The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science Part 23

[Footnote 99: See Lyell, Principles of Geology, "Introduction of Species."]

[Footnote 100: For the exposition of the details of the fall, I beg to refer the reader to McDonald's "Creation and the Fall," to Kitto's "Antediluvians and Patriarchs," and to Kurtz's "History of the Old Covenant."]

[Footnote 101: The Bible specifies, perhaps only as the princ.i.p.al of these arts, music and musical instruments by Jubal, metallurgy by Tubalcain, the domestication of cattle and the nomade life by Jabal. It is highly probable that these inventors are introduced into the Mosaic record for a theological reason, to point out the folly of the worship rendered to Phtha, Hephaestos, Vulcan, Horus, Phoebus, and other inventors, either traditionary representatives of the family of Lamech, or other heroes wrongly identified with them. Very possibly their sister Naamah, "the beautiful," is introduced for the same reason, as the true original of some of the female deities of the heathen.]

[Footnote 102: I can not for a moment entertain the monstrous supposition of many expositors that the "sons of G.o.d" of these pa.s.sages are angels, and the "Nephelim" hybrids between angels and men.]

[Footnote 103: See Lange's "Commentary on Genesis."]

[Footnote 104: The Russian surveys of 1836 made it one hundred and eight English feet; but later authorities reduce it to eighty-three feet six inches below the Black Sea.]

[Footnote 105: Kitto's "Bible Ill.u.s.trations"--Book of Job.]

[Footnote 106: See article "Rephaim" in Kitto's "Journal of Sacred Literature." But Gesenius and others regard it, not as an ethnic name, but as a term for the "shades" or spirits of the dead. See Conant on Job.]

[Footnote 107: On the Biblical view of this subject, the so-called Aryan mythology, common to India and Greece, is either a derivative from the Cus.h.i.te civilization, or a spontaneous growth of the j.a.petic stock scattered by the Cus.h.i.te empire. The Semitic and Hamitic mythologies are derived from the primeval cherubic worship of Eden, corrupted and mixed with deification of natural objects and stages of the creative work, and with adoration of deified ancestors and heroes.]

[Footnote 108: Genesis 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters. See also our previous remarks on the deluge.]

[Footnote 109: Genesis iv.]

[Footnote 110: j.a.pheth is "enlargement," his sons are Scythians and inhabitants of the isles, varying in language and nationality; and Noah predicts, "G.o.d shall enlarge j.a.pheth, he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, Ham shall be his servant." These are surely characteristic ethnological traits for a period so early. On the rationalist view, it may be supposed that this prediction was not written until the characters in question had developed themselves; but since the greatest enlargement of j.a.pheth has occurred since the discovery of America, there would be quite as good ground for maintaining that Noah's prophecy was interpolated after the time of Columbus.]

[Footnote 111: The language of this people, the stem of the Indo-European languages, is, though in a later form, probably that of the Aryan or Persepolitan part of the trilingual inscriptions at Behistun and elsewhere in Persia.]

[Footnote 112: Edkins, "China's Place in Philology."]

[Footnote 113: Reginald S. Poole has adduced very ingenious arguments, monumental, astronomical, and mythological, for the date B.C. 2717.]

[Footnote 114: It is curious that almost simultaneously with the appearance of Bunsen's scheme a similiar view was attempted to be maintained on geological grounds. In a series of borings in the delta of the Nile, undertaken by Mr. Horner, there was found a piece of pottery at a depth which appeared to indicate an antiquity of 13,371 years. But the basis of the calculation is the rate of deposit (3-1/2 inches per century) calculated for the ground around the statue of Rameses II. at Memphis, dated at 1361 B.C.; and Mr. Sharpe has objected that no mud could have been deposited around that statue from its erection until the destruction of Memphis, perhaps 800 years B.C. Farther, we have to take into account the natural or artificial changes of the river's bed, which in this very place is said to have been diverted from its course by Menes, and which near Cairo is now nearly a mile from its former site.

The liability to error and fraud in boring operations is also very well known. It has farther been suggested that the deep cracks which form in the soil of Egypt, and the sinking of wells in ancient times, are other probable causes of error; and it is stated that pieces of burnt brick, which was not in use in Egypt until the Roman times, have been found at even greater depths than the pottery referred to by Mr. Horner. This discovery, at first sight so startling, and vouched for by a geologist of unquestioned honor and ability, is thus open to the same doubts with the Guadaloupe skeletons, the human bones in ossiferous caverns, and that found in the mud of the Mississippi; all of which have, on examination, proved of no value as proofs of the geological antiquity of man.]

[Footnote 115: 5004 B.C.]

[Footnote 116: Perhaps the earliest certain date in Egyptian history is that of Thothmes III. of the eighteenth dynasty, ascertained by Birch on astronomical evidence as about 1445 B.C. (about 1600, Manetho); and it seems nearly certain that before the eighteenth dynasty, of which this king was the fifth sovereign, there was no settled general government over all Egypt.]

