The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1879-12-10


ING most interesting account " Man the
father of the world existed. His destiny
was heaven, on condition that he was
humble in heart, and that he bore with
humility the work of the law, that he
was pure in his thoughts, pure in his
words and that he did not invoke the
Dosros. At first they spoke these
words: Tits ORMAzD Ahuramazda who
has given the water, the earth, the trees
the animals, the stars, the moon, the sum-
and all the blessings which come from a
pure root and a pure fruit. Then the
Lie (the Dgra of falsehood) invaded their
thoughts he subverted their disposition
and said to them: 1t is AHRIMAN who
has given the water, the earth, the trees,
the animals, and all that has been named
above. 1t is thus that in the beginning
Ahriman deceived them in what related
to the Dpras; and to the end this cruel
being has sought only to seduce them.
By believing this lie, they both the male
and female became Da1va,7ds Qike unto
demons and their souls will be in hell
till the renewal of their bodies. . The
DeUa who uttered the lie, becoming
bolder presented himself a second time,
and brought them tj1at8 aOhjcA they ate,
whereby of thousand blessings they en-
joyed there remained not one
These extracts possess the highest an
tiquity, going back, perhaps, as far as
1900 Be.
NJ. Lenormant informs us that the most
ancient name Of Babylon (and we pass
now to another region and another race
in the idiom of the ante-Semitic popula-
ton, Ta2-tir-ki, signifies &'the place of the
tree of life" and that both the Baby
lonian and Assyrian cylinders, as well as
the bas-reiefs on the Assyrian palaces,
present us with delineations Of this mys-
FERROUS tree, surmounted sometimes by
the symbolic image of the Supreme God,
the winged disc cherubim guarding the
sacred fruit In one example the plant
is represented with sufficient accuracy to
enable us to identify it as the A8clepias
ac5da, the plant known as the Soma to
the Aryans Of India, the Haoma to the
Iranians, the crushed branches of which
afford the intoxicating liquor offered as a
libation to the gods and identified with
the celestial beverage of life and immor-
tality. The Haoma and its sacred juice
is called in the ninth chapter of the
Yacma of the Zoroasterians that which
keeps off death. These same sacred
books Of the Iranians sometimes speak of
a single tree springing from the centre of
the holy spring of water, Ardvi-cura, in
Airyana-V@dja PARADISE, and some
times of teoo corresponding exactly to
those of the Biblical Eden.
On a cylinder of hard stone, in the
British Museum, Of great antiquity, we
see a man and woman, seated opposite to
each other, on either side of tree, from
whose spreading branches two big fruits
hang, one of which they stretch forth
their hands to grasp, while a serpent
rears himself behind the woman.
We cannot avoid perceiving in the
identity or the striking resemblance OF
these myths with the Biblical narrative a
strong corroborative evidence of the truth
of the Mosaic account of the fall Human
pride, as NJ. Lenormant remarks, at an
early period cast off this primeval mem
DRY of mans humiliation, and it became
therefore early obliterated among their
traditions. But when we ascend, as
scientific investigation has been doing in
these recent years, to the fountain-head
of antiquity we find that the ancient
populations of Babylonia, Assyria, Persia,
and India had this recollection, and that
it occupied a conspicuous position in their
religious belief. And we feel satisfied
that, however for a brief space, the in
dustrious Investigations Of modern science
may be employed to throw doubt over
our old Biblical faiths in the end they
will all, in so far as they are true, merely
contribute to illustrate and confirm the
absolute accuracy Of all that the Bible
declares.
GAN old subscriber writes to US, . says the
New York Observer al have long been