On the Mosaic Cosmogony. By C. W. Goodwin M.A.
(Continued )
The hypothesis adopted by Dr. Buckland was first promulgated at a time when the gradual and regular formation of the earth's strata was not seen or admitted so clearly as it is now. Geologists were more disposed to believe in great catastrophes and sudden breaks. Buckland's theory supposes that previous to the appearance of the present races of animals and vegetables there was a great gap in the globe's history,—that the earth was completely depopulated, as well of marine as land animals; and that the creation of all existing plants and animals was coæval with that of man. This theory is by no means supported by geological phenomena, and is, we suppose, now rejected by all geologists whose authority is valuable. Thus writes Hugh Miller in 1857—'I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each that they had comprised the entire work of the existing creation—and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from our own. My labours at the time as a practical geologist had been very much restricted to the palaeozoic and secondary rocks, more especially to the old red and carboniferous systems of the one division, and the oolitic system of the other ; and the long-extinct organisms which I found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring the late formations, and acquainting myself with their particular organisms. I have traced them upwards from the raised beaches and old coast lines of the human period, to the brick clays, Clyde beds, and drift and boulder deposits of the Pleistocene era ; and again from them, with the help of museums and collections, up through the mammaliferous crag of England to its red and coral crags ; and the conclusion at which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas. That day during which the present creation came into being, and in which God, when he had made 'the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind,' at length terminated the work by moulding a creature in His own image, to whom He gave dominion over them all, was not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but extended over, mayhap, millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyena ; for familiar animals, such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their time with our own ; and so I have been compelled to hold that the days of creation were not natural but prophetic days, and stretched far back into the bygone eternity.
Hugh Miller will be admitted by many as a competent witness to the untenability of the theory of Chambers and Buckland on mere geological grounds. He had, indeed, a theory of his own to propose, which we shall presently consider ; but we may take his word that it was not without the compulsion of what he considered irresistible evidence that be relinquished a view which would have saved him infinite time and labour, could he have adhered to it.
But whether contemplated from a geological point of view, or whether from a philological one, that is, with reference to the value of words, the use of language, and the ordinary rules which govern writers whose object it is to make themselves understood by those to whom their works are immediately addressed, the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given to the Mosaic description will not bear a moment's serious discussion. It is plain, from the whole tenor of the narrative, that the writer contemplated no such representation as that suggested, nor could any such idea have entered into the minds of those to whom the account was first given. Dr. Buckland endeavours to make out that we have here simply a case of leaving out facts which did not particularly concern the writer's purpose, so that he gave an account true so far as it went, though imperfect. 'We may fairly ask,' he argues, 'of those persons who consider physical science a fit subject for revelation, what point they can imagine short of a communication of Omniscience at which such a revelation might have stopped without imperfections of omission, less in degree, but similar in kind, to that which they impute to the existing narrative of Moses ? A revelation of so much only of astronomy as was known to Copernicus would have seemed imperfect after the discoveries of Newton ; and a revelation of the science of Newton would have appeared defective to La Place : a revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth century would have been as deficient in comparison with the information of the present day, as what is now known in this science will probably appear before the termination of another age; in the whole circle of sciences there is not one to which this argument may not be extended, until we should require from revelation a full development of all the mysterious agencies that uphold the mechanism of the material world.' Buckland's question is quite inapplicable to the real difficulty, which is, not that circumstantial details are omitted—that might reasonably be expected, — but that what is told, is told so as to convey to ordinary apprehensions an impression at variance with facts. We are indeed told that certain writers of antiquity had already anticipated the hypothesis of the geologist, and two of the Christian fathers, Augustine and Theodoret, are referred to as having actually held that a wide interval elapsed between the first act of creation, mentioned in the Mosaic account, and the commencement of the six days' work. If, however, they arrived at such a conclusion, it was simply because, like the modern geologist, they had theories of their own to support, which led them to make somewhat similar hypotheses.
