MR. GLADSTONE ON THE CREATION STORY.

Woodville Examiner, Volume VII, Issue 659, 30 January 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR. GLADSTONE ON THE CREATION STORY.

(GOOD WORDS.)

In a court of justice the evidence of a witness is to bo accepted on matters within Ids cognisance, when his character and intelligence are not questioned ; or again when the main part of a continuous narrative is sufficiently verified, it may be right to accept the rest without separate verification. If a new witness comes into court, and protends to give us fresh and scientific proof of the Creation Story, this may bo true or may be false. If false, the story is not disproved, but stands where it stood before. Bad arguments are often made for a good cause. But if true the event is oue of vast importance. Now the present position is as follows. Apart altogether from faith and from the general evidences of Revelation, a new witness has come into the court, in the shape of Natural Science. She builds up her system on the observation of facts, and upon inferences from them, which at length attain to a completeness and security such as, if not presenting us with a demonstration in the strictest sense, yet constrain us, as intelligent beings, to belief.

The Creation Story divides itself into the cosmological portion, occupying the first nineteen verses of the chapter, and the geological portion, which is given in the last twelve. The former part has less, and the latter part has more, to do with the direct evidence of fact, and the stringency of the authority which the two may severally claim varies accordingly ; but in both the narrative seems to demand, upon the evidence as it stands, rational assent. In regard to both, it is held on the affirmative side that the statements of Genesis have a certain relation to the ascertained facts and the best accepted reasonings; and thus this relation is of such a nature as to require us, in the character of rational investigators, to acknowledge in the written record the presence of elements which must bo referred to a superhuman origin. If this be so, then be it observed that natural science is now rendering a new and enormous service to the great cause in the belief of the unseen; and is underpinning, as it were, the structure of that divine revelation which was contained in the Book of Genesis, by a new and solid pillar, built up on a foundation of its own from beneath. It is, then, to be borne in mind that, as against those who by arbitrary or irrational interpretation place Genesis and science at essential variance, our position is not one merely defensive. We are not mere reconcilers, as some call us, searching out expedients to escape a difficulty, repel an assault. AA r e seek to show, and we may claim to have shown, that the account recorded in the Creation Story for the instruction of all ages has been framed on the principles which, for such an account, reason recommends ; and thatinterpretedin this view, it is at thisjuncture like the arrival of a new auxiliary army in the field while the battle is in progress; like the arrival, to choose an historical instance, of the Prussians at AYaterloo. Such is the confirmatory argument founded upon the contents. But now, yet another ally has come to join our ranks, under the title of Archroologic and Historic Science. It has deciphered the cuneiform inscriptions, and has read among them a creation story inscribed on the tablets found at Nineveh, Here we have a new witness to the very early existence, among civilised, or partly civilised, men, of records of creation corresponding in very essential particulars with the Hebrew narrative. Such a witness plainly to some extent offers to it confirmation; but also stands in competition with it. The competition is in those particulars where the accounts are not in harmony. As to these, standing on the character of its contents, the Hebrew tradition lays claim to superior antiquity and authority. But in proving the vast antiquity of certain fundamental ideas, the two are concurrent, and not competitive. The Babylonian Creation Story is given by Mr. Smith, in his “ Assyrian Discoveries,” so far as its mutilated state permits. It runs as follows, and we cannot, 1 think, but cherish the hope that it may hereafter receive extension or elucidation. “ AA r henthe gods in their assembly made the universe, there was confusion, and the gods sent out the spirit of life. Then they create the beast of the field, the animal of the field, and the reptile or the creeping thing of the field, and fix in them the spirit of life. Next comes the creation of domestic animals, and the creeping things of the city,” Here we have—l, creation by the gods ; 2, chaos ;3, life; and only by inference, order; 4, wide extension of this life in beasts and reptiles; 5, after this the domesticated animals. Thus there is before us a real, though rude and imperfect, structural resemblance to the Hebrew narrative, together with the interpolation of polytheism, From the works of Schrader on the cuneiform inscriptions, some further particulars may be gathered. He observes that in Berosus, as in Genesis, we begin with water and darkness. On which I would only observe that Berosus, who wrote in Greek, may not improbably have known the Mosaic writings, and that water, in the text of Genesis, may be equivalent to fluid. The marked points of correspondence appear to bp these : that the heavenly bodies are created after the heavens, which, I presume, may be meant to include the light. That the land population follows that of the water, and appears when vegetation has already begun. That the monuments name a Babylonian week, with the seventh day as a day of consecration, called also an evil day, perhaps because evil for any work done on it. The inscription says “ To redeem them, created mankind The merciful one in whom is the power that summons to life,” which is faintly comparable with the words of Genesis ii., 7, and the Jehovistic account, “ and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” What seems to disappear from the Babylonian account is that evident intention of series and orderly development, or evolution, which is so wonderful a feature in the Mosaic narrative.

Dawson, in a recent work, observes that the polytheistic element is the distinctive feature of the Chaldean record, and that the originals of the tablets from Nineveh may have been very ancient, but that they are so mixed up with the history of a Chaldean hero, named Izdubar, as to suggest that there may have existed before it still older creation legends. Ho compares this record with the corresponding account in Genesis, which is as broadly marked with the idea of the Divine unity as the Chaldean legend is pervaded by the conception of polytheism. And he adds, “Is it not likely that the simpler belief is older than the more complex; that which required no priests, ritual or temple, older than that with which all these things were necessarily associated?’’ He naturally assigns a marked superiority to the “ Hebrew Genesis.’’ In truth, that superiority seems to bo not great only, but immeasurable. In one point only do the tablets go beyond the narrative of Genesis; they record the great struggle with rebellion, the war in heaven between Merodach and Tiamat. But, upon the whole, ourßible narrative is a regular structure, it is orderly, progressive, and rational; that of the tablets dark and confused. This may, however, is referrable in part to the imperfection of be the tablets, the third of which, Mr. Sayce thinks, may probably have recounted the formation of the earth. The one is charged in a marvellous way with instruction and moral purpose: from the other they have almost disappeared. The first has, as we believe, been receiving marked confirmation in the most vital particulars from cosmic and geologic science ; on the second they can hardly be said to cast more than the faintest light. And yet this inferior document is itself of very great confirmatory value ; for the Izdubar legends, says Mr. Smith, appear to have been composed more than 2,000 years n.c. There is no late date to which the Mosaic narrative can with a shadow of probability be referred. It could not have been formed without a miracle from the tablets as they stand. The two are evidently accounts proceeding from a common source, but derived through indepou dent' channels. The one comes through a powerful and civilised empire, the other through an obscure nomad family. In the relative superiority of the Mosaic narnative all the rules of merely human likelihoods are reversed, and the presumption of a Divine illumination is proportionally augmented. But the unsuspected antiquity of the inferior legend attests by an independent witness, if not the truth, yet at least the presumable origin, of its transcendent rival.