes the Old Testament against the pagan philosophers, to show that it is a plane, covered by the firmament as a roof, above which he places the kingdom of heaven. . . . The arguments employed by Cosmas were unfortunately but too often used by the Christian world in general, who were even willing to see learning itself fall with the overthrow of paganism. All knowledge was divided into sacred and profane, and whatever was not drawn from the Scriptures was slighted and neglected; and this perhaps was one of the chief causes of the darkness which overspread the world during the middle ages." "" 691 To comprehend the force of these observations it may be well to preface our description of the Topographia Christiana by a few excerpts from Matter.692 The only Christian Father whose writings evince the humblest acquaintance with Egyptian studies, CLEMENS Alexandrinus, expressly says, that the "Egyptians taught the Greeks the movement of the planets round the sun;" and, since 1848, Egyptology can proudly add the extraordinary discoveries of Lepsius in hieroglyphical Astronomy, which are likely to be carried to results little expected, through Biot.693 About B. c. 603, Thales had observed an eclipse of the sun. He taught the spheroidity if not the sphericity of the earth; he knew the obliquity of the ecliptic; knew that the moon was illumined by the sun; and explained solar eclipses by the intervention of the lunar disc between the earth and the sun. In the succeeding century, Pythagoras sustained the sphericity of the earth, and its movement, with the planets, round the sun; and his disciples Leucippus and Democritus added some acquaintance with the rotary motion of the earth upon its axis. Eudoxus advocated similar doctrines. Now, Thales, Pythagoras, and Eudoxus, had studied under genuine hierogrammatists in Egypt. The grand Stagyrite (who had not drunk of Nilotic waters) maintained the contrary; viz., that the sun revolved around the earth. In vain did Aristarchus strive to bring science back to truer principles. His voice was unheard for sixteen centuries. Hipparchus determined the precession of the equinoxes, &c., during the 2d century B. C.; but, his more important works being lost, "tulit alter honores;" because Ptolemy, a far better geographer than astronomer, has not revealed what of his great predecessor's views militated against his own celestial dogmas. In the early part of the 2d century, after c., Ptolemy had wofully retrograded from ancient Greco-Egyptian science; for he held to the absolute immobility of the earth, and made the sun revolve around our globe. Denouncing the contrary system as too ridiculous to merit attention, he gives his own reason for opposing it, viz., "that one always sees the same half of the sky"! "The earth," says Claudius Ptolemy, "is not only central, but also stationary. If it had an individual motion (upon its axis) such movement would be proportioned to its mass. It would, therefore, leave behind it the animals and other bodies, which would be carried into the air, it would fly away from them, and escape from the sky! No object not fixed to the earth, no bird, could advance to the eastward with the same rapidity as the globe"! Unsuspected before Newton, the laws of gravitation and attraction could not ease Ptolemy's perplexities. We have seen that the older and wiser Fathers of the Church (who must have been more or less read in the higher Grecian classics), unable to reconcile the letter of "Genesis" with what they well knew to be positive philosophy, had recourse, like Philo, to allegorical explanations which means, simply, that they disbelieved genesiacal stories as revealed in the Septuagint, and therefore nullified them by inventing mystic hypotheses. They sustained, however, in their writings, no especial theory upon astronomy or geography: but, that with which Clemens, and Origen, and Anatolius, and Synesius, and Theophilus, and even Cyril, had refrained from meddling, was grasped, with Promethean audacity, by an itinerant trader of the sixth century after c.; whose temerarious zeal, when he had adopted monastic vows, was exceeded merely by his delicious stupidity; as we now proceed to prove. Cosmas, setting a Greek copy of "Genesis" before him, composed, upon that poor version's literal language, his Topographia Christiana.694 Of Hebrew he had not an idea. |