King's Business - 1923-01

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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