THE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S o ther hand, from th e ru in s of Assyrian libraries have been disinterred fra g ments of an account of creation, and th e Babylonian version of the story of th e deluge, both of which have been brought in to comparison w ith the n arrativ es of the Bible. L ittle need be said of the Babylonian creation story. I t is a de based, polytheistic, long-drawn-out, mythical affair, w ithout order, only here and th ere suggesting analogies to the divine works in Genesis. The flood story h as much more resemblance, bu t it too is debased and mythical, and lacks wholly in th e higher ideas which give its ch aracter to the Biblical account. Yet th is is the quarry from which our critical friends would have us derive the n arratives in the Bible. The Israelites borrowed them, it is thought, and purf- fied these confused polytheistic legends and made them the vehicles of nobler teaching. We need not discuss th e time and m anner of th is borrowing, fo r I cannot see my way to accept th is ver sion of events a t all. There is not only no proof th a t these stories were borrow ed in th e ir crude form from th e Baby lonians, bu t the contrast in sp irit and ch aracter between the Babylonians’ products and the Bible’s seems to me to forbid any such derivation. The de based form may conceivably arise from corruption of th e higher, b u t not vice versa. Much ra th e r may we hold with scholars like Delitzsch and K ittel, th a t th e relation is one of cognateness, not of derivation. These trad ition s came down from a much older source, and are preserved by th e Hebrews in their pu rer form. This appears to me to ex plain the phenomena as no theory of derivation can do, and it is in accord ance w ith the Bible’s o.wn rep resen ta tion of the line of revelation from the beginning along which th e sacred tra dition can be tran sm itted . Leaving Babylonia, I must now say a few words on the scientific and histori-
15 cal aspects of these narratives. Science is invoked to prove th a t the n arrativ es of creation in Genesis 1, th e story of m an’s origin and fall in chapters 2 and 3, th e account of p atriarch al longevity in chapters 5 and 11, th e story of the deluge, and o ther m atters, must all be rejected because in p aten t contradiction to the facts of modern knowledge. I would ask you, however, to suspend judgm ent un til we have looked a t th e relation in which these two things, science and the Bible, stand to each other. When science is said to contra dict th e Bible, I should like to ask first, W hat is m eant by contradiction here? The Bible was never given us in order to anticipate or forestall th e discoveries of modern tw entieth century science. The Bible, as every sensible in terp reter of Scripture has always held, takes th e world as it is, no t as it is seen through th e eyes of tw entieth century special ists, bu t as it lies spread out before the eyes of original men, and uses th e popular every-day language appropriate to th is standpoint. As Calvin in his commentary on Genesis 1 says: “Moses w rote in th e popular style, which, w ith out instruction, all ordinary persons en dowed w ith common sense are able to understand. * * * * * * He does not call us up to heaven; he only proposes things ,that lie open be fore our eyes.” -; It does not follow th a t because the Bible does no t teach modern science, we are justified in saying th a t it con tradicts it.' W hat I see in these n a rra tives of Genesis is th a t, so tru e is the standpoint of the author, so divine the illum ination w ith which he is endowed, so unerring his insight into th e order of natu re, th ere is little in his descrip tion th a t even yet, w ith our advanced knowledge, we need to change. You say th ere is th e “six days” and th e ques tion w hether those days are m eant to be measured by the twenty-four hours
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