'After all,' says Buckland, 'it should be recollected that the question is not respecting the correctness of the Mosaic narrative, but of our interpretation of it,' a proposition which can hardly be sufficiently reprobated. Such a doctrine, carried out unreservedly, strikes at the root of critical morality. It may, indeed, be sometimes possible to give two or three different interpretations to one and the same passage, even in a modern and familiar tongue, in which case this may arise from the unskilfulness of the writer or speaker who has failed clearly to express his thought. In a dead or foreign language the difficulty may arise from our own want of familiarity with its forms of speech, or in an ancient book we may be puzzled by allusions and modes of thought the key to which has been lost. But it is no part of the commentator's or interpreter's business to introduce obscurity or find difficulties where none exist, and it cannot be pretended that, taking it as a question of the use of words to express thoughts, there are any peculiar difficulties about understanding the first chapter of Genesis, whether in its original Hebrew or in our common translation, which represents the original with all necessary exactness. The difficulties arise for the first time, when we seek to import a meaning into the language which it certainly never could have conveyed to those to whom it was originally addressed. Unless we go the whole length of supposing the simple account of the Hebrew cosmogonist to be a series of awkward equivocations, in which he attempted to give a representation widely different from the facts, yet, without trespassing against literal truth, we can find no difficulty in interpreting his words. Although language may be, and often has been used for the purpose, not of expressing, but concealing thought, no such charge can fairly be laid against the Hebrew writer.
It should be borne in mind says Dr. Buckland, that 'the object of the account was not to state in what manner, but by whom the world was made.' Every one must see that this is an unfounded assertion, inasmuch as the greater part of the narrative consists is a minute and orderly description of the manner in which things were made. We can know nothing as to the object of the account, except from the account itself. What the writer meant to state is just that which he has stated, for all that we can know to the contrary. Or can we seriously believe that if appealed to by one of his Hebrew hearers or readers as to his intention, he would have replied, My only object in what I have written is to inform you that God made the world ; as to the manner of His doing it, of which I have given so exact an account, I have no intention that my words should be taken in their literal meaning.
We come then to this, that if we sift the Mosaic narrative of all definite meaning, and only allow it to be the expression of the most vague generalities, if we avow that it admits of no certain interpretation, of none that may not be shifted and altered as often as we see fit, and as the exigencies of geology may require, then may we reconcile it with what science teaches. This mode of dealing with the subject has been broadly advocated by a recent writer of mathematical eminence, who adopts the Bucklandian hypothesis, a passage from whose work we shall quote.
'The Mosaic account of the six days' work is thus harmonized by some. On the first day, while the earth was 'without form and void,' the result of a previous convulsion in nature, 'and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' God commanded light to shine upon the earth. This may have been effected by such a clearing of the thick and loaded atmosphere, as to allow the light of the sun to penetrate its mass with a suffused illumination, sufficient to dispel the total darkness which had prevailed, but proceeding from a source not yet apparent on the earth. On the second day a separation took place in the thick vapoury mass which lay upon the earth, dense clouds were gathered up aloft and separated by an expanse from the waters and vapours below. On the third day these lower vapours, or fogs and mists which hitherto concealed the earth, were condensed and gathered with the other waters of the earth into seas, and the dry land appeared. Then grass and herbs began to grow. On the fourth day the 'clouds and vapours so rolled into separate masses, or were so entirely absorbed into the air itself, that the sun shone forth in all its brilliancy, the visible source of light and heat to the renovated earth, while the moon and stars give light by night, and God appointed them henceforth for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years, to his creatures whom he was about to call into existence, as he afterwards set or appointed his bow in the clouds, which had appeared ages before to be a sign to Noah and his descendants. The fifth and sixth days' work need no comment.
According to this explanation, the first chapter of Genesis does not pretend (as has been generally assumed) to be a cosmogony or an account of the original creation of the material universe. The only cosmogony which it contains, in that sense at least, is confined to the sublime declaration of the first verse, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' The inspired record thus stepping over an interval of indefinite ages with which man has no direct concern, proceeds at once to narrate the events preparatory to the introduction of man on the scene ; employing phraseology strictly faithful to the appearances which would have met the eye of man, could he have been a spectator on the earth of what passed during those six days. All this has been commonly supposed to be a more detailed account of the general truth announced in the first verse, in short, a cosmogony : such was the idea of Josephus ; such probably was the idea of our translators ; for their version, without form and void, points to the primæval chaos, out of which all things were then supposed to emerge ; and these words standing in limine, have tended, perhaps more than anything else, to foster the idea of a cosmogony in the minds of general readers to this very day.
