The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1880-05-12
Letter from Professor Tow.

Editors of the Central Presbyterian:
l must beg leave to trespass on your
patience once more to say word in reply
to a remark in your last article. Your
object and mine is, I trust, simply to get
at the facts in the case of which we are
speaking and l think we MAJ. say that,
as to the result, we agree in holding that
the accounts of Genesis and of modern
science are irreconcilable if either one Of
the following suppositions be correct: Il
If the " day " of the first chapter of Gene
SIS is natural day of twenty-four hours
z. Ii the creation of the vegetable world,
verse II, is represented as wholly ante
rior to the creation of the animal world
verses 20 and following 8. If the term
made In verse l6 is equivalent to "cre-
ated | think have shown that all
these suppositions are correct; but
shall not return to that argument now.
l wish to make remark on the rela-
ton between the first narratives in Gene
Sis and the Babylonian accounts. 1t has
often been pointed out that there is a
striking resemblance between the cos
mogony and early history given by the
Chaldee historian Berosus and that of
our book of Genesis. The recent discov-
cries of Babylonian tablets by the late
George Smith, has made this resemblance
clearer. In the Babylonian poem. as
translated by Smith, Friedrich Delitzsch,
and others, we have history of the orig
inal chaos and the creation of the great
gods; then the creation of the heavenly
bodies; next the creation of the lower an
lmals; next man is introduced then the
god Bel, with sickle-shaped sword and
thunderbolts, fights and Stays the dragon !;
then comes the narrative of the flood
parallel, incident by incident with that
OF Genesis; and finally an account of a
tower-building and dispersion of the
builders by the gods The general and
special agreements between the two ac-
counts (though not all the tablets have
yet been found) are so numerous and
striking as to lead inevitably to the con-
cluslon that the two come from the same
source; for example, the expression &" il
was made good in the Babylonian cor
responds to the biblical "God saw that #
was good The race of man is called
Adam in both, and the Babylonian
like the biblical makes the heavenly
bodies serve as signs of seasons. The
substantial identity of the two is beyond
question. Not less certain is the fact
that the Babylonian is not borrowed from
the Hebrew It's form is such that #
cannot be explained as loan, and more
over its date goes back beyond the begin
ning of the Hebrew people. George
smith, bringing 1t down, as he says, to
the latest possible date, put the original
manuscript of our present Babylonian ac-
counts not later than the seventeenth cen
tury B. O., and the beginning of the le-
gend must 60 still further back not less
than six centuries; so that the consensus
Of scholars now puts it not earlier than
b. Q. 2200, at which time the Hebrew
nation had no existence. Rather. since
the Hebrews came out Of Babylonia. we
must suppose that they received it as an
inheritance from the Babylonians. But
in the course Of time they stripped it Of
its polytheistic features, and transmitted
it into its present monotheistic form. The