Deity than infinite power, spirituality, and wisdom. Hence the Church of England, according to Horsley, does not demand the literal understanding of the document contained in the second and third chapters, as a point of faith.
Are the narratives allegorical? So Philo[1] interprets them, followed by the Greek fathers of Alexandria, Clement and Origen,[2] as well as by Ambrose. In modern times Coleridge read the whole as an allegory.[3] So did Donaldson in his Jashar. There is no indication, how ever, that allegories were intended. Had this been the case, the truths meant to be conveyed would have been easily discovered. The embarrassment and capriciousness of the allegorical interpreters prove that they have followed a wrong method. The outward form is set aside, and an idea discovered beneath it with which the envelope has no necessary connection. Both should be retained; the shell suggesting the kernel, and the kernel showing itself to be the necessary evolution of central ideas.
According to another interpretation, more commonly accepted among scholars at the present day, both accounts are supposed to be, like the early records of other nations, traditional and mythical. This does not imply that they are fables or fictions; far from it. It is true that the oldest traditions of peoples are mainly subjective, the result of the national mind; but they are nevertheless real. Variable, developed in different forms, influenced by the characteristics of the people and by their intercourse with others, they are all that constitutes the earliest history of nations, the shapings of oral tradition before written records appeared. A mythological age stands at the head of all national histories; and that of the Hebrews seems to be no exception. The two narratives present philosophical mythi in a historical form. They represent the best ideas of the Hebrews at a certain stage of their history in explanation of the creation of man, his primeval abode and state, and the cause of his degeneracy. The first account is plain and simple. It assigns a high dignity to man, and traces all human beings to a single pair, in harmony with the best evidence of modern science that points to unity of origin, rather than to different centres of creation. There is a naturalness in the narrative that cannot be mistaken, while the writer adheres to generalities. (Sec Gabler's Einleitung to Eichhorn's Urgeschichte, vol. i. p. 11, &c.; and Gesenius's article "Adam," in Ersch und Gruber's Encyklopædie, vol. i.)
On the other hand, the narrator in the second, third, and fourth chapters manifests a more reflective spirit, seeking to explain causes, and to trace connections. Supplying particulars wanting in the older narrative, and correcting others, he enters into details, and though more anthropomorphic, has a finer perception of circumstances associated with the protoplasts. Tholuck himself admits his narrative to be a mythus. It is usual to designate the first writer the Elohist; the second, the Jehovist; because the one commonly uses Elohim as the name of God; the other Jehovah, or Jehovah Elohim in the second and third chapters.
The Adam in the second and third chapters, according to this view, is the progenitor and representative of humanity, who brought misery into the world by self-will. He is ideal man, becoming historical in every individual who, as soon as his moral nature is awakened, feels the power and the possibility of rising higher through reason and perception. Adam's procedure repeats itself in each individual, who has his paradise, eats of the tree of knowledge, and feels within him the roots of apostasy from God. On the other hand, his restoration and happiness are supposed to be in his own power. His salvation is practicable through the victory of reason over instinct, of faith over sense.[4]
The traditions of ancient nations present analogies to the creation of man given in the first chapter of Genesis. The Etrurian comes nearest to the Hebrew. There creation takes place in six periods of a thousand years each, and men appear in the last, after the earth, sun, moon, and stars, with all living things on the surface of the globe, had been brought into existence by God.[5] The Persian mythology, in like manner, makes Ormuzd, the god of light, create by his word Honover the visible world in six periods of a thousand years each, and man is formed last. The name of the first man is Kaiomorts.[6] The Chaldee myth, given by Berosus, presents little resemblance to the Hebrew narrative. Bel, the highest god, divided the darkness, and cut the woman, who ruled over the monstrous creatures found at first in the all, into two halves, out of which heaven and earth were formed. After that he cut off his own head. The blood trickling down was taken by other gods and mixed with earth, from which men were formed, who are therefore wise, and partakers of the divine intelligence.[7] The Phenician myth is still more unlike the Hebrew account.[8] But Ovid's teaching is that man was made in the image of the gods, and was intended to be ruler of the earth.[9] The Egyptian theology has no point of contact with the Hebrew.[10] The Indian accounts are very numerous, but often discrepant. Their likeness to the Hebrew narrative is remote; for the play of imagination appears in them to excess and absurdity. Among those myths in which the formation of men is described without allusion to any primordial distinction of castes, we may quote two. Prajapati, i.e., the universe which was soul and only one, formed animals from his breaths, a man from his soul. The soul is the first of the breaths. Since he formed a man from his soul, therefore they say, "man is the first of the animals, and the strongest." The soul is all the breaths; for all the breaths depend upon the soul. Since he formed man from his soul, therefore they say, "man is all the animals;" for all these are man's.[11] Manu's account of the creation is that men of the four castes proceeded separately from different parts of Brahma's body prior to the division of that body into two parts. The doctrine of emanation appears in the Indian cosmogonies, as also that of absorption. Thus Brahma is reabsorbed into the supreme spirit, according to Manu.[12] According to the Bamians in India, God having made the world and the creatures belonging to it, created man, who came forth from the earth at the divine voice, his head appearing first, then his whole body, into whom life was conveyed. God gave him for companion a woman, and the two lived together as man and wife, feeding on the fruits of the ground. They had four sons of different temperaments, for whom God made four women, and the four quarters of the earth were peopled by their progeny.[13]
The paradisiacal state of the first pair, and their loss of it as described in the second and third chapters of Genesis, have their parallels in the myths of ancient nations. Ac cording to the Persian traditions, Meschia and Meschiane, the progenitors of mankind, were created for happiness in
- ↑ De mundi Opificio, p. 37, vol. i. ed. Mangey.
- ↑ Philocalia, cap. 1, and contra Cels.
- ↑ Aids to Reflection, p. 241, note (Burlington edition of 1840).Þ
- ↑ See Tuch's Kommentar ueber die Genesis, p. 50.
- ↑ Suidas, s. v. (
Hebrew characters), vol. ii. pp. 1248–9, ed. Bernhardy.
- ↑ Kleuker, i. 19, 20; iii. 59, &c.
- ↑ Eusebius's Chron. Bipartitum, vol. i. p. 24, ed. Aucher.
- ↑ See Sanchoniatho, translated by Cory, in the Phenix, p. 185, &c., ed. New York.
- ↑ Metamorphos. i. 76, &c.; Opera ed. Burmann, tom. ii. p. 20.
- ↑ Roeth's Geschichte der Philos. i. p. 131, &c.
- ↑ Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. p. 24, 2d ed.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 53, &c.
- ↑ See Lord's Display of two Foreign Sects in the East Indies, chapter i. p. 1, &c.