The foregoing explanation many have now adopted. It is sufficient for my purpose, if it be a possible explanation, and if it meet the difficulties of the case. That it is possible in itself, is plain from the fact above established, that the Scriptures wisely speak on natural things according to their appearances rather than their physical realities. It meets the difficulties of the case, because all the difficulties hitherto started against this chapter on scientific grounds proceeded on the principle that it is a cosmogony ; which this explanation repudiates, and thus disposes of the difficulties. It is therefore an explanation satisfactory to my own mind. I may be tempted to regret that I can gain no certain scientific information from Genesis regarding the process of the original creation ; but I resist the temptation, remembering the great object for which the Scripture was given—to tell man of his origin and fall, and to draw his mind to his Creator and Redeemer. Scripture was not designed to teach us natural philosophy, and it is vain to attempt to make a cosmogony out of its statements. The Almighty declares himself the originator of all things, but he condescends not to describe the process or the laws by which he worked. All this he leaves for reason to decipher from the phenomena which his world displays.
'This explanation, however, I do not wish to impose on Scripture ; and am fully prepared to surrender it, should further scientific discovery suggest another better fitted to meet all the requirements of the case.'
We venture to think that the world at large will continue to consider the account in the first chapter of Genesis to be a cosmogony. But as it is here admitted that it does not describe physical realities, but only outward appearances, that is, gives a description false in fact, and one which can teach us no scientific truth whatever, it seems to matter little what we call it. If its description of the events of the six days which it comprises be merely one of appearances and not of realities, it can teach us nothing regarding them.
Dissatisfied with the scheme of conciliation which has been discussed, other geologists have proposed to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense to the Mosaic narrative, and to consider the creative days described as vast periods of time. This plan was long ago suggested, but it has of late enjoyed a high degree of popularity, through the advocacy of the Scotch geologist, Hugh Miller, an extract from whose work has been already quoted. Dr. Buckland gives the following account of the first form in which this theory was propounded, and of the grounds upon which he rejected it in favour of that of Chalmers :—
'A third opinion has been suggested both by learned theologians and by geologists, and on grounds independent of one another—viz., that the days of the Mosaic creation need not be understood to imply the same length of time which is now occupied by a single revolution of the globe, but successive periods each of great extent; and it has been asserted that the order of succession of the organic remains of a former world accords with the order of creation recorded in Genesis. The assertion, though to a certain degree apparently correct, is not entirely supported by geological facts, since it appears that the most ancient marine animals occur in the same division of the lowest transition strata with the earliest remains of vegetables, so that the evidence of organic remains, as far as it goes, shows the origin of plants and animals to have been contemporaneous : if any creation of vegetables preceded that of animals, no evidence of such an event has yet been discovered by the researches of geology. Still there is, I believe, no found critical or theological objection to the interpretation of the word 'day' as meaning a long period.'
Archdeacon Pratt also summarily rejects this view as untenable:—
'There is one other class of interpreters, however, with whom I find it impossible to agree, —I mean those who take the six days to be six periods of . . . .the principle of interpretation in a work on the Creation and the Fall, by the Rev. D. Macdonald ; also in Mr. Hugh Miller's posthumous work, the Testimony of the Rocks, and also in an admirable treatise on the Prœ-Adamite Earth in Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science. In this last it is the more surprising because the successive chapters are in fact an accumulation of evidence which points the other way, as a writer in the Christian Observer, January, 1858, has conclusively shown. The late M. D'Orbigny has demonstrated in his Prodrome de Polœonto logie, after an elaborate examination of vast multitudes of fossils, that there have been at least twenty-nine distinct periods of animal and vegetable existence—that is, twenty-nine creations separated one from another by catastrophes which have swept away the species existing at the time, with a very few solitary exceptions, never exceeding one and a-half per cent. of the whole number discovered which have either survived the catastrophe, or have been erroneously designated. But not a single species of the preceding period survived the lust of these catastrophes, and this closed the Tertiary period and ushered in the Human period. The evidence adduced by M. D'Orbigny shows that both plants and animals appeared in every one of those twenty-nine periods. The notion, therefore, that the 'days', of Genesis represent periods of creation from the beginning of things is at once refuted. The parallel is destroyed both in the number of the periods (thirty, including the Azoic, instead of six), and also in the character of the things created. No argument could be more complete ; and yet the writer of the Prœ-Adamite Earth, in the last two pages, sums up his lucid sketch of M. D'Orbigny's researches by referring the account in the first chapter of Genesis to the whole creation from the beginning of all things, a selection of epochs being made, as he imagines, for the six days or periods.'
