God and my Neighbour Part 6

According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which was at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era.

Here I recommend the study of Laing's _Human Origins_, Parson's _Our Sun G.o.d_, Sayce's _Ancient Empires of the East_, and Frazer's _Golden Bough_.

In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of Manchester spoke as follows:

Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall we a.s.sign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so long preceded Sargo I. and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best answer you in the words of the great a.s.syriologist, F. Hommel: "If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C.

in possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them--a culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far, far older still, and have existed in its _completed_ form in the fifth thousand B.C., an age to which I unhesitatingly ascribe the South Babylonian incantations."... Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past?

A culture which was _complete_ one thousand years before Adam must have needed many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guess that Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years.

Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error of time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well, an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it _has_ a bearing on evolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisation lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends.

Here I quote from _Our Sun G.o.d_, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:

To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with the remains of the a.s.syrian and Babylonian civilisations that the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge, and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus under Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created, is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these pregnant words:

"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that the Sabbatical inst.i.tution originated in the time of Moses, three thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the Church have a.s.serted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."

The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.

Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires_ of the East, speaks as follows:

With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_.

Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their sins. He had been ordered by the G.o.ds to build a ship, to pitch it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark.

He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain of Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadians believed the heavens to rest--where, too, they placed the habitations of their G.o.ds, and the cradle of their own race.

Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself.

On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared in the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his wife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made their way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the books buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and re-established themselves in their old country under the government first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile, other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here, under the leadership of the giant Etana, called t.i.tan by the Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros... But the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel frustrated their purpose by confounding their language and scattering them on the mound.

These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.

Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires of the East_, speaking of the Accadian king, Sargon I., says:

Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian Solomon. Not only was he ent.i.tled "the deviser of law, the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how his father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses, to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought him up as his own son, until the time came when, under the protection of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on the throne of his forefathers.

From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and very likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendary Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient mythical figure?

Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth," from _Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson:

NOTES ON THE MOSES MYTH.

I have been challenged for saying that the story of Moses and the floating basket is a variant of the myth of Horos and the floating island (_Herod_ ii. 156). But this seems sufficiently proved by the fact that in the reign of Rameses II., according to the monuments, there was a place in Middle Egypt which bore the name I-en-Moshe, "_the island of Moses_." That is the primary meaning. Brugsch, who proclaims the fact (_Egypt Under the Pharaohs_, ii. 117), suggests that it can also mean "the river bank of Moses." It is very obvious, however, that the Egyptians would not have named a place by a real incident in the life of a successful enemy, as Moses is represented in Exodus.

Name and story are alike mythological and pre-Hebraic, though possibly Semitic. The a.s.syrian myth of Sargon, which is, indeed, very close to the Hebrew, may be the oldest form of all; but the very fact that the Hebrews located their story in Egypt shows that they knew it to have a home there in some fashion.

The name Moses, whether it mean "the water-child" (so Deutsch) or "the hero" (Sayce, _Hib. Lect._ p. 46), was in all likelihood an epithet of Horos. The basket, in the latter form, was doubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-born G.o.d-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus (i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos _dead_ "on the water,"

and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did Hermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, where he gave laws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, this myth probably means that the Sun G.o.d, who has in the other story escaped the "ma.s.sacre of the innocents" (the morning stars), now plays the slayer on his own account, since the slaying of many-eyed Argus probably means the extinction of the stars by the morning sun (cp. Emeric-David, _Introduction_, end).

Another "Hermes" was the son of Nilus, and his name was sacred (Cicero, _De Nat. Deor._ iii. 22, Cp. 16). The story of the floating child, finally, becomes part of the lore of Greece.

In the myth of Apollo, the Babe-G.o.d and his sister Artemis are secured in float-islands.

It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without some knowledge of ancient history and comparative mythology. It would be impossible for me to go deeply into these matters in this small book, but I will quote a few significant pa.s.sages just to show the value of such historical evidence. Here to begin with, are some pa.s.sages from Mr.

Grant Allen's _Evolution of the Idea of G.o.d_.

THE ORIGIN OF G.o.dS.

Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his _Principles of Sociology_, the progress of development from the Ghost to the G.o.d that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which, however, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at the same time to the conception of three successive stages in human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the preceding argument.

In the earlier stage of all--the stage where the actual bodies of the dead are preserved--G.o.ds, as such, are for the most part unknown: it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are worshipped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting posture under a protecting shed; "a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to attend the body." (This point about the priest is of essential importance.) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes, performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of greater G.o.ds, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship and offerings are paid to them.

Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body, but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshipped.

Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru: "The dead are buried in the forest on some secluded spot, marked by a _merang_, or grave pole, over which at certain intervals the relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings.

When the body is decomposed the son or nearest relative disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest respect."

Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account, as giving us an antic.i.p.atory hint of two further accessories whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake, which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; and second, the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave, which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or praying-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the skull in cloth and its oracular functions.

Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the chief known object of worship survives undiluted; and ancestor- worship remains to this day the princ.i.p.al religion of the Chinese and of several other peoples. G.o.ds, as such, are practically unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up in time between various cla.s.ses of ghosts or dead persons, some ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others; and out of these last it is that G.o.ds as a rule are finally developed. A G.o.d, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost--a ghost able to help, and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected.

Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do with the growth of a higher conception of G.o.dhead; a dead king of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time as a G.o.d of considerable importance. We shall trace out this idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the G.o.ds in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to the increased power of kings or emperors.

When we pa.s.s from the first plane of corpse preservation and mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual, it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship of the dead, and their elevation into G.o.ds, would no longer be possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living.

Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices are offered to the spirit.

Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble of ancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources and remote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in many instances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it is folly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols as the literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of the origin of man, and the genesis of religion.

The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, perhaps, than sun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In _The Real Origin of Religion_ occurs the following:

Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more modest and refined than our civilised contemporaries, for almost all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery, if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion as well as modern thought.

And again:

Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender pa.s.sion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent monuments and libraries of theology.

This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no new theory, and is doubtless quite true, for all G.o.ds have been made by man, and all theologies have been evolved by man, and the odour and the colour of his human pa.s.sions cling to them always, even after they are discarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal G.o.ds and eternal heavens lies man's pa.s.sion for the eternal feminine. But on these subjects "Moses" spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all.

Mr. Robertson, in _Christianity and Mythology_, says of the Bible:

It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable--early, that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates several sets of mythic personages--as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain, making that finally the curse of Canaan; it tells the same offensive story twice of one patriarch and again of another; it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death, life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the "Two Brothers,"

or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use of various G.o.d-names, pretending that they always stood for the same deity; it repeats traditions concerning mythic founders of races--if all this be not "a medley of early fable,"

what is it?

I quote next from _The Bible and the Child_, in which Dean Farrar says:

Some of the books of Scripture are separated from others by the inters.p.a.ce of a thousand years. They represent the fragmentary survival of Hebrew literature. They stand on very different levels of value, and even of morality. Read for centuries in an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superst.i.tious manner, they have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire systems of interpretation--which were believed in for generations, and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion-- are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Colossal usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built, like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex of a single misinterpreted text.

Compare those utterances of the freethinker and the divine, and then read the following words of Dean Farrar:

The manner in which the Higher Criticism has slowly and surely made its victorious progress, in spite of the most determined and exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its favour.

It is exactly a.n.a.logous to the way in which the truths of astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal opposition. They were once anathematised as "infidel"; they are now accepted as axiomatic. I cannot name a single student or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not accept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions of the German school of critics.