[Footnote 117: The Egyptians seem, like our modern cattle-breeders, to have taken pride in the initiation and preservation of varieties. Their sacred bull, Apis, was required to represent one of the varieties of the ox; and one can scarcely avoid believing that some of their deified ancestors must have earned their celebrity as tamers or breeders of animals. At a later period, the experiments of Jacob with Laban's flock furnish a curious instance of attempts to induce variation.]

[Footnote 118: See for evidence of these views early notices in Genesis, and Lenormant and Osburne on Egyptian Monuments and History.]

[Footnote 119: There is no good reason to believe the flint implements mentioned by Delanoue and others, as found on the banks of the Nile, to be older than the historic period.]

[Footnote 120: Wilson, "Prehistoric Man," 2d edition, p. 68.]

[Footnote 121: Southall has acc.u.mulated a great number of these facts in his book on the antiquity of man.]

[Footnote 122: Professor Issel, quoted in _Popular Science Monthly_.]

[Footnote 123: Wilson has remarked the striking similarity of the pottery of these people to American fictile wares. This similarity applies also to the early Cyprian art.]

[Footnote 124: I agree with Gladstone's conclusions as to the date and country of Homer.]

[Footnote 125: I suggested these terms in my lectures published under the t.i.tle "Nature and the Bible," 1875.]

[Footnote 126: Since these words were written I have read the remarkable book of Edkins on the Chinese language, which supplies much additional information.]

[Footnote 127: Donaldson has pointed out (British a.s.sociation Proceedings, 1851) links of connection between the Slavonian or Sarmatian tongues and the Semitic languages, which in like manner indicate the primitive union of the two great branches of languages.]

[Footnote 128: "Man and his Migrations." See also "Descriptive Ethnology," where the Semitic affinities are very strongly brought out.]

[Footnote 129: I can scarcely except such terms as "j.a.petic" and "j.a.petidae," for Iapetus can hardly be any thing else than a traditional name borrowed from Semitic ethnology, or handed down from the j.a.phetic progenitors of the Greeks.]

[Footnote 130: See art. "Philology," Encyc. Brit.]

[Footnote 131: Grammatical structure is no doubt more permanent than vocabulary, yet we find great changes in the latter, both in tracing cognate languages from one region to another, and from period to period.

The Indo-Germanic languages in Europe furnish enough of familiar instances.]

[Footnote 132: It is fair, however, to observe that the Bible refers the first great divergence of language to a divine intervention at the Tower of Babel. The precise nature of this we do not know; but it would tend to diminish the time required.]

[Footnote 133: Lecture in the Royal Inst.i.tution, March 24, 1876.]

[Footnote 134: "Antiquity of Man," 4th ed.]

[Footnote 135: Southall, _Op. cit._]

[Footnote 136: The Mentone skeleton described by Dr. Riviere gives evidence of these facts.]

[Footnote 137: Mr. Pengelly declines to admit this; but a.s.signs no cause for the breaking up of portions of the old floor, which he merely refers in general terms to "natural causes."]

[Footnote 138: This whole subject of supposed preglacial or interglacial men is still in great confusion and uncertainty, and is complicated with questions, still debated, as to the ages of the supposed glacial and postglacial deposits.]

[Footnote 139: _Quarterly Journal of Science_, April, 1875.]

[Footnote 140: Lyell's "Manual of Elementary Geology."]

[Footnote 141: For a full discussion of this subject, see the "Story of the Earth and Man."]

[Footnote 142: Such a table, with an admirable exposition of the entire succession, as at present known, is given in the Appendix to Lyell's "Students' Manual of Geology."]

[Footnote 143: Lyell, basing his calculations on the surveys of Messrs.

Humphreys and Abbott, but others give very different estimates.]

[Footnote 144: A perfectly parallel example is that of the growth of the peninsula of Florida in the modern period, by the same processes now adding to its sh.o.r.es; and this has afforded to Professor Aga.s.siz a still more extended measure of the Post-tertiary period.]

[Footnote 145: Reade, of Liverpool, has recently given a much slower rate--one foot in 13,000 years--as a result of recent English surveys; but I have not seen his precise data, and the result certainly differs from those of all other observations.]

[Footnote 146: I am quite aware that it may be objected to all this that it is based on merely negative evidence; but this is not strictly the case. There are positive indications of these truths. For example, in the Mesozoic epoch the lacertian reptiles presented huge elephantine carnivorous and herbivorous species--the Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, etc.; flying species, with hollow bones and ample wings--the Pterodactyles; and aquatic whale-like species--Pliosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, etc. These creatures actually filled the offices now occupied by the mammals; and, though lacertian in their affinities, they must have had circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems far in advance of any modern reptiles even of the order of Loricates.]

[Footnote 147: "Story of the Earth"--concluding chapters.]