In this trenchant manner do theological geologists overthrow one another's theories. However, Hugh Miller was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved in his view of the question, and we shall endeavour to show the reader the manner in which be deals with it.
He begins by pointing out that the families of vegetables and animals were introduced upon earth as nearly as possible according to the great classes in which naturalists have arranged the modern flora and fauna. According to the arrangement of Lindley, he observes —'Commencing at the bottom of the scale we find the thallogens, or flowerless plants, which lack proper stems and leaves—a class which includes all the algæ. Next succeed the acrogens, or flowerless plants that possess both stems and leaves—such as the ferns and their allies. Next, omitting an inconspicuous class, represented by but a few parasitical plants incapable of preservation as fossils, come the endogens—monocotyledonous flowering plants, that include the palms, the liliaceæ, and several other families, all characterised by the parallel venation of their leaves. Next, omitting another inconspicuous tribe, there follows a very important class, the gymnogens—polycotylodonous trees, represented by the coniferæ and cycadacæ. And last of all come the dicotyledonous exogens—a class to which all our fruit and what are known as our forest trees belong, with a vastly preponderating majority of the herbs and flowers that impart fertility and beauty to our gardens and meadows.' The order in which fossils of these several classes appear in the strata, Hugh Miller states to be as follows :—In the Lower Silurian we find only thallogens, in the Upper Silurian acrogens are added. The gymnogens appear rather prematurely, it might be thought, in the old red sandstone, the endogens (monocotyledonous) coming after them in the carboniferous group. Dicotyledonous exogens enter at the close of the oolitic period, and come to their greatest development in the tertiary. Again, the animal tribes have been introduced in an order closely agreeing with the geological divisions established by Cuvier. In the Silurian beds the invertebrate creatures, the radiata, articulata, and mollusca, appear, simultaneously. At the close of the period, fishes, the lowest of the vertebrata, appear : before the old red sandstone period had passed away, reptiles had come into existence ; birds, and the marsupial mammals, enter in the oolitic period ; placental mammals in the tertiary ; and man last of all.
Now, these facts do certainly tally to some extent with the Mosaic account, which represents fish and fowl as having been produced from the waters on the fifth day, reptiles and mammals from the earth on the sixth, and man as made last of all. The agreement, however, is far from exact, as according to theological evidence, reptiles would appear to have existed ages before birds and mammals, whereas here the creation of birds is attributed to the fifth day, that of reptiles to the sixth. There remains, moreover, the insuperable difficulty of the plants and trees being represented as made on the third day—that is, more than an age before fishes and birds ; which is clearly not the case.
Although, therefore, there is a superficial resemblance in the Mosaic account to that of the geologists, it is evident that the bare theory that a 'day' means an age or immense geological period might be made to yield some rather strange results. What becomes of the evening and morning of which each day is said to have consisted? Was each geologic age divided into two long intervals, one all darkness, the other all light ? and if so, what became of the plants and trees created in the third day or period, when the evening of the fourth day (the evenings, be it observed, precede the mornings) set in? They must have passed through half a seculum of total darkness, not even cheered by that dim light which the sun, not yet completely manifested, supplied on the morning of the third day. Such an ordeal would have completely destroyed the whole vegetable creation, and yet we find that it survived, and was appointed on the sixth day as the food of man and animals. In fact, we need only substitute the word 'period' for 'day' in the Mosaic narrative to make it very apparent that the writer at least had no such meaning, nor could he have conveyed any such meaning to those who first heard his account read.
'It has been held,' says Hugh Miller, 'by accomplished philologists, that the days of Mosaic creation may be regarded without doing violence to the Hebrew language, as successive periods of great extent; we do not believe that there is any ground for this doctrine. The word "day' is certainly used occasionally in particular phrases, in an indefinite manner, not only in Hebrew, but other language. As for instance, Gen. xxxix. II—' About this time,' Heb. literally [ . .]explains itself, and not only philology but common sense disclaims the notion, that when 'day' is spoken of in terms like those in the first chapter of Genesis, and described as consisting of an evening and a morning, it can be understood to mean a seculum.
