Of verses 10 to 14 Voltaire speaks as follows:—'According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful mountains bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates; and if the Pison means the Phasis, it is not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator has got up a Paradise of his own.'
Dr. John Pye Smith suggests that the description is antediluvian, and that the deluge changed the courses of many streams; that hence we must not expect to find any spot conforming to the exact geographical description. If antediluvian, Moses did not write it.
'Verse 15. "The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he might cultivate it."
Voltaire continues:—
'It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to "cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants. Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as flowing through numberless different territories.'
Verses 16 and 17. It is a matter of great difficulty to refrain from ridiculing the statement that there exist trees bearing such fruit, and after overcoming this difficulty, it is still less comprehensible why God should forbid man to acquire a knowledge of good and evil. Would not man's free access to this knowledge appear more in accordance with the character of a just and merciful God? and is not knowledge necessary to man, especially when we find the serpent 'more subtle than other animals,' plotting man's destruction?
Verses 18 and 19. It is somewhat remarkable that immediately after the Lord God had declared his intention of making a helpmeet
for Adam, that he formed all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. This is open to many objections; first, see chap, i, v. 21, but as we must admit there are two distinct accounts of the creation, I will not further burden my work with the contradictions between them; second, the strong improbability of the story of the Lord God bringing the beasts and fowl to see what Adam would call them; either the Lord God had fore-ordained the names to be applied by Adam, or the theologians are wrong—either the Lord God foreknew what names Adam would give each bird and beast, in which case Genesis is incorrect, or prescience, one of the attributes applied to Deity, is deficient; third, the immense time which this naming of every bird and beast must have taken, especially when we remember that Adam was waiting for his wife—it almost appears as if verse 18 should come after verse 20 to make sense of the story. Lawrence says that the account of all the animals being brought before Adam is zoologically impossible ('Lectures on Man,' p. 169). Voltaire says that if Adam had named the animals according to their various natures, he must have either previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society or the Academy of Sciences of Paris. The mode of manufacturing the woman from the rib of the man has been the subject of much controversy, but is only noticed here as another illustration of the fabulous character of the book we are dealing with.
Having passed through the two accounts of the creation contained in the anonymous book I am examining, I shall strive to ascertain the source from whence some of the doctrines and traditions contained in this book were derived. Aware of the magnitude of my task, I will now only deal with authorities to whom no exception should be taken by the religious reader. One is the pious and erudite Sir William Jones, the other the Reverend Thomas Maurice. Of the claims of the first to our attention I will say nothing, for every man ought to be more or less acquainted with the character of the great linguist; of the second I can only say that I find his work issued under the countenance of the heads of the Church, and supported by some of the first men of his day.
When, at the present day, you point out to a Christian the striking coincidence in many points between the Bible and the Hindoo and other sacred writings, he will tell you that the latter have been stolen from the former. Is this the fact? I think not. Maurice, in his preface to his 'Indian Antiquities,' says, 'The stupendous system of the Brahmin Chronology, extending back through millions of years; the obstinate denial of a general deluge by those Brahmins; the perplexing doctrine of a trinity in the divine nature constantly recurring in the operations of Brahma, Vishnu, and Seeva, a doctrine not to be traced to any immediate connexion with the Jewish nation; these were among the delicate topics which neither the clerical nor historical functions in which I had engaged would allow of being passed over in silence. As I advanced in my inquiries, I found that the primeval histories of all the ancient empires of the earth amount to little more than the romantic dreams of astronomical mythology.'