Archdeacon Pratt, treating on the same subject, says (p. 41, note). 'Were there no other ground of objection to this mode of interpretation, I think the wording of the fourth commandment' is clearly opposed to it. Ex. xx. .8. 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 9. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. 10. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it, thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven, and earth, the sea all that in them is, and rested the seventh day ; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.'
'Is it not a harsh and forced interpretation to suppose that the six days in v. 9 do not mean the same as the six days in v. 11, but that in this last place they mean six periods? In reading through the eleventh verse it is extremely difficult to believe that the seventh day is a long period, and the sabbath day and ordinary day, that is, that the same word day should be used in two such totally different senses in the same short sentence and without any explanation.'
Hugh Miller saw the difficulty ; but he endeavours to escape the consequences of a rigorous application of the periodic theory by modifying it in a peculiar, and certainly ingenious manner. 'Waiving,' he says, 'the question as a philological one, and simply holding with Cuvier, Parkinson, and Silliman, that each of the six days of the Mosaic account in the first chapter were what is assuredly meant by the day referred to in the second, not natural days but lengthened periods, I find myself called on, as a geologist, to account for but three out of the six. Of the period during which light was. created, of the period during which a firmament was made to separate the waters from the waters, or of the period during which the two great lights of the earth, with the other heavenly bodies, became visible from the earth's surface—we need expect to find no record in the rocks. Let me, however, pause for a moment, to remark the peculiar character of the language in which we are first introduced in the Mosaic narrative to the heavenly bodies —sun, moon, and stars. The moon, though absolutely one of the smallest lights of our system, is described as secondary and subordinate to only its greatest light, the sun. It is the apparent, then, not the actual, which we find in the passage—what seemed to be, not what was ; and as it was merely what appeared to be greatest that was described as greatest, on what grounds are we to hold that it may not also have been what appeared at the time to be made that has been described as made ? The sun, moon, and stars, may have been created long before, though it was not until this fourth day of creation that they became visible from the earth's surface.'
The theory founded upon this hint is, that the Hebrew writer did not state facts, but merely certain appearances, and those not of things which really happened, as assumed in the explanation adopted by Archdeacon Pratt, but of certain occurrences which were presented to him in a vision, and that this vision greatly deceived him as to what he seemed to see; and thus, in effect, the real discrepancy of the narrative with facts is admitted. He had in all seven visions, to each of which he attributed the duration of a day, although, indeed, each picture presented to him the earth during seven long and distinctly marked epochs. While on the one hand this supposition admits all desirable latitude for mistakes and misrepresentations, Hugh Miller, on the other hand, endeavours to show that a substantial agreement with the truth exists, and to give sufficient reason for the mistakes, we must let him speak for himself. "The geologist, in his attempts to collate the Divine with the geologic record, has, I repeat, only three of the six periods of creation to account for—the period of plants, the period of great sea monsters and creeping things, and the period of cattle and beasts of the earth. He is called on to question his systems and formations regarding the remains of these three great periods, and of them only. And the question once fairly stated, what, I ask, is the reply ? All geologists agree in holding that the vast geological scale naturally divides into three great parts.
There are many lesser divisions—divisions into systems, formations, deposits, beds, strata ; but the master divisions, in each of which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the unpracticed eye can detect the difference are simply three : the palæozoic, or oldest fossiliferous division ; the secondary, or, middle fossiliferous division ; and the tertiary, or latest fossiliferous division. In the first, or palæozoic division, we find corals, crustaceans, molluscs, fishes ; and in its later formations, a few reptiles. But none of these classes give its leading character to the palæozoic ; they do not constitute its prominent feature, or render it more remarkable as a scene of life than any of the divisions which followed. That which chiefly distinguished the palaeozoic from the secondary and tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was emphatically the period of plants—'of herbs yielding seed after their kind.' In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora ; the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth—a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendrons. Wherever dry land, or shallow lakes, or running stream appeared, from where Melville Island now spreads out its icy coast under the star of the pole, to where the arid plains of Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the south, a rank, and luxuriant herbage cumbered every foot-breadth of the dank and steaming soil ; and even to distant planets our earth must have shone through the enveloping cloud with a green and delicate ray. . . . The geologic evidence is so complete as to be patent to all, that the first great period of organised being was, as described in the Mosaic record, peculiarly a period of herbs and trees 'yielding seed after their kind.'
(To be continued.)
Empire 8 June 1861,
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